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PHILADELPHIA Hillary Clinton put on a better television show in Philadelphia than Donald J. Trump did in Cleveland. Expectations had it the other way around. Mr. Trump is the bona fide television sensation, a former maestro of a hit reality series, and he had promised to bring some "showbiz" to the proceedings. Yet it's Mrs. Clinton who had the celebrities and musical acts that "Tonight Show" bookers' dreams are made of Alicia Keys, Meryl Streep, Paul Simon, Elizabeth Banks, Lenny Kravitz and Katy Perry. It's Mrs. Clinton who had the more professionally produced show. And it's Mrs. Clinton who had the bigger ratings, on the first two nights by several million people. Her team planned its schedule to take maximum advantage of a major party nominee's great media prize: nearly total control of four nights of prime time television on cable news, and at least 10 to 11 p.m. on the broadcast networks. Even Mr. Trump gave the Democratic convention credit when he called midweek to discuss the differences between the two conventions. "I've liked both shows," Mr. Trump said, though, he said, no true judgment could be made until after the convention was over, when the two candidates' speeches and ratings could be compared. In Philadelphia, each of the Democratic speeches had its own distinct aim: Fire up the base (Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey and the mothers whose unarmed sons were slain by police), attack Mr. Trump (Senator Elizabeth Warren and the actresses Lena Dunham and America Ferrera), unify the party (Bernie Sanders and Bernie Sanders), rally independents (Michael Bloomberg), fill out the nominee's biography (Bill Clinton). The acts and speeches were choreographed down to the minute so that not a precious second of prime time would go to waste. The tight production continued right into the thunderous final night, with fiery speeches by the activist preacher Rev. William Barber II and John Allen, a retired four star general; Chelsea Clinton's daughterly testimonial; and, finally, Mrs. Clinton's big acceptance which was met with some unplanned protest in the hall that did not, however, derail her address. It might have been a less notable contrast if Mr. Trump's show had not been such a break from the tightly scripted performance that has come to typify these conventions. In Cleveland, an important endorser, Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa, started speaking after the broadcast networks had already moved on to local news (Republican Party officials argued Thursday that they should have shown her instead); Mr. Trump called in to "The O'Reilly Factor" while Patricia Smith was speaking emotionally onstage about her son's death in the Benghazi attack; and one night's program ended prematurely, leaving precious prime time minutes unused. Asked about the differences, Mr. Trump said he could not speak to them with much specificity, because "I didn't produce our show I just showed up for the final speech on Thursday." (He acknowledged that he made other appearances while the convention was going on, including on O'Reilly, but said they weren't a distraction from the convention because they were unannounced and "nobody even knew" he would be appearing.) Mr. Trump has gotten where he is through asymmetrical media warfare. He's forgone traditional campaign tactics like heavy television advertising and the sophisticated data targeting that President Obama perfected over his two campaigns. Instead, he's filled television and Twitter with a running, multiplot reality show that, when working to maximum effect, starves his opponents of media oxygen. Mrs. Clinton has followed the old media playbook by which presidential elections have always been won in the modern era: message discipline, if to a fault (given her severe allergy to news briefings); heavy television advertising; and classic door to door get out the vote legwork. The back to back conventions are a great test case of which approach will work better, and we won't know for some time. So far, Mr. Trump has defied all the traditional rules of political media. If his approach to the conventions proves to be the more effective one, then he will have certainly rewritten them. Netflix buys a visual effects company in a move to support its global ambitions. 15 minimum wage for federal contractors will take effect Jan. 30. Mr. Trump said he would ultimately win because "we have a much better message, and we have a better messenger." Reporters leaving Cleveland quickly formed a consensus that the Trump convention had been a "hot mess," as some of them wrote. Mr. Trump wrote Tuesday night on Twitter that his convention was "far more interesting." More like fascinating, in a highway rubbernecking way. In a sense, it was the show Mr. Trump had promised even if it was at times more like "The Apprentice" than a national political convention. It had twisty turny plotlines (how did lines from Michelle Obama's 2008 convention speech wind up in Melania Trump's 2016 speech?), intrigue (did Team Trump know Ted Cruz was going to use a prime time speaking slot to deny Mr. Trump an endorsement) and villainy (should Hillary Clinton be locked up, and is she inspired by Lucifer?). What the news media saw as a hot mess, Mr. Trump's supporters saw as refreshing, telling it like it is change. And at least two respected polls, CNN/ORC and the U.S.C. Dornsife/Los Angeles Times, showed a bounce for Mr. Trump. Mr. Trump said that proved that he got "the intended result" out of his convention. "I got the biggest bump," he said. The polling is still more remarkable when you consider the following: Mrs. Clinton and the super PACs supporting her have spent 68 million on television advertisements, compared with less than 6 million by Mr. Trump and his supporting groups, according to the ad tracking firm Kantar Media. There has been a lot of debate in recent years over whether 30 second commercials work in politics the way they once did. But there was always one circumstance in which there was not much doubt those rare occasions when one side could run commercials unopposed, or nearly unopposed. "Historically, lopsidedness in paid media has worked for whoever's been able to spend more or spend more effectively," said Elizabeth Wilner, who monitors political advertising for Kantar Media. Now, she said, "the disparity is astonishing." That Mr. Trump is in such a competitive race with Mrs. Clinton despite the disparity in advertising is proof that "free media trumps paid media any day in presidential politics," a maxim shared with me by Mark McKinnon, the former chief media strategist for George W. Bush. And, Mr. McKinnon added, "Trump has figured out how to turn the volume up to 11." (Or maybe up to 100, with his call on Wednesday for Russia to hack into the computer system of his rival for the presidency of the United States, prompting some to accuse him of treason.) Mr. McKinnon's 2004 campaign team won an early advantage for Mr. Bush by attacking Senator John Kerry with a blitz of advertising before Mr. Kerry had much money to defend himself. And, Mr. McKinnon told me on Wednesday, despite Mr. Trump's success without advertising, "I would rather be the campaign spending 100 million on advertising than the campaign spending nothing." If this advertising disparity continues and Mrs. Clinton still loses, there will be reverberations beyond national politics; Madison Avenue and its clients will have to further assess the effectiveness of what has been considered the most important marketing tool in media history for the better part of the last four decades. David Plouffe, who helped lead Mr. Obama's 2008 effort, said presidential media was a long game, and its efficacy could truly be judged only in November. It's all working toward motivating the winning combination of voters to get to the polls in the states that matter in the Electoral College. "This is not a one act play," he said. A convention has the potential to be the ultimate ad, a four night prime time infomercial that can "move the needle further and faster than advertising does," Kevin Sheekey, a longtime adviser to Mr. Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York, told me. The true effect of the two conventions won't be known for a while, and it will set the dynamic until the next big presidential mini series: the debates. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. The joke doesn't have quite the same bite now that the N.B.A. is playing all of its games in a so called bubble, but it elicited a hearty laugh from P.J. Tucker of the Houston Rockets regardless. Have you heard the one about how the only center in Houston is the Toyota Center? "That's true and false," Tucker said, chuckling at the reference to his team's home arena. "But it's mostly true." The Rockets, you see, insist that none of their players have assigned positions, no matter how they are listed in the box score. Tucker has invited onlookers to call him a center "Label it however you want to," he said but he is not even Houston's tallest starter. Nor does Tucker jump center for the Rockets when the game tips off, typically ceding that duty to the 6 foot 7 Robert Covington. Tucker is nonetheless often described as the closest thing to a center among the Rockets' primary players, which owes largely to his physical defense. Yet even when Tucker, who is 6 5, guards someone much bigger, such as the Los Angeles Lakers' Anthony Davis, he is quick to point out that his offensive responsibilities call for him to "still do everything" asked of smaller forwards. One clear takeaway amid all these contradictions is that LeBron James and the Lakers have been thrust into a precarious position in the second round of the N.B.A. playoffs because they have to cope with the Rockets' unconventional approach with Tucker at the heart of the chaos. Davis's influence has been growing and the Lakers lead the series, 2 1, but they have been forced to play smaller lineups than they prefer to counter a fleet, floor spacing front line led by Tucker and Covington. "Every team needs a P.J. Tucker," Cleveland's Larry Nance Jr., a former Laker, tweeted Sunday during Game 2 of the Rockets Lakers series. Tucker played a starring role defensively in Houston's Game 1 victory, then overcame foul trouble in Game 2 to register 18 points and 11 rebounds, though the Rockets' rally fell short. He managed just 3 points Tuesday in a quiet Game 3 performance, shortly after openly disappointed Rockets officials learned that Tucker had not been selected to the N.B.A.'s all defensive first or second team. "What we see," Rockets Coach Mike D'Antoni said, "we think he's the best." The Rockets, to use General Manager Daryl Morey's word, were for years unabashedly "obsessed" with trying to topple the Golden State Warriors, who won three championships in their five consecutive trips to the N.B.A. finals from 2015 to 2019. This season, with the Warriors missing Kevin Durant (left in free agency) and the injured guards Klay Thompson and Stephen Curry, Morey took even bigger swings than usual in his roster construction. He followed the much debated trade that dispatched Chris Paul to Oklahoma City for Russell Westbrook by assembling a four team trade in February that sent Clint Capela, Houston's starting center, to Atlanta to acquire Covington from Minnesota. The emphasis on small ball was widely rebranded as "microball." The Toronto Raptors drafted Tucker No. 35 over all in 2006, but he didn't stick, and headed to Israel for the 2007 8 season. There he led unheralded Hapoel Holon to a stunning victory over Maccabi Tel Aviv, the perennial European club power, for the championship; it was one of only two seasons between 1970 and 2008 that Maccabi failed to win it all domestically. "To this day, that's my No. 1 basketball moment," Tucker said. It was the start of a five season odyssey in the international game, with additional stops in Ukraine, Greece, Italy, Puerto Rico and Germany, during which Tucker developed the long distance shooting touch that makes him one of the N.B.A.'s most productive corner 3 point shooters. "He used to just bully guys down low," said Omri Casspi, Israel's most successful N.B.A. export and a teenager with Maccabi when Tucker was named the most valuable player with Holon. There was "no match" in the league for Tucker physically, Casspi said. Tucker excitedly recounted how loud the Holon crowds were, calling them the most vociferous fans he has ever played for "no doubts, hands down, no close seconds." Yet he said that his current role, as a key two way contributor for an N.B.A. championship contender, seemed like an unreachable dream for much of his time abroad. "Back then the league was different," Tucker said. "Being a 'tweener' was terrible. Nobody wanted tweeners. You had to be a wing player that could shoot 3s or a back to the basket big and if you fell in the middle you didn't fit. So a lot of times, I was lost. "Going over there, I learned how to be a team player. I had to grow up. Being the main guy for three or four years, I understood what it took to be the leader. Coming back to the N.B.A., being one of those other guys again, I knew exactly how to do my job." Becoming proficient from long distance, to coincide with a leaguewide shift away from traditional centers in favor of power players with more mobility and shooting range, certainly didn't hurt: Tucker made a league high 90 corner 3 pointers during the regular season. As D'Antoni noted, Tucker is also the key defender in Houston's schemes that depend on the frequent switching of individual assignments. "Now I bask in that whole area of the unknown," Tucker said. "It's the most beautiful thing ever." At 35, Tucker averaged a career high 34.3 minutes per game during the regular season. His seemingly boundless determination to collect sneakers tends to generate more media attention than his game Tucker plans to open his own sneaker store in Houston next month called the Better Generation With P.J. Tucker but what he covets most is an N.B.A. playoff memory to usurp what he did in Israel. He continues to agonize over the Rockets' fate in the 2018 Western Conference finals. Up, 3 2, over the Warriors, Tucker's Rockets had two shots to eliminate the reigning champions but could not overcome the loss of Paul to a hamstring injury in Game 5. In Game 7, Houston missed a still unfathomable 27 consecutive 3 pointers and lost at home. "It's been frustrating; I won't lie about that," Tucker said. "I still haven't watched Game 6 and Game 7 from two years ago, because we knew that was the championship, whoever won that series. There's nothing worse than that." Yet the stakes for the Rockets seem higher than ever this postseason. D'Antoni's future is uncertain in the final year of his contract as coach, and Tucker, who will be seeking an extension this off season, has just one year left on his deal. Questions likewise persist about how Westbrook fits alongside James Harden and the holes in Harden's and D'Antoni's playoff legacies. All of that tends to generate considerable noise around the Rockets, but Tucker, defiant as ever, said, "We laugh at it." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
BALLET HISPANICO at the Joyce Theater (April 10 11, 7:30 p.m., through April 15). This season sees two premieres inspired by the writings of Federico Garcia Lorca: "Espiritus Gemelos" by Gustavo Ramirez Sansano and "Waiting for Pepe" by Carlos Pons Guerra. The program also features a reprise of "Linea Recta," Annabelle Lopez Ochoa's 2016 exploration of flamenco. The works were created through the company's Instituto Coreografico, a lab for Latino choreographers that Ballet Hispanico's artistic director and chief executive officer, Eduardo Vilaro, began in 2010 as a way, in part, for dance makers to explore their heritage. 212 242 0800, joyce.org EIFMAN BALLET OF ST. PETERSBURG at the David H. Koch Theater (April 6, 6:30 p.m.; April 7, 2 and 7:30 p.m.; April 8, 2 p.m.). In honor of the 20th anniversary of his company's New York debut, Boris Eifman returns with his evening length production of "Anna Karenina." The choreographer's take on the Tolstoy novel raises the tragic affair of Anna and Count Vronsky to melodramatic heights with his melding of ballet and contemporary dance. Accompanying the dancers will be the New York City Ballet Orchestra performing a mix of Tchaikovsky. Nikolay Alexeev conducts. 212 496 0600, davidhkochtheater.com GATHERING PLACE: BLACK QUEER LAND(ING) at Gibney (April 10, 6 9 p.m.; April 12, 8 p.m., through April 28). In this new nearly three week performance series, programmed by Marya Wethers, the focus is the intersections among blackness, queerness and indigeneity. The first weekend presents Mayfield Brooks's three part "IWB: Dancing in the Hold." Part I, "P(a)rLAY," is an invitation to black identified artists to participate in an improvisational dance workshop and performance (April 10). Part II, "Dancing in the Hold," features a production inspired by underwater finds, like a shipwreck (April 12 and 13). And Part III, "Process(Ion)," is a performance installation that includes a procession from the theater to the African Burial Ground in Lower Manhattan (April 14). The series continues later this month with performances by Jumatatu M. Poe and the I Moving Lab collective. 646 837 6809, gibneydance.org | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
Andrew Logan and Claire Anderson of Wilmington, Del., spent more than 6,000 on various medical treatments and drugs for their cat, Lord Tigglesworth. Pets Are Like Family. But as Health Costs Rise, Few Are Insured That Way. Selling pet products to humans is big business. Last year, according to the American Pet Products Association, owners spent nearly 70 billion on their pets. While much of that money is spent on pet paraphernalia, some of the biggest, and most unexpected, costs are for drugs and medical procedures as pets live longer and occupy a more central role in homes. By one estimate, owners spend 9,000 to more than 13,000 for medical treatments over their pets' lifetimes. "Things have changed dramatically over the past 30 to 40 years with how people are viewing pets," said Dr. Craig A. Clifford, a medical oncologist and director of clinical studies at Hope Veterinary Specialists in Malvern, Pa. "Thirty years ago, we called it the Snoopy generation, where the dog lived outside and wasn't a big part of the family." Now, Dr. Clifford said, we live in the Brian generation, a reference to the dog on "Family Guy," who walks on his hind legs, martini in paw, and chats with his family. "People are eating dinner with them and having cocktails with them," he said, with a laugh. "That's a paradigm shift about how pets are perceived." That kind of relationship can lead to some difficult decisions. While a new collar may be a happy expense, emergency surgery to remove a sock lodged in a dog's intestine is not. And the cost for such surgery can stretch to many thousands of dollars, blowing up a monthly budget. Consider He was living a fine feline existence, as a fat cat with doting parents in Wilmington, Del. A few months ago, he began vomiting and eating less. Claire Anderson and Andrew Logan, his owners (or pet parents, as some call themselves), began to worry. At first, they thought he just needed some teeth removed, so they had that done. "He was incredibly low maintenance in terms of any health stuff," Ms. Anderson said of her 8 year old cat. "He had lost seven pounds, and he only weighed 18 pounds to begin with. When he lost the weight, that's when I knew it was more." It turned out that Lord Tigglesworth had cancer in his gastrointestinal tract. The treatment was effective, but he still didn't eat. And giving him a pill not an easy feat with any cat was stressful for him and his owners. The couple's veterinarian prescribed an ointment called Mirataz, whose active ingredient, mirtazapine, was originally used to treat depression in humans but has a side effect of increasing appetite. Mr. Logan said he and his wife had already spent 6,000 on Lord Tigglesworth's care, so they didn't flinch at paying about 30 for a two week supply. "It's been pricey," Mr. Logan said. "But if you were to annualize this over our time together, it's been cheap." Unlike humans, only about 10 percent of dogs and 5 percent of cats are covered by medical insurance, according to a survey by the pet association. And since 2015, the costs of veterinary services have risen over 10 percent for medical treatments and 5 percent for regular checkups, according to the Nationwide/Purdue University Veterinary Price Index. "It's not what veterinarians are charging," Dr. Carol McConnell, vice president and chief veterinary officer for Nationwide, said. "It's more what consumers are choosing to pay." Mirataz is made by Kindred Biosciences, a small pet pharmaceutical company in Burlingame, Calif. The company introduced the drug, its first, in August because nine million cats in the United States have unintended weight loss but only a third of them are treated with appetite stimulants, Kindred's chief operating officer, Denise Bevers, said. One reason is the difficulty of giving pills or compounded liquids to cats. Kindred formulated the appetite stimulant so an owner can rub it into the cat's ear while both are relaxing. The pet pharma field has been growing at an estimated rate of 5 percent a year, to nearly 6 billion in 2016, the latest figure available. Companies producing drugs for pets include Zoetis, which was spun out from Pfizer in 2013; Elanco, formerly part of Eli Lilly; and Merck Animal Health. While there are more cats than dogs in the United States 94 million vs. 89 million dog owners are a richer market for several reasons. Dogs are generally outside more than cats. They're active with other dogs, which means they get hurt. Dogs are also liable to bring diseases inside through fleas and ticks, or to eat something that gives them a parasite. But veterinarians note that dogs are also easier to treat. Have a pill? Cover it in peanut butter or wrap it in deli meat and chances are the dog will scarf it down in seconds. Try to give a cat a pill and the race is on to catch the feline before she disappears under a couch for the rest of the night. The big drug makers have released drugs to deal with common ailments fleas and ticks and itchy skin, known as contact dermatitis. But they have had to be price sensitive in a way they are not with human drugs. Dr. Elaine Wexler Mitchell, a veterinarian who owns the Cat Care Clinic in Orange, Calif., said she often cut up a human pill for her feline patients, recalling that a lot of owners didn't want to use a hypothyroidism drug made specifically for cats because it was more expensive. A three month supply was 35. Pet insurance would seem an answer to this. The industry grew 17.5 percent last year, but to only 1.83 million pets, according to the North American Pet Health Insurance Association. (The first pet policy in the United States was issued in 1982 by Veterinary Pet Insurance for the dog portraying Lassie, the canine star.) Nationwide, which acquired Veterinary Pet Insurance in 2009, assesses the costs of pet insurance in much the same way it assesses cars: different rates for different breeds, ages and geography. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Your Money |
Risk is the essence of romance. A wise woman told me that once; I live with her now, so I'm inclined to believe she knew what she was talking about. Exposed and vulnerable, we reach out to another person and hope they'll reach back. We put ourselves at their mercy in hopes of connection. In some cases, we put ourselves at the mercy of a world that will punish us for that connection should it be discovered. There is some pain we suffer gladly because it's the vessel in which pleasure comes. Titled "403 Forbidden" like every episode title so far, it's both an internet error message and a signpost for the story this installment of "Mr. Robot" has both the series's protagonist and antagonist putting themselves at risk in romance's name. In one case, it leads to disaster. In another ... well, the season isn't over yet. The episode begins with an extended and fascinating flashback sequence. It's 1982, and a young Zhi Zhang (Ross Kurt Le) is a Chinese bureaucrat meeting with IBM executives about their exciting new technology. What they don't know is that Zhang has no intention whatsoever of setting them up with a lucrative government contract not when the technology can simply be swiped. ("I look forward to stealing your intellectual property," Zhang tells the oblivious executives in her native language.) What no one knows is that Zhang, better known to us as Whiterose, is a trans woman, trapped in her male presenting persona. But not for long. Zhang and her assistant, Peng Chen ( Eugene Shaw ), are lovers, and they enjoy their time in America where they're more able to be themselves; their hope is that Zhang will be made ambassador to the United States based on their success there. But while they cuddle in their hotel room, Zhang eyes a music video featuring the gender nonconforming pop star Boy George with barely disguised envy and awe. When her boyfriend returns to the room later that night after a drink up with his associates, Zhang presents herself to him wearing a wig and one of her mother's dresses. "I was going to say, 'You're beautiful,'" he corrects her. They kiss. The camera zooms in. It's one of the loveliest, sexiest moments in the history of the show. But it doesn't last. In a subsequent flashback, Zhang shows up for Peng's arranged wedding to a woman who isn't transgender, of course. As a joke, Zhang has sent him white roses, "the funeral flower." But Peng is in no mood to laugh, and grows only more despondent when he hears that Zhang has accepted the job of Minister of State Security instead of the United States ambassadorship. "You're the only one who knows everything about me," Zhang reassures him. "I trusted you with that. Now I'm asking you to trust me. I promise I'll find a way to make this world better, for us." "This world will never be good enough," Peng replies before slitting his own throat. Blood stains the white roses. It's a moment as morbidly grandiose as the earlier one was rapturous. And it says a lot about Zhang that she chose "Whiterose" as her nom de guerre. In the present day, Elliot Alderson makes an unexpected love connection of his own. With the help of his sister , Darlene whom he's trying to keep at arm's length, as he's done with everyone else in his life he identifies the female bank employee who handles the Dark Army's account, most likely never realizing who she is actually working for. Her name is Olivia Cortez (Dominik Garcia Lorido), she is a single mother with a history of addiction, and wouldn't you know it, she has an OK Cupid date with a stranger on Christmas Eve. Elliot and his alternate personality cum sidekick, Mr. Robot , decide to crash the date in order to get a key fob they'll need for their assault on the Dark Army's treasury. Elliot steels himself to threaten her custody arrangement if she refuses to cooperate. But when the date appears to have stood her up, Mr. Robot calls an audible and, on Elliot's behalf, offers to buy her a drink instead. She finds Elliot's off kilter personality (ahem, personalities) charming, at least until the original date shows up and ruins the mood. Olivia is about to catch a ride home when Elliot races to the street and kisses her, with the beautiful lights of a New York City Christmas glowing as if for their express benefit. If you've ever had the good fortune of kissing someone beautiful on a December night in Manhattan, you'll appreciate the power of the moment. A Christmas Eve one night stand ensues. Waking before she does, Elliot sneaks into Olivia's bathroom with his stolen MacGuffin and discovers that Whiterose has set the all important meeting of the Deus Group for mere hours from now in an effort to thwart the Elliot and Philip Price's schemes. He also sees that she has some OxyContin on hand. But when Olivia follows him into the bathroom, she opens the bottle and reveals not pills but a razor blade. It's there as a reminder of how awful her life as an addict was: "If I hate myself enough to start using again, I might as well kill myself," she says. Elliot, an addict himself, can relate. The two rest their heads on each other as Mr. Robot's voice over says that letting people into your life doesn't have to hurt. The risk is worth taking. It depends on who you're letting in, though. Vera, the vicious drug dealer who killed Elliot's girlfriend in Season 1, appears poised to threaten his therapist, Krista ( Gloria Reuben ), to secure Elliot's help in building his empire. And the mercurial Tyrell Wellick (Martin Wallstrom) has broken into his apartment with news that he is to be named the new chief executive of E Corp, potentially giving away the secret of their alliance to anyone listening. Some risks are more romantic than others. None I love the furtive, skulking way in which the director Sam Esmail and the cinematographer Tod Campbell move their camera: zooming in and out, slowly tracking and swooping around, as if it were a groping tentacle searching for something to latch on to. None Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but the titles of some of the song's on this week's soundtrack "Sick of Myself" by Matthew Sweet, "Flesh Without Blood" by Grimes feel like dark comedy commentary on Elliot and Mr. Robot's relationship. None Tinfoil hat time: If, as it once seemed, Whiterose's top secret project is a time machine, is her goal to go back and undo her decision to choose the security ministry over the United States ambassadorship, thus saving the love of her life? None "My mom died yesterday." "Oh my god, I'm so sorry." "For what?" Never change, Elliot. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
The American Tap Dance Foundation's "Rhythm in Motion" showcase, started three years ago by the foundation's director, Tony Waag, is one of a kind. It shouldn't be. Why aren't there more opportunities of this caliber for tap choreographers to create and show new work? Given the talent in sight at the Theater at the 14th Street Y on Wednesday, one showcase seemed hardly enough. Wednesday's program (the first of two) included leading choreographers like Michelle Dorrance, Derick K. Grant and Jason Samuels Smith, alongside relative newcomers Samara Seligsohn and Leonardo Sandoval and the veteran tapper Brenda Bufalino, who brought the night to a puzzling close. As an art of making noise, tap can just as effectively explore silence. In "MidBloom," Ms. Seligsohn and her three dancers, in Goth inspired costumes, investigated both, punctuating their soundtrack (Polica's "Dark Star") with unexpected pockets of stillness. (Ms. Seligsohn cites T. S. Eliot "There will be time" as her guide.) Though philosophical in its intention, "MidBloom" remained a neatly wrapped routine, a dance lasting the length of a pop song. Mr. Sandoval, arriving next as if blown in from the wings, had a more spontaneous aura of thinking on his feet as he riffed off the bassist Greg Richardson's Afro Brazilian sounds, played live. This smooth solo and the rousing group piece that followed were excerpts from his new show, "Music From the Sole," created with Mr. Richardson. When will New York get to see the whole thing? | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
Short stories are for everyone, even the wee. Three new collections very different from one another in looks and tone offer distinct pleasures for young readers. One's soothing; one's sly; and one's downright uproarious. VERNON IS ON HIS WAY (Roaring Brook, 64 pp., 19.99; ages 4 to 8), by Philip C. Stead, is the sweetest and gentlest of the three. The subtitle, "Small Stories," is fitting; the focus is on mood, on reflection, on the moments when the natural world seems kind and safe. Stead's use of charcoal, pastel and crayon adds to the quiet, tender feeling that suffuses the collection. You may remember Vernon, a toad, from Stead's "A Home for Bird." In it, Vernon tries hard to entertain a new blue avian friend, unaware that Bird is not sentient but rather a wooden cuckoo fallen from a clock. What makes the story touching as well as funny is that Vernon takes Bird's silence for homesickness and tries desperately to make him happy. Stead's new collection is similarly kindhearted. In the first of the three stories, "Waiting," Vernon, well, waits. Like Vladimir and Estragon, he "waits, and waits, and waits." Stead deploys a huge amount of white space and a long minimalist line of green horizon to show just how all consuming waiting can be. Preschoolers will relate. When the wait finally ends, it's with an incongruous, giggle eliciting surprise. The second story, "Fishing," centers on Vernon's pal Porcupine and his anxiety about not knowing how to fish. One whole page is filled with an oversize, hunched, anxious Porcupine, little paws seeming to flex and clench with existential dread. ("I am ruining everything," he thinks, with the hopeless, neurotic intensity some adults would prefer to deny that small children feel.) But fishing turns out not to mean what we think it means, and when a fish leaps from the pond, surrounded by pussy willows and framed by a huge sun, the entire spread seems to explode with exuberant, ebullient color and humor. And in the final story, "Gardening," Vernon tries to remember his favorite things about his old friend Bird. "But sometimes," he thinks, "my memories are not so easy to remember." Porcupine and Skunk try to cheer him up with gifts of detritus from around the woods and pond an old shoe, a red and white fishing bob, some acorns. They want to make Vernon happy. The poetic allusions in the last story to visual and rhetorical references earlier in the collection (and to the earlier Vernon book, though you needn't have read that one to appreciate this one) feel careful and lovely. The joys of this book are writ small, but they feel big. By contrast, Sergio Ruzzier's FOX CHICK: The Party and Other Stories (Chronicle, 56 pp., 14.99; ages 5 to 8) shows that friendship can be challenging as well as comforting. Ruzzier, the author of picture books including "This Is Not a Picture Book!," has created a pair who seem to have nothing in common. Chick is a wacky little narcissist ping ponging around the page; Fox is the fond, amused straight man. Though the book is recommended for roughly the same ages as "Vernon Is on His Way," it's a much easier book for newly independent readers to enjoy solo, and I suspect they'll read it again and again. The minimal, deadpan text is entirely written in white space framed panels with word balloon dialogue, and like Ruzzier's clean, deceptively simple visual style, it goes down easy. In the first story, Chick throws a wild pool party in Fox's bathroom (oh, look, there's a mole passed out in the corner) and it becomes clear that Fox and Chick have different interpretations of what "may I use your bathroom?" means. In the second story, Chick asks why Fox doesn't follow a typical vulpine diet and chicksplains to him what proper foxes eat. (He intones, "They're supposed to eat squirrels ... lizards ... and little birds.") Three almost identical panels show the two friends chatting against a blue and white sky, but in the fourth panel, as Chick realizes what he's just said (and gulps "uh oh"), Chick is alone, oversize, in a frameless box of white space. In the next full page spread, all the ambient details are back as Chick flees, screaming. It's a visually hilarious one two punch, a perfect use of the comics medium. Two pages later, the friends share a delicious vegetarian soup. (Whew.) In the third story, persnickety Chick finds it difficult to be an artist's model. Fox, as ever, is imperturbable. It's a subtle lesson, couched in humor: We can be friends with people who aren't just like us. And we can devour stories about people whose lives are very different from ours. AKISSI: Tales of Mischief (Flying Eye, 188 pp., 14.99; ages 10 and up), by Marguerite Abouet, illustrated by Mathieu Sapin, feels new, daring, exciting and singular. Translated from French, it's a collection of 21 six page comics about a little girl in Ivory Coast, and it is utterly unputdownable. Based on Abouet's childhood memories of growing up in the port town of Abidjan (which also formed the basis of her award winning "Aya of Yop City" books for older readers, which have been translated into 15 languages), the rapid fire, action packed tales are wild and antic. The colors are electric purples, oranges, turquoises and bright yellows. Akissi has dark brown skin, beaded hair and a round Charlie Brown head ("You, with your big empty head, you're gonna get it!" her brother Fofana says through gritted teeth after she tattles on him. "It's you whose head looks like a huge pot!" she yells back, fleeing from him down a bright orange street with curly action lines shooting out behind her.) Akissi kidnaps a baby, gets a pet marmoset and deliberately contracts lice in an attempt to get her mom to cut off all her hair and avoid the pain of getting twists or braids. She plays middle of the night tricks (pee is involved), behaves appallingly in church, and sneaks into a movie. The sense of place is powerful. In a bravura extended sequence, Akissi and her cousins visit her Nan's distant village. They take a shared minibus (with "LET'S DRIVE FAST, WE'RE IN A HURRY" painted on the side), bouncing along dirt roads with a huge eyed, bewildered sheep tied to the roof atop a giant pile of luggage. There's an accident, and suitcases and pots and sheep go flying (the frame depicting the upside down, freaked out animal saying "baaa" as it flies over a cliff made me laugh out loud), but Akissi saves the day. Scary things happen: rogue coconuts, burning hair, poisonous snakes. But there's also cuddling with bunnies. I'd give "Akissi" to kids 10 and up, though the official publisher's recommendation skews younger. The type is perhaps forbiddingly tight, the illustrations are small and detailed, and the humor and situations may shock American kids with delicate sensibilities. (Akissi gets worms, which shoot out of more than one orifice after treatment.) That said, my 13 year old kept stealing the book from my desk; whenever I heard her howling with laughter, I knew what she was reading. That's another great thing about short stories: There's something for everyone. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
Each year in January, several of Manhattan's smaller dance spaces present anthologies of work by different choreographers and companies. Out of town presenters arrive to shop for items they can show back home, while New York dancegoers can catch up on what they might have missed. At the Joyce Theater whose weeklong season is called Focus Dance eight troupes are sharing four programs. Tuesday's opening night was a double bill by the choreographers Vicky Shick and Doug Elkins; the audience abounded with choreographers, presenters and dancers. This anthologizing of contemporary dance continues through this weekend. If you pitch camp at New York Live Arts (whose season is called Live Artery), you can catch pieces by 12 different choreographers or collectives. Such crammed programming doesn't always work out, however. Last year, the Japanese born duo Eiko and Koma gave a tepid impression in their performance in this sampler context, yet were at their most compelling a week later at the Museum of Modern Art. Each of the finest parts of Ms. Shick's "Everything You See" new in 2013 and entirely new to me cast its own spell. But there were gaps between those spells. The piece's time structure meandered, and the accompanying musical collage was inconsequential aural wallpaper. Still, at its best, this piece showed that no choreographer today has a more compelling mastery of the postmodern genre of dance deriving from Trisha Brown, in whose company Ms. Shick performed for six years. This is pedestrian movement turned into casual and lyrical virtuosity. One dancer stands, legs apart, pelvis shifting calmly from side to side, with the torso steadily tilting over sideways in a slow arc as arms blithely pull and push. Another dancer walks while her torso arches and tips; her arms open while her hands clasp the air. The multiple coordination is sensuous; and often there are four or more different solos going on at the same time. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
Damon Daunno, left, as Curly and Rebecca Naomi Jones as Laurey in Daniel Fish's reimagining of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical. How is it that the coolest new show on Broadway in 2019 is a 1943 musical usually regarded as a very square slice of American pie? The answer arrives before the first song is over in Daniel Fish's wide awake, jolting and altogether wonderful production of "Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma!," which opened on Sunday night at the Circle in the Square Theater. "Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin'" is the title and the opening line of this familiar number, a paean to a land of promisingly blue skies and open spaces. But Curly, the cowboy who sings it, isn't cushioned by the expected lush orchestrations. Nor is the actor playing him your usual solid slab of beefcake with a strapping tenor. As embodied by the excellent Damon Daunno, this lad of the prairies is wiry and wired, so full of unchanneled sexual energy you expect him to implode. There's the hint of a wobble in his cocky strut and voice. Doing his best to project a confidence he doesn't entirely feel, to the accompaniment of a down home guitar, he seems so palpably young. As is often true of big boys with unsettled hormones, he also reads as just a little dangerous. He's a lot like the feisty, ever evolving nation he's so proud to belong to. That would be the United States of America, then and now. Making his Broadway debut as a director, Mr. Fish has reconceived a work often seen as a byword for can do optimism as a mirror for our age of doubt and anxiety. This is "Oklahoma!" for an era in which longstanding American legacies are being examined with newly skeptical eyes. Such a metamorphosis has been realized with scarcely a changed word of Oscar Hammerstein II's original book and lyrics. This isn't an act of plunder, but of reclamation. And a cozy old friend starts to seem like a figure of disturbing and exciting depth and complexity. Mr. Fish's version isn't the first "Oklahoma!" to elicit the shadows from within the play's sunshine. Trevor Nunn and Susan Stroman's interpretation for London's National Theater of nearly two decades ago, while more traditionally staged, also scaled up the disquieting erotic elements. But this latest incarnation goes much further in digging to a core of fraught ambivalence. To do so, it strips "Oklahoma!" down to its skivvies, discarding the picturesque costumes and swirling orchestrations, and revealing a very human body that belongs to our conflicted present as much as it did to 1943 or to 1906, the year in which the show (based on Lynn Riggs's "Green Grow the Lilacs") takes place. What's new onstage and off: Sign up for our Theater Update newsletter. Laura Jellinek's set suggests a small town community center that might double as a polling station, decorated with festive banners, colored lights and a full arsenal of guns on the walls. It's made clear that we the audience are part of this community. The house lights stay on for much of the show, in a homogenizing brightness, that is occasionally and abruptly changed for pitch darkness. (Scott Zielinski is the first rate lighting designer.) There's chili cooking on the refectory tables onstage, for the audience's consumption at intermission. A seven member hootenanny style band sits in plain view. The well known melodies they play have been reimagined by the brilliant orchestrator and arranger Daniel Kluger with the vernacular throb and straightforwardness of country and western ballads. The cast members wearing a lot of good old, form fitting denim (Terese Wadden did the costumes) are just plain folks. Singing with conversational ease, they occasionally flirt and joke with the audience seated on either side of the stage. We are all, it would appear, in this together. Though the cast has been whittled down to 11 speaking parts (and one dancer), the key characters are very much present. They include our scrapping leading lovers, Curly McLain and Laurey Williams (Rebecca Naomi Jones); their comic counterparts, Will Parker (James Davis) and Ado Annie (Ali Stroker); that bastion of homespun wisdom and stoicism, Aunt Eller (Mary Testa) and the womanizing peddler Ali Hakim (Will Brill). Oh, I almost forgot poor old Jud Fry (Patrick Vaill), the slightly, well, weird handyman who's sweet, in a sour way, on Laurey. Everybody forgets Jud, or tries to. Not that this is possible, with Mr. Vaill lending a charismatic, hungry loneliness to the part that's guaranteed to haunt your nightmares. These people in some cases nontraditionally yet always perfectly cast intersect much as they usually do in "Oklahoma!" They court and spark, fight and reunite. They also show off by picking up guitars and microphones and dancing like prairie bacchantes. (John Heginbotham did the spontaneous feeling choreography.) They use household chores, like shucking corn, to memorably annotative effect. Ms. Stroker's boy crazy, country siren voiced Ado Annie, who rides a wheelchair as if it were a prize bronco, and Mr. Davis's deliciously dumb Will emanate a blissful endorphin haze. Mr. Brill is a refreshingly unmannered Ali Hakim, and Ms. Testa is a splendid, wryly authoritative Aunt Eller. But there's an abiding tension. This is especially evident in Ms. Jones's affectingly wary Laurey, who regards her very different suitors, Curly and Jud, with a confused combination of desire and terror. That her fears are not misplaced becomes clear in an encounter in Jud's dank hovel of a home. Curly sings "Pore Jud," in which he teasingly imagines his rival's funeral with an ominous breathiness. The scene occurs in darkness, with a simulcast video in black and white of the two men face to face. (Joshua Thorson did the projection design.) And the lines between sex and violence, already blurred in this gun toting universe, melt altogether. I first saw Mr. Fish's "Oklahoma!" at Bard College in 2015, and again at St. Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn last year. It was an exciting work from the get go, but it just keeps getting better. The performances are looser and bigger; they're Broadway size now, with all the infectious exuberance you expect from a great musical. At the same time, though, this production reminds us that such raw energy can be harnessed to different ends, for ill as well as for good. In the earlier versions, I had problems with its truly shocking conclusion the scene that takes the most liberties with the original. In its carefully retooled rendering, it's disturbing for all the right reasons. The other significant change here involves the dream ballet, which in this version begins the second act and has been newly varied and paced. It is performed by one dancer (the exquisite Gabrielle Hamilton) with a shaved head and a glittering T shirt that reads "Dream Baby Dream." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
Google's quantum computer. The company said in a paper published on Wednesday that the machine needed only a few minutes to perform a task that would take a supercomputer at least 10,000 years. SANTA BARBARA, Calif. Google said on Wednesday that it had achieved a long sought breakthrough called "quantum supremacy," which could allow new kinds of computers to do calculations at speeds that are inconceivable with today's technology. The Silicon Valley giant's research lab in Santa Barbara, Calif., reached a milestone that scientists had been working toward since the 1980s: Its quantum computer performed a task that isn't possible with traditional computers, according to a paper published in the science journal Nature. A quantum machine could one day drive big advances in areas like artificial intelligence and make even the most powerful supercomputers look like toys. The Google device did in 3 minutes 20 seconds a mathematical calculation that supercomputers could not complete in under 10,000 years, the company said in its paper. Scientists likened Google's announcement to the Wright brothers' first plane flight in 1903 proof that something is really possible even though it may be years before it can fulfill its potential. "The original Wright flyer was not a useful airplane," said Scott Aaronson, a computer scientist at the University of Texas at Austin who reviewed Google's paper before publication. "But it was designed to prove a point. And it proved the point." Still, some researchers cautioned against getting too excited about Google's achievement since so much more work needs to be done before quantum computers can migrate out of the research lab. Right now, a single quantum machine costs millions of dollars to build. Many of the tech industry's biggest names, including Microsoft, Intel and IBM as well as Google, are jockeying for a position in quantum computing. And venture capitalists have invested more than 450 million into start ups exploring the technology, according to a recent study. China is spending 400 million on a national quantum lab and has filed almost twice as many quantum patents as the United States in recent years. The Trump administration followed suit this year with its own National Quantum Initiative, promising to spend 1.2 billion on quantum research, including computers. One day, researchers believe, these devices could power advances in artificial intelligence or easily overwhelm the encryption that protects computers vital to national security. Because of that, the governments of the United States and China consider quantum computing a national security priority. Quantum computing, one of the "jazziest and most mysterious concepts" in science, has struggled to come of age. But first, scientists must prove such a machine can become more than a project that hints at what could eventually be possible. Traditional computers perform calculations by processing "bits" of information, with each bit holding either a 1 or a 0. That has been the case for decades. Understanding how a quantum computer is different requires a philosophical leap: accepting the notion that a single object can behave like two separate objects at the same time when it is either extremely small or extremely cold. By harnessing that odd behavior, scientists can instead build a quantum bit, or qubit, which stores a combination of 1 and 0. Two qubits can hold four values at once. And as the number of qubits grows, a quantum computer becomes exponentially more powerful. Scientists first described the idea in the 1980s, but qubits are fragile. Stringing even a few together can involve years of work. For the past several decades, labs in academia, industry and government have worked on quantum computing through a wide variety of techniques, including systems built around particles of light or electromagnetic fields that trap tiny charged particles. About 20 years ago, researchers in Japan pioneered "superconducting qubits," for which certain metals are chilled to extremely low temperatures. This method has shown particular promise, sparking projects at IBM, Google and Intel. Their machines look nothing like a regular computer. They are large cylinders of metal and twisted wires that are dropped into stainless steel refrigerators. You send information to the machine, as you would to a traditional computer chip, and receive calculations in return. "We have built a new kind of computer based on some of the unusual capabilities of quantum mechanics," said John Martinis, who oversaw the team that managed the hardware for Google's quantum supremacy experiment. Noting the computational power, he added, "We are now at the stage of trying to make use of that power." Google's paper became a bit of an internet mystery after it was published and then quickly unpublished online in late September. That brief appearance was enough to raise the hackles of researchers at competing companies who believe the Silicon Valley giant is inflating its accomplishment. "This is not about final and absolute dominance over classical computers," said Dario Gil, who heads the IBM research lab in Yorktown Heights, N.Y., where the company is building its own quantum computers. Other researchers dismissed the milestone because the calculation was notably esoteric. It generated random numbers using a quantum experiment that can't necessarily be applied to other things. Though IBM disputed that Google had really accomplished all that much, Dr. Gil argued that quantum computers were indeed getting closer to reality. "By 2020, we will be able to use them for commercial and scientific advantage," he said. Like much of the cutting edge work being done in corporate research labs, Google's quantum effort has its roots in academia. In 2014, Google hired a team of physicists who had spent the previous several years working on quantum computing at the University of California, Santa Barbara. As its paper was published, Google responded to IBM's claims that its quantum calculation could be performed on a classical computer. "We've already peeled away from classical computers, onto a totally different trajectory," a Google spokesman said in a statement. "We welcome proposals to advance simulation techniques, though it's crucial to test them on an actual supercomputer, as we have." The calculation performed by Google's machine is a way of showing that a complex quantum system can be reliable. The company also believes the random numbers it generates could have practical uses. As the machines get better over time, they could help improve cryptography, or even aid in the creation of new medicines or materials, said Daniel Lidar, a professor at the University of Southern California who specializes in quantum computing. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
LOS ANGELES Sandra Bullock and Ellen DeGeneres have spent the last two years in a behind the scenes battle with obscure internet companies that peddle beauty products with fabricated endorsements. As soon as one site is taken down, another pops up in its place. Tired of playing Whac a Mole, the stars went public with their fight on Wednesday, filing a lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court. They are suing over false advertising and the unauthorized use of their names and likenesses to endorse products a "right of publicity" claim. Because Ms. DeGeneres and Ms. Bullock do not know for sure who is behind the fraud, the defendants are identified as John Does Nos. 1 through 100. "These companies change names frequently, merge in and out of entities formed in states that allow for secrecy, operate websites that pop up and disappear overnight, and generally do everything possible to 'stay one step ahead of the sheriff,'" the complaint said. Michael J. Kump, who is Ms. Bullock's lawyer, and Michael E. Weinsten, who is representing Ms. DeGeneres, can now issue subpoenas to uncover the players. The lawsuit shines a light on so called celebrity endorsement theft, which has become a problem for Hollywood in the digital age. It relies on exploiting loopholes in a fast growing area of advertising known as affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing largely involves two online entities: merchants and publishers. Merchants (anyone with something to sell) pay publishers (including bloggers, YouTube influencers, even the New York Times owned review site Wirecutter) to create ads or links that drive consumers to point of sale websites. Each click that results in a sale earns the publisher a commission: 10 percent from Amazon for a luxury beauty purchase, for instance. By next year, it will be a 6.8 billion business, according to estimates from Forrester Consulting, sprawling across websites, email and social media platforms. Most participants are aboveboard. Others are not, and they are the target of the lawsuit filed by Ms. Bullock and Ms. DeGeneres. A common trick involves setting up fake news sites. The scammers then post a real image Ms. Bullock appearing on NBC's "Today" show to promote a film, to use one example from her lawsuit that has been doctored to become an endorsement: "Sandra Bullock Talks About Her New Skin Care Line." (She has never had a skin care line.) An accompanying link leads to a site selling the celebrity's supposed products. Another ad included as an exhibit in the lawsuit fabricated an interview: "Sandra even admitted that plastic surgeons are furious with her after noticing a large decline in patients." (Nope.) In their complaint, the film star and the talk show host listed 40 beauty products that have been sold online with their names fraudulently attached, items like Bella Pelle Wrinkle Cream, that "they have never heard of, used or endorsed." "The celebrity endorsement theft business model is based on a scheme to trick consumers into disclosing their credit card and/or debit card information in order to enroll them in costly programs with undisclosed, or poorly disclosed, recurring charges," Ms. Bullock and Ms. DeGeneres said in the complaint. Ads for the products "typically include unsubstantiated claims that the products will lead to dramatic results," they added. 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. Many of the fake ads associated with Ms. DeGeneres and Ms. Bullock offer free trials. In practice, customers are often charged full price, the complaint said. Dubious offers of free trials put forward online through affiliate marketers "have infested the internet and social media" and cost more than a million victims upward of 1.3 billion over the past decade, according to a report last year from the Better Business Bureau. The number of complaints has also surged abroad, with Australian regulators reporting that for the first nine months of 2018, complaints rose fivefold and losses soared 3,800 percent nearly 40 times more than in the previous year. Fabricated endorsements have been an issue since moviedom's earliest days. The problem became more serious in the 1970s, when advertisers began to pay celebrities huge sums to appear in television commercials: Suddenly a lot of money was at stake. Today, those deals are worth tens of millions of dollars more than film work, even for most A list stars. Julia Roberts, for instance, signed a five year endorsement contract with Lancome cosmetics in 2010 that was valued at 50 million. The littering of the internet with phony endorsements can imperil stars' reputations and limit their ability to secure legitimate endorsement deals. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
Cars and S.U.V.s are not solely about transportation. If that were the case, we'd all be driving old Honda Civics and Ford Explorers. People want to drive their personalities, and because of that, the Cadillac Escalade looms large in pop culture. And if merely big isn't big enough, Cadillac offers the ESV model that I recently tested, with a wheelbase 14 inches longer than the standard model's. Admittedly, when the Escalade came out as a 1999 model, I saw it as the next Cimarron a thinly disguised Chevy Tahoe with a new grille and better seats. It seemed a bit ridiculous at the time, but it's a good thing I wasn't the head of Cadillac's product planning department. The Escalade taught an important lesson: that the customer is king. Americans continue to covet the Cadillac S.U.V.'s large and in charge gravitas, and the Escalade makes a lot of money for General Motors. The 2015 Escalade is 17 percent more efficient on the highway than the previous model, so customers can feel less guilt about melting the polar ice caps. And when G.M. replaces the current 6 speed automatic with an 8 speed unit, the E.P.A. rating of 14 miles per gallon in town, and 20 on the highway, should get a slight upward bump. The fourth generation Escalade is far more distinct and luxurious than the original or its other predecessors. The interior is unique to Cadillac, and the gracefully menacing exterior no longer looks like a Chevy that ditched its bow tie. The Escalade's additional presence, power and luxury are tangible, though Chevrolet owners get a better user interface in MyLink. The touch sensitivity of Cadillac's Cue system is lethargic. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Automobiles |
Breathe a tiny sigh of relief, if not exactly contentment: the American economy grew just barely in the last quarter of 2012. Output expanded at an annual rate of 0.1 percent, which is basically indistinguishable from no growth at all and which is far below the growth needed to get unemployment back to normal. But at least the economy did not shrink, as the Commerce Department estimated in January, when the first report suggested that output had contracted at an annual rate of 0.1 percent. The department's latest estimate for economic output, released on Thursday, showed that growth was depressed by declines in military spending (possibly in anticipation of the across the board spending cuts that are to begin on Friday) and in how much companies restocked shelves. "The good news with business inventories is that what they take away in one quarter they tend to add to the next," said Paul Ashworth, chief North American economist at Capital Economics, referring to the measure of this restocking process. "So there's a good chance that first quarter numbers will be better than originally thought." The growth in output was revised upward from the original estimate partly thanks to updated, and improved, data on business investment and net trade. Imports were lower than previously reported and exports were higher. Economists expect government spending to continue to drag on the economy this year, especially if Congress does not avert the spending cuts, which would shave around 0.6 percentage point off growth. Many hope that even if the cuts go through, Congress will quickly reverse them. "They can always change their minds when they have to renew the continuing budget resolution at the end of this month or in April or May," said Mr. Ashworth. "My expectation is that at most the cuts stay a month or two, and in most departments, with a wink or a nod, they won't do anything crazy." Even if government does lop off 85 billion in the so called sequester, as current law states, the private sector will offset most of this drag, thanks to the housing recovery and other sources of strength. Forecasts for the first quarter call for annual growth of 2.4 to 3 percent. Monetary stimulus from the Federal Reserve, while under fire from some Republicans, is also helping offset the fiscal contraction. "With monetary policy working with a lag and still being eased, the boost to the economy is probably still growing," said Jim O'Sullivan, chief United States economist at High Frequency Economics. The combination of monetary expansion and fiscal tightening has helped lead to a painfully slow decline in the unemployment rate. The jobless rate stood at 7.9 percent in January. The recent end of the payroll tax holiday is also expected to hold back consumer spending and with it job growth. The Labor Department reported on Thursday that first time claims for unemployment benefits decreased by 22,000, to 344,000, last week. The less volatile four week moving average fell to 355,000 from 361,750. "I think it's largely steady as she goes for employment," said Jay Feldman, an economist at Credit Suisse, of the indications from the latest growth report. "I still think we're in kind of a 175,000 jobs a month clip for a while, but with some downside risks later in the year from the sequester." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Economy |
The time to toast the days of late summer is now. But with indoor bars still largely off limits, finding a well crafted cocktail is more difficult than it used to be. That's where a good wet bar comes in handy. "I have a lot of bar tools, and I like having a kit that's pretty," said David Kaplan, the founder and an owner of the cocktail bar Death Co, based on Manhattan's Lower East Side. "But the kit I reach for most is still hyper functional." Every serious home bar should have weighted shaking tins, a mixing glass, a Hawthorne strainer, a mixing spoon and a quality jigger, he said. Also, consider extras like a muddler and ice trays with intriguing shapes. Mr. Kaplan keeps his workhorse accessories in a closed cabinet, but leaves his best looking pieces, including a laser cut strainer and a rose gold spoon, on display. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
When Joel Thompson composed "The Seven Last Words of the Unarmed," he didn't intend for anyone to hear the piece. It was 2014. That summer, Michael Brown was shot and killed by a white police officer in Ferguson, Mo., and Eric Garner died in a chokehold during a botched arrest on Staten Island. For weeks, Mr. Thompson then 25, with a degree in choral conducting watched footage of Mr. Garner's death on loop. Reeling, he tried to find a way to channel his sadness and anger. He eventually took the final words of Mr. Brown, Mr. Garner and five other unarmed Black men who had been killed during encounters with the police, and set them to music for choir. But when he was finished, he put the piece away. The work may well have stayed on his computer's hard drive had Freddie Gray, a 25 year old Black man, not died of a severe spinal cord injury the following year while in police custody in Baltimore. Mr. Gray's death inspired Mr. Thompson to post on social media, asking if there was anyone interested in helping him bring his piece to life. A friend suggested that he reach out to Eugene Rogers. As the director of choirs at the University of Michigan, Dr. Rogers was known for leading works that involved history and activism, on subjects like Matthew Shepard, the gay University of Wyoming student who was murdered in 1998, and Harriet Tubman. "The Seven Last Words of the Unarmed" was a bit riskier: The Black Lives Matter movement was still fairly new then, and still widely perceived as extreme. But in October 2015, Dr. Rogers led the university's Men's Glee Club in the premiere. Mr. Thompson's 15 minute piece echoes the liturgical structure of Haydn's "The Seven Last Words of Christ." The first movement is a moody setting of "Why do you have your guns out?" the final words of Kenneth Chamberlain Sr., who was shot and killed by a bullet from an officer's .40 caliber pistol in White Plains in 2011. After moving through the words of Trayvon Martin, Amadou Diallo, Mr. Brown, Oscar Grant and John Crawford, the final section is a stirring rendering of Mr. Garner's words, now a rallying cry: "I can't breathe." The audience response to early performances was mixed, at best. When Dr. Rogers and the glee club toured cities including Washington and Johannesburg, the reaction was sometimes aggressive. "I took a lot of heat," Dr. Rogers said in an interview. "I went against many people who asked me not to do the piece. We had people in the audience rip up their programs and throw them in the trash, right in front of the choir, and walk out. I had letters written to my dean about it." But now, in the wake of the death of George Floyd, the protests about police violence that have engulfed the nation and the sudden, broad realignment of opinion on racial issues, the work is finding new, and newly enthusiastic, listeners. On June 4, Carnegie Hall streamed a recording on its website and social media channels. "People wouldn't touch it with a 10 foot pole five years ago," Mr. Thompson said. "I'm grateful that people are willing to engage with it now, but I'm also simultaneously frustrated. I'm hoping that the people who are sharing this piece come to realize how white supremacy itself has been embedded into this genre. We need to make substantive structural change to how things are run in classical music." Had the coronavirus pandemic not hit, Mr. Thompson said, he would currently be lost in the archives of the Tallahassee Symphony Orchestra; the ensemble received a grant from the National Endowment of the Arts to commission a piece from him about the 1956 Tallahassee bus boycott. Instead, he spoke from his apartment in New Haven, Conn., occasionally setting the phone down to play riffs from his keyboard as he explained his work. Here are edited excerpts from the conversation. You're a Black Jamaican American in a predominantly white space. How did you get involved in classical composition? I started playing piano in church services. I was pretty much self taught up until that point, so I had horrible technique. Classical music moved to the foreground when I was an undergraduate at Emory. I didn't think it was really possible for me to do classical music. But I remember, I went to my first Atlanta Symphony Orchestra concert. They played Alvin Singleton's "PraiseMaker," and it was the first time I heard classical music from a Black composer. That's when I sort of figured it was possible. Do you think it was easier to trust another Black man to be the conductor of "The Seven Last Words of the Unarmed" because of your shared experience? When Dr. Rogers told me he was interested in the piece, he came down to Atlanta and met with me over tea. We went through the score together. He shared how moved he was, as a Black male, studying the score, and seeing what I was saying, and what I was feeling. I saw the emotional effect that the piece had on him. We had frank conversations about our experiences as Black people in classical music. While you're both Black, the Men's Glee Club, which originally performed the piece, is largely not. Was this something you all talked about? Oh, it was hard. There were people in the chorus who didn't want to perform it. We had alums of the club who had a problem with it. But Dr. Rogers's pedagogy was crucial, and needs to be adopted by other predominantly white choirs. He made sure all the men did their research about these deaths, that they were educated. Everyone's cultural competency went up like five notches. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
For the last 20 years, the American sculptor Tara Donovan has been making art out of the artificial: plastic cups, drinking straws, Mylar tape, those mini golf pencils, even the humble Slinky toy. With these and an array of other materials, Donovan constructs site specific works that recall landscapes or organic forms. On the eve of the publication of "Tara Donovan: Fieldwork" (Rizzoli, 60), by Nora Burnett Abrams, and an accompanying retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, Donovan described pieces of her work and spoke about her creative process and philosophy, as well as the whole "starving artist" thing: "I started out working with mass produced materials because they were what was accessible to me as a poor art student they were cheap." "With every project, I isolate a new material and have to figure it all out from the beginning. I'm always looking for certain physical traits that can somehow be activated outside of the material itself. Transparency and reflectivity are important, because those traits respond to light, and they can be amplified or subdued according to the conditions in the space. A single drinking straw has a very clear purpose that's universal, but a million straws together they become something else entirely. They take on ethereal and atmospheric qualities that aren't present when you're just observing a single straw. "For this piece pictured at top I started out working with index cards, but I can't make art out of things that are going to disintegrate. So I sourced those styrene plastic cards, which I'd first worked with for an installation at Pace in 2014. I was particularly interested in privileging the edge of the card as a means to develop horizontal strata that would ascend. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
NASHVILLE The cabin my husband and I borrowed last week was first built in Kentucky on our friends' family land more than 100 years ago. The timbers are rough hewed, and you can still see the bark on some of the beams as the builders conserved every inch of the trees they felled from a forest that must have seemed endless. Our friends dismantled the cabin in 1987 and brought the timbers back to Tennessee, where they used them to build a new cabin on the Cumberland Plateau. It is now perched at the edge of a windswept bluff overlooking Lost Cove, one of the most biodiverse places in the world, right where the heavens come together with the earth. In the five days we spent there to celebrate our anniversary, we walked in an endless garden Queen Anne's lace and forest tickseed, Carolina horsenettle and narrowleaf vervain, annual fleabane and zigzag spiderwort and oxeye daisies were all growing wild. The woods were filled with songbirds: blue jays and goldfinches and tufted titmice and chickadees and bluebirds and even the secretive scarlet tanager. Tanagers generally keep to the treetops, but the trees growing in the soil of Lost Cove reach up to the edge of the bluff. From our own perch, we had a bird's eye view of the trees. We watched a pair of red tailed hawks teaching their fledglings to hunt. We listened to a pileated woodpecker's wild cry from the top of a dead tree and heard a red fox barking in the dark as two barred owls called to each other: Who, who, who cooks for you? At Lost Cove, the nights are as beautiful as the days. The fireflies come out to fill the forest just as the stars come out to fill the skies. The sound that woke me in the first stirrings of dawn one morning was the cry of a small animal a mouse, perhaps, or a chipmunk in the claws, or jaws, of a predator. It was a piteous sound coming from directly beneath our window. The creature cried out, just once, and then was silent. I've mostly made peace with the fact that the peaceable kingdom is anything but. All day long and all night long, too, every creature on that bluff, like every creature deep in the cove itself and every creature in my suburban yard in Nashville and every creature scurrying down every city alleyway, is both trying to eat and trying not to be eaten. An insect eating scarlet tanager is not inherently less violent than the owl that eats songbirds. A rabbit is not somehow "better" for eating wildflowers than a fox is for eating rabbits. This is how the natural world works, and there is no wishing it were otherwise. But knowing about such suffering is not the same as being a witness to such suffering, and I did not go back to sleep that early morning. My ambivalence in this matter of mortality explains why I was both completely fascinated and completely terrified by the small rattlesnake my husband found curled up next to the front porch of the cabin later that day. I was afraid, but I wasn't only afraid. I was also a little bit in love with the magnificent creature that was calmly surveying us from behind a laurel, making not a sound. "The markings are all wrong," I said. "It has to be a timber rattler." "It's way too small to be a timber rattler," my husband said. "Rattlesnakes don't start out five feet long," I said. Throughout this lengthy conversation, which I have truncated for the sake of your sanity, the snake in question did not stir. It was utterly motionless, so still it provided what my husband believed was unassailable evidence of his point: "If this is a rattlesnake, why isn't it rattling?" One of his former students settled the question after my husband texted him a picture of the snake. Jackson Roberts is now a doctoral candidate in herpetology at Louisiana State University, and he confirmed that we had in fact been visited by a young timber rattlesnake. "You were really lucky to get to see one," he told us. "They're very shy, and they're becoming more rare as we clear out their habitat. And as people kill them." I asked Mr. Roberts why the snake hadn't deployed its trademark warning device. "The rattle is a last ditch defensive strategy against predators," he said. "They'd much rather hunker down and wait for trouble to leave." To a rattlesnake, in other words, we are the trouble. We are the predators. Timber rattlesnakes are declining in many states, including here in Tennessee, and it's illegal to kill one. It's actually illegal to kill any snake in Tennessee unless it poses a direct threat to you. Thing is, there's never any reason to consider a snake a direct threat. Unless you're the one posing a direct threat to the snake if, say, you're trying to kill it a snake will simply sit quietly and wait for you to go away. Barely two days after this peaceful rattlesnake entered my ken and installed itself in my dreams, the Orianne Society, a conservation nonprofit based in Tiger, Ga., started a new initiative to celebrate rattlesnakes. Every day for the month leading up to World Snake Day on July 16, Orianne is posting clips on social media of chief executive Chris Jenkins talking about snake biology, safe hiking in rattlesnake country, what to do when you encounter a snake, etc. basically anything that might encourage people to stop killing snakes. A fear of rattlesnakes is not unfounded. My own cousin's maternal grandfather died decades ago when he stepped on a rattlesnake too far out in the woods to get medical help in time to treat the bite. To the snake, he was a threat. To his family, that didn't matter. The only thing that mattered to them was that he was dead. But the truth is that an animal can be dangerous and still pose almost no threat to people. According to Dr. Jenkins, snakebites are rare, and up to 50 percent of rattlesnake strikes are "dry bites" in which the snake doesn't actually inject venom. Nevertheless, our culture has taught us to associate serpents not only with danger but also with evil. The only antidote to these associations is information. "Unless you're actively trying to catch or kill a rattlesnake, the chance of being bitten is very low," said Dr. Jenkins. "Many more people die every year from horses whether they get thrown off or they get kicked than from snakes. Many more people die from bees and wasps. If you encounter a rattlesnake, you should be excited. It's a symbol that you're in a wild place, a special place." It's hard to imagine a time when rattlesnakes, no matter how shy and how peaceful, will be welcomed without fear. But I like to think we can still "complicate our perceptions," as my friend Erica Wright writes in her forthcoming book, "Snake." Perhaps we can yet learn, as she puts it, to "recognize the grace alongside the fangs and venom. Complicated. Sublime. Awful and beautiful at once." When we checked in the last light of day, our rattlesnake visitor was still sitting quietly in the flower bed. By morning it was gone, vanished into the dappled light of the forest or a shady crevice of that ancient limestone bluff. We never saw it again. Margaret Renkl is a contributing opinion writer who covers flora, fauna, politics and culture in the American South. She is the author of the book "Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss." 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 |
Mark and Penelope Greene took what was once considered a fairly traditional path in marriage. They both worked outside the home until they had children. Then Mrs. Greene stayed home, running a small consulting business between parenting obligations, and Mr. Greene continued working as an economist. Decades on, he became the chief executive of the Fair Isaac Corporation the company behind the FICO credit score and later chief executive of OpenLink Financial, a software company. While she managed their family life, he typically handled the finances. But recently, Mr. Greene said, he began to think more about making changes to their personal finances. He said he didn't want to be the only one who knew what was happening and wanted his wife to be more involved. And that, the Greenes said, was the impetus for spending the better part of five years making sure they both understood the family's finances. Now in their 60s and living in Minneapolis, the couple said Mrs. Greene could manage the family's wealth alone. "I didn't need to be involved before, and I was thankful for that," she said. "But that moment when you have all your ducks in a row for retirement, how are you going to handle all of the stock options but also all of the other stuff? How are you going to prepare for the next step that fixed income part of life? That's a sobering moment for anyone." Much gets written about the need for financial education for children and young adults. And there is plenty more written about the need for financial transparency and openness in marriages. But many couples share financial information with each other sparingly. Sometimes, this is by design. Other times, it happens because life gets complicated with children and careers and it's just easier to divvy up responsibilities and trust that the other one has it covered. It's pretty obvious how this can go wrong, from the death or disability of the one who knows all to a divorce in which one spouse is left in the dark about the financial picture. But it often isn't easy for couples who want to change the way they talk about money after decades of marriage. After all, they found one model that worked for them, and now, with the grim probability that one will die before the other starting to set in, they are being forced to change. "The ideal is where the woman is willing to come to the table and listen to the financial conversations," said Martha Pomerantz, a partner and portfolio manager in the Minneapolis office of Evercore Wealth Management. "There are some older women, 70s or 80s, and they just don't want anything to do with it. They could outlive their spouse and be left with a big huge mess." Advisers can certainly help start a conversation. Ms. Pomerantz said the firm ran seminars to help spouses understand their finances, including one called Wise Women, for wives who needed to learn more. Ms. Pomerantz says she makes a point of addressing the spouse, male or female, who seems to know less. "I make sure that other spouse feels included," she said. "We present the material in a simple way one page that has all the info, not the long song and dance about what is going on in the investment world. It's more about what's important to the family." Mrs. Greene said the family had been working with an adviser who has made her feel included, from the higher level ideas down to the more granular details she wants to understand. Locast, a nonprofit streaming service for local TV, is shutting down Capital One's chief executive was fined after being called a 'repeat offender.' "After we each had our individual meetings with the partners, then we'd have special planning meetings where we would have topics," she said. "We'd go piece by piece through everything that was out there. We talked about every single aspect of the planning. It took us four to five meetings to get started." But these conversations need to be more than an airing of financial details. They need to drive meaningful action. As a result of their conversations, Mr. Greene put a significant portion of the family wealth in Mrs. Greene's name. "She has more money in her account than I do in mine," he said. "She's the trustee for a variety of accounts for our kids and I'm not." One impetus for the Greenes was seeing what friends have gone through. "I meet a lot of women who are in situations where they say, 'Oh, no, everything's a mess,'" Mrs. Greene said. "I don't know what they're doing." Yet not all of these conversations go as planned. "It's a messy situation if there's been no involvement on both parties' parts when it comes to talking about the money," said Kristy Archuleta, a consultant to the Hartford Funds' Human centric Insights Panel and an associate professor at Kansas State University's Institute of Personal Financial Planning. While talking about investments is important, how much a couple spends, donates or leaves to their children is going to have a greater impact on their financial lives as they age. She said most people would be better served by tackling this task incrementally. "First, they should locate where the accounts are and ask, 'How are the bills paid?'" she said. "They should also go at separate times. You don't want to overload the person who hasn't been involved." In certain cases, where one spouse is controlling or insists that he or she made the money so he or she should make the decisions, Ms. Archuleta said professional counseling is needed. "They may not know how to use their voices and how to be involved," she said, referring to the spouse with less knowledge. Suzanne Wheeler, a partner and senior wealth adviser at Mariner Wealth Advisors in Tulsa, Okla., said that even when the couples want to share information, their styles of communication may be sufficiently different that an adviser needs to help with the discussion. "Some couples I work with really want to dig down in all the details," she said. "Some are bottom line people. When you bring those two together, it can be frustrating." She said she often works backward from establishing what the individuals care the most about. From there, she goes into a deeper discussion about the family's finances. Joslyn G. Ewart, founding principal of Entrust Financial, said an easy way into the conversation can be to start with insurance documents. This, she said, will prompt questions like, "How are we protected against the unknown? What do we own that provides that protection?" Even couples who plan to have these conversations don't always do it early enough. Ralph and Lois Glassberg, both in their 70s and living in New York, share everything about their family finances, but they said they were puzzled by friends their age who don't do the same. "We sit down with our friends and hear stories about the spouse does this or that or the guy runs everything and controls all the investments and takes care of all the business aspects," Mr. Glassberg said. But then, he said, he heard from friends in Arizona about a friend who died and had controlled the finances. "He had everything on his computer investments all over the place. But everything was protected by passwords," he said. His wife "didn't know the passwords." Mrs. Greene said she is completely at ease with the family's financial situation now, but she has one regret. "It wasn't really until Mark was able to retire" that they looked at this, she said. She said she wished she had done this sharing earlier " because you could make even better decisions." But at least they know now. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Your Money |
Anna Netrebko sings the title role in "Aida" at the Metropolitan Opera for the first time in September. She is scheduled to be joined by Aleksandrs Antonenko and Quinn Kelsey, under Nicola Luisotti's baton. This fall's classical music calendar features more than 100 events. Dates are subject to change. Read more listings for art, dance, film, pop music, television and theater. Add events directly to your calendar. THE CROSSING Luminous and acute, this vocal ensemble, based in Philadelphia, deals with questions of war, peace and national identity in "Of Arms and the Man," a mixed program at the Park Avenue Armory that includes a premiere by Ted Hearne. (The Crossing will bring another politically charged event, "The National Anthems," featuring works by Mr. Hearne, David Lang and Caroline Shaw, to Peak Performances at Montclair State University on Sept. 29.) Sept. 19, armoryonpark.org. JAAP VAN ZWEDEN The New York Philharmonic's 26th music director, an exacting Dutch maestro who last brought the Dallas Symphony Orchestra into the top tier of American ensembles, begins his tenure this season. After the genial repertory explorations and playful experiments of Alan Gilbert, this may well be an era of more driven, even fussy performances. The opening gala introduces a work by Ashley Fure alongside a Ravel piano concerto, with Daniil Trifonov, and "The Rite of Spring." Mr. van Zweden leads a similarly broad variety over the rest of the season, including premieres by Conrad Tao, David Lang (his opera "prisoner of the state") and Julia Wolfe ("Fire in my mouth"), as well as works by Bruckner, Louis Andriessen (a focus this year), Britten, Shostakovich, Mozart, Beethoven, Rachmaninoff, Brahms, Ives, John Adams, Schumann, Mahler and John Corigliano. "Phil the Hall," in April, is intended to telegraph the Philharmonic's new openness to its community; two series led by Nadia Sirota, "Nightcap" and "Sound On," promise intimate encounters with contemporary music. The baritone Matthias Goerne is the artist in residence. (Mr. van Zweden will not, I repeat not, lead the "Home Alone" score, performed live with the film, Dec. 20 21.) Season opens on Sept. 20; nyphil.org. JACK QUARTET These exceptional new music specialists appear in the spooky confines of the catacomb at Green Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn with a program of John Zorn, Chaya Czernowin, Marcos Balter and arrangements of medieval plainchant. (On Nov. 9 the JACK, its quality unaffected by recent personnel changes, arrives at the 92nd Street Y with the New York premiere of a very New York themed quartet by Andreia Pinto Correia, based on a poem by Hart Crane, alongside works by Sabrina Schroeder, Zosha Di Castri and Ligeti. And on April 14, the group plays Elliott Carter's five quartets in a single, very long program at the Morgan Library Museum.) Sept. 24, deathofclassical.com. 'AIDA' Anna Netrebko sings the title role at the Met for the first time, joined by Aleksandrs Antonenko and Quinn Kelsey, under Nicola Luisotti's baton. The barn burning mezzo soprano Anita Rachvelishvili (Amneris) also takes on Dalila later in the season and stars again opposite Ms. Netrebko in a new production of Cilea's potboiler "Adriana Lecouvreur" on New Year's Eve. That opera, also starring Piotr Beczala and Ambrogio Maestri, is conducted by Gianandrea Noseda and directed by David McVicar. (Cilea's even rarer "Gloria" will be presented by the hardworking Teatro Grattacielo earlier in the season; Ms. Netrebko is scheduled for her several times delayed Carnegie Hall recital debut on Dec. 9; and Ms. Rachvelishvili will reprise her Amneris with the great Verdian Riccardo Muti and his Chicago Symphony Orchestra in June.) Opens Sept. 26; metopera.org. LEILA BORDREUIL This subtle cellist, composer and artist brings to Issue Project Room "Episodes et Mutations," a quietly shifting auditory and visual landscape, with sounds from the Mivos Quartet and a light installation by Doron Sadja. Sept. 26, issueprojectroom.org. HOUSTON GRAND OPERA Exiled for a season from its home at the Wortham Theater Center by Hurricane Harvey, this company returns with a concert featuring Placido Domingo, who starred in "Aida" when the Wortham was inaugurated in 1987. Season opens on Sept. 26; houstongrandopera.org. 'PROVING UP' The composer Missy Mazzoli and the librettist Royce Vavrek's follow up to their bleakly beautiful "Breaking the Waves" is also gloomy, based on a short story about Nebraska homesteaders after the Civil War. After a run in Omaha, the work opens the season at the Miller Theater, which describes it as the first in a series of chamber operas the Miller will help create. Sept. 26, 28, millertheatre.com. LOS ANGELES PHILHARMONIC Not content to settle for any old anniversary gala, this peerlessly ambitious orchestra celebrates its 100th birthday with dozens of commissions this season, an almost alarming concentration of music from rising composers as well as masters like John Adams, Unsuk Chin, Philip Glass and Steve Reich. It's all a little dizzying: a new orchestral work by Andrew Norman; an array of dance partnerships; LA Fest, whose programs run from new chamber works to Moby; a Fluxus festival that includes music by La Monte Young and two of John Cage's "Europeras"; an exploration of William Grant Still and the Harlem Renaissance; a fresh staging of Meredith Monk's "Atlas." A good chunk of this will be led by Gustavo Dudamel, the Philharmonic's star music director, who makes his Met Opera debut with Verdi's "Otello" in December. Season opens Sept. 27; laphil.com. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
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. Dr. Rick Bright, the whistle blower who was ousted as the head of a federal medical research agency "and replaced with the guy who makes Trump's omelets at Mar a Lago," according to Jimmy Kimmel testified in front of a House subcommittee on Thursday, saying he believed the Trump administration had failed to heed his early warnings about preparing the country for Covid 19. Kimmel and other late night hosts delved into Bright's testimony and President Trump's characteristic response. "Bright said if we don't get our act together, the United States could be headed for 'the darkest winter in modern history.' The good news is, it sounds like he's saying we might make it to winter." JIMMY KIMMEL "This was a scary hearing today. Dr. Bright warned us that the window is closing to address the pandemic. And, you know, unless that window is a drive through window at KFC, there's no way Trump's even going to bother." JIMMY KIMMEL "Of course, as he was watching that, there was a good chance Trump was sneezing into his hands, surrounded by reporters and wearing a face mask over his eyes. as Trump 'If I can't see you, I can't give you the corona.'" SETH MEYERS "Even before the hearing began, Trump went on the offensive, tweeting: 'I don't know the so called whistle blower Rick Bright, never met him or even heard of him, but to me he is a disgruntled employee, not liked or respected by people I spoke to and who, with his attitude, should no longer be working for our government!' That's quite a preamble. as Trump 'Before I assassinate this guy's character, let me first say, I have no idea what I'm talking about.'" STEPHEN COLBERT "That's right 'I don't know him, never met him, don't know anything about him, but he sucks.' At this point, does Donald Trump have any 'gruntled' employees?" JIMMY KIMMEL "And he should know a disgruntled, unhappy person when he sees one, because he married three of 'em." STEPHEN COLBERT In Wisconsin, meanwhile, bars in Milwaukee and elsewhere filled up after Gov. Tony Evers's stay at home order was struck down. "To prevent rising infection rates, Evers had closed up Wisconsin until the end of May or at least, he tried to do that, because last night, the Wisconsin Supreme Court struck down the governor's stay at home order. No! Staying closed is the only way to keep Wisconsin safe! It's already too close to Michigan's mitten. We have no idea where that thing's been!" STEPHEN COLBERT "Now, within minutes of the decision, the Tavern League of Wisconsin posted to its Facebook page, 'Open immediately!' Fair enough. I guess we should not expect too much common sense from the Tavern League of Wisconsin. You know their motto: 'Don't let 'em take your keys, bro!'" STEPHEN COLBERT "Now, look, I do sympathize with people in Wisconsin. I mean, even in normal times, they only get to be outside, like, two months a year. I mean, their weather is a natural lockdown. But here's the thing that gets me I understand people who feel like getting kids in school, getting back to work and reopening doctors' offices is worth the risk of coronavirus. Right? I get it. I understand where you are coming from. But if the first thing you do when you're not locked down is pack yourself into bars where you're spraying into each other's faces, something tells me you give zero expletive ." TREVOR NOAH "In the ruling, one justice made an especially stunning comparison, saying, 'This comprehensive claim to control virtually every aspect of a person's life is something we normally associate with a prison, not a free society governed by the rule of law.' OK, calm down, your honor. If this was prison, you wouldn't be sitting on your couch watching 'Tiger King,' you'd be his cellmate." STEPHEN COLBERT The "Daily Social Distancing Show" correspondent Desi Lydic watched Fox News for 48 hours, hoping to find out what Obamagate might be. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
President elect Donald J. Trump has vowed to dismantle many of the signature policies put in place by the Obama administration to fight the effects of climate change. During the campaign, he threatened, among other things, to kill the Clean Power Plan, a set of rules to reduce emissions from power plants. He has also taken aim at new regulations to limit methane leaks from wells and pipelines. And members of his transition team have suggested that he may reduce or eliminate basic climate research at NASA or other agencies. If he follows through, most of these moves will be opposed by environmental groups, by Democrats in Congress and perhaps even by some Republicans. But Mr. Trump will have several tools to begin nullifying the Obama climate agenda. One of them is the little known Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, a small outpost within the executive branch that has, since the Clinton administration, been the last stop for many regulations before they go into effect. Lawyers in the office pore over thousands of pages of federal regulations daily and pride themselves on meticulously reviewing the fine print, even if that takes months or years. Under the control of the new administration, the office could slow President Obama's latest regulatory initiatives by repeatedly sending them back for additional work. "It has been a brake on agency regulation throughout its lifetime," said Jody Freeman, a professor at Harvard Law School and an expert on environmental regulation. "Some presidents have used it as more of a brake than others." Mr. Trump, who has claimed that global warming is a hoax, said this week in an interview with The New York Times that he now saw "some connectivity" between humans and climate change, and that he would "keep an open mind" about whether to pull out of the Paris climate accord, as he threatened to do during the campaign. Yet at the same time, some key positions on his transition team are occupied by people with a long history of rejecting the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change. Other than climate change, there are numerous environmental issues that he has never talked about and that he might be content to leave untouched. And once agency heads are in place, they may choose very different tactics from those discussed during Mr. Trump's campaign or by his advisers. Two people considered to be in the running to head the Environmental Protection Agency Jeffrey R. Holmstead, an energy lobbyist, and Robert E. Grady, a venture capitalist also have experience in the complex machinations of the federal government. "Every new administration comes in with an overestimation of what it can accomplish and how quickly it can accomplish it," said Kevin Ewing, a partner at Bracewell, a Washington law firm. If Mr. Trump does decide to withdraw from the Paris agreement, he will find it difficult: The accord went into force this month. He would also encounter tremendous obstacles were he to try to dismantle the E.P.A., another campaign threat. But he may have an easier time abandoning other climate initiatives, including a United Nations backed program to reduce the environmental impact of international air travel beginning in 2020. The United States has only informally committed to participate in the program, and the new administration could refuse to make that commitment legally binding. One of the most powerful methods to hobble Mr. Obama's domestic environmental initiatives would be to block financing for the E.P.A. and other agencies. "Congress can always pass an appropriations rider that for one year prevents any funding for the implementation or enforcement of a particular regulation," said Scott H. Segal, a partner and director of the policy resolution group at Bracewell. Riders can be passed year after year, effectively neutering a specific regulation, Mr. Segal said. Such an approach can be "stealthier" than trying to undo the regulation itself, Professor Freeman said. "You don't have to repeal these statutes," she said. "You just have to make it impossible to implement them." Another opening for Mr. Trump lies in regulations that were proposed by the Obama administration but are still technically "in motion." In theory, he could pull back or block these rules. But a departing administration can also use a regulation's "in motion" status to its own advantage. Last week, the Obama administration banned drilling in the Alaskan Arctic under the Interior Department's proposed five year plan regulating oil and gas leases. Republicans could kill the plan. But to do so would mean crafting a replacement, a process that could take two years or more. Last week, the White House unveiled a sweeping plan to try to stiffen environmental regulations before Mr. Obama leaves office. Environmental groups can be expected to fight any efforts to undo them. "Donald Trump can't just snap his fingers and change climate policy," said David Goldston, director of government affairs at the Natural Resources Defense Council. "We have ways to thwart him in Congress and the courts that we could employ." The approach the Trump administration takes will depend in part on the status of specific rules and regulations. Some environmental policies like "guidance" issued by the White House earlier this year, instructing agencies to consider the effects of climate change when conducting environmental reviews do not have the force of law that agency regulations do, and can be abolished with a pen stroke. Undoing a regulation is more complicated. Some of the E.P.A.'s new methane rules are completed, for example, but other rules, both at the E.P.A. and at the Interior Department, are not and can simply be abandoned. If a rule is final, the options are different. The new administration cannot just rescind these regulations, but it can order agencies to revisit them. That reopens the rule making process, however, including the opportunity for public comment. Any revisions or replacement regulations must have a basis in facts and a cost benefit analysis, not politics or ideology. There are other potential options for specific regulations. The Clean Power Plan, for instance, is completed but not yet in effect because of a judicial stay imposed while legal action against it plays out in a federal appeals court in Washington. If there is no ruling by Inauguration Day, Jan. 20, Mr. Trump's Justice Department can ask the court to put the case in abeyance, effectively extending the stay indefinitely. "In some respects, this is in the Department of Justice's hands," said Tom Lorenzen, a lawyer at Crowell Moring who argued against the plan before the appeals court. "They will make a determination of how they want to proceed." Mr. Segal said the Republican Congress might also be able to overturn some recently completed regulations under a law that gives both houses up to 60 legislative days to reject them. That law, the Congressional Review Act, usually comes into play only when the party of the incoming president is different from the departing one's and the same party controls both houses, as is the case now. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
NASA on Wednesday introduced the group of astronauts it has chosen for upcoming missions to the moon. The program, called Artemis, aims to send people back to the moon for the first time since the end of NASA's Apollo program in 1972. "This is the first cadre of our Artemis astronauts," Jim Bridenstine, the NASA administrator, said during a meeting of the National Space Council at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. "I want to be clear, there's going to be more." Vice President Mike Pence, who chairs the space council, read off the names. "I give you the heroes of the future, who will carry us back to the moon and beyond," Mr. Pence said. However, the astronauts will not be making any lunar trips for a while. NASA hopes to launch its first Artemis mission next year, but that will be a crewless flight designed to test a giant rocket called the Space Launch System and the Orion capsule where the astronauts will ride. The first flight with astronauts is scheduled for 2023. That flight is to swing past the moon but not land a 21st century equivalent of the 1968 Apollo 8 flight. The mission after that, Artemis 3, is the one that is to land on the moon, likely somewhere near the South Pole, which is of interest because frozen water in shadowed craters has been found there. Artemis 3 is the mission that Mr. Bridenstine has repeatedly touted as the one that will take "the next man and the first woman" to the moon. NASA has not yet revealed which astronauts will be assigned to specific missions. But some in the group have achieved a couple of distinctions in recent years. Ms. Koch and Ms. Meir participated in the first all women spacewalk last year, and Mr. Glover became the first Black astronaut to join the crew of the International Space Station when he arrived there last month. Ms. Koch also set the record for longest consecutive stay in space 328 days by a woman. The Trump administration set a goal of reaching the surface of the moon by the end of 2024. However, NASA is unlikely to meet that deadline in addition to the technical hurdles, there is the question of cost. Congress has provided less money than the space agency says it needs for lunar landers to be developed that quickly. For the current fiscal year, NASA asked for 3.3 billion. Congress has yet to pass a final budget, but the Senate was only willing to provide about 1 billion, and the House of Representatives offered even less, only about 600 million. "We're grateful for that," said Mr. Bridenstine, who said there is support among both Democrats and Republicans for the moon program. "But ultimately, if we don't get the 3.3 billion, it gets more and more difficult." President elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. has so far said little about what he plans for NASA, but most expect a slower pace for Artemis. During the space council meeting, officials of the Trump administration provided a recap of its space policies over the past four years: streamlining the regulations governing launching of satellites, the establishment of the Space Force that is a new branch of the military and increased attention to space debris that threatens satellites in orbit around Earth. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
Last month marked two years since Bruce Beinfield, a 63 year old architect, bought the property on which he hoped to build a house he had designed for himself. The 0.64 acre tract, in Rowayton, Conn., a coastal section of Norwalk, consisted of a long strip of land, just 50 feet across at its widest point, that extended away from the shore into the middle of a serene tidal estuary called Farm Creek. A modest single story cottage sat at the tip, a rustic throwback to 1949. The setting was idyllic, surrounded by water and sea birds, Long Island Sound within view. Mr. Beinfield, who had designed so many buildings locally that his style defined much of Rowayton's village center, said he was excited about the prospect of building his own home there, his marriage having dissolved. His sketches showed a somewhat barnlike house with floor to ceiling windows lining the side walls. About 2,800 square feet total, but just 17 feet wide, the two and a half story house would sit on piles seven feet above the ground, allowing floodwaters to pass underneath while, Mr. Beinfield imagined, creating "a ship like experience" from within. Mr. Beinfield, convinced the design was one of his best, said in a recent interview that he had hoped the house would become "a well loved building in Rowayton." In the two years since, that expectation has proved wildly off the mark. The house Mr. Beinfield wanted to build, far from elevating his stature, marked him as an enemy of the environment and the common good in the eyes of many residents. If far bigger houses were going up all over the Rowayton waterfront, Mr. Beinfield's plan seemed to offend local sensibilities like no other. And if his substantial work in Rowayton and South Norwalk had helped earn him entry into the American Institute of Architects College of Fellows, this project drew only derision. "What he proposed was a monstrosity on stilts," said Lisa Thomson, one of his more vocal opponents and a board member of Save Farm Creek, which organized against the project. And after two years of controversy, she added, "a lot of people won't even talk to Bruce anymore." Charles Schoendorf, an insurance broker who has been instrumental in preserving land around Farm Creek, said, "It would have been monstrous and very imposing in the middle of the creek," adding, "There was a huge outcry." This particular property was so prominent, and Mr. Beinfield's project "represented such a dramatic change, that that's why there was such a community reaction," said Mike Barbis, a real estate agent and an elected commissioner for the Rowayton taxing district. "Some of it was constructive and positive, and some of it wasn't. Some of it was kind of ugly." At 2 Nearwater Road, Mr. Beinfield's land is a remnant of an old trolley line that, in the early 1900s, carried passengers across the creek to a seaside amusement park called Roton Point. The cottage had been used primarily as a guesthouse by the previous owner, who had lived in a multimillion dollar property nearby. When that owner put 2 Nearwater up for sale in June 2013, the listing was of immediate interest to the Norwalk Land Trust, which owns 16 acres of preservation land around Farm Creek, said Kathy Siever, then the group's president. Just two years before, in fact, after an arduous 4.5 million fund raising effort, the trust had added a prime 2.2 acre parcel across the water from 2 Nearwater. Members of the land trust's board approached neighbors of the property seeking an introduction to the owner, who had moved away. They were not warmly received. The neighbors "didn't want to" make the introduction, Ms. Siever said. "They said they were not in favor of having the land trust own the property." They feared vacant land would attract "vandals and undesirables," according to an October 2013 statement by the trust. The board backed off. And in August, Mr. Beinfield bought 2 Nearwater for 717,000. He filed his house plan with the city of Norwalk a month later. Mr. Barbis was one of the first to send out an email rallying cry to the community under the subject line: "It is true Farm Creek will be destroyed." A Facebook page and online petition opposing the plan appeared. If the neighbors had balked at preserving the site, the community at large was now demanding it. Jane Beiles for The New York Times Residents deluged city officials with emails protesting the project. "The mayor called me twice to say he couldn't access his Blackberry because it was inundated," Mr. Beinfield recalled. Stunned by the intense backlash against a plan he said very few people had actually seen for themselves, he withdrew his application before it went before the zoning commission. But pressure continued to build, with some people demanding that the land be preserved and others arguing for a smaller house closer to the road. "No House in Farm Creek" signs went up all over town, showing an outline of the proposed house superimposed over a photo of the site taken beneath what appears to be a real rainbow. The Save Farm Creek organization was raising money to hire a lawyer. Mr. Beinfield's immediate neighbors, Dan and Lisa McHugh, were disputing whether they had to remove a fence, driveway and lawn area that he claimed encroached on his property. A Rowayton resident since 1983, Mr. Beinfield was not used to being such a target. Reluctantly, he said, he began talks with the land trust about selling. After lengthy negotiations, in March 2014 they announced an agreement. The trust would raise 1 million to buy 2 Nearwater and turn it into the Beinfield Preserve. There was a problem, however. The deal could not be concluded unless the dispute with the McHughs was resolved. In late February, Ms. Siever, who had been prodding the McHughs to relent, informed Mr. Beinfield in an email that they had agreed to remove the fence and driveway once the snow melted. But relations between the neighbors had so soured that in late March, Mr. Beinfield, in what he admits was a low point, took a pickax to remove a disputed lawn area himself. Ms. McHugh confronted him and the two argued. When Mr. Beinfield drove away, he didn't get very far before police pulled him over. With guns drawn, he said, they told him he was under arrest. A story with his photo appeared the next day in the local daily, The Hour. "It was the most humiliating experience in my life, by far," Mr. Beinfield said. The McHughs, who no longer live in Rowayton, did not respond to emailed requests for comment. The breach of peace charges against Mr. Beinfield were later dismissed. If the then pending sale to the trust offered him some hope of a graceful exit from the limelight, it, too, was short lived. As is common in Rowayton, 2 Nearwater was part of a private association, this one called Pine Point. And a faction within that association "was extremely concerned and worried and paranoid" about a publicly accessible preserve, said Mr. Schoendorf, who helped with the trust's negotiations. A June 2014 email from Ms. McHugh, who supported a sale to the trust, to her Pine Point neighbors hinted at their fears of a public invasion. "These are not people who come in droves, or busloads, that will make potholes in our streets, and devalue our properties," she tried to assure them. But some of these members interpreted the association's deed restrictions as precluding a public use. Even though the land trust's lawyer disagreed, threats of lawsuits spooked the board, Mr. Schoendorf said. In August 2014, the trust announced it was backing out of the contract. Mr. Beinfield was back to where he had started. Almost a year passed while he weighed his options. "Having this controversy be my legacy was less and less appealing as time went by," he said. So in July, he again filed an application for a house, one intended to appease. Similar in size and design to the one in his original plan, this house would be less visible, set as close to the road as setbacks allow and obscuring fewer views. The cottage is to remain in place. A public hearing is set for Sept. 16. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
Carnival's Fascination cruise ship last month at the Port of Miami, where it was being cleaned and sanitized. If senators are going to hang around Washington, they really ought to do something about cruise ships. OK, the economy first. But if they've got enough time to push along the nomination of a minimally experienced 37 year old protege of Mitch McConnell to be a judge in the second most powerful court in the land, they could give a little attention to what appear to be floating coronavirus traps. The cruise ship industry is one of the big featured players in our pandemic saga. We've followed one beleaguered boat after another, floating around the sea trying to find a port willing to accept a bunch of infected passengers and crew members. Should have been easy to predict. If you're an infectious disease looking to spread, no place better to start than an industry where the basic business model involves squishing as many people as humanly possible into round the clock dancing, swimming, theater and buffet dinners, interspersed with downtime in itsy bitsy staterooms. The cruise lines are now floating deep, deep in the red, and they didn't get help from the stimulus bill Congress cruelly restricted its aid to American companies that don't attempt to dodge American taxes by incorporating themselves in less, um, demanding countries like Panama, Liberia and Bermuda. Still, they have lots of friends in high places. Donald Trump had called them one of the "prime candidates" for a government bailout. (The biggest of the mega cruise companies, Carnival is chaired by Trump pal Micky Arison, and was once a sponsor of an "Apprentice" reboot.) Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin amended the thought, saying the administration didn't want a bailout just "providing certain things for certain industries." Which, of course, is not the same thing at all. It's true that in our current state of crisis, politicians want to talk only about the biggest initiatives. And we would understand Washington wanting to put cruise ships on a back burner, no matter how coronavirus connected their recent history is. But you'll remember, this is the U.S. Senate that's fiddling with judicial nominations for Mitch McConnell's friends. And a president who's jumped on the idea of a payroll tax cut. Undoubtedly under the theory that what this nation needs most of all right now is less revenue for Social Security. Ever since the cruise industry started floating monster liners with thousands of passengers, environmentalists have moaned about the pollution problems. And the way their noise tends to disquiet the poor whales. But they're also potential public health disasters. Many of the passengers are older. The crews are mainly underpaid, undertrained young people who sleep packed together in contagion breeding grounds. The management is so out to lunch that some ships were recently gathering crowds on packed decks for shoulder to shoulder salutes to the world's health care workers. Senator Richard Blumenthal, a longtime crusader for cruise line reforms, found evidence that the Norwegian line's staff was being encouraged to tell potential passengers that a cruise to the Caribbean is the healthiest activity imaginable, since the coronavirus could "only survive in cold temperatures." The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention pulled the proverbial plug in March, with a no more sailing order. But the lines are already talking about getting back in the game Carnival has said it wants to start sailing again in August. They've been around, in the most unwelcome forms possible. Carnival's Diamond Princess, with 3,711 passengers and crewmates, was bobbing off Yokohama with 712 coronavirus cases. Australia was the deeply reluctant host of the Ruby Princess, a virus wracked vessel that has been linked to at least 660 cases and 21 deaths. In a perfect world, the ships would just carry fewer guests, making them easier to deal with in times of crisis. (Last year rescue teams had to airlift 479 of the 1,300 passengers on a ship that ran into very bad weather off the coast of Norway.) More pragmatic minds just want to make sure that the liners have enough medical staff members and equipment. "The issue with the Titanic wasn't that it was too big, but that it had too few lifeboats," said Representative Sean Maloney of New York. He's a member of the House committee that's demanding Carnival Corporation, which has 109 cruise ships, hand over its records on coronavirus treatment. Senator Blumenthal has been introducing a Cruise Passenger Protection Act for years. It would require that ships carrying enough people to fill a small city have an appropriately trained doctor, staff and medical equipment on board. But the bill has never gotten a vote. "The cruise line industry is enormously popular," he said. "It's a great business," Trump said during the period when he publicly thanked Carnival chairman Arison for offering to make the ships available as pandemic treatment centers. It was a nice gesture, although from what we've learned about the state of their layout and ventilation systems, the hospital tents in Central Park start looking better. 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 |
No president in the history of our Republic has been as disorienting as Donald Trump. His goal, even before he became president, was far more ambitious than to tell mere lies. It was to annihilate the distinction between truth and falsity, to make sure that we no longer share facts in common, to overwhelm people with misinformation and disinformation. It was to induce epistemological vertigo on a mass scale. What happened in Lafayette Square earlier this month was the most recent link in a long chain of events. To summarize: On June 1, the president sought to make a point by walking to St. John's Church, across the park from the White House. The church has suffered some vandalism during the protests, and Mr. Trump wanted to be photographed standing in front of it, holding a Bible as a prop. But getting the president from the White House to the church and making the walk the show of strength Mr. Trump was desperate for required militarized security forces to clear out hundreds of overwhelmingly peaceful protesters who had gathered in Lafayette Square, to protest the killing of George Floyd in police custody. A Washington Post investigation reported that a few protesters threw eggs, candy bars and water bottles, but that security forces used smoke canisters, explosive devices, rubber bullets and horses to clear the area. That wasn't the coverage the president wanted, so, as Tim Miller of The Bulwark wrote, Mr. Trump's staff and right wing media apologists distorted facts in order to paint a different picture. They portrayed the protesters as rioters and Mr. Trump as a man of faith who was restoring peace and order. Using the military as part of this charade was egregious enough that it caused Mr. Trump's former Secretary of Defense, James Mattis, to take the extraordinary step of breaking his silence on the president by denouncing him as a threat to the Constitution and national unity, and it caused the nation's top military official, General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to apologize for taking part in the photo op in his combat fatigues. "I should not have been there," General Milley said. The whole thing, from beginning to end, was about creating yet another false narrative. So was the president's tweet earlier this week promoting the conspiracy theory that a 75 year old man who was shoved to the ground by Buffalo police and hospitalized as a result "could be an ANTIFA provocateur." (The elderly man's lawyer issued a statement saying the president's claim was "dark, dangerous and untrue.") And so was the president's previous tweet several weeks before that, promoting a cruel conspiracy theory that MSNBC's Joe Scarborough was responsible for the death of a female staffer in 2001. This is all part of a long established pattern. The first hours of the Trump presidency began with a demonstrable lie, when Mr. Trump, his press secretary and his closest advisers lied about the size of his inaugural crowd, photographic evidence to the contrary be damned. The point of it was to convince the public that Mr. Trump was the object of more adoration than the black president who preceded him, and to distort reality with what Kellyanne Conway famously referred to as "alternative facts." This should have signaled and was intended to signal that Mr. Trump would govern in a world of his own creation, a world of make believe. At a fundamental level, then, the Trump presidency has been about projecting shadows on walls and asking us to believe they are real. The president's brazen assaults on truth were jolting at first. Today, however, we have grown accustomed to them and to the fact that Republican officeholders have almost without exception stood behind him during the last three and a half years. Some Republicans have had no objections to how Mr. Trump has comported himself; they are thrilled to be his courtier, to earn a pat on the head or the back from the president. Many others, though, made the judgment that it was in their interest to go along to get along, that standing up to Mr. Trump would weaken them within the party and derail their political futures, causing them to lose power even before they were turned out of power. They calculated that giving voice to their consciences was not worth incurring the wrath of the Republican base. It was easier, less wearying and a lot less of a hassle to fall into line behind Mr. Trump. In one sense, of course, they were right. But doing so comes at a price. In his extraordinary 1978 essay "The Power of the Powerless," which has been brought up with some frequency during the Trump administration, the Czech dissident (and later president) Vaclav Havel famously refers to a greengrocer who puts in his shop window a Marxist slogan "Workers of the world, unite!" The greengrocer doesn't believe in the slogan, or the regime, which is built on lies. But he acts like he does, or at least abides the lies in silence. He doesn't have to accept the lie, according to Havel; he merely needs to live within it. But what happens, Havel asked, if one day the greengrocer, among other things, stops putting up slogans merely to ingratiate himself? "In this revolt," Havel writes, "the greengrocer steps out of living within the lie. He rejects the ritual and breaks the rules of the game. He discovers once more his suppressed identity and dignity. He gives his freedom a concrete significance. His revolt is an attempt to live within the truth." There is a cost to this action, Havel acknowledges, but by doing so the greengrocer "has shattered the world of appearance, the fundamental pillar of the system. He has upset the power structure by tearing apart what holds it together. He has demonstrated that living a lie is living a lie." Havel goes on to point out that the greengrocer "has said that the emperor is naked. And because the emperor is in fact naked, something extremely dangerous has happened: by his action, the greengrocer has addressed the world. He has enabled everyone to peer behind the curtain. He has shown everyone that it is possible to live within the truth." During the Trump presidency, Republican lawmakers who know better have been putting up propaganda signs in their storehouse windows in the name of party loyalty and self aggrandizement. The price they would pay for honesty would be much lower than that of the citizen of a totalitarian regime. It's still not too late to take the signs down, to break the rules of the game, and to rediscover their suppressed identity and dignity. In important respects, though, the most worrisome thing about the Trump era isn't the president or elected Republicans; it's the base of supporters who have shown an unbreakable devotion to the former and an eagerness to intimidate, when necessary, the latter, to keep them aligned with Mr. Trump. Even Mr. Trump's media enforcers know their assigned roles. If they don't fulfill them, they recognize they will suffer the consequences: an uprising among their viewers and listeners. Dissent is simply not permitted, and if you're a media personality who does dissent, it can be a career killer. The reasons the Republican base has shown such fidelity to Mr. Trump are multilayered. Many support his policy agenda and have a near existential fear of what an ascent to power by a Democratic president would mean. Among Mr. Trump's supporters, there is not just dislike but detestation for the left (and those feelings are reciprocated by progressives). Resentments and grievances over being the object of the left's contempt have built up for years. The president's supporters view him not just as their defender; they see him as their avenging angel. And on top of all that is the acute political polarization that characterizes this era. Those with a tribalistic mind set believe that refusing to support a Republican president is traitorous. So they have stayed loyal to the president through all the carnage, all the lies, all the appeals to our ugliest impulses. But this, too, has a cost. What Mr. Trump requires of his supporters is that they enter his world of unreality. For most people it's too psychologically painful to acknowledge that the person they support is deeply corrupt, pathologically dishonest and brutish. Human beings feel a need to justify their defense of such a person; this can only be achieved by distorting reality, by pretending that Mr. Trump is not who he is and that facts are not what they are. But epistemological anarchy is a mortal threat to a free nation. If there are no knowable truths to appeal to, no common set of facts we can agree on, no shared reality that binds us together, then everything is up for grabs. Justice is impossible to achieve. Might makes right. If this trend toward political and moral chaos is going to be reversed, it will be because ordinary citizens understand the cost of it and push back against it; because they grow weary of the manipulation; because they decide that living within the truth is better than living within a lie. Sometimes these things can be catalyzed by honorable individuals like General Mattis saying there are some lines the president should not step over or Senator Mitt Romney, who has called out the president's ethical transgressions while the rest of his colleagues, through their near total silence, are complicit in them. Still, for those of us who believe politics is an honorable profession that can make the world somewhat better and more just, and who at onetime believed that the Republican Party, while flawed, was an instrument for good, this is a difficult and even disillusioning time. I'm not cynical enough to give up on politics, since the human cost of doing so is much too high. But I'm not naive enough to deny that grave damage has been done to our nation and our politics, and, especially, to the Republican Party. Earlier I alluded to Plato's allegory of the cave. In the story, Plato imagines that a prisoner in the cave, who had been chained with the others, escapes to the outer world. Initially he is blinded by the sun but then he adjusts. He can see the beauty of the world, the sky and the stars. Previously he had been looking only at phantoms; now he is nearer to the true nature of being. Even so, Plato asks, "Will he not fancy that the shadows which he formerly saw are truer than the objects which are now shown to him?" | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
When Jennifer Doudna was in sixth grade, she came home one day to find that her dad had left a paperback titled "The Double Helix" on her bed. She put it aside, thinking it was one of those detective tales she loved. When she read it on a rainy Saturday, she discovered she was right, in a way. As she sped through the pages, she became enthralled by the intense drama, filled with colorful characters, about ambition and competition in the pursuit of nature's wonders. Even though her high school counselor told her girls didn't become scientists, she decided she would. She would help to make what the book's author, James Watson, later told her was the most important biological advance since he and Francis Crick discovered the structure of DNA. She worked with a brilliant Parisian biologist named Emmanuelle Charpentier to turn a curiosity of nature into an invention that will transform the human race: an easy to use tool that can edit DNA. Known as Crispr, it ushered in a brave new world of medical miracles and moral questions. For this accomplishment, on Wednesday they were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. It is a recognition that the development of Crispr will hasten our transition to the next great innovation revolution. The past half century has been a digital age, based on the microchip, the computer and the internet. Now we are entering a life science era. Children who study digital coding will be joined by those who study the code of life. It will be a revolution that will someday allow us to cure diseases, fend off virus pandemics and (if we decide it's wise) to design babies with the genetic features we want for them. Crispr is especially relevant in this year of the coronavirus. The gene editing tool that Dr. Doudna and Dr. Charpentier developed is based on a virus fighting trick used by bacteria, which have been battling viruses for billions of years. In their DNA, bacteria develop clustered repeated sequences, known as Crisprs, that can remember and then destroy viruses that attack them. In other words, it's an immune system that can adapt itself to fight each new wave of viruses just what we humans need in an era that has been plagued by repeated viral epidemics. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
Tyrannosaurs weren't always tyrants. For millions of years, the ancestors of the regal T. rex were relegated to second class predator status while a different dinosaur dynasty ruled over what is now North America: towering allosaurs. But the allosaurs went extinct during the late Cretaceous, allowing tyrannosaurs to seize the throne and then evolve into large killing machines like T. rex and Tarbosaurus. To better understand how and when tyrannosaurs became giants, paleontologists have sought examples of their lineage from when they were small. Their latest discovery is a tiny tyrannosaur that lived in the shadow of larger predators some 96 million years ago. Like the Science Times page on Facebook. Sign up for the Science Times newsletter. Called "Moros intrepidus," the new species is the oldest Cretaceous period tyrannosaur ever found in North America and among the smallest in the world, measuring only about as big as a deer. Because scientists have previously found large tyrannosaurs in North America that date to 81 million years ago, the newly discovered species helps narrow the window of when tyrannosaurs became huge. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
If you have ever wondered about the culinary skills of a "Fox Friends" co host, wonder no longer. On the new show "Cooking With Steve Doocy," the pink faced Fox News anchor makes chili with Dr. Oz, shares a kitchen with Kellyanne Conway and whips up stromboli with Anthony Scaramucci and his wife. "Steve poured the wine!" Mr. Scaramucci wrote in an email. "It was an awesome time." Fox News viewers are fiercely loyal to their network. But will they pay to watch a "Fox Friend" work a griddle? That, in a gourmet nutshell, is the question for Fox Nation, the subscription only streaming service think Netflix for conservatives that debuts on Tuesday and ushers the cable news business into a brave, uncertain new era. For 5.99 a month, viewers can purchase on demand access to live political commentary and hundreds of hours of original programming from familiar Fox News faces. Another "Fox Friend," Brian Kilmeade, has a history show called "What Made America Great." Maria Bartiromo interviews Eric Trump for "The First Family." "Borked" covers the 1987 Supreme Court non confirmation of Robert H. Bork. True crime enthusiasts can opt for "The Fuhrman Diaries," in which famous cases are examined by Mark Fuhrman, the former Los Angeles police detective who was revealed as a racist during the O. J. Simpson trial. Fox Nation may be the id of Fox News, but it is also a potentially shrewd bet for the Murdoch family, which is testing the digital waters ahead of news rivals CNN and MSNBC. Networks like ESPN, CBS, and HBO have introduced stand alone streaming apps as audiences move away from traditional TV. Lachlan Murdoch, who will oversee a reconstituted Fox empire after the company sells most of its entertainment assets to the Walt Disney Company, is ready to modernize. And Fox News, with juggernaut ratings and ad revenue, commands a devoted audience. "We have fans," said John Finley, the executive overseeing Fox Nation. "Other news organizations simply have viewers." Still, every bet needs a hedge. Unlike HBO Now and CBS All Access, Fox Nation does not include any shows from the network's regular broadcast, and its news side anchors, like Chris Wallace and Shepard Smith, are not participating. In an effort to make sure it does not sap the ratings of the prime time shows, Fox Nation will end its live programming around 7 p.m., in time for viewers to switch to cable for Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham. For now, Fox News is not divulging the number of subscribers who have signed on for Fox Nation, saying only that it was pleased by the initial response. About 70 percent of sign ups came from a mobile device, Mr. Finley said, calling it a promising sign for the product's appeal to technologically adept consumers. About that: The median age of a Fox News viewer is 65, hardly the target audience for a streaming app. Even Mr. Kilmeade, in an interview last week, conceded that cable TV was becoming passe with a new generation. "It's scary, right?" Mr. Kilmeade said, recalling that his college age son was the only student in his dormitory with a cable subscription. "He's like, 'Dad, nobody's watching cable anymore.'" Fox News, whose website has enormous traffic, is keen to point out that the median age of its TV viewers is a year younger than MSNBC's. The network also beats CNN and MSNBC in the coveted advertising demographic of 25 to 54 year olds, although cable news viewership skews older over all. 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. Rich Greenfield, a media analyst at BTIG Research, said Fox News should not be concerned about its older audience. "My mom's over 70, and she has a Roku," he said in an interview. "These devices are becoming so easy." But he faulted the network for wading, not diving, into the streaming sphere. "They don't want to take Fox News and offer it directly to consumers; they want to see if they can skim off the top some incremental dollars from cord cutters," Mr. Greenfield said. "If these companies had guts, it wouldn't be ESPN Plus, it would be ESPN. It wouldn't be Fox Nation, it'd be Fox News." For now, Fox Nation is being pitched as complementary content for Fox News "superfans," as the network likes to call them. "They're all in; they feel like they know you," Mr. Kilmeade said. Billboards in major cities have also advertised the service to conservatives with the slogan "Feeling Left Out?" Diamond and Silk, the African American sisters and Trump cheerleaders, will appear weekly as commentators. Editorial page writers for The Wall Street Journal another Murdoch property will appear on live segments dissecting the day's news. Tomi Lahren, a rising star in right wing media, will deliver two daily segments, "First Thoughts" and "Final Thoughts." David Webb, a radio host, hosts "Reality Check." Jesse Watters is planning a behind the scenes supplement for the panel discussion show "The Five," and the archives of his man on the street interviews, which originally aired on "The O'Reilly Factor," will be available. "They're going to have a warehouse of all the old 'Watters' World' segments," Mr. Watters said in an interview, pausing a moment before adding: "Almost all of them." A notorious segment set in New York's Chinatown, which was widely denounced as racist toward Asians, has been omitted. Mr. Watters, among the network's more youthful anchors, said he had a cable subscription at home but had trouble turning it on. "I get frustrated, and I'll just watch Netflix instead," he said. "I'm watching 'Making a Murderer.' I'm three episodes in, and I'm obsessed." As for Mr. Fuhrman, he has been a regular Fox News analyst for years. Mr. Finley, the Fox executive, said he was not worried about granting the former detective a starring role. "The Fox audience is long familiar with Mark and things that have been said about him in the past," he said. "It was not a matter of concern." Mr. Kilmeade, of "Fox Friends," said that "What Made America Great" was not a political show. But there is a Trump y tinge to the proceedings: He tours the Hermitage, the former plantation of President Trump's favorite predecessor, Andrew Jackson; and climbs Mount Rushmore with Ryan Zinke, the president's interior secretary. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
Last weekend, as hundreds of thousands of women gathered in Washington to protest the inauguration of President Trump, the novelist Margaret Atwood began getting a string of notifications on Twitter and Facebook. People were sending her images of protesters with signs that referenced her dystopian novel "The Handmaid's Tale." "Make Margaret Atwood Fiction Again!" one sign read. "The Handmaid's Tale is NOT an Instruction Manual!" read another. "There were a honking huge number of them," Ms. Atwood said. "The Handmaid's Tale," which takes place in near future New England as a totalitarian regime has taken power and stripped women of their civil rights, was published 32 years ago. But in recent months, Ms. Atwood has been hearing from anxious readers who see eerie parallels between the novel's oppressive society and the current Republican administration's policy goals of curtailing reproductive rights. In 2016, sales of the book, which is in its 52nd printing, were up 30 percent over the previous year. Ms. Atwood's publisher has reprinted 100,000 copies in the last three months to meet a spike in demand after the election. "The Handmaid's Tale" is among several classic dystopian novels that seem to be resonating with readers at a moment of heightened anxiety about the state of American democracy. Sales have also risen drastically for George Orwell's "Animal Farm" and "1984," which shot to the top of Amazon's best seller list this week. Other novels that today's readers may not have picked up since high school but have landed on the list this week are Aldous Huxley's 1932 novel, "Brave New World," a futuristic dystopian story set in England in 2540; and Sinclair Lewis's 1935 novel "It Can't Happen Here," a satire about a bellicose presidential candidate who runs on a populist platform in the United States but turns out to be a fascist demagogue. On Friday, "It Can't Happen Here" was No. 9 on Amazon; "Brave New World" was No. 15. The sudden boom in popularity for classic dystopian novels, which began to pick up just after the election, seems to reflect an organic response from readers who are wary of the authoritarian overtones of some of Mr. Trump's rhetoric. Interest in "1984" surged this week, set off by a series of comments from Mr. Trump, his press secretary, Sean Spicer, and his adviser Kellyanne Conway, in which they disputed the news media's portrayal of the crowd size at his inauguration and of his fractious relationship with American intelligence agencies. Their insistence that facts like photographs of the crowd and his public statements were up for interpretation culminated in a stunning exchange that Ms. Conway had on NBC's "Meet the Press," when she said that Mr. Spicer had not lied about the crowd size but was offering "alternative facts." To many observers, her comment evoked Orwell's vision of a totalitarian society in which language becomes a political weapon and reality itself is defined by those in power. The remarks prompted a cascade of Twitter messages referencing Orwell and "1984." According to a Twitter spokesman, the novel was referenced more than 290,000 times on the social network this week. The book began climbing Amazon's best seller list, which in turn drove more readers to it, in a sort of algorithm driven feedback loop. It amounted to a blizzard of free advertising for a 68 year old novel. On Wednesday, the CNN host Van Jones read a famous passage from the novel about efforts to force citizens to "reject the evidence of your eyes and ears," and urged his viewers not to become complacent when faced with a barrage of falsehoods. "Let's not go down the Orwellian road, and I hope that's not where Trump is trying to lead us," he said. Of course, it is not the first time that readers and pundits have invoked the novel to criticize the actions and statements of a government. It is such a standard trope that Orwell's name has become an adjective. And because so many American readers are exposed to the novel in high school or college, most people have a passing familiarity with its basic themes about the dangers of authoritarianism, and use phrases like "big brother" as a shorthand to describe a multitude of things, from Google to homeland security. Retail earnings and Black Friday: the week in business. Elizabeth Holmes will resume her testimony in her fraud trial. "It's a frame of reference that people can reach for in response to government deception, propaganda, the misuse of language, and those are things that occur all the time," said Alex Woloch, an English professor at Stanford University who has written about the roots of Orwell's political language. "There are certain things this administration is doing that has set off these alarm bells, and people are hungry for frames of reference to understand this new reality." The sudden prominence of such novels reflects a renewed public interest in decades old works of speculative fiction as guides for understanding our current political moment. Readers who are grappling with a jolting shift in American politics, when easily verifiable facts are subject to debate and civil liberties and democratic norms feel fragile, are turning to dystopian novels for guidance and insight. "Many of these books are becoming more important to the average American reader because they want to know what's next, because we've never been through this before," said the novelist Gary Shteyngart, author of the dystopian novel "Super Sad True Love Story. "Language is being used to destabilize people's perception of reality, and that's very new to this country." Readers may also be returning to the comfort (if you can call it that) of familiar dystopian novels because these stories offer moral clarity at a time when it can be difficult to keep up with the convulsions of the daily news cycle, and the fire hose of information and disinformation on social media. While many of these novels are perennial best sellers and staples on high school reading lists, publishers were still unprepared for the recent rise in demand. Shortly after the election, "It Can't Happen Here," an 82 year old satirical novel that was popular in its time but was never really enshrined as a classic, was sold out on Amazon and on Books a Million's website. The book has sold about 45,000 copies since Nov. 9. Sales for the mass market edition in 2016 were up 1,100 percent over 2015, according to its publisher. "The book has certainly been known and alluded to since its publication, but now it's really caught on because there are so many astonishing parallels to the present," said Michael Meyer, an emeritus English professor at the University of Connecticut, who wrote an introduction to the novel. "It's a satire about the politics of someone like Trump." The trajectory for "1984" has been even more dramatic. Since the inauguration, sales of the novel have risen 9,500 percent, according to Craig Burke, the publicity director for Signet Classics, a paperback imprint at Penguin. The book became the top seller on Barnes Noble's website this week, and appeared in the top 10 on the Indie Bestseller list, which tracks sales at hundreds of independent bookstores across the country. The novel "1984" is a reliable best seller it was an instant hit when it was first published in 1949, and it continues to sell some 400,000 paperback copies in the United States annually. Still, the recent demand caught the publisher and some booksellers off guard. Signet, which publishes the mass market paperback edition of "1984," is reprinting 200,000 more copies of the book, and another 100,000 copies of "Animal Farm." (Its edition of "1984" is currently out of stock on Amazon.) "We're getting significant reorders from all our accounts," Mr. Burke said. "We've printed, just this week, about half of what we normally sell in a year." Publishers and book retailers have been quick to seize the momentum and take advantage of renewed interest in decades old titles. The Amazon page for "It Can't Happen Here" now features a bold print quote from Salon, calling the book "the novel that foreshadowed Donald Trump's authoritarian appeal." This week, Penguin started an online advertising and social media campaign to promote "1984," which included posts with quotes from the novel on Facebook and Instagram. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
Shayla Mansfield gets a lot of compliments on her diamond engagement ring. She always has the same response when she does. "Thank you, it's actually my mother's ashes," said Ms. Mansfield, 29, who lives in Viera, Fla., and works for Vivint, a home security system provider. The bride to be's mother, Shirley Mansfield, died Dec. 29, 2017, at age 58 from acute myeloid leukemia. Shayla Mansfield's longtime boyfriend, Paul Vasso, 30, who works for Vivint as a field service professional and is father to their children, Jaxson, 6, and Weston, 6 weeks, had been planning a proposal for some time. Shortly after his girlfriend's mother died, Mr. Vasso saw a Facebook post that a friend shared about turning the ashes of loved ones into a diamond. Adelle Archer, 28, a founder of Eterneva, which started in 2017, said the company has helped other couples transform the ashes of loved ones. "People say diamonds are forever and they're the symbol of love and permanence," she said. "How much more meaningful could it get than to have somebody that you hold dear, that can't be there on your wedding day, to get to be part of that commitment that you make?" Ms. Mansfield and her mother Shirley Mansfield, who died in 2017. Lab grown diamonds are becoming more mainstream. Last year, the diamond behemoth De Beers, which operates mines worldwide, opened a lab grown subsidiary, Lightbox, which offers synthetic jewelry at significantly lower prices. (De Beers does not produce diamonds from ashes.) Alexis Dunham, 23, a nursing student from Newbury Park, Calif., lost her brother, Jake Dunham, 21, in 2018 in the Borderline bar shooting in Thousand Oaks, Calif. To honor his memory, she and her fiance, Kaden Golden, a 23 year old construction worker, are designing an engagement ring with a clear three quarter carat diamond grown from his ashes. "My brother and I were really close and then when I started bringing my boyfriend around, they would take off half the time and go hang out," Ms. Dunham said. LifeGem, which is based in Des Plaines, Ill., began its ashes to diamonds operation in 2002. Dean VandenBiesen, 56, a company founder, said he is proud he is able to provide a personal way to pay homage to a loved one. "It brings a measure of comfort, which I think is kind of a big deal in a very difficult time," he said. LifeGem's showroom allows people a chance to learn more about the process. It involves using extreme heat in a vacuum induction furnace to convert the carbon material to graphite. The graphite is then placed into a diamond press that mimics the forces deep within the earth and allows diamond crystals to form. "It's kind of an interesting place where people can come and bring the material from their loved ones and they can have a little celebration of life here," Mr. VandenBiesen said. His clients also can take the edge off their emotions with a microbrew from Fibs Brewing Company, which is also on the premises. Only a relatively small amount of ashes are required to grow a diamond. Ms. Archer of Eterneva says a typical cremation will yield eight to 10 cups and that a half cup can generate "at least a couple of grams of carbon," more than enough to yield multiple diamonds. Eterneva sends back any unused ashes to customers or will store a loved one's remains on site for an indefinite time in case the need to create a replacement diamond ever arises. Because the diamonds are grown one at a time, and come in a variety of colors, they can be pricey. For 2,490, Eterneva's clients will get a 0.1 to 0.19 carat accent diamond. It's 20,199 for a black diamond 1.0 to 1.24 carats; this is the most expensive and difficult to produce of all the colors, according to Ms. Archer. LifeGem's top tier diamonds are 24,999 for a 1.5 carat red or green variety. Heart in Diamond, a British company with offices in Los Angeles, says it can grow in house an orange, yellow, green, or red diamond in 90 days and that in four months a white or blue diamond can be completed. But some companies, like Eterneva, which outsources this process overseas, may require seven to 10 months for production. "We're individually growing each diamond one at a time in their own machine," Ms. Archer said. "So our scientists are having to fine tune our machines every time to someone's unique characteristics of their carbon." Once the diamonds are done, she said, the lab inspects each one to make sure it was able to produce the size that a customer ordered and a product free of visible inclusions. The diamonds are graded and certified and, if a customer likes, laser engraved with the name of the deceased. Ashes aren't the only carbon containing material that can be transformed into a diamond. "We've seen couples do it with their own hair, dog fur, even parrot feathers," said Anastasia Formenti, 28, operations manager at Heart in Diamond. Emilio Perez, 52, a video editor in Powder Springs, Ga., didn't have enough ashes from his grandmother, Rosa Reveron, who died in 2002 at the age of 96. So he sent Heart in Diamond a mix of his hair, and the hair of his partner, Kim Christopher, 52, a chemist, along with a small amount of his grandmother's ashes that he had been storing. The couple married "on an impulse," he said, in October 2018 without rings. But after finding out about Heart in Diamond, Mr. Perez sent his family's carbon to the company and received his finished diamonds four months later. They are now having their wedding bands custom made and fitted with the specialty stones. Meesha Kaufman, 36, of Baltimore, is known among her friends and family (and her boyfriend, Tony Torres, 36, who owns a local gym with her) to be particularly obsessed with her dog, a five year old longhaired Chihuahua named Bruce Wayne. She is having her engagement ring diamond created from a cup of his fur, which a groomer retrieved during a recent styling session. Her friends and family were not surprised. "They do kind of laugh when they find out that I'm not including my boyfriend's hair into it as well, though," she said. "It's strictly Bruce Wayne's." Mr. Vasso proposed to Ms. Mansfield Feb. 26, 2018 in Lake Eola Park in Orlando, Fla. The ashes diamond was delayed and he didn't want to miss his moment so he had Eterneva set the ring with a temporary cubic zirconia stone. On April 5, 2019, Mr. Vasso told his bride to be that he needed to get her ring cleaned and took it to a local jeweler, which Eterneva had commissioned to switch out the stone. Later that day, Ms. Archer and her team showed up at the couple's house to surprise Ms. Mansfield with her ring, which was now set with the lab grown diamond. Upon finding out that her new stone was crafted from her mother's remains, Ms. Mansfield was speechless. She's still trying to figure out if she's more shocked about the endearing gesture from her fiance or the fact that she wore a ring on her finger outfitted with a fake diamond for more than a year. The wedding is planned for May 2, 2020 in Turks and Caicos. Ms. Mansfield is thrilled to have her mother be a part of the big day. And the future bride says her mother would have absolutely approved of being transformed into a diamond. "She sparkled everywhere she went and she was just a bright light," she said, "so I think that this is actually the only way to do her justice." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
Kathy Griffin Is Returning to TV, and Still Taking On Trump Almost a year after Kathy Griffin appeared in a widely condemned photograph that depicted her holding the severed head of President Trump, this comedian and actress is making a TV comeback of sorts. Ms. Griffin will appear on Tuesday in a special episode of the Comedy Central series "The President Show," in which she will play Kellyanne Conway, the president's counselor, the network announced on Thursday. "I am kicking the hornet's nest, as much as I can," Ms. Griffin said in a phone interview. "I think it's important to lean into the controversy, because I know so much more about it now," she added. "I think now enough time has passed where people are starting to see the ridiculousness of what happened to me, and they're seeing other people that Trump has done it to." "The President Show" stars Anthony Atamanuik as a satirical version of Mr. Trump hosting a late night program from the Oval Office. It has also featured other comedians playing members of the Trump family and administration, including Peter Grosz as Vice President Pence, Adam Pally as Donald Trump Jr. and Mario Cantone as Anthony Scaramucci. This will be Ms. Griffin's first television role since the incident last May in which she posed in a photograph while holding a blood smeared representation of Mr. Trump's head. (She has appeared on talk shows since then, including a recent episode of "Real Time With Bill Maher.") Ms. Griffin was swiftly rebuked by Mr. Trump, who wrote on Twitter that she "should be ashamed of herself." Other people from across the political spectrum also criticized Ms. Griffin, who was investigated by the Secret Service. In the fallout, many of her live dates were canceled and she was fired by CNN from an annual New Year's Eve program she hosted with Anderson Cooper. More recently, she has resumed performing a stand up show in which she talks about her life since the firestorm over the photograph. Still, she said she felt it was important to keep joking about her experiences, and about Mr. Trump and his White House. As a comedic role, Ms. Griffin said that Ms. Conway was "a delicious, New York strip steak I don't have to educate one single viewer on who she is." Mr. Atamanuik said that he was inspired to reach out to Ms. Griffin after seeing her on "Real Time With Bill Maher." Despite the outcry that Ms. Griffin's photograph elicited, Mr. Atamanuik said, "I don't see that as a capital offense by any means. I know we spend a lot of time talking about the Second Amendment, but there's the one before it that's really important. The notion that a person's career would be defined by one action they take is, to me, crazy." Just as Ms. Griffin benefits from her appearance on "The President Show," she could help bring visibility to the program at a crucial moment. Though the show drew critical praise for its first season, which ran from April through November, Comedy Central has not yet announced a second season. The network aired a Christmas special in November, and, in addition to Tuesday's hourlong broadcast (called "Make America Great A Thon: A President Show Special"), is planning a third special later this summer. "My personal hope is that the specials do well and maybe that will propel us back into some more regular appearances," Mr. Atamanuik said. "If the strategy becomes to continue doing quarterly specials, that would be a really exciting prospect as well." Ms. Griffin is continuing to tour North America and will be a guest of The Washington Blade at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner in April, whether or not Mr. Trump attends it. For all her other commitments, she said there was something unique about doing "The President Show." "I'm happy to be doing something, after this last year, that's purely fun," she said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
Thunder isn't always violent. It can erupt in hushed rumbles that build ominously, crash in the distance and then slowly dissipate. Those are the kinds of explosions that the choreographer Tatyana Tenenbaum creates using the body and the voice in "Thunder," in which six performers embody what she calls the "simple theater of the singing body." How does a sweeping arm reverberate through space? What does a two footed turn sound like in tandem with Ms. Tenenbaum's singing as she swirls across the floor? In "Thunder," performed Thursday at the Brooklyn Studios for Dance, Ms. Tenenbaum uses language, sounds and movement along with metal sheets to create a sonic landscape. At times, her experiments waver between being a technical exercise and a full fledged theatrical work. But when all of the elements converge, "Thunder" feels, and sounds, a little like magic. When the performers sing, vocalizing words or sounds, the shape of their curving bodies descending into a plie or standing still with a slow rise of the arms affects pitch and tone through the breath. It takes coordination, and while Ms. Tenenbaum is the most masterly, her frequent partners Laurel Snyder and Emily Moore are excellent, too, taking their time to grow into the shapes and sounds. When Marisa Clementi, Ashley Handel and Li Cata join in, "Thunder" becomes a choir. But there's also a touch of the chorus girl here. In the stark setting of Brooklyn Studios the theater is the former gymnasium of a church "Thunder," with its ever drifting, costume changing cast of performers, evokes the sensation of being backstage or in the wings. Ms. Tenenbaum, whose source material included revues of the early 1900s, adds subtle touches of showbiz. There are false eyelashes; at times, dancers rest their hands on their hips where a feathered fan may have been. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
Members of the chorus wield scissors as a sound effect and dramatic tool in Julia Wolfe's "Fire in my mouth," about the Triangle shirtwaist factory fire, with the New York Philharmonic. The composer Julia Wolfe's new multimedia oratorio concerns the 1911 Triangle shirtwaist factory fire. It was a prescient choice of subject. The fire which took the lives of 146 garment workers, most of them young immigrant women led to changes in workplace conditions and stirred debate over contentious issues of gender, labor and immigrants' rights. But how much progress has been made over the past century? That question hovered over the New York Philharmonic's premiere of Ms. Wolfe's ambitious, heartfelt, often compelling "Fire in my mouth" on Thursday, a month into a partial government shutdown driven by bitterness over immigration policy. Ms. Wolfe took risks in writing this work, conducted by the Philharmonic's music director, Jaap van Zweden, and directed by Anne Kauffman. (It anchors "Threads of Our City," a series in Mr. van Zweden's first season as music director exploring immigration.) How does a composer depict such a horrific story without melodrama? How to underscore the powerful old film footage and photos that this production projected over the orchestra women dressed in ruffled shirts walking into factories; workers sitting at tables with sewing machines; the rubble of the decimated factory building without the music coming across as mere soundtrack? The big things are right in this tautly structured 60 minute piece in four parts: "Immigration," "Factory," "Protest" and "Fire." In an affecting touch, the chorus is made up of 146 women and girls, members of the excellent chamber choir the Crossing (Donald Nally, director) and the impressive Young People's Chorus of New York City (Francisco J. Nunez, director). Ms. Wolfe's choice of choral texts, mostly drawn from oral histories and speeches, shows great sensitivity. In "Immigration" she sets the words of a survivor recalling her trip to America: "five of us girls" taking "a big beautiful boat" that "took about 10 days," everyone looking "to God knows what kind of future." There is both heady optimism and a sense of dread in Ms. Wolfe's music here, whole stretches of which render the words in thick, blocky chords, over an orchestra grounded by droning tones yet run through with fidgety inner details. Often a single word is turned into a battering ram: "10, 10, 10," or "days, days, days." Longer choral lines unfold in overlapping phrases, which blend words and choral textures into a haunting muddle. "Factory" begins with percussion evoking the clattering sounds of sewing machines. Most of the workers were Eastern European Jews and southern Italians. So Ms. Wolfe inventively juxtaposes a plaintive Yiddish folk song with a lively Italian tarantella like piece. The way these songs are embedded in Ms. Wolfe's agitated, heaving orchestra, they seem like alternative coping mechanisms for the oppressed. There are stretches in which the music of "Fire in my mouth" assumes its place in the multimedia whole a little too well. I liked it most when Ms. Wolfe went for something musically visceral or extreme, as in the climactic episode of "Protest." The women's choir sings relentless phrases espousing the determination of these immigrants to "talk like," "look like" and "sing like" Americans. Then the girls' choir, entering the hall from the aisles, sang a stark passage from a speech by Clara Lemlich, an activist leading a strike. Here, the choral refrains and orchestra layers built into piercing harmonies, like clusters out of Ives or Varese, yet driven by Ms. Wolfe's Minimalism influenced rhythms. In one of the most gripping moments, the choristers raised actual scissors (specially chosen by Ms. Wolfe) above their heads in an eerie gesture that also added metallic slicing sounds to the musical textures. During the harrowing climax of "Fire" the music turned raw, brassy and blazing, with fractured rhythms, choral plaints that border on screeching, and chanted repetitions: "Burn like, burn like, burn." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
NEW ORLEANS As Zion Williamson spent the past three months recovering from knee surgery, he tried to be patient. It did not always work. "It was a lot of times when I wanted to just punch a wall or kick chairs," he said, "because it's frustrating to not be able to move your body the way you want to." The good news for Williamson, and for countless fans who have been eager to see the 19 year old phenom make his regular season debut, is that the wait is nearly over. Williamson, the top overall pick in last year's N.B.A. draft, is expected to play for the New Orleans Pelicans on Wednesday night against the visiting San Antonio Spurs. "It's been very difficult," Williamson said on Tuesday at a news conference at the team's practice facility. "But it's finally here. I finally get to go back out there." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
NOT many Americans still want a car with a manual transmission. And for the Facebook generation, a car with a third pedal near the floorboard (it's called a clutch) might as well be a Hudson Hornet. For those reasons, fewer automakers even exotic brands like Lamborghini are bothering with stick shifts. So while a small cadre of enthusiasts can praise Acura for offering a 6 speed manual in its 2013 ILX , one wonders if the sales strategy will someday be studied in business schools as a cautionary tale of misguided marketing: the most powerful, desirable version of this compact sport sedan isn't available with an automatic transmission at all. Essentially, if you refuse to wrangle a stick and a clutch or can't sell your significant other on the arrangement you may want to cross the ILX off your list. Save thousands and get a Ford Focus, a Mazda 3 or another sporty compact with a lot of features but no luxury pretensions. It's really that simple. And the problem isn't that the ILX is a bad car. The problem is that it is three cars. One of these is impressive, and the others are largely forgettable, all because of the sort of self sabotage that we've seen too often of late from Honda and its upscale Acura division. The good news is that although the ILX is a deluxe makeover of the Honda Civic, most people would never guess they're related. Once the most flavorful of compact cars, the Civic has been watered down like a cheap margarita. The ILX feels quite different: it looks better and drives sharper, and it is peaceful and pleasing inside. Smart alecks will lazily accuse the ILX of being a Civic with leather seats, but one trip around the block would change their tune. The Acura's fine road manners recall the slightly larger Accord based Acura TSX. Drop in the TSX's 2.4 liter engine, which feels stronger than its 201 horsepower rating, and you have an under the radar sport sedan, a touch lighter and faster than the ever reliable TSX. The base price is 30,095, about 5,000 more than you'd spend on loaded versions of everyday compacts. And while a 30,000 compact sedan tends to set American eyeballs rolling, the combination of this engine still one of the world's great 4 cylinders and generous features makes this version of the ILX, the 2.4L, an attractive proposition. But here's the catch: the 2.4L, the version that truly justifies its entry luxury price, can be obtained only with a 6 speed manual transmission. Way to go, Honda: you just eliminated, oh, about 95 percent of the customers who'd even consider spending 30,000 or more on a small sedan. Worse, when those manual shift die hards show up at the dealer, determined to get a top shelf ILX with all the luxury goodies that help to justify the price they'll also learn that they cannot have a voice activated navigation system, even as an option. That feature, the sales representative will be forced to explain, is available on only the base model and the Hybrid. The 2.4L buyer is also denied the AcuraLink satellite communications system, real time traffic and weather reports and 15 gigabytes of music storage. That leaves the two other ILX models for the people who demand an automatic transmission pretty much everyone and the latest in car technology. Yet both seem like shakier propositions, including the starter model, the 2.0L. Priced from 26,795, this is the ILX that screams "compromise" at the top of its little 2 liter lungs, with standard cloth seats and just 150 breathless horses from a version of the Civic engine. The base model is a car that dogs will chase, sniff and recognize as one of their own. And once you throw in the options that make a "premium" compact premium, the price of the 2.0L can reach 32,295. That's a lot for a sedan with an econobox engine and no more oomph than cars that cost around 20,000. In comparison, the new Buick Verano offers a 180 horsepower 4 cylinder in its base model (with a 250 horsepower turbo version on its way), and the Audi A3 features a fat 200 horsepower from a brilliant turbo 4 cylinder. Options on the 2.0L come in two straightforward groups. The 3,300 Premium Package includes heated leather seats, a power driver's seat, 17 inch wheels, a 360 watt audio system, high intensity headlamps, fog lamps, a rearview camera and active noise cancellation, which quells annoying sound frequencies that intrude into the cabin. Then there is a 2,200 Technology Package that adds the navigation system and surround sound audio. And while the ILX 2.0L is offered exclusively with an automatic transmission, it is the prosaic 5 speed from the Civic. You can get 6 speeds on any number of bargain basement compacts. There is a third model, the ILX Hybrid, which seems to have the market potential of an Uggs store in Sudan. Starting at 29,795, or 3,000 above the base ILX, this model adopts the Civic Hybrid's 111 horsepower gas engine and gives it an electric motor assist. Add on the Hybrid's 5,500 Technology Package (which includes every available feature save 17 inch wheels), and buyers are looking at 35,295 for a small hybrid that can't break 40 miles per gallon. (The government rating is 39 m.p.g. in the city and 38 on the highway. For comparison, the strikingly styled Lexus CT 200h tops the Acura with a 43/40 m.p.g. rating. Asked about the odd lineup decisions, Acura executives said the 2.4 liter, manual only ILX was positioned as the high performance model. For customers who prefer an automatic, the executives added, there's always the TSX. My hunch is that once its dealers' howls stop reverberating, Acura will relent and offer an automatic on the most desirable ILX, the 2.4L. While at it, Acura might drop the base engine entirely, along with the pretense, to establish what the ILX is supposed to be: an entertaining Euro style sport compact. For now, that ILX 2.4L is good enough to send people to remedial shifting school to brush up on their clutch work. Across the line, Acura revamped the Civic stem to stern with a lighter and stiffer structure (including aluminum bits); more sound deadening, thicker laminated windows and aerodynamic covers below the floor; a nearly 7 percent faster steering ratio with more precisely machined gears; and a sportier suspension, including dual stage shock absorbers and lower friction bushings. The stability system borrows advanced controls from Honda's Asimo humanoid robot, with faster reactions and an ability to make automatic steering corrections to counter skids. The resulting car can't break dance like the adorable robot, but it is handsome and entertaining. Even for those who choose the more frugal powertrains, the Acura feels like a legitimate entry luxury car down to its smartly tailored cabin. Guiding the Acura over a gravel choked road, its solidity and quietness made an instant impression. Aging boy racers who loved their old Integras or RSXs may be let down by this more subtle approach. But the top shelf Acura is no poseur, save for its modest all season Michelin tires. The Buick Verano is a stylish and reasonably charming car. But the Acura feels more fun and sophisticated as does the TSX compared with the Buick Regal. The ILX beats the Verano on engine performance, quick and sensitive steering, suspension and bump control and shifter feel. (The turbo Verano will have a chance to even the score.) Honda recalled about 6,000 ILXs this month to repair a potentially faulty door latch, though no customers had reported a problem with the car. Helping to wring every drop from the 2.4L's 7,000 r.p.m. engine and 170 pound feet of torque, the Acura's shifter and clutch are the smoothest synchronized pair this side of a 100,000 Porsche 911S. This powertrain scoots the ILX from a standstill to 60 m.p.h. in about seven seconds, roughly two seconds quicker than the starter model. But you'd better check your watch for the unhurried Hybrid, which arrives at 60 m.p.h roughly four seconds after the sporty ILX 2.4L. The 2.4 engine does consume slightly more gas, with a 22/31 miles per gallon rating versus 24/35 for the 2 liter model. I happened to drive the ILX back to back with Acura's redesigned RDX crossover. Both the sprightly RDX and high end ILX chalked up all the performance and features you'd expect in their categories. Yet the RDX doesn't dabble in multiple powertrains or raise shifter barriers to potential buyers. It's a tremendously versatile crossover and feels like a clear bargain against rivals like the Lexus RX 350, Audi Q5 and BMW X3. As such, the RDX is just the kind of all aboard winner that Acura needs to re establish itself as a smart, practical choice among luxury brands. But aside from hybrid fanatics with 30,000 plus to burn, the ILX seems limited to fans of shift it yourself compacts at a relatively high price. Because either group might struggle to fill a high school gym, Acura should act quickly to expand the appeal of the ILX before it slips through the market's cracks. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Automobiles |
And what Ms. Buckmaster has preserved what must have prompted the adaptation is the sense of wonder, elicited mainly through a beguiling mix of dance and mime. When the soloist playing Mr. Khan (Nicolas Ricchini and Dennis Alamanos alternate in the role), tilts his bald head forward to reveal a face painted on the pate, he seems to become a puppet, an effect both uncanny and giggle producing. In the central section, a fable about a boy's journey through the rain forest in pursuit of honey, the integration of live action and the projection of gorgeous line drawings is a delight. It's the original frame that remains the most childish: an adult Mr. Khan, locked out of his cellphone, getting assistance from the voice of a 12 year old Bangladeshi boy on a help line. "I don't know where I'm supposed to be," the Khan character says, a problem of identity solved at the end, when he remembers a Rosebud like password. Only in stories for children are such questions so easily dispelled. Yet an earlier scene in "Chotto Desh" does suggest how Mr. Khan learned to live with the diverse influences of his upbringing. A teenage Mr. Khan practices in front of his bedroom mirror, mixing the Indian form of Kathak with moves from hip hop and Michael Jackson. Cultures are crossing in his body, as any child can see. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
But in Texas, at least one abortion provider, Whole Woman's Health, has had to interrupt care, canceling appointments for more than 150 patients at three locations on Monday alone. On Wednesday, Whole Women's Health sued the state in federal court over the restrictions. "Patients were crying and begging us to still let them come in," said Amy Hagstrom Miller, president of Whole Woman's Health, the clinic that brought the Supreme Court suit over the Texas restrictions. "We have one woman who drove 250 miles to one of our clinics who is sort of camping out, not leaving, waiting for us to figure out a way for her to be seen." A doctor who provides abortions elsewhere in the state told me that her patients pleaded with her to do the procedure when they came in for ultrasounds before the order went into effect, but she couldn't because Texas requires a 24 hour waiting period. Abortion providers point out that they could use less scarce medical gear and reduce the risk of spreading the virus in waiting rooms if they could expand access to medication abortions via online consultation with a doctor. This kind of abortion involves dispensing pills; studies have shown it is safe and effective. "During the pandemic, it would be possible to provide medication abortion through 11 weeks of pregnancy without an in person visit and by mailing pills to a patient," tweeted Dr. Daniel Grossman, a gynecology professor at the University of California, San Francisco. "This would reduce the patient and clinician's risk of acquiring the virus" and without the need for personal protective equipment. The problem is that at least 18 states, including Texas, require the doctor who prescribes the abortion pills to be present when the medication is taken, which means patients have to go to a clinic two or three times (to date the pregnancy with an ultrasound, to take the pills, and sometimes for a follow up visit). The Ohio Senate passed a tele medicine abortion ban on March 4; the bill now awaits action in the House. Despite the downsides, the push to use the coronavirus crisis to block access to abortion may just be getting started. This week, Mississippi's governor threatened "action" against the state's only clinic if it continued to perform abortions, without specifying what he meant. And dozens of anti abortion groups sent a letter to Alex Azar, the secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, demanding the use of the government's "broad emergency authority" to urge abortion clinics to stop operating and prevent the expansion of abortion by telemedicine. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
Why the coronavirus affects children much less severely than adults has become an enduring mystery of the pandemic. The vast majority of children do not get sick; when they do, they usually recover. The first study to compare the immune response in children with that in adults suggests a reason for children's relative good fortune. In children, a branch of the immune system that evolved to protect against unfamiliar pathogens rapidly destroys the coronavirus before it wreaks damage on their bodies, according to the research, published this week in Science Translational Medicine. "The bottom line is, yes, children do respond differently immunologically to this virus, and it seems to be protecting the kids," said Dr. Betsy Herold, a pediatric infectious disease expert at Albert Einstein College of Medicine who led the study. In adults, the immune response is much more muted, she and her colleagues found. When the body encounters an unfamiliar pathogen, it responds within hours with a flurry of immune activity, called an innate immune response. The body's defenders are quickly recruited to the fight and begin releasing signals calling for backup. Children more often encounter pathogens that are new to their immune systems. Their innate defense is fast and overwhelming. Over time, as the immune system encounters pathogen after pathogen, it builds up a repertoire of known villains. By the time the body reaches adulthood, it relies on a more sophisticated and specialized system adapted to remembering and fighting specific threats. If the innate immune system resembles emergency responders first on the scene, the adaptive system represents the skilled specialists at the hospital. The adaptive system makes sense biologically because adults rarely encounter a virus for the first time, said Dr. Michael Mina, a pediatric immunologist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Epidemiology in Boston. She and her colleagues compared immune responses in 60 adults and 65 children and young adults under the age of 24, all of whom were hospitalized at the Montefiore Medical Center in New York City from March 13 to May 17. The patients included 20 children with multisystem inflammatory syndrome, the severe and sometimes deadly immune overreaction linked to the coronavirus. Over all, the children were only mildly affected by the virus, compared with adults, mostly reporting gastrointestinal symptoms like diarrhea and a loss of taste or smell. Only five children needed mechanical ventilation, compared with 22 of the adults; two children died, compared with 17 adults. Who should get a booster shot? It depends, Dr. Scott Gottlieb says. Children had much higher blood levels of two particular immune molecules, interleukin 17A and interferon gamma, the researchers found. The molecules were most abundant in the youngest patients and decreased progressively with age. "We think that is protecting these younger children, particularly from severe respiratory disease, because that's really the major difference between the adults and the kids," Dr. Herold said. In some adult Covid 19 patients, she added, the lack of a strong early response also may be setting off an intense and unregulated adaptive reaction that may lead to acute respiratory distress syndrome and death. All viruses have tricks to evade the innate immune system, and the coronavirus is particularly adept. Produced early in the course of infection, interleukin 17A may help children thwart the virus's attempts to evade the innate response and to ward off the later adaptive response. "We think that also protects them from sort of making the more vigorous adaptive immune response that's associated with that hyper inflammation," Dr. Herold said. Other experts said the study was well done but suffered as most studies of the coronavirus do from enrolling patients too late in the infection. The innate immune response is set off hours after exposure to a pathogen, but people generally don't come to the hospital until about a week after infection with the coronavirus, when symptoms are severe, said Akiko Iwasaki, an immunologist at Yale University. That's too late to study how the innate immune system responds to the virus, she said, adding, "By the time people are sick, it's way past that time point." Still, the new data negate a couple of popular theories about why children are protected from the virus, she said. Some scientists have suspected that children may fare better because they tend to have had more recent exposure to coronaviruses that cause common colds, which might offer them some protection. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
SAN FRANCISCO Facebook has long relied on algorithms to select news stories for its users to see. Now the social network wants to rely on something else for the same task, too: humans. Specifically, Facebook plans to hire a team of editors to work on a news initiative called News Tab, which is its latest venture into the world of publishing. The Silicon Valley company said that journalists would help curate News Tab, a new section inside of the company's mobile application that will surface the most recent and relevant stories for readers. Facebook said it planned to hire seasoned journalists from various outlets for the roles and would put up job postings on its employment board on Tuesday. News Tab is part of the company's effort to highlight real time journalism and news. It will exist outside of the News Feed, Facebook's never ending stream of status updates and friend requests. "Our goal with the News Tab is to provide a personalized, highly relevant experience for people," said Campbell Brown, Facebook's head of news partnerships. "To start, for the Top News section of the tab we're pulling together a small team of journalists to ensure we're highlighting the right stories." Facebook has been under pressure for spreading misinformation and disinformation to millions of its users. In 2016, Russian operatives manipulated Facebook and disseminated false news stories across its network to influence the outcome of the American presidential election. On Monday, Facebook also revealed that China was behind Facebook pages and groups that were sowing disinformation about the protests in Hong Kong. Facebook is now working to restore its reputation as a place where people can find trusted sources of information. The company has scrambled to hire security researchers and third party content reviewers to deal with the proliferation of bad content. At the same time, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's founder and chief executive, has overhauled the News Feed to focus less on news publishers and marketers, and more on personal interactions between users. As a result, Facebook is looking for other places on its network to show news. Facebook has been pitching News Tab to publishers, hoping to strike content sharing deals in which the company would license and display articles from partners inside its mobile app. Facebook may pay large sums to some though not all publishing partners for access to their content, people briefed on the company's plans have said. Most of the stories appearing in the News Tab will be algorithmically sorted and ranked, Ms. Brown said. But she said training those algorithms to personalize content to people takes an enormous amount of data and time, which is why Facebook is hiring journalists to curate and surface some of the day's most important and pertinent news stories. Other tech giants have also pushed into online news publishing with an element of human curation. Apple, for example, has hired traditional journalists to edit and curate Apple News, its subscription news app. LinkedIn has also hired journalists to work on in house editorial products. Facebook's News Tab will almost certainly attract the ire of critics across the political spectrum, many of whom believe the social network unfairly favors some political parties and viewpoints over others. In Congress and the White House, conservatives have repeatedly alleged without evidence that tech companies like Facebook and Google have suppressed speech from Republicans. Last month, Representative Tulsi Gabbard, a Democrat from Hawaii who is running for president, sued Google, saying the company had infringed on her free speech when it briefly suspended her campaign's advertising account after the first Democratic debate in June. The genesis of the bias allegations followed a Gizmodo article in 2016 concerning Trending Topics, a discontinued Facebook product that surfaced some of the most popular news and trends to users, and was curated by a mix of algorithms and contract journalists. The article quoted anonymous sources who worked on Trending Topics, claiming that some workers routinely "suppressed" conservative stories from the list. But a Times investigation found that the claims were largely unsubstantiated. On Tuesday, Facebook released the results of a yearlong audit of its platform, which looked into the claims of conservative bias across Facebook. The audit, conducted by former Republican Senator Jon Kyl, found no evidence of bias. The findings drew criticism from Republicans like Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, who called it a "smokescreen." But it also prompted ire from left leaning groups like Media Matters for America, whose president, Angelo Carusone, called the exercise part of "Facebook's impulse to appease right wing cries of bias." Facebook has said it hopes to release a test of News Tab before the end of the year. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
Alban Berg's bleak opera "Wozzeck" might not seem suited to the holiday season. One of the least cheerful pieces in the repertory, it tells the story of an impoverished and increasingly delusional soldier, driven to murder and suicide. Yet this time of year is also a moment to take stock. And few works look at life with more searing honesty than "Wozzeck." The issues that drive this wrenching, profound opera are especially timely: the impact of economic inequality on struggling families; the looming threats of war and environmental destruction; the rigid stratification almost the militarization of every element of society. While just as resourceful and visually arresting, this "Wozzeck," introduced in 2017 at the Salzburg Festival in Austria, comes across as more coherent, perhaps because all the scenic elements are united by a central concept. Berg's work on the score was interrupted by his service in World War I, and the opera was first performed in Berlin in 1925. So Mr. Kentridge's production updates the setting from the early 19th century when the source material, Georg Buchner's play "Woyzeck," was written to just before that war, though it still has a timeless feeling. The opera which unfolds in 15 short, episodic scenes is played atop a set (designed by Sabine Theunissen) built of platforms connected by rickety walkways, evoking a bombed out city amid consuming chaos. Silent actors, most in gas masks, keep appearing here and there. An almost continual montage of animation, drawings and projections, mostly in black and white, appear on and behind the set: images of blown up churches and buildings; military maps; charcoal drawings of bedraggled people morphing into spectral stick figures; despoiled rivers and hills. Mr. Kentridge sees his role as providing the structure for a production and illustrating broader themes, giving the performers unusual freedom to fill in the psychological specificity. This worked on Friday, thanks to an impressive cast led by the baritone Peter Mattei in the title role and the soprano Elza van den Heever as Marie, Wozzeck's common law wife, as well as the lucid, radiant and restless performance that the conductor Yannick Nezet Seguin drew from the Met orchestra. Tall and charismatic, Mr. Mattei might not seem natural as a haggard soldier prone to paranoia and hallucinations. Yet, wearing dingy clothes and moving with fidgety nervousness, he conveys Wozzeck's insecurity. During fleeting stretches of lyrical musings, as when Wozzeck realizes that Marie is the only salvation of his miserable life, he sang with burnished sound and aching sadness. While he was chilling in threatening bursts of half spoken Sprechstimme, you sensed that this man's life could have ended up differently. Singing with fervor and silvery tone, Ms. van den Heever played Marie as a young woman of allure and depth who, you could imagine, impulsively turns to Wozzeck in a weak moment. When she erupts in defiance, Ms. van den Heever sent phrases slicing through Berg's orchestra, and you understood the character's frustrated power. It wasn't surprising that she is drawn to the alpha Drum Major (the tenor Christopher Ventris) when he passes by and flirts. The carousing at a seedy tavern, where the crazed Wozzeck shows up after stabbing Marie, was all the more eerie for the multilayered setting and the ominous costumes (by Greta Goiris), with the crowd in gas masks, a bitter premonition of the war to come. Berg's musical language in the opera is an extraordinary blend of old and new with some tonal harmony, bursts of Expressionist angst and stretches of atonality. Mr. Nezet Seguin deftly conveyed the subliminal structure of the opera; each scene is based on a traditional musical form. I wanted a little more poignancy and melting power in the richly expressive passages that sound like an extension of Brahms, Mahler and Strauss. Nevertheless it was fascinating to hear Mr. Nezet Seguin bring out the layered complexities of this music with such transparency and pointed detail. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
It may not seem so to outsiders, but New York City is really a collection of small towns with residents and businesses connected in the most surprising ways. Just ask David Daniels. Late last summer, Mr. Daniels, an associate broker with the Corcoran Group in the West Side office, got a call from colleagues in the company's Brooklyn Heights branch. They were in the process of securing a listing for the estate sale of a townhouse in Harlem, and realized that showing a property so far uptown would be difficult for them. "They were looking for someone within the company to list it with, someone who knew Harlem, had experience selling townhouses and experience with estate sales, and my name came up when they were canvassing managers in our branch offices," said Mr. Daniels, 51, who had reason to believe he was the man for the job. A longtime Harlem resident and a student of Harlem history, he was a 15 year veteran of the business who had rented and sold countless properties in the area. With that resume, the Brooklyn Heights brokers wanted him aboard. And that's when they gave him the particulars of the property. It was the Marion Daniels Sons Funeral Home, three contiguous townhouses at 164 West 136th Street. There was a moment of silence, Mr. Daniels said, while he absorbed the information. "Then," he said, "I told them, 'Marion Daniels was my great grandmother.' " Because there was no conflict of interest the property had long since been passed to Mr. Daniels's second cousin Theodore Daniels Jr., a man he knew only slightly, and then in 2011, to Theodore's stepson, a man he didn't know at all the Brooklyn brokers' reaction was overwhelmingly positive. As Mr. Daniels said, they "were like, 'Marion was your great grandmother? All the more reason you should be the one to sell it.' " Marion Daniels and her husband, Orlander Daniels, had four children, including Rolfe Lee, Mr. Daniels's grandfather. They went into the mortuary business in 1905, renting space on West 61st Street and later on West 134th. In 1912, after Orlander Daniels died of a heart attack, Mrs. Daniels bought the first of the three townhouses she would own on 136th Street. Its top two floors became the family residence; the two lower floors were Marion Daniels Sons Funeral Home. The Danielses were among the first black residents of Harlem. In the early years of the 20th century, few buildings allowed blacks as tenants. Mr. Daniels said. That they were there at all may have been because of the efforts of Philip A. Payton Jr., a black real estate agent and property manager. Mr. Payton, who was known as the father of Harlem, "jousted with recalcitrant white owners," wrote Christopher Gray in a 1991 Streetscapes column in The New York Times. "In one case, he sold some buildings to a white syndicate which unexpectedly evicted the black tenants. Payton then bought two nearby apartment houses and filled them with blacks. In this way, block by block, Harlem became a black community." That community included Madame C. J. Walker, one of Mrs. Daniels's neighbors and the millionaire creator of beauty and hair care products for black women, who lived with her daughter, A'Lelia, in a grand home fashioned from a pair of rowhouses at 108 110 West 136th Street. (A'Lelia Walker, a key figure in the Harlem Renaissance, would later become close to Rolfe Lee Daniels, and to the poet Langston Hughes, a distant Daniels relative.) Another neighbor was the pastor of the A.M.E. Zion Church, Benjamin C. Robeson, Mrs. Daniels's dear friend and a brother of Paul Robeson, the singer, actor and activist. MR. DANIELS GREW UP on Long Island, but often visited his relatives in Harlem. In the late 1960s, he said, it was still a place where men dressed in suits and women wore their Sunday best, even when it wasn't Sunday. As an adolescent, he learned some family history. After Mrs. Daniels's death in 1940, his great uncle Theodore Daniels Sr. bought out his grandfather's interest in the business, and his grandfather opened his own funeral home on St. Nicholas Avenue. "Marion Daniels Sons Inc." remained written in gold block letters on the facade of 164 West 136th Street, however, and as an adult, Mr. Daniels frequently pointed out the building to friends. Fifteen or 20 years ago, he said, he passed by and noticed the office door was open and his cousin Theodore Jr. was working inside: "I popped in and reminded him who I was, and we sat and talked for a while." Those memories contributed to the sense of poignancy he felt when he got the exclusive listing last fall, along with a set of keys. "It was the weirdest thing to be unlocking the door and walking in," he said. "The more familiar I became with everything going up and down the stairs, turning the lights on and off the more interesting it became to me. I thought it was so strange that I was becoming so familiar with this place." Although he found some ornate lamps from the old funeral home in the basement, and the safe he remembered from his childhood was in the same place on the parlor floor, much had changed. When the building was renovated in the 1950s, the two floors that had been home to his family were converted into five apartments. "The only thing I could see that was original to the building was the wooden door to the backyard," he said. But one thing remained constant. "Anytime I planned to show the property," he said, "I had to call first because there were still funerals going on there." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
By almost every metric, Drake's fifth LP, "Scorpion," is a blockbuster. In the first three days after its release June 29, it logged enough streams (435 million) to beat a record set by Post Malone over a full week. After two weeks, it reached rarefied territory in today's music industry: more than one million equivalent album sales. But can you find a physical copy in New York City? The answer: Not so easily. Copies of "Scorpion" CDs only for now; plans for a vinyl release have not yet been announced became available on July 13. That means the bulk of "Scorpion" consumption has taken place on streaming services, where 1,250 paid streams and 3,750 free streams equal one album; the rest were downloads. Its CDs haven't registered on the charts yet, and according to Nielsen, which tracks music industry data, "Scorpion" sold 8,000 physical copies from July 13 through July 17 a relatively microscopic figure that's a powerful reminder of how little some artists need physical sales to drive their success. CD sales have continued to slide as streaming booms, particularly for rap artists, who constantly set and break records and dominate playlists on services including Spotify and Apple Music. Several Top 10 albums on Billboard's chart this year never received a physical release at all, including Cardi B's "Invasion of Privacy" and XXXTentacion's "?"; for Migos and the Carters (Beyonce and Jay Z), physical copies were an afterthought, arriving weeks after their albums hit the charts. And an attempt to track down copies of the year's biggest LP in 16 stores that sell new music across Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens proved challenging. Only six stores had them, and prices ranged from 17.99 to 20.99. (A monthly subscription to Spotify, Apple Music or Tidal costs 9.99.) Representatives from the stores said they had sold around 16 to 18 total copies. Several salespeople said they had received some sort of inquiry about a physical copy, either CD or vinyl, of Drake's "Scorpion" before its release, which they deemed unusual. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
Staff members and owners of Defector Media meeting on Zoom. The company is the creation of journalists who left Deadspin last year. One of the biggest staff rebellions in online media took place last year, when all of the journalists working at the irreverent, sports centric website Deadspin resigned in protest after clashing with their bosses. Now Deadspin's former writers and editors 18 of the roughly 20 who quit last year have reunited to start a digital media company, Defector Media, that they will own and operate themselves. Defector Media is scheduled to start a podcast next month and roll out its website in September, its founders said. Tom Ley, a former features editor at Deadspin, will be the editor in chief. The business side will be led by Jasper Wang, a former Bain Company employee who said he had been an avid Deadspin reader since age 19. Defector's founders said the company had no outside investors, and each employee has taken a stake of roughly 5 percent in the venture. Unlike Deadspin, a free site that relies on ads, Defector will offer subscriptions at 8 a month, with an annual subscription available at a discount. The 19 staff members will be paid as the money comes in, and they can vote out the editor in chief with a two thirds majority. They will also own their own intellectual property, meaning they will get the money if Hollywood shows an interest in their work for Defector. "If you're going to take a moonshot, you may as well do it exactly the way you want to," said Kelsey McKinney, a former Deadspin writer who has joined the new company. The dispute at Deadspin became heated about a year ago, when journalists at the site published an investigative piece that was critical of Deadspin's own parent company, G/O Media, as well as of Great Hill Partners, the private equity firm that had taken control of G/O Media in April 2019. In October, Paul Maidment, then the editorial director of G/O Media, which also operates The Onion, Jezebel, The Root and other websites, sent a memo to the Deadspin staff, telling them to stick to publishing articles that had something to do with sports. Staff members pushed back against what they saw as management's crossing a line by getting involved in the editorial process. After they published articles on a pumpkin thief and how to dress for a wedding, the top editor, Barry Petchesky, was fired. Within a week, the rest of the site's reporters and editors had quit in protest. Since the exodus, Deadspin itself has carried on under G/O Media, moving to Chicago from New York and hiring Jim Rich, a former editor in chief of The Daily News, as its newsroom leader. (He is now G/O Media's editorial director.) 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. While the people who left Deadspin plan to write on sports for the new site, they will be free to go off topic when the mood strikes them. After their departures last year, they created a Twitter feed, UnDeadspin, to highlight articles by former Deadspin journalists published by other outlets. They also reprised the distinctive Deadspin voice in pop up blogs around the time of the Super Bowl and again in April. "A lot of us felt adrift," Mr. Ley said. "If we felt that way, it's likely there are pretty significant numbers of former readers who felt that way and would be willing to pay money to have that kind of publication come back." The former Deadspin staff members also received emails from fans of the site, which had started in 2005 under the publisher Gawker Media. One came from Mr. Wang, of Bain Company. Before the pandemic, he met with former Deadspin people at the Gold Star Beer Counter in Brooklyn. Now he finds himself taking on the challenge of starting a moderately staffed digital outlet as its vice president of revenue and operations. "The hardest part is still the hard part," Mr. Wang said, "which is having writers with talent and followings, and having these writers willing to hold hands and jump together. Once they decided to do that, building the scaffolding of the business is easier than it's ever been." He said he was optimistic because readers have become accustomed to paying for online content, noting the sports fans who subscribe to The Athletic. He added that vendors like Pico, Stripe and MailChimp have made it easier for media companies to outsource business functions. In addition, he said, the thinning of newspaper sports sections, the dissolution of ESPN the Magazine and layoffs at Sports Illustrated may have created a vacuum. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
In Algeria I encountered the superlative of blue. On my visit, I stayed briefly in the resort town of Tipaza, where "the eyes try in vain to grasp anything other than the drops of light and color that shimmer at the edge of the lashes," as Albert Camus wrote rapturously. When I attempted to walk to the seaside, I was intercepted by a police officer, appearing out of nowhere, who advised me that it would be unsafe for me to go that way and directed me back toward my hotel. The pairing of that unbounded landscape of blue, and the restricted lives contained within it, is one of the more bewildering experiences I've had. I never got to see Tipaza's memorial to Camus, which stands along the coastline. It's inscribed with one of his placidly profound observations, taken from one of his earliest essays, which was written in Tipaza and published in the collection "Nuptials," in 1938, by the Algerian French bookseller and printer who "discovered" him, Edmond Charlot. Charlot, and the bookshop and lending library that he ran in French Algiers from 1936 onward called Les Vraies Richesses (True Riches), are the subject of a new novel, originally published in 2017 in France by Kaouther Adimi, a young Algerian writer. Adimi has altered Charlot's epithet slightly, but meaningfully, in her own title, "Our Riches." It's a smart conceit, not only because the story of Charlot, a member of the interwar Francophone intelligentsia, is intertwined with that of Camus and the capers of his enduringly captivating literary circle, but also because the problem of literature in a colonized state often wielded as a tool of domination, separating those who could read, let alone write, from those who couldn't brings Adimi straight to the heart of modern day Algeria's ambivalence about its inheritance, and, not incidentally, of France's, too. Want to keep up with the latest and greatest in books? This is a good place to start. None Learn what you should be reading this fall: Our collection of reviews on books coming out this season includes biographies, novels, memoirs and more. See what's new in October: Among this month's new titles are novels by Jonathan Franzen, a history of Black cinema and a biography by Katie Couric. Nominate a book: The New York Times Book Review has just turned 125. That got us wondering: What is the best book that was published during that time? Listen to our podcast: Featuring conversations with leading figures in the literary world, from Colson Whitehead to Leila Slimani, the Book Review Podcast helps you delve deeper into your favorite books. The real life Charlot was born in Algiers in 1915, to a family that arrived with the French during the 1830 conquest. There was some mixed heritage among them (a Maltese grandfather), and by the 1930s, feeling himself neither French nor Algerian, Charlot insists that, with his printing press, he will construct a "Mediterranean outlook." "Land and literature: What could be more important?" Adimi's fictional Charlot writes. It's an idea that will prove unsustainable. Charlot's father oversees distribution in French Algeria for the publisher Hachette, and siphons off his unsold volumes for his son's first inventory at his new shop on the Rue Charras (which will later have its name changed to Rue Hamani). Charlot's first publication is a play about a worker uprising by Camus, the performance of which has been banned by the colonial government. He goes on to print works by some of the most important writers of the era, of French, Algerian, Spanish and Italian heritage, bringing together "people from all around this sea." But the life of the shop is frequently disrupted by history Charlot is thrown in prison by the Vichy regime, then called up to serve in the war effort in mainland France. Once the war is over, the Algerian revolution will force Charlot out of Algeria. Adimi alternates entries from an invented diary by Charlot with a second, contemporary plotline, in which a student has been hired to clear out the bookstore after the government, which kept it open for decades, decides to close it, in a present day Algiers infused with a melancholy self consciousness, that hypnotic blue that obscures an uneasy nation. The writing loses direction at times; characters appear who were never introduced, along with details that are unnecessary and uninteresting. Yet the truly potent effect of the book is that by taking on literary history from the underbelly of the French nation from the colony just across the sea Adimi confronts us with episodes that are simply never spoken of in France: the grand celebration of the end of World War II, in May 1945, which, in Algeria, turned into a massacre by the colonial administration; another massacre, this time in Paris, in 1961, of Algerian protesters, who were thrown into the Seine by French police officers. It is in unhappy nations, we are meant to understand, that history is a relentless companion. "Charlot left something beautiful here, something bigger than everything that was going on outside," a young Algerian says in 2017, as the shop is being shut down. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
WASHINGTON The White House is expected to name , the deputy director of the National Economic Council, as the chairman of the president's Council of Economic Advisers, according to a person familiar with the matter who declined to comment on the record. Mr. Furman is one of the last holdovers from the original Obama administration economic team that managed the financial crisis and deep recession. His nomination, which the Senate must confirm, might signal a more powerful role for a body that has in the last few years proven less central than the National Economic Council and the Treasury Department. Mr. Furman, who has a doctorate in economics from Harvard, has a long history in Washington. He served as an economist in the Clinton administration, spent time at the World Bank and has advised several Democrats, including current Secretary of State John Kerry during his presidential campaign. Before joining the Obama campaign, he worked at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and the Hamilton Project, a research group developed by former Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin. Traditionally, the head of the Council of Economic Advisers has been an academic economist, tasked with giving unvarnished economic advice to the president. Currently, Alan B. Krueger, a lauded labor economist who also served in Mr. Obama's Treasury Department, holds the post, where he has focused in part on the issue of inequality. Mr. Krueger will return later this year to Princeton University, where he is a tenured professor who has published influential works on topics including education and the minimum wage. The high cost of gas is forcing families to cut back on activities and essentials. Clearview AI does well in another round of facial recognition accuracy tests. Elizabeth Holmes will resume her testimony in her fraud trial. "Over the past two years, Alan has been one of my most trusted advisers on economic policy and a great friend," Mr. Obama said in a statement. "Alan was the driving force behind many of the economic policies that I have proposed that will grow our economy and create middle class jobs. He's devoted his entire career to making sure our economy works for everyone, not just those at the very top." Colleagues said that Mr. Furman has the analytical stature and credentials for the position. "Jason has spent his career mostly working in economic policy, rather than academic settings," said Lawrence H. Summers, the former Treasury secretary. "It would be easy to conclude from that that he was not a rigorous academic economic thinker. That would be badly wrong. He's one of the smartest, clearest thinking, most data oriented economists I know." N. Gregory Mankiw, who headed the Council of Economic Advisers during the George W. Bush administration, also showed enthusiasm for the appointment, writing on his blog that Mr. Furman is "smart, knowledgeable and sensible." He added: "He does not come to the job with as long an academic track record as other recent picks, but he has far more policy relevant experience and expertise." When Mr. Furman first took a job with the Obama administration, he received some criticism from the left. Some liberals questioned his ties to Mr. Rubin, a centrist. Labor leaders denounced him for a 2005 paper calling Walmart a "progressive success story." Mr. Furman argued that poorer families benefited disproportionately from the chain's low prices. "Even if you grant that Walmart hurts workers in the retail sector and the evidence for this is far from clear the magnitude of any potential harm is small in comparison," he wrote. The Obama economic team having come through a bruising two years of budget battles with Congress remains at work on issues like education, deficits and reforming the tax code, as well as policies designed to help support the sluggish if strengthening recovery. Mr. Furman's appointment would continue the administration's habit of shuffling around well known faces more often than bringing in new blood. Mr. Obama has recently named longtime aide Michael Froman as the United States Trade Representative, for instance, and his former chief of staff Jacob J. Lew as Treasury secretary. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Economy |
When the curtain went down on Alexei Ratmansky's dense, complicated new work for New York City Ballet last weekend, the end of a long Sunday matinee, my friend and I turned to each other, not sure what to think. "What was with the gang rape scene?" I said. My friend shook his head, as unenthused as I was. We both had been struck by it: a scene in which the ballerina Megan Fairchild (in a role originated by Sterling Hyltin), at the center of a group of five men, was aggressively thrown around against her character's will a scene that happened, and then was over, not explicitly addressed again. At one point, the petite and strong Ms. Fairchild, trapped, was catapulted into the air, flailing violently (and rather impressively) while airborne. When her aggressors dispersed, she slapped her partner, Daniel Ulbricht, and he fell to the floor. Some people in the audience laughed. We didn't. The retaliation, if that's what it was, didn't match the gravity of the assault. In other words, we had seen a portrayal of a woman being physically violated, with essentially no consequences, no resolution, no critique of the men's actions or of their unresolved nature. Sound familiar? Moreover, it was never less than beautiful to look at: controlled, virtuosic, glamorous. Did everyone see it this way? No, and I'm not suggesting they should have. But I did, and the work, "Odessa," which had had its premiere at the City Ballet gala a few nights before, left me feeling heavy, not offended so much as exhausted, as I tried to reconcile its flood of dazzling formal invention for a cast of 18 dancers (not unusual for Mr. Ratmansky) with its use of tired, troubling cliches (more surprising). If such sleek, unexamined images of violence against women this wasn't the only one in "Odessa," but to me the most prominent and inexplicable weren't so pervasive in contemporary ballet, I might have felt differently. But they are, and I've seen enough. By "images of violence against women," I mean not just depictions of violent acts but also the kind of forceful partnering that's become so ubiquitous, so gratuitous, so banal in ballet the yanking, dragging, prying open of women's bodies by men both with and without a narrative pretext. Calling it out, as I did after seeing Angelin Preljocaj's "La Stravaganza" (1997) for City Ballet in 2014, or Mauro Bigonzetti's "Cantata" (2000), performed by Gauthier Dance in 2016 feels as tiresome as watching it, and unpacking its history would take more space than I have here. Suffice it to say that this isn't a new kind of grievance, dating back at least as far as Ann Daly's controversial, oft cited 1987 essay "The Balanchine Woman," in which she argued that George Balanchine's celebrated Neo Classicism hinged on the objectification of the ballerina, calling ballet "one of our culture's most powerful models of patriarchal ceremony." (And let's not forget about an earlier rejection of that model, by the women who developed what we now call modern dance.) Men lifting, turning, supporting women it's part of ballet's DNA. But there are ways to work within these traditions, or subvert them, that give women equal power and agency, or at least try to. Mr. Ratmansky often has, one reason I expected more from "Odessa." And Justin Peck, City Ballet's artist in residence, seems interested in overhauling well worn gender conventions, in both obvious ways (his "The Times Are Racing" includes a gender neutral role) and subtler ones, treating women like autonomous beings even in the context of more traditional partnering. My disappointment with "Odessa" led me to post a photo on Instagram my favorite place to air an impulsive thought with the caption "no more gang rape scenes in ballets, please." (The photo was of my face, looking directly at the camera, wearing what I consider an "over it" kind of expression.) This prompted an expansive thread of comments, including by my colleague Alastair Macaulay, who had reviewed "Odessa" for The New York Times. He asked whether my call for "no more" was a call for censorship: "Must works of art only depict people behaving correctly?" The answer, of course, is no. If artists want to deal with rape, gang or otherwise, as subject matter, they should, as they should grapple with any difficult issue. But they must really deal with it: Say something. Don't just toss it in as one more incidental plot twist, one more exquisite thing to behold. Acknowledge its urgency, its complexity and the fact that to many in the audience, it may not be so abstract. The score for "Odessa," by Leonid Desyatnikov, was written for the 1990 Russian film "Sunset," inspired by Isaac Babel's short stories about Jewish gangsters in Odessa at the end of the Russian Revolution. Mr. Ratmansky may have intended to evoke that world, including the harsh reality of its gender dynamics. But I didn't feel especially transported, nor did he seem to be complicating, or commenting on, that harshness. Dance, being wordless, leaves ample room for interpretation, perhaps more than other art forms. Another colleague who saw "Odessa," a veteran dance critic, told me that she, too, saw a rape scene, but that it took place in Mr. Ulbricht's dream. For her, the work's violent moments were also its most profound, reflecting the darkness of Mr. Ratmansky's source material. Mr. Macaulay, in his review, noted that there were "moments of personal violence." Yet I also wasn't alone in my reading. When I posted my plea for "no more," I didn't specify what had provoked it, and apparently I didn't need to. Within minutes, a friend commented, "Did you see 'Odessa'?" Mr. Ratmansky's work often rewards multiple viewings, and if I see "Odessa" again, it's possible I'll understand it differently. What my first viewing inspired is a hope that if choreographers are going to engage with the all too present issue of violence against women, they do so in a responsible way that tries to shift the paradigm of what we face out in the world that proposes some alternative, or at least offers a substantive critique instead of replicating what we've seen enough of. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
Julie Murray shares an apartment with a friend on 95th Street near First Avenue. The building is respectably maintained, it's true, and the bathroom is a reasonable size. There's an elevator, and Ms. Murray, 22, a college senior hoping to work in the fashion industry, has her own room. Shoot her. Just shoot her now. "The Upper East Side is very inconvenient for 20 somethings," Ms. Murray said. "The type of people we want to be with are all downtown." She therefore conducts her social life in and around Union Square, and either waits an hour for the No. 6 train home in the wee hours of the morning or reluctantly ponies up for a cab. On those rare occasions when she hangs around her own neighborhood, she feels decidedly out of place. "This is a family area," Ms. Murray said. "There are a lot of strollers and double strollers, and women use them as weapons. They're ruthless. They just bulldoze you over. If it weren't so much money, I'd be living in the East Village or on the Lower East Side." In the 1970s and '80s, the Upper East Side was considered plenty cool enough for young New Yorkers, even those who could afford to live anywhere they wanted. Since then, many of the young and the restless have been drawn downtown and to Brooklyn. And yet, the Upper East Side continues to house a healthy contingent of 20 somethings, thanks to rents that are more affordable than those in catnip neighborhoods. A brief social history: Thirty and 35 years ago a large cohort of the just out of college, some with trust funds or parents willing to be lease guarantors, eagerly scouted the studios and one bedroom apartments in walk ups on the side streets of Yorkville and Lenox Hill or in the postwar high rises complete with doormen and shiny lobbies on the avenues east of Lexington from the low 70s to the mid 90s. One building, Normandie Court on East 95th Street, was a such a postgrad magnet it was nicknamed Dorm andie Court. These happy new arrivals gathered for drinks or dinner at the restaurants and bars that lined Second and Third Avenues: Dorrian's Red Hand, Willy's, Martell's, Cronie's, Mumbles, Kinsale Tavern, the Green Kitchen and Dresner's were all crammed with 20 somethings just like them. Others, with more anemic bank accounts, looked on the Upper West Side, the Lower East Side, the East Village and if they were really hurting for funds in the distant, seamier precincts of Brooklyn. These urban pioneers understood that if they wanted to see their Upper East Side friends, they'd have to be the ones to hop on the train. No one but no one was going to make the long, parlous journey to Williamsburg or Boerum Hill. Now, of course, thanks to the capricious world of real estate, it's a whole different story. Younger New Yorkers began making the shift away from the Upper East Side almost 20 years ago, according to Kathy Braddock, a founder of Rutenberg Realty. "That's when gentrification came to the East Village, the Lower East Side, ABC Town and Brooklyn, areas that young people wouldn't have previously considered unless they were real adventurers." Young apartment hunters on the Upper East Side, on the other hand, can expect fully outfitted kitchens, bathrooms that don't require contortions and comparative bargains. And in many instances they're finding contentment in a neighborhood they had previously associated with old money and old fogies, i.e. people over 35. Others, while bowing to practical considerations, go kicking and screaming all the way uptown, and resign themselves to a social life that involves travel. "I have friends in the East Village who will not come up here," said Alexandra Perrotta, 27, a recruiter for a law firm who just moved into a studio on 97th Street between Park and Lexington. "I have to go to them." When Arielle Grabel, 27, who works in public relations, was looking for an apartment three years ago, she firmly stated her terms: nothing above 20th Street. After she saw what was available, she adjusted her demands to "O.K., nothing above 40th Street." "And then I was saying: 'O.K., if the best I can do is the 50s, that's not so high,' and then eventually, 'O.K., 74th Street it is,' " said Ms. Grabel, who, for a monthly figure she characterizes as between 2,100 and 2,300 month, has a large studio with glossy floors and marble countertops in an elevator building. She has two good friends in the neighborhood, but has been unsuccessful in recruiting others, even if it's just to come uptown for drinks and dinner. "They say there's nothing to do up here," said Ms. Grabel, who herself prefers the night life downtown. But perhaps her sales pitch needs a bit of work. She tells her friends the Upper East Side isn't that bad, not that far from the action, and the people aren't that old. "Most of my listings are on the Upper East Side, and it's hard to even get certain clients to come up here and look at them," said Eric Rohe, an agent with Citi Habitats. "They want to be on Fulton Street or Water Street or in Brooklyn. They want a studio with exposed brick and just enough closet space, and they want to be near the greatest bars and restaurants. And they want the rent to be somewhere between 1,400 and 1,750." Zoey Topper and Noah Silverstein, at Big Daddy's on Second Avenue, had the Lower East Side or the Village in mind. They're Upper East Siders now. Sasha Maslov for The New York Times "Where they want to live," Mr. Rohe added, "the rent for a place like that will be 2,600. But there are plenty of spacious studios with exposed brick in a much more affordable price range on the Upper East Side." If Mr. Rohe can get people to come to his office, he'll print out every listing on the Upper East Side and every downtown listing in a client's price range. "Nine times out of 10," he said, "there will be 30 to 60 listings on the Upper East Side, compared to a handful downtown." According to statistics compiled by the appraisal firm Miller Samuel, a studio on the Upper East Side averages about 2,000 to 2,225 a month, depending on precise location, and a one bedroom runs 2,600 to 3,100 a month. Those looking for a studio in the more with it redoubts can expect to pay more than 2,300 a month on the Lower East Side, more than 2,500 in the East Village and more than 2,700 in Williamsburg. A one bedroom runs about 2,827 on the Lower East Side, 2,861 in the East Village and 3,300 in Williamsburg. But living on the Upper East Side doesn't just mean a smaller monthly outlay; it means more and better room for the money. The reason for the rent differential: supply and demand. The Upper East Side is a thick slice of land with a great density and diversity of housing stock, said Gary Malin, the president of Citi Habitats. "It runs the gamut from entry level walk ups to elevator buildings without a doorman to elevator buildings with a part time doorman to elevator building with a full time doorman." "You don't have that much inventory and that variety in the more hip, trendy areas downtown," Mr. Malin added. "But so many young people in their 20s are looking there now, which drives prices up. Everybody in New York has a wish list. If they can't find it below 23rd Street, they may go to the Upper East Side for the perfect apartment, if not the perfect location." Such was the case with Zoey Topper, 22, an associate at a public relations firm, who with her roommate, Noah Silverstein, also 22, was hoping to find the quintessential apartment on the Lower East Side or in Greenwich Village. But she quickly learned that their budget, 3,000 tops, would get them a space that compared unfavorably with a shoe box. "That's when we decided to go to the Upper East Side," said Ms. Topper, who lives on the third floor of a walk up in the 80s near First Avenue. She has her own large bedroom "it's bigger than the room I had growing up." When Michal Adut and her boyfriend, DeJohn Rose, 26, decided to move in together, they were both living in Williamsburg and wanted to stay there. "We loved the restaurants, we loved our coffee places and we loved the culture," said Ms. Adut, 27. Their budget hovered at 2,500 a month. But rent for apartments they deemed livable and well situated started at 2,900. "There was a point that we got really upset," she said. After giving up on Williamsburg, after futile forays to the Gramercy Park area and the East 50s, the couple continued on their way uptown. Their game spirit was fueled by a list of restaurants and bars compiled by a friend as evidence that there was life beyond 70th Street. Last month they moved into a fully renovated one bedroom with new appliances on 78th and Lexington. "It's a block from the subway," Ms. Adut said. "There's an elevator and big windows and air conditioning units. If you'd have asked me a year or two ago, I would have said I never want to live on the Upper East Side. But I'm running into all these people I know who have moved up here for the same reason we did." Ms. Adut suspects she and Mr. Rose will still venture to Williamsburg for its restaurants. "But I don't think we're going to go there every weekend." Ms. Perrotta, who was priced out of TriBeCa and the West Village, has been diligently exploring her new habitat. "There are all these new places catering to a younger, hipper crowd," she said, enumerating bars like JBird and Jones Wood Foundry. "There are more restaurants here now. There's more action." She said she was trying to sell her downtown friends on moving uptown. "I've tried before," she said. "Let's see how well I do this time." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
Our guide to new art shows and some that will be closing soon. 'IGGY POP LIFE CLASS BY JEREMY DELLER' at the Brooklyn Museum (through June 18). Now 69 years old, the rock star Iggy Pop has been conscripted as the subject of a life drawing class organized by the British artist Jeremy Deller. Twenty two art students were chosen for the four hour class, which took place in February 2016 at the New York Academy of Art. In some of the 53 drawings at the Brooklyn Museum, chosen out of over 100, Iggy Pop looks like classical statuary; in others, a cyborg or a ready for Pixar character. Objects from the museum's collection displayed alongside the drawings make canny connections. These include a 1912 self portrait by Egon Schiele, African fertility figures and a 1982 Robert Mapplethorpe photograph. (Martha Schwendener) 718 638 5000, brooklynmuseum.org 'I'M NOBODY! WHO ARE YOU? THE LIFE AND POETRY OF EMILY DICKINSON' at the Morgan Library Museum (through May 28). This is the second largest gathering ever, anywhere, of prime Dickinson relics, and as such it comes with an aura the size of a city block. It instantly turns the Morgan into a pilgrimage site, a literary Lourdes, a place to come in contact with one aspect of America that can truly claim greatness. And the show has a mission, to give 21st century audiences a fresh take on Dickinson. Gone is the white gowned Puritan nun, and the Belle of Amherst, that infantilized charmer. At the Morgan we get a different Dickinson, a person among people: a member of a household, a village dweller, a citizen. (Holland Cotter) 212 685 0008, themorgan.org 'ALEXEI JAWLENSKY' at the Neue Galerie (through May 29). The Russian born Expressionist Alexei Jawlensky vacationed with Kandinsky, studied theosophy and was banned by the Nazis. He was never quite an artist of the first rank. But this galloping retrospective of his dogged, wide ranging trek through the colors and styles of his time has the poignant appeal of a war diary, offering a view of historical cataclysm in this case, the emergence of abstraction all the more illuminating for its limited, personal horizons. (Will Heinrich) 212 994 9493, neuegalerie.org 'RAYMOND PETTIBON: A PEN OF ALL WORK' at the New Museum (through April 9). Mr. Pettibon first gained fame for his punk rock album designs in the 1970s, but that was just a phase for a madly prolific artist for whom drawing and writing, usually combined, are inseparable. For this retrospective, more than 800 annotated pictures fill three floors and the lobby of the New Museum. With references to childhood television, literary classics and current politics, they have the prickly, manic buzz of interior rants made public, an impression amplified in the artist's tour de force Twitter feed. (Cotter) 212 219 1222, newmuseum.org | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
The gentle piano music starts as the doorbell chimes. A white haired Christian pastor greets his friend, a Muslim imam, and the two converse and laugh over a cup of tea, wincing about their creaky knees as they prepare to part ways. Later, it spurs the same idea in each for a gift: kneepads sent via Amazon Prime. (It is a commercial, after all.) The piano notes accelerate as the men open their deliveries with smiles, and then each uses the item to kneel in prayer: one at a church, the other at a mosque. The final chords fade. The ad from Amazon and its message of interfaith harmony became a viral sensation this holiday season, at the end of a year in which talk involving Muslims became particularly ominous. Amazon which aired the commercial in England, Germany and the United States cast a practicing vicar and Muslim community leader in the lead roles and consulted with several religious organizations to ensure the ad was accurate and respectful. "This type of a project is definitely a first for us," said Rameez Abid, communications director for the social justice branch of the Islamic Circle of North America, one group Amazon worked with. "They were very aware that this was going to cause controversy and might get hate mail and things like that, but they said it's something that they wanted to do because the message is important." A slew of major American brands including Honey Maid, Microsoft, Chevrolet, YouTube and CoverGirl prominently featured everyday Muslim men, women and children in their marketing last year. While such ads were apolitical in nature, focused on themes of community and acceptance, they were viewed as bold, even risky, in a year when there were campaign statements by Donald J. Trump about a Muslim registry and a ban on Muslim immigrants. It was "a glimmer of hope in the midst of a greatly traumatic year for Muslims," said Mona Haydar, an American poet and activist who appeared in a recent Microsoft commercial with a variety of community leaders, including a transgender teenager and a white policeman. "For me as a Muslim woman, I represent something right now in the country that for some people incites fear," said Ms. Haydar, 28, who wears a hijab and hails from Flint, Mich. "This normalizes the narrative that we are just human beings." Several advertising executives likened the movement to the decision by mass marketers to cast same sex couples and their children in ads for the first time in 2013 and 2014, making inclusion and acceptance a priority over potential criticism from some customers. "With the kind of gay parent issue, we've gotten a little closer to acceptance, but the Muslim issue in America is still pretty raw for a lot of people," said Kevin Brady, an executive creative director at the ad agency Droga5, which worked last year with Honey Maid on a commercial about white and Muslim American neighbors. "I don't think it should be, but it's one that I think brands took an extra step of courage to really go out there with in 2016." 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 campaign for YouTube Music in the middle of last year highlighted five individuals, including a young woman in a hijab, rapping to a song by Blackalicious while walking through a school corridor. The inclusion of the ad, "Afsa's Theme," was purposeful, said Danielle Tiedt, the chief marketing officer at YouTube, adding that highlighting diversity is "more important than ever." "I don't think diversity is a political statement," she said. "This is an issue of universal humanity." For its ad, Amazon was painstaking in its attention to detail, checking with religious groups about costuming and background imagery, and sending over final proofs of the ad for review, said Mr. Abid and Antonios Kireopoulos, an associate general secretary of the National Council of Churches, another group Amazon consulted. Ads showing any kind of racial diversity can now attract heaping amounts of vitriol online most of it delivered anonymously as State Farm discovered last month when it posted an ad of a black man proposing to a white woman on Twitter. Anti Muslim remarks, like "they don't belong here," peppered the comments under Chevrolet's video in June of two twins from Los Angeles, named Ruqaya and Qassim, who were accepted into a soccer program the company sponsors. They were 8 years old when the video, which did not mention religion, was made. Mr. Brady said the agency had prepared Honey Maid for potentially hateful responses to its ad, though it fielded fewer than he feared. (On Facebook, the top comments are appreciative and heartfelt.) Nida'a Moghrabi, a cheesecake seller and mother of three daughters who starred in the commercial with a neighbor she befriended a few years ago, said she had initially been irritated by some rude comments on Facebook and YouTube until she realized how ubiquitous such remarks were. "If you go to the adoption commercial from Honey Maid, you still see nasty comments," Ms. Moghrabi said, referring to an ad of a child talking about his new brother. "So I was like, if they're complaining about adopted kids, of course I'm not going to worry about their comments about me." The response from her community was positive, she said. Such ads are "encouraging for the younger generations, like those who are afraid to mention that they're Muslims," she added. "My daughters are more confident now, and I believe their friends who are Muslims, they know that we're accepted and we're loved." With more Americans dwelling in siloed information bubbles, commercials have the potential to reach audiences with diverse viewpoints. Amazon said its ad had aired during programs including the "Today" show, "Empire" and "Blue Bloods," while Microsoft said its placements had included "The Voice," "Pitch" and "This Is Us." Dr. Kireopoulos said he had first seen the commercial outside work while watching a National Football League game on television, giving him hope that many different audiences will see it and consider the message, particularly as reports of hate crimes against American Muslims rise. "I imagine the violence will unfortunately continue, so it will take more vigilance on the part of community leaders and everyday believers to work together," he said. Ms. Haydar is hopeful about the potential. "In 10 years, this commercial might have lived on in the heart of some young kid who saw a Muslim woman in a commercial and didn't see the boogeyman in my face, and instead saw a normal human being," she said. "Then if somebody says something about Muslims that's kind of crazy, maybe that kid can say, 'I saw this commercial, and she actually just seemed kind of normal.' You don't know what the reverberations look like." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
Voyager 2 has been traveling through space for 43 years, and is now more than 11 billion miles from Earth. But every so often, something goes wrong. At the end of January, for instance, the robotic probe executed a routine somersault to beam scientific data back to Earth when an error triggered a shutdown of some of its functions. "Everybody was extremely worried about recovering the spacecraft," said Suzanne Dodd, who is the Voyager project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. The mission's managers on our planet know what to do when such a fault occurs. Although it takes about a day and a half to talk to Voyager 2 at its current distance, they sent commands to restore its normal operations. But starting on Monday for the next 11 months, they won't be able to get word to the spry spacecraft in case something again goes wrong (although the probe can still stream data back to Earth). Upgrades and repairs are prompting NASA to take offline a key piece of space age equipment used to beam messages all around the solar system. The downtime is necessary because of a flood of new missions to Mars scheduled to leave Earth this summer. But the temporary shutdown also highlights that the Deep Space Network, essential infrastructure relied upon by NASA and other space agencies, is aging and in need of expensive upgrades. On any given day, NASA communicates with an armada of spacecraft in deep space. These long distance calls require the most powerful radio antennas in the world. Luckily NASA has its own switchboard, the Deep Space Network or DSN. The DSN is one of space exploration's most valuable assets. It comprises one station in the United States in Goldstone, Calif. and two overseas in Canberra, Australia, and Madrid. It has been in operation nonstop for 57 years, and without it, spacecraft that traveled beyond the moon couldn't communicate with Earth. It is used not only by NASA, but also the European Space Agency and the space programs of Japan, India and soon even the United Arab Emirates. Each station on Earth is outfitted with three 34 meter antennas and one 70 meter antenna. They switch back and forth depending on where a spacecraft is in relation to our planet, and you can see which spacecraft are talking to Earth in real time by visiting NASA's DSN Now website. Because of Voyager 2's trajectory relative to Earth, it can talk to only one station and one antenna in the network: Canberra's 70 meter dish, also known as DSS 43. And that dish will need to be improved for the new Mars missions, prompting a shutdown and temporary dismantlement. "Frankly, there's never a good time to take down an asset and never a good time to fix the potholes in the road," said Ms. Dodd, who is also director of the group that manages the Deep Space Network for NASA. "But you know you're going to do the work at the airport, not during the Christmas rush. You're going to do it when it's less busy." Because Voyager 2 is considered a "geriatric" spacecraft, losing contact with it for any length of time is risky. And for the next 11 months, Earth's ability to communicate with the probe, now in what's considered interstellar space, will be limited. "There is risk in this business as there is in anything in spaceflight," said Glen Nagle, NASA's outreach and administration lead for the station in Australia. "It's a major change and the longest downtime for the dish in the eighteen years I've been here." One of the biggest risks is keeping Voyager 2's communication antenna pointed at Earth. To do this, the probe fires its thrusters more than a dozen times a day to stay oriented. The mission's managers have to trust that the automation on board will be executed relatively flawlessly for nearly a year. Staying warm enough is another major concern. The Voyager team has been slowly shutting off instruments in order to use their heaters to keep the spacecraft's fuel lines at a balmy 32 degrees Fahrenheit. "We've done the analysis to show that we can get through the downtime," with some margin for error, said Todd Barber, the propulsion engineer for the twin Voyager spacecraft. (Voyager 1 is able to communicate with other dishes.) While the team won't be able to command Voyager 2, they will still be listening to the spacecraft. By combining the power of the other antennas in Canberra, they will be able to collect its scientific observations. "The Canberra site will still be getting data back from the spacecraft," Ms. Dodd said. "The science data will still be coming down." Being able to only listen could prompt some anxiety. While Voyager 2 will keep collecting and sending back science data, should something go wrong, members of the team will be powerless to help it, and will just have to watch with their hands tied. "We've been planning on this for over a year," Ms. Dodd said. "I think like any good planning, we're prepared for it. And we've done our best, you know, we've done the best that we can." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
In January, a government appointed panel recommended that all pregnant women and new mothers be screened for depression. Public health advocates rejoiced, as did untold numbers of women who had not known that maternal mental illness even existed before it hit them like a freight train. But the panel did not mention one possible consequence of a diagnosis: Life and disability insurance providers have sometimes penalized women with these mental illnesses by charging them more money, excluding mental illness from coverage or declining to cover them at all. And it's perfectly legal. Many insurance companies lump these women with the larger pool of people in whom more general depression has been diagnosed. That can leave those with mild to moderate cases that came and went facing higher rates, even if they may not be at higher risk of suicide or being unable to work. But insurers base decisions on actuarial data, and the historical underdiagnosis of mild to moderate postpartum depression means there is not much long term data for insurance companies to use. Not every woman will pay higher rates, and the fear of doing so is not a good reason to avoid screening or necessary treatment. Women who are aware of the potential insurance problems can theoretically circumvent them in the short term. Any woman who has never given birth but hopes to get pregnant soon should buy as much life and disability insurance as she thinks she will need before she conceives. But that requires the skills of a fortuneteller, which Rebecca Fox Starr lacks. When she and her husband were childless first time home buyers, they bought life insurance. Now, as the parents of two children, they need more. It will probably cost them more this time, if they can get insurance at all. After the birth of their second child in 2013, Ms. Fox Starr suffered from postpartum depression and was eventually hospitalized. Now, she finds herself in the opaque world of actuarial taint. "It is scary to think that I am less insurable when I am likely someone who needs life insurance more than those without mental health issues," she said. How she will fare when she goes insurance shopping is impossible to know. But it is likely to go something like this. First, she'll probably need to let insurance companies scour commercial databases that contain her prescription records. Those tempted to lie about a history of depression should understand that to do so is insurance fraud. But people who have taken drugs for the condition should know that potential insurers will probably find out. A few exceptions exist. Prudential says it only peers into the databases if women ages 18 to 64 are asking for policies worth 1 million or more. Zurich North America said that a current or previous diagnosis of postpartum depression is not a factor in its decision about whether to check a potential client's prescription history. Once insurers complete the background check, then the personal questions will begin. How long ago was the depression? How long did it last? How severe was it? Did you have thoughts of suicide or attempt it? Were you hospitalized? Has the depression stopped? If you took a prescription medication, how long did you take it? Was this the first time depression was diagnosed? Has it been diagnosed since? The same questions probably will arise if pregnancy related or postpartum anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder or post traumatic stress disorder were diagnosed in the past. In the background, the life insurance companies are trying to calculate the odds of you killing yourself, and the disability underwriters are trying to guess the likelihood you will not be able to work because of mental illness in the future. Of the 20 or so top insurers I asked to comment, not one would say what odds they were using, adding that they consider their actuarial information proprietary. MassMutual refused to answer any questions or to say why. Allstate referred questions about its practices to an industry trade group, then stopped responding to messages. The reluctance may be because of a lack of specific data. We just don't know a lot about who suffered from pregnancy related mental health issues a generation ago and what became of them. The practical ramification of that lack of data is this: Now that untold numbers of additional women are going to learn that they have mild to moderate postpartum depression because of increased screening, there isn't a satisfactory answer to the question of whether they ought to pay more for life and disability insurance afterward. "To my knowledge, that data doesn't exist," said, Samantha Meltzer Brody, the director of the perinatal psychiatry program at the University of North Carolina Center for Women's Mood Disorders. "But at what point are we going to penalize people who were never suicidal? How do we weigh this, or are we going to throw everyone in the same bucket?" Some insurance companies say they may not lump the people who have mild to moderate cases with those who were hospitalized or tried suicide, depending on whether they have the right answers to the companies' underwriting questions. At Banner Life Insurance Company, women with a single episode of maternal depression could qualify for the best rate if it lasted less than a year and they are not currently taking any medication for the condition. At State Farm, women who have recovered from depression related to childbearing and have no history of other depression may also avoid higher premiums. Northwestern Mutual said that women with maternal depression typically have an excellent prognosis and most applicants will pay the lowest rates. MetLife and Mutual of Omaha made similar remarks. Disability insurers may give you coverage but permanently exclude any mental health disorders, so if cancer rendered you unable to work, the coverage would kick in, but not if you had an onset of major depression. Life insurance doesn't work this way, though policies generally have a suicide exclusion that lasts for the first year or so, no matter your health history. For women who wish to avoid running this underwriting gantlet, buying as much insurance as they think they'll ever need before their first pregnancy remains the best move. Once the insurance companies give you a policy, they can't go back and re underwrite you while it is in effect. USAA offers a sort of bonus feature on its life insurance: If you already have some coverage, you can add more without any additional medical exam if you are between the ages of 18 and 35 and you get married, have or adopt a child or buy a home. If you haven't bought insurance yet, there may be other options. Juli Fraga, a psychologist in San Francisco, often uses a diagnosis code that reads "adjustment disorder with anxiety" or "adjustment disorder with depression," under the theory that these diagnoses won't hurt women as much when insurance companies start nosing around later. (Health insurance companies can no longer underwrite based on your health history, thanks to the Affordable Care Act.) This may work, especially for people who do not end up going to a psychiatrist for prescriptions to help speed the healing. When the time comes to buy insurance, shop around, perhaps with an independent agent who works with many companies. If you get turned down or don't like the rates you're quoted, ask if you can be reconsidered in a year or two if you don't experience additional mental illness. Check to see what optional insurance you may have access to through your employer, too, since the insurance companies that service employers tend to underwrite the group of employees in total and don't ask individual workers that many questions. With Unum, for instance, a diagnosis of postpartum depression does not affect life insurance rates. And then, this advice: Don't avoid the depression screening or treatment for fear of what it might portend for your rates at some point in the future. And get the insurance that you need, if you can possibly afford it. Ashley Riser had life insurance, let it lapse for financial reasons, then reapplied after a diagnosis of postpartum depression, anxiety and obsessive compulsive disorder. She paid a higher rate. "I often tell people that my life insurance policy helped save my life," she said, describing the moment she scoured it to see if there was a suicide exclusion during the initial period of the policy. There was. "I knew I couldn't leave my husband and baby in financial disaster, so instead, I dug up the courage to get the help I needed." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Your Money |
Looking to lift the University of Texas System out of a roiling debate over higher education reform in 2011, its chancellor, Francisco G. Cigarroa, sat down with a small group of advisers for nearly two days to shape a plan to move the system forward. From his Austin office this week, Dr. Cigarroa recalled feeling a need to take control. "If there's so much anxiety, at the end of the day, the chancellor needs to manage the process," he said. The group produced what became known as the system's Framework for Advancing Excellence, a sweeping nine point plan that called for raising graduation rates, bolstering online education and increasing the system's investment in South Texas. The plan was widely praised, and it eased anxieties. Dr. Cigarroa was invited to the White House twice to discuss it. Now, amid renewed tensions, public attention has drifted from the framework as legislators have accused the U.T. System Board of Regents of trying to micromanage the University of Texas at Austin, the system's flagship. Still, despite the latest conflict, Dr. Cigarroa said he did not believe another dramatic stroke was needed to reclaim the system's reins. "I've got my hands full," he said. "I don't need a Framework 2.0. That might give me a coronary." (The University of Texas at Austin is a corporate sponsor of The Texas Tribune.) Dr. Cigarroa said the system had not lost its focus on the original plan. "My pledge to the regents is that I'm going to get the framework accomplished," he said. "That's what I'm focused on every day." Dr. Cigarroa said that the turbulence of 2011, from which the framework sprang, was largely generated by differing philosophies about the role of a public university. The recent points of contention, he said, were "different." At a meeting in March, R. Steven Hicks, a regent, accused his colleagues of "spending 90 to 95 percent of their time as a regent drilling down on U.T. Austin," to the detriment of the system's 14 other institutions. Lawmakers, some of whom have accused certain regents of being on a "witch hunt" for U.T. Austin's president, have talked about stripping them of their power and financing. One regent, Robert L. Stillwell, said that the chancellor and his framework might have been the system's salvation in a period marked by division and disagreement. "Without the chancellor, we might well have not been able to make any progress," Mr. Stillwell said. "And there's still work to be done." Dr. Cigarroa said the fact that public attention has strayed from the strategic plan has not impeded its installation. He said that in less than two years the system had accomplished a large majority of the goals set forth in the plan, including the start of massive open online courses through U.T. Austin. Plans for two medical schools one in Austin and another in the Rio Grande Valley that were signaled in the framework are also advancing. The chancellor also said he planned to see the framework through to the end. "Even with all this stuff, it's still an amazing job," he said. Noting that he has good relationships with both the Legislature and the regents, Dr. Cigarroa said he was optimistic that the current rift would subside, particularly after a recent vote in which the regents unanimously reversed course on plans to which lawmakers had objected, including an effort to avoid turning over requested records to elected officials. "I think the Legislature needs to get the confidence that the governing boards not just of the U.T. System, but of all university systems in higher education allow the chancellor and the presidents to get their work done," he said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Education |
"Wonder" is, overall, much less polished than Mendes's last album or the one prior, "Illuminate," released in 2016 and still his best work, which featured oodles of tightly zipped and anxious teen pop rock. (Though he works with some of the same collaborators, including Kid Harpoon, Nate Mercereau and Scott Harris, notably absent is Teddy Geiger, the songwriter and producer who gave those albums ballast and nerve.) Harry Styles might get the glamorous magazine covers and the thirsty memes, but Mendes in general has been a far more convincing avatar of this approach. Styles's music suggests a perpetual ambient sonic vision quest, while Mendes at his best has tossed off a series of crisp hits with flourish. On this album, though, his lyrics meander and stop short of true sentiment, and his rhythmic deliveries feel less cohesive. He still has a way with swell, understanding how to inflate his voice from whimper to peal. But on this inconsistent album, rarely does his singing convey depth of feeling. The handful of dippy love songs "24 Hours," which chirps like Christmas music, or the sock hop ready "305" don't match the mood. The only exception is "Look Up at the Stars," an ambivalent love song about the relationship between idol and idolizers. "The universe is ours/And I'm not gonna let you down," Mendes sings tepidly, like someone who understands and is resigned to how much of that dynamic is beyond his control. The most famous male pop star of the last decade is burdened by a similar ambivalence about success. That would be Justin Bieber, who duets with Mendes on "Monster," a smoky, smooth mope off, with the two singers performing a kind of gut check for their fans. "You put me on a pedestal and tell me I'm the best," Mendes sings, without a flicker of joy. Four years and a couple of lifetimes older than Mendes, Bieber has long been a performer for whom superstardom itself is the raison d'etre, with music a distant second (or fifth, or ninth, at least up until this year's "Changes"). His verse is more tart, more nostril flare: "Lifting me up, lifting me up, and tearing me down, tearing me down." He sounds exasperated, over it. An older brother letting his little brother know just how cruel the world can be. He understands he got here, and he's looking for an exit. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
Stay up to date on the full list of nominees for the 2021 Emmy Awards. Netflix and HBO's "Watchmen" dominated the 2020 Emmy nominations, which were announced on July 28. The Emmy Awards ceremony will be held tonight and broadcast on ABC beginning at 8 p.m. Eastern. It will be hosted by Jimmy Kimmel. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
REVOLVER Sam Colt and the Six Shooter That Changed America By Jim Rasenberger TOMBSTONE The Earp Brothers, Doc Holliday, and the Vendetta Ride From Hell By Tom Clavin You recognize the gun. It is elegant yet functional, clever yet intuitive. The hammer invites the thumb to depress it, causing the cylinder to rotate and align the next chamber with the barrel. The trigger asks to be squeezed, to snap the hammer onto the primer and ignite the gunpowder charge, which will erupt into gas and propel the bullet toward its target. The target is assumed to be human. The revolver is as iconic for Americans as the samurai sword is for the Japanese or the longbow for the English and Welsh. The difference is that we know who invented it. The fact of its invention matters almost as much to our self image as the gun itself. We remember its creator, Samuel Colt, as the definitive Connecticut Yankee, ingenious and acquisitive. But his missteps are as fascinating as his accomplishments, as described in "Revolver: Sam Colt and the Six Shooter That Changed America," by Jim Rasenberger, author of "The Brilliant Disaster: JFK, Castro, and America's Doomed Invasion of Cuba's Bay of Pigs" and other books. It's startling to realize that Colt was born in 1814, just before British troops carrying flintlock muskets burned the White House. America was a nation of farmers, artisans, merchants and the enslaved; it still was when he died in 1862. But he helped to create an industrial, technological future by multiplying the productivity of personal violence. He began with an advantage: His father managed a textile mill at the center of the Industrial Revolution. But Colt never followed a direct course. Instead of entering the factory, he sailed at 16 on a merchant ship from Boston to Calcutta. He endured illness, abuse, even a flogging, but he returned with a model he had carved of a handgun with a multichambered cylinder. Want to keep up with the latest and greatest in books? This is a good place to start. None Learn what you should be reading this fall: Our collection of reviews on books coming out this season includes biographies, novels, memoirs and more. See what's new in October: Among this month's new titles are novels by Jonathan Franzen, a history of Black cinema and a biography by Katie Couric. Nominate a book: The New York Times Book Review has just turned 125. That got us wondering: What is the best book that was published during that time? Listen to our podcast: Featuring conversations with leading figures in the literary world, from Colson Whitehead to Leila Slimani, the Book Review Podcast helps you delve deeper into your favorite books. This in itself was not original. "Where he distinguished himself was in figuring out how to rotate the cylinder," Rasenberger writes, "how to index a chamber so that it lined up in perfect sync with the barrel in front and the hammer behind; and how to lock the chamber tightly." To raise money to manufacture his weapons, he roamed for three years as "Dr. S. Coult," a combination sideshow performer and drug dealer, "selling hits of nitrous oxide gas" in public exhibitions. With his father's help, he secured a corporate charter from New Jersey for the Patent Arms Manufacturing Company, at a time when corporations were rather uncommon. The enterprise suffered from technical difficulties and Colt's profligate spending, but finally began to make revolving rifles, shotguns and pistols. Almost no one wanted them. They were up to five times more expensive than orthodox designs and hardly foolproof. In this era before all in one metal cartridges, each chamber had to be loaded with gunpowder, bullet and external primer cap. That entailed the disassembly of the first production models, which dissuaded the Army. Colt tried the South, claiming that Nat Turner's revolt had inspired him to invent a defense against "a swarming population of slaves." As Rasenberger shows, he was the archetype of the ruthless arms dealer but not, at first, a successful one. In 1841, the company dissolved. Colt invented naval mines and tried laying underwater telegraph cables, but made no money with either. Soon, however, he found redemption financial, if not moral. In the mid 1840s, a former Texas Ranger named Samuel Walker won fame in the war with Mexico wielding Colt's revolvers. Seeing a second chance, Colt asked for an endorsement. Walker did better than that: He improved the pistol's design, making it less complicated and easier to reload. Colt made thousands of weapons for the government in a new factory. Walker died in battle, but Colt finally thrived, aided by Elisha Root, a onetime machine shop worker who transformed the production process. The revolver became synonymous with the "American System" of manufacturing interchangeable parts. Colt owed much to his partnerships, and to his own opportunistic salesmanship. He spent the last weeks of his life hawking weapons to both sides in the approaching Civil War until just after hostilities began. Cleareyed and honest, Rasenberger portrays a complicated figure who combined real mechanical insight with a talent for hucksterism. His book has flaws, of course: overlong passages, too much speculation, an absence of endnotes in the print edition. (Rasenberger is posting them online.) A familiarity with recent scholarship might have produced a more sophisticated depiction of Native Americans' shrewd responses to repeating firearms. But "Revolver" is rewarding biography, highlighting Colt's place in the history of industrialization. The rise of the Colt revolver's multishot technology coincided with the disintegration of political order, as the United States descended into the Civil War. But the weapon achieved its greatest fame in the postwar West. There, enhanced individual lethality met minimal legal and social constraints, or so myth would have it. As with Colt, the truth is not the opposite of legend, but more complicated and interesting. Take the gunfight at the O.K. Corral (actually an adjacent lot, as any buff will note) in the mining boomtown of Tombstone, Arizona Territory, on Oct. 26, 1881: The Earp brothers Wyatt, Virgil and Morgan, and their friend John "Doc" Holliday, exchanged 30 shots in as many seconds with the Clantons and McLaurys. It was part of the Cochise County War, a struggle for power between two factions, the rural Cowboys and a group based in Tombstone, led by the Earps. That's the subject of "Tombstone: The Earp Brothers, Doc Holliday, and the Vendetta Ride From Hell," by Tom Clavin, the author of "Dodge City" and "Wild Bill." "Tombstone" is written in a distinctively American voice. Unfortunately, it's the voice of Gabby Hayes. Attempts to evoke the period are distractingly strenuous; if you didn't know "lawing" was slang for wearing a badge, you will after its first dozen uses. Ellipses pimple sentences randomly and often, serving no purpose. The book rattles with cliches like a box of stink bombs. Here the Indigenous drink "firewater" and go on the "warpath." Clavin calls Tombstone "fertile ground for a watering hole." Yes, holes grow best in fertile ground. The trick is harvesting them. At times, "Tombstone" reads like a transcription of "Drunk History" without the funny parts. "Somewhere out there, or behind them, or wherever they were, was Johnny Behan with his posse," he writes, helpfully covering all possibilities. "Johnny could be past tense in more ways than one, but maybe almost by accident he could wind up doing something about it." Indeed. An awkwardly written book can still succeed through new research or interpretations. And I welcome a familiar story told well. But bad writing and unoriginality are not, as Clavin might say, a match made on the high water mark. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
BMW and Volkswagen Try to Beat Apple and Google at Their Own Game FRANKFURT Volkswagen is delving into quantum computing. BMW is building a giant new data center. And Bosch this week announced plans to construct a factory to build chips for self driving cars. The moves are part of an expanding effort by European carmakers and suppliers to build the computing capacity so called big data they will need as vehicles digitize and become driverless. Cars will need to constantly communicate, absorbing and analyzing information from thousands of vehicles at once, to make decisions to smooth traffic flow, save fuel and avoid hazards. That presents a huge new challenge for companies traditionally focused on manufacturing. "The processing power needed to deal with all this data is orders of magnitude larger than what we are used to," said Reinhard Stolle, a vice president in charge of artificial intelligence at the German automaker BMW, which is building a data center near Munich that is 10 times the size of the company's existing facility. "The traditional control engineering techniques are just not able to handle the complexity anymore." Big data is a challenge for all automakers, but especially German companies because they target affluent customers who want the latest technology. At the same time, the focus on computing pits the automakers against Silicon Valley tech companies with far more experience in the field, and creates an opening for firms like Apple and Google, which are already encroaching on the car business. Google has long been working on self driving or "autonomous" cars, and Tim Cook, the chief executive of Apple, said this month that the company best known for making iPhones is focusing on autonomous systems for cars and other applications. That has put pressure on automakers. German companies in particular have already made investments in ride sharing services, in part to combat the rise of Uber, and are now looking further into the future. Efforts by Volkswagen, trying to remake itself as a technology leader as it recovers from an emissions scandal, show how far into exotic realms of technology carmakers are willing to go. Volkswagen, a German company, recently joined the handful of large corporations worldwide that are customers of D Wave Systems, a Canadian maker of computers that apply the mind bending principles of quantum physics. While some experts question their usefulness, D Wave computers housed in tall, matte black cases that recall the obelisks in the science fiction classic "2001: A Space Odyssey" can in theory process massive amounts of information at unheard of speeds. Martin Hofmann, Volkswagen's chief information officer, is a believer. "For us, it's a new era of technology," Mr. Hofmann said in an interview at Volkswagen's vast factory complex in Wolfsburg, Germany. First theorized in the 1980s, quantum computers seek to harness the strange and counterintuitive world of quantum physics, which studies the behavior of particles at the atomic and subatomic level. While classical computers are based on bits with a value of either 1 or 0, the qubits in a quantum computer can exist in multiple states at the same time. That allows them, in theory, to perform calculations that would be beyond the powers of a typical computer. This year Volkswagen used a D Wave computer to demonstrate how it could steer the movements of 10,000 taxis in Beijing at once, optimizing their routes and thereby reducing congestion. Because traffic patterns morph constantly, the challenge is to gather and analyze vehicle flows quickly enough for the data to be useful. The D Wave computer was able to process in a few seconds information that would take a conventional supercomputer 30 minutes, said Florian Neukart, a scientist at a Volkswagen lab in San Francisco. "If this were an application where D Wave were actually faster, then it would be the first time we'd ever seen that," said Scott Aaronson, a vocal D Wave skeptic who is a professor of theoretical computer science at the University of Texas at Austin. "It would be particularly astonishing that this milestone should happen first for a Volkswagen application problem," Mr. Aaronson said in an email. Volkswagen executives say they will publish the results of their work with D Wave computers, allowing outsiders to try to debunk them. If the D Wave collaboration proves to be a misstep for Volkswagen, it would illustrate the hazards of big data for companies whose main focus for the past century has been the internal combustion engine. It also reflects the stakes for one of the world's biggest carmakers. Suppliers are also gearing up for an era of automotive big data. Bosch, the electronics maker based in a suburb of Stuttgart, said Monday that it would invest 1 billion euros, or 1.1 billion, to build a new factory in Dresden to produce chips for a variety of applications, including the sensors used in self driving cars. Bosch prefers to build its own chips rather than buy them from a supplier, said Christine Haas, director for connected services at the company. "When you have done it yourself, then you have a much deeper understanding of the technology," she said. That is much more than could be efficiently transmitted over the internet to remote data storage facilities operated by outside providers in the "cloud." "A large part of the data center has to be on premises," Mr. Stolle said. "The amount is so huge it doesn't work in the cloud." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Automobiles |
For Gail Becker, a former marketing executive who has two sons with celiac disease, finding gluten free pizza that her kids could enjoy has long been a challenge. So a few years ago, Ms. Becker started making her own, using a crust that contains cauliflower instead of white flour. Her sons loved her cauliflower creation so much that in 2016 Ms. Becker quit her job and launched her own company, Caulipower, which sells frozen cauliflower pizzas and cauliflower baking mix. What Ms. Becker did not anticipate is how quickly it would catch on. Caulipower is now a multimillion dollar brand, with cauliflower pizzas sold in 9,000 stores nationwide, including Whole Foods, Walmart, Safeway and Kroger. As more and more health conscious Americans adopt gluten free, low carb and plant based diets, a growing number of food companies are capitalizing on the trend by using vegetables to replace flour, rice and other simple carbs. Consumers are turning to cauliflower in particular because of its mild flavor and versatility, using it to make an array of recipes that have spread across social media, from muffins and mashed cauliflower to gnocchi, casseroles, pizza and even chocolate brownies. One of the most popular ways to prepare the cruciferous vegetable is to chop or pulverize it into grain size particles, which many people use as a substitute for rice. According to Nielsen, the market research firm, sales of packaged cauliflower "rice," zucchini noodles and other vegetable based replacements for pasta and other simple carbs reached 47 million this year, with sales of cauliflower substitutes in particular doubling over the past year to 17 million. Heather Smith, a nutrition expert and founder of theHAUTEbar, a company that tracks wellness trends, said one reason cauliflower had reached "veggie celebrity" status is its nutrition profile. A 100 gram serving of white rice contains 150 calories, 34 grams of carbs, and one gram of fiber, while a similar portion of riced cauliflower contains just 25 calories, five grams of carbs, and triple the amount of fiber. Others, like Alix Turoff, a registered dietitian in New York, say they like cauliflower because it absorbs the flavors of other ingredients. She tells her clients to pair riced cauliflower with dishes that have a lot of sauce and flavors, like curries, stir fries and chili. Some people even use riced cauliflower to replace the rice in sushi, stuffed peppers and taco bowls. "It opens up the door for people to get more creative," she said. "It's just a great way to get more vegetables in your diet." Food industry experts say that the cauliflower trend is growing because it appeals to a broad spectrum of consumers following a variety of diets, from plant based to Paleo. Many of them are drawn to vegetables and are seeking out so called clean labels, or foods that limit additives such as sugar, salt, artificial sweeteners and heavily refined, synthetic or genetically modified ingredients. According to Nielsen, there are 36 different categories across the grocery store that feature cauliflower as an ingredient. The company found that sales of "cauliflower centric" refrigerated dishes rose 108 percent in the past year, and that cauliflower baby foods increased 34 percent. Green Giant, the century old national food brand, says that cauliflower is among the hottest vegetables it sells today. "The cauliflower trend is pervasive," said Jordan Rost, the vice president of consumer insights for Nielsen. "We're seeing it in everything from cream cheese to baby food. Products that contain cauliflower are experiencing faster growth in sales than their overall categories. It's driving growth across all foods." Some national pizza chains, like California Pizza and Pie Five Pizza, have made cauliflower crust pizza a standard item on their menus. There are also multiple brands of cauliflower pizza sold in supermarkets, including Caulipower and a brand called Cali'Flour, which sells plain cauliflower crusts and flat breads (including a vegan variety) for consumers who want to add their own sauce and toppings. Many vegetable substitutes can be made at home with simple kitchen appliances. Riced cauliflower can be made with a food processor or a hand held tool called a ricer. Another gadget called a spiralizer turns zucchini, peppers and squash into noodles. But the process can be messy and time consuming, leading some brands to offer more convenient, packaged varieties. When the company first introduced its riced cauliflower in late 2016, it was harvesting five acres of cauliflower for the product each week. Now it is harvesting six times that amount, 30 acres , equivalent to over 100,000 heads of cauliflower each day, said Jordan Greenberg, the vice president and general manager of Green Giant. "One of the goals that we had from day one was to create products that offer consumers opportunities to add more vegetables to their diets while swapping out white carbs and less healthy side dishes," he said. Trader Joe's, with more than 450 stores nationwide, started carrying its own brand of riced cauliflower last year that sold out so quickly that some of its stores reportedly instituted a two bag limit on customers. Whole Foods, Birds Eye and Cascadian Farm also introduced their own lines of riced cauliflower. But the products have also drawn the ire of the country's 34 billion a year rice industry, which calls its new competitors "rice pretenders." Now the industry and 10 members of Congress from six rice producing states, including Arkansas, California, Louisiana and Texas, are trying to stop companies from labeling their cauliflower products rice, which they say is misleading and confusing to consumers. In February, the lawmakers sent a letter to the Food and Drug Administration asking the agency to create a "standard of identity," or formal definition, for rice that defines it as a product containing or derived from rice or wild rice. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Well |
Set to to Bohuslav Martinu's Symphony No. 6 ("Fantaisies Symphoniques") and a smidgen of electronic sound, the one act version was made for the great dramatic ballerina Lynn Seymour. It offers a satisfyingly expressionist vision of trauma and mental derangement, in which everything onstage seems to emanate from the mind of the central character. On Saturday night, at the Royal Opera House, Ms. Osipova gave a riveting account of a tortured soul in this section, her body wrenched into strange shapes, her eyes blank and wide as figures from the past filtered by. Ms. Osipova has frustratingly little, however, to do in the full length ballet's first two acts, added by MacMillan after he returned to the Royal Ballet in 1970 as its director. These acts offer a vision of Imperial Russia in the form of the character's memories (or "memories") of her youth a party on the imperial yacht on the eve of World War I; her coming out ball three years later. The overarching idea is that the events of these acts are unreliable products of, or imprints upon, Anna/Anastasia's memory, rather than realistic accounts. This is supported by Bob Crowley's nonrealist, off kilter sails and chandeliers. But MacMillan treats the material with such dull conformity to 19th century ballet tradition the ensemble dances, the solos, the pas de deux arrive with dutiful regularity that it's hard not to read these first two acts as straightforward presentations of life at court. Part of the problem is the score, too slow, evenly paced and folk inflected to sustain the kind of aristocratic merriment that MacMillan seems to want in the opening act, with its naval officers (good work from Luca Acri, Tristan Dyer, Marcelino Sambe), in uniform and stripy bathing suits, entertaining the royal family. "Why would they be dancing?" I kept wondering; a clear sign that suspension of disbelief wasn't going well. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
While I agree with Tim Morrison that any arms control agreement should enhance American national security, the reality is that the Open Skies Treaty was achieving just that. This treaty has been a pillar of post Cold War peace and has given the United States and our European allies surveillance access to Russian military deployments, which not only enhances our mutual understanding of each other's capabilities and intentions, but also serves to lower military tensions between Russia and NATO allies. As a former senior State Department official who dedicated several years to effective arms control agreements, I know that even when treaties aren't perfect, implementation problems should be solved through diplomacy. Abandoning agreements without concrete solutions in place is dangerous for our country. By abandoning the Open Skies Treaty, we divide ourselves from our allies, and signal to the world that the United States welcomes a renewed arms race. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
The trail descended gently through a dense spruce forest, blanketed by snow from an overnight storm. It was bitterly cold, but the sky had cleared and the sun reflected dazzlingly off the frosted terrain. I rounded a corner on my cross country skis and took in an impressive sight that emerged out of the rustic landscape like a vision from the Brothers Grimm: a meadow dominated by a castlelike dark wood villa, with gabled windows, a central cupola and huge icicles dangling from the roof. I was deep in the Jizera Mountains, straddling the borders of Poland, Germany and the Czech Republic, and had unexpectedly come across one of the prime attractions of this corner of Mitteleuropa: a 1756 glassblowing factory turned hunting lodge turned summer home of Premysl Samal, the first chancellor of Czechoslovakia after World War I, who later led the resistance against the Nazi occupiers and died in 1941 in a Berlin prison. Today, in his memory, the villa is called Samalova Chata, an atmospheric rest stop on the region's hiking and cross country skiing circuit. In the warm, oak paneled dining room of the chalet, Czech families and a handful of Germans washed down plates of roasted pork and knodel (round bread and potato dumplings), a local staple, with steins of domestic Gambrinus beer. I opted for less filling fare a bowl of goulash and a cappuccino while my two sons downed glasses of homemade raspberry lemonade. Before last winter, I had never given a thought to a ski holiday in Bohemia, as this western corner of the Czech Republic has long been known. Then a friend in Berlin, where we live, came back raving about his trip here. Just a three hour drive southeast of the German capital, and a one hour drive west of Prague, the Jizera Mountains, which rise to about 4,000 feet, may lack the cachet and the grandeur of the Alps. But they do offer some of the finest Nordic skiing in Central Europe. The area around Bedrichov, the main resort village in the Jizera range, is laced with nearly 100 miles of well groomed, well marked trails, as well as downhill slopes on par with those in some Vermont resorts. The trails thread through virgin forests of pine and spruce, past frozen lakes and meadows, with strategically placed cafes along the way and stunning vistas over the entire mountain range. The region has a dark history. German speaking colonists arrived in the Jizera Mountains from Bavaria and Saxony in the 13th and 14th centuries, answering an appeal by Bohemian princes to settle the rugged and heavily forested area. Deutsche Boehmen, or German Bohemia, became one of several largely German speaking enclaves that formed along the borders of the modern day Czech and Slovak republics under the Hapsburg monarchy, later the Austro Hungarian Empire. At the end of World War I, the Allies broke apart the empire and gave Czechoslovakia its independence. Hitler annexed all the country's German speaking areas, known as the Sudetenland, in the fall of 1938, before invading Czechoslovakia the following year. When World War II ended, vengeful Czechs drove out much of the country's German speaking population of 2.8 million; tens of thousands were killed or died of starvation or disease during the forced marches west. The Czechs also erased almost every trace of a German presence. Names of cities and towns were changed from German to Czech. Friedrichswald Bei Gablonz became Bedrichov. Reichenberg, the largest city in the region, was renamed Liberec. During the Communist era, Czechs ignored this terrible chapter of their history. But in the last few years, details of mass executions and other horrors have filtered into the public debate and found their way into Czech graphic novels and other cultural forums. The Czechs and the Germans, meanwhile, have largely set aside their animosity, and thousands of Germans come to Bohemia every year to hike and ski amid the ghosts of the past. Some of those traces of the bygone era are visible in Janov Nad Nisou, the 2,500 foot high mountain village where my sons and I reserved a room in a penzion a family owned hotel for one week at the end of January 2015. Founded by German speaking settlers in the 17th century, the village was known as Johannesberg until the end of World War II. Arriving after the long drive from Berlin, we ascended a winding and snowy mountain road through the center of the hamlet, passing an old glassblowing factory; the gaudy yellow Town Hall, built in 1927 shortly after Czechoslovakian independence; and a Lutheran church from the same period. Almost immediately, I realized that we were lost. I phoned the owner of our inn, the Penzion Prvni Nelyzujem, who spoke no English and little German, and we talked over each other in mutual incomprehension. At dusk, with snow falling and my panic rising, I found an English speaking receptionist at the village's biggest hotel who agreed to help us. A friend of hers led us in his vehicle over an icy mountain road for three miles in the gathering darkness. Then he turned down a side road through a settled area of pensions and bed and breakfasts, and guided us at last into the driveway of our tucked away inn, a modern, three story beige house set on a wide lawn surrounded by snowy woods. Despite the language barrier, Mila and his wife, Lenka, were warm and welcoming hosts. That first night, they served us heaping plates of roasted pork and knodel for supper, with apple strudel and ice cream for dessert. (We would eat similarly hearty suppers there each evening after a full day's skiing.) They also handed us brochures and maps in Czech and German that gave us the lay of the land. The hotel was filled with Czech families from Liberec and Prague who had driven into the Jizera Mountains for the weekend. As we would discover the following morning, a Sunday, the weekend migration turns the neighboring village of Bedrichov into a zoo of snarled traffic, packed parking lots and stripped bare ski rental shops. By Monday morning, however, the crowds were gone. We rented skis from a small shop in Bedrichov ("Czech, Czech," the owner barked indignantly when I asked him if he spoke German or English), found a parking spot with ease, and carried our skis to the main cross country trailhead. We crossed a bridge over a frozen stream and plunged into the forest. It had snowed heavily the night before, and fresh powder obscured the grooves on the trail, making the going difficult at first. I had last been on cross country skis nearly two decades earlier, in Big Bear, Calif., and my sons were novices. Czechs flew past us with breathtaking agility, skating seemingly effortlessly up steep slopes and speeding past us on the downhill runs. The temperature was a brisk 22 degrees, but the sky was cobalt blue, and I fell into a rhythm, sliding along with growing confidence, synchronizing skis and poles and picking up speed. There was, I discovered, a measure of satisfaction to be had in the downhill runs in Nordic skiing, a feeling of having earned the exhilarating ride. After a long, strenuous ascent we stopped to rest at the crest of a hill, with the entire Jizera range spread out before us. Then we coasted for another half a mile to the Samalova Chata guesthouse and restaurant for a needed break. During our five days on the trail, averaging about six hours and 10 miles of skiing each day, we saw no Americans. Except for a few passing greetings from Czechs who overheard us while consulting the map at a crossroads or waiting in line at a cafe, we heard no English. At a hilltop outdoor snack bar, a teenage girl regarded us with astonishment. "Where do you come from?" she asked. She was from Liberec and had spent the year before as an high school exchange student in Idaho. "Lots of Mormons there," she volunteered. The language barrier could be frustrating sometimes when making our way through Czech only menus, or trying to glean information from the Czech only trail markers about flora, fauna and geological formations. But it was impossible to get lost: All trails circled back to Bedrichov. And the exoticism of the setting, the heartiness of the food, the warmth of our hosts, the beauty of the forest and the exhilarating workouts compensated for the communication difficulties. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
Credit...Mark Sommerfeld for The New York Times TORONTO A group of visitors young and old gathered at the Art Gallery of Ontario in front of a well known Canadian painting the docent called "Church in Yuquot Village." It was a peaceful 1929 image by a national figure, Emily Carr, showing a Mowachaht/Muchalaht settlement she had visited on Vancouver Island. The docent was careful to talk about Carr's close relationship with "the First Nations," the popular term in Canada for Indigenous people. What she didn't mention was the fact that the Art Gallery of Ontario one of Canada's most distinguished art museums had recently renamed Carr's painting, originally titled "Indian Church," saying that the old terminology ''denigrates and discriminates.'' The docent had been coached on her language by Wanda Nanibush, the museum's curator of Indigenous art, who, along with Ms. Uhlyarik, drove the decision to change the painting's title. "That woman did a course with me," Ms. Nanibush said. Nodding in approval, she added, "She got it." In her two years as a full time curator at the museum, Ms. Nanibush has become one of the most powerful voices for Indigenous culture in the North American art world a realm in which Canada has carved a distinct, and influential, approach. Partly because of her efforts, nearly one third of the Art Gallery of Ontario is now devoted to Indigenous artists, including a show by the multimedia artist Rebecca Belmore, "Facing the Monumental," which opened Thursday, July 12. "Canada is way ahead when it comes to Indigenous topics," said Kathleen Ash Milby, a member of the Navajo Nation and a curator at the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian, in Lower Manhattan. While Native and Indigenous artists remain underrepresented in mainstream institutions, academia, and museums in the United States, Canada's efforts may be inspiring greater social awareness and responsibility from Denver to Montclair, N.J., and New York, according to arts leaders. John Lukavic, the curator of Native arts at the Denver Art Museum, said Canadian institutions were shifting the discussion in his field. "This art has been overlooked," Mr. Lukavic said. "I very much appreciate what they are doing." IN TORONTO, Ms. Nanibush and Ms. Uhlyarik have gone well beyond renaming one painting. At the Art Gallery of Ontario's J.S. McLean Center for Indigenous and Canadian Art, which they program, they have rendered wall texts for all the works first in the language of the Anishinaabe, one of the oldest North American languages. (Anishinaabe is a collective term for related peoples including the Ojibwe and the Algonquin.) English is the second language, followed by French. The action recognizes that people with First Nations heritage who number more than 1.5 million currently throughout Canada were the original occupiers of the land here. The moves are part of resisting "the inclusion model, which is where we're just kind of shoved in there with something that already exists," Ms. Nanibush said. She said that her efforts were not just directed at museums and artists, but at everyone. "Museums are the cultural keepers," Ms. Nanibush said. "We come to them to learn our stories, and find out what our humanity is." The efforts come as identity politics in the museum world has reached a flash point at several large cultural institutions that were criticized for racial and cultural insensitivity. Recent flare ups included the Whitney Museum of American Art, which displayed a white artist's painting of the body of Emmett Till, a teenager lynched in 1955. When white artists are seen as appropriating subject matter about the painful experiences of Native peoples without including them in the work's conception, reactions can be strong. That was the case at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis last year when it showed Sam Durant's gallows themed "Scaffold" an attempt, the artist said, to address the state sanctioned hanging of Dakota men in 1862. The work was symbolically buried by elders of the Dakota Nation, but the museum's actions resulted in its hiring an outside law firm to investigate the decision and contributed to the departure of its director, Olga Viso. Recently, Canada has been in the forefront of the decolonization movement, which demands that institutions account for their role in the histories of colonialism. "I want to decolonize the museum," Ms. Nanibush, 42, said. But the curator added that tearing down was not her goal: "I want to create something." "This building is on our land," Ms. Nanibush said of the museum where she stood. She paused. "We're a huge nation. Everything is on our land." She laughed slightly at the scope of the statement, but she was deadly earnest. "Facing the Monumental" opens with one of Ms. Belmore's most striking and provocative works, "The Fountain." Onto a screen of falling water, a video is projected in which the artist throws what appears to be a bucket of blood toward the viewer, which Ms. Belmore characterized as "a violent act." The changes and Indigenous centered thinking have received broad if not unanimous institutional support. "As long as we are talking about showing great art, I'm in," said Stephan Jost, the Art Gallery of Ontario's director, an American who has worked at several museums in the United States. He added, "I'd rather have these conversations than have a Ferguson," referring to the violent clashes in Missouri beginning in 2014 after the shooting of Michael Brown. That level of government and public engagement on the topic, which has deeply penetrated the art world here, is a world away from anything like it in the United States. ''You can't brush it under the carpet here," said Julian Cox, chief curator at the Art Gallery of Ontario. Take the name of the National Museum of the American Indian, which was created by a 1989 act of Congress, incorporating a large private collection and turning it into a public institution. "It's a little bit dated, but I don't think it's offensive in any way," Ms. Ash Milby said of the titular use of Indian. Last year she was an organizer of a show of the Native artist Kay WalkingStick that traveled to the Montclair Art Museum in New Jersey. The Smithsonian said there have been no serious discussions about changing the name. But Mr. Gibson, who studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Royal College of Art in London, is ambivalent about being presented as a Native American artist rather than just a contemporary maker. "People believe that by supporting me, they are supporting a Native American art world, but I am not sure that's true," Mr. Gibson said. "I'm not representative." Kay WalkingStick, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, said that she has seen progress in the art world since she arrived in New York in 1960 (she is now based in Pennsylvania). "My goal was to open up the mainstream to Native American art," said Ms. WalkingStick, 83. "And it has absolutely gotten better." The biggest breakthrough, she added, was getting past the expectation that "Indian artists made art about being Indian." As Ms. Belmore readied her exhibition at the Ontario museum, she spoke about one featured work, "Mixed Blessing" (2011), a crouched, hooded figure in a jacket with synthetic hair spreading out on the floor behind it. The jacket is emblazoned on the back with explicit phrases about being both Indian her word, the same one rejected in Emily Carr's title and an artist. Ms. Belmore, a soft spoken sort who lets her work do the talking, said it represented the contradictions of her identity. As for whether the museum show, her largest to date, was going to be a personal game changer, she expressed a hopeful hesitation that could apply to the progress of all Indigenous artists and the cultures they represent: "It's too soon to tell." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
The comedy horror film "Satanic Panic" is the kind of movie that revels in the details of eviscerations and demonic orgies. With jovial bad taste and a bag of gruesome tricks, the director Chelsea Stardust cheerfully invites her audience to hail Satan. The movie follows young Sam (Hayley Griffith), a pizza delivery woman, who starts the day beleaguered and ends up bedeviled. After being stiffed for her tip at a mansion, Sam enters the house to find a satanic cult on the very night it plans to implant a demon spawn in the womb of a virgin. Unfortunately for Sam, the bloodthirsty tribe zeros in on her apple cheeked purity, choosing her as the vessel for their infernal ritual. She is captured by the cult's maven, Danica (Rebecca Romijn), but soon escapes, proving herself a worthy opponent for demon worshipers. In increasingly bloody fashion, the cult unleashes the power of hell and Earth to pull Sam back. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
Powell freed himself for a shot a potential go ahead 3 pointer that would have given Seton Hall the lead, and perhaps even the title but sent it a fraction long. The ball hit the back of the rim, the Wildcats ran out the clock, and Willard and Powell didn't regret a thing. "I thought it was going to drop," Powell said. Said Willard, "I'll take him shooting the last second shot every day." And why not? The 6 foot 2 Powell scored 78 points in three games in three days at the Big East tournament, carrying the Pirates to the title game. His week began with a 31 point effort in a dominant win over Georgetown in which, at one point, he single handedly outscored the Hoyas, 29 25. He followed that with a 22 point outing in a semifinal upset of Marquette, and then added 25 points, 5 rebounds, 4 assists and 3 steals in the loss to Villanova in the final. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
Aidy Bryant at Rockefeller Plaza. "Shrill," her new comedy debuting March 15 on Hulu, is radically different from anything else she has done in her career. Usually if you ask Aidy Bryant why she got into comedy and onto "Saturday Night Live," she'll tell you it's because she's good at it and she enjoys it. But sometimes a cruel supposition creeps into her mind. As she explained recently, "There is the little voice in my head where it's like, I'm there because I'm fat." This is not how Bryant has ever been made to feel at "S.N.L.," where she has starred for seven seasons, specializing in effervescently clueless characters and earning two Emmy Award nominations. But it is a mind set she's been driven to, she said recently, by a constant barrage of negative reinforcement, "which includes your family and things you see on TV, that tell you you're innately a problem and wrong for existing that way that's a lot to overcome." The conflict between how Bryant sees herself and what an often unforgiving world has told her is one that she could not stave off forever. "I just got fed up," she said. Interested in getting suggestions on what to watch? Sign up for the Watching newsletter, which we send out every Monday and Friday. "It's so exhausting to be like, I'm going to hate myself, all the time, forever," she added. "Every time I get dressed. Every time I go to dinner. Every time I do anything." Her long simmering rebellion takes narrative form in "Shrill," a Hulu series that will be released on March 15. Adapted from Lindy West's memoir of the same title, it stars Bryant as a fledgling writer at an alt weekly newspaper who learns to find her voice amid a maelstrom of online and real life criticism. "Shrill" has deep personal resonance for Bryant; she said the series helped provide her with "an interior makeover on how you approach life, but also how you receive people calling you a fat pig. To not let it penetrate and ruin you." On a Tuesday morning in February, Bryant, 31, was enjoying a late breakfast at a Chelsea restaurant. She was dressed inconspicuously in a sweatshirt and plastic eyeglasses, and not especially anxious about the lengthy "S.N.L." writing session she'd soon be heading into. When she joined the show in 2012, she feared constantly that she wasn't up to its standards and that she'd be fired. But now Bryant feels confident she's found her groove playing a panoply of oblivious and outrageous teachers, students, executives and homemakers. Though she frequently impersonates Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, Bryant said the political sketches were handled by other writers. "I'll stick to my wocka wockas," she said. "If they need me, they'll let me know." But from an early age Bryant took notice of what she saw and didn't see in the films and TV shows she watched. "Almost no one ever looked or sounded like me," she said. "If there was a fat character, they were often, like, with a tuba underneath them. There wasn't a lot of dignity there." She grew up in Phoenix, obsessed with the women who commanded the "S.N.L." stage in that era, like Molly Shannon, Ana Gasteyer and Cheri Oteri. By the time she was 15, Bryant was already performing improv comedy and attending theater camp. In her personal life, Bryant said, she got little positive feedback from friends. And she said her mother had struggled with her own weight. "I had this sense that I had to be on Jenny Craig or Weight Watchers or Blood Type Diet, get a personal trainer or a dietitian," she said. "I was like, this is what life is, just frantically dieting and hating yourself, 24 7." Reflecting on this phase of her life, Bryant said this was likely when she decided to submerge herself in comedy a field where she believed none of this would matter. She became a standout performer in Chicago's improv and theater scene, building her resume at the Second City, iO and the Annoyance Theater before she was recruited by "S.N.L.," a goal that seemed unattainable until she saw her friend Vanessa Bayer achieve it two years earlier. But there was a part of her that never felt spoken to until she read "Shrill" in 2016 and connected with West's own stories of navigating life and the modern day media environment while being constantly degraded for her size. The book includes West's emblematic essay "Hello, I Am Fat," which grew out of a 2011 blog entry for The Stranger, rebuking her editor, Dan Savage, for writing pieces that she felt were fat shaming. "This is my body," West wrote. "It is MINE. I am not ashamed of it in any way. In fact, I love everything about it. Men find it attractive. Clothes look awesome on it. My brain rides around in it all day and comes up with funny jokes. Also, I don't have to justify its awesomeness/attractiveness/healthiness/usefulness to anyone, because it is MINE. Not yours." Bryant said she could also relate to West's painful experiences of being cyberbullied by online trolls. Every time she played Sanders on "S.N.L.," Bryant said, "I would just be inundated with tweets." She added, "Fifty percent of them were liberal people being like, 'You are too gorgeous to play that fat, ugly pig,' and the rest were conservative people saying, 'You are a fat, ugly pig who should not be playing that strong, independent woman.'" "It was so absolutely brutal that they're reducing me and her both to being pigs," she added. (Bryant has since quit Twitter.) At the end of 2016, West began developing "Shrill" with the actor and producer Elizabeth Banks, intending to turn it into a TV series that, while not quite autobiographical, would mirror aspects of her life: West wanted its protagonist to work at a newspaper and have a contentious relationship with her boss; she wanted her to have a fulfilling sex life and to have an abortion, as she did. Most crucially, West said: "This is not a show about someone struggling to lose weight. At no point in the course of this series will the protagonist step on a scale and look down and sigh. She's not miserable all the time. It's about her shrugging off those expectations." "You look at the sheer quantity of impressions that Kate or Cecily can do, because they look like a million people," she said. "Who do I have? Adele? If you look at the entire landscape of media, there's like four fat women who exist." Bryant was reinvigorated when the opportunity arose to be part of "Shrill," and she sought out Michaels for his advice. Michaels, who is also an executive producer of "Shrill," said that Bryant had an inherent sensitivity that had served her well on "S.N.L." and would come through in any other role she chose. "I hope we do glorify obesity," she said, "because every single person deserves to feel wonderful sometimes, and to feel valued and special and beautiful like a legitimate part of society. Because they are." Bryant, for her part, said she was proud to see herself tap into a different skill set on "Shrill," and excel at a much quieter style of story telling from the broad sketch comedy of "Saturday Night Live" "We made a real effort to keep things grounded, and that's something I've always felt I'm good at, just finding out what's genuine about a scene," she said. "That's something I hope translated in a way that there isn't always space for at 'S.N.L.'" Now comes the period where Bryant will start to share "Shrill" and the relentlessly self scrutinizing thoughts beneath it with a wider audience that might not have known that she felt that way about herself. It's a process she began over the Christmas holiday when she showed the series to her parents and brother and awaited their reactions. "The thing that shook them up more were the sex scenes," she said. "Even when I gave my mom a heads up I was like, just F.Y.I. her first question was, 'Do you have to make the noises?'" | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
When Dan Diamond was 12, his mother gave him a book titled "It All Begins With a Date: Jewish Concerns About Intermarriage." At the time, it seemed a bizarre gift for someone so young, but its aim was clear. Mr. Diamond was expected to marry a Jewish woman one day and raise Jewish children, a view his mother later reinforced, he said, by asking the religion of every girl he dated. Then, in November 2012, Mr. Diamond, a psychotherapist, met Ashley Mask, a doctoral student researching art museum education. At that time, Ms. Mask had started to reconnect with her Presbyterian upbringing. But after falling in love with Mr. Diamond, she agreed, should they marry, to raise their future children as Jewish. "I had this naive sense that since we had the same creation story, it wouldn't be hard," said Ms. Mask, 38. But it was. As the relationship progressed, she feared abandoning important holiday traditions. At synagogue services, she said, she felt lost. She worried she would always be an outsider. Interfaith couples represent a swiftly rising demographic. Before 1960, only 19 percent of American married couples were of two different religions, according to a 2015 study by the Pew Research Center. Today, it's nearly 40 percent. As a result, there are a number of new programs providing support to these couples. Given that a 2013 Pew study reported that since 2000, 72 percent of non Orthodox Jews have married outside their faith, it is not surprising that many of the resources are sponsored by Jewish organizations. "There's a deep fear in the Jewish community about losing Jews, about assimilation," Mr. Diamond said. He and Ms. Mask chose to work through some of their issues by signing on with Honeymoon Israel, an organization in Buffalo that offers interfaith partners, including gay and lesbian couples, subsidized 10 day trips to Israel. The trips cost 1,800 a couple or about 20 percent of the total cost with the remainder picked up by a Jewish family foundation in Boston (which prefers to be unnamed), as well as by Jewish organizations in the cities where Honeymoon Israel operates. They also bond with their fellow travelers, other committed couples also struggling to figure out what role religion should play in their marriages, their homes and in the lives of their future children. "The train has left the station," said Avi Rubel, a founder of Honeymoon Israel, which expects to send 360 couples this year. Mr. Rubel said the program has no political or religious agenda. "We don't care what you believe in," he said. "You married into our family, so you're in our family. We want couples to explore the issues on their own terms. We're not trying to dictate how anybody feels about being Jewish or about Israel." Ms. Mask and Mr. Diamond went to Israel in February, three months after their wedding, with the first group organized out of New York City. Ms. Mask was especially relieved to meet so many other Christians in her situation. "It helped address this fear that I will lose part of my identity," she said. For Mr. Diamond, the trip "was all about an open mindedness to the idea that there are many kinds of Jewish families," he said. "That's not something I've been exposed to most of my life: a celebration instead of a grudging acceptance." Seth Preminger, 31, and Tracy Lyons, 30, each assumed they would marry within their own faiths. Dr. Preminger, a child and adolescent psychologist in Chicago who was raised Jewish, and Dr. Lyons, a pediatrician in Chicago who was raised Catholic, met in July 2011. "As a little girl, the only thing I'd ever planned for my wedding was what church I'd get married in and what church music I'd have," Dr. Lyons said. Neither realized how stressful planning an interfaith wedding would be. The Catholic clergyman who agreed to be an officiant wanted to marry them in a church, but that made Dr. Preminger uncomfortable. It was difficult to find a rabbi willing to be part of a joint ceremony. After much searching with Google, they found the Interfaith Family School in Chicago, run by Catholics and Jews. The school, which offers a kindergarten through eighth grade curriculum for children whose families consider themselves "both," and which also has a couple's counseling group, invited Dr. Lyons and Dr. Preminger to attend a student presentation. "It was really exciting for us to hear these kids talk about growing up in an environment that supports both faiths, especially as we were planning our wedding," Dr. Lyons said. "They help you explain the different traditions to extended family." Dr. Preminger said their wedding in May 2015 at the Kenmare Loft, a former factory in Chicago, raised a few eyebrows, but everyone eventually came around. Another organization, InterfaithFamily, which is overseen by rabbis, demonstrates the ripple effect of this new attitude. The nonprofit started as a website, interfaithfamily.com, to help couples plan interfaith weddings and find rabbis willing to jointly officiate ceremonies. Within the last five years, the organization has opened offices in eight cities, where the group hosts couples discussion groups, religious services and social events. "Couples need safe spaces to be with others just like them," said Rabbi Ari Moffic, who heads the Chicago branch. "If you Google 'interfaith marriage,' you'll still find negative headlines." "The American Jewish community sees this as a public concern for Jews at large," said Helen Kim, an associate professor of sociology at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Wash. "They want to mobilize the larger community." Dr. Kim is a second generation Korean American who was raised without religion and adopted Judaism after marrying Noah Leavitt, an associate dean at Whitman. The couple recently wrote a book, "JewAsian: Race, Religion, and Identity for America's Newest Jews." There are no hard statistics, but Dr. Kim, who said she has noticed a rise in Jewish Asian marriages, has also found that Asians in the United States, who are mostly Christian, aren't concerned about "dilution of the population" the way Jews are. On balance, there are fewer resources for couples seeking a more equitable arrangement. Many organizations "say they're friends of interfaith, but they have a tiny asterisk that says, 'We want you to have a Jewish home,'" said Eileen O'Farrell Smith, the founder and director of the Interfaith Union, which holds workshops for Christian Jewish and Christian Muslim couples in Chicago. In New York, a group called Interfaith Community runs couples workshops, private counseling sessions and an elementary school curriculum that teaches the fundamentals of Judaism and Christianity for interfaith families. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
THE MORNING SHOW Stream on Apple TV . Apple has tapped some serious celebrity talent for its flagship offering on this new streaming service. "The Morning Show," which stars Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon and Steve Carell, focuses on the fallout from a MeToo scandal that rocks a TV news program similar to "The Today Show." In her first lead television role since "Friends," Aniston plays a veteran anchor who's blindsided with the news that her co host (Carell) has been accused of sexual misconduct, while Witherspoon portrays a budding reporter who finds herself in line to take over his job. The series, which has already been ordered for a second season, also stars Mark Duplass and Billy Crudup. THE GREAT BRITISH BAKING SHOW Stream on Netflix. They've whipped, folded and frosted their way to star baker titles and Paul Hollywood handshakes. Now one of the three remaining contestants will be crowned this season's winner. For their final showdown in the tent, the bakers will be tasked with making a decadent chocolate cake, a twice baked souffle and a showstopping picnic basket creation incorporating cakes, breads and biscuits. The finale of this competition also serves as a way to check in with all the delightful contestants who were eliminated in the season's earlier rounds, who stop by to celebrate the victor. Aside from that, the off kilter banter from the hosts Sandi Toksvig and Noel Fielding is enough of a reason to tune in. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
Some choreography seems to shrink on an outdoor stage, dwarfed by open space. The opposite was true on Friday at the Damrosch Park Bandshell at Lincoln Center, where the Paul Taylor Dance Company presented three works as part of Lincoln Center Out of Doors. The open air setting, depending on the piece, served either to free up Mr. Taylor's movement or complement its inherent freedom; his work contains equal measures of tension and effervescence. In all three dances "Fibers" (1961), "Aureole" (1962) and "Piazzolla Caldera" (1997) the company looked ripe, expansive, ready for anything. And it needs to be. By the time its next New York season arrives (in March), the troupe will have morphed from the Paul Taylor Dance Company into Paul Taylor's American Modern Dance, reaching beyond Mr. Taylor's vast repertory to bring in the work of other choreographers. It can be hard to imagine these dancers in anything other than a strictly Taylor milieu, so fluent are they in his unmistakable language, with its upward reach and downward pull, its curving, contracting torsos and sturdy, muscular legwork. Yet, at the same time, their sheer athleticism suggests they can handle whatever comes their way. Like Taylor 2's performances in April, this engagement foreshadowed another feature of the reimagined company: its commitment to live music. Pablo Ziegler's New Tango Ensemble, which played its own rapturous set at the top of the show, returned at the end to accompany "Piazzolla." The lavish, steamy score (by Astor Piazzolla and Jerzy Peterburshsky), like the summer night, filled up the dancing in a way I hadn't seen before, both igniting it and letting it breathe. And what a pleasure to see the fearless Parisa Khobdeh, who was out last season because of injury, back onstage. She is the passionate loner on which "Piazzolla" pivots, finding herself without a match amid the driving, swirling push pull of couples in a nightclub. When she gestures toward a row of suspender clad guys behind her, inviting one to dance, they turn their backs. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
Victor Kossakovsky's "Gunda," one of a number of films that avoids presenting animals as objects of wonder or scientific curiosity. There's a moment in "Gunda," an artful documentary about barnyard animals, that could take its place in a list of the year's best scenes. The star, a sow with a bustling litter of piglets, has just experienced an unmistakable trauma. Pacing around the farm, she conveys a palpable agitation and emotion, before turning to look at the camera, pointedly. This isn't the sort of thing we're accustomed to seeing in nature films. It feels as if we're getting a glimpse into Gunda's inner life, and there's no narrator telling us what the animal might be thinking. It's emotionally engaging and feels distinctive to Gunda, instead of an illustration of the species or the planet as a whole. More frequently, a voice over and a crystal clear story guide our attention and define our understanding of what we're seeing in a nature documentary. There's no shortage of drama, to be sure, but usually it's spectacular: tales of survival or mass migration. Even when we're not looking at a panorama on the scale of "Planet Earth," the greater context seems to overshadow the individual animal. But there are signs of new directions in how animals are portrayed in nature films. "Gunda," which opened Friday via virtual cinema, feels like part of this movement, along with a different but also unusual film, "My Octopus Teacher" on Netflix. Both present animals as beings apart from us, not just objects of wonder or scientific study, and with qualities that are all their own, not shadows of human emotions. "Let's film animals the same way we film humans," Victor Kossakovsky, the director of "Gunda," said he told his cameraman. "If you feel like they need space, let them be. If you feel they are comfortable, you come closer." You've probably already had "My Octopus Teacher" recommended to you by friends or family: Over the course of a year, a South African naturalist, Craig Foster, becomes fascinated by and (let's just say it) emotionally involved with a small octopus. We observe the vicissitudes of her life and moments of contact with Foster, who explains his experience in interview segments that have the candor of a therapy session. What makes the film stand out is that this is most definitely not a god's eye account of an octopus's life. Foster's ardent curiosity reflects a different approach to animals than that of the traditionally authoritative conservationist or guide. "They're more or less letting the animals live, and they're trusting the viewers more to make their own conclusions," said Dennis Aig, a film professor at Montana State University, where he runs a program on nature filmmaking. "Even in larger blue chip movies, this kind of sensitivity is starting to emerge." Popular interest in these films has only grown especially against the urgent backdrop of climate change with viewership increasing and more nature shows than ever before. But a particular strand of filmmaking has persisted among the explorations and explications of nature's mysteries, and its likely origins arose decades ago. "I think Jane Goodall started this work with her first early work on chimps," Pippa Ehrlich, one of the two directors of "My Octopus Teacher," said. "I think it's been a slow change over time." The nature programs that followed Goodall's immersive research shared her perceptive evaluation of the chimpanzees' personalities, emotional states and interpersonal relationships. It's scientific in approach, but her open minded point of view and profound insights into emotional intelligence inform the filmmaking. That paved the way for forms of engagement that do not mean solely to elicit sympathy but rather open up a new kind of space for the animals and their individuality, as in "My Octopus Teacher" and "Gunda." "Hopefully the lesson is that, actually, everywhere you turn there are complex personalities in nature that just haven't been documented yet," James Reed, Ehrlich's co director, said. Films like "Gunda" and "My Octopus Teacher" join predecessors like "My Life as a Turkey," a 2011 TV documentary in which a man raises a group of turkeys and susses out their traits and habits. "Kedi" (2017) might also be a recent influence, partly for its popularity, but also for its detailed accounts of Istanbul's street cats. On the more conventional side "The Elephant Queen" (2019) seeks out an emotional intimacy that feels fresh and similar in spirit. In "Gunda," we can learn about the particular cautious intelligence of a chicken picking its way into the grass, or spot personality traits among piglets in Gunda's brood. "My Octopus Teacher" surprises many with the strangeness of its subject: a mollusk with barely distinguishable eyes, that demonstrates a kind of light footed moxie and reserves of iron will. The filmmakers avoided giving the octopus a name (though they do refer to the animal as a female), specifically to sidestep the impulse to humanize her behavior long a point of tension in nature documentary. "There's no question that drawing comparisons with people has been a great convenience and sometimes very educational storytelling strategy," Aig said. "But it is limited in many ways, because as our knowledge of science increases, we also realize that there are differences in why certain species do what they do." The tendency toward portraying animals with nuanced, individual depth is driven by this growing knowledge and interest in animal intelligence, often across disciplines. New understandings of the planet recognize the coexistence of all animals, and, Aig said, younger audiences seem driven by an urge to relate to nature rather than exert a kind of mastery through knowledge. The moment opens up the possibility of seeking out and identifying thought processes particular to animals. Reed emphasized the importance of the feature length focus on a single animal (or two, counting Foster) in "My Octopus Teacher," and the camerawork that allowed them to show "how she felt the world, how she perceived it." It's a close encounter of a sort that's becoming more apparent in nature documentaries both physical and emotional. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
Coffee is still being served to go at Depanneur in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn. The shop's director of operations said that sales have dropped, but those who continue to show up tip generously. For many New Yorkers, the ritual of grabbing a daily coffee is one of the last luxuries they are holding on to while social distancing. On weekends, people line up six feet apart outside cafes offering cappuccinos and mochas to go. Bodegas continue to serve steaming hot cups of coffee to regulars and emergency workers alike. Some businesses are even taking coffee orders for delivery. (In New York, coffee shops fall under "essential retail," which includes grocery stores, restaurants and bars.) New York is fueled and anchored by its coffee purveyors, and contains more of them per capita than any other city in the United States, according to a study by WalletHub. It's why the vanishingly rare blue and white Anthora cup ("We are happy to serve you") remains such a potent symbol of the city. Now that many of those shops have temporarily or permanently closed, a morning latte has come to represent something more: supporting a local business, while preserving a sense of routine. In the years leading up to the pandemic, Lesley Berson, 47, would take her son's hand and make the trip across the street from their Harlem apartment to Lenox Coffee several times a week. The shop's staff "remember him from when he was little," she said. "They've watched him grow up." These days, visiting the shop has become an opportunity to maintain that sense of normalcy and socialize, if only briefly. "I'm a single mother, my child is 7 years old, so to just get out and have a little adult chitchat was really nice," Ms. Berson, a lawyer, said. Noelle Quanci goes to Kinship Coffee in Queens once a week with her fiance for takeaway cups, and "for the sake of having social interaction with a person who isn't someone you live with," she said. "So much of what we love about the neighborhood is centered around having your barista and having your bartender know who you are and going back to the same place over and over again," said Ms. Quanci, 29, who works as a stylist. "Right now everyone is scared and nervous. We're trying our hardest to ensure that the institutions around us continue to exist." Leaving the house for the occasional coffee, she said, was both a privilege and a "calculated risk" she felt comfortable taking in order to help a local business. Many coffee shop owners have found themselves choosing between keeping their stores open and risking the safety of their staff, or facing financial ruin and leaving their employees without work. The cafes that remain open only offer orders for takeout or delivery, and are often operating at reduced hours. "If we were to close, we would not reopen," said Sabrina Meinhardt, the director of operations at Depanneur in Brooklyn. "Customers are very grateful and say 'thank you,' and tips have been really wonderful. It's support for our staff when sales are about half of what they'd normally be." At TB Coffee House in Brooklyn, which opened a year ago, foot traffic has more than halved, said Lusine Mikayelyan, the shop's manager. The shop now mainly serves a mix of regulars and new customers whose nearby cafes have closed. "Most people who live in our community say, 'Thank you for being open when all the other stores are closed,'" Ms. Mikayelyan said. Customers have told her that "coming to your coffee shop makes me feel like everything is still OK." Other coffee shop employees described feeling that they weren't just providing a service, but that their presence was symbolic. "I know it's not just the coffee," said Sarah Madges, 29, a barista and manager at Swallow Cafe, which has three locations in Brooklyn. "Everyone who comes in, I can tell for the most part this is the one thing they do that day that contains a semblance of normalcy and provides comfort, even if that comfort comes through a mask and gloved hand. It's the closest people can get to an organic human interaction." "But it's also tough to keep on a brave face, especially when people don't seem particularly grateful not that they should be commending me," Ms. Madges said. She described instances of customers regularly skipping tips, or becoming angry when a product they wanted was out of stock. Her shop is running with a skeleton crew these days: Many of the baristas quit as the virus began to spread in the city, and only one employee works each shift, both as a safety precaution and out of necessity. While Ms. Madges worries about her health and putting others at risk, "the backdrop is, this is what I have to do to pay rent," she said. "Most days, I'm really trying to focus on how this is the nice part of people's days." Katie Callihan, 27, continues to work two 11 hour shifts a week at Sey Coffee in the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn. "It's not a difficult job in the sense of physical labor it's definitely a mental game," she said. "You're getting paid for your mental and emotional energy." Some of the shop's regulars are seeking the kind of therapeutic exchange that can accompany the transaction. "Half the customers look at you with watery eyes and genuinely want to know how your day is going, and they pause and take their time and it's sweet," Ms. Callihan said. "But when it's the 75th person in a row, it's like, I just want to make your latte." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
As an extra security precaution to protect any financial account numbers, you might want to encrypt the data on the tablet before you erase it. Should the tablet eventually fall into someone else's hands, the erased data will still be encrypted. Many recent Android devices come with encryption on by default. If this is an older tablet, you can usually find the encryption option in the security area of the Android settings. Be warned, though: Encrypting a device can take more than an hour and a few device restarts to complete. The full factory reset can also take an hour or so, but when you have everything backed up and are ready to erase, open the Settings icon and look for either System or Backup Reset, depending on your device. Find the "Factory data reset" item on the menu and select it. (Enter any PINs or passwords when asked along the way.) On the next screen, you should see a warning about the data erasure and any accounts you are still logged into. Tap the Reset Tablet option, and then tap Erase Everything. If you do not want the old tablet to be associated with your own Google Account anymore, log into your account online and find the Recently Used Devices page. Click the icon for the old tablet, and the click the Remove button. When the tablet is fully erased, you can set it up for the child with a new Google Account (or the account the child already uses). Personal Tech invites questions about computer based technology to techtip nytimes.com. This column will answer questions of general interest, but letters cannot be answered individually. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
The second , fourth and fifth floor galleries will continue to form the chronological spine of exhibitions, but in expanded form. The red line on the second floor traces the expansion into the former Folk Art Museum and the Jean Nouvel building. The fourth and fifth floors contain the Studio. The second floor houses the Daylit Gallery. At street level are a gallery and the Projects Room. As the Museum of Modern Art begins the final stage of its 400 million overhaul, it will close for four months this summer and autumn to reconfigure its galleries, rehang the entire collection and rethink the way that the story of modern and contemporary art is presented to the public. The Picassos and van Goghs will still be there, but the 40,000 square feet of additional space will allow MoMA to focus new attention on works by women, Latinos, Asians, African Americans and other overlooked artists like Shigeru Onishi, a Japanese experimental photographer, or Herve Telemaque, a Haitian born painter who is now 81. With the doors closed from June 15 to Oct. 21, the museum will give up summer tourism revenue in the interest of creating a new MoMA that will abandon the discipline based display system it has used for eight decades. Three floors of exhibition space will retain a spine of chronology, but the museum will now mix media, juxtaposing painting, sculpture, architecture, design, photography, performance, film and works on paper. MoMA is announcing these changes and others on Tuesday. In another marked shift, the museum will rotate a selection of art in its galleries every six to nine months and draw all of the opening exhibitions from its permanent collection an acknowledgment that there is no single or complete history of modern and contemporary art and that many of MoMA's holdings have historically been overlooked. As a result, while visitors will still be able to count on highlights like Picasso's "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" and van Gogh's "The Starry Night," they are also likely to be exposed to less familiar names, including Okwui Okpokwasili, an Igbo Nigerian American artist, performer and choreographer. The renovation designed by Diller Scofidio Renfro in collaboration with Gensler will include additional space from the demolished American Folk Art Museum. Existing galleries will also expand west through 53W53, the new residential skyscraper designed by Jean Nouvel. The museum will reopen with a survey of Latin American art, along with exhibitions by two African American artists: Pope.L, known for his provocative performances, and Betye Saar, 92, whose collages and assemblages have often flown under the radar. "We don't want to forget our roots in terms of having the greatest Modernist collection," Leon Black, the museum's chairman, said, "but the museum didn't emphasize female artists, didn't emphasize what minority artists were doing, and it was limited on geography." He added, "Where those were always the exceptions, now they really should be part of the reality of the multicultural society we all live in." MoMA is also announcing a new partnership that will allow the Studio Museum in Harlem to present exhibitions at MoMA while its own building on 125th Street is under construction. The first exhibition at the "Studio Museum at MoMA" will feature the Kenyan born artist Michael Armitage. Thelma Golden, the Studio Museum's director, will curate. The Armitage exhibition will be presented in MoMA's new Projects Gallery on the expanded ground floor which, along with the street level gallery of architecture and design, will be free to the public. Ms. Golden described the partnership as "a new paradigm for collaboration that looks at the different ways institutions can come together," adding that it was meaningful to follow in the footsteps of the former MoMA curator, Kynaston McShine. Mr. McShine, who died last year, started MoMA's Projects series in the 1970s and "made it possible for me to see myself as a curator," Ms. Golden said, "to understand my possibilities." Mr. Lowry said the collaboration also allows MoMA "to expand our knowledge about a range of artists we may only be vaguely familiar with." During its last renovation in 2004, designed by Yoshio Taniguchi, MoMA moved to temporary space in Queens for two years. Because the museum will be closed for a shorter period this time, Mr. Lowry said relocation would be unnecessary. Asked about the financial cost of the hiatus, he said the museum had budgeted to prepare for lost revenue (MoMA PS 1 will remain open). In the last few years MoMA has received what Mr. Lowry once called "the kind of gifts you only dream about," namely 100 million from the entertainment mogul David Geffen. On Tuesday, MoMA will announce yet another: more than 200 million from the estate of David Rockefeller, the philanthropist and banker, who died in 2017. The impact on tourism of a summer without MoMA remains to be seen. Fred Dixon, NYC Company's president and chief executive, said, "Because so much will be on offer this year, we don't anticipate seeing any negative tourism impact." 4 Other Names to Know in Latin American Art Paving the way. Frida Kahlo is internationally renowned for the emotional intensity of her work. But she is not the only woman from Latin America to leave her mark in the art world. Here are four more to know: 1. Luchita Hurtado. For years, Hurtado worked in the shadow of her husbands and more famous peers. Her paintings, which emphasize the interconnectedness of all living things, didn't get recognition from the art world until late in her life. 2. Belkis Ayon. A Cuban printmaker, Ayon was a master in the art of collagraphy. She worked almost exclusively in black, white and gray. She used her art, focused on a secret religious fraternity, to explore the themes of humanity and spirituality. 3. Ana Mendieta. Mendieta's art was sometimes violent, often unapologetically feminist and usually raw. She incorporated natural materials like blood, dirt, water and fire, and displayed her work through photography, film and live performances. 4. Remedios Varo. Though she was born in Spain, Varo's work is indelibly linked to Mexico, where she immigrated during World War II. Her style is reminiscent of Renaissance art in its exquisite precision, but her dreamlike paintings were otherworldly in tone. In the new MoMA, some individual galleries will still be medium specific but visitors will find several possible routes through the expanded museum. They will also find a new two story Studio for live and experimental programming, including performance, dance, music, moving image and sound works. Another new space, the second floor Platform, will be a place for visitors to make art and join conversations. "We're trying to make a visit to the museum a comfortable, enjoyable experience that lets you move back and forth from looking at art to talking about art to thinking about art," Mr. Lowry said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
How Much Watching Time Do You Have This Weekend? None This Weekend I Have ... an Hour, and I Want Stand Up 'Gary Gulman: The Great Depresh' When to watch: Saturday at 10 p.m., on HBO. A lot of comedy today is obliquely about depression, but the comedian Gary Gulman goes for it head on in his new special, where he describes his lifelong mental health struggles. He does so with his signature warmth and mischievous eloquence, covering familiar ground '70s school culture, participation trophies, "literally" in fresh ways. The short but intrusive interstitial offstage segments ruin the rhythm of the stand up and add nothing, but the pull of the material is powerful enough to overcome the hiccups. ... an Hour, and It's All a Conspiracy Rami Malek, left, and Christian Slater in Season 4 of "Mr. Robot." 'Mr. Robot' When to watch: Sunday at 10 p.m., on USA. The fourth and final season of the complex hacker drama "Mr. Robot" is finally here, a full two years after Season 3 ended. (The show's star, Rami Malek, was busy winning an Oscar.) I can't imagine starting here with zero previous "Mr. Robot" knowledge, but as long as you have a loose memory of the characters and a general sense of cynicism, you'll be able to jump in on the terrifically tense and brooding premiere. "Mr. Robot" is as much tone as it is story, building ominousness through sound and production design even more than through dialogue or plot. ... a Few Hours, and I Like the Desert Everyone's favorite dirtbag genius lawyer show is back for a third season, as craggy and clever as you could want. Billy (Billy Bob Thornton) starts investigating water usage in a California town that is suffering under a severe drought though, as always, it seems the mega wealthy are suffering a lot less. This season boasts a "Veep" level guest star lineup, including Amy Brenneman , Beau Bridges, Illeana Douglas , Griffin Dunne and Dennis Quaid . There are also some enchanting hallucination scenes and occasional appearances from goats who wear sweaters. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night's highlights that lets you sleep and lets us get paid to watch comedy. If you're interested in hearing from The Times regularly about great TV, sign up for our Watching newsletter and get recommendations straight to your inbox. Technical problems with an app held up the Iowa caucus results, and by Tuesday it still wasn't clear who had won. ("At one point they called Florida for help," Jimmy Fallon said.) "It's the only thing that happens in Iowa, and still they didn't get it right." JIMMY KIMMEL "And I guess, what do you expect? I mean, the average age of the party leadership is like 85 years old, all right? What do they know about apps? The only thing they know about apps is can you get one free with the early bird special, that's it." TREVOR NOAH "The trouble is, most elderly volunteers had a hard time downloading it onto their garage door openers." STEPHEN COLBERT "It was being called the Super Bowl of politics, but it ended up being called the Fyre Festival. I was waiting to see Ja Rule on CNN." JIMMY FALLON "And hey, what kind of weirdo antiquated system are the caucuses anyway? It's like the musical chairs meets debate class meets a slow gas leak." SETH MEYERS "We haven't seen white people that confused since they first tried to dab." JIMMY FALLON The Punchiest Punchlines (State of the Union Edition) "As you saw, the president stood before a joint session of Congress to deliver the State of the Confederacy I mean Union. And the speech was exactly what you might expect from Donald Trump and a teleprompter: Not a great fit. It was a self congratulatory speech. In the first 10 minutes, Trump used the word 'I' more than all of LensCrafters does in a whole year." JIMMY KIMMEL "First, they introduced the Supreme Court justices, led by John Roberts, who is still working double duty overseeing the impeachment trial. Yet another American forced to work two jobs in Trump's economy." STEPHEN COLBERT "One of the funnier interactions, or lack thereof tonight, was Mike Pence and Nancy Pelosi standing side by side, not talking to each other for the whole time, which was kind of rude on his part because she tried really hard to make him president." JIMMY KIMMEL "And as always, the president invited some special guests to the gallery, with inspiring stories of enduring unimaginable hardship. For instance, Melania." STEPHEN COLBERT An Iowa precinct representative interviewed by Wolf Blitzer about the caucus fiasco had a strong resemblance to Jimmy Fallon. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
Cassandra Shi, center, talks with other guests during a Crypto Christmas Party at Mr. Tipple's Recording Studio in San Francisco. SAN FRANCISCO Joe Buttram, a former mixed martial arts fighter and start up security guard turned cryptocurrency investor, was looking at a new toy called a CryptoKitty. "You can see he wants to sire," Mr. Buttram, 27, said. For about 20 of the cryptocurrency called ether ( 14,000 at the time), the cartoon cat would "mate" with one of Mr. Buttram's, and he would get a new CryptoKitty. That kitty could inherit its father's desirable eyes (traits include thicccbrowz) or fur pattern (like totesbasic). Every new technology gets a game that helps bring it careening into the mainstream. Social networks had FarmVille. Mobile phones had Angry Birds. And, its investors hope, blockchain has CryptoKitties. Blockchain technology like Bitcoin and Ethereum, ledgers for recording virtual currency transactions, is booming, and CryptoKitties is the first big blockchain game. As they did with baseball cards, people collect CryptoKitties, but these cards can breed. The Ethereum network, whose currency is called ether, is valued at about 70 billion, but not many of the investors really know what their ether can be used to do. And now here's one thing you can do with it: Ether is the only currency that exists in the CryptoKitties world. Since CryptoKitties was introduced a month ago, 180,000 people have signed up. They've spent about 20 million in ether, and more than 10 kitties have sold for over 100,000. Based in Vancouver, British Columbia, CryptoKitties is now a team of 18. Next the company is starting social games like kitty beauty contests and expanding into other "blockchain collectibles." "We're just like, man, people want cats," said the CryptoKitties co founder Mack Flavelle, who works for AxiomZen product design studio. "We thought it would build slowly, take a few months, but it's been so fast." A few years ago, investors talked about cryptocurrencies becoming a mainstream currency, so you would one day buy coffee with your ether. But high transaction fees, slow processing and wildly fluctuating prices make it a tricky replacement for cash. So what to do with 73 billion of digital money? "There's nothing to do with it, so hey, for a couple bucks now you can get a cat," Mr. Flavelle said. "Nobody's even pretending it's going to be a transactional currency anymore. It's a stored value." Industry experts echo Mr. Flavelle's conception of cryptocurrency as, well, not yet a currency and digital kittens as a pretty good use for it. One of those is Dan Romero, 30, the general manager of Coinbase, the main trading platform for cryptocurrencies. "In 2014, it was more corporate, everyone was just talking about using cryptocurrency for payments," Mr. Romero said. No longer: "Now we're all talking about CryptoKitties," he said. "There's been a resurgence of playing, and that's a good sign." Like Beanie Babies before them, CryptoKitties are collectibles. Each kitty has a core "DNA" on the blockchain, and the game is basically to mate them (the illustrators do not go deep into specifics) and see what kitty results. The progeny tend to have their parents' traits (an expensive cat will have an expensive kitten) but might surprise or disappoint with more or less valuable traits than either of its parents. There's a limited number of highly desirably first generation kitties and four billion possible combinations of cats based on traits the on staff artists have created (whisker aesthetic, background color, fur type). The company gets a 3.75 percent cut of the breeding and selling auctions. "And the other thing we have are fancy cats, which are hard to unlock, and if you get one of those, it's fancy," Mr. Flavelle said. What makes it fancy? "Fancy cat is a specific recipe," he said. The activity helps make sense of the strange world of Ethereum, Mr. Flavelle said. "In our lizard brains we have fear of chaos," he said. "Collecting allows you to bring order." And the game does seem to be attracting a lot of people who are now willing to go through the byzantine process of getting a digital wallet and acquiring ether. When the company started, there were so many cat based transactions, it slowed down the Ethereum network, upsetting regular traders. "I'm not calling all blockchain people neckbeards," Mr. Flavelle said. "But when these cartoon cats come through and sit on your network and break it, you're not happy." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
Do you miss the finger snap? The new "West Side Story" has retired it. But that generation defining gesture isn't just the stale move of a 1950s beatnik. In the original production, based on a conception by Jerome Robbins, it set more than the beat. It was the tone, the vivacity, the pulse behind dancing that articulated the raw physicality of rage, of yearning, of love emotions contained within a group of youthful bodies on a hot summer night. That snap may not seem like much, but in the revamped version now on Broadway, which has replaced Robbins's choreography with new dances by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, it's a ghost on the stage. That's because what Robbins created wasn't just a series of dances, however peerless, but an overarching view of how, beyond anything else, movement could tell a story. Robbins's choreography with its searing blend of tension and freedom gives "West Side Story" its joy and its horror. It springs the events into action. Arthur Laurents wrote the book, but Robbins's choreography is the true libretto. So while the stellar combination of Leonard Bernstein's music and Stephen Sondheim's lyrics endures, dancing has always been the true star of "West Side Story," where the overheated body is the reason these young men and women, so full of nerves and pride, are ready to burst out of their skin. Choreographers, the best ones anyway, don't just think about steps. "The Dance at the Gym" is more than a battle between the Jets and the Sharks. It's a physical and emotional release: A murmur that builds to a scream. While it's understandable that the current show's director, Ivo van Hove, and Ms. De Keersmaeker, both Belgian, would want to distance themselves from Robbins to present their own version of this classic American musical, there's a major hitch: film. Not the 1961 one directed by Robert Wise and Robbins (until he was fired) that won a bunch of Oscars, but film you're forced to endure throughout this production. The video, by Luke Halls, is impossible to ignore. Like a landscape painting, it stretches across the entire back of the stage, showing us ponderous footage of street scenes moving in slow motion or close ups of the actors' faces, both prerecorded and shot in real time. It smothers any actual aliveness. That includes, of course, the dancing, which operates, to various degrees, like wallpaper. Choreography doesn't make this reimagined "West Side Story" breathe. (The former Miami City Ballet principal Patricia Lucia Delgado, who is also an associate producer, and the Tony winning choreographer Sergio Trujillo are the production's dance consultants.) Ms. De Keersmaeker is a well respected contemporary choreographer. If you know her work, it feels like a fun secret to see her spirals and circles at play on Broadway, rather than the concert stage or the floor of the Museum of Modern Art. Alas, there are problems. Even when you're swept up by flocks of dancers sailing across the stage in formal arrangements, the choreography has little sustained urgency. Because of the looming video, you glean more of the structure of the dance its frame than its interior details. Ms. De Keersmaeker plays with gravity and buoyancy in her passages, which borrow from hip hop, martial arts and house along with her own contemporary vocabulary. Yet on a stage this large and hampered by the film, the in between moments are lost. Those transitional moments how you get from one step to the next are what dancing is all about. Here the choreography is part of a larger vision that renders it extraneous or, worse, inconsequential. Ms. De Keersmaeker is fond of giving her performers movement that takes them to the floor the leads writhe in passion; the ensemble rolls and whirls but the results can be muddled. The fight scenes look like outtakes from the 1960s "Batman" show (without words like "Kapow!" and "Sock!"). And the extended onstage rainstorm isn't much of a thrill: The performers, sopping wet, don't tear through the fight choreography so much as push forward with a grit your teeth kind of tentativeness. You can hardly blame them: A soaking floor is an injury waiting to happen. Ms. De Keersmaeker's roots are not in musical theater but contemporary dance where her heroes are postmodern artists like Trisha Brown and Steve Paxton. When you can make out the details of her movement here, you grasp its rippling flow and bodies, seemingly unhampered by bones. Marc Crousillat, a Shark, tells you everything you need to know about how her phrases can be transcendent he is a vision of clarity and looseness. But there are awkward moments with many of the dancers who are not equal to sustaining qualities of drive and undulating motion. What is it all building up to? Robbins, both a micro and macro choreographer, was able to show the body's expressiveness without self conscious touches, while taking care that every bit of the stage served a purpose even the negative space. And there is the naturalness of his movement, which never required that a dancer add anything extra. His way to get dancers to tone it down? He would say, "Easy." It's not a dirty word. Mr. Crousillat gets easy. Yet the production seems to be aiming for that cheesiest of words: gritty. It doesn't seem to grasp that it's important not only how a dancer leaps but how he stands. Here, the most macho gang members are almost comical: Arms hang down and curl in at either side, and feet are planted feet wide like cowboys fresh from the gym so as not to reveal classical turnout. It's posturing. Robbins's deep movement investigations revealed and still do how emotions, even the most imperceptible ones, live within the body. That's not always an easy quality to draw out. Shereen Pimentel, as Maria, is a powerful singer but not a natural mover; you ache for her when she has to dash happily around the stage. And Isaac Powell, as Tony, has many charms as an actor, but when he moves even just stretching his arms from side to side he suddenly looks like he's the lead in a rom com. There are other questionable moments, as when the Sharks and the Jets position themselves on either side of Maria and Tony to pull them apart, after the couple meets at the gym. It's an image embarrassingly more suited to an Instagram post, which is sad but fitting: This is an Instagram show. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
While the Pandemic Wrecked Some Businesses, Others Did Fine. Even Great. The pandemic has turbocharged profits at some big businesses, like Amazon, which reported a 70 percent increase in earnings in the first nine months of the year. But it has devastated others, like Delta Air Lines, which lost 5.4 billion in just the third quarter. Perhaps most surprising: Some companies that had feared for their lives in the spring, among them some rental car businesses, restaurant chains and financial firms, are now doing fine or even excelling. Wall Street analysts expect earnings to rebound to a record high next year. And, over all, 80 percent of companies in the S P 500 stock index that have reported third quarter earnings so far have exceeded analysts' expectations, said Howard Silverblatt, senior index analyst for S P Dow Jones Indices. Typically, just shy of two thirds of companies beat analysts' quarterly forecasts. "It's amazing," Mr. Silverblatt said. The strong are getting stronger. As the pandemic forced people to stay home and do more things online, some successful companies were perfectly positioned to take advantage of the change. Now, these businesses are becoming even more dominant. Consider Amazon. Its profits in the first nine months were up 5.8 billion from a year earlier. They allowed the company to spend 120 percent more during the period on things like warehouses, technology and other capital investments. That spending 25.3 billion could make it harder for all but Amazon's biggest competitors to keep up with its growth. Often in the past, companies that appeared strong during an expansion struggled in the next recession, delaying a full recovery. For example, banks grew with abandon before the 2008 financial crisis but later became a drag on the economy as they repaired their balance sheets. Tech companies were strong before the pandemic downturn and have powered through the rout, which could help the economy recover faster this time, said Jonathan Golub, chief U.S. equity strategist at Credit Suisse Securities. "It's really quite breathtaking," he said. Some companies are doing better than expected. When the pandemic hit, many executives understandably feared that their companies were facing an existential crisis or, at least, a very difficult recession. But a surprising number of such companies have excelled. Mr. Cooper, a mortgage company, believed that it might face a financial squeeze in the spring when some homeowners were unable to make monthly payments. But a federal regulator provided relief to mortgage lenders, and then business was helped by a surge in refinancing. Mr. Cooper's revenue in the first nine months of the year was up 40 percent, and its stock has climbed 341 percent from its low in April. During recessions, consumers often decide to pull back and avoid large outlays. But this year, something different happened. Many Americans who did not lose jobs but were also not spending on travel and entertainment found themselves with more disposable income. The 1,200 stimulus payments from the government also helped. This has been a boon for companies that initially feared a deep recession. General Motors and Ford Motor, for example, rushed to borrow billions of dollars early in the year, expecting that car sales would tumble and stay low for a while. The auto business did struggle and automakers had to close their factories for about two months, but sales started picking up this summer. For the third quarter, G.M., Ford and other automakers reported big profits. Some large restaurant chains, after pressing for a federal bailout, have done much better than expected as drive through customers, delivery and takeout orders bolstered sales. On Thursday, Papa John's, whose stock is up 32 percent this year, reported surging sales, profits and cash flow and announced a new stock buyback program. Its chief executive, Rob Lynch, said the company had added "over eight million" customers this year. 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. Asked on a call with financial analysts Thursday if the company can hold on to such gains, Mr. Lynch said that many of the new customers were dining more frequently and that the average spending per order was larger than before the pandemic. "So that gives us a lot of confidence that they have come in, they are enjoying their experience and they're coming back," Mr. Lynch said. But there are winners and losers even within industries. Darden Restaurants, which owns Olive Garden and other brands that are more reliant on in restaurant dining, reported a 28 percent decline in sales in the three months through the end of August. Its stock price is down 6 percent this year. Darden is in a painful waiting game. For its results to recover, it needs big states to relax indoor dining restrictions. "We need to get California back," Gene Lee, Darden's chief executive, said on a call with analysts. Olive Garden has 100 restaurants in the state, he said. Businesses have adapted, successfully in some cases. Even as much of the travel industry struggles, some companies have found a way to survive. Hertz sought bankruptcy protection in May. And its biggest competitor, the Avis Budget Group, ran up large losses 639 million in the first six months of the year. But Avis turned a modest 45 million profit in the third quarter. The company's comeback was made possible by cost cutting and a decision to sell 75,000 vehicles in the United States to take advantage of strong demand for used cars. (Nationally, spending on used light trucks, including sport utility vehicles, was up nearly 19 percent in the third quarter from a year earlier.) Of course, that strategy might not keep working. Demand for rental cars is still low, and many Avis Budget locations are at airports, which are seeing precious little traffic. Other companies that have more urban and suburban locations, like Enterprise, are better positioned because they don't depend as much on air travelers. After suffering from a dizzying collapse in business in the spring, airlines pinned their hopes on the typically busy summer season, which brought some relief despite a surge in virus cases in July. But that did little to ease the pain. In the third quarter, American lost 2.4 billion and United lost 1.8 billion. For all three, revenue fell more than 70 percent from the same three months last year. With coronavirus cases at record highs and domestic air travel still down 60 percent from last year, there's little hope that the typically slower winter season will bring a meaningful rebound. The industry is hoping Congress will authorize another round of aid to help it pay thousands of workers. But investors are not all that worried. Investors, who are more likely to buy stocks if they believe companies will make more money, are signaling that they expect a broad profits recovery among the largest U.S. companies. The S P 500 has soared nearly 57 percent from its March low and is up 8.6 percent for the year. Those gains might seem odd given that the combined profits of the companies in that index are on track to decline 25 percent this year from a record showing in 2019. But a big chunk of that rally can be attributed to a handful of large technology stocks. Investors are also counting on the Federal Reserve to keep its benchmark interest rate low for years to come and to keep pumping money into the financial system. Of course, many struggling businesses, including lots of restaurants, stores and services companies are not traded on the stock market. That means a surge in stock prices can give a misleadingly optimistic view of where the economy is headed. "The economy is not as good as the market is," said Mr. Golub of Credit Suisse. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Economy |
Mr. Schwartz is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine who reports regularly on national security and foreign policy. He is based in Washington. Who wouldn't want to be an American ambassador? Beyond the pomp and social cachet, you get a luxury residence, six figure salary, and private school tuition for your children a comfortable diplomatic lifestyle bankrolled by taxpayers. For decades, presidents from both parties have quietly distributed a portion of these cushy posts (often in the touristy capitals of Europe and the Caribbean) to some of their most generous campaign donors. Although the practice is technically prohibited by law, Congress has long acquiesced. "We're the only country in the world that does business in this way," says Dennis Jett, a retired ambassador, career Foreign Service officer and professor who wrote the book "American Ambassadors." "Nobody else has an open market on ambassadorships. If we really believed in capitalism, we would list these postings on eBay." The problem, as indicated by Gordon Sondland and other donor ambassadors during the Trump administration, is that the most loyal are often the least competent. But the practice of effectively selling ambassadorships did not start with President Trump. The fact that nearly every modern president has done the same would seem to be the rare piece of evidence in support of Mr. Trump's claim that he is no more corrupt than the Washington "swamp." The incoming Biden administration now has a chance to prove him wrong. The precise origins of ambassadorial graft are obscure, but one of the earliest examples can be found inside the original "smoke filled room," a suite at the Blackstone Hotel in Chicago, where Republican power brokers haggled into the early hours of June 12, 1920, trying to choose an agreeable presidential candidate to unite their party's deadlocked convention. They finally settled on the stately looking junior senator from Ohio, Warren G. Harding. One of Harding's powerful backers was George Harvey, publisher and industrialist, who had engineered Woodrow Wilson's ascent to the White House. After Harding won the election, he made Harvey ambassador to the Court of St. James's in London. Ambassador Harvey wasted no time in making a fool of himself. He showed up dressed like a minister from the previous century, in satin knee breeches and silver buckled slippers. He gave a speech at a London club questioning whether women had souls. In another speech, delivered before the Pilgrims Society, he claimed that the United States had fought in World War I "reluctantly and laggardly" to save its own skin. Almost immediately, Harvey was condemned on both sides of the Atlantic. Harding distanced himself from his ambassador's views. George Brinton McClellan Harvey, seen here in 1914, was the United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom during the Harding administration. In 1924, Congress passed the Rogers Act, an attempt to create a corps of professional career diplomats. But the temptation to reward political allies with ambassadorships has only grown. Mr. Sondland, a hotelier who gave a million dollars to Mr. Trump's inaugural committee, was made the United States ambassador to the European Union. Unlike Harvey, who had real clout, Mr. Sondland was mainly distinguished by his willingness to give away his own money. (Among his "honors," according to his official curriculum vitae, was the purchase of a California Hyatt, crowned "transaction of the year" at the American Lodging Investment Summit.) As ambassador, Mr. Sondland undermined his State Department colleagues by serving as a backchannel during Mr. Trump's attempted shakedown of the Ukrainian government. He was also overheard conducting a sensitive conversation with the president on his personal cellphone in a Kyiv restaurant, a security breach that a former C.I.A. official called "insane." Under Presidents Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, roughly 70 percent of ambassadorial posts went to Foreign Service officers professionals who spent years training for such a post. The other 30 percent have been political appointments. Some of those are competent foreign policy veterans; others have country expertise from working in business or the nonprofit sector; still others are chiefly qualified by their willingness to pour money into their patron's political campaign. Under Mr. Trump, the number of political appointments rose to 43 percent. The history of American diplomacy is replete with presidential cronies who get their coveted ambassadorships only to find themselves in over their heads. Franklin Roosevelt sent the Democratic backer Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. as his envoy to the United Kingdom. Like Harvey, Kennedy proved to be a headstrong magnate who couldn't control his isolationist streak. He predicted that "democracy is finished in England," after the Battle of Britain and resigned soon after. Over the following decades, as the costs of campaigning rose, money took the place of back room influence as the key criterion for would be ambassadors. Richard Nixon's lawyer put an explicit price tag on an ambassadorship 250,000 for Costa Rica then denied having done so to a grand jury. One of his appointed donors, Vincent de Roulet, called his Jamaican hosts "idiots" and "children." De Roulet's attempts to protect American bauxite interests by threatening to interfere in Jamaican elections were not well received by the host government. In 1973, Jamaica declared him persona non grata; he resigned in disgrace. President Jimmy Carter attempted to reform the system, promising a merit based process overseen by a bipartisan screening board, and Congress made another attempt to limit political appointments with the Foreign Service Act of 1980. But the pay for play system continued, spurred on by campaign costs and the aspirations of the wealthy. William A. Wilson, a longtime friend and backer of Ronald Reagan's, was made the first United States ambassador to the Vatican, a post he held until 1986, when reports surfaced of his unauthorized meeting with the Libyan dictator Muammar el Qaddafi, which flouted White House policy. George Tsunis, another wealthy hotelier, raised 1.3 million for Mr. Obama and was his choice to be ambassador to Norway. Mr. Tsunis proved so ignorant of the country in his confirmation hearing that the Senate sat on his nomination for more than a year. Mr. Tsunis eventually gave up. Three other Obama backers who made it through the confirmation process for other assignments resigned in the midst of scathing reports on their management from the State Department's inspector general. Under Mr. Trump, the inspector general has reportedly examined allegations of racist and sexist remarks by Woody Johnson, a seven figure donor who became ambassador to the United Kingdom. Jeffrey Ross Guntner, Mr. Trump's donor ambassador to Iceland, reportedly wanted to manage the embassy remotely, from California, through the coronavirus pandemic. Kelly Craft, currently ambassador to the United Nations, spent more than 300 days traveling outside the country during her brief tour as donor ambassador to Canada. President elect Joe Biden, who had a clear view of this system as the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for many years, now has a chance to reform it. It is unclear whether he will. While his primary opponent Senator Elizabeth Warren vowed that no ambassadorial posts would go to donors or bundlers, Mr. Biden demurred when asked about the issue this month, saying only that he would "appoint the best people possible." Senator Tim Kaine, a Democrat from Virginia, has sponsored a bill that would require would be ambassadors to disclose their country knowledge and language skills in detail, along with any political contributions given or bundled over the previous 10 years. Ambassadors are responsible for hundreds of government employees and have a hand in most every aspect of American policy within the borders of their host nation. "Would you want a campaign contributor to be the captain of an aircraft carrier?" asked Mr. Jett, the retired Foreign Service officer and author. "Obviously not. This is a national security issue." Beyond the inherent risk of giving such a sensitive job to anyone but the most competent candidate, the practice of nominating donors demoralizes the Foreign Service, wastes opportunities to develop future leaders, and presents the world with a cynical face. It is an especially dangerous practice when Mr. Trump has been working to reframe foreign policy as a more contingent set of arrangements where there are no permanent bonds, only interests. Perhaps there was once a time when American alliances were strong enough to withstand a few Sondlands, but that is far less true today than it was four years ago. If Mr. Biden is serious about restoring America's standing in the world, he should entrust that task to professionals. Mattathias Schwartz ( schwartzesque) is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine. He is also a contributing editor for Rest of World and a former staff writer at The New Yorker, where he won the Livingston Award for international reporting. 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 |
In 2015, Thomas Mors reached for a frog in the sand but the frog didn't hop away. That's because the frog had been fossilized 40 million years ago. Nevertheless, Dr. Mors knew that the frog would soon be hopping into history books, because it was the first fossil frog from Antarctica ever found. "When I was going through samples and I saw this, I said: 'Wow! That's a frog!'" said Dr. Mors, a vertebrate paleontologist at the Swedish Museum of Natural History who led the team of researchers that announced the find Thursday in Scientific Reports. "I knew nothing like this was known from Antarctica. It's exciting." Dr. Mors and his team retrieved the frog from Seymour Island, which sits on the Antarctic Peninsula roughly 700 miles south of Tierra Del Fuego on South America. The frog came to light in 2015 back in Sweden after Dr. Mors had time to sift through the thousands of samples he and his team collected during expeditions to the island in 2011, 2012 and 2013. The haul also included fossilized water lily seeds and shark and ray teeth. Dr. Mors found two frog bones: a skull and a hip bone called an ilium. "The ilium is probably the most diagnostic part of a frog skeleton," said David Wake, a herpetologist at the University of California, Berkeley, who was not involved in the research. "A frog paleontologist wants an ilium." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
"Almost Love" teases you with glimpses into Manhattanite pocketbooks with references to exorbitant rents or entitled, wealthy clients. But each time money enters the story, the film dances around the issue, treating the characters' investments in one another as solely emotional. When Elizabeth rejects a flirtation with a handsome ice cream man, she complains that he only wants to talk about his boring job. The movie never follows up and never leaves room to consider that these genial people with nice apartments and Ivy League diplomas might have an obnoxious sense of who is in their league. The aimless characters in "Almost Love" like to talk through their feelings, their aspirations, their disappointments, but there is little substance in their epiphanies, and the comedy is too low key to make up for its absence. In this comedy of romantic manners, class solidarity is the love that dares not speak its name. Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 34 minutes. Rent or buy on Amazon, Google Play, iTunes and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
"I understood her and I knew her," Kerry Washington (backstage here at the Booth Theater) said of the character she plays in "American Son." "I understood her and I knew her," Kerry Washington (backstage here at the Booth Theater) said of the character she plays in "American Son." Credit...Ike Edeani for The New York Times "I understood her and I knew her," Kerry Washington (backstage here at the Booth Theater) said of the character she plays in "American Son." Kerry Washington shifted a bit on the cozy couch we were sharing in her dressing room at the Booth Theater, her eyes trained inquisitively on mine. "Why?" she asked, with a slight smile. "I'm wondering why you're curious about that." This was early in a recent interview to discuss her return to Broadway in the new drama "American Son," now in previews and opening on Nov. 4. Set inside a Miami police station in the wee hours of the morning "on a day this coming June," as the play's program puts it, Ms. Washington portrays Kendra, a psychology professor searching for answers about her missing son, Jamal. Fear is much of what drives Kendra's actions in the play. Fear that any parent might feel when a child doesn't return home in the middle of the night yet fear that takes on added intensity because her son is a mixed race 18 year old in the South. So I asked Ms. Washington otherwise warm and relaxed on this chilly fall day, her bouncy curls piled in a beautiful updo what she herself fears in life. Which is what prompted her question in response. I tried it another way. What about the role connected with her personally? "I just don't know that I can talk about it," she answered. "Parts of playing her have to remain private for me because I'm still in the process." For Ms. Washington returning to the stage after seven life changing seasons on ABC's "Scandal" it seemed that naming a specific fear was an odd thing to consider. It's not as if she had arachnophobia, she explained. Rather, as a woman of color and a mother, "I'm in a constant conversation with my fears, you know?" Mr. Richards sent her three scripts while she was shooting the TV series's final season, and Mr. Demos Brown's play, touching on race, class, gender and police brutality, immediately grabbed her attention. She intended to read only a little bit of it before bed one evening she had an early morning set call the next day but found herself unable to put down the script. What drew her in was the characterization of Kendra, who is at once a rarity on American stages and wholly familiar to Ms. Washington. "I understood her and I knew her," she said. "I felt like at times I had been her, and at times I had been friends with her." In the role, Ms. Washington lives in what she describes as either "terror" or "fight or flight" mode, clashing with three men who dismiss Kendra. Two are cops: Paul Larkin (Jeremy Jordan), a bigoted newbie who deliberately keeps Kendra in the dark about what he knows, and John Stokes (Eugene Lee), a veteran black lieutenant of the BlueLivesMatter variety. Most complicated are her ties to her estranged husband, Scott (Steven Pasquale), an F.B.I. agent who has left her for another woman and actively rejects Kendra's blunt observations about how race factors into her life and their son's. In this respect, she is a far cry from Olivia Pope. While "strong, smart and successful," Kendra "spends the play twisting herself into a pretzel to try and get what she needs from these three men who all hold different kinds of power over her," Ms. Washington said. Olivia, on the other hand, was almost always "the most powerful person in every room" President Fitzgerald Grant excepted. Motherhood separates the characters as well. "The fact that Olivia Pope chose to never be a mom is so interesting when I look at it through the lens of this play," Ms. Washington said. She added that she wondered if Shonda Rhimes, the creator of "Scandal," made this choice because "just by the nature of what it means to be a black mother, you immediately are introduced to the need to navigate the fear." Since her last appearance on Broadway in 2009, Ms. Washington has become a mother herself. She has two children with her husband, Nnamdi Asomugha, an ex N.F.L. player turned actor and producer. When I asked if her own experiences as a parent informed how she plays Kendra, talk turned again to fear. "How do I answer that?" she wondered, pausing for a long moment. "It's a tricky thing." She pointed to the "personal and political" connections she has to the character, emphasizing the political. She referred to the writer Brittney Cooper's book "Eloquent Rage," which describes the particularly harrowing history of black American women who had their children "ripped" away in slavery. "Yes, as a mother, it makes me think about my beautiful, precious children," Ms. Washington said. "But it also rings into generations of PTSD around what it means to try to raise children in a world that is safe. What that has meant for black women has been so tragic and so complicated for hundreds of years." Kenny Leon, the director of "American Son," worked briefly with Ms. Washington in 2008 on "Swimming Upstream," a collection of monologues about women who survived Hurricane Katrina. The years she has since spent as Olivia have prepared her to play Kendra, he said in an interview. "She has matured into one of the great actresses for the stage," he said. "Developing that TV role at the time gave her a greater sense of the wholeness of characters." Ms. Washington can see his point. "I do feel really grateful for those seven seasons in how they've kind of built my muscles," she said. For what will be a total of 16 weeks, each requiring eight performances, Ms. Washington has been using those muscles extensively. She is onstage for all but three minutes of the play's 80. One suggestion Mr. Demos Brown took: that as a black mother, Kendra would "offer a more spirited defense" of her son than he had originally written. Ms. Washington is also heavily involved behind the scenes: Her production company, Simpson Street, is a producer of "American Son," as is her husband. Mr. Asomugha supported moving the family from Los Angeles so she could do the play; as it turns out, he is making his New York stage debut at the same time, portraying a front porch philosopher in Ngozi Anyanwu's "Good Grief," at the Vineyard Theater downtown. Because of the material's potentially divisive but instructive nature, Ms. Washington reached out to friends at the Ford Foundation about creating a curriculum to accompany "American Son." The foundation connected her with the nonprofit organization The Opportunity Agenda, which is helping to host two coming talkbacks and develop a study guide that will be made available at performances and online. According to a draft of the introduction, the goal is to "inform and frame discussions" and guide "audiences toward useful resources to learn more and to take action." "We can't put this in the world, and also not offer some tools," Ms. Washington said of the show. The production is a long way from the early days of her career, when in films like "Save the Last Dance" and "Ray," she played the best friend or the significant other of the protagonist. She is currently helping to develop the novel "Little Fires Everywhere" as a limited series for Hulu, working as co executive producer and co star with Reese Witherspoon. And she plans to star in (and produce) a workplace comedy that will mark the feature directing debut of Eva Longoria, a collaboration she said was "born out of" their work together on the Time's Up Legal Defense Fund. Her success notwithstanding, Ms. Washington said there was plenty of room for improvement in the representation of women and people of color in the industry, and how race is discussed. She cited a point made by the activist DeRay Mckesson about South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which was set up at the end of apartheid: "We want to go straight to reconciliation and we want to skip over truth. Because we're not comfortable with the truth." What she and her fellow actors are trying to do with "American Son" is "step into some truth," she said. "The magic of theater of great theater, which is what we're aiming for, always," Ms. Washington said, is to "have each person just open up a little more than before they walked into the theater. Their hearts and minds, you know?" | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
In a floor speech in July, Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, issued an ultimatum on future Supreme Court fights. "I will vote only for those Supreme Court nominees who have explicitly acknowledged that Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided," Hawley said. He would require on the record evidence that the next Republican nominee "understands Roe to be the travesty that it is." Absent that, he said, "I will not support the nomination." The day after Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, Hawley reiterated this commitment, and called on his fellow Republican senators to do the same. Others on the religious right may impose a similar litmus test. Social conservatives felt betrayed when, in June, Neil Gorsuch, Donald Trump's first Supreme Court appointee, wrote in a majority opinion that it's illegal under the 1964 Civil Rights Act to fire someone for being gay or transgender. They were doubly dejected when Chief Justice John Roberts cast the deciding vote in a decision striking down a Louisiana law that would have all but regulated legal abortion out of existence in the state. As Politico reported, they now want a guarantee that a new Trump judge will carry out their agenda. At this bleak moment for reproductive rights, this counts as good news. It might at last end the absurd charade that allows conservative Supreme Court nominees to obscure their opposition to legal abortion. Just over six weeks before the election, it should make clear to everyone what is at stake if Trump is allowed to replace Ginsburg. "Hawley wants to make sure where they stand, if they disagree with Roe v. Wade," said Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights. "The 70 plus percent of the American public that supports Roe v. Wade would like to know that too." The custom of nominees concealing their intentions regarding Roe as well as other issues began after 1987, when a bipartisan majority of senators rejected President Ronald Reagan's Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork. Bork didn't just oppose Roe; during his hearing he discussed his skepticism of the 1965 Supreme Court ruling striking down bans on contraceptives, which established the right to privacy that Roe is based on. The reticence around Roe has essentially institutionalized hypocrisy as part of the confirmation process. As Northup points out, during his confirmation hearing in 1991, Clarence Thomas simply described Roe v. Wade without taking a clear position on it. Less than a year later, he joined a dissent in a pivotal abortion case that said Roe was "wrongly decided, and that it can and should be overruled." Because nominees typically refuse to speak about Roe in depth, the debate about abortion during confirmation hearings seems to take place in code. "Everyone talks about precedent," said Murray. "Nobody really talks about Roe v. Wade." This makes the conversation about the future of legal abortion abstract and hard to follow. Traditionally, the right has liked it that way. For years, Hawley said in his Senate speech, religious conservatives have been told: "Don't mess up the Supreme Court nomination process by raising Roe. It's imprudent. It's in poor taste. It will divide our coalition." Instead, he said, conservatives were urged to talk about "process, about methods, maybe throw in some talk about umpires." There's a reason for this: Roe is popular. While many Americans support abortion restrictions, a Pew poll last year found that seven in 10 oppose seeing Roe overturned. As David Wasserman wrote on Monday, more than a fifth of Trump's 2016 voters in battleground states leaned pro choice. Still, Hawley is in a position to extract concessions. The two remaining pro choice Republican senators, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, have already said they're opposed to the Senate voting on a Trump nomination before the election. If Trump loses two more senators, his pick will be defeated. So this time, Trump's nominee might not get away with doing what Brett Kavanaugh reportedly did, telling Collins that Roe is "settled law." That would be for the best. "It would actually be more galvanizing for Democrats if the Republicans would just either do what they say they want to do, overturn Roe and face the political backlash that that would engender," said Murray, "or have their nominee just say explicitly, 'I don't believe there is a constitutional right to abortion.'" Republicans have supported Trump through nearly four years of stupefying corruption to bring us to this precipice, when states might once again force women to give birth against their will. If Democrats can't force Trump's nominee to be clear about the rights he or she intends to take from us, maybe Hawley can. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
LONDON The September issue of any fashion glossy is the biggest of the year, often the most profitable and influential, with a front cover designed to pack political and cultural punch. So far, this year is no exception. Take the furor spurred by one of four September covers released by American Vogue earlier this month, shot by Annie Leibovitz and featuring Jennifer Lawrence in a red satin slip with the Statue of Liberty in the background. Amid accusations that the photo deliberately glamorized the subject of immigration, debate raged online. W magazine chose to fuse print and digital via augmented reality for its September cover, which was released last week. A reader can bring Katy Perry to life reciting the work of Albert Camus, no less by using a special app to scan her face, as the pop star stands alone, brooding, on a darkened Paris street. For one thing, the star chosen for both the Arabic and English language covers is Bella Hadid, 20, the Palestinian American supermodel of the moment. The decision comes just months after Ms. Hadid's sister, Gigi, appeared on the cover of the magazine's inaugural issue in a custom made jeweled veil. That choice prompted allegations of cultural appropriation and a missed opportunity to feature a non Western model, charges that may now resurface. Ms. Hadid was photographed for the September issue by the designer Karl Lagerfeld in a series of head to toe looks from the Italian fashion house Fendi, of which Mr. Lagerfeld is the creative director. In one shot, Ms. Hadid, her hands outstretched, wears a high neck scarlet silk dress with billowing sleeves and matching pointed toe leather boots. In another, she wears a black jacket with a PVC collar and fur trimmed sleeves. Her hands are sheathed by sheer polka dot gloves, and her black pixie crop is covered by a fascinator. Her gaze comes from behind a netted veil. The attire in both cover portraits is modest, but not explicitly Muslim, in keeping with the values of the majority of the magazine's readership as well as encapsulating a major trend on the runways of the fashion capitals. Manuel Arnaut, the editor in chief of Vogue Arabia, who was appointed after the abrupt departure of the original editor, Deena Aljuhani Abdulaziz, in April after just two issues, praised the pairing of Ms. Hadid and Mr. Lagerfeld. He called the September cover "a momentous occasion" for the magazine, which goes on sale Aug. 30. "Bella Hadid is one of the most celebrated models of the time, plus she has a link with the region, being half Palestinian but also a Muslim," Mr. Arnaut said in a telephone interview on Monday. "She is the perfect fit for Vogue Arabia." "We constantly look for people and content that will resonate with our core readers," he said, pointing to previous cover stars like the Muslim model Halima Aden and the content of the September issue. It will include a street style piece on hijab wearing, modest fashion muses, a profile on the emerging actress Amira Khalil and a feature on members of Middle Eastern royalty creating fine jewelry collections. "That said, it is also about finding a balance," Mr. Arnaut said. "The Arab world is not a ghetto. It is a highly informed, international and cultured region where global stars like the Hadids have a cult following. Karl Lagerfeld is a legendary figure for fashion fans in the Middle East, too. We champion what goes on inside our borders, but our mission as a magazine is to cover what goes on outside them as well. That is real diversity." Some observers have suggested that in the last year there has been a subtle rebranding of Gigi and Bella, and their model brother, Anwar, from West Coast beauties to more cross cultural Palestinian Americans and at a time when political tensions have flared. Others suggest that like many young people, the siblings are on a path of self discovery in which they feel more comfortable openly discussing their upbringing and their faith. Thanks to their high profiles and huge numbers of followers on social media, they have also become powerful weapons against Islamophobia. Their father, who was born in Nazareth and raised in Syria and Lebanon, raised his children to be observant, they have said. "He was always religious, and he always prayed with us," Bella said in a recent interview, opening the door for fresh debate about representation of diversity as it exists in the Muslim community. "I am proud to be a Muslim." She has been open about her opposition to President Trump's travel ban, attending a rally in New York in January. "There is no question that Bella and Gigi Hadid have become very popular with millions of young and aspirational Muslims, who love that they have celebrities of that stature with whom they can relate, despite their more liberal interpretation of how to practice the faith," said Shelina Janmohamed, vice president of Ogilvy Noor, an Islamic branding consultancy. Ms. Janmohamed noted that some local publications are attempting to brand the family as "the Kardashians of the Middle East." "That said, there is also a question around authenticity for Muslims, which will likely prove challenging for the sisters," Ms. Janmohamed said. "Bella Hadid's everyday wardrobe is hardly modest. A more conservative audience, when thinking about what a Muslim woman should look like, will inevitably pose questions about how they connect to their heritage and whether they live out Muslim values. When Halima Aden graced the cover of Vogue Arabia, there was never any suggestion that her identity and motivations fitted in with the region." As the modest fashion movement continues to spawn commercial interests, brands entering key markets in Southeast Asia and the Middle East are faced with a decision neatly encapsulated by Vogue Arabia's September issue: Do they continue with the original conception of a brand, centered on Western ideals, or should a brand strategy shift to both localize and diversify as the cultural expressions of the regions become ever more dominant? For Mr. Arnaut and Vogue Arabia, walking a fine line between the two appears to be the answer. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
People waiting in line to enter a store in Brooklyn's Sunset Park, a neighborhood with one of the city's largest Mexican and Hispanic communities, this month. MIAMI Making burial arrangements for Basilio Juarez Pinzon in the Mexican city of Cuautla won't be easy. It will be expensive, complicated and painfully bureaucratic, mainly because his ashes will have to be transported from New York City in the middle of a pandemic. It took Felix Pinzon, Basilio's brother, one month and four days to make arrangements for the cremation of the body on May 4. Basilio had died from Covid 19 at the age of 45. Unfortunately, with funeral homes in New York City overwhelmed and with Felix Pinzon lacking a death certificate for his brother, he still hasn't been able to repatriate Basilio's ashes to Mexico. Over 1,000 Mexicans have died from Covid 19 in the United States, and many of them did not want to be buried in America. Most had an unspoken agreement with their families and friends: If I die in the United States, take me back to Mexico. "Why wouldn't Basilio consider a burial in New York, where he worked for so many years?" I asked Mr. Pinzon recently. "No," he responded. "I'm sure Basilio would have wanted to go back home to his family." His wife and children live in Mexico. "It's obvious to all of us Mexicans; we don't want to be laid to rest far away from our homeland. Most of our families are in Mexico." This long held tradition is beautifully expressed in an old song sung by the famed Mexican singer and actor Jorge Negrete: "Mexico lindo y querido. Si muero lejos de ti, que digan que estoy dormido y que me traigan aqui." ("Mexico, my beautiful and beloved country. Should I die abroad, away from you, tell everyone I'm asleep and bring me back to this land.") New York (primarily New York City and its suburbs) has recorded more Mexican deaths from Covid 19 than any other single state. The sad, lengthy and fairly complex task of repatriating the bodies of New York's deceased Mexican immigrants has fallen to the local Mexican Consulate. Of the 687 Mexicans who have died from Covid 19 in New York, applications to repatriate more than 500 of them have been submitted, a representative from the consulate told me. It is easier and less expensive to repatriate ashes than bodies. But even with cremation, many Mexican immigrants still cannot afford to repatriate their loved ones. "We can help with up to 1,800 U.S. dollars per case," Jorge Islas, the Mexican consul general in New York, told me in an interview. With the consulate still closed, his team is working remotely to issue emergency documents. "We have traditions that have been part of our life since Mesoamerican times. And when it comes to our dead, we have deeply ingrained cultural traditions, a huge part of which involves bringing them back to the place where they were born. People tell us: 'I want to be able to go to a specific place to pray for him, to cry and bring him flowers every year. That's what we do.'" A couple of years ago the animated Pixar film "Coco" showed the world just how close and unusual the relationship between the Mexican people and death is. Our dead live on forever. We want to keep them close so we can talk to them and pamper them even if we can't actually touch them. The Mexican relationship to the dead bears some resemblance to our relationship with our living loved ones amid the social distancing restrictions imposed during the pandemic. Although our family members are often nearby, we can't hug them or hold them close. "Our songs, proverbs, fiestas and popular beliefs show very clearly that death cannot frighten us," wrote Octavio Paz in "The Labyrinth of Solitude," one of the most insightful accounts of the Mexican worldview ever written. Paz said that "the Mexican is familiar with death, jokes about it, caresses it, sleeps with it, celebrates it; it is one of his favorite toys and his most steadfast love." To the ancient Mexican "death was not the natural end of life but one phase of an infinite cycle." And so we must go back to Mexico, lest we disrupt that cycle. Mexicans are leaving the United States in huge numbers, dead or alive, pandemic or no pandemic. Many Mexicans no longer consider the United States an attractive place to work, live and raise a family. Anti immigrant sentiment surged in America in the aftermath of Sept. 11, and things have only gotten worse under President Trump. Between 2010 and 2018, just over one million undocumented Mexican immigrants left the United States voluntarily to return home, according to the Center for Migration Studies. A 2015 analysis from the Pew Research Center found that more Mexicans had left America for Mexico than had entered the United States between 2009 and 2014 and that 61 percent of the one million Mexicans who had returned home during that time had done so to reunite with their families. Family is a big pull, a constant tug on our hearts. And that longing only ends with our deaths. No one dreams about becoming an immigrant, about being forced to flee your country of birth because of economic desperation or political oppression. No wonder so many Mexicans want to return home after they die. Nothing is more personal than deciding where you want to be buried. On the day of Basilio Juarez Pinzon's cremation, four people, including a priest, took part in a small ceremony next to his coffin in New York. Felix Pinzon hasn't been able to send his brother's ashes home to Mexico, but he's going to keep trying until it happens. "It's normal for any Mexican to want to go back to our homeland and be buried there," he told me. Although Basilio hadn't talked about it, it was always clear to his brother that his loyalty to his country was as powerful as that expressed by Negrete in that old song: Mexico lindo y querido, si muero lejos de ti ... 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 |
After he turned from art to writing, Inua Ellams said, "Because I'd spent so much time focused on imagery, when it came to writing poetry, I just wrote down the images in my head with words."Credit...Adama Jalloh for The New York Times After he turned from art to writing, Inua Ellams said, "Because I'd spent so much time focused on imagery, when it came to writing poetry, I just wrote down the images in my head with words." Last year was a big one for the poet, playwright and performer Inua Ellams. His version of the Chekhov play "Three Sisters," which he set in Nigeria during the Biafran war, opened at the National Theater in London. So did another one of his plays, "Barber Shop Chronicles," which went on to tour in the United States. His book "The Half God of Rainfall," which comes out in the United States on Tuesday, also made it to the stage. And Britain, where he moved when he was 12, rejected his application for citizenship. For Ellams, who was raised in Nigeria, England and Ireland, weaving across borders and boundaries is second nature. He turned from visual art to writing at a young age because he couldn't afford paint. "I could get paper and pen," he said during a Zoom interview. "Because I'd spent so much time focused on imagery, when it came to writing poetry, I just wrote down the images in my head with words." Now, Ellams, 35, is probably best known for his plays and is trying his hand at writing for television. Like its author, "The Half God of Rainfall" is hard to put in a neat little box: It is an epic poem about Greek and Yoruba deities, as well as the half god son of Zeus whose special power is killing it at basketball. "They called it Battle Field, The Court of Kings, The Test," Ellams writes, "for this was where warriors were primed from the rest, / where generals were honored and mere soldiers crushed. / Basketball was more than sport, the boys were obsessed." Ellams was born in Jos, Nigeria, to a Muslim father and a Christian mother. His father, who worked in a business that exported Nigerian food, began to openly question his faith after making a pilgrimage to Mecca and seeing things there he did not agree with. The family started receiving threats. Attempts were made on his father's life. Someone tried to burn down their house. They fled to Lagos, but the violence followed them there, so they moved to London. When Ellams was 12, he started playing basketball to get the attention of a girl who was obsessed with African American culture, he said he still plays pickup games twice a week. ("I was always point guard," he said. "Which means I brought the ball up and passed it to the bigger guys.") The family also spent three years in Dublin, where he arrived as the only Black boy in his school. But when it came time to apply to college or art school, Ellams was classified as an overseas student, so he couldn't afford to go, and his formal education ended with high school. He spent the next several years focusing on poetry, much of which he performed at open mic nights in pubs, festivals and theaters. He has published four poetry "pamphlets," with just a dozen or so poems in each, but his first full length collection, "The Actual," will be published in the United States next month. It started as a poem whose title is an expletive followed by "Donald Trump." When it resonated with audiences, he turned it into a series of similarly titled poems on Nelson Mandela, Nestle and Covid 19. Ellams still performs. Earlier this month in London, he began a socially distanced run of his one man show "An Evening With an Immigrant," in which he tells his family history with a mix of poetry and improvised notes, making the show a little different every night. One story he recounts is how his one man show "The 14th Tale" resulted in an invitation to Buckingham Palace, just in time to be added to his application for "indefinite leave to remain" in the country. (His application was approved.) He does not consider himself an actor. "I can tell stories," he said. "I can't make a full transformation into another human being." But in Ellams's writing, the rules are different. While researching Greek mythology for "The Half God of Rainfall," he was struck by something he had not learned about those tales in school: Zeus was a serial rapist. Rather than abandoning the story or glossing over it, he made women's sexual trauma central to what he was writing. His main character, the basketball star Demi (as in demigod), was conceived when Zeus raped a woman named Modupe. When the book came out in Britain last year, Ellams wondered if he would be criticized for writing about women's sexual trauma. He had poured himself into getting it right, he said, speaking with his three sisters and sharing the text with female friends, some of whom had been victims of sexual assault. "I questioned why I wanted to write this story," he said. "It's because I was in a position of power, and I wanted to use it to discuss how men abuse power." The book also likes to have a little fun. In a section that lists half gods who have taken their talents to the N.B.A., Ellams writes that Michael Jordan "did / what no one had dared flew on the court. With no song, / charm or spell to cloak his flight! Live television!" Another example: "Rainbow Snake Goddess? Dennis Rodman's aunt." Indeed, the idea for "Half God" didn't come from high minded dreams of harnessing Greek mythology, but from a boyhood memory of a friend who could spit high into the air and then catch it in his own mouth. In a poem, Ellams called the friend the half god of rainfall. From there, the phrase "make it rain" brought him to basketball. That mix of playful and serious in "Half God" is much like its author. Ellams is meticulously organized, according to his friends, a valuable skill given his multitasking tendencies. His work often explores themes of masculinity and colonialism, Blackness and migration. His quest for British citizenship continues. He also has an encyclopedic knowledge of Marvel Comics and a taste for lame jokes. Kayo Chingonyi, a friend and fellow poet who shares that fondness, offered an example: "What's brown and sticky? A stick." Sitting in his living room, in front of an Ikea bookshelf piled with poetry magazines, two basketballs and a decorative bottle of expired Nigerian Guinness, Ellams heard the familiar joke and responded with an impish chuckle. "He sometimes says, 'I'm not a writer, I'm a thief,'" said Kate McGrath, his friend and longtime producer. "I think that curiosity and openheartedness, and interest in listening to and absorbing other people and other cultures is probably what he describes as being a thief. But I would describe it as being an artist." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
A new study offers a glint of hope to people in a desperate situation: Patients with melanoma, the most serious form of skin cancer, that has spread to the brain. A combination of two drugs that activate the immune system shrank brain tumors in many melanoma patients and prolonged life in a study of 94 people at 28 medical centers in the United States. The drugs were ipilimumab (brand name Yervoy) and nivolumab (Opdivo), and they belong to a class called checkpoint inhibitors. Melanoma is more likely than most cancers to spread to the brain, and once it gets there, fewer than 20 percent of patients survive one year with traditional treatments, according to Dr. Hussein A. Tawbi, the first author of the study and an associate professor of melanoma medical oncology at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. But in the study, 82 percent were still alive after a year. "This is great news," Dr. Tawbi said. "We can help a lot more melanoma patients, and hopefully we'll be able to help a lot more patients in general with these results." About 91,270 new cases of melanoma are expected in the United States this year, along with 9,320 deaths from the disease. Treating cancer that has spread to the brain is a new frontier for the type of drugs used in the study. Checkpoint inhibitors enable the patient's own immune system to fight cancer, a treatment strategy called immunotherapy. They have led to long remissions from deadly forms of the disease, including melanoma and tumors in the lungs and kidneys. The drugs do not help everyone, but when they work the results can be remarkable. The new findings should change the standard of care, Dr. Tawbi said: Melanoma patients like those in the study should be offered the drug combination as part of their initial treatment. He said the drugs should also be tested in people with other types of cancer that have spread to the brain. He estimated that 200,000 people a year in the United States have brain tumors resulting from cancers in other parts of the body. He emphasized that radiation would still be an important part of treatment for many of these patients. The results do not apply to people with tumors that originate in the brain, like glioblastoma, the type of brain cancer that Senator John McCain is being treated for. So far, the kind of immunotherapy used in the study has not worked for such tumors, Dr. Tawbi said, but studies of drug combinations are underway to try to help those patients. The study and an editorial about it were published on Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine. The editorial, by doctors in Britain who agreed with Dr. Tawbi's recommendations, cautioned that the findings did not apply to all melanoma patients, only to those exactly like the ones in the study. Those patients had one or more brain tumors, detected by scans, that were not causing symptoms. The drugs, made by Bristol Myers Squibb, are expensive, costing more than 100,000 a year. The company paid for the trial, and helped to design it and to collect and analyze the data. The company also paid for medical writing and editorial assistance in preparing the article for the journal. The National Cancer Institute also helped pay for the study. Dr. Jedd Wolchok, a melanoma expert at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, said the findings had already been presented at a major cancer conference. "From the boots on the ground point of view, this has changed the way I practice," he said. The study, Dr. Wolchok said, made it clear that immunotherapy that was working to treat melanoma in other parts of the body could also control disease that scans had picked up in the brain. He said brain tumors in one of his patients had disappeared with the treatment. And he agreed that immunotherapy should also be tested in patients with some other types of cancer that had spread to the brain. Former President Jimmy Carter received a checkpoint inhibitor in 2015 when melanoma had spread to his brain and liver. His last scan, in June, showed no cancer, an aide said. Dustin Chambers for The New York Times "The survival outcomes are very encouraging," he said. Dr. Wolchok's hospital participated in the study, but he was not involved in it. Until recently, patients with cancer that had spread to the brain were considered such hopeless cases that they were excluded from most clinical trials of new cancer drugs. They generally survived only weeks to months. Radiation and surgery helped a bit, but the brain tumors generally came back. Patients deteriorated rapidly, and developed trouble thinking and moving around. "The usual response from the oncologist and even the patient is nihilism," Dr. Tawbi said. Immunotherapy caused excitement in 2015 when former President Jimmy Carter said he had received it after melanoma had spread to his liver and brain. He underwent radiation treatment as well. His most recent scan, in June, showed no cancer, his press secretary, Deanna Congileo, said in an email. Mr. Carter received pembrolizumab (brand name Keytruda), a checkpoint inhibitor that was not used in the new study. The drugs have side effects that can be serious and even life threatening. A little more than half of the patients in the study had significant side effects, and 20 percent quit treatment because of them. Some suffered from headaches, two had brain swelling, and one died from heart inflammation thought to be caused by the treatment. Most melanoma cases can be cured with surgery if found early. But 10 percent to 15 percent of new cases are advanced when diagnosed, meaning that the disease has already spread to another organ, like the lungs or liver. Of the advanced cases, more than a third also have tumors that have spread to the brain, and up to 75 percent of these patients have brain malignancies when they die. Until recently, patients with cancer that had spread to the brain were left out of treatment studies, partly because few cancer drugs can get into the brain, which is protected by blood vessels lined with tightly packed cells that keep out many molecules. Even though immunotherapy and other new treatments that target certain mutations have greatly improved survival in melanoma patients, patients whose disease had reached the brain were still excluded from those studies. But checkpoint inhibitors work by enabling T cells a type of white blood cell to attack cancer. And T cells do get into the brain. Dr. Tawbi's study enrolled melanoma patients from February 2015 through June 2017. At first, only patients whose brain tumors did not cause neurologic symptoms were accepted. Most had one or two brain tumors; 22 percent had three or more. Some had already been treated with other cancer drugs, and some had already had radiation for other brain tumors. Partway through the study, patients with neurologic symptoms also were admitted to the study, but results on them are not yet available. The study called for the patients to receive the drug combination at three week intervals, four doses in all, and then to receive nivolumab alone every two weeks for a maximum of 24 months, or until the disease progressed, they had intolerable side effects, or they chose to quit. About a third received all four combination doses, and 59 percent got nivolumab. The median number of nivolumab doses was 15. The overall median duration of treatment was 3.4 months. With a median follow up of 14 months, 57 percent of the patients were helped by the treatment: brain tumors disappeared in 26 percent and shrank in 30 percent. In another 2 percent, the tumors remained stable for at least six months. In 56 percent, the treatment also worked against melanoma growths in other parts of the body. The estimated survival at one year was 81.5 percent. Dr. Tawbi said the researchers now hope to determine the best way to use immunotherapy with radiation. "Instead of 57 or 58 percent, our goal is to reach 100 percent," he said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
PIERRE LAURENT AIMARD at Carnegie Hall (March 8, 8 p.m.). It is not often that one looks at a program and thinks that Beethoven's titanic "Hammerklavier" Sonata might well be the less interesting half of a concert. But Mr. Aimard is always full of surprises. Before that Beethoven, which he will doubtless play with his usual analytical fervor, comes music by Liszt, Messiaen, Scriabin and an oddity: the post Scriabin avant gardist Nikolai Obukhov. 212 247 7800, carnegiehall.org INON BARNATAN at the 92nd Street Y (March 3, 8 p.m.). Sensitive and sophisticated, Mr. Barnatan might be the ideal pianist for the program he has chosen for this recital. Its entirety comprises "Moments musicaux," and it looks at how the idea of a "moment" has changed over time. Schubert, the obvious composer in the genre, is here with his reflective set of six pieces, and Rachmaninoff, too, demanding greater virtuosity. Rightly, there is a contemporary take as well, with two pieces by Avner Dorman. 212 415 5500, 92y.org | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
The first scream is a shock. In the middle of an enigmatic solo, performed largely in silence in the intimate confines of the Chocolate Factory, it's unsettling when the dancer shrieks like a horror movie victim. The second and third screams are less jolting, folded in with calmer activities, but they still stick out among the mysteries of Jimena Paz's "Yellow," such as: Why does the performance take place two hours before sunset? There are clues. A brief program note introduces the idea of "foreignness" and, as source material, a dance that Ms. Paz learned in 1991 from the Argentine choreographer Iris Scaccheri. Each performance, the note says, "will end when the sun sets in Buenos Aires." Ms. Paz was born and raised there, but for the past two decades she has danced in New York, a standout in works by the likes of Vicky Shick (who, with Ralph Lemon, collaborated with Ms. Paz on the choreography for "Yellow"). She isn't foreign to downtown dancegoers, though aspects of "Yellow," like those Expressionist screams, might be. The late afternoon setting heightens the impression of a dancer in a studio, trying to piece something together from memory. The dancing comes in bits: walking, rolling, casually posing, shaking. Agitated, Ms. Paz takes a cigarette break. She puts on and removes a dress of tulle; she strips off orange pants to uncover green ones underneath, but she doesn't reveal much else. A story she tells in Spanish she whispers into the floor. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
Julius Alan Schorzman and Louis Edward Morton were married June 14 at the Seattle Tennis Club in Seattle. Robert Barnhart, a friend of the couple who became a Universal Life minister for the event, officiated. Mr. Schorzman (left), 40, is a senior business analyst in Seattle for the Bill Melinda Gates Foundation. He graduated from the University of Washington. He is a son of Donna Yule of Boise, Idaho, and the late Rex A. Schorzman. Mr. Morton, who is 29 and known as Lue, is a pilot based in San Francisco for Alaska Airlines. He graduated from the University of North Dakota. He is a son of Kathleen Marie Colombo and Patrick Joseph Morton of Seattle. The couple met as teammates while playing for the Seattle Quake Rugby Football Club, an L.G.B.T. inclusive rugby club, in May 2017. Mr. Schorzman had joined the team when Mr. Morton was away on a six month airline assignment in Chicago. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
In 2018, a record number of grizzly bears 51 were killed in the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem, millions of acres in and around Glacier National Park. ESSEX, Mont. The long freight trains climb slowly over Marias Pass, through snow draped mountains south of Glacier National Park and north of the Great Bear Wilderness, snaking through some of the wildest country in the Lower 48. Some 25 trains a day, each a chain of 90 to 120 cars, make the journey over the Rocky Mountains in northern Montana at speeds up to 25 miles per hour. They have long been a threat to grizzly bears, and last year was the worst with eight of the bears a federally protected species run over by trains. On one day in June, a mother and her two cubs were killed by trains in two separate incidents. The long term average for grizzly deaths by train is two a year. "A train can sneak up on you," said John Waller, the supervisory wildlife biologist for Glacier National Park, as he stopped to watch one chug through the forest. "They are amazingly quiet on the down grade and there are a lot of times the sound is blocked, coming in and out of the valleys." The death rate of grizzlies in this region has been rising, attributed not only to trains, but to poaching, cars and the removal of troublesome bears. In 2018, a record number 51 were killed in the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem, millions of acres in and around Glacier Park. And last year, 51 bears were killed. In 2017, just 29 bears were killed or euthanized. At the same time, though, the region's population of grizzly bears has come roaring back to a high of 1,051 from a low of about 350 to 400, when they were listed in 1975 as a threatened species. Some experts say the increase in mortality is a reflection of the fact that more bears are roaming in far more places than they used to, and argue that, so far, these higher death rates are not a threat to the species. "We're still below the threshold that we established to make sure things are sustainable in the long term," said Cecily Costello, a biologist with the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks. "All the data we collect tells us the population is still growing and there's way more bears on the landscape." But if the increase in deaths continues, it could affect the bear's long term future, others say, as well as the potential for connectivity between bears in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem and Glacier region. A merging of bears from these two wild strongholds is considered critical for the long term genetic viability of grizzlies in the Lower 48. State officials convened a meeting last month to advise people how to live alongside the grizzly population, for the safety of both humans and bears. In October, five grizzly bears were killed by trains on the Blackfeet reservation adjacent to Glacier Park after a major snowstorm. The bears had been drawn to the carcasses of two cows that had died near the tracks and weren't promptly reported by the railroad, according to Dan Carney, a bear biologist for the Blackfeet Tribe who is now retired. Two bears were killed by cars as they crossed a nearby highway and three were killed by trains. "There was a lot of snow, but the railroad should have been more vigilant, certainly," said Mr. Carney, who helped clean up the aftermath. "After the first bear got hit, red lights should have gone off and they should have removed the carcasses." Maia LaSalle, a spokeswoman for BNSF Railway, in a statement that factors like weather, vegetation and distance from the track "can impact the ability to detect and remove carrion." "When carrion is reported on or along the rail BNSF mobilizes removal equipment as quickly and as safely possible," she added. "Additionally, BNSF crews are directed to promptly report suspected bear strikes." Ms. LaSalle said only three of the eight bears were killed by BNSF trains; the other five were hit by Amtrak trains. Perhaps the biggest threat to bears here is the expansion of human development in rural lands. Since 1990, some 30,000 homes have been built outside incorporated areas in the Glacier region, according to Dr. Costello, and with them come a range of problems, from chicken coops and beehives that attract bears, to more people hiking and mountain biking in bear habitat, and especially more car traffic. Transportation corridors are an especially difficult wildlife problem one researcher calls them "ecological traps." Bears are drawn to roads or railways because of carcasses of elk or deer killed by trains or cars, the growth of berries in a cleared right of way or the ability to travel unimpeded. Wildlife crossing structures have helped greatly reduce animal deaths on highways around the world, experts say, though they are not used much on railroads. The Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of Montana have led the country in finding solutions, building 41 underpasses and one large overpass for wildlife to cross safely. Despite the tribe's state of the art highway crossings, eight grizzly bears were killed by cars on the reservation in 2018 including four in one night that didn't use nearby underpasses. "We're trying to figure out what's going on," said Whisper Camel Means, a tribal wildlife biologist. "They might need a taller underpass or need an overpass. But when you have females and cubs getting hit, that's a big deal." While there has been a good deal of research in recent years on highway collisions with wildlife and the possible solutions, railroads have not come under the same scientific scrutiny. One notable exception is in Banff and Yoho National Parks. A study found that from 2000 to 2017, there were 14 confirmed grizzly deaths by trains in those parks and as many as seven that were struck but not found. While not a threat to the species, that's a significant number for a local population of 60 bears, said Colleen Cassady St. Clair, a conservation biologist at the University of Alberta. "And it's a huge number in terms of public empathy for grizzly bears," she said. "No one wants to see grizzly bears get struck by trains anywhere, but especially in national parks." Train strikes on all types of wildlife are a growing global problem as rail a fuel efficient mode of transportation is expanding. "We have more trains traveling at higher speeds and no one knows what the impacts are," Dr. St. Clair said. "It's large and increasing and poorly understood compared to vehicle collisions." China, for example, is building thousands of miles of new high speed rail across the country, and other parts of Asia, as well as the Middle East and Europe. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
The anonymous message board began flickering back online on Saturday and was fully visible and available on Monday, three months after it had gone dark. The site, which has served as a megaphone for violent extremists, was knocked offline in August after several tech companies refused to provide it with critical services such as a functioning web address. At the time, the tech companies said they would not work with 8chan because it provided mass killers with a place to air and spread their violent and often racist messages. The shooting at a Walmart in El Paso in early August, along with attacks at mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, and at a synagogue in Poway, Calif., this year were all announced on 8chan before they began. The attackers posted screeds to a section of 8chan that was ostensibly dedicated to politics, and does not appear on the new site. After the El Paso shooting, one of the 8chan founders, Fredrick Brennan, said, "Shut the site down." In September, the site's owner, Jim Watkins, testified in front of Congress about 8chan's operation and policies. The site had been operating out of the Philippines. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
Sited on one of the highest points in Ridgefield, a concrete and glass house by Rafael Vinoly has been for sale for several years. MICHELLE GENOVESI has fiddled with her fair share of home alarm systems in 25 plus years of showing houses. But within minutes of opening up the glass doors of her listing here on Ridgebury Road, two police cruisers pulled up in the cobblestone courtyard. She had inadvertently set off the silent alarm. But this was one call the officers didn't mind making. They were eager to take a look around the house, which is, to put it mildly, a bit of a curiosity in tradition bound Ridgefield. More museum than living space, the residence at 191 Ridgebury is made of concrete, glass and steel. It is wired with commercial grade security systems, which employ outside cameras, temperature and motion sensors, and alarms to announce approaching vehicles. Atop a high hill overlooking a small valley, it has commanding views of the open fields and scenic woods of the horse country of Ridgefield and North Salem, N.Y. Work on the house began in 1990; costs reached about 20 million by the time it was finished in 1993, Ms. Genovesi said. But in a 300 year old town known for historical correctness, being something of an architectural crossbreed hasn't helped the house sell. First listed in 2008 for 10 million, it is offered today for 3.2 million. The late owner's estate decided to donate the hilltop property in December 2010. The recipient, Fairfield University, a private institution in Fairfield, has been trying to sell it ever since. "It's not your typical mom dad and three kids Ridgefield home," said David Frassinelli, the university's associate vice president for facilities. "It begs an international market, art collectors." The donor, Alice Lawrence, had an extensive art collection. She was the widow of Sylvan Lawrence, a Manhattan real estate developer whose company owned an estimated 1 billion worth of New York property at the time of his death in 1981. Ms. Lawrence's collection of 19th and 20th century art was sold at auction by Christie's, for more than 22 million, after her death in 2008. She had hired Rafael Vinoly to design the Ridgefield house, as well as a house in East Hampton also known for its bold use of concrete. (That house was sold before she died.) A leader in an architectural team that came close to winning the World Trade Center site design competition, Mr. Vinoly is known more for his institutional designs for performing arts centers, museums and educational buildings around the world. A lawyer for the Lawrence family, Robert L. Berchem, said his clients had no comment on their decision to donate the Ridgefield property, or why they had chosen Fairfield University. One of Ms. Lawrence's children, Marta Jo, does have a residence in Fairfield. According to Mr. Frassinelli, the university accepted the gift with the understanding that it would very likely be sold off. The university campus is about 45 minutes away, and in any case the house's design does not easily translate to institutional uses. Or, perhaps, even to residential uses. For one thing, although the living area approaches 10,000 square feet, the house has only two bedrooms: a master bedroom in a three story tower, and a guest room at the opposite end of the house. Then there is the cantilevered steel staircase in the master bedroom tower. The absence of railings creates the pleasing illusion of floating steps, but for a university's purposes, the open air effect is a potential safety hazard. "For uses and occupancies greater than 50 people," Mr. Frassinelli pointed out, "it triggers a whole bunch of code upgrades that would significantly modify and impair the beauty of the house." The town assessor's office has appraised the five acre property at 5.4 million. A current appraisal would probably come in lower, as the last one was conducted in 2007, and values in Ridgefield have come down 20 to 40 percent since then, according to Al Garzi, the assessor. In marketing the property, Ms. Genovesi said, she is focusing on the house rather than the location. "It's definitely for someone who appreciates the house as an art form, as opposed to for its total functionality," she said. "It won't be bought by someone who just wants to live in Ridgefield." A long concrete wall that runs through the heart of the home, dividing the guest wing from the main living area, is a central element of the design. The slab follows the 33 steps to the main entrance, then flanks the 58 foot indoor pool that claims the middle of the house, then continues alongside a 60 foot pool outside. To the left of the entry is the massive great room. Its inside wall is concrete, its outside wall glass. The floors are white travertine. The bowed ceiling is teak. The overall effect is austere appropriate for displaying art, perhaps, but not especially welcoming for living purposes, particularly in the wintertime, Ms. Genovesi said. She commissioned the interior design firm of Meredith Baer Associates to warm up the rooms with plump leather armchairs and clean white sofas. A glass walkway leads to the tower, where the master bedroom is on the main floor. Above it is an office with built in metal shelving, leather covered cabinets and a fireplace. On the top is an observation deck offering 360 degree views. The house is as well protected from the elements as it is from intruders. The steep driveway is heated. The deck on top of the tower has a snow melt system. And should a storm knock out electrical service, two generators in the lower level will take over. Taxes are 78,000, which the university must cover, along with upkeep and utilities, but Mr. Frassinelli said it will profit in the end. "It's not an albatross," he said. "We were very happy to receive the gift." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
OTHERHOOD (2019) Stream on Netflix. A lesson for sons with mothers who expect them to get in touch on Mother's Day: Call, don't text. Otherwise you might set your mother up for the kind of retort Patricia Arquette's character has in this movie when her adult son (played by Jake Hoffman) replies "I texted" to her complaint that he didn't call her on Mother's Day. The line she slams back with? "I birthed you." They're not the only baggage laden mother son pairing here; the comedy brings together a trio of moms who journey to New York to reconnect with their children. The film was written and directed by Cindy Chupack, whose past as a writer and executive producer of "Sex and the City" increasingly pokes through as the three women travel from the suburbs to the city. The two other mothers are played by Angela Bassett and Felicity Huffman, whose involvement in the recent college admission scandal may taint this breezy movie. MUM Stream on BritBox. For more on moms (or one, at least), see this British sitcom. Lesley Manville stars as Cathy, a widow who spent the first two seasons grappling with grief, dealing with bumbling family members and heading more and more clearly toward romance with Michael (Peter Mullan), who was a close friend of her deceased husband. The third and final season, which ran overseas earlier in the year and is now available for audiences in the United States to stream on BritBox, changes the way the show handles time: Where the first two seasons each followed Cathy over many months, the third takes place over the course of a single week. The results received some strong reviews from critics in the show's native country. "Before now, 'Mum' probably made you cry once a year," Jack Seale wrote in a review for The Guardian. "Prepare for that to become three or four times an episode." NON FICTION (2019) Stream on Hulu. The French director Olivier Assayas's most recent movie uses the story of two couples to ask questions about the impact of technology on the arts. Its well off Parisian characters include an editor (Guillaume Canet), an actress (Juliette Binoche) and a novelist (Vincent Macaigne); its big romances are of the extramarital variety. "Either this is a comedy of adultery disguised as a meditation on the future of civilization, or the reverse," A.O. Scott wrote in his review for The New York Times. "It's pretty good fun either way, though it's also very much a symptom of the condition it diagnoses, namely the profound complacency of the cultural elite (in France, but of course not only in France)." THE KLEPTOCRATS (2018) 9 p.m. on Starz. The scandal surrounding the investment fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad involved the former Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak, Hollywood and billions of dollars. This new documentary attempts to untangle it through reporting and interviews with investigative journalists including Louise Story, who covered events surrounding the scandal for The Times. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
Once upon a time, Peter Boal was a prince that is, of New York City Ballet, where he danced until 2005. Then, he went to Seattle, to become the artistic director of Pacific Northwest Ballet. But Mr. Boal can't seem to stay away for long. The company returns to City Center with a pair of repertory programs and live music. In "Contemporary Innovators," Mr. Boal pays homage to William Forsythe, whose "The Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude" (1996), a ballet set to Schubert, will be performed alongside works by two of Mr. Forsythe's former dancers: David Dawson ("A Million Kisses to My Skin") and Crystal Pite ("Emergence"). The other program, dedicated to George Balanchine, shows Mr. Boal's City Ballet roots with "Square Dance," "Prodigal Son" and "Stravinsky Violin Concerto." That one is a slam dunk. ("All Balanchine," 7:30 p.m., Wednesday and Thursday; "Contemporary Innovators," 8 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday, nycitycenter.org.) | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
To discuss Ms. O'Riordan's career and legacy, the Popcast guest host Caryn Ganz, the pop music editor for The Times, was joined by Amanda Petrusich, a staff writer for The New Yorker who wrote about Ms. O'Riordan this week, and Charles Aaron, a freelance writer and editor who was on staff at Spin magazine for 16 years and interviewed the Cranberries in 1994 as the band was in the midst of its most successful commercial period. The panel discussed Ms. O'Riordan's role as a frontperson who showed how women could be both beautiful and fierce, how the media positioned bands led by women in the '90s, the ways in which the Cranberries were an explicitly Irish band (and how "Zombie" changed their trajectory) and how the world is absorbing the deaths of central '90s figures. Email your questions, thoughts and ideas about what's happening in pop music to popcast nytimes.com. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
The complaint from Mr. Pence's staff which was quickly brushed aside by Ms. Harris's team was another salvo in the fraught negotiations over the debate scheduled for Wednesday in Salt Lake City, an event that was briefly in doubt after President Trump's announcement that he had contracted the coronavirus. Late Tuesday, Frank J. Fahrenkopf Jr., a co chairman of the Commission on Presidential Debates, said in an interview that after negotiations, Mr. Pence's staff had agreed to accept the placement of the plexiglass dividers, which were installed on the Utah debate stage earlier in the day. Questions still remain about the next scheduled debate between Mr. Trump and Joseph R. Biden Jr. on Oct. 15. Asked on Tuesday if he would feel safe debating the president, Mr. Biden told reporters: "I think if he still has Covid, we shouldn't have a debate." Mr. Biden added: "I think we were going to have to follow very strict guidelines. Too many people have been infected. It's a very serious problem, so I will be guided by the guidelines of the Cleveland Clinic and what the docs say is the right thing to do." The Commission on Presidential Debates oversees safety protocols at the debates in consultation with officials from the Cleveland Clinic. The commission had announced on Monday that it would use plexiglass dividers at the event with Ms. Harris and Mr. Pence, along with mandating that the candidates be seated 12 feet, 3 inches apart. But Marc Short, Mr. Pence's chief of staff, said on Tuesday that he did not want the vice president to appear on national television behind the plastic barriers. "We don't think it's needed," Mr. Short said. "There's no science to support it. The tables are 12 feet apart, and each participant is tested. It's important for the American people that the debate go forward." Referring to Ms. Harris, he said: "If she's more comfortable with plexiglass, then that's fine." The Biden campaign responded that eliminating dividers would risk the health of those in the debate hall. 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. "Senator Harris will be at the debate, respecting the protections that the Cleveland Clinic has put in place to promote safety for all concerned," Sabrina Singh, a Harris spokeswoman, said. "If the Trump administration's war on masks has now become a war on safety shields, that tells you everything you need to know about why their Covid response is a failure." Mr. Pence has tested negative for the virus several times in recent days, according to his aides, though the vice president had interacted frequently with numerous White House advisers who have since tested positive. Mr. Short, the vice president's chief of staff, also claimed that an epidemiologist at the University of Utah, which is hosting the debate, "told us that there's no scientific reason for the plexiglass." In fact, the Cleveland Clinic is overseeing health protocols at the debate. Ground rules for debates are often the subject of delicate negotiations between the campaigns and the debate commission, and it is not unusual for issues to flare up in the hours before the event. Mr. Pence's attempted dismissal of a safety measure, however, was notable in light of the myriad health concerns around staging an indoor event when the president and a significant number of his senior advisers have contracted the virus, along with several senators and a top military leader. One aide to Mr. Pence had expressed disdain earlier this week about the use of the barriers, suggesting they could be used to make a candidate look weak. "If Senator Harris wants to use a fortress around herself, have at it," the aide, Katie Miller, said. A virtual event is also under consideration for the next debate between Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden, though those discussions remain in a preliminary phase, according to two people with knowledge of the commission's deliberations. Much remains unknown about that debate, including if Mr. Trump will be well enough to attend and if Mr. Biden's team would be comfortable with the former vice president's sharing an indoor stage with a president who has been contagious. Mr. Trump's aides insist that he plans to be there. Some of those close to the president have discussed the possibility of holding the two remaining debates outdoors, noting that Mr. Biden has participated in outside forums. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
For nearly a century, Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade has been a turkey day tradition. For 20 of those years, so was Matt Lauer, as a co host of NBC's broadcast of the event. His presence was part of the day whether you liked it or not, like political bickering and your uncle's weird, gelatinous side dish. But this year, Mr. Lauer is gone. He was ousted from NBC just after Thanksgiving last year, over allegations of inappropriate sexual behavior. And so for the first time since 1997, Mr. Lauer did not visit the millions of American living rooms tuned in to the parade. Twitter was pretty happy about that. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
Baryshnikov Arts Center announced on Thursday a new commissioning program that aims to encourage choreographers and other artists to continue creating while the performing arts remain largely shut down in New York City because of the pandemic. The inaugural group of commission recipients including the dance makers Kyle Marshall and Bijayini Satpathy, and the media designer and performer Tei Blow will receive financial support, rehearsal space and assistance from the center's production team to film and edit their projects, which will be shared online. "We need art right now more than ever otherwise, what will we have?" said Mikhail Baryshnikov, the organization's founder and artistic director. Creating work that translates onscreen can be challenging, he added, though he expects that the chosen recipients will be motivated, not cowed, by the requirements. "I think these limitations are wonderful for those artists who have maybe never prepared art projects for a digital space," he said. "Choreographically, especially, you have to really figure out depth of field, where the camera goes." The artists' work will debut after the arts center's coming digital season, which is to begin on Oct. 1 with "Coming Together," a musical film that features the Quodlibet Ensemble and Reginald Mobley, a countertenor, performing Frederic Rzewski's Minimalist response to the 1971 Attica Prison uprising. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
NEW HAVEN The playwright Tori Sampson defines all four characters in "Cadillac Crew" with the same phrase: "a powerhouse of a young woman." They would have to be. Rachel, Abby, Dee and Sarah make up the barely paid staff of the Richmond branch of the Virginia Office for Civil Rights in 1963. Their walls may be jauntily decorated with posters touting "justice for women" and "unrestricted voting rights" along with college pennants from Fisk, Howard and Hampton but half of the phone calls they get are vicious. And someone keeps taping bullets to the door. Yet "Cadillac Crew," having its world premiere at the Yale Repertory Theater here, is only partly about physical danger. More fundamentally it's a play about a metaphorical threat: the threat of erasure. It may be men who start the job of suppressing women's contributions to the civil rights movement, but history completes it. Both processes play out in the first act. Rachel (Chalia La Tour) is in a state of high excitement as her plan to have Rosa Parks deliver the keynote address at a civil rights convocation finally approaches fruition. Even better, as far as Rachel is concerned, Parks will be speaking about something less familiar than her refusal to give up her seat on a bus eight years earlier. She will be speaking about her anti rape activism and the need to integrate women's issues into the movement. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
This rather astonishing movie begins with a lovely young bride to be, Josie (Jessica Rothe), abandoned before even getting to the altar by her high school sweetheart, Liam (Alex Roe), who's absconded in pursuit of music business fame. Eight years later, Liam is a stadium filling country music star, as well as a promiscuous drunk. (The credible songs are mostly by Brett Boyett.) His one nonstandard issue eccentricity is an attachment to an ancient cellphone, which contains Josie's last voice mail message to him. On a New Orleans tour stop, he learns of the death of his best friend in nearby Saint Augustine, the town from which he bailed. On impulse, he heads there. While the Prodigal Son of scripture returned home after working out a heartfelt plea of forgiveness, Liam just shows up. Are there hard feelings? Sure, but they're the softest hard feelings you've seen in any work of fiction, or nonfiction, ever. Also turns out that Josie, as fresh and lovely as ever, has an adorably precocious moppet of a daughter, Billy, whom she has named after Liam's long deceased mother. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
When Richard Blanco read his poem "One Today" at President Obama's second inauguration in 2013, he was the first immigrant, Latino and openly gay poet to do so. Mr. Blanco, 47, was born in Spain and raised in Miami by parents who left Fidel Castro's Cuba. His book "The Prince of Los Cocuyos: A Miami Childhood," was published last year. With Ruth Behar, a Cuban born writer and professor at the University of Michigan, he started a blog, Bridges to/from Cuba, to foster dialogue between Cubans on the island and those of the diaspora. He recently shared his insights about visiting Cuba as it and the United States start normalizing relations. Following are edited excerpts. Q. Having met President Obama, what were your thoughts when you heard about the changes between the United States and Cuba? A. I was impressed by the president's bold move. At the same time, I considered with great empathy the life stories of exiles like my mother, Cold War struggles for freedom and the American dream. I found myself craving some guarantee these historic changes will lead to greater freedoms and prosperity for the people of Cuba, which I hope the president does not lose sight of. Opening up Cuba has to mean way more than our own desires as Americans to be able to travel freely to the island. What have your own visits been like? I've visited six times over the last 20 years, staying with my Cuban family. On my most recent visit this June, I was pleasantly surprised by the number of licensed businesses that had opened up, nightspots and restaurants, filled with Cubans, not just tourists. Transportation had improved, including the vintage 1950s cars that now transport people, up and down Avenida Linea in Havana, for 10 pesos. What I jokingly like to call "Cuber" instead of "Uber." What were some of your favorite sites? Varadero is the most beautiful beach in the world. A midnight stroll through Old Havana. There is art everywhere in Cuba. I went to Fabrica de Arte, a mix of art galleries, theater spaces, bars and craft shops. But the real beauty of Cuba is its people. What role do you think Cuban and Cuban American writers should have in the changes in the relationship between the United States and Cuba? There has been what I see as an emotional embargo, that invisible Berlin Wall across the Florida straits that has affected my generation of Cuban Americans, the Cuban diaspora and the people of Cuba. Because of this Ruth Behar and I created our blog for Cubans everywhere to connect and work through these changes through storytelling and cultural exchange. What impact do you think this new relationship might have on rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people on the island? There has been much said about Raul Castro's daughter, Mariela, and her work as a gay rights advocate. I think gay tourism could have a positive impact. Being living examples of the rights we have secured and enjoy in the U.S. might serve as inspiration to Cuba's L.G.B.T. community. Many of us who might have visited Cuba or have imagined visiting Cuba think of it nostalgically. It's somewhat of an annoying question to me, because it lacks sensitivity. For Americans, Cuba has a psychic hold on the imagination, but we have to understand Cuba is a real country with real people. Cuban people don't exist to entertain our romantic notions of them, past, present or future. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
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