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The saxophonist Hal Singer in a 1950 publicity photo. His 1948 record "Corn Bread" gave him a lifelong nickname and put him on the musical map. Hal Singer, a tenor saxophonist and bandleader whose 1948 hit record "Corn Bread" helped establish a new sound in popular music, died on Aug. 18 at his home in Chatou, a suburb of Paris. He was 100. His death was confirmed by his wife, Arlette Singer, who said his health had deteriorated in recent years. Mr. Singer's saxophone carried him through a long career that was rooted in jazz but also paralleled the birth of rhythm and blues and rock 'n' roll in the 1940s and '50s. He shared stages with the likes of Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday and Ray Charles and earned the nickname by which he became known professionally, Cornbread, with "Corn Bread," an instrumental that topped the R B charts and put him on the musical map. That record showcased "a much raunchier style than most guys were playing," the singer, songwriter and music historian Billy Vera said. With its robust honks and screams, he added, "Corn Bread" packed in "more punch, more soul, more emotion," and helped establish the sound that preceded guitar centric rock 'n' roll. Mr. Singer followed "Corn Bread" with another food themed hit, "Beef Stew," a year later. He went on to record more than a dozen albums as leader or sideman, among them "Blue Stompin'" (1959), a collaboration with the jazz trumpeter Charlie Shavers, and"Paris Soul Food" (1969). He moved to France in 1965 after growing weary of the racial unrest in his home country. "He was quite sad," Ms. Singer said in a phone interview. In France, she added, he felt respected and at ease. Mr. Singer was a toddler during the 1921 Tulsa, Okla., race massacre, one of the deadliest acts of racial violence in American history. After a group of African Americans tried to prevent the lynching of a young man who had been accused of assaulting a white woman, a mob of white people descended on the city's Greenwood district a thriving community that had been nicknamed Black Wall Street killing hundreds of residents and burning more than a thousand homes. A white woman whom Mr. Singer's mother worked for put him and his mother on a train to Kansas City, where they would wait out the violence as their house burned down. "I was always grateful for that," Mr. Singer later said. Harold Joseph Singer was born on Oct. 8, 1919, in Tulsa. His mother, Annie Mae (Jones) Singer, was a caterer. His father, Charles, worked for a company that manufactured oil drilling tools. Mr. Singer picked up the violin when he was a child and moved on to saxophone and clarinet during his teenage years. The sax stayed with him while he studied agriculture at what is now Hampton University in Virginia, and it eventually lured him into dropping out and pursuing music full time. Early in his career, he worked with the bands of Terrence Holder, Ernie Fields and Nat Towles. In 1943, he made his way to New York with the pianist Jay McShann's big band; after leaving McShann, he performed alongside jazz greats like the trumpeters Hot Lips Page and Roy Eldridge. A few years later, Mr. Singer played a memorable saxophone solo on Wynonie Harris's jukebox hit "Good Rockin' Tonight," widely regarded as a precursor of rock 'n' roll. In 1948, he joined the Ellington orchestra "the dream job of any musician," Mr. Vera said. But after finding success a year later with "Corn Bread," he left to lead his own group. After about a decade on the road, Mr. Singer became a regular at the Metropole Cafe, a jazz club in Manhattan, where he teamed with Charlie Shavers. By the early 1960s, he had embraced soul jazz, a subgenre that blended jazz, gospel and R B. Shortly after moving to France in 1965, Mr. Singer met Arlette Verdickt, who worked in public relations and later became a computer engineer; the couple married three years later. In addition to his wife, Mr. Singer is survived by two daughters, Stephanie and Lina Singer, and four grandchildren. He spent the following decades recording and touring around the world, eventually returning stateside to perform in the 1980s. In 1989, his wife helped him publish a memoir in French, "Jazz Roads." In 1992, the French culture minister awarded him the title Knight of the Arts, a designation under France's Order of Arts and Letters, which recognizes renowned artists and writers. He was later promoted to the top level, Commander. In 1999, the Haitian American filmmaker Guetty Felin profiled Mr. Singer in the documentary "Hal Singer, Keep the Music Going." His last public performance was in Paris in 2015. "He was a perfectionist," Ms. Singer said, and as his health began to fail, he decided to bow out because he knew he could no longer perform at his best. As his vision gave way to glaucoma, he played at home for as long as he could. "He always invested his energy in studying, practicing or playing music," she said. "He had a lot of energy that's why he lived so long." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
During my childhood years, my family's kitchen cabinets used to be lousy with the sorts of commemorative glassware you'd get at Burger King or McDonald's a Luke Skywalker here, a Snoopy there. These were part of huge global marketing pushes for creative projects being milked for every last ounce of intellectual property, but also savvy positioning by the restaurants. Fast food companies have long attempted to stave off disposability by piggybacking on broader cultural moments, hoping to extend their reach beyond the comestible into the permanently tangible. In 2020, a fast food chain looking for equivalent big tent cultural relevance has few more compelling places to turn than hip hop, the cultural arena with the most natural and ambitious gift for merchandising. And in hip hop, there are fewer more ambitious personal branders than Travis Scott, who has his own festival, several Nike collaborations, a cereal, a Hot Wheels and much more to his name. That said, the collaboration between McDonald's and Scott, which began this week and includes a range of merchandise and a limited edition meal, initially seems preposterous what does McDonald's know about the right singing to rapping ratio? What does Scott know about the right salt to fry ratio? Juggernauts gonna juggernaut, though. And each gets something from the other. For Scott, it's the scale of the flex a partnership with a brand the magnitude of McDonald's is essentially unheard of. (What's next: Walmart? Berkshire Hathaway?) It's a way to slip his aesthetics into the global mainstream through ads and products, and also something that doesn't exist in music anymore: physical distribution locations. (There are over 13,000 McDonald's restaurants in the United States.) In exchange, McDonald's gets some refracted cool and the satisfaction of knowing that thousands of young people might find their way through the co branded merchandise into becoming walking billboards, especially crucial given that while McDonald's remains among the most valuable fast food restaurant brands on the planet, with total global revenue of around 21 billion each of the last two years, it's still a business in overall decline, from a high of 28 billion in 2013. Partnering with Scott is a way to advertise to young people without all the burdens and potential misfires of actually advertising to young people. It would all be so sinister, so savagely instrumental, if it weren't so effective. The range of products in the merchandise drop is frankly staggering. There are umpteen T shirts some insert Scott's imprint name, Cactus Jack, into the Golden Arches; some are inspired by early 1990s sports aesthetics. There are rugs, a lunchbox, socks, a tie, a 90 McNugget body pillow. As with most of Scott's merch, it's well designed, colorful, playful. The brown work jacket with "Billions and Billions Served" embroidered on the back ( 128) could have been right out of a dawn of the '90s Beastie Boys video. These garments are likely to look better in the rearview a couple of decades from now. Though they're well designed, wearing clothing advertising the leading fast food brand is, in a Sweetgreen era, an unprogressive choice nostalgia tends to soften capitalist excesses, though. There's a television commercial, too, in which an action figure version of Scott speaking in his real(?) voice showcases his meal: "same order since back in Houston." Here, too, a mutual compromise: McDonald's, potentially still skittish about aligning with a rapper, swaps in an animated version in the ad. (Some franchisees apparently opposed the partnership, citing Scott's risque lyrics.) And Scott retains a bit of personal mystery. From this action figure commercial to his recent concert on the video game Fortnite, he has been moving toward full time avatar territory. He is already among the most reluctant of hip hop stars, almost never photographed with his eyes engaging the camera. And his voice is generally digitally processed practically beyond recognition, merely shrugging off the texture of reality. He is becoming an A.I. musician long before the algorithms take over. His aesthetics, though, he's willing to share. A collaboration at this scale is maybe a final stop before a full fledged brand of one's own a Yeezy or a Fenty. Despite hip hop's complete dominance of pop culture, there is still a bit of a lag when it comes to the willingness of large mainstream brands to work with hip hop stars. It's still a light shock to see DJ Khaled hawking for Geico, or Snoop Dogg for Corona (or Dunkin' or the General or Tostitos). McDonald's partnership with Scott may well be the savviest music/food pairing since the Starbucks music program, which placed CDs from its Hear Records label next to its registers. Which brings us back to food. There is of course also a Travis Scott Meal, which costs 6 a specialty burger something like an amped up Quarter Pounder With Cheese, fries with barbecue sauce and a Sprite that sadly does not come with a toy. Part of why the Scott/McDonald's alliance feels different is because of the intimacy of food it's one thing to attach a celebrity to a luxury item, but to attach one to a commodity product is a far bolder statement. A couple of days ago, Scott had a not very socially distanced launch event at a McDonald's in Downey, Calif. Scott's buddies wore special shirts made for employees and cheesed for pictures over the griddle. At the McDonald's closest to my house on Wednesday, though, there was little hubbub just another day in the fry guy trenches. A sign in the outer window featured a glam shot of the meal and referred to it as a "limited time collab." On the video menu screen inside, a picture of the sandwich appeared next to a scrawled Travis Scott catchphrase: "It's Lit!" I bought one and can confirm the sandwich tasted ... exactly like McDonald's. I lasted one bite the Sprite was a deeply necessary palate cleanse. As merch goes, the Travis Scott Meal is imperfect in that it disappears you've got nothing to show for it apart from oily skin and a mild gastric hangover. As a collector, I was much more interested in the grill slip, the small, grease mottled piece of paper stuck to the top of the box that indicates a special order, and which was marked "The Travis Scott." It is peak ephemera, utilitarian debris of a peculiar cultural moment. I threw out the sandwich, and pocketed the slip. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
A tiny Swiss mountain town with a big, glitz infused name, St. Moritz is the winter getaway that made the ski holiday a high life ideal. As far back as the 1860s, a patrician British contingent was spending the cold months in the winter sun here; by the 1960s, the jet set had anointed St. Moritz the hallowed ski spot of wealthy scions and the internationally fabulous. In the town's handful of streets jumbled along the western banks of St. Moritz Lake, the German and Romansch speaking enclave is home to a mere 5,200 citizens, joined by more than half a million glamour hungry visitors each year. Amid all the dazzle and dizzying prices though, the town's roots endure: Swiss, snowbound and sports obsessed. Tourist life remains old fashioned, revolving around the ski lodges and the storied Kulm, the slope side Suvretta and the buzz filled Badrutt's Palace, the grand hotels where heavy Alpine furniture never goes out of style; piano players still serenade the lounge dwellers and old and new moneyed denizens alike sip champagne under dim chandeliers. A host of the Winter Olympics in 1928 and 1948, St. Moritz is prime snow sports territory, with a paradise of idyllic paths for cross country skiing, snowshoeing and sledding. Still, downhill skiing is the siren call of these mountains. Outside town, Corvatsch offers skiers daredevil verticality, but St. Moritz's own Corviglia has glorious expanses of snowy slopes. (Day passes start at 50 Swiss francs, or about 50, depending on the week.) Warm up frozen toes afterward with a hot drink at Alpinahutte, where you'll find skiers reviving with gluhwein (mulled wine), skiwasser (hot water with raspberry syrup and lemon) and bull shots, a 17 Swiss franc concoction of vodka and consomme. Badrutt's Palace, with its green tipped tower marking the bull's eye of Via Serlas, is the heart of St. Moritz society. The hotel's remodeled King's Social House, said to be the oldest club in Switzerland, serves dinner and cocktails to a crowd that stays late to dance in its basement lounge. But there's even more action at the plush Renaissance Bar: Badrutt's pocket size, antique smoking lounge, known to regulars as Mario's, after the now retired barman there. Around the fireplace, scores of merrymakers pack the velvet banquettes and armchairs, lighting cigars with matches in sterling silver cases and inviting new acquaintances for rounds of Mario's signature cocktails (like the hot negroni, with Campari, red wine, cranberry and juniper berries for 25 francs) and the popular club sandwich ( available for home delivery, via Badrutt's slick black Rolls Royce). Sure, most of the Moncler clad masses are here to ski, but why here? For the apres ski scene. At La Baracca, neighborly fraternizing over dinner is the norm, and dancing both around and on the long tables generally ensues soon after. The music is loud; the food is unadorned Alpine home cookin g, with dishes like beef carpaccio with pesto and mashed potatoes (49.50 Swiss francs). The restaurant itself is a former construction shack plunked in a parking lot, with whimsically cockeyed vintage chandelie rs and red roses in ice buckets. And in this glaringly posh town, it's an intimate and unpretentious affair that packs in locals and party loving visitors. In the morning, head to Hanselmann's pastry shop, a classic since 1894, whose elaborate rose and buttercream swirled exterior signals the sugarcoated delights within. A full breakfast menu offers eggs and other savory ways to start the day, but the bakery's cases of croissants and cakes will most likely convince you of sweeter plans. For those ready to dive into slices of Hanselmann's saccharine goodness, there's no better place to try an Engadine nusstorte specialty: a sticky shortbread confection of walnuts and caramel (4 francs) to be enjoyed with coffee. For those in need of a bit of recovery after the previous day's slopes, the Ovaverva bathhouse (entrance, 30 Swiss francs) is a sleek Swiss palace of modern spa facilities. It features saunas , steam rooms, hot tubs, an outdoor heated pool and relaxation rooms fronted by sprawling glass walls with a view of the pines and the mountains. Note that no bathing suits are allowed in the saunas, but there are both mixed and women only facilities. Kiddie pools offer entertainment for the very young, and some invigoratingly fast water slides offer thrills for all ages. A full line of massages can be arranged (60 to 185 Swiss francs), but for more serious treatment, Heilbad next door offers medical grade physical therapy and therapeutic massages (55 to 120 Swiss francs). Strap on your snow gear and head for the peaks to glimpse the summit surrounded valley that nestles little St. Moritz in its lakeside basin. The Chasellas ski lift an eight minute glide above the mountainside deposits straphangers at the Suvretta Hotel's Trutz Chalet, a lunchtime oasis of old fashioned stone and timber at 7,200 feet above sea level, with views over the whole of the Upper Engadine. As skiers slalom by the chalet's picture windows, diners in moon boots fuel up with the simple, robust dishes of Alpine lodge cuisine: rosti potato pancakes and bratwurst, polenta with porcini mushrooms, lamb Wiener schnitzel and more. Lunch plates average around 30 Swiss francs. Via Serlas and its byways have the standard international luxury names to be expected in any global destination this glittery Bulgari, Gucci, Prada and the like but a number of niche boutiques make shopping in St. Moritz special. Faoro, a stylish clothing store with a cafe, sells its own line of Italian made sweaters and smart looking versions of traditional bundner mountain guide outfits. A few doors down, Ebneter Biel uses a fleet of embroiderers to stitch tablecloths and napkins with everything from local fauna to seminude cabaret dancers; it also sells lederhosen for children and traditional leather Appenzeller belts that are fascinatingly studded with metallic cows, horses and starry emblems. Nearby, Lamm has been devoted to all things cashmere since 1935, and the annual winter pop up Cabana sells a personality filled selection of tableware, from hand painted Limoges to Murano glass. Several St. Moritz shops offer Alpine specialties that deserve a taste. Pur Alps has a casual cafe, and sells six varieties of apple juice in its shop, along with jams, cheeses and other local products. At Hatecke, fourth generation butchers in a modern shop, have vacuum packed, housemade lamb, venison and other sausages, and serve a small menu of fresh soups and sandwiches. And you weren't going to leave Switzerland without chocolates, were you? At Laderach, a dizzying array of sumptuously cocoa rich truffles, barks and holiday morsels await. With its Alpine recipes of locally sourced ingredients, the petite Dal Mulin is the rare St. Moritz restaurant that serves elegant, inspired food and doesn't glut its menu with heavy interpretations of Italian standards or additions of lobster, caviar and truffle to justify big ticket prices. Dishes, which rely on locally sourced ingredients, include a light beetroot soup, enlivened with a careful balance of horseradish and caraway seeds. Mains, like seared codfish with salsify and miso hollandaise (52 Swiss francs), and venison loin with savoy cabbage, celery and juniper (58 Swiss francs), are complemented by an extensive, thoroughly researched wine list. The long, snooty shadow of St. Moritz's old winter gentry is still discernible in the remaining private clubs sporting associations by origin that are key to social life here. The Corviglia Club is linked to the mountain's ski lodge, while the Cresta Club's small numbers rally around its toboggan run, a death defying, headfirst solo journey down an ice covered chute, which opened in 1884 and is allowing women to ride for the first time this year. But in the darkest hours, Dracula is the place to go. Linked to the Olympic Park's bob run, the club was started by the photographer, industrialist and infamous playboy Gunter Sachs in 1974. Today the lofty wooden lodge serves cocktails and occasionally hosts bands. Though entrance is reserved for club members and their acquaintances, guests of the Kulm hotel, Suvretta and Badrutt's Palace can get help reserving from the concierge. Others can try their luck by arriving, decently dressed, before midnight. For a jolt of a joy ride, walk through the lovely spruce lined knolls of Kulm park, past the iconic 1928 Olympic Stadium restored by artist Rolf Sachs as his private home, to the starting point of the fabled St. Moritz Celerina bob run. Intrepid visitors can book a high speed trip, equipped with little more than a sleigh and a helmet to hurdle down the ice of what's billed as the world's only naturally occurring bob trail. Bobsleds carry four passengers; up to two may be novices. The hefty 269 Swiss franc ticket includes a celebratory pin and certificate and a glass of bubbly to take the edge off. Observing is free, and electrifying. For snacks and hot chocolate, stop by the Kulm Country Club, a storied chalet recently remodeled by Norman Foster, a part time St. Moritz resident who also designed the timber shingled blob that is the Chesa Futura private residence (the most arrestingly contemporary architecture in town). The club overlooks the plein air ice skating rink in the Olympic Park, which offers skate rentals for 22 Swiss francs. It's filled with contemporary furnishings and vintage relics of local sports: Wooden bobsleds line the ceiling, old ski poles mark the doors and black and white photos of St. Moritz's Olympic competitions festoon the walls. St. Moritz and the Engadin Valley that encompasses it have a long history of attracting artists and intellectuals Friedrich Nietzsche, Alberto Giacometti, Thomas Mann, Hermann Hesse and Giovanni Segantini, among them. In recent years, that cultural legacy has flowered anew, with the openings of contemporary art venues like the Muzeum Susch, the Stalla Madulain, the artist Not Vital's castle turned gallery and the art filled Hotel Castell, all in the surrounding valley. A stroll around the town itself offers its own enlightening treats. Stop by the Segantini Museum before it closes in March for renovations to view the artist's works, including his significant "Life, Nature and Death" triptych. In a sign of St. Moritz's burgeoning importance in the art world, Hauser Wirth opened with a Louise Bourgeois show in a three story Via Serlas space in December. There are several three and four star hotels that possess a fair amount of comfort and decorum, and cost a fraction of luxury lodgings. Built in 1875, the Hotel Reine Victoria retains some of the tasseled curtain and gilded charm of its Belle Epoque origins; its relatively bargain priced rooms start at 175 Swiss francs and include entrance to the neighboring Ovaverva bathhouse. Airbnb can provide some relief off peak, but on average, a one bedroom apartment is still pricey, costing from 225 to 1,200 Swiss francs a night, with prices surging drastically during holiday weeks. The Kulm, one of St. Moritz's grand hotels and the first to open its doors here in 1856, offers both an august history and a slew of newly renovated rooms by the designer Pierre Yves Rochon that feature fragrant, native stone pine wood. Doubles start from 545 Swiss francs. The spa and heated outdoor pool, like most of the balconied rooms, overlooks the lake and mountains. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
Credit...Joshua Rashaad McFadden for The New York Times ATLANTA This, an old saying goes, is "the city too busy to hate," one of the few places in America where enlightened leaders, black and white, chose prosperity over prejudice and a large black middle class emerged decades ago. Birthplace of Martin Luther King Jr., cradle of the civil rights movement, Atlanta, with its gleaming towers and porch swings, was an American exception. The city managed racial conflict through compromise. It was the black mecca. Or so the story went. James Forman Jr., a Pulitzer prize winning professor at Yale Law School, and the son of the prominent civil rights activist James Forman Sr., recalled how, at age 12, he moved from New York to Atlanta because "my mother, as a divorced white woman raising black children, wanted us surrounded by black success. She wanted my brother and me to open the paper every day and see black people making decisions." That was the 1970s. Every Atlanta mayor since 1974 has been black. Yet now the city is an epicenter of America's double meltdown: over racial injustice and over the coronavirus that has hit marginalized African Americans particularly hard. This is the home of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which went AWOL on the virus. This is where a young black man, Rayshard Brooks, was killed on June 12 by a white police officer. What became of the dream of Atlanta? It was always a progressive enclave surrounded by reactionary forces. If City Hall was the nexus of racial cooperation, the State Capitol was the nexus of segregation now and forever. Perhaps things were never quite as good as they seemed. African Americans remained disproportionately poor and vulnerable. When Atlanta hosted the 1996 Olympics, Georgia's flag was still, in essence, the Confederate flag. Progress on race issues is not resolution of race issues. Not in Atlanta, not anywhere, as Derek Chauvin's white knee on George Floyd's black neck demonstrated. Police brutality, mass black incarceration, poor education, redlining of neighborhoods all told a story so routine as to be invisible: A black life is worth less than a white life in America. That idea is woven into the psyches even of people loath to admit it. The Floyd detonation was long in the making. With its large African American population, about a third of the electorate, Georgia was bound to feel the reverberations. Democrats have not won Georgia, with its 16 electoral votes, since 1992, and Donald Trump had a clear victory here in 2016. Now several polls suggest Joe Biden is leading by a small margin (and is considering driving home his ascendancy here by choosing either Stacey Abrams or the Atlanta mayor, Keisha Lance Bottoms, as his running mate). This is the Covid Floyd election, and Georgia has become a bellwether. The narrow 2018 defeat of Abrams, campaigning to become the nation's first black female governor, showed how demographic shifts have changed Georgia. The metropolitan rural political and cultural chasm, evident across the nation, is particularly acute here. Fast growing Metro Atlanta, with its diverse Democratic leaning population, faces a hinterland where, for many white rural Georgians, Trump is still the tough, straight talking dude the country needs. The vote will be close. If Trump loses Georgia to Biden, he likely loses everything. But that's still a big "if." That promise has generally proved illusory when it comes to race. Throughout American history white cruelty in keeping blacks down has been matched only by white ingenuity in finding new ways to do so. Trump is part of that tradition. He has doubled down of late on the same images of lawless blacks that sustained Jim Crow. Forman "toggles back and forth," as he put it, on the question of how much has changed between the time his father was arrested, beaten and held incommunicado by the L.A. police in the 1950s and his 11 year old son insisting, today, on joining the countrywide uprising against racial injustice. "I have never seen anything like this in my lifetime," Forman told me. "I have many white friends with whom I have tried to raise issues of racial inequality and injustice. But it was never front and center in their lives. Now they bring it up nonstop. Perhaps it's like when people saw the images of police attack dogs being set on black children in Birmingham in 1963. You know, 'I can't believe that!' Maybe this is how that felt." "Like Emmett Till in the casket, the Floyd image made clear no black person is safe," Carol Anderson, a professor here at Emory University and author of "White Rage," told me. The question of course is whether this awakening can achieve what even the Civil Rights Movement could not: the full humanization of black Americans. "It has been said that the opposite of criminalization is humanization," Jonathan Rapping, an Atlanta defense attorney who has focused on providing equal justice for marginalized communities, said. In other words, when will America awaken to the fact that Rayshard Brooks was a human being, in full, who should not have ended up dead because he dozed off in his car in the drive thru lane of an Atlanta Wendy's? I have watched the video too often. Brooks groggy in his parked car on June 12. The initially amiable 41 minute encounter between Brooks and officers, including Garrett Rolfe. Brooks's reasonable offer to lock his car and walk to his sister's place. The tussle when Rolfe abruptly moves to make a DUI arrest and handcuff Brooks. A Taser grabbed by Brooks from an officer. Brooks running. Turning and firing the Taser toward Rolfe, who responds with two bullets into Brooks's back. "What I see is a shooting that was unnecessary," Sam Starks, a black Atlanta lawyer, told me. "Park the car. Lock it. Take that person home. Brooks was on probation. He is terrified. He knows the cage he's headed for." Unarmed, Brooks was no threat to anyone. His car was stationary. He would not be dead if he was white. He would be at his sister's place. Having served a one year sentence for credit card fraud, Brooks was in the maw of a system that condemns young black lives long after the cell. A poor black man's chances of finding work on probation resemble a snowball's chances of surviving hell. In an interview in February with Reconnect, a company that works to combat mass incarceration and recidivism, Brooks, 27, said: "I just feel like some of the system could look at us like individuals. We do have lives. It's just a mistake we made." A mistake is not a reason to be treated "as if we are animals." "We need education reforms," he told me. "We need to teach the terrible things we did to make this country. They are known and hidden at the same time." Brock looked hard at me. "I want to show my son the world and what actually goes on." Jamal Harrison Bryant, a pastor, grabbed a microphone. "This is not a moment, it's a movement," he said. Cheers echoed around the still ghostly pandemic hit city. "We're sick and tired of every week having a different hashtag for innocent black lives," he continued. "We're sick and tired of them finding money for Georgia Tech but finding no money for Morehouse and Spelman." Catherine Quashie, a black woman, was standing next to me. Bryant is her pastor. She told me it took her two hours and 47 minutes to vote in Stonecrest, a city southeast of Atlanta. I heard stories of seven hour waits in Fulton County. In upscale Buckhead voters were in and out in 10 minutes. "The encouraging thing," Quashie said, "is nobody left the line." Most of her family is in Europe. "They keep asking me: 'WHAT IS GOING ON IN AMERICA?'" When I leave the demonstration, I drive southeast out of Atlanta toward Arbery's hometown, Brunswick, five hours away on the Atlantic Ocean, across God's country, where nobody wears a mask. Roger Johnson runs a fruit stand near McRae, in an area famous for its sweet Vidalia onions and, of course, Georgia peaches. His daughter, Taylor, helps out. "This is the Bible Belt," Johnson tells me. "Twelve churches between here and the Interstate." He's a stocky, friendly guy with a mustache, a belly and narrow, shrewd eyes. A sign outside says TOMATOES and ONIONS in red and blue letters, with TRUMP's name at the top. So why, I ask, do you like the president? "Because he doesn't take any crap. Because he cannot be bought by other pols. Because he's not a career politician. He might stretch the truth a little but don't we all? And it's the news that stretches it a lot." From abandonment as her son was killed to the White House in just four months is quite a journey. How did she feel, I asked, about meeting with Trump? "I respect him as the president. He is a man and a human being," Cooper Jones told me. "I was criticized, but he gave time to listen to a mother in pain and that is what mattered." Cooper Jones did the right thing, setting an example of brave cordiality in an age of facile declamation. America could use more listening across its lines of violent fracture. Confronting racial injustice involves recognition and reconciliation, however painful. That was Mandela's message. My parents were South African. I know that. In Atlanta, recent months have shown that for all its black professionals and power, the city is as much in need of reform as any other. "As a public defender, you would not know white people are breaking any laws," Rapping, the defense attorney, told me. "Like every city, Atlanta has been shaped by a 400 year old narrative that says black or brown people don't matter." The system that turns black kids into case numbers, that holds young black men in cells for months pretrial because they cannot put up money bonds, that prosecutes for smoking marijuana, has to change. It's a form of violence, and it breeds violence. "Law and order" is no answer. Every weekend, Georgians in their ever growing diversity interracial couples, people in hijabs, gay couples swarm over Stone Mountain, whose North Face is carved with bas reliefs of Confederate generals. It's as if a new Georgia, defying its racist past, is heeding King's 1963 "I Have a Dream" speech in which he said, "Let Freedom Ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia!" One day, I went to Decatur, a city in the Metro Atlanta sprawl, to see a Confederate monument, a 30 foot obelisk engraved with tributes to the "loyalty and truth" of men "who held fast to the faith as it was given by the fathers of the Republic." Graffiti "No justice, No Peace"; "Black Lives Matter" had been scrawled all over it. A few days later, on a judge's order, it was gone, hoisted out by a crane. This is not the election, or the country, it was before Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd and Rayshard Brooks. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
Ara Guzelimian first attended the Ojai Music Festival, the laboratory of musical innovation in Southern California, as a teenager. In 1974, as a college student, he performed at the festival as a member of U.C.L.A.'s a cappella choir. And from 1992 to 1997, he was Ojai's artistic director. So when the festival suddenly found itself in need of a new leader earlier this month, after its incoming artistic director, Chad Smith, was named chief executive officer of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, it was only natural to reach out to Mr. Guzelimian. The festival announced on Thursday that he had agreed to take or retake the job. "It felt a little like Odysseus coming home after all his journeys," said Mr. Guzelimian, whose post Ojai life has brought him to Carnegie Hall, as senior director and artistic adviser, and the Juilliard School, as provost and dean, a position he had already planned to step down from next June. Ojai's original succession plan for Mr. Smith to follow Thomas W. Morris, whose 16 year run as artistic director ended in June was upended by management upheaval at the Los Angeles Philharmonic. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
Wherever men's fashion goes, Ben Cobb is there. This summer, in London, Milan, Paris and New York, there he was, seated in the front row at almost every runway show. And when he's on the street outside the venues, the street style photographers can't resist taking his picture. He has a signature look, with the dark mustache, the tightly fitted, flare legged trousers, the silk shirt unbuttoned halfway to the navel. A Vogue blog post focused on Mr. Cobb in making the case for the return of the sleazy guy. It's natural to assume that his head to toe retro look is a fashion world costume. But for Mr. Cobb, the editor in chief of the British fashion magazine Another Man, every day is, sartorially speaking, 1974. The decade called to him, and he listened. "Most things I love fall into that whole era for some reason," Mr. Cobb said. "The fashion in that era I still think there's something really magical about that time that, for me anyway, never gets boring." Mr. Cobb was sitting in the bar of his hotel, the Loews Regency, between appointments during his visit to New York last month. He had on Gucci flares, a white Louis Vuitton shirt and black Saint Laurent boots. Necklaces dangled from his neck. Now and then patrons looked at him in wonder, as you would when encountering unfrozen '70s Man. Mr. Cobb, 40, who is soft spoken, said he arrived at his signature look many years ago through watching period films specifically, Italian cult horror and crime movies like "Four Flies on Grey Velvet" and "Live Like a Cop, Die Like a Man." "The aesthetic in the movies is incredible," he said. "All the men looked amazing." Speaking more broadly about Hollywood actors in that period, like Robert Redford and Jack Nicholson, he added, "They were allowed to express themselves and be every version of masculinity." Mr. Cobb was asked how he has been able to dress like Maurizio Merli or Robert Redford in "Three Days of the Condor" during the recent era of skinny jeans and shrunken suits. Does he wear a lot of vintage? "I have Saint Laurent blazers, a couple of suits," he said. "With some of the blazers, the proportion of the lapels, it can almost veer into parody. You never want to be a caricature." Instead, he said, he finds plenty of choices in today's luxury men's wear, especially as much of it seems to recycle the 1970s. He's partial to Tom Ford, Gucci, "bits of Fendi" and Dries Van Noten, and when he finds something he likes, he buys in multiples. "At the moment, I get all my trousers from Gucci," he said. "I have these trousers in loads of different colors. I love them. Shoe wise, I love Hedi's Saint Laurent boots." After it was announced that Hedi Slimane would be leaving the label, "I went and bought a whole bundle," Mr. Cobb said. He was born and raised in London, the son of a graphic designer father and a mother who studied fashion at Central Saint Martins. Now he lives in an apartment in that city's Maida Vale neighborhood painted dark brown with gold accents in the decor. The inspirations for his home were the '70s era designer David Hicks and Billy Baldwin, the noted purveyor of Hollywood Regency. "I live in a bubble," Mr. Cobb said. Still, despite his retro aesthetic, he sees himself as of the moment. True style, he said, is mixing the old and the new in a way that reveals your personality. "You've chosen those things and put them together in a certain way, and that's what gives them that cohesiveness," Mr. Cobb said. So how did he feel about being called sleazy in Vogue? Did he take it as a compliment? "I take everything as a compliment," Mr. Cobb said, smiling. "That's the best way through life, right? One person's sleaze is another's romanticism." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
NBCUniversal, the media giant owned by the cable operator Comcast, has pushed out the leader of its network entertainment group amid a pending investigation into claims of workplace harassment. The company said Thursday that Paul Telegdy, the chairman of NBC Entertainment, would be leaving the company. Mr. Telegdy, a longtime television executive, was about to be investigated by outside counsel hired by NBCUniversal after accusations from several Hollywood stars, including the actress Gabrielle Union, that he fostered a toxic work environment. Ms. Union was a judge on the NBC prime time hit "America's Got Talent." She was ousted from the show in 2019 after she alleged instances of racist and otherwise offensive behavior on the set. In June Ms. Union filed a harassment complaint with California's Department of Fair Employment and Housing against NBCUniversal and the show's producers. Mr. Telegdy, a former BBC executive, was made sole chairman of NBC Entertainment in October after a series of executive departures, putting him in charge of NBC's prime time lineup. Earlier, he was responsible for the network's reality programming and oversaw franchises like "The Voice" and "American Ninja Warrior," in addition to "America's Got Talent." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
China launched a spacecraft to the moon's surface on Monday. The mission, called Chang'e 5, is China's aim to be the first country in more than four decades to bring back samples of lunar rocks and soil. China launched a spacecraft to the moon's surface on Monday (it was early on Tuesday, local time), aiming to be the first nation to bring back lunar rock and soil samples in more than four decades. The mission, called Chang'e 5, is the latest step in an ambitious space program that China hopes will culminate with an international lunar research station and ultimately a human colony on the moon by the 2030s. The launch, from the Wenchang space site at Hainan Island in China's south, was broadcast live by Chinese state media. China has often been secretive about its deep space missions, waiting until they made it to orbit before officially announcing success. The broadcast without any delay may be a sign of growing confidence in the proven track record of its space program. Although China ventured into space much later than the United States and the Soviet Union, the country has made huge progress over the past decade, and is now among the elite ranks of space faring nations. In addition to the lunar missions, China's astronauts have docked in orbit with space stations of the country's own construction three times. In July, the Tianwen 1 mission set course for Mars, and will try to land on the red planet's surface next year. These accomplishments have become a source of national pride, carefully managed to emphasize the Communist Party's strong and steady leadership. China's space program remains secretive, but officials have offered more details than usual about Chang'e 5. The entire Chang'e 5 mission, from liftoff to the recovery of the rock samples, will be over in less than a month. After the spacecraft enters orbit around the moon, Chang'e 5 will split into two: A lander will head to the surface while the other piece, an orbiter, waits for its return. Once it gets to the surface, in about a week, the lander needs to accomplish all of its drilling and scooping tasks within a single lunar day, which lasts 14 Earth days. The lander is not designed to survive the frigid dark lunar night. The Chang'e 5 lander includes a small rocket, and before the sun sets it will blast off with the rock and soil samples. This rocket will rendezvous and dock with the piece of the spacecraft that remained in orbit. The samples will be transferred to the orbiter for the journey back to Earth. The sample is scheduled to land in the Inner Mongolia region of China in the middle of December. In an interview with China's state television network, Yu Dengyun, deputy chief designer of China's lunar exploration project, acknowledged that the complex choreography of Chang'e 5 was more technically challenging than that of earlier missions. "We launch rockets on the ground with relatively mature technology, but we are using the lander as the launching platform on the lunar surface," he said. "How to dissipate heat, how to divert flows and how to control the rising process are what we have never done before. These are hard nuts to crack." Chang'e 5 aims to deliver more than four pounds of specimens back to Earth. In the 1970s, three successful Soviet Luna missions brought back a total of about 10 ounces of moon. NASA's Apollo astronauts lugged back 842 pounds of moon rock and soil. Scientists are still studying the Apollo and Luna samples. The landing site is a volcanic plain called Mons Rumker in the Oceanus Procellarum region on the moon's near side. For planetary scientists, rocks collected from this region promise a glimpse of a much younger part of the moon. The places explored by Apollo and Luna were all more than three billion years old. Mons Rumker is estimated to be around 1.2 billion years old. Because it is so different from those earlier sites, "it's possible to get new science outcomes," Xiao Long, a planetary geologist at the China University of Geosciences in Wuhan, who was involved in selecting the landing site, said in an email. Planetary scientists hope that rocks brought back by Chang'e 5 can calibrate a crater counting technique used to estimate the ages of geological surfaces on the planets, moons and asteroids throughout the solar system. A young surface is smooth and almost unblemished, while an old surface is more heavily cratered. But until Apollo, counting craters provided only relative ages; scientists could tell that one place was older than the other but not exactly how old. With moon rocks collected by Neil Armstrong and other astronauts, scientists could measure radioactive elements in the rocks and precisely calculate when a volcanic eruption had occurred, and thus the age of the parts of the moon where the Apollo explorers set down. But none of the missions landed on a younger part of the moon, leaving a large gap of uncertainty. The eastern half of Mons Rumker is a plain of basalt a rock of hardened lava that is relatively crater free, suggesting an age not much more than one billion years. "It has implications way beyond the moon," said James W. Head III, a professor of geological sciences at Brown University who participated in analyzing Mons Rumker with Dr. Xiao and other Chinese scientists. "So it's really a great place to go." Scientists also want to understand some of the differences in composition of varying parts of the moon, and the samples might also explain how part of the moon was still molten some three billion years after it formed. For example, they want to see whether rocks from Mons Rumker contain high levels of thorium. If the moon's upper mantle in this region contained an abundance of that radioactive element, which generates heat as it decays, that might have produced the volcanism that spilled lava onto the surface before cooling into the basaltic plain. "Or is there some other factor, or is the interior still hot?" Dr. Head asked. "By sampling these, we will be able tell whether these are high thorium or not. And if not, that resets that whole question." If there is little thorium, "scientists will need to rethink how this young volcanic rock was created," Dr. Xiao said. To study these and other questions, Carolyn H. van der Bogert, a research scientist at the Institute for Planetology at the Westfalische Wilhelms Universitat in Munster, Germany, said researchers needed more than the wealth of data that has been gathered by orbiting spacecraft such as NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. "What we really need now are very targeted ground truth missions," Dr. van der Bogert said. Missions like Chang'e 5, she added, "are going to be really critical for testing and improving our remote sensing data sets." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
Credit...Russell Shakespeare for The New York Times TOORBUL, Australia The first sign is the smell: smoky, like a campfire, with a hint of urine. The second is the koala's rear end: If it is damp and inflamed, with streaks of brown, you know the animal is in trouble. Jo, lying curled and unconscious on the examination table, had both. Jo is a wild koala under the purview of Endeavour Veterinary Ecology, a wildlife consulting company that specializes in bringing sick koala populations back from the brink of disease. Vets noticed on their last two field visits that she was sporting "a suspect bum," as the veterinarian Pip McKay put it. So they brought her and her 1 year old joey into the main veterinary clinic, which sits in a remote forest clearing in Toorbul, north of Brisbane, for a full health check. Ms. McKay already had an inkling of what the trouble might be. "Looking at her, she probably has chlamydia," she said. Humans don't have a monopoly on sexually transmitted infections. Oysters get herpes, rabbits get syphilis, dolphins get genital warts. But chlamydia a pared down, single celled bacterium that acts like a virus has been especially successful, infecting everything from frogs to fish to parakeets. You might say chlamydia connects us all. This shared susceptibility has led some scientists to argue that studying, and saving, koalas may be the key to developing a long lasting cure for humans. "They're out there, they've got chlamydia, and we can give them a vaccine, we can observe what the vaccine does under real conditions," said Peter Timms, a microbiologist at the University of Sunshine Coast in Queensland. He has spent the past decade developing a chlamydia vaccine for koalas, and is now conducting trials on wild koalas, in the hopes that his formula will soon be ready for wider release. "We can do something in koalas you could never do in humans," Dr. Timms said. In koalas, chlamydia's ravages are extreme, leading to severe inflammation, massive cysts and scarring of the reproductive tract. In the worst cases, animals are left yelping in pain when they urinate, and they develop the telltale smell. But the bacteria responsible is still remarkably similar to the human one, thanks to chlamydia's tiny, highly conserved genome: It has just 900 active genes, far fewer than most infectious bacteria. Because of these similarities, the vaccine trials that Endeavour and Dr. Timms are running may offer valuable clues for researchers across the globe who are developing a human vaccine. How bad is chlamydia in humans? Consider that around one in 10 sexually active teenagers in the United States is already infected, said Dr. Toni Darville, chief of the division of pediatric infectious diseases at the University of North Carolina. Chlamydia is the most common sexually transmitted infection worldwide, with 131 million new cases reported each year. Antibiotics exist, but they are not enough to solve the problem, Dr. Darville said. That's because chlamydia is a "stealth organism," producing few symptoms and often going undetected for years. "We can screen them all and treat them, but if you don't get all their partners and all their buddies at the other high schools, you have a big spring break party and before you know it everybody's infected again," Dr. Darville said. "So they have this long term chronic smoldering infection, and they don't even know it. And then when they're 28 and they're like, 'Oh, I'm ready to have a baby, everything's a mess.'" Here are more fascinating tales you can't help but read all the way to the end. None Getting Personal With Iman. The supermodel talks about life after David Bowie, their Catskills refuge and the perfume inspired by their love. A Resilient Team for a Broken Nation. With the Taliban in control, what, and whom, is Afghanistan's national soccer team playing for? The Fight of This Old Boxer's Life Was With His Own Family. A battle among Marvin Stein's family over his fortune broke out, and he suddenly found himself powerless to fight for himself. In 2019, Dr. Darville and her colleagues received a multiyear, 10.7 million grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to develop a vaccine. The ideal package would combine a chlamydia and gonorrhea vaccine with the HPV vaccine already given to most preteenagers. "If we could combine those three, you'd basically have a fertility anticancer vaccine," she said. Chlamydia's stealth and ubiquity the name means "cloak like mantle" owes to its two stage life cycle. It starts out as an elementary body, a spore like structure that sneaks into cells and hides from the body's immune system. Once inside, it wraps itself in a membrane envelope, hijacks the host cell's machinery and starts pumping out copies of itself. These copies either burst out of the cell or are released into the bloodstream to continue their journey. "Chlamydia is pretty unique in that regard," said Ken Beagley, a professor of immunology at Queensland University of Technology and a former colleague of Dr. Timms. "It's evolved to survive incredibly well in a particular niche, it doesn't kill its host and the damage it causes occurs over quite a long time." The bacterium can hang out in the genital tract for months or years, wreaking reproductive havoc. Scarring and chronic inflammation can lead to infertility, ectopic pregnancy or pelvic inflammatory disease. Evidence is mounting that chlamydia harms male fertility as well: Dr. Beagley has found that the bacteria damages sperm and could lead to birth abnormalities. All of this except the spring break parties is true in both humans and koalas. Researchers who work with both species note that koala chlamydia looks strikingly similar to the human version. The main difference is severity: In koalas, the bacterium rapidly ascends the urogenital tract, and can jump from the reproductive organs to the bladder thanks to their anatomical proximity. These parallels have led Dr. Timms to argue that koalas could serve as a "missing link" in the search for a human vaccine. "The koala is more than just a fancy animal model," he said. "It actually is really useful for human studies." No one knows how or when koalas first got chlamydia. But the curse is at least centuries old. In 1798, European explorers reached the mountains of New South Wales and spied a creature that defied description: ear tufted and spoon nosed, it peered down stoically from the crooks of towering eucalyptus trees. They compared it to the wombat, the sloth and the monkey. They settled on "native bear" and gave it the genus name Phascolarctos (from the Greek for "leather pouch" and "bear"), spawning the misconception that the koala bear is, in fact, a bear. "The graveness of the visage," The Sydney Gazette wrote in 1803, "would seem to indicate a more than ordinary portion of animal sagacity." In the late 19th century, the Australian naturalist Ellis Troughton noted that the "quaint and lovable koala" was also particularly susceptible to disease. The animals suffered from an eye ailment similar to pink eye, which he blamed for waves of koala die offs in the 1890s and 1900s. At the same time, the anatomist J.P. Hill found that koalas from Queensland and New South Wales often had ovaries and uteruses riddled with cysts. Many modern scientists now believe those koalas were probably afflicted with the same scourge: chlamydia. Koalas today have even more to worry about. Dogs, careless drivers and, recently, rampant bushfires have driven their numbers down so far that conservation groups are calling for koalas to be listed as endangered. But chlamydia still reigns supreme: In parts of Queensland, the heart of the epidemic, the disease helped fuel an 80 percent decline over two decades. The disease is also the one that most often sends koalas to the Australia Zoo Wildlife Hospital, the country's busiest wildlife hospital, located 30 miles north of Endeavour. "The figures are 40 percent chlamydia, 30 percent cars, 10 percent dogs," said Dr. Rosemary Booth, the hospital's director. "And then the rest is an interesting assortment of what trouble you can get into when you have a small brain and your habitat's been fragmented." But the cure can be as deadly as the disease. Deep inside a koala's intestines, an army of bacteria helps the animal subsist off eucalyptus, a plant toxic to every other animal. "These are the ultimate example of an animal that's completely dependent on a population of bacteria," Dr. Booth said. Antibiotics extinguish that crucial gut flora, leaving a koala unable to gain nutrients from its food. In a 2019 trial led by Dr. Timms and Dr. Booth, one of five koalas treated with antibiotics later had to be euthanized "due to gastrointestinal complications, resulting in muscle wasting and dehydration." The problem is so dire that vets give antibiotic treated koalas "poo shakes" fecal transplants, essentially in the hopes of restoring their microbiota. For the past decade, Dr. Timms has worked to perfect a vaccine. Rather than treat animals once they are already sick, a widespread vaccine would protect koalas from any future sexual encounter and from passing the infection from mother to newborn. His formula, developed with Dr. Beagley, appears to work well: Trials have shown that it is safe to use and takes effect within 60 days, and that animals show immune responses that span their entire reproductive lives. The next step is optimizing it for use in the field. At Endeavour, the vets treating Jo got a surprise: Molecular tests showed she was chlamydia free. That meant she could be recruited for the current trial, which is testing a combined vaccine against chlamydia and the koala retrovirus known as KoRV, a virus in the same family as H.I.V. that similarly knocks down the koala's immune system and makes chlamydia more deadly. Dr. Timms is hoping that this trial and another in New South Wales will be the "clincher" the last step before the government rolls out mass vaccinations. If he is right, it could be good news for more than just koalas. Dr. Timms began his career studying chlamydia in livestock before moving on to using mice as a model for a human vaccine. Cheap, plentiful and amenable to genetic manipulation, mice have long been the gold standard for studying reproductive disease. But the mouse model comes with serious drawbacks. Most glaringly, mice exhibit a profoundly different immune response to chlamydia than ours, making the idea of testing a mouse for a human vaccine "completely flawed," Dr. Timms said. After a decade of doing mouse work, he reasoned that he could take the insights he had gleaned and apply them to an animal that was actually suffering and possible to cure: the koala. "We don't need a vaccine for mice," he said. With "koala work, as hard as that is, and as difficult as that is, the results you get are the ones that matter." The more Dr. Timms worked with koalas, the more he realized that these marsupials were not so different from you and me. Here was a species that, like us, was naturally infected with several strains of chlamydia and suffered from similar reproductive outcomes, including infertility. He realized he might have a useful model animal on his hands. "This is little Lorna, who's rather interesting," Dr. Booth said. "She has a baby in her pouch and she's had problems with her glucose metabolism" she had diabetes. Wasn't it unusual to have an animal that gets such humanlike diseases: diabetes, cancer and sexually transmitted infections? "We are but an animal," Dr. Booth said, throwing her hands up in a gesture of unity with the world. "We didn't think of it first." It is still uncertain to what extent the research on koala chlamydia will help in developing a human vaccine. (Dr. Darville had been working for nine months when Covid 19 hit, shuttering her lab and slowing scientific progress.) What is certain is that the research done on human chlamydia has greatly benefited koalas. From human antibiotics to mouse insights, wildlife veterinarians have far more tools than before to save the vulnerable marsupials. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
LOS ANGELES "Tenet" was supposed to mark the return of the movie theater business in the United States. Instead, it has shown just how much trouble the industry is in. After five months of pandemic forced closure, the big movie theater chains reopened in roughly 68 percent of the United States by Labor Day weekend, in large part so they could show the 200 million film, which Warner Bros. promoted as "a global tent pole of jaw dropping size, scope and scale." But "Tenet," directed by the box office heavyweight Christopher Nolan, instead arrived with a whimper: It collected 9.4 million in its first weekend in North America and just 29.5 million over its first two weeks. Theaters remain closed in New York and Los Angeles, the two biggest markets in the United States and the center of Mr. Nolan's fan base. In the areas where "Tenet" did play, audience concern about safety even with theater capacity limited to 50 percent or less in most locations likely hurt ticket sales. Box office analysts also noted that "Tenet" is a complicated, cerebral movie with little star power; a frothier, more escapist offering may have had an easier time coaxing people back to cinemas. Whatever the reason, the bottom line was strikingly clear: People aren't going to the movies at anywhere close to the numbers that Hollywood hoped, and things are not expected to improve in the near term. Studios are postponing big movies again "Wonder Woman 1984" retreated last week, prompting at least three studios to convene meetings on Monday to discuss how to proceed with other scheduled releases leaving theater owners without much new to offer for the next two months. Some analysts have started to re sound alarm bells about the future of the theater business. In recent days, Warner Bros. shifted "Wonder Woman 1984" to Christmas Day from Oct. 2, and MGM/Universal pushed back the slasher remake "Candyman" to next year. STX announced it was moving its Gerard Butler starring disaster movie "Greenland" out of September to later this year. Marvel's "Black Widow" and Pixar's "Soul" are two films supposed to come out in November whose future now seems in question. "I'm disappointed that the marketplace is still 30 percent unopened," Jeff Goldstein, Warner Bros. president of distribution, said. "The markets we are missing are key markets where Chris Nolan movies have really performed well in the past." Mr. Nolan's last three non franchise movies "Inception," "Interstellar" and "Dunkirk" opened in the 50 million range in North America and went on to collect between 527 million and 837 million worldwide, with the bulk of sales coming from overseas. Theater owners now must put their faith into two factors out of their control: studios staying the course with end of year releases, and New York and Los Angeles (along with San Francisco, the No. 3 market in the country) allowing theaters to reopen. "Death on the Nile" from Disney's Twentieth Century division is the biggest budgeted movie still scheduled to come out in October. If "Black Widow" (Nov. 6) or the James Bond spectacle "No Time to Die" (Nov. 20) get pushed back or moved online as Disney did recently with "Mulan" theaters are likely to face arduous conversations about their futures with investors and lenders. Ford and Rivian no longer plan to work jointly on electric vehicles. Elizabeth Holmes took the stand in her trial. Follow along with our reporters. Ken Griffin, head of Citadel, bid highest for a copy of the Constitution. In addition, the longer the pandemic drags on, the more that streaming becomes a threat to theaters. At least a dozen movies originally destined for big screens, including "Hamilton," "Trolls World Tour" and "Greyhound," have been redirected to streaming services or online rental platforms. The move has kept money flowing to studios, but analysts say that it has undercut theaters by training consumers to expect new films to be instantly available in their homes. "We're learning that markets being opened, cinemas having safety protocols and studios releasing movies are all tied together," John Fithian, chief executive of the National Association of Theatre Owners, said in an email. "Open markets need safe cinemas, movies need open markets, cinemas need movies. All these things raise audience awareness and comfort in returning to movies. You can't do one at a time." Wall Street's reaction to the "Tenet" opening and the "Wonder Woman" postponement is telling. AMC shares climbed to about 7 on Sept. 4, the day "Tenet" arrived in U.S. theaters, up from about 2 in April. They have since declined by about 17 percent. Cinemark has declined 18 percent since Sept. 4. Cineworld, the parent company of Regal Cinemas, is down 14 percent. (For context, the S P 500 is flat for the period.) "From a cash standpoint, we can see this thing through way into next year if need be," Mark Zoradi, Cinemark's chief executive, said by phone. The company, based in Texas, operates about 5,977 screens in the United States and Latin America. "The fourth quarter is getting our feet back on the ground. Next year is a transition year. 2022 is back to a sense of normality." He added that recent customer surveys had shown 97 percent satisfaction with safety protocols. "We've spent millions and millions of dollars getting this stuff right," he said. "If we can convince the consumer that we have done all of these things, they are much more likely to want to come back." When it comes to the three largest film markets, expectations are tempered for both Los Angeles and San Francisco given the strict metrics California Gov. Gavin Newsom recently announced as part of its reopening plans. For New York though, exhibitors and studio executives alike are incensed that Gov. Andrew Cuomo has given no specific time table for when movie theaters can reopen, coupling them with other large crowd places like concert venues and amusement parks, while allowing bowling alleys and restaurants to resume indoor operations. Not only is New York City crucial for sales, much of the media coverage and online buzz surrounding new movies is generated from there. (The New York Times typically does not review films that are not playing in New York.) "The industry needs New York to open as soon as possible," said Ken Thewes, Regal Cinemas' chief marketing officer. "Governor Cuomo has done a great job getting it under control, but we really need him to give cinemas the same thought that he's given to the restaurant industry and let us resume operations." If those markets don't open, and the studios get skittish, theater operators may have to take some dramatic steps to weather the storm. Shawn Robbins, chief analyst at Box Office Pro, said cinemas may start reducing operating hours to minimize expenses perhaps going down to 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. screenings only, and foregoing matinees and early evening screenings. In some cases, theaters have leases that require them to operate seven days a week. For those that don't, showing movies only on weekends may be an option. "The next stretch is going to be extremely hard," Mr. Robbins said. "Tenet" was not the only movie released in August, but the others "The New Mutants"( 15 million) and "Unhinged" ( 14 million) haven't fared much better at the box office, although they cost less than half as much to make. For Mark Gill, the chief executive of Solstice Studios, the studio behind "Unhinged," the film's grosses are not nearly at the level he hoped for five weeks after release. Yet he says the international performance of "Tenet" it has brought in 177 million worldwide illustrates that if the United States can get its public safety issues under control, people will start going out to movie theaters again. "You can see that this just links to the public health situation here," he said. "The longer it takes us to get that under control, the tougher it's going to be. It's not a permanent problem but it's a large temporary problem." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
Left to right: Ben Miles, Adam Godley and Simon Russell Beale in "The Lehman Trilogy" at the National Theater in London. The three actors take all of the play's roles. LONDON It was one of the most dramatic days in Wall Street history, Andrew Ross Sorkin wrote in The New York Times in September 2008, as the bank Lehman Brothers teetered on the brink of collapse. The day had been alarming, distressing, disquieting but was it really the stuff of drama? The Italian playwright Stefano Massini's "The Lehman Trilogy" takes the events of the crisis as its starting point, before delving back into the history of the family who founded the bank. First performed in Paris in 2013, the play is now running at the National Theater in London through Oct. 20. Here, Holly Williams, a British critic and journalist who writes about the theater, and David Segal, an American columnist and business reporter for The Times, discuss putting the world of finance on the stage. HOLLY WILLIAMS When you hear Lehman, your thoughts go to the crash. The play starts with the moment the lights were switched off in 2008 but then we're immediately whisked back to the beginning of the story, when the first Lehman brother arrived in America in 1844. This isn't a drama explaining the crash, but rather how we got there. What's smart about director Sam Mendes's and designer Es Devlin's setting is that the past is always staged in the present: The action remains in a chrome and glass office, file boxes which we saw so many photos of shellshocked Lehman Brothers employees clutching desperately as they left in 2008 becoming whatever set or prop is needed. You can't view this story of a hard grafting immigrant family, this apparent tale of the American dream, without awareness of where it all wound up. Basically, the Lehmans are present for all things great and horrible about U.S. economic shifts, trends and fads since, roughly, the 1840s. But it's also a family story, too. And this leaves the thorny question of what we are to think of these people. Are they merely opportunists? Are they amoral? Are they geniuses? Are they a net positive for the country? The answers change because the plot follows three generations of very different characters. But the question persists, in my mind, after the curtain falls. What did you make of this remarkable little clan, Holly? WILLIAMS By making it a family drama, we are encouraged to empathize, to emotionally invest. Yet it's no hagiography. The brothers' understandable hunger for a better life tips into full blown greed, and if the first generation's chutzpah makes them endearing, I found the cold ambition of Philip and Bobbie Lehman reptilian, unappealing. One aspect that felt somewhat uncomfortable was how the story glosses over the slavery that initially was a foundation of their wealth. SEGAL This is a question that can't be answered without noting one recurring theme of this play: that the Lehmans are Jews. They start off observant Jews kissing a mezuza on the door of their store, citing rabbis and become less so as the play wears on. But it's not as easy as that. Henry and his brothers know about the evils of slavery it's part of the Passover story they would have known well, and it's taught in a Hebrew school lesson we eavesdrop on late in the play but no one ever mentions a scruple about the system they are facilitating. It's unsettling, to say the least. WILLIAMS I agree. There was something uncomfortable in the hymning of a lost South while not hearing the other side of the narrative. It was presenting their viewpoint at that time, without any explicit modern critique the audience can apply that themselves, I suppose. While there's a strong argument that the best way to stop history repeating is to really understand it, and a human look at the people behind mega institutions can help that, the play was still three and half hours of white men talking about how much money they want to make. I found it completely compelling, I should add, but it's always worth thinking about whose stories get told on our major stages. SEGAL You mentioned the length of this production. Did it work for you? WILLIAMS It was long! But it didn't feel like it dragged at all if anything, I thought the final section, as the corporation passed out of family ownership and hurtled toward ruin, was a little rushed maybe. Anyway, David, what I want to know is how does it feel to see this very American story told by Brits? Did we do a reasonable job at catching something of the national psyche? So far, British critics seem unanimous in their praise do you think it would play so well on Broadway? Famously, Lucy Prebble's "Enron" was a smash in London and a flop over there. SEGAL There does not seem to be anything quintessentially British about the production, unless you count Simon Russell Beale's accent, which often has a hint of fair Albion strange for a character purportedly raised in Bavaria. I also think that American audiences will like the kinetic staging. For stretches of the show, you are transported via a video backdrop that is inventively deployed to convey fire, war, the crash, nightmares, and most winningly, the "dance" of an economy at full throttle. Also, the U.S. is filled with fans of "Breaking Bad" and one of the brothers is played by Adam Godley, who was Elliott Schwartz in that show. Mr. Godley demonstrates range that he never got to in the show. Like his co stars, he plays women, children and an assortment of men, all while wearing the same dark overcoat and suit. WILLIAMS The swapping between all the roles is very effective, and so simply, deftly done: a turned collar, or shift of the hips, is sometimes all you need to know they've switched to a wildly different character. Mr. Beale, especially, does this to real comedic effect his turns as a quavering old rabbi or precocious child, for instance. There's something very pleasurable about the pure theatricality of this transformation, and the audience really lapped it up. That said, I felt it was less effective with the female roles. All the female parts were played for laughs, really. Given these three actors exhibit such mastery at inhabiting different roles, this didn't need to be the case. SEGAL The show was surprisingly shtick y. I was expecting a far more serious drama but was relieved that it often strove for a lighter tone. That said, the goal appears to be giggles, rather than guffaws. I can't recall a play that managed to find a tone that offered up yuks and topics as serious as the glories and perils of capitalism, the role of faith in a culture obsessed with money and the havoc wreaked when immense bets are made with other people's money. This was an evening that could have felt very pedantic an Italian playwright and an English production on Britain's national stage, at a moment when the world is pontificating and theorizing about what ails America. Mr. Massini rarely puts his thumb on the dramatic scales, and only toward the end, when he makes it clear that avaricious people are to blame for a catastrophe. Thankfully, I didn't feel lectured to, or pointed toward a particular conclusion, any other time. SEGAL More than anything, this play just tells a great story. I knew little about the Lehman family going in and it is simply an astounding tale, filled with huge personalities and improbable achievements. They go from zero to hundreds of millions in three generations. There is scarcely an economic trend that they don't spot in advance or ride to a fortune. A cautionary tale is embedded here, and you know it as soon as the curtain rises. Because the play is set in Lehman's offices, on its last day of life by then a kind of crime scene. The revelation is what comes before that. The men who rise from nothing and a nation that makes that rise possible. It is a yarn with plenty of ugliness, sometimes acknowledged by the main players, more often not. But what a yarn. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
MUMBAI, India For much of the last month, India has been gripped by a raging public debate about how to tackle corruption, which is seen by many here as the country's most important challenge. But a slowing economy may soon overtake corruption as a more pressing problem. On Thursday, for instance, as the Indian government negotiated with a fasting anticorruption crusader, the country's central bank issued a blunt warning: economic growth could soon fall below 8 percent. Most countries would be thrilled to have a growth rate of more than 7 percent, but for India, which strode at a 9 percent pace before the financial crisis of 2008 and hit 8.5 percent last year, it would be a significant letdown. Slower growth would mean fewer Indians climbing out of poverty and could help spur greater social unrest. And it would pose yet another challenge to the global economy, which is increasingly depending on emerging markets like India and China to make up for stagnation in the West. The Indian slowdown was in the making long before most analysts were concerned about a double dip recession in industrialized nations. Private investment has been sliding since late last year and once robust car sales have decreased in recent months. Indian stocks began falling in November and are now down more than 24 percent from their high. Moreover, inflation has been hovering at nearly 10 percent even after the Reserve Bank of India raised interest rates 11 times in less than two years. "Today, the economy is running on the engine speed achieved some time ago," said R. Gopalakrishnan, an executive director at the Tata Group, India's largest business conglomerate. Stressing that he was speaking for himself and not his company, he added, "It's not sputtering to an end, but it's slowing down." The new economic worries are occurring while the Indian government has been preoccupied with the biggest protests the country has seen in nearly two decades. The demonstrations are led by an activist, Anna Hazare, who has been on a hunger strike since Aug. 16. He says he will not eat until the Indian Parliament creates a powerful anticorruption agency known as a Lokpal. His movement has gained a large following in big cities like New Delhi and Mumbai, especially among the middle class and the young. While corruption, especially in day to day dealings between public officials and ordinary citizens, is the primary focus of most protesters, many of Mr. Hazare's supporters have also complained about high inflation and a lack of job opportunities. Some of them say corrupt practices have driven up the price of goods and services and distorted the economy. "If the Lokpal bill passes, the economic issue will be good," said Sagar Bekal, a 25 year old construction manager in Mumbai who has organized protest rallies for Mr. Hazare's group, India Against Corruption. "There will be a change good social life, things getting much cheaper with corruption being curbed." Such sentiments, analysts say, reflect the middle class's growing conviction that Indian leaders seem more concerned about reaping the rewards of economic growth for themselves than about improving the country. India has endured a series of large corruption scandals in the last year, involving the auctioning of wireless licenses, the Commonwealth Games of last year and various real estate deals. "People are so dissatisfied that they want a change," said Harsh Goenka, chairman of RPG Enterprises, a Mumbai based conglomerate involved in several businesses. "They want a change in governance." Still, he and others say that the broader economic problems are unlikely to dissipate even if lawmakers agree to create a new anticorruption agency, which is not expected to become an active watchdog for a couple of years. Rather, these people say, the government needs to move quickly to put in place changes to enhance growth, create jobs, tame inflation and improve public services. That task, of course, has become more urgent and difficult in recent weeks because of rising fears of a double dip recession in the United States and Europe. But because it is not a big exporter, India is more insulated from global shocks than other developing countries. Still, it relies significantly on foreign capital to meet investment needs. In a report published on Friday, analysts at Deutsche Bank said India's growth rate could even slip below 7 percent if the United States and European Union fell into a recession. Some economists worry that the movement to establish a corruption watchdog, which has been fueled by disgruntled youth, may ironically hamper the chances for the kind of changes that would help bolster the economy and the prospects of young Indians. The protests could make the government reluctant or unable to take on politically difficult reforms because it will fear opposition from activists and other political parties. "What I fear is that this will eat up whatever energy they have," said Ila Patnaik, a senior fellow at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy in New Delhi. Even before the protests, many analysts had complained that the government, which has been in power for seven years, was doing little to address India's entrenched problems: low agricultural productivity, poor infrastructure, a weak education system that produces graduates with few skills and real estate laws that shortchange farmers and other landowners. But some business executives and analysts had become more hopeful in recent weeks because policy makers had introduced a bill to give farmers more bargaining power in land deals and suggested that foreign retailers might soon be allowed to open stores in India to help improve farm to market logistics. Earlier this month, citing policy changes under way, Goldman Sachs upgraded its rating for India. Now, analysts said, the government is unlikely to act on the land and retail measures for several months, if not longer. Even as markets elsewhere were relatively stable, India's benchmark Nifty stock index fell 1.9 percent on Friday, to its lowest level in 14 months. Furthermore, many analysts say the government is unlikely to push big reforms next year because India's largest and one of its poorest states, Uttar Pradesh, will go to the polls in 2012. Federal elections are due in 2014. Still, some business leaders say the corruption movement has demonstrated that the government, which is run by a coalition led by the Congress Party, may no longer be able to postpone difficult policy decisions. Many of the most vocal protesters at Mr. Hazare's rallies have been people 25 or younger a group that makes up about half India's population. "The middle class has been created; it wasn't there 30 years ago," said Mr. Gopalakrishnan, the Tata executive. "And their aspirations have been created. There is an energy there that has come out of human passion. Being standstill and letting this putter out is not an option." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Global Business |
The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety has again made it more difficult to earn its Top Safety Pick Plus and Top Safety Pick awards by tightening its criteria for the third time since the 2006 model year. The move is likely to dismay automakers because they will suddenly have far fewer vehicles they can promote as worthy of the institute's plaudits. As a result of the changes, 22 vehicles earned the highest award of Top Safety Pick Plus and 17 earned the lesser Top Safety Pick award in this initial announcement of 2014 winners, compared with 13 Top Safety Pick Plus awards and 117 Top Safety Pick selections last year. The I.I.H.S., which is financed by the insurance industry, continues to add to the list throughout the year as new models are introduced and more are tested. It made the changes to its rating system to reflect two of its newer tests. One is the small overlap front test introduced in 2012, which replicates what happens when the front corner of a vehicle collides with another vehicle or with a stationary object like a tree or utility pole. The other test, initiated this year, is a rating of frontal crash prevention technology in the form of warning systems and automatic braking intended to help avoid rear end collisions. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Automobiles |
WASHINGTON An independent panel advising the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention voted Tuesday to recommend that residents and employees of nursing homes and similar facilities be the first people in the United States to receive coronavirus vaccines, along with health care workers who are especially at risk of being exposed to the virus. The panel, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, voted 13 to 1 during an emergency meeting to make the recommendation. The director of the C.D.C., Dr. Robert R. Redfield, is expected to decide by Wednesday whether to accept it as the agency's formal guidance to states as they prepare to start giving people the shots as soon as two weeks from now. "We are acting none too soon," said Dr. Beth Bell, a panel member and global health expert at the University of Washington, noting that Covid 19 would kill about 120 Americans during the meeting alone. States are not required to follow the panel's recommendations, but they usually do. The final decision will rest with governors, who are consulting with their top health officials as they complete distribution plans. The new recommendation is the first of several expected from the panel over the coming weeks, as vaccines developed by Pfizer and Moderna go through the federal approval process, on the thorny question of which Americans should be at the front of the long line to get vaccinated while supply is still scarce. The panel described it as an interim recommendation that could change as more is learned about how well the vaccines work in different age groups and how well the manufacturers keep up with demand. The roughly three million people living in long term care and those who care for them are a relatively clear target; 39 percent of deaths from the coronavirus have occurred in such facilities, according to an analysis by The New York Times. But states and health systems will ultimately have to decide which of the nation's 21 million health care workers should qualify to receive the first doses, as there won't be enough at first for everyone. Pfizer and Moderna have estimated that they will have enough to vaccinate, at most, 22.5 million Americans by year's end, with the required two doses, a few weeks apart. The C.D.C. will apportion the supply among the states, with the initial allocation proportional to the size of each state's adult population. The only member of the committee to vote against the recommendation was Dr. Helen Talbot, an infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt University, who expressed discomfort with putting long term care residents in the first priority group because the vaccines' safety had not been studied in that particular population. "We enter this realm of 'we hope it works and we hope it's safe,' and that concerns me on many levels," she said before the vote. But most panel members who offered opinions said they thought the high death rate among that group made it imperative to include it. Dr. Jose Romero, the chairman of the panel, said that he felt strongly that its process had adhered to its core principles: "maximizing benefit and minimizing harm," promoting justice and addressing health inequities. Dr. Beth Bell, the co chair, acknowledged that all of the members would have liked more data from clinical trials but said that because of the pandemic emergency, "we need to act." The panel, whose 14 voting members have expertise in vaccinology, immunology, virology, public health and other relevant fields, has hinted that the next priority group it will recommend for vaccination "Phase 1b" will be so called essential workers, a huge group numbering more than 85 million. A division of the Department of Homeland Security has come up with a list of workers states should consider counting in that group; it includes teachers and others who work in schools, emergency responders, police officers, grocery workers, corrections officers, public transit workers and others whose jobs make it hard or impossible to work from home. After essential workers, the committee is leaning toward recommending vaccination of adults with medical conditions that put them at high risk of coronavirus infection, such as diabetes or obesity, and everyone over 65. But some states might diverge to an extent, possibly choosing, for example, to vaccinate residents over 75 and then some types of essential workers. All other adults would follow the initial groups. The vaccine has not yet been thoroughly studied in children, so people under 18 would not be eligible yet. Ahead of the holidays, a C.D.C. panel is set to weigh Pfizer BioNTech and Moderna boosters for all adults. What has Covid done to your country's reputation? Americans and Britons give mixed reviews. The F.D.A. authorizes Pfizer BioNTech and Moderna booster shots for all adults. For at least a month or two, there will not be nearly enough vaccine to cover everyone in the initial groups. Dr. Moncef Slaoui, who leads the Trump administration's Operation Warp Speed, said Tuesday morning in an interview with The Washington Post that Pfizer and Moderna would be able to provide an additional 60 to 70 million doses in January "if all goes well." Since each person gets two shots, that would only be enough for 55 million people at most through the end of January about 22 percent of the nation's roughly 255 million adults. Production will continue to increase in February and March, Dr. Slaoui said, with the hope that two new vaccines, from AstraZeneca and Johnson Johnson, will gain F.D.A. approval. "So very quickly, we start having more than 150 million doses a month in March, April, May," he added. He and other federal officials have said that the general public is likely to be able to be vaccinated by May or June. The C.D.C. panel was originally not supposed to vote on its recommendations until after the F.D.A. had approved a vaccine. But it bumped up the timing to give states more guidance as they complete their distribution plans, which must be submitted to the C.D.C. on Friday. On Tuesday, the group specifically suggested that within the long term care population, residents of nursing homes, who tend to be the most frail and susceptible to Covid, should get the first vaccines in the event that there aren't enough, along with staff members who have not had the virus within the last 90 days. Within the much larger category of health care workers, the panel said that health systems should consider prioritizing those who have direct contact with patients and their families and those who handle infectious materials. Dr. Nancy Messonnier, who leads the C.D.C.'s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, told the panel that based on her recent conversations with state health officials, most states and large cities "believe they can vaccinate all of their health care workers within three weeks." But whether they reach that goal depends on how much vaccine they get, and how quickly. Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky told reporters on Monday that his state had more than 200,000 health care workers but would receive only 38,000 doses in its first shipment and that it might not get another for two weeks. Long term care facilities include nursing homes, with about 1.3 million residents; assisted living facilities, with 800,000 residents; and residential care facilities, which tend to be small and cater to specific populations. The federal government has contracted with CVS and Walgreens to deliver vaccines to most such facilities nationwide, with teams of pharmacists making three visits to each to ensure that every staff member and resident gets both an initial shot and a booster shot several weeks later. Several members of the panel urged that small community doctors' offices not be left off the initial priority list. "Transmission dynamics suggest providers who care for patients earlier in their course of illness may be at higher risk," said Dr. Jeffrey Duchin, a member of the panel who is in charge of public health in Seattle and King County, Wash. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
Fifty years ago, colorful, mustachioed cartoon versions of the Beatles traipsed across the surreal world of Pepperland to defeat the Blue Meanies in the film "Yellow Submarine." The movie will return to theaters across the United States, Britain and Ireland this summer to celebrate its anniversary. The movie's psychedelic landscapes have been restored in 4k digital resolution; the animation was cleaned up by hand, frame by frame, rather than through automated digital software. The audio, which features Beatles songs like "A Day in the Life" and "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," was remixed in 5.1 stereo sound at Abbey Road Studios, where the Beatles recorded most of their work. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
The Yankees retained one of their best relievers, reaching an agreement Saturday night on a contract with the left hander Zach Britton. The deal guarantees Britton three years and 39 million. The agreement was confirmed by a person with direct knowledge of the deal who was not authorized to comment publicly until Britton passes a physical examination. The Yankees will have an option, after the 2020 season, to extend the deal to four years and 53 million. If they do not, Britton could then exercise an out clause. Britton, 31, had a 2.88 earned run average in 25 games with the Yankees last season after coming to New York in late July in a trade from the Baltimore Orioles. He ruptured his Achilles' tendon in an off season workout in December 2017 but proved he was healthy last summer, retaining the power sinker that hitters struggle to elevate. Britton, who had 120 saves from 2014 through 2016, has allowed just 12 home runs in 283 games over the last five seasons. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
BACK TO LIFE 10 p.m. on Showtime. Life for Miri Matteson (Daisy Haggard) post prison hasn't been easy. Members of her small coastal community have responded to her return by leaving offensive graffiti on her parents' house, lobbing a brick at her through a window at her new job and sending her a very unpleasant package in the mail. But Miri has soldiered on, trying to convince people that she's not the monster they think she is, working to repair her strained relationship with her mother, reconnecting with old friends and even testing the waters with a new love interest. In the final two episodes of the first season, Miri confronts the unforgiving residents of her town and learns about the events that led to the death of her friend. CHRISTMAS 9 TO 5 8 p.m. on Lifetime. The latest installment of Lifetime's holiday programming touches on a topical phenomenon: the decline of the American department store. Jennifer (played by Tiya Sircar) is an investigative reporter who goes undercover as a store clerk at Desmond's, an outlet known for its holiday decorations and festivities. There, she starts up a workplace romance with Jack (Joe Dinicol), who informs her that the store will be closing after Christmas. Together they work to restore Desmond's to its former glory. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
OMAHA The former rail route known as the Field Club Trail is a beautiful, popular pathway here. Wide and meandering with nearly two miles of paved trail through historic neighborhoods and verdant forests, this connective artery has allowed people to explore midtown for some 25 years. On a recent warm afternoon, with everything newly green, the trail looked like heaven for everyone enjoying nature's splendor after a long and disheartening winter. Not for me, though. When I passed the trailhead on my way to the local grocery store, armed to the teeth with hand sanitizer, the sight of large groups of people enjoying the area brought me to tears of frustration and anguish. My father, an immune suppressed patient battling a rare blood cancer, recently got a T cell transplant in a hospital. I cannot visit him. The coronavirus would be so devastating to him that his doctors have tested him three times. To us, this non social distancing is deeply, painfully personal. The threat is right there. But it seems those revelers don't see the clear and present danger of being in large groups. I know my "Nebraska Nice" neighbors aren't terrible or stupid. I'm sure they've been watching the news, and they've likely stocked up on canned goods and started obsessively washing their hands and worrying about what this means for our vaunted college football team in the fall. It's not really the fault of outdoor enthusiasts just trying to enjoy a little sunshine in midtown Omaha. Instead, look at the glaring lack of leadership in Nebraska, starting with our governor, Pete Ricketts, who has not yet ordered the state to shelter in place, one of five states to hold out. I wonder what Nebraska could be waiting for. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
New York City Ballet, founded in 1948, has always had a nonpareil record for its abundance of important new choreography. From the last century, I remember City Ballet galas that presented world premieres by George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins. On Wednesday, the company's 2016 Spring Gala was principally about 21st century choreography. Its second half consisted of two world premieres, bringing the company's tally for the 2015 16 season to eight, by seven choreographers. (Two have been by City Ballet's resident choreographer Justin Peck; he'll make a third for the company's Saratoga Springs season in July.) But whereas its five new ballets of fall 2015 were all fresh affairs that gave hope for the future of ballet, the two on Wednesday were slickly unoriginal. The choreographers, Nicolas Blanc and Christopher Wheeldon, have very different levels of experience. Mr. Blanc, whom many will remember as a dancer with the San Francisco Ballet, is a novice at dance making; Mr. Wheeldon has been choreographing for world class dancers for 20 years. Though I find Mr. Blanc's nine minute "Mothership" flashy, it has merits: It shows real organizational skill, it abounds with high energy within the academic language of ballet and it gives opportunities to eight highly appealing young dancers. All too many aspects of Mr. Wheeldon's "American Rhapsody," however, just feel from the first fake. It is a sequel to the 2015 Broadway musical production of "An American in Paris," which Mr. Wheeldon directed and choreographed; it was conducted on Wednesday by Rob Fisher, who adapted and supervised that show's musical side. "An American in Paris" used songs by George and Ira Gershwin; "American Rhapsody" used George Gershwin's orchestral classic "Rhapsody in Blue." But I'm among those who found "An American in Paris" synthetic, chiefly redeemed by the winning freshness of Robert Fairchild in the central role of Jerry Mulligan; his every appearance took the show into a new plane of conviction. "American Rhapsody" is another synthetic concoction, but here it's Mr. Fairchild who's the least convincing figure. It's a sophisticated, artificial ballet in which nothing rings true. Mr. Fairchild is paired with Tiler Peck, who is his wife; but as has long been the case with many dance marriages they're not at their best onstage with each other. And though Ms. Peck is a phenomenal technician, she's not always a spontaneous one. Even her extraordinary musicality can turn into a form of game playing exhibitionism, with a strong dash of calculation. On Wednesday, I marveled at her; I never believed her. Clara Frances and Silas Farley of New York City Ballet performing in the premiere of "Mothership." "American Rhapsody" is further marred by its designs, unappealing in color palette and in cut. Leslie Sardinias's backdrop is a weird conglomerate: an ambitious orange starburst over a purple sky is overlaid by a squiggle like a black ribbon, all framed by a blue circle. Janie Taylor has outfitted Ms. Peck and Mr. Fairchild in identical green; but Ms. Peck's long sleeved attire features a peculiarly long Edwardian bodice on top of a brief pink flapper skirt. Nine other couples have matching costumes, but the second lead couple, Unity Phelan and Amar Ramasar, are in blood orange red, while the corps of eight male female couples are in midnight blue. Cartoonishly, Mr. Fairchild acts out cute ideas about moments in the music: a fragmented descending line becomes a display of crumbling mini spasms, some wah wah sequences in the brass become a little sob moment. The biggest melodic outpouring becomes a Peck Fairchild exhibition duet. The corps members create several strikingly horizontal tableaus; Mr. Ramasar pours all his marvelous vitality and warmth into his role; Ms. Phelan is loveliness itself. But Mr. Wheeldon's ballet stays archly outside its score. Mr. Blanc's "Mothership," tidily set to a score of that name by Mason Bates, will be worth seeing again for the breaks it gives to its dancers, who are all at corps or apprentice level. Silas Farley, the best known of them (he's often eye catching as the tallest and happiest man onstage), seizes a moment of expansive virtuosity; Alec Knight, also tall and happy, displays a terrific jump. It will be good to get to know these and other dancers better. The gala's opening dance item onstage the Raindrop Prelude from Jerome Robbins's ballet "The Concert" (1956) featured umbrellas; and in this performance, the final single umbrella, held aloft to shelter all the other dancers, was red. The red umbrella (much seen in the upstairs foyer during the company's annual "Nutcracker" season) is the emblem of the Travelers Companies; and the gala began by honoring Jay Fishman, the longtime chief executive of Travelers and now executive chairman of its board, who has been chairman of City Ballet's board of directors since 2012. (Mr. Fishman, who last year announced that he has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and is now actively engaged in philanthropic efforts to fund research programs and projects related to the illness, was present and received a standing ovation.) There followed Alexei Ratmansky's "Concerto DSCH," made for this company in 2008 to Shostakovich's second piano concerto ("DSCH" refers to the composer's musical code for himself) and now danced by companies from Seattle to St. Petersburg. When it was new I (like many others) thought it at once the finest ballet of the 21st century. While it conjures an idyllically communal world of Soviet athletes joined in leisure, camaraderie, high spirits and tender romance, it also contains darkness, secrets and falls that make its activities seem imperiled. Mr. Ratmansky, a Shostakovich specialist, has since deepened his view of the composer's inner world. (American Ballet Theater, where he is artist in residence, will revive his singularly imaginative "Shostakovich Trilogy" later this month.) But "Concerto DSCH" a marvel of formal intricacy, exuberant humanity and affecting musicality remains the most perfect work he has made. On Wednesday, when it was led by Sara Mearns, Tyler Angle, Brittany Pollack, Anthony Huxley and Gonzalo Garcia, it proved more heart catching than ever. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
DETROIT Equus is Latin for horse. It's also English for a certain Hyundai model, but don't tell that to Equus Automotive. Michael Qualid, a spokesman for the company, said that Equus didn't know the name had been in use on Hyundai's premier luxury model when Equus opened in 2006, but he expressed hope that the Korean automaker would not come after a niche marque over its name. The Equus Bass770, a retro muscle car on display in a corner of the Detroit auto show, is not a '67 or '68 Ford Mustang fastback, but it looks exactly like one. Even the interior, filled with modern necessities such as high seat backs and air bags, features a look that brings its viewer into a leather wrapped 1960s muscle car cave. But even though it has the same profile and many of the same body creases as the Mustang, all similarities end there. The Equus is nearly 10 inches longer, about 5 inches wider and 3 inches taller than the Mustang made famous by the "Bullitt" chase scene. That's because the car's aluminum frame and carbon fiber and aluminum body are, although assembled to look like an old Mustang, made from scratch, Mr. Qualid said. It also has a General Motors engine under its long hood. The car's front clip looks like it came from the early '70s Mopar playbook. The tail lights could have been adapted from a late '60s Camaro. Equus does say in its sales brochure that the Bass770 was "born of an abiding passion for genuine 1960s and 1970s muscle cars," so it's good to know that all three Detroit automakers appear to have been represented in some manner, if only vestigially. The cars are built in Rochester Hills, Mich. Equus engineers placed the car's 640 horsepower LS9 supercharged 6.2 liter V8 (used in the Chevrolet Corvette ZR1) as far back as possible, to improve weight distribution and to create a long energy absorption zone forward of the engine. If you've ever looked beneath the hood of a '68 Mustang, there's some room between the radiator and the grille, but in the Equus interpretation, there's a lot of space there, because the engine lives pretty far aft in a slight divot in the firewall. Equus says the Bass770 meets federal motor vehicle safety certification standards. Mr. Qualid said that by having a small passenger compartment within a long body, it was possible to incorporate big crumple zones into the design. As for its emissions certification, he said that Equus had not received it yet, but that since the LS9 is already a certified engine, it shouldn't be too much of a problem for the company. He also said that Equus is working toward getting European safety and emissions certifications for the car. The cars Equus brought to Detroit this week one red, another white and the other blue looked good. But there were a few little details the boutique automaker may want to address before attempting to sell a 250,000 sports coupe. For example, the rear decklid on the white car didn't look as if it fit perfectly. On the dashboard of the red car, I believe I saw some slight wrinkles and uneven stitching in the leather that in a Ferrari of similar price, you would never, ever see. Although the company's name could be a potential legal issue with Hyundai, Mr. Qualid said that Equus had not been contacted about it. Jim Trainor, a spokesman from Hyundai, said he was "very familiar" with the Equus Bass770, but declined to comment on the Equus name. The Equus logo seems safe from legal attack, though. Like the Mustang's logo, it's a horse, but unlike the Mustang's logo, the image is not a profile of a horse in full gallop. Nor is the horse prancing, like the one in the Ferrari logo. The Equus horse assumes a stance vaguely similar to the Lamborghini bulls. But instead of having its head lowered, preparing to charge, the Equus horse appears to be rearing back, as if spooked. The model name is a bit nebulous. Ian James, a spokesman for Equus, said in a telephone interview that the 770 stands for the volume, in cubic centimeters, of each of the engine's eight cylinders. But as for the Bass as in the musical instrument, not the fish part of it Mr. James said was simply a name the company had settled upon when it decided to build the car. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Automobiles |
Composite by Ruth Askevold/San Francisco Estuary Institute; from left to right: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, U.S.D.A., U.S.D.A., Courtesy of The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley Composite by Ruth Askevold/San Francisco Estuary Institute; from left to right: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, U.S.D.A., U.S.D.A., Courtesy of The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley Credit... Composite by Ruth Askevold/San Francisco Estuary Institute; from left to right: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, U.S.D.A., U.S.D.A., Courtesy of The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley NAPA, Calif. San Francisco Bay, the Sacramento San Joaquin Delta and the watershed that feeds them make up one of the world's largest estuary systems, a wildly varied tableau of beaches, river, creeks, grasslands and tidal marshes. Forty percent of the land in California drains into this rich ecosystem. More than 20 years ago, the San Francisco Estuary Institute, a nonprofit scientific advisory group, began an ambitious effort to guide the restoration of this landscape. But the scientists there soon ran into a huge, unanticipated question: What should the restored terrain look like, and how should its natural systems function? The natural ecology of the Bay Area was thoroughly demolished long ago, overrun by farms, cities and suburbs. There were few intact environments left anywhere in the region to serve as a guide. "There's a 150 year gap in our memory," said Robin Grossinger, a senior environmental scientist at the institute. To fill that gap, he and his colleagues began to scour historical records of the bay and coast for clues to how the California landscape once looked. The institute's historical ecology program has since evolved into one of the largest and most successful efforts to restore an ecosystem by gathering evidence on how it once was. The clues have come from a range of sources: tattered diaries and journals left by trappers and pioneers, yellowed maps made by the first Spanish explorers and survey crews, early aerial photos and narratives recorded a century ago from native people who once lived there, and even pollen deposits and tree rings. "There's a ton of information out there," Erin Beller, one of the institute's three historical ecologists, said as she reviewed maps, photos and landscape paintings at the group's offices. "It's scattered, but it's out there. We trawl dozens of archives to find that transformative data." Pay dirt might be a journal entry about a "horse that fell into the river, for example, that gives us channel depth," she added. In a painstakingly complex process developed by Mr. Grossinger, the myriad data gleaned from thousands of historical sources are winnowed and fed into a geographical database, small bits that, like pixels, come together to create images of a forgotten landscape. "The first time I heard a presentation on this, it took my breath away," said James Cloern, an expert on the ecology of estuaries with the United States Geological Survey. "It's a completely new perspective on this place." The goal isn't just to make things look as they once did, here and there, but also to restore vanished ecological functions that will help the West Coast adapt to a changing climate, a tall order in a thoroughly urbanized environment. "We've altered the landscape so deeply you can't just plant trees," said Letitia Grenier, a senior scientist with the institute. "We have to restore the hydrologic processes, the flooding processes. "You have to learn how it used to work to understand how it wants to work." One of the signature achievements of the estuary institute's approach lies along the Napa River, which flows to the bay through the famous winemaking valley. When the river was straightened and deepened beginning in the early 20th century, its marshes and tidal flats were filled in. Those features once absorbed and held periodic floodwaters. Turning the river into a deeper channel led to serious floods in downtown Napa, and the increased flow lowered the river bottom, incising banks as deep as 25 feet. In 1999, Mr. Grossinger and his team decided that restoring the Napa River would require learning more about how it and the valley once looked and functioned. With hundreds of old photographs, maps and other sources, the ecologists managed to piece together a detailed portrait of the Napa as nature intended it. A six foot long survey map from 1858 showed the river's meanderings in rich detail. An early 20th century photo of a woman washing clothes in the river revealed broad, shallow river banks, while an 1880 painting by Jules Tavernier portrayed seasonal wetlands with wildflower meadows and lush vegetation. The historical study required 10 years and deeply informed efforts to restore the river, which, as it turned out, meant giving it more room to roam, though far from restoring its original course. Some vineyard owners agreed to surrender land valued at up to 400,000 an acre so the river could reclaim it. The Napa County flood control agency built five miles of new marshlands and plains so that the river could flood along its course naturally instead of overwhelming the city of Napa. "We're trying to recover the natural flood control function of the river," said Jorgen Blomberg of ESA PWA, a river restoration firm, who designed and guided the construction of many of the new features of the Napa River. The project also created new ecological niches. No one knew there were once beavers on the river, for instance. But researchers at the institute found an entry in a fur trapper's journal from 1833: "Found a few beaver," it said, an assertion corroborated by references from historical studies. So the rodents have been allowed to re establish their dams, including one within view of downtown Napa. The dams will slow erosion and create deep pools, offering a nursery for young fish some of them threatened and helping rebuild the river. That means it hosts hundreds of species, from pileated and acorn woodpeckers to scrub jays and pallid bats. Ms. Gardner's group has planted 400 trees, and plans to plant 5,000 more in the next three years with the help of local schoolchildren. The use of history to guide restoration has been so successful in the Bay Area that officials elsewhere in California have engaged the eco detectives at the institute to search for clues to other vanished natural systems. Now there are more than a dozen other recording gathering projects underway in places like San Diego and the Tijuana River. "The history of a landscape draws people in," Mr. Grossinger said, "in a way ecology alone doesn't." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
Congress and Trump Agreed They Want a National Privacy Law. It Is Nowhere in Sight. WASHINGTON A rare thing emerged in Washington early this year: agreement. Republicans and Democrats in Congress, as well as the Trump White House, all said they wanted a new federal law to protect people's online privacy. Numerous tech companies urged them on. And they had a deadline. With a broad California privacy law set to go into effect early next year, many federal lawmakers and the tech companies wanted to get ahead of it and avoid having state by state rules. But after months of talks, a national privacy law is nowhere in sight. The window to pass a law this year is now quickly closing. Lawmakers continue to disagree on parts of the bill, including how best to enforce a new law and how much freedom states should have to pass their own rules. And some California lawmakers have balked at efforts to override their state's new law. Several lawmakers and their aides insist that they are making headway, meeting regularly to sort out the remaining roadblocks. "We're talking a lot, we're meeting a lot, member to member, staff to staff, and we're making good progress," said Senator Roger Wicker, the Republican from Mississippi who chairs the Senate Commerce Committee, which includes several lawmakers shepherding the effort. Yet they have nothing public to show for it. And they are now also contending with a Capitol gripped by the House's impeachment inquiry into President Trump. The struggle to regulate consumer data shows how lawmakers have largely been unable to turn rage at Silicon Valley's practices into concrete action. Revelations that the political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica had obtained reams of Facebook user data set off the Washington reckoning over online privacy last year. The social network has since agreed to pay a record 5 billion fine with regulators for mishandling user information, while Congress has grilled major tech executives over their data practices. But the fervor to crack down on Silicon Valley has produced only a single new law, a bill to prevent sex trafficking online. The United States has some laws that protect consumers' privacy, like medical information collected by a doctor. But Congress has never set an overarching national standard for how most companies gather and use data. Regulators in Europe, in contrast, put strict new privacy rules into effect last year. Many tech companies built lucrative businesses off their users' personal information, often by offering a "free" product in return. Facebook, Google and Twitter, for example, let advertisers precisely target messages based on people's habits. Other industries from health care to retail to banking have also looked at ways to take advantage of customer data. Last year, California lawmakers passed privacy legislation in the face of public backlash against those companies. Called the California Consumer Privacy Act, the state law gives people the right to see what personal information companies have compiled on them and the right to delete that data and stop companies from selling it. The law takes effect on New Year's Day 2020; enforcement of it begins in July. Let Us Help You Protect Your Digital Life None With Apple's latest mobile software update, we can decide whether apps monitor and share our activities with others. Here's what to know. A little maintenance on your devices and accounts can go a long way in maintaining your security against outside parties' unwanted attempts to access your data. Here's a guide to the few simple changes you can make to protect yourself and your information online. Ever considered a password manager? You should. There are also many ways to brush away the tracks you leave on the internet. Lobbyists representing the tech giants have spent much of this year trying to modify California's strict rules before they are enforced. The Internet Association, a group whose members include Google, Facebook and Amazon, supported a bill exempting advertising services from being covered by some of the law's restrictions, along with several others tweaking the legislation. At the same time, industry groups flooded Washington with a clear message meant to neutralize California's rules entirely. Congress should pass a national privacy law, they said, and include a provision superseding any state legislation on the issue. Joseph Simons, the chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, the top privacy regulator in the country, has also weighed in, urging Congress to pass a national law. That pressure is likely to increase given that the tech industry's lobbying efforts in California have had mixed success. The advertising exemption did not make it into the state law, for example. Last month, privacy advocates introduced a new ballot campaign to give the law more teeth. A group of chief executives who are part of the group Business Roundtable also sent congressional leaders a letter last month calling for them to pass a national privacy law "as soon as possible." The Internet Association released a digital and radio advertising campaign warning that American consumers could have to contend with 50 individual state privacy laws. And Business Roundtable has run ads on Facebook linked to its privacy positions. In one, a video shows a map of the United States that breaks into five pieces, according to Facebook's library of political and issue advertisements. "Our nation's privacy laws are FRAGMENTED," it said. Tech industry representatives argue that a national law is the best substantive solution in an era of growing privacy concerns. But they also said that their losses in California factor into their strategy. "California certainly makes things more complicated for people, but this is not just a reaction to California," said Michael Beckerman, the chief executive of the Internet Association. Senator Brian Schatz, Democrat of Hawaii, who has been involved in the privacy talks, said Congress remains in negotiations over a national privacy law. He said there were "some remaining thorny issues" but estimated that lawmakers had "probably done 70 percent of the work." Senator Jerry Moran, Republican from Kansas, and Richard Blumenthal, Democrat from Connecticut, are nearing a complete version of a privacy bill, according to one person briefed on the talks. In the House, Democrats have been negotiating with their Republican counterparts but are also considering producing a unilateral measure should bipartisan discussions fail, said a different person familiar with the deliberations. They both spoke on the condition of anonymity because information on the talks was shared confidentially. "We're not amending a statute, we're creating one," said Mr. Schatz. "This is an area where there is no privacy framework in the federal law so we had to construct it from whole cloth and that takes time to do right." One particularly divisive question is whether consumers themselves should be able to directly sue companies that violate the new federal law. Privacy advocates said that a so called private right of action would give consumers recourse if regulatory agencies failed to take action in response to a troublesome practice. But Republicans remain skeptical. "It would really create problems," Mr. Wicker said. Lawmakers have also publicly disagreed over whether they should give the F.T.C. more authority to make rules on privacy than it currently has and how far they must go to pre empt the state laws. As they haggle over the details of any possible legislation, lawmakers have fended off most of the questions about their plans from reporters who stalk them through Capitol Hill hallways and stake out their negotiations. Asked last week about the status of the talks, Mr. Wicker, who once mused that a privacy proposal would be public by early September, deadpanned. "We'll have an announcement this afternoon," he said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
PHILADELPHIA Like many of his third grade classmates, Mario Cortez Pacheco likes reading the "Magic Tree House" series, about a brother and a sister who take adventurous trips back in time. He also loves the popular "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" graphic novels. But Mario, 8, has noticed something about these and many of the other books he encounters in his classroom at Bayard Taylor Elementary here: most of the main characters are white. "I see a lot of people that don't have a lot of color," he said. Hispanic students now make up nearly a quarter of the nation's public school enrollment, according to an analysis of census data by the Pew Hispanic Center, and are the fastest growing segment of the school population. Yet nonwhite Latino children seldom see themselves in books written for young readers. (Dora the Explorer, who began as a cartoon character, is an outlier.) Education experts and teachers who work with large Latino populations say that the lack of familiar images could be an obstacle as young readers work to build stamina and deepen their understanding of story elements like character motivation. While there are exceptions, including books by Julia Alvarez, Pam Munoz Ryan, Alma Flor Ada and Gary Soto, what is available is "not finding its way into classrooms," said Patricia Enciso, an associate professor at Ohio State University. Books commonly read by elementary school children those with human characters rather than talking animals or wizards include the Junie B. Jones, Cam Jansen, Judy Moody, Stink and Big Nate series, all of which feature a white protagonist. An occasional African American, Asian or Hispanic character may pop up in a supporting role, but these books depict a predominantly white, suburban milieu. "Kids do have a different kind of connection when they see a character that looks like them or they experience a plot or a theme that relates to something they've experienced in their lives," said Jane Fleming, an assistant professor at the Erikson Institute, a graduate school in early childhood development in Chicago. She and Sandy Ruvalcaba Carrillo, an elementary school teacher in Chicago who works with students who speak languages other than English at home, reviewed 250 book series aimed at second to fourth graders and found just two that featured a Latino main character. The Cooperative Children's Book Center at the University of Wisconsin Madison School of Education, which compiles statistics about the race of authors and characters in children's books published each year, found that in 2011, just over 3 percent of the 3,400 books reviewed were written by or about Latinos, a proportion that has not changed much in a decade. As schools across the country implement the Common Core national standards for what students should learn in English and math many teachers are questioning whether nonwhite students are seeing themselves reflected in their reading. For the early elementary grades, lists of suggested books contain some written by African American authors about black characters, but few by Latino writers or featuring Hispanic characters. Now, in response to concerns registered by the Southern Poverty Law Center and others, the architects of the Common Core are developing a more diverse supplemental list. "We have really taken a careful look, and really think there is a problem," said Susan Pimentel, one of the lead writers of the standards for English language and literacy. "We are determined to make this right." Black, Asian and American Indian children similarly must dig deep into bookshelves to find characters who look like them. Latino children who speak Spanish at home and arrive at school with little exposure to books in English face particular challenges. A new study being released next week by pediatricians and sociologists at the University of California shows that Latino children start school seven months behind their white peers, on average, in oral language and preliteracy skills. "Their oral language use is going to be quite different from what they encounter in their books," said Catherine E. Snow, a professor at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education. "So what might seem like simple and accessible text for a standard English speaker might be puzzling for such kids." Hispanic children have historically underperformed non Hispanic whites in American schools. According to 2011 data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a set of exams administered by the Department of Education, 18 percent of Hispanic fourth graders were proficient in reading, compared with 44 percent of white fourth graders. Research on a direct link between cultural relevance in books and reading achievement at young ages is so far scant. And few academics or classroom teachers would argue that Latino children should read books only about Hispanic characters or families. But their relative absence troubles some education advocates. "If all they read is Judy Blume or characters in the "Magic Treehouse" series who are white and go on adventures," said Mariana Souto Manning, an associate professor at Columbia University's Teachers College, "they start thinking of their language or practices or familiar places and values as not belonging in school." At Bayard Taylor Elementary in Philadelphia, a school where three quarters of the students are Latino, Kimberly Blake, a third grade bilingual teacher, said she struggles to find books about Latino children that are "about normal, everyday people." The few that are available tend to focus on stereotypes of migrant workers or on special holidays. "Our students look the way they look every single day of the year," Ms. Blake said, "not just on Cinco de Mayo or Puerto Rican Day." On a recent morning, Ms. Blake read from "Amelia's Road" by Linda Jacobs Altman, about a daughter of migrant workers. Of all the children sitting cross legged on the rug, only Mario said that his mother had worked on farms. Publishers say they want to find more works by Hispanic authors, and in some cases they insert Latino characters in new titles. When Simon Schuster commissioned writers to develop a new series, "The Cupcake Diaries," it cast one character, Mia, as a Latino girl. "We were conscious of making one of the characters Hispanic," said Valerie Garfield, a vice president in the children's division, "and doing it in a way that girls could identify with, but not in a way that calls it out." In some respects, textbook publishers like Pearson and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt are ahead of trade publishers. Houghton Mifflin, which publishes reading textbooks, allocates exactly 18.6 percent of its content to works featuring Latino characters. The company says that percentage reflects student demographics. Students should be able "to see themselves in a high quality text," said Jeff Byrd, senior product manager for reading at Houghton Mifflin. But Latino education advocates and authors say they do not want schools to resort to tokenism. "My skin crawls a little when this literature is introduced because people are being righteous," said Ms. Alvarez, the author of the "Tia Lola" series, as well as "Return to Sender." "It should be as natural reading about these characters as white characters," she said. At Bayard Taylor, another third grade teacher, Kate Cornell, said that she would love to explore more options featuring Hispanic characters. "It would be more helpful as a teacher," she said, "to have these go to books where I can say 'I think you are going to like this book. This book reminds me of you.' " | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Education |
A light micrograph of nerve cells from the hippocampus of the brain, which is involved in memory. The biology of memory can help explain how vastly different accounts can emerge from a shared experience. When Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford present their vastly different recollections to the Senate on Thursday, the quality and reliability of memory itself will be on trial. Judge Kavanaugh has emphatically denied allegations from Dr. Blasey that he tried to rape her when they were teenagers or ever committed sexual assault against anyone. Dr. Blasey and another accuser, Deborah Ramirez, have recounted their alleged incidents with both precise detail and gaping holes. Could Judge Kavanaugh's accusers be mistaken about his identity? Could he somehow have erased the experiences they allege from his memory? Or, even, could all be telling what they genuinely believe is the truth? The biology of memory, while still far from worked out, helps to explain how vastly different accounts can emerge from a shared experience. Memory, by its nature and necessity, is selective, its details subject to revision and dissipation. From the dizzying stream of incoming perceptions, the brain stores, or "encodes," the sights, sounds, sensations and emotions that it deems important or novel. The quality of preservation may depend not only on the intensity of emotion in the moment an event occurs but on the mechanics of how that event is recorded and retrieved in some cases, decades later. "Recollection is always a reconstruction, to some extent it's not a videotape that preserves every detail," said Richard J. McNally, a professor of psychology at Harvard University and the author of "Remembering Trauma." "The details are often filled in later, or dismissed, and guessing may become part of the memory." Like the Science Times page on Facebook. Sign up for the Science Times newsletter. For a trauma victim, this encoding combines mortal fear and heart racing panic with crystalline fragments of detail: the make of the gun, the color of the attacker's eyes. The emotion is so strong that the fragments can become untethered from time and place. They may persist in memory even as other relevant details the exact date, the conversation just before the attack, who else was in the room fall out of reach. "In situations of high arousal, the brain is flooded with hormones that strengthen those things you're paying attention to," said Daniela Schiller, a neuroscientist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. "But other details are less accessible." Alcohol, even in moderate amounts, also tends to undermine the brain's ability to encode and store sights, sounds and other details, particularly in a coherent sequence. The accounts of both women note the consumption of large amounts of alcohol; Dr. Blasey described Judge Kavanaugh and his friend as "stumbling drunk." Ms. Ramirez, who alleges that he exposed himself to her during a college party, said she herself was inebriated and slurring her words at the time. These memories might be fragmented or "impaired," said Jim Hopper, a psychologist and teaching associate at Harvard Medical School and a consultant on cases involving trauma and memory. Retrieving such experiences from memory is an equally selective task and prone to error. In biological terms, recollection is a process of both revisiting and reassembly. Recalling an event draws on some of same areas of the brain that recorded it; in essence, to remember is to relive. Every time the mind summons the encoded experience, it can add details, subtract others and even alter the tone and point of the story. That reassembly, in turn, is freshly stored again, so that the next time it comes to mind it contains those edits. Using memory changes memory, as cognitive scientists say. For a victim, often the only stable elements are emotions and the tunnel vision details: the dress she wore, the hand over her mouth. "My experience is that this is the way people recall traumatic experiences," said Esther Deblinger, a psychologist and the co director of the Child Abuse Research Education and Service Institute at Rowan University School of Osteopathic Medicine. The reliability of those details depends in part on when they entered the narrative. "In this case the question is, when did the accuser attach Brett Kavanaugh's name to the incident?" said Elizabeth Loftus, a professor in psychological sciences at the University of California, Irvine. "Was it right away or did it come much later, say, in therapy?" That answer is unclear in Dr. Blasey's case; all that's known is that her husband recalled that she mentioned the name Kavanaugh when she described the incident in a couple's therapy session in 2012. (The therapist's notes don't identify him.) In general, Dr. Loftus said, the earliest or first memory of an event is the more reliable one. How do victims of sexual assault forge ahead without succumbing to the weight of a terrible memory? Dr. Hopper suggested that the answer may lie, in part, with how that memory is retrieved. "If you cling to an abstract, emotionally void description of an event and don't label it 'an attempted rape,' then you can go for years and that's all that will pop up," he said. "You don't go there with the sensory details that you have pushed away. You tell yourself, 'I was forced into a room, I struggled and I got away.'" But perhaps months, years, even decades after the event, an inadvertent trigger may breach the safety of the abstraction, and the reality of the memory he was trying to rape me may rush through, Dr. Hopper said. That realization prompts new emotions, which can reframe the narrative of the memory. A perpetrator's memory of the encounter is at least as prone to revision on retrieval. The encoded fragments of the event are there but typically less vivid; many relevant details may be impossible to summon, especially if the assailant hasn't thought about the incident for years. The memory trace isn't erased, but it can be reconfigured and supplanted. Lingering emotions from the incident are crucial to this process. In a study of teachers and other personnel after a school shooting in suburban Chicago, Dr. McNally and colleagues found that participants' memories of the event often changed sharply between six months and 18 months after the shooting. Some of the people who were no longer upset by the experience 18 months later recalled that they had been outside the building during the event, when in fact they'd been inside. In remembering the scene, they had physically removed themselves from it. A similar sleight of retrieval may protect perpetrators of abuse, experts say. The human mind works to preserve a sense of moral integrity. That process is a self serving one, allowing us to function day to day, tweaking our personal narrative to support who we are or want to be. Men who commit sexual assault rarely think of themselves as assailants, Dr. Hopper said: "We tend to go with the abstract descriptions of events that make us feel less bad about ourselves, and less ashamed." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
NASA's New Horizons probe captured an image of Arrokoth earlier this year, as part of the farthest flyby ever conducted by spacecraft. What does a small, icy world roughly four billion miles from Earth have to do with the Nazis? That's the question NASA was wrestling with before it announced on Tuesday that a space object formerly known by the nickname Ultima Thule would now officially be named Arrokoth, a Native American word meaning "sky." The previous name was a Latin term that metaphorically means "a place beyond the known world." When it was unveiled last year, NASA said the name was only temporary, but it still attracted criticism because the term has a historical association with the Third Reich. But let's start from the beginning. Until Tuesday, Ultima Thule was the informal name NASA used for a small, snowman shaped object in the Kuiper belt, a desolate region of deep space that the agency said in a statement is home to "thousands of known small icy worlds." But that name was not registered with the International Astronomical Union and Minor Planet Center , which has international authority for the naming of objects in the Kuiper belt. Its official name was the impersonal sounding "Kuiper belt object 2014 MU69." The object's strangely shaped, rust colored body is composed of two connected spherical lobes and measures just 21 miles across at its widest point. When it was photographed on New Year's Day 2019 by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft, it was the first object of its kind that planetary scientists had ever gotten to see up close. The term Ultima Thule, however, has its origins much closer to home. It is a Latin term used in classical antiquity to denote distant and unknown lands, in particular ones that were cold, like the Nordic countries. That Northern European connection drew the attention of the Nazis. "Thule was one of the names they gave to what they believed was the ancient Aryan homeland, a prehistoric Aryan utopia that collapsed because of racial miscegenation or a flood or what have you," said Eric Kurlander , a professor of history at Stetson University in DeLand, Fla. The name is also used by the Thule Society, a racist, occult group formed in 1918. The society gave birth the next year to the German Workers' Party, which Adolf Hitler soon joined and used as the precursor to the Nazi Party. "This isn't just some obscure element among hundreds of others in the Nazi cosmology," Dr. Kurlander said. "They named a tank division after Thule in World War II. It keeps popping up, which is why it probably makes sense not to name something that anyone has any interest in Thule. It has too much baggage as this point." How did that name end up on a space rock? The connection between the object's informal name and Nazi history was first reported by Newsweek. Mark Showalter, a scientist involved in the naming process, told the magazine in an interview that the name was suggested by roughly 40 people online. The New Horizons team learned about the term's Nazi connotation during the naming process but decided to move ahead with it anyway, he said. Mr. Showalter did not respond to a message seeking comment on Tuesday. "The question we looked at very closely was whether this was a primary association," Mr. Showalter told the magazine. "The primary association of Thule and Ultima Thule are with travel and exotic places and cold places it's associated with travel gear, it's associated often with distant places in Greenland." S. Alan Stern , the principal investigator for the New Horizons mission, which also did a flyby of Pluto in 2015, addressed the controversy earlier this year when scientists released the photographs taken by the spacecraft. "The term, Ultima Thule, which is very old, many centuries old, possibly a thousand years old, is a wonderful meme for exploration, and that's why we chose it," Dr. Stern told reporters at the time. "Just because some bad guys once liked that term, we're not going to let them hijack it." Why was the space object renamed? The idea of the unknown is built into the name Ultima Thule, so it was always intended to be temporary. Now that scientists have become acquainted with the little world, they wanted to give it a name that celebrated its distance from the Earth, as well as the sheer feat of having gotten close enough to study it, they said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
SAN FRANCISCO Palmer Luckey, a founder of the virtual reality technology company Oculus, has left Facebook three years after the social network acquired his company for close to 3 billion. Mr. Luckey's departure was announced two months after a trial in federal court over allegations that he and several colleagues had stolen trade secrets from a video game publisher, ZeniMax Media, to create the Oculus technology. A jury found Facebook liable for 500 million in damages, in part for Mr. Luckey's violation of a confidentiality agreement. "Palmer will be dearly missed," Tera Randall, an Oculus spokeswoman, said in a statement. "His inventive spirit helped kick start the modern VR revolution and helped build an industry." Ms. Randall declined to disclose the terms of Mr. Luckey's departure. The move adds another twist to Facebook's bumpy foray into virtual reality technology. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's chief executive, has bet big on virtual reality as part of the social network's future, saying he envisioned social interactions between people will someday exist inside virtual worlds. Oculus, he has said, could be a catalyst for that. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
At first glance, Jacques Tondelli (Pierre Deladonchamps) seems to enjoy an unmoored, cushy life in early 1990s Paris. And the early 1990s Paris Christophe Honore evokes in this film looks to be a good place for that. We are introduced to Jacques alone at an elegant bistro, giving a pleasant but slightly ironical glance at a male female couple sitting nearby. In his late 30s, he's dressed stylishly, mostly in blue, a color that suffuses the film, subtly, as has been Honore's customary light touch going back to "Dans Paris" (2006) and "Love Songs" (2007). Soon Jacques's date arrives: a shabbily dressed young hustler. And it clearly amuses the self assured Jacques to dine with the fellow in such an upscale environment. Back at his apartment, Jacques commiserates with an older friend, Mathieu (Denis Podalydes). Jacques's writing is going poorly, his finances are bad. Little to do but hang out and get high with his pal, although steps are taken not to disturb Jacques's grade school age son, Loulou. As it peels Jacques like an onion, "Sorry Angel" also develops, in a loping, unhurried style, the narrative of a love affair that is never truly allowed to happen. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
PALM SPRINGS, Calif. In April, the afternoon after Beyonce headlined the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival's opening weekend with an ambitious performance of history and imagination, the pair of cousins who make up the French electronic music duo the Blaze were still reeling, sharing their impressions in English salted with heavy accents and equally heavy romantic sentiments. "For us French people, we don't used to see that type of show," Jonathan Alric said, sitting poolside in the backyard of a late period modernist home the duo had rented here to work in between festival weekends. In 2017, the Blaze released its first EP of patient, ethereal electronic music, the visceral and agonizingly pretty "Territory," which catapulted them from anonymity all the way to Coachella, where they had performed the day before Beyonce, on a smaller stage. "We were very lucky to play at sunset," Jonathan said. "Basically what we wanted to do with our show was to do something with a lot of poetry, that was main thing." The desert light, Guillaume added, was "very bright, very pure." The Blaze began that performance inside a shimmering box, invisible to the audience. They built up intensity slowly, and revealed themselves partway through, but mostly they looked at each other, not the crowd. "Our creativity, it's a bubble," Guillaume said. "It's a very strong bubble, and we try not to be perturbated by this kind of celebrity or big things." They were at that point on the cusp of completing their full length debut album, "Dancehall," which will be released next month. But instead of speaking in intense particulars about sounds and melodies and instruments, they mostly wanted to discuss feelings. "We really talk a lot about our feelings, about love, family, friends," Guillaume said. "It's very good for creativity. When you can look to your friend and you know him, creativity just comes." The Blaze's songs and videos work on these terms as well epic, rough hewed emotional landscapes that surge and yearn, pulsing thickly with sun streaked, blurry edges. It is body music dance music but it works subcutaneously, operating on the level of emotion and thought more than movement. In the lineage of heavily exported French dance music, it's less plastic than Daft Punk, less brute than Justice. And as a contrast to the Red Bull orgy that is contemporary dance music culture, particularly in the festival context, the Blaze are monastic outliers. Guillaume, 35, grew up in Dijon, in Burgundy, and Jonathan, 29, in Normandy, the Ivory Coast and Peru. Their fathers are brothers, but they were not especially close until about seven years ago, when Jonathan was in film school, and Guillaume was making dub music as Mayd Hubb, inspired by Lee Perry, King Tubby and Mad Professor. Jonathan needed to create a music video for film school, and asked Guillaume for a remixed version of one of his tracks. They found they had similar impulses, and soon began collaborating formally as the Blaze. (They now live together in Paris with their girlfriends.) Never miss a pop music story: Sign up for our weekly newsletter, Louder. Their music is architecturally sturdy, borrowing from electro and house, and also florid and misty, taking in some of dub music's abstractions. "We try to have not too much clean," Guillaume said. From the beginning, they gave equal weight to music and imagery. "We were a little bit annoyed to see that every music video is the same, a guy or a girl singing with big cars," Jonathan said. "We wanted to tell a story, to do something more original." Added Guillaume, "And speak about people we don't used to see." First came "Virile," made for about 100. "What can we do with 100 bucks?" Jonathan remembered thinking. They bought beers, and filmed two friends in an apartment overlooking Brussels. In the video, the men smoke, dance, sing their interaction is part filial, part aggressive, part crypto romantic. The conceit is simple, but the effect is overpowering. Shot with stark, nonjudgmental calm, the video has a patient affection that recalls nothing so much as "Planet Earth." (The Blaze cite as visual inspirations the filmmakers Ken Loach and the Dardenne Brothers, and the photographer Sebastiao Salgado.) It's piercingly intimate, and utterly casual, everyday interactions rendered as dramatic theater. Jonathan sent the video to Manu Barron, one of the founders of the French dance music label Bromance Records, who was struck by the unusual isolation of their vision. "All these young Parisians, young Londoners, who know everything about everything the good shoes to have, how to have friends these two guys were completely out of the game," Mr. Barron said, calling in from his Ibiza vacation. When the "Moonlight" director Barry Jenkins first encountered the "Territory" clip, via a Twitter post by the French director Romain Gavras, "I had an experience," Mr. Jenkins recalled in a phone interview. "When those hands go up on homeboy's face, I was like, 'Let me put this on my flat screen television,'" he said, describing the opening scene, in which the boxer begins to fight back tears. At one point, he had a screengrab from the video as his iPhone wallpaper. "It's almost like a ballet in a certain way, the camera is so active," Mr. Jenkins said. "It's participating in this dance." "Territory" established the Blaze as essential chroniclers of male fragility. "We wanted to talk about what is a modern man," Jonathan said. "Somebody fragile who can cry and everything, but he can do both, he can be as virile and be honest with his feelings and his emotions." On the new album, "Dancehall" named for the social space, not the reggae subgenre the Blaze is fully embracing the potential of the body, with music that's a cousin of the soulful house music of the late 1990s and early 2000s. The sound here builds upon the duo's older work in two ways: It feels slightly fleeter, and more oriented toward the dance floor, and many of the lyrics have a darker tinge to them. Agony and frenzy are in the fore. "When we speak about emotion we don't want to just be positive," Guillaume said last month, over Skype from France. "Sometimes it's hard, sometimes it's easy. Sometimes it can be sad or happy, but finally the more important part is we can find the poetry in it." While the Blaze's following has been small but fervent so far, the intensity of emotion they channel has led to rhapsodic, almost primal endorsement. "I've seen it at least 100 times," Mr. Jenkins said of the "Territory" clip, adding that he mistakenly thought the duo starred in the video. "There was just no expletive way anything about this involves artifice." Mr. Barron said that meeting the Blaze was so powerful, it changed the way he approached his work. "I don't want to produce music for people who buy stuff in a mall," he said. "People need to have frank projects, not perfect projects. It's something without any lie." (The Blaze is now signed to his Animal63 imprint.) The recurring theme throughout all of the Blaze's work, in subject matter and aesthetics, is intimacy. It is in the texture of their songs, and is the anchor of all their visual work. Breaking down barriers to feeling and communication feels like their main goal. "I remember something we discussed at the beginning of the Blaze," Jonathan said. "We were imagining crazy things. Once we said that we wanted to do some electronic music, invent some kind of music where people can dance two by two." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
Across all industries, workers are struggling through the economic slowdown. In California, urban falconers are hoping their jobs will be recession proof. As the state slowly reopens, maybe there will continue to be a need for trained birds of prey to flush sparrows from the poolside arbors of fancy hotels. Or to provide a line of defense for cinematography drones against territorial sea gulls. Or to make paid appearances at special occasions, including engagement shoots and vow renewals. At least, this is the hope and prayer of Adam Baz, whose highly variable hustle as a freelance falconer requires that even his owl has headshots. "Frankly, as a millennial who spent 10 years floating somewhere between babysitter, musician and bird biologist and never making that much money, I wanted to start moving along a career path," said Mr. Baz, 35, who was first drawn to falconry in its more traditional form, as an ancient blood sport. During the two year apprenticeship required to earn his General Class designation a step in the formal hierarchy of falconers he learned that it was possible to not only hunt game with raptors, but to bring home a paycheck. Urban bird abatement falconry first became a viable career path in 2007 when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service initiated a federal permitting program for the use of protected raptors, some of which are well suited to flying in urban environments. As of 2019, only 137 permits had been issued nationwide, but more than a third are held by falconers in California, where the weather is hospitable to both birds and people year round, and many business owners are drawn to greener or more humane alternatives to bird control (which might otherwise include bird sound deterrents, hostile architecture or toxic substances known as avicides). The work gives Mr. Baz an opportunity to be outdoors and to work with wildlife, but to keep flexible hours. For these same reasons, professional falconry is appealing to an increasing number of young career seekers. "At the beginning there might have been this attitude of 'yeah, that's not real falconry,'" said Kort Clayton, 47, the founder and principal of Integrated Avian Solutions. "But younger falconers overwhelmingly don't see that. They see this as a really interesting opportunity," he said, adding that nearly all of the falconers he hires are in their 20s and 30s. To supplement his bird abatement work, Mr. Baz operates a roving one man "falconry school," providing demonstrations, experiences and interactive lessons. (He has paused these offerings in keeping with social distancing measures.) "I've had blind people take my demos, people who didn't speak English, old people, young people, people who identify as witches just truly all kinds of people," he said. "It's important for the public to get a glimpse into the world of falconry so they see the quality of life that these birds have. I worry sometimes that if all you've ever seen about falconry is a still image of a bird with hood on its head and leather straps around its ankles, it's taken out of context," he said. "You're not seeing that bird spectacularly free flying in this beautiful dance with the falconer as the falconer swings the lure and pulls it out of the air at 150 miles per hour. And that seems like a grave loss to me." "Plus, I spend a lot of time on rooftops in Burbank with my birds and my dog by myself, so it's a nice counterbalance to that," he added. Mr. Baz also shares his experience with his birds on Instagram. But despite what some proponents of falconrylife may advertise, he said he tries to be clear that communing with birds of prey isn't all lovey dovey. While it's easy to be drawn in by the splendor and quirkiness of his line of work, he added, the gritty details of the day to day don't often come across. For example, he and his girlfriend share their 550 square foot, one bedroom cottage in Highland Park and backyard with five large birds and a hunting dog. The five birds, which live out back in large enclosures, or mews, are two Harris's hawks, named Jasper and Fox; a Lanner falcon called Orion; a rare African augur buzzard, Kanoni; and Nico the Eurasian eagle owl, who spends a fair amount of time indoors on the couch and who may grow to have a six and a half foot wingspan. The dog is Oona, a red brown Hungarian Vizsla that Mr. Baz chose in part because of the breed's role in falconry dating back to the 10th century or earlier. Plus, much of Mr. Baz's free time is devoted to training, cleaning out cages or chopping up dead mice he purchases from a laboratory supplier, he said. And on the job site, danger abounds, and it's hard to get results. "In downtown Los Angeles, there are light rails, buses, crazy people on drugs, poisoned rats, sick pigeons, huge plate glass windows that reflect the sky which birds will fly into any number of things can go wrong. You have massive intensive pigeon infestations, which are very difficult to haze," he said. "Some falconers have what it takes, some don't." Outside of the city, different landscapes present different challenges. Cassie McGraw, 37, a bird abatement freelancer who spends five days a week chasing sea gulls away from refuse at a Bay Area transfer station said, "You can make all this money, sure, if you get that one great contract. But most of us, especially in the beginning, we have to hustle. Sometimes we go months without anything." Tony Pantaleo, a 28 year old bird abatement falconer in California's Central Valley, who helps keep crows from defecating all over downtown areas from Sacramento down to Bakersfield, said what a freelance falconer can make up to 10,000 a month for full time, sunrise to sunset vineyard abatement or somewhere between 30 and 75 an hour for abatement work in cities may sound like a lot to others, until they consider that the job is 24/7. "After our income, we still have a ton of costs to cover, and still we've got all those hours off the clock," he said. "It's not super easy to find a hawk sitter." On the American market, Harris's hawks, who are well suited to navigating crowded urban areas, cost up to 800. Falcons, like the Lanner falcon Mr. Baz recently acquired and which is permitted for use in film and photo shoots, range from 1,500 to 3,000. Owls and other rare raptors may cost twice that amount. All require lengthy and intense periods of training. Then there's the gear: Most items in a falconer's tool kit gloves and gauntlets, the birds' leather anklets, jesses and bells, perches, carriers, whistles and laser pointers to which birds may be trained to respond are not in and of themselves prohibitively expensive, but the costs add up fast. A lightweight GPS transmitter, which attaches to a bird's feathers to track it on the job, can cost 1,000. And a mixed diet of frozen chickens, quail and rodents can run a falconer hundreds of dollars a month. To make it all work, Mr. Baz's avian services must cast a wide net. In addition to a few bird abatement jobs per week, a 90 minute "hawk walk" is 300 for a group of three. One hour of owl snuggling may cost 75 per person. Despite that it takes years to get one's foot in the door, there is already thick competition between professional falconers especially in Los Angeles and Mr. Baz doesn't see interest from newcomers flagging anytime soon. "People need to get back in touch with nature and wildlife and I think that's particularly true with the stresses and pace of the modern world. So even though falconry feels like it's at odds with an urban existence, in some ways it's the perfect antidote," he said. "That's the essence of what drew me in, and I think that's a big part of why many young people are aspiring to be falconers even if it means grinding away chasing pigeons in downtown L.A." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
WASHINGTON By the time April D. Ryan left the White House briefing room on Tuesday, she was already making headlines: on live television, President Trump's press secretary, Sean M. Spicer, had cut off her questions to chastise her for what he deemed an inappropriate shake of her head. In Ms. Ryan's basement office in the West Wing, the phone started to ring. Her fans, it seemed, were having none of it. "I was appalled at the way Sean Spicer was treating you with such disrespect," said a pained sounding woman named Pam, who said she had listened to Ms. Ryan, the White House correspondent for American Urban Radio Networks, for years. "I have people come at me in all sorts of ways," Ms. Ryan told Pam, nodding. "I thank you so much." Hanging up, Ms. Ryan, whose workspace is about the size of a telephone booth, checked her Twitter account. After Mr. Spicer's harangue, she had tweeted a single word "Lawd!!!!" which was rapidly going viral. (By week's end, it would be retweeted more than 6,000 times.) Somebody had replied with a video of Melissa McCarthy imitating Mr. Spicer on "Saturday Night Live" by shoving a lectern at a reporter. Ms. Ryan howled with delight. "I love Melissa McCarthy!" she said. One of the few black journalists in the White House press corps, Ms. Ryan has covered presidents and clashed with press secretaries for 20 years. But her encounters with the Trump administration are propelling the 49 year old, Baltimore bred journalist to a new level of prominence and into a contentious debate over this White House's attitudes toward gender and race. First there was Mr. Trump's bizarre request, at a February news conference, that Ms. Ryan arrange a meeting between him and the Congressional Black Caucus. "Are they friends of yours?" the president asked, apparently oblivious to the racial undertones of posing such a query to a black journalist. Then came Tuesday, when Mr. Spicer laced into Ms. Ryan after she asked how the administration planned to revamp its image in light of reports about suspicious ties with Russia. "It seems like you're hellbent on trying to make sure that whatever image you want to tell about this White House stays," Mr. Spicer shot back from the lectern, after accusing Ms. Ryan of harboring an "agenda." When Ms. Ryan tried to clarify, he interrupted. "You're asking me a question and I'm going to answer it," he said, adding in a tone: "I'm sorry, please stop shaking your head again." "April Ryan, a respected journalist with unrivaled integrity, was doing her job just this afternoon in the White House press room, when she was patronized and cut off trying to ask a question," Mrs. Clinton told a women's group in California. (Mrs. Clinton, who has sat for interviews with Ms. Ryan, saw the exchange on Twitter that day and added the line to her speech.) The hashtag BlackWomenatWork trended on Twitter, linking Ms. Ryan with Representative Maxine Waters of California, whose hairstyle was mocked by the Fox News host Bill O'Reilly (he later apologized). Whoopi Goldberg expressed her disgust on "The View." John Dingell, the former Democratic representative from Michigan, wrote on Twitter: "If the WH doesn't want talented journalists like AprilDRyan to shake their heads, perhaps they should stop acting like some damn children." For Ms. Ryan, the attention is energizing, and a bit unsettling. She posted supportive comments from fans and celebrities on her Twitter feed, but also some of the racist replies that she says are a byproduct of her job. When a Florida radio host requested a photo with her at the White House "I just love the way you don't take no for an answer" Ms. Ryan politely declined. "It's going to look like I'm gloating," she said. Retail earnings and Black Friday: the week in business. Elizabeth Holmes will resume her testimony in her fraud trial. "Look, I'm a black woman in a white male dominated town," Ms. Ryan said later, when asked if she felt treated differently. But she said her primary goal was to remain focused on her work. "I like Sean Spicer," Ms. Ryan said. "I don't want this to hurt him." She paused. "I don't want it to hurt me, either." By turns serious and ebullient, Ms. Ryan's dispatches reach about 400 radio stations around the country, most with a primarily African American audience. This is not her first time in the spotlight. Barack Obama's first press secretary, Robert Gibbs, once tried to cut off her questions about a botched state dinner by instructing Ms. Ryan to "calm down," adding, "This happens with my son, he does the same thing." The remark, widely circulated on cable news, prompted groans and glares from fellow journalists. "She is a force, and you really have to be a force when you are an African American woman in one of the clubbiest rooms in the country, the White House press briefing room," said Jonathan Capehart, the Washington Post opinion writer. "You've got to be tough, especially to be in that room for 20 years." When Mr. Trump, at his news conference, tried to deputize Ms. Ryan as a liaison with black lawmakers, Mr. Capehart recalled thinking: "What the hell just happened?" "Does he think that all black people know each other and she's going to go run off and set up a meeting for him?" Mr. Capehart said. Adding of Ms. Ryan, "When she is belittled, she rises above it." Mr. Spicer has clashed with numerous journalists in the briefing room men and women and this week he described himself as "kind of astonished" that his back and forth with Ms. Ryan was singled out. "April is a tough reporter who knows how to throw it out and take it back," Mr. Spicer said in an interview with the radio host Hugh Hewitt. "But to suggest that somehow because of her gender or race she is treated differently, I think, is frankly demeaning to her." He added: "I'm treating April Ryan with the same pushback that I would any other reporter in that room." Ms. Ryan joined Pittsburgh based American Urban Radio Networks in 1997 to cover the White House, after reporting at local stations in Baltimore and Tennessee. At first, she sat in the back of the West Wing briefing room, among the more obscure news outlets. Over the years, she made her way forward, sometimes taking the chairs of no show reporters and eventually securing her current seat in the third row. She has published two books, "The Presidency in Black and White" and, last year, "At Mama's Knee," a look at motherhood and race. (Ms. Ryan is a single mother of two daughters.) Her purview is general politics, but she often pursues questions germane to a black audience, a rarity in a press room where white men are the majority. "The truth of the matter is, if she doesn't ask the urban related questions, they may never get asked," said Jerry Lopes, president of program operations at Ms. Ryan's network. After Mr. Spicer's remarks on Tuesday, Ms. Ryan was greeted by reporters with smiles and a rousing "Hey troublemaker!" from a passing cameraman. Asked who might play her on "S.N.L.," Ms. Ryan burst out laughing, started to dismiss the idea, then allowed that she was a fan of Taraji P. Henson, who plays Cookie on "Empire." In January, Ms. Ryan was spotted outside Mr. Spicer's office, giving him a hard time about one of his answers. Mr. Spicer, who had taken pains to call on Ms. Ryan that day, was incredulous. "How many times did you get called on in the Obama administration?" he asked. The day after the head shaking incident, Mr. Spicer walked into the briefing room and conspicuously called on Ms. Ryan first. "How are you today?" he asked with a smile from the lectern. "I'm fine, and how are you?" Ms. Ryan replied, drawing laughter. "Fantastic," Mr. Spicer said. And then Ms. Ryan moved on to the news of the day. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
PANTNAGAR, India The Nagla elementary school in this north Indian town looks like many other rundown government schools. Sweater clad children sit on burlap sheets laid in rows on cold concrete floors. Lunch is prepared out back on a fire of burning twigs and branches. But the classrooms of Nagla are a laboratory for an educational approach unusual for an Indian public school. Rather than being drilled and tested on reproducing passages from textbooks, students write their own stories. And they pursue independent projects as when fifth grade students recently interviewed organizers of religious festivals and then made written and oral presentations. That might seem commonplace in American or European schools. But such activities are revolutionary in India, where public school students have long been drilled on memorizing facts and regurgitating them in stressful year end exams that many children fail. Nagla and 1,500 other schools in this Indian state, Uttarakhand, are part of a five year old project to improve Indian primary education that is being paid for by one of the country's richest men, Azim H. Premji, chairman of the information technology giant Wipro. Education experts at his Azim Premji Foundation are helping to train new teachers and guide current teachers in overhauling the way students are taught and tested at government schools. For Mr. Premji, 65, there can be no higher priority if India is to fulfill its potential as an emerging economic giant. Because the Indian population is so youthful nearly 500 million people, or 45 percent of the country's total, are 19 or younger improving the education system is one of the country's most pressing challenges. "The bright students rise to the top, which they do anywhere in any system," Mr. Premji said over lunch at Wipro's headquarters in Bangalore, 1,300 miles south of Uttarakhand. "The people who are underprivileged are not articulate, less self confident, they slip further. They slip much further. You compound a problem of people who are handicapped socially." Outside of India, many may consider the country a wellspring of highly educated professionals, thanks to the many doctors and engineers who have moved to the West. And the legions of bright, English speaking call center employees may seem to represent, to many Western consumers, the cheerful voice of modern India. But within India, there is widespread recognition that the country has not invested enough in education, especially at the primary and secondary levels. But most Indian schools still perform poorly. Barely half of fifth grade students can read simple texts in their language of study, according to a survey of 13,000 rural schools by Pratham, a nonprofit education group. And only about one third of fifth graders can perform simple division problems in arithmetic. Most students drop out before they reach the 10th grade. Those statistics stand in stark contrast to China, where a government focus on education has achieved a literacy rate of 94 percent of the population, compared with 64 percent in India. Mr. Premji said he hoped his foundation would eventually make a difference for tens of millions of children by focusing on critical educational areas like exams, curriculum and teacher training. He said he wanted to reach many more children than he could by opening private schools the approach taken by many other wealthy Indians. Mr. Premji, whose total wealth Forbes magazine has put at 18 billion, recently gave the foundation 2 billion worth of shares in his company. And he said that he expected to give more in the future. Those newly donated shares are being used to start an education focused university in Bangalore and to expand and spread programs like the one here in Uttarakhand and a handful of other places to reach 50 of India's 626 school districts. The effort's size and scope is unprecedented for a private initiative in India, philanthropy experts say. Even though India's recent rapid growth has helped dozens of tycoons acquire billions of dollars in wealth, few have pledged such a large sum to a social cause. "This has never been attempted before, either by a foundation or a for profit group," said Jayant Sinha, who heads the Indian office of Omidyar Network, the philanthropic investment firm set up by the eBay founder Pierre Omidyar. Although the results in Uttarakhand are promising, they also suggest that progress will be slow. Average test scores in one of the two districts where the foundation operates climbed to 54 percent in 2008, up from 37.4 percent two years earlier. (A passing mark is 33 percent or higher.) Still, only 20 of the 1,500 schools that the foundation works with in Uttarakhand have managed to reach a basic standard of learning as determined by competence tests, enrollment and attendance. Nagla is not one of the 20. "We are working with the kids who were neglected before," said D. N. Bhatt, a district education coordinator for the Uttarakhand state government. "You won't see the impact right away." The Premji Foundation helps schools in states where the government has invited its participation a choice that some educational experts criticize because it seems to ignore fast growing private schools that teach about a quarter of the country's students, including many of India's poor. Narayana Murthy, a friend of Mr. Premji and chairman of Infosys, a company that competes with Wipro, said he admired the Premji Foundation's work but worried it would be undermined by the way India administers its schools. Mr. Premji says his foundation would be willing to work with private schools. But he argues that government schools need help more because they are often the last or only resort for India's poorest and least educated families. Mr. Premji, whose bright white hair distinguishes him in a crowd, comes from a relatively privileged background. He studied at a Jesuit school, St. Mary's, in Mumbai and earned an electrical engineering degree at Stanford. At 21, when his father died, Mr. Premji took over his family's cooking oil business, then known as Western Indian Vegetable Product. He steered the company into information technology and Wipro whose services include writing software and managing computer systems now employs more than 100,000 people. He remains Wipro's largest shareholder. While the foundation has been welcomed by government officials in many places, the schools in Uttarakhand provide a glimpse of the challenges it faces. After visitors left a classroom at Nagla school, an instructor began leading more than 50 fifth grade students in a purely rote English lesson, instructing the students to repeat simple phrases: Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening. Good night. The children loudly chanted them back in unison. Another teacher later explained that the instructor was one of two "community teachers" local women hired by a shopkeeper to help the understaffed school. Although under government rules Nagla should have nine trained teachers for its 340 students, it has only four. Underfunding is pervasive in the district. But so are glimmers of the educational benefits that might come through efforts like the Premji Foundation's. Surjeet Chakrovarty, now a 15 year old secondary school student, is a graduate of Nagla and still visits his old school regularly. The son of a widower who is a sweeper at a local university, Surjeet aspires to become a poet and songwriter something he attributes to the encouragement of his former teachers at Nagla. "My teachers here gave me so much motivation to write," he said. One of those Nagla teachers, Pradeep Pandey, shared credit with the Premji Foundation, and its assistance in developing new written and oral tests. "Before, we had a clear idea of the answers and the child had to repeat exactly what we had in mind," Mr. Pandey said. "We can't keep doing what we did in the past, and pass them without letting them learn anything." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Global Business |
Paul Wright, a smiling, impeccably jacked personal trainer, stared at me from the large screen mounted to the wall. He was waiting for me to start my next set of biceps curls. The screen was part of a new weight lifting machine from Tonal, a San Francisco start up. The system combines software and an interactive LED screen with electromagnetic weights and cables to create an experience that does not rely on plates, barbells and gravity. Tonal had sensed that my last set of curls was too easy, and helpfully perhaps sadistically added more weight for the next set. I grumbled about the weight, but realized Mr. Wright couldn't hear me any more than Tamilee Webb could hear me griping through a "Buns of Steel" VHS tape in the 1990s. The video of him was a recording, too. But as I grimaced and sweated through the reps, I noticed they were precisely the right level of difficulty. The machine knew my strength better than I did. As I tested the machine in a Tonal office, the company's chief executive, head of marketing, public relations representative and another trainer eagerly looked on. The Tonal machine is very cool, I told them and, at 2,995, very expensive. Home fitness machinery, in all its bulk, was once relegated to the garage or the basement. Now, with a little help from Silicon Valley engineers, it is moving onto the wall. In recent weeks two tech start ups, backed by millions of dollars of venture funding, have introduced sleek wall mounted fitness systems that stream workouts into their customers' living rooms, bedrooms, dens, foyers or home offices. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
WASHINGTON The European telecom operator Altice completed its 17.7 billion deal for Cablevision on Tuesday, its second major acquisition in a year and a step toward its goal of becoming a leading cable and broadband internet provider in the United States. After its purchase of Cablevision, which includes Newsday and a television station, the Altice subsidiary Altice U.S.A. will have 4.6 million broadband and cable television subscribers, making it the fourth largest cable and broadband operator in the country, with customers in 20 states, including the New York market. Altice is a global telecommunications firm based in the Netherlands started 15 years ago by the French Israeli billionaire entrepreneur Patrick Drahi. In addition to the United States, it operates in Europe, the Caribbean and Africa. The company wants to keep expanding, creating more consolidation in the market for a utility service broadband consumer advocates fear is controlled by fewer firms. (Comcast, Charter and Altice now control 52 percent of the cable market in the United States.) In an interview, Dexter Goei, chairman and chief executive of Altice U.S.A., talked about the company's plans and how, despite the many regulations recently aimed at the cable and broadband industry, he is not scared off. Below are edited excerpts from the conversation. In one year, you have closed acquisitions of Cablevision and Suddenlink. What next? We are going to take our time and be thoughtful about next steps, but fundamentally we are in the business of getting larger. Scale drives better economics and better strategic flexibility. We will look to do more. When we will do something more, I don't know. In 2016, we are very focused on the integration of, not just the two businesses in the U.S., but the entire Altice family. In what ways do you want to get larger? We would like to do more of what we have. Are there things to be done in other revenue streams, whether in content or mobile or technology? Maybe. It is worthwhile knowing that every single one of our businesses in other markets are quad play, both fixed and mobile broadband (and television and phone). In places where we have big market share positions, we have invested in media and content. Way too early to tell, but we will be ambitious. We have been built by a prescient entrepreneur who has not been shy to continue to grow our business and we've moved quickly when we want to move quickly. Can you afford to take your time? Your United States cable and telecom competitors such as Comast, AT T and Verizon are buying content and ad technology. I don't necessarily agree that our competitors are out there doing a lot of stuff on content. I would say obviously Comcast for sure, but Verizon is very focused on its mobile content strategy. The Dolans were very involved in content and split the team up. To invest in content is a big word, but you have to be very specific as to what you are talking about. We aren't at the scale to do what Comcast does. Everything else is beating around the edges. We can be thoughtful. It would seem like this is a bad time to invest in the United States market if you read statements from cable firms. They complain about too much regulation from the Federal Communications Commission. It's too early to tell if we have a strong point of view on any issues. These are, as you may suspect, in other markets we are in. On net neutrality, we have the same directives in Europe that are percolating. On the all vid, or set top box proposal, this is a very U.S. type of issue that we aren't smart enough around today. We don't have that issue today in other markets. How about cost cutting? How is that going to affect customers and employees of Cablevision? Is there concern about how cost cutting will hurt service and jobs? On the end user side, I don't think end users will expect anything but continued great service and even greater service. We've said we'll invest significant amounts of capital in customer service and the network. On the Cablevision employee side, people are unbelievably energized and excited about what we are bringing to the table. There is no fear on the cost side. There is a clear understanding that there is a new management team in place that will be very thoughtful about how we deploy our capital going forward. It will be a little bit better than done historically. We aren't feeling any things you are suggesting people might be feeling. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
As National Geographic editors prepared an issue dedicated to race, they realized the 130 year old magazine might face questions about its troubled history on the subject. So they asked John Edwin Mason, a University of Virginia professor who studies the history of Africa and photography, to dig through the magazine's archives to examine its shortcomings in covering people of color in the United States and abroad. "Through most of its history, National Geographic, in words and images, reproduced a racial hierarchy with brown and black people at the bottom, and white people at the top," Mr. Mason said in an interview on Tuesday. There was a complete absence of urban, educated Africans in the magazine's pages, he told them. Black people were presented as static, primitive and non technological, often unclothed or presented as savages, he said. And that image, which persisted until the 1970s, shaped how the magazine's readers largely white and middle class perceived black people, he said. But as he presented his findings to the editors, he didn't encounter the kind of defensiveness he feared, he said. Instead, they gave his research prominent placement under a headline with no equivocation: "For Decades, Our Coverage Was Racist. To Rise Above Our Past, We Must Acknowledge It." Written by Susan Goldberg, the editor in chief, the note acknowledges that "it hurts to share the appalling stories from the magazine's past." It includes some of the most blatant examples of racism, including a 1916 story about Australia that included the photo caption: "South Australian Blackfellows: These savages rank lowest in intelligence of all human beings." Ms. Goldberg said in an interview on Tuesday that the magazine was proud of its history of opening eyes to new places and cultures, and of the way the publication has grown in recent decades. But she said the magazine, which won a National Magazine Award on Tuesday for an issue dedicated to gender last year, hoped that coming clean about its mistakes would help gain some credibility. "It tells people that you're thinking about these things, you care about these things, and you want to do a better job," she said. The magazine was far from alone in racist coverage at the time, Mr. Mason said, but it was considered a leader in photography. Its effort to directly confront its past was largely well received. At least two web based publications, Splinter and The Root, described the decision as a welcome "first step." 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. Deborah Willis, the chairwoman of the Department of Photography and Imaging at New York University, said she grew up reading National Geographic, but had long noticed the failure to capture the voices of black subjects. She never heard how they felt about being photographed or the story behind their jewelry; instead, you heard the "voice of the institution," she said. "I wanted to become a photographer because of National Geographic," she said. "I wanted to tell a different story." Modern news organizations still lag in minority representation on photography staffs, said Brent Lewis, a senior photo editor at ESPN's The Undefeated. Mr. Lewis praised National Geographic's overall effort, but said he was disappointed that the cover the most recognizable image for an issue dedicated to race was shot by a white man, Robin Hammond. Ms. Goldberg said the main feature story featured nine photographers, five of whom were people of color. Of the eight writers, four were people of color. "We cover a diverse world," she said. "If we want to do so accurately and with authority, we need a diverse staff to cover it." The magazine's self reflection was among the most direct admissions of past sins from media organizations, which have occasionally wrestled with their complicity in injustices. In 2004, The Lexington Herald Leader in Kentucky published a front page "clarification" to atone for its civil rights coverage 50 years earlier. "It has come to the editor's attention that The Herald Leader neglected to cover the civil rights movement," it read. "We regret the omission." In 2016, The Courier Journal in Louisville, Ky., apologized for continuing to refer to Muhammad Ali, the famed boxer, as Cassius Clay for years after he changed his name in 1964. Its editor, Neil Budde, wrote that it "did little to help race relations in a turbulent time." (It was one of several newspapers, including The New York Times, to slowly adopt the change.) The Times has scoured its archives for unpublished photos of black history, and retroactively wrote obituaries for women who were initially overlooked, an effort it pledged to continue. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
The intrigue of the WWE, where wrestlers wear gimmicky costumes while tussling, captures a child's imagination in the amiable Netflix movie "The Main Event." Sweet natured Leo (Seth Carr) is an 11 year old pipsqueak and pro wrestling enthusiast who's picked on by bigger boys. Escaping his bullies one day, he stumbles into an estate sale where he finds a mysterious wrestling mask that, once donned, imbues him with superhuman strength. In a note of silliness, the magic fabric also stinks of body odor. Armed with this disguise, Leo becomes a superhero of sorts. Most of the day, he's a nervous kid with a few friends. But in the mask, he transforms into a smooth talking strongman who can topple a tree with a karate kick, or turn the charm on with his school crush (Momona Tamada). The mask fulfills a juvenile fantasy of limitless power, and Leo puts it to the test when, with the blessing of his kooky grandma (Tichina Arnold), he enters a pro wrestling competition under the moniker Kid Chaos. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
It was a week in which President Trump was acquitted in his impeachment trial in the Senate and gave his annual State of the Union address, and the results of the Democratic caucuses in Iowa descended into chaos, delays and recrimination. So, naturally, "Saturday Night Live" began with ... a parody of the Democratic debate in New Hampshire. By now you know the format for this type of sketch, seen at the opening of this weekend's broadcast, which was hosted by RuPaul and featured the musical guest Justin Bieber. So we'll just run through some of the players, the roles they played and their most memorable lines: Jason Sudeikis, the "S.N.L." alum, reprised his Joe Biden impersonation on Saturday, dismissing accusations that his campaign had been hampered by a weak performance in Iowa. He said, "By the time we get to South Cackalackey, Joe Biden's gonna do what Joe Biden does best: creep up from behind. Just when you think your lead is safe, my numbers are gonna sneak up and surprise you with a nice sweet kiss on the neck." Larry David returned as Bernie Sanders to take stock of the Iowa debacle. "I still can't believe all this mess happened in Iowa because of an app," he said. "Hey, I have an idea for an app. It's called no apps. No apps, no computers, no gadgets, no gizmos. You show up to your polling place, take a number like you do at the butcher, they call your ticket. You walk up to the counter and say to the guy: 'Give me a pound of whatever's about to go bad.'" Bowen Yang played Andrew Yang, pointing out the math pin on his lapel as he said sarcastically, "Oh, the issue in Iowa was math? Oh, I wonder who they could have called to help them out with that? I meant because of my pin, racist." Rachel Dratch, another "S.N.L." veteran, was back as Amy Klobuchar, trying not to be overshadowed by Elizabeth Warren. "Elizabeth is J. Lo and I'm Shakira," Dratch said. "And so, to Donald Trump I say: " here, she imitated Shakira's tongue wag from her performance at the Super Bowl halftime show. The debate was briefly interrupted by an advertisement for Michael Bloomberg. "Are you a registered Democrat thinking, These can't be my only choices?" the slogan ran. "Then try Bloomberg. He's not as short as Trump is fat." Then it was back to players like Kate McKinnon as Elizabeth Warren, who boasted about her lack of funding. "My campaign is broke as hell," she said. "My biggest contributions are the pennies from loafers and whatever the concerned moms of Bernie bros can afford." (Later in the sketch, McKinnon also said, "I know a lot of people like me but they worry about if I'm electable. I have a great solution for that: Elect me." Colin Jost, as Pete Buttigieg, addressed his campaign's lack of traction with black voters. "People say I'm not very popular among minorities," he said. "They've been referring to me as Mayo Pete. But I assure you I'm not that spicy." Over at the Weekend Update desk, the anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che continued to riff on the end of President Trump's impeachment trial and his State of the Union address. President Trump was acquitted in his Senate trial this week, and Democrats are calling it a cover up. But does this look like a guy who can pull off a cover up? The screen showed a recent viral photograph of President Trump. Oh my God, it's like the day at the nursing home when they let the residents put their own makeup on. President Trump then spoke at the National Prayer Breakfast and held up a copy of a headline about his acquittal. I assume to prove that prayers don't work. Then he went and attacked Mitt Romney, a devout Mormon who voted to convict him. Trump said, "I don't like people who use their faith as a justification for doing what they know is wrong." At which point even the leaders of the National Prayer Breakfast were like, Jesus Christ, dude. The day after the Senate vote, President Trump gave a speech at the White House, which he called a celebration. Let's take a look. The screen shows a video of O.J. Simpson being acquitted in 1995. Oh, that's the wrong clip. Here's the actual one. A montage of outtakes from President Trump's remarks in the East Room, calling Adam Schiff "a vicious, horrible person" and Nancy Pelosi "a horrible person" and using an obscenity. At least he's happy. During his state of the union address, Trump gave a medal to Rush Limbaugh and celebrated the creation of the Space Force, a moment that was predicted by a Mad Lib I did in 1992. Just two weeks after Melissa Villasenor's hilariously pointed song about white male rage in Academy Award nominated films, is it too soon for another segment about the Oscars? Absolutely not. This week, it was Chloe Fineman's turn to shine in a bit about what she called "steering wheel acting," which she described as "the scene in every Oscar movie where a broken woman is finally alone in her car and just lets it all go." (She then demonstrated by gripping an imaginary steering wheel and bursting into an unsettling combination of tears and laughter.) | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador at the National Palace in Mexico City. One of his campaign pledges was to rid Mexico of corruption. President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has a chance to fight corruption at the top. But he needs to uphold the law on all sides to be effective. MEXICO CITY I've spent two decades trying to make sense of the economics of Mexico's drug trafficking. During that time I have often heard a phrase muttered by gangsters and crime journalists: "Who needs the angels, when you have God." If cartels pay off the top levels of government, or the gods, then the lower levels, like the police officers, are already taken care of. Money rises up like gas, and power flows down like water. When Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador won the presidency in 2018 on a platform of ridding Mexico of corruption, he duly recognized that change had to start at the top. "We are going to clean up the government like a staircase," he famously said, meaning from the top down. He said that Mexico would no longer suffer at the hands of corrupt leaders, whom he called, "a mafia of power." Corruption tears at the soul of Mexico, and many here see it as one of the country's leading problems. It's the reason killer cartels flourish, roads have potholes, and doctors treating Covid 19 don't have better protective gear. It also pervades everyday life, with bribes functioning as the grease that keeps the system moving, and in this way it makes a large part of the country complicit. Bureaucrats get cash tips for issuing birth certificates, for example, and the police pocket cash for turning a blind eye to motorists running red lights. The "angels" at the bottom take bribes, too. But when the "gods" at the top are rotten it has the most devastating consequences. The former governor of Veracruz, Javier Duarte, was accused of skimming billions of dollars from state coffers when he was in office between 2010 and 2016, and later convicted on various charges. During his term, poverty increased and 17 journalists were murdered. After he left office, the biggest mass grave in Mexico's recent history was discovered. While former governors and generals have been jailed, corruption charges have never been filed against those at the very top: the presidents. That could now change. On Sept. 15, the eve of Mexico's independence day, Mr. Lopez Obrador delivered a document to the Senate calling for a referendum on whether to indict former presidents if there is evidence of crimes that did grave harm during their administrations. It was backed by what activists claimed were 2.5 million signatures written on piles of paper that were hauled into the building in boxes, an image shared in enthusiastic tweets by the president's supporters. Critics retorted that you shouldn't need a referendum on whether justice is served, and that it is a distraction from high pandemic deaths and a double digit recession. And as the vote could coincide with midterm elections in 2021, it might be a tool to get voters to the polls in support of the president's National Regeneration Movement party, or Morena. The thinking there is that people will be more motivated to cast a ballot in a historic plebiscite than just a regular midterm. I think a referendum could give citizen support to what may become very politically divisive cases. And going after the gods of corruption is certainly a good thing, forcing Mexico to catch up with an anti graft drive across Latin America. In the last half decade, former presidents have been convicted of crimes involving corruption in Honduras, El Salvador and Brazil, and charged with similar crimes in Guatemala, Peru, Argentina, Panama and Bolivia. Justice could help deter future leaders from succumbing to temptation, while acting as a catalyst in cleaning up the system, and pushing Mexico to finally live up to its great potential. Yet there is the danger, as in other Latin American countries, that politicians could wield the anticorruption club against their enemies giving yet another weapon to the powerful. Cases need to be open and fair, which is especially challenging in a divisive partisan environment. And the president's own allies in Morena need to face the same scrutiny. Otherwise, there is a danger of replacing one "mafia of power" with another. There are various accusations against Mexico's former presidents. The biggest case centers on Emilio Lozoya, the former head of the state oil company Pemex. Recently extradited from Spain on bribery charges, Mr. Lozoya filed a deposition last month claiming that former leaders were involved in taking handouts from Pemex and other companies for awarding them lucrative contracts. His harshest accusation was against former President Enrique Pena Nieto, alleging that he "created a scheme of corruption in the federal government" during his term between 2012 to 2018. Mr. Lozoya also said that former President Felipe Calderon had knowledge of bribes when he was president between 2006 and 2012. Mr. Pena Nieto has not commented publicly on the deposition but he previously denied any misconduct. In a separate case, Mr. Calderon's former public security secretary, a key figure in his war on drug cartels, has himself been imprisoned in the United States on drug trafficking charges filed there. Mr. Calderon has denied wrongdoing and said in a tweet that Mr. Lozoya's accusations are "an instrument of vengeance and political persecution." The challenge with fighting corruption, however, is that it can affect all sides. When Mr. Lozoya dominated the news, videos emerged of Mr. Lopez Obrador's brother receiving paper bags of cash back in 2015. The president said he thought that the money was Morena campaign contributions to candidates in local elections but he also said that electoral officials should investigate. "If a family member commits a crime, they should be judged, whether it's my son, my wife, my brothers or whoever," he said. With accusations seeming to touch all of the country's politicians, it's easy to lose hope that things will change. In his 1984 book "Distant Neighbors," Alan Riding, a former New York Times bureau chief here, described corruption as the "oil and glue" that keep the machine in motion. However, I find hope in the wave of civil society groups that have grown in recent years, including Mexicans Against Corruption, which was formed by journalists, academics and others in 2015. They are, among other things, working to expose cases of graft, which can lead to government investigations. With more eyes on them, Mexican officials are unable to get away with such flagrant abuses, the group's communications director, Dario Ramirez, told me. "It's about how we can have a change so corruption is not part of our culture," he said. "I am optimistic because I believe in the evolution of societies." Mr. Ramirez said he thought improvements have occurred under President Lopez Obrador, who has cut the budgets of various agencies to limit waste and embezzlement. But in the long term, he said, it would be best to create more independent prosecutors; Mexico's federal attorney general is currently proposed by the president and ratified by the Senate. Another potent action would be to expand the online posting of all government spending and contracts, which would be intended to make it harder to conceal bribes and other fraudulent activity. "There are more and more tools, above all from civil society and journalism, to create the public pressure necessary to change the system," Mr. Ramirez said. "So corruption stops being the oil of all the social, political and economic relations in Mexico." These tools need to be used against the ruling party as well as former leaders. Mr. Lopez Obrador has an opportunity to clean house. But unless he is thorough, the effort could be in vain. Ioan Grillo, a contributing opinion writer, is the author of "El Narco: Inside Mexico's Criminal Insurgency" and, most recently, "Gangster Warlords: Drug Dollars, Killing Fields, and the New Politics of Latin America." The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We'd like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here's our email: letters nytimes.com. Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter ( NYTopinion) and Instagram. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
The true test of a garden is how it looks in the rain. Any landscape is lovely garnished with blue skies and butterflies. But in a summer storm? As I turned onto a six acre eastern Long Island garden in pelting rain the other day, the first things I noticed were two gravel tracks, bordered by waterlogged shrubs and the dim silhouette of the landscape designer John Beitel, sheltering in place in his vehicle. Without any of the usual clues there were no manicured panels of privet, overfertilized rose beds or aggressive hydrangeas I could as easily be meandering through a remote forest preserve as a Hampton Bays garden on the edge of the Peconic Bay. "It'll blow over soon," Mr. Beitel predicted, jumping into the passenger seat of my rental car to wait out the weather with a confidence I admired even if I didn't share it. But Mr. Beitel knows his turf, having grown up just a few miles away in a bucolic South Shore village called Bellport. Earlier in the morning, he had sailed across choppy waters from Fire Island, and he was "fairly sure" that he would be able to make it back, he said. We seemed to be parked at the misty edge of a long gravel driveway, at the end of which appeared to be a half hidden, flat roofed house. Was something growing on top? "Rooftop meadow," Mr. Beitel confirmed. He has been designing gardens for 36 years, and this may be his favorite. Part of the reason, certainly, is that this low slung house belongs to the land instead of the other way around. The architect Caleb Mulvena of Mapos, who designed the house to replace a cottage that came with the property, sited it unobtrusively behind a rise; from the driveway, your eye naturally goes past it in favor of the horizon. Other details came into view through the windshield. Surrounding the house was a mini prairie of golden grasses, vivid now against the gray backdrop. Drifts of rain heavy Queen Anne's Lace and butterfly weed added muted dabs of color. Silhouetted against the sky were lovely old trees, including a majestic sycamore the clients had decreed untouchable during the renovation process. From what I could see, this was the sort of quintessentially American landscape that Walt Whitman might have been thinking about when he described the prairie as "pure luminous color fighting the silent shadows." Or you could call it a no garden garden. With a limited palette (layers of green on green texture), native shrubs and hardy perennials that draw little attention to themselves individually, landscapes like this are in high demand these days among homeowners who want to live in serene surroundings without having to actually garden. ("When I started out," Mr. Beitel said, "a lot of my clients were very active gardeners, always in the garden working. Even my weekend people. But nowadays, high maintenance is a recipe for a short lived garden.") Every garden tells a story about the family that owns it. This three year old one belongs to an entrepreneurial French couple who live with their children most of the year in Hong Kong. (They spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect their privacy.) In the summer, when they spend six or more weeks on Long Island, family members are most likely to be found outdoors in a hammock, swimming in the pool, or playing an after dinner pickup game of soccer. The couple spends much of the rest of the year traveling for business, a situation that makes a low maintenance landscape essential. Which was fine with Mr. Beitel. "I'm tired of the manicured look," he said. "What's exciting is to get back to basics, to really study a site to get a feel for the light and the environment that was there originally, and to translate that into a design for a nontraditional garden." Every garden also tells a story about the person who designed it. Mr. Beitel, 56, grew up in a family of avid gardeners. "My Sicilian grandfather had a huge garden, and it was so beautiful, partly because it was so essential to the family. You could see it in the craftsmanship of how he built a simple fence or a raised box. From him, I learned how to work with the land and take advantage of the conditions you have on site," he said. Untamed landscapes like this one also owe a debt to the High Line in New York City. Since 2009, when the Dutch garden designer Piet Oudolf's painterly drifts of grasses and wildflowers debuted on a stretch of elevated walkway in Manhattan, the park's design has been influencing garden designers around the country. The High Line in turn pays homage to the 20th century prairie garden movement, which venerated the unspoiled expanses of the Great Plains and the strong horizontal line of the horizon. With the torrents slowing to a drizzle, we made a run for it. Indoors, the house revealed itself to be much bigger than expected, with cedar paneled, open plan living and dining areas that gave way to a long wall of floor to ceiling windows overlooking the Peconic Bay. The distant land masses of Robins and Shelter Islands looked deceptively close, a swim away. The view lured us outdoors, onto an unobtrusive terrace that gave way to a self effacing deck surrounding a swimming pool. At this stealth house, nothing disturbed the landscape. We wandered out to the bluff to look at the bay and to pay homage to a wind battered native black cherry tree. Hurricane Sandy wreaked havoc on the fragile bluff in 2012. But you would never know it five years later. Mr. Beitel replanted it; today, the steep, sandy slope is covered with bayberry, beach plum, volunteer locust and wild verbascum. "A rugged coastal, sandy landscape where the plants are really survivors is the most beautiful landscape there is," Mr. Beitel said. "You learn that, growing up on Long Island." A garden like this has a positive impact on the environment: The coastal plants are a buffer against erosion and runoff; the hardy perennial grasses require very little water ("and no pesticides," Mr. Beitel said) and the native flowering plants attract pollinators. The rain stopped as we walked toward the guest barn, where the family slept for months while their new house was under construction. We stopped to admire a proud old dogwood tree, whose progress Mr. Beitel monitors throughout the seasons, sending his clients photos in spring. ("I don't want them to miss it in flower," he says.) Mr. Beitel knows, day to day, everything that happens in this garden. He drops by often, and sometimes the visits are for himself as much as for the garden: "If I'm really stressed out, I'll stop by. It's calming." And then the sun came out. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
The new PBS cartoon "Molly of Denali," which centers on an Alaska Native family, is perhaps PBS's most ambitious effort yet to educate its young viewers about a distinct cultural group. When two children's television producers from the East Coast set out to make a show about an Alaska Native girl whose parents run a rural trading post, there was no question that they would need some cultural guidance. Dorothea Gillim, who was executive producer of the "Curious George" television series, grew up in Rochester, N.Y., where the grocery chain Wegmans originated, and she had long imagined a children's show that centered on a store that was the hub of the community. The show's other creator, Kathy Waugh, who was a writer on "Arthur," envisioned a story about an adventurous young girl living in a remote area. The setting for the show came to Gillim in 2015, when the news media was covering President Obama's trip to Alaska. On the eve of the visit he announced that the name of Mount McKinley, the highest mountain in North America, would be restored to Denali, its Alaska Native name. The show that the producers dreamed up, called "Molly of Denali," ended up becoming a PBS cartoon about a 10 year old Athabascan girl with a video blog about life in rural Alaska. PBS says it is the first nationally distributed children's series with a Native American lead. The show, which premieres across the country on Monday, was written for children ages 4 to 8. It follows the spunky and inventive Molly Mabray and her friends as they solve kid friendly problems, like earning enough money to buy an inflatable tube to ride on the water or finding ways to keep four legged creatures out of their garden. Sign up for the NYT Parenting newsletter for the info you need to raise thriving kids. It also represents what is perhaps PBS's most ambitious effort yet to educate its young viewers about a distinct cultural group, while investing in making sure that members of that group are involved at every level of production. The core narrative of the show involves Molly making new connections to her Native identity. But neither of the creators had Native roots, and they knew they would need to educate themselves about the cultural heritage of their main character. PBS and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the nonprofit that distributes federal funds to public broadcasting stations and programs, including "Molly of Denali," urged the producers to find a way to intimately involve Alaska Native people in the making of the show. In the past, one or two cultural advisers might have been considered sufficient for informing a children's show about an Alaska Native family. But for a television show created in 2019, after years of reckoning with inadequate representation in television and film, there's an understanding in the industry that Alaska Native people should be integral to the process of telling a story about themselves. "For so long people have come in and literally just taken our stories and have done what they wanted with them," said Princess Daazhraii Johnson, a creative producer and writer on "Molly," who is Neets'aii Gwich'in. (The character Molly's cultural heritage is from three Athabascan groups: Gwich'in, Koyukon and Dena'ina .) To make sure they got the show right, the Boston public broadcaster WGBH, which produced the show, involved more than 60 people who are Alaska Native, First Nations or Indigenous in writing the scripts, advising on cultural and linguistic issues, recording the theme song and voicing the characters. "We recognized our own ignorance of the subject and we didn't want to repeat stereotypes," Gillim said. The production had cultural advisers from each region of Alaska that the show addresses, and for each animated Native character, they hired a voice actor who was of either Alaska Native or First Nations heritage. It's a scope of inclusion rarely seen in children's television, one the show's Native writers and advisers hope becomes a new standard for how TV producers handle specific cultural identities. Growing up in the 1980s, Johnson, the "Molly" writer, said she remembers few Native role models in the media and troubling racist portrayals of Native Americans in television and film. Even now, stories in mainstream pop culture about Native American communities tend to rely on tropes about "savage" or "noble" warriors and focus on the anguish of poverty and alcoholism, instead of showing Native Americans in everyday roles, according to a report released last year by the First Nations Development Institute, a nonprofit focused on improving the economic conditions of Native Americans. Instead of outsiders continuing to co opt and misrepresent Native culture, "we have to be a part of informing what that image is, and we have to be at every level of production," Johnson said. Not all shows have the funding to reach that goal, said Linda Simensky, the vice president of children's programming at PBS. "Molly" could because the show received support from the U.S. Department of Education and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, she added. Funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting allowed WGBH to train six Alaska Native screenwriters and hire four Alaska Native advisers. The producers met the advisers in Fairbanks, Alaska, in 2016, to develop the world of the show before production began. "It became very clear to me that I'm sitting with people who don't know anything about my culture, about where I came from," said Luke Titus, one of the advisers. Titus, 78, an Alaska Native elder who is Lower Tanana Athabascan, discussed growing up in a small cabin in an Alaskan village and the centrality of nature in his community. He eventually got used to the idea that it was O.K. to interrupt the producers to share his own insight, a behavior that isn't part of his culture's custom, he said. He shared painful stories, too, including one about being sent away to boarding school when he was about 12 years old, part of a broader forced assimilation campaign by the United States government . Boarding school is a common childhood memory for Native Americans of a certain generation: Sovereign Bill, the 14 year old girl who voices Molly and is Muckleshoot and Tlingit, said that her grandmother was sent to boarding school in Alaska as well. Titus's story inspired an episode of "Molly of Denali." In one segment, Molly sets out to find her grandfather's lost drum, which he gave away when he was a child at boarding school. Using an old photograph of her grandfather, Molly tracks down an Alaska Native woman who had befriended him at school, who explained that he gave up the drum because singing Native songs wasn't allowed there. "They only wanted us to sing new songs," the woman says, "Their songs. In English. We were made to feel bad about who we were." It's a sensitive topic to introduce to 4 year olds, but the writers and producers on the show said that they felt the appropriate way to do it was through the eyes of a curious child who wanted to help her grandfather. At other moments during the meetings about the show, Alaska Native advisers pointed out parts in the script that clashed with their culture. Gillim recalled that in an early draft, a script had Molly tossing a map at her mother in excitement. But the advisers told her that behavior didn't align with Alaska Native custom, which emphasized that children must show respect to their elders. In a revised script, Gillim said, Molly gently places the map in front of her mother. "We came up there with all of our East Coast producer energy and with, certainly, the willingness to learn," Gillim said. "But we really learned the importance of slowing down and listening." One of the advisers gave Molly her Native name: Shahnyaa, which means "one who informs us." The concept of Alaska Native names became the basis for a segment in which Molly interviews the adults in her town about how they received their Native names. At the heart of the show are Molly's efforts to learn about her family's Alaska Native heritage and sustain it as a member of a younger generation. In another episode, Molly rows a traditional canoe, called a beedoye. As she pulls the oar back, she sees a mirage of an ancestor rowing along beside her. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
Slowly, the sales of one lipstick brand have grown so large that the little known charity it supports, the MAC AIDS Fund, has become the second largest private donor to AIDS organizations, after the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. In its latest coup, the lipstick Viva Glam by MAC, a subsidiary of Estee Lauder signed the singer Rihanna as its new face last week and won the endorsement of Michel Sidibe, executive director of Unaids, the United Nations agency fighting the disease. As Mr. Sidibe noted when he posed with Rihanna in a SoHo makeup shop, she has 34 million Twitter followers. By comparison, Unaids' Twitter page, which he posts on, has fewer than 100,000. (Rihanna is also the world's most popular Facebook personality, with 85 million "likes.") If Mr. Sidibe, a middle aged bureaucrat, advises followers to get tested, "I don't get a lot of retweets," he said. But if Rihanna posted a similar message, he said, "it could change the whole dynamic," because millions of her fans are in high risk groups: young people, minorities and gay men. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
When Kevin Broccoli wrote his two man play "James Franco and Me," he had vague hopes that the real James Franco might tweet about it or maybe, just maybe, come see a performance. Instead, Mr. Franco's lawyers have sent a cease and desist letter to a New York theater that was going to stage the satire in August. The letter, which was shared with The New York Times, asked the Peoples Improv Theater to stop marketing "James Franco and Me" with his name. Peoples Improv Theater decided to cancel the show rather than face possible legal consequences, Mr. Broccoli said. The theater did not immediately respond to requests for comment. "I don't begrudge them that decision," he said on Wednesday in a telephone interview. The letter, however, was an unwelcome surprise. "I was a little disappointed," said Mr. Broccoli, a playwright and actor based in Providence, R.I. "I'm not someone who's trying to get into legal entanglements by any means, but anyone who comes to see the show would see that it's totally satire and within fair use guidelines." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night's highlights that lets you sleep and lets us get paid to watch comedy. We're all stuck at home at the moment, so here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now. The White House ordered West Wing staff members to wear masks on Monday after a military valet and Katie Miller, a spokeswoman for Mike Pence and the wife of the presidential adviser Stephen Miller, tested positive for Covid 19. Although Trump, Pence, and senior members of their administration have declined to isolate themselves, Dr. Anthony Fauci and two other top administration health officials decided to self quarantine for the next two weeks. "Mr. President, the virus is calling from inside the house get out of there! Seriously, get out of there. You're doing a terrible job." STEPHEN COLBERT "No, Dr. Fauci, we need you. If you're not around, all the health decisions are going to be made by Jared Kushner, the MyPillow guy, and William Barr in a sexy nurse costume." STEPHEN COLBERT "This is super serious. Katie Miller has attended nearly all of the White House coronavirus task force meetings in the situation room, which they've now temporarily rechristened 'the incubation room.'" STEPHEN COLBERT "Trump is upset about the outbreak at the White House. According to officials, he was annoyed to learn that Ms. Miller tested positive. He was really annoyed. As soon as he found out, he sent her an irritable arrangement." STEPHEN COLBERT "The White House announced yesterday that despite one of Vice President Mike Pence's senior staff testing positive for the coronavirus, Pence will not isolate himself. But in his defense, you can't catch it if you never breathe. imitating Mike Pence 'No, no thank you. Oxygen is the devil's gas.'" SETH MEYERS "If we were living in a story or a fable, this would be the moment where the mean old miser finally has a change of heart and throws money at some kid to go buy a goose for the festival or something. But this is Donald Trump there's no change of heart. There's no learning curve. If this was a Choose Your Own Adventure story, the bottom of every page would say, 'Just go to the next page.'" SETH MEYERS "And I won't lie I'm not surprised that this started in Stephen Miller's house. That dude has always given off major bitten by a bat vibes." TREVOR NOAH "In a new interview, a White House senior adviser said it was, quote, 'scary' to go to work after two fellow staffers tested positive last week for the coronavirus. Said the adviser, 'Before this, it was just embarrassing.'" SETH MEYERS "But by all means, let's send everyone else back to work." JIMMY KIMMEL "The coronavirus is now officially in the White House, and that's scary. Although if it's like everything else that lands in the White House, it won't last more than a few weeks." TREVOR NOAH "Really? You work in the most tested place in the world and you're scared? Hey, I've got a spooky story for you: you're driving on the highway late at night, when suddenly, a hideous old man rises up in your back seat and says, imitating Trump 'You should go back to your job at the meat packing plant Donny want burger.'" STEPHEN COLBERT Jimmy Kimmel's Monday night monologue shared the story of his dramatic Mother's Day weekend involving Mike Pence. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
The lifeguards are hidden behind Greg Emetaz's video design mostly waves, book covers and ephemera. (Raja Feather Kelly's choreography is similarly occluded.) The woman in the red one piece (Sophia Byrd) is easy enough to pick out, but which man played her brother? No idea. The choral voices, too, are often lost in the splendid clamor of the instruments. If you have seen "Passing Strange" or "The Total Bent," Ms. Rodewald's collaborations with her sometimes bandmate Stew, you'll guess that the music she supplies is rich and rousing. The style is symphonic rock or chamber pop strings, drums, keyboard, woodwinds and more that twine together in a sound that is undulating and lush. David Driver, nimble voiced, is the lead vocalist. The orchestrations, which have a saxophone sound a note like a foghorn and a drummer trade his brushes for mallets, are cool and clever. (The people in the first two rows were offered ear plugs, but from the middle of the audience it never sounded too loud.) Even while enjoying the music I began to hunger for some sense of character or plot. I felt a little ashamed of this it seems childish to want to be told a story. But without a story, I couldn't make the songs connect or accrete. Still it worked on some people. During a song that began "A typeface called Optima" the font (I guessed, correctly as it turned out) used on the Vietnam War Memorial I heard someone in an upper row crying quietly. Mostly I felt stranded on the surface, happy to float along, never in any danger of drowning. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
"We built this," she said, adding a different expletive after "this." The opening sequence said "step aside," literally, as a single file line of dancers, with Solange at its center, walked matter of factly down the building's spiraling tiers to the opening notes of "Scales." Audience members on those upper levels, peering down into the rotunda where the band was stationed and more viewers sat on the floor were swiftly ushered back to make way for the procession. Solange had asked that the audience wear white, one way of visually organizing a vast, crowded, potentially chaotic space. But she was also commenting on another kind of whiteness. To fill the museum with the sounds of an album that celebrates black womanhood and black manhood sung, played and channeled into movement by black women and men was its own symbolic retort to the art world's (and the dance world's) histories of exclusion. Like the dress code, her choreography for herself, two backup vocalists, six musicians and a core group of eight dancers had an orderliness, anchored by simple geometric formations that echoed Julia Heymans and Kris Moran's set of spherical and rectangular sculptures. Drawing our attention to the height and circularity of the space, a 13 member horn ensemble popped up on two levels of the museum's spiral ramp, joined later by the dancers and 32 additional performers in a snaking descent toward the rotunda for a voluminous final section. The core performers (who included some familiar faces from the modern dance world, like Kristen Foote of the Limon Dance Company and Davalois Fearon of the Stephen Petronio Company) often escalated from composed to wild, repeating the same movement with mounting energy. Folding forward became thrashing forward; swinging the arms became flinging the arms, the physical manifestation of lyrics like "you've got the right to be mad." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
When Mets General Manager Brodie Van Wagenen introduced Luis Rojas as the team's new manager at Citi Field on Friday afternoon, Van Wagenen declared the occasion a proud day. He welcomed Rojas, who has been with the organization for 15 seasons, as "one of our own," and cited Rojas's consistency as a key factor in the decision to promote him. "It's a credit to an entire organization," Van Wagenen said. But even for the Mets, the ongoing off season has been notably awkward. Less than three weeks before players report to the team's workout complex in Port St. Lucie, Fla., for spring training, Rojas became the second Mets manager hired in the last three months. He ascended to the position a week after the departure of Carlos Beltran, who was hired in November but parted ways with the team last week after a report by Major League Baseball's commissioner implicated him in the Houston Astros' sign stealing scandal. "We had a number of difficult days," Van Wagenen said in Friday's biggest understatement. "This is a very different feeling today, and we're excited for that. It's an unfortunate circumstance for baseball, but today's a good opportunity and exciting time for the Mets." Passed over in the search that gave Beltran the job, Rojas, 38, had expected to spend the season on the Mets' bench as Beltran's deputy. Rojas had managed in the minors for eight seasons, as well as in the Dominican Republic, and he was supposed to offer an experienced hand to Beltran, who played 20 seasons in the majors but had never been a manager at any level. Now the job of leading the Mets belongs to Rojas. "I still live in a dream right now," Rojas said Friday. Known for his attention to detail with planning and logistics, Rojas's approach spoke "loudly," according to Van Wagenen, who nonetheless hired Beltran in November. After Beltran's departure, team officials met with Rojas in New York this week and concluded he was the best fit for the vacant job. Like Beltran and Mickey Callaway, who was fired in October after two seasons as the Mets manager, Rojas has no previous major league managerial experience. Though Rojas reached the major leagues only last season as the first quality control coach in Mets history he helped develop several of the team's current stars while they made their way through the farm system. He traces his roots in the franchise to his first days working at the team's training academy in the Dominican Republic, and he eventually was chosen to manage Mets teams in the Gulf Coast rookie league as well as in Class A and AA. His steady demeanor and energetic gait made an impression on members of the front office along the way, Van Wagenen said. And since getting the promotion, he said, he has already communicated with several players, including Jeff McNeil, Steven Matz and Noah Syndergaard. "It's great that I know them, but it's even better that they know me back," Rojas said. "It's something that's going to help us click even quicker with the ideas and strategies." Rojas was born in the Dominican Republic and grew up in major league clubhouses. His father, Felipe Alou, won 1,033 games in 14 years as a manager in the majors, and his brother, Moises Alou, played 17 seasons, the last two with the Mets. Neither was present for Rojas's news conference, but the succession was clear. Felipe wore No. 17 as a manager, Moises No. 18, and on Friday the Mets co owner Jeff Wilpon slipped a No. 19 Mets jersey over Rojas's collared shirt. Rojas spoke in both English and Spanish when expressing gratitude, and he thanked his family for preparing him for this opportunity. Rojas referred to his time with his father as a university for baseball studies, but he did not commit to a certain style. "My style of managing is the team that I have," Rojas said. "We have a really good roster. We have really good starting pitching. We have a really good bullpen and we can score some runs. I feel pretty good about it right now." He will get his first feedback this weekend. While some Mets employees managed Rojas's news conference on Friday afternoon, others were preparing to host a fan fest for the first time in team history, at Citi Field on Saturday. As part of the program, Rojas will meet with fans in a town hall format. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
Although the Farallones are closed to the public, wildlife viewing boats like the one run by San Francisco Whale Tours can approach them with care. Our captain that day was Joe Nazar, and our naturalist was Steve Wood, a cheerful biologist who conducts research on marine invertebrates at Dominican University of California. A word of warning: This is not exactly a pleasure cruise. Going out to the Farallones can be a challenging expedition. "Come dressed for the moon," the trip material told us. It's good advice. I dressed for the moon in fleece and rain layers and I was still cold. The air temperature topped out at 55 degrees, but the wind, rain and sea spray from the vessel's wake chilled to the bone. Although the boat has a covered cabin with booth seating that recalls the interior of a cozy diner, it is not where you want to be when the boat is ricocheting off eight foot swells on the open ocean. About halfway to the islands, one young woman came lurching out of the cabin, eyes wild. She headed for the railing and threw up off the starboard side of the boat. About an hour and a half went by, during which the 20 or so other passengers and I stood outside in a hibernating trance, eyes fixed on the waves rushing at us from the horizon. Then a Cassin's auklet flitted by along the surface of the slate gray sea, and I perked up. These protected seabirds nest on the Farallones. We were close. As if to add to the drama on our approach to the fog shrouded islands, the rain came in torrents, pocking the liquid mercury surface of the sea. We arrived at Southeast Farallon Island in time to observe an inflatable Zodiac boat filled with cargo being lifted by crane from the water, with a few researchers looking on. Conditions on the rocky shore are too hazardous for a dock, so the Outer Limits, an aptly named fishing boat, had come on a volunteer mission to deliver provisions that had been handed off to the Zodiac. There is no fresh water on the island. Everything has to be brought in for these researchers. Mr. Wood told us that sea lions, northern elephant seals, tufted puffins and other species had established zones on Southeast Farallon; as we cruised the shoreline, we got a closer look at a few of those neighborhoods. On one slope was an elephant seal rookery, with 500 pound juveniles lolling on the rocks. There weren't any two ton adult males around that day (they can grow to the size of a pickup truck), but we could imagine. One juvenile can feed a great white shark for up to a month. More than 400 species of birds have been recorded in the Farallones. We saw double crested cormorants, red necked phalaropes and common murres, which can dive hundreds of feet underwater to catch fish. That day the soundtrack to the islands was the cacophony of thousands of murres roosting together, which pretty much drowned out the songs of all other seabirds, save for the occasional gull squawk. There are a lot of vagrants out in the Farallones. Mr. Wood explained that vagrants are, technically speaking, birds or other animals that don't belong here, usually because they've gotten lost or blown off course: the odd sapsucker, for example, or the one northern gannet that took a wrong turn and has been returning to Southeast Farallon for four years. Gannets don't live in the Pacific; they spend most of their time in the North Atlantic. We spotted the lone gannet's yellow head bobbing as he perched high on a dark granite outcrop, exhibiting nesting behaviors. His plump, white feathered body stood out against the smaller birds. According to scientists, he is the first known northern gannet in the Pacific. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
As the temperature crept up to 90 degrees on Sunday, a three hour outdoor performance didn't seem like the most attractive afternoon activity. But any qualms about the heat quickly faded as Heritage Sunday, an annual presentation of Lincoln Center Out of Doors and the Center for Traditional Music and Dance, got underway. This year's edition, "Global Beat of the Bronx: From Bambara to Breakbeats," brought together four Bronx based troupes to show the wealth of cultural traditions flowing to, and from, that northernmost borough: Bombazo Dance Company, Chief Joseph Chatoyer Dance Company, Bambara Drum and Dance Ensemble and Full Circle Souljahs. As crowds gathered under the trees at Hearst Plaza in Lincoln Center, the vitality of drumming and dance lifted the weight of the muggy day. Bombazo, directed by Milteri Tucker Concepcion, specializes in the Afro Puerto Rican form Bomba, danced in long, layered skirts to drums known as barriles. A row of male percussionists (including one junior member who couldn't have been more than 10) accompanied an ensemble of women in flowing red and white, though "accompanied" suggests too great a gulf between the pulse of the music and the proud, hip swaying, shoulder shaking movement. As Ms. Concepcion explained in a post show talk, the lead drummer in Bomba often takes cues from the dancer; the dancer, in that sense, is the drummer. That interconnectedness the challenge between musician and dancer was a theme of the afternoon, emerging powerfully again in the work of Chief Joseph Chatoyer Dance Company. This troupe dedicates itself to preserving the culture and language of the Garifuna people, descendants of West and Central Africans and Caribbean Native Americans who have lived in Central America since the 1700s. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
Lorraine Hansberry in 1959, the year her "Raisin in the Sun" had its Broadway premiere. A few weeks after "A Raisin in the Sun" opened in New York in March 1959, making 29 year old Lorraine Hansberry the first black woman with a play produced on Broadway, a reporter for The New York Post asked what other projects she had in the works. For "Raisin," she had drawn on her family's battle to buy a house in a segregated white neighborhood in Chicago; for her next play, as the civil rights movement gathered momentum, she wanted to consider the progress and setbacks of an earlier era. Hansberry told the reporter that she was writing an adaptation of "The Marrow of Tradition," a long out of print novel by Charles W. Chesnutt about a massacre that destroyed black rights gained after the Civil War, based on a rarely acknowledged white supremacist coup that overthrew the multiracial government of Wilmington, N.C., in 1898. Chesnutt visited Wilmington to research his novel; published in 1901 and not reprinted until 1969, it was one of the few book length accounts of the massacre. "If I finish it, it won't be Chesnutt at all, but me," Hansberry said. "But I hope to feature him somehow with my dramatization and make people wonder who the hell was this Negro doing all this writing before the turn of the century." Though the play has never been performed, Hansberry left over 300 pages of drafts for "Marrow: A Play in Three Acts, based on themes and characters from 'The Marrow of Tradition' by Charles W. Chesnutt; 1901." Stephanie Browner, the general editor of the coming Oxford Complete Works of Chesnutt, spent a year sorting through the "Marrow" files in Hansberry's papers at the New York Public Library's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. The earliest draft is dated 1955; a decade later, when Hansberry died of cancer at 34, "Marrow" still appeared on her list of plays to finish. She told The New York Times in 1962 that she suffered from "first draft itis," pivoting from one version to another, "depending on what's cooking inside." Browner, dean of the Eugene Lang College at the New School, tracked every revision as Hansberry worked toward a final version. "We don't understand Hansberry until we understand that she was reading Chesnutt, reading W.E.B. Du Bois, reading political history," Browner said recently. By writing about an 1898 coup that effectively ended Reconstruction, she added, Hansberry was "undoing a false story about post Civil War America." Soyica Colbert, a Georgetown University scholar whose intellectual biography of Hansberry will be published next year, said the script helps to underline the playwright's "radical and vast interests" beyond her "Raisin," which is widely taught in classrooms and has been presented on Broadway three times, most recently starring Denzel Washington. "Her exploration in 'Marrow' is part of a larger history about her wrangling with questions around crisis and historical change," Colbert said. It's taken a while for audiences to catch up with Hansberry's story of America. Besides "Raisin," she only had one other play produced in her lifetime: "The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window," a study of Greenwich Village artists and intellectuals trying to find political purpose. It puzzled critics expecting another drama of black family life and closed the night she died, in January 1965. Yet she wrote at least four other plays all of which, except "Marrow," have since been published. "My perspective is that we should take what she's done, even if she didn't deem it finished," said Imani Perry, a Princeton University professor and the author of "Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry." "She was so prolific. There's a lot that doesn't have the final period put on it." Five years after Hansberry's death, her longtime partner and literary executor, Robert Nemiroff, put together a complete version of "Les Blancs," set in an African colony fighting for independence. Its internal debates between assimilationists and revolutionaries anticipated rifts within the black power and decolonization movements that roiled the late 1960s; James Earl Jones starred in the 1970 premiere. Another script that Nemiroff later published, Hansberry's television play "The Drinking Gourd," proved too far ahead of its time. In 1959, NBC planned a series of programs to commemorate the centennial of the Civil War, and Hansberry, fresh off the success of "Raisin," was commissioned to write the first episode: a 90 minute drama about slavery. Her script eviscerated romantic "Gone With the Wind" style portraits of slave life, showing a black man blinded for learning to read and a white master who can't recognize his own complicity in the slave system's violence. NBC executives put it in a drawer and never produced it. Realistic depictions of slavery didn't start to appear on American television until "Roots," in the late 1970s. The unpublished script shows the playwright grappling with a question that feels nearly as pressing in 2020 as it did in 1959 or 1901: what to do when white supremacist violence threatens black lives. In Hansberry's script, as in Chesnutt's novel, North Carolina's white elite turns the white working class against black allies through racist propaganda, rousing a lynch mob after a black servant is falsely accused of raping and murdering a white woman. At the end of the play, while a band plays "Dixie," the mob is set to burn down the black run school, newspaper and hospital. (In the 1898 Wilmington coup, dozens of black residents were murdered or driven out of town, and the new government soon eliminated black voting rights.) Perry sees moments like this as evidence of Hansberry's radicalism, far from the optimistic vision often ascribed to "Raisin." Hansberry watched her father pursue legal remedies for the real estate agreements that enforced segregation in Chicago, and yet her family still faced violence, even after the Supreme Court ruled in her father's favor. "Her point is that even if you do it the right and respectable way, that's no protection," Perry said. The "Marrow" script builds to the moral crisis of a wealthy white woman, the wife of one of the coup's architects, who learns that half their property is rightfully owed to her half sister, the product of her father's legal marriage to a black woman during Reconstruction. Will the wife's realization be enough to change an unequal system? Can she muster the psychological strength to challenge the race privilege from which she benefits? Hansberry's stage directions for "Marrow" frame these questions in spatial terms. The set is divided between the white sister's house on one side of the stage and the black sister's home on the other. Only slowly do we realize that the familiar domestic interior both masks and reveals the roots of violence in the home: sexual, political, economic. Behind the outlines of the homes, we can glimpse a swamp, a reminder of people excluded from polite society. Departing from Chesnutt, Hansberry begins her play with "an old and demented Negro beggar woman" emerging from the swamp, who, we later learn, was driven to insanity after the Ku Klux Klan murdered her husband. Breaking the realist frame, she approaches the audience with an alms basket and sings a spiritual with a haunting refrain: "Oh, my Lord, oh, my Lord, what shall I do!" It's a question that lingers throughout the play, a challenge to the audience as well as its characters. Browner pointed out that the beggar woman becomes bound up in a mix of imitation, desire, and violence that crosses lines of race, class, gender and sexuality. A white bachelor who mimics the beggar woman also flirts with a black male servant, all while courting a white heiress whose relatives are concealing an interracial marriage. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
Netflix's colonization of international television continues, with the debut on Friday of the eco thriller "The Rain," the first Netflix financed series made in Denmark. Other streaming services have strong footholds in the wide territory of Scandinavian TV, too, and "The Rain" is one of three premieres in a four day stretch that offer a short historical primer in Nordic drama. If you've watched a 2015 Icelandic mystery called "Case" on Netflix, you probably wondered what the deal was with Logi (Magnus Jonsson), the burned out lawyer whose background was barely sketched in. It was as if we were already supposed to know his story. It turns out we were, and now we can watch it thanks to Walter Presents, which offers the first season of the legal drama "The Court" ("Rettur") the landmark Icelandic series later rebooted as "Case" beginning on Thursday. Released in January 2009, just a few months into the small nation's great financial crash, "The Court" appears to have some of the energy and melodramatic verve of the David E. Kelley courtroom shows that came just before it, like "Boston Legal" and "The Practice." (Walter Presents made only one of the season's six episodes available.) Mr. Jonsson, shaggy and shapeless in "Case," sports close cropped hair and form fitting suits as the younger Logi, who's a consummate egotist he answers the phone "Iceland's lawyer here." His aggressiveness comes out of a checkered past that includes a manslaughter conviction and a bankruptcy, and in the pilot he jumps to a new, smaller firm in search of partner status. "The Court," with its case of the week structure and focus on the lawyers' personal lives, feels very early 21st century American, and maybe it's not a coincidence that the name of Logi's new firm is Law Order. There's no one in "Arne Dahl" named Arne Dahl. It's the pen name of Jan Arnald, the writer whose series of 10 crime novels was turned into the two seasons of this Swedish cop drama. All 20 episodes two per mystery will soon be available on MHz Choice, which began a weekly release of Season 2 on Tuesday. "Arne Dahl" and the excellent Swedish Danish series "The Bridge" both came out in 2011 and shared a production company, Filmlance International. But they're like two sides of the police procedural coin. "The Bridge" (available on Hulu) was thoroughly up to date, devoted to deep psychology and complicated season long plots. "Arne Dahl," about a six person team called (perhaps with a touch of mordant Swedish humor) the A unit, is a throwback, with its large, chatty ensemble and its old school self contained, movie length mysteries. The grim cases are leavened with humor that's a little sharper than team cop dramas usually provide. In one running joke, every time the chief drops by Holm's apartment with a congratulatory loaf of walnut bread, she's in bed with a different colleague. And when a character can't find something to watch, a friend asks, "'The Bridge' Season 2, have you seen that?" Netflix's new Scandi drama brings us to the present in more ways than one. It's engineered for current TV trends, and specifically for what appear to be Netflix's appetites: a post apocalyptic sci fi and horror blend with an environmental theme and a cast of attractive teenage and twentysomething survivors. The eight episode first season (three were available) gets off to a breathless start. A pair of scientists snatch their daughter, Simone, from high school and take her and her young brother, Rasmus, to a bunker in the forest just before a virus carrying rain starts to fall over Denmark. The parents know what's up, but they're gone before they can provide answers. This cues the passage of time montage lonely birthday parties, indoor plants growing and dying, isolation as an excuse for Simone (Alba August) to walk around in her underwear, Rasmus suddenly played by an older actor (Lucas Lynggaard Tonnesen). Six years quickly pass, then events force the siblings out of the bunker and on a long walk toward Sweden. "The Rain" is like a lot of contagion thriller and teenage survival shows, but more than anything it's a young adult version of "The Walking Dead." The siblings fall in with a twitchy, disparate band of alternately friendly and distrusting fellow travelers, and they confront starving survivors who aren't a whole lot more human than the "Walking Dead" zombies. Artfully piled trash and strategically abandoned cars simulate urban desolation, here in Copenhagen rather than Atlanta. Simone is obsessed with her responsibility to protect Rasmus, as if she were a younger, gentler Rick Grimes. "The Rain" is lighter in every way than "The Walking Dead," though more lightweight but also more easygoing and humorous. It's not gripping, as either an adventure or an intellectual exercise. But it's entertaining, and the narrative pull toward the answers that may lie near Stockholm is strong. And as a Scandi drama bonus, getting there will probably require crossing the Oresund bridge, the hulking, silent star of "The Bridge." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
China's Yutu 2 rover on the moon's surface. Ground penetrating radar on the rover examined soil on the moon at depths of more than 100 feet. China's robotic Chang'e 4 spacecraft did something last year that had never been done before: It landed on the moon's far side, and Yutu 2, a small rover it was carrying, began trundling through a crater there. One of the rover's instruments, a ground penetrating radar, is now revealing what lies beneath. In a paper published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances, a team of Chinese and Italian researchers showed that the top layer of the lunar soil on that part of the moon is considerably thicker than some expected about 130 feet of what scientists call regolith. "It's a fine, dusty, sandy environment," said Elena Pettinelli, a professor of mathematics and physics at Rome Tre University who was one of the authors of the paper. Based on what NASA astronauts observed during the Apollo moon landings, other scientists said they would have expected one quarter as much soil. "That's a lot of regolith," said David A. Kring, a senior scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston who is not involved with the Chinese moon mission. "That's food for thought." Chang'e 4 landed just over a year ago inside Von Karman crater, a 110 mile wide depression, and continues to explore a part of the moon that has not been seen up close before. The radar technology aboard the rover is widely used on Earth to reveal buried structures, and it has been deployed on spacecraft that orbit Mars But it has rarely been used on the surface of other worlds. Yutu 2's predecessor, which landed on the moon in 2013, carried an identical instrument. Three rovers scheduled to be launched to Mars in July, one by NASA, one by a collaboration between Russia and the European Space Agency and one by China, all have similar radar instruments. Dr. Kring said he had worked on proposals to NASA for using ground penetrating radar on future missions to the moon, both robotic and crewed. The Chinese mission's findings might show the technology's utility, especially to find ice deposits beneath the lunar surface that could help make possible extended stays on the moon by human crews. Although Von Karman crater lies within what is known as the South Pole Aitken basin, an ancient 1,100 mile wide impact crater, it is too far north for there to be ice in the soil. The radar waves passed through the top 40 feet or so almost effortlessly, indicating a porous granular material. Below that, there were boulders, perhaps a couple of feet to a couple of yards in size. A third slice of soil, even lower, appeared to consist of alternating layers of fine and coarse particles but without boulders. One surprise was that the researchers saw no signs of the radar bouncing off basalt solidified lava that would have pooled at the bottom of a crater as the rocks melted by a meteor impact cooled. Yutu 2's radar signals would have bounced off that rock if the rover had visited Von Karman crater soon after it formed. But several billion years later, the basalt surface has been buried by regolith that was subsequently tossed up by later impacts. The top layer of fine particles may have also once contained boulders, but those may have been broken apart in eons of subsequent cosmic pummeling. "It's an old area," Dr. Pettinelli said. On Earth, very little of the surface is shaped by asteroid impacts. On the moon, the effects of space rock strikes can be seen almost everywhere. But the research also points to potential pitfalls of ground penetrating radar data. The Yutu instrument emits two frequencies of waves a high frequency band that Dr. Pettinelli and her colleagues analyzed and a low frequency band that penetrates deeper but does not provide as much detail and which they ignored in this paper, because they consider it unreliable. In a paper published in the journal Science in 2015, a different group of Chinese researchers described a complex geology of nine distinct layers below Mare Imbrium, a lava plain on the moon's near side where China's earlier mission, Chang'e 3, had landed. Those findings were based on the first Yutu rover's low frequency radar data. A few years ago, Dr. Pettinelli led a session at a scientific conference where Yan Su, a professor at China's National Astronomical Observatories, presented another analysis of the Chang'e 3 radar data. She said she did not say anything during the session, but later told Dr. Su that she had performed the analysis incorrectly. In an article published in 2018 in the journal IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, Dr. Pettinelli, Dr. Su and their team said that tests of a prototype instrument on a model of Yutu on Earth had generated similar erroneous signals. Peimin Zhu, a professor at the China University of Geosciences in Wuhan and an author of the 2015 Science paper, said he and his co authors would respond in the future to the IEEE paper's claims. Dr. Zhu said the team he works with was also working on its own analysis of the Chang'e 4 data. Because the radar instrument on Yutu 2 is identical, the authors of the new paper ignored the low frequency radar. "We don't trust that data," Dr. Pettinelli said. Dr. Pettinelli said that as Yutu 2 gathers more data, it might be possible to remove the spurious reflections and pull out accurate findings about the deeper layers. Last year, scientists reported that mineralogical analysis of materials at the surface inside Von Karman crater suggested that some of it might have been excavated from moon's mantle the layer beneath its crust by large impacts. Dr. Kring said the data was not conclusive, but the main purpose of the mission was to prove the technologies. "I would not say these missions are producing extraordinary science," he said. "But they are demonstrating a newfound capability. And they are on the science side, filling in some details, providing some details we didn't have." The next two Chinese lunar missions aim to bring pieces of the moon back to Earth for closer study. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
Update: A.G. Sulzberger will take over as publisher of The New York Times on Jan. 1, The Times announced on Dec. 14, 2017. He had more than 160 bylines as a reporter on the Metro desk and more than 170 in 19 months as a national correspondent based in Kansas City, Mo. But perhaps the most important piece of writing that A. G. Sulzberger did for The New York Times before Wednesday when he was named deputy publisher was not an article and was not published in The Times, but was all about The Times. That work came to be known as the "innovation report." It zeroed in on the importance of a digital future for the newspaper his family has owned since 1896, and said The Times risked losing its pre eminent place if it did not make sweeping changes. The report was released in May 2014 after nearly a year of analysis and deliberation by a committee led by Mr. Sulzberger. Systemic change at The Times was not the committee's original mandate, said Adam Bryant, a longtime reporter and editor who was on the committee. But he said that Mr. Sulzberger "led the way in saying we've got to pivot and change our mission." "The ambition of the report was really Arthur's," said Mr. Bryant, who is now editorial director of NYT Live, which organizes The Times's conferences and live events, and the writer of the Corner Office column. "The work we needed to do was bigger, broader, deeper. He stepped back at the right moments to let the team work together and brainstorm, but when he needed to step up and say, 'We need to turn the wheel and go left instead of right,' he did." Mr. Sulzberger, 36, made the transition to digital strategist after five years as a reporter, national correspondent and assistant editor at The Times, starting on the Metro desk. Since August 2015, he has been an associate editor. He will assume his new responsibilities on Nov. 1. In a conversation in his office off the Times newsroom on Wednesday, Mr. Sulzberger said he saw the innovation report and the thinking that led to its conclusions as "a wake up call to the newsroom that we were at risk of missing the moment." "It's always easy to see how change will jeopardize the traditions of the place," he said, "but what became really clear to me was not changing was the more dangerous course if we cared about the traditions of the place." Mr. Sulzberger steps into his new role at a challenging moment for The Times, and for journalism itself. His resume includes strong journalistic credentials and deep strategic thinking about changes in digital media, but limited experience running a digital media company. Unlike some of his predecessors in the deputy publisher role, he has been groomed more in the newsroom than in advertising or consumer marketing. The Times, like other publications, is experiencing declines in print advertising as it navigates a rapidly changing media landscape. Still, his colleagues at The Times described Mr. Sulzberger as a quick study whose modesty masked a deep inner confidence. "He has a very analytical brain," said Carolyn Ryan, an editor who was Mr. Sulzberger's boss when he worked on the Metro desk, "but he's perceptive about people." Others at the paper said he was a hard worker who plunged into assignments and did not complain when the reporting was tedious and the hours were long. For an article about the Iowa caucuses four years ago, he drove in a loop from one campaign headquarters to another, simply to see which candidate's forces had the energy to soldier on and which seemed to be giving up. He kept driving until around 1 a.m., said Michael Barbaro, a political reporter who wrote the story with him later that day. "He did it with joy and energy and creativity," Mr. Barbaro said. "It was one of those unglamorous, dutiful reporting exercises, but there was nothing dutiful about the way he did it." 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. Ms. Ryan said that "there was no expectation from him that he be treated any differently" from other reporters and editors in a newsroom where everyone knew who he was. In the newsroom or out on an assignment, Mr. Sulzberger did not trumpet his connection to The Times's owners. He is the son of the publisher and chairman of The New York Times Company, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., and a fifth generation descendant of Adolph S. Ochs, who bought The Times at a bankruptcy auction and promised a newspaper that would be "clean, dignified, trustworthy and impartial." "I recognized the name," said Vincent Bova, a video editor and puppeteer who figured in a feature article that Mr. Sulzberger wrote in 2010. "I mean, I knew I was dealing with royalty. There was no reason for me to bring that up with him, and he didn't." Mr. Sulzberger's mother, Gail Gregg, is a painter and writer with a background in journalism. She and his father divorced in 2009. Mr. Sulzberger wrote his articles in the third person, the way most newspaper articles are written except for one. He told readers in January 2012, when he was based in Kansas City, that he was a vegetarian, not the easiest thing to be in the Midwest. "A mecca of meat," he called it. "Any newcomer should expect to start with a tour of the most venerable purveyors of cows, pigs and chickens in what I've been told are their most delicious forms," he wrote. "So, yes, I've 'eaten' at some of these famous restaurants." He put the word "eaten" in quotation marks for a reason. He said he had had a baked potato at a steakhouse, rolls at a place known for its fried chicken and a mug of Budweiser at a barbecue joint. Another article he wrote from the Midwest began with a tip from Patrick McGeehan, a Metro reporter in New York, who had heard that the last machine in the world that could develop Kodachrome film in a lab in Parsons, Kan. was being retired. Mr. Sulzberger's article caught the attention of movie producers, who optioned it, and the film industry website The Tracking Board reported in May that Jason Sudeikis and Ed Harris would star in the movie. Mr. Sulzberger said he had donated the money he received, less than 2,000, to The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund. Though Mr. Sulzberger grew up in Manhattan, Andrew Paryzer, a friend since the two were in seventh grade at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, said he was "athletic and outdoorsy" and was good at river rafting, which he learned when he lived in the Pacific Northwest from 2006 to 2009. "He's the best oarsman when we're going through the rapids and stuff," said Mr. Paryzer, a managing director of Blue State Digital, a strategy and technology firm. "The story for me has always been: He loves being out there. He's very comfortable. But he's also someone who makes a lot of other people comfortable." He did that on a rafting trip with friends who were not experienced. Mr. Sulzberger, Mr. Paryzer said, "made them comfortable 'There's a plan. Yes, we're going down a river with rapids, but we've done it before.' He inspires confidence." Mr. Sulzberger went to Brown University, where he majored in political science and graduated in 2003. He joined The Providence Journal for a two year reporting internship in 2004 at the recommendation of Tracy Breton, a longtime investigative reporter at The Journal who also teaches at Brown. "I hadn't always wanted to go into journalism," Mr. Sulzberger said, "but she really pushed me to give it a shot." "Once you're six months into being a reporter and you've lost the nerves," he said, "you realize this is one of the most fun jobs any person can have, so it was being a reporter that made me want to spend a career in journalism." He joined The Oregonian in 2006 and The Times in 2009, working first as a reporter on the City Room blog, one of the newspaper's highest profile digital efforts at the time. He then covered Federal District Court in Brooklyn before opening a bureau in Kansas City in 2010. "I loved the idea of going to a part of the country that the rest of the country feels all too comfortable overlooking and finding the stories that aren't being told there," he said. "I feel like I was at my best as a reporter when I was channeling the great stories that I knew were hidden in plain sight." But he also covered breaking news, as when a tornado destroyed much of Joplin, Mo., and floods devastated other parts of the Midwest. Back in New York, he spent about 18 months as an editor on the Metro desk before taking up the project that became the innovation report. "I'm pretty omnivorous with information," he said, "and I've treated the strategy work I've done for the last few years the same way that I always treated any reporting assignment, which was: Before you start writing, before you come to a view of how things are working and how they should change, learn everything. And, as much as you have time to, question everything that you think you already know." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
Ben Schwartz, the Voice of 'Sonic the Hedgehog,' Hits the Arcade Ben Schwartz, the actor and comedian, dunked the ball without looking at the joystick. "This is just like muscle memory," he said. On a frosty Monday afternoon, Mr. Schwartz had sneaked away from publicity rounds for an hour of arcade games at Barcade in the East Village of Manhattan. A few day drinkers slouched on bar stools, but Mr. Schwartz, 38, had the run of the machines. "Playing video games by myself makes me happy," he said. Raised in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, he spent much of his childhood hunched over a controller. On weekends, he and friends would go to the local Nathan's, spending the day playing arcade games and scarfing hot dogs. Did it impress girls? "Are you crazy?" Mr. Schwartz said. "Almost nothing I did impressed anyone." Then his parents bought a Super Nintendo and he could play video games at home. "I was, like, addicted," he said. "I loved it so much." He still loves it. Mr. Schwartz, who won an Emmy for co writing Hugh Jackman's opening number at the 2009 Oscars, wore a polka dotted shirt buttoned to the neck and basketball print socks under spotless white Nikes. An urban Peter Pan, he specializes in portraying young men who can't or won't grow up. He played the incorrigible rich kid Jean Ralphio in the sitcom "Parks and Recreation," and a pushy spin doctor in the management consultant drama "House of Lies." A popular voice actor, he also plays characters in "Duck Tales" and "Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles." He has also voiced a video game character, Skidmark, a blue snail in the game Turbo: Super Stunt Squad, as well as the title character in the movie "Sonic the Hedgehog," adapted from the Sega game. "Nobody cares about my face," he said. Grinning and pale, like a friendly ghost with good hair, he arrived a few minutes after noon and toured Barcade in search of the Sonic game. When the first trailer for "Sonic" was released last year, fans reacted to the character's design with horror, singling out the teeth (so many!) and the legs (so disproportionately long!). Sonic 2.0 looks more cartoonish, like the original arcade game. "The newer design fits better," Mr. Schwartz said. "It looks way more like me." The bar didn't have Sonic so he began with a 1980s arcade game called Tapper, in which the player is a bartender serving beer to thirsty patrons. "This I have history with," he said. Eyes glittering with reflected pixels, he began slinging frosty mugs, first in a saloon and then in a stadium, nailing the bonus round. "I can't tell if it's embarrassing for me to be very good at this," he said. As the game progressed, the pixelated customers grew more demanding. "It is probably not teaching kids good values," he said. Having whiffed the second bonus round, he walked away with several lives remaining. "As a kid I never would have left a quarter in the machine," he said. "Sacrilege. Truly sacrilege." Onscreen, Mr. Schwartz often plays characters who project a boundless and mostly undeserved confidence. But when it comes to arcade games, the prowess is real. Growing up, he devoted himself to a game until he mastered it, which Mr. Schwartz, a former psychology and anthropology double major, blames on mild strain of obsessive compulsive disorder. "When I start something, I really want to finish, which has helped me in writing and stuff," he said. After graduating from Union College (he wore a Super Nintendo controller over his gown), he worked as a page on the "Late Show With David Letterman" and as an intern at the Upright Citizens Brigade so he could afford to take improv classes. He spent his free time writing jokes, 10 per day, which were mostly rejected. He bypassed Michael Jackson's Moonwalker ("Can't separate the art from the artist," he said) and instead applied himself to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time. He played as Leonardo, the character he voices, defeating foot soldiers as he marauded through a dystopian New York. "Before Giuliani," Mr. Schwartz said. His assistant brought a cup of green tea and he left Leonardo to his travails. "We have unlimited coins," he said, a little wistfully. "We could go forever." With his hour nearly up, he attempted a few levels of The Simpsons, playing as Homer, mashing the buttons with impossible speed. "Imagine being able to play your favorite character from your favorite show," he said, as Homer stole a hot dog from a small child. "Like imagine you could play Elisabeth Moss from 'Handmaid's Tale.'" For his final game, he put a quarter into NBA Jam, playing as Anthony Mason alongside Patrick Ewing. "He's on my socks," Mr. Schwartz said proudly, as he maneuvered his players up and down the court effortlessly, swooshing three pointers. "I still got it. After all these years, maybe this is what I'm born to do, and the other stuff had just been wasting time." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
Q. What is the difference between posting a video to Instagram and to IGTV? A. Instagram, originally an app for posting square smartphone photos, added support for 15 second video clips in 2013. The platform now allows videos up to 60 seconds, and the clips can be in the horizontal format. This summer, Instagram announced its new stand alone IGTV app for sharing longer video. (People using the main Instagram app can also watch IGTV videos by tapping the TV icon in the top right corner of the screen.) However, IGTV has its own specific requirements for videos. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
The stately house at 29 Beekman Place the former home of an Iranian princess extends 12,260 square feet and sits on a tree lined enclave near the East River. The Midtown mansion that was a longtime home of Princess Ashraf Pahlavi, twin sister of Iran's last shah, finally closed in August after several years on the market and some legal wrangling. The sale price was 11.5 million, a hefty discount from its nearly 50 million initial price tag. The stately building, at 29 Beekman Place, situated on a tree lined enclave with striking East River views, had been in bankruptcy proceedings. It was also the subject of lawsuits by staff and family members against the company that managed the assets of the princess, who died in 2016 at the age of 96. The house was the longtime Manhattan home of Princess Ashraf Pahlavi, twin sister of Iran's last shah. The most expensive transactions in New York City in August were also in Midtown. Four more units at 220 Central Park South closed. The priciest, at 61 million, encompasses the 70th floor of the main tower. At the adjacent 18 story villa building, there were three purchases, including a duplex on the 11th and 12th floors that sold for 49 million. All went into contract before the coronavirus pandemic hit. Among the month's other noteworthy transactions, an Upper East Side townhouse on East 78th Street that had also lingered on the market for a few years found a buyer. Also, Susan White Morrissey, founder of the White Warren cashmere company, bought a Central Park West co op, and Robin S. Weingast, who runs an employee benefits firm, bought an Upper East Side co op. The estate of Robby Browne, a top real estate broker at the Corcoran Group who died of Covid 19 in April, sold one of his investment properties a one bedroom apartment at 25 Central Park West, where he had lived in a two bedroom on an upper floor for many years. The price was 1.25 million. The estate also sold a ground floor staff/storage unit in the building for 225,000. The Beekman Place mansion, just a few blocks from the United Nations, was built in 1934 for William S. Paley, who ran CBS for several decades. Princess Ashraf acquired it in 1975, four years before her brother, Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, was deposed in Iran. (She also bought neighboring 31 Beekman Place.) The home, which was sold through the Wansdown Properties Corporation, had been on and off the market since 2014. Its most recent list price was 11.45 million. The seven story, limestone and brick structure has 12,260 square feet, including 10 bedrooms and nine bathrooms, eight wood burning fireplaces, a wine cellar and a solarium, according to the listing with Compass. There are also about 1,500 square feet of outdoor space, including three terraces off the formal dining room, the main bedroom suite on the third floor, and a sixth floor office. Although the home has been updated, many prewar architectural flourishes remain, like the wood paneling and floors, ornate moldings and high ceilings. The new owner is an entity linked to Finkelstein Timberger East Real Estate, a Scarsdale, N.Y., company with a portfolio of apartments in the Bronx. Last September, an anonymous buyer had agreed to buy the house for 10.3 million, according to federal bankruptcy court filings, but that deal fell through. The other notable townhouse closing was an 1866 building at 20 East 78th Street, about a block from Central Park, between Fifth and Madison Avenues. The house sold for 18.8 million, four years after first being listed for 38 million, and more recently, for 24.9 million. The sellers, the hedge fund manager Michael Price and his wife, Jennifer Price, had purchased the home from the socialite Pia Getty in 2003 for 14 million. The red brick and limestone building, five stories high and 25 feet wide, has 8,760 square feet, with eight bedrooms and eight and a half baths, as well as a landscaped garden off a conservatory and a terrace on the fourth floor. The main bedroom suite takes up the third floor and features two bathrooms, four walk in closets and a study. At 220 Central Park South, the 70th floor aerie, which extends 5,935 square feet, has four bedrooms, five full baths and two powder rooms, according to the building's latest offering plan. It also comes with two 48 square foot balconies providing panoramic views of the park and beyond. The anonymous buyer used the limited liability company 220 CPS NY. The duplex villa has 4,820 square feet, with three bedrooms, four full baths and a powder room, along with 1,685 square feet of outdoor space. Its monthly carrying costs total 20,817, according to the Corcoran listing. The buyer, using the limited liability company CPS Realty Partners, also picked up a 388 square foot studio on the 19th floor of the tower for nearly 1.4 million. Full floor villa apartments on the seventh and third floors sold for 40.7 million and 30.5 million. Both have 4,896 square feet, with five bedrooms and six and a half baths. They also have outside space 96 square feet on the seventh floor and 116 on the third. The buyers' identities were shielded by limited liability companies, 220CPSV710019 and 220 Villa 3. The limestone complex at 220 Central Park South, near Columbus Circle, set a national record last year for the most expensive single residence when the hedge fund manager Kenneth Griffin paid nearly 240 million for four unfinished floors in the tower. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
On Friday, the music industry woke up to the news that the Fyre Festival, promoted as a pair of luxurious concert weekends in the Bahamas, had been abruptly canceled, with attendees taking to social media to post images of shoddy beach accommodations and far from gourmet meals. And then, for the festival organizers, the legal and financial reckoning began. Over the weekend, one disappointed ticket buyer filed a lawsuit alleging fraud, and the Bahamian government sought to reassure travelers of the safety of the islands. The lawsuit, which seeks 100 million and class action status, was filed by Mark J. Geragos, a celebrity lawyer who has represented Chris Brown and Kesha, on behalf of Daniel Jung, a Los Angeles man who, according to the suit, paid 2,000 for a ticket and airfare to the festival. The event, announced in December through a wave of Instagram posts by celebrities and supermodels, was advertised as including popular acts like Blink 182, Major Lazer, Migos and Rae Sremmurd. The rapper Ja Rule and his business partner, the 25 year old technology entrepreneur Billy McFarland, were behind the festival, and attendees were promised music, catered meals and V.I.P. accommodations in a beach paradise. But once the first fans arrived on flights from Miami on Thursday, it was clear that the festival was not what it was promised to be. According to Mr. Jung's suit, the scene "was closer to 'The Hunger Games' or 'Lord of the Flies' than Coachella." (The protestations of the event's wealthy young clientele, however, also drew plenty of social media schadenfreude.) In an email, Mr. Geragos said that "we have been inundated with people distraught over what happened" who wanted to join the suit, filed Sunday in federal court in California. Organizers issued a statement saying, "The Fyre Festival is a dream and a vision that we regrettably did not see come to life how we imagined in 2017, but our main priority now is rectifying the situation and helping all affected guests." It is still not clear just how, or when, the event fell apart. Last month, The Wall Street Journal reported that some of the performers had not been paid advances, but talent agents representing acts on the bill said the fees were eventually paid. Blink 182 withdrew on Thursday afternoon, telling its fans, "We're not confident that we would have what we need to give you the quality of performances we always give." Yet even that evening, agents for other acts were given no indications from organizers of trouble ahead. In a lengthy statement, the director general of the Bahamas Ministry of Tourism, Joy Jibrilu, defended Great Exuma, where the festival was to be held, as a developed island with a fully functioning infrastructure. And one more thing: "Despite reports, the waters surrounding Great Exuma are not shark infested," she said. 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. Festival organizers have cited rough weather as one cause of complications at the event site but also admitted in a statement, "We were simply in over our heads." In a presentation put together to entice investors, which was obtained by Vanity Fair, the festival organizers claimed they had been given access to land worth 8.4 million in exchange for putting on the festival and advertising the island. The Ministry of Tourism did not respond to a message seeking comment. The festival has told attendees they can have their tickets refunded or receive a V.I.P. ticket to Fyre Festival 2018, "which will take place at a U.S. beach venue." Yet talent managers and others expressed doubt that anyone in the music industry would work with the Fyre team again. An email sent over the weekend to ticket holders included a link to an online form for requesting refunds. Organizers asked customers not to request refunds on payments they had already disputed through their credit card companies, a move some made almost as soon as they arrived. Shivi Kumar, 33, who split a 3,500 deluxe lodge package with six friends, asked her bank to refund the money she had uploaded to a digital wristband, which organizers had recommended that guests use instead of cash. "When I called Bank of America, they said, 'We already know about everything'" regarding the festival, Ms. Kumar said. "They didn't even do a temporary credit; they just refunded it." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
LOS ANGELES Pete Docter is a 6 foot 5 Minnesotan who comes across like Tom Hanks in "Big" and lives in a literal tree house. Jennifer Lee is a 5 foot 3 Rhode Islander and self described former "flute playing band nerd" who loves books and is known for her showstopping laugh. On Tuesday, they became two of the most important people in Hollywood. As expected, the Walt Disney Company named Ms. Lee to lead its revered Walt Disney Animation Studios and Mr. Docter to lead its Pixar Animation Studios. Both were given the title of chief creative officer. They succeed John Lasseter, 61, who managed both animation studios until earlier this month, when he resigned following complaints about his workplace behavior. Mr. Docter, 49, is a 28 year Pixar veteran who directed three of its most successful films "Up," "Inside Out" and "Monsters, Inc." and helped write the screenplays for "Toy Story" and "Wall E." He has won two Academy Awards. Ms. Lee, 46, only got her start in animation in 2012, when she co wrote the screenplay for "Wreck It Ralph." But the following year, she directed, with Chris Buck, the musical sensation "Frozen," and won an Oscar. She also helped write "Zootopia" and "A Wrinkle in Time" and played a critical role in bringing "Frozen" to Broadway. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
You've probably heard a version of this before. Two centuries ago, the Romantics trumpeted the virtues of nature as the antidote to the viciousness of industrialization. In 1984, the biologist Edward O. Wilson put a scientific spin on the idea with his book "Biophilia," which posited that humans possess an innate love of nature. Wilson's argument was persuasive, yet it was mostly an aspiration dressed up as a hypothesis. In the generation since, scientists have sought to confirm the biophilia hypothesis and they're starting to get results. As little as 15 minutes in the woods has been shown to reduce test subjects' levels of cortisol, the stress hormone. Increase nature exposure to 45 minutes, and most individuals experience improvements in cognitive performance. There are society scale benefits as well. Researchers in England have shown that access to green spaces reduces income related mental health disparities. It's all very encouraging, but how exactly does nature have such an effect on people? To answer that question, Williams shadows researchers on three continents who are working on the frontiers of nature neuroscience. Maybe it's the forest smells that turn us on; aerosols present in evergreen forests act as mild sedatives while also stimulating respiration. Perhaps it's the soundscape, since water and, especially, birdsong have been proven to improve mood and alertness. Nature's benefits might be due to something as simple as the fact that natural landscapes are, literally, easy on the eyes. Many of nature's patterns raindrops hitting a pool of water or the arrangement of leaves are organized as fractals, and the human retina moves in a fractal pattern while taking in a view. Such congruence creates alpha waves in the brains the neural resonance of relaxation. Williams, a contributing editor at Outside magazine, presents all of this with the zip of a trail runner covering a lot of ground sure footedly. She's got the pop sci presentation down pat breezy enough to draw in the lay reader, thorough enough to satisfy the expert. She gamely volunteers to be researchers' human guinea pig, including wearing a portable EEG unit in the woods and looking like a "shriveled sea urchin." (At times, though, Williams's writing pops a little too much for my taste; describing Frederick Law Olmsted as a "badass nature guru" is pushing it.) | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
What's on TV Thursday: 'The Fate of the Furious' and 'No One Saw a Thing' None | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
It's hard to imagine Ann Liv Young and company doing what they did on Wednesday night more than once, let alone eight times, the length of their run at New York Live Arts in Chelsea. The brutal rawness and immediacy that we've come to expect from Ms. Young, a divisive performer and choreographer, reaches new heights or newly disturbing depths in her "Elektra," which had its United States premiere alongside its even rowdier companion piece, "Elektra Cabaret." In terms of audience interaction which can be violently direct in Ms. Young's work "Elektra," a very liberal interpretation of Sophocles, is fairly benign. The four main characters, in fact, are penned in, their singing and screaming and dancing confined to a sand pit encircled by a low fence, which seems built as much for them as for the show's four legged interloper, a frisky black pig named Daisy. What's alarming here is just how much Ms. Young demands of herself, as Elektra, and of her performers: Bailey Catherine Nolan as Chrysothemis (Elektra's sister), Charley Parden as Orestes (their brother) and Vanessa Soudan as Clytemnestra (their mother). Daisy, treated to a steady stream of snacks by a lurking pig handler, Marissa Mickelberg, has it relatively easy. In this fractured pop song driven tale of the siblings who avenge their father by killing his murderer their mother everyone fights, bites, flings, stabs and claws through scene after bitter scene, as if for the first and last time. Costumes rip (and fall off entirely); makeup smears; wigs and microphones come undone. When Elektra and Clytemnestra wrestle each other over a loaf of bread, you fear for them. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
We all love to be pampered. So, when did a quiet luxurious car become something to sneer at? The latest generation of LaCrosse, wearing the new face of Buick, is ready to shave the rough edges off tough commutes. It's very comfortable in its role of being, well very comfortable. (ON CAMERA) For decades in the auto industry the emphasis has been on massive amounts of power and razor sharp handling, egged on by automotive journalists... such as myself. Guilty. But let's get real. How often do owners of high performance machine actually get to use those attribute. Traffic is like this everywhere nowadays and road conditions aren't getting any better. LaCrosse and competitors Kia Cadenza, Lexus ES, Lincoln MKZ, Nissan Maxima and Toyota Avalon keep unpleasantries at bay. That's especially true for my tester with the standard suspension. It's comfy without riding like marshmallow. As tested, LaCrosse is not happy hustled hard into a corner. Reality check, that's getting harder to do. (ON CAMERA) Anyone that wants to sharpen the driving experience will want to go with the optional set up that includes General Motors HiPer Strut front suspension and adjustable dampers. This is good stuff. The upgrade averages around 1,500. There's only one engine. A 3.6 liter direct injected V6 (SOUND UP) quietly turning out 310 horsepower and 282 pound feet of torque (SOUND UP) The eight speed transmission's electronic controller can be vague, wish Buick stayed old school here. New school paddle shifters are most welcome. Most LaCrosses will be front wheel drive, all the tires are driven on my tester. (SOUND UP) There's a comfortable amount of power to go with the coddling ride. Forget library quiet, this is a fortress of solitude. The new body structure is stronger but lighter by 300 pounds. (ON CAMERA) I've driven a lot of the fuel saving automatic start stop systems listen very carefully.... Did you hear the engine shut down? Did you hear it start up? It's hard to feel. This is the best system I have ever experienced. Good thing. It can't be turned off. Great gas mileage doesn't seem critical nowadays but the front wheel drive LaCrosse is best in class with an E.P.A. average of 25 miles per gallon on standard grade fuel. (ON CAMERA) There's safety tech like lane keep assist and frontal collision warning. The great thing is, it doesn't beep to warn you and everyone else in the car. The seats discreetly vibrate. This car has auto braking with pedestrian detection in a 1,690 package bundling radar assisted cruise control and semi autonomous parking. Overall, the cabin is airy even with a center console that envelops those up front. The head up display, especially crisp, keeps eyes on the road. Seats aren't just heated and vented, the driver gets a subtle back massage. There's a mix of soft touch materials and (SOUND UP) not so soft. This rubberized surface can be seen as either rich or plain and the bark is not from real trees if that's a deal breaker. Others in class have full surround view camera systems. On shut down, a warning to check the back seat could prove invaluable. General Motors does a good job with touch screen interfaces this one is no exception aided by Apple CarPlay. (ON CAMERA) As expected LaCrosse as an awful lot of knee and legroom. However, if you often carry a lot of tall friends, you might invite them on the test drive. This could be a result of the panoramic roof panel, something to consider while shopping. No separate climate zone, or heated seats available in back. Computers can be charged and LaCrosse has a built in high speed data hot spot of course there's a monthly fee for that. Three adults will fit fairly well while surfing the web. (ON CAMERA) To open the trunk with you hands full just do the bump. Kids that's an old 70's dance move... so I hear. Not all seats split and fold in this class so kudos to Buick. The cargo hold is ample, few sedans can hold more than seven packs of this stuff. Just make sure fragile things stay clear of the hinge arms. LaCrosse is a good looking rig, so was the outgoing car. Not only did it get complements from folks walking by, one guy thought it was a Jaguar. Okay, I wouldn't peg it as a Jag, but Buick designers can take that as a compliment. While this paint might look black on your screen, it's actually a deep green with nice modeling in different light. Loyal Buick owners will notice another change to the grille, the tri shield gets its colors back. Pricing? Well, a base LaCrosse is 32,990 and it looks much the same as this top trim Premium version optioned up at 48,970 49 grand right down to the ventiports. Going with Avalon, Cadenza, or Maxima can save enough cash to buy a family vacation. LaCrosse is a solid update on Buick's tradition of keeping owners cocooned. Something to consider when the road gets rough. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Automobiles |
When the choreographer George Balanchine created dances, he generally confined himself to matters of pure form: These steps go this way, with this rhythm, these dynamics. He allowed dancers and audiences to work out meanings, if any, for themselves. With one ballet alone Balanchine (1904 83) departed from this policy: "Apollo" (1928), and in particular its title role. This masterpiece, the oldest that Balanchine kept in repertory, returns to open New York City Ballet's winter season on Jan. 22, with new Apollos. The role is a matchless adventure for any performer; but when Balanchine himself coached it, he moved and spoke as with no other role. Three leading interpreters Jacques d'Amboise (who first danced the role for Balanchine in 1957), Edward Villella, (1960s), Ib Andersen (1980) attended an "Apollo" seminar last summer at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. Each had created roles in Balanchine premieres and had inherited other lead roles but all recalled that, for Apollo, Balanchine brought a new kind of drama to his tuition. Though he never said so, he prompted others to believe that this was his most autobiographical role: a portrait of the artist as a young god. As with other roles, Balanchine demonstrated more than he spoke; and he moved with a skill every Apollo found brilliant. Mr. Villella had been taught the role by another ballet master; when he showed Balanchine what he had learned, Balanchine responded tartly "No poetry!" And part of the revelation that followed was the thrilling way that Balanchine dressed that day in a suit showed the role's inner life. But all these Apollos also remember that the choreographer used words to open up "Apollo" as drama. Balanchine spoke of imagery in other ballets, too. But with "Apollo," the imagery came in a flood, revealing the sustained wealth of references he had in mind. Most Balanchine ballets are high poetry; but the creation of poetic art is the very subject matter of "Apollo." Most myths of Apollo show him as fully divine, the mature god of music and the arts. The composer Igor Stravinsky, however, had conceived the Apollo of this ballet as a raw youth, still finding his feet. This was the vision that Balanchine fulfilled. Toward the ballet's end, this young god suddenly rests his head in exhaustion on the hands of his three muses (one of several touching images of vulnerability). Then, at a turning point in the music, he lifts his head, as if hearing something offstage. This, Balanchine made clear to his interpreters, is the call from Zeus Apollo's father and the king of the gods. From then on, the ballet is a leave taking. Apollo is departing to join his father on Olympus; but the muses do not want to let him go. For Balanchine, the whole ballet is conducted as if Zeus were watching Apollo graduate to godhood. Apollo has two solos: Each shows a growth in mastery. The first has a series of steps in which the young god's supporting leg gives way beneath him. With each new step, however, Apollo finds more strength and is able to view more of the world. Near the end of this solo, Mr. Andersen said, there's a moment when Apollo looks up and out, as if to say, "Hi, Daddy!" Mr. d'Amboise is clear that Apollo is "a wild, untamed youth who learns nobility through art." Balanchine, he said, loved to recall the Paris critic who, reacting negatively to the original 1928 production, said, "Whoever saw Apollo on his knees?" (Balanchine's response: "Whoever saw Apollo?") Sure enough, Apollo goes onto both knees soon after the three muses Terpsichore, Calliope and Polyhymnia have joined him. In that position, he holds his lute vertically aloft, while the muses, around him in a ring, incline toward him, like birds drinking from a pool. The lute, rising like a central fountain, is, Mr. d'Amboise said, quoting Balanchine, "a sacrifice." Apollo dances his second solo after each muse has shown him what she knows. Calliope (muse of lyric poetry) and Polyhymnia (mime) have elements of labor in their solos, of trial and error. Terpsichore (dance), however, is more fully the mistress of experimentation: Her solo is characterized by a larger playfulness that satisfies Apollo. Early on in his solo he kneels again, but now to extend his arms powerfully behind him as he bends his torso and head forward. This is "the eagle," with wings spread: a crucial image that Balanchine emphasized to each male dancer. The eagle is perched on a crag; he sees all. In what follows, Apollo remains exploratory. There's a famous "neon light" image, where Apollo opens and closes his two hands in alternation. (Balanchine often said he took this from the illuminated signs in Piccadilly Circus, London.) Later on, Apollo kicks the air: as several of Balanchine's Apollos remember, he's "playing soccer." The eagle, the Piccadilly Circus neon sign, the soccer playing are images that Balanchine seems to have shared with all his Apollos. Other details he gave to some Apollos but not others. Peter Martins, a long term Apollo interpreter, has said that he was told, for one series of quick prancing steps, "You're dancing on hot coals." Though Balanchine looked back on "Apollo" as a milestone ballet from which he learned, in later years he went through many seasons without reviving it. In 1979, when he brought it back to repertory for Mikhail Baryshnikov, he cut its Prologue and changed its ending in ways about which people still argue fiercely. Nonetheless, once he was working on it, he did so with passionate detail: "The only ballet on which he was super specific," Mr. Andersen said. Several of the Balanchine alumni at the "Apollo" seminar agreed the role of Apollo was where Balanchine the creative artist came closest to a self portrait. Yet it also shows us sides of Balanchine few ever saw: The young god Apollo is effortful in his search for inspiration as the mature, phenomenally assured Balanchine never seemed. But the young god reveals himself in eagle imagery above all; and with "Apollo" Balanchine found his own commanding, eagle eyed view of his art. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
Its handsome yet airless world premiere production, directed by Christopher McElroen for the American Vicarious, appears to mistake soberness for seriousness of purpose. Even in the intimacy of the Sheen Center's black box space, with spectators seated on either side of the stage, the action always feels removed in time and space, like a museum diorama. Unhelpfully, and perplexingly, Mr. McElroen stages many scenes with actors' backs to half the audience. Ian Lassiter's Pushkin is woefully lacking in charisma a seemingly deliberate choice, and in keeping with the production, but a mistake. When this Pushkin rouses himself from his reserve, he's all pique and muffled resentment, with almost no discernible humor or warmth, no qualities to make him complex and sympathetic. So when we watch him snap at his beautiful young wife, Natalya (Jenny Leona), or bristle as the czar (Gene Gillette), his personal censor, publicly humiliates him, there's not much reason to care. And when Natalya's sister Alexandra (Lexi Lapp), a huge fan of "Eugene Onegin," falls for Pushkin despite herself, we wonder how she can be anything more than star struck by this brooding jerk. Ms. Lapp, actually, succeeds better than her castmates at breaking through the production's stultifying constraints. Making sense of her every line, she removes the obstacle to naturalness that verse can be when spoken. Her Alexandra is a living, breathing human being albeit one with lamentable taste in men. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
Bill O'Reilly is both an ambassador and a moneymaker for Fox News, his television home since 1996. His show, "The O'Reilly Factor," which airs at 8 on weeknights, is routinely the highest ranked show on cable news. And his blend of I know best commentary and pointed interviews established a genre of opinion programming that has come to dominate much of television news. With more than 5,000 episodes under his belt, Mr. O'Reilly is the jewel in the Fox News crown: His show has generated billions of dollars in revenue, including over 446 million from advertising from 2014 to 2016, according to the research firm Kantar Media. This year, he is averaging nearly four million viewers a night, up about 40 percent from just two years ago. His audience is overwhelmingly white roughly nine out of 10 viewers, according to Nielsen but more or less evenly split between genders, with men making up about 54 percent of viewers. Fox News recently extended his contract, though it is not known for how long. A journeyman reporter in his pre Fox years, Mr. O'Reilly cut his broadcasting teeth in markets like Scranton, Pa.; Dallas; Denver; and Hartford. He eventually became a network correspondent, at CBS and ABC, before jumping to "Inside Edition," the syndicated tabloid program that he anchored for five years. He moved to Fox News in 1996, and became one of the network's original stars. First known as "The O'Reilly Report," his prime time show became a phenomenon, prompting much liberal hand wringing about the popularity of Mr. O'Reilly's sharply conservative, and occasionally misleading, commentary. In 2002, Mr. O'Reilly started hosting a daily talk radio show that, at its height, was syndicated to over 400 stations. He left the program in 2009, citing his television commitments. Today, he often records "The O'Reilly Factor" in the early evening. If there is breaking news, Fox News can beam him in from a remote studio. MICHAEL M. GRYNBAUM In 2012, when the Independence Fund, a small nonprofit organization dedicated to improving mobility for wounded veterans, was only a few years old, it raised 614,000 in contributions. The next year, after Mr. O'Reilly began speaking about the organization's work on his show, contributions skyrocketed to 19 million. The flow of money into the fund, which provides high tech wheelchairs and equipment, shows how powerful an endorsement from Mr. O'Reilly can be in the world of philanthropy. From 2005 through September 2015, Mr. O'Reilly made more than 7 million in grants and contributions to various recipients, largely through a foundation set up in his parents' name, according to an examination of the foundation's tax filings. On his television program, Mr. O'Reilly says the foundation, which is overseen by three directors, including himself and his longtime friend Edgar Royce, is largely funded by sales of his books made through his personal website. The foundation makes grants to a wide variety of charities and philanthropies. Among them are a number of Catholic related institutions, including the all boys Catholic high school that Mr. O'Reilly attended in Mineola, N.Y., on Long Island. It also supports the arts, including the Apollo Theater in Harlem, and humanitarian programs like Doctors Without Borders and Joe Torre's Safe at Home organization. According to the foundation's 2012 tax filings, which cover through September 2013, it made a contribution of 1.015 million to the Independence Fund. In an on air discussion in September about how Donald J. Trump and Hillary Clinton both had accepted money from outside sources for their foundations, Mr. O'Reilly said his foundation did "not accept money from anybody else." But an examination of the foundation's tax records shows that it has twice. Filings for the period in which Mr. O'Reilly's foundation made its 1.015 million donation to the Independence Fund show it accepted a 1 million grant from Richard W. Hotes, an Alaskan businessman. The website for Mr. Hotes's own foundation highlights its work in redesigning and donating track chairs to wounded veterans. On his show, Mr. O'Reilly thanked Mr. Hotes for making a 1 million contribution for the high tech wheelchairs. Calls to Mr. Hotes's companies were not returned. Charitable contribution lawyers said there was nothing illegal or wrong about Mr. O'Reilly's foundation accepting contributions from other foundations. 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. A spokesman for the Independence Fund said in a statement that Mr. O'Reilly's 1 million donation and other public support had helped to provide nearly 1,800 all terrain wheelchairs and other assistance to veterans. But the fund did not respond to follow up questions about Mr. Hotes's contribution or whether the bulk of the money donated by Mr. O'Reilly's foundation had come directly from him or another person. And tax filings from 2013 show that the Durden Foundation in Panama City Beach, Fla., gave 250,000 to Mr. O'Reilly's foundation. That donation was earmarked for track chairs. A call to the Durden Foundation was not returned. Calls and emails to representatives for Mr. O'Reilly were not returned. JULIE CRESWELL In the liberal leaning publishing world, right wing authors are often relegated to conservative imprints that specialize in catering to the interests and opinions of Red America. Not Mr. O'Reilly. He is one of the biggest names at Henry Holt, a 151 year old imprint that also publishes books by esteemed writers like Hilary Mantel and Paul Auster. The company has invested heavily in Mr. O'Reilly, with good reason: His books are huge and reliable best sellers. His "Killing" series, which he started in 2011 and writes with Martin Dugard, has more than 17 million copies in print, according to a Holt spokeswoman. Holt representatives have declined to comment when asked whether the company would continue to publish Mr. O'Reilly's books in the wake of the new revelations about sexual harassment allegations against him, and it remains unclear whether his publishing career will be harmed by them. His literary agent did not respond to a request for comment. Mr. O'Reilly's most recent book, "Old School," which is billed as a defense of traditional values and came out on March 28, sold 67,500 copies in its first week, according to NPD BookScan, which tracks 85 percent of the print market. That was before The New York Times's report about the sexual harassment settlements. The next week, sales slipped to 41,300. Mr. O'Reilly's book "Killing the Rising Sun," which came out in September and is still on the hardcover best seller list, also lost momentum. The book sold 7,900 copies last week, down from 9,000 the previous week and 9,900 the week before that, according to BookScan. In its first week out, the book sold more than 250,000 copies, according to a news release from his publisher. That decline could partly reflect the natural sales cycle of a book. Sales are often significantly higher the first week a book is out, because preorders are bundled into that week's sales. But the downward trend could also be a sign that some of his fans are defecting. If Mr. O'Reilly's career as an author declines as a result of the allegations against him, it could deliver a significant blow to Holt and its parent company, Macmillan. His books are a large and dependable source of revenue for his publisher. Each of the last six years, he has released a new installment of the "Killing" series. The books typically sell around 1.1 million hardcover copies in the first few months a staggering figure for a nonfiction title, which quite likely generates around 15 million for his publisher. "He's defying the laws of gravity," said Peter Hildick Smith, president of the Codex Group, which analyzes the book industry. ALEXANDRA ALTER Mr. O'Reilly has also brought his brand of brash conservatism and patriotism more directly to viewers, crisscrossing the country for speaking engagements and performances. In late January, he appeared as a speaker at the Centurion Jewelry Show in Scottsdale, Ariz., where he called Mr. Trump impulsive and said his critics would try to impeach him. "I used to call him Mr. Potato Head," Mr. O'Reilly said about Mr. Trump, according to an account of the event. "Now I have to call him Mr. President." He has also spoken in past years at a gala for Crime Stoppers of Houston, a nonprofit organization, and at the National Confectioners Association's Sweets and Snacks Expo in Chicago. The Harry Walker Agency, which lists Mr. O'Reilly as a client on its website, notes that other groups that have hosted him include the Executives Breakfast Club of Oak Brook, Ill., and Gama International, a leadership development association. When reached for comment, representatives at both organizations said they were not aware of any recent appearances by Mr. O'Reilly. Not all groups pay that much to bring in Mr. O'Reilly. Rania Mankarious, the executive director of Crime Stoppers of Houston, said that she could not disclose Mr. O'Reilly's speaking fee, but that it was more in line with the 25,000 to 50,000 that speakers of less renown typically command. "It was a very normal range, but not normal for someone of his caliber," she said in an interview. "I actually was surprised." Would she book Mr. O'Reilly now, given the recent reports about harassment claims? "The only reason I wouldn't book him now is we don't repeat speakers," Ms. Mankarious said. "In our world, people aren't guilty just because someone has made accusations." Mr. O'Reilly also tours the country giving performances. His current "The Spin Stops Here" speaking tour, with the comedian Dennis Miller and Jesse Watters of Fox News, has made recent stops in Omaha, Tacoma, Wash., and Tulsa, Okla. His next two appearances, which according to his website are sold out, will be in June in Westbury, N.Y., not far from where he lives on Long Island. Tickets starting at 65 went on sale recently for shows in Anaheim, Calif., Baltimore, Las Vegas and Tampa, Fla. Mr. O'Reilly typically trumpets the tour on his Fox News program "Tickets make great Mother's Day and Father's Day gifts, plus birthdays, you know the deal," he said last week to alert viewers about shows. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
De'Andre Arnold on First Red Carpet: the 'Kid With Dreads Is at the Oscars' None De'Andre Arnold, the Texas high school student who in December was suspended for wearing dreadlocks, is excited to show viewers of the Academy Awards telecast the hairstyle he has been wearing since seventh grade. In a phone interview shortly before his flight to Los Angeles, De'Andre, an 18 year old high school senior, said that he was feeling "pride, and validation too," for the opportunity he has Sunday. "It's like, look at me," he said. "The little kid with dreads is at the Oscars. While all the people at home are mad? I'm at the Oscars." He was invited to the Academy Awards by the former N.B.A. player Dwyane Wade and his wife, the actress Gabrielle Union, who were producers of the animated short film "Hair Love," which is taking home an Oscar tonight. The short was directed by Matthew A. Cherry and features the voice of Issa Rae. De'Andre said that dreadlocks were a family tradition. "When I was around my dad's side of the family when I was younger, I would see them everywhere," he said of the hairstyle. "On aunties and cousins. I really just took to it. I was just like, I want to do that, too. From there, I just joined in on the fun." Though he has worn his dreadlocks all through high school in Mont Belvieu, Texas, he was suspended only in December. He was told he could not walk at graduation if he did not change his hair. He has no plans to do so. The Best Oscars Red Carpet and After Parties Photos Officials at the Barbers Hill Independent School District, where he is a student and which is majority white, have said they were hewing to regulations on students' appearances. Still, the decision to suspend De'Andre has drawn criticism from many who say the policies are racist and sexist. De'Andre's mother will be with him, and Dove has paid for their hair, makeup, wardrobe and tickets. Mr. Wade and Ms. Union paid for their travel and accommodations. Asked what most excited him about going to the Oscars, he said, "I'm really excited to see all the celebrities, just being close to them you know. Just breathe the same air as them, I guess." Asked whom he was excited to see, aside from Mr. Wade and Ms. Union, De'Andre hesitated before landing on Will Smith. When it was suggested that he may have the opportunity to meet Mr. Smith, he said, "That'd be cool. That'd be really cool." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
Carol Channing, who created the title role in the 1964 smash hit musical "Hello, Dolly!," has been called many things: "a walking alarm clock," "a moon mad hillbilly," "an Al Hirschfeld caricature in the flesh," with "a vocal range from deep foghorn to squeaky hinge." But one thing she has never been called is a type. "Everyone is unique," said Carole Cook, who in originating the Australian production in 1965 became just the second woman to play Dolly Gallagher Levi. "But some are uniquer than others." So what happened when the irreplaceable Ms. Channing said, "So long Dearie" to the role? She was replaced. Again and again and again. For a variety of reasons, "Hello, Dolly!" survived and even flourished with a wide array of Dollys. But nobody since Ms. Channing, in a mid 1990s revival, has descended the Harmonia Gardens steps on Broadway until now, with Bette Midler headlining a highly anticipated production scheduled to open April 20 at the Shubert Theater. Here's a look at how Ms. Channing who would eventually surpass Yul Brynner's track record in "The King and I" by logging more than 5,000 performances in New York and on the road put her indelible stamp on one of the most famous roles in musical theater history, while also leaving the door open for so many other interpretations. When the composer Jerry Herman set out to adapt Thornton Wilder's "The Matchmaker" as a musical, he intended it for Ethel Merman. She decided not to do it. So did Mary Martin. (Both would later take on the role.) Nanette Fabray was considered. Nancy Walker auditioned for the part. Ruth Gordon, who had played Dolly in "The Matchmaker" on Broadway in 1955, took singing lessons in preparation, but the musical's director, Gower Champion, never asked her to audition. During this time, David Merrick saw Ms. Channing's nightclub act in Minneapolis and mentioned the idea of a "Matchmaker" musical to her. Later, according to the Merrick biographer Howard Kissel, he invited her to his office and cautioned, "I don't want that silly grin with all those teeth that go back to your ears." It took a wee hours of the morning lobbying session from Ms. Channing in the summer of 1963 to convince Champion that she could handle the role. The next day, they sold Merrick on it. David Hartman, the longtime "Good Morning, America" host, had a singular viewpoint on what followed. He worked as a stage manager during Act I of the original production and then donned a maitre d' outfit to act alongside Ms. Channing as well as several subsequent Dollys in the second act. "Carol wasn't a Jewish yenta, of course, and they rewrote and rewrote and rewrote to tailor it to her," Mr. Hartman said. "Our reviews weren't strong when we opened in Detroit, and so Gower broke the script into eight large chunks and began rewriting it. Throughout that process, Carol was finding out who that character was." But once she got a grip on the part, Ms. Channing wasn't about to relinquish it. Of those 5,000 plus performances, she missed only half of one of them, owing to a bout of food poisoning in Kalamazoo, Mich. Jo Anne Worley, who was Ms. Channing's standby during the original production, remembers once vocalizing before a performance in the hallway. Ms. Channing walked past her and said, "Jo Anne, don't worry about it, dear." Laurence Maslon, a historian of musical theater and a professor at New York University, maintains that Merrick's approach to "Dolly" grew out of a marketing ploy he had noticed when his shows left Broadway for the provinces. "He was probably very influenced by touring productions, where finding stars really mattered," Mr. Maslon said. By the end of its Broadway run, Merrick had inserted everyone from Phyllis Diller to Betty Grable to Martha Raye into "Hello, Dolly!" Merman and Martin each got a crack at the part they had originally turned down. Bette Davis and even Jack Benny who would have starred in drag opposite George Burns both considered joining them. "Some shows are more performer oriented than actor oriented," Mr. Maslon said, "and Jerry Herman's shows were a perfect example." Sondra Lee, an original "Dolly" cast member who performed alongside several of the above leading ladies, believes that one quality is essential. "The musical's version of Dolly requires an exceptional version of 'monstreuse,'" she said. "They're not really a person. They're an essence, a presence, a thing, with a kind of truth of their own. The apotheosis of Merrick's casting gambits came in 1967, when he replaced the entire Broadway cast with an all black company led by Pearl Bailey. Merrick had put together this troupe which included Cab Calloway, Clifton Davis and a young Morgan Freeman as one of its several out of town companies, and when the Broadway box office began to flag three years into the run, he imported that company from Washington. The New York Times theater critic Clive Barnes attended the show and called it "a Broadway triumph for the history books ... Bailey took the whole musical in her hands and swung it around her neck as easily as if it were a feather boa." She would win a special Tony Award for the role, returning to it for a brief "Dolly" revival in 1975. Jack Viertel, the artistic director of City Center's Encores! series and the author of "The Secret Life of the American Musical," remembers being more excited as a jazz loving teenager at seeing Bailey than Ms. Channing. And even by Merrick's splashy standards, he said, the cast swap was big news. "Not only was it a marketing stroke of genius, but it was a huge deal artistically," Mr. Viertel said. While all black casts were not uncommon in shows with black themes, he added, "it was genuinely shocking to see a black cast in a quote unquote 'white musical.'" Miscast? Or Just Right? The initial production closed soon after surpassing "My Fair Lady" as the longest running show in Broadway history at the time. By that point, another big name had made Dolly her own: the film version featured a 27 year old Barbra Streisand as the middle age widow. A more radical choice came later. Since Jack Benny passed up the role it probably didn't help that he wanted to do it for just one week it wasn't until 2015 that a man played Dolly in a sanctioned American production. That person, Lee Roy Reams, had performed with Ms. Channing in one Broadway "Dolly" revival and directed her in another before descending those steps himself. "It's like putting on a dress: You adjust it to the woman wearing it," Mr. Reams said. "I directed Madeline Kahn, who was wonderfully comic but came at the material from a place of realism, whereas Jo Anne Worley used more slapstick and had bits she liked to do." In each case, Mr. Viertel said, the most successful Dollys "manage to be both in the role and on top of the role." Then there's the material itself: Mr. Herman's timeless score, of course, and librettist Michael Stewart's marvelous distillation of the Wilder play. Carole Cook made a similar point, if more tersely, in an interview with Richard Skipper, whose 20 year career as a Carol Channing impersonator spawned a second career as a historian and the creator of the comprehensive website callondolly.com. "Carole once told me that the role is so foolproof that an orangutan could do it," Mr. Skipper said. The Last Word Goes To ... And what about Ms. Channing herself, who at 96 is officially passing the torch and the red gown on to a new Broadway Dolly? Reached by email, she said: "I was too busy taking Dolly on the road to be concerned with choices made by whoever was playing her on Broadway. If they were smart, and all of them were, they were creating their own version and not worried about mimicking my interpretation." Of the replacement Dollys, including the ones who were offered the part before she was, Ms. Channing said: "There were so many, and they all had such strong personalities, Well, you have to with a role like Dolly Levi. "Anyway, I don't think they gave a thought about how I had performed the role." If that's true, they were and are in the distinct minority. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
You can take the S.U.V. out of the country. Apparently, you can also take the country out of the S.U.V. The rise of the citified crossover has helped to close the barn door on sport utilities that built a reputation on rugged backcountry virtues. Whole swaths of manly men trucks have vanished, from Hummers and Chevy TrailBlazers to Isuzu Troopers and Mitsubishi Monteros. Even 4 wheeling nameplates that once ruled the suburban commuter trails, like the Ford Explorer and Jeep Grand Cherokee, have been forced to adapt or die, becoming so carlike and digitized that owners of the originals would barely recognize the latest generations. For brands that offer a choice between pure crossovers and more traditional S.U.V.'s, the identity crisis is particularly acute. As Americans vote for all wheel drive crossovers with not a whit of off road pretensions the Toyota Highlander and Nissan Murano come to mind it's harder to find fulfilling roles for a hard core Toyota 4Runner or Nissan Pathfinder. Rather than retire the grizzled warriors, some automakers continue to soften and compromise them, sometimes to dubious effect: the 4Runner is a pale shadow of its rebellious self of the 1980s and '90s. The Pathfinder fares better, but tiptoes down the same bumpy road: it can't get too fancy pants and reject its country roots, or its small town, dirt road buds the ones who grew up with it and know it best would accuse it of selling out. On the other hand, the Nissan has to grow up and take on three row family duties or it's not going to have a job anymore. The result is a Pathfinder that, like the latest Explorer, throws a few bones at 4 wheeling fans even as it winks at the real target: moms and dads obsessed with numbers, counting two kids (at least), three rows, seven seats and as many miles per gallon as possible. Oh, and please don't let it look like a minivan. The Pathfinder avoids the minivan styling curse, but what's left hardly seems a bragging point. The Nissan seems to wear its existential conflict on its sleeve: what am I, and why am I here? The front is barrel chested, with a black mesh grille that looks eager to suck up mud and win points with papa. From there, the Nissan goes as soft as spoiled fruit, with a falling roofline and awkward bulges to distract you from its suburban banality. It's more evidence that Nissan designers seem lost of late, the 370Z and Juke aside. By switching to a car type unibody platform, the Pathfinder sheds about 500 pounds, weighing about 4,300 total. And that's despite a growth spurt of about 4.5 inches in length and four in width, with a three inch lower roofline. The Pathfinder also adopts a powertrain that's more car than truck: Nissan's workhorse 3.5 liter V 6 here with 260 horsepower and 240 pound feet of torque linked to a fuel saving variable automatic transmission. That engine replaces a 4 liter V 6 that made 6 more horses and 48 more pound feet, but was cruder and thirstier. The slimmer Pathfinder manages 20 m.p.g. in town and 26 on the highway with 2 wheel drive, or 19/25 m.p.g. with 4 wheel drive. (Nissan's "best in class" fuel mileage claim overlooks the same size Ford Explorer, which gets 20/28 m.p.g. with the EcoBoost turbo 4 cylinder.) Over a three hour highway run in the Pathfinder, I achieved 24 m.p.g. I was suspicious of how smoothly a continuously variable transmission, which eliminates the conventional stepped gears, would mate to an S.U.V. But the Pathfinder's throttle is well matched to the C.V.T., allowing feathery inputs to keep pace with traffic without making the engine rev obtrusively. While Nissan's C.V.T.'s are among the industry's smoothest, summoning a burst of acceleration results in an engine surge to high r.p.m., amplifying the somewhat coarse sound of the V 6. The interior feels traditional and utilitarian, with a bluff dashboard and more knock knock hard plastic than in some competitors. But the amenities are all here once you move up from the basic rear drive Pathfinder S ( 29,495). The gauges and center navigation screen are large and readable; the controls are mostly straightforward. The faux wood and metal finishes of my Platinum test model looked solid. That range topping Platinum 4WD version starts at 41,995 and rose to 43,850 for the well optioned test truck. Nissan's vexing weather alerts were in full effect, a synthetic female voice warning me ad nauseum of supposed flood risks in neighboring New Jersey even when there wasn't a cloud in the sky. The Nissan's strong suit is interior space, despite a third row seat that's typical of this class: The lankier your body, the more you'll complain about the coach seating. The third row does recline slightly, helping matters. Fight for the second row, and the reward is outstanding legroom, aided by 5.5 inches of fore and aft sliding for the split seats. Flip a lever in that second row, and the seatback and cushion slide forward and sandwich in an efficient clamshell arrangement. That opens up easy third row access, even when a child seat is strapped into the folding second row. And the seats return to their original position without excessive wrestling. As with the Explorer, there's no low range setting for serious off roading. But a three mode console knob lets drivers select full time 2 wheel drive to save fuel; pick an automatic mode that engages 4 wheel traction when the wheels slip; or lock the system into full time all wheel drive. Hill Start Assist, which is standard, holds the vehicle steady on steep grades. On the road, the Nissan feels steady and workmanlike, more truckish than some car based crossovers. The steering has pleasing heft, but there's body lean in swift corners and some structural shimmy over rough roads. The Explorer's superior body control makes it seem to shrink around the driver; the Nissan never lets you forget you're pushing a relatively big rig. In the old days, you didn't necessarily need a family to want a Pathfinder, a 4Runner or, before those, the Jeep Wagoneer. Their outdoorsy nature and scouting skills appealed even to singles who knew their way around a campsite. This Pathfinder is different. Sure, it will navigate a rutted dirt road or deep snow. But I can't imagine anyone without children having the slightest inclination to own one. If you're into real off roading, buy a Jeep Wrangler. Place the Pathfinder on the growing list of one time mudders that had to scrub up to survive. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Automobiles |
"Abby's," a sitcom that debuts March 28 on NBC, is shot almost entirely outside in front of a live audience seated on bleachers. Sitcom showrunners have no shortage of logistical worries, but air traffic isn't generally among them. That is, unless you happen to be shooting your sitcom in a backyard beside the Burbank airport. And so it was that Josh Malmuth, the creator of the new sitcom "Abby's," stared at the sky one night last fall as his production ground to a halt, girding himself for another shoot to be interrupted every 15 minutes or so by an assistant producer with word of a plane, or a helicopter, or perhaps a drone. "And so it begins," he muttered. Such are the wages of innovation. "Abby's," which debuts March 28 on NBC, is a 10 episode multicamera sitcom that is shot almost entirely outside, a simple sounding tweak that nevertheless turns one of the hoariest of television conventions into something that, as far as anyone can tell, has never really been done before. Natalie Morales ("Parks and Recreation," "White Collar") stars as Abby, an ex Marine who turns her backyard into a neighborhood watering hole, where an array of quirky regulars, including Neil Flynn ("The Middle"), Nelson Franklin ("Veep") and Jessica Chaffin ("Search Party"), pass their evenings and tee up one another's punch lines. It's the same basic setup that has undergirded any number of workplace shows and other comedies based on improvised families. This includes perhaps the greatest of all sitcoms, "Cheers," which also happens to be the series against which all other bar comedies will be measured. "The 'Cheers' comparisons have been what everybody talks about, and listen, we'll take it," Morales said. "That being said, there have been a lot of medical shows, a lot of law shows, and people hang out in bars a lot. So we were like, 'I think it's fine to do another bar show.'" The concept was inspired by Bacchanal, a New Orleans wine bar that consists largely of a graceful courtyard (and which figured in a rainy subplot in "Treme"). Malmuth, a San Diego native, moved the concept to his hometown and convinced Michael Schur, one of the most prolific sitcom makers in show business these days, to help him develop it. At first glance, Schur would seem to be an unlikely choice for a multicamera sitcom, the classic form generally consisting of actors performing on a contained set before multiple cameras and a studio audience that defined TV comedy for decades, from "I Love Lucy" to "All In the Family" to "The Cosby Show" to "Seinfeld" and "Friends." But Schur was intrigued by the idea, so he and Malmuth hopped in a golf cart and drove around the Universal lot in search of an ideal spot. They found it on the former Wisteria Lane, where the stars of "Desperate Housewives" once backstabbed (and front stabbed, and actually stabbed) their way to ratings gold. After NBC gave the go ahead, an outdoor studio was built behind the house that once belonged to Edie (the desperate housewife played by Nicollette Sheridan). The goal was to split the difference between a conventional set with water and windproof lighting rigs and a smooth, level concrete slab for easy camera movement and a backyard, with strung lights, fire pits and largely unobstructed natural elements. "There's an episode when you see Jessica's hair blowing a little more than it probably would, but that's part of being outside," said Franco Bario, the co executive producer who oversaw construction of the set. "The more it looks like a stage, the less important it is that we're out here." The set includes bleachers for the just over 100 people who provide what amounts to an outdoor laugh track each episode opens by noting, in a nod to sitcom intros of yore, that "'Abby's' was filmed before a live outdoor audience." To reinforce the notion, the cameras will occasionally pull back before and after commercial breaks to show the crowd and set. "You see the audience; you see that we're, like, literally on the side of a cliff in Universal Studios; you see the Los Angeles city lights; and then you see us on this weird little outdoor set, acting," Morales said later. "It's going to feel familiar, but it's also going to feel very novel." Schur said, "We worried a little about breaking the fourth wall, but the very premise of a multicam is constantly breaking the fourth wall you're hearing humans laughing." Though they have plenty of well regarded sitcoms between them Malmuth was a writer and producer for "New Girl" and "Superstore" the theatrical setting harkens back to earlier in their careers, when Malmuth wrote for the stage and Schur for "Saturday Night Live." But they weren't necessarily looking to reinvent an old format, they said in a joint interview shortly before the shoot, in another house up Wisteria Lane. "The objective wasn't, let's set out to rejuvenate the medium," Schur said. "The objective was let's execute this idea as well as we can, and then this is how we're backing into that." "We don't want to do it on a stage with AstroTurf, so what can we do?" Malmuth said. That said, there is a replica of the bar set on a nearby soundstage to use for rehearsals and as a weather contingency plan. ("Abby's" made it through its first season without a rainout.) But other things, like the menagerie of critters in the surrounding hills, you just have to deal with. The night I was there, a raccoon got into the craft services tent "That's a first," Malmuth said when I told him and skunks have been known to wander onto the set. Crickets are also an issue, though sound editors have to add them as often as subtract, for continuity's sake. During one break in the filming, a baby gopher scampered down the driveway and blindly caromed off several people's shoes before weaving its way back into the bushes. "Occasionally packs of wild coyotes come out of the hills and just maul an actor," Schur said. (He was joking.) The odd mauling aside, a general feeling of festivity prevails on the set, with the crowd, crickets and flickering fires coalescing into something more akin to a summer camp talent show than a network sitcom. During yet another chopper break, music thumped as a jovial M.C. whipped up the audience, who munched boxed dinners and huddled in blankets in the crisp (for Los Angeles) November night. "Apparently these planes and helicopters don't care that we're trying to make a TV show!" the M.C. said, and then pointed out Schur, eating onion rings by one of the cameras, who waved at the crowd. Leonard Ouzts, who plays one of the regulars, mingled with extras as production assistants lugged an enormous tuna onto the set for a scene involving an elaborate fish tale. "There are a bunch of jokes about how we're going to have to shoo cats away and it's going to start to stink, and those might just be prophetic," Schur said. "If coyotes are ever actually going to come out of the hills, it's going to happen tonight. So buckle up." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
LOS ANGELES The entire faculty at Miramonte Elementary School, where two teachers were arrested last week on accusations of child sexual abuse, will be replaced by new teachers this week, the Los Angeles Unified School District superintendent announced Monday night. Speaking to hundreds of parents at a meeting called to address the crisis at Miramonte, Superintendent John Deasy announced the school would be closed Tuesday and Wednesday, and when students returned on Thursday, an entirely new corps of teachers and staff members would have been hired to greet them. All current teachers, administrators and staff members will be moved to a school still under construction for the rest of the school year, where they will be interviewed by school officials and, if necessary, the police. In addition, a psychiatric social worker will be assigned to every class once the school reopens. Every student in the school district who attended Miramonte will also be interviewed. Mr. Deasy said he felt a personal responsibility to do two things: help children who were victims, and restore parents' trust in the school district. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Education |
A Heart Attack? No, It Was the Coronavirus The 64 year old patient arrived at a hospital in Brooklyn with symptoms looking like those seen in patients having a serious heart attack. An electrocardiogram revealed an ominous heart rhythm. The patient had high blood levels of a protein called troponin, a sign of damaged heart muscle. Doctors rushed to open the patient's blocked arteries but found that no arteries were blocked. The patient was not having a heart attack. The culprit was the coronavirus. The Brooklyn patient recovered after 12 days in the hospital and is now at home. But there have been reports of similar patients in the United States and abroad, and the cases have raised troubling questions for doctors. What should doctors do these days when they see patients with apparent heart attacks? Should they first rule out coronavirus infection or is that a waste of valuable time for the majority of patients who are actually having heart attacks? The Brooklyn patient had myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart that has been seen in patients with other viral infections, such as MERS also caused by a coronavirus and the H1N1 swine flu. But the new coronavirus, called SARS CoV 2, mostly infects the lungs, causing pneumonia in severe cases. Believing it caused respiratory disease, many cardiologists thought the coronavirus was outside their specialty. "We were thinking lungs, lungs, lungs with us in a supportive role," said Dr. John Rumsfeld, chief science and quality officer at the American College of Cardiology. "Then all of a sudden we began to hear about potential direct impact on the heart." A report on heart problems among coronavirus patients in Wuhan, China, was published in JAMA Cardiology on Friday. The study, led by Dr. Zhibing Lu at Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University, found that 20 percent of patients hospitalized with Covid 19, the illness caused by the coronavirus, had some evidence of heart damage. Many were not known to have underlying heart disease. But they often had abnormal electrocardiograms, like the patient in Brooklyn, in addition to elevated troponin levels, which sometimes soared to levels seen in patients with heart attacks. The risk of death was more than four times higher among these patients, compared with patients without heart complications. Virginia's new lieutenant governor elect says she won't force vaccines. The journal also published a report, by doctors in Italy, describing a previously healthy 53 year old woman who developed myocarditis. Dr. Enrico Ammirati, an expert in myocarditis at Niguarda Hospital in Milan who consulted on the case, said the patient's heart problems were likely caused by her body's immune response to the virus. But so much about this new pathogen is unknown, and it is not yet clear what might cause heart damage following infection. "Myocarditis can likely be caused either by the virus itself, or the body's immune and inflammatory response to the virus," said Dr. Scott Solomon, a cardiologist at Harvard Medical School. Infected patients who get myocarditis do not necessarily have any more virus in their bodies than those who do not develop the condition, he said. It is possible but not yet established that myocarditis results from an immune system that lurches out of control while trying to turn back the coronavirus, pumping out such excessive levels of chemicals called cytokines that cause inflammation that they damage the lungs and the heart alike. The condition, called a cytokine storm, is more serious in older people and in people with underlying chronic diseases, Dr. Solomon said. It is the primary reason for the severe respiratory complications that can lead to death in patients with the coronavirus. Cytokines also promote blood coagulation and interfere with the body's clot busting system, said Dr. Peter Libby, a cardiologist at Harvard Medical School. Blood clots in coronary arteries can block blood flow and cause heart attacks. Another possibility, Dr. Libby said, is that some coronavirus patients develop heart problems as a consequence of infections in their lungs. "The lungs are not working, so there is not enough oxygen," he said. "That increases the risk for arrhythmias." At the same time, fever caused by the virus increases the body's metabolism and the heart's output of blood. The result is that the patient's heart must struggle with an increased demand for oxygen but a reduced supply, an imbalance that may lead to heart damage. But doctors cannot rule out the possibility that the coronavirus directly damages the heart, several experts said. In Seattle, a patient infected with the virus recently died after experiencing so called heart block: The electrical signals originating in the top of the organ, which sets the heart's normal rhythm, were not reaching the bottom of the heart. When that happens, the heart goes into an emergency mode with so called escape rhythm, which causes it to beat very slowly. The man had underlying lung disease, which worsened his prognosis. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
The end of the HBO show also means the end of "Thrones" watch parties. These responses have been lightly edited for length and clarity. For the Season 8 premiere, I went to an intimate gathering with three enthusiastic comrades. I brought the Cersei and Tyrion bobbleheads, which I made as anticipation therapy during the painful wait for the season to arrive. My husband never caught the bug, so I typically watched alone. When I discovered that my friends were big fans, my guilt vanished (it was like a dirty little secret), and I felt like a giddy teenager. We hosted a potluck style watch party for the series finale, with about 30 guests. Everyone was a fan, which meant no one talked over the show. Read our recap of the series finale. We had a "Thrones" party where we dressed up, learned ax throwing and archery, then we ascended The Hudson Yard Vessel. After that we went to Queensyard instead of King's Landing for a Feast of Thrones. After that, we all got together for one last viewing party to watch the season finale. Discussing the show together bonds our families together and deepens our friendships. At our final season watch parties, each week we honored a different aspect of "Game of Thrones." For the fourth week, we dressed up in red to honor Melisandre. We had Melisandre place settings and name tags for the red themed food. Each week there were 14 of us, and it's fun to share the horror, excitement and surprise of each episode with friends. We had a wonderful watch party at Norwalk Public Library, put on by two big time obsessive fans who work at the library, Vicki Oatis and Lisa Story. We decorated our auditorium with a Weirwood tree and we brought in comfy seating from the children's room. The attendees were mostly youngish people who are not your mothers' library users. We shared tears of joy and sorrow and commiserated with each other. For the final season, I hosted a weekly watching party for all friends of the Thrones. On a wall I put up cards for all the characters who were living at the start of Season 8. Underneath each house sigil, I made colorful descriptions of each character since the houses are so complex and the histories are intense, it's good to have a refresher! As the season progressed, I would indicate the fallen houses and dead characters by crossing them out in red Sharpie. I put a lot of effort into the decorations, and I will be so sad to tear them down! I'll probably leave them up another week or two. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
Recorded in 2013 off the Azores, this is the only known underwater video of a rare whale species. True's beaked whales look a bit like weird dolphins with big foreheads, fat bellies and small flippers. They're about the size of an elephant. And yet they are so elusive that most scientists who study them have never seen one in the wild. But in 2013, a group of students on an educational cruise did just over five yards from their inflatable boat. They captured the scene on video. At the time they knew they had seen a beaked whale, but had no idea they had seen one of the rarest kinds. Their underwater footage, shot in the Azores, a Portuguese archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean, is the first of its kind. It was discovered by scientists who were trying to solve a mystery about a beached whale that had been found farther south in the Atlantic. The researchers, reporting their results Tuesday in the journal PeerJ, said the video provided a rare peek into the social lives of these animals. What they learn from it and other reported sightings could help in devising conservation strategies to protect these attention shy animals and related beaked whales. Beaked whales exist in temperate waters from the North Atlantic to Brazil, and also near South Africa, Mozambique, Australia and New Zealand. They are some of the least understood mammals on the planet. Few people ever see beaked whales because they spend more than 90 percent of their time diving underwater. They live in small groups, rarely breach and tend to stay away from boats when they do. With only brief glimpses at their bodies, they are hard to distinguish, which makes conservation difficult. Most of what scientists know about the species is gleaned from their carcasses or pooled from behaviors observed among the 22 known species in the beaked whale family. For instance, we know they are exceptional divers. Their bodies even have special pockets for their fins when they dive, making their bodies smoother and allowing the whales to conserve energy and oxygen. Every hour and a half, Cuvier's beaked whale, also called the goosebeak whale, dives down up to 10,000 feet and stays there, at tremendous pressure, for up to two hours. These dives are deeper and longer than those of any other mammal. Between deep dives, these whales make resting dives that can be 1,200 feet deep and last 20 minutes. And when they breach, the show isn't as charismatic as that of a dolphin. "They just come out, make a small blow, and you don't see them again," said Natacha Aguilar de Soto, a biologist at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland and the University of La Laguna in the Canary Islands. The coloring can sometimes vary within and between species and even between the living and the dead. To really know if it was a True's beaked whale, she asked other researchers if they had seen anything like it. In the process, she stumbled on an array of reports of the whales from scientists, tour boats and students, including the young adult whales swimming in the newly reported video. The beaked whales hung out near the boat for 10 minutes, breathing every 10 seconds or so. This gave the group time to drop a camera in the water, which provided some nice shots that Dr. Aguilar de Soto would later use to make identifications. The encounter with these three whales was among five confirmed live sightings of True's beaked whales in this region of three Atlantic archipelagos called Macaronesia. A whale watching group also provided her with photos for identification of True's beaked whales, a mother and her calf, traveling in the Azores in 2015. Another video showed four Gervais' beaked whales, relatives of the True's whales, jumping. By conducting a genetic analysis of the stranded animals and comparing their DNA sequences to that of known True's beaked whales, her team found that the masked whale of El Hierro had a genetic signature most closely related to that of True's beaked whales that had been stranded off the Atlantic coast of the United States. No one, though, had reported a similar white mask. It's possible that this animal's mask was an anomaly, or that the freshness of the carcass allowed the researchers a rare opportunity to see it: After some time being stranded, the whales all begin to appear dark. To learn more, they are starting a global genetic analysis of bones and tissues of beaked whales to find out if the True's beaked whales of the Southern Hemisphere are a different species from those of the north, because they're the only whales found in both, with a gap in the middle. Scientists still have no idea about the numbers of True's beaked whales or other species in their family. But understanding more about beaked whales is important for protecting the extreme divers. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
When the show at last began, a show is what it was something between a concert and a musical happening. It opened with a song, ended with a trio harmonizing from above, and had dancers in between. The crowd hooted and clapped as models descended the marble stairs, as the cast was less professional runway denizens than friends and family, including the designer Stephane Ashpool's godfather and two guys from the local basketball league he sponsors. The clothes, and the scope of the show, suggested a continuing evolution from its sporty roots, with what seemed to be more tailored pieces and outerwear than in seasons past. Even so, the styling is still reliably bombastic. When Mr. Ashpool came out for a bow with a shock of dyed blond hair and matching beard, the point was underscored. A night at the Opera, maybe, but not yet a polite entertainment. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
THE WITCHER Stream on Netflix. Audiences don't even need to wait for a title card to see the first beast being slain in the opening scene of "The Witcher." The show a fantasy series and a clear response by Netflix to "Game of Thrones" stars Henry Cavill as Geralt of Rivia, an imposing monster hunter with a conscience. Based on books by the Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski (which have also inspired a popular video game series), the show follows Geralt during business hours (he's essentially an exterminator of mythical brutes) and outside of them, as his story intersects with the lives of a sorceress (played Anya Chalotra) and a young princess (Freya Allan). Cavill "brings a convincing physical presence and some wry humanity and emotional depth to 'The Witcher,'" Mike Hale wrote in his review for The Times. "He's operating above the level of the material (and most of the rest of the cast), and if you're susceptible to the fantasy genre even when it's executed in routine fashion, he could tip the scale in favor of watching." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
What would you name a new element on the periodic table? That's a question that groups of scientists from Japan, the U.S. and Russia will have to decide as they replace the current identifiers of four elements 113, 115, 117 and 118 with something a little more evocative. With the ushering in of these four superheavy elements, and the approval of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry, the Periodic Table's seventh row will be complete. Though the researchers have yet to put forth their suggestions, tons of ideas are already floating around science circles. One online petition aims to name "heavy metal" 115 "lemmium" after the deceased Motorhead frontman Ian 'Lemmy' Kilmister, and has already reached more than 145,000 signatures as of Wednesday afternoon. Another, with more than 44,000 signatures, wants to name element 117 "octarine" after the late Terry Pratchett and his Discworld book series. We recently solicited reader suggestions. Many proposed naming them after prominent scientists such as Rosalind Franklin, Ada Lovelace, Nikola Tesla and Carl Sagan or after chemistry professors that they admired in college and high school. Others tapped into popular culture, picking "adamantium" after the material, in Marvel lore, that makes Wolverine's indestructible claws, and "unobtanium," the coveted element from the movie Avatar. Donald Trump is shaking up this contest, too readers suggested "trumpium," "trumpillium," "trumpissum" and "AnyoneButTrumpium." Here are some other standouts: The most popular suggestion we received was to name element 113 after Riken institute in Japan. The team of scientists from the institute were the first researchers in Asia to discover an element and gain the right to name it. But "Rikenium" does not follow the rules set out by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry, which ultimately must approve the winning names (Riken is an institute, not a place, and therefore would most likely be disqualified as a contender). David Bernklau, a reader from Brooklyn, suggested naming one of the new elements after Albert Ghiorso, who codiscovered an astonishing 12 elements, a record. Over the course of 30 years, his inventions contributed to the discovery of americium, curium, berkelium, californium, einsteinium, fermium, mendelevium, nobelium, lawrencium, rutherfordium, dubnium and seaborgium. Seaborgium was named after his colleague Glenn Seaborg, a nuclear scientist. "In a nutshell, it is unbelievable that an element has yet to be named after him!" said Mr. Bernklau. Several people suggested naming one of the new elements after the 300 foot tall mutant lizard. "Godzillium," Susan Sampson wrote, "is mythical, Japanese, and worthy of an element that is unnatural, radioactive and rapidly self destructive." This popular suggestion comes from a Japanese word for Japan, "Nippon." This name actually isn't a newcomer to the periodic table. In 1908, Japanese chemist Masataka Ogawa ascribed nipponium, with the symbol Np, to what he thought was element 43. It appeared in periodic tables in Britain, according to the book "The Lost Elements." But other scientists were unable to isolate the element. Later analysis of Dr. Ogawa's samples in 1930 showed that Dr. Ogawa had actually found element 75, which is just one row directly below element 43. Unfortunately by the time researchers realized the mistake it was too late: element 75 had already been named rhenium in 1925. Dr. Ogawa died a few weeks after learning the fate of nipponium. Element 43 was later found and named technetium in 1937 and the symbol "Np" was used to describe neptunium in 1940. Lisa DeBenedittis said she would bestow the name sisyphisium on element 118 because it is the heaviest synthetic element. Her logic: "The credit for discovering element 118 the heaviest ever created has been assigned to the Dubna and Lawrence Livermore teams. The element has a checkered history: a 1999 claim to have made it was retracted two years later amid accusations that data had been falsified." "Therefore, I look to two attributes: its heaviness and its second appearance, as noteworthy. Like the heavy boulder that Sisyphus was condemned to push up a mountain, only to watch it roll down, for eternity, this name evokes 118's emblematic characteristics." Holly Triebe also decided to borrow a name from Greek mythology for her suggested name. She went with "narcissium" after the handsome hunter, Narcissus, who upon looking into a pool of water, fell deeply in love with his reflection and stared at it until he died. "This word suits any of the newfound elements because they are all man made elements, and scientists have begun to play God in this aspect. They decide what is created and what they believe is necessary," she said. "It is a form of self importance because the elements present on Earth are no longer good enough." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
Joseph's depiction makes clear that both men believed themselves indispensable to the black struggle. Their instinct for leadership pushed them to their physical limits, as they worked and traveled near nonstop, to the detriment of family life. One gets the sense that Malcolm's path, particularly as he became estranged from the Nation of Islam, was more daunting. Unlike King, who had the structure of the black Christian church that had supported him from childhood, and the aid of established black secular organizations like the Urban League, the N.A.A.C.P. and its legal arm, the Legal Defense Fund, Malcolm was constantly setting up new groups to help fulfill his vision for black advancement. Although King sought ties with allies overseas, Malcolm X had the more ambitious plan to bring people of African descent, and then all people of color, together in a coalition to promote the rights of nonwhites around the world. Joseph posits that Malcolm X's demand for "radical dignity" for black people was heavily influenced by his parents, Earl and Louise Little, who had been followers of Marcus Garvey. Garvey's Back to Africa movement was as much about instilling racial pride and black self determination as actually leading African Americans back to the Mother Continent. In writing about King, Joseph joins a chorus of voices among them, Tommie Shelby, Brandon M. Terry and Michael Honey who have argued against the present day image of King as a harmless figure, mouthing platitudes so broad and comforting that people from all points on the political spectrum could agree with them. The newest writings remind us that King's insistent "quest for radical black citizenship" made him far from comforting to large segments of the American population. The editorials and articles written in opposition to him, the persistent death threats and the surveillance by the F.B.I. (which surveilled Malcolm X, too) show a level of hostility that might shock younger generations raised from elementary school age to celebrate him as a universally loved figure whose birthday is now a national holiday. The new writings also emphasize King's radical economic vision. Even before he became a public man, he wrote of his affinity for socialism. Joseph highlights this aspect of King's thought, and gives a persuasive account of King's migrating view on the subject of economic justice and the role it could play in fostering racial justice. This migration, or evolution of views, is a theme that allows Joseph to tie his subjects together in an especially effective way. For as King altered his views, so did Malcolm X. Joseph shows that Malcolm's transformation began even before his famous trip to Mecca, and that some of the changes were due to his increasing respect for King and the movement that had grown up around him. Reading Joseph's side by side consideration allows us to see two men's visions move toward convergence as the reality of the limitations of their initial positions became clear. King's faith in nonviolence and Christian charity bumped up against a hard wall of hatred and white supremacy that was unmoved by arguments about morality and love. As uplifting as King's arguments might be, as a strategy against white supremacy they repelled Malcolm X, since they suggested a lack of self awareness and self love. King came to realize that more concrete policy initiatives that did not simply rely on changing hearts were needed, and that the self esteem of black people, under constant attack by white supremacy during and after slavery, mattered greatly. At the same time, Malcolm's justifiable call for self defense, which sometimes shaded into the hint that whites and blacks might eventually do battle with each other, faced a hard reality: Blacks, greatly outnumbered, would be at a decided disadvantage in any toe to toe fight against whites. Strategic but respectful alliances with enlightened whites might be fruitful. That, of course, is what King's movement had been about. In a way, "The Sword and the Shield" answers the old question about whether the times make the person or the person makes the times. It would be hard to find a context more suited to the talents and interests of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. than the years of the Cold War, the optimism of the post World War II economic boom and the dismantling of European colonial empires. Both men, and the movements they led, benefited enormously from the West's ideological battle against Communism. How could the United States, with its own version of an "iron curtain" of legalized segregation, lay claim to a moral high ground? Prosperity, for a time, banished the selfishness that arises in eras of scarcity. And the hopes engendered by the rise of people of color in all parts of the world could be connected to the battle for civil rights in America. We are no longer in those times. Joseph's book makes one wonder how the two men would have deployed their talents in our less than heroic age. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
Ms. Okeowo is a staff writer at The New Yorker. Ms. Orlinsky is a freelance photographer. Credit...Katie Orlinsky for The New York Times Climate change and the violence in Michoacan threaten Mexico's Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve. Katie Orlinsky for The New York Times Katie Orlinsky for The New York Times Credit... Katie Orlinsky for The New York Times Going up into the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve, between the Mexican states of Michoacan and Estado de Mexico at an altitude of almost 10,000 feet, can be dizzying. The flashes of orange catch the corner of your eye, dart around your shoulders and streak above in the sky. Neon in your face, rustling your hair and eyelashes, as you realize you are surrounded. Butterflies crowd the horizon, litter the walking path and tremble on the green leaves of the trees in which they nest. They circle and smash into visitors, who are encouraged to stay as quiet as possible so as not to disturb the fragile insects. Every November, the reserve begins to welcome hundreds of millions of monarch butterflies, which journey several thousand miles from the United States and Canada to escape the coldest months of the year. But the monarchs, and their spectacular migration, are at risk of becoming extinct from rising temperatures and drought caused by climate change; loss of habitat and the eradication of milkweed, the plants that nourish and host their eggs; and toxic pesticides. The reserve has felt, to the conservationists and guides working there, like a sanctuary both for the butterflies and for surrounding communities; despite Michoacan's being one of the most violent states in the country because of organized crime cartels, residents of towns overlapping the reserve said they had generally felt safe. But the illusion of peace has been shattered. This year, Raul Hernandez Romero, a sanctuary guide, and Homero Gomez Gonzalez, a local politician and manager at the reserve, were found dead within weeks of each other. The men were devoted to the protection of the monarchs. 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 |
If the actress Jameela Jamil seems to be all over your feed lately, it's because she is not content with just being a pretty face. A star of "The Good Place," which is back for its final season on Sept. 26, Ms. Jamil, 33, has also become an advocate for "body neutrality," even taking on Instagram for its policies on ads for weight loss products. Here, she talks about the fun of makeup but also how she keeps a measure of control over the image she puts out there. I get up and wash my face. It's pretty standard Cetaphil. But it's anything I find, to be honest. Then I put on natural witch hazel. I get it from health food stores. Actually I mix the witch hazel with my Charlotte Tilbury Magic Cream moisturizer, which also has SPF in there. The truth is, I don't really know what I'm doing with skin care! But when I mix those products, it makes my face feel tight, and I like that. If I have a shoot, I sometimes take a cube of ice and pop it under my eyes. And I really love the Honey Jasmine mask from the Organic Pharmacy. It smells really good. I'm in my 30s now, and I'm paying more attention to my skin. I'd never been on a TV show before, and you have to wear so much makeup on TV. So at night I like to do something nice for my skin. I put on Drunk Elephant Marula oil. I'm so lubed up, I look crazy. Say No to Contouring I grew up in London, in the northwest in Camden Town. London girls don't really wear so much makeup. You're not supposed to brush your hair. You're supposed to roll out bed and whip on some eyeliner and get out of the house. It's very Alexa Chung and Kate Moss. I'm based in Los Angeles now, and I see a lot of contouring. It's too much work. I would look like a member of "The Addams Family." Really. Someone did contouring on me, and I looked like Morticia. No shade to her because she's an icon. Or sometimes you do it for the 'Gram, but it's heavy in person. It costs a lot of money as well to have all this makeup. So I try not to get myself addicted to looking perfect. I'd rather get used to my face. I always wear mascara, blusher and lipstick. I really like Maybelline mascara the Colossal Big Shot. I've used that every day for maybe 10 years. I use the Giorgio Armani liquid blusher. It's not thick and powdery. And I love Fenty lipstick. I have the one that goes on as liquid and then goes to a matte finish. It looks like paint. It stays for days! My favorite one is a fuchsia color. I wore it yesterday, and it's still on today. I have stained lips now it's so good. I do my own makeup. I just learn off YouTube and Instagram videos. When I was about 27 or 28, a couple years into my career, people would cake my face with makeup. I rarely wear foundation, and I don't love putting stuff on my skin. I want to look like me. Now, even when I shoot covers, I normally do my own makeup as much as I can. Also, I don't want anyone touching my face. That's why I don't get facials I have never had a facial! If I'm doing a shoot, I do wear a bit of eyeliner, or I'll wear Charlotte Tilbury highlighter on the top of my cheekbones. I also really like the Giorgio Armani fluid sheers. They make your face look like a baby pearl. When I first started doing my own makeup, it used to freak people out. But now I think people actually find it quite a relief. I've done makeup for a cover shoot in the back of a car in 10 minutes. I'm quick, and I'm not rolling in with an entourage and being precious. It's not my wedding day. The only thing is, I need someone to do my hair because I have no upper body strength. I can't blow dry. I use Head Shoulders because I've had bad dandruff for years. Since I started the show, I've been using it with Olaplex conditioner. Normally I never touch my hair I don't curl or dry it. But on the show, it's an assault because they're drying it every day. I also cut my own hair since I was 16 and I never dye it. I had so many screw ups. You live and learn, and learn off the internet, and watch other people. I'm a super self sufficient person, and I like to be in control of myself. I don't wear fragrance. I don't know, I just never did. I was a classic tomboy for most of my life. Other girls were into beauty I wore black tracksuits until I was 22. Fragrance is something no one really introduced me to. I smell of soap. The thing I pay most attention to is food. I haven't eaten gluten since I was 12. I have celiac. I think having a big food allergy as a child, you become more knowledgeable about food. Most of my skin care happens at the dinner table. I use my skin as a way to see how my digestive system is working. I learned that through Chinese medicine. I can tell if something is upsetting my body. By the time it shows up on my skin, it's already messing with my immune system. It may be that I need less dairy or more salmon and fats. It's a very, very old fashioned way of looking at beauty. It's part of the reason I never drank or smoked. I really do eat for my skin and hair. I don't do any workout regimen. But I have big plans to. I told my doctor I'm clinically weak. It's not a condition, it's just sad. For whatever it's worth, I do think fitness is really important. But I find gym culture, which is very much L.A. culture, so steeped in vanity. I'm not really interested in exercising for my aesthetic. I prefer exercising for mental health. I do like to walk, and I've started hiking with friends. It's a social exercise. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
Billy Dee Williams recently told Esquire magazine that he uses both male and female pronouns to refer to himself. "I say 'himself' and 'herself,' because I also see myself as feminine as well as masculine," said Williams, who is known for playing Lando Calrissian in the "Star Wars" universe. "I think of myself as a relatively colorful character who doesn't take himself or herself too seriously." His comments were widely taken to mean that he had embraced gender fluid pronouns. But on Tuesday, in an interview with the Times reporter Dave Itzkoff for a forthcoming "Star Wars" article, Williams, 82, said he was not aware of how his words would be interpreted. "That was a good article, except that thing about gender what's it called, gender fluid?" he said, referring to the Esquire profile. "I had never heard that expression before. But I don't really know what it means. What does it mean?" When the term was explained to Williams that there are people who do not identify as simply men or women he said, "Well, that's not what I was talking about. I was talking about, I think that men should get in touch with their female self." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
Before the trendy hotels moved in, the meatpacking district was a curious place, with hidden spots behind its battered industrial visage. Sebastian Nicolas, 35, an original partner from the Box, the burlesque club on the Lower East Side, hopes to bring a little of that mystery back with a live music "listening room" called Subrosa. Sharing the same address on Gansevoort Street as Bar Nana, but beneath it in an old garage, this bar brings a refreshing bohemian breeze to the neighborhood, along with a distinctly Latin beat. A few steps from the High Line. Subrosa is marked by a red neon sign, which leads to a series of landings that descend dramatically to the basement, where Mr. Nicolas has created a postmodern beatnik's cavern of whitewashed brick walls in rosy hues. Low red couches and bronze mirrored tables are set before a modest stage. Spontaneous salsa dancing is encouraged. The usual meatpacking district suspects (ladies with big handbags and big blond hair, guys in fashionable hoodies and expensive jeans) are mixed in with mature, more upscale couples who came for the live music. On a recent Thursday visit, one older woman in a black beret and a leopard patterned skirt danced solo for a while, deeply feeling the beat. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
This article contains spoilers for the first three episodes of Season 8 of "Game of Thrones." With the death of the Night King and Melisandre in the Battle of Winterfell, one of the last remaining supernatural forces in Westeros is Bran Stark, a.k.a. the Three Eyed Raven (Isaac Hempstead Wright). He can warg, he can see the past, present and future (sort of), and he can beat just about anyone in a staring contest. His importance is such that the Night King raised an entire army of the dead in his efforts to vanquish him to erase him would be to erase the world's memory. But instead of fighting back on a supernatural level, Bran sat back during the battle, as part of a strategy to lure the Night King into a vulnerable position. Should he have played a more active role? Warged a dragon? Shared battlefield intelligence? Invaded the Night King's psychic space? Perhaps. Fans speculated that he was doing all of these things and more, but had no real answers. Until now. During a phone interview this week, Hempstead Wright went deep on the Three Eyed Raven, his role in the battle and his purpose beyond that. Following are edited excerpts. So let's talk about what Bran was doing during the Battle of Winterfell. My involvement was small, compared to most people. I only did two weeks of night shoots, and they were there for 55 nights. The hard part for me is just sitting there, and staying put, keeping the furs in place for continuity. I can't get up. So when the director yells, "Cut!" everyone else can wander around and have a chat, and I'm stuck in the courtyard yelling, "Hey, guys! Come out and hang out near me so I can talk to you!" I think everyone would get angry, though, if I complained that I had to sit down with loads of warm furs. Laughs I've got a pretty all right deal there. So it was great to see what everybody else was up to! It just goes so quickly. It doesn't feel like an hour and 20 minutes, because everything is so high stakes. But Bran's role in it? Laughs He's not going to be right at the forefront. There's not a lot Bran can contribute on the battle side. Maybe not physically, but there is a moment where he is doing something. He wargs into the ravens to do some aerial reconnaissance, but that dissipates pretty quickly and he remains in that state. What was he doing? As far as I understand it, he's just in the ravens. He's just keeping tabs on the battle. But having lots of shots of ravens flying around wouldn't be much of interest! Laughs And it would be pretty impractical for him to be like, "Hey, Theon, can you go run over there and tell this guy to get out of the way of that guy?" Bran recognizes that all he can do is sit there and let whatever happens, happen. We saw how quickly all their plans disintegrated! There would have been no chance of an efficient communication system. Laughs Ah, O.K. Whenever Bran does anything lately, the internet explodes with theories. Laughs. I thought this battle might have put some of those theories to rest. Evidently not! Such as the popular one that Bran was actually the Night King. That's finally debunked now? Yeah. The Night King is dead. I can't see how Bran is the Night King, or was the Night King. Although they did share a meaningful look. What was going on between them, in that moment? The reasoning behind that wasn't actually in the script, but the director Miguel Sapochnik and I came up with this idea that the look Bran gives the Night King is one of pity. Bran saw the creation of the Night King, or the first White Walker, or whatever. He realizes that he was once just a normal guy who was forcibly strapped to a tree, and had a piece of dragonglass plunged in his heart. He didn't ask to become this raving, crazy ice killer. So it's a bit like a Frankenstein's monster scenario. He was forced into this situation, and he was trapped into this Night King's body, and programmed to kill everyone. So we tried to get a moment where Bran is feeling sorry for him. Bran is looking at this ancient being who didn't want to become this murderer, but is. And the reason the Night King takes so long is that he's been programmed to destroy the Three Eyed Raven from the moment he was created, so he's taking a moment to savor it. There are even people now trying to make a case for Bran being evil. Interesting! Laughs Well, you'll have to wait to see if he's up to no good. What do you think about how Bran's arc is saying about the story's larger theme of predestination versus free will? How much does he see from the future and set in motion? He gave Arya this dagger last season in just about the very spot where she ends up using it. As I understand it, Bran can't exactly see the future. I think he can have inklings. When Bran gives Arya the catspaw dagger, he knows there's something important to do with it, but he doesn't know that say, six months on, she's going to use it to stab the Night King. So I think it's still indeterminate, and not classical causal mechanics, where he just views things as actions that follow from one another. There's still some uncertainty. Read more about the complex history of the catspaw dagger. No, I don't think he knows anything other than it's important that Arya get that blade. He doesn't necessarily know why. Even if Bran did know everything that happened in the future the reason, in my opinion, that Bran is so quiet and doesn't necessarily choose to give everything away is that the Three Eyed Raven is trained to be very calm and still, because he knows that the information that he has could be used for all sorts of purposes. If any of the normal people knew anything about the past, or any sort of vague things that might happen in the future, it would probably change the way things unfold. People would end up making the wrong choices, or doing things based on what Bran's told them. The very purpose of the Three Eyed Raven is to be the one who is wise, and still, and careful enough to handle this information and not just go blabbering it about, because that would affect the outcome. He's very cautious with what he reveals to people, because he's aware that time has to unfold naturally. And yet, he seems to be directing people somewhat. He shuts down the conversation when Dany arrives at Winterfell: "We don't have time for this." And just after Sam has found out that his father and brother were killed, he doesn't give him time to mourn. He insists that this is the moment to go tell Jon about his heritage. It could be read as manipulative, that he's using Sam's emotional state to influence how Jon receives the news. Bran doesn't care. It's totally irrelevant to Bran that Samwell Tarly's family has died, unfortunately. The Three Eyed Raven doesn't see things in terms of personal sadness. He just sees things in terms of the way things must unfold, or the way time goes. He's not going to go, "Oh, I'm sorry, Sam. I hope you feel better in a minute." He just sees things that have to happen next, and the importance of those things far outweighs any personal tragedies that might occur. It sounds brutal! But that's been the role of the Three Eyed Raven for millennia. To sit there, watching, carefully. He doesn't sit there judging. He doesn't sit there advising. He just sits there keeping an eye on history and time. Well, there are some contradictions within that. If he doesn't fully know the future, how does he know what has to happen next? If he isn't concerned with people's emotions, why would he steer Sam to tell Jon at just the exact moment when the news would be somewhat tainted by his perception that Dany could be an unfit ruler? That might just be for dramatic tension. But yeah, good point. Laughs This is all conjecture on my part. I've never actually gone through a very detailed analysis of what exactly Bran's powers are with the showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss . To be honest, I don't think they really want to do that. It would become like a superhero movie, if we knew every way that Bran's powers worked and what exactly he can do. It's best to keep that sense of mystery and an unknown to it. Beyond his powers, Bran's also able to help validate the redemption of other characters, such as Jaime previously and Theon in this battle. Both of them have done really awful things to him in the past, and have tried to rectify that. And perhaps because Bran is beyond caring, it's very easy for him to forgive? I don't think it's a question of Bran forgiving them. There's nothing personal when Bran tells Theon, "You're a good man." What he's basically doing there is that he knows that Arya is running and charging on her way to save the day, and Bran recognizes that he needs to buy some more time. And that's a real moment there where Theon could give up again, as we've seen him do several times before. He looks at the Night King like, is he just going to run away or give up? And Bran recognizes that Theon needs that final push to give it one last go, to buy enough time for Arya. You said he's very careful about sharing that information. But what about coordinating with, say, the Citadel to update their historical records? Why be the sole proprietor, who can be killed, when some of this information could be recorded and shared to benefit a greater number of people? The reason that you have a Three Eyed Raven is that you need to be sensible to guard this information. Even in our world, if we knew every single precise thing that went on in history, the world would probably be a very different place. I think the job of the Three Eyed Raven is to keep the information and decide what to be shared. The previous Three Eyed Raven, and all the Three Eyed Ravens before him, they didn't share information. They sat there, and they waited. They just kept abreast of everything. So I don't know whether that's something would be on Bran's agenda. It's like he's Google, and only one person has internet access. Yeah, I guess. But I wouldn't want Cersei to have Google, would you? Laughs There are plenty of people who could use that information, and Bran recognizes the potential that it could fall in the wrong hands. It's far too dangerous. He can look up anything in history, and it's not just uploading images anymore. He can just go, "What happened on the 5th of November of this year," or whatever, and look it up with some precision. I think what the previous Three Eyed Ravens did is they sat there in the cave, and they went through every single day in the history of the world. Obviously, Bran hasn't had time to do all that yet. He's only been the Three Eyed Raven since the end of Season 6. Vladimir Furdik, who plays the Night King, reminded us on Twitter of the importance of his touch. He marked Bran before, but with his death, is that completely gone? Or is it still there? It's still there. It's kind of like frostbite. But if the Night King is dead, I can't see how it will have any supernatural connection anymore. Without a Night King, it's redundant. The Night King speaks: Read an interview with Vladimir Furdik. You tweeted that you love the Bran memes: "Keep 'em coming." Most of them are about the Three Eyed Raven stare, which is basically just because you can't see without your glasses. Yeah I kind of like that, because it makes you feel distant and removed. You're sitting there, and you can't see what's going on, so you're forced to become a bit more interior, thinking about things. Bran's not going to be sitting there playing "I Spy," looking at different things. He's sitting there inside his head. So I think not having my glasses kind of helps. I probably made my vision sound worse than it is it's really not that bad. But if I take them off, it's a bit blurry. But to be honest, with the Battle of Winterfell, the last thing on my mind was how people were going to react in a comedic way. It was such a hard shoot, and so focused and intense, the only thing I thought as far as audience reaction was how astonishing they'd find it. But I really do love when people respond with memes and comedy. It's great fun. And there are some really original ones. It's a testament to how much people love the show that they come up with these funny little things that refer to these moments. Do you ever worry if those responses could turn Bran into comic relief? No, I don't. You've got to let people laugh, and you've to laugh at yourself. It would be really pompous if we said, "You can't make a joke about Bran because he's a very serious person." Anyone who watches Episode 3 and thinks it's hilarious or meme worthy, that doesn't change that it's still utterly dramatic and terrifying and captivating. You can still enjoy the comic relief after. Could Bran's watching in a way be a meta commentary about the show's pacing and the audience watching? Yeah! He could be a parallel to the audience, an audience surrogate, in that the audience also isn't able to contribute much, in the sense that the audience can only watch just as Bran can only watch. I don't know if that's intentional, but I just like the fact that Bran is a very still character, because there aren't many people in "Game of Thrones" who are content with just getting by, and letting things happen, and just watching them and observing. It's nice to be one of the people who isn't reactionary, who isn't charging around and stabbing things or whatever, but remains calm. It's quite refreshing. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
The ability of the Amazon forest to soak up excess carbon dioxide is weakening over time, researchers reported last week. That finding suggests that limiting climate change could be more difficult than expected. For decades, Earth's forests and seas have been soaking up roughly half of the carbon pollution that people are pumping into the atmosphere. That has limited the planetary warming that would otherwise result from those emissions. The forests and oceans have largely kept up even as emissions have skyrocketed. That surprised many scientists, but also prompted warnings that such a robust "carbon sink" could not be counted on to last forever. In a vast study spanning 30 years and covering 189,000 trees distributed across 321 plots in the Amazon basin, researchers led by a group at the University of Leeds, in Britain, reported that the uptake of carbon dioxide in the Amazon peaked in the 1990s, at about 2 billion tons a year, and has since fallen by half. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
The Michigan football team, unable to rein in a coronavirus outbreak now in its second week, canceled its game Saturday with fourth ranked Ohio State, dealing a more threatening blow to the Buckeyes' playoff hopes than the Wolverines seemed equipped to do on the field. Ohio State desperately needs to play this weekend or persuade the Big Ten to rewrite its rules to have enough games in this herky jerky pandemic season to qualify for the conference title game scheduled for Dec. 19. If not, the Buckeyes who are behind Alabama, Notre Dame and Clemson in the College Football Playoff rankings would have to argue that they should remain in that spot despite having played fewer games than other contenders, like one loss Texas A M and unbeaten Cincinnati, who are expected to play nine games. Ohio State is unbeaten in five games so far. Big Ten athletic directors have a previously scheduled meeting Wednesday morning, but as of midafternoon on Tuesday there were no plans to change the requirement that barring the cancellation of virtually every game on Saturday a team must play six games to qualify for the championship game that pits the winners of the Big Ten's two divisions. Ohio State leads the East, and Northwestern (5 1) has clinched the West. If Ohio State does not qualify for the conference championship game, Indiana would represent the East. The Hoosiers have lost once in seven games 42 35 at Ohio State. "If we don't quite get the games we need to get into the championship game, then I think that needs to be looked at hard, just like anybody else in the conference," Ohio State Coach Ryan Day said on Tuesday, shortly before the Michigan game was canceled. He added, "There's no easy solution in times like this, so I know those guys are going to come together and take a hard look at it and make sure it was the right decision." Day, the Buckeyes' second year coach, has already proved a formidable lobbying force with Ohio State's considerable financial and political muscle behind him. He was at the head of an earlier movement, with the Buckeyes' team doctor in tow, that prodded the Big Ten presidents and chancellors to reconsider their August decision not to play football this fall because of health concerns with the virus. A compelling argument for ensuring that Ohio State qualifies for the playoff: Conferences earn 6 million for each team that qualifies, as well as 2.43 million to cover expenses. In a statement saying it is continuing to determine the qualifications for the conference title game, the Big Ten noted, "We are in unprecedented times." The Big Ten is not the first conference to have to grapple with rewriting its rules for a pandemic season. The Atlantic Coast Conference last week canceled the final regular season games for Clemson and Notre Dame and declared they would play each other for the conference championship. That plan also leaves open the lucrative possibility that both teams could reach the four team playoff that is scheduled to begin on Jan. 1. Who should get a booster shot? It depends, Dr. Scott Gottlieb says. The decision spared the A.C.C. the potential calamity of having Miami finish ahead of Clemson because of cancellations. Both teams have one loss. Conversely, the Pac 12 has yet to alter its rules that pit the North and South Division winners against each other. So the possibility stands that Southern California and Colorado could finish their seasons unbeaten, with wins over U.C.L.A. and Utah, respectively, but the Buffaloes would be relegated to watching the Trojans play the winner of the North Division (Washington or Oregon) because they have played one less conference game than U.S.C. This might have been settled on the field, but Colorado's game against U.S.C. was canceled because the Trojans did not have enough players. If the Buckeyes lost a playoff berth because of Michigan's outbreak, it would be particularly cruel. In a game played annually since 1918, they have beaten Michigan the last eight years, often dominating their rivals. And Michigan this season has been desultory, going 2 4 and losing four of its past five games, the only victory a double overtime win over Rutgers. Michigan had to cancel its game last week against Maryland after positive cases surfaced in the program. The situation worsened this week. "We have not been cleared to participate in practice at this time," Warde Manuel, Michigan's athletic director, said in a statement. "Unfortunately, we will not be able to field a team due to Covid 19 positives and the associated quarantining required of close contact individuals." Manuel said later during a news conference that he would be open to changes that would allow Ohio State to play for the Big Ten title. It was an acknowledgment of how the conference has struggled to contain the virus. Wisconsin, Minnesota, Maryland, Michigan and Ohio State have endured outbreaks that forced them to cancel games. "I don't think we should just hunker down and say, 'Well, we said six, and that's going to be it,'" Manuel said. Ohio State canceled its Nov. 28 game at Illinois, and its game at Michigan State last week was in doubt before it was ultimately played (the Buckeyes won, 52 12). The Buckeyes also had a game against Maryland canceled because of the Terrapins' virus troubles. Another potential lifeline that appeared to open up for the Buckeyes on Tuesday may not be reliable. Purdue announced Tuesday that it had canceled practice to evaluate the results of virus tests. Indiana followed Tuesday night and said it had paused football activities because of an increase in virus cases. The teams are scheduled to play a rivalry game on Saturday. If Purdue was unable to play but Indiana could field a team, that could open the possibility of Ohio State playing Indiana again. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
As the first trailer for "A Quiet Place Part II" opens, the world has apparently returned to relative normalcy. Evelyn Abbott (Emily Blunt) even drives down a small town street with her three children in tow. The peace lasts for only a few seconds, and then the deadly extraterrestrial creatures who terrorized her family in the original horror movie, a sleeper hit in 2018, reappear to create havoc. The sightless monsters, who attack and kill anything that causes sound, force the Abbott family out of their farmhouse and on the run. But after Evelyn trips a wire that triggers a noisy trap, she discovers a group of mysterious renegades (including characters played by new cast members Cillian Murphy and Djimon Hounsou) hiding out. They warn her that the enemies aren't just aliens. As Murphy's character puts it, "The people who are left are not the kind of people worth saving." Once again directed by Blunt's real life husband, John Krasinksi (who co starred in the first installment), "A Quiet Place Part II" will be unleashed in theaters on March 20. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
This is the story of a woman who became famous on Instagram for smooshing her face into bread products. It sounds completely random. But consider the Internet, and you can begin to believe. In a culinary era defined by its anti gluten principles, one 27 year old woman is showing her unabashed love for all things grain based. Her work has caught the attention of BuzzFeed and Vice's Munchies blog, helping her amass a following of more than 33,000 people. The blogger based in Brooklyn, who is a copywriter by day, wishes to remain anonymous, but The Times has verified her identity. Since she first smooshed a potato roll on her Instagram account, Bread Face Blog, six months ago, she has created a ritual that involves rolling her face in bread to a carefully curated soundtrack. A single Popeye's biscuit is smashed to the tune of a song by Lindsey Buckingham. The Cocteau Twins croon as she prepares a stack of tortillas. "It's just a little crush," Jennifer Paige sings in the background as a pretzel from Black Forest, a beer garden in Brooklyn, is smooshed. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
The inspirations for Rafiq Bhatia's new album, "Breaking English," include but are not limited to: Jimi Hendrix concert videos, blaring prayer calls from Turkish mosques, East African archaeological sites, the death of Trayvon Martin and Flying Lotus sound collages. They might sound scattered on paper, but they coalesce in the hands of Mr. Bhatia, a guitarist who refuses to be pinned to one genre, culture or instrument. This 30 year old musician fluidly moves between jazz and rock groups, Indian and American musical influences, and acoustic and electronic sounds. His transient approach, combined with his obsession of assiduously studying the past in order to break cleanly from it, makes him one of the most intriguing figures in music today. "I went through a lot of periods of very intense self doubt about whether somebody like me could deal with this way of making music," Mr. Bhatia said in an interview at a Vietnamese cafe in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Growing up in a Muslim family in Raleigh, N.C., made him accustomed to being perceived as an outsider. "There was a very large percentage of the population down there that were not comfortable with our presence," he said. And when he recently started wading into the world of electronic music and sound design after spending years in jazz communities, he said he felt ostracized: "A lot of these spaces are dominated by white men or are very heavily segregated." For inspiration, he leaned into his identity and immersed himself in his family's labyrinthine, peripatetic history. His relatives trace back to India but spent several generations in East Africa; his maternal grandfather owned a restaurant in Tanzania, where he played violin for his patrons. That legacy manifests on "Breaking English" in the Carnatic violin playing of Anjna Swaminathan, whose lithe melodic gestures fit snugly with Mr. Bhatia's hypnotic, Radiohead like guitar patterns. And two songs named "Olduvai" refer to the Tanzanian gorge that Mr. Bhatia visited with his family about a decade ago, where some of the earliest human fossils were discovered. While Mr. Bhatia embraced his cultural past, he rejected his musical one. An intimidatingly strong guitar player from an early age, he studied first at New York University and then at Oberlin, where he was taken under the wing of the estimable drummer Billy Hart. In subsequent collaborations with Vijay Iyer, Marcus Gilmore and David Virelles, Mr. Bhatia proved he could hang with anyone in the jazz world. "He would keep it on reserve and then suddenly unleash something really beautiful and terrifying and intense," Mr. Iyer, a MacArthur fellow, recalled in a phone interview. But after recording "Yes It Will," his 2012 debut that was more closely aligned with modern jazz sensibilities, Mr. Bhatia became disillusioned with the confines of the guitar and the staid conventions of acoustic jazz recording sessions. "I felt I needed to make a radical break with my instrument and retool my whole vocabulary," he said. So he left his main instrument out of the creative process until the end, instead composing on Ableton Live, plug ins and "the wall that I banged my head against for a solid few years until the music finally started to make sense," he said with a laugh. As he labored on his own compositions, Mr. Bhatia jumped across another genre divide when he joined the indie rock songwriter Ryan Lott in his band Son Lux in 2014. The pair found a kindred drive for disorientation, with Mr. Lott astounded by some of Mr. Bhatia's explorations upon first listen: "What kind of brain thinks that this is O.K. and has the creative bravery to make it happen?" he recalled wondering in an interview backstage at a recent Son Lux concert at Brooklyn Steel. There are no conventional guitar solos on "Breaking English" perhaps a strange choice for someone so adept on the instrument. But as the album title suggests, its aim is to dismantle dominant languages and tendencies to capture "what it would be like to fly over an undiscovered planet," Mr. Bhatia said. Now the only question is: What will he sound like next? "You don't want an artist to put out the sequel you want them to come around with something that no one expected," Mr. Iyer said. "I think he's got all that in him." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
If someone told you there was a play called "Chickens in the Yard," about Pennsylvanians who own chickens, you might infer that the cast consisted of humans playing humans. And maybe other humans playing chickens. But in Paul Kruse's intriguing one act play by that name presented at Jack, the hip, tinfoil walled performance space in Brooklyn all four cast members play both species. The very idea may sound like a parody of an acting class exercise, but the transitions from walking and speaking to pecking and clucking are sometimes stunning. The humans are Joyce (Maggie Low), whose house this is; her son, John (Jeremiah Maestas); and her son's longtime boyfriend, Tom (Roger Manix). Joyce's husband died two years ago but makes his presence known, sometimes speaking through the patio wind chimes. The living are soon joined by Tom's teenage sister, Abby (Sangi Varsano), whom he hasn't seen since she was 4, when their mother kicked Tom out for refusing not to be gay. Abby, who is so sheltered (or young) that she has never heard of John Waters, arrives the same day that Tom brings home a cute new chicken (whom Ms. Varsano also plays); he names her after the Puritan radical Anne Hutchinson. There's plenty of conflict. The chickens have been around for almost a year and aren't laying eggs yet, which is way behind normal chicken schedule. Abby demonstrates a troubling addiction to telling lies mostly whatever she thinks people want to hear. John and Tom disagree on a bevy of issues, like whether they want children and whether being an artist counts as having a career. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
Doris Munoz, the founder of Selena for Sanctuary, at SummerStage in Central Park ahead of this weekend's concert. Doris Munoz saw the crowd streaming in grandmothers, young children and college students, many outfitted in Selena T shirts and pulled out her phone. "I had to FaceTime my mom and just cry it out," she said recently. It was July of last year, and Munoz, a Los Angeles based music promoter and manager, was at Lincoln Center's Damrosch Park for Selena for Sanctuary, a concert named for the pioneering Tejano star that was the largest in a series of events Munoz had dreamed up with her mother and father in mind. In early 2017, when California was at the center of the fight over sanctuary cities that arose in the wake of President Trump's inauguration, Munoz held a concert in Los Angeles to raise funds to help cover her mother's legal fees as she worked to attain citizenship. Munoz grew up as the only United States citizen in a family of five in San Bernardino, Calif. Her parents came to the United States from Mexico in 1989. "I was afraid that one day I would get that call that I was fearing my whole life, that one of my parents were deported," Munoz, 25, said in a phone interview. That first concert grew into Solidarity for Sanctuary, a series in Los Angeles that has raised money not only for Munoz's parents, but for immigrant rights organizations and others fighting for citizenship. (Selena for Sanctuary is a version of the event with a focus on music by the singer, who was shot and killed in 1995.) When Munoz collaborated with Lincoln Center on Selena for Sanctuary last summer, it was the first time she'd brought the shows outside of Southern California. Around 4,000 people showed up. "It exceeded any expectation that I ever had," Munoz said. It also posed a question: "We already blew out Lincoln Center. Where do we go from here?" The answer, at least this summer, is Central Park. On Sunday, as part of SummerStage, Selena for Sanctuary will return to New York. The lineup, built around Latinx artists, includes the R B singer Kali Uchis; the genre bending experimental musician Helado Negro; and Cuco, a 21 year old singer and guitarist from the Los Angeles area whose unpretentious brand of trippy pop catapulted him from obscurity to a recent major label debut in the span of just a few years. Merchandise sales at the concert, which is free, will support Make the Road New York, a prominent immigrant rights group. "It's important to raise the visibility of what they're doing," Munoz said, "so that the New York community knows what they can tap into if they're undocumented themselves, or if they have a friend or a loved one who is in that process and just needs advice or needs community." As the name suggests, Selena for Sanctuary is centered around a celebration of Selena Quintanilla Perez, who Uchis said was "a huge icon and paved the way for artists like me and any other artists who are multicultural and have roots in another country." "She was American born and raised, but she very much always loved her Mexican roots and made that a part of who she was and always represented for her people," Uchis, who is a citizen of both the United States and Colombia, added. "And that's kind of what it is to be multicultural, to be someone who is from the United States but also to say, you know what, that doesn't mean that I have to wash myself down with everything American." Both Uchis and Munoz referred to Selena as the first Latina singer they'd seen have crossover success when they were growing up. "She's a symbol of hope," Munoz said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
As an actor, Charles Martin Smith once played a fictionalized version of the real life writer Farley Mowat in "Never Cry Wolf," a sometimes strenuously realistic Arctic adventure. The role must have made an impression: As a director, Smith made "The Snow Walker" (2003), an Arctic survival tale also based on a Mowat story. Some of Smith's feel for landscape and animal life resonates in his latest directorial effort, "A Dog's Way Home," which is adapted from a novel by W. Bruce Cameron, whose "A Dog's Purpose" was made into a film in 2017. Not to break this particular puppy on some perverse auteurist wheel, but Smith also directed "Air Bud," about a basketball playing dog, and there's a touch of that here, too. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
The placenta, once thought sterile, actually harbors a world of bacteria that may influence the course of pregnancy and help shape an infant's health and the bacterial makeup of its gut, a new study has found. The research is part of a broader scientific effort to explore the microbiome, the trillions of microbes bacteria, viruses and fungi that colonize the human body. Those organisms affect digestion, metabolism and an unknown array of biological processes, and may play a role in the development of obesity, diabetes and other illnesses. During pregnancy, the authors of the new study suspect, the wrong mix of bacteria in the placenta may contribute to premature births. Although the research is preliminary, it may help explain why periodontal disease and urinary infections in pregnant women are linked to an increased risk of premature birth. The findings also suggest a need for more studies on the effects of antibiotics taken during pregnancy. The new study suggests that babies may acquire an important part of their normal gut bacteria from the placenta. If further research confirms the findings, that may be reassuring news for women who have had cesareans. Some researchers have suggested that babies born by cesarean miss out on helpful bacteria that they would normally be exposed to in the birth canal. "I think women can be reassured that they have not doomed their infant's microbiome for the rest of its life," said Dr. Kjersti Aagaard, the first author of the new study, published on Wednesday in Science Translational Medicine. She added that studies were needed to determine the influence of cesareans on the microbiome. Previous studies have looked at bacteria that inhabit the mouth, skin, vagina and intestines. But only recently has attention turned to the placenta, an organ that forms inside the uterus and acts as a life support system for the fetus. It provides oxygen and nutrients, removes wastes and secretes hormones. "People are intrigued by the role of the placenta," said Dr. Aagaard, an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children's Hospital in Houston. "There's no other time in life that we acquire a totally new organ. And then we get rid of it." She added, "We are just starting to catch a glimmer of this amazing organ that defines placental mammalian biology." Dr. Aagaard and her team became curious about the placenta when they noticed something puzzling in earlier research on the vaginal microbiome in pregnant women: The microbes that were most abundant in the mother's vagina did not match the population in a newborn's intestine. Scientists had assumed the bacterial profiles would be similar, particularly in babies born vaginally, who were thought to pick up the mother's bacteria during birth. Dr. Aagaard and her colleagues began to question that assumption. "It didn't make a whole lot of sense to us," she said. "It's not like babies are hanging out in the vagina. They come shooting out pretty fast." Also, she said, they emerge covered in a waxy substance called vernix, which most likely helps keep bacteria from latching on. The researchers wondered if babies might acquire some of their intestinal bacteria before birth, maybe from the placenta. So they collected placentas in the delivery room from 320 women, mostly black and Hispanic. Most had vaginal deliveries, and some had cesareans. Most of the births were at term, but some were premature. The scientists searched the placental tissue for bacterial DNA, using a technique called shotgun metagenomic sequencing. They shaved off the outer layer of each placenta and tested samples from the inside, to avoid surface contamination. "The placenta is not teeming with bacteria, but we can find them, and we can find them without looking too hard," Dr. Aagaard said. She said the placenta was less than 10 percent bacteria by mass, comparable to the eye or deeper regions of the skin, but very different from the intestine, which is 90 percent bacteria. The study provides an "initial snapshot" of the placental microbiome, Dr. Aagaard said. About 300 different types of bacteria turned up, most of them harmless. The team compared the distribution of the types with what had been found previously in other parts of the body, including the mouth, skin, nose, vagina and gut. The closest match by far was between the placenta and the mouth, which, in turn, was much like that in babies' intestines in the first week of life. A scientist not involved in the study, Dr. David A. Relman, a microbiome expert at Stanford, said that Dr. Aagaard's results agreed with those from his lab and others, which had found microbial DNA in amniotic fluid, apparently from the mother's mouth, gut and vagina. Dr. Aagaard said she thought that oral bacteria travel through the mother's bloodstream to the placenta, take up residence there and find their way into the fetus. This is a theory. But research in animals supports it: Oral bacteria injected into a vein in mice home in on the placenta. The idea also meshes with something that obstetricians have long noted: Women with periodontal disease have a higher risk of having premature or low birth weight babies. Treating the disease during pregnancy does not lower the risk. Preventing the disease or treating it before pregnancy seems more important, Dr. Aagaard said. The study did not provide definitive evidence about periodontal disease because only one participant had it. A disturbing finding was that when women had urinary infections early in pregnancy, even if the infections were cured, evidence of the bacteria still turned up in the placenta. Those infections increase the risk of premature birth. The study also found that the microbiome of the placenta in women who had full term pregnancies differed from that in women who had preterm births. But Dr. Aagaard said the researchers did not know if the difference contributed to the early birth, or was just characteristic of an earlier stage of pregnancy. Dr. Martin J. Blaser, director of the human microbiome program at NYU Langone Medical Center, and the author of a recently published book, "Missing Microbes," said that Dr. Aagaard's study was important, but preliminary, and that it did not provide information that could be used in treating pregnant women. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
Instead of one new home, Amazon chose two. Two places, with waterfront views and organic shops and abandoned buildings, that will someday house tens of thousands of high tech workers. We spent much of this week in those two places, Crystal City in Arlington, Va., and Long Island City in Queens, to capture life there as Amazon named them the winners of a 14 month long beauty contest for its new headquarters. Together, the two areas both are neighborhoods, not actually cities could help make Amazon one of the largest private tech employers on the East Coast. Once Amazon fully moves in, neither will likely be the same. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
A. R. Penck, a leader in the German Neo Expressionist movement of the 1970s and '80s, which brought a new sense of historical and political drama to figurative painting, died on Tuesday in Zurich. He was 77. The Michael Werner Gallery, which has represented him since the 1960s, said the cause was complications of a stroke. Until 1968, Mr. Penck was known in East Germany by his real name, Ralf Winkler. That year, in an effort to confuse arts officials, with whom he had had numerous run ins, he adopted the name of the eminent geologist Albrecht Penck, an expert on the Ice Age, whose works he had been reading. He first attracted attention with a series of paintings and sculptures, made in the 1960s and early 1970s, that he called Standarts, a conflation of "standard" and "art," with an echo of the German word for banner or flag, standarte. His works on canvas, influenced by cave paintings and African tribal art, often consisted of stick figures, crudely rendered animals, pictograms and calligraphic squiggles. His crowded scenes suggested conflict, or deep psychic distress, annotated in a forgotten hieroglyphic language or a proto computer code, and set in a time that seemed at once mythic and contemporary. The latent violence of the Cold War, and the historic rupture dividing East and West Germany, infused his work with palpable angst. In the three dimensional Standarts, he affixed bottles or tin cans to cardboard boxes, in a manner reminiscent of Arte Povera, the Italian movement that venerated commonplace, preindustrial materials. "His pictures are at once simple and complex; they suggest all kinds of systems but ones not fully understood by modern man," the critic Mark Stevens wrote in Newsweek in 1983. "This combination of the sophisticated and primitive, of billboards and magic, appeals to many who find his work rich in references to totalitarianism and the conflict between East and West." Mr. Penck's troubles with the East German government increased in direct proportion to his acceptance in the West as an important new artist. His inclusion in the prestigious Documenta exhibition in Kassel, West Germany, in 1972 turned the spotlight on him, and a year later, when the Communist government discovered that he had been exhibiting in the West under a false name, he was drafted into the army for six months. After the West Berlin Academy of the Arts awarded Mr. Penck the Will Grohmann Prize in 1975, and the Kunsthalle in Bern, Switzerland, mounted a retrospective of his work, his situation grew untenable at home. In 1980, he was expelled from East Germany. His artistic training was perfunctory. In his early teens, he took painting and drawing lessons with Jurgen Bottcher, known by the pseudonym Strawalde, and joined with him to form the renegade artists' group First Phalanx Nedserd ("Dresden" spelled backward). He later worked for a year as a trainee draftsman at the state advertising agency in Dresden. His early work tended toward fairly standard landscapes, cityscapes and portraits, some of which were exhibited, but it also included the arresting "Execution," a pencil drawing of three men about to be shot by a three man firing squad. Its violent subject matter anticipated his painting "Electric Chair" (1959 60), which depicts a barefoot man strapped into the seat, watched intently by a seated audience. After failing to gain admission to the fine arts academies in Dresden and East Berlin, Mr. Penck worked for several years as a stoker, a newspaper deliverer, a margarine packer and a night watchman. His emblematic stick figure evolved in the early 1960s: a spindly Everyman, often presented solo in midair, as though frozen in the act of doing jumping jacks, though sometimes assembled into groups. In "World Picture" (1961), Mr. Penck pitted two camps of stick figures, each side brandishing weaponlike forms and holding aloft placards bearing the equation "A A." In 1968, Michael Werner, then with the Galerie Hake in Cologne, arranged a show of Mr. Penck's work, which had to be smuggled in from East Berlin, where Mr. Penck had moved in 1963. It was then that he adopted what he called his "paint name," one of several. He later used Mike Hammer, T.M. and Y. After opening his own gallery in 1969, Mr. Werner heavily promoted the work of Mr. Penck and another of his discoveries, Georg Baselitz. The West German art press soon gave a name the Neue Wilde ("Young Savages") to a scattered group of Neo Expressionists that included, in addition to Mr. Penck and Mr. Baselitz, the painters Jorg Immendorff, Markus Lupertz, Anselm Kiefer and Sigmar Polke. Reviewing two exhibitions by Mr. Penck in The New York Times in 2013, Roberta Smith called him "in many ways the most visionary and accessible of this cohort." With the "Zeitgeist" exhibition at Martin Gropius Bau in 1982 and the "New Art" exhibition at the Tate Gallery in London a year later, Mr. Penck and the rest of the pack began to look like a conquering army, as Neo Expressionism assumed the dimensions of a major movement. After leaving East Germany, Mr. Penck settled in Kerpen, southwest of Cologne, but in 1983 he moved to London. He later relocated to Dublin. A keen drummer, he joined with the bass player Frank Wollny in the 1980s to form the free jazz group Triple Trip Touch, also known as TTT. When interest in Neo Expressionism faded, Mr. Penck slipped off the radar screen. But he continued to develop the stick figure motif, crowding his brightly colored canvases with tightly interlocked forms, and in the late 1980s and early '90s, he executed a stunning series of self portrait heads resembling fierce tribal masks. In the late '70s, he began making wood sculptures, using chain saw and ax to create monumental totemistic columns. He later turned out sculptures in iron and bronze. Mr. Penck is survived by his wife and children. Complete information on survivors was not available. A survey of his work, "Rites of Passage," is currently on view at the Fondation Maeght in St. Paul de Vence, France. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
Since 2014, the independent Los Angeles based collective the Kilroys has sought to increase representation for female playwrights by publishing a list of new plays by women deemed worthy of production. This year, the group's list has a more specific focus: female and transgender writers of color. All 37 plays on this year's list are written by women of color, including Lauren Yee, Leah Nanako Winkler, and Amina Henry. The shift in focus was inspired by 2015 statistics from The Count, a continuing study of gender disparity in theater financed by the Lilly Awards and the Dramatists Guild. The findings showed that, while 22 percent of plays produced in regional theaters over the previous three years had been written by women, only 3.4 percent had been written by women of color. The organization polled more than 250 professionals from the theater world to nominate new plays that have been produced once at most. "Somebody's Daughter," by Chisa Hutchinson, one of the nominated plays, just finished up a run Off Broadway. Ms. Yee's "The Great Leap," which follows a basketball player traveling from the United States to China, will receive its premiere at the Atlantic Theater Company next May. Another nominated play, Aleshea Harris's "Is God Is," won the Relentless Award last year and has yet to be produced. Since the list's inception, more than 100 productions of plays chosen by the group have been mounted or announced. A full list can be found at thekilroys.org. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
AMERICAN BALLET THEATER at the Metropolitan Opera (through July 7). The company wraps up the weekend with Kenneth MacMillan's sumptuous production of "Romeo and Juliet" before moving on to "Swan Lake" starting on Monday. Yes, it's true that this "Swan Lake" is in need of an overhaul, but there are some mighty dancers cast as Odette/Odile, among them Isabella Boylston, Devon Teuscher and Misty Copeland. And for the matinee on June 20, the powerful, statuesque Christine Shevchenko makes her New York debut as Odette/Odile opposite the charismatic James Whiteside. 212 362 6000, abt.org MOLISSA FENLEY AND COMPANY at Danspace Project (June 21 23, 8 p.m.). In "Their Mark, an evening of new dance and new music," Ms. Fenley collaborates with the percussionist Frank Cassara and the violist Ralph Farris on the piece "Water Table." It includes four dances (three of which are new) that investigate qualities of water. Each one is set to music by a different composer: Linda Bouchard, Andrew Toovey, Tigran Mansurian or Mr. Cassara. The program also features a shortened version of "Mix," a work from 1979 in which Ms. Fenley explores a series of rhythmic phrases and changing spatial patterns to the accompaniment of her dancers' footsteps and claps. 866 811 4111, danspaceproject.org JACOB'S PILLOW DANCE FESTIVAL 2018 at Jacob's Pillow (June 20 August 26). The revered, long running festival in Becket, Mass., will host the Royal Danish Ballet, under the artistic direction of the former New York City Ballet principal Nikolaj Hubbe (June 20 24, at Ted Shawn Theater). The company's leading principals and soloists will perform repertory by August Bournonville, Marius Petipa and Jules Perrot. Ragamala Dance Company, a Minneapolis group specializing in contemporary dance and the South Indian classical form of Bharatanatyam, will also make an appearance (June 20 24, at Doris Duke Theater). And on June 17, just before the festival officially opens, the Scottish company Janis Claxton Dance will make its United States debut with "Pop Up Duets (Fragments of Love)" at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Mass. 413 243 0745, jacobspillow.org | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
The Obamas Want 'Higher Ground.' Someone Got There First. None Hanisya Massey, the owner of Higher Ground Enterprises in Covina, Calif. The Obamas' company, Higher Ground Productions, has filed a petition to cancel Ms. Massey's trademark. Brad Torchia for The New York Times Hanisya Massey, the owner of Higher Ground Enterprises in Covina, Calif., first heard from a lawyer for Higher Ground Productions early this summer. Barack and Michelle Obama wanted to trademark their company's name, but the United States Patent and Trademark Office had deemed it too similar to the mark Ms. Massey registered in 2017 for her computer training company. Higher Ground Productions was looking to strike a deal. So began the dispute, which escalated from an initial note sent by the Obamas' lawyer to requests by Ms. Massey for onscreen roles in their productions and, now, an attempt by the former president and first lady's company to have Ms. Massey's trademark wiped off the books. The case isn't expected to slow the Obamas' post presidency plans to break into the entertainment business or to prevent them from using the name. The first film from their Netflix deal, "American Factory," has already been released on the streaming site, and more content is in the works. The Obamas landed on Higher Ground, inspired by the Stevie Wonder song of the same name . But Ms. Massey got the name first. Higher Ground Enterprises started training people to use computers more than 10 years ago, Ms. Massey said. Her inspiration for the name stems from her clients, who she said wanted to be on a "higher playing field." Now, Ms. Massey said, her company's services include consulting, photography, videography, e books and other learning materials. It was her father who encouraged her to trademark Higher Ground Enterprises, telling Ms. Massey, "you just never know." The Obamas' Higher Ground Productions has successfully found resolutions with other similar trademark holders, the company's trademark lawyer, Jim Vana, said in a statement. But with Ms. Massey's company, the Obamas have hit a snag. Ms. Massey and her lawyer, Larry Zerner, came back with a proposal to sell the mark in exchange for what Mr. Vana called "significant demands," including appearances in the Obamas' TV and film productions. Ms. Massey referred all questions about proposed terms to her lawyer, who confirmed that acting roles for Ms. Massey were part of her suggested deal. "It was not, 'I want to star in a movie,'" Mr. Zerner said in an interview. "It was like, 'Can I get a bit part in something?'" Michelle and Barack Obama, who named their Higher Ground Productions company after the Stevie Wonder song of the same name. The Trademark Office has deemed it too similar to Ms. Massey's mark. A few weeks ago Higher Ground Productions filed a petition to cancel Ms. Massey's trademark. Rebecca Tushnet, a Harvard Law School professor and an expert in intellectual property law, said in an interview that the goal of this move would be to determine whether Ms. Massey is actively and regularly using the trademark to conduct business. The Obamas' filing starts a fact intensive inquiry that could take years to sort out. "If there's not sufficient use of the mark, then the registrant has no rights and the Obamas can go ahead," Ms. Tushnet said. If there is sufficient use, she added, Ms. Massey could have a potential trademark infringement claim. As for Ms. Massey's request for roles in the Obamas' productions, it isn't exactly typical in trademark cases, Ms. Tushnet said in an email. "I can't say I'm super surprised given the context (where she might have greater than usual leverage in seeking a role she might otherwise not be able to get)," she wrote. "Nor am I surprised that it wasn't an acceptable term to the Obamas given the interference with creative control it would mean and given the lack of any apparent relationship between that condition and the rights to use the trademark." "Some judges might feel it's kind of tacky," she added, "but it doesn't affect the legal question of who has the right to the mark." Mr. Vana said Higher Ground Productions filed the petition after having difficulty finding evidence of Ms. Massey's company or use of the trademark. Ms. Massey said she has invoices and advertisements to present as evidence . A client Yvette Rodriguez, who said in an interview that Ms. Massey has handled her nonprofit's social media presence for about four years sang her praises . But her company's internet presence was dormant for years , which Ms. Massey argues shouldn't reflect her business presence. The current website for Higher Ground Enterprises was still in development on Sept. 4, but it was up and running the next day. (The site was later updated to include a section recommending Mr. Zerner's services, which was then removed after Ms. Massey was asked about it .) Even without having had that presence online for some time, this case and the petition has left Ms. Massey concerned about the digital effect of the Obamas' prominence. "It could definitely hurt my business severely," Ms. Massey said. "Because if you Google this, this is the only thing that comes up. And I am pretty much a little needle in the haystack at this point." Mr . Vana, however, said that the petition "in no way" hinders Ms. Massey's ability to run Higher Ground Enterprises. It could be a while before there is an outcome. Trademark cases are decided on paper rather than in a courtroom, Mr. Zerner said, and for a petition such as this one, the Trademark Office automatically sets up dates and deadlines. This case could stretch into March 2021. This isn't a political fight for Ms. Massey, who said she voted for Mr. Obama for president both times . "They put their pants on just like me, one leg at a time," she said. "It didn't really make any difference to me who it was." "They were the ones who started this. I'm willing to go as far and long as it takes," Ms. Massey added. "The question is, can they?" | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
For the past several summers, Bill and Hillary Clinton have done what New York City's moneyed residents have done for decades: They spent their vacation amid the prime beachside real estate of Long Island. In 2011 and 2012, there was the eight bedroom, 12,000 square foot East Hampton rental with a heated pool that the couple took for part of August, the kind of house that typically goes for 200,000 per month, according to local real estate listings. Then, in 2013, they opted for an equally pricey six bedroom mansion in Sagaponack with a private pathway to the beach. (Mrs. Clinton worked on her memoir, "Hard Choices," from a sunny office with an ocean view.) Last year, when speculation about Mrs. Clinton's presidential run reached a fever pitch, the former first couple chose the comparatively lower key town of Amagansett, just up Montauk Highway from the lobster shacks and fishermen at the end of Long Island. The seven bedroom bluffside estate with sweeping views of Gardiners Bay, the kind of house in that area that rents for 100,000 for the month of August, was next door to the home of the Clinton friend and donor Harvey Weinstein. But the Clintons' go to vacation spot for the last several summers now seems problematic, as Mrs. Clinton, who is seeking the Democratic nomination for president, delivers a populist economic message that the deck is stacked in favor of the wealthiest Americans and that she plans to "reshuffle the cards." Thus, it may not be ideal for Mr. and Mrs. Clinton to be photographed mingling at summer cocktail parties with the likes of Jerry Seinfeld, Alec Baldwin, Steven Spielberg and other wealthy Hamptons regulars. The Clintons looked into renting another home in the Hamptons, but they have hesitated to sign a lease, said several real estate agents in the Hamptons, who could discuss the Clintons only on condition of anonymity for fear of jeopardizing their client list. Campaign aides have said Mrs. Clinton will take a vacation in August, but they declined to comment on the specifics of when or where. Whether they rent there or not, the couple are expected to spend much of their vacation on the shores of Long Island, where their circle of New York friends and donors own luxe houses. The Clintons will also spend at least one weekend in their old vacation haunt of Martha's Vineyard, likely alongside President and Michelle Obama, to celebrate the 80th birthday of their friend Vernon E. Jordan Jr. (Mr. Jordan and other friends lured Mr. Clinton to the island in the early years of his presidency, and it quickly trumped his previous leisure spot in Arkansas. A White House spokesman said it was too early to confirm Mr. Obama's August plans.) Another presidential candidate, former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida, who on Monday declared that he was seeking the Republican nomination, has already drawn criticism for his summer vacations in Maine. The Boston Globe reported that Mr. Bush is getting his own four bedroom, 3,000 square foot cottage on the Bush family oceanside compound in Kennebunkport. Donors who did not want to talk on the record offering Mrs. Clinton unsolicited advice said they hoped she could avoid the inevitable claims of elitism by not renting a Hamptons home again, given the optics of a presidential campaign and the still sluggish economy. (One donor advised she should at least opt for the less flashy Sag Harbor.) At the same time, Mrs. Clinton and her allies, under intense pressure to raise money for both her campaign and Priorities USA Action, a super PAC supporting her bid, will need to woo the country's wealthiest Democrats this summer, wherever the 0.001 percent happen to be. "There is only going to be one fund raiser for Hillary in the Hamptons this summer: it starts on Memorial Day and ends on Labor Day," said Robert Zimmerman, a fund raiser for Mrs. Clinton with a home in Southampton. With her kickoff rally in New York last Saturday and a week of campaigning in early nominating states behind her, Mrs. Clinton will dive into a breakneck schedule of fund raisers across the country. "The fund raising for Hillary has been easier than other fund raising, but it's never easy," said Jay Jacobs, a Nassau County Democrat and longtime Clinton friend. "Some of us will go into catastrophic withdrawal if we're not tapped to raise money for one of the Clintons," said Ken Sunshine, a veteran Democratic activist and public relations executive with a home in Remsenburg. But this year, it's not so simple. As she mounts a campaign built on lifting the middle class and alleviating the growing gap between rich and poor, Mrs. Clinton has come under criticism for her family's wealth. Mr. and Mrs. Clinton have earned more than 125 million in paid speech income since leaving the White House in 2001, according to financial disclosures. That level of income "shows how out of touch they've truly become," said Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee. The attack appears to have made inroads. A CNN poll released June 2 showed that 47 percent of voters believed Mrs. Clinton "cares about people like you," down from 53 percent last July. Mrs. Clinton's allies said the issue was less about perception and more about practicality. The excruciating pace of a presidential campaign, even in its infancy, doesn't allow for two consecutive weeks of downtime, much less the long walks on the beach and clambakes the Clintons have come to enjoy in previous years. "They probably won't have the time to spend out there, so why spend the money?" Mr. Patricof said. But it could pay for Mrs. Clinton to have a presence in the Hamptons. Already, some of the women who move to vacation homes for the season and are active in charitable causes have inquired about hosting fund raisers and luncheons to raise money for Mrs. Clinton, said Alison Brod, a public relations executive and Hamptons hostess. "It's a time for people to show their allegiance and show off their houses at the same time," Ms. Brod added. The parties won't exactly feature the poolside glamour the area is known for. Campaign finance rules dictate that a married couple may spend 2,000 on expenses like cocktails and appetizers. That doesn't go far in an enclave where a party tent can cost tens of thousands of dollars, not including the band, passed hors d'oeuvres and Veuve Clicquot that go in it. "Let's face it, none of the people coming to my event on Monday are coming for the coconut shrimp," Mr. Jacobs said ahead of the June 1 fund raiser at his family home in Laurel Hollow, N.Y., a Long Island enclave with a very distinct vibe from the Hamptons. "They're coming to see Hillary." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
Consider the anchovy . That's what Nick Perkins, a chef and the owner of Hart's in the Bedford Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, would like you to do should you visit his restaurant and desire a burger. The only item on the menu that does not change with the season or the day of the week, it is a lamb patty served on a bun with fennel, aioli and an unusual optional upgrade: a row of marinated anchovies. "We get a lot of people who are like, 'Really? Is it really good?'" Mr. Perkins said. "And we always say, 'We'll buy your burger if you don't like it.' But it just never happens. People really like it." Mr. Perkins is allergic to dairy and always looking for foods to fill the cheese shaped void in his heart. He found that tinned fish could act as a nondairy stand in. "For me, learning about anchovies my mom's Italian, I spent a lot of time in Italy growing up they do the exciting umami work that Parmesan does, for example," he said. According to the most recent data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 3 percent of fish caught in the United States in 2017 was used as canned human food including anchovies and other small fish, like herring or sardines (an increase from 2 percent the year before). But to understand why, one must understand where the anchovies we eat today come from, and what an anchovy is. The anchovy is a small, 3 inch fish raised in seawater . There are about half a dozen species of the anchovy in the world, and each of them can be eaten. You can buy and eat fresh anchovies if you happen to be in the vicinity of where they're caught, but most often anchovies are jarred and tinned, or pulverized to use as a paste in sauces or salad dressings. American chefs are foisting small fish on diners in an attempt to make the fish palatable to trusting audiences. "I'm not trying to use ingredients to be cool or contrarian or bold. I use them because I think they're going to make you enjoy the food more and they're going to make you a better cook," she said. "I feel like I had to work for a really long time to get people to trust me in the anchovy spirit." Anna Harrington, a baker who runs a cookie shipment service called the Rounds, includes one unorthodox flavor combination on her online menu: anchovy scallion. "I really wanted to include anchovies because I feel like there aren't a lot of crackers out there with fish in them," she said. "Anchovies are really decadent and delicious and have an incredible richness and go really well with butter. My cookies have tons of butter. Really, they're mostly butter. It felt like a natural pairing to me." Ms. Harrington acknowledges that the fish cookies don't sell as well as her other flavors, but she has no plans to take them off the menu. "The people who like the anchovy cookies are obsessed with it," she said. "It's their favorite thing." Katie Parla, a food and beverage educator and culinary writer living in Rome , published a book this year about the land of the anchovy: the Italian South. Ms. Parla eats her fair share of tinned fish there and says that if you're looking for the real deal, you should source your anchovies from the waters off the coast of Spain. "The cold waters of the Cantabrian Sea produce incredible, meaty anchovies, and even Italian connoisseurs place them above those of the west coast of Italy," she said in an email. Anchovies are caught in nets and are not typically farmed. In the U.S., they're caught using a purse seine, a large wall of netting that captures many fish simultaneously. In one town on the Campanian coast, Pisciotta, fishers use something called a menaica net , which is said to date back to Ancient Greece, according to Ms. Parla. Menaica nets are more sustainable; the way the nets are designed guarantees that only anchovies past reproductive age are caught, which helps to ensure the survival of the species. When small Italian producers catch anchovies, the fish are quickly processed their heads and guts are removed then the fillets are layered with coarse sea salt and ultimately tinned, with or without olive oil. Alberto Recca , of the popular Sicilian anchovy namesake brand, said that anchovies originally initially infiltrated the U.S. because they were popular among south Mediterranean immigrants living here. "The Italians, Portuguese, Spaniards, French and Greeks who enjoyed this delicacy in their home countries introduced it to their American neighbors," he said in an email. "The present growing popularity of anchovies in the U.S. can be attributed to Americans who have tried them in trattorias and beachfront restaurants in their travel to the Mediterranean basin, especially Italy and Spain." From a carbon footprint point of view, he said, purse seine, the method used to fish anchovies, "is pretty good," Mr. Levin said. "If you think about the total environmental impact of these small fisheries, they're really quite a good fishery." And, he added, the nutrient density in anchovies is high because they contain good oils and micronutrients. Other fish scientists say that consuming fewer of the bigger fish at the top of the food chain and more of their prey is a good way to rebalance the marine ecosystem. In a 2011 study, Villy Christensen , a professor at the University of British Columbia specializing in ecosystem modeling , found that fish at the top of the food chain had been wiped out; over the past century, populations of these fish have shrunk by about two thirds . Dr. Christensen urged diners to consume more forage fish, including anchovies and sardines, and reduce their intake of bigger fish to help rebalance the fish species in the ocean. Plus, he said in a phone call, "small fish like anchovies are nutritious, affordable and have lots of nutrients and healthy fats and protein. It's much more healthy to eat that than things like whitefish or tilapia. They don't compare at all to the nutritious value of anchovies." Mr. Perkins said that Hart's is still working to win over the hearts, minds and stomachs of some skeptical diners. "I think people are less scared of little fish," he said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
And a bit unexpectedly, the best new models included many stellar sports cars, perhaps signaling that good times are about to roll or, at least that wealthy buyers are ready to splurge on pretty toys. Over all, it was a good year for car buyers, as postrecession investments paid off, bringing interesting models to showrooms. As in past years, writers for Automobiles have each picked the cars and trucks that have stood out. The Mazda 3 topped both lists, and while in the past the writers have included some of the same vehicles, this year they agreed on eight of the 12 models. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Automobiles |
"Westworld," Picasso and the Karate Kid are coming to the Tribeca Film Festival. On Wednesday, organizers announced the TV lineup for this year's festival, which runs April 18 29. First up will be a screening of the Season 2 premiere of "Westworld," the HBO sci fi western. The cast members Evan Rachel Wood, Thandie Newton, Jeffrey Wright and James Marsden, along with the co creators Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, will discuss the series after the screening billed as the season's New York premiere. ("Westworld" returns to HBO on April 22.) On April 20, the world premiere of "Rest in Power: The Trayvon Martin Story" will depict the life and legacy of Mr. Martin. Jay Z is the executive producer for this Paramount Network documentary series. The festival will also host the world premiere of "Cobra Kai," a sequel series to "The Karate Kid" that debuts on YouTube Red in May. Ralph Macchio, the original Karate Kid, and William Zabka, star as middle aged men reviving their adolescent karate rivalry. They will attend along with the series creators, Hayden Schlossberg, Jon Hurwitz and Josh Heald, on April 24. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
Follow our live coverage of the Tony Awards and the winners list. The Tony Award nominees were announced Thursday by James Monroe Iglehart, who won a Tony in 2014 for his performance as Genie in "Aladdin." Below is a list of the nominees. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
Watching J. T. Rogers's new play, "Oslo," I was able, briefly, to summon a sensation long lost in regard to Israelis and Palestinians: hope. It actually once seemed possible that those two warring tribes might figure out how to live side by side in what could reasonably be called peace. Optimism tends not to be a default position for a foreign correspondent. But I felt it in the late summer of 1993 in Jerusalem. That's where I was based when word seeped out that secret talks held in Norway's capital had produced an Israeli Palestinian framework for an eventual peace that seemed plausible at the time. The deal was sealed before the world in the stunning moment on Sept. 13, 1993, when Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin of Israel and the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat clasped hands on the White House lawn. Across nearly three hours at the Vivian Beaumont Theater in Lincoln Center, "Oslo," which was nominated for seven Tony Awards, including best play, takes the audience behind the scenes to recreate the negotiators' passion and doggedness that produced the Handshake. In the bargain that they reached, Palestinian statehood would be an objective achieved gradually, starting with autonomy for the Gaza Strip and the somnolent West Bank town of Jericho, both under Israeli control then. If all went well and trust deepened, the parties would tackle far more complex issues, like the fate of Jerusalem. Some would say it was naive of me (along with plenty of others) to have ever thought that Israelis and Palestinians had made the psychological breakthrough necessary to put their torturous past behind them. Maybe the skeptics were right. Still, "Oslo" served as a tonic of sorts. Even when the play differed from reality, it reminded me that anything is conceivable if enemies can see the humanity in each other. The lead characters are a Norwegian couple who had Middle East experience and thought they might be able to broker an agreement. This was high octane audacity. Yet the two of them Terje Rod Larsen, a social scientist, and his wife, Mona Juul, an official in Norway's foreign ministry pulled it off. The play's Mr. Larsen, portrayed by Jefferson Mays, seems a somewhat foggier professorial sort than the man I recall. More jarring is the Juul character played by Jennifer Ehle. She is the narrator and a near constant stage presence. In 1993, her intimate involvement in the talks was not nearly so evident to outsiders. The differences in perception nagged at me. After leaving the theater, I went home to reread a long reconstruction of the negotiations a ticktock, in newspaper jargon that I had written in early September 1993. I was startled to see I had made no reference at all to Ms. Juul, who is now Norway's ambassador to Britain. Other newspapers at the time similarly gave her scant attention, if any. Was her onstage prominence a playwright's invention? Or did we did I get an important element of the story flat out wrong? Some of the men on the Beaumont stage were barely recognizable. I'm thinking in particular of Uri Savir, a senior foreign ministry official who was the lead Israeli negotiator. In creating his character, Mr. Rogers exercised his dramatist's license aerobically. He acknowledged that. This Mr. Savir, played by Michael Aronov, is bearded and svelte, a live wire in a purple shirt who hops on the furniture spewing obscenities every second or third sentence. The real Mr. Savir was, shall we say, more roly poly and less flamboyant definitely unlikely to jump on a table or wear anything other than the standard issue suit of a career diplomat. But when it comes to the big picture how the parties got to yes "Oslo" nails it. Thus did it transport me back to those heady days. Secrecy, as Mr. Rogers correctly shows, was essential. The two parties normally had a capacity to leak like a colander, especially the Israelis. "That was the difficult part keeping our mouths shut," Yair Hirschfeld, an Israeli negotiator (played by Daniel Oreskes), told me in 1993. Still, word about Oslo did leak out. In late August, I first heard hints of it from a well connected Palestinian money changer in East Jerusalem. The playwright also grasps how atmospherics enhanced the chances of success. There is an element of onstage clownishness that some audiences might take to be an invention. I knew that it wasn't. The Larsen Juul team went out of its way to create opportunities for shared meals, shared drinks and even shared jokes. Each side saw the other as human. One other element, most important, stands out as what the American Middle East specialist Aaron David Miller has aptly referred to in a book title as "The Much Too Promised Land." The past enshrouds almost everything there. Each side sees itself as history's true orphan. A rule that the Norwegians imposed was that the negotiators set their sights on the future; rehashing the past was an invitation to resentment, friction and inevitable failure. The strategy worked. As I watched the onstage drama, I reflected on the measure of optimism that had been kindled even in impoverished, overcrowded and bitter Gaza. Jericho, isolated though a mere 15 miles from Jerusalem, was definitely ready for better days. It had long been a backwater, probably ever since Joshua fit the battle. "This is our chance to prove that we can control our own lives," a toy store owner told me at the time. Many Israelis, whose national anthem is titled "The Hope," were ready, too. I sat with a group of them watching the Handshake on television in a suburb of Jerusalem. They were in awe, albeit tempered by a distrust of Arafat. One woman, no softy, had been a runner in pre state Palestine for the underground paramilitary outfit known as the Stern Gang. Now, overwhelmed, she wiped away tears. I said "Oslo" evoked the optimism I had once felt. Briefly, I also said. The sensation quickly vanished. There's no need to relive here how the peace process crumbled under the weight of terrorism, assassination, settlement expansion, physical barriers, mutual accusations of bad faith and even a retreat from the notion of shared humanity. Peace now seems very distant indeed. The hopeful Larsen character urges the audience to "see how far we have come." "If we have come this far through blood, through fear, hatred how much further can we yet go?" he says. The question is as tantalizing today as it was in 1993. But I left the Beaumont sadly aware that the rancorous past, not a hopeful future, rules for now in the much too promised land. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
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