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NO TALKING got the idea for "Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland" which enters the nonfiction list this week at No. 7 from a New York Times obituary back in 2013. "It was one of those obituaries that just cracks open a whole world that you had very little inkling of beforehand," he explained on a recent episode of the Book Review podcast. "A woman named Dolours Price had died, and she had been an I.R.A. soldier. She had been the first woman to join the I.R.A. as a front line soldier leading bombing raids, targeting people for execution. She was a very dramatic, impetuous figure." Keefe says he "was so intrigued by some of the details in the obituary that I wanted to see where they went." Where they went, it turns out, is straight to the notorious 1972 kidnapping and murder of Jean McConville, a widowed Belfast mother of 10. In "Say Nothing," as Keefe investigates the crime, a history of Northern Ireland and the Troubles unfurls in the background. As he says, "I'm drafting on an incredibly brave effort by her children, starting in the 1990s, to come out and break the code of silence in Ireland, and say: 'We need to know what happened to our mother. We've been waiting decades for answers, for a body.' And I think it took great courage for them to do that." If "Say Nothing" is, ultimately, about keeping silent, then Peter H. Reynolds's "Say Something!" which enters the picture book list at No. 7 is about the opposite, about exhorting kids to be heard, whether through their words or their actions: "If you see someone lonely, say something ... by just being there for them." Maria Russo, the children's books editor at The Times, says that titles like this are part of a new trend that she calls "empathy books." "They're not stories so much as poetic explorations of compassion and justice," she explains. "With the adults shouting and slinking off to their corners so much, there's a new urgency to showing kids how to, basically, chill out, do the right thing, be nice." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
FIRST TIME visitors to Humewood Castle in Kiltegan, County Wicklow, can't help it. They simply say, "Wow." It's that big, that stunning that, well, fairy tale. It's vast and turreted, and the view toward the mountains looks like a Hollywood backdrop. Humewood, an Irish estate on 427 acres, roughly a 90 minute drive from Dublin, includes 15 bedrooms, a ballroom, a banqueting hall and a billiards room, among other amenities. And an American, John Malone, now owns it. Last November, the 72 year old billionaire chairman of the cable and telecom giant Liberty Global got it for a song. He paid around 8 million euros, or roughly 10 million, for the 32,668 square foot granite Victorian Gothic bastion, built in the 1860s. That's about a third of what it sold for in 2006, near the height of the boom in the Irish economy. That year, it was bought for 25 million euros by an Irish real estate developer, Lalco Holdings, which had planned to develop it as one of Ireland's leading luxury resorts with golf course included. That scheme was shattered after the real estate bubble burst in 2008. But it's not necessarily about the money. "I didn't buy Humewood as a financial investment," Mr. Malone said. "It's an act of love rather than financial acumen." Mr. Malone, who has tracked his heritage back to an ancestor who arrived in Pennsylvania from Ireland in the 1830s, is among an increasing number of Americans with deep pockets returning to their Irish roots to buy castles and manor houses at distressed prices with cash. Many of the properties are changing hands for about a third of 2007 levels, thanks to the country's exodus of property developers, many of which failed when the market collapsed. The wide eyed developers, along with Ireland based business executives, were once the main buyers of Irish stately homes, according to Harriet Grant, head of country house and estate sales at the broker Savills Ireland in Dublin. "It's been really interesting because we didn't really have American buyers in our market for many years," she said. But the attraction of the Emerald Isle's much lower prices and a slowly strengthening economy has changed that. Overseas buyers accounted for nine of the top 10 sales of Irish country mansions last year several of them Americans, according to the Dublin based estate agency, Sherry FitzGerald Group. In 2013, this trend has continued "with Americans leading the way, although there is emerging interest from Asia and in particular China and Japan," said David Ashmore, director at Sherry FitzGerald. For example, Charles Noell, founder of the Baltimore based private equity firm JMI Equity, bought Ardbraccan, an 18th century mansion set on 120 acres of land with formal gardens outside the town of Navan in County Meath. Mr. Noell paid nearly 4.9 million euros, or 6.3 million, according to Savills, the firm that handled the sale. It was originally listed in 2008 at triple that. James E. Thompson, an American who is a permanent resident of Hong Kong and founder of the Crown Worldwide Group, went to Ireland last year to explore his roots and was smitten. He bought Woodhouse, a country home with about 400 acres outside Stradbally in County Waterford, reportedly for under 6.5 million euros. Savills Ireland was also the agent. Of course, many wealthy American buyers have discreetly managed to remain anonymous in a number of cash purchases during the last 12 months, said Ronan McMahon, a global real estate expert who reports on real estate trends for International Living, a magazine and Web site specializing in living abroad. For example, Ravenswood, the former home of the 1970s pop singer songwriter Gilbert O'Sullivan, a 6,500 square foot Georgian mansion outside Bunclody, County Wexford, was sold last year through Colliers International for 1.3 million euros, down from an asking price in 2009 of 2.5 million euros. A Texas based lawyer reportedly bought it. Is it time to buy your Irish castle? To be honest, there's not a lot of competition. High earners in Ireland, who might have been in the market a decade ago, no longer are because of the dearth of bank financing. So the potential market is a very small number of cash buyers, Ms. Grant said. But there is not a huge number of high end estates in good condition on the market in Ireland, Ms. Grant said. That is not all that surprising given that this is a very small country. The Republic of Ireland is roughly the size of West Virginia. "You might in one year have 10 available," she added "But after four or five years of absolute stagnancy in the market, prices have come down to a level deemed to be good value; the economy is steadying, and suddenly you have international buyers taking note of Ireland." For nearly a year, sales have been increasing. "A number of prime estates were brought on to the market priced to sell," said Ms. Grant. Some of them had already gone into receivership. Others were driven by pressures to repay bank loans. And, of course, there were private sales from owners financially hit by the collapsed economy or simply wanting to downsize. Historic house prices are all over the map and, as with all real estate, location matters. There's a big gap between the cost of a manor house on the edge of Dublin, or one in County Cork overlooking the coast, and a manor house in the rural midlands of County Offaly, Ms. Grant said. An off the beaten path location far from either Shannon Airport, in County Clare, or Dublin Airport can certainly temper value and potential price appreciation. It's also tricky to compare one property with another to get a sense of comparable market costs. There are so many variables, from the condition of the home itself to proximity to major roads. Knowing how much wiggle room there is on price is crucial. "You can play some serious hardball on pricing, if you're buying from a bank actively trying to clear up a mess," said Mr. McMahon. He advises making lowball offers. If the asking price seems reasonable, offer 20 percent less as a starting point. "There's only one way to find out what the seller's bottom line is." Humewood Castle is owned by John Malone, the American billionaire. But even those properties priced at fire sale prices aren't really cheap. "I've seen castles and historic homes sell at auction for very small amounts, but they're still a high end purchase," said Mr. McMahon. "That's because if you're buying a very low sticker price castle, it's probably rundown. Those charming old stone walls can be quite damp and drafty, not only in winter, but during a rainy Irish summer, too." Maintaining crumbling Irish veneers can be off putting. Historic homes often come with legal obligations. If the home is categorized as protected or of "national importance" you have to maintain it and keep it from falling into disrepair. "The Irish Americans who come to view castles for purchase have a lovely two or three days looking in the country and traveling in Ireland, but then the situation hits them," said Roseanne De Vere Hunt, head of residential and country properties at Ganly Walters in Dublin. "These historic properties require a lot of renovation work and constant maintenance." For many buyers, it's worth it at these bargain prices. Country houses that would have sold for 3 or 4 million euros at the market peak are available at a million or less now and selling, said Jim Clery, a partner with KPMG Ireland and head of its real estate department. "Buyers know upfront that they have to factor in the running costs of these places in terms of repairs and gardens and all that. And they're shopping for proximity to good roads and a good village." There are other nominal costs that come with buying a home in Ireland. The government levies a stamp duty, or tax, on the purchase of all residential property. For properties valued up to 1 million euros, the rate is 1 percent of the full value. For properties valued over 1 million euros, the rate of 1 percent applies to the first 1 million euros, and a rate of 2 percent applies to the balance. The actual buying process is pretty straightforward. In Ireland, as in the United States, real estate agents earn their money by charging the seller a commission, not the buyer. For all buyers, it's wise to hire an inspector to check if the property has any physical defects like damp or dry rot. That is because the seller is not required to tell a buyer about any potential flaws. It's buyer beware. Inspection fees range from around 300 to 1,000, though the average is about 500, according to a recent International Living report on Ireland. Sellers must, however, provide a Building Energy Rating. This rating will give you an indication of how energy efficient, or truly drafty, a property is. There are also land registry fees, which are based on the value of the property and can range from around 500 to 1,000. Legal fees charged by solicitors are generally 1 percent of the purchase price, and there is the value added tax on those fees. With property sales falling off in recent years, many law firms now offer fixed rate fees. But starting in July, buyers have to pay an annual local property tax of 0.18 percent of the market value of any property valued below 1 million euros and 0.25 percent of the market value of a property valued above 1 million euros ( 1.29 million). Finally, when the time comes to sell a residential property, a 33 percent capital gains tax is generally charged. Buyers, too, must be prepared for the challenges of owning a home in another country and, possibly, retiring there one day. That's another matter entirely. Americans may be able to become Irish citizens if they, a parent or a grandparent were born in Ireland. (In full disclosure, while I haven't bought my castle yet, I've done this. Two of my grandparents were born in Ireland, so I applied for Irish citizenship and now have an Irish passport and dual citizenship.) Without Irish citizenship, Americans must register with the Irish authorities if they are staying longer than three months and get what's called a "permission to remain." Once granted, permission is given to stay for a maximum of a year. It's renewable each year. After five years, a single authorization for the next five is granted, and after 10 years, typically permission to stay permanently is awarded. The cost of living in Ireland isn't cheap, and inhabiting a drafty old castle can run up a monthly budget fast. According to Numbeo, an online database of user contributed information about the cost of living in cities around the world, consumer prices in Dublin are 11.5 percent higher than in New York City. International Living pegs the overall cost of living in Ireland as 17 percent more expensive than the European Union average. For countries that use the euro as currency, only Finland and Luxembourg are more expensive, according to its recent report. On the bright side, renovation costs are substantially lower than they were during the time of the Celtic Tiger. That is because there are a lot more contractors who want the work, hence labor is cheaper, said Mr. Clery. Prospective buyers could opt to rent a castle to get a feel for a location. The four bedroom Kilcolgan Castle in County Galway, for example, offers short term stays. Dating from the 11th century and on the banks of the Dunkellin River overlooking Galway Bay, just outside Galway City on the west coast, the castle comes with gray limestone walls and a three story turret. The owner is an American, Karen Geoghegan, who inherited it in 1996 from her father. She runs it as a bed and breakfast. She debated selling the property in 2006 when it might have brought 10 million euros. For sentimental reasons, she waited too long to sell, and the real estate market imploded. Another consideration for owning a home on the old sod: Ireland is an English speaking country in the 17 nation euro zone (Britain does not use the euro), so it might be ideal for Americans who do business in Europe Like Mr. Malone, the chairman of Liberty Global, perhaps. Although he said he bought Humewood Castle as a family retreat that he and his wife would visit five or six times a year, it was worth noting that Liberty Global, based in Denver, completed its acquisition of the British cable company Virgin Media in June. The deal added 25 million customers in 12 European countries. "Maybe we'll have a few business meetings there," Mr. Malone said. "It is a stopping off place on the way to Europe. You almost fly over it." There still could be historic homes under the radar, Ms. Grant said. Properties often change hands quietly and privately. "There are houses in good condition out there for good value, but you have to know what you are looking for and be patient," she said. "It comes down to timing." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Your Money |
Coney Island is a long way to go for a party. But that didn't stop nearly 500 people from making the trek last Saturday night for the disc jockey Nicky Siano, the music pioneer who helped spawn the 1970s disco scene with his club the Gallery and a stint spinning at Studio 54. He was turning 60. Revelers of all ages, from teenagers with skateboards to older people with canes, converged at the Eldorado Auto Skooter pavilion on Surf Avenue. There were colorful bumper cars parked around the dance floor, hand strung Christmas lights and, of course, disco classics like "Turn the Beat Around" and "Native New Yorker." For the birthday boy, there was no better way to celebrate than being in the D.J. booth, spinning his own party. As for the unusual choice of setting, it turns out that Mr. Siano had very specific audio requirements. "I knew the Eldorado had a Richard Long sound system," he said, referring to the sound designer who had devised similar systems at Studio 54 and Paradise Garage. "I was walking my dog there last summer and went in, and the sound system was still intact." That was when he decided to give what he called "The Last Party" to commemorate, by his own admission, his unlikely survival while also honoring his triumphant but turbulent past. "When I was a kid playing records, I was like, 'I'll never live past 30,' " he said, recalling his drug fueled lifestyle in the 1970s. "And other people were like, 'He's never going to live past 25.' " Held just a few subway stops from where Mr. Siano was born and raised, the party was also something of a homecoming. As a teenager in the late 1960s, Mr. Siano got his start playing 45s for his friends at home and at parties at his older brother Joey's apartment. Then, one night in 1970, his brother's girlfriend took him into Manhattan, to a party at the Loft, where David Mancuso was playing albums in addition to 45s and keying lights to sync with the music, creating an atmosphere to complement the sound. It also inspired him to start his own club. In 1973, with Joey's financial help, they opened the Gallery in a Chelsea warehouse on West 22nd Street that drew a diverse and dancey crowd with its nonstop mix of beat heavy R B and soul. After a year, the Gallery moved to Houston and Mercer Streets, where it really took off. Revelers danced till dawn, which was not a problem since there were few neighbors to complain. "It was barren," Mr. Siano said of SoHo in the '70s. "Nothing was going on down there, which was good for us because everyone would hang out on the street." Inside, Mr. Siano wasn't simply playing records. He had a dynamic performance style: jumping, dancing and gesticulating wildly as if he were leading an invisible orchestra, conducting the mood of the crowd through nonstop sets without the use of a playlist. He was creating the mold for modern D.J. culture. "The moment dictates the record," he said of his style, then and now. "You have to be open to the inspiration that's in the room." The Gallery also became a breeding ground for future D.J. legends. "Larry Levan and Frankie Knuckles were his balloon boys at the Gallery, and they learned how to D.J. from Nicky," said Brent Nicholson Earle, an AIDS activist and downtown archivist who contributed research to Mel Cheren's memoir, "My Life and the Paradise Garage: Keep On Dancin'." "Nicky is like the father of disco," Mr. Earle added. "He taught Larry and Frankie how to spin, and from them came the music of the Paradise Garage and the Warehouse in Chicago, which is where house music got its name." Mr. Siano's personal life, meanwhile, was spinning out of control. "I was a mad drug addict back in those days," he said, recalling his life at 21. "That was the first time I tried heroin." His drug use led to the closing of the Gallery in 1977, though he continued to work, including a stint at Studio 54, where he famously played "Sympathy for the Devil" as Bianca Jagger rode in on a white horse. But his career would not last. In 1982, he decided to get sober and left the night life to be a social worker for addicts with H.I.V. Mr. Siano at his club, the Gallery, during its disco era heyday in the 1970s. It would be 15 years before he returned to spinning. In 1997, a call from Francois Kevorkian, a founder of Body Soul, a since shuttered Sunday tea dance in TriBeCa, got him back in the booth. The party was to celebrate the birthday of Mr. Levan, who had died in 1992. That job led to a resurgence that continues today. In recent years, Mr. Siano has been booked at clubs in Paris, London, Berlin, Tokyo, Los Angeles, Melbourne and elsewhere. In New York, he has played occasionally at places like Santos Party House and produced a documentary film and soundtrack about the Gallery called "Love Is the Message." For a time, he had a weekly disco show on SiriusXM's Studio 54 channel, which he now produces as an independent podcast. During his five hour set on Saturday, the classic disco and soul music Mr. Siano spun had not changed, but he augmented his vinyl with a glowing Apple laptop. He used reading glasses to peruse LP labels. And his days of conducting the crowd Leonard Bernstein style are in the past. But that did not stop the wildly enthusiastic partygoers from taking up the slack as they jumped and bumped, whooped and whistled to the beat, with some even touch dancing "Saturday Night Fever" style, as if it were 1977. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
Two men stand inside the Gavin Brown's Enterprise booth at the sixth edition of the mammoth Frieze New York art fair on Randalls Island. The walls are hung with Instagram worthy canvases by the Swedish artist Karl Holmqvist. Written on each is a jaunty phrase like "Hug a Hippie, They're All That!" Or "Hug a Hustler, He'll Like It" and "Hug a Hooker You Know!" The two men are in conversation. The subject is that mysterious genus, the rich. "They buy houses they don't need, furniture they don't like and art they don't understand," the first man says. "To show off to people they don't know," his friend says with a laugh. There are those who attend art fairs with the serious purpose of building collections. There are those who go to shop for expensive things to cover a hole in the wall. There are those who appear in order to make their presence known to fellow travelers on a seemingly unending global caravan. And there are those, like this reporter, whose magpie ambition is to collect random shiny conversational oddments like the one above. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
Pandora Media, the struggling internet radio giant, appointed a new chief executive on Monday, after a shake up in June that installed SiriusXM as an influential new investor. Roger Lynch, the chief of the video streaming service Sling TV, will leave that company to become the new chief executive and president of Pandora, and will also join Pandora's board, according to announcements from both companies. Mr. Lynch will replace Tim Westergren, one of the founders of Pandora, who had served as chief executive for just over a year. Pandora also announced that Michael Lynton, the chairman of Snap, the company behind the Snapchat app, and the former head of Sony Pictures Entertainment, will join Pandora's board. Naveen Chopra, who has served as Pandora's interim chief executive since June, will continue as chief financial officer. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
Shhh. Do you hear that? It's the sound of wind whistling through the abandoned malls of America as the Cassandras of contemporary retail cry their doom through corridors lined by fronds of lonely greenery: the end of a way of shopping, and all that. But train your ears toward another direction. In Asia, an entirely different story is being sung: one full of glimmer and potential; one that is not limited to luxury products but treats all customers as if they were buying luxury; one in which consumers are drawn like magnets to the physical reality of a what to call it? Not a bazaar, really, or an arcade, or a plaza. An immersive aesthetic experience with shopping as a byproduct, perhaps. In Shanghai, the Shanghai Village, an outlet shopping complex created by Value Retail (founder of Bicester Village in Oxford, England) in a Disney resort area, stretches for 473,612 square feet across the waterfront, its gleaming Art Deco promenades lined by 200 trees and featuring bathroom lounges covered in swirling mosaics in the styles of different artists and so eye popping they are actually booked for local events on their own. In Seoul, the 30,140 square foot library in the COEX Mall includes approximately 50,000 books and magazines to browse, and offers couches and reading tables for passers by as well as serving as a venue for cultural events. In Siem Reap, Cambodia, the 86,000 square foot T Galleria by DFS (yes, the "duty free" folks, though this is not your standard airport experience) houses a multitude of brands alongside reflecting pools, verdant gardens and work from local artisans. And in Hong Kong, on the Kowloon side of the harbor, a 2.6 billion, three million square foot art and design district 10 years in the making, called Victoria Dockside, is being built by Adrian Cheng's New World Development Company. It ultimately will include an art museum, a soaring green wall, an ultraluxury hotel, apartments, offices and of course retail, framed like the art that surrounds it. Together, these projects embody a new way of thinking about the physical space where stores congregate, one that borrows from the online playbook: prioritizing the idea of content over contents, and further demonstrating the way in which the real and virtual worlds increasingly intertwine. Not because they offer video screens or iPads for ordering (though they are on hand) but because of a more fundamental conceptual connectivity. "It's a core reality shift," said Scott Malkin, the founder and chairman of Value Retail. "The war is over. Alibaba won. That means physical retail is no longer about the distribution of goods but building brand equity." And brand equity is created via the subliminal communication of ephemeral values: service and touch what Mr. Malkin calls "the software" that surrounds the "hardware" of bricks and mortar (and marble and sandstone) reality. Which then becomes the place, he said, "where the interface behavior occurs." "The context for stores is more and more important," said Luca Solca, head of luxury goods research at Exane BNP Paribas, "because you have to make people want to get out of their homes and away from their screens. If the old model the merch emporium gave way during the turn of the millennium to the flagship model, which saw stores become echoing and somewhat austere temples where consumers worshiped the handbag on the plinth, we are now entering a new stage. One embodied more by Apple or Starbucks than any previous fashion retail space. One that takes the rising principles of the experience economy and the growing belief that millennial consumers who hate anything smacking of marketing or overt product pushing are increasingly choosing to spend their money on the unique event rather than on the aspirational product, and applies them to shopping. One that says investing in a value system that surrounds the shopping experience will pay off in consumption. Because instead of taking home a postcard or a T shirt to remember the visit, you take home a Prada shoe, or a Dior dress. Mr. Cheng first began exploring these principles in 2009 in his K 11 Art Mall developments in Hong Kong, Shanghai and Guangzhou, which originally combined art and shopping elements a mix of high and consumer culture previously seen as heretical and then expanded from there. The Shanghai Art Mall, for example, includes an urban farm where visitors can grow herbs that they eventually take home for their dinner. It's not an obvious sales driver but, Mr. Cheng said on stage at The New York Times International Luxury conference in Hong Kong last week, foot traffic went up dramatically after it was opened. Not that the point was "about traffic," Mr. Cheng said. "It's about building a community. About grooming the audience and having access to their behavior, which then continues online." The farm is the bait, in a sense. Going to a store, Mr. Malkin said, "should feel like going to a hotel or resort, where you are taking away a memory because you are touched by an emotion you want to revisit." As a retailer, this means "you are not serving a person who needs an item," he said. "You are serving a person who needs an experience." And that changes how the retailer does things. Mr. Solca said he believed this kind of strategic approach would form a new model for global retail. Mr. Malkin agrees. "The reality is our experience in China will set the gold standard for what's possible in other international locations," he said. "It's driving our thinking about the future." Just whatever you do, don't call it a "shopping center." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
Since reopening in October, the Museum of Modern Art has won broad praise for its revitalized collection displays that scramble painting, films, performance and photographs. But MoMA's departments continue to collect art and to organize exhibitions independently, and now the museum has designated a new chief curator for photography: Clement Cheroux, of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Mr. Cheroux, 49, has led SFMoMA's Pritzker Center for Photography, the country's largest dedicated space for the camera arts, since 2017. There, he has organized exhibitions such as "Snap Share," which examined the history of photographic transmission from postcards to social media, and "Don't! Photography and the Art of Mistakes," a show covering 100 years of artists' use of blurring, lens flares, overexposure and other technical "errors." At MoMA he succeeds Quentin Bajac, a fellow Frenchman, who returned to Paris in late 2018 to become director of the Jeu de Paume, France's national photography museum. (Coincidentally, this is the second time that Mr. Cheroux has taken over from Mr. Bajac in a major curatorial post; each served in turn as chief curator of the photography department of the Centre Georges Pompidou.) "I decided to accept the offer because I think there's a great new energy since the reopening," Mr. Cheroux said in an interview on Thursday. "I was really impressed with the work that was done by the curators to show photography with painting, with sculpture, with films." Having participated in an interdisciplinary rehang at the Pompidou, he added, "I know how hard it is to do that kind of installation, and MoMA's is at a really high standard." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
It has become a familiar dance: A company reports a data breach, and you dutifully change your passwords, ask for a new credit card and hope your information doesn't end up for sale on the dark web. But the hack that last week engulfed Marriott and 500 million of its customers has added a new step: Your passport might be at risk, too. Whether those customers should go get a new passport is perhaps the most complicated consumer question hanging out there in the wake of the news that millions of Starwood Hotels customers had their data stolen in a breach that began as early as 2014. Brands like Westin, Sheraton, Aloft and W are affected, but not Marriott brands that predate the company's acquisition of Starwood in 2016. Besides passport information, the thieves took names, addresses, dates of birth, and credit or debit card numbers, though it's possible that they did not get access to every bit of information for each person in the company database. Given how often bank card fraud occurs, Starwood customers may have obtained a new number in the past few years, anyway. But a subset of Starwood customers those who traveled abroad and had to turn over their passport numbers at the check in desk face a question that few breach victims have faced before: What is the likelihood that someone might use that number to acquire a new passport and use it for no good? After almost two months of picket lines, Marriott workers have agreed to a settlement. The State Department says there isn't much of a chance. The World Privacy Forum and the Identity Theft Resource Center say there is with a mild qualification. If you're among the Starwood customers who had to hand over passport information, your decision will hang on your taste for the very long odds of very bad people doing horrible things with a passport they acquired in your name. The thieves the hackers have not been identified, but the stolen information has not turned up on the dark web, which experts said suggested the work of a state actor were able to access passport numbers because local or national rules sometimes require hotels to collect them. Depending on where you go in the world, officials in the place you are visiting may require your hotel to examine your passport and perhaps transmit passport information to local authorities. It is unclear how long Marriott had held on to the information and if it held it longer than it had to. A spokeswoman said the company was not certain about these details yet. A Hilton spokesman said that when its hotels are required to gather passport information, they often upload it via third party software to the relevant authorities. The length of time such information is retained depends on the location of the hotel. A Hyatt spokeswoman said that it collects the minimum amount of personal information necessary to provide services that guests say they want or to comply with local rules. It is also not clear how many former Starwood customers have a decision to make about their passports. A Marriott spokeswoman would only say that it believed that the number would be a "very small subset" of the larger group but that it did not have a precise number just yet. But even a small subset of 500 million can be a very big number: If two tenths of a percent of customers are affected, that would be one million people. The State Department does not believe those people need new passports. The logic goes like this: Nobody can access your travel records using a passport number, nor can anyone travel in your name simply by presenting those digits. If the thieves try to obtain a replacement in your name, they'll run into difficulty: Unable to present a lost or expired passport, they would need a sheaf of other documents to prove that they are you. But that's where the danger lies, said Pam Dixon, executive director of the World Privacy Forum. Sophisticated thieves can clear those hurdles, she said. "The Marriott breach is risky precisely because they had the passport number plus all of the demographic information," she said of the thieves. She worried in particular about an emerging form of fraud called "morphing" in which determined thieves create fake supporting documents and then try to obtain a passport in your name. Part of the process involves creating an image by merging a photo of you that they find online with a photo of a thief similar to the "deepfake" videos that can already be found on the internet. Ms. Dixon said she would replace her passport once she finished a pending trip abroad. Eva Velasquez, president of the Identity Theft Resource Center, said that she would do the same if she received notification from Marriott indicating that thieves retrieved useful information like her address and date of birth in addition to her passport number. (Marriott is just beginning the process of informing customers if their data is on the loose.) To be clear: Thieves probably won't be making a few million passports. For any one person to become a victim, the thieves would need to be in the business of faking identities in the first place. That may not be their endgame at all. Then, they'd have to pick on your data and be successful in getting a passport in your name. Then, they'd have to choose to use it. The odds of all that happening are low. In the world of payment cards where fraud is not nearly as complicated it's still a small portion of customers that have to deal with it. A Visa spokeswoman said that as its algorithms improved and companies became more sophisticated, it has seen f raud rates on at risk card accounts falling below 5 percent. That won't keep some people from wanting to do anything they can to avoid even rock bottom odds of, say, landing in jail when they try to enter another country someday. So they'll get a new passport, which comes with a new passport number. For now, Marriott doesn't want to pay for that peace of mind. Instead, it's setting up a process to work with guests who may one day experience passport fraud that they believe was a result of this breach. Then and only then will it reimburse people for the costs involved with getting a new passport. On Sunday, Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York, called on the company to reimburse people who choose to obtain new passports. Marriott is offering customers free enrollment in a service called Web Watcher from the security company Kroll, which scans the dark web for information that thieves may be trying to sell. You can give the service your passport number and ask it to watch out for those figures out there in the blackness but the membership expires after a year. But breach anxiety can be forever, or at least 10 years: the standard renewal period for adults' passports. So why can't a company, just once, say something like the following? "We're sorry. And we're going to protect you for as long as you feel like you need protecting." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Your Money |
Even admirers have their own debates: The book is good, but great? Great but not the greatness of assurance and cut gem perfection. It's the greatness of a vastly open, unstable, slithery text. Within the scaffold of its tidy, three act structure and its carefully patterned symmetries, sprouts an unruly blend of stiff moralism and wild ambivalence, its infatuation with and contempt for wealth, its empathy alongside its desire to punish its characters. One of the pleasures of writing about a book as widely read as "The Great Gatsby" is jetting through the obligatory plot summary. You recall Nick Carraway, our narrator, who moves next door to the mysteriously wealthy Jay Gatsby on Long Island. Gatsby, it turns out, is pining for Nick's cousin, Daisy; his glittering life is a lure to impress her, win her back. Daisy is inconveniently married to the brutish Tom Buchanan, who, in turn, is carrying on with a married woman, the doomed Myrtle. Cue the parties, the affairs, Nick getting very queasy about it all. In a lurid climax, Myrtle is run over by a car driven by Daisy. Gatsby is blamed; Myrtle's husband shoots him dead in his pool and kills himself. The Buchanans discreetly leave town, their hands clean. Nick is writing the book, we understand, two years later, in a frenzy of disgust. Fitzgerald was proud of what he had achieved. "I think my novel is about the best American novel ever written," he crowed. The book baffled reviewers, however, and sold poorly. "Of all the reviews, even the most enthusiastic, not one had the slightest idea what the book was about," Fitzgerald wrote to the critic Edmund Wilson. That matter remains unsettled. The book has been treated as a beautiful bauble, fundamentally unserious. In a 1984 essay in The Times, John Kenneth Galbraith sniffed that Fitzgerald was only superficially interested in class. "It is the lives of the rich their enjoyments, agonies and putative insanity that attract his interest," he wrote. "Their social and political consequences escape him as he himself escaped such matters in his own life." This interpretation has been turned on its head. Both new editions make light of the book's beauty it's the treatment of the grotesque that is so compelling (Morris compares the characters to the "Real Housewives"). Both make the case that the book's value lies in its critique of capitalism. Lee describes Fitzgerald as "a fan of Karl Marx," and writes that "Gatsby" remains "a modern novel by exploring the intersection of social hierarchy, white femininity, white male love and unfettered capitalism." For Morris, too, there is no romance between Gatsby and Daisy but "capitalism as an emotion": "Gatsby meets Daisy when he's a broke soldier, senses that she requires more prosperity, so five years later he returns as almost a parody of it. So the tragedy here is the death of the heart." The evidence exists, in Fitzgerald's complicated way, as we look at the text and the biography. He was rived by bitterness and profound envy toward the rich. "I have never been able to forgive the rich for being rich and it has colored my entire life and works," he wrote to his agent. But this was the same man who, as a child, liked to pretend he was the foundling son of a medieval king. The same man who fell in love with Zelda because she looked expensive. So much waffling, according to critics who want less equivocation, less moonlight and stronger moral stances. Except for those critics who find the moralizing heavy handed and crave subtlety. What other waves of analysis await us as the new narratives rush in? How can one story sustain them all? As we're borne back, ceaselessly into this one text, it becomes clear that courting admiration might be one path to literary immortality, but courting endless interpretation might be the safer bet. After all, there's great honor in being a supporting character. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
Feb. 19 was the centenary of the birth of Carson McCullers, one of the most distinctive and ill fated writers in American history. McCullers died when she was 50, in 1967. She suffered a series of strokes before she was 30, and spent much of her life in pain. Earlier this year, the Library of America published a volume of McCullers's short stories, plays, essays, memoirs and poems. But it's the author's fiction (also published by the Library of America, among others) that keeps her reputation strong a century on. Her debut, "The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter," is routinely listed among the best books of the 20th century, and Rose Feld's assessment of it in the Book Review in 1940 proves that its towering reputation was formed more or less immediately. "No matter what the age of its author, 'The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter' would be a remarkable book," Feld started. "When one reads that Carson McCullers is a girl of 22 it becomes more than that. Maturity does not cover the quality of her work. It is something beyond that, something more akin to the vocation of pain to which a great poet is born." McCullers was actually 23 at the time, but point taken. "She writes with a sweep and certainty that are overwhelming," Feld said, concluding that we were to anticipate McCullers's second novel "with something like fear," given the standard set by the first. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
It's nothing but noise, all the time. We get hammered every second from an incessant sousaphone of tweets and from the righteous rage machine that screams at us in this digitized 24/7/365 communications world that we have built. What you might not know is that we have long had a name for what started this all: "disruptive innovation." The concept was pioneered by Clay Christensen, a high profile and well regarded Harvard professor of management who died of cancer last week at 67. Professor Christensen's remarkable legacy grew out of a seminal book he published in 1997, "The Innovator's Dilemma." The book covered esoteric industries like the disk drives market and excavating to analyze and illustrate the power of disruptive technologies. His ideas exploded through the then nascent internet scene and throughout Silicon Valley. I recall reading an early copy and thinking that it was a manifesto that the tech world would embrace and that Professor Christensen was tech's prophet. In the face of disruption, older companies could do almost nothing. It wasn't that they couldn't see the new threats of start ups, but that they were stuck on serving their current businesses, and they failed to change their products and services out of fear of cutting into profits. Professor Christensen's formula was elegant: "First, disruptive products are simpler and cheaper; they generally promise lower margins, not greater profits. Second, disruptive technologies typically are first commercialized in emerging or insignificant markets. And third, leading firms' most profitable customers generally don't want, and indeed initially can't use, products based on disruptive technologies." It was that simple. Professor Christensen's book came out a year before Google was founded, seven years before Facebook, eight years before YouTube and 11 years before Uber. Each of these companies, knowingly or unknowingly, would follow his map. While Professor Christensen would go on to write a sequel and many more books on adjacent topics ripe for disruption, like education ("Disrupting Class" in 2008) and health care ("Innovator's Prescription" in 2009), it was his initial idea that was devastatingly insightful. I use the term devastate because, though no fault of Professor Christensen's, disruptive innovation took a turn for the worse in tech. Silicon Valley failed to marry disruption with a concept of corporate responsibility, and growth at all costs became its motto. The more measured approach that Professor Christensen taught was ignored. Thus, in tech, the idea was more like "destructive innovation," which to me was distilled in Facebook's famous sign that was once plastered all over the walls at its headquarters: "Move Fast and Break Things." I have always wondered why the company chose those words. I have no problem with "move fast," which Professor Christensen would not have quibbled with, since being nimble was a core competency that he touted. It was the word "break" that stuck in my head like a bad migraine. Why use a violent and thoughtless word like "break" and not one more hopeful, like "change" or "transform" or "invent"? And, if "break" was to be the choice, what would happen after the breaking? Would there be fixing? Could there be any fixing after the breaking? "Break" sounded painful. And, back to today's subject, Professor Christensen never talked about that. In fact, Professor Christensen's approach was quite the opposite. He learned in 2010 that he had lymphoma, then he had a stroke. Within two years, he published the book that I like best, titled "How Will You Measure Your Life?" It is at turns spiritual and sometimes self helpy, taking Professor Christensen's management thinking and applying it to how to live a life. This book should be newly relevant, as tech is casting about for its next act; we've been talking about the negative impact of tech's disruptive innovations for a while now. Techies measure everything and so Professor Christensen's bracing prescriptions are perhaps perfect as the tech industry seeks redemption. "It's easier to hold your principles 100 percent of the time than it is to hold them 98 percent of the time." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
Maani Safa, the co founder of Etch, does not lack for places to work. His company, which focuses on digital innovation, strategy and product development, rents a shared work space in TriBeCa and has offices in London and Sydney. He also keeps a home office in his two bedroom apartment at Abington House, a rental building in West Chelsea owned by Related Companies. Nonetheless, he can frequently be found downstairs in Abington's co working space hosting morning meetings after returning late from a business trip, grabbing a cup of coffee or catching up on reading in front of the fireplace. Changing American work habits and the growing popularity of co working spaces like WeWork, Workhouse and the Farm continue to transform the office landscape. And residential developers have taken notice: A number of new residential projects feature shared work spaces that channel the vibe of trendy start ups with computer bars, comfortable seating and coffee stations. According to a Gallup survey released last month, 43 percent of employed Americans said they work remotely at least some of the time. Between that trend and the rise of the freelance economy, residents now expect more than a drab teleconferencing room. "When I was last looking for apartments, a lot of buildings said they had an office, but when you got there you'd find this sterile room from the 1990s, lots of brown and mauve," said Mr. Safa. "A space like that is utterly useless an office should be about invoking a feeling of creativity and calm, it should be a place I want to bring people. Otherwise I'd stay in my apartment." Bryan Cho, executive vice president at Related, said that shortly after MiMA, a rental tower the company owns in Hell's Kitchen, opened in 2011, residents started using the shared lounges as de facto co working spaces. "We noticed people were bringing their laptops to work among their neighbors," said Mr. Cho. At subsequent developments, like Abington House and 15 Hudson Yards, Related has anticipated that demand. Slated to open in 2018, 15 Hudson Yards will have a dedicated collaborative work studio with large communal tables, a computer bar and booth seating on the 51st floor. Mr. Cho said that Related has converted underused conference rooms at some of its other developments to computer bars. At Nine52, a Hell's Kitchen condo that began sales last spring, GAIA installed a 1,300 square foot co working space with corkboard walls, a long wooden table, sleek work carrels and a kitchen. "First time home buyers, in particular, tend to count their numbers," said Maria Ienna, the director of sales, adding that "a lot of shared co working spaces are really expensive, even for a desk." At WeWork's West 43rd Street location, for example, a dedicated desk starts at 550 a month and a private office at 930. Asher Abehsera, the founder of Livwrk, which partnered with the Kushner Companies to develop the Austin, Nichols and Company warehouse on the Williamsburg waterfront into condos, said that when considering which amenities to add, "I thought the smartest thing was to create spaces around how people work." Taking cues from nearby coffee shops, the Austin Nichols House, which opened for sales last year, was designed with a large cafe area that opens onto a courtyard. There are long, shared work tables, benched seating with cafe tables, indoor and outdoor fireplaces, and a glassed in children's play area next door so that parents can keep an eye on their kids while logging extra hours. As the lines between home and work continue to blur, so, too, have their aesthetics. At Citizen 360, an Anbau Enterprises condo development on the Upper East Side, the co working and lounge areas feature massive window seats, swivel chairs, area rugs and plants. Clodagh, the interior designer whose eponymous firm designed the space, pointed out that the demand for beautiful and comfortable work spaces is a corollary of being able and expected to work anytime, anywhere. "Work has become totally nomadic," she said. "The hospitality business has seeped into the office business, and they've both seeped into the home business." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
THREE years ago, Douglas Crumley sold his financial planning practice in Fair Oaks, Calif., and he and his wife, Ann, left the country. "The intention was to live in Ecuador and travel through South America doing the retirement thing," he said. "Well, I became absolutely bored. I don't speak Spanish well enough to assimilate and walking up and down the beaches seemed unproductive." So seven months after setting up stakes abroad, Mr. Crumley, now 69, and his wife, Ann, 53, moved back to the United States and settled in Tampa, Fla. She headed into the work force selling residential real estate, but Mr. Crumley was not certain what to do with himself. At his wife's suggestion, he joined a nearby Rotary Cub. " 'It will make you feel like you're doing more than taking up space,' she told me," Mr. Crumley said. She was right. For the last year, he has been going to weekly breakfast meetings and volunteering in community service projects, for example, helping collect bikes donated to children living at a local orphanage. "I feel useful," he said. "It's a wonderful group of men and women who inspire me, and we've become friends." Older volunteers like Mr. Crumley are on the rise, as Americans live longer and are healthier. In 2013, 24.2 percent of Americans over 65, 10.6 million people, did some type of volunteer work, up from 22.7 percent in 2002, and that number is expected to rise to more than 13 million by 2020, according to the Corporation for National and Community Service, a federal agency that administers large national volunteer programs such as AmeriCorps and Senior Corps. Responding to that spirit, old line volunteer organizations like Rotary and the Peace Corps are stepping in to deliver opportunities for retirees to stay connected and give back. "Rotary was the original social network," said John Hewko, general secretary of Rotary International, later adding, "way before Facebook." He said, "From its start, Rotary meetings have been an occasion for people to get together and exchange ideas, discuss critical issues happening in their community, things happening globally and to take action." It is still going strong. The 110 year old organization, which was founded in Chicago, has 1.2 million members in 34,000 clubs in 200 countries and other geographical locations, and 28 percent of those members are retired and active in the group. In the United States and Canada, 26 percent of Rotarians are between 60 and 69 nearing or at retirement age up from 24 percent in 2009 and 21 percent in 2006. "We have Rotarians in their 70s and 80s traveling to Nigeria to work on polio and traveling to Bolivia to work on a water project," Mr. Hewko said. "For our retiree members, it's incredibly important to stay engaged with people, to be out and about, and to be giving back." Like Rotary, the Peace Corps is also working to enlist older American volunteers. The corps, established in 1961 by an executive order signed by President John F. Kennedy, is still predominantly a younger person's game, but 7 percent of its volunteers are 50 or older. "I would like to see that closer to 15 percent," said Carrie Hessler Radelet, the Peace Corps' director. Locast, a nonprofit streaming service for local TV, is shutting down Capital One's chief executive was fined after being called a 'repeat offender.' The corps has no upper age limit. Although fewer than 1 percent of volunteers are over 70, more than 4 percent are 60 and over. And the oldest volunteer, who recently entered the service, is an 86 year old trainee in Morocco. The push for older volunteers began in 2011, when the Peace Corps began working with AARP to connect more older volunteers with service opportunities. Then, in 2012, it expanded Peace Corps Response, a program that may be more appealing to older adults because it requires a shorter time commitment, three months to a year instead of the traditional 27 month commitment. The program had been open only to Peace Corps veterans, but now anyone with at least 10 years of work experience and the needed language skills may apply. In the 2014 fiscal year, more than a third of people who applied for Peace Corps Response positions were 50 and older. While the medical evaluation process is the same regardless of an applicant's age, depending on medical history, it can take longer for an older volunteer to be accepted. "We only place our older volunteers where we are certain we can medically support them, so there may also be a slightly smaller list of countries you can consider," said Ms. Hessler Radelet. All Peace Corps volunteers receive comprehensive medical and dental benefits during service. Financial benefits include paid travel to and from the country of service, living expenses, vacation days and a readjustment allowance upon completion of service that can amount to thousands of dollars. Married couples may serve in the Peace Corps together, but each person must apply and qualify as a volunteer separately. John Granger and his wife, Kate Burrus, from Eugene, Ore., both 64 and retired teachers, recently finished their second assignment with the organization. "We really felt that we had a lot of experience to offer and wanted to share it in a way that could make a difference," Mr. Granger said. "At the same time, we wanted to travel, to live in another culture and experience a much simpler lifestyle." On their first Peace Corps assignment, they taught English in Chongqing, China, from 2009 to 2012. Then they worked at a small primary school in the foothills of the Blue Mountains in Jamaica. "We were each assigned to a small primary school, and our assignment focused on working with students needing extra instruction in reading," Mr. Granger said. In Rotary, the retiree volunteer story is similar. Myriad volunteer projects give retirees outlets for their professional skills; for example, mentoring budding entrepreneurs, tutoring children or working on disease prevention. In the United States, average annual club dues are around 400, with some clubs including meals in their costs. (Rotary members generally meet over a meal.) Peggy Halderman, 66, joined Rotary in Golden, Colo., after she retired from her job as assistant regional director for external affairs at the National Park Service. "My husband has been a Rotarian since about 1991, so I always helped out on all sorts of projects with his Golden Rotary Club," she said. The club has a philosophy of "find your passion" and, once a member has developed a project, Rotary provides volunteers and financial support, Ms. Halderman said. "So, I saw a blank canvas." She said she "had no idea what the future would bring, but knew that now was the time for me to contribute in my own backyard." Her project was fighting childhood hunger through the Golden Backpack Program, which initially delivered lunches in backpacks. Now in its seventh year, the program has raised more than 450,000 from Rotary and other sources and has served more than 350,000 meals to needy children in the Golden area. "To see the sheer joy on the faces of little kids when they get their weekly sacks of food," Ms. Halderman said, is "all our amazing volunteer team needs." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Your Money |
The editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values . It is separate from the newsroom. Thursday's news that more than three million Americans filed for unemployment benefits last week, a total far higher than in any previous week in the modern history of the United States, has been greeted with surprising equanimity by the nation's political leaders. They appear to regard mass unemployment as an unfortunate but unavoidable symptom of the coronavirus. "It's nobody's fault, certainly not in this country," President Trump said Thursday. The federal government's primary response is a bill that passed the Senate late Wednesday night that would provide larger cash payments to those who have lost their jobs. But the sudden collapse of employment was not inevitable. It is instead a disastrous failure of public policy that has caused immediate harm to the lives of millions of Americans, and that is likely to leave a lasting mark on their future, on the economy and on our society. The pain will be felt most acutely in the least affluent parts of the nation, struggling even before the coronavirus crisis and even after a decade of steady though unequal economic growth. The federal government's first and best chance to prevent mass unemployment was to keep the new coronavirus under control through a system of testing and targeted quarantines like those implemented by a number of Asian nations. But even after it became clear that the Trump administration had failed to prepare for the pandemic, policymakers still could have chosen to prioritize employment by paying companies to keep workers on the job during the period of lockdown. A number of European countries, after similarly failing to control the spread of the virus, and thus being forced to lock down large parts of their economies, have chosen to protect jobs. Denmark has agreed to compensate Danish employers for up to 90 percent of their workers' salaries. In the Netherlands, companies facing a loss of at least 20 percent of their revenue can similarly apply for the government to cover 90 percent of payroll. And the United Kingdom announced that it would pay up to 80 percent of the wage bill for as many companies as needed the help, with no cap on the total amount of public spending. Some countries only pay employers for workers who aren't working. Under Germany's Kurzarbeit scheme, the government chips in even for workers kept on part time. The German government predicts that 2.35 million workers will draw benefits during the crisis. In either case, the goal is to preserve people in existing jobs to preserve the antediluvian fabric of the economy to the greatest extent possible, for the benefit of workers and firms. "What we're trying to do is to freeze the economy," the Danish employment minister, Peter Hummelgaard, told The Atlantic. "It's about preserving Main Street as much as we can." Preserving jobs is important because a job isn't merely about the money. Compensated labor provides a sense of independence, identity and purpose; an unemployment check does not replace any of those things. People who lose jobs also lose their benefits and in the United States, that includes their health insurance. And a substantial body of research on earlier economic downturns documents that people who lose jobs, even if they eventually find new ones, suffer lasting damage to their earnings potential, health and even the prospects of their children. The longer it takes to find a new job, the deeper the damage tends to be. American companies have long fought to maximize their freedom to shed workers during economic downturns, and American economists have tended to agree, arguing that easy separation facilitates adjustments in the allocation of resources, allowing weaker businesses to shrink and stronger businesses to grow. This is a dubious argument even in normal times. The American economy has outpaced Europe, and the freedom to fire workers may well be a factor. But the benefits have accrued primarily to shareholders. The European model has been better for workers, who have experienced faster income growth than in the United States. And this downturn is not an example of the kind of periodic free market "creative destruction" that those who embrace this theory tend to celebrate it's a public health crisis. The nation has taken ill, and it needs to go to bed for a while. But there's no obvious reason to think the economy would benefit from the kinds of big economic shifts facilitated by mass unemployment. This economic contraction was not caused by too much housing construction or too much gambling on Wall Street. It was caused by the arrival of a virus, and preserving ties between companies and workers could help to accelerate the eventual economic recovery once the pandemic passes. Companies could keep trained and experienced employees, averting the need for people to look for jobs and for companies to look for workers. The United States has made some efforts to preserve jobs, particularly at small businesses. The bailout bill includes 367 billion for loans to small businesses that would be forgiven if recipients avoid job and wage cuts. But that is less than a third of the amount that experts estimate would be required to provide comprehensive support for small businesses. And the bill does not require big companies that get bailouts to make similar efforts. Instead, the government agreed to give workers who lose their jobs an extra 600 a week. We'd all be better off if the government had helped those workers keep their jobs instead. 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 |
Julie Kent in 2015, retiring from American Ballet Theater. She is now finishing her first season as Washington Ballet's artistic director. WASHINGTON Almost exactly two years ago, the ballerina Julie Kent stood onstage at the Metropolitan Opera House, eyes brimming with tears, and bade farewell to her 30 year dancing career at American Ballet Theater. (She was 45.) Her ballerina days were over, but she didn't have much time to lament the loss. Barely a year later, she was offered the job of leading the Washington Ballet. Ms. Kent instantly became one of the few women leading ballet troupes in the United States, something she had neither expected nor planned for. "My image of a leader was always somebody that likes to tell people what to do," she said a few months after being appointed. "I've never been that person. So I had to change my idea of what a leader was." It would seem, watching her at work with the Washington Ballet dancers here, that she is a natural. As she slips into a rehearsal of Antony Tudor's "Lilac Garden" wearing a chic knit dress, hair loosely tied back, her presence is felt around the studio. Everyone works a little harder. That ballet will appear on the final, and perhaps most ambitious, program of her first season. The program (Thursday through Saturday) includes two masterworks of 20 century repertory, the emotionally complex period piece "Lilac Garden" and Frederick Ashton's "The Dream." Both are company premieres, and ballets with which Ms. Kent was closely identified as a dancer. The third piece on the program is more of a gamble: Ms. Kent's first commission for the company, "Frontier," by Ethan Stiefel, her former longtime Ballet Theater colleague. Ms. Kent brought Mr. Stiefel in not long after she took the position she wanted a new work by an American choreographer to present as part of the John F. Kennedy centennial celebrations at the Kennedy Center this spring. Mr. Stiefel, who retired from dance in 2012, did a stint directing the Royal New Zealand Ballet, where he made a Bavarian beer hall themed ballet set to music by Johann Strauss II. He also provided dances for the Starz series "Flesh and Bone," which is set in a nightmarish ballet company. By tapping Mr. Stiefel, she is also appealing to a broader audience, not just the ballet cognoscenti. "Frontier" traces the experience of a female astronaut and culminates in a solo meant to evoke the excitement of exploring a new planet. It is not the first time the point shoe has been used to depict weightlessness; 19th century audiences swooned when they saw ballerinas glide across the stage on the tips of their toes. Nor is it the first ballet to imagine the eerie quietude of outer space. Ashton's 1965 66 ballets "Monotones 1 2" explored this theme even before the first lunar landing. But Mr. Stiefel was seeking a certain verisimilitude. He spent a day at NASA headquarters in Washington and spoke with astronauts. One of them talked about the process of dressing for space travel referred to as "donning" and "doffing" as being like a choreography, which gave Mr. Stiefel the idea of integrating this highly ritualized process into his ballet. The pared down spacesuit costume for "Frontier," adapted from elements of motocross and sky diving gear, was developed by Ted Southern, who has made gloves for NASA, and his wife and design partner, Flora Gill. The ballet is a first step toward establishing a new, distinctive repertory for the company, much of it built on contacts Ms. Kent developed throughout her career. For next year she has commissioned three works, by Marcelo Gomes and Gemma Bond, both dancers at American Ballet Theater; and by Clifton Brown, of Jessica Lang Dance. Her first season has included a mix of works new to the company, like Alexei Ratmansky's "Seven Sonatas" she was in the original cast and ballets the dancers already knew, like William Forsythe's "In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated." She said that she viewed them as steppingstones for the dancers, works that push them to perform at a higher technical level, with greater finesse and articulation. So too, with the 19th century Romantic ballet "Giselle," which she staged for the company in March with her husband, Victor Barbee. (Mr. Barbee, who had been the associate artistic director at Ballet Theater for more than a decade and its assistant artistic director before that now holds the same position in Washington.) "I've been dancing it since I was 17," Ms. Kent said of "Giselle" as she sat in her office, its walls lined with photographs spanning her career. The company's pleasant headquarters are still in what was once the founder's home, near the National Cathedral. "Victor and I taught those dancers every little step. And they rose to the occasion." ("It was clear," wrote The Washington Post's dance critic, Sarah Kaufman, "that Kent's touch is a subtle and sensitive one.") Unlike some incoming directors, Ms. Kent has not tried to remake the company in her image by quickly replacing large numbers of dancers with her recruits. (S he has not let anyone go, though she has added four dancers.) Ruthlessness is not her style. The atmosphere at a recent "Frontier" rehearsal was relaxed, even as the dancers scrambled to complete a series of complicated tasks in just a few bars of music. Mr. Stiefel, who cultivates a wry, even dandyish attitude, occasionally fiddled with his handlebar mustache. A dancer joked to his partner, "will you space dance with me?" Asked whether he had intended to make a clear statement by choosing a woman to play the astronaut, Mr. Stiefel said he would not be unhappy if people took it that way. "I would trust a woman implicitly to go to space and get the job done." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
"Wendy," the new film from Benh Zeitlin, opens with tender caresses and shimmers of radiant light. Much as at the start of his smashing feature debut, "Beasts of the Southern Wild," the camera is trained on a young girl whose world is filled with wonder, strange rituals and phantasmagoric shocks. In "Beasts," the girl was called Hushpuppy and she lived in a tumbledown paradise called the Bathtub. Here, the girl is Wendy and she lives in her own ramshackle utopia, one that borrows a little from "Beasts" and, more generously and unproductively, from J.M. Barrie's "Peter Pan." There are other similarities between Zeitlin's two films, including sumptuous cinematography and a rousingly propulsive score, a rabble of charming children and nods at our environmental crisis. With its exquisite, near cubistic close ups of a toddler in a woman's arms, the opener of "Wendy" suggests that Zeitlin has embraced abstraction even more boldly than he did in "Beasts." Here, the child, a cherub with a halo of dark curls, comes into focus gradually. Like the pieces of an unsolved jigsaw puzzle, she appears in fragments a downy arm, a prettily lashed eye, a face outlined by honeyed light that sweetly suggest she's very much a work in progress. It's a lovely start and for the next 50 minutes or so Zeitlin keeps adding more beauty, filling in the background and adding detail as the film pleasantly drifts. Even when Wendy grows older, becoming a rather sober 9 year old (Devin France), the whole thing meanders, swirling rather than marching forward. Then one night Wendy and her brothers hop a train, coaxed aboard by a laughing boy called Peter (Yashua Mack), and the drift gives way to churn, to chugging wheels, driving music and skin prickling momentum. Wendy is clearly off on an adventure, ready to take flight. But when the children arrive on a lush volcanic island, the film stops dead in its tracks. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
Nearly 2,700 New York City students were wrongly told in recent weeks they were not eligible for seats in public school gifted and talented programs because of errors in scoring the tests used for admission, the Education Department said on Friday. The company that both created and scored the tests, Pearson, has apologized for the mistakes, according to the department, which is now scurrying to notify parents that pupils originally locked out of the coveted programs are instead able to apply for seats. Updated scores will be distributed within 10 days and the deadline for applying to gifted programs, originally Friday, will be extended to May 10, the department said. Only six students were incorrectly deemed qualified for the gifted programs, but they will not lose their eligibility, the department said. All told, 4,735 students or 13 percent of all those in kindergarten through third grade who sat for the tests were affected by the errors, said Erin Hughes, a spokeswoman for the Education Department. Of those, 2,698 are newly eligible for seats in districtwide gifted programs, meaning they scored at or above the 90th percentile. The other 2,037 will be told they are now eligible for one of the city's five more competitive "citywide" gifted programs, open to those at the 97th percentile or higher. Those students had been erroneously told they were eligible only for the district programs. In a terse statement, , said the errors made by Pearson were "unacceptable." The company also designed the state standardized tests being administered to students this month, and has developed new curriculums that have been endorsed by the city's Education Department. "Pearson has an established record in this field and we depend on its professionalism and deep capacity to deliver for the public," Mr. Walcott said in his statement. "But in this case, they let our children and families down. I have told the company's officials in no uncertain terms that I expect this will never happen again." In a statement, Scott Smith, the president of learning assessment for Pearson, said "the fact that these errors occurred is simply unacceptable to Pearson as we fully understand the importance of accurate scoring." "It is clear that we had a breakdown in our processes and we are conducting a complete, extensive investigation of every step," the statement continued. Even before the error, the number of students qualifying for gifted seats 9,020 was far higher than the number of seats. The new number is more than 11,700. The competition is most acute for the citywide programs, where only several hundred seats are available. "It's unfortunate, but this happens," said Donna Taylor, the principal of the Brooklyn School of Inquiry, a citywide program. "There are a ton of people it has unfortunately affected." Besides increased competition for the seats, the higher number suggests that the city has been unable to control the explosive growth in high test scores, which coincided with the growth in test preparation services. Last year, 9,644 students qualified. The tests this year, which consisted of two parts delivered in one sitting, were revised to make them less susceptible to preparation, which education officials said would also help increase the chances that children from poor backgrounds would gain seats. Shael Polakow Suransky, the chief academic officer for the Education Department, said further study was needed to understand what factors could be causing the increase. He said the goal of the new assessments was not to reduce the number of eligible students, but to do "a better job of identifying kids' giftedness without respect to whether they had prior academic preparation." Critics of the Bloomberg administration seized upon the mistakes. The teachers' union president, Michael Mulgrew, remarked that the Education Department "blames the testing company and tries to bury the announcement on a Friday afternoon." Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, a mayoral candidate, said it was time for the department to "reassess its relationship with the company." The errors were discovered when two parents, one a statistician, complained that their children had been incorrectly scored, the department said. According to Pearson, three mistakes were made. Students' ages, which are used to calculate their percentile ranking against students of similar age, were recorded in years and months, but should also have counted days to be precise. Incorrect scoring tables were used. And the formula used to combine the two test parts into one percentile ranking contained an error. Earlier this week, the department said that score reports for 400 students had been lost, but that those tests had been found and were being scored. One parent, Rena M. Ismail, 36, who had been told that her 5 year old son, Hyder, was not eligible for a gifted seat, said the department informed her that her son had scored in the 89th percentile, when, by her math, he was in the 91st. "I knew he got it," she said. "I could see it. They told me I was mistaken. "I am an educated person. I know how to add and multiply, and I knew he got in by his score sheet." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Education |
LOS ANGELES The film executive behind book to film blockbusters like "Life of Pi" and "The Devil Wears Prada" will rebuild her operation at Sony Pictures after being jettisoned by Walt Disney Studios. Sony and HarperCollins Publishers said on Monday that they would finance a yet to be named venture run by the executive, Elizabeth Gabler, who is considered Hollywood's foremost bridge to the New York publishing world. Ms. Gabler, 63, was previously president of Fox 2000, a division of 20th Century Fox, which Disney absorbed in March as part of a 71.3 billion deal with Rupert Murdoch. In addition to "Life of Pi" and "The Devil Wears Prada," Fox 2000 hits include "The Fault in Our Stars," "Hidden Figures," "Marley Me" and the "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" series. To the surprise of many in Hollywood Ms. Gabler in particular Disney immediately pulled the plug on Fox 2000; Disney had signaled for months that it intended to keep it running. Disney insiders asserted that Ms. Gabler's operation was too expensive and that her track record at the box office had grown spotty amid the film industry's shift toward fantasy franchises. "The Hate U Give" was one recent Fox 2000 disappointment, costing roughly 50 million to make and market and collecting 35 million worldwide last year, about half of which went to theater owners. "This re establishes us as a big buyer," Ms. Gabler said in an interview, referring to her all female Fox 2000 team, which she will take with her to the new division. (There are 10 executives and assistants.) Ms. Gabler emphasized that her new Sony label would also develop films based on books from publishers other than HarperCollins and that she could make movies for third party distributors if Sony passed. For the first time, she will also be able to develop books for television, including Netflix and other streaming services. Brian Murray, chief executive of HarperCollins, came up with the idea of joining forces with Sony. "We thought we could play a greater role as a facilitator, increasing the odds that HarperCollins authors could see their books turned into compelling films, television, streaming opportunities," Mr. Murray said in an interview. With the rise of streaming, there is been a steep increase in the number of books being developed for films or shows, he noted. Netflix alone will spend roughly 8 billion on original content next year, according to BTIG Research. Hulu and Amazon are expected to spend an estimated 3 billion apiece. Sony said Ms. Gabler's focus on new books as sources for modestly budgeted films made her a must have executive, complementing the studio's primary business of big budget remakes, spinoffs and sequels. Sony's most recent movie, "Spider Man: Far From Home," is on a pace to collect at least 1.1 billion worldwide. "We love our superheroes, but new intellectual property is also really important, and throughout the history of Hollywood, literary intellectual property has always flourished," Thomas E. Rothman, chairman of Sony's Motion Picture Group, said in an interview. "This is an innovative way to give Sony early access to HarperCollins authors. To work with Elizabeth, who is a superstar, makes authors feel not just comfortable but fortunate." 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. Mr. Rothman, who has orchestrated a turnaround at Sony in recent years, beat out a competing bid from Paramount Pictures, which has been working on a comeback of its own. Ms. Gabler is expected to take a half dozen projects from Fox 2000 with her. On Aug. 9, Disney will release a completed film she left behind, "The Art of Racing in the Rain," based on Garth Stein's 2008 novel, which was published by HarperCollins. Ms. Gabler acknowledged that the box office had shifted toward franchise spectacles in the Netflix age, making it harder for dramas and comedies based on books to break through. But she rejected the notion that such films were no longer viable in theaters. "A best selling book brings enormous audience pre awareness," she said, noting that Mr. Stein's "Art of Racing in the Rain" had sold more than eight million copies. Ms. Gabler previously worked for Mr. Rothman, who resigned as chairman of Fox's movie group in 2012 after a long run. HarperCollins, part of Mr. Murdoch's News Corporation, was a corporate sibling to Fox in that era, but there was not an official system of funneling books to the studio, Mr. Rothman said. "I've wanted this equivalent of a Disneyland FastPass for a long time," he said, referring to the new setup with HarperCollins. One of the big five publishers, HarperCollins has had several breakout hits recently, including Rachel Hollis's self help books "Girl, Wash Your Face" and "Girl, Stop Apologizing." In its recent earnings for the third quarter of the 2019 fiscal year, HarperCollins reported a 29 percent rise in earnings from the same period in 2018. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
It was Friday, the first day of London Fashion Week, and Donatella Versace was sitting in a hotel in Mayfair, finishing the preparations for her hard driving, techno fabulous Versus Versace show scheduled the next day. Ms. Versace lives in Milan, and so does Versus Versace, but a few seasons ago she moved the show to London. She would be back in Milan in a few days to stage the Versace show, but for Versus, its rebellious little sister (the line that was created for Donatella, Gianni Versace's rebellious little sister), London felt right. "I think youth culture starts here," Ms. Versace said, in her Marlboro rasp. "British people have more courage than the others." It had a steady feeder supply in a handful of fine universities churning out graduates, and strong support for its fledglings, like sponsorships and incubator programs. The opening days of fashion week, which runs through Tuesday, are a display of its hometown ingenuity, the make do of young designers running riot. At Fashion East, the talent hatchery run by the East End den mother Lulu Kennedy, four upstarts had installed themselves in no less than the Tate Modern: three on the runway, one in a static presentation just outside. Fashion East can feel ragtag, but the standouts this season were remarkably assured, particularly the magpie, "Mad Max" glamour of Matty Bovan, only a year and change out of Central St. Martins but already under the wing of Katie Grand, a top stylist and editor of Love magazine. And the plasticized elegance of Supriya Lele, a new Royal College of Art graduate, who mined her Anglo Indian heritage for a collection that featured latex and gaffer tape, but whose overall effect was serene rather than seamy. They are still so early in their careers that it feels almost irresponsible to shine a light; Ms. Lele, for example, hasn't even worked out how to produce her collection for sale. But the rise from obscurity to fame in London fashion can be astonishingly fast. Consider how many of those ranked among the city's most creative, and now known worldwide, began at Fashion East themselves only a few years ago Jonathan Anderson and Simone Rocha among them. Mr. Anderson and Ms. Rocha have become two of the must sees of the London schedule, and their shows mark the moment when the week kicks into high gear. Mr. Anderson spoke of a "style odyssey" a woman sent on a journey, her J.W. Anderson traveling wardrobe a mash up of the rough and the refined, ostrich feathers blooming out of plain wool and linen skirts, metal mesh dresses with high top sneakers. "Things that shouldn't really work," Mr. Anderson said. "Things that shouldn't really work" are the Anderson specialty: His collections typically pile an unholy assemblage of elements together and trust the process to guide the result. But this time, many of the things that didn't really work didn't, really. Mr. Anderson's draped jersey dresses looked pasted in from a less interesting collection; likewise the sneakers, with their unsalvageable scent of the shopping mall. Mr. Anderson said he'd been aiming for something feminine, but his sense of the body sometimes falls short. It was an interesting, and potentially clever, move to fit his travelers with pockets aplenty but hard to imagine the woman who would want two hanging open on her chest. Ms. Rocha was also thinking of feminine dressing. "When people hear 'femininity,' they think it's all soft and girlie," she said. "And it's not. I think you can still be very strong." She was also thinking of travelers: In an uncertain world at a time of fraught crossings, she bundled her women in stern, nearly martial tailoring, in suave velvet bonded to sponge softness girded with strength. Ms. Rocha's signatures are gauzy layers and sheer dresses embroidered with flowers and pearls. Girlishness in excelsis. She kept that emphasis, and the flowers, but gave them a new spine. The result was fantastic. "The world is a bit upside down at the moment," she said. But her women (of all ages, mind, from teenage models to the great elder stateswomen of runways past) clutched their (faux) furs around them, strapped on their packs and soldiered on. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
Professional sports figured out how to sputter back to life over the past three months. The N.B.A. finished its season with LeBron James on top again. The N.H.L. has a new Stanley Cup champion. The W.N.B.A. also delivered a title team, which included two of the league's biggest stars. The N.F.L. is charging ahead despite a series of positive coronavirus tests among some of its 32 teams. And Major League Baseball this week, if all goes as planned, will become the latest elite sports league to pull off the small miracle of completing a season that once appeared beyond hope. Against all odds, and with their financial futures threatened as never before, the leagues deployed aggressive, rapid response testing that remains out of reach for the general public. Keeping spectators out or severely limiting attendance, they apparently avoided the calamity of a virus death traced to an event. And they pushed through, their schedules overlapping as never before, while the country was reeling from the pandemic and politics, and was not necessarily watching. When things looked dire, as when N.B.A. players refused to take the court in protest of the police killings convulsing the country, it took former President Barack Obama to step in and keep the action going, telephoning a group of players led by Chris Paul and James and persuading them not to abandon the season. In a late night call, after an acrimonious players' meeting on Aug. 26 appeared to leave the season hanging in the balance, the former president, a fan of the game who is friendly with basketball luminaries, stressed to the players that they would be giving up a powerful platform if they stopped playing. Seen as something of a wise elder of the sport, he urged them to demand specific actions from the league before agreeing to return (They resumed play in exchange for commitments from the league to work toward increased voting opportunities and to press for social change.) The leagues succeeded because they are enormously wealthy. They had enough money not just to administer comprehensive testing but also to pivot quickly and do things that would have seemed unimaginable in the past, like relocating the Toronto Blue Jays to Buffalo and closing off hundreds of basketball and hockey players in bubblelike zones in two Canadian cities and at Disney World in Florida for two months. Now the leagues have to figure out how to do it again as infection numbers have reached a record daily high in the United States, making it unclear how to protect players and other personnel without spending exorbitantly again. Baseball recently released its 2021 schedule with an April 1 opening day, but Commissioner Rob Manfred last week essentially said the schedule was little more than a series of dates on a calendar. "The reality is all planning for 2021 for us, and for every other business in America, has to have an asterisk next to it in terms of what the course of the virus is going to be," Manfred said on ESPN Radio. Resorting to bubbles seems unrealistic for an entire season. And going without ticket sales and all the money from overpriced hot dogs, beer, T shirts and parking has produced plenty of deep red balance sheets. None Week 11 Predictions: Here are our picks against the spread. N.F.L. Tightens Covid Protocols: As cases rise and Thanksgiving approaches, the league is requiring masks inside team facilities and increasing testing. The Packers' Defense Is Their M.V.P.: Green Bay's oft overlooked defense has kept the team from falling out of the Super Bowl chase. The Long Path to the Super Bowl: With 18 weeks in the regular season and fewer teams earning byes in the playoffs, the Super Bowl is still a long way off. Playoff Simulator: Explore every team's path to the postseason, updated live. The N.H.L., which should now be in the third week of the 2020 21 season, is targeting a Jan. 1 start date, but has yet to post a schedule, as the U.S. Canadian border remains closed. On Thursday, the league announced it was postponing its All Star Game and the Winter Classic, an outdoor game scheduled for New Year's Day. The Lakers won the N.B.A. championship on Oct. 11, ending a season less than two weeks before the next one would normally start. League officials have yet to say when play will resume. "We will react to the state of the art science," Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban said. "I can't say when, but I can say that whatever we do we will do with safety being our top priority." Casey Wasserman, the owner of a sports marketing and talent firm who has close relationships with the leaders of several leagues, said he was confident the N.H.L. and the N.B.A. would aim to start their seasons by early winter, perhaps with slightly shorter schedules of roughly 70 games, and to complete their playoffs in June, as usual, so they can return to normal schedules for the 2021 22 season. Major League Soccer is considering starting sometime in April rather than in early March. The W.N.B.A. played 22 regular season games this year instead of 34, as in 2019, but it ended at roughly the same time, putting less pressure on scheduling for next year. Where allowed, teams will admit spectators in limited numbers, as some N.F.L. teams have done. The Los Angeles Dodgers and Tampa Bay Rays are playing the World Series at a neutral stadium in Arlington, Texas, that is about 25 percent full. Still, as they so often do, sports are serving as a reflection of society. No one can say when most people will stop fearing large crowds, and the steps toward normalcy have had setbacks riddled with positive coronavirus tests. Even with payment from media contracts, teams and leagues still stand to lose billions without the so called bums in seats. Spectator spending brings in roughly 25 percent of the N.F.L.'s 15 billion in revenue, about one third of baseball's revenue and roughly 40 percent of the N.B.A.'s. For other sports, such as hockey, soccer and tennis, the share is substantially higher. Also, for any number of reasons including too much competition, an oxygen sucking presidential election and a distaste for watching games in empty stadiums millions of fans have largely rejected the version of pro sports that the pandemic has wrought. Television ratings plummeted for nearly every league 61 percent for the Stanley Cup playoffs compared with 2019, 49 percent for the N.B.A. finals, and more than 40 percent for the United States Open tennis and golf tournaments and for baseball's playoffs. Ratings for the N.F.L., which did not have to alter its traditional schedule, have fallen the least, by 13 percent. Throughout all the ups and downs, constant testing has been vital. Every league contracted with a private lab to perform multiple tests each week and produce rapid results, usually within 24 hours. N.F.L. players are tested and screened for symptoms every day. Already the league has conducted more than 450,000 tests, and the handful of positive cases have come not from the gridiron but from off the field activities like dining, according to the league and the players union. In Major League Soccer, tests occur every other day and the day before each match. "The only way any of this happens is with vigorous testing and the protocols working in tandem," said George Atallah, a spokesman for the N.F.L. Players Association. "Testing alone is not enough. It puts everyone in the right frame of mind, but also gives a false sense of security. It's not a ticket to ignore the protocols and do whatever you want." Agreements on testing, safety protocols and pay were crucial to persuading players to return for the 2020 seasons, but only the N.F.L. has figured out how to manage its finances beyond this year. Leagues are considering loosening regulations to allow private equity funds and other, publicly traded financial instruments to invest in teams. Last fall, the Wilpon family, the longtime owners of the New York Mets, pulled out of a 2.6 billion deal to sell their team to the hedge fund magnate Steve Cohen, only to agree last month to sell to him for just over 2.4 billion after a calamitous year on and off the field for the club. Steve Horowitz, a principal at Inner Circle Sports, which specialize in sports finance, noted that the potential prices of franchises appear not to have dropped substantially even though "in the pandemic, values of teams are down across the board because you have lost a tremendous amount of revenue." "Everyone's interests are really aligned here," he said. "Right now everyone is just trying to grind through the year. In total, it's 18 months of pain, and sports will be back." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
Molissa Fenley's dances flourish in wide open spaces, where the air around bodies becomes just as tangible as the sculptural shapes she creates for her dancers. It's hard to say if that quality relates to her early years growing up in Nigeria, but an uncluttered space like Judson Memorial Church, where her company returned Tuesday evening, provides a luminous setting for the breadth of her movement in her refined and systematic modern dances. Somehow, it's like gazing into the horizon of a foreign land. In its one off program, Molissa Fenley and Company presented three works, including "Redwood Park," Parts 1 and 2. The first was commissioned by the Oakland Ballet, in California; the second is a premiere. Though different in tone, the dances, inspired by Ms. Fenley's extensive walks in the Oakland Hills, share a similar spirit: sensitive, delicate yet strong. In the first section, set to percussive music by Joan Jeanrenaud, the dancers Evan Flood, Christiana Axelsen, Rebecca Chaleff and Matthew Roberts start out in first position. Soon, the stage is alive with swirling legs and curving arms, creating both tension and tranquillity, a hallmark of Ms. Fenley's choreography. The dancers are a marvel of containment and precision: As often as they rise on demi point and it happens a lot, from still balances to turns they convey a grounded poignancy. They're never, mercifully, too light. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
EMPIRE 8 p.m. on Fox. The fifth season of this drama will end after unfolding alongside a real life scandal that embroiled one of its stars, Jussie Smollett. His future on the show as Jamal Lyon remains somewhat unclear, so it will be interesting to see how the series ties up any loose ends. Going into the finale, the F.B.I. is looking into the entertainment company; Andre Lyon, the oldest son of Lucious (Terrence Howard) and Cookie Lyon (Taraji P. Henson), has attempted suicide; and someone winds up in a coffin. CTRL ALT DELETE on Vimeo. In the same way that "High Maintenance" on HBO connects its disparate New York characters through a shared marijuana dealer, this web series is made up of vignettes about people who visit or work at the same abortion clinic. The first season, with seven episodes that are each less than five minutes, confronts abortion from the perspective of the clinic's doctors, receptionists, counselors, patients and protesters, and explores the many circumstances behind the choice to have an abortion. The show, created by Roni Geva and Margaret Katch, is shot by an all female crew and approaches the topic with a light, comedic tone, while still highlighting the range of emotions experienced by the clinic's patients, their partners, friends and family. The second season starts streaming on Wednesday and brings back many of the same faces from the first, with Ed Begley Jr. joining the cast as a veteran doctor. LUCIFER on Netflix. What would a police procedural look like starring the Devil? This series, in its fourth season, explores just that. Tom Ellis stars as Lucifer Morningstar, a model esque version of Beelzebub, who relocates to Los Angeles from hell and gets a gig consulting for the Los Angeles Police Department. In the new season, Lucifer reconnects with a former flame, Eve, the original sinner, bringing her along on cases and to appointments with his therapist (Rachael Elaine Harris). But as the Prince of Darkness gets used to domestic bliss, his former partner, Detective Chloe Decker (Lauren German), receives a warning that "evil shall be released" when the Devil finds his first love. ACTION POINT (2018) Stream on Amazon; purchase on YouTube, Amazon, Google Play and Vudu. If you're longing for the summer months but dread the season's crowded beaches and long amusement park lines, allow Johnny Knoxville to whisk you away to a place where summers were much simpler, but not very safe. Here, the comedian plays the owner of a dilapidated and loosely regulated amusement park, who tries to fix it up. In true "Jackass" fashion, he is injured in the process, meaning that you can watch Knoxville be blasted by a power hose and catapulted into a barn from the comfort of your air conditioned living room. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
Alfred C. Snider, Who Promoted Healthy Debate as Just That, Dies at 65 Alfred C. Snider, a scholar, rhetorician and evangelist who sought to heal the world through debate and who in the process turned bucolic Vermont into the argumentative center of the world died Friday in Burlington, Vt. He was 65. His death, from complications of pneumonia, was announced by the University of Vermont, where he was the Edwin W. Lawrence professor of forensics and the longtime director of the university's debating team. Considered one of the foremost debating teachers of his era, Professor Snider known for his florid shirts, ardor for argument and the enigmatic nickname "Tuna" was renowned worldwide as a convener, coach and judge of debating competitions and workshops. At stake for young debaters, he often said, was the chance to advance academically, to improve communication skills and above all to attain cross cultural understanding. "My agenda is to fight back the darkness by trying to bring the light of human reason," Professor Snider told the Burlington publication Seven Days in 2004. "I want to replace weapons with words. I want every citizen to be a debater." At Vermont, Professor Snider taught legions of students to argue through courses like Persuasion, Presidential Campaign Rhetoric and the Rhetoric of Reggae Music. Many became lawyers, or debate coaches themselves. Under his stewardship, the university's debating team attacked questions that could range from whether the United Nations should offer bounties for capturing Somali pirates to whether women's sports should be guaranteed as much television time as men's. In 2011, the Vermont team was ranked No. 7 in the world by the International Debate Education Association, ahead of Harvard, Stanford and McGill Universities and the London School of Economics. The team is currently ranked 15th. Professor Snider was concerned in particular with endowing citizens of fledgling democracies with all the nonviolent weapons in the debater's arsenal. In 1982, he established what is now the World Debate Institute, which has brought international students, teachers and coaches to Vermont for an annual summer boot camp. He traveled to scores of countries among them Qatar, Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Botswana and a spate of former Soviet republics training debaters and organizing contests in the art of what he called "constructive disagreement." "I like to take debate where it's not," Professor Snider said in the Seven Days interview. "Yeah, I've lectured at Oxford and Cambridge, but I don't really feel they need me to tell them that debate's cool and they should do it. They're all set. But I do like to go to Serbia, Chile and Mongolia. My favorite countries are dictatorships in the process of falling, or where they recently got out of a long period of authoritarian rule." Alfred Charles Snider III was born in Pasadena, Calif., on Oct. 28, 1950, the son of Alfred Charles Snider Jr., a butcher, and the former Marguerite Dillard, a homemaker. Long afterward, Professor Snider described himself as having been an intellectually curious but chronically undisciplined student. "I was always talking when I wasn't supposed to," he recalled in a 2007 lecture. Then, in seventh grade, he stumbled onto his school debating team and found his vociferous calling. He competed through high school and was a nationally ranked debater at Brown, where he majored in Asian civilization and minored in communication. He earned a master's degree in rhetoric and public address from Emerson College and a Ph.D. in communications from the University of Kansas, and joined the Vermont faculty in 1982. He was a longtime resident of Burlington. Professor Snider's first marriage, to Sally Jane Zitzmann, ended in divorce. His survivors include his second wife, Bojana Skrt, a debate teacher from Slovenia; a sister, Janet Hermanaeu; a daughter from his first marriage, Sarah Snider Green; and two grandchildren. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Education |
Latest Project The first stateside "What's Up" was staged in May in New York to coincide with Frieze New York, held in a three story building in the Chelsea gallery district. To create "a dialogue" between young and more establishment artists, he paired John Chamberlain sculptures with those of Ernesto Burgos. "I'm not as well known in New York," he said. "So it was important to have the right space in a prime location." Next Thing He hopes to take "What's Up" to Los Angeles, Buenos Aires and Hong Kong. "I don't believe in the gallery model," he said. "Things are changing so quickly and people are getting bored of going to one gallery after another." Instead, he wants to try his hand at virtual exhibitions. "Today it's very tricky to buy art online, and I don't think it's working as it should," he said. "A dream of mine would be to become the go to guy in that space." Like Mother, Like Son Working with his mother comes with advantages and disadvantages. "My mother loves young people and has more energy than I do," he said. "At art fairs, she gets along with all of my friends, and I get along with all of hers. Although, of course, sometimes it can be irritating when your mother wants to go out later than you at a party. I'm like, 'Mom, it's time to go home.'" | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
PARIS In an effort to prepare for competition on cross Channel rail traffic, Eurostar said Thursday that it had awarded a hotly sought contract to upgrade its aging fleet of fast trains to a Germany company, Siemens. The announcement did not sit well in Paris, which had been backing a French champion, and officials sharply criticized the decision. The PS700 million, or 1.1 billion, contract will provide Eurostar which is majority owned by the French state through its ownership of the national railway S.N.C.F. with 10 of Siemens' sleek new Velaro e320 trains. Siemens beat out the A.G.V. trains made by Alstom, the French industrial conglomerate. Designed by the Italian firm Pininfarina, the trains will be capable of traveling on other networks, as Eurostar seeks to extend its own reach into Germany and the Netherlands. The Eurostar e320, as it is known, will carry more than 900 passengers at a top speed of 320 kilometers, or 200 miles, per hour, compared with the 750 passengers the current generation carries, at speeds of up to 300 kilometers per hour, Eurostar said. It will also have onboard WiFi and entertainment systems. The company hopes the new fleet will better position it for the arrival of Deutsche Bahn, the German operator that hopes to start offering service from points in Germany to London by the end of 2013, when Eurostar's monopoly ends. Nicolas Petrovic, Eurostar's chief executive, said Thursday in London that the decision to award the contract to Siemens was based on "technical, commercial and pricing criteria." "It was a very competitive tender and at the end Siemens made the best overall offer," Mr. Petrovic said. "There's nothing else behind that but commercial benefit to Eurostar." But the news was a bad break for Alstom at a time when stagnating economies are keeping European orders down and competition is growing in overseas markets from rising stars like China. Alstom was bailed out by the French state in 2004, when President Nicolas Sarkozy was finance minister, and it is seen as a national standard bearer. Dominique Bussereau, the secretary of state for transportation, last month went so far as to call for the creation of "an Airbus of the rails," a cooperative arrangement to end ruinous competition between French and German champions, which he said only benefited China. In a joint statement Thursday, Mr. Bussereau and Jean Louis Borloo, the minister for ecology, energy, and sustainable development, expressed their "stupefaction" at Eurostar's "failure to take the applicable security regulations into account." They said they supported international competition, but considering the three fires that have occurred in the tunnel, including a particularly damaging one in 2008, "no deterioration in the level of security can be considered." They pointed to the fact that the Siemens' trains employ "distributed traction," where the locomotive function is distributed throughout the train, instead of traditional locomotives, which pull from the front and push from the rear. The head of Instagram agrees to testify as Congress probes the app's effects on young people. Today in On Tech: A fix it job for government tech. When the tunnel safety rules were written in the 1980s, the only trains considered were Eurostar trains made by Alstom using the traditional technology. Since then, the global trend is increasingly toward distributed traction. The Channel Tunnel Safety Authority, which advises the French and British regulators overseeing the tunnel, recommended in March that this rule be relaxed to allow for distributed traction trains. The authority also called for a reduction to 375 meters from 400 meters in the minimum train length allowed. The length is important because emergency exits inside the tunnel are spaced 375 meters apart. (The e320s ordered by Eurostar are 400 meters long.) Eurotunnel, as well as a French British intergovernmental committee, approved those recommendations this year. "In principle, there is nothing in this train which would be ruled out as far as it being able to obtain authorization," said Richard Clifton, head of the British delegation to the Channel Tunnel Safety Authority. But Mr. Borloo and Mr. Bussereau said that the French emphasized Wednesday at a meeting of the intergovernmental committee "the absolute necessity for exhaustive studies" before distributed traction trains could be authorized. "What is surprising about this announcement is that the Siemens train doesn't conform to the safety standards and security rules of the tunnel," said Virginie Hourdin Bremond, a spokeswoman for Alstom. "There will just be some more discussion, but I think common sense will prevail," said Mr. Petrovic of Eurostar, in acknowledging the French concerns. He added that he expected the contract to be completed "in the next few weeks at maximum." A European Commission directive to stimulate competition in international passenger rail routes came into force Jan. 1, but the jury is still out on whether entrenched players in passenger traffic, including Deutsche Bahn and S.N.C.F., also known as Societe nationale des chemins de fer francais, will make room for upstarts. A similar 2007 directive regarding freight traffic has not yet had the desired effect. On Oct. 19, a Deutsche Bahn high speed train will arrive in London after passing through the tunnel for tests. The company hopes to show that two of its 200 meter trains tied together are as safe as a single 400 meter train, and that distributed traction is safe in the tunnel. Deutsche Bahn, fully owned by the German state, estimates it will carry as many as a million passengers to London each year, from Cologne and possibly Frankfurt, once its service is running. Currently, its high speed trains go as far as Brussels, meaning passengers change there for the Eurostar service. Andreas Fuhrmann, a Deutsche Bahn spokesman, said the new service would would generate a new market in Germany for cross Channel rail traffic, as most people traveling to Britain today choose to fly or take a bus. Like Eurostar, Deutsche Bahn is planning to use the Siemens Velaro platform for its service, he said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Global Business |
More specifically, the United States Patent and Trademark Office turned down the basketball superstar LeBron James's attempt to trademark the phrase "Taco Tuesday." The patent office said that the phrase was "a commonplace term, message or expression widely used by a variety of sources that merely conveys an ordinary, familiar, well recognized concept or sentiment." It cited several news articles that showed that "Taco Tuesday" is used widely "to express enthusiasm for tacos by promoting and celebrating them on a dedicated weekday." The patent office also pointed to the similarity of "Taco Tuesday" to another trademark already in existence, "Techno Taco Tuesday," which is held by an entertainment company in Las Vegas. The office said "merely omitting some of the wording from a registered mark may not overcome a likelihood of confusion." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
The letter name for a musical note was just a distraction to Ornette Coleman, the composer and multi instrumentalist who rattled the jazz world with his unorthodox ideas about melody, harmony and group improvisation in the 1950s. "'C' is just a name," he told one of his students, Daniel Paul Schnee, as Maria Golia quotes him in her fittingly unconventional new book. "You could call it 'Tokyo' or 'wisdom' or 'sandwich,' but that doesn't signify the sound." In his lexicon of indefinite definitions, the free sounding, pitch twisting eruptions of sound he created were "territories" for his bandmates and their listeners to explore. As Schnee recalled in an essay Golia quotes, Coleman thought of his music as "a territory in which to create variations or new directions into other territories related to the melody, as well as your own ideas as new territories to work in." Conceived of as territory, music is indeed more like Tokyo than like the letter "C." Shaped by individual knowledge, it can be a form of wisdom, too. And with musical ingredients combined in layers of textures and colors, Ornette Coleman's work was, in a sense, a musical sandwich. Golia, the author of three previous books (on Egypt, photography and other nonmusic subjects), has made no attempt to write an exhaustive, intimately detailed biography of Coleman or an in depth musicological study of his ever challenging art. There are already fine books of both kinds, including "Ornette Coleman: A Harmolodic Life," by the jazz writer John Litweiler, and "Ornette Coleman: His Life and Music," by the musicologist and bassist Peter Niklas Wilson, among others. Golia serves her subject fittingly by taking a nontraditional approach, applying the concept of territory to Coleman's time on earth. "Ornette Coleman: The Territory and the Adventure" is an atlas in prose, a guide to the territories of varied sorts social, racial, aesthetic, economic and even geographic that Coleman came out of, traveled through, lived near, occupied, left behind or transformed. The starting location in Coleman's story is Fort Worth, the partly Southern, largely Western, formerly Mexican city in the heart of Texas where Randolph Denard Ornette Coleman was born in 1930. Golia, who once ran a performing arts center in Fort Worth, handles the area's complex history deftly, touching on both the horrors enacted by the Texas Ku Klux Klan and the vibrant life affirming force of Baptist and Pentecostal churches in the African American community where Coleman's family lived. The open emotionality and penetrating physicality of the Sunday morning music Coleman experienced when he was young sounds that moved the soul by way of the body had a lasting impact on his music. John Wallace Carter, a musician and composer who attended high school with Coleman, captured the lasting influence of that experience in an interview Golia quotes: "As I search my experiences now, looking for areas to call upon for thematic material ... I go back often to the scenes of my early childhood. I wish I could capture the raw power of my baptizing pastor." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
Graduating from fists to lead pipes, then to dynamite, Raymond and his partner "Nails" Markey (Warner Richmond) sell protection, corrupt unions, buy judges, shake down developers and even threaten the city's food supply. But as Raymond ascends, he falls for a debutante. The gang thinks "you're putting on the high hat," Markey warns him anticipating the movie's kiss off image of a topper flung from a car. "Quick Millions" is largely forgotten today, but it was critically well received in the 1930s. "Although cinema patrons may be surfeited with underworld tales, this particular effusion has the distinct advantage of being endowed with originality and suspense and also of being exceedingly well directed," Mordaunt Hall wrote in The New York Times. While not a hit, the movie did contribute a number of ideas to Howard Hawks's 1932 "Scarface." Outrageous gestures abound: A hooker strikes a match off a cop's badge, and Raymond gets a quick 12,000 in petty cash out of a gang member's pocket. George Raft, anticipating his role in "Scarface," appears as Raymond's enforcer, so smooth he picks out a revolver to match his evening clothes. (Raft, a professional tango dancer before he entered movies, here enlivens a gangster party with a suave soft shoe shimmy.) There's no shortage of attitude. One hoodlum sneers at "laws made by lawyers for other lawyers to break." The movie stops dead for an irate district attorney to launch into a long rant regarding millionaire racketeers and big business crime, attacking his audience, Chamber of Commerce types playing footsie with the mob, as "yellow" cowards. Fox promoted Brown as an expert on crime who has "had frequent contact with gangster types and concededly knows more about them than any other person in motion pictures." True or not, he was an obviously talented filmmaker who apparently rubbed his bosses the wrong way. Characterized by the film historian Carlos Clarens as a "pugnacious leftist," Brown would only direct two other movies, "Hell's Highway" (1932) and "Blood Money" (1933), both in the hard boiled crime territory he staked out with "Quick Millions." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
Latest project: In "Sunnyside," he plays a "catastrophically dumb" fashionista of mysterious origins ("our dad lives in international waters"). "The show doesn't shy away from showing how the immigration process overlaps with things like affordable housing and lack of health care in this country," he said. Next thing: He is developing a romantic comedy inspired by "Pride and Prejudice," only set on Fire Island, for the streaming video platform Quibi . "I am a huge Jane Austen fan," he said. He also started a podcast with his friend and fellow comedian Mitra Jouhari called "Urgent Care." The show's aim is to bestow "unqualified, completely unhinged advice" to "people who apparently have nowhere else to turn," he said. Clothes minded: Mr. Kim Booster is a bit of a fashionista in real life, too. "I'm in this weird spot where my really tuned in fashion friends would say I'm just riding the trends," he said. "And any of my really basic friends would say I look insane." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
ORIGINAL CAST ALBUM: COMPANY (1970) Stream on the Criterion Channel. Stephen Sondheim's formally adventurous 1970 Broadway musical about modern relationship issues is viewed by many as his breakout work as an independent creative force. D.A. Pennebaker, the filmmaker known for his documentary work on the upheaval and music of the 1960s and '70s, was on hand when the original cast gathered at "The Church," a Columbia Records studio in Midtown Manhattan, to record the show's cast album. Sondheim is featured in the documentary, as is Elaine Stritch, who played Joanne, and other performers. Among the songs captured are "Another Hundred People" and "The Ladies Who Lunch." PAN (2015) Stream on Hulu; rent on Amazon, Google Play, iTunes, Vudu and YouTube. J.M. Barrie's story of Peter Pan has inspired many adaptations since it debuted in its recognizable form as a play in 1904. This movie by Joe Wright and Jason Fuchs tries to add something to the canon by providing the eponymous character with an origin story. In this telling, Peter (Levi Miller) is an orphan living in London during World War II. He and several of his friends are kidnapped by pirates and brought to Neverland to mine for a magical substance. When he runs afoul of the pirate leader Blackbeard (Hugh Jackman), Peter discovers a hidden talent that saves his skin and puts him on the path to finding his true identity. ROSWELL, NEW MEXICO 9 p.m. on The CW. The city that lends this series its name has been an important location in American mythology since remnants of a mysterious aircraft were found at a ranch nearby in 1947. The military said it was the wreckage of a balloon but some believe that an alien spaceship crashed at the site. This show, a reboot of an earlier TV series, opts for the unofficial, speculative narrative. It tells the story of Liz (Jeanine Mason), a scientific researcher who returns home to New Mexico and rekindles her relationship with Max (Nathan Parsons), a stranded alien in hiding. Their connection has been tested repeatedly by unresolved secrets and extraterrestrial intrigue. In the Season 2 finale, Liz will have to contend with a number of threats and she may not be able to save everyone she cares about. SONGLAND 10 p.m. on NBC. For almost two decades,there has been a steady stream of reality shows that allow aspiring performers to strut their stuff. Songwriters, who tend to work behind the scenes, have had far fewer opportunities. This competition show was conceived as a way to redress that imbalance and show viewers how songs are crafted. Each episode gathers four writers who present their creations to a group of music producers and one guest star or band.The winning submission is recorded by the musical guest under their own name and released. The second season wraps with the R B superstar Usher sitting in as the talent scout and prospective client. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
Ruben Santos, a technical maintenance specialist for Oatey, a Cleveland based commercial and residential plumbing product manufacturer and distributor, has returned to a place he hasn't been in 30 years: the classroom. "I was so nervous because I have been out of school since 1988, and going back to classes was a shocker to me," Mr. Santos, 48, said. But it's not a typical classroom. His lessons are taught in a retrofitted 53 foot long semi truck trailer in Oatey's parking lot. His customized training is paid for by his employer and provided by Cuyahoga Community College, also known as Tri C. Tri C's mobile classroom is one of a growing number of similar labs being rolled out by community colleges in response to employers' needs for skilled workers in industries from manufacturing to health care to information technology. The twist is that they're going where the students are rather than having the students come to them. And students learn skills they can use right away. "The mission of community colleges is all about access to the skills training, and we are seeing more and more colleges adopting the mobile technology and buying the equipment to do it because they see it has such an impact," said Darlene Miller, executive director of the National Council for Workforce Education, an affiliate council of the American Association of Community Colleges. The Tri C unit hit the road about two years ago and travels in Northeast Ohio to companies such as Arconic, Mold Rite Plastics and Ford, and to schools in nine counties. It houses a lab area for hands on training and a classroom space with 10 desk stations, Wi Fi and video systems. It cost around 340,000 to refurbish the trailer as a classroom, and was funded primarily by a grant from Citizens Bank. But there are also the operational costs of roughly 9,000 per quarter to cover fuel and maintenance. "Our trailer, which is booked for 47 weeks this year, allows us to take the training to businesses and directly address the region's manufacturing skills gap," said William Gary, executive vice president of work force, community and economic development at Tri C. "Employers allow their employees time, and they can walk right out of the plant and into our trailer for an hour, or three hours, to conduct the training right on site." Oatey currently has 15 employees enrolled in mobile training. The curriculum includes: modules on blueprint and schematics reading; sensors, pneumatics and hydraulics; and advanced troubleshooting. "We recognized a need to grow the skills of our internal technical talent," Bob Rodgers, Oatey's chemical plant manager, said. In turn, the company expects a bang for its buck. "We anticipate seeing improved machine uptime," Mr. Rodgers said. "When machines are running, we achieve greater efficiency and production. Moreover, with this investment, we see enthusiasm and engagement from our maintenance team who appreciate our commitment to their professional development." The Cuyahoga Community College Mobile Training Unit is a retrofitted 53 foot trailer that travels in Northeast Ohio to companies and schools. Dustin Franz for The New York Times For workers who have been on the job for decades like Mr. Santos, the training is a way to keep digital skills current. "For those who are mid or late career, who perhaps haven't had to navigate the enrollment process, time commitment and commuting aspects of college, the convenience of the mobile classroom has been a welcome innovation," said Maureen Pansky, senior human resources manager at Oatey's manufacturing plant. There is a real demand for these mobile units, especially for older workers who need to learn new skills or enhance their skills to move forward, said Phyllis Cummins, senior research scholar at the Scripps Gerontology Center at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. She is examining the role that community colleges can play for workers ages 40 to 64 to help them remain competitive in the labor market. The students she has interviewed were all "very concerned about keeping their skills up to date and having opportunities to improve their skills," Ms. Cummins said. The good news: "Because of very low unemployment rates, employers are taking on more of the responsibility for providing training and opportunities, which can also help workers, for example, shift to a new position in manufacturing as technology makes some jobs obsolete." One of the mobile lab pioneers is Northeast Wisconsin Technical College in Green Bay. "We started in 2010 with our first one, which taught computer numerical machining," said Mark Weber, dean of trades and engineering technologies. "Our goal was to bring training to rural high schools and introduce students to advanced manufacturing careers. We give them hands on experience with electromechanical and automation engineering training and teach maintenance technician skills for manufacturing plants." Today, the classrooms on wheels are offered in seven counties and 36 high schools, and they have expanded to employer site training, especially in rural areas, Mr. Weber said. The college also operates a lab specializing in information technology. "It has clearly taken off," he said. Mobile labs from Pueblo Community College in Pueblo, Colo., deliver work force training in a range of advanced manufacturing skills via classrooms housed in seven trailers (an eighth is in production.) They contain multimedia instructor stations and specialized equipment. To date, the labs have been used in eight Colorado counties and in Utah and New Mexico. "Much of our service area is rural," she added, "so we also set up in a general location and multiple people can come for training, or employers can send their employees." Students run the gamut from eighth graders learning about careers to incumbent workers to those learning new skills to enter manufacturing. "We also take training programs to those who are incarcerated and going to be released in one or two years to provide them with jobs skills they will need so have a sustainable job when released," Ms. Corum said. The numbers speak for themselves: "Our Pueblo Corporate College team has provided over 160,000 hours of 'earn as you learn' training," Patty Erjavec, president of Pueblo Community College, said. "Those completing the training see, on average, an initial 3 percent increase in pay." One benefit for employers is the convenience. "It is a little insane how easy it is," said Ron Francis, the plant manager for pewag Inc., an industrial chain manufacturer in Pueblo. "It's great because we're able to grab our employees in training back if we need them since they are not off site." Another advantage is that "the instructors are the same ones you get if you went to the college," Mr. Francis said. "They know the material really well and set it up so our guys can be a success from the minute they walk back out." Dylan Rebensdorf, 23, is one of the pewag employees taking advantage of the on site classes. "Everything they're able to teach in that lab you can see for yourself on the work floor," he said. The upside is tough to ignore: "I would love to see this all over the country for workers like me," Mr. Santos, the Oatey maintenance specialist, said. "I have been here for 30 years, and the mobile training is really giving me the opportunity to grow and stay on the job longer than I might have been able to do without it." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Education |
Hoping to thwart a sophisticated malware system linked to Russia that has infected hundreds of thousands of internet routers, the F.B.I. has made an urgent request to anybody with one of the devices: Turn it off, and then turn it back on. The malware is capable of blocking web traffic, collecting information that passes through home and office routers, and disabling the devices entirely, the bureau announced on Friday. A global network of hundreds of thousands of routers is already under the control of the Sofacy Group, the Justice Department said last week. That group, which is also known as A.P.T. 28 and Fancy Bear and believed to be directed by Russia's military intelligence agency, hacked the Democratic National Committee ahead of the 2016 presidential election, according to American and European intelligence agencies. The F.B.I. has several recommendations for any owner of a small office or home office router. The simplest thing to do is reboot the device, which will temporarily disrupt the malware if it is present. Users are also advised to upgrade the device's firmware and to select a new secure password. If any remote management settings are in place, the F.B.I. suggests disabling them. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
"I wanted to write about the everyday and common but nonetheless undeserved experience of women around me," said Cho Nam Joo, author of "Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982." Kim Jiyoung, the exceptionally average protagonist of Cho Nam Joo's novel, is 33, living on the outskirts of Seoul with her husband and infant daughter. She is exhausted by the monotony of cooking, cleaning and child rearing, and vaguely resentful that she gave up her job at a marketing agency. There's nothing especially dramatic about her story, which is precisely Cho's point. Translated from the Korean by Jamie Chang, Cho's clinical prose is bolstered with figures and footnotes to illustrate how ordinary Jiyoung's experience is. "In 2014, around the time Kim Jiyoung left the company, one in five married women in Korea quit their job because of marriage, pregnancy, childbirth and child care, or the education of young children," she writes, adding exact percentages of working women by age group, with a footnote from a 2015 study published in South Korea's Health and Social Welfare Review. Even though her book, "Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982," is fiction, Cho grounded it in statistics so that its message wouldn't be dismissed as a made up account of one woman's experience, she said. "I wanted to write about issues that women could not speak about before, because they were taken for granted," Cho said last month during a Skype interview from her home in Seoul, where the streets in her neighborhood were empty because of the coronavirus outbreak. "I wanted to make this into a public debate." The new, often subversive novels by Korean women, which have intersected with the rise of the MeToo movement, are driving discussions beyond the literary world. "These books exposed Korea's dirty little secret, which is that despite being seemingly wealthy and modern and enlightened and cool, the social advances have fallen far, far, far behind the money," said Euny Hong, author of "The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation Is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture." "What's recent in Korean feminist literature is the first world problem nature of it, where Korea is an extremely wealthy country, and there's still something that's profoundly wrong." "Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982," published in South Korea four years ago, is coming out in the U.S. this month. Cho wrote "Kim Jiyoung" in 2015, finishing a draft in just a few months. At the time, misogynistic trolls were becoming a greater presence online. False rumors proliferated on the internet that a South Korean woman had contributed to spreading the MERS virus in Hong Kong after refusing to be quarantined. Derogatory slang targeting housewives, like the term "mum roach," was becoming more prevalent. "I wanted to write about the everyday and common but nonetheless undeserved experience of women around me, about the despair, exhaustion and fear that we feel for no reason other than that we're women," Cho said in an email through a translator. "I also wanted this story to not just be a work of fiction, but a very likely true to life biography of someone out there." Like her heroine, Cho experienced pervasive sexism throughout her life, she said. Born in Seoul in 1978, she studied sociology at Ewha Womans University, the nation's top women's college, then spent nearly a decade writing for current events TV programs. She quit to raise her child but found it difficult to restart her career a biographical detail that informed her novel. She began gathering articles and sociological data and decided to write a fictional biography of an average Korean woman, following her from birth to the present. In "Kim Jiyoung," small disappointments and minor outrages trail Jiyoung for her entire life. When she is a child, her parents spoil her younger brother, while she and her sister have to share everything; at her all girls' high school, male teachers grope and harass their students under the guise of examining their uniforms. In her first job, Jiyoung and her female colleagues are passed over for choice assignments that are given to less competent but higher paid men. When Jiyoung gets married and decides to start a family, she and her husband quickly determine that she should be the one to stay home since he makes more money, an outcome that was a foregone conclusion. "The fact that Jiyoung saw this coming did not make her feel any less depressed," Cho writes. One day, when Jiyoung is sitting on a park bench drinking coffee while her daughter naps in her stroller, she overhears a stranger calling her a "mum roach" who leeches off her husband's paycheck. Her pent up frustration boils over, and she begins speaking in the voices of other women, some living, some dead, the one moment where the story tips from the mundane into the slightly surreal. Along with praise, the novel generated a backlash among men who opposed Cho's feminist message. After the pop star Irene, a member of the group Red Velvet, said she was reading it, angry male fans posted videos of themselves burning photos of the singer. A crowdfunding effort began to support a parody book titled "Kim Ji hun Born in 1990," about a young Korean man who faces reverse discrimination for being male. Cho never expected it to drive such extreme reactions. Now that it has become a blockbuster, she has been gratified by the responses from readers who saw their experiences reflected in Kim Jiyoung's story. "My novel made people speak out," she said. "The novel became more complete thanks to the readers themselves." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
Photographs by Roger Kisby for The New York Times Photographs by Roger Kisby for The New York Times Credit... Photographs by Roger Kisby for The New York Times Clockwise from top left: Tarriona Ball of Tank and the Bangas, the Weather Station, Lingua Franca, La Cuneta Son Machin, Shame, Superorganism, and fans of Mallrat at South by Southwest in Austin, Tex. AUSTIN, Tex. Even past its peak, the annual South by Southwest Music Festival was a prodigious thing, with some 2,000 acts performing in Austin's clubs, theaters, hotels and parking lots from March 12 through Sunday. This year's festival, the 32nd, didn't have any arena circuit headliner or overbearing corporate sponsorships, reflecting a dwindling recording business. But that just helped level the playing field for the performers Austin mainstays, international visitors, punks from multiple generations, singer songwriters, even some SoundCloud rappers who still flock to SXSW in hopes of being discovered or getting a boost. No one listener can choose a definitive "best of" SXSW; even in day and night concertgoing, it's impossible to hear more than a small percentage of the performers. Here are 17 acts that stood out this year. SHAME Charlie Steen's bright blue jacket came off early in the set by Shame, a South London band barely out of their teens. By the time his Velvet Underground T shirt followed it, a mosh pit was already churning. Shame activates the visceral instincts of punk and proto punk, with guitars droning and gnashing, drums kicking them into motion and Mr. Steen barking lyrics about deep disaffection; between songs he had banter like: "Money first, music second. No, I'm just joking we're a guitar band in 2018." The way he ricocheted around the stage along with forays onto the shoulders of audience members Mr. Steen should have sported a Stooges T shirt. Twitching, hunching, crucifying himself with the microphone stand on his shoulders, his moves had the makings of a thousand GIFs. LINGUA FRANCA Mariah Parker, who performs as Lingua Franca, merges rapping, spoken word, singing, a social conscience, a sense of humor and a limber physical presence to mix the personal and the political; tracks built on ingeniously manipulated jazz samples are a bonus. She's a Ph.D. student in linguistics at the University of Georgia; she's also thoroughly down to earth. LUCY ROSE This singer dared to perform quietly at SXSW, radiating solace and benevolence in her gauzy, luminous voice. She's an English songwriter who gained some American listeners with choruses for the rapper Logic. She sang about regretful leave takings and the possibilities of tender reunions over undulating piano chords or unobtrusive guitar; there were echoes of Feist and Joni Mitchell, but she had her own melodic grace. BALUN Latin rock remains wide open to ideas not limited by national origin. Balun, a band from Puerto Rico, sometimes used a reggaeton beat, but it was also ready to layer on deep electronic bass tones, the quick strumming of the small Andean guitar called a charango, pealing rock guitars and ethereal soprano vocals, adding up to songs full of positive aspirations. OUGHT The post punk band Ought, from Montreal, won't be pinned down from song to song. It can be melodic, singing about something like romance; it can seethe with frustration; it can switch to jagged, stop start dissonances. And it can find its way toward ranting affirmation: "I'm no longer afraid to die," it declared in "Beautiful Blue Sky." Whatever the idiom, it sounds as if the band means it. THE WEATHER STATION Both serenity and storminess infuse the songs that Tamara Lindeman, from Toronto, writes as the Weather Station. Her band's folk rock is steeped in Joni Mitchell and Fairport Convention, weighing the textures of interwoven guitars; her lyrics reveal her interior monologues with a literary, lived in sense of detail, often pondering the ways a couple's lives can grow together and apart: "An ambulance passed on the street, and you took my arm reflexively," she sang in "Thirty." DERMOT KENNEDY Angels, demons, ghosts, memories and all the dimensions of love haunt the Irish songwriter Dermot Kennedy. He has a grainy, melancholy voice that can crest with a howling rasp; he's an acknowledged fan of David Gray. Onstage at SXSW, his songs revealed their folky structures, built on guitar or piano. But they also harnessed the dynamics of electronic dance music, with drumbeats sputtering into double time and choruses that exploded into his howl. The valley and peak production makes his songs more suitable to current radio, though it may be a Faustian bargain: W ill the tracks sound dated in a few years? JACKIE MENDOZA A member of the band Gingerlys, Jackie Mendoza backed herself for this show with her own laptop tracks. They were dense concoctions that changed radically from song to song, touching down at times in dance beats before drifting into more abstract zones, and then getting reeled back by her straightforward vocal lines, with lyrics in English and Spanish. JADE BIRD Jealousy and separation sparked song after song in a showcase set by Jade Bird; she even had a pre emptive breakup song: "Knew we had to stop before we started/to torture each other," she rattled off in "Cathedral." She's an English songwriter with a country rock streak and a furious rasp when she gets riled, which was fairly often in the songs she unveiled: "Baby thanks for leaving me/Happy anniversary," she snarled. MALLRAT All the awkwardness and annoyances of suburban teenage life find their way into the songs of Grace Shaw, a 19 year old Australian who calls herself Mallrat. She worries, and doesn't worry, about fitting in or being liked; she mocks the comforts of sterile surroundings. Her songs turn mild rap cadences into singsong melodies, set to vamps that match guitar or piano chords with perky electronics. And during the festival she performed at a mall store. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
BILLION DOLLAR BURGER Inside Big Tech's Race for the Future of Food By Chase Purdy Human appetites are strange things. Most eaters (I include myself) will salivate at bacon, despite what we know of the waste, squalor and suffering caused by mainstream meat production. Yet when we hear about a new type of "ethical" meat with a much lower carbon footprint, cultured from cells without killing a single animal, our initial response is usually something like: "Ew! I wouldn't eat that." We should try to get beyond our disgust about "lab meat," argues the journalist Chase Purdy, who is in the rare position of having actually tasted it. In a fast paced global narrative, Purdy follows the various cell cultured meat companies that are currently competing to get their product to market first. The front runners are in Israel, the Netherlands and (no surprise) Silicon Valley. The results of what Purdy calls this "edible space race" may shape the future of meat eating around the world. Meat that is grown in a vat doesn't taste as bad as you might expect, according to Purdy. It's not as if conventional ground beef from feedlot cows tastes that great either when you really pay attention. In San Francisco, at the offices of the food company JUST, a lab tech serves Purdy a taco stuffed with duck chorizo grown from cells. The meat, he reports, is "moist and richly flavored." The early prototypes of cell cultured meat grown from muscle stem cells suffered from being too lean, but now the companies have figured out ways to grow fat tissue as well as muscle tissue, which means that the mouthfeel is getting closer to the meat we know (though it's still easier to make a texturally plausible meatball than a convincing steak). This is Purdy's first book, and he sometimes falls into journalistic cliches. His story teems with the occasional "make or break" moment or a light bulb going off in someone's head. But the upside is that his writing is always punchy and readable, even when he is explaining the complex and gruesome biology of growing a new piece of flesh from an old one. Sometimes there is a kind of Frankenstein fascination, such as in his description of how scientists at JUST have figured out a way to manipulate cells collected from the pointy tip of a chicken's feather to become not just more feathers but also muscle and fat. Purdy explains that "scientists can take a cell that would normally live its life as a feather producer, tell it to stop working on feathers, and then revert it back into an earlier stage cell." In this way, cells from a single feather could give rise to multiple batches of chicken nuggets. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
READ ALL ABOUT IT On distribution day, or Distro, staff members of The Koala, a student run publication at San Diego State University, pass out copies on campus to mixed reviews. On a recent cloudless afternoon, a group of young comedy writers one in Ray Bans and a floppy wizard hat, another in skateboard sneakers and funky jeans descended upon San Diego State University's palm tree dotted campus, brandishing copies of their latest creation: a 12 page broadsheet of lewd humor. It was distribution day, or Distro, and staff members of The Koala, California's most reviled student publication, had 8,000 copies to hand out. "Come and get it, you know you want it," thundered Erik Luchsinger, a 21 year old management major, in Hawaiian swim trunks, tank top and bow tie. "All the cool kids are reading it!" bellowed Taylor Etchart, a senior foods and nutrition major. "Guaranteed to be funnier than your textbook!" another staff writer shouted as students whizzed by on skateboards and bicycles. The Koala traffics in the kind of off color banter even the writers recognize as offensive, though they also characterize its content as "witty" and "artistic." Issues are peppered with jokes about homosexuals, Jews, Latinos, African Americans, cancer patients and injured orphans. "Zimmermanslaughter" mocked the killing of the black teenager Trayvon Martin at the hands of a neighborhood watch coordinator. A particularly controversial issue featured a piece with the headline "RAPE!" It advised student rapists on what to do "when you drunkenly realize she's conscious enough to call the cops": "Wipe off the blood and hide in the bushes NOW!" "Koala Call Outs" are anonymous reader letters filled with slurs about students and professors, who are often named or described. The student run tabloid has had a controversial presence across the region at the University of California, San Diego, where it originated in 1982 and now only occasionally publishes, and at California State's San Marcos campus, where it was shuttered more than a year ago. Here at the state university system's San Diego campus, students routinely criticize the paper for promoting "rape culture." Periodic editorials and campaigns denounce The Koala, including one in 2010 to persuade local businesses to discontinue advertising. Last fall, a group of students sent a letter to the university senate's Freedom of Expression Committee demanding an end to distribution on campus. Despite all this, The Koala seems to be flourishing. It has recouped its lost advertising dollars, and revenues are up by more than 100 percent from fall 2012 (the editorial staff is not paid). For the first time, staff members are trying to sell subscriptions to graduating seniors, to foster an alumni base, and there is a beefed up online presence. Koala coffee cups, stickers and T shirts are in the works, and the paper set up a table during rush hour on the quad for a "Koala Awareness" event. Martin Beil, the business manager, says the goal is no longer just to survive but to "fully saturate the market." With its hip, fanzine look, The Koala has its fans. "Issues fly around the dorms," Mr. Luchsinger insisted. "We find them in bathrooms, in libraries and in the cafeteria." The paper's "enemies," he said, just don't get it. Mr. Luchsinger, who says he culls inspiration from satirists like Benjamin Franklin, views the tabloid as rebellious and boundary pushing. "This is not highbrow journalism," he acknowledged. "But we are still trying to do something substantial." The Koala's mission, he says, is to tease and tweak the campus melting pot. Juliana Bloom, who was recently promoted to editor after Mr. Luchsinger, puts it simply: "We're a comedy publication. It's O.K. for us to joke about serious stuff." ALL THE VIEWS UNFIT TO PRINT (BY US) An expurgated front page of The Koala, which traffics in off color banter and slurs on students and professors. Not surprisingly, detractors don't find anything funny here. "I dread it when it comes out," said Susan E. Cayleff, a professor in the women's studies department, who spends class time during Distro Days discussing The Koala. "It makes students terrified and uncomfortable and not proud to be here." IN 2001, A SPIRITED SCIENCE MAJOR named George Lee Liddle 3rd became editor in chief of U.C. San Diego's Koala, courting controversy with risque content while currying favor with national free speech activists, who rushed to the paper's aid when administrators tried to close The Koala there. After graduating, Mr. Liddle sought to expand the paper's reach. He registered The Koala as a for profit business in 2005 and contacted students at San Diego State, where they secured student association status and office space. Briefly, the papers existed in an ambiguous universe: as both business and university organizations. Critics lobbied administrators to revoke student association status at U.C. San Diego, and eventually at San Marcos. The conflict was moot at San Diego State. Staff members were accused of alcohol and drug related violations and its university affiliation pulled. Today, the paper is published off campus. The battles over The Koala provide a glimpse of how challenging it can be for a university to uphold its free speech mores yet still remain a civil, welcoming place for its increasingly diverse student body. San Diego State's code "defends the expression we abhor as well as the expression we support," meaning The Koala can mouth off about different races and still be untouchable. Jung Min Choi, an associate professor in the sociology department, has been one of The Koala's most vocal critics, frequently using the paper in his classes as living exhibits of racial intolerance. In 2008, an African American professor in his department was attacked in an anonymous reader letter: "Your dissatisfaction with being a fat, ugly and childless black woman is evident," read part of the letter. It accused the professor of "preaching" instead of "teaching." Dr. Choi, who specializes in race and identity, and his colleagues approached the university's Center for Student Rights and Responsibilities about what they considered a case of faculty harassment. "I must say I was not actually greeted very warmly," he recalled. Officials told him they had no intention of censuring the paper. "They have a right to be here," Greg Block, the chief communications officer, told me. "We don't necessarily agree with everything they publish, but that's neither here nor there." And when students pleaded last fall with Mark Freeman, chairman of the Freedom of Expression Committee, to help shut it down, he wrote back that "freedom of the press is very broadly protected." Jimmy Talamantes, a graduate student who is Mexican American, was one of the letter signers. He called the response disappointing. "Students should not feel threatened by any person or organization while attending an institution of higher learning," he said. SERIOUSLY "This is not highbrow journalism," said Erik Luchsinger, a recent editor. "But we are still trying to do something substantial." He, and the spirit of Kramer, presided over a staff meeting in the fall. T. Lynne Pixley for The New York Times TO BETTER UNDERSTAND what's so funny about The Koala, I joined the staff at one of its Sunday night meetings, in a cluttered one bedroom apartment on the edge of the San Diego State campus. Sitting on a shag rug beneath a framed poster of the "Seinfeld" character Kramer, and between bites of guava cookies supplied by Mr. Luchsinger's mother, students reviewed their last issue, which was projected onto a flat screen television. When the scan stopped on the staff box, they cackled at their pen names. The use of them angers critics, who complain that if The Koala is going to publish its targets' names, the staff ought to use real names, too. "Who's Toilet?" someone asked, reading off one of the bylines. The room chortled. Mr. Luchsinger talked finances, then consulted the group on the paper's fraying relationship with the university's Afrikan Student Union. "Do you guys think it would be a good idea to have them come over here and write white people jokes for us?" he asked. The idea was tabled after a brief discussion and more chuckles. Later, a cluster of students crafted a limerick about the student body president, who spent his early years in a homeless shelter. Mr. Luchsinger said the president's oft told story had a phony, "after school special" quality to it, and couldn't be missed as fodder for comedy. The meeting built to a crescendo as the students tossed out ideas for one of the trademark features: "Top 5's." They jotted down possibilities for "Top 5 Things to Wear to a Gay Pride Parade" and "Top 5 Reasons to Marry an Illegal Immigrant," including, as one student shouted out, "You get a free housekeeper." Or "Cheap labor is now free." Or "She expects the abuse." Responses elicited peals of laughter. "Can someone just say we are all going to hell?" one student said. Mr. Liddle swears his proteges are not filled with misogyny or racial animus about half of the 25 or so staff members are women, and a handful are Asian or Mexican American. Their motives are pragmatic, he said: They want experience with a media outlet. Many of the staff members told me they aspire to work for television, an online magazine or media start up. They said that when they first read The Koala, they were relieved to find others with a similar sensibility. "I found people who share my sick sense of humor," Mr. Etchart said. He calls it "dark satire." The no holds barred approach also appealed to Emmilly Nguyen, a freshman journalism major. Around Koala staff members, she said, "I could be myself." Mr. Luchsinger plays up the bond that staff members share. While reputed to be hard partying renegades, he said, a surprising number have a hard time finding places to fit in. "There is this constant insider joke that we are basically a group of misfits who are awkward and weird," he said. SPECIAL EDITION A cover of The Koala, which has been denounced by some faculty members and students. I asked Lisa Wade, chairwoman of the sociology department at Occidental College, who studies campus culture, why young people might see humor in the hurtful. Dr. Wade noted that most college students have been reared on unvarnished satire, much of it untidy and cruel. "Family Guy" and comedians like Sarah Silverman and Sacha Baron Cohen have plumbed domestic violence, AIDS victims and children with special needs for comedic material. "Generation X sort of started it," Dr. Wade said. "But these guys have really grown up on it." Mordechai Gordon, a professor of education at Quinnipiac University who developed a course titled "The Philosophy of Humor and Laughter," sees the desire to rebel and poke at taboo topics. "When kids go to college, they feel like it is their time to say whatever they want and do whatever they want." He cites the superiority theory of humor, dating back to Plato. "Making fun of racial stereotypes has a long history maybe it's more in your face now. You don't even have to believe that Irish people like to get drunk or Poles aren't smart to think the jokes are funny. We feel superior." While The Koala has considerable enemies, it also has surprising allies, like Kevin Torres, a Mexican American business major, who says he appreciates the way it makes light of stereotypes that can have hints of truth to them. He found the Koala takedown of Mexican house cleaners particularly entertaining. "I think it's pretty hilarious," he said, folding over with laughter. "When you're Mexican, it's very hard to get offended. You have to have humor. Yes, my mother cleans houses." The Koala is not the only publication to mine edgy terrain. A subgroup of campus publications The Quinnipiac Barnacle, The Medium at Rutgers and The Texas Travesty at the University of Texas, Austin delight in routinely touching humor's third rail. Take The Medium. Last year, it was criticized for likening a sorority with dwindling membership to a gaggle of farm animals. The motto: "Ugliness Acceptable." So loud was the outcry that staff members posted a speedy apology on their Facebook page. In 2012, officials released a statement condemning The Medium for a column defending Hitler that it falsely attributed to a Jewish activist on campus. Ronald Miskoff, then faculty adviser, is not a fan of administrative intervention. He thinks students should be given the space to figure out where the line between funny and cruel is, even if that means allowing them to make bad calls. "Otherwise you have censorship," he said, "and what's the next stop on that bus?" Staff members at The Brown Noser, founded in 2006 at Brown University, set their own limits. "We don't write anything that feels classist or racist," said Louisa Kellogg, an editor. Also on the no go list: gross stuff, juvenile humor, and headlines that resemble ones in The Onion. At The Colonel, the University of Kentucky's satire broadsheet, public officials are fair game, private citizens not so much. "Usually what we tell staff members is: If you Google them and their name comes up all over the place, they're game," said Nicole Schladt, an editor. But what of publications that don't monitor themselves? Dr. Choi believes that's when universities ought to step in. Administrators have a responsibility, he said, to "uphold not just legal behavior but ethical behavior as well, and some common sense about what is and isn't funny." He added: "When administrators don't take a stand, it is almost as if they are supporting what these people are saying." Mr. Freeman interprets the university's silence differently. "If we were able to ban any speech we didn't like, we'd have very little debate," he said. "For me, this is a teachable moment about the consequences and burdens of living in a democracy." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Education |
Samuel Boden, Ocean Barrington Cook and Barbara Hannigan are members of an unhappy royal family in the new opera "Lessons in Love and Violence." LONDON George Benjamin and Martin Crimp have done it again. Six years after their previous operatic collaboration, the masterly "Written on Skin," Mr. Benjamin and Mr. Crimp have again dared to challenge audiences by remaining true to their uncompromising visions. In "Lessons in Love and Violence," which opened here on Thursday at the Royal Opera House, the music, written and compellingly conducted by Mr. Benjamin, is unapologetically modernist, while the libretto, by Mr. Crimp, is often cryptic. Without pandering, they've made another significant contribution to the art form. As with the medieval "Written on Skin," "Lessons in Love and Violence" which will stream on medici.tv starting May 26 and travel to at least six opera companies in the coming seasons looks to the past for contemporary resonances. Mining the historical relationship between King Edward II of England (1284 1327) and his courtier Piers Gaveston, the 90 minute opera doesn't seize on the story for a polemic on behalf of gay love. Aided by Katie Mitchell's modern dress production, Mr. Crimp and Mr. Benjamin have made something more ambiguous and timeless: a tale of a leader's catastrophic conflation of his personal desires with the identity of his suffering country. Recalling the gnomic character names in "Written on Skin," Edward is referred to only as the King (the charismatic baritone Stephane Degout); his heir is the Boy (the tenor Samuel Boden); Edward's wife, Queen Isabella, is Isabel (the expressive and riveting soprano Barbara Hannigan). The opera opens in the King's apartment, with him and Gaveston (the robust baritone Gyula Orendt) brazenly flaunting their affair, even as a military adviser, Mortimer (the bright voiced tenor Peter Hoare), argues that love any love is "poison" to both the human body and the body politic. A gaggle of nonspeaking actors with notepads mills about like obsequious officials or timid modern day reporters, a powerless public hanging on every interaction of the royal family and the King's enemies. Isabel, who wants to maintain her position, at first thinks she has no choice but to accommodate her husband's involvement with Gaveston. But is the courtier engaged in a calculating power move? Has the King chosen him as a way of defiantly asserting his right to indulge in the luxuries of love and culture, even as his realm is wracked with famine and civil unrest? At one point we see the King and Gaveston entwined in a romantic embrace just before an audience arrives to see a play. Their insinuating, sensual lines unfold together, but the musical effect is not exactly contrapuntal: the two voices sound almost codependent. You think Isabel is going to be the most sympathetic character in the opera. But not long after the start, we see her dark side as she's startlingly impervious to a group of starving citizens, witnesses to the deprivation and strife spreading throughout the land. One woman, hinting bitterly at the King's affair with Gaveston, asks a chilling question: "They say we know why the poor sleep three in a bed, but why do the rich?" The story begins to move toward its bloody conclusion as Isabel realizes the King has gone too far and she has to ally with Mortimer and acquiesce to Gaveston's capture and, eventually, his death. With Gaveston gone, the King renounces his wife, leaving himself precariously isolated. Ms. Mitchell and the designer Vicki Mortimer have made the opera's various scenes the King's apartment, Isabel's chambers, a theater, a prison different vantage points on the same well appointed room, with a large fish tank, a display case full of busts and a Francis Bacon esque portrait. But it's Mr. Benjamin's remarkable music that gives the work its charge: The writing is so lush, haunting and detailed radiant one moment, piercingly dissonant the next that you are continuously enveloped by the raucous beauty of the sounds. As the opening scene begins, needling brass riffs protrude over sputtering clusters of hard edged chords. Sometimes a bed of strings will swell with a prolonged sonority, though the component notes are too restless to stay put. Instrumental lines emerge from atmospheric murmurs, trying to coalesce into melodic fragments. Mr. Crimp's text, as in "Written on Skin," is enigmatic. "You know where I am: inside your life," Gaveston tells the King. Early on, the King warns Mortimer, who is clearly drawn to the queen, that wherever Mortimer touches the "immaculate surface" of Isabel's skin, "your politics will leave streaks of my blood." Mr. Benjamin savors the strangeness of these words. He was determined, he says in an interview in the program book, to set the text so that it would be audible. He does so impressively, aided by the crisp diction of the singers, often by following the natural rhythms of speech. But he knows when to allow a vocal line to turn mellifluous. For all the hypnotic allure of the opera, I kept waiting for the music to clobber me. That finally happened, twice, toward the end. With the King dethroned and arrested, Mortimer has set up house with Isabel, grooming the Boy to become the next king. The Boy is taught his first lesson in leadership really a lesson in the futility of love and the utility of violence: A madman has appeared claiming to be the king, and Mortimer tries to force the boy to punish him. When the Boy proves too weak, the man is killed in his presence, as the orchestra erupts in gnashing rage. In the next scene, Mr. Orendt reappears as a Stranger a figure of death to claim the King in one last embrace. Then, in an orchestral transition, comes that second burst of vehemence. I won't give away the opera's resolution, other than to say that the Boy, now king, has learned his lessons all too well. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
In March 2018 the designer Rei Kawakubo held a Comme des Garcons show in Paris dedicated to the subject of camp, and sparked by Susan Sontag's 1964 essay "Notes on 'Camp.'" Ms. Kawakubo, who is famous for issuing one sentence koans to elucidate her work (or make it even more mysterious), was rendered uncharacteristically verbose by the subject, sending out a multi paragraph missive on the show beforehand. It turns out she is not the only fashion figure tantalized, inspired and bamboozled by camp. Andrew Bolton, the curator in charge of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute, had introduced Ms. Kawakubo to the Sontag essay which itself contains 58 different definitions of the term, and served to bring it from the underground into the mainstream when he was creating an exhibition of the designer's work. Now the fruits of Mr. Bolton's obsession are on view for all to see in "Camp: Notes on Fashion," the latest iteration of the Met's annual spring blockbuster fashion show. A subject that at first seems obvious, camp is a densely layered sensibility that encompasses (among other things) the revivifying and subversive power of the extreme, artificial, performative and pastiche, often challenges established norms o f "good behavior" or "good taste" ( feh! with the good taste) and is deeply intertwined with the history of queer culture. A historical, cultural and sartorial journey traced in 250 objects of which there are 170 garments, the show begins with the concept "se camper" ("to flaunt" or "to posture"), and exists formally in two parts. The first half evolves through four eras Versailles, Oscar Wilde, Christopher Isherwood, Susan Sontag which connect individuals and their camp points of view with their expression in written and decorative arts. Section two addresses the multiplicity of meanings of camp today, as illustrated by a multitude of looks straight from contemporary runways: feathered, Freudian, elegant and over the top. ROBERTA SMITH I also had high hopes for this show, without quite knowing what I was hoping for. I reread Sontag, and by the end, despite her brilliance in identifying it, she makes camp seem fairly large and elastic and it's become only more so. Also there's the issue of being outdated in terms of contemporary culture. FRIEDMAN The justification for doing this now, in an institution like the Met, seems to be that in periods of great divisions and dissent, camp, with its multiple interpretations and exaggerated aesthetic, rises to the fore. Camp also functions as a safe space for marginalized groups to engage in self expression and cultural commentary. Yet I did not feel, looking at the clothes even the Viktor Rolf meme bait tulle bombs that I just saw on the runway in January that what I was seeing was a visual expression of this moment. Though I did get a sense of its place in a historical and artistic tradition. SMITH What would Sontag have cited as camp today, when we seem to be up to our necks in it? Still, even before rereading "Notes on 'Camp,'" a thumb through of the show's lavish if cumbersome catalog excited me. It raised two very art specific ideas. First, that camp begins with the invention of the contrapposto pose one hip thrust out, elbow cocked in Greek sculpture, which seems brilliant, as well as apt because of the Greek acceptance of love between men. Second, there was the notion that the Pre Raphaelite painters were camp innocent or inadvertent camp, according to Sontag . This idea made me much more sympathetic to the excess and overt displays of skills of these artists, although I'm not sure how they would have taken it. So I expected the show to shake me up. But once beyond the historical material, it looked surprisingly predictable and not very coded, either. FRIEDMAN Funny, I also thought the beginning was by far the most compelling section. I loved seeing that little bronze classical nude of Belvedere Antinous from 1630 (attributed to Pietro Tacca) in the entrance gallery with the Mapplethorpe photo of the marble Antinous from 1987, the Vivienne Westwood tights with the mirrored olive leaf over the crotch and the photograph from Hal Fischer's 1977 "Gay Semiotics." All of these male nudes have their elbows cocked out from one hip in that classic exaggerated pose of "se camper." That, to me, was a powerful argument for camp as a cultural through line. SMITH To me, the first half has three distinct parts a long opening section devoted to pre Sontag historical material, Sontagian camp and what the Met calls "Failed Seriousness." They pull you in different directions, and build anticipation before the letdown or onslaught of the second half. It starts out dense, carefully structured and richly textured. Cross references abound among paintings, prints, letters, books and photographs. Gender is very much up for grabs. I loved learning about the Chevalier d'Eon (1728 1810), a French soldier and diplomat who lived openly as a woman in Britain, becoming something of a celebrity. The photographs and manuscripts pertaining to Wilde are also very affecting. FRIEDMAN In those early rooms, I stumbled over the camp side of things as it related to fashion. For example, the intricate peacock feathered Aubrey Beardsley cover illustration for the English edition of Wilde's "Salome" was juxtaposed with a gorgeous black cape by Sarah Burton for Alexander McQueen embroidered in brass bullion peacocks which doesn't strike me as particularly over the top or artificial. Maybe theatrical. I had the same questions in the Sontag room, where the blush pink ostrich feathered Balenciaga dress donated by Jayne Wrightsman was paired with the Cecil Beaton 1966 portrait of Mrs. Wrightsman in the dress (which was a fabulous call and respon se). So it is camp, presumably, because in Sontag's time it was over the top. Which is useful for underscoring the fact that in different eras, what qualifies as extremism takes different shapes, but also adds to the general confusion; it's implied, rather than overt, and tests the fall back supposition that camp (like porn) is in the eye of the beholder: "I know it when I see it." On the other hand, I thought the layering of Warhol's screen test videos of Sontag with the paper Campbell's soup can dress and the Warhol Campbell's soup can silk screen with the self portrait of the artist was very effective. SMITH I especially like the self portrait of Warhol in finger on lips pose. The Sontagian camp gallery seems very much about sorting out camp, just like her essay. What is and isn't camp becomes very ambiguous. There are wonderful things here, all selected from the Met's collection. They represent or actually are, since Sontag visited the museum regularly the art, artifacts or design objects that Sontag mentioned in "Notes on 'Camp.'" About a dozen notes are emblazoned above the appropriate displays while the essay itself is flashed in a continual chyron "crawl" atop the displays, like an animated frieze, to the sound of typing. Sometimes it's obvious, like the suit Schiaparelli designed with Jean Cocteau. The juxtaposition of Edgar Degas's "Study of a Ballet Dancer" with two little pairs of porcelain ballet dancers seemed a camp moment unto itself. I'm not so sure about the lovely fennel shaped Sevres coffee service displayed in the Emile Galle "Cow Parsley" Cabinet. FRIEDMAN It was that contextualization I missed when we progressed to the second half. The multicolored sweetie box of the fashion section was where the sense of how these clothes reflect the artistic expression or political tenor around them seemed to have been abandoned. The Christopher Bailey faux shearling rainbow cape for Burberry, for example, is a reflection and celebration of (and Pledge of Allegiance to?) the L.B.G.T.Q. movement, and is part of a blossoming of challenges to old gender stereotypes. But it resides simply with the artist Philip Core's quote about Camp being "the heroism of people not called upon to be heroes." What happened to the connections between the garments and the world whether of art or culture in which they were created? "Camp," the show, struck me as the most idea driven, Conceptual, intellectual exhibition theme the Costume Institute has ever used. In the end I felt I was looking mostly at fashion one liners. FRIEDMAN And it was not entirely clear to me whether the fashion served the quotations, or the quotations explained the fashion , or whether it depended on what you were seeing, and reading (and hearing all those words being read aloud, plus Judy Garland's final, cracked rendition of "Over the Rainbow" as an aural backdrop) . My sense in a Costume Institute show is that the chosen garments have some extraordinary textile or artistic value. There are pieces like that here, like the Manish Arora "merry go round" skirt, with an actual carnival toy worked into its embroideries, and the Maison Martin Margiela Christmas tinsel coat. But Stella McCartney's banana T shirts for Chloe, or Virgil Abloh's arched eyebrow little black dress with the words "little black dress"? I don't know if they stand on their own. Also, I can't help but find it strange that Thierry Mugler, who is one of fashion's supreme camp designers by any definition, has only two dresses in the show (including the Venus emerging from the half shell creation Cardi B wore to the Grammys). It makes me wonder about the criteria. Though, obviously, that Moschino TV dinner dress from the most recent collection makes sense. SMITH And there is an undue amount of Moschino. I counted 15 dresses and ensembles. Most are by Jeremy Scott and are consistently heavy handed especially the monstrous TV dinner dress. The one exception is Mr. Scott's prosciutto dress, which we both liked. It was a simple sheath in a show where simplicity was scarce and, true to its name, it sheathed the body perfectly latex imitating prosciutto masquerading as silk jersey. SMITH I loved the Koizumi at least the lower level one. I ts pile of organza in rainbow colors seemed like the Neo Expressionist response to the LeWittean order of Christopher Bailey's rainbow cape. FRIEDMAN In some ways, I thought the "Failed Seriousness" area the corridor that serves as the connecting passage from the show's first half to the second was the tightest, most coherent part of the whole show. But that is partly because it was so narrowly construed: fashion talking to itself. So the Yves Saint Laurent column dress with the big pink fanny bow (which is, indeed, ridiculous; who wants a giant bow on their bottom?) goes perfectly with the Scott for Moschino paper doll version of the same; the Lanvin Castillo lilac ruffled bustle dress that gets turned upside down, literally, by Viktor Rolf. You can absolutely see how an idea that didn't quite come off got transmogrified into a successful camp ideal. Yet that tightening is, also, to me, where the exhibition starts to lose steam, because as it physically narrows it also conceptually narrows, and as you point out, becomes all about fashion. SMITH As a person from an increasingly inclusive art world, I was struck by how few designers of color were present. And I thought there would be something that RuPaul once wore at the very least. As a non fashion person, my problem with most of the garments in the final gallery is that so many of them look so useless. The roots of camp are in subversion and opposition. But here, it's seen only within the rarefied context of high end fashion, of extremely expensive clothes that will be worn only a few times if at all , before being given to some museum . I wanted more street. I was expecting to see something by Miguel Adrover, who made dresses out of Burberry raincoats and a miniskirt out of a Louis Vuitton purse. His work was disruptive on so many levels in terms of business and creativity. Less disruptive but also camp would have been Stephen Sprouse's Louis Vuitton bags, or maybe Takashi Murakami's. FRIEDMAN That didn't bother me so much, speaking as a fashion person. (Though I also would have loved some Adrover.) I'm used to the fact that some pieces function as expressions of pure ideas, and then later get translated into what people wear. And there are concept clothes in the final section that specifically exemplify the idea of affluence, excess and waste whether it's Mr. Scott's money dress or the plastic bag ball gown by Moschino, or the logo strewn Guccis. Because there is no context other than quotations ("Camp is BIG business"), we lose the idea that those clothes were both a humorously subversive but pointed comment on current consumer habits while at the same time feeding or even exploiting them . Yet by the time you exit the show, between figures of Cher and Liberace and their most crazily encrusted garments, you've almost forgotten about the beginning, and surrendered to camp as costume. SMITH Mr. Bolton's previous exhibitions for Rei Kawakubo, "China: Through the Looking Glass" and "Manus x Machina" are among his greatest. He and his curatorial efforts are by now fixtures in the worlds of art and fashion. There aren't many curators who year after year show us their thoughts and research! on fashion history in a way that is at once so focused and proscribed and yet so open ended. "Camp" may be the most conflicted show he's done in a while, but it has real substance. Even if you have moments of hating it, as I think we both do, you're very engaged throughout. FRIEDMAN Mr. Bolton has a habit of toggling between big, thematic shows and smaller, more personal deep dives into the work of a designer, and I feel like this resides somewhere between the two forms. What it really reveals is that camp itself is such a giant, elusive concept, it can't really be satisfyingly contained in the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor galleries. But I'll give him this: After you go through those doors, you don't stop thinking about it. It sticks with you and niggles in the brain. Through Sept. 8 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Avenue, Manhattan; 212 535 7710, metmuseum.org. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
Each Saturday, Farhad Manjoo and Mike Isaac, technology reporters at The New York Times, review the week's news, offering analysis and maybe a joke or two about the most important developments in the tech industry. Farhad: Hey, Mike! How goes it? I tried a weird sleep experiment this week. I slept from 10 p.m. to 3 a.m., and then again from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. I love the super early morning hours before my kids wake up. I find I get more stuff done then. And who doesn't like a daily nap? Mike: That sounds like me in college. You haven't also started beer bonging cases of Keystone Light, too, have you? Because, um, studies have shown that it is not great for you. And by studies I mean "my freshman year grade point average." Farhad: O.K., here's what happened in tech. Twitter rolled out an update that was universally panned by people on Twitter. That happens every time Twitter rolls out an update, but this time the update was actually bad. Twitter stopped counting user names against the 140 character limit (if you don't get what that means, don't worry), which resulted in people being able to create huge chains of Twitter spam aimed at other people. As Sarah Jeong writes in Motherboard, it's a really terrible implementation that makes you wonder if anyone at Twitter even uses Twitter. Mike: I came online after a day of working and literally could not understand what Twitter did or how to use it, on the desktop at least. It seems like I'm talking to myself in a vacuum when I tweet. Which, coincidentally, is pretty much how I use the service anyway. So I guess I don't mind it? Farhad: What are these people thinking? I mean, sure, Twitter is under pressure to attract new users, and the old format did clog up text with a bunch of symbols that only made sense to the initiated. But the fix they chose creates more problems than it solves. Mike: Maybe it's one of those things like when we're writing a story and stare at a terribly written sentence long enough that it begins to make sense. I bet you strongly relate to that one. O.K., let's turn to another social network. Facebook intensified its all out assault on Snapchat this week by implementing Stories in its own app. For those counting at home, that means all of Facebook's social apps Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger and now the blue app let you create a disappearing video diary of your day. So, back to Facebook. We've talked about the frighteningly effective brazenness with which Facebook copies its competitors before. I don't really know what to say other than I stand in horrified awe. We've just witnessed a pilfering on a historic scale. Snapchat's Stories is one of the most interesting and original new social features in years, but in the long run it's Facebook and its subsidiaries that may end up enjoying the most of this innovation. No one ever said the tech business was fair, I guess. Mike: On the other hand, the argument I keep hearing is that it's not about being first, but about "executing best." And honestly, Instagram Stories is pretty well done. I may not use it, but I certainly appreciate it. One thing I wonder is how these employees fill their Stories with new fun stuff all the time. They're pretty much forced to look like they're living an amazing life at all hours in order to test the product. But if I were constantly filming Stories? It would be me hunched over my laptop, shoveling Indian food into my mouth. Farhad: Look, we've been over this. Yes. Finally, can you fill me in on what on earth just happened with Google and Uber? Waymo, the self driving car unit of Google's parent company, Alphabet, is suing Uber for what it says is theft of its technology. Something amazing happened in that case this week. Anthony Levandowski, the Uber engineer at the center of the lawsuit, invoked his Fifth Amendment rights against self incrimination in a response to a request to turn over documents in the case. Uber's lawyers recommended that he hand over the documents, but Mr. Levandowski disagreed, apparently. Am I missing something or is this very, very bad for Uber and the future of its self driving program? | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
Q. Every time I download a free app from the Google Play store on my Android tablet, it wants me to "finish setting up my account." I thought I already had an account, because I've been downloading apps and I just press Skip on the next screen to go on. Why does it keep bothering me with this? I don't want to enter my credit card number and have it on file there. A. Even though you are downloading free apps from the store, Google Play would like you to supply a payment method in case you ever do decide to purchase software or services that cost money. The top part of the alert box displays the payment options. As long as you keep skipping the request to add a payment method, Google will probably keep asking you to finish setting up your account each time you try to download an app or other free item from the store. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
'ARTISTIC LICENSE: SIX TAKES ON THE GUGGENHEIM COLLECTION' at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (through Jan. 12). Displays that artists select from a museum's collection are almost inevitably interesting, revealing and valuable. After all, artists can be especially discerning regarding work not their own. Here, six artists Cai Guo Qiang, Paul Chan, Richard Prince, Julie Mehretu, Carrie Mae Weems and Jenny Holzer guided by specific themes, have chosen, which multiplies the impact accordingly. With one per ramp, each selection turns the museum inside out. The combination sustains multiple visits; the concept should be applied regularly. (Roberta Smith) 212 423 3840, guggenheim.org 'AUSCHWITZ. NOT LONG AGO. NOT FAR AWAY' at the Museum of Jewish Heritage (through Aug. 30). Killing as a communal business, made widely lucrative by the Third Reich, permeates this traveling exhibition about the largest German death camp, Auschwitz, whose yawning gatehouse, with its converging rail tracks, has become emblematic of the Holocaust. Well timed, during a worldwide surge of anti Semitism, the harrowing installation strives, successfully, for fresh relevance. The exhibition illuminates the topography of evil, the deliberate designing of a hell on earth by fanatical racists and compliant architects and provisioners, while also highlighting the strenuous struggle for survival in a place where, as Primo Levi learned, "there is no why." (Ralph Blumenthal) 646 437 4202, mjhnyc.org 'PIERRE CARDIN: FUTURE FASHION' at the Brooklyn Museum (through Jan. 5). He was never a great artist like Dior, Balenciaga or Saint Laurent, but Pierre Cardin still at work at 97 pioneered today's approach to the business of fashion: take a loss on haute couture, then make the real money through ready to wear and worldwide licensing deals. He excelled at bold, futuristic day wear: belted unisex jumpsuits, vinyl miniskirts, dresses accessorized with astronaut chic Plexiglas helmets. Other ensembles, especially the tacky evening gowns souped up with metal armature, are best ignored. All told, Cardin comes across as a relentless optimist about humanity's future, which has a certain retro charm. Remember the future? (Jason Farago) 718 638 5000, brooklynmuseum.org 'AGNES DENES: ABSOLUTES AND INTERMEDIATES' at the Shed (through March 22). We'll be lucky this art season if we get another exhibition as tautly beautiful as this long overdue Denes retrospective. Now 87, the artist is best known for her 1982 "Wheatfield: A Confrontation," for which she sowed and harvested two acres of wheat on Hudson River landfill within sight of the World Trade Center and Statue of Liberty. Her later ecology minded work has included creating a hilltop forest of 11,000 trees planted by 11,000 volunteers in Finland (each tree is deeded to the planter), though many of her projects exist only in the form of the exquisite drawings that make up much of this show. (Holland Cotter) 646 455 3494, theshed.org 'RACHEL HARRISON LIFE HACK' at the Whitney Museum of American Art (through Jan. 12). As seen in this excellent midcareer survey, Harrison's assemblage style sculptures suggest serendipitous urban still lives, of the kind you see on New York City sidewalks on trash collection day: bottles, bedding, defunct appliances, outgrown toys, discarded Christmas trees in season and, always, sealed garbage bags filled with you don't want to know what. All of these together translate into information about commerce, class, memory, value, accident, appetite, waste, color, shape, zeitgeist not to mention life and death. But this is an art of questions, not answers. The more you look, the more questions there are. (Cotter) 212 570 3600, whitney.org 'THE JIM HENSON EXHIBITION' at the Museum of the Moving Image (ongoing). The rainbow connection has been established in Astoria, Queens, where this museum has opened a new permanent wing devoted to the career of America's great puppeteer, who was born in Mississippi in 1936 and died, too young, in 1990. Henson began presenting the short TV program "Sam and Friends" before he was out of his teens; one of its characters, the soft faced Kermit, was fashioned from his mother's old coat and would not mature into a frog for more than a decade. The influence of early variety television, with its succession of skits and songs, runs through "Sesame Street" and "The Muppet Show," though Henson also spent the late 1960s crafting peace and love documentaries and prototyping a psychedelic nightclub. Young visitors will delight in seeing Big Bird, Elmo, Miss Piggy and the Swedish Chef; adults can dig deep into sketches and storyboards and rediscover some old friends. (Farago) 718 784 0077, movingimage.us 'ERNST LUDWIG KIRCHNER' at the Neue Galerie (through Jan. 13). You could be forgiven for drawing a connection between Kirchner's shocking color palette and his character. It would be understandable enough, considering his problems with morphine, Veronal and absinthe; the nervous breakdown precipitated by his artillery training in World War I; and his suicide in 1938, at the age of 58, after the Nazis had denounced him as a degenerate. But to linger on Kirchner's lurid biography would be unfair to the mesmerizing technical genius of his style, amply on display in this exhibition. Surrounding more or less sober portrait subjects with backgrounds of flat but brilliant color, as Kirchner did, wasn't just a youthful revolt against the staid academic painting he grew up with. It was also an ingenious way to articulate subjective experience in an increasingly materialist modern world. (Will Heinrich) neuegalerie.org 'YAYOI KUSAMA: EVERY DAY I PRAY FOR LOVE' at David Zwirner (through Dec. 14). Ignored for decades in New York and Tokyo, this 90 year old artist is enjoying a not unmerited surge in public visibility, but just what do audiences get from taking photographs of their colored reflections in her Infinity Mirror Rooms? Kusama first made a mirror environment in 1965, when she was staging orgiastic happenings that encouraged "self obliteration"; now the self has been subsumed by the social media profile, and our digital narcissism has made the abandonment Kusama once encouraged impossible. If you want to line up for an hour or more for your selfie opportunity, be our guest, but the rest of the show, including some excellent new steel sculptures, requires no wait. (Farago) davidzwirner.com 'THE LIFE AND TIMES OF ALVIN BALTROP' at the Bronx Museum of the Arts (through Feb. 9). New York City is a gateway for new talent. It's also an archive of art careers past. Some come to light only after artists have departed, as is the case with Baltrop, an American photographer who was unknown to the mainstream art world when he died in 2004 at 55, and who now has a bright monument of a retrospective at this Bronx museum. That he was black, gay and working class accounts in part for his invisibility, but so does the subject matter he chose: a string of derelict Hudson River shipping piers that, in the 1970s and '80s, became a preserve for gay sex and communion. In assiduously recording both the architecture of the piers and the amorous action they housed, Baltrop created a monument to the city itself at the time when it was both falling apart and radiating liberationist energy. (Cotter) 718 681 6000, bronxmuseum.org 'NATURE: COOPER HEWITT MUSEUM DESIGN TRIENNIAL' at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum (through Jan. 20). Plastics transformed the material world after World War II. Today, they pollute our oceans. A better future will be made with ... algae. Or bacteria. That's the dominant theme of this sweeping exhibition. On display here at the Smithsonian's temple to the culture of design are objects you might once have expected only at a science museum: Proteins found in silkworms are repurposed as surgical screws and optical lenses. Electrically active bacteria power a light fixture. The triennial displays some 60 projects and products from around the world that define a reconciliation of biosphere and technosphere, as Koert van Mensvoort, a Dutch artist and philosopher, puts it in the show's excellent catalog. "Nature" provides us with a post consumption future, in which the urgency of restoring ecological function trumps the allure of the latest gadget. (James S. Russell) 212 849 2950, cooperhewitt.org Read about the events that our other critics have chosen for the week ahead. THE NEW MUSEUM OF MODERN ART (ongoing). Of course we've got quibbles about this or that gallery but the new MoMA, a third larger than before, feels fresher and more urgent than at any time since it last closed in 2002. The best news: This is a museum that once again puts its collection first. If you want to see everything, budget a solid four or five hours and you'll still be moving fast past many works. I suggest starting on the east side of the museum. (Look for the suspended helicopter.) Take the escalators or elevators to the fifth floor, where the chronological display of the collection (1880 1940) begins. The galleries are numbered, so you can work counterclockwise, moving from the older building into the new wing and back. If you enjoy a more sequential approach, you can do it again on the fourth floor (for postwar art, 1945 75 or so) and the second floor (for contemporary art, from the late 1970s to the present). But if you're more adventurous, head west from the ticket desk, hit the design gallery and projects gallery, then hop on the new "blade" staircase by Diller Scofidio Renfro/Gensler. This way will plunge you into the middle of the timeline. (Farago) 212 708 9400, moma.org THE NEW MUSEUM OF MODERN ART: THE COLLECTIONS (ongoing). MoMA celebrates its latest expansion by not only extending the permanent collection, but also reshaping its version of modernist art history to include many more women, artists of color and non Westerners. Some works have been newly conserved (note the brightened colors of Henri Rousseau's "The Sleeping Gypsy"). Others have been put on view for the first time in years. The collection is also less permanent in that one third of its galleries will be installed every six months, starting in February. Adding to the festivities, all other exhibitions at the Modern are drawn from its collection. "Surrounds: 11 Installations" puts on view for the first time 11 sprawling, never before exhibited artworks that vary in interest and probably won't be seen again any time soon (to Jan. 4). "Moment: Pope.L, 1978 2019" surveys the long career of a rare artist who, working in all media, has maintained his avant garde street cred (through Feb. 1)."Sur Moderno: Journeys of Abstraction, the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Gift" presents a selection of South American postwar art so substantial that it could reorient the museum's focus (through March 14). For the latest iteration of MoMA's well known "Artist's Choice" series, the painter Amy Sillman has selected "The Shape of Shape," filling a large gallery with an astounding array of carefully juxtaposed works from across the collection (through April 12). "Taking a Thread for a Walk" (through April 19) examines the role of weaving in modern art beyond textiles. And don't forget the six artists' commissions. (Smith) 212 708 9400, moma.org 'NOBODY PROMISED YOU TOMORROW: 50 YEARS AFTER STONEWALL' at the Brooklyn Museum (through Dec. 8). In this large group show, 28 young queer and transgender artists, most born after 1980, carry the buzz of Stonewall resistance into the present. Historical heroes, including Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, are honored (in a film by Sasha Wortzel and Tourmaline). Friends in life, Johnson and Rivera are tutelary spirits of an exhibition in which a trans presence, long marginalized by mainstream gay politics, is pronounced in the work of Juliana Huxtable, Hugo Gyrl, Amaryllis DeJesus Moleski and Elle Perez (whose work also appeared in this year's Whitney Biennial). (Cotter) 718 638 5000, brooklynmuseum.org 'OCEAN WONDERS: SHARKS!' at the New York Aquarium (ongoing). For years, the aquarium's 14 acre campus hunkered behind a wall, turning its back to the beach. When aquarium officials last year finally got around to completing the long promised building that houses this shark exhibition, maybe the biggest move, architecturally speaking, was breaking through that wall. The overall effect makes the aquarium more of a visible, welcoming presence along the boardwalk. Inside, "Ocean Wonders" features 115 species sharing 784,000 gallons of water. It stresses timely eco consciousness, introducing visitors to shark habitats, explaining how critical sharks are to the ocean's food chains and ecologies, debunking myths about the danger sharks pose to people while documenting the threats people pose to sharks via overfishing and pollution. The narrow, snaking layout suggests an underwater landscape carved by water. Past the exit, an outdoor ramp inclines visitors toward the roof of the building, where the Atlantic Ocean suddenly spreads out below. You can see Luna Park in one direction, Brighton Beach in the other. The architectural point becomes clear: Sharks aren't just movie stars and aquarium attractions. They're also our neighbors as much a part of Coney Island as the roller coasters and summer dreams. (Michael Kimmelman) 718 265 3474, nyaquarium.com 'BETYE SAAR: THE LEGENDS OF "BLACK GIRL'S WINDOW"' at the Museum of Modern Art (through Jan. 4). "Black Girl's Window," which consists of an old window frame that Saar filled with a constellation of images, is the focus of this exhibition, one of several helping to reopen MoMA. Concentrating on Saar's early years as an artist, it tracks the experiments in printmaking and assemblage that led her to arrive at the titular work. Despite the unusual color of the gallery's deep purple walls, the show is relatively modest a scholarly study of a specific period, anchored by MoMA's recent acquisition of a group of 42 of her works on paper. Two pieces from 1972 that represent her shift from the mystical to the political "Black Crows in the White Section Only," which brings together a variety of racist advertisements, and "Let Me Entertain You," which shows a minstrel singer with a guitar transforming into a black liberation fighter with a rifle serve as a kind of coda. Their appearance at the end offers a tantalizing glimpse of the iconoclastic artist Saar was on her way to becoming. (Jillian Steinhauer) 212 708 9400, moma.org 'STONEWALL 50 AT THE NEW YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY' (through Dec. 1). For its commemoration of the anniversary of the Stonewall rebellion, the society continues with two micro shows: "By the Force of Our Presence: Highlights From the Lesbian Herstory Archives" documents the founding in 1974 by Joan Nestle, Deborah Edel, Sahli Cavallero, Pamela Olin and Julia Stanley of a compendious and still growing register of lesbian culture. And "Say It Loud, Out and Proud: Fifty Years of Pride" turns a solo spotlight on charismatic individuals: Storme DeLarverie (1920 2014), Mother Flawless Sabrina/Jack Doroshow (1939 2017), Keith Haring (1958 90) and Rollerena Fairy Godmother. (Cotter) 212 873 3400, nyhistory.org 'T. REX: THE ULTIMATE PREDATOR' at the American Museum of Natural History (through Aug. 9). Everyone's favorite 18,000 pound prehistoric killer gets the star treatment in this eye opening exhibition, which presents the latest scientific research on T. rex and also introduces many other tyrannosaurs, some discovered only in this century in China and Mongolia. T. rex evolved mainly during the Cretaceous period to have keen eyes, spindly arms and massive conical teeth, which packed a punch that has never been matched by any other creature; the dinosaur could even swallow whole bones, as affirmed here by a kid friendly display of fossilized excrement. The show mixes 66 million year old teeth with the latest 3 D prints of dino bones, and also presents new models of T. rex as a baby, a juvenile and a full grown annihilator. Turns out this most savage beast was covered with believe it! a soft coat of beige or white feathers. (Farago) 212 769 5100, amnh.org 'VIOLET HOLDINGS: LGBTQ HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE N.Y.U. SPECIAL COLLECTIONS' at Bobst Library (through Dec. 31). With the Stonewall Inn now a National Historic Landmark (and a bar again; it was a bagel shop in the 1980s), nearby New York University has produced a homegrown archival exhibition at Bobst Library, across the park from Grey Art Gallery. Organized by Hugh Ryan, it takes the local history of queer identity back to the 19th century with documents on Elizabeth Robins (1862 1952), an American actor, suffragist and friend of Virginia Woolf, and forward with ephemera related to the musician and drag king Johnny Science (1955 2007) and the African American D.J. Larry Levan (1954 92), who, in the 1980s, presided, godlike, at a gay disco called the Paradise Garage, which was a short walk from the campus. (Cotter) 212 998 2500, library.nyu.edu 'PUNK LUST: RAW PROVOCATION 1971 1985' at the Museum of Sex (through Nov. 30). This show begins with imagery from the Velvet Underground: The 1963 paperback of that title, an exploration of what was then called deviant sexual behavior and gave the band its name, is one of the first objects on display. Working through photos, album art and fliers by artists like Iggy Pop, the New York Dolls, Patti Smith and, yes, the Sex Pistols, the exhibition demonstrates how punk offered a space for sexual expression outside the mainstream. In the story told by "Punk Lust," much of it laid out in placards by the writer and musician Vivien Goldman, one of the show's curators, graphic sexual imagery is a tool for shock that frightens away the straight world and offers comfort to those who remain inside. While some of the power dynamic is typical underage groupies cavorting with rock stars images from female, queer and nonbinary artists like Jayne County and the Slits make a strong case for sex as an essential source of punk liberation. (Mark Richardson) 212 689 6337, museumofsex.com | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
To get to the front desk of the 50 room Ramble Hotel, which opened in Denver's River North Art District (RiNo) last May, guests walk through what amounts to a cocktail jamboree: the first outpost of the bar Death Co beyond New York City's East Village. The hotel, owned by Ryan Diggins, 34, a local developer, was generally inspired by the salons of 17th century France, and, specifically, by Catherine de Vivonne, Marquise de Rambouillet, whose own salon was known as an egalitarian gathering. "I loved what the French salon stood for, as really it was a place for everyone, as long as you had an opinion," Mr. Diggins said. "Ramble is our shortened version of her name, and also means to wander or explore without a definitive destination." In hopes of fostering the Marquise's ideal of interaction and engagement, the hotel stocked the airy, ground floor lobby with myriad seating areas for lingering, and also holds occasional art programs in its adjacent event space. The hotel is close to RiNo's inventive restaurants (Comal Heritage Food Incubator, where Syrian refugees make the best hummus I've tasted, based on their own recipes), shops (like Modern Nomad, a housewares store in a former auto body shop) and food halls (including Zeppelin Station, which opened last March). Our room faced Larimer Street, which was once a hangout for the Beat muse Neal Cassady , and can be rowdy; we listened to bachelorette parties swish by like whirligigs on 16 passenger bike bar tours. The Denver Rescue Mission nearby means revelers may be sobered by denizens down on their luck. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
Mr. Burke, 58, is chairman of the Mortgage Bankers Association, a national organization based in Washington that represents the real estate finance industry. He is also a newly named co president of KeyBank's community bank, specializing in commercial and private banking. KeyBank is based in Cleveland. Q. What does "E .J." stand for? A. Edward James. I'm a junior, actually, so my family, to distinguish between me and my father, called me E. J. My father died a long time ago so I dropped the junior part. Q. You were sworn in as the M.B.A. chairman last October. What do you see as your main role there? A. As the chair, I'm supposed to provide oversight of the staff and the C.E.O. I also do a fair amount of lobbying, and I do a lot of travel on behalf of the association. I go to a lot of state association events to get a sense of what's happening in the industry. And in our industry there is a lot happening today. Q. Starting with the new federal rules defining a "qualified mortgage." A. The definition of qualified mortgage has helped lenders understand better the guidelines. I think our members, more than anything else, want clarity. They want to know what the rules are. Q. There are also continuing efforts to reform the government sponsored entities, or G.S.E., Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. A. You're not going to get much more private capital until we see G.S.E. reform pass in Congress. Two bills have been put forth. One is Corker Warner in the Senate and the other is the PATH Act in the House. We think that some variation on Corker Warner has a pretty good chance of coming to the Senate. We like a lot of the elements, so in our opinion, if Congress acts, they put forth a G.S.E. reform bill that provides clarity, it provides a path to taking Fannie and Freddie out of conservatorship. I think, when that happens, you'll see private capital say, O.K., I'm willing to come into the market. Fannie has so much market share, and there really is no competition. I'm optimistic that we might actually see some legislation. Q. How would you categorize the state of the lending industry right now? A. This year we expect residential mortgage origination to be down about 40 percent, because the amount of "refi" business is down. But the economy is slowly getting better. In the end, it's income that repays loans, so the more stability we have in the job market, the easier it will be to qualify people for mortgages. So it is slowly getting better. Q. And on the commercial side? A. On the commercial side, it's very good. And it's very good for a couple of reasons: One, is that we had almost no addition to supply between, say, '08 and probably '11, and really only in multifamily have we seen any significant increase in supply. So that, along with a slowly improving economy, has made a lot of commercial properties improve their fundamentals. The other thing is the amount of capital that wants to be invested in the commercial sector is significantly higher than on the residential side. I'm talking about office, industrial and retail, too. Q. A focus of your job at KeyBank is commercial lending. Are you lending more? A. Yes. In '13, if you look at loans that we originated and syndicated to other banks, including those we kept for ourselves, loans we originated and sold via Fannie and Freddie, F.H.A., Commercial Mortgage Backed Securities, and all of that, we put out about 30 billion in commercial real estate finance. In '12, it was about 20 billion. I think that this year we will do a little bit more than we did last year. I would be pleased if we grew our total origination between 5 and 10 percent. Q. Who are some of your larger clients? A. We focus on owners of real estate. That includes people who develop, but we have a very active REIT practice. Our top clients include American Campus Communities and DuPont Fabros Technology. We're the lead bank for BioMed Realty, which owns biomedical research buildings. We don't do as much in New York. KeyBank is a 90 billion bank, and it's difficult to compete with the trillionaires. We do some in New York, but we're more of a middle market bank. Q. What's your outlook for interest rates this year, particularly the 30 year fixed rate mortgage? A. I think they're going to rise if I knew how much I probably wouldn't be sitting here right now. As the economy seems to be getting better and it seems like a slow, steady progress it seems the Fed will lower their bond buying. I think you could see as much as 50 basis points by the end of the year for the 30 year mortgage. It seems like the long end of the curve is going to go up faster than the short end. Q. So that means you're seeing increased interest in adjustable rate mortgages? A. We have, and I think we will. And many lenders are not doing a teaser rate, because that's what got people in trouble the last time. They're going to qualify people at a much higher rate. I see it more on the commercial side. Q. How do you balance your time between your M.B.A. role and your KeyBank job? A. Well, it's very difficult. But first of all, the way M.B.A. sets up their leadership, you have what they call a leadership ladder, so I spent one year as a vice chair and a year as a chair elect, and so that gave me a bit of time to plan for this year. And everybody at the bank has also been prepared for this year. In my job I can make an argument to be somewhere in the United States almost every day, because there's always a client meeting. And so you end up planning your year. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
SAN FRANCISCO Travis Kalanick needed everyone to take a deep breath. The chief executive of Uber was holding a regularly scheduled all hands meeting on Tuesday at the ride hailing company's San Francisco headquarters when he faced an onslaught of questions from upset employees. Uber was under attack unfairly, many staff members believed after people accused the company of seeking to profit from giving rides to airport customers in New York during weekend protests against President Trump's immigration order. But there was another matter disturbing the employees: Mr. Kalanick himself. He had joined Mr. Trump's economic advisory council in December. After the immigration order against refugees and seven Muslim majority countries, many staff members wondered why Mr. Kalanick was still willing to advise the president. "What would it take for you to quit the economic council?" at least two employees asked at the Tuesday meeting. On Thursday, Mr. Kalanick gave his answer, stepping down from Mr. Trump's economic advisory council. "There are many ways we will continue to advocate for just change on immigration, but staying on the council was going to get in the way of that," Mr. Kalanick wrote in an email to employees obtained by The New York Times. Mr. Kalanick's exit from the advisory council underscores the tricky calculus facing many Silicon Valley corporate chieftains who try to work with the new administration. On one hand, many tech executives have openly tried to engage with the president, a path that is typically good for business. Yet Mr. Trump's immigration order has been so unpopular with so many tech workers many of whom are immigrants themselves and who advocate globalization that they are now exerting pressure on their chief executives to push back forcefully against the administration. Thirty miles south of Uber's headquarters, for example, Facebook employees have voiced frustration that Peter Thiel, the billionaire tech investor and adviser to Mr. Trump, still has a seat on the social network's board. At Google, employees have staged protests against the immigration order. At Twitter's headquarters, some employees have said they are uneasy about the president's heavy reliance on their service to send divisive messages. The tension over continuing to work with Mr. Trump reached a breaking point at Uber because Mr. Kalanick was, until Thursday, one of the most vocal proponents among tech chiefs of engaging with the president. As recently as Saturday, Mr. Kalanick had publicly said in a blog post that the best route forward was to have "a seat at the table." He had added, "We partner around the world optimistically in the belief that by speaking up and engaging we can make a difference." Outside of the internal pressure, Uber faced other fallout from Mr. Kalanick's stance. More than 200,000 customers had deleted their accounts. In addition, Uber rivals had seized the moment to attack the company and bolster their own businesses. The New York Taxi Workers Alliance sent emails to the news media calling attention to Uber's ties to Mr. Trump, and organized a protest at Uber's New York office for Thursday. Lyft, another ride hailing service, pledged to donate 1 million to the American Civil Liberties Union and has seen its app shoot toward the top of the download charts. Uber drivers, many of them immigrants who work for the ride hailing company on a freelance basis, were also upset. "There would be no Uber without immigrants," said Jim Conigliaro Jr., founder of the Independent Drivers Guild, an organization that represents and advocates protections for nearly 50,000 Uber drivers serving New York City. "As a company whose success is built on a foundation of hard work by immigrant workers, Uber can and should do better to stand up for immigrants and their workers." Uber has set aside 3 million for a legal defense fund to support drivers, offering help with translation services and round the clock telephone access to legal aid. For Mr. Kalanick, the moment was especially fraught. Other corporate chiefs, including Elon Musk of Tesla and SpaceX, and Mary Barra of General Motors, are also on the president's economic advisory team. Mr. Musk said on Twitter this week that the group of economic advisers planned to come to some sort of "consensus" on immigration, and to influence Mr. Trump by engaging directly with him rather than cutting off ties completely. "Travis and the other C.E.O.s are on that (presidential) board for one simple reason: To advance their business interests," said Dan O'Sullivan, a writer from the Chicago area who helped to spread the DeleteUber campaign on social media. Internally, Uber staff members also began piling on the pressure. According to nearly a dozen current and former Uber engineers and product managers who attended or were briefed on the Tuesday all hands meeting, employees said they were concerned that Mr. Kalanick's willingness to work with Mr. Trump after the immigration order would color Uber as a soulless company that cared only about its bottom line. Some told Mr. Kalanick that they had suffered a personal cost a stigma, they said of working at Uber. One staff member asked him to present the benefits of working at Uber that could outweigh that personal cost. Mr. Kalanick replied that he believed that change could be best effected through engagement, and through the work they did every single day. Many employees were not satisfied with his answer. On Wednesday, Uber staff members followed up by circulating a 25 page Google document titled "Letters to Travis" to tell the chief executive how and why his willingness to engage with the administration had affected them. By Thursday morning, Mr. Kalanick had reversed his position on engaging with Mr. Trump. His participation in the economic advisory council had created what he called a "perception reality gap between who people think we are, and who we actually are." In his email to employees, he said his participation was being interpreted as a sign that he had endorsed the president and the administration's agenda. In fact, Mr. Kalanick said, the immigration order was hurting many people across America. "Immigration and openness to refugees is an important part of our country's success and quite honestly to Uber's," he wrote. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
THE ROOK 8 p.m. on Starz. The first season of this fantasy spy thriller starring Emma Greenwell is coming to an end. Greenwell plays Myfanwy Thomas, a woman with supernatural powers who is trying to regain her memory. She shares the screen with the sci fi favorite Olivia Munn as Monica Reed, an agent from the American sister agency to the Checquy, the British secret service that protects the country from sinister magic. In the finale, Myfawny is still searching for clues to her past, even as her powerful enemies at the Checquy get closer to capturing her. SWEETBITTER 9:30 p.m. on Starz. As the final two episodes of Season 2 premiere, Tess (Ella Purnell) is still feeling lost, unsure of her future at the trendy New York restaurant where she works and indecisive about her love life. She is determined to keep the chaos of working in food at bay but that may require some serious sacrifice. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
President Trump's handling of the coronavirus pandemic has been a case study in a management style marked by falsehoods and intimidation. Rather than risk inviting his ire, subordinates and fellow Republicans covered for him as he delayed a coordinated response to the coronavirus and it felled nearly 200 Americans. His political allies haven't been the only ones to fall into line. Just look at the way the president co opted Google. While declaring the national emergency last Friday, President Trump announced that he had enlisted Google to create a broadly available website to help facilitate testing for the virus. He said that 1,700 engineers were working on the site and had "made tremendous progress." It sounded ambitious and promising. If only it were true. What followed were attempts by Google to placate the president and a mad scramble to get done what he'd said it was already doing. Blindsided by the announcement, Google at first revealed that a subsidiary of its parent company known as Verily was working on a small scale website initially intended only for health care workers in two Bay Area counties. The Verily site was being developed in coordination with Jared Kushner, the president's son in law and senior adviser, who was taken with the idea after speaking with Verily's chief executive, Andy Conrad, The New York Times reported. (It rolled out on Sunday but was immediately overwhelmed by people seeking testing.) But then Google pivoted and announced it was in fact also working on a new national informational coronavirus website. The saga could have ended there, but Mr. Trump instead lambasted the press for correctly reporting that Google initially had no plans for the website he described. And Google did nothing to correct the record, making itself complicit in his stoking of press mistrust. Mr. Trump asserted on Sunday that Google's national site was always the plan, while doubling down on his attack, saying, "I don't know where the press got their fake news, but they got it someplace." And he said Sundar Pichai, chief executive of Google parent Alphabet, called to apologize, though he didn't clarify what he meant by that. Alphabet refused to confirm to The Times whether such a call even occurred or for what Mr. Pichai would need to apologize. And it declined to discuss the episode further. It's not the first time a technology company has bent to Mr. Trump's will. Apple's chief executive, Tim Cook, failed to correct Mr. Trump when he took credit in November for opening a Texas computer manufacturing plant that had been in operation since 2013. Of course, Google and Apple are loath to cross a president whose administration is overseeing antitrust investigations of them. And his vendetta against Amazon's chief executive, Jeff Bezos, who owns The Washington Post, most likely cost Amazon a roughly 10 billion government contract. Put simply, Mr. Trump's bullying often works. The Google flap lays bare his strong arm tactics and the dangers of being complicit in his crusade against the media, particularly when Americans are trying to make sense of a mushrooming health crisis. Google's national site finally went live early Saturday morning, just over a week after Mr. Trump's surprise announcement. Comprising mostly links to other Google sites, like YouTube how to videos for those working at home and video updates from the C.D.C., it does not help facilitate coronavirus testing, as Mr. Trump promised. Earlier, its limited Verily site raised concerns on Wednesday from a group of Democratic senators over data collection practices that include potentially sharing personal health information with contractors, government agencies and other outside parties. Yes, it's commendable that Google ultimately committed to creating what may ultimately prove to be a valuable tool in combating the coronavirus. But as one of the world's most valuable and powerful companies, it should also come clean about the president's falsehoods. What the public needs is sober, forthcoming leadership, whether from Silicon Valley or from Washington. It needs a president who speaks accurately about the growing global crisis and works with industry transparently and decisively. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
The Brooklyn based artist Simone Leigh, whose sculpture has been the subject of increasing attention, on Thursday evening was awarded the Guggenheim Museum's prestigious Hugo Boss Prize, which recognizes achievement in contemporary art. "Leigh has consistently expanded the possibilities of ceramics, which is her principal medium and one that has long been undervalued within the mainstream art world," the jury said in its statement. "We are particularly compelled by Leigh's longstanding and unwavering commitment to addressing black women as both the subject of and audience for her work." Ms. Leigh, 50, has for more than 25 years explored the experiences and social histories of black women through the ceramic tradition. She currently has a solo show at the New York gallery Luhring Augustine. And she has been selected as the inaugural winner of the High Line's new series of large scale commissions, which will be unveiled in April. See a slide show of work by past winners of the Hugo Boss prize. The 12th artist to receive the biennial Hugo Boss prize which is named after its fashion company sponsor Ms. Leigh will receive an award of 100,000 as well as a solo exhibition at the Guggenheim in April 2019. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
The disease is characterized by an itching, oozing rash that can cover almost all of the skin. The constant itch, to say nothing of the disfigurement, can be so unbearable that many patients consider suicide. There has never been a safe and effective treatment. On Saturday, the results of two large clinical trials of a new drug offered hope to the estimated 1.6 million adult Americans with an uncontrolled, moderate to severe form of the disease, atopic dermatitis, which is a type of eczema. Most patients who got the active drug, dupilumab, instead of a placebo reported that the itching began to wane within two weeks and was gone in a few months, as their skin began to clear. Nearly 40 percent of participants getting the drug saw all or almost all of their rash disappear. For some, relief was almost instantaneous. "I knew immediately I was on the drug" and not the placebo, said Daniela Velasco, an event planner in Playa del Carmen, Mexico. Within a couple of weeks, the ugly red rash that had covered 90 percent of her body was almost gone. Even better, she said, "for the first time I didn't feel any itch at all." Before entering the trial, Mrs. Velasco, 36, had seen 40 doctors about the disease and tried dozens of drugs and treatments, to no avail. To participate in the study, she spent more than 95,000 to fly to Mount Sinai in New York on a regular basis and stay in hotels. She realized she might get a placebo but also knew that when the study ended everyone, including the placebo patients, would be able get the drug if the trial was successful. The drug blocks two specific molecules of the immune system that are overproduced in patients with this and some other allergic diseases. The only side effects were a slight increase in conjunctivitis, an inflammation of the outer membrane of the eye, and swelling at the injection site. "This is a landmark study," said Dr. Mark Boguniewicz, an atopic dermatitis expert at National Jewish Health and the University of Colorado School of Medicine who was not involved with the study. "For us in atopic dermatitis, we are entering a new era." The studies, lasting 16 weeks and involving nearly 1,400 people, were published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Daniela Velasco's arms, left and top, and legs, below right, before the treatment with dupilumab. Dr. George D. Yancopoulos, the president and chief scientific officer at Regeneron, which, in partnership with Sanofi, makes the drug, said he expects the Food and Drug Administration to rule on dupilumab by March 29, 2017. The drug's brand name will be Dupixent. The agency has given the drug breakthrough status, which provides expedited development and review of drugs for serious or life threatening diseases. Dr. Yancopoulos declined to speculate on dupilumab's price, saying only that it will be "consistent with the value of the drug." It is a biologic, the most expensive type of drug, and is injected every two weeks. Atopic dermatitis experts said they have longed for a safe and highly effective treatment. In desperation, some prescribed other drugs off label, like powerful immunosuppressants or high doses of steroids, which are far from ideal because even if they helped, their side effects can be severe kidney failure with immunosuppressants, bone loss and even psychotic breaks with high dose steroids. Patients are miserable, Dr. Boguniewicz said. "Our patients and families haven't slept through the night, not for days or weeks, but for months or years." Many doctors provide no treatments other than perhaps creams and ointments that do not stop the itching or soothe the red and weeping rash, said Dr. Jonathan I. Silverberg of Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine and a principal investigator in one of the studies. Many sufferers can relate to the plight of the defense lawyer played by John Turturro in the HBO series "The Night Of." He suffers from atopic dermatitis that started on his legs and his feet and later spread to his neck and head. Like so many patients, he tries treatment after treatment bleach baths, covering the rash in Crisco and wrapping it with plastic wrap, steroids, Chinese medicine. He scratches it with chopsticks and disgusts people near him. But all to no avail. Such experiences explain the excitement over the new drug, although researchers say they would like to see longer term data. "What we are seeing are some really impressive efficacy numbers," Dr. Silverberg said. "But efficacy alone is not enough. It is the safety profile that is the real key. Everything we are seeing really looks great." Dr. Jon M. Hanifin, a professor of dermatology at Oregon Health and Science University and founder of the National Eczema Association, agreed. While not a principal investigator in the study, Dr. Hanifin did oversee the care of some patients enrolled in it. "It's wonderful," he said. "We walk in the room and patients are smiling. These patients are the worst of the worst. Their life was destroyed." Dr. Yancopoulos was inspired in part to develop the drug because his father had severe atopic dermatitis, which he developed shortly after he got lung cancer at 70. "More so than the cancer and the chemo, this rash and its horrible itch started dominating his life and ruining its quality," Dr. Yancopoulos said. "Here's a guy with Stage IIIB lung cancer basically a death sentence and he is more concerned and miserable about his skin and his itch." One participant in the trial, Lisa Tannebaum, a 53 year old harpist in Stamford, Conn., was so thrilled that she wrote a letter to Regeneron suggesting they use her before and after photographs in advertisements. She developed a severe form of the disease 14 years ago and tried everything imaginable in conventional and alternative medicine without relief specialized diets, immunosuppressive drugs, special clothing, bleach baths. She even had the gold fillings removed from her teeth on the theory that they may be causing an allergic response, but to no avail. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
Over the last 15 years, as a geriatrics and palliative care doctor, I have had candid conversations with countless patients near the end of their lives. The most common emotion they express is regret: regret that they never took the time to mend broken friendships and relationships; regret that they never told their friends and family how much they care; regret that they are going to be remembered by their children as hypercritical mothers or exacting, authoritarian fathers. And that's why I came up with a project to encourage people to write a last letter to their loved ones. It can be done when someone is ill, but it's really worth doing when one is still healthy, before it's too late. It's a lesson I learned years ago from a memorable dying patient. He was a Marine combat veteran who had lived on a staple diet of Semper Fi and studied silence all his life. A proud and stoic man, he was admitted to the hospital for intractable pain from widely spread cancer. Every day, his wife visited him and spent many hours at his bedside watching him watch television. She explained to me that he had never been much of a talker in their 50 plus years of marriage. But he was far more forthcoming with me, especially when it became clear that his days were numbered. He spoke of his deep regret for not having spent enough time with his wife, whom he loved very much, and of his great pride in his son, who had joined the Marines in his father's footsteps. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Well |
For 24 seasons, "Judge" Judy Sheindlin has reigned as the stern, hallowed matriarch of what has become the most watched courtroom in daytime television. But this coming 25th season of "Judge Judy," Ms. Sheindlin said, may very well be her last. In an appearance on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" airing on Monday, she said that CBS would be airing reruns after the coming season ends next year. She also raised the possibility that she would compete with "Judge Judy" with a new show. In a statement to The New York Times on Monday, Ms. Sheindlin suggested that her breakup with CBS was not necessarily a smooth one. "CBS has been a fine partner for 20 plus years," Ms. Sheindlin, 77, said in a statement to The New York Times. "They have decided to monetize their 'Judge Judy' library of reruns. I wish them good luck with their experiment." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
The president has shifted the way both parties talk about trade, immigration and deficits and despite dismal economic news, many voters still reward him for it. BETHLEHEM, Pa. To understand how much President Trump has altered the conversation around the economy, just listen to Bruce Haines, who spent decades as an executive at U.S. Steel before becoming a managing partner of the elegant Historic Hotel Bethlehem. The steel mills that still dominate Bethlehem's skyline have long been empty. And now, so are the tables in the Tap Room, the hotel's restaurant, a sign of the economic hardship caused by the coronavirus pandemic. "It's been very difficult," Mr. Haines said. The president's management of the pandemic is a prime reason many voters cite for backing his opponent. But Mr. Haines, who lives in a swing county in a swing state, is struck most by a different aspect of Mr. Trump's record. In perhaps the greatest reversal of fortune of the Trump presidency, a microscopically tiny virus upended the outsize economic legacy that Mr. Trump had planned to run on for re election. Instead of record low unemployment rates, supercharged confidence levels and broad based gains in personal income, Mr. Trump will end his term with rising poverty, wounded growth and a higher jobless rate than when he took office. Still, despite one of the worst years in recent American history, the issue on which Mr. Trump gets his highest approval ratings remains the economy. It points to the resilience of his reputation as a savvy businessman and hard nosed negotiator. And it is evidence that his most enduring economic legacy may not rest in any statistical almanac, but in how much he has shifted the conversation around the economy. Long before Mr. Trump appeared on the political stage, powerful forces were reshaping the economy and inciting deep rooted anxieties about secure middle income jobs and America's economic pre eminence in the world. Mr. Trump recognized, stoked and channeled those currents in ways that are likely to persist whether he wins or loses the election. By ignoring economic and political orthodoxies, he at times successfully married seemingly contradictory or inconsistent positions to win over both hard core capitalists and the working class. There would be large tax breaks and deregulation for business owners and investors, and trade protection and aid for manufacturers, miners and farmers. "He completely moved the Republican Party away from reducing Social Security and Medicare spending," said Michael R. Strain, an economist at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. On immigration, Mr. Trump remade the political landscape in a different way. He has accused immigrants of stealing jobs or committing crimes and as he did in Thursday night's debate continued to disparage their intelligence. In doing so, he rallied hard line sentiments that could be found in each party and turned them into a mostly Republican cri de coeur. The Democrats changed in turn. Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. has positioned himself as the champion of immigrants, pledging to reverse Mr. Trump's most restrictive policies, while rejecting more radical proposals like eliminating the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. He has also been pushed to finesse his position on fracking and the oil industry, promising not to ban the controversial drilling method on private lands, and trying with mixed success to walk back comments he had made during the presidential debate about transitioning away from fossil fuels. Shifts on trade were more momentous. Mr. Biden and other party leaders who had once promoted the benefits of globalization found themselves playing defense against a Republican who outflanked them on issues like industrial flight and foreign competition. They responded by embracing elements of protectionism that they had previously abandoned. No matter who spends the next four years in the White House, economic policy is likely to pay more attention to American jobs and industries threatened by China and other foreign competition and less attention to worries about deficits caused by government efforts to stimulate the economy. 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. The reshuffling is clear to Charles Jefferson, the managing owner of Montage Mountain Ski Resort near Scranton, Pa. "Those were not conversations we were having five years ago," he said. "The exodus of manufacturing jobs, that was considered a fait accompli." Mr. Jefferson, 55, grew up in North Philadelphia in a blue collar union family and remembers the hemorrhaging of jobs that many Democratic leaders said was unstoppable in a globalized world even though such positions were deeply unpopular with many rank and file Democrats. Manufacturing revived after bottoming out during the Great Recession but floundered during President Barack Obama's second term. Mr. Jefferson, who said he voted for Mr. Obama, supported Mr. Trump in 2016. He plans to do so again. As a result, in this election, unlike the last, the significance of manufacturing and the need for a more skeptical approach to free trade are not contested. Mr. Biden, after decades of supporting trade pacts, is now running on a "made in all of America" program that promises to "use full power of the federal government to bolster American industrial and technological strength." He has also vowed to use the tax code to encourage businesses to keep or create jobs on American soil. Even voters who don't particularly like Mr. Trump credit him with re energizing the U.S. economy. Walter Dealtrey Jr., who runs a tire service, sales and retreading business in Bethlehem that his father started 65 years ago, said he voted for Mr. Trump in 2016, but he was never a big fan of the president. "He talks too much," said Mr. Dealtrey, who's been around long enough to distinguish a new Goodyear or Michelin tire by its smell. "And his tone is terrible." A year ago, he had considered the possibility of supporting a moderate Democrat like Mr. Biden or Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota. But with Election Day just over a week away, Mr. Dealtrey plans to once again support the president. Even after a few unnervingly slow months in the spring and some layoffs among the 960 people he employed at his company, Service Tire Truck Centers, he still trusts Mr. Trump on the economy. Mr. Dealtrey talked as he walked around stacks of giant tires that towered above his own six foot frame, a Stonehenge size monument to wheeled transport. He likes the president's focus on "big manufacturing" and the way he "instills confidence in businesses to invest in this country." "I don't think he really has pushed the boundaries of any of those policy issues beyond where they already were," said Mr. Strain of the American Enterprise Institute. Similarly, Jason Furman, a chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers during the Obama administration, argues that Mr. Trump was pushed along by the same trends and forces that spurred his supporters. And on some issues, like immigration, he caused public opinion to move in the opposite direction. In the end, it may turn out that the president's most significant impact on economic policy is not one that he intended: overturning the conventional wisdom about the impact of government deficits. By simultaneously pursuing steep tax cuts for businesses and wealthy individuals, raising military spending and ruling out Medicare and Social Security reductions, Mr. Trump presided over unprecedented trillion dollar deficits. Emergency pandemic relief added to the bill. Such sums were supposed to cause interest rates and inflation to spike and crowd out private investment. They didn't. "Trump has done a lot to legitimize deficit spending," Mr. Furman said. Mr. Furman is one of a growing circle of economists and bankers who have called for Washington to let go of its debt obsession. Investing in infrastructure, health care, education and job creation are worth borrowing for, they argue, particularly in an era of low interest rates. That doesn't mean the issue has disappeared. Republicans will undoubtedly oppose deficits resulting from proposals put forward by a Democratic White House and vice versa. But warnings about the calamitous consequences of federal borrowing are unlikely to have the same resonance as before the Trump presidency. Back in his office, Mr. Dealtrey remembers how disturbed he once was about the size of the deficit. "I used to care about my kids and grandkids being stuck with it," he said, leaning back in his chair. "But nobody cares anymore." "Maybe I don't care anymore," he said, momentarily surprised at his own words. "We've got bigger problems than that." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Economy |
Thanksgiving has passed, but you might still be on the road, or headed into the air. Below is a list of stories that will help you navigate the mayhem. What to Find Where at 10 Airports Getting stuck in some airports may mean more time for a spray tan or for your children to explore a playspace. Our guide covers where to find hidden gems in case you find yourself stuck in one of the nation's busiest airports. How to Game Out Your Drive If you haven't left yet, it's probably too late to avoid traffic. But you can still avoid the worst of it or start thinking of your exit plan. Based on data from Google Maps, here's how to do it. Portable stoves, blankets and yes, a car seat organizer will help the time on the road pass much more harmoniously. Google data also helpfully allowed us to see where people were going last year. It turns out that people were going on vacation, not just going home. In either case, it's a bear of a time to travel. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
For Joshua Henry, the Tony nominated star of "Carousel," playing the flawed Billy Bigelow is an opportunity to expand younger black actors' notion of what they can hope to do onstage.Credit...Jesse Dittmar for The New York Times For Joshua Henry, the Tony nominated star of "Carousel," playing the flawed Billy Bigelow is an opportunity to expand younger black actors' notion of what they can hope to do onstage. Samson Peter Henry, his parents' first child, made his debut on the cusp of spring, at around 9 o'clock one morning this March. For his mother, Cathryn Henry, a postpartum nurse at New York Presbyterian Hospital, it was a kind of Have Your Child at Work situation. For his father, the three time Tony Award nominated actor Joshua Henry most recently for his lead performance as Billy Bigelow in Jack O'Brien's revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein's "Carousel" Samson's birth had the advantage of exquisite timing. "We were in the middle of previews, and like a good boy he came on the day off," Mr. Henry, 33, said over lunch at a diner on the Upper West Side, near his apartment. He'd logged only three and a half, maybe four hours of sleep the night before, but he was energetic anyway. When he realized it had been exactly a month since his son was born, he high fived the reporter across the table. It's a bounteous time for Mr. Henry, who is toppling a boundary as the first black actor to star as Billy Bigelow on Broadway. Billy is Mr. Henry's highest profile stage role so far, while becoming a father is, he said, the biggest moment of his life. What's strange, and powerfully serendipitous, is how perfectly that intersects with the biggest moment in Billy's life, when he learns of his impending fatherhood. If, when he was 15, Mr. Henry had been given a glimpse of his future the Broadway debut at 23 in "In the Heights"; his first Tony nomination, at 26, for "The Scottsboro Boys"; a second three years later, for "Violet" it would have seemed foreign to him. The youngest of three children of Jamaican immigrants, who attended a small Christian school north of Miami where his father taught math, he'd always been musical. But he'd never seen professional theater and had no idea it could be a career. "I had fully intended to work at an accounting firm like my mom," he said. Then came an intervention that Mr. Henry credits with everything good that came after. When he was 16, his choir teacher, Birgit Fioravante, urged him to audition for the school production of "The Music Man." He ended up playing the male lead, Harold Hill. "Afterward, she took me aside and she was crying," Mr. Henry said. "She was like, 'You can do this for a living.' And I was like, 'Do what?'" At college, he knew within a week that theater was something he could do for life. From 11:30 p.m. to 3 a.m., alone in a college studio, he would devote his nights to what he calls "Josh obsession time," honing his skills. "I would just be there with the mirrors," he said, "and I would play cast album after cast album after cast album after cast album. And I would start to learn the directors, the music directors, what musical theater was how it was constructed, how a show was made. While I was listening to music, I was practicing dance." He was also studying the careers of black musical theater actors like Michael McElroy, Taye Diggs, Norm Lewis and Brian Stokes Mitchell. "I was like, if there's a template for me out there, I have to know exactly what that is," he said. Yet even as he searched for that template, he didn't want to be limited to roles written for black men. And while he willed himself to believe that he would perform on Broadway within three years of graduation a goal he wrote down in a planner he still keeps on his desk he wasn't sure that the theater, an overwhelmingly white industry, would welcome him. "I was having flashbacks of the nights at 3 in the morning, trying to find myself and my craft and wondering if there was a not knowing if there was a hoping," Mr. Henry said, hitting that word hard, "that there was a place for me in this business. I lost it. I was crying so much in that read through. A lot of us were." After he did that show, which transferred to Broadway in early 2008, "couldn't nobody tell me anything about where I'm supposed to be," he said. It means something to him, then, to play a classic role like Billy Bigelow. Billy, though, is a dark hearted carnival barker who beats his wife. Mr. Henry is so gentle spirited that the director George C. Wolfe, who worked with him on "Shuffle Along," remarks on the rare sweetness he exudes, while the composer Jeanine Tesori, who worked with him on "Violet," mentions his "radical kindness." He didn't have many ways, aside from fatherhood, to connect with Billy. To Mr. Henry, playing this deeply flawed man in a show with a famously glorious score is "an opportunity to leave a bigger mark than just the notes and the scenes" to expand younger black actors' notion of what they can hope to do onstage. He was cautious, though, when the producer Scott Rudin floated the idea of the role. In a musical that's controversial for its seeming indifference to domestic violence, casting a black actor ran the risk of demonizing black men. That is largely how his casting has been received, though Hilton Als, the most prominent black critic in the American theater, found another dimension in it. He argued approvingly in The New Yorker that the production which has a white Julie Jordan, played by the Tony winner Jessie Mueller offers a rare instance of colorblind casting in which thought has been given to a black character's presence in a largely white world. Aside from his ensemble role in Green Day's "American Idiot" in 2010, all of Mr. Henry's Broadway roles until "Carousel" were written to be performed by men of color, often in stories about black culture most recently "Shuffle Along," in 2016, about the first black musical. After that, he spent 15 months playing Aaron Burr in "Hamilton," in Chicago and then on tour, in San Francisco and Los Angeles. He was playing Burr last summer when he and his wife found out she was pregnant. Suddenly "Dear Theodosia," Burr's tender pledge to his little girl, became a song that Mr. Henry was singing to his unborn child. A couple of times on the lyric "I'll do whatever it takes, I'll make a million mistakes, I'll make the world safe and sound for you" his voice cracked with emotion onstage. Early in the run of "Carousel," he'd been singing to his unborn boy, too, tapping into his own anticipation to portray Billy's in "Soliloquy." As Samson's due date approached, Mr. Henry's castmates teased him, saying he'd never be able to sing it the same way again. The first time he had to perform it as a father, the day after the baby's birth, he didn't know how he would. "I'd only gotten like two hours' sleep," he said. "You want to let go in the character, you want to let go emotionally, but I was concerned that if I did that, I would feel the actual feelings that I'm feeling in my " He broke off, paused a long moment, misted up, exhaled. "Um. And if I felt all those things, I still had to sing the song, this seven and a half minute mammoth of a song. There are certain technical things you have to do to just get through it. I don't even remember that show. I thought I would." Ms. Mueller does. She gathered with some other actors to watch "Soliloquy" from the wings that night. "Because it was a moment, you know?" she said. "I was thinking about him a lot, because I knew he has the most on his shoulders in this play. I was so surprised by how calm he seemed." Mr. O'Brien, their Tony winning director, remembers, too. The change he saw in Mr. Henry's "Soliloquy" was so profound that it altered the structure of the production. In the first weeks of previews, Mr. O'Brien recalled, he had often been moved "but not stunned" by what struck him as a concert perfect, too safe performance of the song. "The weekend that the baby was born, it was like a dam burst inside him," Mr. O'Brien said. "I didn't say anything about it. He just started to relate, I think, to the depth of his own feelings, and wow. You know, there's another scene in Act 1 as written, and we decided we were idiots to do it, because he was hitting the high point in the show, and what did you want to see after that? Nothing." So in this "Carousel," that's when the first act curtain falls, with the company's festive departure for the clambake cut from the show. In Samson's life, of course, the curtain has only just risen. And his father brimming with plans as usual, including for a funk and soul album of mostly original songs that he hopes to drop in September feels the effect this small person is having. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
WASHINGTON The United States economy is headed for a tumultuous autumn, with the threat of closed schools, renewed government lockdowns, empty stadiums and an uncertain amount of federal support for businesses and unemployed workers all clouding hopes for a rapid rebound from recession. For months, the prevailing wisdom among investors, Trump administration officials and many economic forecasters was that after plunging into recession this spring, the country's recovery would accelerate in late summer and take off in the fall as the virus receded, restrictions on commerce loosened, and consumers reverted to more normal spending patterns. Job gains in May and June fueled those rosy predictions. But failure to suppress a resurgence of confirmed infections is threatening to choke the recovery and push the country back into a recessionary spiral one that could inflict long term damage on workers and businesses large and small, unless Congress reconsiders the scale of federal aid that may be required in the months to come. The looming economic pain was evident this week as big companies forecast gloomy months ahead and government data showed renewed struggles in the job market. A weekly census survey on Wednesday showed 1.3 million fewer Americans held jobs last week than the previous week. A new American Enterprise Institute analysis from Safegraph.com of shopper traffic to stores showed business activity had plunged in the second week of July, in part from renewed virus fears. Amazon on Wednesday extended a work from home order for eligible employees from October to January, and Delta Air Lines said on Tuesday it was cutting back plans to add flights in August and beyond, citing flagging consumer demand. The nation's biggest banks also warned this week that they are setting aside billions of dollars to cover anticipated losses as customers fail to pay their mortgages and other loans in the months to come. May and June will prove to be "easy" in terms of recovery, Jennifer Piepszak, the chief financial officer of JPMorgan Chase, said during an analyst call on Tuesday. "We're really hitting the moment of truth, I think, in the months ahead," she said. Jamie Dimon, the bank's chief executive, said much of the economic pain had been blunted by federal spending, which was now running out. "You will see the effect of this recession," he said. Some companies that used small business loans to retain or rehire workers are now beginning to lay off employees as those funds run out while business activity remains depressed. Expanded benefits for unemployed workers, which research shows have been propping up consumer spending throughout the spring and early summer, are scheduled to expire at the end of July, while more than 18 million Americans continue to claim unemployment. Most economists abandoned hope for a "V shaped" recovery long ago. Now they are warning of an outright reversal, with mounting job losses and business failures. And this time, much of the damage is likely to be permanent. "Our assumption has to be that we're going into re lockdown in the fall," said Karl Smith, the vice president of federal policy at the conservative Tax Foundation in Washington. Until recently, Mr. Smith said, he had been pushing administration officials and members of Congress to begin phasing out an extra 600 per week for unemployed workers perhaps replacing it with an incentive payment for Americans who return to work and to shift spending toward tax incentives. The last two weeks of coronavirus data changed his mind. He is now calling for another large economic rescue package from Washington, including extending the enhanced unemployment benefits, offering more aid to small businesses and perhaps sending another round of stimulus checks to American households. "We have to go back to liquidity mode. I know in Congress there's not a lot of appetite for that," Mr. Smith said. "But there's still a chance it could be a horrible fall, and the legislative calendar is not set to deal with that." Who should get a booster shot? It depends, Dr. Scott Gottlieb says. Virginia's new lieutenant governor elect says she won't force vaccines. Trump administration officials have suggested a willingness to negotiate with Democrats on unemployment benefits, small business aid and possibly another round of stimulus checks, while also pushing for business tax cuts that have found little traction in Congress. Some Senate Republicans want to cut off pandemic spending increases entirely, though their leadership has expressed openness to a deal if it includes protections from lawsuits for businesses that reopen. Small businesses around the country say that if lockdowns persist without some type of additional financial cushion from Congress, they will be faced with a dire choice. At Sonoma Fit, a three gym chain in Northern California, business was finally starting to stabilize this month after weeks of lost revenue and extreme uncertainty. Old customers were starting to come back. New ones were signing up. The thousands of dollars that Jennifer and Adam Kovacs, the owners, had spent to overhaul their facilities to allow for social distancing seemed to be paying off. Then on Monday, a friend called to tell Ms. Kovacs that the governor had just ordered gyms in much of California to close again. Ms. Kovacs said she was "blindsided" but she tried to hide it from her 17 year old daughter, who was working at the front desk. About three quarters of Sonoma Fit's nearly 5,000 members stuck with them through the first shutdown, but Ms. Kovacs said she thought they would be lucky to retain half their members this time. She said she could not imagine business returning to normal as long as rules differed by county and industry and were subject to change at a moment's notice. Mr. Trump's advisers continue to predict the economy will rebound sharply in the months ahead, and the president has made increasingly insistent calls for a full reopening of schools this fall. Many economists agree that the economy cannot fully recover let alone grow if millions of young children remain at home without viable child care options. Yet failure to control the virus has made reopening a risky trade off. Some of the nation's largest school districts, including Los Angeles and San Diego, have announced that they will not immediately return to in person classroom instruction when the new school year begins. In New York and other large public school districts around the country, officials are preparing to bring students back for only part time instruction and have warned parents they could shut down again if cases rise. Those announcements have not been accompanied by government funded programs that economists say would help schools open safely or ensure access to child care for millions of Americans who are struggling to juggle parenting and work a group that is disproportionately made up of women who are not white. Even as Mr. Trump pushes a return to classrooms, many districts are facing pandemic induced budget shortfalls. Census figures from 2019 analyzed by Melissa S. Kearney, a University of Maryland economist who directs the Economic Strategy Group at the Aspen Institute, show that nearly one quarter of American workers about 38 million adults have at least one child under the age of 13 at home. The share is higher among so called essential workers who are required to report to their jobs during lockdowns, and it rises to one third for workers in low income families. Only 16 percent of all workers with a young child have a nonworking spouse at home who could plausibly care for children who are not in school in order for a spouse to report to work, Ms. Kearney said. "There's millions of workers that can't go back to work if their kids don't have a safe place to be, most days a week," Ms. Kearney said. "This is not, get schools open or don't get schools open. We need to figure out a way to get schools open safely." Officials in Florida, Texas and other states began a rapid reopening of their economies in May, while the nation's infection rate remained higher than those of other wealthy nations and well before the federal government had a plan to ensure the safety of anything resembling normal business activity. An ensuing surge of cases in the Southeast and Southwest has forced some governors to reimpose limits like shutting down bars. Restaurants, retailers and other businesses that have partly adapted to the new realities of the crisis, often by moving some operations outdoors, must now brace for the prospect of at least several more months of constricted revenues as colder weather sets in. Broadway has shuttered until 2021. Popular music groups have canceled tours, leaving independent concert venues with no way to earn money to survive. "I am normally a very optimistic person, and I have never seen an entire industry face an existential struggle like we are facing right now," said Audrey Fix Schaefer, a communications director for music venues in Washington, D.C., including The Anthem and the 9:30 Club, and for a newly formed trade group called the National Independent Venue Association. "It is that dire." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Economy |
The yellow boxfish doesn't look nimble. Squat and rectangular, it resembles a plastic storage bin with fins. Even its coloring suggests clumsiness juveniles are hard hat yellow with black spots, as if to say "coming through!" But on a coral reef, you'll find these cuboid creatures darting in and out of tight spaces, snatching shrimp from crevices and cornering like BMX champs. The combination of their body plan and swimming style "really boggles the mind," said Pim Boute, a doctoral candidate at Wageningen University in the Netherlands. It has also inspired decades of research into how, exactly, they manage to move with such agility. The latest foray, carried out by Mr. Boute and colleagues when he was a master's student at the University of Groningen and published in Royal Society Open Science last week, lays out the role of one understudied element: the fish's tail fin. Most fish, from minnows to sharks, have pliant bodies, which they undulate to move through the water. But boxfish sport a set of hard, bony plates, called a carapace. The carapace acts like a suit of armor protecting them against predators, but restricting their flexibility. So if they want to move, "they can only use their fins," Mr. Boute said. It also gives them their strange shapes: other boxfish species look like purses, Frisbees or ottomans. In 2015, a group of researchers, including Mr. Boute's two co authors, published a study suggesting that these carapaces make the bodies of some boxfish species inherently unstable in the water. (Other studies have come to the opposite conclusion, saying that ridges on the carapace actually help with stability.) If that's the case, the fins not only propel and steer the fish but steady it, too, Mr. Boute said. Based on previous studies, as well as his own underwater observations, he figured the tail fin was "quite important" for modulating yaw swerving motions that occur in the horizontal plane. (When a car hits black ice and fishtails, for example, it's experiencing yaw.) To test this theory, Mr. Boute and colleagues used three dimensional plastic models of finless yellow boxfish. (Such stand ins are common in this type of study, he said, because it's difficult to measure forces acting on a live fish.) They placed each model in a tank, on a rod that kept it in place, and sent water rushing past it as though it were swimming while a sensor measured the rotational force the fake fish experienced. They did this repeatedly, each time changing the angle of the boxfish to the water flow. They then put the models through the same tests, but added a tail fin. They tried the fin in both open and closed positions when a yellow boxfish tail fans out, it more than doubles in size and in a series of postures, from sticking straight out to kinked right or left. The researchers found that without a tail fin, the boxfish was at the mercy of the water flow: had it not been attached to a rod, it would have been nudged left or right. But an open tail fin stabilized the fish, no matter how the body was angled. A closed tail fin had a subtler effect, counteracting the influence of the oncoming water to varying degrees depending on the fish's position. The force measurements also indicated that when the tail turned, the fish would turn, too. This suggests that by opening, closing and turning its tail fin, the boxfish can "control the unstable system that is the body" leaning into some turns and course correcting others, depending on where it wants to go, Mr. Boute said. It also reinforces the viewpoint that the boxfish's shape is inherently wobbly which Mr. Boute expected, because the fish's body flits around so much, he said. Malcolm Gordon, a retired professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California, Los Angeles, called the new results "scientifically sound refinements" in the decades long quest to figure out how boxfish work. But he remains on the opposite side of the stability debate, and thinks the carapace helps to stabilize the fish. The boxfish, however, keep doing what they do best: driving scientists to distraction with their unlikely moves. As soon as you watch one treat a reef like an X Games course, "it's obvious that they use the tail for steering," Mr. Boute said. "But to quantify this yeah, it was quite some work." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
Our guide to new art shows and some that will be closing soon. 'MAX BECKMANN IN NEW YORK' at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (through Feb. 20). In the last two years of his life, the great German Expressionist Max Beckmann lived in New York. This terrific exhibition gathers paintings that he created during his time here as well as paintings now owned by museums and private collectors in New York, regardless of when they were made. If this sounds like a recipe for mishmash, it's not: There's not a single dud among the 39 works in the show, which will warm the hearts of Beckmann's fans and serve as an excellent introduction for those unfamiliar with his deeply and vigorously humane art. (Ken Johnson) 212 535 7710, metmuseum.org 'IGGY POP LIFE CLASS BY JEREMY DELLER' at the Brooklyn Museum (through March 26). Now 69 years old, the rock star Iggy Pop was 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 'VELAZQUEZ PORTRAITS: TRUTH IN PAINTING' at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (through March 12). Two freshly cleaned portraits from the Hispanic Society of America, currently closed for renovations, join five other pictures by the greatest artist of the Spanish Golden Age. In Velazquez's "Portrait of a Young Girl," from around 1640 and stunningly alive after conservation, an anonymous sitter of around 6 or 7 lips pursed, black eyes fixed forward has the self possession of a grown woman; its psychological intricacy belies the easy brushwork of the picture's background and the girl's gray dress. At center is the Met's prized portrait of Juan de Pareja, Velazquez's mestizo slave (who became a portraitist himself after his emancipation in 1654), who wears a glamorous white lace collar and crosses his arm before himself like a general. Rare enough as a sympathetic depiction of a European of color from before the French Revolution, the portrait has something more: nobility of spirit. (Jason Farago) 212 535 7710, metmuseum.org 'VOULKOS: THE BREAKTHROUGH YEARS' at the Museum of Arts and Design (through March 15). The charismatic, rebellious sculptor and teacher Peter Voulkos was a genuine rock star of his medium, a trained potter who went on to violate every rule of pot making often before a live audience. His sculptures started out clearly enough as polite, wheel thrown vessels but evolved into nervy and transgressive abstract paintings, looming behemoths fired in industrial size kilns, precarious assemblages and live wire performances (no ritual immolation but lots of smashing and dropping of plates and vases). This taut, electric exhibition zooms in on 1953 to 1968, a pivotal decade and a half in his career. (Karen Rosenberg) 212 299 7777, madmuseum.org | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
The lies and obfuscations pile up. No, it wasn't tear gas used to clear Lafayette Park for President Trump's Bible waving photo op last Monday night, Attorney General William Barr said on CBS's "Face the Nation" on Sunday. Rather it was "pepper balls," he said. "Pepper spray is not a chemical irritant. It's not chemical." Wrong, according to The Washington Post; pepper balls are very much a chemical irritant. The paper awarded the nation's top law enforcement officer four Pinocchios for his claim. The president himself keeps at it, too. On the morning of June 4, he tweeted: " Robert Mueller should have never been appointed, although he did prove that I must be the most honest man in America!" As of May 29, the most honest man in America had uttered 19,127 false or misleading claims in his 1,226 days in office, according to Glenn Kessler of The Post, who has been tracking them since Day 1. That's 15.6 falsehoods a day, or roughly one per waking hour, every hour, every day. That puts him on track to hit 20,000 lies by Wednesday, July 29; by Nov. 3, at this pace, he'll be north of 22,000 but of course that period will constitute the heat of the campaign, when the frequency seems likely to increase. All right, some still say; Yes, Mr. Trump is worse than normal, but they all lie. What's the big deal, really? Here's the big deal. Mr. Trump's lies are different. Not just in quantity, but also in quality. He lies for a different purpose than every other president yes, even, I would argue, Richard Nixon, the biggest presidential prevaricator until Mr. Trump came along. What is that difference? In a nutshell, it is this: Our democracy has, to use a word that former Vice President Joe Biden employed in his powerful June 2 speech in Philadelphia, certain guardrails that, as Mr. Biden put it, "have helped make possible this nation's path to a more perfect union, a union that constantly requires reform and rededication." Every president before Mr. Trump has been mindful of those guardrails. When they lied, they lied out of respect for those guardrails. Mr. Trump lies to crush those guardrails into scrap metal. Let's take the George W. Bush administration and the run up to the Iraq war. I know that we still debate whether administration figures lied or were the victims of faulty intelligence. To me, the evidence is overwhelming that they knowingly lied about the immediacy of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. Indeed, part of the reason the intel was faulty was they created a special intelligence unit within the Pentagon to tell them what they wanted to hear. So let's say they lied. The lies were bad; I'm not saying they weren't. And they had calamitous consequences. But they were crafted in a way that heeded the existence of the guardrails. The very example I cited above the creation of what they called the Office of Special Plans is proof of this. They knew they couldn't just go before the American public and say any old thing, grounded in nothing. They knew they had to make the case for war within a certain process that existed, that honored precedent and that seemed evidence based and "democratic." The Bush team on Iraq, Lyndon Johnson on the Gulf of Tonkin incident, even Mr. Nixon on Watergate in all those cases, lies were told. But Presidents Bush, Johnson and Nixon also knew and implicitly accepted that lying to the American people had limits, limits that were enforced by the truth finding institutions and principles that are essential to a democracy the free press, free speech, constitutional checks and balances, legitimate independent investigations. On this last point, the contrast between Mr. Nixon, who agreed to send administration officials to testify before the Senate Watergate committee, and Mr. Trump, who is fighting any such cooperation all the way up to the Supreme Court, is stark. Whatever else they did, these earlier presidents understood these limits and respected the institutions enough to try to sneak around them. Additionally, they understood the value of these institutions to hold the opposition in check when the other side is in power. And all previous presidents at some level took these institutions as givens in a functioning democracy, which they all believed should endure. Not so the incumbent. It often befuddles observers that Mr. Trump has no urge to hide his lies. Of course he doesn't. Because he doesn't care if he's caught, because he has no regard for the democratic limits named above. His only real purposes are holding on to power by any means necessary and relentlessly reinventing himself to keep his reality show on the air for as long as possible. So, far from respecting the institutions enough to sneak around them or appear to conform with their rules, he is perfectly happy to destroy those institutions that might expose him (the press, Congress, the courts, the inspectors general). He has nothing but contempt for the institutions that check him, so he has no urge to hide anything. And of course maybe the most frightening part of all he has not a moment's concern for what endures after he's gone. So this is what makes his lies worse. They threaten the foundations of the republic in a way that even Mr. Nixon's did not. And they will only get worse. If we've learned one thing about the president, it's certainly this: It will always get worse. It's mortifying enough to imagine the damage he can do in the next five months, let alone the following four years if he's re elected. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
LOS ANGELES Alarmed by plunging television ratings for the Academy Awards, the organization behind the Oscars said on Wednesday it would add a category for blockbuster films and shorten the telecast by giving out some statuettes during commercial breaks. Yet adding a category for "outstanding achievement in popular film," as John Bailey, the president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, put it in a letter to members, could create new problems for the beleaguered organization. What if a movie many see as a legitimate best picture contender the worldwide smash "Black Panther," for instance receives a nomination for the populist Oscar but not for best overall picture? Does that mean "Black Panther" and films like it are second class citizens? The letter, co signed by Dawn Hudson, the academy's chief executive, did not say what would constitute a "popular" film or whether movies nominated in that category could also be nominated for best picture. (An academy spokeswoman later clarified that they could.) The category will make its debut at the next Oscars ceremony, which will be held on Feb. 24 and televised on ABC. "Eligibility requirements and other key details will be forthcoming," the letter said. The academy did not respond to a request to interview Ms. Hudson or Mr. Bailey, who was re elected to a second one year term as president at a board meeting on Tuesday night. The academy's board also voted to keep the telecast to three hours, which it described as an effort to deliver "a more accessible Oscars for our viewers worldwide." To trim the telecast the last show, in March, stretched nearly four hours the academy said it would present "select categories" during commercial breaks, with the winning moments edited and aired later during the broadcast. It did not say which categories could be edged aside. The most likely are the three Oscars presented for short films. Producers hired to shape the annual telecast have long pressed the academy to reduce the number of awards presented on air. (There are now 25.) But academy traditionalists some of whom have left the board in recent years always pushed back. A third change will not take effect until 2020, the academy said. The telecast will be held earlier in the year in an attempt to speed up Hollywood's awards season, which in recent years has stretched to four solid months of ceremonies. By the time the Oscars roll around, there is little suspense about who will win what, and the honorees themselves have a catatonic look, having been trotted from one awards podium to the next. The change in dates may force other telecasts, including the Grammy Awards, to recalibrate their own positions on the calendar. Whether its remedies are the correct ones or not, the academy had to take some kind of action: The Oscars are increasingly out of touch. A record low of 26.5 million people watched this year's telecast, a nearly 20 percent drop from a year earlier. As recently as four years ago, the Academy Awards had an audience of 43.7 million viewers. 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. "We have heard from many of you about improvements needed to keep the Oscars and our academy relevant in a changing world," Mr. Bailey wrote. "The Board of Governors took this charge seriously." The Oscar telecast is a big business, generating 83 percent of the academy's 148 million in annual revenue. ABC controls broadcast rights for the show until 2028 at a cost of roughly 75 million a year. ABC was seeking as much as 2.8 million per 30 second commercial for the most recent telecast. Nose diving ratings threaten all of that income, not to mention eroding the position of the Oscars in comparison to the more free wheeling Golden Globe Awards. A few more years of declines and the Globes will be the higher rated show. Reasons for the Oscars' decline abound the general fragmentation of the media landscape is one but the central complaints have been about the telecast's marathon length and increasing tendency to honor niche films that the majority of American moviegoers have not seen. Last year's best picture winner, "The Shape of Water," had sold about 60 million in tickets at the time after playing in theaters for 14 weeks. "Black Panther," by comparison, took in 202 million over its first three days in North American theaters alone. In 2009, the academy tried to make room for more widely seen films by doubling the number of potential nominees for the best picture award to 10 from five. That shift occurred after "The Dark Knight," a critically acclaimed superhero film, was shut out of the best picture category, despite receiving nominations in eight others and winning in two. But allowing more best picture nominations did little to solve the problem. For the most part, moviedom's elite continued to bypass films with large audiences and simply put forward additional niche ones. One rumpus after another has roiled the academy in recent years. After black actors and films that focused on black characters were overlooked for Oscar nominations in 2015 and 2016, the OscarsSoWhite social media outcry was so fierce that the academy raced membership changes into effect. There has been progress, but it's still mostly white and male. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
When I was a little girl, I loved the moments I spent with my mom as she did my hair not so much getting my hair combed, but the ritual around the process, and the magic we created out of it. First, the banishment of annoying siblings to another part of the house. Then, the gathering of materials: a turquoise wide tooth comb and brush set, an assortment of candy colored barrettes, and the jar of blue Ultra Sheen hair grease, a small cup of solidified ocean that bore the swirling imprint, like fossilized waves, of dipping fingers. Finally, there were the stories. We pretended there were people who lived in my hair, and as she combed each section, we'd "visit" our regular cast of characters usually based on real life friends and relatives creating elaborate story lines about the goings on in their lives. Sitting between my mother's knees I could be and do anything. I felt powerful. As I got older, I became aware that as an African American girl, I saw myself very differently from how others saw me. Kids teased me about my weight, my clothes and my hair, which I began to wear straightened in an attempt to fit in, but which never seemed comfortable on top of my head (I was the girl with the lopsided "mushroom," or the frizzy edges that I sweated out during gym class). Suddenly, the voices of the people in my hair were quiet. My hair had lost its magic, and, I felt, so had I. Books were my anchors whenever I questioned myself, my attractiveness, my magic. Yet even in the pages that became my solace, I rarely saw images of black kids like me weird, "quirky" and shy who just got to be regular kids, grappling with everyday kid stuff. Much later, when I decided to write a children's book, hair seemed like a natural subject, inspired by the special time I shared with my mom as she combed my hair, which had awakened my love of storytelling. But I also wanted to expand the kinds of stories told about African American kids. The result was "I Love My Hair!," a story about an African American girl who uses vivid imagery to celebrate the ways she wears her hair, published in 1998 and now being reissued on its 20th anniversary. Back then mainstream publishers were starting to pay attention to what was called "multiculturalism," the precursor of today's diverse books movement. Yet I still felt stories about black kids were narrow, either historical or focused on trauma or the ills of urban communities. In "I Love My Hair!" I sought to create a whimsical story that encouraged kids not only to love their hair, but also to explore and find joy in their own imaginations. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
FOR nearly two decades, Mark Nutter lived and worked in Los Angeles as a writer for screen and television. After his divorce almost three years ago, he returned to Chicago, his hometown, where he and his ex wife owned a penthouse condominium that they had used as a pied a terre. Mr. Nutter began to focus on writing for musical theater, and then "realized all the musical theater fun was happening in New York," he said. He contacted Erica Bunin of Alfred Real Estate, who had helped a friend find a pied a terre in the Musicians Building, erected nearly a century ago on West 67th Street. The building was "heavily insulated so musicians could play their instruments and not bother their neighbors," Ms. Bunin said. Soundproof living quarters were very important to Mr. Nutter. "He was concerned not only about sound from the outside," she said, "but sound he would be making in the apartment." Apartments in the Musicians Building were too expensive, so Ms. Bunin showed him a co op across the street. A lovely one bedroom for 699,000, with monthly maintenance around 2,200, was on the market. But it was too small for Mr. Nutter's equipment and instruments, which include an upright piano and a digital keyboard. "Mark is very tall and the sleeping loft is very short," Ms. Bunin said. "It was fun with those tall ceilings," said Mr. Nutter, 58, "but somebody younger could have gotten into the loft easier." The layout wasn't right, either. "I had to think about my piano," he said. "Pianos require a certain amount of space and an interior wall." Temperature and humidity can affect the tuning of a piano placed against an exterior wall. Ms. Bunin urged Mr. Nutter to look at many apartments. "My experience with people who are just beginning their search is they are not ready to move on a place," she said. "Education is very important." Mr. Nutter also needed to sell his Chicago penthouse, which was in a glassy high rise condo building, Superior 110, in the River North neighborhood. Three exposures made for great views, but the place had too many windows, Mr. Nutter said. "I have bookshelves and books, and this was like living in a fishbowl." The penthouse eventually sold for 685,000. "I got as lucky as you can get taking an enormous hit," Mr. Nutter said. In 2008, before the building was completed, the purchase price had been around 1 million. So he lowered his sights in New York to a top price of 500,000. "That, of course, narrows the universe quite a bit," Ms. Bunin said, "but it wasn't impossible." She suggested Citylights, one of the first high rise co ops built, 15 years ago, in Long Island City, Queens. An apartment there, for 488,000, with maintenance of less than 1,600, had a small second bedroom and magnificent views of New York City. But for Mr. Nutter, the location was a problem. "You couldn't hail a cab you had to call a cab," he said. "You are still a subway ride away from Manhattan, and I didn't want to have to rely on the trains. I wanted to know that, even if it's miles and miles, I could walk where I wanted to go." A place on West 96th Street hit the mark. A one bedroom with around 800 square feet, it had not just a sunken living room but a dining area and an up to date kitchen. The list price was 549,000 and the maintenance a bit more than 1,000. The apartment faced 96th Street, a major crosstown thoroughfare. Mr. Nutter first saw the apartment on a rainy day, when, he said, "the sound of wheels is noisier than wheels on dry pavement." His plan was to add soundproof windows throughout. He offered 485,000; the counteroffer was 540,000. But the parties couldn't agree on a number. The apartment later sold for 530,000. Mr. Nutter had also liked a one bedroom in one of the three residential co ops on Morningside Drive not owned by Columbia University. It was farther from the subway than he might have liked. But the apartment, listed for 475,000, was large, with around 900 square feet. It came with floor to ceiling bookshelves and a second bathroom, "which is, I think, unique among all the one bedrooms I looked at," Mr. Nutter said. His offer of 465,000 was accepted. Maintenance was in the mid 900s. Mr. Nutter, who arrived in the fall, loves the tranquillity of his neighborhood, though a yell emanates at 8:15 a.m. from the school across the street on school days as someone herds the pupils inside. Still, by then he is up composing. In the morning hours, he uses headphones so as not to even chance disturbing his neighbors. His most recent show, "Re Animator: The Musical," an adaptation of a 1985 cult horror movie for which he wrote the lyrics and music, was well reviewed last summer. He has become used to the walk to shops and services. "I have accepted and enjoy that you go out and walk 20 minutes to get what you want," he said. "Walking is not the chore I thought it might be." One building quirk is the lack of a buzzer, though visitors can call from the lobby. Having hunted for a place of his own, Mr. Nutter now understands why New Yorkers are obsessed with apartments. "Every conversation turns to real estate," he said. "I jump into those conversations with pride of ownership. I am so thrilled with the deal I got, and people nod in agreement. I hear great comments about Morningside Heights. I bandy the square footage figure about with pride and joy." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
Certainly the patient never knew where the hip pain came from, or why its left leg stopped working. The diagnosis arrived only 240 million years later, when a femur turned up in an ancient lake bed in Germany, one side marred by a malignant bone tumor. Cancer seldom appears in the fossil record, and its history among vertebrates is poorly understood. On Thursday , a team of researchers writing in JAMA Oncology have described the femur as the oldest known case of cancer in an amniote, the group that includes reptiles, birds and mammals. Modern cancers are often diagnosed through soft tissue examinations or biopsies, but that is a difficult prospect for cancer hunters working with cold, hard fossils. Instead, it takes luck. "When it comes to our understanding of cancer in the past, we're really just at the beginning," said Michaela Binder, a bioarchaeologist at the Austrian Archaeological Institute who's researched cancer in ancient humans. "It's not like people say, 'Oh, I want to go study cancer in ancient turtles or in fossil mammoths,' because we have so little evidence." Like the Science Times page on Facebook. Sign up for the Science Times newsletter. The discovery of the femur was a stroke of luck . Originally collected by Rainer Schoch of the Stuttgart State Museum of Natural History, it belonged to a wide bodied, long tailed animal called Pappochelys, a shell less relative of modern turtles. The femur and its jagged growth caught the attention of Yara Haridy, a former medical student and paleontologist at the Natural History Museum, Berlin. While many paleontologists look for the cleanest or at least most representative remains, Ms . Haridy said, the marks left by illness and injury also can shed light on the lives of ancient animals. The study of such fossils is called paleopathology, and it combines aspects of modern forensic and medical practices. "I basically go through an elimination process, which is kind of how diagnostics in humans work," Ms. Haridy said. "You go from the most general possibility to more specific and really strange diagnoses." Ms. Haridy and her colleagues brought the femur to Dr. Patrick Asbach, a radiologist at the Charite, a university hospital in Berlin. Examining micro CT scans of the bone, the researchers began running through a checklist of possible causes. Healed injuries are the most common type of fossil pathology, yet the micro CT scans showed that underneath the growth, the bone was unbroken. So Ms. Haridy considered other possibilities. A congenital abnormality would have been present on both sides of the femur, not just one. And while friction and excessive pressure can cause bone growth, the femur would have been protected by muscles. That left the possibility of disease. But most diseases eat away at bone instead of building it up, or lead to infections that warp and wear away the underlying surface. Benign tumors can sometimes grow on bones, but they tend to be formed from cartilage and look quite different: "They either make a bunch of cartilage or start to actually reabsorb bone," Ms. Haridy said. The team identified the swelling as an osteosarcoma, a type of bone cancer also found in humans. According to the National Organization for Rare Disorders, an estimated 750 to 1,000 cases are diagnosed in the United States every year. The find is an important data point when it comes to learning more about cancer in the vertebrate family tree, Dr. Binder said. The lack of evidence for prehistoric cancer has sometimes led researchers to speculate that the disease is a modern phenomenon related to unhealthy living, pollutant filled environments or people getting much older than they used to in the past. Other specialists have suggested the possible presence of a tumor suppressor gene in vertebrates, the failure of which allows benign tumors to metastasize. In the absence of fossil evidence, however, there has been no proof. Adding to the uncertainty, some animal lineages seem less susceptible to cancer than others: Crocodiles and a few other reptiles, along with sharks and naked mole rats, are rarely troubled by the disease, while tumors in invertebrates don't much resemble those of vertebrates. Still, there are other recent finds that suggest cancer's antiquity. In 2001, a team of Russian paleontologists identified a possible cranial osteosarcoma in an Early Triassic amphibian, while a benign jaw tumor from a 255 million year old mammal forerunner was reported in 2016. "What makes this really cool is that now we understand that cancer is basically a deeply rooted switch that can be turned on or off," Ms. Haridy said. "It's not something that happened recently in our evolution. It's not something that happened early in human history, or even in mammal history." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
Someone has it in for the Tony Award winning actress Tonya Pinkins. In a video posted to YouTube just after Christmas, a woman in a blond wig and lethal looking lipstick spits rhyming insults at Ms. Pinkins while a backing track plays. "You're a has been, a hack, a floozy, a slut," she seethes, "Your initials are T.P. so " The tone nose dives from there. Yet what's most shocking about the video is its mastermind, major cinematographer and star: Tonya Pinkins. A year ago Ms. Pinkins, 54, set Off Broadway tongues and fingers wagging after a vexed departure from the Classic Stage Company's production of "Mother Courage," an exit as gossiped about as Shia LaBeouf's from "Orphans" or Jeremy Piven's from "Speed the Plow." Now she has returned with a video that repurposes that gossip for a higher, hip hop inflected end. Rather than trying to protect herself, she's embracing every attack in ways audacious, profane and uproarious. The video, "Tonya Pinkins Rap Roast (Diss) Challenge YouTube," features Ms. Pinkins in three roles that blond battle rapper, a brunette battle rapper and a Rastafarian referee. As the female characters slam her, personally and professionally, a passel of guest stars including Ellen Page, Tea Leoni and Bebe Neuwirth look on, appalled. Viewed without context, the piece seems a postmodern taunt or a bridge burning implosion. But there's something more potent and more joyful at work. Ms. Pinkins first heard about the challenge on a panel at the Toronto International Film Festival last September. She saw a couple of videos online and knew she wanted to create one. "I want to make people laugh a lot," she said. "We need to laugh and we need to laugh at ourselves as much as possible." She was speaking via Skype from a Starbucks in Singapore, in the midst of a long trip that would also take her to Vietnam, Thailand and India in search of teaching opportunities. When Skype gave out, she continued via phone, text and attempted WhatsApp, remaining good humored throughout. After all, she has been through worse. When she decided to leave "Mother Courage," she wrote an open letter, published by Playbill, criticizing a "cultural misappropriation" of the African setting and a vision of the lead character who "would not be an icon of feminine tenacity and strength, nor of a black female's fearless capabilities," but rather a "delusional woman." In writing the letter, she was, she felt, "the most authentic I may have been as a human being." She liked that feeling. Yet her friend the playwright and activist Eve Ensler warned her that she might face consequences attacks on her character or a chilling effect on her career. "I was saying: 'Be aware of what you're going into. Do it with your eyes open,'" Ms. Ensler recalled recently by telephone. A host of negative comments did ensue, including at least one website dedicated to her disparagement. It was a difficult time, Ms. Pinkins said, but she got through it. "Most people think if that happened they would die. They would disappear, they would crawl under the rug," she said. But she didn't die and she didn't disappear. Last year you could see her in popular television series like "Madam Secretary" and "Gotham." She also appeared in the Hulu mini series "11.22.63." Its showrunner, Bridget Carpenter, described her work as "intelligent, insightful, clear, with wonderful emotional depth." She received offers for several plum Off Broadway roles, in shows like "Marie and Rosetta" at the Atlantic Theater Company and "War" at Lincoln Center Theater, she said, which her filming schedule precluded. Still, she never forgot the comments she received in the wake of "Mother Courage," and as soon as she heard about the Roast Challenge, she knew that she could defuse them by turning them into unrestrained comedy. Through a mutual friend she contracted the writer Isaac Klein to compose the rap and sent him link after sneering link to the criticism she had gotten. "I want it all in there," she told him. Mr. Klein had a lot to work with. A performer of indisputable virtuosity and bite, Ms. Pinkins has seen perhaps more tumult offstage than on. She landed in the tabloids after a contentious custody battle and subsequent fights over child support, and has been open about her time on public assistance. If professional ructions have been fewer, she has developed a reputation as a fierce and fiercely opinionated artist. In addition to the "Mother Courage" ado, she has fought publicly over salaries, resisting the idea that "women are supposed to take less because a man likes you or says something nice to you. I've got four kids to feed, and I've got to keep a roof over their heads. You liking me can't pay my bills." Mr. Klein stuffed all of this into his first draft. Then he worried. Could he really show a woman famous for roles in "Jelly's Last Jam" and "Caroline, or Change" lyrics like "You're the only Tony winner best known for being on welfare"? And what about his riff on the Classic Stage controversy: "You quit 'Mother Courage.' Were you smokin' crack?/You finally booked a good show and left cuz Brecht wasn't black?" He also wasn't sure if she'd accept the suggestion, made by his writing partner, James Stewart, that they set the rap to "Lot's Wife," Ms. Pinkins's lacerating aria from "Caroline, or Change," the 2004 Broadway musical written by Tony Kushner and Jeanine Tesori. "I was a little terrified," Mr. Klein said, speaking by telephone. When he presented it to Ms. Pinkins, she said, "It's wicked and awesome and I love it," he recalled. The notes she gave were formal ones, like prompting him to write a faster Daveed Diggs style rap for her. The director George C. Wolfe, who has worked with her several times, described the video as "typical Tonya. There's a ferocity and an intelligence and a wit. It's where bravery and madness meet." He called Ms. Pinkins "passionate and committed," noting that "her heart and her aggression are bound together in a really fascinating way." The playwright Branden Jacobs Jenkins loves the video, too. (She co starred in his "War" at Yale Repertory Theater.) "Tonya's gift and curse is that she's got a political heart and mind and such an intense breadth of experience in the theater coping with the slings and arrows of stereotype and tricky representation," he wrote in an email. He sees the video as a response. Ms. Pinkins has been pleased by the reaction. Most of her friends have loved it, she said, and if a few were shocked, they got over it. That's how she knows it's working. "If everybody likes it, something's off," she said. She has called on other Broadway artists, like Cynthia Erivo, Kristin Chenoweth and Lin Manuel Miranda, to roast themselves, too. If it catches on, she said, "it could be a very cool thing." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
An investigation found that several sites owned by Ken LaCorte push inflammatory items stories, petitions and the occasional conspiracy theory to the public. SAN FRANCISCO At first glance, the websites Conservative Edition News and Liberal Edition News have only one thing in common: Both have been carefully curated to inflame America's culture wars. Conservative Edition News is a repository of stories guaranteed to infuriate the American right. Its recent headlines include "Austin sex ed curriculum teaches kids how to obtain an abortion" and "HuffPost writer considers Christianity 'dangerous.'" On Liberal Edition News, readers are fed a steady diet of content guaranteed to drive liberal voters further left or to wring a visceral response from moderates. One recent story singled out an Italian youth soccer coach who called Greta Thunberg, the teenage climate activist, a "whore." The sites are the work of Ken LaCorte, the former Fox News executive who was accused of killing a story about President Trump's affair with Stormy Daniels, the pornographic film actress, before the 2016 election. Their content is written by a network of young Macedonians in Veles, a sleepy riverside town that was home to a collection of writers who churned out disinformation during the 2016 presidential election in the United States. Among Mr. LaCorte's network was one writer who helped peddle a conspiracy theory that Hillary Clinton had ties to a pedophile ring. Until now, it was unclear who was behind the sites. But an investigation by The New York Times and researchers at Nisos, a security firm in Virginia, found that they are among several sites owned by Mr. LaCorte that push inflammatory items stories, petitions and the occasional conspiracy theory to the American public. While big tech companies like Google and Twitter are trying to distance themselves from divisive politics by restricting or banning political ads, Mr. LaCorte's websites are a reminder that there is a cottage industry of small sites happy to stoke passions on both sides of the political aisle and cash in on that anger. Conservative Edition News and Liberal Edition News forgo bylines. The only hint of their maker is in fine print at the bottom of each page: "By Bivona Digital Inc.," a corporation whose only known address is a drop box typically reserved for transient sailors off the San Francisco Bay in Sausalito, Calif. "I wanted to try to find middle ground," Mr. LaCorte said. "Unfortunately, the things that work best right now are hyperactive politics. On one hand, that's at odds with what I want to do. But you can be more successful by playing the edgy clickbait game." He added: "Where does that line turn from good business to 'Eh, that's sleazy' ?" Exploiting American cultural and political fissures to drive traffic to his websites has worked wonders. At last count, Mr. LaCorte had more than three million followers on the social network and 30 million unique visitors to his sites. Even he couldn't believe his success. "One day I woke up and more than 1 percent of Americans were following my sites," he said. Intentionally or not, the sites are mimicking Kremlin interference in 2016, when Russian operatives used fictitious personas to inflame American discord over Benghazi, border security, gun control and Black Lives Matter. American officials have warned that Russia is laying groundwork for interference in 2020. In a rare joint statement this month, officials at the Department of Homeland Security, the F.B.I., the National Security Agency and other agencies warned that Russia, China, Iran and other nations would seek to interfere in the 2020 election through social media, disinformation and cyberattacks. The announcement was intended to assure Americans that the government was prepared. What is less clear is how officials plan to address the growing and increasingly profitable marketplace for politically divisive content that is being operated by Americans. In this case, with help from Macedonia. The spreading of politically divisive content or even blatant disinformation and conspiracy theories by Americans is protected free speech. Security experts said the adoption of Russian tactics by profit motivated Americans had made it much harder to track disinformation. "It's this blending we're most worried about," said Cindy Otis, Nisos' director of analysis and threat investigations. "It makes it much harder to determine motivation and even the actor." She added, "This slow and steady mainstreaming of disinformation like tactics is normalizing things we would otherwise identify as inauthentic behavior." Mr. LaCorte had steered clear of promoting his role in the sites. His employees were careful to omit any mention of their involvement on their LinkedIn profiles. But The Times and Nisos traced their involvement through historical internet records, state business records, web server addresses, the WordPress publishing platform, and Facebook and Google Analytics accounts. Mr. La Corte, an acolyte of Roger E. Ailes, the former Fox News chairman, served two decades at Fox before being pushed out in November 2016 as part of what he called a post Ailes "corporate purge." He soon began devising his own venture, LaCorte News, "center to right leaning, but nothing like the hard core political sites you see around," he said in a Facebook post. With a 1 million investment including 250,000 of his own money and more from friends and family he hired executives like John Moody, who left Fox after posting a racially inflammatory column, and brought on advisers, including Michael Oreskes, a former New York Times editor who was later ousted from an executive position at NPR amid sexual harassment allegations. "Mr. LaCorte asked me for advice on launching a nonpartisan news site," Mr. Oreskes said. "I gave it, just as I would give advice on this important goal to anyone else who asked, including The New York Times." Mr. Moody did not respond to requests for comment. Almost immediately, Mr. LaCorte noted that there was little audience for his centrist news start up on Facebook. "Facebook has created an onboarding system where I could not just go out and do standard news and have that be a successful strategy," he said. He set up several Facebook pages on science, history and humor, anticipating that they would eventually direct traffic back to LaCorte News. The pages accumulated nearly 300,000 followers, but the traffic rarely crossed over from Facebook to Mr. LaCorte's websites. In time, he reached a conclusion similar to one reached by the young Macedonians in 2016. They discovered they could make tenfold their country's average monthly salary using Google AdSense's pay per click ads next to inflammatory stories aimed at pro Trump American audiences. In the final weeks of the presidential campaign, Buzzfeed found more than 100 Macedonian pro Trump websites that pumped out false and inflammatory stories. Mr. LaCorte said he hadn't followed Macedonia's fake news industry until early 2017, but came to admire its ads and traffic. He reached out to a 19 year old Macedonian on Facebook and put a handful of his friends on monthly wages to do what he called "journalism lite" hot takes on sensationalist stories from The Daily Caller and other right leaning sites. Mr. LaCorte said his sites weren't making things up. "It's not like I went to Macedonians 'R' Us," he said. "Every story went through a U.S. editor. It's not like we were doing 'Hillary Clinton's Cronies Did This.' It was fair news. It was real." Facebook shut down Mr. LaCorte's pages and even employees' personal accounts last week after researchers at Nisos and The Times asked about his business. The move, which Mr. LaCorte denounced as conservative censorship, killed off roughly 90 percent of his income. A Facebook spokeswoman said the action had nothing to do with content. After learning of the pages, she said, Facebook concluded that Mr. LaCorte had violated its terms of service by buying and exchanging so called site privileges, and that accounts in his network had engaged with well known Macedonian "troll farms." While Mr. LaCorte waits to see if Facebook will turn the spigot back on, he is moving more content to YouTube and creating an anti censorship Reddit like "Free Speech Zone." That content will also have Macedonian help. "I wish I could have an office full of locals," Mr. LaCorte said. "But there's no chance I could stay alive and pay Bay Area salaries as a start up." Recently, the Macedonian government began investing in media literacy, in an effort to extinguish its "fake news" reputation. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
The Juno spacecraft really did reach Jupiter. JunoCam, the electronic photographer affixed to the NASA spacecraft that locked into Jupiter's orbit on July 4, has now met the bar set in the Instagram age. (Pics or it didn't happen.) The images transmitted back to Earth after Juno began orbiting Jupiter now confirm the beginning of the space probe's 20 month mission around the solar system's largest planet. Until now, Juno's nascent path around Jupiter had been tracked by signals it was sending back. But NASA on Tuesday released an image taken by the satellite on Sunday from a distance of 2.7 million miles; it even shows the Great Red Spot, though the famous storm has been shrinking in recent decades and may not be as great as it once was. The spacecraft's camera had been turned off as it approached Jupiter, and was only switched back on, along with other instruments, once the solar powered probe survived its passage through the planet's massive radiation barrages. As Juno moves outward on a 53 day orbit, it will be taking about four images an hour even as the size of Jupiter diminishes with the growing distance. The mission has been relying on amateur astronomers on Earth to keep watch on what is going on in Jupiter's clouds, but the planet will soon be out of sight from Earth for a couple of months, behind the sun. With Juno's pictures, the scientists will be able to note any big changes in Jupiter's appearance. "Stuff we'll able to resolve, we'll be able to keep an eye on while they're essentially blinded," Dr. Hansen Koharcheck said. At the end of the month, Juno will reach the farthest point of its orbit and then swing back around, passing within 2,600 miles of Jupiter's cloudtops on Aug. 27 for its first close approach with all of the instruments turned on. Juno will provide the first good views of Jupiter's north and south poles, and planetary scientists are curious to know whether turbulent vortices swirl in the polar regions as they do on Saturn. On later orbits, Juno will continue photographing the poles, but where else the camera will focus will be open to a popular vote by the public. The Mission Juno website already invites discussion on points of interest, similar to discussions mission scientists would hold. Beginning with the fourth pass in November, anyone can vote among several choices. "We may finesse things a tiny bit," Dr. Hansen Koharcheck said, to combine nearby targets or to take into account memory constraints on the spacecraft. "But for the most part, we are going to have the priority determined by the voting." She said that if other members of the science team had something they wanted photographed, they would have to propose them on the website like anyone else and win the popular vote. "They're going to have to lobby for it, and they might have to get all their friends and neighbors to vote on it," Dr. Hansen Koharcheck said. "Other than the north and south pole, there's not going to be any set asides." The specifications for the JunoCam called for it to last just eight of Juno's 37 orbits, but Dr. Hansen Koharcheck said it is shielded so heavily that she thought it would make it through the entire mission. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
On March 8, 2014, Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 vanished with 239 passengers and crew aboard as it crossed the Indian Ocean, triggering a large scale search for its remains that lasted nearly three years. As a byproduct of the tragedy, scientists have gained access to more than 100,000 square miles of seafloor mapped at a level of detail that provides a rare look at the ocean's geological processes. "It's an incredible trove of data," said Millard F. Coffin, a marine geophysicist from the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies at the University of Tasmania in Australia. "I've been working in this part of the Indian Ocean for 30 plus years and over many voyages in the eastern Indian Ocean I've never seen this level of resolution." Dr. Coffin worked with a group of about 10 scientists from Geoscience Australia, the national geosciences agency in Australia, to analyze data from the search. They were given access to high resolution sonar information collected on ships, and data obtained by remotely operated vehicles and autonomous underwater drones. The information was provided by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, which led the search. Previous satellite data provided scientists with information about the Indian Ocean at a resolution of about five square kilometers, or about two square miles. With the instruments from the search ships, they have collected information at a resolution of meters, and in some locations they have used remote operating vehicles and underwater autonomous vehicles to gain detail on the scale of centimeters. The search has helped create three dimensional maps of the ocean floor that reveal its topographical complexity and will allow researchers to further investigate unique features like the oceanic plateau called Broken Ridge, and its southern flank Diamantina Escarpment. The Flight 370 search also provided information about tectonic and volcanic activity, Dr. Coffin said. The team plans to release more detailed looks into its findings later in the year, and the full data set from the search will be made available in the middle of the year. Walter H.F. Smith, a geophysicist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said the hunt for the lost jetliner highlighted how little we know about the oceans. In a paper that was also published Wednesday in the journal EOS, he and his colleagues explained how common unmapped areas of ocean are. "There are all kinds of things you can't do if you don't know the shape of the ocean bottom, or don't know it properly," Dr. Smith said. The consequences of not knowing, he said, can hinder how experts predict tsunamis, understand ocean currents, make climate forecasts, study marine life and search for missing planes. Previous studies have suggested that only 8 percent of the world's oceans have been mapped, meaning that a ship measured an area's depth and recorded it in a scientific database. Before Flight 370's disappearance, only 5 percent of the southeast Indian Ocean had been mapped, Dr. Smith said. To figure out how often people fly over unmapped parts of the world's oceans, Dr. Smith and his colleagues compared data on mapped and unmapped segments of the world's ocean segments with a database of commercial airline routes. They found that about 60 percent of all commercial flights that cross over the ocean travel over waters with unmeasured depths. The longest contiguous route over unmapped ocean was from Kennedy International Airport in New York to Chongqing Jiangbei International Airport in China, a journey over more than 1,200 nautical miles of unmapped ocean. "I wanted people to realize that it's not just Malaysia Airlines straying into the southeast Indian Ocean where it shouldn't have been," he said. "Even when your aircraft is exactly where it's supposed to be, it might be over unknown ocean." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio, who last week tested positive for the coronavirus, then negative and then negative again, said on CNN on Sunday that his roller coaster ride should not be reason for people to think "that testing is not reliable or doesn't work." His first test result was positive, when he was screened with a rapid testing method on Thursday before President Trump arrived in Ohio for campaign appearances. Mr. DeWine was given an antigen test made by Quidel, one of two companies that have received emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration for coronavirus antigen tests. These tests, while fast and convenient, are known to be less accurate than PCR tests, which were used to retest Mr. DeWine twice on Thursday and once more on Saturday. All three PCR tests turned up negative, confirming that Mr. DeWine was not infected with the virus. "I don't think that DeWine's results were surprising, per se," said Andrea Prinzi, a clinical microbiologist and diagnostics researcher at the Anschutz Medical Campus in Colorado. "We know that the performance of antigen testing is not as accurate as PCR testing." The Ohio governor's experience, however, may raise concerns about how much states will rely on antigen tests as they seek to augment the forms of testing, like PCR, that are in short supply or that are mired in laboratory backlogs, unable to generate results in a timely fashion to help assess caseloads and dole out treatments. Mr. DeWine, a Republican, is one of seven governors who announced last week that they were banding together to buy 3.5 million rapid coronavirus tests, including antigen tests, to ramp up production. Daniel Tierney, the press secretary for Mr. DeWine, noted in an email that the states involved were considering "multiple companies and multiple testing types," but did not specify further. On Sunday, Mr. DeWine said he had already been in touch with Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland, a Republican, to talk about the states' agreement to use their collective "purchasing power" for testing and other supplies. "If anyone needed a wake up call with antigens, how careful you have to be, we certainly saw that with my test," Mr. DeWine said. "And we're going to be very careful in how we use it." A spokesman for Mr. Hogan, Michael Ricci, echoed that sentiment: "We are taking this one step at a time." Accurate test results are crucial for curbing the spread of disease. False positives, like the one Mr. DeWine received, can set off an unnecessary period of self isolation, depriving people of access to their workplaces or their own families. False negatives, on the other hand, can hasten the spread of disease from unwittingly infected people. PCR tests, like the ones used to determine Mr. DeWine's health status, are often the best bet for avoiding incorrect results. But these tests are in short supply nationwide as manufacturers and laboratories struggle to meet the increase in demand that has accompanied recent surges in infections. Turnaround times for results have stretched past two weeks in some parts of the country, rendering the information useless for anxious people who need to know their status immediately so they can self isolate as needed and stop the virus from spreading further. Compared with PCR tests, antigen tests are more likely to return a false negative result, mistaking an infected person as virus free. Quidel's test, for instance, can miss up to 20 percent of the cases that PCR detects. Notably, Mr. DeWine's antigen test produced the opposite error: a false positive that incorrectly indicated he had been infected. But Mr. DeWine might not have been have been the ideal candidate for an antigen test, said Karissa Culbreath, the scientific director of infectious disease, research and development at TriCore Reference Laboratories in New Mexico. Such tests usually perform better on samples that contain high levels of virus, which tend to come from sicker patients and people at higher risk of transmitting the infection. When given within the first five days after coronavirus symptoms start, Quidel's false negative rate may drop below 5 percent, according to the company's intended use statement. Mr. DeWine, however, had not experienced symptoms, aside from a headache. "If we're testing outside of that intended use, we might expect false positives or false negatives," Dr. Culbreath said, referring to the five day window that follows the onset of symptoms. Allocating tests to people who fit that criteria, she added, will also eliminate the need for scores of follow up tests, especially while many suspected cases across the nation remain undiagnosed. "Tests are not interchangeable in their usefulness," Dr. Culbreath said. "We need to look at this as a tool belt and identify the right tool for the job." On Sunday, Mr. DeWine did note that antigen tests function especially well as "screening" tests, expediently delivering information to people while their results are confirmed if necessary by the more accurate PCR tests. He added that it was incumbent upon the companies developing the tests to demonstrate their accuracy, and that the experience would not deter him from expanding testing in his state. "We could use additional money for testing," Mr. DeWine said. "We have doubled our testing the last four weeks. We need to double it, and then double it again." Ohio was among the first states to reopen in May, but as cases ticked up in mid June and July, Mr. DeWine signed a statewide mandatory mask mandate and asked several counties to limit gatherings of any size. There have been at least 99,969 cases and 3,668 deaths in Ohio since the beginning of the pandemic, according to a New York Times database. The status of testing in the United States is far from ideal, Ms. Prinzi said. But for now, it's time to make do with the materials we have, she said. "We can argue about diagnostic accuracy all day, but this is a huge public health crisis right now," she added. Flaws and all, antigen tests are "a necessary part of our management of the pandemic," Dr. Culbreath said. "But we have to be very intentional about how we use these tests." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
Sales opened last month for a new 133 unit condominium at 121 East 22nd Street. The building has a pool, a gym and automated parking. The tight supply of buildable parcels in Manhattan often leaves developers to contend with quirky lots, less than favorable locales and a host of other issues. In its latest luxury condominium project, the 133 unit 121 East 22nd Street in Gramercy, Toll Brothers City Living faced a few of these challenges, and more. The developer needed to create a cohesive complex on two combined lots abutting a public high school and bordering both busy Lexington Avenue and quieter side streets. And it had to abide by zoning regulations that restricted building heights in the area. "Your foot is in both worlds there," said David von Spreckelsen, the president of Toll Brothers City Living, New York, a division of the luxury home builder Toll Brothers, which partnered with Gemdale Properties and Investment of China on the project. Toll Brothers hired the Office of Metropolitan Architecture, or OMA, to design a multifaceted building that reflects both communities and works within zoning and other confines. This is the first ground up commission in New York for OMA, which was founded by Rem Koolhaas, the Pritzker Prize winning Dutch architect. (The architect of record is SLCE Architects.) OMA designed two connecting towers of concrete and glass that seamlessly transition from a classic aesthetic to something a lot bolder. This is partly accomplished through window placement. Traditional punched windows, like those of neighboring prewar buildings, gradually change over to contemporary floor to ceiling glazed windows. Shohei Shigematsu, a partner of OMA and the project's leader, said the "duality of the context" largely inspired the design. "I wanted it to be contextual," he said, "but also to create a new identity." No doubt, the building, which extends from 22nd to 23rd Streets, will be easily identifiable after its expected completion in the fall of 2018. Much of the facade will have a cubelike appearance that culminates in a striking three dimensional prismatic corner. This architectural element provides not only the building's distinctive exterior, but also frames the inside views with intricately folded windows that look up to the sky or down to the busy street. "It was important to create a corner that adequately addresses such a dynamic street," Mr. Shigematsu said. The building's entrance, though, will be through a travertine limestone lobby in the 13 story south tower, on 22nd Street, next to the prewar building housing the School of the Future. That tower will contain 25 apartments, while the larger 18 story north tower will have the remaining 108. The two structures will be connected on the ground and first floors through an enclosed breezeway. And between them will be a 30 by 35 foot courtyard landscaped by LDGN that leads to an indoor pool. Sixty seven of the units, which range from spacious alcove studios to a sprawling five bedroom, will have outdoor space, according to Florence Clutch, the sales director for the building. Each apartment interior, designed by INC Architecture Design, will have wide plank white oak floors, high ceilings (some reaching 13 feet) and rich textural finishes that include Calacatta gold marble and Kenyan black quartz in the bathrooms, along with acid edged cabinetry and polished black quartz counters in the open kitchens. The kitchens will also be equipped with Gaggenau appliances. Prices for the apartments, which went on sale at the end of January, range from 1.3 million for a studio of 735 square feet to 10.995 million for a five bedroom of 3,798 square feet with a 586 square foot terrace. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
For 10 days in January, the rapper J. Cole hosted a marathon recording session in Atlanta, enlisting dozens of artists from his Dreamville label and beyond to collaborate freely. The result, some six months later, is a No. 1 album. "Revenge of the Dreamers III" (Dreamville/Interscope) anchored by Cole and his signees, including Bas, Earthgang, Ari Lennox, J.I.D. and more, plus 25 other rappers and singers tops the Billboard 200 this week, with 115,000 album equivalent units, factoring in sales, streams and song downloads. The compilation, the third in a series that began in 2014, was carried to No. 1 in large part by its 121 million streams; the 18 track release also totaled 23,000 in traditional sales. With J. Cole becoming something of a hip hop elder statesman not to mention a commercial juggernaut in recent years, the third "Dreamers" entry easily bested its predecessors: "Revenge of the Dreamers II," from 2015, peaked at No. 29 on the Billboard chart, while the first mixtape did not place at all, according to Billboard. At No. 2 this week is one of the year's most consistent albums, "When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?" by Billie Eilish, which earned another 50,000 units, including 53 million streams. No. 3 is last week's No. 1, "Indigo" by Chris Brown, down 54 percent to just under 50,000 units in its second week, while Lil Nas X is No. 4 with his "7" EP. The rapper Machine Gun Kelly debuts at No. 5 with "Hotel Diablo," which totaled 39,000 units, including 28 million streams and 16,000 in sales. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
Syphilis continues to make a dismaying comeback in the United States. Between 2012 and 2016, the rate of primary and secondary syphilis among women increased 111 percent. Over the same period, the rate of congenital syphilis increased by 87 percent. The sexually transmitted disease is caused by infection with the bacterium Treponema pallidum. The bacterium also can be passed from mother to child during pregnancy or birth. Up to 40 percent of infants with syphilis are stillborn. The rest appear normal at birth; if left untreated, however, they may develop a number of serious symptoms, from bone pain to deafness and blindness. Infected babies are treated with penicillin. Infants who picked up the bacterium while passing through the birth canal generally fare better than those infected during pregnancy. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
It has been a strange chain of events, the small group of soccer fans admits. One minute, the fans were searching for live sports to watch on television during the pandemic. The next, they found themselves building a passionate, worldwide following for a small town Eastern European soccer team and, briefly, even trying to save it from financial ruin. It all started as a one day lark in March, when Shane Robinson, 28, of Adelaide, Australia, began a conversation with friends about how they could fill the void when their local soccer team, Adelaide United, and the Australian soccer league like most of the world's other leagues shut down as the coronavirus spread. With options like England's Premier League and Italy's Serie A similarly unavailable as a substitute, one of Robinson's friends discovered that there were still some professional games being played. They just happened to be in Belarus. With a watch party out of the question because of social distancing restrictions, Robinson and about 25 friends searched for a Belarusian Premier League game that they could all watch remotely. One member of the group discovered that through a betting website, they could livestream the season opener between S.F.C. Slutsk (pronounced Slootsk) and Slavia Mozyr. So on a weekend in late March, they logged in. And they couldn't believe what they found. "It was ridiculous," Robinson said of the March 22 game, a 3 1 Slutsk victory in which five penalties were awarded. "It was nothing like I'd ever seen before. Right away, we were thinking: Surely this can't happen every week. But it's not been far off." Furloughed from his job, Robinson spent the Monday after Slutsk's victory creating a Facebook group that he envisioned as a means of encouraging fellow Australians to watch the team's matches during the A League's hiatus. Hoping that the group, F.K. Slutsk Worldwide a mistranslation of the club's official name would attract around 100 members, Robinson soon discovered that by sending the page to various A League supporters groups, he had tapped into a sports starved reserve of allies. "By Friday," he said, "we had more than 1,000 people." By the time Slutsk played its second game, against Dynamo Brest, hundreds of Australians were tuning in online to watch. English speaking Slutsk fans in Belarus quickly discovered the group, too, and it was this perfect opportunity internet connections, Zoom chats, livestreams and a desperate need for any sporting interaction that has given a strapped Belarusian team with only a 2,000 seat stadium and serious financial problems a nascent worldwide following. "The Slutsk page just popped up on my page, and it was a name that stuck out," said John Malone, 40, a Scot who has since watched four or five live games while he waits out the Scottish league's suspension. "It's a good laugh, talking to other football fans from around the world." Soon, Robinson, the page's founder, had opened a dialogue with the club itself. "After the second round it became clear that something needs to be done with this wave of popularity," said Vitali Bunos, the Slutsk chairman. "Otherwise, we could simply lose these people." The club set up a small task force and appointed a soccer writer, Yahor Khavanski, to act as a go between for the team and the new supporters group. And representatives also began opening up to Robinson and others about the club's dire financial prospects. "Someone basically said that they are short of money and that they are not even sure that the club will make it through the season," Robinson said. "So we've started thinking of a couple of ways to help." Initially, the supporters group and the club discussed selling merchandise to the new fans, but Covid 19 risks made it implausible. When the club then set up a crowdfunding page, supporters found that technological glitches and issues with currency exchanges hampered donations. Eventually, Robinson settled on a GoFundMe page, which he hoped might raise around 25,000 to purchase sign boards around the team's stadium. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
The panel is expected to recommend that the nation's 22 million health care workers receive the Covid 19 vaccine before anyone else, along with three million mostly elderly people living in nursing homes and other long term care facilities. After months of deliberation and debate, a panel of independent experts advising the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention voted Tuesday to recommend that health care workers who are most at risk of contracting Covid 19, along with residents of nursing homes and other long term care facilities, be the first Americans to receive coronavirus vaccinations. If the C.D.C. director, Dr. Robert R. Redfield, approves the recommendation, it will be shared with states, which are preparing to receive their first vaccine shipments as soon as mid December, if the Food and Drug Administration approves an application for emergency use of a vaccine developed by Pfizer. States don't have to follow the C.D.C.'s recommendations, but most probably will, said Dr. Marcus Plescia, the chief medical officer for the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, which represents state health agencies. The panel, called the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, will meet again soon to vote on which groups should be next to receive priority. Here are answers to some common questions about the vaccine and its distribution. Who will get the vaccine first? The C.D.C. committee recommended that the nation's 21 million health care workers be eligible before anyone else, along with three million mostly elderly people living in nursing homes and other long term care facilities. A staggering 39 percent of deaths from the coronavirus have occurred in long term care facilities, according to an analysis by The New York Times. But there won't be enough doses at first to vaccinate everyone in these groups; Pfizer and Moderna, the two companies closest to gaining approval for their vaccines, have estimated that they will have enough to vaccinate no more than 22.5 million Americans by January. So each state will have to decide which health care workers go first. They may choose to prioritize critical care doctors and nurses, respiratory therapists and other hospital employees, including cleaning staff, who are most likely to be exposed to the coronavirus. Or they may offer the vaccine to older health care workers first, or those working in nursing homes, who are at higher risk of contracting the virus. Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky said on Monday that most of his state's initial allocation would go to residents and employees of long term care facilities, with a smaller amount going to hospital workers. It's important to remember that everyone who gets a vaccine made by Pfizer or Moderna will need a second shot three weeks later for Pfizer's, four weeks for Moderna's. Who gets it next? The C.D.C. committee hinted last week that it would recommend essential workers be next in line. About 87 million Americans work in food and agriculture, manufacturing, law enforcement, education, transportation, corrections, emergency response and other sectors. They are at increased risk of exposure to the virus because their jobs preclude them from working from home. And these workers are disproportionately Black and Hispanic, populations that have been hit especially hard by the virus. Individual states may decide to include in this group employees of industries that have been particularly affected by the virus. Arkansas, for example, has proposed including workers in its large poultry industry, while Colorado wants to include ski industry workers who live in congregate housing. After essential workers, the priority groups likely to be recommended by the C.D.C. committee are adults with medical conditions that put them at high risk of coronavirus infection, and people over 65. But again, some states might diverge to an extent, choosing, for example, to vaccinate residents over 75 before some types of essential workers. All other adults would follow. The vaccine has not yet been thoroughly studied in children, so they would not be eligible yet. Who will make state level decisions about priority groups? Each state has a working group, composed largely of public health officials, that has been planning for months and making decisions about vaccination campaigns. Each state's top health official and governor will probably sign off on final plans. How long will states focus on one priority group before moving to the next in line? States don't need to reach everyone in one priority group before moving on to the next, according to the C.D.C. advisory committee. But more federal guidance is expected on the subject. Who should get a booster shot? It depends, Dr. Scott Gottlieb says. When will the first doses of a vaccine be shipped, and where will they go? Federal officials have said they plan to ship the first 6.4 million doses within 24 hours after the F.D.A. authorizes a vaccine, and the number each state receives will be based on a formula that considers its adult population. Pfizer will ship special coolers, each containing at least 1,000 doses, directly to locations determined by each state's governor. At first, almost all of those sites will probably be hospitals that have confirmed they can store shipments at minus 94 degrees Fahrenheit, as the Pfizer vaccine requires, or use them quickly. When will a vaccine be available to the general public, and where will people receive it? Federal officials have repeatedly suggested that people who are not in the priority groups healthy adults under 65 who don't work in health care or otherwise qualify as essential workers should have access to the vaccine by May or June, because there will be enough supply by then. But a lot will have to go right for that to happen. One factor is whether, or when, other vaccines besides Pfizer's and Moderna's are approved. Once the vaccine becomes widely available, most people will be able to get it in doctor's offices and at pharmacies. Can employers like hospitals or grocery stores require their employees to be vaccinated? Employers do have the right to compel their workers to be vaccinated. Many hospital systems, for example, require annual flu shots. But employees can seek exemptions based on medical reasons or religious beliefs. In such cases, employers are supposed to provide a "reasonable accommodation"; with a coronavirus vaccine, a worker might be allowed to wear a mask in the office instead, or to work from home. Three companies have announced preliminary data indicating their vaccines are effective, and there are dozens of additional candidates in clinical trials. Can I choose which vaccine I get? This depends on a number of factors, including the supply in your area at the time you're vaccinated and whether certain vaccines are found to be more effective in certain populations, such as older adults. At first, the only choice is likely to be Pfizer's vaccine, assuming it is approved. Moderna asked the F.D.A. for emergency authorization on Monday; if approved, it would most likely become available within weeks after Pfizer's. Are there any side effects from the shot? Some participants in both Pfizer's and Moderna's trials have said they experienced symptoms including fever, muscle aches, bad headaches and fatigue after receiving the shots, but the side effects generally did not last more than a day. Still, preliminary data suggests that, compared with most flu vaccines, the coronavirus shots have a somewhat higher rate of such reactions, which are almost always normal signs that the body's immune response is kicking in. At the meeting of the C.D.C. advisory committee last week, some members said it would be important for doctors to warn their patients about possible side effects and assure them of the vaccines' safety. How do I know it's safe? Each company's application to the F.D.A. includes two months of follow up safety data from Phase 3 of clinical trials conducted by universities and other independent bodies. In that phase, tens of thousands of volunteers get a vaccine and wait to see if they become infected, compared with others who receive a placebo. By September, Pfizer's trial had 44,000 participants; no serious safety concerns have been reported. The F.D.A. will also review the data for each vaccine seeking authorization and share it with its advisory committee, which will meet publicly in the case of the Pfizer vaccine, on Dec. 10 to ask questions and make a recommendation to the agency. The F.D.A. will then decide whether to approve the vaccine for emergency use. I had Covid 19 already. Do I need the vaccine? Probably. Although people who have contracted the virus do have immunity, it is too soon to know how long it lasts. So for now, it makes sense for them to get the shot. The question is when. Some members of the C.D.C. advisory committee have suggested Covid survivors should be toward the back of the line. "At the beginning, when it's a resource limited vaccine, my opinion is that we need to try and target as best we can to those that we know are susceptible," Dr. Robert Atmar, an infectious disease specialist at Baylor College of Medicine who serves on the committee, said during a meeting of the panel last week. Like the Science Times page on Facebook. Sign up for the Science Times newsletter. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
The often irreverent French director Francois Ozon gets serious with a fact based story about a group of men who were childhood victims of a pedophile priest. When you purchase a ticket for an independently reviewed film through our site, we earn an affiliate commission. For a member of the clergy to sexually violate a child is one of the most stark and cruel betrayals imaginable. That an institution would prevaricate and dissemble about these betrayals rather than take immediate, decisive action to pursue justice and provide restitution creates a greater betrayal. After years of such actions, betrayal reaches a near unimaginable level. And yet. We don't have to imagine. In the Roman Catholic Church, these violations have been rife, and the stories behind them are appalling. In "By the Grace of God" Francois Ozon , one of France's most brazen and talente d directors, tells a story of a group of men in Lyon, all childhood victims of a pedophile priest. These adults find each other and form an organization to bring that priest and the church's higher ups who covered for him to account for their actions. This fact based story one which, as we learn from the closing credits, has still not reached a conclusion represents a break from Ozon's usual fare. The director is known as an unpredictable genre bender, confidently concocting erotic thrillers, anti erotic thrillers, musicals, literary adaptations (his 2007 film, "Angel," was an imaginative and very apt view of Elizabeth Taylor 's tricky, brilliant novel) and more. His movies are almost exclusively stylistically elaborate affairs. This is not the case here. Ozon's screenplay derived from his own research, including interviews with members of the Lyon activist group Lift the Burden consists of three profiles, so to speak, of the adult survivors of one predator. The first, Alexandre, played with button down precision by Melvil Poupaud , is a still devout Catholic and family man haunted by the criminal priest's continued activity in his church. Francois, played by Denis Menochet , is a bearish atheist who first responds to a request for testimony with an emphatic "No!" But soon, the floodgates of emotion and indignation open, and he helps found the activist group. The movie then presents Emmanuel, played by Swann Arlaud , perhaps the most at risk of the adult characters, a near genius intellect whose abuse led to an unfulfilled, fraught adulthood. Ozon's approach in "By the Grace of God" is not plain, but it is straightforward. The movie is not replete with what you'd call stylistic flourishes although when one character ascends a spiral staircase, Ozon doesn't restrain himself from doing as he always does in this situation, which is to include an overhead shot of the structure. And Ozon exerts his command of cinematic language throughout, in ways that are less immediately obvious. He crafts a film that is engrossing from the start, while building to something greater and more emotionally encompassing. The director's resourcefulness is on particular display in the scenes with Emmanuel. Having established the precarious position this character is in, Ozon's camera practically stalks him as he speeds his motorcycle to unknown destinations or stands on the walkway of a bridge. Ozon makes you worry for the character. "By the Grace of God" is a rarity: An important film that's also utterly inspired. Not rated. In French, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 17 minutes. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
The artist Steinunn Thorarinsdottir in Fort Tryon Park with one pair of sculptures from her exhibition "Armors." 8 Outdoor Art Installations in New York to Get Excited About A change of context can turn even the most familiar object into something new. Which is one reason that the city offers so much alfresco art in the summertime: it's a chance for rediscovery. There's another reason: it's hard not to feel the pull of the outdoors when you've been stuck inside for months. Artists feel it, too, leaving the four walls of their studios behind for the experience of creating en plein air. And so now we have a bumper crop of art installations re enchanting the most familiar public spaces. Here are some of the most promising free exhibitions currently remaking the cityscape. The Knights Take the Field On the lawn outside the Met Cloisters museum in Fort Tryon Park, the Icelandic sculptor Steinunn Thorarinsdottir has installed "Armors," with cast aluminum versions of three suits of armor from the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Each is paired with another figurative sculpture (her son was the model). It's a chance to see some of the Met's prized collection in a novel fashion. "Normally one sees armors as these beautiful artifacts displayed in glass cases, and you cannot approach them," said Ms. Thorarinsdottir. But in this case, she said, "You can touch them and feel the energy." The pairs might seem at first like combatants ready to do battle, as the medieval exterior of the Cloisters looms in the background. But looking closer reveals that the nude androgynous figures are posed in the same stance as the armor. You see the outside and the inside at once, a transformation that manages to illuminate the human fragility and vulnerability in gleaming metal. The president of Iceland, Gudni Thorlacius Johannesson, was on hand for the opening of the exhibition, and another prominent voice, Lin Manuel Miranda, has endorsed the show on Twitter. (Mr. Miranda's dog could not be reached for comment.) Through Sept. 13 on the Cloisters Lawn in Fort Tryon Park; forttryonparktrust.org. Up in the Sky The High Line teems these days, and not just with tourists. Three exhibitions are currently on view. The British artist Phyllida Barlow has installed a reimagined version of "folly," a work she presented outside the British Pavilion at the 2017 Venice Biennale. Retitled "prop," it consists of concrete panels and planks, nodding to the neighborhood's industrial past and the endless recycling of materials and ideas in art and architecture. "Agora," a group show spread over the length of the park, includes artists from seven countries addressing the role of art in the public realm. Duane Linklater, an Omaskeko Ininiwak artist from Canada, has installed towering tripodal works that recall the structure of the tepee and contrast starkly with the ever rising condominium towers surrounding the High Line. Dorothy Iannone's mural, "I Lift My Lamp Beside the Golden Door," rises next to the High Line at West 22nd Street, with a trio of colorful Statue of Liberty figures and the final line from Emma Lazarus's poem "The New Colossus." Through March 2019 on the High Line; art.thehighline.org. Not far away, another Hashimoto work, "The Eclipse" is a floating cloudlike work that will be installed in the St. Cornelius Chapel. It consists of thousands of nearly transparent rice paper kites, enveloping viewers and architecture alike in a nearly consuming fog. St. Cornelius Chapel, owned by Trinity Church Wall Street, will open its doors for the first time since 2013 to welcome the work. The photographer John Raymond Mireles has spent the last three years traveling to all 50 states, making portraits of more than 3,000 people along the way, which he displays on fences from Anchorage to Lower Manhattan. Over the course of time, the prints "transitioned from vibrant and shiny to dull and weathered and marred at the hands of vandals," he wrote on his website. The "Neighbors Project," as it's called, aims to nourish a sense of empathy in wary New Yorkers by placing the large scale prints in highly trafficked areas. Eighty six of his photographs will be on display along the fence of a park at the corner of Houston Street and Second Avenue. Through July 7 at First Street Green Art Park, corner of Houston Street and 2nd Avenue; firststreetgreenpark.org. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
At 76, Lucinda Childs finds herself in a position she didn't imagine she'd be in again: running a dance company. "I sort of thought, well that was interesting, and it was great, and I had the 30 years in SoHo," she said before a rehearsal in Brooklyn last month. "I'm sort of moving on." That worked for a while. After she disbanded her company in 2000, Ms. Childs, who was part of the experimental 1960s collective Judson Dance Theater, focused on European commissions. The subject of a current exhibition in Paris that focuses on her archives, Ms. Childs is the rare choreographer whose artistic bridges extend both from Europe to the United States, and from modern dance to ballet. Her stark, minimalist approach stitches together straight and circular motifs in space with fleet footwork and military authority. It is at once unfussy and euphoric, somehow like figure skating without the ice. And she was still in demand. In 2009, the Bard SummerScape festival commissioned a revival of "Dance," her ravishing 1979 work set to music by Philip Glass and featuring decor a black and white film of the dancers of the time by Sol LeWitt. (The original film was restored for SummerScape.) In 2012, Robert Wilson's "Einstein on the Beach" (1976) featuring choreography by Ms. Childs, began an extensive tour. From these two revivals, a new Lucinda Childs Dance Company was born. Beginning Tuesday, Nov. 29, Ms. Childs presents her company in two programs for a two week season at the Joyce: "Lucinda Childs: A Portrait (1963 2016)" features repertory works including "Into View," her first new piece for her current group and "Dance." She remains the image of elegant serenity it's hard to imagine that her dignified posture will ever abandon her but her voice was full of emotion as she said, "It has been an amazing period for me." The "Portrait" program shows that while her early interests an adherence to line and precision, along with an expansive exploration of space have persisted, one aspect has changed. "In the new piece, there's a lot of contact," she said. "In 'Dance,' they never touch one another." Ms. Childs uses the music, she said, "as a sounding board for all of the movement ideas." The music is part of what inspired her to incorporate partnering in "Into View," a Joyce commission for 11 dancers set to Colin Stetson and Sarah Neufeld's "The Sun Roars Into View." (Mr. Stetson and Ms. Neufeld, who have performed with the Canadian band Arcade Fire, have also, Ms. Childs said, played with Mr. Glass.) The piece is named for that "exciting moment just before the tip of the sun comes over the horizon," she said. "So that mood, that atmosphere and those very dramatic shifts of light that happen appealed to me." While partnering is new to her group, Ms. Childs has included it in her dances with outside companies since 2000. In this case, it has let the dancers catch up with Ms. Childs's current choreographic concerns not only in terms of space and rhythm but also in movement invention. And Ms. Childs wasn't kidding about partnering. Matt Pardo, who often dances with Kate Fisher, said, "This concert is literally the first time we've actually touched each other since I joined the company five years ago." At the same time, the tone isn't shifting drastically. The dancer and rehearsal director Sharon Milanese described "Into View" as basically two partnering phrases that repeat. "There is no intimate emotional context," she said. "It's really movement and pattern and shape and space, just like the rest of her work is." That's not to say that Ms. Childs's works don't stir up emotions, and part of that has to do with how her dancers work as a team to generate a shared rhythm with their bodies. "Nobody's right, nobody's wrong," Ms. Childs said. "They connect in a certain way. It's not even visual. It's just something that they sense among themselves, which is part of what the intensity of the performance is: They feel it. When it happens, you can feel that they're clicked in together." Ms. Childs's experience with partnering was limited as a young dancer to her own participation in contact improvisation groups of the 1970s. "You'd have no idea what would happen because it's was all improvised, so you're in the door and out the door, and it's just an experience," she said. "That certainly was something that was explored at the time and with nine people on top of you, you know?" But, she said, she loved that period: "The sessions were open. Anybody could go, and sometimes they weren't even dancers sometimes people wanted to watch or decided they wanted to join, and it was nice a little bit like the Judson spirit." She became a member of Judson Dance Theater in 1963 after she presented "Pastime," a solo exploring the action of a flexed foot. (It is included in "Portraits.") The work, Ms. Childs recalled, was almost like an audition for the Judson group; afterward, Yvonne Rainer, a founding member, granted her approval. But Ms. Childs had another ambition: to join Merce Cunningham's dance company. "He came to Judson, and he actually said some positive things about my work," she recalled. "I almost fainted. He said: 'Listen, if you want to do that work, that's great, but some of the people trying to do the company and that work it's really not a good idea. It's really best to focus on one or the other.'" That didn't make her decision easier. "I always wanted to be in the company, and I was always hoping," she said. "Deborah Hay" another Judson choreographer "got in, and I was extremely jealous." But that paved the way for "Dance," one of Ms. Childs's most important works. LeWitt's film, projected on a scrim in front of the stage, shows the original cast including Ms. Childs moving in sync with the current dancers. "It's almost like ghosts from past dancing with the present," Ms. Milanese said. "It's beautiful." Contrasts in articulation have to do with footwear the original dancers wore sneakers; the current group wears split sole jazz shoes and training. The '70s cast was eclectic, with a mix of dance backgrounds. There's more uniformity today. But Ms. Childs has altered little apart from how the arms swing in changes of direction. "There's a certain kind of freedom that was a little bit excessive that I didn't want this company to imitate," she said. But "the choreography is, for the most part, exactly the same in terms of the actual variations and the steps and the relationship to the dancers and to the music." So "Dance" is really the same dance? "Yes," Ms. Childs said. "'Dance' is 'Dance.'" She laughed, which is not so rare these days; even her dancers have noticed she has lost some of her reserve. "It was more difficult to have conversations with her way back when," Ms. Milanese said. "I attribute it to she is a very shy person, and she didn't quite know us that well. But for the new dancers that come into the company now, she's much more easily able to have a conversation. I guess it's life, experience, age." It could also have something to do with place. Ms. Childs moved to Martha's Vineyard in 2003 and gave up her SoHo loft, the same building that housed her fellow dance artists Trisha Brown, David Gordon and Douglas Dunn. "I was there 30 years with all of my colleagues, and I felt it was sort of refreshing to move," she said. "It was a big step, but it's one that I've been happy about." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
THE island never seems to lack for grand building plans. But that is sometimes less obvious than it might be, because of what usually happens when plans meet reality. Years can go by before a shovel enters the ground, what with a tangled approvals process and a tough climate for financing. Taking stock at year's end, Mitchell H. Pally, the chief executive of the Long Island Builders Institute, cited the persisting decline in new single family home construction, but saw it as partly offset by a rise in multifamily construction. "Sites that are not appropriate for single family are now available for multifamily," Mr. Pally said, pointing to "infill" spots in downtown areas, particularly in Nassau County, where land is scarce. According to Eric Alexander, the executive director of Vision Long Island, a smart growth group, 12 multifamily projects with a total of 1,588 new units were approved last year. Of those, Mr. Alexander said, four are under construction. He cited an "increased demand for multifamily housing stock," adding that in 2011, the most sought after sites were "in downtowns, near transit and other amenities." He anticipates approval this year for roughly 15 projects with more than 2,000 units. The round tower entry to Metro 303, a rental apartment complex approved last year on a triangular 1.8 acre lot at the northern gateway to Hempstead village, is framed and sheathed. Four of its five stories, which will house 166 one , two and three bedrooms, have gone up on the site of a former Ford dealership. "It will kick off that Main Street redevelopment," said Maria Rigopoulos, a managing director of Mill Creek Residential Trust, the developer of Metro 303, referring to the Plainview developer Renaissance Downtown's extensive makeover plans for Hempstead Village, for which 5 million in sewer infrastructure work is to start soon. "It's starting to really change the look and feel." Metro 303 is expected to be ready for occupants by fall. It has two landscaped courtyards, a swimming pool, a sundeck and a clubhouse, and is a short walk from both the Hempstead and the Country Life Press stations of the Long Island Rail Road. Rents have not yet been set. Work is also about half done on Mill Creek's West Hempstead Station, a 150 unit rental building on the former site of the Courtesy Hotel in West Hempstead, Ms. Rigopoulos added. In downtown Riverhead last week, concrete was poured for the foundation of Summer Wind Square, a four story 52 unit rental complex that is also to have a 100 seat restaurant, and possibly a market, a cafe and shops, on the first floor. The complex which will restrict residency to those earning no more than 58,000 a year, or 80 percent of median income in Suffolk County will have balconies overlooking the Peconic River, Grangebel Park or a parking lot. According to Jodi Giglio, a Riverhead councilwoman and a partner in Epic Development, the owner, "there are 300 people in Riverhead looking for this type of housing and 14,000 throughout the county." Studios with lofts will rent for about 900 a month, one bedrooms for 1,150, and the three two bedrooms for 1,350, including heat. Renters will be selected via a Long Island Housing Partnership lottery. Site plan approval took a year and a half, Ms. Giglio said. Suffolk County, "realizing the need for construction jobs and housing, helped push it along," she said. What may be the Island's fanciest rental apartment, Plaza Landmark, is quickly rising on the site of a former office building in the village of Great Neck Plaza. Lalezarian Associates of Lake Success bought the property last year after another developer scrapped its plans for a condominium. Construction started six months ago. Kevin Lalezarian, a principal, said the 94 unit modern glass building, with a residents only "green rooftop" park and a fitness center, would start leasing this summer. One and two bedroom apartments from about 3,000 to 4,500 a month, as well as a handful of three bedroom penthouses, should be ready for occupancy in late summer or early fall, with 19 set aside as income restricted housing. The units, which are described as "very upscale," are to have round the clock concierge service and underground parking. Each one is to have 10 foot ceilings, surround sound, a washer/dryer, and Italian kitchen cabinets with stainless steel appliances and granite countertops. The first 210 units at Avalon Rockville Centre, which was finished last year, were leased and occupied within seven months. "It was not unusual in a market as deprived for high quality rental units as Long Island," said Matthew Whalen, a vice president of AvalonBay, the developer, "but definitely a very pleasant experience for us." The site, a former brownfield, was acquired four years ago. And the complex is growing. Phase 2 will be 139 apartments in a separate three story building with a courtyard and a "very cool" fire pit lounge, Mr. Whalen said. Rents for the units, to be completed this year, range from the low 2,000s, for a one bedroom, to more than 4,000 for two. At AvalonBay's Mitchel Field development, the clubhouse will be finished next month and construction is under way on 160 rental apartments, 44 rental town homes and 19 single family homes, which will be for sale. New colonials and preserved and renovated homes along General's Row on the former military housing site are listed for 649,000. With a few hundred names on the waiting list, Mr. Whalen expects the first building, Manor House, to be ready for tenants in March, with town homes completed later in the spring. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
At a recent event for the very active alumnae of Finch College, the genteel Upper East Side women's school that dramatically closed its doors in 1975, wine flowed along with conversation inside the music room of the Birch Wathen Lenox School on East 77th Street. There was talk of classmates Tricia Nixon Cox, Isabella Rossellini, Anne Cox Chambers, Francine LeFrak, Suzanne Pleshette, Jane Holzer and Lilly Pulitzer Rousseau. After a polite seminar about real estate in Manhattan, the women also discussed Grace Slick, who attended the school, and her news making White House incident when Richard Nixon was president. "We were waiting outside in line in our suits and white gloves to go into tea in honor of the 70th anniversary of Finch," said Ceil Ainsworth, class of 1958. She remembered seeing Grace Slick in a skirt and boots "with a man who turned out to be Abbie Hoffman trying to get inside." Ms. Slick, a singer in the band Jefferson Airplane, was from a Republican Bay Area family. She had attended Finch in 1957, years before she became an anti establishment pop star famous for "White Rabbit" and "Somebody to Love." She brought Mr. Hoffman as her White House date and planned, she later claimed, to dose Richard Nixon's tea with LSD stowed in her fingernail. Security guards recognized Mr. Hoffman from an F.B.I. watch list and barred them both at the gate. "Those were interesting times," Ms. Ainsworth said, as her friends smiled. They were indeed, and for all kinds of reasons, especially at a faltering small college with talented faculty, an opera box, a gilded mirrored dining hall with a chef who made coquilles St Jacques, and famously high tuition, all in the posh confines of East 78th Street between Park and Madison Avenues. These days Finch alumnae, many of whom have or have had serious careers despite the school's fluffy reputation (one oft mocked class, Comparative Merchandise, used Bergdorf Goodman for shopping research), stay engaged with as many events as any living college sponsors. Many support a generous scholarship fund for female community college students transferring to four year schools. One Finch scholar, Eiko Otake, performed a dance and movement piece at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in November. This fierce Finch bond around a dead institution is not as much about vanishing New York (Lord Taylor) as vanished (the Stork Club, whose proprietor's daughter attended the school). The nostalgia is almost plaintive like for a Camelot with dorms. "Finch was a jewel box where out of town girls could come feel safe in New York," said Margaret Hedberg, who runs the International Debutante Ball and who was a "Finchie" in the early '60s with Tricia Nixon. During Ms. Hedberg's first year, she made the dean's list. Her second, she got distracted by a boyfriend with a sports car. "And I started playing bridge in the lounge, where I'd see my French professor going to teach my class through our cigarette smoke," she said. Other Finch students took academics seriously, availing themselves of the school's tiny classes, excellent art history department and prestigious small museums. They went on to become curators, judges, lawyers, doctors, teachers, journalists and advocates for women in the workplace. Kathleen Guzman, the managing director of Heritage Auctions and an "Antiques Road Show" regular, had a charismatic professor of African Art, Marshall Mount, who changed her life. "I was studying costume design," said Ms. Guzman, who migrated up from Fort Lauderdale in the early 1970s and was a scholarship student. "But he was so extraordinary and so excited to show us beautiful things that I changed my focus to art history." Her memories of her time at the school include costume parties at the nearby Carlyle Hotel and students in full makeup for early morning classes with the more attractive male professors. "It was an interesting time to be in a white glove school with chandeliers, and they even gave me a maid my first year," said Debbie Bancroft, a sociable journalist who attended Finch in 1974 as its finances were imploding. "But it sure went downhill fast." The reason had to do with a diminishing number of applicants for same sex schools. It didn't help that Finch maintained a reputation as a finishing school long after it had gone from a two year college to four. Its founder, Jessica Finch Cosgrave, was a Barnard graduate, suffragist and socialist leaning firebrand who started the school in 1900. She aimed to give women a more practical education than other classically centered colleges, so that they might have careers before having children and after raising them. Her faculty included singers, musicians, artists, designers and politicians. But though Finch enrolled Roosevelts, Whitneys and Vanderbilts, it had no endowment. Overleveraged finances coupled with a nearby water main break causing costly damage forced it to close. (To paraphrase Tolstoy, all faltering women's colleges falter in their own way, most recently Sweet Briar College in Virginia, which announced its closing but has managed to stay open. Right now, Mills College in Oakland, Calif., faces financial trauma.) "When we understood we were closing, we did telethons and marketing campaigns," said Ms. Guzman, who lives near Finch's old block. "But we found that so much money of the wealth in families ends up going to the colleges of men, not women, that our outreach wasn't successful." Even selling off its valuable art from the museum, including works by Isamu Noguchi, Josef Albers and Sol LeWitt, along with hitting up parents for money on top of tuition, couldn't keep the school from closing. Now Finch exists purely as an alumnae association that a former professor, Margaret Maxwell, began in 1993. "We didn't have access to student records," said Frances Fish Tomkins, a self described hillbilly who came to Finch in 1956 from West Virginia and never forgot making her first friends in a daunting city. "So we looked everyone up in yearbooks and phone books." Three hundred people showed up for a reunion in 1994, and by the next fall a thousand were in touch. The Finch College Alumni Association Foundation Trust now gives away at least 10 scholarships of 5,000 a year to community college students, many recommended by LaGuardia Community College in Queens and who have attended schools including Yale, Smith and Brown. "I was a scholarship student at Finch myself," Ms. Guzman said. "So I love giving back." After three students of diverse backgrounds receiving Finch scholarships introduced themselves to applause at the Birch Wathen Lenox School, the event broke up. Lois Ziegler, class of 1958 and the former fashion director of JC Penney, led a large contingent to dinner. But two younger women broke off to head west to stand in front of a townhouse on East 77th Street that was once their dorm and is now a medical office and apartment building. "This was where I put a piano in the elevator, dropped a coconut cake from my window and got into my nightgown to walk around the lobby of the Carlyle on a dare," said Megan McCarthy, who came to Finch from Atlanta and is now a realtor in Westchester County, N.Y. "When we turned 18, we took each other to the bar at the Carlyle for our first legal drinks," said Sarah Macyshyn, her classmate, who came to Finch from Greenwich, Conn. They looked at a door to a townhouse across the street where sexy John Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas lived, remembering knocking on his door for Halloween treats or to ask if he needed a babysitter. They remembered the gold upholstery of dining hall banquettes, Texas students in fur coats, New York Philharmonic concerts, movie premieres and one trip downtown to the Continental Baths, where there was an expensive cover charge and men in little pink towels. "It was my introduction to New York night life," Ms. Macyshyn said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
The slogan of the Magnet Clinic in San Francisco on a T shirt worn by the nursing director Pierre Cedric Crouch. The clinic did 9,600 H.I.V. tests last year. SAN FRANCISCO It wasn't his first broken condom, so Rafael didn't worry. But three weeks later, the man he'd met in a bar called to say that he had "probably been exposed" to H.I.V. Rafael, a muscular, affable 43 year old, went to a clinic and within 45 minutes learned he was infected. Although it was already closing time, a counselor saw him immediately and offered him a doctor's appointment the next day. At Ward 86, the famous H.I.V. unit at San Francisco General Hospital, the doctor handed him pills for five days and a prescription for more. Because he was between jobs, she introduced him to a counselor who helped him file for public health insurance covering his 30,000 a year treatment. "They were very reassuring and very helpful," said Rafael, who, like several other men interviewed for this article, spoke on condition that only his first name be used to protect his privacy. "They gave me the beautiful opportunity to just concentrate on my health." Despite bad luck in sex with strangers roulette, Rafael did have some good fortune: He lives in San Francisco, which is turning the tide against H.I.V. and serving as a model for other cities. The city that was once the epidemic's ground zero now has only a few hundred new cases a year, the result of a raft of creative programs that have sent infection rates plummeting. "I love the San Francisco model," said Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. "If it keeps doing what it is doing, I have a strong feeling that they will be successful at ending the epidemic as we know it. Not every last case we'll never get there but the overall epidemic. And then there's no excuse for everyone not doing it." Last week, the World Health Organization essentially agreed. Issuing new guidelines for the treatment and prevention of H.I.V., the agency called on the rest of the world to do much of what San Francisco is already doing: Every H.I.V. patient should start antiretroviral drugs as soon as they test positive rather than waiting for measures of immune system strength to drop, the agency said, and everyone at risk of infection should be offered preventive drugs. San Francisco adopted the first practice "test and treat" five years ago and the second in 2013. It has bolstered those efforts with others, like the rapid doctor's appointment program that swept Rafael in, and another to track difficult patients. In 1992, the city had 1,641 deaths from AIDS. Last year, just 177 San Franciscans with H.I.V. died, and most of them actually succumbed to heart disease, cancer or other old age ills, said Dr. Susan Buchbinder, the head of H.I.V. prevention research for the city health department. By other measures, too, San Francisco is ahead. According to a 2012 estimate by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, only 39 percent of all infected Americans had seen an H.I.V. doctor, and only 30 percent were taking their pills consistently enough to be "virally suppressed," meaning they were not infectious. By contrast, in San Francisco, 82 percent of residents with H.I.V. were in care, and 72 percent were suppressed. In Ward 86 all of whose patients are uninsured or on public assistance suppression has reached 84 percent. San Francisco has some natural advantages: wealth, political leaders who consistently back the fight in part because the gay vote is so big and a close knit medical community in which many of the top officials in the fight against H.I.V. have studied together, trained each other and done research projects together through the University of California, San Francisco. Because of the tech boom, City Hall's budget grew from 5 billion to nearly 9 billion in 10 years. For patients not eligible for federal or state aid, the city has its own health insurance: Healthy San Francisco. And it has been able to counter every cut in federal AIDS funds. "One of my first budget questions is always, 'Are they cutting our Ryan White money again?' " Mayor Edwin M. Lee said in an interview, referring to the 1990 law that pays for AIDS drugs. "Since 2011, we've backfilled more than 20 million with very little debate." Wealth also eases the burden in a harsher way: Soaring rents have driven out many poor residents. Two thirds of San Francisco's infected are white or Asian; nationally, 63 percent are black or Hispanic. Older, wealthier, openly gay white men are more likely to be insured and well informed about risks than young black and Hispanic men, the epidemic's fastest growing subgroup. In 1983, the city opened the first dedicated AIDS ward. In 1987, it tested the first antiretroviral drug, AZT. In 1992, it began distributing clean needles to drug addicts. In 2010, it adopted "test and treat" antiretroviral drugs given as soon as a patient tested positive. In 2013, it started the preventive drug program, PrEP pre exposure prophylaxis with Truvada, a two drug pill at no charge to the uninsured. By some estimates, 15 percent of the city's gay men are now taking Truvada. Numerous recent studies have shown that people taking antiretroviral therapy every day not only live longer, but also have so little circulating virus that they are highly unlikely to infect others even through unprotected sex. But the shift to immediate drug treatment was a struggle. Dr. Grant Colfax, who was then the city's director of H.I.V. prevention, met resistance from doctors arguing that drug side effects were too harsh to begin immediately and that patients not yet motivated by brushes with death might take medicines carelessly and develop resistant strains. Community groups were also angry. Many had lucrative city contracts to hand out condoms and advice, which the city rewrote to require they do tests and provide medical care. "We were accused of 'medicalizing H.I.V.,' " Dr. Colfax said. "Which I found ironic." But the new infection rate had not budged for 11 years. "We couldn't keep doing the same old thing," he said. "We didn't want it to feel like a jail cell," said the nursing director, Pierre Cedric Crouch, wearing the clinic's signature "No Blame/No Shame" T shirt. "And we have no stigma. You can come in saying you just slept with 20 guys and don't know what a condom is, and we don't criticize you. We help you out." Magnet's social workers will enroll patients in insurance or, if they have coverage, fight to make sure it covers what they need. Jayne Gagliano, the benefits manager, said she regularly had to explain to out of state insurers that using Truvada to prevent infection was, in fact, F.D.A. approved. "The fragmented American insurance system is one of our biggest obstacles," said Dr. Diane V. Havlir, the chief of the H.I.V. division at San Francisco General, who has seen patients stop taking their pills because of coverage lapses. The drug user often disappeared. He recently had texted her: "Where can I get an abscess drained without all the red tape?" but then had not answered several messages. "A lot of this work is 'Where's Waldo?' " Ms. Antunez said. Her first visit was to the Maitri Hospice, a haven on a residential block. Founded, according to its website, by a "drug addled drag queen turned Zen master," it has a Buddha and origami cranes for decor, and separate smoking porches for tobacco and medical marijuana. The young mother was not dying, although she had survived two types of AIDS related pneumonia. Rather, she "just needed a break," Ms. Antunez said, from methamphetamine binges in her housing project, during which she slept on any free couch and neglected her pills. Today, she was waiting in a turquoise tank top, floral shorts and a white Tilley hat, ready to ride a city bus to Ward 86. Ms. Antunez asked about her new tattoos. Deeply shy, the woman focused on her phone and mumbled childlike answers until she mistakenly thought a reporter was a supervisor assessing Ms. Antunez, and leapt to her defense: "Erin is great! You can tell some people don't want much to do with you, but she knocks on doors, she calls me, we play phone tag." Ms. Antunez's afternoon client was not in his room at the Donnelly Hotel although she knocked loudly in case he was in a stupor. Stephen first heard of the drug through a gay student group at his Catholic college. "But my friend said it means you're super slutty, that it's for people who bareback, or go into dark rooms for sex," he said. "I didn't want to associate with it." Now, he said, he considers it another form of protection, "something I definitely want to add to my bag of goods." If he had grown up in San Francisco, he probably would have learned of it earlier. Discussion of PrEP is now mandatory in public school ninth grade sex ed classes. The city's success is not only shrinking the epidemic. It is changing the psychology of gay sex here in unexpected ways. The fear of death so long a part of being gay in America appears to be receding. Take Bradley and Paul, a couple visiting the Magnet clinic for gonorrhea tests. Paul, 53, a ruddy and weather beaten Hawaii resident who called himself "one of the dinosaurs," said he had probably been infected with H.I.V. as a teenager. Many friends died decades ago. "It's crazy I'm still alive," he said. Bradley, who resembled a prep school athlete about 20 years younger, was from Atlanta and uninfected. They felt safe together, Paul explained, because he takes Complera, a triple therapy pill, while Bradley takes Truvada. "PrEP has really changed the game," he said. "Bradley was the first guy I knew who was on it. He'd prefer to be with someone with an undetectable viral load than with someone who says, 'Well, I assume I'm still negative.' It blows my mind to be positive and not feel like a pariah." "It's really nice to still be around now and see a younger generation go through what we did," he added. "I grew up in the '70s with no fear. The guys in the '90s were full of fear. Now guys are growing up with no fear at all." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
In the fall of 2013, the vocalist Lucy Dhegrae performed a solo called "Dithyramb." The five minute piece, written by Jason Eckardt, consists of cries, truncated syllables and sharp sibilant sounds that appear to resemble someone angrily shushing herself. At the end, Ms. Dhegrae forced a single breath into a painfully long note that turned into a stifled hiss, held until her face changed color and her eyes teared up. From the audience, it looked like self asphyxiation. "It's supposed to be a prayer to Dionysus, the god of ecstasy," Ms. Dhegrae said of the piece in a recent interview. "And the entire time I thought about what had happened and how I had not talked about it and would it ever go away." The trauma of her assault is the subject of Ms. Dhegrae's four concert Processing Series, which opens on Saturday at National Sawdust in Brooklyn. The series attempts to shed light on the complex relationship between mind and body. At the core of each concert is a new work written for Ms. Dhegrae that is intended to be both about healing and actively therapeutic for the performer. Therapeutic both mentally and physically: Soon after that 2013 performance of "Dithyramb," Ms. Dhegrae, the founder of the Resonant Bodies Festival of contemporary vocal music, found she could no longer sing. Doctors diagnosed her with paresis of the vocal folds, a muscular dysfunction. When her voice teacher heard about it, she advised Ms. Dhegrae against letting anyone know, arguing that even to mention such a condition could endanger her career. "It was like going through the rape again," said Ms. Dhegrae. "It was that same sense of: 'Hide this thing that happened to you. Don't talk to anyone about it.' You are dealing with this huge personal crisis but feeling shamed about it and completely alone." The body of work she has commissioned for the Processing Series is designed to reflect the multiplicity of approaches that helped her. These include meditation and breathwork, internal family systems (I.F.S.) therapy , eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (E.M.D.R.), and self defense training. The most important step in healing was speaking out. After she was diagnosed with paresis, Ms. Dhegrae threw herself into research, spending up to 20 hours a day trawling through scientific journals and poring over her own medical history. Her doctors never investigated a possible psychosomatic cause. But two scientific articles struck a chord. They dealt with victims of sexual assault who had developed vocal disorders but regained their voices once they spoke out about their experience. "I had that deep sense that this is me," Ms. Dhegrae said. "I thought, if the way to get back my voice is to talk about it whatever it takes, I will do it." She contacted the speakers bureau of RAINN, the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network, and began telling her story at schools and colleges. (Her condition affected her singing, but not her speaking voice.) She did report her rape to an investigator from the University of Michigan's campus police, but the statute of limitations had expired, and the man denied the charges. Helping Ms. Dhegrae regain her voice became "a process of empowerment," he said. He encouraged her to take up Krav Maga, a self defense system developed in the Israeli military. During their lessons, he had her forcefully utter the word "no" over and over. That exercise turned into "No," a work by Caleb Burhans which will be part of the program at National Sawdust on Saturday. It layers recordings of Ms. Dhegrae intoning the word until the flurry of "no" comes together in a sonic tapestry that is stable and calm. The program also includes Osnat Netzer's "Philomelos," inspired by Lavinia from Shakespeare's "Titus Andronicus," who, even with her tongue and hands cut off, finds a way to identify her rapist. A violinist and a percussionist stand in for the different personality components that interact with each other in I.F.S. therapy. Other composers Ms. Dhegrae commissioned also found musical expressions for specific forms of therapy. Katherine Young produced a piece that includes a humming meditation, and an electronic score that plays with the left and right channels of a sound system, to evoke the buzzers held in each hand by a patient undergoing E.M.D.R. Eve Beglarian took a different approach. Her response to the commission at first unsettled Ms. Dhegrae. When she received it, she said, "It ripped my heart out." Ms. Beglarian drew on her own experience of having been, as she put it in an interview, "messed with" by a much older man when she was 11. Her recovery involved flexing her sexual power with men in order to "transform the very thing that made me feel vulnerable into a strength." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
For imaginative choreographers like the rising talent Emery LeCrone, a challenge is something to relish. In "Bach Interpreted," Ms. LeCrone shows how there can be two sides to one piece of music by creating a pair of dances, each set to Bach's Partita No. 2 in C minor, for the Works Process series at the Guggenheim Museum. One will be based on classical vocabulary, the other on contemporary movement. Fittingly, the designer Yigal Azrouel has created costumes that respond directly to the choreography and performers an impressive bunch in each work. The classical portion highlights Tyler Angle and Teresa Reichlen of New York City Ballet, and Stella Abrera and Alexandre Hammoudi of American Ballet Theater; the contemporary work includes the ever wondrous Kaitlyn Gilliland. The City Ballet principal Jared Angle takes the moderator's seat in a discussion between Ms. LeCrone and Mr. Azrouel. If you can't make it, don't fret: on Sunday at 7:30 p.m., the program will be streamed live at guggenheim.org/live. (Sunday and Monday, 1071 Fifth Avenue, at 89th Street, 212 423 3587, worksandprocess.org.) | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
Kings Point, at the tip of the Great Neck peninsula, is graced with nine miles of waterfront along Long Island Sound and Manhasset Bay. Last November, when the youngest of their three children was ready for his own room, Bobby Zargari and his wife, Melissa, moved from a compact home with a postage stamp size backyard in Saddle Rock Estates, an unincorporated area, to a sprawling, twice expanded five bedroom three bath ranch on a flat, rectangular 1.25 acre plot in Kings Point, the verdant, affluent village at the northern tip of the Great Neck peninsula in Nassau County. The Zargaris paid just over 2.5 million to have more space and so that their children could enjoy the serenity of a sun dappled backyard "large enough for privacy and small enough to get to know your neighbors," said Dr. Zargari, an oral surgeon, who grew up in Kings Point. They will also be close enough to share Sabbath dinners with family and attend the Great Neck public schools, which "are just as good as private schools," he said. The sizable property will also make it possible for the Zargaris to install a pool and eventually enlarge the home further. And that dream house would be in an idyllic spot. With nine miles of waterfront along Long Island Sound and Manhasset Bay, Kings Point is a Gatsby esque collection of homes and estates amid tall trees, lushly landscaped lawns and meandering roads in the North Shore town of North Hempstead; it is the priciest of the nine incorporated Great Neck villages. Or, as Andi Levine, the broker owner of Keller Williams Realty Gold Coast office, put it, "Kings Point has always portrayed the illusion of being a gated community." Beyond the fact that it has its own police force, that feeling of exclusivity is promulgated by a nearly complete new camera system with license plate readers and video cameras installed at each of the village's 19 entrances, said Michael Kalnick, the mayor. In recent years, buyers in this village of 1,575 homes have reflected a demographic shift, "a little bit more cultural, for good or bad," said Dr. Zargari, an Iranian Jew who is married to an American, "more of a Persian influence and more religious." According to census data, of the 7,784 residents in ZIP code 11024, 2,897 or 37.2 percent are of Iranian ancestry. "Today," Ms. Levine said, "the Kings Point population is mostly first generation foreign as opposed to the previous which was second generation American," also including a recent influx of Asians, many having first landed in Flushing, Queens. Ashok Sinha for The New York Times Soheila Sharf, the owner of Soheila Sharf Realty in Great Neck, sees Iranian Jewish buyers as committed to the area. "They grow up and live in the city and they want to have families and they move back to be near their families," she said. "You give them the same house in Sands Point for half the price, they don't want it." Part of the appeal lies in amenities like parks, waterfront concerts and a marina, said Kouros Torkan, a builder, who has lived here 30 years. "The village is unique and diverse," he said. "This winter the streets were always plowed. The security is very tight. The fact that it is a 30 minute ride to the city it is exceptional." More than 60 years ago, many of the large estates that made up Kings Point were carved into one acre lots and built up with low slung ranches, often on slabs. Over the last decade almost 130 village houses have been knocked down and rebuilt 16 in the last year, said Richard A. Schilt, the village building inspector. The prevailing new style is an ornate colonial French mansion hybrid in brick or limestone with gambrel roofs, wrought iron detailing, gilded embellishments, arched windows and balustrades. "Most of the existing houses were built in the '50s and '60s and are falling apart," said Michael Ahdoot, a local builder. "If you want to move to a neighborhood like Kings Point, you don't want to live in those houses." Mr. Ahdoot recently knocked down his three bedroom midcentury and in its stead is building a mansion with a mansard roof, cast stone quoins and arch topped French doors. Next door, a clapboard colonial was recently replaced by a brick chateau. Across the street, a 20,000 square foot limestone palace is nearly complete. Taxes on new buildings often top 70,000 a year, Mr. Ahdoot said. Ordinances cap above ground house size at 8,000 square feet per acre, Mayor Kalnick said. While attempts have been made to retain "the character of the community," homes have "easily tripled in volume," he said, when one takes into account below grade features, such as movie theaters and indoor pools. Ashok Sinha for The New York Times Mark Stumer, an architect who is on the village landmark preservation and architectural review boards said some of the new construction was "poorly designed" and had "impacted the look of Kings Point," adding, "Many of these homes are overpowering on their sites, and some areas do seem overcrowded." Last month, Janet Etessami, whose real estate agency bears her name, sold what she described as a teardown for 11.5 million. "Kings Point picked up tremendously within the past six months," as compared with the previous year, Ms. Etessami said. Prices have yet to return to the levels reached before 2008, she said, but "there are bidding wars and houses are selling above asking price." A recent perusal of houses for sale revealed listings for 27, at prices from 1.49 million for a five bedroom four and a half bath fixer upper ranch to 10 million for a six bedroom four and a half bath 1956 split level with New York City skyline and bridge views. In 2013, 46 homes sold, with a low price of 880,000 and a high of 4.55 million, at an average of 2,095,804, Ms. Levine said. A year earlier, the low price was 950,000, the high 13 million, and the average 2,720,739 in other words, 23 percent more. Ashok Sinha for The New York Times Commanding views of Long Island Sound are only part of the lure at Steppingstone Park and Marina, part of the Great Neck Park District system. Waterside concerts by artists like Michael Amante and the Lovin' Spoonful are held during the summer season. The park has a sailing school, a fishing dock, an aqua park, indoor and outdoor playgrounds and a snack bar. Five miles of hiking, running and cross country skiing trails are available at the 175 acre Kings Point Park. There are also tennis courts, picnic areas and baseball fields. Restaurants and boutique shopping can be found along Middle Neck Road, in the villages of Great Neck and Great Neck Plaza. The well regarded Great Neck public school system has 6,480 students from nearly 30 countries, according to Dr. Thomas P. Dolan, the superintendent. The John F. Kennedy School teaches through Grade 5. Great Neck North Middle School is followed by high school at either Great Neck North or the alternative Village School. SAT mean scores at Great Neck last year were 559 in reading, 614 in math and 581 in writing, versus 501, 485 and 477 statewide. The North Shore Hebrew Academy teaches through Grade 5 at its Cherry Lane campus. Annual tuition is 12,000 to 14,000, depending on grade, said Arnie Flatow, the executive director. The 7:47 a.m. train from the Great Neck station of the Long Island Rail Road ferries riders to Pennsylvania Station in 24 minutes. A monthly costs 242, a peak one way 11. Driving to Manhattan takes about 30 minutes, barring heavy traffic. The comedian Sid Caesar lived from the 1950s to the late '70s in a home with water views on East Shore Road; the comedian Alan King lived until his death in 2004 in the Kenilworth neighborhood, in a Tudor mansion built in 1926 by the lyricist Oscar Hammerstein and overlooking Manhasset Bay. George M. Cohan, the composer and lyricist, lived in a stucco Mediterranean on Kings Point Road from 1914 to 1920. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
Mr. Birgeneau bowed out a day after Smith College said that Christine Lagarde, head of the International Monetary Fund, had withdrawn from its commencement because of protests. Condoleezza Rice, the former secretary of state, said this month she would not deliver the address at Rutgers University after the invitation drew objections. Last month, Brandeis University rescinded an invitation to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali born activist, over her criticism of Islam. Such reversals, whether initiated by the school or the speaker, were once rare, but have become more common in the last few years. Campus activists on the left have long objected to appearances by more conservative figures like Ms. Rice, though usually the events proceeded despite the protests. What is far more unusual is to see them block appearances by figures like Ms. Lagarde, a trailblazing woman usually seen as a centrist, who faced criticism over I.M.F. policies toward poor nations that predated her tenure; or Mr. Birgeneau, who was known for liberal policies toward students who were gay or not authorized to be in the country. Michael Rushmore, a Haverford senior who was one of the authors of an open letter to Mr. Birgeneau, said his critics were not setting an unfairly high standard, though, "I think that's a fair concern." "We recognize that we can't like every single thing about a person," he said. "But this was something that touched a lot of us very directly because we were at Occupy events. There was some solidarity there that we felt we had to act on." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Education |
It's unusual that the parent is the one who undergoes such a life altering transformation in a bildungsroman, which makes "Jinn" especially intriguing. Following her father's advice, Summer decides to attend mosque with Jade, at least until she leaves for college. It's not long , however, before the teenager becomes drawn to some of the rituals and ideas of the Muslim faith particularly jinn, the supernatural beings made of fire who can take on both human and animal form. For Summer, the exploration of Islam hardly means readily accepting the faith's more conservative teachings, but rather, trying to strike a balance. She still bares her midriff, smokes weed and drinks at house parties, while wearing a hijab that often only partly covers her funkily dyed curls. Her sartorial experimentation frustrates Jade (who, as a meteorologist for a local news station, deals with her own internal struggles over comfort in wearing her head scarf in public) and at one point, Summer's testing of the boundaries between religion and her own self expression leads to an embarrassing social media snafu. But Mu'min, who based "Jinn" in part on her own upbringing, approaches her protagonist's journey of self discovery with a delicate sense of wonder and a striking lack of moral judgment. A range of characters show Summer there are many ways to be a Muslim, including Tahir (Kelvin Harrison Jr.), a classmate and love interest whose parents are less strict in their practice than others. "Jinn" may end a little too neatly after challenging so many of the conventions of its genre, but it's easy enough to look past. As Summer and Jade, Renee and Missick give grounded, lovely performances, tapping into the characters' needs to be seen and accepted for who they are, and who they are becoming. When Mu'min focuses her camera on the mother or daughter studying herself in a mirror, she effectively shows them pondering the weight of what it means to be a black girl or woman, and to wear a hijab in school or at work. These are ostensibly unremarkable choices embracing one's sexuality, embracing one's faith that nevertheless bring with them the possibility of unfavorable implications and "other" ing in today's present climate. The fact that they make those choices at all is a sign of resilience. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
The rest of the fashion world may be talking about "a clear call for change" (in the words of the Boston Consulting Group study commissioned by the Council of Fashion Designers of America) and the "danger of designer creative burnout" and the need to slow things down (after a month of shows, doesn't less seem like more?) and so on and so forth. But that industry disrupter/tweet stormer/creative megalith otherwise known as Kanye West has a different idea about how the future of fashion, or at least his fashion future, may look. Over the weekend, he took to Twitter, as is his wont, to reveal his plan: "No more fashion calendar... I'm going Mad Max... 6 collections a year...3 albums a year," he wrote. Six collections! It's not entirely clear how that might look, since Mr. West's thoughts then took a different direction, but chances are that there will probably be "homeless sweaters" involved. "I believe in my ripped homeless sweaters!!!" he posted earlier. (In case you were wondering, a "homeless sweater" is the knit equivalent of distressed jeans: stretched out and with some judiciously placed holes. Kendall Jenner wore Mr. West's version to his New York Fashion Week show last month.) And Mr. West never paid much attention to the fashion calendar in the first place, scheduling his show during fashion week without going through the CFDA, and often conflicting with other designers, much to their chagrin. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
As the World Heats Up, the Climate for News Is Changing, Too As Europe heats up, Greenland melts and the Midwest floods, many news organizations are devoting more resources to climate change as they cover the topic with more urgency. In Florida, six newsrooms with different owners have taken the unusual step of pooling their resources and sharing their reporting on the issue. They plan to examine how climate change will affect the state's enormous agriculture sector as well as "the future of coastal towns and cities which ones survive, which ones go under," according to a statement released when the initiative was announced last month. Florida's record breaking heat waves, devastating storms like Hurricane Michael and increased flooding at high tide have not been lost on Mindy Marques, the publisher and executive editor of The Miami Herald, one of the six organizations taking part in the effort. "It's undeniable that we are living with the impact of changes in our climate every day," Ms. Marques said. The Guardian, the left wing British daily, recently updated its house style to prefer the phrase "climate emergency" over "climate change." It also recommends "climate science denier" in place of "climate skeptic." The publication has also started listing the global carbon dioxide level on its daily weather page. The New York Times established a desk dedicated to climate change in 2017, with editors and reporters in Washington and New York who collaborate with bureaus around the world. But even among journalists who want to convey that climate change is a crisis, there is not unanimity about how to play it. Matthew C. Nisbet, a communications professor at Northeastern University and the editor of the journal Environmental Communication, has argued for more nuance. "We have good research that in amping up the threat without actually providing people with things they can do, you end up with fatalism, despair, depression, a sense of paralysis, or a sense of dismissiveness and denial," he said. Mr. Nisbet, who recently published an article headlined "The Trouble With Climate Emergency Journalism" in the journal Issues in Science and Technology, warned that fever pitch coverage could make climate science go the way of dietary science, a discipline that has suffered, in his view, from credulous reports of new studies that regularly upend conventional wisdom fat is bad; no, carbs are bad; no, eat like a cave man. "People don't know what to believe," Mr. Nisbet said. "They lose trust in the science and in the journalism about the science, and the complexity of the issue is lost." David Wallace Wells, the deputy editor of New York magazine whose work has appeared in The Times, argued the contrary, saying that a dash of alarmism suits alarming developments. Barely a year after the kerfuffle around that article, a panel of scientists convened by the United Nations issued a dire report, which forecast severe climate change as soon as 2040. To describe it, some news organizations pressed the panic button, a la The Guardian: "We Have 12 Years to Limit Climate Change Catastrophe, Warns U.N." (Mr. Wallace Wells's contribution was headlined: "U.N. Says Climate Genocide Is Coming. It's Actually Worse Than That.") But even those that played it straight could not help but convey urgency. "U.N. Report: 'Unprecedented Changes' Needed to Protect Earth From Global Warming," went the USA Today headline. 1. Time for action is running out. The major agreement struck by diplomats established a clear consensus that all nations need to do much more, immediately, to prevent a catastrophic rise in global temperatures. 2. How much each nation needs to cut remains unresolved. Rich countries are disproportionately responsible for global warming, but some leaders have insisted that it's the poorer nations who need to accelerate their shift away from fossil fuels. 3. The call for disaster aid increased. One of the biggest fights at the summit revolved around whether and how the world's wealthiest nations should compensate poorer nations for the damage caused by rising temperatures. 4. A surprising emissions cutting agreement. Among the other notable deals to come out of the summit was a U.S. China agreement to do more to cut emissions this decade, and China committed for the first time to develop a plan to reduce methane. 5. There was a clear gender and generation gap. Those with the power to make decisions about how much the world warms were mostly old and male. Those who were most fiercely protesting the pace of action were mostly young and female. Other outlets held off, however, with 28 of the top 50 American newspapers by Sunday circulation publishing nothing on the report the day after it was issued, according to the liberal watchdog Media Matters for America. The Columbia Journalism Review bashed the nonchalant response to the United Nations report in an April 22 essay headlined "The media are complacent while the world burns." Written by the longtime environmental reporter Mark Hertsgaard and the magazine's top editor, Kyle Pope, the piece, which was also published in The Nation and The Guardian, took issue with the "climate silence" of major news organizations and singled out the paucity of time given to the issue on television news, "where the brutal demands of ratings and money work against adequate coverage of the biggest story of our time." An illustration of the extremes in how climate change has been covered was evident on a recent edition of the nightly Fox News program "The Story With Martha MacCallum." The segment began with a clip from John Oliver's HBO show in which Bill Nye the Science Guy, a winner of multiple Emmys who specializes in explaining scientific concepts in simple terms, lit a globe on fire and ordered his viewers, in unprintable language, to grow up and face the crisis. After the clip played, Ms. MacCallum's guest, the Fox News personality Jesse Watters, weighed in. Mr. Watters's view lines up with the roughly one third of Americans who believe that climate change is mostly due to natural trends, according to a new study from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. It is also in keeping with the opinion of Mr. Watters's onetime dining partner President Trump, who pulled the United States out of the Paris climate accord and has called the idea that climate change results from human activity a "hoax" and "fake science." At the other end of the spectrum, the activists of Extinction Rebellion, a group founded in Britain last year, argue that most journalists have not met the crisis with sufficient urgency. In addition to recent protests in London and Paris (where some participants were tear gassed), the group has aimed at the news media, with demonstrations last month outside the offices of The New York Times, The Washington Post and Fox News. "You're still not talking about it like it's an emergency," said a group spokeswoman, Alanna Byrne, referring to large media outlets, "and that's what we have to do now: Be honest to the public about the full scale changes we have to make." On April 30, The Columbia Journalism Review and The Nation sponsored a town hall on how to cover climate change as part of an initiative called Covering Climate Now. It has brought together Asahi Shimbun, a Japanese newspaper; Maclean's magazine of Canada; The Philadelphia Inquirer; and other outlets that have pledged to step up coverage of the issue before a United Nations climate summit scheduled for September. "It's outdated to say that covering the effects of climate change is advocacy," said Mr. Pope, the Columbia Journalism Review editor. "It's an enormous story. The effects of this are completely nonpartisan." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
Myrna Katz Frommer, who channeled the voices of comedians and busboys in the Catskills and teachers and rabbis in Brooklyn through vivid oral histories she created with her husband, died on Aug. 8 at her home in Lyme, N.H. She was 80. Her son Frederic said the cause was complications of Alzheimer's disease. Ms. Frommer died just a week after her husband, Harvey Frommer. Ms. Frommer edited her husband's many books, which were frequently about baseball, before he submitted them. But she was not a sports fan. When they began to work on oral histories in the late 1980s, however, they found common ground. Their first book , "It Happened in the Catskills" (1991), started as a conventional narrative history of the fast fading world of summer resorts and bungalow colonies known as the borscht belt . But they recognized that the stories they were hearing from waiters, guests, agents, bellhops and other personalities would be better told in their own voices. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
Yet "50 Years" reminds us as well of the breadth of talent and unity of vision in the scene Ms. Cooper helped forge. One of the great lost innovators of the late 1960s, whose work always seems on the cusp of rediscovery, is Bill Bollinger, whose "Rope Piece" from 1968 consists of a pair of strands of hemp bolted to the floor and ceiling, stretched to the extreme and clamped together: maximum tension expressed with minimal means. In Robert Murray's "Surf" (1967), a pair of yellow aluminum zigzags nuzzle on the floor, like snakes in the grass offering a sly rejoinder to Donald Judd's nearby matte brown aluminum box. The show "50 Years: An Anniversary" closes this weekend after a very short run (less than a month). Ms. Cooper was clearly not eager to preen although there are some delicious archival materials on the gallery's website and she has kept up regular programming at her two other Chelsea locations rather than mount a hagiographic blowout. (Around the block, in an empty lot on the corner of 11th Avenue and West 25th Street, the gallery is presenting a towering totem of red steel by Mark di Suvero, who first worked with Ms. Cooper at the artist run Park Place Gallery in the mid 60s.) The times are too fraught for celebration, Ms. Cooper seems to have concluded. Like its anti Vietnam War predecessor, this show, too, has an activist stance: Gallery visitors are asked to contribute to March for Our Lives, the national movement for gun control begun by students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. If Ms. Cooper's taste has diffused throughout the world of contemporary art, her ethics and engagement have not and what feels finest in this discreet jubilee is its vision of integrity in a mad, mad market. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
Juliana F. May rehearsing her new dance, "Folk Incest," at Abrons Arts Center in Manhattan. "I'm more interested now in how the dancers make their own choices in the space," Ms. May said. A rhythmic chant of "don't do it" rang through the halls of Abrons Arts Center in Manhattan on a recent afternoon. Inside a basement studio, five women were rehearsing a new work by the choreographer Juliana F. May. As they buzzed around the space, what sounded like casual conversation alternated with catchy songs and incantations. Yet what they said was much darker than how they said it. (Most of the script can't be printed here.) References to sexual violence and Nazi Germany punctuated the lines of dialogue that flew among the performers. And perhaps because of that dissonance, the text, alarmingly, could be funny at times, even while profoundly unsettling. In "Folk Incest," which begins a two week run at Abrons on Oct. 9, Ms. May, 38, has set out to grapple with what she calls "seemingly unrepresentable" material; that is, to find ways to speak about the unspeakable. While trauma has been a recurring theme in her work, she said she has never before confronted it so concretely. "I'm looking at my own sexual trauma, and at intergenerational trauma as a Jew," she said at a restaurant in the Lower East Side. Her mother's parents, she said, fled from the Holocaust; their parents died in Europe. In particular, she has been contemplating what it means to romanticize or find arousal in traumatic events, whether personal, historical or both. "Some of it's about the fantasy of the trauma, which is also a way of dealing with or mastering the trauma," she said. A native New Yorker who made her first solo in middle school, Ms. May grew up studying dance composition and improvisation; her early influences included the experimental choreographers Neil Greenberg and Susan Rethorst. In works like "Gutter Gate" (2011) and "Commentary not thing" (2013), she began combining movement with forms of vocalization: a means, she said, of bringing the audience "into a thick, dense place where we lose a sense of where we are." In "Folk Incest," she is also commenting on her artistic lineage, on inherited tools of postmodernism and abstraction. "What are the things that I really want to say?" she asked. "Am I abstracting them in order to hide behind those things, because they're a little bit too scary to say? What do I want to be heard?" "Folk Incest" is full of movement, with the dancers performing physical tasks as they speak: skipping with shimmying shoulders; striding on tiptoe; pretending to walk a small dog. Yet Ms. May's focus, she said, has been on developing the text with great care but not too much delicacy. "I'm actually interested in being a bit reckless with language," she said. "To put that danger in the center of the room and find a way to laugh about it, cry about it, to fulfill a range of emotions around a very scary thing." Tess Dworman, one of the dancers, said that while she's uncertain how audiences will receive the work, one thing is clear: "Juliana is not trying to solve anything, any of these huge issues that we're putting on the table," she said. "It feels like a natural inclination to reach toward some form of hopefulness, and there's a bit of that in the piece, but it really stays in the mess of it and just draws that out." In person and over the phone, Ms. May spoke about the creation of "Folk Incest." These are edited excerpts from those conversations. I found myself laughing sometimes during your rehearsal and thinking, "Should this be funny?" This is really serious stuff, and thank God for levity. I think humor is the only way to make it a little bit more O.K. What drew you to working with "unrepresentable" material? I think trauma is one of the most impossible things to retell or reflect on, aside from explaining the traumatic event itself, which usually gets people stuck on the gory details or the paradigm of victim and perpetrator. Can you say more about the victim/perpetrator paradigm? I'm really talking about the cycle of abuse that happens within one person. If trauma remains unprocessed, disgust or rage can turn inward to self harm or externalize itself to others. You yourself can become the perpetrator, and a cycle of abuse continues. I feel that in myself my relationship to desire and rage and how at a young age those wires got crossed, and it's very difficult to untangle them. This work is treading around that crossing and uncrossing of wires. This piece deals partly with your own experience of sexual trauma. Do you want people to know what exactly that was? That's something I've really battled. In other processes I've collected a lot of text from conversations between my performers. For this we did that somewhat, but mostly I've written it. So my experience is there, but I'm still not sure how much I want people to know specifically. How did you generate the text? We spent the first six months just talking and recording, and I ended up not using most of what we did. We took breaks, and I spent most of that time writing for six hours every day, playing with dialogue, thinking about these events that have happened to me about my family, about my father and sister, and the trauma that has persisted in my immediate life but also intergenerationally. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
Credit...Donald Judd Art; Judd Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; Zack DeZon for The New York Times I wonder if it even occurs to young artists in the globalist, pluralist present to try to stake out a spot in art history by changing the way history goes. Donald Judd, pioneer of the 1960s movement called Minimalism (the label wasn't his; he hated it), thought about this constantly. He wanted, right from the start, to be a big art deal, a super influencer. Long before his death in 1994, at 65, he was. Major American and European museums owned his work. His signature sculptural image a no frills, no content wood or metal box had not only been adapted by other artists, but also riffs on it became a fixture of international architecture and design. To some degree, we all lived in Judd world, and still do. The big, and maybe only surprise, particularly for Judd skeptics, is how really beautiful some of the art looks, how poetic, and mysterious. These were qualities that Judd himself, at least when he was starting out, would not have wanted applied to his work, which in the 1950s was painting. Beauty and mystery belonged to the art of yesterday. His was an art of today, a today that he kept close tabs on as a busy New York art critic in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Writing led him to network widely in the contemporary art world. It allowed him to observe its career making machinery in action, and to consider how to position himself within it. His reviews listy, pontificating, proscriptive were a form of self advertising that also served as a useful means of self critique. It was three dimensional, so it wasn't painting but, he claimed, it wasn't sculpture either. He called the new works "specific objects," and left it at that. He titled all of these objects "Untitled," and insisted they were devoid of metaphors, personal data or real world references all the lures, in other words, that art traditionally uses to draw us in. The earliest of these experimental objects look pretty funky. From 1961 comes what is essentially an all black oil painting with a baking pan sunk into its surface. An oil paint mixed with sand picture, dated to the following year, is colored allover scarlet red and has a yellow plastic "O" a found bit of commercial signage sideways in its center. Almost every subsequent piece for the next few years is the same red. Judd said he chose the color because it made edges look crisp. He didn't mention that it also shouted "Look at me!" For some observers, the most interesting thing Judd was doing at this early point was playing with space, in unusual ways. A largish 1963 work composed of iron flanges (Hardware store finds? Junk shop rescues?) attached to a flat wood panel, simultaneously hugs the wall, painting style, and curves out into the room. And a smaller wall piece from the same year offers a preview of further complexities to come. About the size of carpenter's plane, it consists of a shelflike unit holding a length of square pipe. They seem to form a single dense, even leaden unit. Yet two small holes cut into the "shelf" hint at interior space, and a view from the side reveals the pipe to be hollow and open at both ends. Suddenly the piece feels light and buoyant. Air is moving through. You can almost feel it. This came at a time when Abstract Expressionism that most touchy feely of styles, remained the model of what serious art should be. Judd took critical heat for shifting production from his studio to what people assumed to be a factory. But in reality, his creative involvement with his art stayed intense. All the work was based on his detailed drawings. (Several are on view.) Indeed, drawing designs became one of his chief occupations. In addition, he chose the material, much of it industrial (metals, Plexiglas, acrylic paint), to be used for new work, and he often oversaw, or consulted on details and production. For a hands off artist, he was very much on the job. It is the art produced by this combination of authorial presence and absence that makes up the bulk of a retrospective organized by Ann Temkin, MoMA's chief curator of painting and sculpture, with Yasmil Raymond, former associate curator; Tamar Margalit, a curatorial assistant; and Erica Cooke, a research fellow that spans more than 30 years. In the second gallery, where industrial fabrication starts, we get a full range of what will be repeated Judd forms. There are round ended metal wall pieces shaped like bolster pillows, and sets of thin, squared off uprights reminiscent of high jump bars. The little 1963 shelf and tube piece reappears in larger, more elaborate versions, its horizontal air shaft intact. And there are boxes, many, open and closed, foursquare and flat, single or multiple, floor bound or attached to the wall and stacked up, one over the other, high. It also has an interior life, or lives. A floor box built of opaque honey gold Plexiglas appears to have a dark form sealed inside. A row of four aluminum boxes spaced close together across the third gallery looms like a barrier wall. But peer into either end and you'll find that the boxes are hollow and form a long corridor colored a subaqueous blue. And there's the complex language of materials to savor, most industrially sourced. In the 1970s, commercial plywood caught Judd's eye and he used it in a suite of boxy sculptures that look like a cross between shipping containers and anchorite cells. In addition, the unpainted sheets of wood chosen are rich with organic patterning: flamelike grains, knots like eyes. They exemplified an aesthetic of accident he relished. He still isn't on any center stage. As a model for young artists now in an art world that acknowledges multiple histories and has zero interest in "isms" he seems locked in another time, as do many of his contemporaries who came of age more than a half century ago. Simply put, they lived on a smaller art planet, one small enough to have faith in a Next Big Step. In the market managed present, it's hard to imagine ever thinking that way. But it's good to have him back in the spotlight at MoMA and elsewhere. (Several smaller New York exhibitions have been scheduled to complement the retrospective show.) And it's nice to report that in important ways he still is news. His art once thought to be too severe to be beautiful (or maybe to be art at all) can now be seen to offer pleasures, visual and conceptual, that any audience with open eyes, can relate to, and that young artists can even maybe shoot for. Judd the critic once said that for art to matter, "it needs only to be interesting." His is. Sunday through July 11 (opens to members Feb. 27), Museum of Modern Art, 11 West 53rd Street, Manhattan; 212 708 9400, moma.org. Several galleries are offering shows related to the artist. Judd in Two Dimensions: Fifteen Drawings at Mignoni, 960 Madison Avenue, Manhattan; through March 21; mignoniart.com. Judd Foundation: In conjunction with the MoMA retrospective, Judd's former loft and working space will operate an expanded visit schedule from March 1 July 11, at 101 Spring Street. It will also display 20 woodcut prints that Judd made in 1992 that have never been exhibited in New York. juddfoundation.org. Donald Judd: Artworks 1970 1994 at David Zwirner, 525 and 533 West 19th Street. Manhattan, April 18 to June 26; davidzwirner.com. Salon 94 will be hosting a presentation of Donald Judd Furniture at the New York edition of TEFAF, May 8 12 at the Park Avenue Armory. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
President Trump's angry condemnation of the news media during a campaign style rally on Tuesday heightened the fear among journalists that verbal attacks on the profession could lead to physical attacks. While criticizing media coverage has long been a surefire tactic to rile up crowds, the depth of the president's most recent jabs took even seasoned journalists by surprise. He called journalists "sick people," accused the news media of "trying to take away our history and our heritage" and questioned their patriotism. "I really think they don't like our country," he said. Throughout the presidential campaign, Mr. Trump would frequently turn the attention of rallygoers to the areas containing journalists, who would then be greeted with obscenities and taunts. Journalists are well accustomed to being disliked at his rallies. But Tuesday's remarks struck a tone that alarmed journalists more than usual. Margaret Sullivan, a media columnist for The Washington Post, called it "the most sustained attack any president has ever made on the press." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
After Robert Alexander died at 51 during heart surgery in June 2018, after he was taken from the hospital to the facility that would recover the tissue and bone he had donated, he was brought to his uncle's farm in Hinton, Okla., where his six siblings, his mother and other family members and friends had gathered to give him a home funeral. They laid him out on a sturdy folding banquet table and dressed him in well worn bluejeans, a Harley Davidson bandanna, a long sleeved Affliction T shirt and his black leather vest painted with the American flag. On the wall behind him, they hung a blanket emblazoned with a flaming skull. A mechanic, Mr. Alexander had loved motorcycles, though his health and finances had kept him from being a regular rider. After he was properly adorned, and "looking pretty badass," as his sister Tawnya Musser said, his siblings and their mother gathered around him, and a brother in law took a family photo using his smartphone. "We couldn't think of a time when all of us had been together with Mom," Ms. Musser, 34, said. "So we had the conversation. Did Mom want a photo with all seven of her children and was it morbid that one of them was dead?" There ended up being several photographs. They are startling and beautiful. Mr. Alexander looks peaceful and regal. The siblings have shared them among themselves, but the images don't live on social media, as many contemporary death photos do. In a collision of technology and culture, of new habits and very old ones, we are beginning to photograph our dead again. For families like Mr. Alexander's who are choosing home funerals and following natural death practices D.I.Y. affairs that eschew the services of conventional funeral parlors photography is an extension and celebration of that choice. Family members are sitting with kin in hospice, or taking them home from hospitals, and continuing to care for them after they die, often washing their bodies and then adorning them, as Mr. Alexander's family did, with favorite clothes, flowers, cards, books and other totems. They are sending their dead off as their grandparents used to, and recording the event and its aftermath with their smartphones. "You can die in a way that has beauty attached," said Amy Cunningham, 64, a funeral director in Brooklyn who specializes in "green" burials, without embalming or metal coffins, and assists families who are caring for their dead at home. "The photograph seals the emotion," Ms. Cunningham said. "And with cellular phones ever present, we're going to be recording all kinds of things we never did previously. Death is just one of them. Though when you're Facebook posting and the images are wedged between the latest Trump atrocity and cats who look like Hitler it can be jarring." So, too, is the now common experience of seeing emoji applied to tragic events. Do you choose the weeping smiley face or just hit "like"? The End of the Timeline When Louise Rafkin posted a photo of her mother, Rhoda Rafkin, on Facebook the night of her death at 98 in September with her golden retriever at her side, it rattled some family members and friends. Ms. Rafkin, 61, an author and martial arts teacher in Oakland, Calif., who is also a contributor to The New York Times, described how she and others had carried Rhoda outside to the garden she had loved. They transported her on an improvised stretcher, a surfboard borrowed from neighbors, and with help from their college age sons. Here are more fascinating tales you can't help but read all the way to the end. None Getting Personal With Iman. The supermodel talks about life after David Bowie, their Catskills refuge and the perfume inspired by their love. A Resilient Team for a Broken Nation. With the Taliban in control, what, and whom, is Afghanistan's national soccer team playing for? The Fight of This Old Boxer's Life Was With His Own Family. A battle among Marvin Stein's family over his fortune broke out, and he suddenly found himself powerless to fight for himself. Rhoda was dressed in a blue caftan and strewn with sunflowers, roses and gladioli. They tucked her into a sheet, lit candles and sat with her until it was dark. It is a lovely image, shot at the magic hour, as filmmakers like to say of the time just before dusk, but it shocks nonetheless. "I was crazy about my mom and I wasn't fazed by her being dead," Ms. Rafkin said, noting that Rhoda, an educator, had been in hospice for more than six months. "I've been through the AIDS epidemic. I'm used to death. There are ways you can make this meaningful. Although I'm not religious, I am a deep believer in ritual and how that can heal and provide context." The Facebook post was a way to announce Rhoda's death, Ms. Rafkin said, adding, "I'm pretty sure my mother would have disapproved, and that's a tad unsettling. 'No folderol,' she said about the whole process." Some family members had mixed reactions. "I think what she did in the garden was beautiful," said Ashley Peterson, 31, of Ms. Rafkin, who is her aunt. "But I felt like posting the photos could make people uncomfortable and leave an image in their minds they did not want to see." Susan Sontag wrote that photography has its own ethics: It tells us what we are allowed to see and what's taboo. (In the age of TikTok, these rules have evolved beyond all imagining.) If we are more familiar with the deaths of strangers, their violent ends captured by photojournalists, maybe that's because the deaths of our intimates have been at a remove for so long. There have been exceptions, of course, like the harrowing images that emerged during the AIDS epidemic from photographers like Therese Frare and artists like David Wojnarowicz, whose tender portraits of his friend and mentor Peter Hujar are holy seeming and sacramental. "In one sense it's surprising because we've been so disconnected from death in the last century or so," said Bess Lovejoy, the author of "Rest in Pieces: The Curious Fates of Famous Corpses," published in 2013, of the resurgence of home death photography. Ms. Lovejoy is also a member of the Order of the Good Death, an organization of funeral professionals, artists and scholars that prepare a culture generally in denial about death. Modern photography was born in 1839, when Louis Daguerre refined a process for capturing an image on silver plated copper. For decades, one of the most common uses of this new technology was the post mortem photo: an artfully composed image, taken by a professional photographer, of dead family members in all manner of poses. Dead children in the laps of their parents, often with their eyes painted open; dead adults dressed in their finest clothes; even dead parents holding their living children; or entire families, wiped out by diseases like cholera, typhoid or diphtheria, nestled together in bed. These were prized mementos, most often the only photograph that was ever taken of the subject, said Stanley B. Burns, 81, the quirky ophthalmologist behind the Burns Archive, a collection of post mortem and medical photos, among other intriguing photographic genres, stored in a chockablock townhouse in Midtown Manhattan. The photos in Dr. Burns's "Sleeping Beauty" books (there are three) are both ghoulish and gorgeous. Dr. Burns pointed out that the subjects tended to look pretty good, because the plagues that felled them did so quickly. The images have been inspiration and provided material for collectors and Victoriana enthusiasts like Joanna Ebenstein, 48, a writer and curator who was a founder of the idiosyncratic Morbid Anatomy Museum, now closed, in Brooklyn. "Post mortem photographs can be seen as a Western form of ancestor veneration," said Ms. Ebenstein, a practice that began to decline when death was outsourced to the clinical environments of hospitals and funeral homes, "and it became taboo to talk about." But what really curtailed post mortem photography and the elaborate mourning rituals behind it, according to Dr. Burns, was World War I. "There was so much death," he said. "If everyone is mourning, you lose your fighting spirit. It's not patriotic." "What's happening now is that people are taking back that process," Dr. Burns continued. "But the impulse to photograph is the same as it was for the Victorians. They want to show they have seen their person through to the end. 'I've done this work, I've loved her to the end.' It's your last bond, and you want to document that." As the funeral industry slowly evolves from Big Casket to include a cadre of overwhelmingly female and digitally native professionals with all manner of titles (end of life teachers, death doulas and others), they are displaying their work, with humor and photographs, on social media. Their message: Get comfortable with death, it doesn't have to be so scary, and here are photos to prove it. They share images of the dead attended by family members in their beds, or shrouded in natural fabrics cinched with rope at a grave site. They perform death themselves, as Melissa Unfred, 41, a natural mortician based in Austin, Texas, sometimes does, lying in shallow graves strewn with flowers and turf. Ms. Unfred, who sells "Cremate the Patriarchy" T shirts on Etsy, is the Mod Mortician of Twitter and Instagram, one of many evangelists for the so called Death Positive movement. Caitlin Doughty, 35, a funeral director who describes herself as a mortician activist and funeral industry rabble rouser, recently re enacted a Victorian style post mortem photo shoot with a tintype photographer at the Merchant House Museum in Manhattan, and shared it on YouTube. Ms. Doughty is the founder of the Order of the Good Death and the author of "Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs?" published last September, "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes and Other Lessons from the Crematory" and other jauntily titled books designed to demystify death. With her Bettie Page crop, she is an avatar of the goth inflected sub tribe of death professionals. "It's not like no one never took a photo of Mom in the coffin," Ms. Doughty said. "I have pictures of my grandparents in their caskets fully embalmed. But the sense of ownership has changed. It's not, 'Mom is handed to the funeral parlor and they do something behind the scenes and sell the body back to you.' Sure, you could take photos but it's like a statue in a museum. The product of someone else's art. My sense of why we are seeing more and more photos of these natural bodies is because the families have prepared them themselves, they've done a job together and they are proud of their work." Ms. Doughty advises families on home death rituals and best practices, like how to keep the dead cool with packs of dry ice. "One family texted me photos as they worked, though not to say, 'How are we doing?' but, 'Look how beautiful.' I think people have this fear that Mom is going to be this otherworldly creepy thing, and then when that doesn't happen, they want to capture it." Ms. Cunningham, the funeral director in Brooklyn, recalled addressing a group of Unitarians in Albany a few years ago, and saying that she wasn't sure she would want to be viewed, post mortem, by her friends and family. That she would prefer to be looking her best. A nonagenarian yelled out, quite sharply, as she remembered, "'You'll get over that!'" "And that got me thinking," Ms. Cunningham said. "Wouldn't it be wonderful to die unfettered and free from worrying about how I look?" Cancer patients and others with terminal illnesses have long used photos and videos to bear witness to their suffering and make visible that which is considered off limits on blogs, Twitter and now TikTok and have encouraged family members and friends to do so on their behalf when they are no longer able to, pushing visual and emotional boundaries well beyond what may be considered comfortable. She captures the area between a forefinger and thumb, or the calluses of someone's hands. Wrinkles, she likes to say, are containers for memories and lived experience. She may take a photo of the crepey skin on an arm, or a scar, and sometimes she layers those images with photo collages made from leaves or flowers. The images are both abstract and intimate. The aesthetic and language of modern post mortem photography is not all fabric shrouds and flower petals, however. Monica Torres, 42, is a desairologist (the term for hair and makeup stylists who work on the dead) and embalmer in Phoenix with a sassy Twitter handle, Coldhandshosts. Her specialty is trauma, and she relies on conventional methods to make decedents look like themselves again. "I cannot create a positive, lasting memory for families without the chemicals and tools that I use," Ms. Torres said. The families of her clients often ask her to take photos, or gather at a coffin for a selfie, she added. An educator, she also shares her work in vivid photos on her website. "Now that the death positive movement is in full effect," she said, "families are beginning to show interest, and documenting their journey through grief is a powerful tool to use toward acceptance. We want to empower families with education about what it is we actually do and how our dark art is valuable." Bam Truesdale, 37, a hair and makeup stylist in Charlotte, N.C., has been preparing decedents for funeral parlors for 10 years. When his mother, Cynthia Cummings, died at 61 in 2016, he worked on her, too. As is his habit with all the people he prepares, he put earphones in his mother's ears, and played her gospel music, though he worked in silence. After Mr. Truesdale had made his mother up and done her hair, pinning a white feather and rhinestone fascinator to her curls, he smoothed her dress, adjusted her stockings and picked her up, placing her gently in her coffin. He captured the entire process with his Android phone, though when he paused to kiss her face all over, as he used to do when she was alive, the colleague he'd brought from work to help him if he faltered took the phone from him and snapped those photos herself. Afterward, he uploaded the images to a Google drive and did not look at them again until the last week of January. "I started feeling emotional that day," he said, "and something in my head told me, I think it was her, that I had never shared her like she asked me to." When Ms. Cummings was dying, she made Mr. Truesdale promise that he would make sure no one would forget her. Mr. Truesdale said, "I was going back and forth, 'Maybe I should? Maybe I shouldn't? People are going to think I'm weird.'" It was evening when Mr. Truesdale posted his dead mother's photos on Facebook. He awoke the next morning to find his phone lit up with thousands of comments and notifications. Many people asked if he could make the post public, so he did. By the end of the day, 25,000 people had "liked" the post, and it had been shared more than 15,000 times. Among the more than 4,000 comments, the most common were that Ms. Cummings looked beautiful, and that Mr. Truesdale had done a wonderful job caring for her. Strangers wrote that they wished they could have had a similar experience with their own family members. His three siblings thanked him, too. "They didn't know they wanted to see the pictures," he said. "But they did." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
LOS ANGELES True movie stars can "open" a film of any quality simply by having their name above the title. Very few of those specimens remain in this fragmented entertainment age, but Dwayne Johnson proved himself as one over the weekend. "Rampage," a PG 13 cheesefest involving mutant animals and marketed squarely around Mr. Johnson's presence, generated 34.5 million in ticket sales in its North American debut, on the low end of prerelease analyst expectations but enough for No. 1. "Rampage," which received weak reviews, collected an additional 140 million overseas, according to comScore, which compiles box office data. New Line Cinema, a division of Warner Bros., spent at least 220 million to make and market "Rampage" worldwide. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
MOST people would probably be quite happy to receive an inheritance. They would pay off debt, maybe their mortgage; save for retirement; take a trip or two. It would be blissful, and it would make their lives easier. Then there are those who have actually received an inheritance, sometimes sizable, and struggled with the accompanying responsibility. How should they manage it? What should they spend it on? Do they even deserve it? In this group, there is a small subset call them trust fund progressives who want to give all or most of the money away while they're young. Some may call these people generous; others may call them naive about what life has in store. Consider Greg, a teacher in Oakland, Calif., who asked that his last name be withheld to protect his family. His trust fund, which he received in 1996, when he was 18, was worth 900,000 at its peak. His great grandfather had made a fortune as a banker in Europe and the United States, he said, and his grandfather, who set up the trust fund for him, had also worked in finance. His mother went a different way and got involved in the civil rights movement. She taught Greg about the problems of income inequality in America from an early age, he said. In 2002, when he was 24, Greg came to the conclusion that he didn't deserve or want all of that money and decided to split his inheritance with two men he grew up with in Cambridge, Mass. Their families had lived communally and he considered them brothers, even though he was biologically an only child. "After a lifetime of growing up together and sharing our parents, we found ourselves in a really different position economically," Greg said. "That was something I didn't want and didn't feel needed to happen." He researched how to split the money among the three of them without anyone incurring taxes. He waited to tell his mother until he was ready to do it. He said she was supportive; her main concern was that he help the men understand the complexities of wealth. "What I found was that having a lot more money than the people you're close to seems to mean you have two choices, neither of which is great," Greg said. "You can be secretive about your wealth or you can share it with them, but then you're in this weird position of economic power. I felt there was a third choice: you could just change the situation and decide not to have lots more money than people you're close with." Greg is far from alone among trust fund progressives who are looking not only to overturn the image of the trust fund child drifting through a life of leisure and luxury, but also to level the playing field in their own small way. Some of them have come together through Resource Generation, a group that allows young inheritors to talk openly about the challenges of wealth. Its members, ages 18 to 35, have wealth that ranges from inheriting a 500,000 house when their parents die to having immediate access to a foundation worth 100 million. "We definitely have a portion of the community who are giving away all inherited wealth," said Sarah Abbott, a chapter organizer for Resource Generation. "There are also people in the community who are giving half of it away or some such percentage." She added, "We really encourage people to look at their lives and to figure out how to realistically plan to take care of themselves and their future children, but also realistically think about the world we want to see and giving to social change organizations." The sums vary. Jessie Spector, the group's program director, inherited a little over 500,000 from her grandparents. So far she has donated a third of it, lent another third to organizations and friends without interest, and made plans to give away the rest in the next three years. Ms. Abbott says she will inherit money in the future but does not know how much. Her mother, who inherited money from her own parents, and father own a glass business in Minnesota. Even if her inheritance is not huge, Ms. Abbott said she felt she had already been given a tremendous leg up on her generation: her family paid for her college education at Wesleyan, which costs about 60,000 a year. "I have a pretty incredible safety net," she said. "I have health care and I have the support of my family. I'm someone who can save money, and I feel I have more than I need." That fits with Resource Generation's stated mission to make progressive change in the world. Members, Ms. Abbott said, "see wealth inequality, and they want to be an agent for changing that." So they write checks or make low or no interest loans to progressive groups or other organizations they believe in, or friends in need. At the heart of what these trust fund progressives are doing is a belief that runs counter to the prevailing advice given by trust and estate professionals, if not a broader swath of society. The standard advice goes something like this: People who are fortunate enough to receive an inheritance should manage it well for themselves and future generations, and should try not to dip into the principal. "Most parents and grandparents want the inheritances left in trusts to have a positive influence, and most encourage philanthropy," said James L. Kronenberg, chief fiduciary counsel at Bessemer Trust. "In these cases, where kids are giving it all away at an early age, it is not entirely contrary to their thinking. Most parents and grandparents would not want to see their children and grandchildren give it away all at once. They would want it done in a more measured and thoughtful way." Mr. Kronenberg said most trusts contained "brakes" to prevent an inheritor from taking out too much money too quickly, and depending on how the trust is written, the trustee overseeing it can have broad discretion to refuse the beneficiary's requests. But if the beneficiary lies about the purpose of the money, the trustee has little recourse. "I've never seen the permissible beneficiaries as my child and all of his friends," he said. "If the child says I want the money for something and turns around and gives it to his friends, the trustee can't do much about it." Some trust fund progressives see what they have received as unfair. They want a more just society. In giving away what their family left to them, they feel that they are, in a small way, doing their part to make society less unfair and inequitable. Ms. Spector told a story of a member who inherited 1 million and gave away about half of it before he had a child with special needs who required expensive medical care. While many people might have regretted donating the money, he has continued to give to charities while also ensuring that his family has financial security. "In his life now, he's also thinking about how he can support his own family to get the care and support that he needs," she said. "But part of working for social change is supporting networks and infrastructure so anyone from any class background can have a child with a lot of health care needs and have the resources they need." In 2007, five years after splitting up his trust fund once, Greg got the urge to divide his money again, this time with a friend from a teaching fellowship. He said he had learned a tremendous amount from her but felt that she was being held back from contributing greatly to society because of her financial situation. "I was close enough to her that I could see that her capacity to live the way she wanted to and do what she wanted to do was limited by lack of money in a way my life was not," Greg said. "She had student loan debt. She had an old computer that didn't work and had to borrow mine. She couldn't take a break in the summer and had to get summer jobs as a teacher. She had medical care that had to be deferred." He added: "She wasn't poor. She was employed in a middle class job and had a college degree. It didn't make sense that I could have this life and she couldn't, and I could change it." So he split what was left of his 300,000 in half. He said the second time was a little harder. He had been working as a teacher since 2003, and the numbers in the bank meant more to him. Yet he has no regrets. "That second move put me more in line with the situations of a lot more people who are involved in education," he said. Today, Greg has a partner, a baby and a house. He said that his partner understood why he had split his inheritance and told him that she found him more attractive for putting his money where his mouth was on social change. "I sometimes experience a fear of scarcity, but it's not regret," he said. "When there are budget cuts, when there are bad choices being made about the economy, I don't feel completely immune to their impact. But I know that at the same time, I'm aware of all of the privilege I still have as a U.S. citizen with white skin, male, a college degree, a union protected job, owning a home, having health care." He added, "Apart from dollars, these things put me in the top 1 percent of privileged people on this planet." It is this sense of having enough that Resource Generation is pushing its members to embrace, even if they understand that people who were born with far less might struggle to understand what they are doing. "It makes sense that somebody who grows up poor says, 'Hey, if I had a windfall of 100,000 I would hold on to it,' because they probably need it more," Ms. Abbott said. "If you have a lot of class privilege and you grow up wealthy and had a windfall of 100,000, you might look around you and say, 'Actually, I don't need to use this money.' " | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Your Money |
Like many cities, Paris has lost a little bit of its magic during the coronavirus lockdown, with cafes, theaters and shops closed. And now you can't even run there, at least for much of the day. All outdoor sports, including running, have been banned from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Officials hope that by pushing people to exercise in the less busy hours they will cut down on social interaction. Mayor Anne Hidalgo told Franceinfo that she did not want to ban jogging, only limit it to "times when there will be fewer people on the street." She continued, "During the day, you have people who do their shopping and that's normal, because you have to eat and you have people who go to work." Even cycling has been halted in France, but professionals are asking for a waiver, saying that their livelihoods are at stake. "Even if, for some, a cyclist is not an important profession to make society work, the fact remains that we are employees," said Pascal Chanteur, president of the National Union of Professional Cyclists. "The Minister of Labor said that we had to go back to work if we could not do telework. And we could not resume? We would like to be able to exercise our profession like other employees." France has been hit particularly hard by the virus. After 8,000 deaths, its health minister said on Tuesday that it was "still in a worsening phase." The National Rugby League in Australia managed to get through just two games before the virus shut the sport down. But the league is considering an innovative way to get the season rolling again. It plans to pack up the entire league teams, players and officials and ship it to a resort, perhaps on Moreton Island, off the coast of Brisbane. There, games could be played safely distanced from the rest of the country. "We can sleep about 1,500 people," David James, manager of Tangalooma Island Resort on Moreton, told Fox Sports. "We can isolate the place. We can lock it down." The plan echoes a scheme by the Big3, the American three on three basketball league, to play its games in a quarantined area. That league planned to go a step further, having the players live in a house together for a "Big Brother" style reality show. And speaking of islands, Dana White, president of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, said his organization's fight cards might soon be held on one, too. "I'm a day or two away from securing a private island," he told TMZ. "We're getting the infrastructure put in now." He said fights held there would primarily be for international fighters who could not get into the United States. There would be no fans, and steps would be taken to assure the health of fighters, referees and production people, he said. White said he was still not ready to reveal the location for U.F.C. 249, scheduled for April 18. There is, in fact, a golf tournament underway in the United States. The perhaps aptly named Outlaw Tour, a minor league circuit, is holding an event this week in Scottsdale, Ariz., where golf courses are open after being deemed essential businesses. The mostly American, mostly unknown field includes Alex Cejka, a German who won on the PGA Tour in 2015. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
Mezcal is a drink like no other. "El elixir de los dioses" (the elixir of the gods) is a potent and largely handcrafted libation that has been consumed at quinceaneras, weddings and funerals for generations in Oaxaca . Unlike its cousin tequila, mezcal is not easy to produce commercially, limiting its export . And even with a boom in international interest, local mezcal maestros have focused on quality production in small batches. Witnessing the traditional process at a palenque, or artisanal distillery, is one of the few ways to understand mezcal's cultural significance. Maguey, or the agave plant used to make mezcal, can take seven to 30 years to mature. There are roughly 30 different species used to make mezcal in Oaxaca, each with a distinct flavor: tobala, which takes an average 15 years to grow, has a smooth, fruity taste, while tepeztate, which matures in about 25 years, is strong and earthy; you can really taste the plant. When a maguey plant is harvested, its sugar rich base, the pina, is dug out of the ground; this "pineapple" is the key to mezcal. The pinas will be covered with rocks in an embers lined pit and roasted for hours, giving mezcal its famously smoky taste. They are crushed and fermented; the mixture is then distilled several times over wood burning ovens, yielding a spirit that is rated between 35 and 90 percent alcohol. I find that between 45 and 50 percent is the sweet spot. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
In 1994, a year of testosterone heavy films like "Pulp Fiction" and "The Shawshank Redemption," a female director teamed up with a female producer, female writer and female led cast to make a movie based on a book by a female author. Male studio executives wrote off "Little Women," the third big screen adaptation chronicling the 19th century March sisters, as mere family Christmas sap ahead of its December release. But those involved in the project knew they were working on something special. "I don't think anyone really expected it to do as well as it did. It wasn't the talk of the town," Winona Ryder said. Made for 18 million, Gillian Armstrong's version of "Little Women," starring Ryder as Jo March and Susan Sarandon as the matriarch Marmee, was a critical and box office triumph, earning 95 million worldwide (about 165 million today), three Oscar nominations and a devoted fan base. Writer Robin Swicord and Amy Pascal, then executive vice president of production at Columbia, had spent 12 years shopping "Little Women" to various studios. AMY PASCAL I've always loved the book. My dad read it to my mother when she was pregnant, and that's how I got my name Amy Beth . ROBIN SWICORD People just weren't that interested in a movie with a lot of women in it, especially women wearing long dresses. Someone said to us they would do a modern day version, like, the Marches are in the '90s and not happy about not having a car for Christmas. It was not what we were about. DENISE DI NOVI (producer) At that time, it was almost impossible to get female driven films made. They called them "needle in the eye" movies, where a guy would say to his wife, "I'd rather have a needle in the eye than go to that movie." And this one had "Little" and "Women" in the title, freaking deadly. SWICORD Columbia said, "If you get Winona Ryder, we'll maybe consider it." So, Amy and I went to Denise because she had a great relationship with Winona from "Heathers" and "Edward Scissorhands" . Unbeknown to them, Ryder had recently been drawn to the Alcott book under tragic circumstances. The previous year, 12 year old Polly Klaas was abducted and murdered in Petaluma, Calif., where Ryder grew up. Polly dreamed of being an actress and starring in "Little Women." WINONA RYDER It was an incredibly heartbreaking situation. Her parents gave me her copy of the book, and within about a month, I happened upon Robin Swicord's script. It was this weird alignment. I was also raised on Louisa May Alcott, so I was thrilled to get this opportunity. DI NOVI Physically, Jo was supposed to be plain and gangly, but Winona was a "Little Women" fanatic and so understood the character. She was the It Girl, but she was also outspoken and embodied Jo. SWICORD I will credit Winona because she really wanted a female director, and there weren't that many at the time. GILLIAN ARMSTRONG The big sell when they approached me was: A woman has never directed this story, one of the most important stories ever written by a woman. And I said no. After doing "My Brilliant Career," I just thought, it's another period film about a feisty, intelligent girl who finally becomes a writer. But Denise Di Novi's very persistent. Offers went to Susan Sarandon and Christian Bale for the roles of Marmee and Laurie, and auditions for additional roles began in early 1994. SUSAN SARANDON When they asked me to do it, it was toward the end of the school year, and I had a pretty strict policy about not leaving my young kids. But they worked it out. ERIC STOLTZ I'd read the book and Robin's script, and I told them I'd do anything. Even though the Mr. Brooke role Laurie's tutor who becomes Meg's husband wasn't large, everything about it felt right. SWICORD There were talks around Mary Louise Parker for Meg, but there was a sense that we wanted someone who felt less edgy. I began lobbying heavily for Trini Alvarado. SWICORD A producer friend who was working on "My So Called Life" let me see a rough cut of the pilot, and I told Amy, you have to look at this young actress Claire Danes . PASCAL I remember Claire's screen test, which was the scene of Beth dying, and her quivering chin. CARRIE FRAZIER (casting director) I cried because it was so moving. We were trying to go for something that had relevance to real life and not just a Disney quality to it. ARMSTRONG It was one of those light bulb moments where I went, Beth doesn't have to be frail. She's an old soul and she is actually stronger than all the other sisters. CLAIRE DANES I'd never done a feature film before. This felt like a beginning for me. Natalie Portman, Thora Birch and other actresses read for the part of the youngest March sister, Amy, who grows up during the course of the film, and another future A lister was close to signing on. ARMSTRONG Our biggest decision was really should we have two Amys or one? If we were going to go with someone who could play both old and young Amy, the very best person we auditioned was Reese Witherspoon. She was also short, which helped. DI NOVI It just was weird to have someone be a little girl and then a grown up. It didn't work. ARMSTRONG Kirsten Dunst really blew other Young Amy candidates out of the water. FRAZIER I still wanted Reese to play Older Amy because she and Kirsten were a superb match. But I was also really crazy about Samantha Mathis , and I thought she did a beautiful job. Hugh Grant could have played a pivotal role that ultimately went to Gabriel Byrne. FRAZIER The only time I felt we'd gone off the rails was when somebody was talking about Hugh Grant to play Professor Bhaer the older German tutor who courts Jo . DI NOVI We all had a huge crush on Hugh. He sent in a self tape, and he was actually quite good. But it was so important to us to be true to the book in terms of Professor's Bhaer's age and what he was like. Hugh was too stunningly beautiful. John Turturro lobbied very hard for that role, too. ARMSTRONG We were all dreading Beth's death, and that was the only scene that we had to reshoot. There was a technical issue and it ended up with chemical spots all over it. DANES It was crushing. That was such a climactic scene, and I had really worried about it. The cast developed a family like bond, not dissimilar to the Marches. SARANDON Very often on movies that have a lot of women in the cast, people start rumors about fights, but this was not like that at all. DUNST It felt like summer camp. I was the little sister who got to work with all the cool, older girls. I remember Susan telling me that she wears a different perfume for each role, so I did that on my next couple films. STOLTZ I had such a crush on Susan. ALVARADO Christian taught me the dances from "Newsies." We would do it in our period costumes, and he would flip me in the air. Another time, we got the giggles when someone had to say the line, "Dr. Bangs is here." He felt like a little brother. SAMANTHA MATHIS We listened to Liz Phair's "Exile in Guyville" and Sarah McLachlan. I will guiltily admit I introduced Eric to "Beverly Hills, 90210." The studio's expectations were so low that executives were caught off guard when they saw the finished product. ARMSTRONG Fifteen men in suits watched the rough cut , and one of the most moving, memorable moments of my life was when the lights came up and they said, "We were dreading having to come and see this little girls' film, but we loved it and we cried. We want to give you some more money." DI NOVI The funny thing about the movie in general was that men would cry and be so surprised. Women know that Beth dies, and are more prepared for it. "Little Women" earned three Oscar nominations, including best actress for Ryder (though it didn't win anything). Sarandon was up for the same award that year for "The Client." RYDER I was not expecting it at all. I remember talking to Susan on the phone about what we were going to wear. I was actually going to borrow something of hers. She said, "You know it's Jessica Lange's year" for "Blue Sky" . I was like, "Oh, trust me. I know." It was so much more fun because my previous nomination was for "The Age of Innocence" where there was so much pressure. ARMSTRONG I've joked that now that the academy has greater diversity and invited so many more women voters in, I should ask for a revote for "Little Women." SWICORD I wish that "Little Women" had shaken things up a little more than it had. Studios viewed it as an anomaly. "Beaches," "Pretty Woman," "Steel Magnolias," each one came out and people said it was a fluke. I said, how many of these movies with female leads has to succeed before people understand that there is a female audience? DUNST I feel proud that I'm part of a classic that people still love to watch at Christmas or show to their daughters. It's a source of comfort, and it's about becoming your own person, having your own identity as a woman. RYDER It's actually one of the few movies of mine I don't turn off when it comes on because I really like it, and it was such a special experience. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
On the subject of travel, my father used to say: "You can't go back. Avoid the places you loved when you were young, because they'll have changed, and you'll be disappointed." Occasionally my husband agrees, "That's right, you can't go back." But does that mean that the cities and countries where we were happiest and most enchanted must forever be crossed off the list of dreamed of destinations? Can't some places remain unspoiled (or possibly even improve)? And, at the very least, isn't it interesting to see how different a place looks to us at various points in our lives? This spring, I decided to find the answer to some of these questions by revisiting Sicily, one of my favorite places on earth. I'd first been there in 1992, with my mother, my husband and our two sons (then aged 10 and 14), and written for this newspaper about watching Mount Etna erupt. I'd returned for six weeks in early 2002 to write a brief book that was partly about how an immersion in Sicilian history, with its appalling violence and inspiriting record of recovery and resilience, had provided some comfort in the recent aftermath of Sept. 11. One advantage of returning to a region you know reasonably well and, I suppose, of getting older is that you lose the greedy compulsion to go everywhere and see everything. Were this a first visit, or were I alone with Howie, I couldn't have resisted Palermo: the glorious mosaics in the cathedral of Monreale, the exuberant Baroque statuary of the Quattro Canti, the vibrant markets and delicious street food. But vivid memories of yanking my sons out of the way of speeding cars and rogue motorini convinced me that it might be more relaxing to begin our vacation in Cefalu, a seaside town about 40 minutes from Palermo, to which we flew from Rome. We rented a car at the airport (a more efficient process than in years before) and drove to Cefalu. The first sign of serious improvement was that the traffic seemed less maniacal than I remembered, making the trip more like an ordinary (that is, vaguely harrowing) autostrada drive, and less like a ferocious scramble for survival. We spent three nights in Cefalu, a beautiful town on the sea. Hugging a curve of the coastline, Cefalu has a picturesque, mazelike old city and a magnificent cathedral that you can see from far away. In the Duomo is a remarkably well preserved 12th century mosaic of Christ Pantocrator in the central apse, just above the Madonna and surrounded by the Twelve Apostles. The village is like a much smaller, more intimate version of Monreale without the crowds. During our last stay in Cefalu, Howie and I returned to the church every few hours to watch the changing light play on the mosaics, but we knew that these obsessive pilgrimages were unlikely to appeal to the girls, who much preferred playing on the beach and in the gentle waves. I'd very much wanted to revisit the lovely inn and restaurant, Gangivecchio, in an ancient, aristocratic villa in the Madonie mountains above Cefalu, but I wasn't sure how well the children would like the twisty two hour drive. Instead we took a much shorter (less than a half hour) trip to the handsome town of Castelbuono, where we had an extraordinary lunch at Nangalarruni, a much loved restaurant that specializes in dishes prepared with local mushrooms. The menu includes a marvelous sort of gratin made with potatoes and mushrooms, a medallion of pork encrusted with honey, pistachios and almonds, and pastas with a variety of delectable mushroom sauces. Easily navigable and unpretentious, Castelbuono is also an art town, with 15th century frescoes in the crypt of the church Matrice Vecchia; in the castle is a chapel encrusted with the giddily over the top Baroque decorations of the sculptor Giacomo Serpotta. If you like to cook, as we do, the great frustration of tourism is the inability to shop at local markets and make dinner. One thing that's greatly changed travel over the last decade has been the advent of Airbnb and its online gallery of rentable apartments and houses. For us, the fantasy was irresistible: the smell of olive oil and garlic, the family gathered around platters of steaming pasta and seafood bought that very day. We could be like Italians! The reality was somewhat different. The amiable hosts who showed us to our rental cottage in Cefalu had forgotten to mention the high chance of burning out the clutch as we climbed the driveway, which rounded precipitous curves (without guardrails) along the edge of a cliff, nor did we know (from the online photos) that the only access to the bedrooms was via a semi broken ladder, a problem for two little granddaughters, my seven months pregnant daughter in law and, to be honest, for me. In Syracuse, where we went next, our elegant, spacious, comfortable apartment, also an Airbnb, had another sort of glitch: The electricity had been turned off in a country where, we well knew, it could be weeks for it to be turned back on. Perhaps my father should have said: You can't go back and rent an apartment. Fettuccine with mussels, clams, calamari and shrimp at Sicilia in Tavola in Syracuse. Susan Wright for The New York Times Ultimately, these issues, which featured comic awkward moments evoking "National Lampoon's Vacation" films, hardly mattered. Our little family fled both Airbnbs and checked into local hotels, the gracious and comfortable La Plumeria in Cefalu, and in Syracuse, after our genuinely kindly, regretful landlady refunded our money, (though our Cefalu "host" refused) the elegant Algila. When the travelers who had come for Easter filled its rooms, we moved again to the old fashioned, seafront Hotel des Etrangers. In Syracuse, we stayed on Ortigia, the lovely island across a small bridge from the mainland. Though there were far more restaurants and souvenir shops than I recalled from my previous visits, Ortigia's architecture, the atmospheric cobbled streets, the dramatic waterfront and especially the Piazza del Duomo (particularly beautiful when illuminated at night) were no less thrilling than I remembered. Nor was it any less fascinating to observe the layers of history so visible everywhere throughout the city. On one side of the Duomo, you can see the columns that upheld the structure during its original iteration as a Greek temple; consecrated as a Christian church in the seventh century, the Norman cathedral was rebuilt, in its current Baroque splendor, after the earthquake of 1693. Among Syracuse's wonders is one of Caravaggio's major and most beautiful paintings, "The Burial of St. Lucia," which was done in 1608 when the artist briefly took refuge in Sicily, on the run from a murder charge in Rome. The painting, temporarily housed in the church Santa Lucia alla Badia, on one side of the Piazza Duomo, depicts the interment of the city's patron saint, her delicate frame stretched out near the bottom of the canvas, surrounded by mourners and half blocked from our sight by the broad, powerful back of the gravedigger; all this the action of the painting, as it were transpires in a narrow band, beneath a vast expanse of empty dark space that has been restored since I last saw it (then in Syracuse's art museum) to reveal a brick niche, dimly visible in the sepulchral gloom. On the mainland, a short cab or bus ride (or longer walk) from Ortigia, is Syracuse's archaeological zone, a sort of classical entertainment center featuring one of the largest and most impressive Greek theaters in existence, as well as an elliptical Roman arena that often served as the stage (and could be flooded) for simulated naval battles. In the same park are a series of caverns, or latomie. Now surrounded by a pleasant garden planted with lemon and orange trees and heavily populated by songbirds, are the caves that were used as prisons by the region's despotical rulers. Perhaps the most well known of these caves, the Ear of Dionysius, was (at least supposedly) given its name by Caravaggio, who observed the way in which the cave's entrance resembles an enormous ear. Our granddaughters loved running in and out of these dark, slightly daunting natural wonders, and were suitably impressed by the unusual acoustics, where the slightest whisper can be heard throughout the cavern. Legend has it that this feature was used by the rulers to eavesdrop on the conversations of the unsuspecting prisoners, though it seems more probable that this natural amplification was ingeniously employed to increase the audibility of the plays performed in the Greek theater. As in much of Sicily, the food in Syracuse is to put it simply great. One of the best meals we had on our trip was at Burgio, a sort of upscale open air grocery store and restaurant in one corner of Ortigia's appealing market. Burgio focuses on local produce cheeses, sausages and salamis. They serve sandwiches made to order, artisanal beers, local wines and elaborate platters on which are arranged small dishes of sliced meats, fish, cheese and marinated vegetables, each selection paired with perfectly complementary relishes. Eating at Burgio was our consolation for not being able to shop in, and cook from, the market, but it was by no means the only excellent restaurant in Ortigia. Walking around, checking out menus, it's not hard to find someplace where the food is superb and not terribly expensive. We especially liked Sicilia in Tavola, which has a terrific selection of seafood dishes and pasta Bolognese for the girls! and where I had pasta with sea urchin, pasta ai ricci, a dish with which I am obsessed and order every chance I get. We also liked a place called DiVino Mare, which is near the market and serves grilled, wonderfully fresh fish at unusually reasonable prices. We spent much of our time (four days) in Syracuse just walking around and eating. I would have liked to spend more time traveling up and down the Ionian Sea coast, and to the inland mountain towns of Ragusa and Modica. I'd hoped to take the family to the fish market in Catania, where once, eating pasta with sea urchin in a little trattoria at the edge of the pescheria, I watched the restaurant and the market stalls empty as everyone gathered to marvel at a gargantuan tuna that one of the fishermen had brought in. I would have liked to have lunch at the coastal beauty spots Aci Trezza and Aci Castello, and to visit Noto, the wildly Baroque town where every cornice and window sill appears to vie for the greatest complexity of decoration, and where a balcony might be upheld by mermaids, griffins or galloping horses carved from stone. I would have liked to make a side trip to the Villa Romana del Casale, near Piazza Armerina, a restored Roman villa with famously spectacular mosaics depicting a chariot race, an epic hunting scene, a parade of women in what appear to be bikinis. Susan Wright for The New York Times But of the three generations traveling together, each one had their own reasons for wanting to relax, to take things slow and easy. Ultimately, some of the most pleasurable moments were the most unexpected, and the ones that most fully disproved my father's warning against returning to the familiar. I had an experience of pure bliss, riding through the gently rolling, unusually green Sicilian countryside between Cefalu and Syracuse, looking at ruins of ancient farmhouses and flocks of grazing sheep, and hearing my granddaughters sing at the top of their lungs along with Adele's "Hello." When we reached Segesta, after getting lost in search of a nearby lunch spot, it was midafternoon. The busloads of tourists and Italian schoolchildren had mostly departed. We took the shuttle bus up to the amphitheater, where a strong wind was blowing, and where as their parents and grandparents sat on the stone benches encircling the theater and took in the view the girls ran up and down the levels like graceful little mountain goats and treated the ancient theater as their personal terraced playground. From the shuttle bus, going back downhill, you suddenly see the temple, solitary and majestic, exerting a kind of presence you can feel even from afar. The bus driver stopped so his passengers could take a picture, and I had the sense that even he navigating this road, day after day had never reached the point of taking the temple's beauty for granted, and was still awed by its magnificence. The hike from the parking area to the temple is slightly steep and long. Leon and Howie and the girls ran up ahead, while I walked more slowly to keep my daughter in law company. By the time we reached the temple, the girls had made it their own. Malena, who never walks when she can run, was scrambling over the rocks that surrounded the structure, inspecting every inch of the hilly area around the monumental columns. Emilia was having quite a different reaction. In the open space, with the temple behind her, she seemed to have become intoxicated by the gorgeousness of the place. With her arms outstretched she twirled and twirled around, the afternoon sunlight shining through her pale skirt and picking out the highlights in her long reddish brown hair. Graceful and free, powered by the sheer joy of being a child, by the happiness of finding herself in such an astonishing spot, she turned and turned and turned. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
Among the ingredients for a successful road trip the food, the music, the car the most crucial is the company. That feeling of being trapped in a small space with someone who gets on your every nerve? It does not bode well for an enjoyable journey. "The Straights," a road trip play by T. Adamson, breaks this rule immediately with pink haired Nina in the passenger seat. Attached at all times to her phone, frequently dictating messages filled with emojis and exclamation points, she has the kind of loud, look at me energy that drowns out everything around her. "O muh Gerd," she says to her old friend Phoebe, who is behind the wheel, "Clare's gonna be psyched to see you and me again, girly! Yaass!" Will he, though? Clare is a guy, by the way and while that's probably not a spoiler, it was a bit unexpected. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
Three years ago, my family and I had the experience of going through a full "dress rehearsal" for my mother's demise. At 83, she had become alarmingly weak from stage IV lymphoma and atrial fibrillation, and asked me and my brother to come home to Delaware for her next oncologist visit. Mom had already undergone chemotherapy and cardioversion, so we knew there were few treatment options left. Still, we were utterly unprepared when the doctor said, "She probably has less than six months," and recommended that she begin hospice care. Widowed at just 37 with two small children, Mom has trained herself to face challenges without flinching. She is that rare Chinese elder who isn't superstitious about mentioning or planning for her own death. True to form, when we got home from the oncologist's office, Mom sat us both down at the kitchen table to discuss her end of life wishes. She had witnessed two horrible lingering deaths up close her mother's and a longtime friend's. What she feared most was pointless suffering and the loss of control over her own life. She wanted us to understand that, if she had little hope of recovery, she'd rather go quickly than fall apart slowly and painfully. My brother, at the other extreme, wanted Mom to pursue every medical option, no matter how long the odds. He believed that doctors were fallible, there was always another treatment out there, and life was worth clinging to. And he couldn't bear the thought of living without her. Then there was me, torn between them. I had spent hours listening to Mom's fears and understood them. A decade earlier, my mother in law had died with a feeding tube in her side while her oncologist suggested more surgery after six months of wasting away from metastatic cancer. It would have been infinitely kinder to allow her to die peacefully in her own bed. We had given my paternal grandmother just such a "good death." We sat by her bed and told family stories as she slipped into unconsciousness. We turned away from the outside world and drew close to one another. All was quiet and time seemed to stop. Finally, we held her as she took her last breaths, letting her know how much we loved her but also letting her go. I remember that week as a thing of rare beauty. It taught me that dying well can be a balm and a blessing to all involved. Recognizing the enormous gulf between those two scenarios, I supported Mom's right to die on her own terms. Like my brother, I desperately wanted more time with my mother. Despite her failing body, Mom's mind remained sharp. In recent years, our occasional mother daughter tensions had subsided, leaving a much warmer and less complicated companionship. After an emotional week of debate, we all agreed to bring Mom to New York for a second and final opinion from the world class doctors at Memorial Sloan Kettering. If they too determined that nothing more could be done, we would accept the inevitable. At Sloan Kettering, Mom went through the scans without incident but afterward her blood pressure dropped dangerously low and she was admitted as an inpatient. By the next night, Mom could hardly breathe at all. It was agonizing to watch her gasping for air. She was terrified of suffocating and on the verge of panic. Finally, she pulled me close to say, "Tell them to stop everything." I had promised to honor her wishes, so I found a doctor and activated her D.N.R. In a few minutes, my husband, Steve, and our 14 year old daughter, Maya, arrived and Mom couldn't hold back her sobs. "I'm so sorry I won't see you grow up! I'm sorry I won't see you graduate or get married!" We had all been coming to terms with Mom's mortality for months but the shock and pain were still overwhelming. Then something that seemed miraculous happened. A hospice nurse, Tracy Kahn, arrived and went in to check on Mom. She came back to tell us that she didn't think Mom was going to die that night, the next night, or maybe for weeks. Based on years of observing hospice patients, Tracy did not believe Mom was dying of cancer right then. Instead, without our realizing it, her heart had been severely weakened by the cardioversion, which required high doses of a toxic drug. Almost two liters of fluid had accumulated in the lining of her right lung. We immediately reversed the D.N.R. but it would be another 10 days before Mom grew strong enough to have the fluid drained. Over the next month, the hospital's lymphoma, cardiology and pulmonary teams worked together to bring Mom back from the brink. They administered steroids, gave her blood transfusions, stabilized her immune system, optimized her diuretic and treated her infections. Mom transferred to a rehabilitation center for another month, then came to live with me in Brooklyn. With our newfound sense of "now or never," Mom and I fulfilled one of her longtime dreams. We edited and self published her memoirs, which she'd been writing for years, and she's enjoyed positive reviews from friends and strangers alike. Today, Mom still wrestles with neuropathy, shortness of breath, and sometimes crushing fatigue but she is very much alive. Even more amazing, she has been living on her own for the past two years. We've had time to reflect upon our decisions, how we influenced one another, and what we'd do differently. My central insight is that it took all three of us to steer clear of the twin shoals of dying too soon and dying too late. We made better decisions because we listened to one another and weighed all the conflicting information. In hindsight, my mother acknowledges that she wanted to "pull the plug" too soon because she became overwhelmed by fear. No one thinks clearly in the grip of panic. That's why it's so important to start talking long before the end. Not merely about what constitutes a good death but, more important, what makes even a diminished life worth living. As Atul Gawande writes in "Being Mortal," "Our ultimate goal, after all, is not a good death but a good life to the very end." The end of life conversation is equally important to both sides the dying person and the survivors. One of my mother's greatest comforts is knowing that her children understand her wishes and will honor them. We proved that during the dress rehearsal. Only recently have Mom and I realized how much it cost me to be her health care proxy, rather than a grieving daughter who wanted to do anything to save her mother. I'm still going to be torn between those two roles "the next time" but simply being aware of that inner conflict helps mitigate it. And Mom's future decisions will be informed by all the joy she would have missed had she died that night in late 2015. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Well |
Now Lives: In a modern three bedroom apartment in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn that she shares with two friends. Claim to Fame: Ms. Nirui is a self described "luxury remixer" known for putting a D.I.Y. spin on designer labels, like a tank top made from Gucci garment bags and an asthma inhaler bedazzled with the Dior logo. Her high low creations have won her fashion fans, including Marc Jacobs, who hired her to create a bootleg hoodie that purposely misspelled his name as "Mark Jacobes." The 125 hoodies sold out in a single day last December. Ms. Nirui is also a writer, photographer and the digital editor at Helmut Lang. "I've kind of become obsessed with customizing things and the fact that I can pay 5 for a Chinatown hoodie and change the context so it has the same value as a 900 sweatshirt," she said. Big Break: In 2015, the designer Demna Gvasalia was making waves with his Vetements x Champion capsule collection. Not wanting to spend 1,100 on a sweatshirt, Ms. Nirui dreamed up her own version: a black Champion hoodie with the Comme des Garcons logo embroidered using the hoodie's iconic C. "I remember thinking it was so absurd that it was so expensive," Ms. Nirui said. "So I decided, 'No way. I'm just going to do my own.'" She posted her creation to Instagram and was flooded with messages from people wanting to buy it, including Chance the Rapper. She declined to sell it, which only stoked demand further. "It wasn't about making money," she said. "It was about taking a piece of history and reworking it into something nobody else could have." Latest Project: In January, the Museum of Modern Art enlisted Ms. Nirui to make a limited edition hoodie for the closing of its exhibit "Items: Is Fashion Modern?" The hoodies were based on Maison Margiela's numerical logo, and were given out to museumgoers for free. Next Thing: While Ms. Nirui is planning more hoodies (she declined to name the designers she is collaborating with), she is branching into zines and other creative forms. Most recently, she created a line of Barbie doll outfits for the Miami street wear brand Stray Rats. Bootleg for the Masses: Ms. Nirui doesn't consider her work as "ripping off other designers," but as homage. "Brands like Louis Vuitton and Chanel, they're the pinnacle of luxury, and things like that should be available to everyone," she said. "If you can't afford it, make it. If that's what you want to wear, do it yourself." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
LONDON The laptop or what's left of it is a mangled carcass: Its innards have been ripped out, and only a few strips of metal and plastic remain. This was the MacBook Air that The Guardian used to store files leaked by the United States intelligence contractor Edward Snowden. Guardian employees destroyed the computer with power tools in July 2013 after the files on it were deemed a threat to British national security. The destruction order came from the Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ, a 100 year old intelligence and security agency tasked with keeping Britain safe. The organization, which usually prefers to be under the radar, is celebrating its centenary with "Top Secret: From Ciphers to Cyber Security," an exhibition of more than 100 objects at the Science Museum in London that runs through Feb. 23. In addition to the laptop, the items on show include an encryption key used by Queen Elizabeth II to make sure her phone conversations weren't tapped and a briefcase containing a clunky brown handset that Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher used for top secret calls. GCHQ is one of Britain's most secret and secretive organizations: It wasn't officially acknowledged in law until 1994. So why has it decided to appear in a London museum? "We needed to tell our story, to be able to show the British people that this is what we do on their behalf," said Tony Comer, the organization's official historian . Part of the aim, he added, is to convince "those who really like solving problems that perhaps a career in GCHQ is the right thing for them." He said that the agency was "radically" rethinking how it can attract the intelligence operatives of tomorrow. "It's up to us to persuade them how cool it would be to work in a place like GCHQ," Mr. Comer said. "Top Secret" is cleverly crafted to appeal to audiences of all ages. Adults can learn about the everyday business of communications based espionage and counterespionage, and children have a play area full of word and number games . The exhibition's richest sections, which are devoted to World War I, World War II and the Cold War, showcase the unwieldy contraptions used for espionage that could now be replaced by a desktop computer, a laptop or a smartphone. One section focuses on the first downing of a German airship over Britain, which killed 16 crewmen, in September 1916. A vitrine displays the cutting edge technology of the time that was used to spot the airship: a radio device fitted in a wooden, glass fronted box, with knobs on top. Also on view are pieces of metal and fabric from the skin of the airship; and a cap, badge and boot that belonged to the German airmen. A section about British intelligence services dismantled a Soviet spy network in 1961 recreates a home in suburban London, complete with 1960s style floral wallpaper. It includes a radio transmitter that two spies from the ring concealed under their kitchen floor, and a cigarette lighter with a secret compartment for encryption codes. Other sections allude to the use of satellites and online hacking in intelligence gathering. The exhibition is "not necessarily dealing with a lot of stuff that's contemporary," said Elizabeth Bruton, the curator of communications at the Science Museum. GCHQ was "still a secret organization," she added, "so even though we've worked closely with them for this exhibition, there are still things that they do that are kept secret." Stuart McKenzie, now a vice president at the Mandiant consulting arm of the cybersecurity company FireEye, worked for the British government for 11 years. He said the business of intelligence had not changed drastically since World War II. "People are still trying to break codes; people are still trying to get in and steal secrets," he said. "Some of the tools have changed." In the modern day cyber landscape, he said, Britain needs more than "a few people who've gone to Oxford and Cambridge," so it made sense for GCHQ to reach out to a wider pool. But were the show's young visitors eager to join the cloak and dagger world of GCHQ? Jake Drexler, 12, visiting from Los Angeles with his father, a gaming industry executive, was busy solving a scrambled word puzzle on the exhibition's opening day. He said the show was "fun" and that he liked the wartime displays. "They had to keep telling each other codes, but without letting the other side know what was happening," he said. "It was interesting how they figured out how to do that, and how they broke the codes on the other side." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
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