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A Puerto Rican man died from complications of the Zika virus earlier this year, the first reported death attributed to the disease in the United States. The victim, a man in his 70s, died in February from internal bleeding as a result of a rare immune reaction to an earlier Zika infection, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Puerto Rico now has 683 confirmed Zika infections in its outbreak, which began in December; 89 are in pregnant women, according to Dr. Ana Rius, the territory's health secretary. Fourteen of those women have given birth, and all their babies are healthy, she said. The man who died was a resident of the San Juan area who fell ill with fever, rash and other typical Zika symptoms early this year, said Tyler M. Sharp, a C.D.C. epidemiologist working in Puerto Rico. "That illness resolved," Dr. Sharp said. "But very soon after, he had bleeding manifestations." He was hospitalized and died within 24 hours. The condition that killed him, immune thrombocytopenic purpura, is similar to Guillain Barre in that the Zika infection triggered his immune system to produce antibodies that attacked his own cells. In Guillain Barre, they attack nerve cells, while in this case, they attacked the platelets, which cause the blood to clot. The death was not described earlier because it took time to be sure Zika was the cause. "We had to check with family members, his personal physician and the doctors who managed him to be sure he didn't have something else going on," Dr. Sharp said. Such deaths are rare but not unknown, he said. There have been three in Colombia's Zika outbreak. None that Dr. Sharp knew of were recorded in Brazil, but the symptoms, he said, are easily misdiagnosed as dengue hemorrhagic fever, which is much more common. Deaths from Zika are normally very rare in adults, and the illness is usually mild, with the rash lasting only a week. But the World Health Organization declared a global health emergency in February once it was suspected that Zika had caused a wave of microcephaly in Brazil. There are now almost 1,200 confirmed cases of microcephaly in Brazil, the agency said last week. In the 50 United States, there have been 426 cases of Zika, all in returning travelers or, in a few cases, in sexual partners they passed it to. But the C.D.C. expects clusters of mosquito transmitted cases in Florida, the Gulf Coast and possibly Hawaii when the summer heats up. The first commercial test for the Zika virus will become available to physicians as early as next week, which may speed diagnoses. Quest Diagnostics, based in New Jersey, said on Thursday that the Food and Drug Administration issued an emergency use authorization to allow the test to be used as long as the health crisis continues. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
ATLANTA Last week was a bad one for Georgia, and an especially bad one for our governor, Brian Kemp. On April 20, he announced that he would allow Georgia's tattoo parlors, hair and nail salons and other "high touch" businesses to reopen as early as April 24, ahead of even President Trump's ambitious plans. In the days since, the state has reverberated with political turmoil. Even the president rebuked Mr. Kemp for moving too fast. For better or worse, the governor has made our state the nation's canary in this particularly terrifying coal mine. Someone had to go first, and Mr. Kemp isn't the only political leader eager to reopen the country. But the ham handed way he went about it makes Georgians of all stripes afraid of what comes next, and it leaves us wondering whether he is setting us up for a punishing new wave of infections. He has clashed with city and county leaders and left business owners the people he was trying to help in the dark. From my vantage point as a doctor, an epidemiologist, a journalist and a native Georgian, it's clear that if there's anything to be gained from this moment's anguish, it is the opportunity to help others avoid our mistakes. Here are some of the lessons my state has learned. Despite all the warnings in the news media, it can be tempting to cherry pick evidence that supports a move to reopen. Governor Kemp said his decision was based on "favorable data" and enhanced testing, but the more we looked, the more questionable that data looked: fluctuations among data curves, some of which conflicted with each other; weeklong lags in Georgia's reporting of Covid 19 cases and deaths. Never mind that neither of the metrics Mr. Kemp cited the past week's average of total daily cases, and daily deaths was among the federal gating criteria, a set of benchmarks intended to help states decide when to reopen their economies. And while our testing capacity is increasing by the day, we have yet to demonstrate the coordination needed to identify emerging hot spots in real time. It's not just about having favorable data, or even enough testing. It's about having the right infrastructure to assess it and ensure sustained decreases in cases. "If the answer to all that is not an absolute yes, it raises serious questions about the wisdom of opening up sectors of the economy," said Joshua Weitz, a quantitative biologist at the Georgia Institute of Technology who specializes in disease dynamics. Georgia's public health funding is substantially lower than that of other states; you get the data quality you pay for. As a consequence of the way our state gathers, reports and publicizes data, many Georgians don't trust that our leadership is making smart decisions. And while on Monday Mr. Kemp announced some changes in data reporting that will most likely improve transparency, many of my neighbors already share a creeping sense that the most critical decision of his administration was made in a data free zone. Don't punish small businesses by treating their decision to reopen or not as a purity test. Last weekend, Jenn Jones, who owns the Creature Studio hair salon and spa in Atlanta, told me that her business would go under if she didn't reopen by June. So she's reopening. She was slowly collecting masks and gloves for her employees, and she had redesigned her salon space to accommodate the social distancing recommended by the Georgia Board of Cosmetology and Barbers. Her decision does not signal any support for Mr. Kemp. "I don't align with his policies whatsoever," she said, echoing a position taken by business owners and politicians across the state. It's not about politics; it's about survival. But you wouldn't grasp the complexity of these decisions from the responses of people watching them play out from afar. On social media and over email, customers and neighbors are threatening to boycott businesses that reopen, regardless of the degree to which they consider customers' safety. People on my own neighborhood website are circulating lists of local businesses that do and do not open as a pandemic purity test of sorts, intended to guide the buying decisions people will make when the pandemic is over. Somehow, we've reached the point where caring about public health has become a progressive issue, while the nation's economy has become a conservative one. This division is false; no one should have to choose between financial annihilation and helping to spread a deadly disease. But thanks to unforgivable failures of political leadership, business owners in Georgia are bearing the burden of that choice and the same will happen in every state that follows our lead. We have dangerous tensions between our state and local governments. The governor's decision came as a surprise to our mayors, who were not consulted or informed about his executive order in advance and were barred by one of its clauses from issuing local orders more or less restrictive than his. Many felt the choice was the wrong one for their communities. Bo Dorough, a Democrat, is the mayor of Albany, Ga., which at one point in the pandemic had the most Covid 19 deaths per capita outside New York City. He pleaded with the governor to "recognize there are exceptions." Atlanta's Democratic mayor, Keisha Lance Bottoms, who described seeing people lined up for haircuts and manicures in the days following the reopening announcement, said, "What we are essentially saying in Georgia is, 'Go bowling and we'll have a bed waiting on you.'" Even Randy Toms, a Republican who is the mayor of Warner Robins, near Atlanta, said the order was concerning. "I don't want people to go out and believe the virus is gone," he said. But the governor didn't budge. It's unclear why Mr. Kemp made such a unilateral decision, but it's not surprising. The move might be intended as payback: For several weeks in March, Mr. Kemp declined to shut Georgia down despite dire projections of the pandemic's public health impact. Many local governments issued countywide shelter in place orders during that time, which Mr. Kemp's chief of staff decried as "overreach." Fortunately, some other states with imminent plans to reopen, like neighboring Tennessee, have carved out exceptions or given leeway to local governments. But governors, especially Republicans who have historically clashed with Democratic mayors, may be lured into using the reopening as leverage. Don't. The people who suffer most from the results of uncoordinated public health efforts are often the people who have the least. Save the peevishness for a lower stakes crisis. Success is up to us. Georgia went first. Some of our confusion and fears were inevitable but the governor exacerbated those with his poor planning, and he may have set us up for a relapse. Inevitably, other governors will make other mistakes, even if they learn from Georgia's mistakes. But as we citizens, business owners and local politicians are learning, that doesn't mean we will fail. As other states reopen and they will saving ourselves and one another will be up to us. Keren Landman is a physician who specializes in infectious diseases and a journalist who writes about public health. 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 |
THAT the singer Prince died without even a basic will to govern what would happen to his estate, potentially worth hundreds of millions of dollars, was surely poor financial planning. But for most Americans, a will is either more than they need or far, far less. A will is one of the documents that financial advisers or estate lawyers usually advise clients to have. But a will's role in getting assets to the right people at the right time and at the right tax rate is not what many people assume. Some advisers say many Americans may not even need a will. And some people may benefit from a will but may opt not to draw one up for legitimate reasons. When someone dies without a will known legally as dying intestate there are laws in each state that govern how the assets are distributed and to whom. In New York, for example, a married man with two children who dies without a will would have his assets split this way: His wife would receive 50,000 plus half of the estate, and the two children would receive equal shares of the other half of the estate, said Jennifer B. Cona, managing partner at the law firm Genser Dubow Genser Cona. "The court's job is to make sure all family members are protected," Ms. Cona said. "If there is no spouse and no children, then parents and then siblings of the decedent split the estate." But, she added, "Most people don't want their assets distributed this way. Most spouses want all their assets to go to their spouse while she is still alive." Going through what is called the probate process can also take considerable time and the costs can be taken from the assets in the estate. In California, for example, the process takes at least nine months but can stretch out for years, with court costs of thousands of dollars, said Kelly Cruz, director of strategic planning at Aspiriant, a wealth adviser in Los Angeles. There is also the issue of privacy. "Going through a probate process like Prince's estate opens everything up to the public," Ms. Cruz said. So it would seem that the best response would be to draw up a will and avoid all that. But there's a catch: Wills govern only certain types of assets. Most people who are not wealthy have more of their money in assets that pass to heirs through beneficiary designation forms, not wills. These include retirement accounts, 401(k) plans and life insurance. Other assets like bank accounts or homes can be jointly owned or have provisions to transfer ownership to an heir after the person's death. In these cases, the beneficiary forms overrule the will. "The average American who would die intestate can deal with the majority of his assets with beneficiary designation forms," said James A. Cox III, managing partner at the Harris Financial Group in Richmond, Va. "But a higher percentage of people who don't have a will have probably improperly filled out their beneficiary designation forms. That's a far greater problem than not having a will." People starting out in a career, for example, may name a parent as the beneficiary on a retirement plan. But decades could go by and the parent could die while still the named beneficiary. In that case, Mr. Cox said, the hassle is minor: The parent's estate files a form to disclaim the assets and they go to the beneficiaries in the standard line of succession. But a former spouse is a different story. "I've yet to have any of them disclaim," Mr. Cox said. "They got half on the way out and the remainder at death." Likewise, bank and brokerage accounts can be transferred to heirs by filling out transfer on death forms. Jeffrey Carbone, managing partner at Cornerstone Financial Partners in Huntersville, N.C., said the cost of going through the probate process in that state is 4 per 1,000. But he was able to save a client about 80,000 on a brokerage account by having her fill out a transfer on death form naming her five children equally. "Sometimes there are easy fixes to estate issues," he said. In states that have adopted the simpler, uniform probate code, which is about a third of them, Kevin Flatley, a lawyer at the Keating Law Office in Reading, Mass., said he advises clients to forgo the expensive and time consuming process of creating an elaborate estate plan. Instead, he said, he urges them to focus on making sure their assets are properly titled to go directly to the heirs. "I'm encouraging people more often not to worry about creating trusts just to avoid probate," he said. "In states that have adopted the uniform probate code, probate is a very simple process." New York is not one of those states, but Minnesota, where Prince died, is. Mr. Flatley's advice, though, is predicated on the person designating assets that are easy to value Prince's royalty income is not and having heirs who all get along. But planners who work with wealthy clients who have more complicated assets shudder at such advice. For one, the cost of an estate plan is not exorbitant. Darren M. Wallace, a partner at the law firm Day Pitney, estimated that a basic one for a married couple two wills, two revocable trusts and a set of documents if someone is incapacitated at around 5,000. (A simple will may cost 500 to 1,000, Ms. Cona said.) "The real cost of not doing proper planning can come in a variety of ways," Mr. Wallace said. "Taxes and asset protection are the two key reasons to do proper trust planning. The other reason is keeping assets from passing to minor children." Any good plan will also include what is called an advanced directive. This includes a power of attorney, which allows an appointed person to handle financial affairs should you become incapacitated, and a health care proxy, to allow someone to communicate with doctors about your health. "These are decisions with end of life care," Ms. Cona said. "You should make them while you can." While it is ultimately an individual's responsibility to have everything in order, a comprehensive adviser also makes sure estate documents, forms and plans are set. "We ask, 'Who is in your life, and what would you do if you couldn't use these assets anymore?'" said Mark Doman, chief executive of the Doman Group. Mr. Cox said he would consider it a breach of his fiduciary duty if he did not talk to clients about how assets pass. "It's offensive sometimes to tell someone it's selfish not to prepare a will," he said. But, he added, "You don't want to dance around the edges." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Your Money |
They will not say her name. Not now, after what these players have been through. It is important not to give her recognition. Think of it as protest jujitsu. The W.N.B.A. finals have begun. On Sunday, the Seattle Storm defeated the Las Vegas Aces, 104 91, to take a two games to none lead in their best of five series. Game 3 is Tuesday night. In its 24th year, the women's league has some of the most incandescent players in basketball but still struggles for broad recognition and respect. In this strange season, which unfolded in a Florida arena without fans because of the coronavirus pandemic, the minimalist environment has provided a bright backdrop for the league's evolving talent to shine. The legacy of the 2020 season, however, will not only be about on court action and a championship won. It will also be about the W.N.B.A.'s continued leadership in the battle for human rights. In no way has this been clearer than in how its players have responded to brackish bullying from an unexpected source: the co owner of the Atlanta Dream, Senator Kelly Loeffler of Georgia. When they talk about her, they refuse to name her. Think back to June, to the raw edged days after the killing of George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis. As the nation reeled and launched into self examination, the W.N.B.A. was among the first professional leagues to say its upcoming season would be devoted to pushing for social justice and promoting the Black Lives Matter movement. That was not a surprise. Nearly 70 percent of the league's players are Black and a significant number of its stars are lesbian. They are women who know all too well the full brunt of discrimination. That is why they have been leaders in the justice fight for so long. Nor was it a surprise when they faced blowback. The surprise was that the blowback came from within. To be specific, from one of the league's most influential voices, Loeffler, a Republican who is running to keep her seat in the Nov. 3 election. Loeffler reacted by publicly scoffing at the league's pledge to double down on social justice support in 2020. She scorned the decision to cover player jerseys with the slogan "Say Her Name," meant to call attention to the deaths of Black women like Breonna Taylor at the hands of the police. In a letter to the W.N.B.A.'s commissioner, Loeffler wrote, "I adamantly oppose the Black Lives Matter political movement," before listing a series of inaccurate claims, including that it "promoted violence and destruction across the country." There was a method to Loeffler's obstinate stance. She has been engaged in a hard nosed battle for Republican voters in a conservative state. To gild her bona fides with the far right in her party, she cribbed from a well worn playbook used by President Trump: To show toughness, verbally attack Black athletes and draw them into a fight. Even if it meant attacking everything that the players on her team along with the entire league have stood for. But things have not turned out as she planned. With each of the league's dozen teams sequestered on a sports training campus near Tampa Bay, the players huddled together. They knew the W.N.B.A. commissioner's office had denounced Loeffler's views. They also understood that their cash compromised league was not exactly in a prime position to demand she put her 49 percent stake in the Dream up for sale. Amid a pandemic and widespread economic calamity, who would be the buyer? So the players strategized, and took her on in their typically thoughtful manner. "We realized, 'Oh, she wants us to get mad,'" said Sue Bird, Seattle's veteran guard, remembering the moment as we spoke last week by telephone. "She wants us to try and kick her out. That would give her more attention. This is what she wants." "We had to find a better way." Instead of meeting force with force, providing fodder that would only fuel Loeffler's campaign, the players decided to work around her. Their first move was both decisive and quietly aggressive: In interviews, public pronouncements and on social media, they decided to stop saying the Atlanta co owner's name. They refused to give her the dignity. "Words are things," said Nneka Ogwumike, the Los Angeles Sparks forward who is president of the league's players' association, as she walked me through the strategy. "Words have power. And to give energy to a name I think is very meaningful. So, we stopped saying that name." The next move was more to the point. It began with leaguewide video calls featuring a cast of advisers including Michelle Obama and Stacey Abrams, who in her bid to become governor of Georgia in 2018 nearly became the first Black woman to be elected governor anywhere in the United States. The discussions centered on politics and power. The players began vetting Loeffler's political opponents in the upcoming election, looking for a way to insert themselves into a race that could end up altering the balance of congressional power. They homed in on one candidate: The Rev. Raphael Warnock, a Democrat and a pastor of Atlanta's Ebenezer Baptist Church, where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was co pastor. Once Warnock addressed the players over Zoom, there was no doubt. "It was clear to us immediately," Bird told me. "He stands for everything that we stand for. You could literally go down the line of all the things we care about, and we were aligned with him. It was like, 'Wow, we want this guy in the Senate. This is the candidate that we want in the Senate.' " Within days, nearly everyone in the league began showing up for their nationally televised games wearing black T shirts emblazoned with two words: Vote Warnock. That kind of mass support for a single candidate opened a new chapter in the annals of athlete protests. "It's unprecedented," said Amira Rose Davis, an assistant professor at Pennsylvania State University who specializes in race, sports and gender. Davis noted the many examples of individual athletes supporting politicians. That's been the tradition in sports. "But this is different," she said. "The coordination. The strategic part. The specificity, taking the time to meet a candidate and then to back that candidate as a group. That has never happened before." After the player push, the Warnock campaign said it experienced a significant boost in enthusiasm and financial support: A spokesman said 236,000 flowed to the campaign in the days after the T shirt endorsement began. Though it is impossible to draw a direct correlation with the W.N.B.A.'s activism, at least one major poll shows Warnock surging ahead of Loeffler and the other candidates for the first time. This Senate race is far from over. If no candidate gets a majority of votes, there will be a runoff in January with the top two vote getters. "If Warnock wins and the byproduct is that a certain someone is not in the Senate, then, hey, we're all happy," said Bird, refusing, of course, to say that certain someone's name. No matter how this season or the election turns out, women's professional basketball has once again helped lead the way. This time by showing the best way to work around a bully. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
Last year's live action Winnie the Pooh movie hits Netflix. And Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy are buddy cops in "The Heat," on FX. CHRISTOPHER ROBIN (2018) Stream on Netflix; Rent on Amazon, Google Play, iTunes, Vudu and YouTube. The adult world is a soul crushing trap in this live action Winnie the Pooh tale, with Ewan McGregor as an adult Christopher Robin. It's postwar Britain, and Christopher's imagination has been flattened by the gears of professional life and World War II. After a particularly cruel work task forces him to miss a family outing, Christopher (or Mr. Robin, if you like) has a run in with Pooh (voiced by Jim Cummings). That soft spoken, honey loving bear will remind many viewers of their childhoods, and that's certainly the case with Christopher; he soon finds himself on an adventure that eventually involves the rest of the motley Hundred Acre Wood crew. In his review for The New York Times, Ben Kenigsberg wrote that once the movie "softens its insufferable, needlessly cynical conception of the title character, it offers more or less what a Pooh reboot should: a lot of nostalgia, a bit of humor (Brad Garrett's vocal deadpanning as Eeyore is a standout) and tactile computer animation that, even for the effects jaded, makes it look as if the actors are interacting with real stuffed animals." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
What is it? A crossover version of the Fit, essentially, built on the same platform. Is it real? Yes. It looks something like the Urban S.U.V. Concept that Honda showed off at the New York auto show last year, but more conservative in styling. What they said: Honda didn't have much to say about the HR V other than seeming to lump it with the successful Fit. "Together, the Fit and HR V represent a tremendous growth opportunity for Honda in the U.S.," Jeff Conrad, senior vice president of the Honda automobile division of American Honda, said at a news conference on Thursday. What they didn't say: Honda said little and showed less, and didn't even bother to bring the actual car to the show. So we can only speculate what engine it will get. It will most likely be the same 1.5 liter 4 cylinder that lives in the Fit. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Automobiles |
If you are having a hard time fathoming how Donald Trump could deny reality, attempt to force feed America his fictions, fight truth with conspiracy and concoction, and try to spin a loss into a victory, you shouldn't. You need only be open to a fair analysis of Trump's life. There is nothing new about this man's behavior. This is what he has always been: a liar, a con man and a grifter. For instance, consider a period in his life 30 years ago, in 1990, and you will see that everything he is doing now he did then. His brazen play at fact alteration isn't innovation but regurgitation. New York City was just coming off the racially divisive Central Park Five case in which five young Black and brown teenagers were wrongly convicted of attacking a white female jogger in Central Park. After the attack, Trump took out a full page newspaper ad calling for New York State to adopt the death penalty and said of the teens in a CNN interview: "Of course I hate these people. And, let's all hate these people because maybe hate is what we need if we're going to get something done." In early 1990, Trump and his wife at the time, Ivana, separated and went through a messy divorce based on Ivana's claim of "cruel and inhumane treatment." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
JAKARTA After years of being known for inefficiency, corruption and instability, Indonesia is emerging from the global financial crisis with a surprising new reputation economic golden child. The country's economy, the largest in Southeast Asia, grew at an annual rate of 6.2 percent in the second quarter of this year, data released Thursday showed. That is an acceleration from 2009, when gross domestic product expanded 4.5 percent. The stock market hit a record high last week and has been among the best performing equities markets in Asia this year, rising more than 20 percent since Jan. 1. The country's currency, the rupiah, has appreciated nearly 5 percent this year against the dollar, among the strongest showings in Asia besides that of the yen. Foreign direct investment, which was held in check for years after the 1997 economic crisis in Asia, is also returning. The country had 33.3 trillion rupiah, or 3.7 billion, in foreign direct investment in the second quarter of this year, a 51 percent rise from a year earlier, the Investment Coordinating Board in Indonesia said last week. The country is on track to attract more foreign investment this year than it did in 2008, when it lured in 14.87 billion. Such statistics have some here cautiously saying that the country, a Muslim majority democracy and one of the world's most populous countries, could soon merit the kind of attention that investors now lavish on China and India. "Indonesia is one of the most interesting, most attractive destinations in the world," said Lanang Trihardian, an analyst at Syailendra Capital, a fund management firm based in Jakarta. "Foreign investors have been flowing to Indonesia from maybe around mid 2009. We are seeing a lot of liquidity coming into Indonesia, and it is mostly going to capital markets, to bonds, to stocks." Undoubtedly, significant obstacles to sustained growth remain. Despite progress on corruption, investors complain of confusing regulations and labor laws that make it difficult to dismiss employees. Little infrastructure has been built since the Asian economic crisis in 1997, and rolling blackouts have plagued the country for years. While the education system has been successful in fulfilling basic requirements like literacy, the universities and colleges in the country are widely considered archaic. But more than a decade after the chaotic overthrow of the Suharto dictatorship in 1998 and subsequent fears of disintegration at the hands of separatist groups, as well as the threat of Islamic militancy the country seems to have stabilized. It is rich in natural resources like palm oil, copper and timber, commodities that are in great demand in China. In one sense, Indonesia appears more attractive these days because much of the rest of the global marketplace looks so gloomy. Its low debt, high growth and a sense of optimism compare favorably with a mood of despondency in developed markets like the United States, Japan and Europe. The huge consumer market in the country, accounting for more than two thirds of G.D.P., has largely been credited for maintaining growth. Although the global economic crisis crimped confidence, Indonesia's relatively young population of 240 million and government stimulus policies, as well as a popular program of direct cash transfers to the poor, have kept consumption humming. In Jakarta, worsening traffic and a proliferation of megamalls are seen as signs of the growing strength of the middle class. At the center of the capital, the huge Grand Indonesia mall opened in 2007 and expanded during the global downturn, adding theme areas with mockups of New York, Japan, the Arabian Peninsula and Paris, complete with a miniature, spinning Moulin Rouge windmill. "We're selling international brands here so Indonesians don't have to shop abroad for them," said Teges Prita Soraya, a spokeswoman for the mall, adding that trade, largely in imported luxury brands, had surged ahead despite the global crisis. The mall is home to the country's first branch of Harvey Nichols, the upscale British department store, and has boutiques for luxury brands like Chanel, Armani and Dolce Gabbana which already have branches in other malls across the city. Yet there is criticism that economic growth has had less effect than it should have for the majority. About 15 percent of the population lives below the country's official poverty line of around 1 a day, but advocates for the poor say the percentage would be larger if Indonesia set the bar a little higher, say, at 1.25. Relatively sluggish growth in labor intensive industries has meant slow progress in curbing unemployment, which is over 7 percent. The government believes that one solution to moving to a higher level of sustained growth is foreign investment, particularly in industries like manufacturing. The government's investment coordinating board, known as BKPM, is hoping to attract 30 billion to 40 billion in annual foreign investment by 2015 three to four times as much as it achieved last year, said Gita Wirjawan, head of the agency. In an economy currently worth 650 billion a year and expected to grow to 1 trillion in five years, that is not terribly much. But it is "optically" very important for establishing Indonesia as a serious investment destination, he said. "It's not a slam dunk, but it's achievable," he said. Indonesia gets the largest share of its foreign investment from within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, with non Asean states like Japan and South Korea, as well as European countries, making up much of the rest. Indonesia is working to change rules to make it easier to acquire land for infrastructure and is seeing interest in infrastructure investment, Mr. Wirjawan said. The government recently eased investment rules in areas including health care, construction and electricity generation. At the same time, it is working to put the flow of "hot," or speculative, money to better use, passing rules on government bonds requiring foreign investors to keep their money in the country for longer. Such efforts seem to be paying off. The government announced this week that China's sovereign fund, China Investment Corp., was hoping to invest 25 billion in infrastructure projects in Indonesia. Posco, the South Korean steel giant, signed a 6 billion deal on Wednesday to build a plant in Indonesia with the local producer Krakatau Steel. While investment in manufacturing still lags behind other sectors, Mr. Wirjawan said that Indonesia, with its relatively low labor costs, was reaping the benefits of rising costs in regional competitors. "We're seeing an increasing relocation of factories by the Taiwanese, the Koreans and Japanese from Vietnam and China, given their rising labor costs and given the increased stability that people are seeing in Indonesia from an economic and political standpoint," he said. The Indonesian Footwear Association has said that major brands including Asics, Mizuno and New Balance have shifted part of their production to Indonesia this year because of rising costs elsewhere. Indonesia's footwear industry employs 640,000 people and exported 1.8 billion worth of goods in 2009, said the association's chairman, Eddy Widjanarko. Producers are hoping to increase that figure to 2 billion this year. Katja Schreiber, a spokeswoman for Adidas which has also been aggressively expanding production in Indonesia said the country, its third biggest supplier, offered "abundant labor availability, good quality, competitive prices and political stability." Although production here is growing rapidly, she said, it is not happening at the expense of its top suppliers, China and Vietnam. The local stock market has reflected the perceived strengths of the economy. Shares related to commodities, Indonesia's main export sector, have been strong earners. Banking stocks have risen along with the generally upbeat mood on consumption and the relatively good health of the sector, which, for the most part, weathered the credit crisis reasonably well. Major consumer shares like Unilever Indonesia and the car distributor Astra International have been consistent leaders on the local index. All this exuberance has raised some fears that inflation could become a big problem. The country's central bank, Bank Indonesia, decided to hold its benchmark interest rate at 6.5 percent this week, despite a jump in annual inflation to 6.22 percent in July. Regardless, many feel that Indonesia's time has come again. "In Asia there is a feeling that after you invest in China and after you invest in India, where are you going to invest? said Fauzi Ichsan, senior economist for Standard Chartered in Indonesia. "It'll have to be Indonesia. It's a natural destination." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Global Business |
Stop us if you've heard this before: The Yankees have one of the best records in Major League Baseball despite missing several star players to injury. No, this is not 2019, when the Yankees endured a nightmarish run of setbacks and sent a major league record 30 players to the injured list. But this season has certainly felt eerily similar in the Bronx. In the span of eight days, the Yankees placed three of their best players outfielders Giancarlo Stanton (left hamstring strain) and Aaron Judge (right calf strain), and infielder D.J. LeMahieu on the 10 day injured list. LeMahieu, who was hitting an American League leading .411, was the latest casualty, exiting Saturday's game against the Boston Red Sox with a left thumb sprain. Losing three All Star caliber players at once is painful enough during a traditional 162 game regular season. But in this pandemic shortened 60 game campaign, a minimum stint on the 10 day injured list is the equivalent of missing 27 days in a normal year. "Any time off is not good," Judge said on Sunday. "That's why I was begging for just a couple days, not really 10 days." The shorter than usual run up to this unusual season has been seen as a contributing factor to the current rash of injuries, particularly to pitchers, across baseball. The Yankees, despite overhauling their medical and training departments last off season, have not been an exception, with injuries to reliever Tommy Kahnle (Tommy John surgery), catcher Kyle Higashioka (right oblique strain), Stanton, Judge and LeMahieu. The hamstring strain was particularly frustrating for Stanton, who played in just 23 games between the regular season and playoffs last year because of a slew of injuries. He missed a chunk of this spring training with a calf injury. None Everyone Loves Ohtani: The Angels' two way star was a unanimous pick for A.L. M.V.P. and his superfans redefine devotion. Phillie Phavorite: Bryce Harper truly committed to Philadelphia and now he's back on top of baseball, winning the N.L. M.V.P. Cy Young Winners: Milwaukee's Corbin Burnes and Toronto's Robbie Ray had hit rock bottom before they worked their way up to stardom. Baseball Is Stuck in Neutral: The potential of a lockout has a star studded group of free agents waiting for the dust to settle. Free Agency Tracker: Get the latest updates on signings, contract extensions and trades. Hoping to avoid a repeat of last season, Stanton, listed at 6 foot 6 and 245 pounds, said he lost 20 pounds in an effort to get back to the physique of the earlier, healthier years of his career. It seemed to be working: He looked like the 2017 N.L. M.V.P. version of himself, hitting .293 with three home runs. "Words can't really describe the disappointment I've had over this," said Stanton, who is in the middle of a three to four week recovery. "I can't dwell on it. I have to see what's in front of me and that's still a decent amount of the season and playoffs left. Though I was in this situation before, it seems unreal at times." On the bright side for the Yankees, their star closer, Aroldis Chapman, who tested positive for the coronavirus on July 11, was added to the active roster before Monday's 6 3 win over the Red Sox. He closed out the victory, first baseman Luke Voit smashed two home runs and the Yankees improved to 16 6. LeMahieu, the Yankees' best all around player last season, could miss about two to three weeks, Yankees Manager Aaron Boone said on Monday. In 2018, LeMahieu missed two weeks with a similar left thumb sprain and a small fracture. This time, Boone said, there were no broken bones. And Judge, who planned to resume batting practice on Monday after a few days off, said he expected to come off the I.L. as soon as he was eligible on Saturday, against the Mets. Judge, who leads the Yankees with nine home runs, said he begged the team's doctors, trainers and Boone not to place him on the I.L. He felt he needed only a handful of days off to recover from tightness in his calves, which he believed arose from playing against the Rays on the artificial turf at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Fla. On Sunday, Judge declared that he was at 100 percent and felt like he could have played in a game that day. Boone, though, said the decision to place Judge on the I.L. was easy because he did not want a soft tissue injury to become a larger problem. Judge said multiple times on Sunday that he was frustrated, but he clarified it wasn't directed at the team. "I'm frustrated with myself not being out there," he said. "They're just looking out for me and what's best for me." Although the Yankees won't return to Tropicana Field during the regular season, they could end up as postseason opponents. To alleviate the wear and tear of artificial turf on his legs in the future, Judge said he planned to wear sneakers when he played defense but to switch to cleats when he was hitting (the batter's box and basepaths are dirt), a plan he came up with after talking to other players with experience playing at the stadium. "It's just easier on your body and easier on your knees because you don't have all that body weight going down into nine little spikes," Judge said of wearing tennis shoes. The good news for the Yankees is that few M.L.B. organizations are as equipped to handle injury absences as they are. Entering Monday, Clint Frazier was 8 for 15 with two home runs while filling in for Judge. The Yankees filled LeMahieu's spot on the active roster with infielder outfielder Miguel Andujar, who was the runner up for the 2018 A.L. Rookie of the Year Award but had recently been at the team's alternate site. "We don't skip a beat, and you're not going to find that on very many teams," Yankees reliever Zack Britton said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
Elisabeth Moss won the Golden Globe for best actress in a television drama for her role in "The Handmaid's Tale." In her speech, she quoted from Margaret Atwood whose novel of the same name inspired the series and celebrated the marginalized voices that are reaching the mainstream. This is from Margaret Atwood: "We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edge of print. It gave us more freedom. We lived in the gaps between the stories." Margaret Atwood, this is for you and all of the women who came before you and after you, who were brave enough to speak out against intolerance and injustice and to fight for equality and freedom in this world. We no longer live in the blank white spaces at the edge of print. We no longer live in the gaps between the stories. We are the story in print. And we are writing the story ourselves. Thank you. Laura Dern accepted the award for best supporting actress in a TV series, for her role in "Big Little Lies." In that show she plays Renata Klein, the mother of a girl who is being harassed at school. She used part of her acceptance speech to express support for those who speak out against abuse and spoke about playing an "outrageous, complicated woman a terrified mother." Terrified because her little girl was being abused and bullied, and she was too afraid to speak up. Many of us were taught not to tattle. It was a culture of silencing and that was normalized. I urge all of us to not only support survivors and bystanders who are brave enough to tell their truth, but to promote restorative justice. May we also, please, protect and employ them. May we teach our children that speaking out without the fear of retribution is our culture's new North Star. Bless you, bless everyone who worked on this. All the people who support me and my beautiful children, thank you for all of your work and love. Frances McDormand, who won best actress in a film drama for her part in "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri," referenced the MeToo movement. So, many of you know, I keep my politics private, but it was really great to be in this room tonight and to be a part of the tectonic shift in our industry's power structure. Trust me, the women in this room tonight are not here for the food. We are here for the work. Thank you. Gary Oldman won the award for best actor in a film drama for portraying Winston Churchill in "Darkest Hour." He said the role made him consider the importance of strong, morally sound political leadership. I would like to thank our producers, Douglas Sibanski, Tim Bevin, Lisa Bruce and Antony McCarton. And my wife, who put up with my crazy for over a year. She would say to friends, "I go to bed with Winston Churchill, but I wake up with Gary Oldman." Which is, I suppose, better than the other way around. I am very proud of "Darkest Hour." It illustrates that words and actions can change the world, and boy oh boy, does it need some changing. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
Through March 10. Sam Fogg Ltd. at Luhring Augustine, 531 West 24th Street, Manhattan; 212 206 9100, luhringaugustine.com. Sam Fogg, the respected London dealer, has regularly staged exhibitions of medieval art in New York for around a decade, but never before in Chelsea. Unsurprisingly, this year's show begins with the thrill of simply walking into it, forsaking the neighborhood's contemporary art babble for the otherworldly hush imposed by nearly 30 expressions of faith in painting, sculpture and whatnot from the Middle Ages. Here, the whatnot includes enamels, a silver and silver gilt reliquary in the form of a bishop's hand; a large stained glass window and the lavishly illustrated Carpentin Hours, by the artist known as the Master of the Dresden Prayer Book. The most secular item in this group is a two tier cast brass chandelier from the Southern Netherlands (1480 1520) that is remarkably like the single tier one in Jan van Eyck's "The Arnolfini Portrait" of 1434. The era's religious faith is especially palpable in two carved softwood sculptures from the 14th century whose colors and gilding remain nearly intact: a pale, life size Spanish crucifix that is both daunting and slightly comic and a polychrome wood Pieta with anguished expressions and with gaping wounds whose red matches that of the Virgin's robes. The appealing emotionality of these works is countered by a marble of John the Baptist, also from the 14th century. Attributed to Robert de Lannoy of Paris, it is a study in idealization and dignified restraint down to the orderly rivuletlike textures of the saint's camel hair coat. Among many other standouts, a triptych centering on an elaborately ensconced Virgin and Child (1490 1500) reflects the influence of van Eyck's infinite realism and his banishment of the Gothic gold that is so gloriously evident elsewhere in the show, especially in "Saint Michael Vanquishing the Devil," an altarpiece panel made in Aragon around 1470. Smart, stylish and apocalyptic, Zach Blas's "Contra Internet" at Art in General uses sculpture and moving images to critique the internet as a tool of capitalism and oppression, and to imagine its messy demise. The centerpiece, "Jubilee 2033," is a 28 minute video featuring an animated robot from the future sent to assist humans. Actors play those champions of capitalism, Ayn Rand and Alan Greenspan, and the transgender performance artist Cassils stars as Nootropix, a fictional prophet of artificial intelligence. "Jubilee 2033" borrows its title and opening sequence from Derek Jarman's punk cult film "Jubilee" (1978) and is shown in a dark gallery with futuristic elements: a bright green geometric emblem projected on the floor and blown glass orbs resting on pedestals. In the video, the promise of the internet has failed and we see cities burning or campy digital images of conflagration as well as a copy of the hippie utopian "Whole Earth Catalog." Nootropix appears near the end of the video, its body painted silver, spouting ideas couched in queer and feminist theories of technology and science fiction and dancing to an opera aria while a petro looking liquid shoots out of a glowing blue faux phallus. "Contra Internet" also includes a single edition book titled "The End of the Internet (As We Knew It)" with a bibliography of "Works Plagiarized" from the theorists Fredric Jameson and Beatriz Preciado and the Zapatista revolutionary Subcomandante Marcos, among others. The exhibition also gains traction from its location in Art in General's space in Dumbo, one of New York's Silicon Valley like hot spots. After leaving the show I spied a cafe nearby with the slogan "you code, we cook" printed on its window, addressed to the minions toiling for digital overlords in Dumbo's pre post contra internet work spaces. I was sort of waiting for Nootropix to appear inside, specterlike, in full prophet mode. The three photos of his own that David Hartt included in "This Synthetic Moment," a six photographer show he curated at David Nolan Gallery, are fraught with disembodied melancholy. "Interval XIII" shows a lone auto parked on the street, closely wrapped in what looks like a giant blue garbage bag, and in "Interval I," a few small, worse for wear boats list in the water. But all the other images he chose are of black women and men, and they add up to an exceptionally rich demonstration of racial identity as a continuous act of self creation. A large new print of an untitled self portrait shot in 1964 by the Brooklyn born activist and photographer Kwame Brathwaite, presented with a '68 portrait of his wife, nearly does the job alone. Goateed and handsome in a pinstripe suit jacket, Mr. Brathwaite emerges from a shadowed background with lips slightly parted, as if about to speak into his camera like a microphone. His expression has both the unfinished quality of a subject surprised and the urgent attention of a photographer striving to capture such a moment. Both, of course, are poses but they're authentic ones. Liz Johnson Artur, who's been shooting black communities in Brixton, South London, for more than two decades, brings out a similar point with clothing. An extraordinarily absorbing 20 minute digital montage includes just enough dramatically monochrome uniforms to make the details of everyone else's outfits seem equally intentional. White robes, to take one example, appear on men in church; women in mosque; and with thin rainbow stripes at a gathering of Rastafarians. In fact, Ms. Ojih Odutola functions as much as a storyteller as a visual artist, spinning a fantastic tall tale around the images. Rather than presenting them as her own artworks, she describes them as depicting members of the UmuEze Amara, one of the oldest noble clans in Nigeria, and the Obafemi, minor aristocrats, merchants and ambassadors. The paintings, we are told, represent 200 years of collecting and are offered "in partnership" with the Whitney Museum and presented by Ms. Ojih Odutola in her role as deputy private secretary, signing off from Udoka House in Lagos, Nigeria. (It should be noted that the works on view are primarily from Jack Shainman Gallery, and the museum has acquired three of the paintings.) Except, of course, the collection is clearly created by one artist and the works, which resemble paintings, might really be described as drawings. Executed in charcoal, pastel and pencil traditional drawing materials they are built up with richly colored surfaces, and finely detailed textiles, faces and backgrounds. There is a "Wall of Ambassadors" (2017) and a young girl tucked into bed on her "First Night at Boarding School" (2017). Portraits of young men "Surveying the Family Seat" (2017) and their "Unclaimed Estates" (2017) suggest a kind of "Downton Abbey" in Nigeria. Or, in the same way the Obamas represented the success of the African diaspora, Ms. Ojih Odutola imagines two clans with longevity, prosperity and regal bearing. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
Straddling a high point in the Bronx, High Bridge takes its name from a near forgotten pedestrian crossing into Manhattan, closed off in the early 1970s. But in recent years, given plans to reopen the restored High Bridge next year, both it and the neighborhood have been rediscovered by growing numbers of would be buyers and renters. 1026 Ogden Avenue A 1992 building with two units, retail space and parking for six cars, listed at 375,000. (718) 324 6060, ext. 408 Victor J. Blue for The New York Times Nor is the bridge the only alluring new landmark. In 2009, just to the east, the opening of the new billion dollar Yankee Stadium further bolstered the name recognition of this neighborhood, which spans about a square mile and has about 38,000 residents, mostly Puerto Rican and African American, along with large numbers of newcomers from the Dominican Republic and West African nations including Senegal, Mali, Guinea and Gambia. It is not only very close to Manhattan, but also endowed with a large amount of income restricted housing as well as some market rate properties priced much more affordably than comparable real estate in Harlem. Since 2003, dozens of three family houses have gone up, said Allison Jaffe, the owner and broker of Key Real Estate Services. Despite the housing growth, 2010 census data indicate that more than 95 percent of residents are renters. That trend may stem from a '70s era history of serious blight. High Bridge used to be among those areas of the South Bronx where crime, drugs and arson ran rampant. Ocynthia Williams, a founder of Taqwa Community Farm, a garden cultivated on undeveloped land originally belonging to the city, has lived in High Bridge for three decades and recalls how the area's derelict condition back then drew her into a life of community activism. "I thought this was one of the most dilapidated communities that I'd ever seen in my life," Ms. Williams said. "It was so dirty, and crack was an epidemic, and all the buildings were burnt out." Taqwa, one element of a communitywide effort to create green spaces, has helped the neighborhood undergo a "complete transformation," said Ms. Williams, who describes herself as tickled at the number of small farmers' markets now operating during the warmer months. A precipitous drop in crime rates has dovetailed with the other changes: homicide rates in the 44th Precinct, which covers High Bridge, along with Concourse Village, East and West Concourse and Mount Eden, fell 91 percent from 1990 to 2012; there were 8 murders last year, according to police data. Similarly, over that period robbery was down 79.4 percent, with 451 robberies reported in 2012. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
EPIC requested a hearing where the court could review the fairness of the Facebook agreement and consider consumer groups' complaints. If the court decides to grant such a hearing, a judge could require the trade commission to review outstanding consumer complaints and alter the terms of the proposed settlement. EPIC, which said it had several outstanding complaints against Facebook, also argues in its filing that the trade commission violated its own mandate to thoroughly review consumer complaints when it agreed, as part of the proposed deal, to shield the tech giant from pending accusations lodged by consumers and consumer groups. The filing, in federal court in Washington, effectively challenges the F.T.C.'s fitness to act as the nation's privacy enforcer even as some members of Congress are floating the idea of creating a separate data protection agency to safeguard Americans' personal information. James A. Kohm, associate director for the enforcement division of the trade commission's bureau of consumer protection, said the agency had thoroughly investigated the complaints it had received about Facebook from consumer groups and media reports as well as information it obtained independently from other sources. One complaint from a consumer group, for instance, was related to Facebook's use of facial recognition technology. The F.T.C. said it had addressed issues raised by the complaint in several of the settlement's provisions, including a requirement that Facebook ask consumers to opt in to new uses of the technology that the company had not previously disclosed. As is typical in such investigations, some consumer complaints could not be substantiated, Mr. Kohm said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
This is one of those "based on a true story" movies that rather undercuts its veracity by having every character talk like they're in a movie. In 2010, in Port Isaac, Cornwall, a quartet of loutish music industry execs throwing a stag weekend for a colleague hear the singing of the local fisherman. Described by one character as "the rock 'n' roll of 1752," it sure has some heavenly harmonies, and one of the louts hears the sound of money. But a couple of the singers don't want to hear word one about a deal. "We're just fishermen, you see ... there's no need to sell our souls for fifteen minutes of fame ... now if you don't mind, son, some of us here have some real work to do." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
"Will that go off in a metal detector?" Ryan Seacrest asked as he greeted Emma Stone, who met his gaze with a coy smile and plenty of attitude. It took brass, she knew, to upend tradition, striding the red carpet as she did at the Golden Globes on Sunday night, not in a gown, but a silver bodiced Lanvin jumpsuit showily sashed at the waist. She was rivaled for chutzpah by the singer and songwriter Lorde, who stepped briskly to Mr. Seacrest's side in a midriff baring brassiere top, loosely tailored evening jacket and billowing trousers, her Narciso Rodriguez ensemble a worldly nod to 1940s screen goddesses like Gene Tierney and Lauren Bacall. They were among a handful of high luster personalities spiraling on E! network's "GlamCam 360," their fashion choices uncommonly daring, looks that flew in the face of viewers' most cherished expectations. "In Hollywood, there is a bit of a shift happening," said Micaela Erlanger, a stylist whose clients include Lupita Nyong'o and Michelle Dockery. "The red carpet is evolving as a great platform to show people that you don't always have to play by the rules." If only that were so. The 21st century is well underway, yet a roster of unspoken edicts continues to govern its gala events, calling forth nothing more daring than spangled variations on a conventional prom dress or, at their most ostentatiously formal, a coronation gown. "In a way, the red carpet couture gown is almost like a wedding dress," said Rebecca Arnold, a fashion historian with the Courtauld Institute of Art in London. "It's become fossilized, no longer relevant to people's daily lives." As is perhaps inevitable. "Awards shows aren't really about fashion," Dr. Arnold observed. "They're about an actress maintaining her identity." Which on the red carpet, she said, would simply translate to "a glossier version of our idea of her." Still, as Hollywood's night of nights draws near (five weeks and counting) there are indications that once hidebound notions of glamour are starting to slacken at last. Ms. Erlanger would likely have applauded Julianna Margulies, classically youthful but by no means staid in a structured crimson gown by Ulyana Sergeenko; or Sienna Miller, looking fresh, not tarty, in a flower embroidered Miu Miu dress that plunged to her navel without violating decency codes. Or a cotillion of others, who, while wholly respectful of the ceremonial occasion, gave off an air of cool girl bravado, their sometimes zanily patterned frocks, tea length gowns and racy onesies likely to be echoed at Oscar time. They were exceptions. Their peers mostly played by the rules. They are "dressing for a mass global audience," Bridget Foley, the outspoken fashion editor at Women's Wear Daily, suggested in a pre Globes column. "Much of that audience," Ms. Foley wrote, "clings to visions of old Hollywood glamour as the template for currency." Dr. Arnold agreed: "When people see actresses on the red carpet, they want them to be like princesses. They want to see them photographed like a Sargent painting." A more apt descriptive may be "stale," even downright archaic. Hence the parade of stylistic anachronisms: sweetheart necklines, slashed to the sternum halter gowns, boned and corseted mermaid dresses or crazy effusions of Cinderella froth mid 20th century visions of glamour that are themselves Disney appropriate variations on 19th century formal wear. "The look was modern when it was created in the 1950s and is beautifully preserved in Hollywood films of that time," said Rosetta Getty, a fashion designer with a progressive following. "Celebrities grow up watching those films and want to emulate the style of their stars." But in adopting such hoary archetypes (a mermaid silhouette from "Gilda" or a carpet sweeper train), even the most fetchingly youthful nominees and presenters tend to age themselves, their looks at times as matronly as that of a Golden Age diva. The reliance of young stars on such shopworn conceits may go some way toward explaining why Reese Witherspoon saw fit to wear a strapless, silver beaded Calvin Klein gown trailing an abbreviated train; or why Allison Williams chose a ridged and laboriously ruffled Armani Prive gown, her hair crimped and waved like a 1940s starlet. Or, for that matter, why Amal Clooney pretentiously accented her black Dior gown with a pair of white kid opera gloves. There was, as well, Jessica Chastain, encased in an elaborately draped bronze Atelier Versace dress (a ringer for the 1950s William Travilla one from Cameron Silver dusted off for the Globes by Lana Del Rey). Not by chance did Ms. Chastain's version emanate a whiff of the tartiness she demonstrated in her latest film, "A Most Violent Year," the dress seemingly meant to transform her, in the minds of viewers and studio executives, from an ethereal Ophelia to sizzling paparazzi bait. A similar perception shifting strategy may have prompted Ms. Witherspoon's stylist, Leslie Fremar, to suggest that the actress cast aside her customary jewel tone A line frocks in favor of the seductive black Saint Laurent gown she wore in September at the premiere of "Wild" at the Toronto International Film Festival. In Ms. Fremar's recollection in Women's Wear Daily, Ms. Witherspoon balked at first, insisting: "I'm Southern. I don't wear all black," but the stylist held her ground. "Wear it just this once," she remembered pleading. "It will make an impact." It did. The asymmetrical above the knee cocktail dress was deemed a "class act" by US Weekly online, and pronounced "phenomenally cool" by the Red Carpet Fashion Awards, a popular blog. Television audiences may not always approve, but Ms. Lovell rarely encounters resistance from the stars. Clients like Taylor Schilling of "Orange Is the New Black" are, she said, open to a contemporary look, something on the order of the austere bib front Thakoon gown Ms. Schilling wore to the Golden Globes last year. Hipper still may be the gambit suggested by several red carpet aspirants: a formal top with trousers. "Weren't Emma Stone and Lorde, both who wore pants, the uncontested best dressed at this year's Golden Globes?" said Ryan Lobo, a designer of the minimalist chic Tome label. Roland Mouret took the concept to its inevitable extreme. "For me, jumpsuits are the strongest statements on the red carpet," he said. "They give the elegance of a gown with the sexy attitude of trousers." And, he might have added, an air of breeziness and derring do. After all, as Mr. Mouret noted with a wink, "Every woman has the secret desire to be a Charlie's Angel." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
The fledging art institution Philadelphia Contemporary may not yet have a home, but it now has an artistic director: Nato Thompson, currently the artistic director Creative Time. Mr. Thompson, who has been with Creative Time for a decade, will assume his new position in November, and aim to guide the institution as it moves from pop up projects into a permanent building in Philadelphia. Philadelphia Contemporary was founded last year by Harry Philbrick, who was previously the director of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. It has hosted various events and installations around the city, including poetry readings, midnight vigils, sculptures and an interactive art project with Emma Sulkowicz. "We're working on what the mission is," Mr. Thompson said in a phone interview. "Certainly we know it will be a noncollecting institution. It will be multidisciplinary and civically driven." He said he does not yet have any projects planned, or even a proposed budget to work with. The organization aims to move into a space in 2021 or 2022, and produce site specific works around the city until then. Mr. Thompson hopes to showcase both local and international art, and contribute to a growing Philadelphia art scene to complement pillars like the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. "This is a city where it's very important to support the local arts community," Mr. Thompson said. "It's got a great underground arts scene. But that said, I don't want to become provincial." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
ATLANTA Hours before the sport's biggest game, President Trump joined the growing ranks of parents anxious over tackle football, saying in an interview he "would have a hard time" letting his 12 year old son play. "I mean, it's a dangerous sport and I think it's, I, it's really tough" if his son wanted to take up the game, Mr. Trump said in an interview with CBS ahead of its Sunday evening broadcast of the Super Bowl. The president's concerns are at odds with his previous criticism that the N.F.L. has been making the game too soft to avoid concussions and other injuries, and suggest that he is struggling with many of the same questions that parents across the country are asking about the safety of youth tackle football. Mr. Trump said he would ultimately let his youngest son, Barron, who plays soccer, decide if he wanted to play tackle football and would not steer him away from the sport. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
When NBC televises next year's Winter Olympics from Pyeongchang, South Korea, a familiar face will be gone from the prime time anchor seat: Bob Costas, who held the job for 24 years, will be replaced by Mike Tirico, who joined the network last May. "It just felt to me like the right time and it's felt like the right time for a while," Mr. Costas said in an interview this week, in advance of NBC's scheduled announcement on "Today" on Thursday. "This was a good time to step away, while I could still do it," he said. Mr. Tirico worked at ESPN for 25 years, and his versatility as a host and play by play announcer made him a leading contender to succeed Mr. Costas as soon as NBC hired him. He was a daytime host during the Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro last year. He has also called National Football League and Notre Dame games and has hosted the British Open golf championship. "I knew Bob wasn't going to stay in the job for 20 more years," Mr. Tirico said in an interview, "but I didn't know if they were going to choose me or when it would happen." Mr. Costas's long run as the prime time host calls to mind that of Jim McKay, who covered or hosted 10 Olympics for ABC Sports. That Mr. Costas held the job for so long reflected NBC's commitment to making the Olympics the centerpiece of its sports portfolio and to holding onto highly rated programming that appealed to a broad demographic, especially women. The network has spent billions of dollars to carry every Summer Games since 1988 and every Winter Games since 2002. NBCUniversal, the network's parent company, has the rights to carry every Olympics until 2032. Mr. Costas was NBC's late night host during the 1988 Summer Games in Seoul, South Korea, when Bryant Gumbel was the prime time host. Mr. Costas took over the prime time assignment in 1992, when the Summer Olympics were in Barcelona, Spain. The only gaps in his prime time hosting resume came when CBS televised the 1992, 1994 and 1998 Winter Games. "The 11 prime time Olympics may never be touched," said Mr. Tirico, 50, who declined to discuss the streak he might have if he kept the prime time position through 2032. "Hopefully they invite me back for another," he said. "I'm just focused on South Korea." Mr. Costas, 64, decided before the Rio Games that it would be his final Olympics as the prime time host. "Rio had some capstone moments," he said. "Michael Phelps was finishing off. So was Usain Bolt. And Simone Biles was emerging. It had moments that felt like closure to me, and this felt like a good time to step aside." He said that in his 24 years, the job of hosting the Olympics had changed. The increased number of events and the need to keep viewers engaged with the action had reduced his time for conducting interviews and delivering essays. Retail earnings and Black Friday: the week in business. Elizabeth Holmes will resume her testimony in her fraud trial. "I wasn't getting bored by it, but over time the formats changed a bit," he said. "At the beginning it was more freewheeling and there were more spaces for me to contribute. And it became more tightly formatted as the years went by." The Rio Games served as a salve to his experience two years earlier at the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, where viral conjunctivitis in his eyes kept him off the air (and largely in a dark room) for six days, with Matt Lauer and Meredith Vieira filling in. "If that had been my last Olympics, I would have wanted to do one more," he said. His contract allowed him to determine whether he continued in the job, and he said he would have stayed if NBC had not had someone like Mr. Tirico in place. Mr. Costas is not only leaving as NBC's prime time host, he is also reducing his overall workload at the network. He will no longer host "Football Night in America," the pregame show that airs before the network's "Sunday Night Football" broadcasts. He will host the Triple Crown horse races this year but in the future, he will be at only the Kentucky Derby unless a horse is vying for the Triple Crown at the Belmont Stakes. In that case, he would host the Belmont race. He will host next year's Super Bowl coverage while Mr. Tirico is in Korea. Mr. Costas will take on a role at the network similar to Tom Brokaw's, offering commentary and features at major events, like the Olympics or the Super Bowl, or appearing on NBC programming when news breaks, as he did when Muhammad Ali died last year. The network regularly calls on Mr. Brokaw, the former NBC "Nightly News" anchor, to comment on major events like presidential elections. Scaling back his NBC schedule will give Mr. Costas more time to indulge his love of baseball at MLB Network, where he calls games, narrates documentaries and hosts round table shows. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
Live Nation Entertainment, the global concert giant that owns Ticketmaster, announced a program on Friday to offer refunds and coupons for canceled and postponed shows, after weeks of criticism online and growing pressure from lawmakers. According to Live Nation's plan, which starts May 1, people can obtain refunds for canceled or rescheduled shows. Like another plan instituted this week by AEG Presents, Live Nation's biggest corporate rival, refunds for postponed shows will be available for 30 days once new dates have been set. For events that already have new dates, customers' 30 day refund window will start May 1. Live Nation has also offered incentives for its customers to hold on to their tickets and therefore let the company to hold on to revenue. For canceled shows, Live Nation is offering its customers credits worth 150 percent of their tickets' value to use on future events. Customers who decide to go to shows when they are rescheduled will also receive credits, but for lesser amounts that may vary for each event. Live Nation's program applies only to events in the United States. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
Social media lives and dies on engagement. You serve your audiences such provocative content news, political hot takes, baby pictures that they keep their eyes on you as long as possible. When Facebook's chief, Mark Zuckerberg, showed up in Congress on Tuesday and Wednesday, he seemed to be aiming for disengagement. Facing a grilling over data breaches and Facebook's role in foreign interference in the 2016 election, he was interested in keeping the provocation, and thus the attention, to a minimum. If the byword of platforms like Facebook is "stickiness," Mr. Zuckerberg's prepared, bland affect achieved the opposite. He was so unsticky, the questions slid right off him. Washington had been prepared for a showdown since the revelations that tens of millions of users had their data "scraped" by the political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica. The major broadcast and cable news networks carried the hearing live. Mr. Zuckerberg took his seat Tuesday facing a sea of snapping cameras, a handy if heavy handed metaphor for the invasion of privacy. But Mr. Zuckerberg had no interest in providing a show. He was apologetic. He was soft spoken. Even his clothing was deferential. He ditched his Silicon Valley T shirts for a suit the color of the Facebook logo banner and a tie the shade of the Like button. He came prepared with stock answers: "Senator, that's a great question"; "I'll have my team get back to you." (That team is going to be busy.) He repeatedly alluded to having begun Facebook in his dorm room at Harvard, framing the company as a bootstrap success story rather than a global supra state with a population larger than any country's. And he faced a panel of senators who did not always seem to understand the platform's functions the distinction between selling data and using that data to sell targeted ads, for instance or how to phrase questions to press their points. It was a far cry from the film "The Social Network," written by Aaron Sorkin, in which an arrogant, fictionalized Mr. Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) had little patience for a lawyer deposing him: "You have part of my attention. You have the minimum amount." Mr. Zuckerberg was all attentiveness. That's not the same as openness. He was slippery when it came to the tension between the company's business model which depends on access to granular personal data and privacy concerns. But he answered with white noise machine calm, like a tech support representative asking legislators if they'd tried turning their democracy off and turning it back on again. At least one audience was happy with the uneventful session. On some channels on Tuesday, Mr. Zuckerberg was split screened with a graph of Facebook's stock price, which rose in inverse proportion to the hearing's newsworthiness. Denied any explosive Sorkinian moments or news breaking exchanges, the networks peeled off one by one in mid hearing: first the broadcast networks, then CNN and MSNBC. (Fox News stuck around longer.) The second day of testimony, on Wednesday, before the House Commerce Committee, was much more aggressive and heated. From the left, Representative Bobby Rush, Democrat of Illinois, likened Facebook to J. Edgar Hoover's Cointelpro surveillance program; from the right, several Republicans criticized Facebook for deeming that videos from the Trump boosters "Diamond and Silk" were "unsafe." But there were a lot fewer eyes on it. None of the broadcast networks carried Mr. Zuckerberg's testimony. On cable, it was relegated to HLN and CNBC. Mr. Zuckerberg had help from Wednesday's crowded news cycle. The House speaker, Paul D. Ryan, announced that he would not seek re election, and President Trump tweeted that he planned to fire missiles at Syria, giving the embattled head of Facebook an indirect assist from his competitor Twitter. Mr. Zuckerberg did not escape the two days unscathed. Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, created a shareable moment Tuesday by asking if Mr. Zuckerberg would mind revealing which hotel he'd stayed at, eliciting a flustered "No" from the executive, who said, in 2010, that privacy was no longer a "social norm." But the networks cut away from their coverage anyway, which may have been just fine with Facebook. The hearings didn't do much to clear up how the mass of us, in the social media era, can minimize unwanted attention. But they showed that Mr. Zuckerberg has a few hacks to do just that. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
The European Union is introducing some of the strictest online privacy rules in the world. The changes aim to give internet users more control over their information, but the long term effects of the new law won't be known for years. What the G.D.P.R., Europe's Tough New Data Law, Means for You LONDON Europe is about to introduce some of the toughest online privacy rules in the world: the General Data Protection Regulation, also known as the G.D.P.R. The changes aim to give internet users more control over what's collected and shared about them, and they punish companies that don't comply. Here's what it means for you. What are the new rules? The law, which goes into effect on May 25, strengthens individual privacy rights and, more important, it has teeth. Companies can be fined up to 4 percent of global revenue equivalent to about 1.6 billion for Facebook. The internet's grand bargain has long been trading privacy for convenience. Businesses offer free services like email, entertainment and search, and in return they collect data and sell advertising. But recent privacy scandals involving Facebook and the political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica highlight the downsides of that trade off. The system is opaque and ripe for abuse. It's too early to know how effective the law will be, but it is being closely watched by governments globally. Will the internet look different? Supporters of the law say it will bring sweeping changes to how companies operate online, but in reality, the effect on your internet experience will be minimal. An American visiting Europe, for example, isn't likely to see a difference. If you live in one of the European Union's 28 member states, there is one change you may welcome you are likely to see fewer of those shoe or appliance ads that follow you around the internet after you do some online shopping. As e commerce became commonplace, a cottage industry sprang up to track people around the web and nudge them back to online stores to complete a purchase. Advertisers call these ads "fine tuned," but most people consider them creepy, said Johnny Ryan, a researcher at PageFair, which makes tools to help companies work around ad blocking software. Mr. Ryan said the new rules would make it harder for ad targeting companies to collect and sell information. But the new rules allow people to band together and file class action style complaints, a legal approach that hasn't been as common in Europe as in the United States. Eager to exploit the new law, privacy groups are planning to file cases on behalf of groups of individuals. The hope is that a few successful lawsuits will have a ripple effect and lead companies to tighten up how they handle personal data. The new law also ensures that you cannot be locked in to any service. Companies must make it possible for you to download your data and move it to a competitor. That could mean moving financial information from one bank to another, or transferring Spotify playlists to a rival streaming service. What's with all these privacy notices? In the weeks before the law goes into force, internet users have been receiving a stream of privacy policy updates in their inboxes grocery store loyalty programs, train services, even apps that parents use for youth soccer all have to set out what data they gather from you, and how they handle it. The law requires that the terms and conditions be written in plain, understandable language, not legalese. Companies must also give you options to block information from being gathered. But the deluge of emails is leading to concerns that users are agreeing without taking a closer look. A similar reaction came after the European Union required companies, starting in 2011, to put warnings on websites alerting users that they were being tracked. The rules have led to so many pop up disclosure boxes that people often consent just to make the warnings disappear. Companies argue that they are being careful to comply with General Data Protection Regulation, but Giovanni Buttarelli, who oversees an independent European Union agency that advises on privacy related policies, has been unimpressed. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
A "colonized" African man with hope in his heart and a degree in accounting relocates to his European "motherland" and experiences a brutal disillusionment. His story provides the focus of Med Hondo's first feature, "Soleil O" (1970), an exemplary militant film that is coolly confrontational and at times bleakly humorous. The movie, long out of distribution, has been restored and is now streaming on the Criterion Channel. Its title referring to a West Indian song about the horrors of slavery, "Soleil O" is a work with power to both inform and judge its viewers. Hondo opens the film with a compressed history of European imperialism, involving forced conversion to Catholicism and induced tribal warfare, before following his unnamed protagonist (Robert Liensol) to Paris, where in the first of many misapprehensions, he begins searching for an address that is actually in Marseilles. Dapper and reserved, the man has a difficult time finding any sort of work, let alone a job in accounting. (In one bit of business, an established migrant takes his suitcase and offers him a broom.) Graffiti warns of the "black invasion" or the "Negro Arab menace." Hostile whites run the gamut from hysterical to sullen. Some are indifferent, others offer ineffectual solidarity debating each other rather than engaging the protagonist. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
The rightful president of Belarus, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, appeared via video last month before the United Nations Human Rights Council. Her country's August election, she declared, had been "stolen." Despite objections from a representative of the Belarusian government, who said she had no right to address the body, Ms. Tikhanovskaya implored the United Nations to act. "Standing up for democratic principles and human rights is not interfering in internal affairs," she insisted, "it is a universal question of human dignity." No one knows how Donald Trump's Covid 19 diagnosis will affect his presidential campaign, but before falling ill, he repeatedly suggested that he won't accept the results of the election, should he lose. In that case, Joe Biden should follow Ms. Tikhanovskaya's example and appeal to the world for help. For many Americans raised to see the United States as the natural leader of the "free world" it may be hard to imagine requesting foreign intervention against tyranny in our own land. But as historians like Gerald Horne and Carol Anderson have detailed, there's a long history of Black Americans doing exactly that. From 1845 to 1847, Frederick Douglass delivered more than 180 speeches imploring British audiences to intervene against American slavery. After World War I, when President Woodrow Wilson unveiled the Fourteen Points that he hoped would structure the postwar world, the National Equal Rights League, led by William Trotter and Ida Wells Barnett, asked the Paris Peace Conference to adopt a 15th: The "elimination of civil, political and judicial distinctions based on race or color in all nations." After World War II, the sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois edited a 94 page pamphlet that the N.A.A.C.P. presented to every ambassador to the new United Nations. "Peoples of the world," it declared, "we American Negroes appeal to you; our treatment in America is not merely an internal question of the United States. It is a basic problem of humanity; of democracy." In 1951, the entertainer activist Paul Robeson handed U.N. officials a 200 page document alleging that America's treatment of its Black citizens violated the organization's convention against genocide. In 1964, Malcolm X beseeched Africa's newly independent governments to "recommend an immediate investigation" into American racism by the U.N. Human Rights Council. This June, relatives of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Philando Castile and Michael Brown endorsed a letter calling on the council "to urgently convene a special session on the situation of human rights in the United States." Joe Biden is not W.E.B. Du Bois, let alone Malcolm X. But the party he leads now faces chronic racist disenfranchisement. The more the Democratic Party becomes a vehicle for Black political empowerment, the less its votes count. Democrats must now win the popular vote by three, four or even five percentage points to be assured of winning the Electoral College. They must achieve that margin in the face of a strenuous Republican effort to ensure that many Democratic ballots are not counted. And even if they overcome both of those obstacles, Mr. Trump may still not concede. That's why Du Bois's appeal to the world remains so relevant. By impeding Black voters, the United States still violates the democratic principles it has helped enshrine into international law. After observing America's 2018 midterm elections, a team from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe cataloged a long list of undemocratic practices, from the disenfranchisement of former prisoners to the District of Columbia's lack of congressional representation to discriminatory voter identification laws, and concluded that, in critical ways, American elections "contravene O.S.C.E. commitments and international standards with regard to universal and equal suffrage." What Mr. Trump is doing this year, the election monitoring expert Judith Kelley, the dean of the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University, recently told The Boston Globe, is the kind of activity that international election observers "would go to countries and write up huge reports about and say, 'Red flag! Red flag!'" Democrats should spend the coming weeks working to ensure that this year's O.S.C.E. observer mission despite being banned from many states, especially in the Deep South can do exactly that. Then, if Mr. Trump and his allies halt the counting of ballots, or disregard them altogether, Democrats should use the O.S.C.E's report as evidence in an appeal to the same body where Ms. Tikhanovskaya made hers: the U.N. Human Rights Council. They should also lodge a complaint with the Organization of American States, a regional organization that has pledged "to respond rapidly and collectively in defense of democracy," and which in 2009 used that mandate to suspend Honduras after its government carried out a coup. To professed political realists, this may sound laughably naive. In practice, international do gooders at the United Nations and Organization of American States are virtually powerless against the most powerful government on earth. But that's not the point. While appealing to international bodies may not change the election's result, it could change the Democratic Party itself. Today, many prominent Democrats remain enthralled by the very myths about American exceptionalism that Black activists have long challenged. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
For the second year, Lexus has received the top overall score in the Consumer Reports' Car Brand Report Cards. Acura took second place, and Audi was third. Japanese automakers dominated the list, taking seven of the top 10 spots, with the remainder going to the German marques Audi, Mercedes Benz and BMW. Luxury brands, with the exception of Cadillac, did better than their nonluxury siblings. Lexus was the only brand to achieve an excellent overall reliability score. The lowest scoring brands in the survey were Ford and Jeep, which tied for last place. According to Consumer Reports, the intent of the Brand Report Cards is to show which brands are producing the best all around vehicles. Overall scores are calculated using scores from road tests and for predicted reliability. The reliability scores come from information provided by the magazine's 1.1 million subscribers during its annual auto survey, about problems with their vehicles. Scores ranged from the 79 points earned by Lexus to 50 for Jeep and Ford. Following Lexus were Acura, with a score of 75, and Audi, with 74. The magazine's editors noted that Audi moved up to third place this year, from eighth last year, because its cars have "beautifully finished interiors," "responsive handling" and a "range of fuel sipping engines." Audi's new models earned the automaker the highest average road test score. "We've seen Audi making really great cars for a while, and we've seen the reliability improve," Jake Fisher, the automotive test director for Consumer Reports, said in a telephone interview. "You put that together and they come in third." Rounding out the top 10 were Subaru (72), Toyota (72), Mazda (71), Honda (70), Infiniti (69), Mercedes Benz (68) and BMW (60). This year, 260 vehicles from 23 brands were included. For a brand to qualify for inclusion, Consumer Reports requires road test and reliability data from at least three of its nameplates. Fiat, Jaguar, Land Rover, Lincoln, Mini, Mitsubishi, Porsche, Ram, Scion, Smart and Tesla were not included in the 2014 rankings. Consumer Reports said the domestic brands' performance was a "mixed bag." The top performing American brands were Buick (63), GMC (63) and Chrysler (62). They fell the middle of the pack. In addition to Ford and Jeep, which tied for the lowest score (50), the bottom five slots were rounded out by Dodge (53), Cadillac (54) and Chevrolet (56). Consumer Reports said Jeep's problems stemmed from "spotty reliability and mediocre road test" scores. Last year, Cadillac was the leading American brand; this year it was G.M.'s lowest scoring brand, mainly because of problems with its CUE infotainment system. Mr. Fisher called Ford "a sad story" because its road test scores were good, but it scored below average in reliability. In 2011, Ford was fifth, but by 2013 had fallen to the bottom five because of problems with three of its technologies: the MyFord Touch infotainment system, automatic transmissions in the Focus and Fiesta models and its 1.6 and 2 liter EcoBoost turbocharged 4 cylinder engines. Even though Ford has changed MyFord Touch, the problems "haven't gone away," Mr. Fisher said. "And now they are putting these systems into different product lines, and we are seeing the whole product line being affected. The story with Ford is just a proliferation of those problems. The disease is spreading." In the Annual Auto Issue, to be released in March, Consumer Reports also issues Top Picks in each of 10 categories chosen from among the more than 260 vehicles the magazine road tested. This year, the all electric Tesla Model S was chosen as Best Overall based on what the magazine called its "exceptional performance" and its many "impressive technological innovations." The Ram 1500 took first place in the pickup truck category and was the first Chrysler vehicle in 16 years to be a Top Pick. The redesigned Subaru Forester replaced the Honda CR V as the top pick among small S.U.V.s, and the Hyundai Santa Fe replaced the Toyota Highlander as the top pick of midsize S.U.V.s. The Honda Accord was the top pick in the midsize sedan category. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Automobiles |
LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. George Hill is hardly the biggest star in professional basketball. But he was the one who took the lead when a handful of players on the Milwaukee Bucks began talking about the police shooting of Jacob Blake a few days earlier in Wisconsin. The players, led by Hill, implored their teammates not to play in their playoff game on Wednesday, believing they had a responsibility to make a statement about the how the police treat Black people. What they envisioned a one game, on the fly protest instead inspired one of the broadest political statements across sports leagues that the United States had ever seen: walkouts involving hundreds of athletes in professional men's and women's basketball, baseball and soccer, as well as one of the world's biggest tennis stars. LeBron James, basketball's most famous athlete, said on Twitter that change "happens with action and needs to happen NOW!" President Trump, who had previously attacked the league and had publicly sparred with James, who plays for the Los Angeles Lakers, said people were "a little tired of the N.B.A." By Thursday afternoon, the N.B.A. players had pledged to return to play, according to three people who were part of the discussions and spoke on condition of anonymity because final details of a comeback had not been worked out. "We are hopeful to resume games either Friday or Saturday," a league spokesman, Mike Bass, said in a statement. But the players' message was still echoing within and well beyond the world of sports, perhaps to greater effect than ever before. More baseball, hockey and basketball games were called off on Thursday, along with football practices and other events as athletes urged greater focus on conversations about racism and police brutality. Basketball players, especially women, have been at the forefront of discussions and demonstrations about social injustice for years. That has morphed amid the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, and the shooting of Blake, a Black man who was shot in the back multiple times by the police in Kenosha, Wis., as he tried to enter his vehicle. Following their walkout, Bucks players, led by Hill and his teammate Sterling Brown, called for elected officials in Wisconsin to take concrete steps to hold the police officers accountable for how they treated Blake. "For this to occur, it's imperative for the Wisconsin state Legislature to reconvene after months of inaction and take up meaningful measures to address issues of police accountability, brutality and criminal justice reform," Hill said. The walkouts drew the attention of several prominent political figures. Among the first to weigh in was former President Barack Obama, who has personal relationships with several N.B.A. players. He praised the Bucks in a tweet on Wednesday "for standing up for what they believe in." The reaction from the White House was much more critical. Along with Trump's comments, Jared Kushner, the president's son in law and one of his senior advisers, said on CNBC, "I think that the N.B.A. players are very fortunate that they have the financial position where they're able to take a night off from work without having to have the consequences to themselves financially." The players' action, as impactful as it has been, has also come with some of its own challenges. At a private players' meeting hours after the walkout, some players expressed frustration with the Bucks for surprising the union, their opponents and the league with their protest, according to two people who attended the meeting but were not authorized to discuss the details publicly. Then, after the protest spread and inspired some players to reconsider playing at all this season, the Bucks quickly backed resuming play, rankling some rival players, including James, according to the people. Several N.B.A. and W.N.B.A. players have increased their social justice efforts in recent months. James and other top athletes formed More Than a Vote to protect voting rights and reach out to Black voters. Stephen Curry, the Golden State Warriors guard, appeared in a video at the Democratic National Convention in support of Joseph R. Biden Jr., the party's presidential nominee. Renee Montgomery, who plays for the W.N.B.A.'s Atlanta Dream, skipped the season altogether to focus on social justice efforts. Recently, the entire Atlanta team and others in the league publicly endorsed an opponent of Senator Kelly Loeffler, a Republican from Georgia who is a co owner of the Dream, because she criticized the Black Lives Matter movement and the W.N.B.A. players' social activism. Earlier this month, the N.B.A.'s owners, many of them billionaires, said they would donate 300 million over 10 years roughly 1 million per year for every team to a fund "dedicated to creating greater economic empowerment in the Black community," according to a news release. In a Thursday afternoon video conference, N.B.A. players the Lakers' James among them asked for a greater commitment from the owners, with the Charlotte Hornets' owner Michael Jordan joining the call as much as an advocate for the players as an ownership peer. Tilman Fertitta, the owner of the Houston Rockets, said on CNBC that he did not think that the stoppage was directed at the league's owners. "I think they just needed a pause," Fertitta said Thursday. "They've been playing every other day. These are our partners, OK? We're 50 50 partners. And if we do well, they do well. And if the league doesn't do well, none of us do well. And they realize that." With basketball games called off on Thursday, the prior day's insurgency led professional and college teams in other sports to hurriedly scratch their plans, too. In baseball, at least seven games were postponed. The Mets and Marlins stood on the field at game time for 42 seconds of silence; 42 was the number worn by Jackie Robinson, who broke baseball's color barrier in 1947. The players then retreated to their clubhouses, leaving behind a "Black Lives Matter" T shirt over home plate. Ron Rivera, the coach of the professional football team in Washington, a franchise with a troubled history on race, said the day would be reserved for "reflection instead" of football. The New York Jets, the Indianapolis Colts and the Green Bay Packers were among the teams that also canceled practices. Troy Vincent, the N.F.L.'s head of football operations and the highest ranking Black person at the league office, spoke tearfully on ESPN Radio about his fears for his three sons and his support for the athletes who sat out games. "I've got a 22 year old and a 20 year old and a 15 year old that I'm trying to prevent from being hunted, and their teachable moment and I'm trusting my Lord, trusting him," Vincent said. "I'm just I'm proud of what the guys and the women are doing." Boston College, Kentucky and South Florida abandoned plans for football practices on Thursday, unsurprising moves toward the end of an unusually vibrant off season of activism by college athletes. "What happened to Jacob Blake is history repeating itself," Max Richardson, a linebacker at Boston College, wrote on Twitter. "These countless tragedies are reoccurring. There can be no more ignorance. Changes WILL come." Playoff hockey games that were scheduled for Thursday and Friday were also postponed. It was not always clear how long the various teams and players would keep their sports activities on pause. Four baseball teams that had protested on Wednesday resumed play on Thursday, and Naomi Osaka, a Black woman who has won two Grand Slam titles, said she would play in the Western Southern Open's semifinals on Friday. Osaka had planned to quit the tournament because there were "more important matters at hand," but she relented after tennis officials agreed to delay matches by a day. By the end of Thursday, some in sports said they were already turning to political action beyond demonstrations. Mike Krzyzewski, the men's basketball coach at Duke, told a rally of athletes that his players would register to vote later in the day. "This thing can be won, and your generation is the generation that's going to do it," he said without endorsing any particular candidate. "I grew up a long time ago in the '60s. I thought it was headed in the right direction. Damn, I was wrong. I want to be right." Marc Stein reported from Lake Buena Vista, Sopan Deb from New York and Alan Blinder from Atlanta. Reporting was contributed by Ken Belson, Gillian R. Brassil, Christopher Clarey, Matthew Futterman, Shauntel Lowe, Ben Rothenberg and David Waldstein. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
Crushed cans, old playing cards, burned out cigarette butts, a lone, fading and bright red bow the beauty and detritus of urban life were culled from the streets by Kahlil Robert Irving, a 26 year old artist who has mixed found objects into a collagraphic print hanging in a turn of the century Brooklyn limestone that houses the Jenkins Johnson Projects. The work, "Street Block: Lost/Found/Chance" is a fitting introduction to the gallery's latest exhibition. Called "Block Party," a riff on the New York summertime tradition, the group show features an array of emerging voices including Devin N. Morris, Alex Jackson and Kenturah Davis. What's refreshingly missing are the images one might expect of a city in seasonal repose. Instead, the exhibition casts its gaze on the grittier, more pressing concerns people in urban communities discuss when they come together: race, gender, immigration, violence and gentrification. For Tess Sol Schwab, the director of the project space and the exhibition's curator, the show of photographs, paintings and sculptural installation was an opportunity to consider how a block party often a celebration also can be a town hall meeting, to "think about what's affecting the community or what's hurtful and negative, as well as a place for brainstorming ideas to make it better," she said. The block is viewed matter of factly in Kenny Rivera's gouache street scenes that carry an undertone of violence and nostalgia, recalling the Washington Heights of his childhood, while the young painter Vaughn Spann, in "Here Comes the Storm," considers the block more abstractly in relationship to Minimalism. Mr. Spann, 25, seemed to be thinking of the block as a unit of measurement; its capacity to form a component of a larger whole. To achieve this, the work is made of terry cloth, painted black and broken into pieces that form a city grid, circling another grid. It underscores Mr. Spann's belief that "we are all enmeshed within the grid, both functioning within it and fighting to work against it." The image is a metaphor for how "very often, to get to where we want to go many of us have to operate in conditions that only function through conformity," said Shikeith, 29. "Sometimes, I feel like I am going to war when I pick up a camera, like there's an urgency in the logic behind my envisioning of a malleable black manhood," he added, referring to the images he sees as combating popular stereotypes. For the founder of the project space, the San Francisco dealer Karen Jenkins Johnson, "Block Party" is also about marking the space's first anniversary in the Prospect Lefferts Gardens section of Brooklyn. The mission, she said, "is to cultivate a relationship with the community." Ms. Jenkins Johnson, 58, considers the gallery to have what she called a "second bottom line," which measures success in terms of positive impact. She pointed to Lizania Cruz's "We the News" interactive wall installation and zine project, where the artist created "story circles" by gathering together members of New York's immigrant communities to capture their experiences. Ms. Jenkins Johnson said this was the kind of communal exchange she wants to show in the gallery. Kearra Amaya Gopee's single channel video installation, "Artifact 1: Tiger Balm," also on view, is a moving look at memory as montage. It tracks the painful personal story of Ms. Gopee and her mother as they attempt to immigrate to America from Trinidad and Tobago in the early 2000s, after their travel documents were stolen, she said, by a family member. The narrative is told through archival family footage, images and visa applications. "What I found after producing 'Tiger Balm' was that it generates its own block in a sense," the 23 year old artist said. "Many Caribbean people in the diaspora who have managed to see an iteration of the installation in full have responded in kind with their own experiences with immigration and restriction of movement by loved ones, either their own or that of several generations before them." She added that for many families, "this is often a taboo subject for valid reasons but it is my hope that this small gesture can at least bring this conversation to the forefront of our own communities." In its first year, Jenkins Johnson Projects has not only become a place for young artists of color to exhibit but has also emerged as a hub for curators of color to regularly test ideas and present exhibitions. "If they don't have a place where they can practice their skills, they cannot go out there and be curators at Brooklyn Museum or for the Detroit Institute of Arts or for San Francisco Museum of Modern Art," Ms. Jenkins Johnson said. The project space has invited established artists, like Derrick Adams, and curators, including Dexter Wimberly to organize shows that have introduced younger artists like Kennedy Yanko, a sculptor, and Leonardo Benzant, a painter and sculptor, to the New York art scene. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
The empty Borussia Park soccer stadium in Germany. The country's top soccer league, the Bundesliga, has estimated that about 240 people would be required to stage a game even if there were no spectators. When Will Sports Come Back? Here Is What Has to Happen First During a news conference Tuesday night, President Trump made a personal plea that probably resonated with at least some sports fans around the country. "We have to get our sports back," Trump said. "I'm tired of watching baseball games that are 14 years old." Trump said he was assembling a panel of experts including the commissioners of every major league in the country to figure out a way for games to return to stadiums around the country. Both Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York and Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the federal government's leading expert on infectious diseases, expressed support this week for the idea of staging games without spectators in the stands. So how realistic is it that we will see sports again this year? What exactly would that entail? Here are answers to some of the more pressing questions as the sports world ponders how to proceed during this global health crisis: Why don't we have any sports to watch right now? Sporting events with fans packed into cozy stands, narrow concourses and omnipresent lines fit the exact definition of the sort of mass gatherings that experts insist we must avoid at this time to stop the spread of the coronavirus. And it's not just the games themselves: Think about fans traveling to and from stadiums, tailgating in the parking lots, congregating at bars before and after the events. "You're bringing together a bunch of people who don't usually mix and packing them really close together for an extended period of time," said Dr. Julie Vaishampayan, chair of the public health committee for the Infectious Diseases Society of America. "As risk goes, it's way above just sitting in a restaurant." 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. So couldn't games be played without fans and just be broadcast on television? That's an option that leagues across America and around the world are grappling with now. But it's not that simple a solution. On a basic level, should we feel OK about asking hundreds of athletes around the country to ignore global health guidelines to play sports for our entertainment? The athletes wouldn't just be meeting a few times a week for games. They would presumably have to practice and partake in other team activities. "Even if they wanted to play in empty stadiums, it's putting the players at risk," said Vaishampayan, who watches football and said she could not imagine the N.F.L. operating this year. "There's nothing to say that players won't get infected at home and bring it to the field." What's the big deal about a couple of dozen people on a basketball court? Perhaps a league could create a hugely intricate system of testing and quarantining players and coaches to ensure that only virus free athletes made it onto a court or a playing field. But a professional sports broadcast, in truth, involves a much bigger gathering than just a group of athletes and coaches. For example, the Bundesliga, Germany's top soccer league, estimated that around 240 people players, team staff, officials and broadcast staff would be required for a game even if it were played behind closed doors. In that case, could there be a way to establish some type of closed off, virus free "bubble" environment where the leagues could play games? Various sports organizations have discussed plans like this. Major League Baseball, for instance, internally pondered bringing all of its teams to Arizona where there are 10 ballparks used for spring training to play a season in a single, tightly controlled area. But most experts find such proposals extremely complicated and ultimately pretty far fetched, at least for competitions involving several games spread out over time. How would these people be fed? What if a player is hurt? Would the athletes leave their families or would the families come, too? Any such scenario would involve many more people than one might have originally pictured, and it would be almost impossible to maintain a perfectly closed system. "You can't think of it as airtight," said Dr. William Schaffner, a Vanderbilt University professor who is an expert in preventive medicine and infectious diseases, "because it won't be." If the staging of games still poses so many risks, why would anyone do it? There's an idea that our sports leagues embody some core element of our national character and that their return would represent a needed symbol of normalcy in this trying time. The other big thing, of course, is money: Billions of dollars stand to be lost by leagues if they are unable to complete their seasons. Money can make people do a lot of things. Are there any leagues around the world trying to operate, and doing so successfully, while paying attention to health guidelines? Taiwan's five team basketball league has been playing games out of a single, empty gymnasium that no more than 100 people may enter at a time. Coronavirus tests are not taking place on site, but everyone's temperature is being monitored. (Asymptomatic carriers of the virus, of course, might not have an elevated temperature.) Over the weekend, the country's baseball and soccer leagues kicked off in similar fashion. In Germany, teams in the top soccer leagues have begun practicing again, and league officials are aiming to resume play in May. A few countries, like Nicaragua, have carried on with little or no restrictions. It's important to note that, for the most part, these countries far more than most around the world, including the United States have avoided large numbers of deaths through a mixture of testing, tracking and other preventive measures. And even then, they tend to be proceeding with extreme caution. It's unclear what would happen, for instance, if a Taiwanese basketball player tested positive for the virus. Would the league suspend play again? How should decisions about whether to resume play be made? These are questions weighing on everyone involved in sports at every level in the United States. Schaffner, for instance, is part of an advisory panel brought together by the N.C.A.A. to create a recommendation for how college sports should proceed at this time, and teams and officials have been clamoring for answers that have yet to arrive. "The coaches wanted it last week," Schaffner said about the panel's pending recommendations, laughing. "We haven't given ourselves a timeline. We're watching the data very carefully and looking at the models out there." In the big picture, it comes down to priorities. Medical experts focused solely on eliminating the spread of the virus would say that sports should not played at this time at all. But not everyone thinks that way. For some, restoring a bit of normalcy to American economic and social life outweighs some of the dangers of the virus. "We're going to have to accept some increased health risks in order to solve some of these other problems," Schaffner said, describing the thinking of those hoping to reopen parts of society, including sports. "If you don't expect perfection, you won't be disappointed." So when will things actually be "normal" again in sports, the way they were before? Experts agree that even if sports leagues return in some diminished capacity in the near term, there will not be a true return to "normal" like, say, the sight of 50,000 people packed into Yankee Stadium until there is a vaccine available to everyone in the country. And that could take until 2021, or beyond, to happen. "Degrees of social distancing are going to have to be part of our norm until that time," Schaffner said. "We may whittle them down, make modifications and compromises, but social distancing will have to remain." And so that means sports may not feel "normal" for quite some time. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
Choreography is theater, and the great choreographers have all been master dramatists. Five ballets that returned on Saturday to the New York City Ballet repertory for the first time this season all exemplified a spare extreme of modernism: drama without narrative, without acting, without scenery; costumes without color; drama in which nothing occurs but the alchemy of dance and music. The music, in four cases, was 20th century modernist; this lean but high concentrate dance theater still feels audacious. The five were made by George Balanchine (1904 83); they are the Bach "Concerto Barocco" (1941); the Stravinsky "Monumentum pro Gesualdo" (1960) and "Movements for Piano and Orchestra" (1963); the Webern "Episodes" (1959); and the Hindemith "Four Temperaments" (1946). It's in their absence of color, curiously, that they're truly an extreme. By dressing many ballets in just black and white, Balanchine went where very few have dared to follow; once you acquire a taste for this vein of his theater, you can feel that color is not a heightening but a dilution. In these ballets, the way a woman's foot changes position to show a shift in a musical phrase may prove uncannily momentous; the way a body changes angle at the end of a phrase can have the effect of a punch line. In Saturday afternoon's performance of "Concerto Barocco," there were many such moments. Among those marvelous moments were that end of phrase change of angle (just 90 degrees, a twist from one diagonal to another), which was a recurrent pleasure in Teresa Reichlen's dancing of the third movement; the warmth with which Sara Mearns infuses her classical line; and the calm grace and self effacing authority with which Russell Janzen holds an arm in an arc above his head or slides Ms. Reichlen, feet first, upstage in the second movement. Throughout this "Balanchine Black White" program, the choreography again proved rich fare. Most of "Episodes" is especially spellbinding. The quiet multiplicities of angle keep leading us into the theater of Webern's harmonies and rhythms. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
new video loaded: The Challenge of a Wright House | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
WHETHER it's called a small minivan or a tall wagon or a people mover or a multipurpose vehicle, the basic idea behind the redesigned 2012 Mazda 5 is one that has long been popular with manufacturers. But in North America at least, it hasn't been all that popular among actual customers. Still, Ford will take its own shot at this hazily defined product niche later this year with its C Max, and other manufacturers are likely to follow. "The timing on the older products wasn't good," said Finbarr O'Neill, president of J. D. Power Associates, the market research firm that tracks the auto market, referring to tall wagons offered in the United States in the 1980s and '90s. "At that time S.U.V.'s were getting bigger and bigger. "But downsizing is a trend now, and we see potential for these products" as federal fuel economy rules tighten and fuel prices rise. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Automobiles |
DURING a blistering run from last November through May in which Japan's stock prices nearly doubled on signs that its economy was finally reflating the blueprint for success in that market seemed simple. As the administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe pushed to devalue the yen, investors gravitated toward long forgotten Japanese exporters, which directly benefit from this policy. That's because a weakening yen makes the price of Japanese made products more competitive in the global marketplace. Indeed, some of the best performing Japanese stocks in this stretch were traditional, multinational industrial giants. Shares of Toyota Motor, for instance, returned nearly 115 percent from mid November of last year to May 22. Then in a flash, this strategy seemed to fall apart or did it? Concerns over the Bank of Japan's commitment to so called quantitative easing coupled with fears that the Federal Reserve in the United States would soon end its own bond buying program helped push the country's stocks into yet another correction. From its May 22 peak, the Nikkei 225 index of Japanese shares fell more than 20 percent by June 13. But then it came roaring back by more than 16 percent on more recent signs that the country's economy was indeed nearing a turnaround. The currency was also whipsawed. After exchange rates had sunk to a low of 103 yen to the dollar, the yen strengthened back to around 94 to the dollar before sliding again. At the end of the week, it stood at more than 99. As the dust settles, Japanese equity funds are up more than 27 percent for the year. And, year to date, the yen has weakened more than 14 percent against the dollar. This roller coaster ride, though, has complicated matters for investors. Should they go back to favoring shares of exporters, since the yen has been losing value again? Or should they ignore those companies and instead tilt toward businesses that can thrive under a strong yen, should the trend reverse once more? Or should they avoid Japanese stocks altogether? For example, one of the top Japanese holdings in the Causeway International Value fund is the JGC Corporation, an engineering company. "It's one of our largest Japanese holdings but it has little do with Japan," said Sarah H. Ketterer, co manager of the fund, which beat more than 85 percent of its peers in the past year. Among other things, she said, the company builds liquefied natural gas plants to help meet the growing demand for the fuel in Southeast Asia. Over all, less than one fifth of the company's revenue comes from Japan. Another alternative is to invest in companies that don't necessarily require a strong economy, but that stand to benefit from demographic trends playing out in Japan. Among the biggest holdings in the Matthews Japan fund, for instance, is JP Holdings, which operates child care centers. In addition to advocating a weak yen to reinvigorate economic growth, Mr. Abe been calling for more women to enter the work force, including leadership posts in Japanese corporations. The country has long been plagued by an aging labor pool, in part because of a declining birthrate. Getting more women into the work force could help address the aging issue and bolster gross domestic product. To do that, though, the government acknowledges a need for more day care options nationwide. "Companies have to boost investments in child care to facilitate moving young mothers into the work force," said Taizo Ishida, lead manager of Matthews Japan. And JP Holdings, one of the largest operators of child care centers in Japan, would surely stand to benefit, he said. Since the start of the year, the shares have more than tripled in value. For instance, during the years when the yen was strengthening, few exporters could gain global market share in the face of a strong currency. One exception, though, was Unicharm, a maker of diapers. Yoko Sakai, an analyst at Harding Loevner who specializes in Japanese equities, said Unicharm could achieve this partly because it recognized early on that to sell in a cost effective way to the developing world, it couldn't rely on the same high quality, high priced diapers that Japanese customers demanded. It produced cheaper diapers, which proved quite popular in countries like Indonesia and Thailand, Ms. Sakai said. Harding Loevner looked for the other kinds of nontraditional thinking from Japanese companies that are domestically oriented. "Whether the yen works for them or against them in a year or two," she said, "we want companies that can find ways to improve." One such company, she said, is ABC Mart, a shoe retailer in which Harding Loevner invests. ABC Mart began as a wholesaler but decided to integrate vertically by owning its own retail stores. Then it began buying some shoe brands. "This company isn't just taking share, it is disrupting the market and getting rid of the middleman," she said. WHEN will it be safe to start betting more directly on a Japanese rebound? It's hard to say, according to money managers. Skepticism about the future of the stock market is deeply rooted. "In Japan, people are conditioned to sell after a 20 percent rise in asset prices," said M. Campbell Gunn, manager of the T. Rowe Price Japan fund. And Ms. Sakai said, "If anybody tells you that they know what's going to happen in Japan, they're lying." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Your Money |
SAN FRANCISCO Google will begin requiring those who buy ads related to federal elections in the United States through its sprawling advertising network to prove that they are citizens or lawful residents of the country. In a blog post published on Friday, Google said it would take steps to verify if people or organizations are allowed to buy political advertising and ask them to prove that they are who they say they are. It will, for example, ask a political action committee for an Internal Revenue Service issued employer identification number, or ask an individual for government issued identification and a Social Security number. In October, Google disclosed that the Internet Research Agency, a Russian company accused of meddling in the 2016 presidential election, had spent nearly 5,000 buying online advertising during the election cycle. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
This article contains spoilers for "Borat Subsequent Moviefilm." Fourteen years after the comedian Sacha Baron Cohen brought his character Borat to America, the mustachioed journalist from Kazakhstan is back to wreak more havoc in "Borat Subsequent Moviefilm," which began streaming Friday on Amazon Prime. In the first film, Borat's primary goal was to nab the "Baywatch" star Pamela Anderson as a wife, but his sights are set much higher here, as the Kazakh authorities order him to infiltrate President Trump's inner circle. Baron Cohen's undercover prank war ensnares plenty of real life politicians this time around, including Trump's personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, who has spent the last couple of days attempting to debunk a salacious scene where he appears to make a move on Borat's teenage daughter. In his first attempt to curry favor with the American authorities, Borat plans to give Vice President Mike Pence a famous monkey that has become an adult film star in Kazakhstan. (Yes, that old plotline.) Upon arriving in the United States, Borat pries open the crate containing the monkey and finds his teenage daughter Tutar instead; she has stowed away on his trip and eaten the monkey in transit. Left without his simian offering, Borat instead resolves to give Tutar to Pence as a child bride, and he travels to the Conservative Political Action Conference, held in February in Maryland, in the hopes of making the handoff to the vice president while he's speaking at the event. "How would I slip into this conference of Republicans unnoticed?" Borat wonders in voice over. First, he dresses as a Klansman, nodding to conference goers in the lobby from beneath his white hood. ("I'm Stephen Miller," squawks Borat, referencing Trump's senior adviser.) Having gotten past the lobby, Borat then takes refuge in a bathroom and assembles a second disguise, this time dressing up as Trump. Flinging Tutar over his shoulder, Borat as Trump rushes into the ballroom to interrupt Pence's speech, an incident that even made headlines at the time. "I brought the girl for you!" Borat yells at the peeved vice president before being ejected by security. But the most damning part of the sequence isn't Borat's prank; it's the way the film lingers on Pence's assertion that the government had the coronavirus outbreak under control, at a time when there were still only 15 reported U.S. cases. What could Borat say that's more shocking than real life? Having gotten nowhere with Pence, Borat resolves instead to give Tutar to Giuliani. But father and daughter hit a rough patch as Tutar undergoes a feminist awakening (as well as a Fox News blond bombshell makeover), and she sets off to interview Giuliani on her own. Borat, who's had a change of heart, rushes to the interview in the hopes of saving his daughter from what he presumes will be a carnal sacrifice. In the meantime, Tutar and Giuliani sit down in a hotel room for the interview, which a nervous Tutar repeatedly fumbles. Giuliani attempts to reassure the girl, who responds with obsequious flattery and flirtation. The two even share some alcohol. Here's where things get ... well, let's say selectively edited. "Shall we have a drink in the bedroom?" Tutar appears to ask Giuliani in the scene, though the actress is turned away from the camera while the line is heard. In the bedroom, Giuliani appears to say, "You can give me your phone number and your address," though he, too, has his back to the hidden camera when the line is heard. While Giuliani sits on the bed, Tutar unbuttons his shirt and appears to remove a microphone pack, but the moment is contextualized and scored to appear more like a seduction. Giuliani then leans back on the bed and puts a hand down his pants. Giuliani has since claimed that he was merely tucking his shirt back in, and a plausible case could be made from the footage that he's doing just that. Still, the camera lingers on Giuliani's hand as it travels south of his waistband an event that's prolonged using multiple angles until a lingerie clad Borat interrupts the encounter and offers to take his daughter's place, saying, "She 15, she too old for you." (The actress playing Tutar, the newcomer Maria Bakalova, is 24.) Confused, Giuliani leaves. As the film wraps up, Borat returns to Kazakhstan and stumbles upon a shocking comic revelation: His mission, as designed by the Kazakh authorities, was actually a revenge plot to spring the coronavirus on the world. Before he left, Borat was secretly injected with Covid 19, making him an unwitting patient zero for the pandemic. In a series of flashbacks, the horrified Borat remembers that his boat trip to America incorporated a pit stop at a wet bar in Wuhan, China, where he coughed all over the items on sale; he even docked briefly in Sydney and coughed on Tom Hanks, who turns up for a game cameo appearance. In real life, Hanks was among the first high profile Americans to contract the coronavirus, in March, while shooting an Elvis Presley biopic in Australia. Borat certainly makes for a funnier scapegoat, though Giuliani may find Baron Cohen's super spreading headlines less amusing. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
WE THAT ARE YOUNG By Preti Taneja 480 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. 27.95. You can probably come up with the gist aging monarch, three daughters, a fool, a storm. But there's more: political jostling, the threat of war, descent into madness, suicide. Writers crib from Shakespeare because the stories are lodged in our collective recall, but so full of subplot and nuance they can be remade. Revisiting "Lear," as Preti Taneja does in her debut, "We That Are Young," is a familiar trick (it won Jane Smiley a Pulitzer). Still, with Shakespeare, fresh interpretation is always welcome. If Smiley's "A Thousand Acres" was an act of transposition, "We That Are Young" is an embodiment. The register is dramatic and the language poetic, but the novel (like the play, I think) tries the patience. By the fourth act, you're fidgeting, waiting for the characters to start dying. Taneja's Lear is Devraj, and the kingdom he's dividing is the Company, which is in the business of business: manufacturing, government contracting, hotels, real estate, you name it. His heirs are Gargi, Radha and the youngest, disowned Sita. Taneja also gives us Lear's hundred knights, his fool, his hangers on (Kent, Gloucester and his bastard son), his subpar sons in law. The book shouldn't be evaluated on its fidelity to the source material, but Taneja's attentiveness deserves credit. Devraj is a magnate, not a monarch; that old but still salient point about the root of all evil. Gargi, on her first date with the man she'll marry, listens to his catalog of the things he loves and comes up with her own: "The beautiful horizon of the production possibility frontier. The maximum possible output combinations of two goods or services an economy can achieve, when all resources are fully and efficiently employed." Goneril is a monster; Gargi is a capitalist. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
Last week's Vows column "She's 98. He's 94. They Met at the Gym.," about how a nonagenarian couple became acquainted, courted and recently married, showing the world that love has no age barriers, inspired numerous comments on Facebook and Twitter. Many readers extended their congratulations and encouragement to the newlyweds, some shared their own experiences and opinions. Below are some of the highlights, edited for space. My grandparents were married for fifty years. Then my grandma died. My grandpa moved in with his childhood love at age 86. She died eight years later. Now my grandpa is 96 and dating my grandma's sister, lol. It's never too late! Ridiculous! My Dad is 91 and he has a companion who is 84. They don't live together and don't want to. They just enjoy each others company by traveling together, going to dinner, movies, etc. They spend a lot of time together, but believe marriage is unnecessary at their ages. My Dad thinks it would be ridiculous to get married at his age. If your health declines, which is highly likely, you have to be a caretaker, pay for nursing homes (not covered by Medicare), etc. This gentleman is a WWII veteran. His medical care is covered by the VA. He also is entitled to reside in a VA retirement home should he need caretakers. His wife is now entitled to the same. (My grandfather and his second wife were both entitled to do this). Of course we don't know anything else about their finances or situation so should not judge but for this reason alone, getting married was a wise move. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
THE DETOUR 10:30 p.m. on TBS. When audiences were introduced to the Parkers, that family at the center of this TBS comedy was en route to Florida for a vacation. In Season 2, the Parkers moved to New York. Now in Season 3, the four Parkers have become one of TV's most endearingly dysfunctional families. This season finds them in Alaska, where residents have plenty of guns and surprisingly forward thinking attitudes toward gender and sexuality. Nate (Jason Jones) struggles to accept his new place in the family when Robin (Natalie Zea) becomes the breadwinner by getting a job in a Hooters like bar. "It's not called 'The Road Trip,'" Mr. Jones said of the show in an interview with The New York Times last year. "It's called 'The Detour' for a reason. It's a metaphor, if you will." CITIZEN ROSE 8 p.m. on E! The actress Rose McGowan's allegations against Harvey Weinstein helped spark the current national conversation around sexual harassment and abuse in the workplace, and her activism shows no signs of stopping: She is now starring in a documentary series about her work on behalf of women. "Citizen Rose," produced by the company behind the reality shows "Keeping Up With the Kardashians" and "The Real World," gives a behind the scenes look at Ms. McGowan's life. "I wanted really to be like Gertrude Stein and have a conversation with the world," Ms. McGowan said at a Television Critics Association media event this month. "Instead of in my living room." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
Credit...Andrew Testa for The New York Times At Men's Fashion Week in London, Less Angst, More Celebration LONDON Britain may be a divided nation, with no resolution to Brexit in sight, but the country's multi billion dollar fashion industry cannot afford to grind to a halt. A handful of designers worked out their political angst on the catwalk at London Fashion Week Men's this season. For most, however, it was business as usual, and the results were three days of collections that offered some real bright spots during a time filled with shades of gray. Here's why. Alexander McQueen is one of the best known British names in fashion, yet the brand rarely shows in London. This season, however, the creative director Sarah Burton chose to present her spring 2020 collection at home. More specifically: inside the very English surroundings of Charterhouse, a 14th century building complex in Clerkenwell near the McQueen headquarters. Many of the 31 looks echoed the fall 2019 women's wear looks shown at Paris Fashion Week in March. The aim? To create a strong dialogue between the men's and women's wear. See traditional tailoring with an inventive twist, and heritage fabrics largely sourced from the mills of Northern England. Men's wear is a fast growing category for McQueen, accounting for roughly 30 percent of the business, according to the company . Kering, its parent group, believes it can be an even bigger part of the brand. This slick collection gave substance to that strategy. Charles Jeffrey has become a poster boy for the London scene, nominated for the LVMH prize and lauded for his dramatic gender blending collections that marry a couturier's touch with underground cool. But with the spotlight has come scrutiny, and calls for greater commercial as well as creative consideration. Among the glass towered book stacks of the British Library on Saturday, the young Scot (whose Loverboy show in January had been inspired by a first edition of "The Story of Peter Pan") sought to show he had begun to grow up. He did it in three acts, each introduced with a poetry reading and on a catwalk shorn of the usual theatrics, that revealed his most disciplined designs to date: black seersucker tailoring with a military bent, splashed with color; punk tartans; and capes finished in wild, ethereal prints. The clothes were wearable, with a clear design signature and defiant message, though they lacked some of the flamboyant glory that first defined Mr. Jeffrey's work. Also getting down to business was Edward Crutchley, Kim Jones's right hand man. This season he explored "nostalgia without being nostalgic," particularly for bourgeois Britain in the 1980s and '90s. Nicholas Daley often infuses music into his presentations. His parents ran a reggae club in the 1980s, and Mr. Daley's half Jamaican, half Scottish heritage has long served as the DNA of his namesake label, which colorfully explores subcultures. "Astroblack" took place inside the St. Mary at Hill church, hidden down a city back street with a large organ and burning incense sticks. First, musicians from the jazz band Sons of Kemet played themselves down the runway wearing pinstripe pants, string tops and sleeveless vests in oranges and ochres with knitted beanie hats. Then came models in oversize checked shorts and coats printed with Irish linen mills, tie dyed shirts from Kyoto and denim Baker Boy hats produced by the British milliner Christys. To close, the musicians performed a jubilant jam session that had models and guests jumping up and down. Hussein Chalayan also turned up the volume, exploring how ethnic dance has been subsumed by Western occupation. Models clutched small vintage boomboxes as they walked down a pedestrianized Mayfair street. A breezy silhouette mimicked a body in movement, so a belted pinstripe suit was paired with billowing pants, and there was an abundance of boxy summer stripes and oversize cotton shirts, some complete with dance instructions and many finished with snaps, buckles and even hiking poles to prepare for moving onward. And then there was Martine Rose, who has made a signature out of using the base materials of everyday street life (chav sportswear, office drab) to underpin her collections. This season expanded that population to include the '80s club kid, skinhead, new romantic and after office raver. The point, Ms. Rose said, was that living when discord in Britain has reached new highs, "We need to learn to coexist." Samuel Ross, the latest recipient of the Fashion Award's British Emerging Men's Wear Designer prize, examined what he called "the scaffolds of society." In the rain soaked depths of southeast London, his A Cold Wall collection brought a new and refined finish to luxury street wear separates. Anoraks, macs and jackets in chalky grays and earthy browns were paneled and pocketed with graphic precision, sometimes layered with harnesses to keep the wearer upright. "I was thinking about scrutinizing your own reflection and self study in mirrors," Mr. Green said backstage. A series of boxy paneled leather looks opened the show, followed by luxe quilted suits, wafer thin second skin cutout looks inspired by Mexican lanterns, and finally signature uniform staples with photo prints reminiscent of a male anatomical sketch. "It was a more positive show than normal," Mr. Green said. "Almost celebratory in fact." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
CHICAGO The conductor Daniel Barenboim entered the rehearsal room. Musicians of the West Eastern Divan Orchestra, the improbable ensemble he founded nearly 20 years ago with Edward Said, were tuning their instruments, listening intently to one another. "I'm very, very happy to see you here," Mr. Barenboim said to the orchestra, whose members include Israelis, Palestinians and musicians from other Arab countries. "I'm very glad that those of you that have strange passports managed to get into the United States." The West Eastern Divan Orchestra is dedicated to the idea of breaking down barriers in the Middle East. But new barriers put up by the United States briefly threatened to derail the orchestra's current tour: Over the summer, it looked as though some musicians might not get visas because they held passports from Syria and Iran, two of the nations named in President Trump's travel ban. They ended up getting waivers, allowing the tour to go forward. And that is how Mr. Barenboim found himself at Symphony Center here on Friday to rehearse Strauss's "Don Quixote." Which led to an inevitable question: As the orchestra nears its 20th anniversary, and even the seemingly modest dream of being able to play in all its members' home countries appears out of reach, is the whole enterprise quixotic? "When I'm with them, it doesn't feel quixotic at all," Mr. Barenboim, 75, said in an interview. "When I talk to you, I know it is quixotic." Quixotic or not, the project has overcome enormous odds since it grew out of a 1999 workshop in Weimar, Germany, that Mr. Barenboim, an Argentine Israeli, created with his friend Mr. Said, the Palestinian American literary scholar, who died in 2003. If the orchestra has not shaped the debate as much as Mr. Barenboim would have liked a 2005 concert in Ramallah, in the West Bank, has never been repeated, and it has never played in Israel it has become a regular presence at leading music festivals and concert halls. The five city American tour that began here on Monday will take it to Carnegie Hall on Thursday, for a concert that is to be broadcast on WQXR and streamed live at medici.tv. The group's deceptively simple premise that getting musicians from groups that have been opposed for decades to play together would foster understanding seems even more ambitious in this polarized age. These musicians from different sides of the Middle East divide are visiting a United States riven by tribalism and racial animosity, and reeling from the anti Semitic killing of 11 at a Pittsburgh synagogue and the spate of pipe bombs mailed to prominent critics of President Trump. The Divan Orchestra, Mr. Barenboim said, was not created as a political orchestra, or as an orchestra for peace, but simply as a way to promote dialogue starting with its own members. "I sat them together, so you had a Syrian cellist and an Israeli on the same stand," Mr. Barenboim said. "What do they do? First of all, they tune to the same A. So they have to listen. Then they try to play the same way, with the same bow strokes. They do that for six hours a day, and then they eat in the same dining room. Their attitude changes." "I always say to them: 'I expect all of you to agree on how to play Beethoven,'" he said. "I don't expect you to agree on the other side's narrative. But I do expect you to try to understand it and respect it." Making music is hard work: Mr. Barenboim, who led the rehearsals this week in English dipping into German, Spanish or French where appropriate could be a demanding taskmaster. But he was also quick to show warmth and delight, and to offer guidance. "Wonderful. Wonderful!" he said after a run through, once they had earned it. During rehearsals, the players the youngest are in their teens, the oldest in their 40s applauded one another and exchanged sympathetic looks after Mr. Barenboim's criticisms. But there has been plenty of tension over the years. The project has been disparaged by many Israelis and Arabs alike, with players sometimes feeling displeasure from their families. And the events of the all too real world have a way of intruding. When Israel waged war against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon in 2006, several Arab musicians did not play with the orchestra some because they could not travel, others because they felt unable to. Nassib Ahmadieh, a cellist who grew up in Lebanon, said he could not bring himself to perform that year. "I didn't have the psychological state to go on tour with the orchestra while my parents were under bombardment, and the whole country was severely damaged," said Mr. Ahmadieh, 41, who now lives in Germany. "I couldn't imagine myself traveling around and playing Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. It was too optimistic for me." Mr. Barenboim's trip to Chicago was a kind of homecoming: On Thursday he received a huge ovation when he returned to his old podium at Orchestra Hall to conduct the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for the first time since he stepped down as its music director in 2006. When he left, there were rumors of bad blood, which his long absence did little to allay. He insisted there was no animosity: He had simply wanted a clean break, he said, and rarely appears as a guest conductor, given his schedule as general music director of the Berlin State Opera and chief conductor of the Staatskapelle Berlin, not to mention his piano concerts. He has also shepherded the creation of the Barenboim Said Akadamie in Berlin, which offers music degrees and courses in humanities, and concerts in the Frank Gehry designed Pierre Boulez Saal. Mr. Barenboim has long been outspoken. When Israel passed a new law this year that enshrines the right of self determination as "unique to the Jewish people," he wrote that it made him ashamed of being an Israeli. After the United States decided to move its embassy to Jerusalem, he warned that it would make the situation worse and called on the world to recognize Palestine as a sovereign state. In his interview here, he said that the problem that inspired him to create the Divan orchestra remains much as it was then. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
ABT STUDIO COMPANY at the Joyce Theater (April 24, 7:30 p.m.; April 25, 8 p.m.; through April 27). This group, directed by the former American Ballet Theater soloist Sascha Radetsky, acts as a bridge between ballet training and a professional career. Proof of its success is evident in the main company: Three quarters of its dancers started out at ABT Studio. For its Joyce season, the group presents existing and new choreography with repertoire that includes George Balanchine's "Tarantella" and excerpts from "Don Quixote" and Stanton Welch's "Clear," as well as five New York premieres. Doing the choreographic honors are Stefanie Batten Bland, Gemma Bond, Ma Cong, Claudia Schreier and Ethan Stiefel. 212 242 0800, joyce.org COLLECTIVE TERRAIN/S at Danspace Project (April 25, 8 p.m.; through May 4). Jasmine Hearn, Tendayi Kuumba, Samita Sinha and Tatyana Tenenbaum take over Danspace Project with two weeks of events exploring the relationship between the voice and the body. Organized by Hearn and Tenenbaum along with Danspace's associate curator, Lydia Bell, the engagement features performances, a workshop and a launch party for a book created by the collective and published by Danspace Project. For the choreographers, who will each present works during this run, the coming together of ideas, vocalization and dancing is based on their shared interest in "vibration as anatomy of human connection," as they explain in press materials. 866 811 4111, danspaceproject.org | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
Finally, Jeff Bezos is really in fashion. On Thursday, Amazon rode to the rescue of the beleaguered American industry or at least one particularly challenged and particularly notable subsection: independent high end designers. Along with Vogue and the Council of Fashion Designers of America, the e commerce giant announced the unveiling of "Common Threads: Vogue x Amazon Fashion," a new storefront featuring 20 buzzy creative names, including Batsheva Hay, Brock Collection, 3.1 Phillip Lim and Edie Parker. "I'm thrilled to announce this partnership, and want to thank Amazon Fashion, not only for its generous support of 'A Common Thread,' but also for so quickly sharing its resources to aid American designers affected by the pandemic," said Anna Wintour, editor in chief of Vogue and Conde Nast's artistic director. "While there isn't one simple fix for our industry, which has been hit so hard, I believe this is an important step in the right direction." The move will create a new outlet for brands that are currently at risk of bankruptcy after Covid 19 forced the closing of the stores that sell them, resulting in canceled orders and piles of unsold stock. Even luxury e tailers like Net a Porter have had to close their warehouses. But it also positions Amazon, which may be the largest fashion retailer in the United States but is often seen as, if not an enemy, at least a questionable suitor when it comes to the designer world, as its white knight. And the move gives Mr. Bezos a certain sway over a community that, until now, was largely suspicious of him. In other words, he is not an entirely selfless savior. There's something, and potentially a lot, in it for him. Even before he stood next to Ms. Wintour in his Tom Ford tuxedo as a co host of the Met Gala in 2012, Mr. Bezos had his eye on the shiniest, most eyeball attracting part of the apparel sector. But the ethos of Amazon "the everything store" has never mixed well with that of the fashion week flock, which may best be characterized as "only a few, very special, things," just as its shopping "environment" never seemed sufficiently glamorous to many luxury brands. Though their products were sold on the Amazon owned Zappos or Shopbop, those brands shied away from being sucked into the parent company's maw. That did not stop Amazon from trying. In 2011, the company introduced myhabit.com, a flash sale site meant to compete with sites like Gilt Groupe. That closed in 2016, the year after Amazon teamed up with the CFDA to sponsor the first New York Men's Fashion Week (a relationship that ended in 2017). That same year Amazon Fashion went all in with private label clothing, a category that now includes 111 different labels and 22,617 products, according to a new report from Coresight Research. On an investor call in 2016, Jean Jacques Guiony, the chief financial officer of LVMH, the largest luxury group on the world, announced: "We believe that the existing business of Amazon doesn't fit our luxury, full stop, but also doesn't fit with our brands. If they change the business model, I don't know, but with the existing business model, there is no way we can do business with them for the time being." Still, WWD reported in January that Amazon was planning a new luxury platform to compete with the Alibaba Tmall, along with a 100 million marketing campaign; and as recently as February, Mr. Bezos was at Paris Fashion Week celebrating Diane von Furstenberg's Legion d'Honneur with Ms. Wintour and designers like Christian Louboutin. Now the novel coronavirus pandemic has changed the playing field. Amazon, Ms. Hay said, "is the one place everyone is shopping." (Indeed, Mr. Bezos is potentially on his way to becoming the world's first trillionaire because of it.) Whether they like it or not, designers, especially small ones, have no real choice. They need to move their existing inventory, and they need a partner with the logistics to do it. And one that has access to an enormous ready made consumer base. The idea for the storefront came out of an initiative created by Vogue and the CFDA, who have been working together on ways to support the industry through the pandemic. Last month they announced the Common Thread grant program, raising over 4 million to be disbursed in small increments to designers, retailers, garment manufacturers, as well as the fashion support system to help them survive until reopening. As to what exactly it is: The designers can choose what inventory to sell on Amazon (most likely a mix of current and past stock), and they control their own pricing and imagery. They can opt to use Amazon's fulfillment platform or do the fulfillment themselves. The standard third party selling fees typically around 17 percent apply. According to one participant, however, Amazon agreed to eliminate monthly fees, warehouse fees and packaging fees for the initiative. Vogue and the CFDA initially approached most of the designers about the deal because, as Ms. Hay pointed out, Amazon "doesn't have much of a relationship with many of these brands." Now, of course, that will change. "It does feel like lot of things are shifting in the world," she said. Whether those shifts include a customer who wants to buy an irony laden prairie dress (Ms. Hay's signature) or a very expensive unique floral dress (a trademark of Jonathan Cohen) at the same time and in the same place that she buys toilet paper and nail polish remains to be seen. After all, at the time of the Common Threads store opening, the three current top selling items on Amazon, in clothing, shoes and jewelry, were a men's T shirt multipack, a Hanes men's sweatshirt and a classic Croc. Even in the private label offering, the average price tag is only 32, according to Coresight. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
Across a foggy stage, illuminated from the sides, dancers run past like extras in a disaster movie, anxiously looking in every direction. This is the start of a work called "Breakthrough," but if the dancers or their audiences are searching for an artistic one, they will search in vain. Instead, this piece, the newest on the Ailey II program that opened at the Joyce Theater on Tuesday, is just another example of the low level of choreography often foisted upon the spirited, highly skilled dancers of this junior company. What the choreographer, Manuel Vignoulle, seems to intend to break through are stultifying social conventions the dancers act like zombies but the work is itself mired in stultifying dance conventions: spasms on the beat as if from electrocution, running in place. Where "Breakthrough" is novel is in its use of stretchy shirts. Dancers identified in the program as "outsiders" periodically pull their shirts up over their faces. Later, when a woman can't keep pace with the racing pack, a man stretches his shirt over both of their heads. They stay connected like that through an acrobatic duet that includes her balancing upside down and fully extended on his shoulders an effect more silly than haunting, but one I've never seen before. Dwight Rhoden's "Hissy Fits" (2006) isn't so laughably bad. It's merely empty, and at least it's accurately titled. The women exhibit "attitude," slapping and stepping on the men, who sometimes persuade them with hugs into letting down their guard. Yet women and men alike are trapped within the flashy shell of the choreography. The score samples various Bach pieces, and Mr. Rhoden's blunt responses restore "baroque" as a term of disparagement. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
Hotels are concluding that millennial travelers want three things: customized experiences, digital convenience and relevant information on social media. Call it Canopy by Hilton, Moxy by Marriott or Element by Starwood, traditional hotel chains are catering to the tastes of young adults who have never known a world without the Internet. Even Best Western, known for its budget hotels, has announced plans for a new brand called GLo, which will offer lower priced small rooms and free high speed Internet. According to Phocuswright research, seven in 10 18 to 34 year olds took at least one leisure trip in 2014, and while millennials spend slightly less annually ( 3,217) than older travelers ( 3,381), they do travel more on the fly. Almost a quarter of Gen Y travelers booked their last trip less than one week before departure, says Phocuswright. "We see millennial travelers more as explorers than tourists," said Brian McGuinness, global brand leader, Starwood's Specialty Select Brands. "Our Aloft hotels are specifically designed with them in mind." Aloft features free Wi Fi, areas for working poolside or in the bar, and even a robotic bellhop that appeals to tech savvy millennials, he said. Now, guests who are too busy to talk to a human can order from an emoji room service menu by texting a string of emoji with their last name and room number to Aloft TiGi (which stands for Text it. Get it.). The pilot program is available at Aloft Manhattan Downtown, Aloft Liverpool and Aloft London Excel, and will go to Aloft properties in Asia next. On the menu are things like a hangover kit of Vitaminwater, Advil and bananas for 10; a phone charger for 25; a Surprise Me package of what the Aloft emoji room service menu calls "fun swag and cool stuff" for 25, and more. "If I'm traveling for work, and it's late, I want a hotel where the food is good, and the delivery is quick," said Sherrelle Banks, 28, a communications analyst for Fidelity Investments in Westlake, Tex. "Clean, nonsmoking rooms are a must." When it comes to leisure travel, Ms. Banks said that she takes photos of everything in the hotels where she stays the lobby, the view from the room, and the room itself along with vacation shots of activities to share with friends and family. "I post almost everything on social media," Ms. Banks said. "People who saw pictures of my trip to Costa Rica on Facebook said they want to go with me next time." To grab the attention of millennials who regularly use social media, Marriott International has gone Hollywood by running its own studio to create short films, TV shows and webisodes that promote its various brands, said David Beebe, vice president for global creative and content marketing at Marriott International. Marriott Content Studio has created shows like "Navigator Live," which gave guests in Renaissance Hotels a look at a city through the eyes of touring musicians. The show also ran on the cable network AXS TV. Short films like the action comedy "Two Bellmen Two," about two bellmen who save the day when a guest's business presentation goes missing, was filmed at the J.W. Marriott Marquis Dubai and garnered 7.9 million YouTube views. The film, which will soon be featured on Emirates Airline, is also shown in a number of Marriott hotels. The short films are created by Marriott Content Studio executives and Hollywood producers like Ian Sander and Kim Moses (whose credits include the television series "Ghost Whisperer" and "Profiler") who produced "French Kiss," a romantic tale set at the Paris Marriott Champs Elysees. "French Kiss" has received 6.1 million YouTube views, and also has been seen on flights on JetBlue and American among other airlines, and in certain Marriott hotels. Information on the company's 19 social media brand campaigns is monitored at its headquarters in Bethesda, Md., using a screen that tracks pop culture events and allows staff members to create real time marketing opportunities, like its recent Super Bowl "Suite Stadium Contest" that gave a winner and three guests an overnight stay at Levi's Stadium the night before the Super Bowl in a converted guest room suite, along with tickets to the game. "Marriott is trailblazing marketing infrastructure for major hospitality brands, using platforms such as Snapchat and context specific video content to build brand awareness and encourage participation," Andrew Alvarez, a hospitality industry analyst for IBISWorld, an industry research company based in New York, said in an email. Marriott's Renaissance Hotels have also introduced Evenings at Renaissance, a free event for guests featuring local craft beverages chosen by the hotel bartender and local drink experts. The program is part of the brand's new It's Business Unusual global campaign to appeal to young entrepreneurial business travelers. Hotel chains are also trying to draw young adults to their brands with music related loyalty program events, like Hilton PLAY's concerts. In December, for example, Hilton presented Neon Trees at the Washington Hilton in the District of Columbia for an exclusive performance for guests. Hilton HHonors members can redeem points to attend such concerts, or can make a gift of the experiences to others. Apps that allow hotel guests to select rooms, check in digitally or order a burger before arrival are becoming standard mobile features, while social media like Hilton Suggests Twitter handle ( HiltonSuggests) shares recommendations from contributors around the world for everything from where to eat to what to do and see. "It's the concierge for the social age," said Mary Beth Parks, senior vice president for global marketing for Hilton Worldwide. Because 44 percent of millennials prefer booking hotel services from a mobile phone, versus 26 percent of baby boomers, according to IHG's 2015 Trends Report, it's no surprise that IHG is using mobile for more personalized service with customers. The company, with brands including InterContinental, Kimpton, EVEN, Indigo and Crowne Plaza, is running a pilot program in IHG hotels in China that places beacons in the lobbies and restaurants that recognize rewards club members using the IHG app nearby. "These beacons then send information to the guest's smartphone, including personalized notifications and offers," said Heather Balsley, IHG senior vice president, Americas Brand Management. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
The pop singer Kesha suffered another setback this week in her long running legal fight against Dr. Luke, her former producer, whom she accused of rape almost six years ago. The two filed dueling lawsuits on the same day in October 2014, with Kesha asking to be released from her contracts with Dr. Luke's companies, on account of the assault she accused him of, and Dr. Luke saying that Kesha had defamed him with a "sham" allegation to escape her contractual obligations. Since that time three years before MeToo swept the entertainment industry the story has been debated in public and online, and it has grinded through the courts on its way to a possible trial. So far, Kesha (born Kesha Rose Sebert) has largely prevailed in the theater of public opinion, making an emotional performance at the 2018 Grammy Awards surrounded by fellow women in music, all in white and releasing two new albums. Dr. Luke, on the other hand, has practically disappeared from the pop charts he once dominated. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
"I suppose neither of us is used to the spotlight," a dapper T'Challa, the prince of Wakanda, says upon meeting Natasha Romanova, a.k.a. the Black Widow, in "Captain America: Civil War." A few scenes later, a recently orphaned and vengeful T'Challa, swapping his bespoke blue suit for a full body bulletproof one, reappears as a new Marvel movie superhero. The prince will have to live with the attention: Even before its Feb. 16 release, "Black Panther" smashed box office records, beating out "Captain America: Civil War" on first day advance ticket sales and surpassing "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice" to become Fandango's top selling superhero movie in history. Perhaps even more impressive, the film is also outpacing its cinematic counterparts in cultural reach. "I've been waiting all of my life for 'Black Panther,'" said DJ BenHaMeen, host of FanBrosShow, a weekly podcast on "urban geek" culture. "That said, I know where I was, the exact street in Houston and the exact time on Oct. 28, 2014, when Marvel officially announced that they were doing the movie." Not since Spike Lee's "Malcolm X" in 1992 has there been so much hype and hope for a movie among African American audiences. From special group outings planned by excited fans to crowdfunding campaigns to ensure children can see it, "Black Panther" is shaping up to be a phenomenon. In December, a viral video of two African American men excited to see the movie's poster with its all star black cast "This is what white people get to feel like ALL THE TIME?!!!!" one man wrote on Twittered seemed to capture the anticipation, garnering more than 2.5 million views. What has audiences so eager this time is in part the combination of an auteur African American director (Ryan Coogler of "Fruitvale Station" and "Creed"), a heavyweight cast (Chadwick Boseman, Michael B. Jordan, Lupita Nyong'o, Angela Bassett and Forest Whitaker) and a soundtrack co produced by a rap superstar (Kendrick Lamar), all working on one of the most popular franchises in Hollywood. But the excitement has also been fueled by the origin story of the African superhero. Created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, Black Panther was the first black superhero in mainstream comics, making his debut in Marvel's Fantastic Four No. 52 in 1966. He went on to appear in Avengers titles and took his first star turn in Jungle Action No. 5 in 1973. He had his ups and downs: his own series largely penned by Kirby, a cancellation in 1979 and a return in the 1980s. From 2005 to 2009, he was the subject of another series, this one written by the filmmaker Reginald Hudlin ("Marshall"). In 2016, Ta Nehisi Coates wrote a new series of comic books, while Joe Robert Cole and Mr. Coogler worked on the script. In many ways, Black Panther is part of a current wave of black superheroes, like Netflix's Luke Cage and CW's Black Lightning. But "Black Panther" has the setting of Wakanda, a fictional African country that is wealthy (thanks to vibranium, a mineral with energy manipulating qualities) and technologically advanced. Part of the movie's emotional and visual appeal lies in the fact that Wakanda has never been colonized. "Wakanda is a kind of black utopia in our fight against colonialism and imperial control of black land and black people by white people," said Deirdre Hollman, a founder of the annual Black Comic Book Festival at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem. "To the black imagination, that means everything. In a comic book, it is a reality, and through a major motion picture, it's even more tangibly and artistically a reality that we can explore for ourselves. There's so much power that's drawn from the notion that there was a community, a nation that resisted colonization and infiltration and subjugation." For Frederick Joseph, a marketing consultant who created the BlackPantherChallenge, a GoFundMe campaign to buy tickets so youngsters can see "Black Panther" in theaters, the complexity of Wakanda takes on new meaning in our current moment. Compared with President Trump's disparagement of Haiti and African nations, he said, "You have Wakanda as a place of Afro futurism, of what African nations can be or what they could have been and still be had colonialism not taken place." (Mr. Joseph's campaign, which raised more than 40,000 to take children from the Boys Girls Club of Harlem to the film, has led to more than 70 similar efforts.) The Black Panther's regal alter ego, Prince T'Challa, is a draw as well, said Jonathan Gray, author of the forthcoming "Illustrating the Race: Representing Blackness in American Comics." He explained: "Now there you have every black boy's fantasy. He is richer than Bill Gates, smarter than Elon Musk, better looking than Denzel." And with vibranium, "he is the hereditary ruler of the richest nation on Earth. The movie is about wish fulfillment. When you see Bruce Wayne, this dashing billionaire, where is the black version of that? You got T'Challa." In this sense, "Black Panther" is as much an alternative to our contemporary racial discourse as it is a throwback, not only a desire for what could have been but also a nostalgia for what we once had. "I don't think it's a coincidence that this movie appears precisely in a moment in which our politics seems inescapable," Mr. Gray said, adding later that "Black Panther" should be understood in a political context in which both the legal gains of the civil rights movement and the interracial optimism of the Obama era have been undermined. For Marc Bernardin, an author of the comic book "Genius" and host of the podcast "Fatman on Batman" with the director Kevin Smith, the movie taps into "the cultural longing for what Obama was, the time in which you didn't check your phone every day hoping the world wasn't on fire again. A time where devaluation of young black life wasn't as stark and awful as it feels like it is right now." Simply going to the movie can be interpreted as a small gesture of protest and a grand expression of cultural pride. "Black Panther" has already become a kind of shared language. "Last week I was at the mall when another black dude passed by me," Mr. Bernardin said. "We gave each other a nod, and he said, 'Black Panther's' in a month, yo.' That was his version of 'what's up,' his way of marking of time." In addition to fans wearing custom made Black Panther costumes and African inspired haute couture to the premiere last month, African American civic groups and others are buying out movie theaters so African American children can experience the film with one another. In Oakland, Calif., LaDawn James Williams originally intended to fly to New York to see it with her college friends from Howard University. Instead she plans to host a "Black Panther" screening for her local chapter of Jack and Jill of America. She, her husband, and their 9 year old daughter and 7 year old son will watch it with more than 90 other African American families in a private viewing. "We'll be able to take the mask off," she said. "It's going to be really subtle, but we're going to get certain things about the movie and its language that only we know. So I want this to be something we do together: my family, my chapter and my community." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
Six middle and high school students sat around a table on a Monday afternoon, watching a psychologist write three letters on a whiteboard: "What does O.C.D. stand for?" the psychologist, Avital Falk, asked the group. "Because it's messing up our lives," said Sydney, a chatty 14 year old with long red hair. These young people have O.C.D., an illness characterized by recurrent, intrusive thoughts and repetitive behaviors, or other problems with anxiety. They also are participants in a novel treatment program at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York. Typically patients with O.C.D. see a therapist once a week for an hour over several months, but this program consists of two hour group meetings three times a week, plus up to four additional hours of individual therapy per week. Some patients complete the treatment in just two weeks. The program, which began in 2016, is part of a new wave of concentrated, intensive therapy programs for psychiatric disorders. The Child Mind Institute in New York launched a two day "boot camp" for teens with social anxiety last year. The Houston O.C.D. Program in Texas operated its first weeklong treatment program for adolescents during spring break for local schools. In Atlanta, Emory University is in its third year of a two week therapy program for veterans with post traumatic stress disorder, funded by the Wounded Warrior Project. Similar offerings for veterans are now available at U.C.L.A. Health in California, Rush University Medical Center in Chicago and Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. The approach is gaining popularity in part because of new research showing that for both adults and children, the concentrated approach is generally just as effective, and in some ways more effective, as treatment that is spread out over several months. A meta analysis of randomized, controlled trials published last year in the journal Behaviour Research and Therapy found remission rates of 54 percent for children in intensive, concentrated cognitive behavioral therapy (C.B.T.) for anxiety disorders and 57 percent for those in standard C.B.T., a difference that was not statistically significant. Just 2.3 percent of patients who did the concentrated therapy dropped out during treatment, compared with 6.5 percent for standard C.B.T. At Emory, only 5 percent of veterans in the two week PTSD program left before finishing, according to a paper published in the fall of 2017. The intensive treatments seem to work best for anxiety related disorders. They usually consist of C.B.T., in which patients repeatedly expose themselves to the very situations they fear. Supporters of the approach said that while it may involve a similar number of total hours as weekly therapy, relief is quicker. Thomas H. Ollendick, a psychology professor at Virginia Tech, who helped pioneer a one day treatment for phobias and has studied a one week treatment for O.C.D., said this can be crucial for people whose illnesses are preventing them from attending school or work. And with concentrated treatment, Dr. Ollendick said, "you don't have a week in between to unlearn what you learned in the session or have additional experiences that can lead you to think, 'Oh, I better be afraid.'" The concentrated format allows therapists to deliver evidence based treatment to more people, since it's easier for patients who live in places without access to high quality therapy to travel for a one or two week program, said Donna B. Pincus, director of the Child and Adolescent Fear and Anxiety Treatment Program at Boston University, which runs five to eight day intensive treatment programs for panic disorder, separation anxiety disorder and phobias. Even patients who live nearby may find it easier to take off a week of work or plan treatment during a school break, rather than deal with the logistics of weekly therapy. "People are pulled out of their everyday lives for two weeks they are not dealing with work and spouses and kids," said Barbara O. Rothbaum, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Emory University School of Medicine. "It really is a kind of a bubble for them to do this work." Some patients use the concentrated therapies to kick start treatment or as an adjunct to longer term therapy. Christina Uzzi, 14, of Fair Haven, N.J., usually does weekly therapy via Skype with her psychologist at the Child Mind Institute. She also did two of the two day social anxiety "boot camps" at the institute last summer before starting eighth grade at a new school. The long days gave her hours to practice things that are hard for her, like asking strangers for directions and public speaking, with the help of her therapist and a group of other teenagers with similar fears. The boot camp "was a big boost all at once," said her mother, Jennifer Uzzi. "I think she definitely improved to be able to chitchat with people and order in a restaurant." Going through Emory's two week PTSD program with a small group of fellow veterans helped Detrice Burriss, 52, stick with therapy and stay motivated, she said. Each day, her group would meet for breakfast or coffee before therapy. "It was almost like I've got to be in formation at nine o'clock. I've got to go, or they are going to be looking for me," said Ms. Burriss, who developed PTSD after an I.E.D. hit a vehicle in front of the one in which she was riding in Iraq in 2009. Several researchers in the United States point to the work of scientists in Norway, led by Gerd Kvale and Bjarne Hansen, as the source of much of the American surge in excitement around intensive, concentrated treatment. Therapists there have treated more than 700 patients with O.C.D., panic disorder and social anxiety disorder with a four day protocol. Patients meet in small groups, but each works with his or her own therapist. The core of the treatment is two eight to 10 hour days of "exposure and response prevention," in which patients actively approach the situations that induce their anxiety and avoid engaging in any behavior to reduce the anxiety. In the mornings, therapists travel with patients to their homes, to stores and all around their communities so they can encounter as many situations as possible that spur anxiety, a method that has been shown to increase the therapy's effectiveness. Patients continue to do exposures on their own in the afternoons and evenings. Before treatment, 70 percent of patients were classified as having severe O.C.D., and nearly three quarters had previously been in therapy. Some 42 percent were taking antidepressants. The study did not have a control group. At the Weill Cornell program, the participants, ages 10 to 15, practice exposures in a mock class. Dr. Falk gives them assignments to induce anxiety based on their individual triggers. She told the 12 year old in the red tie and blazer who is petrified of not acting "right" out of fear it will cause something bad to happen to "be really inappropriate and rude, and eat in the middle of class and make a mess." She instructed a 12 year old girl in a Harry Potter "Butterbeer" T shirt to write about what she did on her recent birthday. The child has many compulsive behaviors involving writing and often has to erase and rewrite, something that causes problems in school. For a 10 year old with braces and a purple streak in her hair whose O.C.D. is triggered by not knowing certain things, Dr. Falk instructed the other kids to "tell me something secret and rude" that she couldn't hear. As class got underway one day, the boy, at Dr. Falk's urging, ditched his tie and blazer. He was eating an orange. "Make fun of me," encouraged a 14 year old who has spent most of the session doodling. The girl with the writing compulsion put down her pen and wailed. "Oh my god. It looks like an 'I' with a top hat on it," she said, staring at her paper. Dr. Falk looked it over. "I can understand it perfectly," she said. "Let it go, which is going to be better for you long term." Before the kids left, Dr. Falk wrote a new homework assignment on a colorful notecard for each of them, more exposures to complete before the next group meeting the very next day. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
HAMMONASSET BEACH STATE PARK, Conn. The newly hatched saltmarsh sparrows are helpless, all but featherless, with reddish skin, barely visible in the evening light. Mosquitoes buzz as Samantha Apgar holds aside a tangle of marsh grass, or salt hay, to show me the hidden nest. It's the size of half a baseball, tucked in under a tangle of grass. The incoming tide is rising over the soles of our boots and the hatchlings won't stay dry long. Ms. Apgar, a graduate student at the University of Connecticut, is working with Christopher Elphick, an ornithologist there, to record what happens when high tides flood the nests of marsh birds. She has automatic video cameras and is also collaborating with videographers from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, one of whom has his camera trained on this nest and had recorded the hatching of these babies a couple of hours before. She warns me that the outlook for these fragile hatchlings is grim. If they last through the night, they still have five days of increasingly high tides ahead of them until the new moon. "I don't think they're going to make it," Ms. Apgar says. The species, which breeds in coastal marshes from Maine to Virginia, and lives only on the Atlantic Coast, has always been at the mercy of time and tide, nesting between the highest spring tides. But now a sea level rise of a fraction of an inch a year caused by climate change is pushing tides higher and higher, threatening the birds' survival. Their population has been declining about nine percent a year since the late 1990s. They now number somewhere from 40,000 to 80,000, although overall population estimates are tentative because the birds are not always easy to find. Dr. Elphick and his colleagues recently predicted that they will reach a threshold, when the highest spring tides come too often to allow the birds time to raise their young. "After that threshold is crossed," he says, "these birds have maybe six years before they're extinct." Like the Science Times page on Facebook. Sign up for the Science Times newsletter. The birds' precarious existence is one example of the threat to the coastal marshes of the Eastern Seaboard and all the species that depend on them. The end may not come gradually for the species living on the edge. "We could suddenly lose a lot of stuff very quickly," Dr. Elphick says. "I think that's what's scary to those of us who study this stuff. The recognition of how rapidly things can change." In the morning, the newly hatched sparrows are gone, drowned in the night's high tide and the mother sparrow is already looking for fathers for her second brood. She can't waste time; the tides won't wait. 'It's a hard way to be born, I think.' Those hatchlings drowned on the night of June 10, near the beginning of a nesting season that runs from May through August. Ms. Apgar followed nests at the Connecticut site throughout the season. Of 59 nests found, 40 failed. She knows that 16 were flooded and failed. The others may have, but she doesn't have the evidence. Four nests produced young that survived at least long enough to leave the nest, and she doesn't know what happened to the hatchlings in the other 15. This is not research for the faint of heart. "They get out of the egg and pretty soon after are inundated with cold water and either drown or make it through and fledge," Ms. Apgar said. "It's a hard way to be born I think." Dr. Elphick said it is common to come out and find "little baby chicks drowned everywhere." But, he said, "that's part of their life history. That has happened ever since they've been living in marshes, to some extent." Dr. Elphick says it's very difficult to pin down an evolutionary cause for a behavior, but for the female sparrows, promiscuity seems to make good sense. Mating quickly is of utmost importance so you can't be too choosy, and if you're not being picky about prospective fathers, "you may be better off mating with multiple males." Unfortunately, none of these apparent adaptations will help if the birds don't have around 23 days between nest flooding tides to lay eggs, incubate them and raise the chicks to the stage when they're able to leave the nest. That's where lunar cycles and tides come in. The highest spring tides, very likely to flood the nests, occur roughly every 28 days. Whether the highest tide is at the new or full moon depends on multiyear cycles. Now, new moon tides are the highest. No matter, there is always a secondary peak midway between the highest tides. Right now those secondary peaks don't cause nest flooding as predictably as the new moon tides do. The end, though near, is not absolutely certain. The birds have moved to new habitats in the past, in the sense that the marshes of the Eastern Seaboard were not where they are now when the species appeared thousand years ago. The Hammonasset marshes were under glaciers. And the marshes were miles east. The sparrows traveled with the marshes as the plants shifted along the changing location of the shore. Building now limits that movement, although a recent paper suggests there is more room than previously thought for coastal changes. And the sea is rising fast. The pressure's on to come up with other approaches. "The conservation of this species right now and not just this species but the whole suite of things that live in salt marshes centers around where are the places where it's possible for there to be marshes 30 years, 50 years, 80 years from now," Dr. Elphick said. Inevitably a sort of gallows humor evolves in studying a species that seems destined for extinction. Enter the ghost cameras. Ms. Apgar and Dr. Elphick are making video recordings of nests during high spring tides so they can see what actually happens. At what age can the chicks climb up the grass to survive? Do they live after being inundated? What do the mothers do? And they do this in the dark. "Most of the chicks were dying at night in the years we had been studying the birds," Dr. Elphick said. So they needed cameras that could record video at night. Most small video cameras have infrared filters to improve colors, with one notable exception. "I wound up buying these cameras," Ms. Apgar said, holding one up for inspection, "that are actually from a paranormal activities shop." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
A nurse prepared a flu shot for a 6 month old in Pittsburgh in February.Credit...Kristian Thacker for The New York Times In Britain, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been waging his own pro flu shot campaign. Last month, he labeled people who oppose flu vaccines "nuts" and announced the country's largest ever rollout of the shots. In April, one of the few reasons Australia allowed citizens to break the country's strict lockdown was to venture out for their flu shots. The flu vaccine is rarely mandated in the U.S. except by some health care facilities and nursery schools, but this month the statewide University of California system announced that because of the pandemic, it is requiring all 230,000 employees and 280,000 students to get the flu vaccine by November 1. A life threatening respiratory illness that crowds emergency rooms and intensive care units, flu shares symptoms with Covid 19: fever, headache, cough, sore throat, muscle aches and fatigue. Flu can leave patients vulnerable to a harsher attack of Covid 19, doctors believe, and that coming down with both viruses at once could be disastrous. The 2019 20 flu season in the United States was mild, according to the C.D.C. But a mild flu season still takes a toll. In preliminary estimates, the C.D.C. says that cases ranged from 39 million to 56 million, resulting in up to 740,000 hospitalizations and from 24,000 to 62,000 flu related deaths. But now, fighting flu proactively during the continuing pandemic presents significant challenges: not only how to administer the shot safely and readily, but also how to prompt people to get a shot that a majority of Americans have typically distrusted, dismissed and skipped. With many places where the flu shot is administered en masse now inaccessible including offices and plants that offered it free to employees on site and school health clinics officials have been reaching out to local health departments, health care providers and corporations to arrange distribution. From now through Oct. 31, publicity campaigns will blast through social media, billboards, television and radio. Because the shot will be more difficult to access this year, people are being told to get it as soon as possible, although immunity does wane. There will be flu shot tents with heaters in parking lots and pop up clinics in empty school buildings. Because of the efforts, vaccine makers are projecting that a record 98 million flu shots will be given this year in the United States, about 15 percent more than doses ordered last year. The Kaiser Permanente health care system will be flooding more than 12 million of its members with flu shot reminders via postcard, email, text and phone calls. Pharmacies and even supermarkets are expected to play a bigger role than they have in previous years. As of this week, Walgreens and CVS will have flu shots available. Walgreens will be hosting additional off site flu vaccine clinics in community centers and churches. To reduce contact time, CVS is allowing patients to fill out paperwork digitally. In New York City, which averages about 2,000 flu related deaths a year, the health department has been reaching out to hundreds of independent pharmacies to administer the shots, because they are often located in outer borough neighborhoods where the coronavirus has been rampaging. The health department has a detailed online flu vaccine locator. "Access is a problem for all adult vaccines," said L. J. Tan, chief strategy officer for the Immunization Action Coalition, a nonprofit group that works to increase vaccination rates, who was an early promoter of the term twindemic. "Adults may think, If I can get the flu shot easily, I might consider it." "But a vaccine not given won't protect anyone," said Dr. Jane R. Zucker, assistant commissioner for the Bureau of Immunization at the New York City Health Department, which has been hosting webinars for providers about how to have conversations about the flu shot with hesitant patients. As health officials note, should a vaccinated person contract the flu, the severity will almost certainly be reduced, hospitalization rarely necessary. Especially with Covid 19 raging, public officials reason, those odds look pretty good. Another reason people give for not getting the shot is they think it makes them sick. "People who say 'I'll never get it because it gives me the flu' have not had the flu and don't know what it is," said Patsy Stinchfield, senior director of infection prevention at Children's Minnesota. "What you're feeling is your body's immune response to the virus's antigens," said Ms. Stinchfield, a member of the C.D.C.'s influenza work group. "You may feel flu ish. And that's a good thing. It's your body's way of saying, 'I am ready for the flu, and I won't get as sick if I get the real one.'" Public campaigns will describe the shot as a critical weapon during the pandemic. "Hopefully people will say, 'There's no Covid vaccine so I can't control that, but I do have access to the flu vaccine and I can get that,'" Ms. Stinchfield said. "It gives you a little power to protect yourself." Other campaigns will emphasize familial and community responsibility. Usually, flu vaccine compliance rates among people ages 18 to 49 are low. Vermont's, for example, is only about 27 percent. Christine Finley, the state's immunization program manager, believes that rates will improve because of the pandemic's stay at home households. "People are more aware that the risks they take can negatively impact others," she said. "They're often taking care of young children and older parents." But though American public health authorities usually look to Australia's flu season as a predictive, Australians say this year it's not a reliable indicator. "This situation is of no comfort as these measures do not apply to the United States where the populace has never been effectively physical distancing," nor have the country's entry restrictions been as onerous, said Dr. Paul Van Buynder, a public health professor at Griffith University in Queensland, Australia. All that Americans can do is get vaccinated against flu, he added, because circulation of the coronavirus remains high. "It is likely they will have a significant influenza season this northern winter," he said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
On the vast spectrum of playmaking, the New York Musical Festival hews much closer to candy colored convention than to gritty, gray outre. It's a Manhattan institution with a Middle American cautiousness about it a place hospitable to new work that doesn't push boundaries or ruffle feathers . Yet "Till," by far the best of four shows I saw at this year's festival, may unsettle your very soul. It's the story of Emmett Till, and its run, which ends Sunday, is timed to coincide with what would have been his 78th birthday, had he not been brutally murdered in the summer of 1955. A black teenager from Chicago who had just turned 14, he was visiting relatives in the Jim Crow South when some white men snatched his future away from him. With a book by Leo Schwartz and D.C. Cathro , and music and lyrics by Mr. Schwartz, "Till" is the story of that summer of sweet, funny, rambunctious Emmett (Taylor A. Blackman); his mother, Mamie (Denielle Marie Gray), who's trying so hard to bring her son up right and keep him safe; and his teasing grandmother, Alma (Judith Franklin), who cheers Emmett and Mamie on. In a smart and inventive production, beautifully cast and sensitively directed by N.J. Agwuna at the Pershing Square Signature Center, this musical achieves something difficult and rare. It blows the dust of history off a tragedy and brings a martyr to exuberant, mischievous, complicated life. Emmett's not a saint here, nor is he the corpse in the infamous photo that his mother wanted the world to see. He's a regular kid a little cocky, a little dreamy. And like Mamie, we wish the world for him. With an excellent cast of six lending their rich voices to a score that's part gospel, part old fashioned musical (music direction and arrangements are by Lena Gabrielle, choreography is by Kenny Ingram), "Till" cuts between Chicago and Money, Miss., where the white characters are sinister in half masks and gloves. (Costumes are by Andy Jean.) Emmett, for all his self assurance, and all the efforts of his family to prepare him, doesn't truly understand the danger there. "Till" is not a perfect musical; it's a show still en route to its final form. For now, a couple of Mamie's songs seem awkwardly placed, disrupting the action and emotion, while the event that incites Emmett's murderers needs to be depicted with greater clarity so the audience isn't left puzzled at a crucial moment. There's also an unintended tonal danger in the script, which this production skirts but others might fall into: the perception that Emmett, by failing to fathom the perils of a racist society, might in any way share the blame for his death that belongs to his killers alone. As one character reassures another, speaking about something else entirely: "Their actions could never be your fault." "Till," which in its final moments projects that chilling photo, is an inherently political work. So, in a different way, is "Leaving Eden," a show that feels like half of a very promising musical. With a book and lyrics by Jenny Waxman, and music by Ben Page, it opens with captivating harmonies sung by three women who straddle two eras: the current day and the dawn of humanity. Adam (Ian Ward) is in some ways a nice enough guy and, hey, he is the only guy around but he makes a lot of secondhand pronouncements cloaked in God's word, as a way of getting Lilith (Sarah Anne Martinez) to behave. She's hard to control, and control is Adam's whole game. Eve (Gabrielle McClinton), the second woman, turns out to be easier to manipulate. The show's latter day plot is about Lily (Janet Krupin) and Adam (Azudi Onyejekwe), whose tiresome relationship gets predictably tangled up with a modern day Eve (Ms. McClinton). But it struggles to mold itself to the biblical parallels. The best thing about the show, directed by Susanna Wolk with music direction by Nathan Dame, was Ms. Martinez's New York debut. Comic and poignant, delicate and bold, it was a terrific performance, and I wish I could tell you to see it. But "Leaving Eden," alas, has already ended its festival run. "Flying Lessons," a poppy, madly overstuffed show that continues through Sunday, also boasts a standout performance from an actress I'd never seen before. Her name is Michelle Coben, she has perfect comic pitch, and if I tell you that her voice is part squeaky toy and part foghorn, I want you to understand that she's somehow a delight to listen to. Written by Donald Rupe, who also directs (additional music is by Cesar De La Rosa , music direction by Jason M. Bailey), "Flying Lessons" is about Isabella (Esmeralda Nazario), an eighth grader seeking to discover the formula for greatness in her research for a paper on Amelia Earhart (Megan Valle) and Frederick Douglass (Brandon Martin). A smart kid sinking under the weight of too much responsibility at home, she has no sympathy for her beleaguered, financially stretched mother, Lydia (Desiree Montes), but she will by the end of this lesson teaching show. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
Children at the 46th edition of the Angouleme International Comics Festival in France. ANGOULEME, France It's a big year for comic book anniversaries. Batman's 80th is this year, and Asterix is turning 60. But at the Angouleme International Comics Festival in France, which finished on Sunday, there was a sense that the form's best days may be yet to come in the French speaking world, at least. "It's a kind of golden age," said Jean Luc Fromental, a comic book author who also runs a graphic novel imprint for the publisher Denoel. "There has never been so much talent. There have never been so many interesting books published." There are now more comic books published annually in France and Belgium than ever before, according to the festival's artistic director, Stephane Beaujean. "The market has risen from 700 books per year in the 1990s to 5,000 this year," he said in an interview. "I don't know any cultural industry which has had that kind of increase." The bumper year in France and Belgium contrasts with a mixed situation worldwide. Comichron, a website that reports on comic book sales in the United States, where the market is worth around 1 billion, says that sales there are declining. But in terms of respect and recognition, comics are on the way up. In July, "Sabrina," by the American artist Nick Drnaso, became the first graphic novel to be nominated for the Man Booker Prize, Britain's most prestigious literary award. "March: Book Three," a graphic novel about the civil rights movement, won the National Book Award for Young People's Literature in 2016. Want to keep up with the latest and greatest in books? This is a good place to start. None Learn what you should be reading this fall: Our collection of reviews on books coming out this season includes biographies, novels, memoirs and more. See what's new in October: Among this month's new titles are novels by Jonathan Franzen, a history of Black cinema and a biography by Katie Couric. Nominate a book: The New York Times Book Review has just turned 125. That got us wondering: What is the best book that was published during that time? Listen to our podcast: Featuring conversations with leading figures in the literary world, from Colson Whitehead to Leila Slimani, the Book Review Podcast helps you delve deeper into your favorite books. In Angouleme, a city about 450 kilometers, or 280 miles, southwest of Paris, comic books aren't merely an annual preoccupation. Visitors arriving by train are greeted outside the station by an obelisk honoring Rene Goscinny, one of the creators of Asterix. There's a comics museum, and a comics library. The festival, spread out in venues across the city, featured comic books on just about every conceivable subject the life of Jules Verne, the wines of Burgundy, erotic stories set in space, even one whose main character is a gym sock. The St. Martial church was repurposed as a shop specializing in comic book titles for Christian readers, whether modern spiritual tales or retellings of Bible stories. The Angouleme event is unusual in its embrace of comics from around the world, including, but not limited to, those from the three traditions that dominate the form here: French Belgian, American and Japanese manga. "It's the only place in the world where you can see all the comics created in the world," said Beaujean, who this year has doubled the size of an area where publishers can buy rights to international titles. Books featuring classic characters like Donald Duck, Wonder Woman and Tintin were available in both freshly printed form and as secondhand rarities. And while occasional encounters with men in superhero outfits are unavoidable at an event like this, Angouleme has a very different atmosphere from its American counterparts such as Comic Con. "In America, it's about the pop culture, which would include everything from Marvel movies to Lego," said the American comic book artist Terry Moore, the author of a 26 year old series, "Strangers in Paradise." "In France, I'm seeing that it's about books, books, books," he said. On Saturday, France's culture minister, Franck Riester, gave a speech comparing the event's role in the world of comics to that of the Cannes Film Festival in cinema, and Jean Michel Blanquer, the education minister, visited on Thursday. The attendance by government officials underscored the way the "ninth art," as comic books are sometimes referred to in France, is not a niche pursuit but a mainstream activity. The Angouleme festival announces a number of prizes each year, their recipients chosen by fellow comics artists. This year, for the first time, women won both of the festival's biggest awards. A jury of seven artists selected the debut graphic novel by the American author Emil Ferris, "My Favorite Thing Is Monsters," as winner of the Fauve d'Or, or Golden Wildcat award, for the year's best book. The Japanese Manga artist Rumiko Takahashi won the Grand Prix, the festival's lifetime achievement award. Takahashi began publishing manga comics in 1978 and her books, including "Inuyasha," about a time traveling schoolgirl, have sold more than 200 million copies. She is only the second woman to win the prize. Angouleme is a cornerstone of the comics industry in France and Belgium, but some in the field say the exuberant headlines conceal a more complex picture. A common refrain is that the huge increase in titles has meant that, while there's more money in the industry, there are also a greater number of authors grasping for a share of it. Benoit Peeters, an author of comic books who has also written a biography of the philosopher Jacques Derrida, said in an interview that despite the increase in overall readership, "the sales of each book, except for those like Asterix and manga, are going down." Peeters founded an organization called The General State of Comics to lobby publishers and the French government to defend the interests of comic book artists. He said that publishers were hedging their bets by signing up for too many books, with smaller titles often receiving inadequate support as a result. "I think the publishers need to make some choices," he said. "When they choose a book they have to defend it and promote it." But in France, at least, comic books were taken seriously as an art form, Peeters said. "When I was a young author I came from a more literary world," he said. "People said, 'What are you doing with comics? You are a clever person. You should work with movies or literature.' Now, nobody would say that." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
Each June, two students are chosen as winners of the Jimmy Awards, a sort of Tonys for teenagers. Step into their high kicking world as 74 theatrical hopefuls from around the country compete for stardom. Ben Platt, the 23 year old Tony award winning star of "Dear Evan Hansen," loves the National High School Musical Theater Awards. Or to use his words, he is "totally obsessed" with the competition, also known as the Jimmy Awards, now in its ninth year. The Jimmys take over Broadway's Minskoff Theater for one sparkly Monday night each June, transforming the set of "The Lion King" into a showcase for 74 of the nation's most talented theatrical hopefuls. The teenage contestants warble ballads, show off their fan kicks and smile until their faces hurt in an attempt to win college scholarships and cash prizes. And, if they are really lucky, they just might catch the eye of a powerful Broadway casting director. Mr. Platt was not discovered through the Jimmys though the casting director of "Dear Evan Hansen," Tara Rubin, serves as a regular judge but as this year's host, he admitted during the June 26 ceremony that he is a rabid fan, having binged on past performances thanks to YouTube. "I watch those videos religiously," Mr. Platt said after the show via phone. "If I was 17 again, I would have one million percent wanted to be in the Jimmys. I would have focused my whole year around it." And his participation must have felt particularly exciting for its young contestants he is, after all, not that much older than them, and fresh off winning a Tony for playing an awkward teenager struggling to connect. One contestant, Sky Nathan Frank, 17, who attends the San Diego School of Creative Performing Arts, said that meeting Mr. Platt was one of the highlights of his week. "Being around actors like him in New York, I can feel the energy in the streets," Mr. Frank said. Thanks to musicals like "Dear Evan Hansen" and "Hamilton" (and cover versions of their songs that flood the internet) Broadway seems to be having a youth boom. The Jimmys tap directly into that, while also giving its contestants a glimpse of the harsh realities of life as an actor. While the show itself is a joyful two hours of song and dance, in the end, a panel of judges must select two top winners. Most of the contestants go back to their hometowns empty handed, and must decide whether to throw themselves at a stage career. It is a high stakes affair, as old as "A Star Is Born" and as of the moment as "The Voice," packed with some of the most talented students in the nation, one that had Mr. Platt beaming from the podium. The idea came from Van Kaplan, the executive director of the Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera. He saw the talent coming out of Pittsburgh's Gene Kelly Awards, a regional competition honoring high school musical theater begun in 1991, and realized that other cities were producing equally exciting young winners in their local contests. Mr. Kaplan had the vision of taking the program national, by bringing the best actor and best actress from each region to New York for a 10 day, rigorous musical theater boot camp culminating in a two act awards spectacular on a Manhattan stage. Thirty two students came to New York in 2009, the competition's first year, held at N.Y.U., which is a partner. The theater owner and producer James Nederlander, who died last summer, came on as the main sponsor, and the awards took on his name. "The Tonys, but for high school," as Mr. Kaplan envisioned it, has ballooned to involve over 1,300 high schools and 50,000 students at the local level. For the first time, the finale sold out the Minskoff. After the Broadway League stepped in to manage the national program in 2014, some 15 new regional competitions like the St. Louis High School Musical Theater Awards popped up to feed talent into the Broadway showcase. This year, 37 separate award shows around the country anointed a best actor and best actress, and sent them to live together in N.Y.U. dormitories and to learn musical numbers, complete with full choreography, at a breakneck pace. Ms. Lalama arrived at the first opening number rehearsal carrying a notebook scribbled with X's and O's grouped into formations. "I come from a football family, and this is how I draw dance patterns" she told the gaggle of bright eyed high school students standing in front of her in spandex pants and dance shoes. "Give this 150 percent!" Ms. Lalama shouted, as the students prepared to run through the number again. The opening number is always a cheeky mega mix of contemporary Broadway hits woven together with aplomb by the musical director Michael Moricz. This year, the contestants quickly transitioned from harmonizing the teen angst of "Dear Evan Hansen" to stomping out the Celtic beats of "Come From Away." The group number is followed by several mash up medleys of solos that students performed to win their regional competitions. The teenagers are in full school production costume whether Phantom or Wednesday Addams and comedic juxtapositions are introduced; a proud Don Quixote of "Man of La Mancha" may interact with a nebbishy Seymour of "Little Shop of Horrors" in the context of a single number. Because the number of participants has swelled in recent years, not every student can appear in a showcase medley. "We'd be there for four hours," Mr. Kaplan said. So, for the second year in a row, he devised a group number that gives the remaining students a chance to woo the judges. (This year it was a tribute to shows Mr. Nederlander had produced or presented.) Because of the rapid rise of one Jimmys alumnus, Eva Noblezada, there is new pressure on the participants: the chance to suddenly land a Broadway role simply by singing on the Minskoff stage. Ms. Noblezada, 21, who currently plays Kim in "Miss Saigon" at the Broadway Theater and was nominated for a Tony this year, was first spotted by Ms. Rubin, the casting director, who served as a judge in 2013. "Obviously, I wouldn't have gotten 'Saigon' if it wasn't for that," Ms. Noblezada said. (She did not win a Jimmy Award.) "I hear Eva's break talked about among the kids a lot," Ms. Lalama said. She also mentioned Ryan McCartan, another former contestant who last year landed a major role on Fox's television adaptation of "The Rocky Horror Picture Show." Justin Rivers gets it, too. "I know that rejection is a part of this industry, but I know it's what is meant for me," he said, breathless during a short break between dance rehearsals at N.Y.U.'s Tisch Hall earlier in the week. At 18, Mr. Rivers was returning to the Jimmys for a second year, having again won his spot via the local awards in Charlotte, N.C. His classmate and childhood best friend, Amina Faye, won best actress at the Jimmys last year with a solo from "Ragtime," a show they starred in opposite each other. For all these reasons, Mr. Rivers said he was feeling particular pressure coming into this year's awards. "I feel like I have something to prove. And because I just graduated high school, it's my last chance." (He plans to major in musical theater at Point Park University in Pittsburgh in the fall.) Each contestant worked during the week on a solo with a coach, a working member of the Broadway community. Adam Kantor, who recently starred as Motel in "Fiddler on the Roof," encouraged Mr. Rivers to connect his song to a personal experience. "I am singing 'It's Hard to Speak My Heart' from 'Parade,' about a man who is falsely accused of molesting a child," he said. "And Adam asked me what it made me think of, and I said, 'Racial profiling.'" "He asked if it ever happened to me, and I said, 'Yeah,'" Mr. Rivers said, of racial profiling. "And I told him the story of one time it happened and how I felt about it, and I channeled that emotion." Sofia Deler, 16, of Boone High School in Orlando, Fla., is one of the youngest in the competition, and abandoned her strict tennis training to pursue singing instead. Her decision paid off on Monday night, Ms. Deler won best actress with a tender interpretation of "She Used to Be Mine" from "Waitress." After the show, Ms. Deler was given the full star treatment at a Planet Hollywood after party, posing in front of flashbulbs and a glossy Jimmys banner as she met members of the news media. She held on tight to the best actor winner, Tony Moreno, 18, of Trinity Prep School in Winter Park, Fla., who won with a rousing rendition of "Disappear" from the "The Burnt Part Boys." Their wins are the first time in Jimmy's history that two contestants from the same regional competition took home top national honors. "It's overwhelming," said Ms. Deler, squeezing Mr. Moreno's hand and looking like she might hyperventilate. In his acceptance speech, Mr. Moreno, who will study musical theater at the University of Arizona in the fall, reflected on the previous week. He said that the group had seen "Come From Away" on Broadway and really took in its message of finding community in a strange, new land. "We were 74 people who had no idea who each other were," Mr. Moreno said. Now, he said, they had become a real company. And they had put on a Broadway show. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
When the last presidential race was in its early stages, Katie Glueck was a senior at Northwestern University. Now covering the Ted Cruz campaign for Politico, Ms. Glueck, 26, belongs to a select group of millennial reporters who have a front row seat to the greatest political show on earth. While youth is a virtue for those covering the turbulent 2016 campaign, it has been known to get in the way now and then. Caitlin Huey Burns, 28, who covers primaries and caucuses for the website RealClear Politics, said, "I often get asked by voters if I'm writing for the school paper." Rosie Gray, 26, who covers the campaign for BuzzFeed, said that her age is only occasionally a factor. "Honestly, the times I feel the most young is when I'm talking to a voter on the trail and I sound like a pipsqueak saying, 'Excuse me, ma'am, can I ask you a question?'" she said. "A lot of that had to do with how you present yourself and how you act. You can either act like a young little thing or not." And she disputed the notion that her age is much of an issue. "I'm not that young," she said. "I'm 26. Thirty is staring me down the barrel of a gun." But Maralee Schwartz, a former longtime political editor at The Washington Post, said that the rise of these correspondents is new indeed. "They've become much more prominent," Ms. Schwartz said, adding that 2012 "was the first year that you saw how many younger reporters were on the trail. One veteran reporter called me from the bus, stunned, saying: 'I am the oldest person here. One of them brought brownies.' They may lack experience, but they can keep pace with the changes and demands and responsibilities of the web." Having come of age during a historically unruly decade, the 20 something reporters are perhaps uniquely prepared for an unpredictable narrative featuring protagonists like the upstart Vermont socialist Bernie Sanders and Donald J. Trump, the reality television star turned front runner. After all, they belong to a generation jolted into political awareness in their childhood years by 9/11, and the news of their teenage years was heavy with the war on terror and a deep recession. They learned to doubt conventional wisdom when their elders told them that an insurgent named Barack Hussein Obama could never win the White House. And they joined the ranks of professional journalists at a time when older reporters were being laid off in droves and venerable publications were shutting down. As a result, they're supple. And unlike some of their colleagues, who came of age in the days of bulldog editions and ink stained fingers, they are at home in the social media sphere and are accustomed to working at digital speed. "I definitely think I have an advantage as a young person covering this, not only from an energy level but from a 'fresh eyes' perspective," said Ms. Huey Burns, a 2009 graduate of John Carroll University. "I don't have any kids," Ms. Huey Burns said. "I don't own a home. I don't own a car. I definitely have more flexibility to do this sort of thing, and I think it gets harder and harder to go out on the road when you have other obligations." Ms. Huey Burns, who has 7,200 Twitter followers, was speaking in an empty bakery in Irmo, S.C., on the outskirts of Columbia. In a matter of hours, the well funded Jeb Bush would quietly end his quiet campaign. "I get so excited on voting days," she said. "I just cannot wait to see what happens, and I love that feeling. I know it sounds weird, like I have no life." Such enthusiasm is a trait she shares with her fellow millennial reporters, who are not yet weary of the endless stump speeches and Hampton Inns. Story lines that may echo long ago campaign tales for those reporters old enough to have endured the hustings in the company of Michael Dukakis or Jack Kemp are fresh to those who haven't seen it all before. "It's amazing," said Ms. Glueck of Politico in the lobby of a Marriott in Columbia. "The other day we had the leading candidate for the Republican nomination tussling with the Pope. That's a rare moment, and it wasn't even necessarily the dominant story the following day." Unlike some of their more experienced colleagues, the reporters under 30 also seem to accept the notion that they are always on the clock, that keeping up a running patter with news hungry audiences via Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat is as much part of the job as filing a 550 word dispatch. "There are points where I have to remind myself, 'You haven't tweeted all day,' because it is an important part of building our brands and sharing our work, and that doesn't come to me naturally," said MJ Lee, a 29 year old politics reporter for CNN. "But there's no going back. "You have no excuse," continued Ms. Lee, who is married to Alexander Burns, who covers politics for The New York Times. "You have to be up to date on everything, because you can be. You have your iPhone and you have Twitter. Why aren't you up to date on the latest thing that happened two minutes ago? When I get on a plane and it's a small plane and there's no Wi Fi, I get uncomfortable." Ms. Lee, a 2009 Georgetown University graduate who majored in government and Chinese, said: "Yesterday, we went to dinner, and for some reason I stopped getting email on my phone. And that made me really nervous. And it was maybe 17 minutes." The energy required to maintain a constant online presence is just part of the challenge. To write or broadcast anything connected with politics in 2016 is to be exposed to instant backlash. Even a deeply reported and elegantly written campaign story is likely to draw malicious attack. This is especially true of female reporters, who often find themselves the target of misogynist online abuse. But an advantage of growing up with social media is the ability to withstand the torrent. When Ms. Gray, the BuzzFeed reporter, wrote about the "alt right" movement of white supremacists, she knew exactly what she would face, and she said she took it in stride. Ms. Gray, who has more than 51,000 Twitter followers, left New York University in 2012. Like the other young reporters on the beat, she is thankful for the circuslike atmosphere of the 2016 campaign. "I always try and bring running shoes in my suitcase and I use them maybe once a week on a trip," Ms. Phillip of The Washington Post said. "It's a trade off between sleep and exercise, and sleep is hard to come by, so I usually choose sleep." "It's hard to eat well," she said. "You end up eating chicken nuggets and French fries, driving to the next event and then calling it a day. There was a time in New Hampshire where it was a pretty busy day and I ate McDonald's twice. I think a little bit of my soul died." But she's not the only one. "We've given up our lives in order to do this, but you're not alone," Ms. Phillip said. "One of the best things is to know that when you're in that hotel room late at night, wondering whether you're able to do this, it's not just you. Other people are going through it, too." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
For centuries scientists, even Darwin, couldn't make sense of it: Tropical water contains so few nutrients, you can see right through it. And yet coral reefs are oases that support about a quarter of all known species on Earth. How could that be? The answer to this paradox, in part, is sugar. We tend to think the ocean tastes salty. But shaken, stirred and dissolved in seawater are microscopic morsels of sugars and carbs, known as dissolved organic matter. This dissolved substance makes up most of the organic material in the ocean. And it's especially abundant around coral reefs. "Imagine all these sugars dissolved into the ocean: If no one can use them, they might as well not be there," said Michelle Achlatis, a researcher at the California Academy of Sciences. This filter feeding sponge lives on coral reefs in the Indian and Pacific Oceans, straining tiny plankton to eat as it sits in the water. But its filtering cells also sip sugars from seawater. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
The judge's allegiance to Benfica, the biggest soccer club in Portugal, hardly made him an outlier. Benfica often boasts that it can count more than half of Portugal's population as supporters, and judges, prosecutors, top police officials and even the country's prime minister are regular guests in the directors' box at the team's matches. One judge has been so loyal, in fact, that he was honored last year with a Golden Eagle lapel pin, symbolic of his half century affiliation with the club. So when it was revealed that a judge, not the one given the lapel pin but another one, had joined the legion of critics assailing a 31 year old computer hacker, Rui Pinto, who had embarrassed Benfica by publishing some of its darkest secrets online, few rushed to his defense. But to lawyers for Pinto, who is scheduled to stand trial this summer, the judge's fandom was a serious problem: He had been assigned to oversee their client's case. Benfica's reach, though, may make that difficult. The Lisbon team is the biggest of Portugal's three most powerful clubs, a sporting and media colossus whose influence extends into nearly every aspect of daily life in the country. It is a team whose victories are celebrated, whose losses are mourned and whose fans hold positions of power in everything from media to banking to government. That power, Benfica's critics say, affords the club and its leaders a type of leverage that extends far beyond the soccer field, and explains why some refer to it as the Octopus. Ana Gomes, a career diplomat turned anticorruption campaigner and one of Pinto's most vocal supporters, said in a recent interview that she believed Benfica's outsize influence had given it a privileged status in Portuguese society, particularly when it came to legal matters. The phrase she used to describe that status "state capture" refers to the notion that private entities like corporations, or maybe even a popular sports team, can grow so powerful that they are able, if they choose, to unduly influence the state itself. "State capture is done through the capture of people who are in an institutional position in the state, and of course one key pillar is the justice system," said Gomes, who has been campaigning on Pinto's behalf. "If you have judges who are captured, or don't mind having the appearance of being captured, we have a problem." Benfica, which was asked for comment on Monday, provided a lengthy defense of its actions on Wednesday night, after publication of this article online. A club spokesman said via email that Benfica officials had never performed or suggested acts that "were not perfectly legal." He suggested that those speaking out against the club were motivated by envy because of its years of success, adding it was not true that Benfica had any undue influence in Portuguese society and that any suggestions to the contrary were conspiracy theories that "are the daily 'food' of internet, social media and, unfortunately, even trusted and reputed newspapers." For now, it is Pinto, though, who may have the biggest problem of all. In crossing Benfica and exposing its secrets, he has made a formidable enemy. Arrested last year in Hungary and extradited home to Portugal, Pinto now faces 25 years in prison for his hacking, which unearthed not only the secret documents of Benfica, but also others related to players, prominent agents and even the office of the country's attorney general. Those charges relate to details Pinto revealed on the so called Football Leaks platform, and not on a website through which he later funneled the majority of revelations about Benfica. The disclosures were hailed in some corners for shining a light on the underbelly of the world's most popular sport, but for now they are producing only anxiety for Pinto. That is because his fate now rests, potentially, in the hands of a judge, Paulo Registo, who may already have signaled he believes the defendant is guilty. After being picked to preside over Pinto's trial, Registo worked quickly to delete social media posts linking himself to Benfica, but not before they had been noticed by journalists and others. In one, the judge was reported to have liked a post that described Pinto as a "pirate." "The judge that will judge Rui Pinto doesn't hide his love for Benfica," read one headline from a news outlet that reprinted some of the messages. That association offered more ammunition to critics who have long bemoaned what they considered to be a close relationship between Portugal's most important institutions and Benfica. (One of the leaks revealed a list of contact details for 44 judges who had been invited to Benfica games.) But it was not the first time Registo had overseen a case closely linked to his favorite team. Before he was named to lead Pinto's trial, Registo served on a three judge panel overseeing a case involving Benfica's former legal director, Paulo Goncalves. The legal director was accused of trading perks like prime seats and club merchandise to two court officials who are accused of illegally gaining access to details of ongoing investigations into Benfica and then passing that confidential information to team officials. Yet even though he was the head of the club's legal department, and his actions benefited the club, the court allowed Goncalves to obscure his links to Benfica by claiming he had acted in a private capacity. A court of appeals judge later complained that Benfica itself should have been charged. But, then, Registo was not the only judge handling a case in which Benfica held an interest who was later revealed to be a devoted supporter of the club. Shortly after being selected to hear the case, Pires, who also owned stock in Benfica, was invited by the club to visit its training complex. Porto is currently appealing the ruling, but the frequency of outcomes that appear to have benefited Benfica and the contents of some of Pinto's leaks which included a database with the names and addresses of some of Portugal's most senior judges and notes on games they had been invited to attend have renewed questions about how far the club's influence extends. "You need to understand Portuguese history to understand the importance of football in our culture, politics, even in our everyday lives," said Mario Figueiredo, a former president of the Portuguese league. He said that several of the presidents of Portugal's three biggest clubs had often found themselves in legal trouble, but that none had ever been prosecuted while in office. "Being the president is a form of protection," he said. More than a decade ago, for example, Porto's longtime president, Jorge Nuno Pinto da Costa, was cleared of involvement in a corruption scandal after wiretap evidence that appeared to link him to a scheme to bribe referees was deemed inadmissible by a judge. There was also controversy in 2017, when a judge, who had confirmed he was a Porto fan, ruled the club could continue disseminating the content of Benfica's emails, a decision that was later overturned on appeal. Whether Registo will continue to oversee the Pinto trial is less clear. On Monday, after details of his links to Benfica were published by Portuguese news outlets, and after Pinto's lawyers complained, Registo wrote to the court of appeals asking to be recused. No decision on his request has yet to be made. Benfica said it would seek legal action against Pinto and "all the criminals that have hacked, robbed and insulted this centennial institution." The club suggested Pinto's actions had been financed by unidentified overseas entities and international groups of hackers with the support of politicians, international organizations and media from across Europe and the United States. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
Several years ago, federal agents traveled to Moscow to enlist the help of their Russian counterparts in arresting one of the world's most pernicious email spammers. They were rebuffed, a former American law enforcement official who was there said. The spammer, who used the pseudonym Peter Severa, was protected, probably by the Russian government, and could not be touched. The agents went home and waited for their target to make a mistake. Last week he did, traveling for vacation to Barcelona, Spain, where the agents who had been following him for years were ready. Early last Friday, Spanish police burst into the hotel room where the spammer was staying with his family and arrested him. Simultaneously, cybersecurity operatives from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and several private companies took down his online network of tens of thousands of virus infected computers. On Monday, the Department of Justice unsealed court papers accusing the spammer, whose real name is Peter Levashov, of wire fraud and unauthorized interception of electronic communications. Mr. Levashov, 36, is expected to be extradited to the United States. Officials said Mr. Levashov's arrest and the takedown of his network ended a vast criminal enterprise. For more than a decade, Mr. Levashov used his online empire to enrich himself and help others drain bank accounts and commit stock fraud, officials said. He has flooded computers with millions of spam email messages advertising counterfeit pharmaceuticals and remedies for erectile dysfunction, using subject lines like "No amorous failure risk." Despite Russian news media reports to the contrary, American officials said Mr. Levashov played no role in attempts by Russian government hackers to meddle in the 2016 presidential election and support the candidacy of Donald J. Trump. But as the Trump administration's early hopes of a rapprochement with the Kremlin have given way to increasing rancor, Mr. Levashov's arrest is certain to heighten tensions. In the past, the Kremlin deplored such arrests as tantamount to kidnapping. An advisory on the website of the Foreign Ministry accused the United States of "hunting Russians around the world," and urged citizens to take precautions. Mr. Levashov was captured three months after the arrest of Stanislav Lisov, a Russian hacking suspect, also in Barcelona. The arrests are likely to increase discord when Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson visits Moscow this week. Government agents and cybersecurity analysts have followed Mr. Levashov since at least 2006. In that time, he has made a fortune clogging inboxes with spam using a network of computers infected with a malware known as Kelihos. The cost of a spam campaign ranged from 200 to 500 per one million email messages, though he offered discounts of more than 50 percent for bulk orders. Mr. Levashov charged more to target American computers, an indication that these were a higher priority, court documents said. Mr. Levashov was also known to rent his huge network of virus infected computers to online criminals who would use it to tap bank accounts and distribute ransomware, viruses that encrypt data in an infected computer or smartphone. At times, cybersecurity specialists said, Mr. Levashov had control of more than 100,000 computers. He has already been indicted twice in the United States on wire and computer fraud charges. "He was a kingpin in the criminal underground," said Brett Stone Gross, a cybersecurity analyst who has tracked Mr. Levashov for years. Despite his sprawling criminal enterprise, Mr. Levashov appears to have lived openly and lavishly in St. Petersburg, his hometown. He had a large home and bodyguards and traveled around town in an armored sedan, according to someone with knowledge of the investigation into his activities, who asked to remain anonymous because the information is confidential. His wife was said to be a high end wedding planner sought by St. Petersburg's elite. Though he engaged primarily in criminal exploits, Mr. Levashov appears to have occasionally dabbled in politics, suggesting collusion with the Russian government. During Russia's 2012 presidential election, his computer network was used to spread fake news stories about one of Vladimir V. Putin's opponents, the billionaire businessman and Brooklyn Nets owner, Mikhail D. Prokhorov, saying he had come out as gay. Text overlaid on a picture of Mr. Prokhorov said, "Everybody who knows me knows I am a," followed by an anti gay slur. Some have speculated that Mr. Levashov also helped carry out a huge assault on Estonian government and banking computers in 2007 that is considered one of the first examples of cyberwarfare. The attack is widely believed to have been retaliation by Russia after Estonian authorities removed a World War II memorial to Soviet soldiers from its pedestal in the center of the capital, Tallinn. Cooperation between Russian government agencies and cybercriminals is not uncommon. Russian hackers have access to the contents of millions of infected computers around the world, and there is evidence that Russian intelligence agencies piggyback on their criminal operations as a form of cheap intelligence gathering. Last month, the Justice Department indicted two Russian intelligence agents, accusing them of working with a suspect in criminal hacking to breach Yahoo and steal account information from hundreds of millions of users. Current and former F.B.I. agents said they have rarely, if ever, received help from Russia to arrest cybercrime suspects. More often than not, they said, the hacker is recruited to work for the government. Sending spam is not illegal in Russia, and cybercriminals usually avoid directing more harmful attacks against computers on Russian territory. When arrests do occur, it is because the suspect enters a country that has a collaborative law enforcement relationship with the United States. It is not clear why Mr. Levashov would risk traveling abroad. Cybersecurity researchers had long ago guessed his true identity, and in recent years American law enforcement has stepped up arrests of criminal suspects from Russia. The Russian foreign ministry estimates that as many as three dozen Russian citizens have been arrested under similar circumstances at the behest of American authorities. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
Mitra Suleiman drives seven hours to Central Valley, N.Y., from her home in Ottawa, Canada, every year in search of a bargain. Woodbury Common Premium Outlets, an outdoor maze of shops an hour's drive north of New York City, "has so much variety, there is nothing like it where we are from," said Ms. Suleiman, 36. "Right now, I'm on the hunt for shoes for my son." The shopping complex, one of the largest in the country with 13 million visitors a year, offers a variety of items, from 10 Tommy Bahama board shorts to 5,000 suede suits at the country's only Tom Ford outlet. On a recent weekday afternoon, there was a jumble of visitors, many of whom had paid 42 for the CitySights NY bus from Manhattan's Port Authority Bus Terminal. Those who had driven themselves spent as long as 30 minutes searching for a parking space among the acres of blacktop. Loudspeakers announced the day's sales in various languages, including Mandarin and Spanish, as families pushed baby carriages and consulted maps to find their bearings. Now, for the first time in 15 years, the complex's plazas and labyrinthine layout are preparing for a face lift. "This is one of our oldest outlet centers. It was built in 1985, and this is its first complete overhaul," said Danielle DeVita, a senior vice president in real estate at Simon Property Group, the public real estate investment trust. "It really was time." The 170 million renovation, which is to begin next month and is expected to be finished in 2016, will expand the center by 60,000 square feet for a total of 900,000 square feet. There will be room for about 20 additional stores, new parking to accommodate nearly 20 percent more cars and a welcome center. The plan is expected to create about 400 new permanent jobs and as many as 500 construction jobs. The outlet business is growing at a faster pace than the larger apparel market. Outlets posted sales of 12.3 billion over the last 12 months ending in March, nearly 14 percent higher than the 10.8 billion they posted the previous year, according to data from the NPD Group, a market research firm. The apparel market, with sales of 200 billion, grew less than 3 percent over the 195 billion it posted a year earlier. "We have customers that literally fly into JFK, get in a cab and go directly to the outlets, fill up their luggage and return home again," Ms. DeVita said. "If you go on a Tuesday in February, it is still packed." Over the last 10 to 15 years, the outlet business has changed considerably, market experts said. "It used to be that outlets were a clearinghouse, a place where consumers could get overruns, or extras that never sold," said Marshal Cohen, a chief industry analyst at the NPD Group. "Now, 86 percent of merchandise that is sold in outlets is specifically made for them. While they may have fewer design elements than their premium brands, the consumer is getting a set of standards that is still higher than what are used by more affordable brands." Although the outlet industry is strong, and Woodbury Common is fully leased, shoppers must often contend with a confusing layout and snarled traffic. "The problem up there is that on the weekends, you can sit in your car for three to four hours just to get inside," Mr. Frankel said. "It is just not designed for those kinds of crowds. You really wouldn't want to live near that place." Simon has expanded Woodbury Common three times: in 1993, 1994 and 1998. In this complete overhaul, there will be a new main boulevard leading into the center and a new entrance plaza. The main tower building, which was designed in the style of an American colonial village, and where visitors from as far as China line up to take photographs, will be demolished. In its place, Simon is building a new main building, Market Hall, that will feature an architectural tower in the same colonial style and a food court for 850 shoppers. The old food court building, in the middle of the complex, is being replaced with a boulevard called Madison Avenue, which will connect shopping areas to one another. The center's six shopping areas, known as districts, are also being redesigned. Their names will be changed to reflect New York State areas like the Hamptons and regions like the Adirondacks. The facades of the buildings will also be redone to reflect the areas for which they are named, so that the stores in the Hamptons district, for example, will include cedar shake shingles, stone veneers and paint colors like sage and dark gray. Simon will add 20 stores by filling in empty spaces. "We won't be building on grass, just strategically placing infill where it is possible," Ms. DeVita said. "The idea is to better orient people visually by connecting different areas of the center, to make it easier to navigate and facilitate the shopping experience." The company is also redesigning the roads to allow traffic to pass more easily. This includes realigning the perimeter road and redeveloping portions of the inner roadway. Parking spaces will be reconfigured and a four level garage will be constructed. The company is also redesigning many of the outdoor plazas and sidewalks with new landscaping and seating areas. Simon has put such effort into the redesign of the center because of its importance in the company's overall portfolio. "Today, if a brand doesn't have an outlet store, you can bet they are looking at potentially opening one," said Michele Rothstein, a senior vice president in marketing at Simon. "And for a luxury brand, if they want to open an outlet, chances are they want to be at Woodbury Common." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
Dana Polan is a professor of cinema studies at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts and author of eight books related to film and media studies. In his course on American cinema from 1960, he links films to the culture at large. Here, he does the same for movies that reference education (this being Education Life) and have won at least one Academy Award (this being Oscar month). Identify the film and its Oscar win(s). How does each film address its time? For the answers, click here. 1. In this 1961 drama, sexual denial spells disaster for two high school students. She ends up at an institution. He stumbles at sports and, pressured to attend Yale by his socially ascendant family, ends up a dropout. 2. During one alcohol drenched night after a faculty mixer, a husband and wife torment each other. This 1966 film, adapted from a play by the same title, influenced policy decisions about movie exhibition. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Education |
Reaching Out to Tech and Creative Tenants, Starting With Lunch A factory district does not typically spring to mind as a prudent location for retailing, but some of Manhattan's successful food vendors have chosen the Falchi Building in a spartan part of Long Island City, Queens, for their next retail ventures. The 658,000 square foot building at 31 00 47th Avenue was bought in 2012 by Jamestown Properties, which also owns Chelsea Market, the popular food marketplace in Manhattan that has become a tourist destination and neighborhood landmark. While Chelsea Market has evolved into an office building with a ground floor market of dozens of food shops, it originally began as a place for food vendors to house their manufacturing facilities, with perhaps a small retail operation. Jamestown has plans to transform the Falchi Building into something resembling Chelsea Market in its earlier years, said Michael Phillips, the chief operating officer of Jamestown. "At Chelsea Market's roots, that's what I think it was: food production with a small retail component," he said. But as Chelsea grew more residential and the elevated High Line began drawing visitors from all over, "it quickly became more retail and less production," Mr. Phillips said. The five story Falchi Building, which has offices and light manufacturing on its upper floors and a street level cafe, will soon have ground floor production facilities and retail shops for Artisanal Premium Cheese, L'Arte del Gelato and Juice Press. To spur the repositioning of the building, Jamestown has also created an "artisanal food fair" called the Food Box in about 2,000 square feet. A handful of food purveyors that prepare their food off site sell their goods over a line of wooden kiosks facing customer seating. Started in November, the Food Box, which has been popular with the district's office workers and students at nearby LaGuardia Community College, has rotating vendors and may move around the building, Mr. Phillips said. Currently, it offers Thai food from Khao Man Gai NY; Caribbean food from ReCaFo; Paraguayan delicacies and empanadas from Karu Cafe; soups and sandwiches by Mrs. Soupy and Friends; and baked goods by Made From Scratch. A former owner of Chelsea Market, Irwin Cohen, developed the idea of food manufacturing businesses anchoring a thriving market and once owned the Falchi Building, Mr. Phillips said. Jamestown has also made facade and lobby renovations, adding tables and seating for visitors along with art installations throughout the ground floor concourse. Current tenants include the United Nations, the watchmaker Tourneau and the document processor Swiss Post Solutions, along with jewelry making businesses, among others. With asking rents ranging from 20 to 40 a square foot, Mr. Phillips said, the building has features that could serve a variety of tenants, from showrooms to research and development to warehouses. Jamestown's plan is to attract more technology, media and creative companies with the new amenities. The Coalition for Queens, a nonprofit group supporting technology entrepreneurs, will be opening offices in about 4,200 square feet on the concourse. Kevin Spacey was ordered to pay 31 million to the 'House of Cards' studio after sexual harassment allegations. Netflix buys a visual effects company in a move to support its global ambitions. The factory district has seen an influx of technology companies in recent years, said Jukay Hsu, one of the coalition's founders. "We've seen tremendous growth in the tech community here," he said. "It's so raw and industrial, which is something tech companies are attracted to." At the incubator, Mr. Hsu and co founder David Yang have installed a giant sliding garage door, which can be rolled open to the concourse for tech gatherings. Nearby, Artisanal Premium Cheese, which imports cheeses from around the world and ages them in high tech cheese caves, is building out 10,500 square feet for its production and offices, and it is already holding cheese and wine tasting classes. At the Falchi Building's main entrance at 47th Avenue and 31st Street, Artisanal will open its cheese shop cafe behind large display windows, probably sometime this summer, said Daniel W. Dowe, the chief executive of Artisanal. "We thought we would do it in Manhattan," Mr. Dowe said of the cafe's opening. "And if you had to make a pure retail decision, you probably wouldn't say 47th Avenue in Long Island City is the place you have to be, but I think there's enough population in the building to make it work." As Artisanal's first cheese shop cafe, the site can be used as a training facility for employees who will eventually work in future cafes, Mr. Dowe said. "We've spoken to technology companies that want to have their work force in Long Island City, because the rents are half of what they are, particularly in Midtown South, where you find similar types of properties," Mr. Arkin said. While the Falchi Building may be at the forefront of the neighborhood transformation, particularly with the retail food uses it offers, some owners of nearby buildings are beginning to follow suit or are at least watching closely, he said. Besides offices, hotels being developed in the Court Square area of Long Island City may eventually be a source of customers. Jamestown is trying to pull off a similar repositioning of a much larger formerly industrial complex called Industry City in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. There, the company is working with partners to convert the six million square foot, 16 building complex into a hub for technology and manufacturing, also using food vendors. "This is a unique concept, and it's a Jamestown brand that they bring to any of these kind of adaptive reuse projects that they do," Mr. Arkin said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Economy |
CARDIFF, Wales Lin Manuel Miranda sat patiently in a shabby, capacious hot air balloon, as a technician checked the lighting on a stuffed bird poised overhead. A puppeteer stood nearby, holding a stand in for his "daemon" (in this case a hare), the animal that represents an externalization of each individual's soul in the fantastical world of Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials." "It's like a buddy movie," Miranda said with a laugh, nodding at the puppet. But this isn't exactly a buddy movie. The new HBO and BBC One series, based on Pullman's best selling fantasy trilogy , features hot air balloons, talking animals, witches, armored polar bears, multiple worlds, a young heroine on a quest and a world class villain who happens to be an alluringly beautiful woman. The details of Pullman's elaborate, wide ranging narrative have been painstakingly recreated in this first season of "His Dark Materials," which will have its U.S. premiere on Monday, featuring: Ruth Wilson ("The Affair") as Mrs. Coulter ; James McAvoy ("X Men") as Lord Asriel ; Miranda ("Hamilton") as Lee Scoresby; and Dafne Keen as the 12 year old Lyra , the protagonist of the story. (HBO and BBC also committed to a second season, which is currently being filmed.) Pullman's elaborate, thrilling narrative , nominally aimed at young adults but read far more widely, has sold around 18 million books worldwide, been translated into 40 languages and turned into well received stage and radio plays. None of that dissuaded the British producer Jane Tranter from acquiring, in late 2015, the rights to the trilogy, which she called "a national treasure." Tranter, whose company Bad Wolf is producing the series with New Line Cinema for the BBC and HBO, believed that the novels' complexity made them better suited to a TV adaptation, she said. But that doesn't mean it was easy. It took two and a half years for the creative team including the writer Jack Thorne, the director Tom Hooper (who directed the first two episodes) and the special effects studio Framestore to figure out how to structure the series, bring the daemons (pronounced "demons") to life and create the different environments that the heroine journeys through. Making things more tense was the fact that while the BBC signed on early, HBO didn't commit until filming was about to begin. "It was a massive gamble, we had nowhere near the entire budget," Tranter said. (No one would give a budget number, but the show is widely rumored to be very expensive because of its extensive special effects and variety of locations.) For HBO, "His Dark Materials" was an opportunity to broaden "what could be considered an HBO show," said Casey Bloys, the head of programming. One thing it is not designed to be, he insisted, was a replacement for the network's last big fantasy adaptation, the recently departed "Game of Thrones." "Let's put this to rest: There is no next 'Game of Thrones,'" Bloys said. What HBO liked about "Dark Materials," he said, was that it was family friendly but had big, complex themes. It certainly does. Pullman's series consisting of "The Golden Compass," "The Subtle Knife" and "The Amber Spyglass" essentially reimagines Milton's epic poem, "Paradise Lost." (The title "His Dark Materials" comes from a line in the poem.) The story posits a world that is saved rather than ruined by original sin, represented in the novels by a mysterious substance called Dust. Along the way it explores questions about good and evil, religion and morality, the relationship of the soul to the body and the nature of consciousness itself. But you don't have to know any of that to enjoy the cracking pace of the narrative. The story centers on Lyra Belacqua, an orphan living at Jordan College in a parallel world Oxford, in which zeppelins float and the gargoyles represent animal daemons. When her closest friend disappears, Lyra embarks on a quest to find him one that ultimately involves traveling to London with the mysterious Mrs. Coulter (Wilson), discovering a government sanctioned child abduction program and heading into the frozen north, where witches and armored bears hold sway. "She is a wounded child, because she has no parents, and a brave young girl," Keen said in a telephone interview. "It is an amazing part to play." Thorne, the prolific writer of the play "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child," among many other recent works for stage and screen, said in a phone interview that he loved Pullman's choice of a 12 year old heroine to carry the story. (At the London premiere of the series, he likened the character to the climate campaigner Greta Thunberg.) A self described workaholic, Thorne wrote 46 drafts of the first episode. "My job was to make sure that the storytelling was at the right pace," he said. "When you have all these possibilities of CGI, you have to be careful. We need complexity as well as bells and whistles." There are plenty of those in "His Dark Materials," most notably in the creation of the daemons, which had to be added through visual effects technology in postproduction. (That they are extensions of each person and cannot be separated without terrible physical and emotional pain is an essential part of the plotline.) To help the actors when filming those scenes, the production employed puppeteers. "There is a nightmare version of this kind of work where you are acting with a tennis ball held at the right eye line, but this was amazing," Miranda said during a break on set. "It really is another actor in the scene, and it adds all kinds of fun and subtext." Eliot Gibbons, the production's workshop manager, said that his team of puppeteers tried to create figures with character and personality, even if they weren't fully realized. He picked up and manipulated a startlingly charismatic wooden cat, which had one arm and was attached to what looked like a Slinky . "We worked closely with visual effects to make sure they were happy with the size and movement," he said. "You have birds and lizards, hares and monkeys, and snakes coming in and out of clothes. Each one would have about seven iterations, from eyes on a stick to more sophisticated versions." And then there were the mammoth polar bears, represented during the shoot by a person wearing a huge puppetry rig , so that the animal's movement had "irregularity and breath," Gibbons said. The stand ins formed the visual foundation for the animation, which technicians would then painstakingly layer into the scenes. The animals are expressive and often cute, but their roles go beyond simply charming younger viewers. Wilson, who worked closely with her puppeteer, Brian Fisher, said the daemons help illuminate flesh and blood characters like her Mrs. Coulter, a seductive villainess of complex moral stature and motive. "The animals represent a side to each character," she said. "Why does Mrs. Coulter have a monkey? Why can she separate from her daemon when no one else can? Why does it have no name? I have my own theories about why she is capable of doing horrific things and believing it's the right thing to do: She is silencing her soul, and there is an abusive relationship between the two. It has to be about self harm." Mrs. Coulter is a powerful female figure in a male world, Wilson noted, adding that she modeled the character's image on the 1930s and 1940s actress Hedy Lamarr, who was also a gifted inventor. "Like her, Mrs. Coulter is incredibly intelligent, but understands how to gain power through image and sexuality," Wilson said. Thorne expanded Mrs. Coulter's role in the show. "Her relationship with Lyra felt so key to everything," he said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
Extreme coincidence can work sometimes in Davies's short stories, to highlight irony, but the mountain of impossible coincidence at the end of "West" is staggering. One of the characters rides across much of the country on horseback to arrive at the precise moments needed to kill the only two people who should be killed, though he's never met or heard of them before and he also suddenly realizes that this is where he's from, the place where his sister was raped and killed. His impossible weapon is a knitting needle with a knob on one end, which would catch on the bow and be flung to the side. But here it takes perfect flight. The needle is instantly recognized, despite being just a bloody point sticking out of someone's head, and the victim was not distracted at all by a galloping horse arriving and didn't turn to look. The problem is that there's no drama possible in "West" because the two main characters, Bellman and Bess, spend only four pages together at the beginning and have no communication after that. The minor characters are distant and uncommunicative, and don't provide any drama, either. No character can push at another to reveal who they are. So the substitute is action: suffering and illness on Bellman's journey, narrated so quickly it cannot be felt; the threat of rape for Bess; and racist affronts to Old Woman From a Distance, who is cheated and has his hand broken. Bellman's quest was only an idea, never supported in a psychologically realistic and believable way; Old Woman remains a simple character, despite Davies's efforts otherwise; and what we feel for Bess is melodrama a child abandoned, a young woman unprotected. We have to care about that because we always care about that, no matter who it is. "West" is too short and undeveloped to be a novel. And although it has the length, lovely compressed language and fast pacing of a novella, it lacks the form's dramatic focus and intensity, the unity of dramatic action. Davies is an excellent writer whom you should read, but her strengths of surprise and coincidence don't work in this longer narrative, and her quick skill at characterization doesn't develop over a longer span. Because I'm a fan of Davies's stories, I desperately wanted "West" to succeed, but it simply does not. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
"Degas at the Opera," in Paris now and Washington in March, reveals the leering intensity rather than the sentimentality in Degas's ballet and opera pictures. PARIS You'll find them up in the balcony, or in standing room, silently mouthing the libretto or humming along with the score. These are the superfans: the compulsive lovers of opera or ballet or theater who see every performance; who travel from city to city for Marilyn Horne or Mikhail Baryshnikov; who know every downbeat of "Cosi Fan Tutte" or "A Chorus Line." Most are harmless admirers. Some become lay experts. But the superfan can be conniving, as in "All About Eve," or even murderous: the Tejano sensation Selena was killed by her fan club president. If great art stimulates the heart and the head, the superfan has the ratio out of whack: Passion wins out over reason, and appreciation tips into obsession. In the annals of French art history, the superfan par excellence is Edgar Degas: the most Parisian of all the Impressionists, and an obsessive of the first magnitude over the opera and ballet. For decades, he watched the leading singers and dancers under the new electric lights, and scrutinized the young members of the corps de ballet in the wings and backstage. Close to half of Degas's painterly output depicts the Opera de Paris which was (and still is) both an opera and a dance company, and which he knew as intimately as Monet knew Giverny's gardens. In the year 1885 alone, Degas went 55 times to the still new Palais Garnier. He saw one opera, the now forgotten "Sigurd" by Ernest Reyer, at least 37 times. His images of dancers making their grandes arabesques or bending at the barre, now schmaltzy stalwarts of dorm room posters, were the projects of true mania. It includes more than 200 works in a panoply of media paintings and pastels, monotypes and painted fans, even solarized photographs of dancers in shocking orange but only one subject: the hermetic world of Paris music theater, a place of grand spectacle and even grander depravity. The show also features a bronze cast of the tutu clad "Little Dancer Aged Fourteen," the only sculpture Degas exhibited in his lifetime; the wax original is in the National Gallery of Art, which will host "Degas at the Opera" next March. Usually a figure as quaintly perky as Eloise, she has never looked less tender. It turns out that today's age of superfandom wherein the selfie has replaced the autograph, and TV audiences mount petitions against plotlines has roots in the theatrical milieu of the dawn of industrial capitalism. What Degas demonstrates, and why "Degas at the Opera" feels so relevant, is that audiences have always held more sway over performers than we admit. Today's "age of the fan" is not so new, and the opera of 19th century Paris, in particular, was literally built for adulation and abuse. DEGAS CARED FOR MUSIC, and had particular admiration for Gluck, but he was not only at the Opera to listen. In late 19th century Paris, opera was a social spectacle that made it an ideal subject for a painter of modern life. For both the upper class and the new bourgeoisie, the real point of a night at the theater was to see and be seen. The performances were often stodgy or familiar particularly the ballets, which by Degas's time were little more than a sideshow between opera acts. Not a problem: that allowed the audience to ignore the stage and pay attention to the real theater around them. Degas went as often as he could afford it: first to the Opera Le Peletier, the company's home until a fire destroyed it in 1873, and then to the choke me to death with gold and marble Garnier, which opened in 1875 and which Degas despised. At both houses, he trained his eye on both the stage and the audience, which he painted from unorthodox perspectives sometimes a sharp view down from the loges onto the dancers' heads, sometimes a sotto in su gaze up from the orchestra seats to the women in the priciest boxes. In pastel, particularly, he could imitate his view of the backlit performers, their faces lost in the footlights. Not until 1885 could Degas afford the Opera's most expensive subscription, which got him a seat every Monday, Wednesday and Friday and much better privileges than that. Three day subscribers, principally aristocrats and financiers who, like today, underwrote new productions, got to enter the Garnier through a dedicated entrance. More important, subscribers had the right to pass through a communicating door backstage, even during performances. Back here, the men would come into the dressing rooms of the divas, and proposition the dancers in the "foyer de la danse," an opulent mirrored chamber that Garnier designed as, basically, a hunting ground. You had to sign in when you entered: At the Orsay we see Degas's name on the ledger, day after day. Most of the ballerinas in Degas's paintings and prints were not the athletic, self reliant dancers we see on the stage today, but miserable girls from the lower ranks of French society. At midcentury, more than half of the Opera's new enrollments were fatherless ; their mothers were usually laundresses or concierges, and most girls arrived at the opera house barely fed. There the ballet masters "broke" the girls stretching their little bodies on racks, reshaping their feet with specially carved boxes. Onstage, or in Degas's pastels, the girls in their tutus might look angelic. But to the Opera subscribers these dancers were known as the "petits rats": little rodents, barely paid, ripe for sexual exploitation. The distance between the opera and the brothel was vanishingly thin in the late 19th century. For the Romantic author Theophile Gautier, the dancers at the Opera were "frail creatures offered up in sacrifice to the Parisian Minotaur," who "each year devours virgins by the hundreds, with no Theseus coming to save them." In Degas's images, the most devoted operagoers hover in the wings like birds of prey, and even mothers are on hand to pimp their young daughters to the subscribers. He made that sordor visible in 80 pitch dark monotypes he made to illustrate a novella by Ludovic Halevy his good friend, and the co librettist of "Carmen." Degas depicts portly men sitting in the Garnier foyer beside dancers who stare into space, or top hatted aristocrats swarming around the ballerinas like vultures. (New York audiences saw these prints in the Museum of Modern Art's "Edgar Degas: A Strange New Beauty" in 2016.) Yet even in Degas's now beloved, superficially sunnier pastels, the dancers appear more often like possessions than fellow artists. They are working girls, bent over, tying their slippers, slumped in the corner rarely elegant, and always being watched. Though he admired some female painters (notably Mary Cassatt), Degas was an intense misogynist, and the formal innovations of his art went together with an avaricious focus on control. "I have perhaps," he once confessed, "too often considered woman as an animal." LITTLE MARIE VAN GOETHEM, the Belgian born model for Degas's statue "Little Dancer Aged Fourteen," was one of these "petits rats." She was born in 1865, the second of three girls. Five years later, her father died, and in the same year the Franco Prussian War broke out. Marie, her sisters, and her laundress prostitute mother were scrambling across Pigalle. Ballet was the only way out. At 12, Marie entered the Opera's conservatory, and while the dance masters broke her she posed in Degas's studio for extra money. He sculpted her in fleshy wax at two thirds life size, her eyes shut tight, her face scrunched up like a wadded rag. Instead of capturing her mid plie, Degas chose to sculpt her standing in the awkward fourth position, feet perpendicular to the torso and pointing in opposite directions. He gave her a sharp jaw and a forehead like a ski slope. To her body he affixed a real tutu, and real human hair. Have the performing arts really given up on predation? Today's dancers might not be as desperate (or as young) as little Marie, but the opera and the ballet have always been games of class distinction, and philanthropy has more uses than a tax write off. I couldn't help but think, as I made my second pass of "Degas at the Opera," of last year's scandal at the New York City Ballet, in which the star dancer Chase Finlay exchanged lewd texts with donors to the company, sending pictures of sex acts and pledging to treat female dancers "like the sluts they are." (Two other fired dancers have since been reinstated.) The Paris Opera Ballet has its own problems; last year, a leaked questionnaire revealed that three quarters of the dancers reported suffering or witnessing verbal harassment, and one quarter had endured or seen sexual harassment. Degas never married. He left no record of any mistress. He may have died a virgin. But just because he kept his hands off Marie and the other "petits rats" does not make his art less creepy. Van Gogh, in a letter as blunt as Mr. Finlay's texts (though tamed in this translation), wrote that Degas "watches human animals stronger than himself getting erections and having sex, and he paints them well, precisely because he doesn't make such great claims about getting an erection." This painter who "didn't like women," in van Gogh's estimation, found at the Opera an arena of desire and depredation that he could translate into pure form beautiful and stifling, modern and cold. This is the truth about superfans: they smother what they love. Through Jan. 19 at the Musee d'Orsay, Paris; musee orsay.fr. Opens March 1 at the National Gallery of Art, Washington; nga.gov. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
The 1960s have been over for a long, long time: temporally, culturally, ideologically. And one by one, its leading musicians are deciding they've been on the road long enough. Yes, Bob Dylan and Neil Young, among others, are still barnstorming. But on Friday and Saturday nights, farewell tours by two major figures rooted in the 1960s folk revival came to New York City: Joan Baez, 77, at the Beacon Theater and Paul Simon, 76, at Flushing Meadows Corona Park. Their careers have intersected. On Saturday night, before a crowd of more than 30,000 people, Mr. Simon explained that he wrote "Rene and Georgette Magritte With Their Dog After the War" his "oddest song title," he said after seeing a photograph with that caption in a book he happened to leaf through while rehearsing with Ms. Baez at her California home. Ms. Baez, on Friday night, raved over the concert by Mr. Simon that she had just seen at Madison Square Garden; then she sang a Simon Garfunkel hit, "The Boxer." Ms. Baez's concert was serene and modest, deferring as always to the songs she sang and the ideals they suggested. Mr. Simon worked on a larger scale, invoking a world of influences, ideas and details, juxtaposing and often combining introspection with a dance party. A farewell concert is inevitably a reckoning with an entire career, a last major chance in the spotlight to put a near lifetime of music into perspective. It took the Grateful Dead five nights in 2015 two in California, three in Chicago to encompass the jammy sprawl of their music (and most of the band members were back on the road in various configurations within months). By contrast, set lists from Elton John's three year farewell tour, which comes to New York City in October, show a straightforward jukebox of two dozen certified hits. Mr. Simon and Ms. Baez both chose not to retire with wall to wall oldies; their farewell shows revisited past glories but also showed them still engaged, still tinkering. Never miss a pop music story: Sign up for our weekly newsletter, Louder. Ms. Baez joked about her "big band": just a guitarist and keyboardist (Dirk Powell), a percussionist (her son, Gabriel Harris) and sometimes a backup singer (Grace Stumberg), along with her own guitar. They provided a self effacing backdrop for Ms. Baez's voice. Although it's no longer her transparent soprano of the 1960s, that voice retains its earnest determination to tell deserving stories and to rally a social conscience. A folkie to the end, Ms. Baez paid tribute to mentors, comrades and sources. She cited Pete Seeger, her sister Mimi (who recorded as Mimi Farina), the Chilean songwriter Violeta Parra, the labor movement commemorated in "Joe Hill" and, most of all, Bob Dylan, for whom she was an early champion and a girlfriend. His catalog handily provided farewell songs for the concert; she opened with "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right." And their mercurial relationship was the subject of Ms. Baez's own "Diamonds and Rust," a barbed post breakup song that put her in the Top 40 in 1975. After she sang Mr. Dylan's "A Hard Rain's A Gonna Fall," she commented, "That boy's not much in the way of manners, but he sure could write." Still, Ms. Baez also looked to songwriters from younger generations to address the present. Her current outlook, she said, is summed up in a song from Antony and the Johnsons, "Another World." After she sang about an exploited woman's revenge in "Silver Blade," a ballad written for her by Josh Ritter, she cited the MeToo movement. And in the night's most topical song, Zoe Mulford's "The President Sang Amazing Grace," she memorialized the 2015 church murders in Charleston, S.C. Ms. Baez's progressive politics are so well known that she didn't have to elaborate on them. Instead, she was pointedly playful. When she finished her main set, Jimi Hendrix's Woodstock version of "The Star Spangled Banner" blared from the sound system; she and her bandmates took a knee. She ended the concert with the spiritual "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot," greeting mortality with faith and returning to the a cappella purity that brought her 1960s fame. At the end, she sang about angels who were "coming to carry me you us even Donald home. Amen." Mr. Simon, who has insisted that he is retiring from touring but not songwriting or performing, chose his farewell venue precisely: near the Unisphere, a symbol of 1960s global optimism, in the largest park in Queens. Mr. Simon was born in New Jersey but grew up in Queens, and he was grinning well before he sang "Goodbye to Rosie, the queen of Corona," in "Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard," knowing exactly the roar he would get from the audience. After he sang "Kodachrome," which belittles "all the crap I learned in high school," he said, "Take that, Forest Hills High," before admitting that he "actually had a good time there." Mr. Simon presided over his last tour date with casual, hometown ease, and he got shouts and applause every time a song mentioned New York City or one of its landmarks. The park is under a flight path; as one plane roared overhead toward a landing, Mr. Simon waved it in with a cheerful, "Welcome to New York." And he ended the concert, and his career on the road, with "The Sound of Silence," which carries an admonition rooted in everyday New York City: "The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls/and tenement halls." But Mr. Simon's music also portrayed a New York City beyond the old neighborhood: internationally connected and informed, curious and welcoming, culturally intertwined and restlessly exploratory and, often, a place of uneasy solitude amid the hyperactivity. The upbeat tunes of songs like "You Can Call Me Al" and "Kodachrome" carry tidings of desperation and disillusionment; driven by flamenco handclaps, the snappy "Wristband," from Mr. Simon's 2016 album "Stranger to Stranger," warns about the rising anger of people who feel shut out. Mr. Simon has always steered clear of direct political messages, determined not to be didactic. He introduced "American Tune" which was released in 1973 and muses, "When I think of the road we're traveling on/I wonder what's gone wrong" by simply saying, "Strange times, huh? Don't give up." The rhythms were both international and idiosyncratic, with grooves that invoked Jamaica, India, South Africa, Brazil, Nuyorican salsa and Louisiana zydeco ("That Was Your Mother," which had Mr. Simon showing off some footwork of his own). His omnivorous 14 member band handled a profusion of instruments button accordion, oboe, Brazilian cuica and a remarkable spectrum of idioms and fusions. Farewells in pop tend to be final until they're not; ask Phish or the Eagles. Ms. Baez's tour extends into next year, and brings her back to the Beacon on May 1. And with these concerts as closing statements, Ms. Baez and Mr. Simon suggested that even if they leave the road behind, their work isn't finished. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
If you work at a home based business, you may want to consider a new, simpler option for taking a deduction for your home office on your federal income tax return this year. The Internal Revenue Service announced last year a streamlined option for the home office deduction, effective for the 2014 filing season. The agency said the new "common sense" alternative aims to reduce paperwork and record keeping hassles for those who claim the home office deduction. Approximately 3.3 million taxpayers claimed nearly 10 billion with the deduction in the tax year 2011, the I.R.S. said. The new "simplified" option involves multiplying the square footage of your home office up to 300 square feet by a fixed amount of 5 to determine your deduction, which is capped at 1,500. To claim the optional deduction, you can complete a short work sheet found in the tax instructions and enter the result on your tax return. (If you're self employed, you claim it on Schedule C, Line 30; if you're employed for someone else, but use a home office, you claim it on Schedule A, Line 21.) Previously, the only way to claim the deduction required filling out Form 8829, a 43 line document. That option which the I.R.S. calls the "regular," or standard method can involve complex calculations of allocated expenses and depreciation, and carry overs of unused deductions. That approach, the agency said, can be "burdensome" for small business owners, because they have to keep all sorts of records, like mortgage and utility statements, to calculate their deduction. If you use the new option, you can't depreciate the portion of your home used for business. But you can claim allowable mortgage interest, real estate taxes and insurance losses on your home as itemized deductions on Schedule A. These deductions don't have to be allocated between personal and business use, as the regular method requires. As with taxes in general, however, things can be tricky even if they appear simple at first. The new method may be a particularly good option if you're less than diligent about keeping expense records for use of your home office, said Jessi Dolmage, a spokeswoman for TaxACT, a provider of online tax preparation software. If you do keep detailed expense records, though, you might be better off using the standard method. To be sure, you have to calculate the deduction using both methods. So much for fewer hassles. Using the regular approach may yield a larger deduction, said Ms. Dolmage, particularly if your office is small. To get a quick idea of whether the simplified option makes sense, you can multiply your home office's square footage by 5, and compare the result with your deduction on last year's tax return. If the result is more or about the same, you can go with the simpler form. But if it's less, you may want to take the time to calculate your actual expenses. "If historically you've taken a larger deduction, you might be better off with the old fashioned method," said Mark Luscombe, principal federal tax analyst for CCH, a tax information provider. Here are some additional questions about the home office deduction: Does the simplified option make it easier for my work space to qualify as a home office for tax purposes? No. The simplified option doesn't change the criteria for a home office; it just reduces the calculations and record keeping requirements associated with taking a deduction for its expenses. To qualify, you still must use the space regularly and "exclusively" as your principal place of business, according to Mr. Luscombe of CCH. (That means your home office can't double as, say, your child's playroom.) If you work as an employee of a business, rather than being self employed, your home office must be for the convenience of your employer in order to qualify. If I moved last year and used home offices in different houses, can I use the simplified option? Yes but for just one of the homes. The deduction for the other home must be calculated using actual expenses, according to the I.R.S. Where can I find more details about using the simplified option? See I.R.S. Publication 587, Business Use of Your Home, available online. Or or visit the I.R.S. website for some frequently asked questions about the new option. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Your Money |
"Carnival Row" is a rarity among television fantasies these days because it did not begin life as a comic book, novel, film or other existing property. It's what's called an original. But there's original and then there's well, you get the idea. The series, whose eight episode season arrives Friday on Amazon Prime Video, reanimates bits and pieces from different branches of the fantasy genre into a glum and lumbering beast that only occasionally sparks into life. That description could also fit one of the show's monsters, a golem like creature that figures in the investigations of a detective named Rycroft Philostrate , known as Philo and played without much evident enthusiasm by Orlando Bloom . He slogs through the grim and rainy streets of a London like, Victorian ish city where humans uneasily coexist with various humanoid species identifiable by their horns, snouts or hooves. Philo's opposite number, and interspecies love interest, is a winged fairy (or fae) with the equally ostentatious name of Vignette Stonemoss (Cara Delevingne) . Philo and Vignette inhabit a world, created by Rene Echevarria ("The 4400") and Travis Beacham (a screenwriter on "Pacific Rim"), that probably sounded better in the pitch meetings. It has a strong medieval magical component, with wintry fortresses, butchery gruesomeness reminiscent of "Game of Thrones" and an assortment of creatures like those in the "Lord of the Rings" and "Grindelwald" franchises. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
TELL ALL TSUNAMI Is everyone in Washington writing a political memoir? It sure seems that way. The latest ones to hit the list are 's "The Restless Wave," which debuts at No. 1, and James R. Clapper's "Facts and Fears," at No. 3. Clapper, the former director of national intelligence, supports the contention that Russian interference affected the outcome of the election. As he said on "Face the Nation" recently, "To me it stretches credulity to think that the Russians didn't have profound impact." HIT PARADE Americans are so consumed by political books right now that some of us at the Book Review began to wonder about reading trends in summers past. A quick browse in our archives revealed that 10 years ago this week, Stephenie Meyer's sci fi novel, "The Host," was ensconced at No. 1. Barbara Walters's memoir, "Audition," topped the nonfiction list but it was the book at No. 3, a collection from the comedian Chelsea Handler called "Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea" which quickly became the season's buzziest book. Mitch Albom's "Tuesdays With Morrie" ruled the nonfiction list 20 years ago, while Sue Grafton's "N Is for Noose" was the country's top novel. At the bottom of the fiction list was a book people were just beginning to hear about: Helen Fielding's "Bridget Jones's Diary," which would go on to dominate summer sales. Danielle Steel's "Zoya" was the No. 1 novel 30 years ago, but it was Gabriel Garcia Marquez's "Love in the Time of Cholera," at No. 3, that ultimately became the summer's must read. "For the Record," a memoir by Ronald Reagan's onetime chief of staff, Donald T. Regan, was No. 1 on the nonfiction list, soon to be overtaken by No. 2, Stephen Hawking's "A Brief History of Time." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
Marnie, the Shih Tzu whose lolling tongue, amused expression and tilted gait made her a celebrity on Instagram, died on Thursday at her Los Angeles home. She was 18. "She passed very, very peacefully," said Shirley Braha, who adopted Marnie from a Connecticut shelter in 2012. "She passed away of old age is the simplest way to put it." Marnie's quizzical face and uncanny gift for posing garnered 1.8 million followers on Instagram and turned her from a filthy rescue dog into a poster pet for adopting older animals. She posed with the likes of Katy Perry, Tina Fey and Selena Gomez; got a book deal; and at one point became so famous that her absence at the 2015 World Dog Awards made headlines on TMZ. "Marnie knew that she was famous and she absolutely loved it," Ms. Braha said on Saturday. "She loved it when crowds would form around her. She would do little dances. She would pose. I never trained her to do it. She just looked straight at the camera and stayed still and gave everyone the most perfect selfies that they wanted. She was a pro." Marnie's unlikely rise to fame began after Ms. Braha found her in a Connecticut shelter. She had been found on the streets by animal control officers and named "Stinky" by shelter workers because she smelled so badly. Ms. Braha, who had never had a pet before, fell in love with a picture the shelter posted on PetFinder. The dog was looking straight into the camera with a bemused look that said, "What the heck am I doing here?" Ms. Braha said. When she arrived at the shelter, the dog's fur was dirty and matted. Ms. Braha named her Marnie after the musician Marnie Stern. On the train from Connecticut to New York, passengers stared. One businessman looked at the dog and said, "ferocious." It turned out Marnie had 14 rotten teeth, which did not explain the dog's most curious feature: her long Gene Simmons like tongue that lolled out to the side, making it look as if she was always laughing. Marnie just had a very long tongue, Ms. Braha said. Ford and Rivian no longer plan to work jointly on electric vehicles. Elizabeth Holmes took the stand in her trial. Follow along with our reporters. Ken Griffin, head of Citadel, bid highest for a copy of the Constitution. Once she was cleaned and had dental surgery, Marnie was like a new dog. She insisted on going everywhere with Ms. Braha and barked for hours when she was left alone. Marnie accompanied Ms. Braha to her favorite bar in Williamsburg in Brooklyn, and to parties and restaurants. A couple of times, Ms. Braha sneaked Marnie in to her job at MTV, where she was a producer. "She loved to party," Ms. Braha said. "You'd bring her out to a group of people, her tail would wag, her tongue would hang out, and she would run around in circles." In 2014, after the MTV division she worked for folded and she was laid off from her job, Ms. Braha began posting more and more photos of Marnie on Instagram. It began as more of a hobby and a way to spend time with her attention hungry dog than an effort to join the ranks of other pets who had become famous online. "I was just doubtful anyone would care," Ms. Braha said of her early pictures. "There is so much content online and it's almost like the aspiration of fame seems so trite that it just didn't appeal to me." But before she knew it, she was getting more followers. "Once I started doing it, I realized that I was having a lot of fun and she was enjoying it," Ms. Braha said of Marnie. By 2015, The New Yorker had decreed Marnie "the most famous American dog on Instagram." Ms. Braha said people would write or stop her on the street to tell her that Marnie's story had inspired them to adopt an older pet. As Marnie got older and winters made it harder for her to go outside, Ms. Braha decided to move to California from New York. "Our relationship was that of two best friends," she said. "When she became more geriatric, I was more of a caretaker." During her final days, Marnie was listless but still cheerful and had enough of an appetite to munch on her favorite foods of chicken and greens. But an ulcer had developed on the dog's gums and because of her age, it was not healing. "Her body just didn't have the defense to fight off small things like that," Ms. Braha said. "It was causing her a lot of pain. Her body was just shutting down." Ms. Braha warned Marnie's 1.8 million Instagram followers to prepare to say goodbye and kept them updated about the dog's spirits and trips to the veterinarian. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
All three have pronounced facial and physical beauty and in the classical dance forms of India the face itself dances and seems to speak. As these dancers move, you see Odissi's intoxicating ability to etch sculptural shapes and then to make them gorgeously liquefy. In particular, you see the creation and change of ravishing S bends between head and calf, like changing harmonies in music. The Nrityagram troupe has often performed in the West. The group (consisting of Ms. Sen and Ms. Satpathy, the lighting designer Lynne Fernandez, four male musicians and sometimes other dancers, too) tours the United States most years. In New York, it has given weeklong seasons at the Joyce Theater, and on Saturday it is to perform, for the first time, in the Temple of Dendur at the Metropolitan Museum of Art the first stop of its United States tour. Ms. Mohapatra has given a few isolated and admired performances in New York, most recently in 2013. As yet Ms. Mohapatra, artistic director of the Guru Shradha Institute of Odissi Dance in San Francisco, enjoys nothing like the American or European reputation of the Nrityagram artists. It's fair to say, however, that many people around India's complex dance world consider her the greatest Odissi stylist today. Her credentials are impressive: She is based in Bhubaneswar, the capital of Odisha (and Odissi). (Nrityagram, an hour's drive from Bangalore, is a dance village in Karnataka.) She is also part of the most prestigious Odissi family: Her father in law and (for 18 years) teacher, Kelucharan Mohapatra, was the most influential of three gurus whose work was crucial in redeveloping Odissi. More crucially, among the many Indian dancers who sustain 90 minute solo dance programs, she is one of the inspiring few who raise such a recital to a vast span of both movement and spirit. Felicitously, the two programs show opposite faces of Odissi; to watch both was to feel how immense this genre can be. Ms. Mohapatra's Sunday program, accompanied by four musicians, was an orthodox recital of five items three choreographed by her father in law, two by her husband, Ratikant Mohapatra. Monday's performance by the Nrityagram collective "Songs of Love and Longing (Exploring the Gita Govinda)," choreographed by Ms. Sen to 12th century Sanskrit poems set to music by Raghunath Panigrahi (who died in 2013) emphasized the erotic aspects of Abhinaya (expressive mime and action), love's desire and love's affliction. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
LAS VEGAS Not that long ago, a telephone meant a black two piece unit with a handset and a rotary dial. Nowadays, the telephone has been completely redefined as a smartphone capable of performing an exponentially expanding array of tasks. Similarly, the automobile is being redefined in its second century as not necessarily a "smart car" (that name is taken), but as something of a rolling infotainment machine. At the sprawling International CES here last week, applications, systems and gadgets for automotive use were among the fastest growing categories on display for the industry only consumer electronics show. The total array was in the uncountable thousands, but a few stood out. Like most of this latest generation of infotainment options, it will work with either Android or Apple systems. Harman lists eight automakers it is working with to make the system an option in new cars; aftermarket units would be available from audio makers like Pioneer, Alpine and Kenwood. Mercedes Benz demonstrated a new "wearable" interface that would let a smartwatch monitor auto functions like the door locks, maintenance intervals, climate control, tire pressures and an electric vehicle's rate of charge. Mercedes used a Pebble watch in its demonstration but said the technology would be functional in a variety of smartwatches yet to come. Asked if the selection might include a long anticipated wearable device from Apple, a Mercedes engineer smiled and said, "No comment." Another Mercedes system would let a car talk to your house. The interface is with the Nest home protection system, which can provide remote control of a house's thermostat and monitoring of the smoke and carbon monoxide alarms. A demonstration showed a car passenger raising the temperature in a mountain cabin so it would be cozy when the travelers arrived. A version of this kind of system is also being developed by AT T that allows you to watch any webcams set up in your home. Audi showed, among other things, searingly powerful laser headlights and a suite of aids that it calls Intelligent Traffic Management. For one on road demo, Audi was allowed to tap into the Las Vegas traffic control center, which electronically monitors and controls traffic signals across the metropolitan area. An Audi sedan equipped with an in car receiver was able to drive around town and display what the next traffic light on the road was about to do. Approaching an intersection, for example, it could tell how many seconds remained before a green or red light would change. In an unexpected twist, the Audi system also found some bugs in the Las Vegas control center's system, including a traffic light in front of the Rio hotel and casino that had been permanently locked in "ambulance override," preventing it from functioning normally. (The information was passed along to the traffic control center, which confirmed and corrected the issue.) Audi is also apparently headed into the tablet business. Its Smart Display system is an Android based 10.2 inch tablet computer that "lives in your car" and lets passengers control many vehicle functions. A demonstration included a back seat passenger adjusting the cabin temperature, radio selections and stereo volume. The tablet can also connect to the Web through a new higher speed Wi Fi system that is being rolled out in many Audis this year. The tablet, which Audi said would carry its brand name, is powered by a new Nvidia Tegra 4 chip. Audi also unveiled part of the interior in its coming, otherwise unrevealed 2015 TT sports car. A highlight was a configurable 12.3 inch three dimensional instrument display; it could be set to show only gauge readouts or adjusted to include an enormous navigation screen directly in front of the driver. The intent, said an Audi board member, Ulrich Hackenberg, is to equip the company's sports cars with information systems that concentrate exclusively on the driver. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Automobiles |
Dealing mainly with family disputes like spousal abuse, divorce and alimony claims, these courts are governed by Islamic law that can vary in interpretation from region to region. Further complicating matters are chauvinistic cultural traditions that can overrule religious dictates, resulting in adjudications that are fraught and combative. Undismayed, Ms. al Faqih presides over a bustling courtroom in the West Bank (intimately filmed by the cinematographer Amber Fares, who directed the warmhearted documentary "Speed Sisters"). The proceedings are vexingly vague, serving mainly to highlight a personality at once firm and compassionate, sharp witted and immune to male privilege. A visit with Ms. al Faqih's parents who put almost all of their 12 of their children through college is brief but revealing, as is footage of the judge educating a women's group on their rights. In countries where domestic violence is viewed as a shameful private matter, and honor killing excuses can be used to deflect a murder charge, women need all the help they can get. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
Eight years ago, when Dr. Anthony C. Watkins and Dr. Khadijah Booth Watkins moved into hospital staff housing, a two bedroom rental was fine for them and their young son. A few years after their second son arrived, the family moved within the building to a three bedroom. For the last year or so, the Watkinses hunted casually for a place to buy, checking online listings and attending open houses. Hospital housing was convenient, but "we knew it wasn't a long term solution," said Dr. Watkins, a transplant surgeon. "My wife was really stuck on a brownstone type situation. Me, I'm from Tennessee. I was looking for something like a 40th floor looking at the city type of situation." "It no longer felt like this was a perk to live there," said Dr. Booth Watkins, a child and adolescent psychiatrist. The notice "gave us the fire we needed. It wasn't feasible to pay that kind of money for what we had." Their employer, New York Presbyterian Hospital, declined to comment on its housing policies. So, with no time to buy a place, the couple went on the hunt for a rental for their family, which includes their sons, Khalil, 12, and Ayden, 6; Dr. Booth Watkins's father, Garland Booth, who moved in with them last year from Virginia; and their dog, Blu. The couple started in East Harlem at a sleek 2007 condominium building, Observatory Place, on 104th Street near First Avenue. A two bedroom two bathroom apartment was for rent for 3,200 a month. Some of the two bedrooms they had seen when they were looking casually were large enough to be converted to a three bedroom, but not this one. They walked away from a 3,000 a month duplex in a four unit brownstone on East 129th Street roomy but rundown and near the commotion of the Metro North railroad tracks. They considered a three bedroom for 3,800 a month at 107th Street near Central Park. "One of my dreams was to be close to Central Park so I could have access to that to run," Dr. Watkins said. But the place wasn't big enough and "didn't have that homey feel for us." Many of the apartments they saw had tiny bedrooms. Though they looked elsewhere, the search always returned to Harlem. "The farther up you go, the more space you get for less money," Mr. James said. "That fact kept proving to be." The family loved a two bedroom sublet at Strivers Lofts on West 135th Street. The monthly rent was 3,950, and a third bedroom could be carved from the generous L shape living and dining area. With a police station across the street, the neighborhood seemed especially safe. The roof deck was enticing, too. But after some back and forth, the couple were disappointed to be told it had been rented to someone else. Finally, they came to a recently converted brownstone with two units in the West 130s. The upper duplex, 3,800 a month, had three bedrooms and three bathrooms. It was everything they wanted. They were about to take it. But they made the mistake of visiting the lower unit: a three bedroom triplex with four bathrooms, a finished basement and a backyard. At 4,700 a month, "it was a little hefty on the price," Dr. Watkins said. But, upon reflection, it seemed a better choice, with fewer stairs to climb than the top unit, Dr. Booth Watkins said. "And I really loved the idea of the yard." So at the last minute, the Drs. Watkins changed their minds. They signed a two year lease for the triplex, paid a broker fee of 15 percent of a year's rent, or 8,460, and arrived last spring. "That was a pill to swallow and then we had to put down a dog deposit," Dr. Watkins said. "So the initial move in was a pretty penny." More space, they found, made for more expenses a grill, outdoor furniture, higher utility costs, gardening supplies for Mr. Booth's vegetable garden. "We used the move as an opportunity to upgrade some furniture," Dr. Watkins said, but disposing of the old stuff "kind of backfired because we were in the living room with no sofa for a long time, and I bought a brand new TV, so we had a nice TV in the living room but no furniture." They hauled in some temporary chairs. One thing they lack is closet space. "I guess we never realized we packed so much stuff in the old apartment," Dr. Booth Watkins said. In their new home, "it felt like we had a lot of space, but no place to put things." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
There are two critical things to know about community colleges. The first is that they could be the nation's most powerful tools to improve the opportunities of less privileged Americans, giving them a shot at harnessing a fast changing job market and building a more equitable, inclusive society for all of us. The second is that, at this job, they have largely failed. When President Obama stood at Pellissippi Community College in Knoxville, Tenn., last month and offered every committed student two years' worth of community college at the government's expense, he focused on the first point. With open enrollment and an average price tag of 3,800 a year for full time students, community colleges are pretty much the only shot at a higher education for those who don't have the cash or the high school record to go to a four year university. And that's a lot of people: 45 percent of the undergraduate students in the country. They are "essential pathways to the middle class," Mr. Obama said. They work for parents and full time workers, for veterans re entering civilian life, and for those who "don't have the capacity to just suddenly go study for four years and not work." What the president chose not to emphasize is that precious few of the students at community colleges are likely to fulfill the promise and complete their education. Of all the students who enroll full time at Pellissippi, for example, only 22 percent graduate from a two year program within three years. Just 8 percent transfer to a four year college. And that's hardly the bottom of the barrel. There are many community colleges with much worse records. The president's offer of a free ride should increase enrollment: White House officials estimate that the program, if approved by Congress, would lift enrollment by 1.6 million by 2026, bringing the total to nine million students from about seven million today. But that's the easy bit. Whether his plan ultimately delivers on its promise, however, will depend less on how many students enter than how many successfully navigate their way out. Today, only 35 percent of a given entry cohort attain a degree within six years, according to government statistics. At public four year colleges, 57 percent of the students graduate within six years. And it's getting worse. Community college graduation rates have been declining over the last decade. It's past time we paid attention. Community colleges have been consistently ignored by policy makers who equate higher education with a bachelor's degree mostly ignoring the fact that a very large group of young Americans are not prepared, either financially, cognitively or socially for that kind of education. Meanwhile, American higher education has become a preserve of the elite. Only one in 20 Americans ages 25 to 34 whose parents didn't finish high school has a college degree. The average across 20 advanced industrial nations assessed by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development is almost one in four. "What choice do we have but to make these institutions work?" a White House official who has been working on the new proposal told me. "There is no real alternative out there for 40 percent of students." But Mr. Obama's plan risks falling well short of its ambitions. Community college students may not be the poorest of the poor, but they mostly come from stressed backgrounds in the bottom half of the income distribution, and they often lack the money or social support networks to help them through school. Most are not truly prepared for college, requiring remedial courses in math or English before they receive their first higher education credit. Elizabeth Holmes Hones Her Defense in Day 2 of Testimony Kevin Spacey was ordered to pay 31 million to the 'House of Cards' studio after sexual harassment allegations. "Community colleges," said Andrew Kelly, an expert on education at the American Enterprise Institute, "are not miracle workers." With little guidance to navigate a complex system not just of standard two year associate degrees in dozens of subjects, but also a variety of one year certificates, as well as transfer programs to four year colleges, it is not surprising that students often spin their wheels. The primary solution, if there is one, probably lies further up the pipeline, in high schools, where the Obama administration is running up against political flak and parental objections to its push to establish a common core of proficiency to ensure the vast majority of high school graduates are indeed equipped for college. Or perhaps the true challenge is even earlier, from birth to age 3 or 4, as the Nobel laureate James Heckman from the University of Chicago has been urging for years, when investments in cognitive and emotional capabilities have an enormous impact on children's future development. Mr. Kelly doubts that the federal government can pull off a miracle. "We've seen school improvement grants to improve K through 12 education; we've seen No Child Left Behind," he noted. "Those policies have generally been disappointments." But giving up on community colleges would be even worse, because some promising experiments point the way to a more successful path. Take New York. A few years ago, the City University of New York began Accelerated Study in Associate Programs, which covered any tuition not already provided by financial aid. It offered students free textbooks and MetroCards for the subway. Crucially, it offered intense tutoring: The program's advisers had a caseload of 60 to 80 students, about one tenth of that of a typical community college adviser. Students had to commit to a full time program and sign up for early developmental courses needed to get up to speed. The college steered students into blocks of courses and pressed them to graduate with associates' degrees within three years. The results were impressive. MDRC, a nonprofit organization that evaluates social policies, found that the accelerated study program roughly doubled the three year graduation rate among the most disadvantaged students, those who initially needed remediation classes. The program is not cheap; it costs 30 to 35 percent more a student. But because of the higher graduation rate, the cost per graduate was actually lower. And that, said Gordon Berlin, president of MDRC, is the metric that matters. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Economy |
Throughout Virginia Woolf's "To the Lighthouse," the painter Lily Briscoe struggles to complete a modern picture and only on the final page, after painting a single stripe, does she wearily proclaim: "I have had my vision." The 30 artists in "Lineup," a show covering a century of art history and filled with more stripes than a jailhouse uniform shop, share with Woolf's alter ego painter a commitment to these linear bands, which structure a picture's surface even as they shut down the illusion of three dimensions. Two painted seated nudes by Bonnard and Picasso, and a lithograph of the same theme by Matisse, all use vertically striped backgrounds to absorb flesh into the non illusionistic terrain of modern art. Barnett Newman and, later, Agnes Martin would use stripes to paint purely abstract works that confounded viewers' perception whereas for Michel Parmentier, the severest of the Conceptual abstract painters of late 1960s Paris, thick bands of red served his political resistance to visual pleasure . (Daniel Buren, Mr. Parmentier's old buddy and the king of stripes, is strangely left out of this show.) More relaxed, more painterly abstractions by Sean Scully and Mary Heilmann round out the last century, though they are prefigured here by two wonderful gouaches from 1930, each featuring horizontal ribbons of blue and green, by the lesser known Soviet painter Konstantin Rozhdestvensky. A fuller study of the stripe in modern painting might include Op artists like Bridget Riley and Julio Le Parc; post painterly abstraction by the likes of Gene Davis and Morris Louis; and Conceptualists like the Polish artist Edward Krasinski, who made the blue stripe his signature. Instead, "Lineup" has a deflating coda of contemporary figurative paintings that incidentally include stripes, such as a waxy portrait by the drainingly cynical Chloe Wise. For some young artists, the stripe is like everything else from the past: just another joke. A door can keep you out or let you in. But lying on the floor with hinges exposed, like the two found car doors in "Eyelids Are Our Thinnest Skin," Ann Greene Kelly's second solo show at Chapter NY, it evokes both functions without filling either, acting more like a symbol than a thing. Ms. Kelly amplifies this heady effect by installing plaster reliefs into the door panels. In the red Toyota Corolla, it's two round pits lined, like ancient wells, with "bricks "; in the white Ford Focus, a crumpled shirt falling out of sight . But it's with four large colored pencil drawings, the balance of the show, that the artist really makes her subject clear. Just one untitled example includes two pairs of red rimmed eyed in a blue bordered pocket mirror and two diamond rings on a loop of pink ribbon twisted twice to make it both a Mobius strip and an infinity sign. There's a green whisky bottle, a grayish hand pulling up thick purple carpeting, several tiny articles of clothing, and a receding tunnel behind iron bars. All these suggestive, ambiguous images jostle together in warm disorder, intensely colored but inconclusive, proceeding endlessly with no clear direction, impossible to summarize or explain. In other words, it's a self. Sergio Sister is a Brazilian artist best known for making geometrically abstract paintings and sculptures . Several of the drawings, collages and canvases included in his exhibition, "Then and Now" at Nara Roesler, however, show a very different side of Mr. Sister: bright, graphic images he made in the late 1960s and early '70s while he was a political prisoner in Sao Paulo under Brazil's military dictatorship . (Works from that period by Mr. Sister are also included in "The Pencil Is a Key: Drawings by Incarcerated Artists," currently at the Drawing Center.) The works here, made with materials that his girlfriend, now his wife, brought to him in prison, are emphatic, critical of the regime and often disturbing. An untitled diptych from 1967 has a crudely drawn head inscribed with the words "fogo" (fire) and "USA," along with limp red bodies hanged by their necks, suggesting the violence and larger political forces at work in Brazil at that time. Other works use collaged newspaper, military logos and graffiti like text to evoke the chaos and terror of that era. Displayed next to the early works are more sedate monochrome paintings and boxes made from the '80s to as recently as 2017. They show Mr. Sister's occasional consistency as a colorist, but they are considerably less exciting although you feel guilty preferring art created under such traumatic conditions. Vanessa German's sculptures radiate energy. It comes partly from the accumulation of elements sequins and fabrics, toys and knickknacks that she layers and bundles onto found and dismantled dolls. The work is a dazzling display of how resourcefulness can feed abundance. Ms. German, who deems herself a "citizen artist," is interested in art as a form of healing and protection, especially for African Americans. In Pittsburgh, she turned the building next to hers into the ARTHouse, where people from her predominantly black neighborhood can come and create. She credits her sculptures, which she calls "power figures," with saving her from depression. They recall the Kongo people's nail filled "minkisi n'kondi," protective charms believed to contain spiritual forces. The stars of her show, "Trampoline: Resilience Black Body Soul," at Fort Gansevoort, are found on the second and third floors, where Ms. German's large figures pop and process against bright walls. In one, titled "The Runner, Run and Fight. Don't let your white friend's father touch your panties. Circle Running, Rape Proof, or Un Rape able?" (2019), a black girl with a silver glitter face and a skirt made of shoes leaps just out of reach of white ceramic hands. The threat of danger is palpable, but it's crosscut by a flicker of joy she's making a break for it, running away, getting free. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
MIAMI After he blasted a 95 mile per hour fastball more than 400 feet to center field in the ninth inning of the Mets' 7 3 win on Monday night, Pete Alonso was the last player into the clubhouse. Teammates held Bud Lights in their hands and shouted for Alonso, the rookie first baseman, to hurry. They were ready to celebrate the first home run of his major league career. He jumped into a laundry cart at Marlins Park, and they wheeled him into the shower. He was doused with beer, barbecue sauce, ketchup, mustard, eggs and relish. He kept his mouth shut the whole time as his eyes started to burn. "That was really cool," he said. "I didn't know that was a thing." The Mets and the rest of Major League Baseball have quickly learned that Alonso, 24, is the real thing. After stroking hard hit doubles against the Nationals over the weekend, Alonso delivered his first long ball when the Mets, with a fresh one run lead in the ninth inning, needed some insurance. One at bat earlier, Amed Rosario's run scoring single had broken a 3 3 tie. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
A little more than a year ago, the beloved French fashion house Sonia Rykiel founded in 1968 by a flame haired feminist to empower women, passed on to her daughter in 2007 and sold to Hong Kong investors in 2012 went into liquidation. At the time, it appeared to be a sad denouement for the once revolutionary ready to wear brand. But now the house of Rykiel is about to rise again, under new owners. Or is it? Fashion history is littered with tales of newfangled entrepreneurs who have swooped in to save old brands, only to leave them in tatters. Will Rykiel be one of them, or the exception that proves the rule? "The Sonia Rykiel brand is not damaged, it still has strong values," said Michael Dayan, who, along with his brother Eric, made a fortune in outlet e tailing and bought Rykiel late last year. The Dayans have big plans for the brand. A revamped women's wear line. A men's wear line. A perfume. Perhaps even a boutique hotel. "There is a fascination and attraction to owning a luxury brand it brings a lot of glam and fame, and it has been a booming industry and a very profitable industry," Mr. Carreira continued. "But luxury takes time; it's not a fast move. It's a kind of game. And the return on investment is not guaranteed at all." What's more, "Sonia Rykiel is a brand with a strong heritage, but a difficult one to bring back to center stage," said Luca Solca, a luxury analyst at Bernstein. "It is possible that you hit great ideas and that you manage to get back to notoriety and desirability but doing that in an industry dominated by mega brands with way more resources for marketing and communication is very difficult." Case in point: the French modernist brand Courreges. In 2011, a pair of French advertising executives, Jacques Bungert and Frederic Torloting, bought the company from its founders, Andre and Coqueline Courreges, and installed the hot design duo Sebastien Meyer and Arnaud Vaillant of Coperni Femme. Despite the splashy overhaul, sales faltered, and by 2018, all four were gone. (Courreges is now owned by Francois Pinault's holding company Artemis, the majority shareholder of Kering, and in the midst of another turnaround.) Then there is the American fashion brand Bill Blass, which was purchased in 2008 by the entrepreneurial brothers Cin and Peter Kim, who made their money producing dress shirts and neckwear for the mass market. The Kims hired designer Chris Benz, formerly of J. Crew, to reposition the brand for Gen Xers, and, like the Dayans, focused on direct to consumer e commerce. The new Bill Blass hit the market in 2015 to much fanfare, but it failed to lift off. Mr. Benz left the company, and today Bill Blass only sells shoes. There is currently nothing available on its website. Rykiel has already been through this once. In February 2012, when the Rykiel family sold the company to the billionaire brothers Victor and William Fung of the Hong Kong manufacturing firm Li Fung, there was lots of talk of potential, with grand plans to "ensure the longevity of the brand," as Nathalie Rykiel, Sonia's daughter, said at the time. But the company was plagued by a series of outside economic troubles and in house management issues. In seven years, sales dropped from 83.7 million euros in revenue and 1.4 million euros in losses to 35 million euros in revenue and 20 million euros in losses before finally filing for bankruptcy. The Dayans brush all that off like a piece of lint. They say they are different. They say, as far as they are concerned, "Sonia Rykiel right now is like a start up," as Eric put it. And the Dayans know all about running start ups. The sons of Moroccan immigrants, Eric, age 40, and Michael, who is 38, grew up in the 12th arrondissement, a middle class quarter on east side of Paris. Michael studied law, passed the bar and went into practice. Eric enrolled in business school, dropped out, and worked for the family's destocking business. In the mid aughts, Michael quit law and, with Eric, their brother David and their friend Thierry Petit, took the family business online. For the next two years the brothers took what they describe as "a break," to spend time with their families and explore other avenues. They invested in Back Market, a French website that sells reconditioned electronic equipment, and BlaBlaCar, a French online marketplace for car pooling. Then they heard about the Rykiel woes. "It made us dream," Eric said. Though they have never worked in the luxury sector, they were sure they could run Sonia Rykiel. After all, at Showroomprive.com, they launched collectionIRL, an in house women's wear label. "We are ambitious," Eric said. "And we have experience." The first round of takeover offers came in July. Bidders included the former Balmain chief executive Emmanuel Diemoz, the French real estate entrepreneurs Nicole Levy and Julien Sedbon, and a Chinese investor. The Dayan brothers were not among them. "The timing wasn't great it was July, vacation time," Eric said. "The information escaped us, and we missed it." In the fall, David saw that French court was about to choose a new owner for Sonia Rykiel. He asked Eric and Michael if they were they still interested. They were. "This was on a Thursday," Eric said. "And the court date was Monday, at 11 a.m." The brothers spent the weekend hunkered down with their lawyers, their bankers, "and a lot of coffee," Eric said. They drew up a business plan, got the bank to cut a sizable check and went to court. In their dossier, they asked for the company name, the unsold stock, the licenses (eyewear, homeward, linens, and children's) and archives, which are stored in a warehouse near Tours, in the Loire Valley. They skipped the real estate, including the company's flagship store and headquarters on the Boulevard Saint Germain, a property still owned by the Rykiel family. Like showroomprive.com, they wanted to make Sonia Rykiel primarily an e commerce fashion brand. Luckily, as it turned out. "With coronavirus, it would have been a heavy lift with the boutiques," Eric said. "We were lucky not to take them." The courtroom was standing room only. The brothers' bid was one of nearly two dozen that included two American funds, a Chinese fund, a Korean family fund and Sonia Rykiel's former son in law and former C.E.O., Simon Burstein, of the Browns retailing family in London. The judges opened each packet, one by one, and read the price and pitch out loud. "We kept holding our breath, wondering: Are we still in the race?" Michael remembered. In the end theirs was the highest bid 10 million euros, according to a source who attended the hearing and, after a three week long review, the court approved their proposal. When asked about what she thought of the new buyers, Nathalie Rykiel, who did not pursue buying back the company from liquidators, said by email: "I am looking forward to seeing how this new chapter will evolve." Meanwhile, they plan to start unloading leftovers via the new website. Of the 80,000 pieces they inherited, they are posting 20,000, including accessories. The remaining 60,000 they will recycle, or upcycle. They want to dial back prices to the affordable luxury of Sonia's era. This is where the perfume will fit in, too an "accessible product for women to enter the luxury world," Michael said. Back when Rykiel was a thriving business, it had "600 points of sale in the U.S. alone," Michael said. The Dayans "want something smaller, more of an 'experience,'" Michael said. They are real estate shopping on the Left Bank including talking to Ms. Rykiel about taking over the original Saint Germain property with the dream of housing a shop, offices, and perhaps a small hotel, all in one building. Moving into hotels is not such a stretch, Eric said; in the 1980s, he recalled, "Sonia redecorated the Crillon and the Lutetia." "It's going to be great," Michael said, with an air of unquestioned confidence. "You'll see." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
HERRANG, Sweden The rhythmic boom boom of Count Basie's 1930s big band echoed around the Folkets Hus community center here. Men in suspenders and trousers and women in beaded silk dresses fanned themselves in what meteorologists earlier that day had called record breaking heat for Sweden. The temperature didn't seem to bother Norma Miller, 98, who was seated onstage in a sequined jacket and leggings. Behind her flickered a black and white clip of the 1935 Harvest Moon Ball at Madison Square Garden in New York. She pointed to a slim, energetic figure onscreen her 16 year old self twisting and sliding across the dance floor with Billy Ricker. "This is the contest I lost because my blouse opened!" Ms. Miller said. "You can see it opening!" For audience members, some 200 dancers from around the world, most of them white, Ms. Miller was a direct link to the Lindy Hop's African American history, a link she has been providing for more than 30 years. The still lively and salty tongued Ms. Miller, who keeps her nails painted the signature red and white of her performance days, ended her lecture by jokingly, but sincerely, thanking white dancers for keeping the Lindy Hop alive. Named after Charles Lindbergh, the Lindy Hop married swing music's traditional eight count with the fast paced, free form movements of African American dances at the time: spins, slides, thrilling flips and kicks steps Ms. Miller mastered as a child. Born in 1919, she grew up in an apartment building behind the Savoy Ballroom. In an interview here, Ms. Miller said she remembered hearing the big bands from the fire escape window every night and longing to be inside the club. In her 1984 memoir, "Swingin' at the Savoy," she wrote that her mother, a maid, held rent parties for extra cash. She and her sister would watch the guests dance and later practice their moves in the living room. On Easter Sunday in 1932, one of the Savoy's top dancers, Twistmouth George, saw the 12 year old Ms. Miller dancing on the sidewalk outside the club and invited her inside to perform with him. That chance encounter jump started her career. "The Savoy was a very important place socially for black people to go and mix and mingle because, remember, you were confined in your area," she said. "We couldn't go to all the other five ballrooms that they had throughout the city of Manhattan." Ms. Miller competed in amateur contests in Harlem, eventually coming to the attention of Herbert White, founder of the popular Whitey's Lindy Hoppers. At 15, she was invited to join the troupe on tour to introduce the Lindy Hop to clubs and ballrooms in Europe. At the height of her career, Ms. Miller performed in Paris, Miami and Rio de Janeiro with Whitey's Lindy Hoppers, crossing paths with Duke Ellington and Josephine Baker, smoking joints with Louis Armstrong, and appearing onscreen in "Hellzapoppin' " (1941). But World War II finished Whitey's Lindy Hoppers, as the group's male performers were called into service. Ms. Miller formed her own troupe, eventually going solo and working the chitlin' circuit with little success. By the 1960s, she had transitioned from dance to comedy about dance, opening regularly for Redd Foxx. A few days after her lecture, over lunch at a nearby marina, Ms. Miller talked about her time at Herrang Dance Camp. "A place like this is unbelievable," she said, pausing to swat mosquitoes at her leg. It's "like Brigadoon" the musical about the enchanted Scottish village that magically appears once every 100 years. The camp started as a weeklong summer event for 25 Swedish Lindy Hop lovers in 1982 and has evolved into a five week dance camp known as the Lindy Hop Mecca. This summer, the camp drew some 5,000 dancers and 100 instructors from more than 60 countries. Ms. Miller described the camp as a place where students "come to inherit the soul of black dancing." There are nightly social dances, with live bands. And workshops from "Beginners Lindy" and solo jazz to ballroom competition take place in tents named after New York's famous ballrooms: the Savoy, the Alhambra, the Palladium, Roseland and Small's Paradise. But as much as the camp is intent on exposing students to vernacular dance, it also became responsible for reviving the Lindy Hop and extending the careers of dancers associated with it, including Ms. Miller. Lennart Westerlund, 60, a founder of Herrang, attributes the Lindy Hop revival to Swedes' admiration for the dance. In its early years, Mr. Westerlund said, Herrang drew Swedish dancers who mostly knew about the Lindy Hop through old movies like "After Seben" (1929) and the Marx Brothers' "Day at the Races" (1937). "The dance was more or less dead," he said. "It was existing in small pockets in America and possibly somewhere in Europe. But it was more a European translation of the dance." The camp's first instructor, a New York dancer named John Clancy, taught a white American interpretation of the dance from the 1940s and '50s. "At the time, we didn't know the African American side of it," Mr. Westerlund said. That changed when he read "Jazz Dance: The Story of American Vernacular Dance," Marshall and Jean Stearns's comprehensive book on its African American origins. One figure in the book was the master Lindy Hopper Frankie Manning, who by the early '80s had left dancing for a steady job at the post office. Mr. Westerlund invited him to teach at Herrang. A lead performer in Whitey's Lindy Hoppers, Manning was a longtime friend of Ms. Miller, who was then living in Las Vegas, doing comedy and writing her memoir. Mr. Manning and Mr. Westerlund's friendship changed Herrang, opening the door for dancers like Ms. Miller to teach and perform. The camp soon became a platform for black performers whose popularity had waned stateside, including the master drummer George Reed, who played behind jazz giants like Charlie Parker; the singer and tap dancer Mable Lee; and the tap dancer Skip Cunningham. Chester Whitmore, a dancer from Los Angeles, has taught and performed at Herrang for more than 25 years alongside Ms. Miller. He said that Swedes respected the black performers and their careers in a way that he hadn't seen in the United States, and praised the Herrang approach. "The other camps," he said, "they'll do the music and stuff, but they won't tell you the story." In the past three decades, the Lindy Hop has grown internationally, with ballroom scenes, swing clubs and Lindy Hop camps opening in places like Singapore, Russia, Israel and Nepal. (It even had a resurgence in the U.S. in the 1990s.) Mr. Whitmore says Ms. Miller is a source that keeps the movement rooted, adding: "It's a shame that you got to go all the way of Europe just to find it." Angela Andrew, a Londoner, met Ms. Miller in a hotel room in New York during a visit to celebrate Frankie Manning's birthday in 1994. She now serves as her stand in at Herrang workshops, demonstrating movements while Ms. Miller, who needs help walking these days, instructs from a chair. During a recent workshop, Ms. Miller could be heard shouting at Ms. Andrew and other longtime instructors to stay on beat: "No! It's BE dop buh bop!" Ms. Miller, who splits her time between Florida and Italy, said she planned to celebrate her 100th birthday in December 2019 in Herrang, but remembers that when Manning first told her about the camp, she couldn't believe it. "I said: 'You've got to be kidding talking about some goddamned Lindy Hop in Sweden. Who the hell's gonna come here?'" | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
Latter day Bob Dylan is for die hards. His voice is tattered and scratchy, not always bothering to trace a melody. His lyrics can be cryptic or throwaway when they're not downright bleak. His music is adamantly old fashioned, and he's not aiming to ingratiate himself with anyone. But for those who have stuck with him this far, his new album, "Rough and Rowdy Ways," is at once a summing up and a taunt, equal parts death haunted and cantankerous. "Today and tomorrow and yesterday too/The flowers are dyin' like all things do," he sings as the album begins, in "I Contain Multitudes." "Rough and Rowdy Ways" is Dylan's first album of his own songs since "Tempest" in 2012, and song for song, it rivals the grim, gallows humored conviction of his albums "Time Out of Mind" (1997) and "'Love and Theft'" (2001). After "Tempest," Dylan recorded collections of vintage pop standards, but he hasn't tried to emulate the urbane concision of Irving Berlin or Hoagy Carmichael on the new album. Instead, the music is often rootsy and open ended, while the many verses of lyrics move through ever shifting perspectives. "Rough and Rowdy Ways" often feels quietly conspiratorial. The band Dylan's long evolving touring band patiently circles through slow, stealthy vamps or, in more upbeat moments, lopes through 12 bar blues shuffles. The music has a late night, after hours sense of seclusion and confidentiality, the sound of musicians who have been listening to one another long and intently. The album title echoes "My Rough and Rowdy Ways," a song from the 1920s by the country music forefather Jimmie Rodgers about not entirely settling down. Dylan's new songs are, for better and worse, a blizzard of allusions: song titles and musicians, historical figures and movie characters, authors and hints of quotations. Dylan builds a cultural pantheon and, for once, he lodges himself in it. "Rough and Rowdy Ways" follows albums of pop standards. The album's first two songs, "I Contain Multitudes" and "False Prophet," include declarations like, "I sing the songs of experience like William Blake/I have no apologies to make." Later, in "Goodbye Jimmy Reed" a Jimmy Reed style electric blues that also harks back to Dylan's own "Leopard Skin Pill Box Hat" he growls, "Never pandered, never acted proud." Rarely one to tell his own story, even in his memoir, "Chronicles, Volume One," Dylan seems candid for those few lines. His tone is assertive but not triumphal; he's beyond gloating. And he has an eye on larger stretches of history than his own. In "Mother of Muses," a hymnlike tune glimmering with mandolin that ponders redemption and creativity he wants to marry Calliope, the muse of epic poetry Dylan also praises generals from the Civil War and World War II for preserving freedom. In the 17 minute "Murder Most Foul" set apart from the rest of the physical album release on a separate disc Dylan presents the 1963 assassination of John F. Kennedy as a crucial American trauma, the moment when "the soul of a nation been torn away/and it's beginning to go into a slow decay." The band plays glacial, sustained, unmetered drones anchored by Tony Garnier's bowed bass, and Dylan intones an account of the murder interspersed with song and movie titles, never spelling out whether all the culture he mentions is a consolation or a decadent distraction. There's a creaky tenderness in "I've Made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You," which has a gently undulating melody that suggests Offenbach's Barcarolle from "Tales of Hoffmann," as the singer seeks love as a last chance for solace: "I've traveled a long road of despair/I've met no other traveler there," he sings. "Lot of people gone/A lot of people I knew." But elsewhere he bristles. He's sardonically morbid in "My Own Version of You," a skulking waltz with a Frankenstein like narrator who's scouring "morgues and monasteries" for body parts to bring someone to life. In "False Prophet," a slow blues that caps each verse with a pushy unison riff (borrowed from Billy "The Kid" Emerson's 1954 "If Lovin' Is Believing"), Dylan allows himself to boast and to brandish his wrath. "I ain't no false prophet, I just said what I said," he cackles. "I'm just here to bring vengeance on somebody's head." And in "Black Rider," a string band ballad that tiptoes along, pausing each time Dylan takes a breath, he addresses a mysterious figure Death, perhaps with alternating sympathy and aggression. "Don't turn on the charm," he warns. "I'll take a sword and hack off your arm." For all he has seen and sung, on "Rough and Rowdy Ways" Dylan refuses to settle down, or to be anything like an elder statesman. He sees death looming, but he's still in the fray. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
I feel it sometimes, like a phantom limb, banging against my side as I move around the house. I sense it nestled in the crook of my arm as I wander from room to room. It was the one time receptacle of all I held immediately important: purse, receipts, identification, charger, books, tissues (fresh and used), flask, tampons, a card for that delicious but inexpensive Italian restaurant from that onetime a few months back. What was it? My surprisingly roomy yet somehow streamlined handbag, of course. My bag of choice was black leather with gold hardware, made by Balenciaga, bought on sale. Once upon a time I didn't leave the house without it. Now, of course, because of Covid 19 I no longer really leave the house. I haven't carried my bag for months. Masks are the accessory of the moment, if one is looking to define such a thing. The tote (or clutch or saddle bag) seems a relic of ages past, gathering dust in bedroom corners and closet shelves. But is this a permanent change in our wardrobe? Or will the bag live again? Ana Kinsella, a freelance copywriter in London, has relied on her pockets for most of her daily lockdown walks, or the occasional canvas tote for gathering supplies. "In my pre coronavirus life, my handbag wasn't so much a way to carry things around as a way to keep things together," she said. Lockdown has brought about the inverse; that constantly accumulated junk is scattered with abandon around the home, rather than stuffed in one place. "I now have no idea where anything is," she added. Ms. Kinsella recalled being drunk after a late night Zoom bachelorette party, for which she'd dressed up, and walking to the end of her road for a cigarette. On the way out she picked up her fanciest bag, a small, bright orange leather satchel, despite not actually needing it. "I thought, I owe it to the outfit to have a handbag with me, even if no one is there to see it," she said. Katie Hillier knows leather goods better than most, having worked as the creative director of Marc by Marc Jacobs and consulted for an array of luxury brands. Her work at the former British brand Luella, beginning in 1999, was part of what helped kick off the "It" bag movement of the early 2000s. She observed that, throughout lockdown, people have been finessing the minutiae of their routines the preferred shopping route, the ideal outdoor workout and will likely now shop with these in mind. "Functionally is going to be even more important than it ever was before," she said. She predicts a market for inventive canvas shoppers, lined in something waterproof, or cross body bags with adjustable straps for hiking or cycling; "geeky stuff like that." Already, the luxury retailer MatchesFashion.com has seen a boost in sales of "functional lifestyle styles such as canvas totes" such as Rue De Verneuil, whose structured canvas bags cost over 200, said Cassie Smart, head of womanswear buying for MatchesFashion. Ms. Hillier said she thought future bag purchases would be "less about bags as a status thing. Some people may have realized that they actually enjoy being at home, and that there are other things that they can spend their money on." Indeed, with stores closed, fashion and accessories sales have plunged by 35 to 39 percent according to a recent report from McKinsey, and some of the money that might normally have gone on bags has, over the last few months, been allocated to bikes. (In March, nationwide US sales of bicycles and related services nearly doubled compared with the same period last year according to the N.P.D. Group.) Large leather bags are impractical for cycling: anything too long swings forward and lodges between the legs, making pedaling difficult, while shoulder styles risk slipping down. In various cities, as protesters marched past luxury stores, there were also few handbags to be seen. Nervous of the unrest, Gucci, Chloe, Louis Vuitton and others had removed stock, their usually bombastic window displays stripped bare. When, in late May, despite the spreading unrest, Vuitton opted to continue its widespread influencer campaign for its new bag, the LV Pont 9, the move was criticized on social media as tone deaf. According to Colleen Hill, curator of costume and accessories at the Museum at FIT, fashion history does attest to a link between changing handbags and social shifts. "That is an idea that can be traced back to at least the early 20th century, when women began carrying bags that held items such as cosmetics, cigarettes, a wallet and keys," she said. "All of these signified growing freedoms for women in public life." Chanel's 2.55, for example, equipped with myriad pockets and a long shoulder strap, "reflected Chanel's personal, but highly influential, design ethos that combined practicality with high style," said Ms. Hill. Ms. Hill said she expected to see another such shift now. "As a New Yorker, I usually carry a large bag that will hold everything I need for the entire day my iPad or a book, headphones, some cosmetics, my water bottle, and maybe even a spare pair of shoes," she said. "Now that I stay closer to home, I can get away with smaller and more functional bags." She has been relying on a neat black leather tote, purchased on Etsy, years ago: "It's subdued, and it feels like the right bag for this moment." The question of appropriateness is paramount. Typically, bags have been a financial crutch for fashion brands, propping up ready to wear sales, and, thanks to their logos, serving as a form of advertising. Whether this will remain true given the recession as well as the related shift in attitudes toward big business and wealth inequality is debatable. "I think people are becoming quite confused about what they should buy and what they shouldn't buy," said Ms. Hillier. "They are thinking about where materials came from, whether they are eco." She predicts people will be keen to "shop to support," saving their money for brands that share their values. Case in point: Tree Fairfax, a small independent label based in Virginia, whose handmade leather goods, designed, the website says, for "moving around lightly," received numerous shout outs on social media in the recent drive to promote Black owned businesses. However, when contacted to discuss the effect of the current moment on handbag trends, the brand's owner, Tricia "Tree" Hash, replied that she was too exhausted by racism, and too worried about her son, who was still working as a delivery driver without P.P.E., to talk about leather goods. Which seemed exactly the point. Later, keen to remember what had once felt so important, I took my former favorite bag for a walk around the house. We meandered from living room to bedroom and back again. After weeks of living bagless, hands free, my swag weighing down my bicycle basket rather than my shoulders, I was transported back to a time of commutes, rushing, air travel, post work drinks, and a laptop ensconced in leather beneath the table. Suddenly, it all felt so heavy. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
As the hooknosed, hygiene challenged, villainous Count Olaf in "A Series of Unfortunate Events," could easily be the stuff of nightmares yours and your children's. After all, "Unfortunate Events," in which he wickedly (and continuously) places the Baudelaire orphans Violet (Malina Weissman), Klaus (Louis Hynes) and Sunny (Presley Smith) in harm's way while chasing after their inheritance, isn't typical family fare. But the malice and nefariousness are surprisingly enjoyable. "We're far from friendly, but I like that a 10 year old and a 40 year old can watch the same scene and enjoy it for different reasons," he said of the show's 10 vocabulary and themes. "We feel like we're making something that, in all of its nastiness, in all of its cynicism, is good." Hewing closely to Daniel Handler's marvelously macabre Lemony Snicket novels, the series, whose second season is now streaming on Netflix, will end after Season 3, with the last of the 13 books. Which will give Mr. Harris, 44 a multiple Emmy nominee as the womanizing Barney in CBS's "How I Met Your Mother" and a Tony winner as the transgender East German rocker in "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" more time to spend with his own family: his husband, David Burtka, and their 7 year olds, Gideon (his thing is chess) and Harper (hers is belting out songbook standards), who live in New York while he shoots in Vancouver. And yes, the twins are allowed to watch their father at work. "Of course, it's probably not the perfect content because it's pretty dark a lot of slapping children and smoking cigarettes and trying to murder 14 year olds," he said with a vaguely maniacal chuckle after pouring himself a glass of Scotch at a New York photo studio. "I don't know that that's a conversation to have at the dinner table, but for us it's a little bit different." Here are edited excerpts from the conversation. So what is that, two fingers of Scotch? No, not two fingers. Measures against his index finger. And yes, it's slightly over. How dare you, ma'am. Why don't you take a sip and tell me where we are we in the Baudelaire tribulations? The kids are still trying to evade Count Olaf, and the only difference is they've both grown about three inches, so we quickly reference how remarkably tall they've gotten. And there's more action. The Baudelaires for the first few books are shuffled from location to location from protector to protector, and at this point realize that they're on their own and have to take some personal action in order to get away from Olaf and stick together as a family. And that is a good fuel for the engine. He's losing it as the series goes on. He's Wile E. Coyote, frustrated that the Road Runner keeps getting out of his reach. So he's tired and swinging roundhouse knockout punches, even though that's not the best way to box. And that's fun to play. You're unrecognizable as Olaf. And Olaf himself plays different characters. How much time do you spend in the makeup chair? About two and a half hours. I start in the special effects makeup trailer and do all the prosthetics. I have a big forehead piece that covers my eyebrows and a nose that goes on, and then they paint it to match my skin tone, airbrush the whole thing with wrinkles and spots and hand paint bags under the eyes and capillaries. After that I get a three piece unibrow, two muttonchops, a goatee and a two piece wig. And then I get dressed, and I'm ready to go. As much time as I spend in the process of looking like Olaf, it pales in comparison to the workload that Louis and Malina have. They're on set doing their scene, blocking and learning lines, and then they're rushed to school to think only about honors biology. Then there's a knock at the door, and they stop where they are and go recite dialogue and act stressed and emotional. Rinse and repeat all day long until they're pumpkined, which is the term for when they're wrapped. You recently rented out a theater in your hometown, Albuquerque, N.M., so that locals could see "Love, Simon" free of charge. It was a movie that I think is profound, about a gay high school student who is afraid to come out and falls in love, and I was really moved by just how pure it was. But that purity doesn't have to be pretentious. It's not "Brokeback Mountain"; it's more "Sixteen Candles," handled in such a confident, casual, easy way. So I got 111 people to see it, and hopefully they were moved by it and will tell their friends and pay it forward. Talking about smart kids, you also host NBC's "Genius Junior." What's the appeal? It's these remarkable kids that do the most amazing feats, who can spell "omnidirectional" backward as fast as you can say it and remember a shuffled deck of cards and know the Greyhound bus map. These are achievable goals that kids can accomplish. If it can be aspirational and inspirational and still watchable, then I'm happy to be the ringmaster of that circus. Does it make you want to go home and quiz Harper and Gideon? I'm having to shift into that parent. Not, certainly, spelling backward. But to get them to recognize that homework, that reading, that writing, isn't something that they do for an hour until they can play and so they're excited to know that it doesn't stop until you're 80 and you have cataracts. So I'm on them to make sure they're using sentence structure well, that they're spelling things right, that their E's look uniform. It's time. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
From left, Jorge Andres Villarini and Stephanie Rae Williams of Dance Theater of Harlem and Ross Katen of the Jose Limon Dance Foundation rehearsing a reconfigured version of Limon's "Chaconne." "Modern dance," the choreographer Jose Limon wrote in 1965, "is not a 'popular art.'" Nor is it an advertiser's dream. "A pretty ballerina in a pert tutu and pink toe shoe," he continued, "is a much more fetching sales pitch than a vision of a barefoot dancer in a species of ecstasy or suffering." But for Dance Theater of Harlem's City Center season, beginning Wednesday, Virginia Johnson, the company's artistic director, wants her ballet dancers to brush up against some of that ecstasy and suffering. The Jose Limon Dance Foundation operates out of Dance Theater of Harlem's headquarters. So when Ms. Johnson decided that she wanted to have a classic modern work in the repertory, it was natural for her settle on a Limon piece, "Chaconne," which he created as a solo for himself in 1942. Set to Bach's Violin Partita No. 2 in D minor, it is stately, introspective and lushly seamless. Ballet dancers are capable of expressing those qualities, of course. What's trickier for them to grasp is the way weight is used in modern dance. Instead of airiness, they must dig into the floor, as well as master the contraction and release of the pelvis to attain an entirely new way of holding the body. In its purest form, "Chaconne" is a solo. It will be performed that way on Friday by Dylan Santos, but for opening night it has been reconfigured for five dancers three from Dance Theater and two from the Limon company. Last Thursday, the cast gathered in a studio with Ms. Johnson, the Dance Theater ballet master Keith Saunders and the Limon company's artistic director, Colin Connor. For the expanded "Chaconne," each dancer performs a solo, etching the space with Limon's voluptuous turns, both fleet and slowly curving, and weightier moments of stillness in which stoic poses are embellished with sculptural touches, like the arms held overhead with the backs of the wrists touching. Eventually, like a flock of birds, they swirl the stage in unison and land on individual spots. "There's something really nice about it building with one person and then another, and then ending up together at the end," Mr. Connor said. "I love the idea that they each get to wear it like it's a piece of clothing they can pass on to one another." The reconfigured work will begin with the elegant Dance Theater member Jorge Andres Villarini, followed by Logan Frances Kruger of Limon, Mr. Santos, Ross Katen of Limon and Stephanie Rae Williams of Dance Theater. "It's good," Mr. Connor said after a run at the rehearsal. "You guys are harmonizing." "Chaconne" was staged by Gary Masters, a former Limon dancer and reconstructor of his pieces, who worked with the companies separately and together. (The Limon company has its own season at the Joyce Theater, starting May 2.) "It seemed like a great chance for us to all be in the same room together and to function more collaboratively," Mr. Connor said. "I've talked to some of the dancers who are doing it for Dance Theater of Harlem, and they're like, 'I've never had to dance anything like this before.' It requires your total entire human engagement. It's a gloriously daunting solo." That appealed to Ms. Johnson, who called "Chaconne" an "exercise in artistry." She said she liked the idea of a shared voice, and appreciated the Limon company's being in Dance Theater's space because of the aesthetic that the modern group brings. "In ballet, we go so much to the surface," she said. "Here, we have a company that is so grounded and operating on a different kind of purpose in making dance it's a reminder that you should consider other things." As for the solo itself? "This is understanding that you have a purpose on the stage and that you need to find a way to fulfill it," she said. "I looked for dancers who had access to an interior life that could inform the quietness of the piece, that would bring that kind of weight to it." Contained at first, "Chaconne" grows from simple elements to full bodied expression. "It spreads its energy into space and almost creates light in some kind of way," Mr. Connor said. "I think Jose managed to tap into this sense of existential human fight that we all have in a way that has so much life to it." One challenge is holding the stage in what Mr. Connor described as "naked dancing." It's impossible to hide in the solo; it has a formality to it that emphasizes line, but it also deals with the idea of building momentum. Mr. Santos said he had to find a way to understand that the positions in the work are more than poses, but feelings. "I started paying attention to everything happening around me what makes me happy, what makes me sad, what makes me do better, what makes me not be in a bad mood and not do my best," he said. "The solo started unfolding in front of my face. When I perform it, I don't even see anyone else in the room. I've never felt like this ever dancing anything else. Any dancer should have the chance to do it once." The importance of "Chaconne" goes beyond the obvious differences between modern dance and ballet. "Every step has to keep being true to what you're feeling in that moment," Mr. Santos said. "It's literally about being a human being and not being afraid to feel what you feel." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
A team of scientists unveiled a new tree of life on Monday, a diagram outlining the evolution of all living things. The researchers found that bacteria make up most of life's branches. And they found that much of that diversity has been waiting in plain sight to be discovered, dwelling in river mud and meadow soils. "It is a momentous discovery an entire continent of life forms," said Eugene V. Koonin of the National Center for Biotechnology Information, who was not involved in the study. The study was published in the journal Nature Microbiology. In his 1859 book "On the Origin of Species," Charles Darwin envisioned evolution like a branching tree. The "great Tree of Life," he said, "fills with its dead and broken branches the crust of the earth, and covers the surface with its ever branching and beautiful ramifications." Ever since, biologists have sought to draw the tree of life. The invention of DNA sequencing revolutionized that project, because scientists could find the relationship among species encoded in their genes. In the 1970s, Carl Woese of the University of Illinois and his colleagues published the first "universal tree of life" based on this approach. They presented the tree as three great trunks. Our own trunk, known as eukaryotes, includes animals, plants, fungi and protozoans. A second trunk included many familiar bacteria like Escherichia coli. The third trunk that Woese and his colleagues identified included little known microbes that live in extreme places like hot springs and oxygen free wetlands. Woese and his colleagues called this third trunk Archaea. A number of researchers have developed a way to get around that. They simply pull pieces of DNA out of the environment and piece them together. In recent years, Jillian F. Banfield of the University of California, Berkeley and her colleagues have been gathering DNA from many environments, like California meadows and deep sea vents. They have been assembling the genomes of hundreds of new microbial species. The scientists were so busy reconstructing the new genomes that they did not know how these species might fit on the tree of life. "We never really put the whole thing together," Dr. Banfield said. Recently, Dr. Banfield and her colleagues decided it was time to redraw the tree. They selected more than 3,000 species to study, bringing together a representative sample of life's diversity. "We wanted to be as comprehensive as possible," said Laura A. Hug, an author of the new study and a biologist at the University of Waterloo in Canada. The researchers studied DNA from 2,072 known species, along with the DNA from 1,011 species newly discovered by Dr. Banfield and her colleagues. The scientists needed a supercomputer to evaluate a vast number of possible trees. Eventually, they found one best supported by the evidence. It's a humbling thing to behold. All the eukaryotes, from humans to flowers to amoebae, fit on a slender twig. The new study supported previous findings that eukaryotes and archaea are closely related. But overshadowing those lineages is a sprawling menagerie of bacteria. Remarkably, the scientists didn't have to go to extreme places to find many of their new lineages. "Meadow soil is one of the most microbially complex environments on the planet," Dr. Hug said. Another new feature of the tree is a single, large branch that splits off near the base. The bacteria in this group tend to be small in size and have a simple metabolism. Dr. Banfield speculated that they got their start as simple life forms in the first chapters in the history of life. They have stuck with that winning formula ever since. "This is maybe an early evolving group," Dr. Banfield said. "Their advantage is just being around for a really long time." Brian P. Hedlund, a microbiologist at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas who was not involved in the new study, said that one of the most striking results of the study was that the tree of life was dominated by species that scientists have never been able to see or grow in their labs. "Most of life is hiding under our noses," he said. Patrick Forterre, an evolutionary biologist at the Pasteur Institute in France, agreed that bacteria probably make up much of life's diversity. But he had concerns about how Dr. Banfield and her colleague built their tree. He argued that genomes assembled from DNA fragments could actually be chimeras, made up of genes from different species. "It's a real problem," he said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
HOUSTON For a small person who had surgery before he was even born, and who'd just spent an hour and a half squeezing through a tight space that clamped down on his head every few minutes, Baby Boy Royer was showing a feisty spirit. He arrived pink and screaming on Friday at 5:35 a.m., two days before his official due date, weighing 8 pounds 8 ounces, and almost 20 inches long. Within moments of his birth at Texas Children's Hospital, he did what his parents and doctors had eagerly hoped to see: He moved his legs and feet, a sign that the operation may have prevented damage to the spinal nerves needed for walking. Indeed, placed on his belly, he managed to pull a knee underneath himself and push off, as if he intended to crawl away from the nurses who were trying to swaddle him. His parents said they wanted to know him better before choosing his name, though they had narrowed the list to three candidates. On Sept. 27, as a six month old fetus, he underwent experimental surgery while still in his mother's womb to treat a severe form of spina bifida, in which the tissue that should enclose and protect the spinal column does not form properly. The condition leaves the spine open with nerves exposed, and they sustain damage that can leave a child incontinent and unable to walk. The opening leaks spinal fluid, and the base of the brain can sink into the spinal column and be harmed by pressure. Research has shown that for carefully selected fetuses, surgery before birth rather than after gives the child better odds of being able to walk independently and of avoiding the need for an implanted shunt to prevent fluid buildup in the brain. Usually, the prenatal surgery requires cutting open the uterus. But after carefully studying the options and consulting various specialists, Lexi and Joshuwa Royer chose an experimental approach. In that procedure, developed at Texas Children's Hospital by Dr. Michael Belfort, the obstetrician and gynecologist in chief, and Dr. William Whitehead, a pediatric neurosurgeon, doctors make just tiny slits in the uterus to insert a camera and miniature instruments. The camera sends images to a monitor that the surgeons watch so they can see what they are doing. Though more data is needed, the newer approach seems to have two major advantages, which were important to the Royers. It appears less likely to lead to a premature birth, which can cause many complications for the newborn. And it gives the mother a chance to have a vaginal delivery. Women who have the usual fetal surgery have to give birth by cesarean section, which poses risks for subsequent pregnancies. For the Royers, the procedure, described in an Oct. 23 article in The New York Times, lived up to its promises. Mrs. Royer's pregnancy lasted the full nine months, and she had a happy, uncomplicated vaginal birth with her husband by her side. Dr. Belfort delivered their son. The infant's back, which previously had the biggest defect the surgeons had ever repaired, now showed barely a hint of it. But incisions on his sides, made during the fetal surgery to loosen enough tissue to cover the hole in his back, had not closed. Those cuts usually heal on their own after birth, but one had a sizable lump of tissue bulging out and needed suturing. Three hours after he was born, Baby Royer was on an operating table with three plastic surgeons stitching up his sides. The job took less than an hour. Dr. Larry Hollier, the surgeon in chief and chief of plastic surgery at Texas Children's Hospital, marveled at how good Baby Royer's back looked. "I've never seen a such a big defect successfully repaired, with the child moving his feet at birth. It's unbelievable. If this is the cost of getting that closed just having to do a little skin operation it's fantastic." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
EIKO at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine (Nov. 20, 7 p.m.). In "The Duet Project: Distance Is Malleable," this Japanese dancer and choreographer explores interdisciplinary collaborations, which are prompted by the following questions: How can two artists collide and return changed but whole? How can two individuals encounter each other and discuss their differences with or without words? For this iteration, Eiko works with the filmmaker Alexis Moh, the poet and artist Mark McCloughan and the rapper and painter DonChristian Jones. Projections will also allow Eiko to perform with her deceased grandfather, the Japanese painter Chikuha Otake. For her, a duet can appear in many forms. Open rehearsals will be held on Monday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. 212 316 7490, stjohndivine.org/visit/calendar/events GIBNEY DANCE COMPANY at Gibney Dance (Nov. 16, 8 p.m.; Nov. 17, 4 and 8 p.m.; Nov. 18, 2 p.m.). The notion of home is both personal and expansive; for some, it can evoke safety, while for others, it brings up trauma and pain. Gibney Dance's latest program, "Home," features two premieres by the guest choreographers Adam Barruch and Shamel Pitts, who is working with the visual artist and director Deville Cohen. In "Imprint Ghosts," Barruch considers the emotional reverberations of a physical space, while Pitts and Cohen offer "Menagerie." Here, the artists, inspired in part by Tennessee Williams's "The Glass Menagerie," respond to the individuality of six dancers. 646 837 6809, gibneydance.org 'VELOCITY' at the New Victory Theater (Nov. 16, 7 p.m.; Nov. 17, 2 and 7 p.m.; Nov. 18, noon and 4 p.m.; through Nov. 25). In this high energy production, the much lauded champion dancers James Devine and David Geaney look at the past, present and future of Irish dance. Featuring live music by a Celtic band, along with a D.J., "Velocity" performed by Geaney, AnneMarie Keaney and Gabriella Wood is a celebratory jam session and suitable for all ages. 646 223 3010, newvictory.org | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
MELBOURNE, Australia One more major title, just one, and Rafael Nadal will share the most prestigious record in modern men's tennis with Roger Federer. But Nadal is panther quick to assure you that he is not ripping forehands in practice or drifting off to sleep with "No. 20, No. 20" ringing in his head. The chase obsesses tennis fans this three way tussle to finish with the most Grand Slam singles titles in the history of the men's game. With the Australian Open well underway, Federer has 20, Nadal has 19 and Novak Djokovic has 16. All are comfortably into the third round, but when Nadal sat down for an interview at his Melbourne hotel this week, he insisted that he had never viewed it as a chase. For him, the number by his name is simply a byproduct of his relentless pursuit of the best effort within himself. "I am happy with who I am," he said, tapping his barrel chest with an index finger. "I was very happy with 16, very happy with 17, very happy with 18, very happy with 19, and if one day I get to 20, I will be very happy, too. But my level of happiness is not going to change because of this. Do I make myself clear?" It is as if Nadal is trying to build fences around the achievement before anyone else has a chance to start putting up anything resembling barbed wire. "Getting to 20 does not make me incredible," he said. "And if I get to 22, I am not more incredible. I see my life as something more normal." Would it be different if Nadal were chasing a record from another era instead of his own? When Federer equaled Pete Sampras's record of 14 in 2009, Sampras was retired. When Sampras equaled Roy Emerson's record of 12 in 1999, Emerson was long retired. Nadal is on the verge of equaling Federer, his longtime tennis yang who has become a very friendly rival. They are headed for Cape Town, South Africa, to play a charity exhibition together the week after the Australian Open. "I think the good thing is to appreciate being part of a story that has never happened before," he said. "You never had so many matches between three players like this: Novak against me, me against Federer, Novak against Federer. So many finals and semifinals and important matches between all of us, and that is a story that will remain in the history of our sport." Federer is 38; Nadal, 33; Djokovic, 32. All would once have been considered past their tennis primes at those ages. "I wouldn't have thought I'd still be here," Nadal said. But they have inspired one another, and as the 2020s begin, Nadal is ranked No. 1, Djokovic, No. 2; and Federer, No. 3. Their collective staying power explains why no active player in his 20s has won a major singles title, which is unprecedented in the Open era or any era. "I don't hear much talk about the Grand Slam record in the locker room," said the American veteran Sam Querrey. "At least the guys I talk with a lot, the Americans, we never talk about it, probably because none of us have even one. It's not relatable. Actually it's not relatable to someone who has three, like Stan Wawrinka. He's a star. They are superstars." Djokovic and Federer are in the bottom half of the draw in Melbourne, but danger still lurks in the top half for Nadal. If he beats his Spanish compatriot Pablo Carreno Busta in the third round, he will face either Karen Khachanov or Nick Kyrgios. Kyrgios, who relishes getting under Nadal's skin and once upset him at Wimbledon, actually mimicked Nadal's service motion during his second round victory over Gilles Simon on Thursday. "Honestly I don't care at all," Nadal said of Kyrgios's stunt after defeating Federico Delbonis 6 3, 7 6 (4), 6 1 on Thursday night. "If it was funny, good." But Kyrgios, for a change, has looked more inspired than conflicted in his home nation. Inspired is, of course, Nadal's default mode. He practices like he plays: at full in the moment throttle, even if he practices and plays less often now to preserve his energy and fragile knees. Last April, he experienced a rare motivational crisis, brought on by his latest round of injuries, that had him muttering "I want to get out of here" in the midst of a victory over Leonardo Mayer in Barcelona. But he has rebounded convincingly and said he still plays for the same reasons love of the game and the fight, and the desire to achieve personal goals for himself and those close to him. He is newly married to his longtime girlfriend Maria Francisca Perello and, despite his fiercely protective attitude toward his private life, is speaking openly about their desire to start a family. He has won 12 French Opens on the red clay in Paris, two Wimbledons on grass and four United States Opens on an acrylic hardcourt surface quite similar to the one at Melbourne Park. But he has often stumbled at the final hurdle here, losing four finals, the most recent one to Djokovic last year in a 6 3, 6 2, 6 3 rout. Djokovic, who has beaten Nadal nine straight times on hardcourts and won the Australian Open a record seven times, remains the rightful favorite again. If Nadal cannot get to 20 in Melbourne, he will, if he remains healthy, have a fine shot of getting there in Paris in June. Federer, five years older, has had ample time to see this coming, but it is also worth remembering that the Grand Slam career record is a relatively contemporary obsession. Until Open tennis began in 1968, many of the greatest players, including Jack Kramer and Pancho Gonzalez, quickly turned professional, which made them ineligible for Grand Slam events. Rod Laver, who twice won all four Grand Slam events in a single year, has said he paid scant attention to his total. In the 1970s and 1980s, the game's greats regularly skipped the long trip to Australia. For those who keep track, and not many do, Federer has won 103 tour titles, Nadal has won 84 and Djokovic has won 77. Still, the numbers that resonate are 20, 19 and 16. "I am happy to be part of this from the inside, but if I end up finishing third, I don't think I'm going to be less happy in the future," Nadal said. "And if I end up finishing first, I don't think I'm going to be any more happy in the future, either." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
If your cinematic wish list includes watching a steel faced Marcia Gay Harden blast a big guy named Cheetah with a shotgun, then by all means, check out "Point Blank." Anybody outside of this niche constituency can skip this flaccid Netflix action flick including fans of Anthony Mackie and Frank Grillo, who ill advisedly used their vacation from playing Falcon and Crossbones in Marvel movies. Directed by Joe Lynch, the film attempts to graft buddy comedy antics onto a "we're running out of time!" plot. Mackie's Paul is a nurse desperately trying to rescue his very pregnant wife, Taryn ( Teyonah Parris ), who was abducted for contrived reasons having to do with Grillo's character, Abe, a tough guy who may not be as bad as he first appears. There is also something to do with police corruption, which, in case you were wondering, is where Harden comes in. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
Waltzing can go on for hours in an endless rotation, as partners coiled in each other's arms whisk around a brimming dance floor. It requires a significant amount of physical contact, which is why the waltz was considered somewhat of a guilty pleasure until the early 19th century, when its popularity finally overthrew propriety. And now during the coronavirus pandemic close partner dancing raises eyebrows again. In Vienna, the home of the waltz, a wave of cancellations has shut down the annual ball season. Usually, in January and February, hundreds of luxurious celebrations are held across the city, including a New Year's Eve ball, the Hofburg Silvesterball, at the Imperial Palace. Just after this year's events wrapped, lockdowns began. Planning for a new season's programs came to a halt. The waltz may have a reputation as the ultimate social dance for partners the way it is traditionally performed at the balls but there is another interpretation, one that resonates in this pandemic year of physical distancing. More than a century ago, the Viennese dancer Grete Wiesenthal transformed the waltz into a powerful form of solo movement. Though her name is not usually found among the internationally renowned pioneers of modern dance, like Isadora Duncan, Ruth St. Denis and Loie Fuller, Wiesenthal is revered in Austria, where her dances have been revived periodically since her death 50 years ago. Like many Viennese, Wiesenthal, who was born in 1885, grew up with the waltz but her training was in classical ballet. She refined her technique at the school of the Vienna Court Opera, where, she would later insist, there was no focus on artistry. A solo style of waltzing was Wiesenthal's answer to what she considered ballet's weakening relationship to music. She saw the art form, and the Opera's productions, as hopelessly committed to uniformity, with no space for dancers' self expression. Wiesenthal developed her own technique, which she called spherical dance, and it was centered on a different axis than ballet. Turns and extensions were set on a horizontal line of the body, and her arms, torso and legs would stretch across space simultaneously. With bent knees, she manipulated the momentum of her turns and could tilt into crescent shaped back bends. Not clasped to a partner, she was free to sweep her arms gracefully, plunging her into balance defying leans. Wiesenthal also drew inspiration from nature. In addition to smaller theaters, she often performed outside, removing the barrier between audience and stage, and created dances that reflected the elements and her surrounding environment. The cultural historian Alys X. George, the author of "The Naked Truth: Viennese Modernism and the Body" (2020), said in an interview that the artistic avant garde in Vienna, who adored Duncan and St. Denis, were thrilled with the homegrown Wiesenthal when she introduced her contemporary style. "That was just electrifying for the city because Wiesenthal really took this Austrian dance form, the waltz, and gave it a new lease on life," she said. "She liberated it from the balls, she brought it outdoors, she linked it with nature, too, but kept the ties to music that have so animated the Viennese cultural sphere." The Viennese have loved the waltz for centuries. It began in the 18th century as a rambunctious, folksy country dance in parts of Germany and Austria, and swiftly spread through the social classes, rising to prominence among the upper classes and aristocracy as an elegant form of entertainment. In Vienna, the waltz the city's version is distinguished by the music's three count structure danced at high speeds edged out the uptight minuet in the early 19th century, and composers like Johann Strauss senior and Joseph Lanner popularized it around the world. In the waltz, Wiesenthal found what she believed ballet had grown cold to musicality. "Nobody knew anything about the growing together of music and movement," she said in a 1910 lecture. "My wish for a different dance, for a truer dance became ever stronger and more defined and at the same time, with the ballet dances, I learned how one should not do it." Despite her disillusionment with ballet she began her professional career with the Vienna Court Opera. She danced there for several years, departing after a contentious casting decision that put her at the center of a battle between Gustav Mahler, then director of the Opera, and a ballet master, Josef Hassreiter. Mahler gave Wiesenthal a member of the corps de ballet a solo in "La Muette de Portici," which infuriated Hassreiter and went directly against his wishes. Just a few months after the "La Muette" premiere, Wiesenthal left the company and, as she put it, a life of "staying with the beat and not getting out of line." At the start of 1908, Wiesenthal and her sisters, Elsa and Berta, made their debut at Cabaret Fledermaus with original choreography. They danced together and performed solos, but it was Wiesenthal's "Donauwalzer" solo to Strauss's "On the Beautiful Blue Danube," that was the program's highlight. (When she became famous, street musicians would serenade her with Strauss's waltz, the dancer La Meri said decades later.) The Wiesenthal sisters danced in Vienna and Berlin, and in 1909 made an appearance at the London Hippodrome. They were a hit in London, where The Dancing Times later wrote that the sisters "were not mere performers; they were poems." In 1912, when Wiesenthal first came to the United States, solo, bringing her program to the Winter Theater, The New York Review, a weekly theater paper, called her "the high priestess of joy and ecstasy." Wiesenthal's energized approach to dance inspired many collaborations with Vienna's leading artists. In 1910, with her solo reputation on the rise, the playwright and librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal became a close creative partner. She starred in his pantomimes and silent films, distilling complex narratives through their emotional essence rather than literal gestures. She also was in the premiere of Richard Strauss and Hofmannsthal's "Ariadne Auf Naxos" (1912) in a self choreographed role, and was contracted to perform with Diaghilev's Ballets Russes in the spring of 1913, the same month the curtain opened on "The Rite of Spring." Though it never materialized, said Andrea Amort, founder and director of the dance archive at the Music and Arts University of the City of Vienna, it was to have been a new production, with a libretto by Hofmannsthal and danced by Nijinsky, Wiesenthal and Ida Rubinstein. Throughout her career, critics and audiences admired her dancing for its daintiness, and critics consistently noted her charm and femininity in their reviews. But Wiesenthal was experimenting with the extremes of the waltz's expressive potential. She was also exploring a deeper connection between dancer and audience. "It seems her secret was to have her dancers waltz not with each other but alone, in such a way that the audience felt itself to be the partner," the dance writer George Jackson said in the program notes to George Balanchine's "Vienna Waltzes" (1977). (Balanchine's work, in its final section, also features a solo waltzer who moves across the stage luring the audience along with her.) Wiesenthal, Mr. Jackson wrote, "was able to take the closed waltz and open it to inspection without destroying its essence." "Besides these huge swings and floating movements, she has very tiny, very sensitive movements," Ms. Seyfried said in a video interview, demonstrating an energy flowing through her own hand. "She works sometimes just with the fingers, she lets the fingers breathe." Ms. Seyfried is currently working with Ms. Amort (both are professors in the dance department at Music and Arts University), on reviving a fuller exploration of her technique, and not just her repertory. The Vienna State Opera Ballet Academy is also now considering introducing her technique and choreography into its curriculum. Wiesenthal's articulation of the music, and her choice of composers Strauss (Johann, Josef and Richard), Schubert, Beethoven, Chopin inextricably linked her to the waltz. But it was an entirely new vision. By the time she returned to America for her second tour, along with the Vienna State Opera dancer Willy Franzl, in 1933, audiences had moved on to different forms of expressive modern dancing and her style was received as pure nostalgia. John Martin, the dance critic for The New York Times, wrote: "Hers was in its day exhilarating dancing, make no mistake. When it can be seen, at some future time, in relation to its period, it will again be exhilarating dancing." Maybe now is that future time. It is a year when a bold solo waltz, unattached to any grand theatrical conventions, can seem not only refreshingly of the moment but also exhilarating once again. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
He prefers to focus on the dilemmas, successes and struggles of particular Asian Americans, including Cho; Eddie Huang, the rebel celebrity chef; and Amy Chua, the notorious tiger mom. While he admires Huang more than Chua, he considers both to be resolute individualists who refuse to back down when faced with the disapproval of Asian Americans or Americans as a whole. They know who they are, even if who they are happens to be contradictory and provocative. This self assertion or brashness makes them characteristically American. Cho represents the flip side of their success, and Yang's essay on the shooter, which was first published in n 1 in 2008 and established Yang as a writer to reckon with, remains his best work, probably because here he comes face to face with himself most vividly. Cho was an Asian American man whose depression and rage appeared to be tied to his misogyny and his experience of being rejected by women. Contemplating Cho, Yang says: "The Asian man knows something of the resentment of the embattled white man ... and something of the resentments of the rising social justice warrior. ... Tasting of the frustrations of both, he is denied the entitlements of either." Cho was an extreme manifestation of this resentful, racialized masculinity, and Yang confesses an ambivalent kinship with him as an "unlovable" man himself. Looking at Cho's face, Yang feels "a very personal revulsion. ... Those lugubrious eyes, that elongated face behind wire frame glasses: He looks like me." This is the emotional crux of the book, one Yang barely pursues beyond this essay. If Yang had pressed further in examining himself or other Asian Americans, he might have been able to develop a new approach to the Asian American condition, one that addressed the hatreds and self hatreds born from racism and internalized racism. The older approach to this problem emerged after 1968, when radical college students coined the term "Asian American." Being "Asian American" meant being anti imperialist, antiwar, antiracist and anticapitalist. If racism harmed you as an individual, the solution was both to change yourself, by developing a political consciousness, and to undertake collective action, by attacking racism and everything related to it. That legacy of merging individual and collective transformation still exists today in nonprofit organizations, grass roots activism, some campus student groups and even among some elected politicians, including Jane Kim, who serves on San Francisco's Board of Supervisors, and the California congresswoman Judy Chu. This Asian American legacy in politics and art is invisible to Yang, who does not even mention Frank Chin, the writer who most forcefully dealt with the agonies of Asian American manhood. Chin, who connected racial emasculation to the treatment of Asian Americans as objects of "racist love" (as opposed to the "racist hate" directed against African Americans), argued that Asian American writing had to be a form of fighting. Yang flails rather than fights, which suggests that there is something inadequate about the Asian American legacy for him. He may not be alone. His neglect of historical forebears and his almost exclusive focus on the personal is indicative of a generational shift in Asian American thinking; revolution is not very fashionable today. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
Fans of Greta Gerwig's "Little Women" can't stopping talking about it: Marmee March's confession to her headstrong daughter Jo that "I'm angry nearly every day of my life." It's a line that had never been spoken on film, and only once in a television mini series. And to those of us who'd buried Louisa May Alcott's novel about four rambunctious Civil War era sisters deep in our cobwebbed memories, it sounded unfamiliar and almost shocking. Even Gerwig has said she felt like she hadn't heard it before reading the book again as an adult. But that line and the chord it has struck with audiences is one of the things Laura Dern, who plays Marmee in Gerwig's adaptation, told me she's happiest about. "I was really grateful for that scene, because I think the availability of Marmee as a mother is about something raw and about expressing what isn't working with how women are treated or measured," she said. "We felt it was essential." Saintly and serene. Insipid and sexless. Or even smarmy Marmee, depending on whom you ask. Her name summons up an unsettling gamut of reactions, none of them exactly flattering. Because somewhere between the page and the screen, Marmee became easy to overlook. Adolescent readers tend to be spellbound by the March girls' aspirations and high jinks, not the inner life of their mother (eye roll). And early movie adaptations, directed by men and catering to social norms of virtuous, self sacrificing womanhood, rendered Marmee cloying and flat. It's an association she still can't quite shake and that threatens to suffocate actresses in sticky sweetness. Which is why her admission of intentionally suppressed anger in the newest Oscar nominated adaptation "is so important, because it tells us about so many mothers' experiences, but also about the real woman behind Marmee," said Anne Boyd Rioux, the author of "Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy: The Story of 'Little Women' and Why It Still Matters." That real woman was Louisa's own mother, the long suffering Abigail May Alcott. Born into Boston prosperity, she fell hard for Bronson Alcott, a penniless dreamer whose progressive visions of education and social reform mirrored her own. But Bronson, for all his charms, turned out to be a notoriously poor provider abandoning her for long stretches without money or a permanent home while she raised four daughters as essentially a single mother. The low point was Fruitlands, Bronson's ill fated utopian community (the rules: no heated baths, no animal products or labor, no sex). There, the men philosophized and then went traveling, leaving Abigail and her girls to harvest the crops. "It was this romantic dream hippie ish, bizarre, not anything like the bourgeois dream of a young man who would allow her to be this full person who could write or teach or work," said the author Eve LaPlante. Dern used LaPlante's books "Marmee Louisa: The Untold Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Mother" and "My Heart Is Boundless: Writings of Abigail May Alcott, Louisa's Mother" in her research. LaPlante added, "Bronson wasn't that guy because he couldn't make a living. He got fired from every job he ever had. He wasn't stable at all." A suffragist, abolitionist and social worker, Abigail wielded a sly wit: "I wish women displayed more brains and less jewelry"; "In this world of folly and fashion ... a man's hat is the most essential part of his head." And her generosity was legend. But beneath the sunshine, bitterness simmered. "She was the epitome of the phrase, 'No good deed goes unpunished,'" said John Matteson, the author of the Pulitzer Prize winning "Eden's Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father." "That's what makes portraying Marmee so complicated," he said. "On the surface she seems to be this sweet, loving, encouraging, kind woman. But when she lets the mask slip, you realize that she is fiercely angry with the fact that the world doesn't repay that kindness." "I see it as a kind of reparative gesture on Louisa's part," said Sarah Blackwood, who recently wrote about the Marmee problem for The New Yorker. "I think she creates a sentimental, idealized home, because she's trying to write something that's going to sell. More power to her she succeeded really well. But then I also do think she took so many of the hard, dark, terrible things from her." That sugarcoating, translated onto film, often made Marmee feel somehow less real, less significant, less subversive. "If you look at the earlier Marmees, they're just hardly even there," said Rioux. "They're so unimportant and so uninteresting, they don't even deserve screen time." Spring Byington sparkled in Broadway comedies until she played Marmee in George Cukor's 1933 version with Katharine Hepburn, leaving her pigeonholed as a fluttery maternal type. Mary Astor, who starred with June Allyson in Mervyn LeRoy's 1949 adaptation, thought Marmee would be the end of her, her bitterness growing by the day. "I would sit quietly and wonder, 'What am I doing here?'" she wrote in her 1959 autobiography, "My Story." Maybe it takes a woman to know how to depict one. In 1994, the director Gillian Armstrong conjured up what Blackwood called a girl power Marmee with Susan Sarandon, still soaring after "Thelma Louise." "She gets a lot of great lines like railing against corsets, which the real Marmee also did," Blackwood said. "She's really bustling around." Sarandon, outfitted with a homeopathic kit and grungy period dresses, played Marmee as "what it would be like to explain to your girls how to be strong in a real feminine way" rather than "imitating the worst characteristics of men," Sarandon said. "I think the tricky part is not making her sappy," she added. "It's trying to find a way within the language of that period to make her strong. But it comes from a mother's love, not from being a proselytizing, politicized woman. She's liberated in the sense that she has a very strong core idea of morals, of integrity, of kindness." Still, it wasn't until Vanessa Caswill's 2017 BBC mini series starring Emily Watson that a screen Marmee first uttered that line about anger. She even snaps at her daughters. "One of my friends turned to me and said, 'Who among us hasn't done that at one time or another?'" Rioux recalled. "I just thought, yeah, perfect." Dern's only trepidation about taking on Marmee was the realization that making her wisdom and language accessible would be difficult. "How do you hold the energy of someone who is rather iconic for an angelic nature but allow her to be a modern mother?" Dern asked. "And before I even expressed that to Greta, she said, 'We want to make her modern and messy and complicated and available and powerful as opposed to just sitting quoting poetry and beautiful lines.'" "Just like Greta wanted to give Louisa the ending she may have always wanted to have," Dern said, "we wanted to give her her real mother in all these complications, the marriage in all its complications, the heartbreak in all its complications." But even that hasn't been enough for some Marmee supporters. "I wasn't satisfied by Marmee in the new film," Blackwood said, "but I don't even know what else could have satisfied me." Maybe she'll get a chance to find out: "Marmee Louisa," LaPlante's dual biography, has been optioned and developed into a six hour limited series by Engage Entertainment, and will soon be pitched to studios and networks. "I think if you want to get more of who Marmee the real Marmee was," LaPlante said, "you have to have a different movie." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
PARIS Deep in the concrete bowels of the Palais de Tokyo, the modern art museum of Paris, down a plunging staircase with walls covered in angry graffiti, amid racks of clothes and roaming models (some of whom were sporting little horns jutting from their foreheads, or with flattened noses), the designer Rick Owens pshawed about current events and the state of the world. "I'm tired of thinking about doom and decline," he said. At the end of a week in which the denuclearization of North Korea did not happen and a soap opera of testimony in Washington, D.C. did, you kind of know what he's talking about. In any case, he was thinking about something else: glamour, the kind you earn, not the kind that comes with entitlement. It appears to be making something of a comeback. And that got him thinking about Cecil B. DeMille in the 1930s and Larry LeGaspi, the man who created the style of Kiss in the 1970s and whose work deeply influenced Mr. Owens (he has a book on the designer coming out later this year). Also Charles James, the couturier, and the lush fabrics and prints of Mariano Fortuny. So he decided to tell an epic story of his own. He did it in sharp, tailored coats over layers of snap crotch maillots "sex where the woman is in control," he said and jackets with curving, raised seam shoulders in silver cowhide or shearling, like folded angel wings. In jersey dresses draped in increasingly complex twists and peekaboo turns around the body, trailing like the traces of ball gowns past onto the floor, and columns of red and fuchsia. He did it with body modification as a reminder of the right to self definition, and with a supple dignity. There's been a lot of protective clothing around this season, a lot of battering ram shoulders and storm trooper boots and swaddling duvets for when you just can't take it any more. At Balmain, Olivier Rousteing added spikes to Easter egg boucles and stiff princess skirts (hug, and you risk impalement), crunched biker patent leather into thigh high nail spiked boots and flowing capes, and otherwise decorated dangerously in a 1980s remix of plastic covered denim and sheer Swiss dot blouson jumpsuits and extreme encrustation. He has no fear of the overblown. But the most evocative clothes are waging a battle of a different kind: one for the values of the silver screen over reality television; for the work of history over the blink and you'll miss it reaction to whatever just arrived in your feed; for temptation that comes with a moral center. In the melee, streetwear, the flavor of the most recent moment, is falling by the wayside. Mr. Owens is not the only one who believes it is time to move on. At Paco Rabanne, Julien Dossena broke the bonds of 1960s futurism in a terrific Jean Harlow meets Jimi Hendrix hybrid of duchess satin swagged cocktail dresses, silver chain mail bias slips; Art Deco peacock print rock star suiting and leopard spots. Backstage, his face lit up as he described watching old Audrey Hepburn movies and Marilyn Monroe in "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes," and buying his own first real piece of fashion (a pair of Raf Simons trousers) and how with that, confidence came. At Y/Project, Glenn Martens laid thin strips of vinyl over sheaths to create slithers of shine, looped faux fur lined military skirts up and around, and raised the panniers of Versailles from hips to shoulders, so silk gowns became tents swaying around the body. And at Loewe, Jonathan Anderson offered an elegantly pointed meditation on the selfie and 16th and 17th century cameos (the connection between the two), juxtaposing the now and then by setting the cool of a black riding coat against the frippery of handkerchief hem skirts trimmed in Elizabethan lace; needle punching ribbed cream knits into organdy petticoats; and flopping a cravat and balloon sleeves out from under a basic black knit tank. The details mattered. Tweed capes were trimmed in falls of feathers, and a jacket was nipped in at the waist and pinched in back almost as if grabbed by a hand, to flare over the hips. A pearl encrusted sweater was paired with a giant jeans (big pants are a trend). There were some bouncing, big yarn pompoms and winged skull caps with a beanie top, drawing a thin line from the court of Mary, Queen of Scots to the court of the influencer. The current convulsive instant may pass but not so much the human condition. There is a depth and emotional connection in these clothes that just doesn't exist in Virgil Abloh's Off White, though even Mr. Abloh he of the ironic quotes and collaborator cool was toying with the old razzle dazzle: showing a sleeping bag size silver puffer over a Lurex silver union suit, followed by a silver satin jacket and shorts, followed by a silver satin evening coat. They stood out amid the racecar checks and leather sweats, the oversize faded denim painter's pants and utilitarian body con knits dangling well, it wasn't clear what they were; straps? But Mr. Abloh's reference points seem to have more to do with his peer group than any larger idea. At the end, a troika of billowing, beachy ball gowns appeared, slit to the thigh and worn over micro shorts. Maybe they were supposed to lighten things up. Begone, ye political and ecological angst! The problem is that they looked, like the material they were made from and the whole collection itself, awfully unconvincing. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
Geraldine Ferraro with Walter Mondale as he announced that he had chosen her as his vice presidential running mate in the 1984 election. WASHINGTON On the cusp of Joe Biden teaming up with a woman, I am casting back to my time covering the first woman who was a serious contender for veep. The feminist fairy tale which began with women crying and popping champagne on the convention floor in San Francisco in 1984 had a sad ending. Cinderella with ashes in her mouth. It's hard to fathom, but it took another 36 years for a man to choose to put a woman on the Democratic ticket with him. To use Geraldine Ferraro's favorite expression, "Gimme a break!" After Walter Mondale picked Ferraro, a Queens congresswoman, the first man and woman to share a ticket had to consider all sorts of things: Could he kiss her on the cheek? (No.) Could he call her "dear" or "honey"? (No.) Could they hug? (No.) Could they tell jokes, as Johnny Carson did, about how angry Joan Mondale would be when her husband kept coming home late and saying he had been in private sessions with the vice president? (No.) They wanted to be seen as peers, more TV anchor team than suburban couple. Mondale could not seem paternal or patronizing or use phrases like "a ticket with broad appeal." Ferraro, who walked faster, had to stop bounding ahead of her running mate. They knew that the way they conducted themselves would forever recast the perception of men and women in politics. So they were wary in the beginning. As one Democratic consultant put it at the time, "He looked like a teenager on the first date with that 'How in the world do you pin the corsage on her?' problem.'' Before a fund raiser in New York once, a Democratic official presented Ferraro with a wrist corsage. She refused to put it on. "That I will not do,'' she told the man politely. Sometimes, the introductory music for the petite blonde was the 1925 ditty, "Five Foot Two, Eyes of Blue." One magazine hailed her as "America's Bride." When the ticket headed South, Jim Buck Ross, Mississippi's 70 year old commissioner of agriculture, called the 48 year old Ferraro "young lady" and asked if she could bake blueberry muffins. Ferraro's historic campaign was full of images never before seen on the presidential trail. As she went onstage, Gerry, as she was universally known, would hand off her pocketbook to an aide. Her charming press spokesman, Francis O'Brien, sometimes ironed her dresses as her main foreign affairs adviser, Madeleine Albright, looked on. It was fascinating to see age old customs through the eyes of a woman candidate. "People hand me their babies,'' Ferraro marveled. "As a mother, my instinctive reaction is how do you give your baby to someone who's a total stranger to kiss, especially with so many colds going around? And especially when the woman is wearing lipstick?" It was the first time a candidate running for the White House had talked about abortion using the phrase, "If I were pregnant," and about foreign policy with the phrase, "As the mother of a draft age son." The "smartass white boys" around Mondale, as many feminists called them privately, got nervous when she talked about being a mother. How could she be tough and a mother, they wondered, not seeing the obvious: Mothers are tougher than anyone. Fearing white male backlash, they tried to control her bouncy Queens persona. Ferraro walked the same tightrope that tripped up Hillary Clinton when she wondered if she should wheel around in that debate and tell the creeping Donald Trump to scram. If she got angry, would she seem shrill, that dread word, and turn off voters? The Mondale inner circle wanted Ferraro to play the traditional running mate role of hatchet man. But Gloria Steinem warned, "Nothing makes men more anxious than for a woman to be masculine." George H.W. Bush excitedly proclaimed after his debate with Ferraro that he had tried to "kick a little ass"; his press aide called Ferraro "bitchy"; and Barbara Bush said Ferraro was a word that "rhymes with rich." What started as a goose bump blind date with history curdled, as Ferraro got dragged into a financial mess involving her husband's real estate business. Right after the Reagan landslide, Democrats began muttering about returning to white Anglo Saxon men on the ticket and not having any more "feminized" tickets that didn't appeal to them. I called women across the country for a magazine autopsy I was writing and was shocked to hear how ambivalent women still were about a woman running the country. A 36 year old mother of three from Bristol, Tenn., told me: "I put myself in her shoes. Could I sit down and logically make decisions for everybody without cracking up? I think women in general are weak. I know that sounds awful. But we women know we have our faults.'' The next year, Ferraro put out a memoir talking about how depressed and paranoid she got, and how much she cried, admitting that she was not "prepared for the depth of the fury, the bigotry, and the sexism my candidacy would unleash." She said that Mondale's male aides were so condescending that she instructed them to "pretend every time they talk to me or even look at me that I'm a gray haired Southern gentleman, a senator from Texas." (In her memoir, Sarah Palin aimed her sharpest barbs at John McCain's aides.) We don't know whom Biden will choose but we do know the sort of hell she will endure at the hands of Team Trump. Even after the MeToo revolution, even with women deciding this election, have the undercurrents of sexism in America changed so much? Hollywood, after all, only just began forking over major budgets to women directors, after years of absurdly stereotyping them. Kimberly Guilfoyle, Kellyanne Conway, Kayleigh McEnany, Lara Trump and Jeanine Pirro the Fox Force Five of retrograde Trumpworld will have the knives out. Conservatives will undermine the veep candidate with stereotypes. She's bitchy. She's a nag. She's aggressive. She's ambitious. Who's wearing the pants here, anyhow? I asked Francis O'Brien if he thought, three and a half decades after he watched the sandstorm of sexism around Ferraro, whether her successor would have an easier time. "I think it's the same, in many ways," he said. "This is a white Anglo Saxon country founded by white Anglo Saxon men for white Anglo Saxon men. Sexism is like race. It'll pop out. It's in our DNA. We're one of the few Western countries where women have never made it to the top." But on the bright side, when Chuck Schumer wanted to call Nancy Pelosi a lioness on Friday, referring to her negotiations with Republicans on the relief bill, he checked with her first to see if she would prefer lion. 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 |
PARIS It may have been snowing on Monday morning here, but at Stella McCartney's show in the Palais Garnier, the stars were shining brightly. Amber Valletta and Doutzen Kroes were there; ditto the Formula One world champion Lewis Hamilton; Francois Henri Pinault, the chief executive of Kering, which owns the McCartney brand; and the art dealer Dasha Zhukova. In pride of place was the designer's beaming father, Paul McCartney, alongside his wife, Nancy Shevell. "Wasn't it a stormer? Wasn't it just great?" Mr. McCartney asked after the finale as he made his way down the sweeping grand staircase. "Of course I love every show because Stella is my baby. But I feel like this collection was particularly witty and sexy.'' | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
We s tood on the deck of the hulking cargo ship, through the bluster and drizzle in the Strait of Messina, both of us feeling something like sailors docking at an unfamiliar port of call. My new acquaintance, a Genovese Ph.D. student in anthropology named Giacomo, explained to me that he'd rarely ventured south of Rome, much less ever been to Sicily. But he was excited, as was I, to see the brilliant golden statue of Madonna of the Letter come into view as a faint rainbow stretched 180 degrees across the harbor. He explained his travel philosophy: that the self is a vessel one empties at home and slowly fills with experiences over the course of one's travels. That sounded like a great frame of mind to begin my trip to Catania, the second largest city in Sicily, positioned in the shadow of Mount Etna on the island's eastern coast. While it doesn't attract the same kind of attention as Palermo, Catania's unheralded delights are worth exploration: fine architecture, bustling markets, lively cultural events and centuries of history dating to the city's beginnings as a modest Greek colony. And while the euro has seen an uptick over the dollar in the last year or so, a trip to Catania can be had for a relatively modest sum. While I could have flown to Catania from where I was staying in Rome, I opted for the more scenic train ride. A second class seat cost me 69.50 euros (about 86), and while the seats didn't recline (brutal on a 10 hour ride), the train was half empty so I had the seats next to me to myself. The sights and smells of the new city hit me square on after stepping out onto the uneven stone pavement: the peddlers selling gelato and icy granitas, shops full of fresh pasta, motorbikes zooming in and out between lanes of cars, and walls covered in multicolored graffiti. I walked a bit along the water, taking in the slightly briny sea air before hanging a right and making my way toward my lodgings in the center of town. The door closed with a reverberating clang, as if I had entered a mausoleum. I had arrived at my hotel, Asmundo di Gisira, which is equal parts bed and breakfast and art gallery. It was certainly one of the more interesting hotel experiences I've had in recent memory: Art pieces bedeck the lobby and rooms are themed after myths. Mine, with two beds placed back to back and a circular mirror on the ceiling with a remote controlled chromatic lighting system, was named after the Acis and Galatea myth, famous throughout the island. (The quickie version: Acis loves Galatea, as does a monster named Polyphemus; spurned by Galatea, the monster kills Acis; Galatea turns Acis into a magical stream.) One aspect of the hotel I particularly enjoyed was the ability to take breakfast on a large terrace overlooking Piazza Giuseppe Mazzini. Piazzas are essential to Catanian life, something I discovered during my first morning walking around the city. The main square, Piazza del Duomo, seemed to fill with people proportionally as the morning sun illuminated it: Vendors, shoppers heading to the market and old men sitting around the elephant statue in the square's center fill the plaza. You'd be wise to grab an espresso macchiato (an espresso with a dash of milk) from one of the cafes on the west side of the square and watch this snapshot of Catanian life Caffe Prestipino makes a good one (1 euro). After paying a visit to the Cathedral of Sant'Agata, which has, because of earthquakes and Mount Etna's ornery nature, been built and rebuilt several times since its original construction in the 11th century, I headed across the street to the Church of the Badia di Sant'Agata. I noticed its promising looking dome and was hoping to ascend for a good view of the city; I was in luck. Three euros and 170 steps later I was up at the cupola, with a wonderful view of the city and Mount Etna, one of the largest active volcanoes on the continent, looming only somewhat menacingly in the background. While Catania has a public transportation system, its center is small and very manageably explored on foot, allowing you to match the unrushed pace of life and enjoy the narrow stone streets, polished by years of automobile and foot traffic; the sunbaked facades of its buildings; and the thousands of balconies that lean out into its avenues. Catania's ancient history is conspicuous everywhere you go. A quick walk from the main piazza is the archaeological complex Terme della Rotonda (free admission), an ancient thermal bath complex from the Roman Empire that was repurposed and used as a Christian house of worship beginning in the sixth century the oldest in Catania. Built in the 1800s (practically a newborn) the Teatro Massimo Bellini, named after the city's most famous composer, watches regally over a piazza with the same namesake. I went one afternoon, hoping to catch that evening's "La Traviata" performance, only to be greeted by a sign saying it was sold out. Undeterred, I went to the box office about 30 minutes before showtime, and slowly pushed my way to the front of the line. I was in luck. My balcony seat wasn't cheap (42 euros), but I was happy to have landed a seat, and the guy at the box office even floated me a 20 percent discount (off the regular price of 52.50 euros). The gorgeously gilded opera house was a perfect environment to watch the trials and tragedy of the courtesan Violetta Valery. Ursino Castle, which dates to the 13th century, now holds a civic museum (12 euros admission with audio guide) and is also worth a visit. Inside you'll find treasures from the old Italian masters: works from El Greco and Battistello, and Caravaggio's somber "Maddalena Addolorata." For the most part, works proceed chronologically, eventually getting into the 20th century and the colorful, almost Van Gogh like "Autoritratto" (self portrait) by Antonio Ligabue. The museum is quite large and parts of it, like one area where 500 year old relief fragments are just sitting on the floor, feel a little like the curators didn't know what to do with so much history. It's a palpable feeling in Italy, particularly in Sicily: The sheer volume of fascinating ancient buildings and artifacts can overwhelm. And as on the floor of a rain forest, new life must push through the old and fight for resources. The compact Sicilian Museum of Contemporary Art does this well (5 euros admission), highlighting works from Catania (Alfio Giurato's moody work "The Puppets") and elsewhere (the Cuban artist Cesar Santos's cheeky "Playground"). And at Gammazita, a cultural association/library/performance space, I saw both young and old united on Piazza Federico di Svevia enjoying a public performance, socializing, eating and drinking. Inside the building is a warm, eclectically decorated informal lending library further back is a small bar and cafe. A couple in the front room was setting out food announced on a hastily scrawled menu: Eggplant lasagna, arugula salad and a couple of other dishes. The chaos spilled charmingly out into the street. Two young women were singing and playing the guitar, and guests could enjoy their food and peruse piles of books that were set up outside. A store just across the alleyway (also called Gammazita) specializes in circus and street performing. Alongside, a tall young man was giving an informal plate spinning lesson to some youngsters. All in all, it was a welcoming, festive atmosphere. That eggplant lasagna, which I had, along with the salad, for 10 euros, also happened to be excellent, with perfectly al dente noodles and a creamy tomato sauce. One afternoon I walked into Pausa Pranzo, where I was introduced to the Sicilian way of doing lunch no menu, just choose from several options. I had a small plate of mixed vegetables as an appetizer (5 euros) followed by a juicy, garlicky spaghetti alle vongole (7 euros). The situation was similar at Il Principe (incorrectly listed by Google Maps as permanently closed) various vegetable antipasti (3 euros) followed by a dish of fried whole sardines, a Catanian specialty (6 euros). What really shone, though, were the markets, where you can find seasonal, high quality ingredients. This was apparent at the fish market near Piazza del Duomo, which overwhelms with fresh clams, mussels and other seafood, and particularly at the large Fera o Luni market in Piazza Carlo Alberto di Savoia, which doubles as a flea market (Catania's big markets are closed Sundays). The latter market was vast and labyrinthine, with vendors selling everything from fresh fennel and cauliflower to knockoff designer handbags and shoes. I dug through a pile of clothing and picked up a button down shirt and sweater for one euro apiece, and a bag of fresh green and black olives mixed with pickled carrots and cauliflower (one euro). My bad Italian led me to accidentally buy way more pepato stagionato a powerfully salty sheep's milk cheese that resembles pecorino Romano than I intended, picking up more than a pound. At 6.50 euros, it was still a good deal, and I enjoyed it with a crusty white roll I purchased from a local baker for 25 cents. A local I met at the San Nicolo Benedictine Monastery, Carmelo Sidoti, was a fierce champion of his city, and quick to distinguish Sicily from the rest of Italy: "We had 17 civilizations here. We are unique in our position," he said. "The motto of Catania is 'Melior de cinere surgo': From the ruins, I emerge stronger." He was hardly incorrect: it felt to me as if Catania, where the past meets the present, is getting ready for its moment. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
5 Shows to See in New York: 'Children of a Lesser God,' 'Mlima's Tale' and More "April cried and stepped aside": So goes one of Oscar Hammerstein's lovely lyrics for "Carousel." But apparently Broadway doesn't listen. Instead, every April, the theater district reaches a noisy climax as the season crashes into the Tony Awards eligibility deadline. This year, nine shows open between the 8th and the 26th, all of them would be prize magnets. You probably already know a lot of the titles: Tina Fey's musicalized "Mean Girls," the two part "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child" and dueling Golden Age revivals of "My Fair Lady" and, yes, "Carousel." If you've got 15 hours and half a grand (or more) to spare, see 'em all. But you might want to consider some less buzzy titles, both on and Off Broadway, that are also, as Hammerstein wrote of May, "full of promises." Mark Medoff's drama about the relationship between a smug speech therapist and the pugnacious woman he's trying to teach is difficult to cast. Not so much because the woman, Sarah, is deaf; there are many excellent deaf actors. But she must also be young and ferocious and profoundly charismatic, which are the right words to describe Lauren Ridloff, a former Miss Deaf America. When I saw her in the Berkshires tryout of the play last summer, I thought she was sensational. The speech therapist is also difficult to cast. Because he acts as an interpreter for both the hearing and the deaf, he must be fluent in American Sign Language while also speaking the lines. And because his character suffers from borderline obnoxiousness syndrome, he needs a lot of natural charm to counteract it. The production opening on Broadway this month, directed by Kenny Leon, is lucky to have Joshua Jackson, best known for television work including "The Affair," in the role. He's an even match for Ms. Ridloff, which is saying something. For the follow up to her 2017 Pulitzer Prize winner, "Sweat," Lynn Nottage leaves broken down Reading, Pa., for Kenya, and leaves the hollowed out factory workers there for ... elephants? Yes, "Mlima's Tale," a play about the black market "ivory highway," stars Sahr Ngaujah (Broadway's "Fela!") as the title pachyderm. The rest of the Public Theater's cast Kevin Mambo, Ito Aghayere and Jojo Gonzalez play a variety of characters, from poachers to collectors, who come into contact with Mlima serially, in the manner of "La Ronde." But don't expect romantic roundelays from Ms. Nottage, for whom politics is never far from the surface. After all, this 90 minute drama, directed by Jo Bonney, opens just as the United States is lifting its Obama era ban on big game trophies and as the death of the last male white rhinoceros has assured the extinction of that overhunted animal. George Bernard Shaw's "Saint Joan" offers one of the most coveted title roles in the canon. Among the maids who have led France against the English in the eight Broadway productions since 1923 are Katharine Cornell, Uta Hagen, Siobhan McKenna, Diana Sands and Lynn Redgrave. Now, Condola Rashad so startling last year in "A Doll's House, Part 2" and a lovely Juliet in 2013 is the ninth to step up to the stake. Coveted it may be, but the role is tricky. How, after all, do you play a 17 year old girl who believes she hears God in the bells of her hometown and not make her seem, in our day, crazy? How do you reconcile the historical Joan, burned for heresy and canonized for faith, with Shaw's Joan, a martyr for the cause of freethinking? Luckily, the Manhattan Theater Club production at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater, its Broadway house is directed by Daniel Sullivan, who has experience solving such interpretive riddles. His 2010 staging of "The Merchant of Venice" made emotional sense of a play that many thought had become unproducible. From "Hair" to "Hamilton," the Public Theater has a good track record with musicals that rethink what a musical can be. Its latest, "Miss You Like Hell," with a book by Quiara Alegria Hudes ("In the Heights," "Water by the Spoonful") and songs by the indie singer songwriter Erin McKeown, is no different: It tells an American road trip story, but not the usual kind. Daphne Rubin Vega ("Rent") plays Beatriz, an artist who is also an undocumented Mexican immigrant, and Gizel Jimenez plays Olivia, her estranged 16 year old daughter. Why Beatriz shows up at Olivia's window one night, spiriting her away on a cross country journey, is part of the mystery that gets cleared up as the miles go by. You wouldn't think that a play starring Denzel Washington, who has made Broadway hits out of "Fences" and "Julius Caesar," would need extra help luring an audience. But at four or five hours long, depending on how it's cut and directed, Eugene O'Neill's classic drama about the American cult of hopefulness can seem intimidating. It needn't be, as the most recent major revival, starring Nathan Lane at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, proved. For one thing, its portrait of the lost soul habitues of a Manhattan saloon a "Who's Who in Dipsomania" is never less than compelling. For another, those barflies, tarts, anarchists and con artists are all juicy roles that, when cast well, promise fireworks. You would expect fireworks anyway from a production directed by George C. Wolfe, who brings a musical sensibility to large scale plays. (He directed the Broadway premiere of "Angels in America.") But Mr. Washington is also surrounded at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theater by a cherry picked company of top stage actors, including Bill Irwin, David Morse, Tammy Blanchard, Reg Rogers and Frank Wood. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
Two weeks after signing its final licensing deal with a major record company, the online music service SoundCloud has introduced its long awaited subscription plan. The new program gives customers access to a much wider range of music than is available on competing services like Spotify and Apple, and it offers artists and their labels the promise of royalties. Under the plan, SoundCloud will operate on two levels. The free version will let people listen to 100 million songs, many of which are uploaded directly by artists or selected for promotion by their labels. Customers who pay 10 a month to the new subscription version, called SoundCloud Go, will have access to all those songs as well as to millions more from those labels' catalogs. They will also have the ability to eliminate ads and save songs to their phone to listen to them offline. The service will have more than 125 million songs, the company said. One example of how the new two tiered system will work is Adele, whose music is released through Sony in the United States. Free users will be able to hear a few of her singles as well as 30 second samples of the rest of her catalog; subscribers can listen to all of her songs. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
The Chicago rapper Valee isn't concerned with social media and extracurricular drama: "I would just rather be busy waiting on the next beat, so I can say something better than I just said." Valee, Kanye West's New Signee, Is a Rapper Who Just Might Build You a Koi Pond Earlier this year, on the set of his first major music video, the rapper Valee was hemming his own clothes. The shoot for "Miami," featuring the hip hop godfather Pusha T, who doubles as the president of Kanye West's G.O.O.D. Music, was meant to announce Valee, a 29 year old from Chicago, as the latest addition to the tastemaking label. But instead of acting like a newly minted star, leaning into a world of stylists and on demand everything, he brought a sewing machine from home. "I put stuff together," Valee said with a shrug during a recent trip to New York. It was an understatement, but also an all purpose job description, one that hinted at the motivations of a man who is less a born rapper than a detail obsessed D.I.Y. aesthete, always looking for a fresh creative angle. At a time when lines have blurred between viral jester and professional musician, especially in hip hop, and a new generation of stars have come to prominence via extracurricular antics (and, sometimes, heinous crimes), Valee is a low key anomaly. He has only a perfunctory social media presence, no scandals or performative beefs to his name and, as a bit of a loner, comes unaffiliated with any existing movements or microgenres. At nearly 30, with two children and three dogs (Furrari, Ravioli and Sophia), he is basically ancient among those to spawn from YouTube and SoundCloud. "All these people that go extremely viral, I can't name you one damn song they've made," Valee said, in reference to his disruptive contemporaries like 6ix9ine and XXXTentacion. "You just know them through being silly." Never miss a pop music story: Sign up for our weekly newsletter, Louder. "I'm real easygoing," he added. "I don't look at the view counts, I don't look at the comments it's a distraction. I would just rather be busy waiting on the next beat, so I can say something better than I just said." That head down, music first work ethic has paid off gradually. Valee's first commercial project, the "GOOD Job, You Found Me" EP, was released in March and executive produced by Mr. West, who before his recent theatrics, brought Valee into the G.O.O.D. fold. "I just felt proud of being able to tell my mom that 'Ye reached out," Valee said, adding, "He saw that I built on my own with a small team." In keeping with the times, Valee has continued to release a steady stream of new songs and distinct, minimalist music videos as he builds toward a body of work worthy of a proper debut album. "I have probably 250 songs in the chest," he said, "but I want to increase the quality." Valee had been quietly releasing music online for a few years, developing a taste for murky, mid tempo beats with blown out bass, before he found a plugged in booster in Mr. Barber early last year. The proprietor of the blog Fake Shore Drive, an early megaphone for breakout Chicago acts for the last decade, Mr. Barber was initially struck by Valee's video for "Shell," which, at one minute and 49 seconds, said it all. And while Chicago's musical reputation has bifurcated into the hyperaggressive drill sound popularized by Chief Keef and G Herbo or the theatrical positivity of Chance the Rapper and his acolytes, Valee was neither. Yet he "was being embraced by both scenes," Mr. Barber said as likely to be played at a downtown hipster club or a strip club on the far South Side. Nonchalant on a track, in a way that indicates casual mastery, not laziness, Valee might mumble in tight, clipped flashes of melody or unleash a tumble of sly tongue twisters, as on his budding cult favorite "Two 16's." (As one Twitter user memorably put it, "valee raps like an old timey tiptoeing burglar.") Though his songs only sometimes clear two minutes "There's so many choices," Valee said, referring to the streaming economy, "so you've got to put people's favorite part in that little amount of time" his vivid writing in impressionistic bursts keeps standard fare (cars, clothes, women, guns) sounding fresh and often hilariously specific. "Spent 1,200 on a Yorkie," he raps, "fed it Benihana's food." Elsewhere, an airport salad functions as a hiding place for marijuana and a custom vehicle ("Super Sport with frog eyes") winds up "double parked at Five Guys." Paul Rosenberg, the new chief executive at Def Jam, which oversees G.O.O.D., and Eminem's longtime manager, called Valee "an authentic and infectious standout," citing "his immediately recognizable voice and melodic cadences." The rapper, he said, is "exactly the type of artist we are excited to help build a fan base and career with." Valee, tortoise like, said he is chasing stability. Still, one of the downsides of not jumping up and down for attention in an oversaturated field is that, well, sometimes you don't get attention. While the Lil Pumps of the world are clocking nine digit view counts on YouTube, Valee has yet to hit a million with a music video. "I feel like I'm still developing," he said, invoking his constant "we're not there yet type feeling." In what might be seen as a market concession, the recent Valee video for "Skinny" was directed by Cole Bennett, the Hype Williams of the SoundCloud boom. Mr. Barber said that a big part of his job was to get Valee to come "out of his shell and be a celebrity." Backstage at a private show for New York University students, Valee's D.J. and producer Rio Mac got in on the cheerleading, too, urging his friend to hype up the college crowd. "I want you to stick your chest out," he said. "You're like a sex icon." Valee demurred. "I'm an old man," he said. "A big weekend for me is Home Depot and a Caesar salad." Referring to the new, ground level warehouse apartment he has been building for himself, Valee said wistfully, "I've always wanted to pull my classic car up directly to my kitchen, get out and leave the groceries right there." But press him long enough, and he will admit to less elegant ambitions, as well. "I want chart topping records all of that," Valee said, leaving the luxury cars as his friend played the breakout hit "Look Alive," by Blocboy JB, featuring Drake. "I would love to one day have 100 million views on something. "What's the song, what's the beat? I don't know," he added. "But I can't wait." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
FRIGID winter temperatures have just arrived in the Northeast, and beach ready bodies are thousands of sit ups away. But for some buyers and summer renters especially year end bonus recipients now is when thoughts turn toward house hunting in the Hamptons. After the fall of Lehman Brothers and several years when buyers and renters had the upper hand, in 2011 the Hamptons real estate market showed signs of a revival; agents expect it will continue in 2012. Although prices are still down from the peak of the boom years, they are showing a steady recovery, and more houses are changing hands. The major brokerages will release their year end sales reports in the coming weeks, but throughout most of last year, sales were particularly strong at the high end. Jonathan J. Miller, the president of the appraisal firm Miller Samuel, said 69 houses in the Hamptons sold for 5 million or more in the first three quarters of 2011, compared with 61 in the same period the previous year. In one of last year's biggest deals, a 55 acre North Haven waterfront estate called Tyndal Point sold last spring for 36 million. Although it was originally listed in 2007 for an eye popping 80 million, it still brought an impressive figure for a house north of Highway 27, the Hamptons' main thoroughfare. While the side south of the highway is closer to the ocean, there is nothing shabby about a place on a peninsula with 3,000 feet of shoreline offering sunrise and sunset views. Mr. Miller said there would have been even more sales in that upper bracket last winter, if there hadn't been concerns that the Bush tax cuts might be eliminated, which caused a flurry of activity in the fourth quarter of 2010 and a correspondingly quiet first quarter of 2011. He added that the activity in the high end was not necessarily trickling down. "Are all these trophy property sales a proxy for the state of the housing market?" Mr. Miller asked. "My answer is no. It's a small sliver of the market, and it's motivated for very different reasons. If you look at the sub million dollar market, that market is flat." As for which areas are faring particularly well, brokers say Sagaponack and Bridgehampton are hot, particularly among the finance set. "It used to be the estate areas of East Hampton and Southampton were always the crown jewel," said Judi Desiderio, the chief executive of Town and Country Real Estate. "It seems there's a new buyer, a younger buyer, and they're happy to be in the farm fields of Sagaponack and Bridgehampton." Even so, some noteworthy new properties are being built. Mr. Brennan is selling a 5,000 square foot modern house with a guesthouse for 25 million, on a bluff overlooking the ocean in Montauk. Designed by James Biber, of Biber Architects, the house has steel and glass rooms maximizing views and outdoor space, while a brick and wood wing offers more of a retreat. Gary DePersia, a senior vice president of Corcoran, says contemporary houses are more in demand these days, partly because fewer of them are available. "A great modern house very often will do better in price per square foot than its traditional brethren," he said, adding that tastes had shifted toward simpler, sleeker interiors, even in houses externally in keeping with their shingled neighbors. The median sales price for a Hamptons home was 850,000 in the third quarter of last year, according to the most recent data compiled by Mr. Miller for Prudential Douglas Elliman. That is up 22 percent from the same quarter in 2010 but still down from the peak of 1.1 million in the second quarter of 2007 typically the strongest quarter of the year. Although the figures in the report are for all houses sold and do not reflect what most people will pay for a summer house somewhere between 1 million and 5 million, depending on beach proximity and amenities like a gunite pool they do highlight market trends. "From peak to trough, prices fell about 30 percent," Mr. Miller said. "That was an overcorrection; we've already recovered about half of it. I think there's room for pricing to grow going forward, but that's going to take a few years." Perhaps a better gauge of the market is how many "sold" signs are popping up in front of the hedges. From that perspective, things are picking up. There were 398 sales in the Hamptons in the third quarter, up 12 percent from the same period in 2010. But that compared with 651 homes sold in the third quarter of 2005, the year sales activity peaked. The year end reports due out in the next few weeks will show whether the Hamptons mirrored the Manhattan market, which saw a significant slowdown in sales activity at the end of the year. But many brokers are optimistic, predicting that any dip will be a temporary reaction to last year's stock market swings and economic uncertainties a pause, rather than the beginning of another freeze. Diane Saatchi, a senior vice president of Saunders Associates and a longtime Hamptons broker, says a few high end deals can skew the data. But she pointed to a more intuitive economic indicator that she said tended to reflect real estate trends. "You probably can get the best read on the market by looking at the activity on various main streets," Ms. Saatchi said. "When you see stores full and restaurants crowded, you know business is good. It's clearly brighter here than it was in 2008, 2009 and 2010." Even so, the persistent consolidation of real estate firms indicates some uncertainty about the market. In December, Town and Country acquired Kathleen Beckmann Real Estate of Montauk, after acquiring the Westhampton brokerage Phillips Beach Realty in March. Last October, the East Hampton agency Devlin McNiff teamed up with Halstead Property of Manhattan, expanding Halstead's reach into the Hamptons. For more than a decade, the Hamptons has been subject to an influx of New York City agencies, led by Corcoran and Elliman. But brokers say the latest round of reshuffling is a sign of the economic times. "The market got smaller after 2008, had a really terrible year in 2009, then in 2010 and 2011 it stabilized," said Stuart Epstein, the managing director of what is now called Devlin McNiff Halstead Property. "But it's still smaller than it was. That means there are a lot of people looking to make a living in a smaller market." Mr. Epstein said he and his wife, Lynn, decided to partner with Halstead in order to stay competitive, especially given the Internet, which has not so much leveled the playing field as made it more costly for little firms to keep up. "Really," he said, "it was a feeling that in order to play in the big leagues at this point going forward, we needed the clout we could get from that company in terms of marketing, technology and their referral network." That does not mean local, independent agencies are going away. But for small brokers looking for a lifestyle change or a way to compete in a tougher market, affiliating with a larger firm seems to be gaining appeal. In Southampton Village, Joseph Hall and his partner are trying to sell a traditional three bedroom house renovated to appeal to current tastes, with a wine refrigerator in the eat in kitchen and a generally minimalist decor. Offered for 1.995 million last fall, the place was originally listed for 2.7 million in 2007. "That year," Mr. Hall said, "we didn't even reply to offers that were higher than where we have it listed now." The house was taken off the market when the economy tanked. He thinks it is now well priced: "We didn't expect that it would move immediately and we're happy to wait it out." Mr. Hall and his partner use their house in the summer, but many Hamptons sellers are waiting out longer selling periods by taking advantage of the strong market for rentals. "The rental market did very well on the high end last year," said Mr. DePersia of Corcoran. "I think it's going to be another good year." One of his listings, a 12 bedroom Bridgehampton estate with a recreation pavilion (including a two lane bowling alley, a skateboard half pipe, a racquetball court, a media room, a disco and a spa), has commanded more than 500,000 for two week rentals in the past couple of summers. A 10 bedroom resort in Water Mill ( 695,000 for Memorial Day to Labor Day) is also available for short term rentals, illustrating homeowners' new willingness to accommodate renters' schedules. On the lower end of the scale, he said, summer renters can find a house for 50,000 a month in the Northwest Woods or the village of East Hampton, or south of the highway in Amagansett. Double that price gets you more amenities closer to the beach, and there are cheaper options as well. "When people rent a house," Mr. DePersia said, "they make concessions they wouldn't necessarily make when they buy a house. What's good to know is that there is a house for everyone out here. It depends on what your level of compromise is and what you're willing to pay." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
Climate change may affect wood rats in the Mojave Desert in a most unusual way. A new study finds that warmer weather reduces their ability to tolerate toxins in the creosote bush, which they rely on for sustenance. The consequences may be dire for the wood rats. "There's not much more they can eat out there," said Patrice Kurnath, a biologist at the University of Utah and one of the study's authors. She and her colleagues reported their findings in Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
Chris Dercon, who had an international pedigree as a former director of contemporary art museums including Tate Modern in London, led the Berlin Volksbuhne theater for less than a year. BERLIN The director of Berlin's storied Volksbuhne theater, Chris Dercon, quit on Friday, after months of heated debate that saw the building occupied by left wing activists who opposed his appointment as a betrayal of the theater's roots. Klaus Lederer, Berlin's senator for culture, said in a statement that Mr. Dercon would leaving his position immediately, citing a failure of the Belgian born director's vision for the Volksbuhne to work out as hoped for in the roughly six months that he led the theater. "We all agreed to make a new start possible," Mr. Lederer told reporters on Friday, after informing theater employees of the decision, which he said was reached on Monday, after realizing that the Volksbuhne was facing "a difficult situation." Within hours of the announcement, bright yellow posters saying "Bye Chris" in black gothic lettering appeared in the subway near the theater and were pasted over billboards advertising upcoming productions. Since the naming of Mr. Dercon to replace its longtime director, Frank Castorf, the theater has been at the heart of a bitter debate that pitted employees and Mr. Castorf's supporters against the new director's idea to open the theater up as an interdisciplinary space for international productions. Under Mr. Castorf, an icon of German theater, the Volksbuhne made a name as a home for ambitious experimental productions with a rebellious, intellectual spirit that reflected the attitude of the newly reunified city. In the eyes of the theater's many supporters, the appointment of Mr. Dercon, who had an international pedigree as a former director of contemporary art museums including Tate Modern in London, but relatively little experience in theater, seemed an affront. Mr. Dercon's first season began with an eclectic array of productions including a 10 hour dance event in which the audience were asked to join in, and an installation by the Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul. But the first major world premiere of Mr. Dercon's tenure, a new play by the Catalan movie director Albert Serra, who had not previously worked in the theater, was panned by critics: One said that it failed to satisfy even "the basic requirements for a successful theater production" and a review in The New York Times called it "a resounding failure." The dispute over the theater's future became a microcosm of the larger debate taking place over the future of Berlin. After establishing itself as a haven for artists and boundary bending creative minds, drawn by a post reunification abundance of affordable housing and available public spaces, the city now finds itself confronted with the same concerns over gentrification and globalization that have been a death knell for independent artistic communities in thriving capitals around the world. In the past decade, average rents in Berlin have more than doubled, and the city is experiencing a housing crunch, leading to protests in formerly run down neighborhoods that have become increasingly popular for investors. Though the city has strong laws protecting renters, many longtime residents are facing eviction. Mr. Lederer said that a replacement for Mr. Dercon would not be named immediately, stressing the importance of taking the time necessary to find a good long term solution for the theater. He insisted that the problem was not one of numbers alone, even as several German news outlets reported the Volksbuhne was in dire financial straits. "The central point we all agreed to was that if we continue with business as usual, we would face a real, lasting problem that could have endangered the theater as a whole," Mr. Lederer said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
Last year, when the much loved designer Alber Elbaz was unceremoniously fired as the longtime creative director of Lanvin, the fashion world cried foul. How would that storied brand, so defined by Mr. Elbaz, continue without him? In February, when the label's internal creative team produced a sloppy, unfocused collection, it seemed a portent of more mess to come. But in March, the maison that Jeanne Lanvin built named Bouchra Jarrar, founder of her own house and alumna of Balenciaga and of Christian Lacroix, as its artistic director of women's collections. And though the official unveiling of her version of Lanvin will be in September, during the Paris women's wear shows, she was in New York this week to give retailers (and some critics) a sneak peek of what she has been doing. And I have to tell you, it's pretty smart. The combination of Ms. Jarrar's finely honed aesthetic which might be categorized as "haute cool," a kind of luxurious minimalism, where every button is its own fetish with softer, more feminine colors and prints, a legacy of the house's founder, it does not look like Mr. Elbaz's work, which was quirkier and married high romance to a powerful core. But it also doesn't represent a drastic break. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
A FEW weeks before the school year ended, I visited Westover School in western Connecticut to sit in on a class aimed at encouraging teenage girls to consider careers in finance. The class was run by a nonprofit group called Invest in Girls, which is using three private schools Westover, which is all girls, and Milton Academy and Middlesex School, which serve both boys and girls to test its program. The goal is to be more than another "kids and money" program, said its founder and chairwoman, Dune Thorne, who is also a partner at Brown Advisory in Boston. "There are a lot of financial literacy programs out there, all doing important work," Ms. Thorne said. "What we saw was missing is that when you have finance as a core tool in your toolbox, it opens up the world in a different way. You think about decisions differently." This intrigued me. After all, getting teenagers interested in finance and teaching the subject in a way that links it to the moral complexity taught in, say, English class is certainly a good idea. But why just focus on girls? Are they any more or less adept at understanding finance than boys their age? To their credit, the organizers did not try to explain this away. The reason, they said, was that their program emphasizes learning techniques that work better with girls. My other question was why the class should be only for private school students. (One year for a boarding student at Westover tops 47,000 a year.) Do they need this type of education? "When we say we're at Milton, Middlesex and Westover, some people say you're helping rich white girls learn about the financial services industry," Ms. Thorne said. "This is really about girls who are emerging as leaders and how to help those girls have the finance and investing knowledge they will need." The program, she said, will be expanded to other schools if the pilot works. The class I sat in on was actually had a mix of students, some whose parents paid full tuition, some on financial aid and some from abroad. Here is some of what I learned. All the classes are taught by a woman who works in finance. The four classes in the first year consist of an overview of the program's objectives, and discussions of spending, savings and investments. "All the girls want to talk about is stocks," Ms. Thorne said. "We can't talk about investing before we talk about budgeting and saving. We're about how to build a strong understanding of finance." While all three schools are following the same curriculum, they have different businesswomen teaching the classes. Twice a year, Invest in Girls arranges for field trips to see women at work and also to learn how to network with students from other schools, said Emilie Liebhoff, chief executive of the group. This year, they went to Windhaven Investment Management in Boston and the Hanover Insurance Group in Worcester, Mass. But the mentoring part is where they get to ask how to apply their learning. Ultimately, students will be taught not just about their own money, but about roles they can play in a business. THE CLASSROOM What I saw in the classroom was messier and less polished than I had expected. The night I was there, Connie Everson, a managing director at Capital Markets Outlook Group, a research firm in Boston, was trying to explain how capital markets work. Watching her, I felt sympathy. It is hard for many of us to remember when we did not understand all the financial jargon that is regularly used on television and online. But it was also refreshing to hear a group of 15 year olds ask why a stock goes up or down. Toward the end of her talk, we were all asked to look at the bags of Starbust candies Ms. Everson had distributed at the start of the class. Each one had a different combination of red, orange and yellow candies that represented stocks, bonds and cash. Since no bag had the same number of colors, every student was forced to consider concepts like asset diversification, risk assessment and liquidity in a simple but effective way. Invest in Girls uses little tricks like this to explain complicated concepts to high school sophomores. (At another point, Ms. Everson compared a portfolio to a closet, with its various types of attire for different occasions.) And those methods appealed to the schools. "This is what we've been thinking about all along for girls what are the nontraditional fields we want girls to have access to," Ann Pollina, Westover's head of school, told me. "We wanted to help them understand what women do in business. We wanted to help them get a picture of what women in those fields really do." "I know you need to be able to handle your finances," she said. "I don't want to be in a position when I graduate from college that I don't know how to handle my money." But her mentor, Lia Eddy, who works as an analyst in the loan department at Admirals Bank in Boston, said she found Cailee was equally interested in the nuts and bolts of paying for medical education. "She was more interested in how do I get a loan in college," Ms. Eddy said. "It helped me in a way, because I had to explain to her what I was going through with my own loans." In other cases, students were able to see their mentors in the workplace. That was what Jennifer DiMario Sabatini, a vice president at Loomis Sayles in Boston, did for her mentee, Gabby DeBartolomeo. Gabby said she was more interested in going into business now than before the program. "I learned the most about when you have an income and you're earning money, what to do with that money," Gabby said. "All the money I make baby sitting goes into a low interest savings account. I.I.G. has made me more interested in investing that money and watching it grow." Ms. Sabatini said Gabby's straightforward questions what is liquidity? got her thinking about the importance of teaching teenagers about finance. "For me, I don't think twice about the word," Ms. Sabatini said. "But you hear all these stats about kids being courted by credit cards on campus and coming out with debt. You see the need to educate them earlier on about financial issues." That may be the biggest factor in determining the careers they will have. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Your Money |
WASHINGTON Negotiations over a trade deal encompassing nearly half the global economy formally kicked off on Monday, despite concerns that the United States has been spying on its European allies. European officials have called the potential free trade agreement with the United States a "once in a generation prize," with the prospect of adding hundreds of billions of dollars in yearly growth and thousands of jobs to the still lagging European and American economies. But big deals come with big stakes, and analysts expect months of intense negotiations as officials rush to complete a comprehensive agreement under the title of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership before a deadline of the end of 2014. Companies and countries have started maneuvering in an effort to broker special carve outs, exclusions or inclusions. Sensitive issues like agricultural policy, airline rights, data privacy and intellectual property are likely to face serious headwinds. Michael Froman, the United States trade representative, urged those taking part in the talks here to "think outside of the box as necessary to make progress." He added both sides were entering the talks "with eyes wide open" but with the knowledge that "there is strong political will at the highest levels on both sides of the Atlantic determined to stay focused and get this done on one tank of gas." Despite the push on both sides of the Atlantic, reports that the United States' National Security Agency has been secretly tracking European diplomatic offices in Washington overshadowed the start of the talks. In recent weeks, several European leaders expressed outrage over the reports, which were based on information supplied by the former government contractor Edward J. Snowden, who remains in legal limbo in a Moscow airport. France, in a show of deep discontent, called for postponement of the trade talks. Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany criticized American espionage agencies for "cold war" tactics. Last week, the European Parliament voted to start an investigation into the matter. Parallel negotiations on security and surveillance concerns started Monday as well, covering "data protection and privacy rights of E.U. citizens," European officials said in a statement. The International Monetary Fund predicts that the euro zone will contract again this year, with the broader European Union scarcely growing. The outlook is better in the United States, but not much; the fund expects modest growth of about 1.9 percent. Open or closed on Thanksgiving? Here are stores' plans for Thursday and Friday. The high cost of gas is forcing families to cut back on activities and essentials. Clearview AI does well in another round of facial recognition accuracy tests. "We are convinced that this trade agreement will result in more jobs and more growth and that will help to get us out of the economic crisis," Karel de Gucht, the European trade commissioner, said at a news conference on Monday. "That would be good news for Europe, but also a very good message for the whole world economy." One major study by the London based Center for Economic Policy Research found that a comprehensive trade and investment deal could increase the European economy by about 119 billion euros, or 150 billion a year, and the American economy by an annual 122 billion. Households are expected to benefit, too. An average family of four in the European Union might see an additional 545 euros in disposable income, the study found. An American family might benefit by about 841. "This is a once in a generation prize, and we are determined to seize it," David Cameron, the British prime minister, said last month at a meeting with President Obama and other leaders at the Group of 8 summit meeting in Northern Ireland. The similarity of the American and European work forces, corporate structures and legal systems and the depth and breadth of the existing ties between the two economies have eased the way for an ambitious deal on tariffs, regulations and other issues. But entrenched interests have started lobbying in earnest behind the scenes. For instance, France has pushed to retain its subsidies for its domestic film industry. And farm and food safety standards are expected to be a major sticking point in the negotiations. Genetically modified crops, which Europe largely abhors and which the United States produces billions of dollars' worth a year, are just one issue. On Monday, public interest groups also raised concerns that the negotiations would weaken consumer protection standards, and that corporate interests were too strong. "We are highly skeptical that an agreement focused on regulatory harmonization' will serve consumer interests, workers' rights, the environment, and other areas of public interest," said a large coalition of American and European consumer groups in a statement. "It could lead to lower standards and regulatory ceilings instead of floors," the statement said. The coalition called for negotiating texts to be released to the public. But officials have put in months of legwork on the negotiations, and they were optimistic as the deal talks formally began. "We will work hard to get a result," said Mr. De Gucht, the European trade commissioner. "We will of course meet a lot of problems and stumbling stones, but if we reach an agreement, it would be a historic one." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Global Business |
The New York Times, for reporting led by Jodi Kantor, Megan Twohey, Emily Steel and Michael S. Schmidt; and The New Yorker, for reporting by Ronan Farrow Investigations by The New York Times and Ronan Farrow, 30, of The New Yorker that revealed allegations of sexual harassment and the subsequent silencing of the victims helped topple powerful men including in Hollywood, politics and Silicon Valley and prompted a wave of women to share their experiences with abuse. Reporting on accusations against Bill O'Reilly, the former Fox News host, and Harvey Weinstein, the film mogul, inspired the global MeToo movement that has opened new conversations about gender and power dynamics in the workplace. READ MORE: The coveted award for public service went to reporting on sexual harassment. The Times won three awards, including for reporting on possible ties between Russia and President Trump's inner circle. The entire staff at The Press Democrat helped cover the wildfires in October that devastated Santa Rosa and surrounding Sonoma County. "Because we live here and we know, we felt it necessary to be scrupulous," said Catherine Barnett, the paper's executive editor. "And we just got out and gave it all we had." Ms. Barnett said some of the paper's reporters and photographers were evacuating their families even as they chronicled the fires. Finalists Staff of The Houston Chronicle Staff of The New York Times The Enquirer was recognized for its multimedia narrative of seven days inside the city's heroin epidemic, a period in which 18 people died and at least 180 overdoses were reported across the area. "What we wanted to do was to let our communities here know what people are living every single day," said Terry DeMio, one of the project's lead reporters. More than 60 reporters contributed. "This was the most local news story you can imagine," said Dan Horn, co author of the main article with Ms. DeMio. "Everyone was involved in some way, shape or form." Finalists Jason Grotto, Sandhya Kambhampati and Ray Long of The Chicago Tribune and ProPublica Illinois Staff of The Boston Globe Staffs of The New York Times and The Washington Post The organizations were recognized for their reporting on Russia's influence in the 2016 election, the Trump transition team and the presidential administration. The winning pieces included a report in The Post that Attorney General Jeff Sessions had spoken to Russia's ambassador to the United States during the presidential campaign, contradicting his confirmation hearing testimony, and a report in The Times that President Trump asked James Comey, then the F.B.I.'s director, to end an inquiry into Michael Flynn. Finalists Amy Julia Harris and Shoshana Walter of Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting Brett Murphy of USA Today Network The three journalists were honored for their work in the Philippines, exposing the "brutal killing campaign" behind President Rodrigo Duterte's war on drugs. Through crime data and interviews, the reporters challenged official accounts about the killing of drug suspects in the country. "We basically used the police's own data to prove exactly what they were doing," said Ms. Baldwin, 34. She said the award, shared with Mr. Marshall, 50, and Mr. Mogato, was a "huge honor" and that she hoped it would draw more attention to the ongoing killings. Finalists Staff of The Associated Press Staff of BuzzFeed News Ms. Ghansah's portrait of Dylann Roof was cited for its "unique and powerful mix of reportage, first person reflection and analysis of the historical and cultural forces" behind his murder of nine parishioners at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in June 2015. It was the first Pulitzer for GQ magazine. Ms. Ghansah, 36, said that she initially thought her piece would be centered on the victims' families but that "it felt inappropriate to keep probing them while allowing Dylann Roof to have the sanctity of silence we often afford white domestic terrorists." Ms. Ghansah, an essayist, added that she wanted to honor them "very, very much." Finalists John Woodrow Cox of The Washington Post Norimitsu Onishi of The New York Times Mr. Archibald, 55, was cited for "lyrical and courageous commentary" that focused on issues in Alabama but had a wide resonance, like Confederate monuments. In a series of columns, he also wrestled with the failed Senate campaign of Roy S. Moore, who was accused of sexual misconduct by multiple women yet enjoyed significant support at home and from the Republican Party. "Even though it was just a small squeaker win" for Mr. Moore's opponent, Doug Jones, Mr. Archibald said, "it was a message to women that this can't be tolerated anymore." Finalists Jelani Cobb of The New Yorker Steve Lopez of The Los Angeles Times Mr. Saltz, 67, was cited for his "canny and often daring perspective on visual art in America," including analyses of the political undercurrents in the Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art and the lasting influence of Michelangelo, as well as an unflinching look at his own career as a "failed artist." It was the first Pulitzer for New York magazine. Describing his personal and direct approach to criticism, Mr. Saltz said, "I should be as vulnerable in my work as the artist is in her or his work." Finalists Carlos Lozada of The Washington Post Manohla Dargis of The New York Times 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. Ms. Dominick was cited for examining the consequences of Iowa's Medicaid privatization, as well as the broader health care challenges mounting for regular Iowans, "in a clear, indignant voice, free of cliche or sentimentality." Ms. Dominick, who was a Pulitzer finalist in 2014, told her newsroom colleagues that she hoped her paper would "continue to work to make Iowa a better place to live." Finalists Editorial Staff of The New York Times Sharon Grigsby of The Dallas Morning News Reuters was cited for its "shocking photographs" of Rohingya refugees as they escaped persecution in Myanmar to reach the Bangladesh border. "All the talent we had we directed to this story because it's such an important story for the world to know," said Ahmad Masood, editor of pictures for Reuters. Working around visa restrictions, Mr. Masood assigned over a dozen photographers from around the world to cover the Rohingya's struggles in shifts. There were often three photographers at a time chronicling the thousands of refugees crossing the border by land and sea. Finalists Kevin Frayer, freelance photographer, Getty Images Lisa Krantz of The San Antonio Express News Meridith Kohut, freelance photographer, The New York Times The protagonist of Mr. Greer's novel is Arthur Less, a novelist on the verge of 50 who, feeling the humiliations of life and career, reluctantly accepts invitations to a string of disastrous literary events. His travels, filled with comic and poignant incident, take him to New York, Paris, Berlin, Morocco, southern India and Kyoto, Japan. In The New York Times Book Review, Christopher Buckley called "Less" the "funniest, smartest and most humane" novel he had read in several years. Mr. Greer, 47, is the author of six works of fiction, including "The Confessions of Max Tivoli" and "The Story of a Marriage." Finalists "In the Distance," by Hernan Diaz (Coffee House Press) "The Idiot," by Elif Batuman (Penguin Press) Ms. Majok, 33, a Polish immigrant who saw her first theater show at 17 after winning 45 from playing pool, initially wrote this as a short work called "John, Who's Here From Cambridge." It evolved to its finished form and opened Off Broadway at the Manhattan Theater Club last June. The play received plaudits for its striking portrait of the obstacles that come with having a physical disability in various forms and privilege that exists in unexpected places. "The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea," by Jack E. Davis The Gulf of Mexico is the world's tenth largest body of water. But until Mr. Davis's book, which traces its history from the Pleistocene to the present, it had never gotten a comprehensive history, the committee noted in its citation. Mr. Davis, 61, a professor at the University of Florida (and a near lifelong Gulfsider), said that the Deepwater Horizon disaster of 2010 had helped shape his mission: to restore "the true identity of the gulf." "I wanted to show that it was more than an oil spill, or a sunning beach," he said. "It has a really wonderful, complex history that has been left out of the broader American narrative." Finalists "Fear City: New York's Fiscal Crisis and the Rise of Austerity Politics," by Kim Phillips Fein (Metropolitan Books) "Hitler in Los Angeles: How Jews Foiled Nazi Plots Against Hollywood and America," by Steven J. Ross (Bloomsbury) "Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America," by James Forman Jr. Mr. Forman's book looks at the ways in which real time responses to crises in black communities beginning in the late 1960s helped unintentionally lead to mass incarceration. Mr. Forman, 50, took about four years to research the book, but felt the first stirrings of it while working as a public defender in Washington, D.C. "When you're working as a public defender, you don't have time to brush your teeth sometimes, let alone write a book," Mr. Forman, now a professor at Yale Law School, said. Finalists "Notes on a Foreign Country: An American Abroad in a Post America World," by Suzy Hansen (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) "The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin's Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World and Us," by Richard O. Prum (Doubleday) Mr. Lamar, a 30 year old from Compton, Calif., is the first winner who did not produce classical or jazz music and certainly the first rapper. Mr. Lamar's fourth LP topped the charts while also tackling thorny personal and political issues, including race, faith and the burdens of commercial success. The Pulitzer board called it "a virtuosic song collection unified by its vernacular authenticity and rhythmic dynamism that offers affecting vignettes capturing the complexity of modern African American life." Finalists "Quartet," by Michael Gilbertson "Sound From the Bench," by Ted Hearne READ MORE: The Pulitzer board called Mr. Lamar's album "a virtuosic song collection unified by its vernacular authenticity and rhythmic dynamism that offers affecting vignettes capturing the complexity of modern African American life." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
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