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The actor and part time tech investor Ashton Kutcher, second from left, presented 4 million worth of digital coins called XRP to Ellen DeGeneres's favorite charity on her talk show in May. SAN FRANCISCO You may have seen the actor and part time tech investor Ashton Kutcher present 4 million worth of digital coins called XRP to Ellen DeGeneres's favorite charity on her talk show. Or maybe you saw Stephen Colbert announce a 29 million donation of XRP to schoolteachers on his late night show. Ripple, a San Francisco company that is rolling in money thanks to last year's run up in the value of cryptocurrencies, was behind the giveaways. And it has quietly become one of the most valuable start ups of the last decade thanks to the value of XRP, the digital token its founders created six years ago. Now comes the hard part: persuading people to use XRP for something other than speculative trading. It is an issue facing most of the still young cryptocurrency industry. Digital tokens like Bitcoin and its many imitators (like XRP) were designed to make electronic transactions of all sorts easier. But today almost no transactions are happening, other than on virtual currency exchanges where people bet on their price. Despite a dramatic drop in the value of cryptocurrencies this year, Ripple still owns 30 billion worth of XRP, and the company wants to get some of those digital tokens into the hands of potential users. In addition to the on air gifts, and a private concert by the rapper Snoop Dogg for the currency's fans, Ripple has created a 300 million fund that will pay companies to begin using XRP for its intended purpose easing the transfer of money across international borders. Ripple recently announced another program, called Xpring, that will pay developers to build XRP focused software. "It's still really, really early days, but we are seeing the vision come to life," said Asheesh Birla, the head of product at Ripple. "I need to make sure it's in the hands of the right folks." But few cryptocurrency projects have evolved to the point where anyone is using the tokens as anything other than an investment. Many people who bought the digital tokens created by these projects did so in the belief they will one day be useful for real transactions of some sort. If the projects want to keep those investors from selling, the projects have to convince them the tokens will have some long term value. A company known as Block.One, for example, raised 4 billion from investors before it even had functioning software. Now it is using some of the billions it has raised to create investment funds that will encourage developers to work on making its cryptocurrency, EOS, useful. But no project is sitting on more money than Ripple, because of the unusual structure of the XRP cryptocurrency. Bitcoin and most other well known cryptocurrencies are slowly created over time and given away to computers on the network, with no company or authority in charge. In contrast, most XRP tokens about 60 percent are held by Ripple. In January, the value of an XRP token briefly rose above 3, making a co founder of the company, Chris Larsen, wealthier than Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg for a short time, and Ripple worth more than most banks in the world. Since then, the value of an XRP has dropped about 80 percent. But investors have kept the price around 50 cents and the value of the company's holdings of XRP around 30 billion more than the valuation of WeWork or SpaceX. But Ripple's enormous holdings come with significant risks. The biggest legal concern facing many cryptocurrency projects is regulators in the United States categorizing their tokens as investment contracts, or securities. If projects like XRP and EOS get the security label, they will be subject to restrictions on trading and movement, making it even less likely that people will use the tokens for their intended purposes. A top official with the Securities and Exchange Commission said in a speech this month that one of the biggest factors in determining whether a token is a security is the role a central organizer plays in promoting the coin and increasing its value, especially if the central organizer holds a significant amount of the tokens. Ripple's executives have said they are confident XRP is not a security because XRP could still be used even if the company disappeared. The company hired Mary Jo White, who was chairwoman of the S.E.C. from 2013 to 2017, to defend it against lawsuits from disgruntled XRP investors who claim the company misled them. But the situation is something of a Catch 22 for Ripple: Its efforts to promote XRP could demonstrate how reliant XRP is on Ripple. "Centralized control of a cryptocurrency is the central element to the S.E.C.'s test of whether these tokens are securities," said Lawson Baker, a lawyer and venture capitalist in the cryptocurrency industry. "Any time you are putting XRP to work to defend it or buy good will, you are going to hurt your case that you aren't a security." But Currencies Direct isn't planning to integrate XRP into its business right now, Mr. Harris said, because Ripple does not yet serve most of the countries where his company works. "They aren't in any of the markets where we need them to be yet," Mr. Harris said. "It's a wait and see game as to how they are able to build out that network." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
Jupiter's Great Red Spot is shrinking, but that does not necessarily mean that it is dying. Earlier this year, amateur astronomers caught the red spot seemingly starting to fall apart, with rose colored clouds breaking away from the storm that is some 15,000 miles wide. In May, giant streamers of gas appeared to be peeling from the spot's outer rim, blown into the winds circling the planet. The spot which is red for reasons not fully understood has become smaller in recent decades. Some Jupiter watchers wondered if they were witnessing the beginning of the Great Red Spot's end. "We beg to differ with that conclusion," Philip S. Marcus, a professor of fluid mechanics at the University of California, Berkeley said on Monday during a news conference at a meeting of the American Physical Society's division of fluid dynamics in Seattle . In essence, Dr. Marcus said, the odd dynamics in the spot are just the result of weather on Jupiter, the solar system's largest planet. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
If you ask Kathleen O'Brien Price about filming "Real Life Cooking," a weekly live stream show where she cooks a full meal from start to finish out of her tiny Harlem kitchen, she rattles off a list of the challenges. "Our stove is a miniature stove. A sheet pan can't fit in our oven. We have to wait because only one of my burners works well. But if I can do this, so can you. I hope it's inspiration." The former "Chopped" champion and graduate of Le Cordon Bleu, Ms. O'Brien Price, 31, also hosts "Lovers Friends," a ticketed R B themed dinner party prepared in her home and held at secret locations. She's part of a new breed of culinary entrepreneurs who are making a name for themselves right out of their New York City home kitchens, using social media to promote their events. At the last dinner party she threw, she only knew one person at the table. "One of the guests said to me, 'You don't know me, but I follow you on Instagram.'" (She has more than 11,000 followers.) Home chefs operate in a variety of ways. Some use their home kitchens to test recipes for preparation and larger distribution from elsewhere or to develop meal plans that then get sent to subscribers. Others prepare meals for pop up dinners or prepare items for home delivery. Many home businesses in the city operate under the radar, and these new types of start up food businesses often aren't governed by existing regulations. "In New York City, if you are zoned residential, you can use your apartment for business if the business occupies only 25 percent of your available space, up to 500 feet, and you can't have any employees on site," said Jaime Lathrop, a lawyer in Park Slope, Brooklyn, who handles real estate litigation and transactions. (New Jersey is the only state that prohibits the sale of homemade foods for profit.) For food preparation, most baking is allowed but anything that requires refrigeration is banned because of the difficulty in maintaining food at legal temperatures with consumer refrigeration units, Mr. Lathrop said. New York State licensing requirements include a Home Processor License, Wholesale Business Registration, a Food Protection Certificate and Sales Tax Vendor Registration. "But most of the time the biggest obstacle to running a business out of your home is that the lack of space and limitations on food production generally discourage long term use of your apartment as your business grows along with demand," he said. For Ms. O'Brien Price, a California native, the kitchen in the 3,200 a month two bedroom apartment she shares with her boyfriend, Christopher Coy, 31, president of Paramount Sports Entertainment, had to make sense for her business ventures. "I needed to find a kitchen where I could film. This kitchen is new and updated," she said, explaining why she chose to live in a fifth floor walk up where she is constantly hauling groceries up the stairs. "My boyfriend is not from New York. He didn't understand that you have to compromise." Nicknamed "Chefleen" by Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith when she worked for them as a private chef, Ms. O'Brien Price says that her Harlem community is integral to her cooking. A neighbor across the hall in her building has even taste tasted her recipes for her, trying out her vegan chicken. "I love the energy of the city," she said. "Harlem has so much history. It's not just the restaurants that are inspiring but also the people." Matt Davis, a co founder of Mosaic, used his Brooklyn Heights kitchen to develop recipes for his home delivered healthy frozen meals. "The first step was to cook good food, freeze it, thaw it out and see how it was when we reheated it," he said. "I was cooking stuff I liked, stuff that made us feel healthy. Roasted veggies, whole grains, ginger, miso sauce. Things you would find at a Sweetgreen." The former senior director of operations for Blue Apron, a meal kit service, Mr. Davis lives with his wife, Nikita Urval, 30, a neurologist at Mount Sinai Beth Israel, in a co op near Cadman Plaza in Downtown Brooklyn that they purchased three years ago for 560,000. "She had to give up half her apartment for a year," he said of the time he and co founder Sam McIntire were developing their recipes. "She'd be coming off a shift and come home to the counter covered in samples and the cat locked in the bedroom. The upside is she gets the food I do all the cooking." Now that Mosaic has launched, their food is made in a commercial kitchen in upstate New York. "It has to be in a kitchen certified for food safety," said Mr. Davis, 30. But he was surprised how much of the company truly developed in his home kitchen. "From an R D standpoint it was amazing how far we were able to go in our own kitchen," he said. "The trick is mostly around scale it sounds silly but things as technical as the amount of salt that needs to go in the dish became tricky. There's a big difference when you're making 12 portions if we scaled it up you had to go back and adjust." Mosaic is currently sold direct to consumer, delivering to all five boroughs, some parts of Connecticut and Washington, D.C. But Mr. Davis remembers how grass roots his initial delivery system was. "In the very beginning we would take the portions and I would deliver them by the subway, loading them into Trader Joe's bags and bringing them to friends and family." Other ideas for home kitchen businesses are born out of years served in the restaurant business. When Jose DeJesus, 37, returned from a stint as a contestant on season 18 of "Hell's Kitchen," he was inspired by the intensity of the experience to embark on his own culinary venture. "My wife picked me up from the airport and as soon as I stepped foot in my house I said, 'If I can go through that, I am definitely going to start these pop up dinners. I literally started a week after that." While working as chef de cuisine at Eataly's Il Pesce restaurant, Mr. DeJesus, who goes by the name Trill Cooker (meaning true/real cooker) began hosting Breaking Bread, a multicourse dining experience with a secret tasting menu from his home kitchen. "I'm bringing urban fine dining to the Bronx," said Mr. DeJesus, who was born in the South Bronx and is inspired by his Puerto Rican roots and a mother whom he calls "adventurous in the kitchen." "She had Italian cookbooks, Asian cookbooks. That had my mind going." In 2016, Mr. DeJesus and his wife, Elizabeth, manager of the pediatric rehabilitation department at the Hospital for Special Surgery, went in with his in laws on a three family home in the Bronx that they purchased for 458,000. His mother in law and father in law live on the second floor. Mr. DeJesus and his wife and their daughter, Kaleigh, 13, and son, Jax, 6, take the third floor. The first floor is used as a common family area, which leads to the backyard. His mother in law helps with the pop up dinners, curating everything from the glassware to the art that hangs on the walls. The setup for Breaking Bread is intimate and homey. "This is not a restaurant. This is an evening long celebration of food at a secret location," according to the website. "I have a picnic table in the dining area. I built out a center island between the living room and kitchen. Six guests sit at table and two guests are in front of me. The whole experience happens right in front of you. I'm using a home stove and oven. People are amazed how is this guy creating this food with just that?" From pork belly to roasted and marinated beets, Mr. DeJesus is interested in educating his Bronx neighbors on foods they might have been otherwise reluctant to eat. "A friend told me to move to Indiana and take over out there. He's right but he's also wrong. Why can't I do it in my own part of the Bronx? The food is really lacking up here," he said. "Part of my movement is to bring people from the city and Brooklyn, to have them walk through the streets and see the Bronx is a beautiful place." These types of pop up dinners are a relatively new development and represent a gray area in terms of city health department rules and licensing, according to Michael Lanza, an assistant press secretary in the city's Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. "Food service establishments must operate out of a commercial kitchen and be inspected by the Health Department," he said. "We do not recommend anyone set up a stand and start selling food without a license." "It's expensive to eat here," she said of New York. "I taught myself how to cook and meal prep because I didn't want to cook every night. My millennial colleagues would look at my food and say, 'How did you do that?'" Ms. Koren tried other ventures including e books and an accountability group before hitting on the meal plan program. "For eight dollars a month, you get a weekly meal plan with a grocery list. You can adjust everything, and the grocery list will update. I get you started, I give you the list, you shop, you cook and you eat." She has 2,200 subscribers and began working on the business full time last September. "My audience is international," she said, noting that her Instagram audience of more than 340,000 followers is less than 50 percent American. The two bedroom co op she rents with her boyfriend for 2,350 a month presents its own set of challenges to running a business. The kitchen is small, so she asks her boyfriend to stay out of it when she's "in the zone" doing "huge meal preps" every Saturday night test cooking meals that will eventually go into her meal plans if they work out. Then, on Sunday mornings, she carefully carries the food into what she dubs her "Instagram studio," a home office with a "perfect square table" that gets good light so she can photograph the food. Ms. Koren's boyfriend, who is a full time web developer and is studying for a master's degree in computer science, takes her homemade lunches to work. "He sells my program constantly," she said. The couple got a composter and put it in his parking spot behind his car. "That was his idea. He's gotten me into being more sustainable." Back uptown in Harlem, Irena Capris, 32, is busy making vegan wraps and raw vegan cheesecakes in the tiny kitchen of the first floor studio in a brownstone that she rents for 1,700 a month with her husband. Her three year old daughter, Roksana (who also goes by "Roki"), is her constant companion as she works. She runs a catering business and also hosts dining events. After moving to New York City from Russia 10 years ago, Ms. Capris became interested in eating a vegan diet, seeking out eco friendly products and adopting a zero waste mentality. She started Clean Plate NY in December 2018 and had her first big catering job this past spring, preparing and delivering vegan wraps for 20 people at a makeup school photo shoot. This summer, she hosted "Earth Side Picnics" in Central Park, where all of the materials used were eco friendly and the menus featured items like gluten free buckwheat avocado toast with shiitake bacon and tahini date oat cookies. "I live uptown and people often throw parties outside to celebrate birthdays and other occasions," she said, "It's fun, but the outcome is not plastic, trash, wasted food, so I had an idea of putting together food parties and showing that low waste parties are possible, and at the same time showing my craft, making dishes from plants." Ms. Capris often finds herself running back and forth from her own kitchen to her mother in law's upstairs (she lives in the apartment directly above), all the while with her toddler on her hip. "I have a support system, my husband helps me a lot on weekends or after he gets off work, and my mother in law is an amazing woman who lives in the same brownstone as us and lets me use her dishwasher and laundry," she said. "I also sometimes shoot my content on her porch, while Roki, my daughter, tries to help," she said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
When jobless workers get their last unemployment check, the effect on spending is sharp and swift. Unemployed workers' spending on food, clothes and other so called nondurable goods immediately drops 12 percent, about twice as much as when they lost their job and went on unemployment insurance, University of Chicago researchers have found. Spending at drugstores falls 15 percent. Co payments for visits to the doctor fall 14 percent. Spending on groceries falls 16 percent, or 46.30 a month, on average. Millions of Americans are less than two weeks from cutbacks like those. The last two federal emergency unemployment programs in the CARES Act, passed as the pandemic's first wave surged in March, expire on Dec. 26. An analysis by the Century Foundation concluded that 12 million workers who rely on one or the other of these programs will lose them on that day. This will add to 4.4 million who will have already exhausted their federal unemployment benefits. It projected that fewer than three million of these workers will be eligible for what are known as extended benefits, which kick in when the unemployment rate in a state is exceptionally high and can last six to 20 weeks, depending on the state. If Congress and the administration are unable to hammer out a deal to provide additional relief, the others will be left with nothing. "It was obvious this would be totally inadequate," said Stephen A. Wandner, a senior fellow at the National Academy of Social Insurance, who has argued for extending unemployment benefits for a longer period, especially at a time when jobs are so hard to come by. Mr. Wandner noted that unemployment benefits lasted up to 99 weeks almost two years as part of the recovery effort in the last recession. In 2003, when the nation was also recovering from recession, maximum benefits were extended as long as 72 weeks, or almost a year and a half. Joblessness will not only affect consumer spending. Nearly 12 million households fear they may not being able to meet their mortgage payments, according to a survey in October by Moody's Analytics and Morning Consult. Millions of others can no longer afford their rent. And 37 percent of the unemployed said the coronavirus pandemic prevented them from looking for a job. "You are really putting coal in people's stockings," Mr. Wandner said. At the end of November, 16 million people reported they had not worked in the last seven days and were relying on unemployment insurance payments to make ends meet, according to a Census Bureau survey of Americans' financial condition. Losing those checks will translate into immediate hardship. "Come Jan. 1, a lot of people are going to be on Defcon 1," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics. The expiring programs are Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, created for gig workers and others not covered by regular unemployment insurance, and Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation, which extended benefits up to 13 weeks beyond their regular duration (from 12 to 30 weeks, depending on the state). The November Census survey found that about one in four people out of work was relying on savings or selling assets to meet spending needs. One fifth said they were still using some of the so called economic impact payment of 1,200 that most Americans got under the CARES Act in the spring. But that is running out fast. More than one in six said they were borrowing from friends and family. 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. Pascal Noel, an economist at the University of Chicago, analyzed the consequences of expiring unemployment benefits with his colleague, Peter Ganong, in a study published last year. Mr. Noel noted that spending "falls substantially exactly in the month in which benefits expire, and it falls across the board." And that kind of shock has consequences. Mark Aguiar of Princeton and Erik Hurst of the University of Chicago have estimated that the drop in grocery spending that Professors Ganong and Noel associate with the end of unemployment benefits leads to a deterioration in diet quality: a significant decline in household consumption of fresh fruit and a jump in the consumption of hot dogs and processed lunch meat. Jesse Rothstein of the University of California, Berkeley, and Robert Valletta of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco studied what happened when unemployment insurance ended for workers who lost their jobs during the recessions of 2001 or 2007 9. Household income declines 522 a month on average, they found. When unemployment checks run out, the poverty rate among families who received them rises from 20 percent to about one third in the next six months, the researchers found. Other government programs, like food stamps, did not raise their income by much. The current crop of unemployed is already in bad shape. According to the Census Bureau, for instance, by the end of November, more than one person in 10 who had not worked in the past week was relying on federal nutrition assistance, also known as food stamps, to meet needs. That is up from one in 40 in mid July, just before the expiration of another component of the CARES Act a 600 weekly supplement to other unemployment benefits. Poverty, which actually declined in the first months of the pandemic reflecting the extraordinary relief offered by the CARES Act through the spring and early summer has snapped back with a vengeance. According to estimates by Bruce D. Meyer of the University of Chicago, James X. Sullivan of the University of Notre Dame and Jeehoon Han of Zhejiang University, 11.4 percent of Americans subsisted with incomes below the official poverty line by October, up from 9.3 percent in June. The checking accounts of the unemployed also reflect this reversal of fortunes since the early phases of CARES Act relief, according to an analysis by researchers at the JPMorgan Chase Institute and the University of Chicago. Their account balances more than doubled from January to July, helped by the supplemental unemployment payments and the economic impact check. In percentage terms, their gain was vastly greater even than for workers who kept their jobs. Their spending also surged, peaking in July. By the end of August, however, the last month in which the researchers tracked the finances of the unemployed, their median bank balances had shrunk by about a third since July, losing most of the cushion built up since March. "The typical family does still have somewhat of a cash buffer," said Fiona Greig, co president of the JPMorgan Chase Institute, "but it is declining precipitously." Regular unemployment insurance in the United States remains among the least generous in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, typically falling to zero after six months, barring extraordinary legislation. In Denmark or Portugal, by contrast, unemployment benefits replace around 80 percent of the lost wages of workers even two years after they lose their jobs. In the United States, jobless benefits add up to about 20 percent of the median income for a family with two children, according to data from the O.E.C.D. In Germany and Ireland, they amount to over 50 percent. Emergency legislation like the CARES Act has provided an intermittent boost to unemployed American workers during crises. But barring new action by Congress in the coming days, the safety net will revert to its previous state. Millions will fall through the cracks. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Economy |
Veteran insomniacs know in their bones what science has to say about sleep deprivation and pain: that the two travel together, one fueling the other. For instance, people who develop chronic pain often lose the ability to sleep well, and quickly point to a bad back, sciatica or arthritis as the reason. The loss of sleep, in turn, can make a bad back feel worse, and the next night's slumber even more difficult. Why sleep deprivation amplifies pain is not fully worked out, but it has to do with how the body responds to an injury such as a cut or turned ankle. First, it hurts, as nerves send a blast up the spinal cord and into the brain. There, a network of neural regions flares in reaction to the injury and works to manage, or blunt, the sensation. Think of the experience as a kind of physiological dialogue between the ground unit that took the hit and the command control center trying to contain the damage. In a new study, a team of neuroscientists has clarified the nature of the top down portion of that exchange, and how it is affected by sleep. In a sleep lab experiment, the researchers found that a single night of sleep deprivation reduced a person's pain threshold by more than 15 percent and left a clear signature in the brain's pain management centers. In a separate experiment, the team determined that small deviations in the average amount of sleep from one day to another predicted the level of overall pain felt the next day. "What's exciting about these findings is that they will stimulate, and justify, doing more research to figure this system out," said Michael J. Twery, director of the sleep disorders branch of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, who was not involved in the new study. "Once we understand how sleep deprivation changes how these pathways function, we should be able to manage pain more effectively all types of pain." Like the Science Times page on Facebook. Sign up for the Science Times newsletter. Other researchers cautioned that the study was small, and in need of larger replication. But, they said, at a time when chronic pain conditions and narcotic addiction are on the rise, the new work is a pointed reminder that the body's own ability to manage pain can be improved without a prescription. The study team, led by Adam J. Krause and Matthew P. Walker of the University of California, Berkeley, had 25 adults come into the lab on two occasions to measure their pain threshold for heat. Two measurements were taken from each subject, one in the morning after a full night's sleep, and one in the morning after staying up all night. The two visits occurred at least a week apart, and included measurements in a brain imaging machine. The subjects judged the pain sensation of having a small, heated pad pressed against their skin, near the ankle. By gradually adjusting the temperature up and down, the researchers identified the level of pain that each person graded as 10, or "unbearable," on a scale of 1 to 10. Tired of tossing and turning? There are some strategies you could try to improve your hours in bed. None Four out of five people say that they suffer from sleep problems at least once a week and wake up feeling exhausted. Here's a guide to becoming a more successful sleeper. Stretching and meditative movement like yoga before bed can improve the quality of your sleep and the amount you sleep. Try this short and calming routine of 11 stretches and exercises. Nearly 40 percent of people surveyed in a recent study reported having more or much more trouble than usual during the pandemic. Follow these seven simple steps for improving your shut eye. When it comes to gadgets that claim to solve your sleep problems, newer doesn't always mean better. Here are nine tools for better, longer sleep. Pulling an all nighter increased everyone's sensitivity to heat the next morning, by 15 to 30 percent on the pain scale. This wasn't unexpected; previous research had produced similar findings, for a variety of painful sensations. But the brain imaging added a new dimension: For each participant, activity spiked in pain perception regions, and plunged in regions thought to help manage or reduce pain. The biggest peaks were in the somatosensory cortex, a strip of neural tissue that runs across the top of the brain like a headphone band. This is the seat of the so called homunculus, the distorted "little man" neural map of the body; it seems to be where the perception of pain becomes a conscious "ouch." The lowest troughs of activity occurred in deeper brain regions such as the thalamus and nucleus accumbens. "So you have two things happening at once here," said Dr. Walker, director of the Center for Human Sleep Science at U.C. Berkeley. "There's ramped up sensation to pain, and a loss of natural analgesic reaction. The fact that both of them happen was surprising." Deliberate sleep deprivation is rare in the natural world robins and squirrels tend not to stay up late to catch "Saturday Night Live" so it may be that no backup systems have evolved to help restore or tune the brain's pain management system, Dr. Walker said. In a separate trial, the research team recruited 60 adults online who reported having daily pain. The participants rated their sleep and pain over two days, scoring the previous night's slumber in the mornings, and their pain level in the evenings. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
Celebrate International Women's Day on Thursday with a superhero and an Olympian. And ponder the pitfalls of fame on "Atlanta." JESSICA JONES on Netflix. They don't make superheros much more cynical than Jessica Jones, who is played with sass, sarcasm and cutting bitterness by Krysten Ritter in this series. After playing an ensemble role in "Marvel's The Defenders," Ms. Ritter is back in the center of the action as Jessica hits an identity crisis and takes on a new investigation. The long shadow of Kilgrave, made into a terrifying villain by David Tennant, looms over it all. LADIES FIRST on Netflix. Deepika Kumari grew up in poverty in rural India, where social norms dictated that women remain in domestic life. Instead, she took up archery and discovered her extraordinary talent. In just three to four years she mastered the sport, eventually becoming the world's top ranked archer at the age of 18 and appearing in the Olympics in London and Rio. This short documentary navigates her improbable rise and continued success (she's still just 23). THE OATH on Crackle. O.K., so it turns out 50 Cent didn't actually invest in Bitcoin. But he's had real success in his television ventures, most notably as executive producer and star in the hit show "Power." Now he's throwing his weight behind "The Oath," which explores police gangs. The show was created by Joe Halpin, a former undercover cop in the South Central section of Los Angeles. Sean Bean stars, bringing the same brooding intensity to street fights that he displayed in the fantasy worlds of "Lord of the Rings" and "Game of Thrones." LIBERATION DAY on Sundance Now. It sounds like a tale straight from the Seth Rogen playbook, but it actually happened: In 2015, an art rock band from Slovenia known for its fascist aesthetic played a concert in North Korea. This documentary shows the band, Laibach which had previously been banned in Yugoslavia for its use of imagery associated with totalitarianism preparing to perform in Pyongyang for the country's 70th anniversary of liberation from Japanese colonial rule. In his review in The New York Times, Glenn Kenny described it as a "consistently understated chronicle of Westerners who are very carefully playing with fire." ATLANTA 10 p.m. on FX. "Is this simply Season 2 of 'Atlanta'? Is it an entirely new series?" James Poniewozik asked in his review in The Times, before concluding: "It is the same. And it is different. And that's a wonderful, surreal, hilarious thing." The second episode, "Sportin' Waves," focuses on Paper Boi (Brian Tyree Henry) and his realization that his fame comes with a lot of unwanted baggage, whether in interactions with corporate yes men or with drug dealers. Earn spends an eventful day (and a lot of money) at the mall. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. has an opportunity and a challenge: He is the presumptive nominee for president taking on an incumbent weighed down by a public health disaster and a resulting deep recession. But first, he has to get past the birds. The birds twittered up a storm during a May 8 address on the economic crisis, as he livestreamed from his Delaware home, where the Covid 19 pandemic has marooned him. They whistled through his remarks to a "virtual rally" aimed at voters in Florida. They honked, from a pond near his house, through a speech to the Asian American and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) Victory Fund. Not since Tony Soprano and his ducks has a media figure's circumstances been so enmeshed with the fowl in his backyard. Running a general election campaign that began almost immediately as shelter in place policies fell into place, Mr. Biden has suddenly found himself, late in life, trying to adapt from his beloved retail politics to unsatisfying e tail politics. Mr. Biden, speaking straight to camera, lacks the off the cuff energy he can get in front of a crowd. There are none of the trademark embellishments "Folks!" "I'm serious!" It's enough to make you miss the white knuckle Biden speaking style that made every debate answer a perilous journey. That Biden, after all schmoozing, empathizing, gaffe making, touching, maybe overtouching was all about being there and showing up. Sheltering in place with only a planter of impatiens for a wingman, he delivers speeches that feel like they want the reaction of a crowd. ("Have you heard that before? Well, we're not buying it.") He has not managed, as any successful YouTuber learns, to self generate the ardor and enthusiasm that you imagine in your audience. That disorienting Zoomosphere feeling is a problem because so much of politics is about place courting electoral votes, making physical pilgrimages. The Biden campaign has tried to compensate with "virtual rallies," which raise a kind of existential question: What does it even mean to be "in" Tampa from a house in Delaware? A May 7 event tried to answer that, and the results were like a "Saturday Night Live" sketch. A Florida Democratic official introduced the candidate over a shaky connection "He's running to rebuild the American middle class and make sure this time ev glitch body c glitch glitch lo glitch ." A local high school student led the Pledge of Allegiance in front of a set of home window blinds. A D.J. spun "Ain't No Stopping Us Now" onscreen and, as if to prove the song's point, kept it going for almost three minutes. Campaign rallies are often front loaded with preliminaries and testimonials from area bigwigs. But what was barely tolerable filler in person is a "Close Tab" prompt online. A May 20 rally aimed at Milwaukee, Wis. ("Not to be cheesy but it's going to be a Gouda time!" promised the website) was tighter, getting to Mr. Biden's speech within 15 minutes, but with only 2,400 viewers streaming, according to the online counter. Mr. Biden can be more animated in his remote interviews, where there is someone on the other end to play off of. In a Thursday interview with Stephen Colbert, he misted up connecting his own history of loss (his wife and daughter in a car crash and his son Beau to cancer) to the mourning in families across the country. It recalled, despite the distance, his memorable 2015 interview with Mr. Colbert shortly after his son's death as well as the current president's allergy to expressing anything like empathy or grief. For now, Mr. Biden is running against an opponent with a near monopoly on the airwaves. Just as the 2007 08 TV writer's strike salvaged Mr. Trump's career by clearing a time slot for "The Celebrity Apprentice," the president again finds himself one of the few people able to generate television content. Only Mr. Trump gets to move about in the physical world, holding briefings, visiting an auto plant in Michigan and a medical equipment center in Pennsylvania. He may self immolate regularly, dispensing don't try this at home medical advice and going maskless in an Arizona factory while the loudspeaker cranked "Live and Let Die." But TV has a bias toward things that look like TV high definition images, people interacting with people and this he can provide. Even Mr. Biden's onetime boss, Barack Obama, has an advantage. His elliptical criticism of President Trump in a prime time commencement address generated more news than any recent direct attack from Mr. Biden. Of course, the political re entry of a former president is inevitably news but also, it happened in front of millions of viewers on multiple networks. Mr. Biden, meanwhile, has to exist in the same limbo that nearly everyone does, even Hollywood celebrities, videophoning it in with a bookshelf backdrop. It sets a public health example. (He made a point of beginning his Colbert appearance wearing, then removing, a mask, the same day the president pointedly did not wear a mask before cameras in Michigan.) But if, come summer and fall, Mr. Trump is holding rallies, the same things that might make them questionable from an epidemiological standpoint will give TV news producers what they crave: crowd dynamics and images at large scale. To be clear: The low media profile has not provably hurt Mr. Biden, who has maintained a lead in poll averages. For all we know, it may be helping him, part of his unspoken pitch being the promise of relative quiet after four years of a presidency whose dials go up to 11. ("The more he talks, the better off I am," Mr. Biden told Charlamagne, in defense of being "MIA" in the media during the pandemic.) Also to be clear: Mr. Biden should get media coverage because he is the presumptive challenger for president in a time of unprecedented national crisis, not because he has put on a sufficient show. But if his campaign is holding public events, the purpose is not to get less attention. "It's often said that crisis reveals character," Mr. Biden said in his Tampa rally speech. It also reveals one's creativity and ability to adapt to drastic changes. That means finding a way to make a challenger's argument "Here's what you'd be getting if I were president right now" in a way that virtually imagines a virtual presidency. Mr. Biden's campaign has been able to create blistering ads. It hasn't, yet, found ways to recreate the kinds of warm encounters he thrives on in the real world: | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
John Dalman had been in the waiting room at a Loxahatchee, Fla., dermatology clinic for less than 15 minutes when he turned to his wife and told her they needed to leave. Now. "It was like a fight or flight impulse," he said. His face numbed for skin cancer surgery, Mr. Dalman, 69, sat surrounded by a half dozen other patients with bandages on their faces, scalps, necks, arms and legs. At a previous visit, a young physician assistant had taken 10 skin biopsies, which showed slow growing, nonlethal cancerous lesions. Expecting to have the lesions simply scraped off at the next visit, he had instead been told he needed surgery on many of them, as well as a full course of radiation lasting many weeks. The once sleepy field of dermatology is bustling these days, as baby boomers, who spent their youth largely unaware of the sun's risk, hit old age. The number of skin cancer diagnoses in people over 65, along with corresponding biopsies and treatment, is soaring. But some in the specialty, as well as other medical experts, are beginning to question the necessity of aggressive screening and treatment, especially in frail, elderly patients, given that the majority of skin cancers are unlikely to be fatal. "You can always do things," said Dr. Charles A. Crecelius, a St. Louis geriatrician who has studied care of medically complex seniors. "But just because you can do it, does that mean you should do it?" Mr. Dalman's instinct to question his treatment plan was validated when he went to see a dermatologist in a different practice. The doctor dismissed radiation as unnecessary, removed many of the lesions with a scrape, applied small Band Aids, and was finished in 30 minutes. Dermatology a specialty built not on flashy, leading edge medicine but on thousands of small, often banal procedures has become increasingly lucrative in recent years. The annual dermatology services market in the United States, excluding cosmetic procedures, is nearly 11 billion and growing, according to IBISWorld, a market research firm. The business potential has attracted private equity firms, which are buying up dermatology practices around the country, and installing crews of lesser trained practitioners like the physician assistants who saw Mr. Dalman to perform exams and procedures in even greater volume. The vast majority of dermatologists care for patients with integrity and professionalism, and their work has played an essential role in the diagnosis of complex skin related diseases, including melanoma, the most dangerous form of skin cancer, which is increasingly caught early. But while melanoma is on the rise, it remains relatively uncommon. The incidence of basal and squamous cell carcinomas of the skin, which are rarely life threatening, is 18 to 20 times higher than that of melanoma. Each year in the United States more than 5.4 million such cases are treated in more than 3.3 million people, a 250 percent rise since 1994. The New York Times analyzed Medicare billing data for dermatology from 2012 through 2015, as well as a national database of medical services maintained by the American Medical Association that goes back more than a decade. Nearly all dermatologic procedures are performed on an outpatient, fee for service basis. The Times analysis found a marked increase in the number of skin biopsies per Medicare beneficiary in the past decade; a sharp rise in the number of physician assistants, mostly unsupervised, performing dermatologic procedures; and large numbers of invasive dermatologic procedures performed on elderly patients near the end of life. In 2015, the most recent year for which data was available, the number of skin biopsies performed on patients in the traditional Medicare Part B program had risen 55 percent from a decade earlier despite a slight decrease in the program's enrollment over all. Skin cancers are more common in older people, which means Medicare pays for much of the treatment. In 2015, 5.9 million skin biopsies on Medicare recipients were performed. More than 15 percent of the biopsies billed to Medicare that year were performed by physician assistants or nurse practitioners working independently. In 2005, almost none were, said Dr. Brett Coldiron, a former president of the American Academy of Dermatology, who has studied the use of clinicians who are not physicians in medical practices. Dr. Coldiron, a dermatologist in Cincinnati, said he was skeptical of the growing use of such clinicians in the specialty. "Ads will say 'See our dermatology providers,'" he said. "But what's really going on is these practices, with all this private equity money behind them, hire a bunch of P.A.'s and nurses and stick them out in clinics on their own. And they're acting like doctors." Bedside Dermatology, a mobile practice in Michigan, sends clinicians to 72 nursing homes throughout the state for skin checks and treatment. Dr. Steven K. Grekin, a dermatologist, said that when he founded Bedside, many of the nursing home patients had not been examined by a dermatologist for several years. "We were seeing a real unmet need," he said. In 2015, Bedside Dermatology's traveling crews performed thousands of cryosurgeries spraying liquid nitrogen on precancerous lesions with an instrument that resembles a blowtorch. Other spots on the nursing home patients' skin were injected with steroids, or removed with minor surgery. Examining the 2015 Medicare billing codes of three physician assistants and one nurse practitioner employed by Bedside Dermatology, The Times found that 75 percent of the patients they treated for various skin problems had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. Most of the lesions on these patients were very unlikely to be dangerous, experts said, and the patients might not even have been aware of them. "Patients with a high level of disease burden still deserve and require treatment," Dr. Grekin said. "If they are in pain, it should be treated. If they itch, they deserve relief." Dr. Eleni Linos, a dermatologist and epidemiologist at the University of California, San Francisco, who has argued against aggressive treatment of skin cancers other than melanomas in the frail elderly, said that if a lesion was bothering a patient, "of course we would recommend treatment." However, she added, many such lesions are asymptomatic. Dr. Linos added that physicians underestimate the side effects of skin cancer procedures. Complications such as poor wound healing, bleeding and infection are common in the months following treatment, especially among older patients with multiple other problems. About 27 percent report problems, her research has found. "A procedure that is simple for a young healthy person may be a lot harder for someone who is very frail," she said. The work of Bedside Dermatology reflects a wider tendency to diagnose and treat patients for skin issues near the end of life. Arcadia Healthcare Solutions, a health analytics firm, analyzed dermatologic procedures done on 17,820 patients over age 65 in the last year of life, and found that skin biopsies and the freezing of precancerous lesions were performed frequently, often weeks before death. While health care experts agree that access to care is of growing importance, there is an ongoing debate over whether practitioners who are not physicians are qualified to make diagnoses, identify skin cancers and decide when to perform biopsies skills dermatologists acquire through extensive training particularly among the elderly. The frequency with which physician assistants and nurse practitioners take skin biopsies compared with M.D.'s was the subject of a 2015 study at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Based on 1,102 biopsies from 743 patients, researchers found that physician assistants and nurse practitioners performed nearly six biopsies for every skin cancer found more than twice the number performed by physicians. Riley Wood, age 82, arrived one morning last February at an ADCS clinic in Heathrow, Florida, for a skin check with David Fitzmaurice, a physician assistant. For Mr. Fitzmaurice, the exam was routine; Mr. Wood was one of a few dozen patients he sees each day. On the day a reporter observed him, Mr. Fitzmaurice moved quickly through the visits, many of which entailed procedures like biopsies and cryosurgery. Mr. Wood had already had two other cancers kidney and throat. Mr. Fitzmaurice decided Mr. Wood needed two biopsies one on his scalp, for a suspected squamous cell carcinoma, and a second on his neck, for a spot that might be a melanoma. The bleeding from the biopsy wound to Mr. Wood's neck persisted for several minutes, leaving the patient worried and depleted. Arielle Rought, a physician assistant with ADCS who is in her late 20s, called skin checks "our bread and butter." On the day a reporter visited, Ms. Rought biopsied a spot on a patient's hand to rule out melanoma. Her supervising physician was standing out in the hall, yet she did not ask him to take a look. Asked why she had not called him into the room, she said she did not consider it necessary. The biopsy was negative. In an emailed statement, the president of the American Academy of Dermatology, Dr. Henry W. Lim, said: "The AAD believes the optimum degree of dermatologic care is delivered when a board certified physician dermatologist provides direct, on site supervision to all non dermatologist personnel." Ms. Rought said it was not unusual for a skin check to lead her to to freeze as many as 30 precancerous lesions called actinic keratoses on a patient during a single visit. Actinic keratoses are called precancerous because they can sometimes turn into squamous cell carcinoma. Ms. Rought said her "rule of thumb" was that 20 percent of actinic keratoses progress to cancer. While that might once have been the popular understanding, research now suggests otherwise. Dr. Martin A. Weinstock, a professor of dermatology and epidemiology at Brown University, reported in a 2009 study of men with a history of two or more skin cancers that were not melanomas that the risk of an actinic keratosis progressing to skin cancer was about 1 percent after a year, and 4 percent after four years. More than 50 percent of the lesions went away on their own. Dr. Lim said the dermatology academy's position is that actinic keratoses should be treated, as it is impossible to know which ones will turn into cancer, but some specialists are questioning whether that's necessary. At his next visit in February, he was seen by another young woman, whom he also took to be a physician. As it turned out, both women were physician assistants. The second physician assistant told Mr. Dalman that he would need radiation on basal cell carcinomas on his temple, shoulder and ear. He said he tried to argue with her, explaining that he'd had many similar lesions in the past that were removed with a simple scrape. He said she countered that if she attempted to remove the lesion above his right eye, he might end up unable to blink that eye. And without superficial radiation on his ear, he was in danger of losing the entire ear. She said he would also need Mohs surgery on several of the basal cell carcinomas. She did not respond to requests from The New York Times to speak about the case. Although Dr. Masessa signed Mr. Dalman's chart, Mr. Dalman never met him. This could be because the clinic he went to, northwest of West Palm Beach, Fla., is one of more than a dozen clinics scattered across three states associated with Dr. Masessa, who is based in New Jersey but licensed in Florida. Supervision of physician assistants is required by state law. The Florida Department of Health website lists Dr. Masessa as supervising four physician assistants in the state. Dr. Masessa did not respond to repeated requests for comment. An associate, who identified himself as Jeff Masessa, returned a call and asked for questions by email. Neither he nor Dr. Masessa responded to a detailed list of questions, despite repeated follow up emails from The Times. On the day of Mr. Dalman's surgery, the same physician assistant injected a local anesthetic, then instructed Mr. Dalman to return to the waiting room, Mr. Dalman said. Then something dawned on him. Since he had not laid eyes on a physician in several visits, he worried that the physician assistant would be doing the procedure. The prospect made him nervous and he decided to make a swift exit. Mr. Dalman later went to see Dr. Joseph Francis, a dermatologist near West Palm Beach. Dr. Francis said there was no indication for superficial radiation, a treatment of which the American Academy of Dermatology has voiced skepticism. Moreover, Dr. Francis decided, many of the basal cell carcinomas could be scraped off. Dr. Francis said he was shocked not only by the number of biopsies that had been taken at once, but also by the aggressive treatment proposed. Moreover, when he reviewed Mr. Dalman's records from Dr. Masessa's clinic, he saw four skin exams documented over the four month period. But when he examined the patient, Dr. Francis noticed a pigmented, asymmetrical spot slightly bigger than a pencil eraser on Mr. Dalman's shoulder. It turned out to be a malignant melanoma, not documented by the physician assistant. Dr. Francis removed it before it had a chance to spread. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
Lawyers for Mary Boone, the veteran art dealer who is facing possible prison time for filing false tax returns, are asking that she be spared incarceration, saying her offenses were the product of trauma, not greed. Ms. Boone is scheduled to be sentenced later this month after pleading guilty last September to two counts of filing false returns for 2011 for herself and her gallery. Federal authorities had charged her with reporting a false business loss and claiming about 1.6 million in personal expenses as business deductions. Each of the two counts carries a possible penalty of three years in prison. But in a memorandum to Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein of Federal District Court in Manhattan, Ms. Boone's lawyers asked that she be sentenced instead to home confinement and probation with up to 1,000 hours of community service. Her troubled and unstable childhood led to mental health issues, a suicide attempt and drug and alcohol abuse, they wrote, and played a role in the crimes she committed. In particular, they said the poverty of her early life had left her fearful that, despite her success, she would end up destitute and dependent upon others. "Behind the facade of success and strength lies a fragile and, at times, broken individual," the lawyers wrote in the filing made last month. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
Brooke Watts and Carson Palmer played Cassie and Mike in the production of "A Chorus Line" by the Northwest School of the Arts in Charlotte, N.C., which couldn't be presented at the International Thespian Festival because of the coronavirus. On the evening of the first Friday this month, in a tiny town in a rural Kansas county where you could have tallied the coronavirus cases on two hands and had fingers left over, Leslie Coats headed to the high school where she has taught drama for more than 40 years. School has been out since before Memorial Day, but one of her students wanted help preparing for a college audition. Afterward, he asked if they could go into the theater, where he hadn't been since classes went virtual back in March. Inside, he looked around at the familiar space, where the frame of a familiar set for Arthur Miller's "All My Sons" was already back onstage. "He said, 'I feel like a huge weight just lifted off my shoulders,'" Coats recalled by phone the next morning, her voice thickening in sympathy. "And then he started crying." Except in Paola, where the confluence of state regulations, local virus rates and promised safety precautions resulted in a green light for a livestream festival performance of "All My Sons." The plan? For the cast of 10 to perform in front of an invited audience of family and friends that would fill the school's 297 seat theater to about one third capacity. That is as close to normal as this year's festival could even dream of getting. Which is to say, not really very close at all. To veterans of the festival held for the past 25 years at the University of Nebraska Lincoln, whose facilities it gradually outgrew normal can bear some resemblance to "Waiting for Guffman." Abby Stuckrath, 18, who graduated this spring from Denver School of the Arts, remembers performing "The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee" for a 2018 main stage audience during a tornado warning and being told by her teacher that, should a tornado come their way and the auditorium be evacuated, "You will stay in character." (Stuckrath's character: Olive Ostrovsky, the Celia Keenan Bolger role.) Alan Strait, who taught drama for years in Las Vegas, was once voted down by his own students when he suggested a spring break theater trip to New York instead of a festival trip to Lincoln. These people are hard core. But when, at the end of March, Indiana University canceled its summer activities, normal was no longer an option. The Educational Theater Association, the nonprofit that has produced the festival since 1941 and had expected 5,000 attendees in Bloomington, declared that the event would simply go online, with details TBA. Much of it, including workshops and the college fair, has been adapted to translate digitally. Online, the cost of admission is a more accessible 199, down from the in person 865. And if Tina Fey was an unlikely get for an appearance in Indiana, she will be doing a live virtual Q. and A. with the students. Amy Miller, who acted at the festival numerous times in her own student years, is now a drama teacher at New Albany High School in Indiana, where her production of "My Fair Lady" was chosen for this year's main stage. On the plus side, nixing the gathering means she won't have to worry about loading the show's bi level set into two semis, and the costumes into a box truck. And she does have a professionally shot videotape that the festival can stream to its anticipated 2,500 participants. Still, Miller said, the cancellation hit her hard. "I feel like a teenage drama queen using this language," she said, "but it was a little devastating." Early last December, when Corey Mitchell and his students at Northwest School of the Arts in Charlotte, N.C., put on "A Chorus Line," he made the de rigueur preshow speech to the audience, instructing everyone to turn off their cellphones and explaining that because of copyright infringement, filming the performance was prohibited. Does the school have a video of it, though? Over the phone one recent afternoon, Mitchell's answer was a muffled scream of anguish. But taking a production to the festival is an expensive endeavor; Mitchell's fund raising goal for "A Chorus Line" was 125,000. The last time his school had a main stage show there was in 2013, when he brought "The Color Purple" to Lincoln a production chronicled in the documentary "Purple Dreams" and shimmeringly enshrined in Northwest memory. Brooke Watts, 19, who played Cassie in Mitchell's "A Chorus Line," grew up wanting to do what she had seen the older kids do in "The Color Purple." "My one theater dream," she said, "was just to be on that big stage in Nebraska." True, she noted, this year it would have been Indiana. But that is how large the festival looms as a marker of achievement in the school theater landscape. So it is also a place to make a statement, as Mitchell did with "The Color Purple" ("You don't see many predominantly African American shows on that stage," he said) and wanted to do again with "A Chorus Line." His was a meticulous homage to the original 1975 production, he explained, "except that over half the kids on the line are students of color." Which might not sound like a big deal, but Mitchell and Watts both said there were people in Charlotte who thought that Cassie, the Donna McKechnie/Charlotte d'Amboise role, had to be played by a white actress. Even Watts, who is black, wondered about that when she heard other students say so. "The tradition on every Broadway show, every show that I've seen," she said, "it's been a blond lady with a bob, like skinny. I have not seen an African American Cassie ever." This summer, the main stage audience will get a glimpse of one, anyway. The festival is the flagship event of the International Thespian Society, which has a membership of 130,000 and chapters in schools across the United States, as well as a smattering elsewhere. Its members are known as Thespians, with a capital T. An honor society that requires many hours logged in theater arts before admission is granted, it has an expansive list of famous alumni. Wayne Brady, Adam Driver and Aidy Bryant were Thespians; so were Zoe Kravitz, Julia Louis Dreyfus and Tom Hanks. Dick Van Dyke was a member. Madonna, too. All year, across the country, Thespians compete in events that were recently rebranded the Thespys. At the festival, those competitions have also gone digital, with students uploading videos of their performances for adjudication. But they have had to consider more than their skills with a camera, or how to perform in the absence of audience response. Maura Toole, 17, from Grimsley High School in Greensboro, N.C. a state where the coronavirus rate has risen lately was weighing whether to film her Thespys song, "Falling Slowly" from "Once," in person with her duet partner or from their separate homes. "By law, we can be together," she said. "Our consciences are telling us that that's a bad idea right now, given what's going on in our community." (Their verdict: separate spaces.) Erielle Harris, 14, who just graduated from eighth grade at St. Martin's Episcopal School in Atlanta, also had the wider world on her mind. Planning to attend the virtual festival with her twin sister while FaceTiming with drama program friends, she said early this month that she hoped that Covid and Black Lives Matter would be part of the online conversation, to "make sure everyone's educated." Since then, the festival has announced a slate of diversity themed programming, including a keynote address about racial equity by the Tony winning director Kenny Leon. The thing about humans with smartphones is that they tend to be too entranced by their screens to pay much heed when someone tells them to put them away. Thank goodness for that, at least in the case of Northwest's "A Chorus Line." Needing to piece together a festival tribute to the production, Mitchell put out a call for any videos clandestinely shot by audience members. In dress rehearsal footage, Watts will be seen performing Cassie's big number, "The Music and the Mirror." There will be video, too, shot late last month at a theater in Charlotte, where the Northwest company gathered in socially distanced fashion to sing, a cappella, "What I Did for Love." For Carson Palmer, 18, who played Mike, that was a bittersweet reunion, and a reminder of the capstone to their high school careers that he and the cast's other seniors thought they would have. Just after graduation, there would have been an encore weekend of "A Chorus Line" in their school's 600 seat auditorium, then the trip to Bloomington. "We were all so excited to have the June production be our last show together before going off to college," he said. "It's wild to think that the show in December was actually the last time I'll be performing with my best friends." 'If they bring it in, we're done' The rare luck of the students in Paola, Kan., is that they got to slip back into "All My Sons" a drama that Coats, their teacher, believes has only gained resonance with the advent of the coronavirus and the surge of Black Lives Matter protests. "They're very conscious of the fact that if they bring it in, we're done," she said, two days after rehearsals started. "If anybody gets exposed, we're finished." For the festival performance, Coats said she would move actors out of the single cramped dressing room and into three other nearby rooms where they could spread out. Their makeup kits would be individual, not shared, and the makeup crew like the ushers gloved and masked. "Obviously," she said, "you can't social distance onstage, because the roles don't allow it." They were taking a risk, Coats acknowledged, but one she considered acceptably small even if a what if kind of worry kept her up at night. "If I could put them all in plastic wrap and keep them isolated totally until we're done," she said, "I would do it in a heartbeat." The coronavirus quickly proved wilier than they were. A week into rehearsals, a crew member tested positive. The county's contact tracing program swung into action; a few students got calls. Yet the impulse was not to close the production. Consulting with the health department, Coats scrambled to reassess, asking her other students and their parents if they felt comfortable continuing. They said they did. And Coats, who also got a contact tracer's call, announced that she would direct via video from quarantine, while requiring her cast and crew, in the theater, to wear masks offstage and on. "The masks will actually help you work on projection and articulation," she advised her actors via email, ever the educator. The show would go on, with their faces uncovered for the livestream. And then Coats reconsidered. A couple of days later, she canceled the performance. She declined to say, for this article, what had changed, but the crew member was among nine new local coronavirus cases reported that week, according to The Miami County Republic. Until that abrupt end, though, Coats's students had had the luxury of the nearly normal: being in a room together, making theater something so many people, their fellow Thespians included, are aching to do. Through these long pandemic months, a line from "Hamilton" has played on repeat in Coats's head: "the world turned upside down." With her company gathered, it felt for a little while like the world was righting itself again. But it isn't. Not yet. And so for these Kansans, as for legions of festival goers, virtual is as real as it gets this summer. It's not much like being there. But at least they'll not be there together. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
What does the rhythm of life sound like in 2016? Drums are keeping traditions alive in Basque Country and Burkina Faso; California is calling on the voices of strong women to inspire new music; and in Montreal, jazz lovers are preparing for what is sure to be the classiest Battle of the Bands in history. Pack your earplugs and head to San Sebastian, Spain, for La Tamborrada (Jan. 20), one of the oddest and, surely, most annoying musical traditions in the world. Every year on the feast of St. Sebastian, more than 100 local drum regiments parade through the city's Plaza de la Constitucion, beating buckets and drums for 24 hours, a custom thought to have begun during the Peninsular War, when villagers filling their buckets with water from the plaza's well began to mock Napoleon's soldiers, who were occupying the city. Drummers are most often dressed in peasant costumes, as soldiers or as chefs, a practice with varied explanations, none of which ring quite true. It may have something to do with the large dinners hosted by local food clubs the night before, a big bonus in a city already well known for its culinary expertise. Rooted in age old West African traditions, Festima (Feb. 27 to March 5), held every other year in Dedougou, Burkina Faso, is a different kind of cacophony, mixing drumming with dance and, most important, mask making. Musicians with hand drums, whistles and balafons, xylophone like instruments made with gourds, pound out rhythms while dancers, masked to look like animals and bush spirits, perform and interact with spectators. Storytelling competitions and presentations on the history of regional mask making and culture are also part of the festivities, which began in 1996 with a group of students hoping to preserve these traditions. Arrive well rested, as impromptu dance sessions often keep visitors up till the wee hours. In March, two freshman fests, the Okeechobee Music Arts Festival (March 4 to 6) in Florida and Paradise Lost (March 10 to 12), Jamaica's first electronic dance music festival, make their debuts with impressive lineups. Mumford Sons, Robert Plant, Ween, Big Boi and others are to headline Okeechobee's five stages, which share the vast grounds, nicknamed Sunshine Grove, with camping facilities, a yoga center and an art studio. In Ocho Rios, Paradise Lost is to have Bassnectar and Tiesto leading a pack of rising E.D.M. artists on a beachfront stage, including King Jammy, a Jamaican born music maker who organizers said will help keep the fest tethered to its roots. Nestled between Santa Barbara and Los Angeles, the Ojai Valley's luxury spas and inns can be a respite for city dwellers. The Ojai Music Festival (June 9 to 12) assists, providing music to soothe and inspire the soul for the last 69 summers. For this, its 70th anniversary season, the focus will be "pushing boundaries, great music grounded in spiritual and political context," said Thomas W. Morris, the festival's artistic director. Concerts include an evening honoring Josephine Baker, led by the soprano Julia Bullock; songs inspired by the 2011 Egyptian revolution from Dina El Wedidi, an Egyptian vocalist; and from Kaija Saariaho, a Finnish composer, the American premiere of her "La Passion de Simone," which is based on the life of Simone Weil, a French philosopher. And in Montreal this summer, you'll find the usual jazz royalty Wynton Marsalis, Gregory Porter, Stacey Kent at the Festival International de Jazz de Montreal (June 29 to July 9). But the one true king will be crowned at the festival's now wildly popular Battle of the Bands, when the Cab Calloway Orchestra returns to Montreal for the first time in 25 years to challenge a battle favorite, the Glenn Miller Orchestra. And while head banging is unlikely, some pretty snazzy solos are guaranteed. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. At 7 in the morning, they are already lined up poultry plant workers, housekeepers, discount store clerks to ask for help paying their heating bills or feeding their families. And once Metropolitan Ministries opens at 8 a.m., these workers fill the charity's 40 chairs, with a bawling infant adding to the commotion. From pockets and handbags they pull out utility bills or rent statements and hand them over to caseworkers, who often write checks 80, 110, 150 to patch over gaps in meeting this month's expenses or filling the gas tank to get to work. Just off her 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. shift, Erika McCurdy needed help last month with her electricity and heating bill, which jumped to 280 in January from the usual 120 a result of one of the coldest winters in memory. A nurse's aide at an assisted living facility, Ms. McCurdy said there were many weeks when she couldn't make ends meet raising her 19 year old son and 7 year old daughter. "There's just no way, making 9 an hour as a single parent with two children, that I can live without assistance," said Ms. McCurdy, 40, a strong voiced, solidly built Chattanooga native. She was so financially stretched, she said, that she and her daughter often sneaked into her son's high school football games free during halftime because she couldn't afford the 6 tickets. (She proudly noted that her son, Charles, had made the All State football team.) As for her daughter Jer'Maya, who mimics Beyonce's every move on her mother's iPhone, Ms. McCurdy said, "She'd love to take ballet and piano lessons, but there's no way I can afford that." Having worked as a nurse's aide for 15 years, Ms. McCurdy has been among the nearly 25 million workers in the United States who make less than 10.10 an hour the amount to which President Obama supports increasing the minimum wage. Of those workers, 3.5 million make the 7.25 federal minimum wage or less. And like many of them, Ms. McCurdy hasn't been able to rely on steady full time hours she has often been assigned just 20 hours a week. Even if she worked full time year round, her 9 hourly wage would put her below the poverty threshold of 19,530 for a family of three. Climbing above the poverty line has become more daunting in recent years, as the composition of the nation's low wage work force has been transformed by the Great Recession, shifting demographics and other factors. More than half of those who make 9 or less an hour are 25 or older, while the proportion who are teenagers has declined to just 17 percent from 28 percent in 2000, after adjusting for inflation, according to Janelle Jones and John Schmitt of the Center for Economic Policy Research. Today's low wage workers are also more educated, with 41 percent having at least some college, up from 29 percent in 2000. "Minimum wage and low wage workers are older and more educated than 10 or 20 years ago, yet they're making wages below where they were 10 or 20 years ago after inflation," said Mr. Schmitt, senior economist at the research center. "If you look back several decades, workers near the minimum wage were more likely to be teenagers that's the stereotype people had. It's definitely not accurate anymore." In Chattanooga, the prevalence of low wage jobs has contributed to the high poverty rate: 27 percent of the city's residents live below the poverty line, compared with 15 percent nationwide. Women head about two thirds of the city's poor households, and 42 percent of its children are poor, nearly double the rate statewide. "The face of poverty in this community is women, especially women of color," said Valerie L. Radu, a professor of social work at the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga. This city was not always a magnet for low wage jobs. For much of the last century, the city, which hugs the Tennessee River, was a manufacturing hub with dozens of apparel factories, textile mills and metal foundries. During the last quarter of the 20th century, almost all the factories and foundries were shuttered, and with them disappeared thousands of manufacturing jobs that had once lifted workers, even ones without high school degrees, into the middle class or to the cusp of it. In their place have come thousands of service sector jobs: at the aquarium and Imax theater built to lure tourists and at hotels, nursing homes, big box stores, brew pubs, fast food restaurants, beauty salons and hospitals. Discount stores dot the landscape, including a Family Dollar downtown near the upscale Bluewater Grille, reflecting how much American cities have experienced a hollowing out of the middle class. "Chattanooga has a twofold problem: the low level of educational attainment and the traditional jobs that these people move into have largely disappeared," said Matthew N. Murray, an economist at the University of Tennessee. Just 23 percent of Tennessee adults have a bachelor's degree. JeraLee Kincaid, 23, is an 8.50 an hour cashier who works at the checkout booth at a parking garage next to the Marriott Courtyard hotel downtown. A solid student in high school, Ms. Kincaid, who lives with her mother, planned to study computer programming in college, but instead her family decided that she needed to help pay the medical bills of a 5 year old niece who has leukemia. 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. "She can't eat, talk or walk by herself," said Ms. Kincaid. She says she feels stuck, but also grateful that her boss is trying to help find her a scholarship to attend college. When Volkswagen opened a 1 billion assembly plant in 2011, 80,000 people applied for 2,000 jobs paying an average of 19.50 an hour. Many low wage workers, like Ms. McCurdy a high school dropout who later obtained her high school equivalency diploma would have loved to work there, but they faced difficulty mastering the math tests given for jobs that involve advanced machinery. "We understand that more individuals have to get some kind of higher education degree or certificate to have a chance in this world," said Chattanooga's mayor, Andy Berke. "We don't want the South to be a place where businesses go to find low wage, low education jobs. That's a long term problem that midsized cities in the South face." Here as well as elsewhere, a college degree cannot guarantee a good job. Landon Howard graduated from the University of Tennessee campus here four years ago with a bachelor's degree in social work, but has been unable to find a job in that field. Instead he is a prep cook at the trendy Tupelo Honey Cafe. Often scheduled for just 15 to 20 hours a week at 9.50 an hour, he usually takes home less than 200 a week. "I've had to move back in with my parents," Mr. Howard said. His most urgent concern is his lack of dental insurance. "One of my teeth is cracked," he said. "There's a big gaping hole. I don't know if I'm going to lose it." Ms. McCurdy, as a parent in a modest income bracket, would not usually be eligible for the state's Medicaid program, although her children would, but she was accepted because of a heart condition requiring costly medications. Her family has had to make many sacrifices since she was laid off in 2012 from her job as a full time nurse's assistant in the emergency room of Memorial Hospital. Her fall to 9 an hour at the assisted living facility from 13.75 at the hospital forced her to give up a 2,000 square foot home in Harrison, a local suburb, "which is beautiful, and you have better schools," she said. "It was a good life," she added. "You didn't have to worry about violence or anyone breaking in." After being laid off, "I realized I couldn't afford to stay in a house where the rent was 625 a month," she said. So she found a 400 a month, 1,100 square foot house in Brainerd, known for its gangs and violence. "I stay in at night," she said. "I put bars on the windows." The new house has two modest bedrooms, a largely unfurnished living room, a bathroom and a small shotgun kitchen "where I got to move the table when my son gets up from dinner," she said. "Imagine being in a two bedroom place with a 6 2, 280 pound boy and a little girl. Me and my little girl share a room." They also share a bed, but Jer'Maya keeps her dolls, books and clothes in Charles's room, among his footballs and athletic gear. Ms. McCurdy receives 400 a month in food stamps. Without it, she said, "we wouldn't be eating." Still, Ms. McCurdy worries about her children's future. "I have a son that's graduating in May," she said. "He's looking at college. My heart is pounding 99 miles per hour. If he goes on full scholarship, I'll still need to support him how to pay his cellphone bill, how to pay for transportation and food during vacations." Her February utility bill just arrived and it stunned her: 320. She may again turn to Metropolitan Ministries for help, although she says she hopes the 3,000 or so she expects to receive from the earned income tax credit will help her pay that bill and also buy a new living room couch. Rebecca Whelchel says she has seen big changes in the clientele since she became the executive director of Metropolitan Ministries eight years ago. "It used to be that folks came in with a single issue it was like, 'I have to buy a new tire because my tire blew out,' or, 'I'm short on my electrical bill,' " Ms. Whelchel said. "Now they come in with a rubber band around a bunch of bills and problems. Everything is wrong. Everything is tangled with everything else." At age 34, Nick Mason earns 9 an hour as an assistant manager for a Domino's, overseeing a crew of six. "I don't think 9 is fair I've been working in the pizza business for 19 years, since I was 15," he said. He attended the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga, studying to become a registered nurse, but he dropped out as a sophomore when his marriage fell apart. He returned to work full time, and he and his children moved in with his parents in the suburb of Hixson. "I just wish we could have our home, but I can't afford to," said Mr. Mason, father of 7 year old Halle and 5 year old Eli. "That's what the kids keep asking for." "We've had to sacrifice a lot of things," he continued. "I'd love nothing more than to give them what they deserve. As a single father, it's impossible. I put my kids in karate about a year ago. They loved it, but I got to the point where it was a choice between paying for a cellphone or karate, and as a manager, I need a cellphone for people to keep in touch with me." Mr. Mason has heard the criticisms: Stop complaining about your pay; just go back to school and that way you'll find a better paying job. "I would love to go back to school," he said. "It's easy for people to say that because they haven't been in my shoes. I'm already busy every minute of the day. I already don't get to see my kids enough. I doubt I'll be able to afford school, and I don't know where I would find the time." His big hope is to be promoted to run a Domino's, which might mean earning 15 an hour. Ms. McCurdy, who applied for two dozen jobs this winter, delivered good news with a big smile. She was offered a job as a full time nurse's aide on the transition medical floor at Erlanger Health System, a hospital. "They're paying me 10.64," she said, an improvement over the 9 an hour she had been earning. "That gives me a little room to breathe." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Economy |
Returning to the podium of the New York Philharmonic last week for the first time in 11 years, Gustavo Dudamel brought a jolt of bristling vitality to an overplayed staple: Dvorak's "New World" Symphony. On Thursday, for the second program in this two week engagement, Mr. Dudamel began with Schubert's Symphony No. 4, often taken for granted. Trying to jolt this charming, if modest, 30 minute score would be counterproductive. Instead, Mr. Dudamel showed taste and sensitivity in a lovely performance that stood out, even on a program dominated by Mahler's great symphonic song cycle "Das Lied von der Erde." Schubert gave his Fourth Symphony the tagline "Tragic." But other than in the grave introduction to the first movement, the piece doesn't seem particular dark. I've always felt that the title could be Schubert's dig at his own circumstances when he wrote the work. He was 19 and struggling to get his career off the ground, and assuming his music would be ignored. (Which it more or less was.) Those hopeless feelings seeped into the Philharmonic's weighty, restrained and elegant performance on Thursday. The somber slow introduction began with a forceful chord, played with gnarly sound and rattling timpani, and maintained that grim cast. In the main Allegro section, the tempo was insistent but held in check, giving the music a nervous, almost panicked feel. Mr. Dudamel and the players brought glowing warmth and grace to the wistful slow movement. The scherzo had the heartiness of a rustic dance. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
The automaker's contention in such a geographic recall is that vehicles need to be fixed only in states where the problem is thought most likely to occur for reasons including the use of road salt or extreme temperatures. Consumer groups like the Center for Auto Safety have long criticized the practice, saying vehicles in other states that need to be repaired may be missed. The practice, which saves money for automakers because they do not have to issue a nationwide recall, is approved by N.H.T.S.A., which, along with automakers, has defended it as practical and effective. McLaren Automotive has informed the safety agency it will recall 327 MP4 12 C Spider and Coupe models from 2012 14 in Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas. In its report, McLaren officials said humidity could cause the windshield wiper motors to fail. BMW will recall almost 2,500 of its 2012 K 1600 GT and GTL motorcycles because of a stalling problem caused by engine control software, according to its report to the agency. The automaker said it was aware of one injury, which it described as minor, related to the problem. Mercedes Benz will recall about 130 of its 2013 SL550, SL63 AMG and SL65 AMG models because the front passenger air bag may not work properly, the automaker said in its report to the agency. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Automobiles |
Anthony Braxton retired from academia in 2013, but at 73, he is far from idle. That much is clear when I recently walked into his apartment in Connecticut, a couple of dozen miles away from Wesleyan University, where he taught for more than two decades. After shaking my hand and taking my coat, this composer and saxophonist a MacArthur "genius" grant winner, an N.E.A. Jazz Master and an eminence in improvisation and contemporary composition showed me into a small but comfortable study, stacked with reams of large format score pages. This was "Trillium L," the next opera in his long gestating cycle of works for the stage. Each act of a "Trillium" opera tells a different story, while using the same cast of singers, who rotate roles. Playing with stock genres including elements of gangster noir, futuristic dystopia and cutthroat boardroom intrigue has given Mr. Braxton the chance to explore ideas regarding cultural progress (or lack thereof). But gonzo, satirical humor often leavens the fundamental seriousness, in both sound and word. He has spent much of the last four years on "Trillium L," writing the libretto and coming up with rhythms for the singers and "guide tones" essentially a floor of drone pitches that will undergird the orchestral writing. The meat of the orchestration will come soon, now that those basic parameters have been set. "The first story is about Ashton Downs," he said, turning over the initial pages of the score. "My new hero." Having glanced at the lengthy libretto, I mentioned that this character seems like a striking addition to the Braxton operatic canon: a secret agent gifted in karate. "He's gonna beat the spit out of James Bond, in the future," Mr. Braxton joked, using a saltier word. "That's when I'll make my money." "By the way," he added, "this is a five day opera." He smiled knowingly when I mentioned that "Sonntag aus Licht" the final opera by one of his heroes, Karlheinz Stockhausen occasionally takes two days to perform. (There may be an aspect of cheerful one upmanship going on here.) Mr. Braxton admitted that he did not know whether "Trillium L" would ever be performed. But he is determined to finish it, and soon. Other ambitious projects are closer to being realized. Later this month, Mr. Braxton's label is releasing a 12 album set of his "Syntactical Ghost Trance Music." Given the title "GTM (Syntax) 2017," the set offers a revelatory new perspective on a series of works that once occupied him. Originally inspired by classes Mr. Braxton took on Native American ritual music, his early "Ghost Trance Music" pieces like Composition No. 181, from 1995 featured purposely wandering, seemingly unending single line melodies that unfurled with a pulsing, meditative quality. "I discovered there's a trance music coming from every direction, and every ethnic group," he said. "And I found myself feeling that not only did I love this music, but it was relevant for me. I had come to a point where 'intellectual interesting' was not what I was looking for." In later "Ghost Trance" pieces, rat a tat subdivisions of select beats started to interfere with this even keel patterning. (Mr. Braxton described this as "pulses with abruption.") By the time of Composition No. 340, in the mid 2000s, these abruptions had multiplied. Graphic notation elements, including some vivid, color coded schemes, became nearly as prominent as the melody. Along with some of Mr. Braxton's other conceptual strategies like "secondary material" at the end of a composition that could be inserted throughout a performance he increasingly emphasized the possibility of miasmatic swirl. Yet even at its most raucous, the "Ghost Trance" catalog radiates joy and good humor. In the new box set, 12 vocalists tackle "Ghost Trance" styles from a decade long compositional span giving a relatively fleet tour of their variety. (The ensemble will perform at Roulette on Jan. 25.) "For me the 'Syntactical Ghost Trance' compositions give insight into the expansion of the system, moving from sonics into signals into ritual," Mr. Braxton said. "It involves people suddenly coming together in communities. The art of the relationship. How to deal with each other." Several of the singers are veterans of past "Trillium" performances, and it shows. When realizing some of the more extreme qualities of Mr. Braxton's writing like the hailstorm of sci fi style syllables that make up the "syntax" of these particular "Ghost Trance" pieces the ensemble's nimbleness and warmth suggest a highly caffeinated updating of Gregorian chant. And the vocalists' collective understanding of Mr. Braxton's flexible performance instructions makes the set an exciting document not only of "Ghost Trance Music," but of his processes in general. As in his widely celebrated, jazz inspired quartet music from the 1980s, Mr. Braxton is keen to have different compositions layered atop one another. "One of the areas that interests me is taking stable logics and changing it into mutable logics," he said. "Taking mutable logics and changing it into stable logics. Improvisation becomes composition. Composition becomes improvisation." During a new performance of Composition No. 220, the vocal troupe responds to this invitation by inserting the bebop like melody from Composition No. 85, from 1978. Not long after, that vintage melody slips underneath new Composition No. 220 motifs. As he drove us to a nearby Ruby Tuesday for dinner, Mr. Braxton emphasized that the Tri Centric Foundation is not devoted only to his work. He mentioned a recent orchestral recording by the saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock, a frequent collaborator of his, and noted with pride that an earlier performance of some of that material was presented by the Tri Centric Orchestra. Close associates of Mr. Braxton run the foundation and administer his label, New Braxton House. You can't find the label on any streaming service. But the entirety of his self released material has recently appeared on the Bandcamp platform, where impulse buyers can pick among individual projects, or acquire the whole digital catalog at a 25 percent discount. That price naturally changes every time Mr. Braxton adds an 11 plus hour recording to the mix. But at present, you can acquire more than 100 hours of his work for around 700. (That includes solo saxophone sets, electroacoustic music, orchestral recordings and several 4 act "Trillium" operas as well as nearly a dozen hours of Mr. Braxton's ecstatic 1990s dive into the music of Charlie Parker.) The Tri Centric team is currently looking for additional donors and album purchasers to help with the cost of making more of Mr. Braxton's scores and writings available. A raft of performances is being prepared to honor his 75th birthday, in 2020. And Tri Centric also has ambitions to produce more recordings of various projects, including the "Trillium" operas. Mr. Braxton wants it all to go on, even after his writing ends. "I have real hope that New Braxton House can somehow fight for its life," he said. But he quickly added: "I am not ready to retire. And so I've got some cards up my sleeve." Keeping his eyes on the road ahead of him, he said, "This dog is not finished." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
Submerged in shadow, we are surrounded by a 19th century freak show. Ugly phrase, yes, but that's what it is a carnival sideshow of human beings whose appearance promises the thrill of shock for paying customers. Some of the attractions are faked, of course. But one barker assures the crowd that he offers the genuine article, a young Mexican woman truly "ghastly to behold." "Just waiting to walk onstage," he says, "and fill your hearts with fear, fill your hearts with disgust, fill your hearts with loathing." More likely, for us it will be her contemporaries who elicit those reactions because the title character of Shaun Prendergast's one act play "The True History of the Tragic Life and Triumphant Death of Julia Pastrana, the Ugliest Woman in the World" really was exhibited internationally, in the mid 1800s, for the delectation of spectators. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
At the beginning of the pandemic, the coronavirus looked to be another respiratory illness. But the virus has turned out to affect not just the lungs, but the kidneys, the heart and the circulatory system even, somehow, our senses of smell and taste. Now researchers have discovered yet another unpleasant surprise. In many patients hospitalized with the coronavirus, the immune system is threatened by a depletion of certain essential cells, suggesting eerie parallels with H.I.V. The findings suggest that a popular treatment to tamp down the immune system in severely ill patients may help a few, but could harm many others. The research offers clues about why very few children get sick when they are infected, and hints that a cocktail of drugs may be needed to bring the coronavirus under control, as is the case with H.I.V. Growing research points to "very complex immunological signatures of the virus," said Dr. John Wherry, an immunologist at the University of Pennsylvania whose lab is taking a detailed look at the immune systems of Covid 19 patients. In May, Dr. Wherry and his colleagues posted online a paper showing a range of immune system defects in severely ill patients, including a loss of virus fighting T cells in parts of the body. In a separate study, the investigators identified three patterns of immune defects, and concluded that T cells and B cells, which help orchestrate the immune response, were inactive in roughly 30 percent of the 71 Covid 19 patients they examined. None of the papers have yet been published or peer reviewed. Researchers in China have reported a similar depletion of T cells in critically ill patients, Dr. Wherry noted. But the emerging data could be difficult to interpret, he said "like a Rorschach test." Research with severely ill Covid 19 patients is fraught with difficulties, noted Dr. Carl June, an immunologist at the University of Pennsylvania who was not involved with the work. "It is hard to separate the effects of simply being critically ill and in an I.C.U., which can cause havoc on your immune system," he said. "What is missing is a control population infected with another severe virus, like influenza." Dr. Hayday and his colleagues began with the assumption that the patients would generate a profound immune response to the coronavirus. That is why most people recover from infections with few, if any, symptoms. But those who get very sick from the virus could have immune systems that become impaired because they overreact, as happens in sepsis patients. Alternately, the scientists hypothesized, these patients could have immune systems that struggle mightily, but fail to respond adequately to the virus. One of the most striking aberrations in Covid 19 patients, the investigators found, was a marked increase in levels of a molecule called IP10, which sends T cells to areas of the body where they are needed. Ordinarily, IP10 levels are only briefly elevated while T cells are dispatched. But in Covid 19 patients as was the case in patients with SARS and MERS, also caused by coronaviruses IP10 levels go up and stay up. That may create chaotic signaling in the body: "It's like Usain Bolt hearing the starting gun and starting to run," Dr. Hayday said, referring to the Olympic sprinter. "Then someone keeps firing the starting gun over and over. What would he do? He'd stop, confused and disoriented." The result is that the body may be signaling T cells almost at random, confusing the immune response. Some T cells are prepared to destroy the viruses but seem undermined, behaving aberrantly. Many T cells apparently die, and so the body's reserves are depleted particularly in those over age 40, in whom the thymus gland, the organ that generates new T cells, has become less efficient. The research also suggests that a popular idea for treatment may not help most people. Some patients are severely affected by coronavirus infections because their immune systems respond too vigorously to the virus. The result, a so called cytokine storm, also has been seen in cancer patients treated with drugs that supercharge T cells to attack tumors. These overreactions can be quelled with medications that block a molecule called IL 6, another organizer of immune cells. But these drugs have not been markedly effective in most Covid 19 patients, and for good reason, Dr. Hayday said. "There clearly are some patients where IL 6 is elevated, and so suppressing it may help," he explained. But "the core goal should be to restore and resurrect the immune system, not suppress it." The new research may help answer another pressing question: Why is it so rare for a child to get sick from the coronavirus? Children have highly active thymus glands, the source of new T cells. That may allow them to stay ahead of the virus, making new T cells faster than the virus can destroy them. In older adults, the thymus does not function as well. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
David J. Thouless, F. Duncan M. Haldane and J. Michael Kosterlitz won the Nobel Prize in Physics for their work in topology, a branch of mathematics that describes properties that change only in increments. David J. Thouless, F. Duncan M. Haldane and J. Michael Kosterlitz won the Nobel Prize in Physics for their work in topology, a branch of mathematics that describes properties that change only in increments. SOUNDBITE (English) Goran K. Hansson, Permanent Secretary of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences: "The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the 2016 Nobel Prize in physics with one half to David J. Thouless and the other half to F. Duncan Haldane and J. Michael Kosterlitz for theoretical discoveries of topological phase transitions and topological phases of matter." SOUNDBITE (English) Duncan Haldane, Nobel laureate in Physics: AUDIO VIA PHONE I was very, very surprised. And very gratified. There's a lot of tremendous new discoveries, which are based on this original work and have extended it many ways, and now happening." SOUNDBITE (English) Thors Hans Hansson, Member of Nobel Committee and Professor of Theoretical Physics: It has combined beautiful mathematical and profound physics insights and has achieved unexpected results that have been confirmed by experiments. It's really beautiful and it's deep. Three physicists born in Britain but now working in the United States were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics on Tuesday for research into the bizarre properties of matter in extreme states, including superconductors, superfluids and thin magnetic films. David J. Thouless of the University of Washington was awarded half of the prize of 8 million Swedish kronor, or about 930,000, while F. Duncan M. Haldane of Princeton University and J. Michael Kosterlitz of Brown University shared the other half. The scientists relied on advanced mathematical models to study "theoretical discoveries of topological phase transitions and topological phases of matter," in the words of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm. Their studies may have major applications in electronics, materials science and computing. In an email, Michael S. Turner, a physicist at the University of Chicago, described the work as "truly transformational, with long term consequences both practical and fundamental." Why did they win? The three laureates sought to understand matter that is so cold or so thin that weird quantum effects overpower the random atomic jostling that dominates ordinary existence. Superconductivity, in which all electrical resistance vanishes in matter, is one example of such an effect. Dr. Thouless and Dr. Kosterlitz worked together at the University of Birmingham in the 1970s to investigate what happens when two dimensional films of matter shift from one exotic phase, like superconductivity, to another. The key to their success was something called topology, a branch of mathematics focused on the fundamental shapes of things. At the Nobel news conference in Stockholm, Thors Hans Hansson, a member of the Nobel physics committee, tried to illustrate topology by holding up a cinnamon bun, a bagel and a pretzel. To a topologist, he said, the only difference between them is the number of holes, as opposed to the characteristics an average person might notice, like saltiness or sweetness. There is no such thing as half a hole, the topologist would note, and the number of holes only changes stepwise in integers. Likewise, the macroscopic properties of exotic matter change in stepwise "quantum leaps" if the materials involved are thin or small enough that their behavior is determined by the strange rules that govern the behavior of atoms. An example is the quantum Hall effect, in which the electrical resistance of a thin film changes in stepwise fashion. In 1983, Dr. Thouless was able to link these changes mathematically to the so called Chern numbers after the mathematician Shiing Shen Chern that characterize topological shapes. Dr. Haldane used a similar technique to analyze the properties of chains of atoms so skinny that they could be considered one dimensional threads. Someday, they may be the basis of a new kind of computer. In the last decade, this work has led to the development of materials called topological insulators, which conduct electricity on their surfaces but not inside. "They have ignited a firestorm of research, and although applications are still yet to come, I believe it's only a matter of time before their research leads to advances as unimaginable to us now as lasers and computer chips were a hundred years ago," said Laura H. Greene, president elect of the American Physical Society. Who are the winners? Dr. Thouless, 82, was born in Bearsden, Scotland, was an undergraduate at Cambridge University and received a Ph.D. in 1958 from Cornell. From 1965 to 1978, he taught mathematical physics at the University of Birmingham in England, where he collaborated with Dr. Kosterlitz. In 1980, he joined the University of Washington in Seattle, where he is now an emeritus professor. Dr. Haldane, 65, was born in London. He received his Ph.D. from Cambridge, where he was also an undergraduate, in 1978. He worked at the Institut Laue Langevin in Grenoble, France; the University of Southern California; Bell Laboratories; and the University of California, San Diego, before joining the Princeton faculty in 1990. Dr. Kosterlitz, 73, was born in Aberdeen, Scotland, and received his doctorate in high energy physics from Oxford University in 1969. He has worked at the University of Birmingham; the Institute of Theoretical Physics in Turin, Italy; and Cornell, Princeton, Bell Laboratories and Harvard. "I was very surprised and very gratified," Dr. Haldane, whom the Nobel committee reached by phone Tuesday morning, told reporters at the news conference in Stockholm. "The work was a long time ago, but it's only now that a lot of tremendous new discoveries are based on this original work and have extended it." Dr. Kosterlitz told The Associated Press that he had gotten the news while heading to lunch in Helsinki, Finland, where he is a visiting professor at Aalto University. "I'm a little bit dazzled," he said. "I'm still trying to take it in." He said that he was in his 20s when he began studying two dimensional materials and that his "complete ignorance" was an advantage in challenging the established science. "I didn't have any preconceived ideas," he said. "I was young and stupid enough to take it on." Who else has won a Nobel this year? Yoshinori Ohsumi, a Japanese cell biologist, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine on Monday for his discoveries on how cells recycle their content, a process known as autophagy, a Greek term for "self eating." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
SAN FRANCISCO Airbnb says it plans to acquire HotelTonight, a service for travelers seeking last minute hotel bookings, in a deal that will expand the lodging rental company's portfolio with traditional and boutique hotel listings. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. The acquisition values HotelTonight in the vicinity of its last private valuation, 465 million, said two people who were briefed on the deal and were not authorized to disclose the price. That would make it Airbnb's biggest acquisition. In a statement, Brian Chesky, Airbnb's chief executive, emphasized the company's desire to expand into all aspects of travel. "A big part of building an end to end travel platform is serving every guest, whether they plan their trip a year or a day in advance," he said. Airbnb, which is valued by private investors at 31 billion, is preparing to go public, though it has not specified a time frame. Ahead of that, it has expanded beyond home stays to appeal to a broader range of travelers. The company now lists boutique hotels, luxury hotels, activities and a hotel like service called Airbnb Plus. In February, Airbnb hired Fred Reid, former chief executive of Virgin America, to strike more partnerships in the transportation industry. The San Francisco company is part of a coterie of highly valued start ups, often called "unicorns." Many of these unicorns are now moving toward the public markets, including the ride hailing firms Uber and Lyft. Last week, Lyft unveiled its public offering prospectus, which showed that the company was growing quickly but was also losing money. Airbnb has turned a profit, excluding certain costs, for the past two years, the company said in January. Founded in 2010, HotelTonight has raised 127 million in venture funding, according to Crunchbase. It began as an app that listed discounted rooms to last minute travelers. But the company put a priority on growth over profits in its first five years of operation, burning as much as 30 million a year, according to a blog post by Sam Shank, HotelTonight's chief executive and co founder. In 2015, HotelTonight laid off 37 employees, or 20 percent of its staff. In 2017, HotelTonight expanded the time frame in which customers can book hotels to 100 days, putting it in direct competition with the likes of Expedia and Booking Holdings, the 80 billion travel behemoth that owns Priceline and Booking.com. Airbnb is also locked in competition with Booking Holdings. The two companies have taken turns announcing ever larger numbers of home listings in the last year; Airbnb currently touts six million. Buying HotelTonight gives Airbnb access to even more properties. Airbnb said HotelTonight would continue to operate as a stand alone business. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
After three years in London, Kristin Petuck Luks and Howard Luks readied themselves to return to New York. They planned to attend a friend's wedding earlier this fall. So they flew in for four days, appending an apartment hunt to their wedding trip. The Lukses had previously lived in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, where Mrs. Luks had rented a stabilized two bedroom apartment in 2001, when she was a student at the Pratt Institute. She is now an architectural designer. Mr. Luks, who had been renting in Manhattan, joined her there a few years after they met through a friend, and they married five years ago. "We paid for the quaint neighborhood and centrality with the tiniest apartment we have ever lived in," Mrs. Luks said. She craved a second bedroom to use as her home office, where she could spread out her drawings and samples of stone, wood and tile. Ideally, she wanted a charming neighborhood. The budget was 3,500 to 4,200 a month. With Mr. Luks soon expected in his New York office, the Lukses needed to find a place within days. "Time was not on our side," Mr. Luks said. He had an uncle who owned some residential buildings. One two bedroom in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, was available. The third floor walk up, in a converted church building, rented for 3,500. On Facebook, Mr. Luks's sister saw an intriguing listing in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, from a friend, Chad Kessler, a salesman at New Millennium Real Estate. So Mr. Kessler took the Lukses to see it. The 4,000 apartment was beautifully renovated, but the second bedroom was more like an extension of the master bedroom with an extra wide doorway. The departing family's two young children slept in the extension. "The bedroom is like an opulent huge parlor, and Kristin wanted an actual office with a door you could close," Mr. Kessler said. And if relatives stayed overnight, everyone would effectively be sleeping in the same room. "My wife is very concerned with layout and gets frustrated with wasted space," Mr. Luks said. "I am more concerned with amenities, like does it have a dishwasher." Mr. Kessler had another building to show, nearby in Boerum Hill. The just redone two unit building had two two bedroom vacancies. One, at 3,750, was too small for their needs. The other had a lovely private roof deck but, at 4,750, was too pricey. What's more, construction was still wrapping up. "My wife has enough experience to know that nothing is ever done on time," Mr. Luks said. They couldn't wait. The two were staying at a friend's place just a few blocks from Stuyvesant Town in Manhattan. Mr. Luks used to live nearby. The location was a 15 minute walk to his office near the Flatiron district. Stuyvesant Town carried no broker fee. It was a solid default option. "It is hard when you are under time pressure and moving from a different continent," Mr. Luks said. The couple arranged for an appointment the next day, viewing a few two bedrooms. They took the first one they saw, with plenty of closet space and strong water pressure. The apartment was on a low floor and the day was cloudy, but they knew they could brighten the dark floors with rugs. They canceled the next day's appointments in Brooklyn Heights, renting their apartment for 4,200 a month. The rent includes gas and electricity; the charge for air conditioning is 26.65 per window unit per month. "We didn't want to run around anymore," Mrs. Luks said. "Stuyvesant Town was a known entity. There were no wild cards popping up. The floor plan is really functional, and I am a tough critic." Now, though First Avenue is hardly the charming street she had envisioned, the neighborhood is certainly practical. The two enjoy Stuyvesant Town's community feel, with welcoming neighbors who chat in the elevators and laundry room. "Everybody seems to know each other," Mr. Luks said. "There are plenty of older folks who still live here. I have a friend who lives here with her husband and two children, and they are in the building that her grandparents have lived in since her mother was born." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night's highlights that lets you sleep and lets us get paid to watch comedy. If you're interested in hearing from The Times regularly about great TV, sign up for our Watching newsletter and get recommendations straight to your inbox. Samantha Bee reveled in the Democratic candidate Conor Lamb's upset victory in a special House election in Pennsylvania. Bee said that she hopes the Democratic leadership will take the win to heart and run candidates in other red districts next year. "Just two years ago, Trump won this district by 20 points. Two years before that, Democrats didn't even bother running an opponent against the Republican incumbent. You know, I'm really enjoying this radical new Democratic strategy called 'trying.'" SAMANTHA BEE "Hey Democrats, you know that delectable, unfamiliar aroma you're smelling today? It's blood in the water. And yes, I know you're vegans, it's fine it's hummus in the water. Just get to work." SAMANTHA BEE Bee went on to address the student marches in support of gun control that took place across the country on Wednesday. "We cover hard topics all the time, but gun violence is the worst because honestly, I never thought anything would change," Bee said. "But I should have known better. I should have known that a generation would come that wouldn't repeat our mistakes." Trevor Noah was stunned by how boisterous a crowd of protesters was in Washington. Senator Bernie Sanders was caught on camera delivering a speech, but his voice was all but inaudible over the crowd. "Do you know how loud you have to be to drown out Bernie Sanders using a megaphone? Bernie's so naturally loud, he normally uses the megaphone backwards so he can have an indoor voice." TREVOR NOAH Like Bee, Jimmy Kimmel took a moment to celebrate Lamb's defeat of the Republican candidate Rick Saccone. "The White House is not saying he lost it's 'essentially a tie.' But it's not a tie, it's a loss. If it was a tie, it'd be Scotch taped to Donald Trump's shirt and manufactured in China." JIMMY KIMMEL Then Kimmel focused his attention on Trumpstore.com, the Trump family's official online store. He ordered a bunch of merchandise from the website, and noticed that despite President Trump's "America First" philosophy, nearly everything turned out to be made in a foreign country. "I heard that Trump wants to fire his secretary of veterans affairs. Trump said he might do the job himself, since he's a veteran of several affairs." JIMMY FALLON "It is spring break. Spring break is that special time of year when memories are made and then completely forgotten by the next morning." JIMMY FALLON "In addition to Rex Tillerson, Gary Cohn and Hope Hicks, we also learned that Trump's personal assistant was just fired although he was actually escorted from the White House on Monday. I assume he wanted to beat the rush." STEPHEN COLBERT Stephen Colbert paid a visit to an art therapist, and he turned out to have some demons to exorcise. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
BOYZ N THE HOOD (1991) Rent on Amazon, Google Play, iTunes, Vudu and YouTube. After the director John Singleton died on Monday, A. O. Scott wrote in The Times that Singleton's "Boyz N the Hood," a coming of age story set in what was then called South Central Los Angeles, "rests in American movie history like a boulder in a riverbed, altering the direction of the stream." The film was Singleton's directorial debut; it earned him an Academy Award nomination for best director, making him both the youngest person and first African American to receive that nomination. The film focuses on a group of teenagers in the early '90s, including the smart mall worker Tre Styles (Cuba Gooding Jr.), the scholarship seeking high school football star Ricky Baker (Morris Chestnut) and Doughboy (Ice Cube), their troubled friend and Ricky's half brother. In his article this week, Scott wrote that Singleton synthesized several precursors "Mean Streets," "Rebel Without a Cause," Blaxploitation movies, 1930s crime genres, westerns and samurai epics and "came up with something bracingly, thrillingly and frighteningly new." PATERSON (2016) Stream on Amazon; rent on Amazon, Google Play, iTunes, Vudu and YouTube. Adam Driver received his first Tony Award nomination this week for his performance as Pale, the eruptive, coked up restaurant manager in "Burn This" on Broadway. That man couldn't be more different from the one he plays in this slow burner from Jim Jarmusch save for the fact that both characters are from New Jersey. Driver here plays Paterson, a soft spoken bus driver who shares his name with the town he lives in, Paterson, N.J., and who in his free time sits by the water writing poetry. In her review for The Times, Manohla Dargis called the movie a "wonderful new dispatch from Jarmusch land." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
If you're in the mood for a music infused retelling of a Greek myth, but c an't find, or afford, tickets to the Tony Award winning "Hadestown" on Broadway, set your aim about 80 blocks north of midtown. There, in Marcus Garvey Park, the Classical Theater of Harlem is presenting a completely free and totally exhilarating new adaptation of "The Bacchae" that will leave you wanting to join the chorus. And not just any chorus. The all female group of singers and dancers in Bryan Doerries's adaptation of the Euripides play has been possessed by the defiantly playful spirit of the deity Dionysus, who takes human form as the charismatic Preacher D (Jason C. Brown) and has come to wreak havoc on those who refuse to acknowledge his godliness. Like the love child of Prince, Bob Marley and Jimi Hendrix, Preacher D is all swagger and seduction as he descends the steps of the Theban palace and announces, "I rep for Dionysus y'all and he don't play/He'll light yo ass up, if you got something to say." While the chorus of women sigh and writhe along, the young king Pentheus (R.J. Foster) is a tad skeptical. After returning to Thebes and finding that all the women have abandoned their duties in a state of euphoria, he demands to know why they are praising the god he mistakenly calls "Dianas." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
Credit...Maddie McGarvey for The New York Times AKRON, Ohio The students paraded through hugs and high fives from staff, who danced as Sister Sledge's "We Are Family" blared through the hallways. They were showered with compliments as they walked through a buffet of breakfast foods. The scene might be expected on a special occasion at any other public school. At LeBron James's I Promise School, it was just Monday. Every day, they are celebrated for walking through the door. This time last year, the students at the school Mr. James's biggest foray into educational philanthropy were identified as the worst performers in the Akron public schools and branded with behavioral problems. Some as young as 8 were considered at risk of not graduating. The academic results are early, and at 240, the sample size of students is small, but the inaugural classes of third and fourth graders at I Promise posted extraordinary results in their first set of district assessments. Ninety percent met or exceeded individual growth goals in reading and math, outpacing their peers across the district. "These kids are doing an unbelievable job, better than we all expected," Mr. James said in a telephone interview hours before a game in Los Angeles for the Lakers. "When we first started, people knew I was opening a school for kids. Now people are going to really understand the lack of education they had before they came to our school. People are going to finally understand what goes on behind our doors." Unlike other schools connected to celebrities, I Promise is not a charter school run by a private operator but a public school operated by the district. Its population is 60 percent black, 15 percent English language learners and 29 percent special education students. Three quarters of its families meet the low income threshold to receive help from the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services. The school's 2 million budget is funded by the district, roughly the same amount per pupil that it spends in other schools. But Mr. James's foundation has provided about 600,000 in financial support for additional teaching staff to help reduce class sizes, and an additional hour of after school programming and tutors. The school is unusual in the resources and attention it devotes to parents, which educators consider a key to its success. Mr. James's foundation covers the cost of all expenses in the school's family resource center, which provides parents with G.E.D. preparation, work advice, health and legal services, and even a quarterly barbershop. The students' scores reflect their performance on the Measures of Academic Progress assessment, a nationally recognized test administered by NWEA, an evaluation association. In reading, where both classes had scored in the lowest, or first, percentile, third graders moved to the ninth percentile, and fourth graders to the 16th. In math, third graders jumped from the lowest percentile to the 18th, while fourth graders moved from the second percentile to the 30th. The 90 percent of I Promise students who met their goals exceeded the 70 percent of students districtwide, and scored in the 99th growth percentile of the evaluation association's school norms, which the district said showed that students' test scores increased at a higher rate than 99 out of 100 schools nationally. The students have a long way to go to even join the middle of the pack. And time will tell whether the gains are sustainable and how they stack up against rigorous state standardized tests at the end of the year. To some extent, the excitement surrounding the students' progress illustrates a somber reality in urban education, where big hopes hinge on small victories. "It's encouraging to see growth, but by no means are we out of the woods," said Keith Liechty, a coordinator in the Akron public school system's Office of School Improvement. The school district, where achievement and graduation rates have received failing marks on state report cards, has been trying to turn around its worst performing schools for years. "The goal is for these students to be at grade level, and we're not there yet. This just tells us we're going in the right direction," he added. On a tour of the school on Monday, Michele Campbell, the executive director of the LeBron James Family Foundation, pointed out what she called I Promise's "secret sauce." In one room, staff members were busy organizing a room filled with bins of clothing and shelves of peanut butter, jelly and Cheerios. At any time, parents can grab a shopping bin and take what they need. Down the hallway, parents honed their math skills for their coming G.E.D. exams as their students learned upstairs. Dr. Campbell arrived to a classroom where a student and teacher were facing off. "You're being too aggressive!" the student snapped at Angel Whorton, an intervention specialist. There was a pause, and the two burst into giggles, breaking character in a role playing assignment. "Good; that's how I need you to use your words," Ms. Whorton said to the boy, who is awaiting a disciplinary hearing. Students here are aware that they are part of something special. "We get to have fun, and have opportunities that other kids don't have," said Kamari Dennis, a fourth grader. The school is an extension of Mr. James's work in his hometown, Akron, where his family's foundation has been active for seven years. The I Promise program supports about 1,100 other students in third through 10th grade across the Akron public school district, with mentoring, college and career preparation and other resources estimated at 2.6 million for this school year. All of the students in the program and the school who meet certain academic criteria will receive a full college scholarship to the University of Akron. But the I Promise School was a recognition that the foundation's community services were not enough. They needed to reach students earlier. They secured an old district office building that served as a holding place for schools in transition, poured in 2 million and counting for improvements and reopened it in seven weeks. The school opened in July 2018 and is expected to serve 720 students in third through eighth grade by 2022. The school negotiated with the Akron Education Association for an extra hour a day and an extended year to put into place programs intended to address students' social and emotional needs. Pat Shipe, the president of the association, said the union was proud of the collaboration and "cautiously optimistic" about its outcomes. "While this school is in its infancy, we look forward to an extended review of the many indicators, which will confirm any growth, understanding that one or two tests do not tell the whole story," she said. On a recent morning, students spent the first hour getting ready for the day in a gathering that is called an "I Promise Circle." By the end of the circle, a girl who was upset about a run in with her bus driver and another girl who had dozed off were squealing happily at the end of the game Down by the Banks. "One time, LeBron wrote us a letter, and I knew it was real because I saw the paper was signed in pen," said Vikyah Powe, a fourth grader. "That encouraged me." While Mr. James called the school "the coolest thing that I've done in my life thus far," he said he could take credit for only a small part of what was happening. "I had the vision of wanting to give back to my community. The people around every day are helping that vision come to life," he said. "Half the battle is trying to engage them and show that there's always going to be somebody looking out for them." Lining the walls of the school's vast lobby are 114 shoes, including those worn during the 2016 season when Mr. James led the Cleveland Cavaliers to the N.B.A. championship, a reminder that he once walked a path similar to these students. Mr. James was also considered at risk; in fourth grade, he missed 83 days of school. Nataylia Henry, a fourth grader, missed more than 50 days of school last year because she said she would rather sleep than face bullies at school. This year, her overall attendance rate is 80 percent. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Education |
The Ringer, a sports and culture website created by Bill Simmons, will soon be hosted on Vox Media's platform but maintain editorial independence under a partnership announced on Tuesday. Mr. Simmons, a former ESPN personality, will keep ownership of The Ringer, but Vox will sell advertising for the site and share in the revenue. The Ringer will leave its current home on Medium, where it has been hosted since it began in June 2016. Jim Bankoff, Vox's chief executive, said in a phone interview that the partnership was the first of its type for the company and would allow it to expand its offerings to advertisers. Vox runs a collection of popular websites, but until now it has not used its technology to host other sites. The company's brands include The Verge, SB Nation and Polygon, and it bought the Curbed network of sites in 2013 and Recode in 2015. "They fit really well with our way of doing things, and we're excited to grow together," Mr. Bankoff said. He said that there was no date set for The Ringer's arrival but that it was expected "later this summer." Mr. Simmons said in a statement: "This partnership allows us to remain independent while leveraging two of the things that Vox Media is great at: sales and technology. We want to devote the next couple of years to creating quality content, innovating as much as we can, building our brand and growing The Ringer as a multimedia business." Once a Boston focused sports blogger, Mr. Simmons became one of the nation's premier sports analysts in his 15 years at ESPN. But he left the company in 2015 after a series of disputes with management, and Grantland, the boutique website he had created for ESPN, was soon shuttered. He joined HBO on a three year contract, but his weekly show, "Any Given Wednesday," was canceled after four and a half months because of poor ratings. The Ringer was seen as an effort to recreate the best parts of Grantland, which expanded its coverage beyond sports and into popular culture and featured long form writing. Mr. Simmons hired several former Grantland employees for the new site, but The Ringer has struggled to attract the same audience as its predecessor. The Ringer also produces several podcasts, including one hosted by Mr. Simmons and one hosted by Larry Wilmore, a former "Daily Show" correspondent who briefly had his own show on Comedy Central. The Ringer's move to Vox is a blow to Medium, the blogging platform created by the Twitter co founder Evan Williams. Envisioned as a counterpoint to Twitter, with an emphasis on long form writing and thoughtful commentary, Medium has struggled to find its place on the web. In recent years, the company wooed commercial publishers in the hopes of developing steady sources of revenue. The Ringer was the first prominent outlet to announce it would be hosted on the platform, and it was followed by others including The Awl, Pacific Standard and ThinkProgress. But Medium announced in January that it would be laying off 50 employees, a third of its staff, and changing its business model. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
Rebecca Pauline Jampol didn't plan her May 19 wedding to coincide with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's nuptials. But that didn't stop friends from speculating that she may have been secretly attempting to outdo the royal couple. "It all makes sense: If Rebecca's going to do anything, she's going to do it over the top and make it a spectacular spectacle," said Samer Fouad, who was part of Ms. Jampol's 10 person bridal party. Jasmine Wahi, another attendant, added, "The royal wedding had heavy competition." The scene was meant to evoke Ms. Jampol's sense of what Newark, at its creative best, can look like. "I wanted this to be kind of a big thing for the community," she said. Ms. Jampol, 34, and Mr. Harris, 33, met in Newark in 2012. Their flair for the dramatic is not limited to social events. Ms. Jampol is a design professor at Rutgers University Newark and a modern art curator. With Ms. Wahi, who she calls her "art wife," she runs a local nonprofit gallery, the Project for Empty Space, where the focus is social issues explored boldly and unflinchingly; sexual violence and immigration rights have been recent subjects. "Rebecca and Randy are beautiful human beings inside and out," said Mr. Fouad, a graphic designer on the Fine Arts faculty at Rutgers Newark. "They not only have each other's back, they have everyone else's in this community, too." Mr. Harris, a Newark native, laid the groundwork for their synergetic reputation before the arrival of Ms. Jampol, who moved to Newark in 2004 from Charlottesville, Va., to study art at Rutgers. "Randy is like the son of Newark," Ms. Jampol said. "It's a this is his city kind of thing." His magnetism first came to her attention at Hell's Kitchen Lounge, the downtown watering hole where she was working as a bartender in 2012. "Randy was a patron at the time, and I had just started my galleries," she said, including a place on the Lower East Side of Manhattan that has since closed. Mr. Harris, whose gentle demeanor is expressed externally by a sweet smile, instantly caught her eye, though she and her then boyfriend were in the eighth year of what would end up a 10 year relationship. "We were attracted to each other right from the start," Ms. Jampol said. "I felt I had to be careful around him because of it." Mr. Harris was a Sunday night regular at Hell's Kitchen out of necessity: He didn't have cable and needed a place to watch "The Walking Dead." But he soon started spending more time watching Ms. Jampol than the TV, he said. By the time he and his rock band were offered a residency playing Hell's Kitchen on Sunday nights in 2013, he and Ms. Jampol were spending a lot of time together. "We had the same group of friends," said Mr. Harris, who was also in a relationship then, with the mother of his 7 year old son, Ian. But the attraction with Ms. Jampol was undeniable. It followed him around the city to places like the Lincoln Park Music Festival, held every July, where he and Ms. Jampol spent the day together as friends in 2013, connecting through hip hop, fried catfish and collards. "Rebecca is super ambitious, but she's also caring and she makes people feel safe," he said. "She gives them the confidence to do things they otherwise wouldn't be able to do." This confidence extended to him when, in 2014, he came back from a weekslong tour with his band single and made up his mind to pursue Ms. Jampol, who had also exited her longtime relationship. Mr. Fouad, who has known Ms. Jampol for a decade, said Mr. Harris showed guts in his attempt at maneuvering past friendship. "When I first met Rebecca, I watched her pull up on a bright yellow Vespa," Mr. Fouad said. "She took off her helmet, and it was like it was happening in slow motion in a movie. She's beautiful and has these long, gorgeous legs." But she quickly seemed less smoldering than big sisterly once he got to know her. "I thought she was so hot, but she ended up taking care of me." It's a familiar refrain among Newark artists. "One of the things that really attracted me to Rebecca is that, through her work and the way she does things, I started seeing all the potential in this city again," Mr. Harris said. The mural especially, with its evocations of Newark's past and present, is a reminder of her gift for projecting the spirit of the place he knows best. "She made me fall back in love with Newark." Still, it was an early date outside city limits both say clinched their romance. In 2014, Jill Wickenheiser, a friend of Ms. Jampol who works at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, arranged for the couple to see the band Interpol there. A trip to San Diego the following year for a friend's wedding moved them closer to thoughts of marriage. But despite that happy occasion, "it had been a traumatic couple of days," Mr. Hayes said. The presidential election had just happened, and the outcome was not the one he wanted. "I was bawling for, like, three days," he said. On a post San Diego trip down the coast to Valle de Guadalupe, Mexico, in a rented car, Ms. Jampol soothed and sympathized. "He's an emotional guy," she said. "But it was a beautiful trip, and we learned we travel well together. I think at that moment we realized this was it for us." The proposal that transpired a few months later, on Ms. Jampol's 33rd birthday, Jan. 1, 2017, offered a preview of the pageant like atmosphere that would resurface on their wedding day. With a cluster of the locals Ms. Jampol calls their "framily," the couple celebrated at their favorite Newark haunt, Jimenez Tobacco, a velvet walled cigar bar opened by a Cuban woman decades ago and now run by her sons. "For a long time it was like a speakeasy, where you'd bring your own bottle of booze," Ms. Jampol said. "Now they've got a liquor license and are a little more established. But they still do Prohibition style cocktails. And it still feels like the most amazing hole in the wall." Mr. Harris signed on to DJ for the cigar bar birthday bash. But after the first few sets, he was overtaken by an urge to make the night more meaningful. First it took the form of a performance. The Velvet Trio hadn't yet formed, but Mr. Harris' bandmates in that group were on hand. He recruited them to play a few songs with him including, for a final number, a cover of the Cure's "Lovesong." "Rebecca was wearing a crown and I saw how beautiful she was looking and I was thinking about how happy she made me," Mr. Harris said. "In my head I felt like the ground became kind of holy." As the song wound down, Mr. Harris spun around, yanked a string out of the bar's booze soaked carpet, got down on one knee and tied the string around Ms. Jampol's ring finger. With the entire birthday party assemblage watching, he proposed. The answer was an instant, enthusiastic yes. "I was stunned, but I was also so happy," Ms. Jampol said. When planning a wedding for 350, a track record for creating an artistic community can be useful. With Ms. Wahi, Ms. Jampol oversees the Gateway Project Spaces, a downtown artists' collective with 56 studios attached to the Project for Empty Space. Besides the artist Ventiko, a synthetic flower maker, Mahtab Pedrami, was among the current or former tenants who lent their talents. Pamela Jampol, Ms. Jampol's mother, said the merging of so many artistic sensibilities for the occasion reflected her daughter's longtime gift for bringing people together. "She's always been ambitious in so many things, but especially in loving and taking good care of people." On May 19, the elder Ms. Jampol, a minister at Christ Community Church in Charlottesville, officiated at a short ceremony alongside Mr. Jampol's father, Mark Jampol, and Mr. Harris's parents, Madeline Juarbe Del Rios and Randy Hayes Harris Sr., as well as his stepfather, Roberto Del Rios. As Ms. Jampol walked with her father down the theater's aisle to an stage covered in Ms. Pedrami's flowers, the cellist Daniel de Jesus, ethereal in white robes and pastel face paint, played and sang to the crowd. From the concert hall's proscenium stage, 20 attendants looked on. Ms. Jampol, in a white lace dress with a 12 foot veil, and Mr. Harris, in rhinestone shoes and a paisley jacket, listened attentively as each parent spoke. Mr. Harris Sr. recalled his son's early childhood flair for salsa and merengue dancing with his mother as she cooked, and ended with words of wisdom, advising the couple to keep dancing and always watch their footwork. "When life gives you a new step, be patient," he said. But "do your dance, and don't let go." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
LIVERPOOL, England For once, there was no big finale to Jurgen Klopp's speech. Liverpool's coach stood in the canteen at Melwood, the club's training facility, with his players and the club's staff gathered in front of him. All boundaries had blurred. Star players sat next to interns, all wondering the same thing: Klopp did not, as he ordinarily would, end his talk with a rhetorical flourish, or a war cry, or even a joke. Instead, as he sent everyone home for the foreseeable future, he stressed two simple messages. One: it was vitally important that everyone present not just his players, but the club's staff members, too stayed in touch. If they were feeling down, they were to reach out to a friend, or to one of the countless WhatsApp groups that are the lifeblood of any soccer club, or even to him. "You all have my number," he reminded them. Feel free to use it. And two: If anyone started to feel unwell, if anyone had even the slightest concern that they might have contracted the novel coronavirus, they were to report in to the club's doctors Jim Moxon and Sarah Lindsay immediately. The fate of soccer, of course, is of fractional importance in the face of a global pandemic. And the dreams and aspirations of one team particularly a member of the game's wealthy elite are just a minuscule fraction of that, particularly at a time when clubs across the world face a future so uncertain that, soon, some may cease to exist at all. Liverpool, though, is in a particular purgatory. The club won the last of its 18 domestic championships in 1990. Since then, it has, at times, dipped into mediocrity and become a monument of faded grandeur. It has twice, as the song goes, conquered all of Europe. It has picked up cups and picked up scars. This season was going to be, at long last, the season it finally won the Premier League. Until late February, Liverpool had won all of its league games but one, and even that was a draw. Less than two weeks ago, by beating Bournemouth at Anfield, it had extended its lead to 25 points. When Manchester City lost the next day, Liverpool needed only six points two wins for its lead to be unassailable. It hoped to be able to claim the title on home turf, against Crystal Palace, this Saturday. Plans for parties, for parades, were already in place. By March 11, though, people inside the club had started to sense the situation was changing. As Klopp's players passed the time in the Hope Street Hotel preparing for a Champions League game against Atletico Madrid, others at the club were putting plans in place to deal with the mounting coronavirus crisis. This is the story of the 48 hours when one team's championship season ground to a halt. Together with Phil Jacobsen, head of the club's medical department, and its operational staff, Michael Edwards, Liverpool's sporting director, was trying to pare down the number of staff members needed at Melwood as much as possible. The club eventually decided it could allow roughly half its nonplaying work force to stay home. The emphasis, at that point, was very much on allowing the team to keep functioning; all the guidance that Liverpool had been given by the soccer authorities centered on the weekend's Premier League games being played. The atmosphere was serious, tense. When Klopp walked out at Anfield that night, he was greeted by the usual throng of fans asking for high fives. He snapped at them to "put your hands away." They also plotted how to deal with the immediate, and the minor: Klopp, it was decided, would do his weekly news media briefing at Anfield, not at the training facility. Training was scheduled for 11 a.m. on Friday. The players were to report by 9:30. When they arrived, Melwood was eerily quiet. It is the sort of place where one notices if a single staff member is not present, let alone half of them. By then the Premier League had issued a statement confirming all of the weekend's games were off, and Arsenal had announced that its manager, Mikel Arteta, had tested positive for Covid 19. Klopp and Edwards decided training would still go ahead, not least as Klopp told the players because they were already there. It would be just a light session: a warm up, a few rondos. If there was news about the rest of the season, they would deal with it afterward. When that word, eventually, filtered down to the training field, it was acknowledged quietly. The players were told to shower, change and meet in the canteen at 1 p.m. Klopp huddled with his staff: his assistants, Pep Lijnders and Peter Krawietz; Nemmer, the nutritionist; the fitness coach Andreas Kornmayer; and Moxon and Lindsay from the medical department. They quickly formalized a plan for how the next few weeks might work. When he met with his players in the light, airy canteen, Klopp passed all of that on. He tried to address what he thought the players might want to know. Could they travel to see family? (It was not banned, but not advised, and given the situation, not realistic). Could they stay in hotels? (Not if at all possible). Was there a date when they should come back? (Not yet; the situation was too fluid). Then Klopp moved onto the practicalities. Many of Liverpool's players have home gyms and pools; for those that did not, particularly the younger players living in apartments, the club could send over equipment. Mostly, though, Klopp focused on the human impact of such an unsettling time. He told Liverpool's employees not to panic, not to be afraid. He told those players who were far from their families, and those that live alone like Takumi Minamino, a Japanese midfielder only recently arrived in England that they would have the support of the club, that they would not be alone. He told them all not to put themselves, or anyone else, at risk. He told them not to worry about league titles. When he finished, the mood was somber. The players said goodbye: not shaking hands, not hugging, not knowing, really, when they would see one another again. A squad that had brought Liverpool to the brink of a historic moment drifted off, unsure whether the season's pause would be the end of their story, or merely a gap in it. Over the weekend, there was a flurry of WhatsApp messages, as there always is. The players did not talk about the league title or whether, if the season was canceled, they might be denied their chance to win it. Instead they were discussing what they were seeing on the news. Many had friends at clubs far less financially secure than Liverpool; they tried to find out how if they might survive a shutdown. Jordan Henderson, the team's captain, noticed a report that an initiative to help stock a food bank in the city, like similar ones elsewhere, would suffer because it gathered as much as a quarter of its donations on Liverpool matchdays. He sent a message to the organizers to say that the players would cover the shortfall. On Sunday, when Liverpool should have been preparing for the week it has been awaiting for 30 years, the defender Joel Matip ran laps in Sefton Park, a peaceful, verdant spot to the south side of the city, not far from Penny Lane. He passed by almost unnoticed. For now, that is all Matip like his teammates, like his team's fans can do: go around in circles, and wait for news. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
The coronavirus has largely spared children. Most confirmed to be infected have had only mild symptoms. But doctors in Europe and the United States have recently reported a troubling new phenomenon: Some children are becoming seriously ill with symptoms that can involve inflammation in the skin, eyes, blood vessels and heart. The condition, which doctors are calling "pediatric multisystem inflammatory syndrome," is so new that there are still many unanswered questions about how and why it affects children. Here's a summary of what is and isn't known so far. What are the symptoms? Symptoms can include fever, rash, reddish eyes, swollen lymph nodes and sharp abdominal pain. They do not usually include two common hallmarks of Covid 19: cough and shortness of breath. The syndrome can bear some resemblance to a rare childhood illness called Kawasaki disease, but as doctors learn more, they are emphasizing that the two conditions are not the same. Both involve a surge of inflammation in the body and can have serious effects on the heart. But Dr. Steven Kernie, chief of pediatric critical care medicine at Columbia University and NewYork Presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital, said the new syndrome appears to affect the heart differently. While Kawasaki disease can produce coronary aneurysms when left untreated, the new syndrome seems to mostly involve inflammation of coronary arteries and other blood vessels. And though shock is a rare complication of Kawasaki disease, the new syndrome has sent many of the children into a kind of toxic shock with very low blood pressure and an inability of the blood to effectively circulate oxygen and nutrients to the body's organs, Dr. Kernie said. The coronavirus primarily affects adults by entering cells in their lungs and replicating, often causing respiratory failure. But this childhood syndrome "seems to be less a lung specific disease," Dr. Kernie said. While most of the hospitalized children with the syndrome need some additional oxygen, and a few have required ventilators, the effect on the lungs seems to be driven by an inflammatory response that affects many other parts of the body as well. Can it be fatal? Three children in New York have died from it, Governor Andrew Cuomo reported on Saturday. Another death, of a 14 year old boy in England was reported in, a study in the journal Lancet. How common is it? There is no good data on how many children have developed the syndrome, but it appears to be a small number so far. On May 8, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said there had been 73 reported cases in New York state and that the health department was investigating several child deaths as other possible cases. A handful of cases have been reported in other states, including Louisiana, Mississippi and California. There have been at least 50 cases reported in European countries, including Britain, France, Switzerland, Spain and Italy. How old are the children who have gotten it? Hospitals have seen cases in children of all ages, from infants to older teenagers. What should parents do if their child has symptoms? Dr. Katie Schafer, a general pediatrician who has a private practice in Birmingham, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit, said that because there were still many unknowns about the condition, parents of children who have symptoms should take them to pediatricians rather than assuming that a rash or fever or abdominal pain is only a sign of a typical childhood illness. "This is presenting very much like a common childhood illness, which it is not," she said. "This is a novel diagnosis that doesn't exactly have a name, doesn't exactly have a timeline, doesn't exactly have a protocol. We didn't learn about this in medical school." How do we know it's related to the coronavirus? Many of the children who have become sick with the syndrome either tested positive for the coronavirus at the time of their symptoms, or had positive antibody tests suggesting they may have been infected weeks earlier. Dr. Schafer said it was possible that "this may be a post infection condition and not necessarily part of the acute phase of Covid." What is the treatment? Treatments have included steroids, intravenous immunoglobulin, high dose aspirin and antibiotics, as well as supportive oxygen through the nose, a mask or, in the most serious cases, a ventilator. Most children who are intubated can be removed from the ventilators within a few days, doctors said. Will there be long term effects? It's unclear. Children who have had serious effects on their hearts will need to be monitored by cardiologists in case there is residual heart damage. Others will undoubtedly need to be followed by their pediatricians to keep track of any lingering effects. Why would children get this and not adults? Children may be at greater risk for this syndrome because their immune systems are not fully developed, Dr. Kernie said. But there are no clues yet as to why some children get sick and not others. Many of the children have been previously healthy. And the syndrome doesn't seem to run in families, but Dr. Kernie's hospital and others are doing genetic testing to see if there is a predisposition or genetic reason one child becomes very sick while siblings seem unscathed. Like the Science Times page on Facebook. Sign up for the Science Times newsletter. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
"We wanted the building to be invitational to the neighborhood," said Dr. Thomas F. Schutte, Pratt's president, who is also the chairman of the nonprofit Myrtle Avenue Revitalization Project. "And it was received with great pleasure that we called the building Myrtle Hall, because it showed we embraced the neighborhood." Further transformation is imminent. Just west of Myrtle Hall, demolition has begun on a two block strip of buildings that housed a post office, a supermarket and shops. The Silverstone Property Group plans two buildings, seven and eight stories tall, with 240 rentals, 20 percent of them below market rate. The development will include retail space, occupied in part by an expanded supermarket. Ground is also to be broken by next year on a 6 million public plaza on a strip of Myrtle from Hall Street to Emerson Place, with 25,000 added feet for people and performances. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
CHICAGO Despite the bitter wind, Kim Wasserman showed me around La Villita Park. Occupying 21 acres in the middle of this city's largest Mexican American neighborhood, called Little Village, the park used to be a brownfield and illegal dump. Back then, the site leached toxins into hundreds of nearby basements. Sickened residents protested for years. The federal cleanup, finally completed in 2012, became the largest urban Superfund project in America. Ms. Wasserman, executive director of the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization, then helped lobby the city for the park. She pointed out where residents got the playground, ball fields, skate park and community gardens they wanted. The 19 million park now hosts city sponsored sports programs and free concerts. During warm months, Ms. Wasserman said, formerly incarcerated young residents from Little Village help keep an eye on La Villita, discouraging gangs from moving in. "The community feels ownership of the place," she said. One result in this city known for its murder rate: next to no violent crime in the park, according to Ms. Wasserman. Chicago is at the forefront of a growing, big city trend. It has been undertaking a major parks and open space program, upgrading neighborhood playgrounds and recreation centers, scooping up acres of disused land for new green areas and repurposing large swaths of formerly industrial waterfront. Aided by a longstanding tax that goes directly to parks, these efforts to improve public space, begun under the city's former mayor, Richard M. Daley, have gathered steam since Rahm Emanuel took office in 2011. They have met with some of the usual resistance from state authorities reluctant to finance city improvements and from some aldermen who want money now allocated for parks, trees and after school programs redirected toward violence prevention. The mayor has testily noted that after school programs and parks, like La Villita, provide exactly the sort of safe spaces for young people that help reduce crime. From Philadelphia to Seattle, other American cities are also banking on parks and public spaces to drive social and economic progress. Parks may not seem particularly urgent compared with the latest gangland murder epidemic; but the effort in Chicago to improve and expand them has, neighborhood by neighborhood, delivered long term rewards. A few downtown showpieces, like the urbane Riverwalk and glamorous Millennium Park, have reaped immense financial windfalls for the city. Barack Obama's presidential library in Jackson Park promises to become a major new attraction and help rejuvenate that part of the South Side. Other park projects are not making headlines but are making a difference. I caught up with Mayor Emanuel one afternoon at an arts and recreation center in Ellis Park in Bronzeville, one of the city's historic African American neighborhoods. The center, on former Chicago Housing Authority land, is a sunny, brightly colored two story building with big windows and a state of the art indoor pool. It's linked with a network of related improvements to transit, public health and street life in Bronzeville. Like La Villita, it was among various long percolating community initiated dreams, realized only lately, thanks to a cocktail of financing the mayor helped mix. "Urban policy often focuses too much just on housing," Mr. Emanuel told me, grateful to focus on what has become a central plank of his administration and not talk policing or murder rates. "Housing alone doesn't make a neighborhood." That's a view shared by Mayor Jim Kenney of Philadelphia, who was swept into office last year on a platform committing hundreds of millions of dollars to fixing up some 400 dilapidated green spaces, ball fields, pools, libraries and recreation centers in underserved districts. Philadelphia has the highest poverty rate among the 10 most populated cities in the United States. The plan focuses on the city's neediest areas. Hunting Park, in North Philadelphia, is an example. For years, it was a troubled place before its revitalization started in 2009. Since then, crime has plummeted 89 percent, probably not all thanks to improvements to the park, though Philadelphia authorities attribute declines in prostitution and drug dealing to families taking over the park. I spent an afternoon with the city's parks commissioner, Kathryn Ott Lovell, touring crumbling libraries and rec centers in North and West Philadelphia now scheduled for makeovers. Once great buildings, still bustling with children, they remain critical to their neighborhoods, barely held together today by bubble gum and underpaid, overworked custodians who are among the city's unsung heroes. Changing demographics, new technologies and evolving demands by residents on parks and libraries to be complex community hubs require that these places receive more than just a fresh lick of paint or sod. They need extensive rethinking. The William Penn Foundation in Philadelphia has pitched in an additional 100 million to help make all that happen, its biggest grant ever. "We want every Philadelphian to be able to walk to a place that says, 'You are worth it,'" Ms. Lovell explained. Chicago is trying to send the same message. East of Little Village, in the Bridgeport neighborhood, Studio Gang, the highly regarded architecture firm, has designed an elegant new zinc clad public boathouse, with clerestory windows and a jagged roofline (based on stop action photographs of rowers, the architects say), providing a gateway from Bridgeport to the waterfront. Farther north, the 606, Chicago's version of the High Line, which opened in mid 2015, has turned a defunct rail corridor into a wildly popular pedestrian greenway. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
The most marvelous element of American Ballet Theater's new production of "The Golden Cockerel" was contributed by someone who died 54 years ago: the artist Natalia Goncharova. In a flood of blazing color, the Metropolitan Opera House stage erupts in a style at once storybook naive and neoprimitivist modernist. Emphatically two dimensional with strong elements of cartoon, it says "This is mere fantasy" at the same time as it fills your heart. Details (the gorgeous pattern of intensely individual skirts for eight supporting women, some breathtakingly hued stools for some attendant boyars) are as thrilling as the overall charm of a fairy tale told in a blast of reds, yellows, golds and stinging sky blues. The credits say that the scenery and costumes are by Richard Hudson, "inspired by" Goncharova (1881 1962). There's no moment when we feel he's misjudged the original. I've watched two other Goncharova designs innumerable times ("The Firebird" and "Les Noces" at the Royal Ballet); this "Golden Cockerel" production richly honors the spirit of this great artist. The long history, onstage and in the literary imagination, of "The Golden Cockerel" As choreographed by Alexei Ratmansky, "The Golden Cockerel" honors the spirit of its composer, Nikolai Rimsky Korsakov (1848 1908) engagingly, but less completely. This is the 2012 two act ballet adaptation of a one act 1937 ballet of a 1914 three act opera ballet production of Rimsky's 1907 opera, which had its first production in Russia in 1909, the year after his death. Though that sounds bewildering, the basic story has changed little. It hinges on two immortals: an Astrologer and the glorious Queen of Shemakhan, whom he forever seeks. The Astrologer, a magician, gives a Golden Cockerel to the silly Tsar, Dodon, as the ultimate defense mechanism. With this Cockerel's alarm calls, Dodon's realm can never fall. In due course, Dodon is seduced by the foreign Queen. Now the Astrologer demands her as his reward from the hitherto grateful Tsar. But Dodon, infatuated by her and enraged by this claim, refuses whereupon the Cockerel abruptly pecks him to death. The realm vanishes; the Astrologer continues his pursuit of the Queen. Ingratitude and dishonesty are punished; mortals anyway are but shadows. Mr. Ratmansky's narration is suspenseful, amusing, energetic. With his keen historical sense, he conveys a colorful Ballets Russes style of cartoon characterization. Moment by moment, you have fun getting to know this story's people and following their antics. Gary Chryst, the most admired artist of the Joffrey Ballet of yore appearing with Ballet Theater as a guest, makes Dodon a rivetingly doting dotard. There are excellent character performances by Roman Zhurbin (General Polkan), Jeffrey Cirio and Joseph Gorak (Dodon's two sons, irrepressibly youthful and callow) and Martine van Hamel (the befuddled royal housekeeper, always a step behind events). The Golden Cockerel, marvelously performed on Monday by the young soloist Skylar Brandt, has the right inhuman brilliance fast and staccato. But the Astrologer (Cory Stearns, in Hogwarts apparel) counts for little; and the dangerous charm, glamour and malice of the Queen one of many femmes fatales in the Diaghilev repertory are of limited power. Veronika Part, with her handsome head grandly plumed, dances the role in heavy point shoes and with allure that gradually grows monotonous. It's a fun role but is it a juicy dance one? Not on Monday. The Goncharova designs derive from both Diaghilev's 1914 opera ballet staging, which featured extensive choreography by Michel Fokine, and from Fokine's 1937 one act ballet adaptation of it. Because 18 minutes of amazingly vivid silent film survive of the 1937 version (and a few more minutes of some 1940s performances), this Ballet Theater staging created by Mr. Ratmansky in 2012 for the Royal Danish Ballet is to some degree a reconstruction. The program says Mr. Ratmansky was "inspired" by Fokine's original, but those silent film sequences, featuring the legendary teenage ballerinas Tatiana Riabouchinska (in the title role) and Irina Baronova (as the Queen), contain a superbright vigor that his ballet doesn't quite match. The original story, a Russian classic, is Aleksandr Pushkin's 1834 verse version of an 1832 one by Washington Irving; but its satire of kingship carries no sting in this iteration. The two act arrangement of Rimsky's score is by the musicologist Yannis Samprovalakis. Its first act ends lamely, and there's too little panache to its dance sequences. (Fokine labored over the 1937 arrangement with Antal Dorati and Nikolai Tcherepnin.) The layers of reality inhabited by the Astrologer and Queen something so crucial to many works of Diaghilevian theater here seem tacked on, a flimsy afterthought. Nothing here is weak, but what's important? Later performances four casts tackle it this week may change the overall texture onstage and in the pit. Monday's performance, conducted by Charles Barker, was blighted by poor brass playing in the opening fanfare. Rimsky's luscious invention, sometimes Debussyan in modernist hues, often anticipates Stravinsky's early scores. Rimsky remains celebrated as a master orchestrator. On first acquaintance, Mr. Samprovalakis's arrangement seems to drain away some of its palette. Goncharova's designs should reflect this music, not eclipse it. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
If you run into Attorney General William Barr over the weekend, be sure to congratulate him. The readers have spoken! Barr was the runaway winner of our vote for Worst Trump Cabinet Member. He swept the field last fall, too. What we need now is a Worst Museum where we can put Barr's portrait looming over the door. The Worst of Trump is clearly a topic people are pondering. We got thousands of responses to the contest. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos came in second and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo third. They were far, far behind the leader. But give DeVos credit it's not easy to build up so much rancor when you're in a relatively low profile cabinet post. "Betsy DeVos is one I particularly love to hate because of her smug arrogance, while being the very picture of ignorant incompetence," wrote a voter. "What can be better than a secretary of education who doesn't believe in public schools and appears never to have attended any schools herself?" asked another. Maybe it's unfair for DeVos to have to compete against terrible cabinet members with so much more power. "Can we divide it into two categories?" asked Anne Gables, who proposed giving separate awards for "least qualified (most clueless) and most dangerous." Makes sense, and if those were the options DeVos would sweep the Clueless Contest while Barr would win the Keeps You Awake Nights competition. One surprise in the pack was the strong showing by postmaster general Louis DeJoy. His job isn't officially part of the cabinet, but DeJoy got a special exemption to join the competition since he's been trying to undercut postal efficiency right ahead of the presidential election. "Rookie of the year has to be Louis DeJoy, for the sheer chutzpah of destroying one American institution (the mail) in the cause of destroying another American institution (democracy)," wrote Martin Benjamin. Whenever we have a vote for Worst Trump Cabinet Member a sizable contingent protest that everybody should get a trophy. ("It is just too difficult to choose the Worst of the worst.") A Georgia reader managed to trim the list down to three before throwing in the towel. ("Like eating a potato chip; can't have just one.") "Each cabinet member makes a unique contribution to the swamp," argued a reader from Iowa. "Who can say the alligator is more or less important than the mosquito or the leech or the water moccasin?" The swampy metaphors were popular. Linda Morgan of San Francisco voted for Barr as "concertmaster of all things wicked and slimy in Trump world," but added an apology to "all green witches, snakes and worms." Mike Pence came in fifth behind Barr, DeVos, Pompeo and DeJoy. Those who did vote for the vice president pointed out that having Pence as veep made it much less satisfactory to daydream about impeachment. ("He perpetually haunts the halls of power with a creepy presence and omnipresent inadequacy.") And then, of course, there was his prediction that we'd have put the pandemic behind us by Memorial Day. ("It's gotta be Mike Pence, Corona Virus Czar. ...") A reader from Spain expressed surprise that "I've seen no mention of the truly vile and incompetent Secretary of the Treasury Steve Mnuchin." And indeed, Mnuchin came in way down the line. But he had champions who thought he deserved a prime spot. One of them noted that this is a man who left Goldman Sachs with about 46 million in stock, but now "thinks 600/week is overpaid." Dennis in Seattle was disturbed that Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao wasn't "getting enough credit for the wholesale theft of hundreds of millions of dollars from Americans" who couldn't get ticket refunds when airlines canceled their flights. To be fair, Chao did express her displeasure, but apparently some people don't think hand wringing is enough. And remember Ben Carson? Almost nobody did when it came to the balloting. Frank from North Carolina, in fact, wrote to ask whether the secretary of housing and urban development had joined the Witness Protection Program. "What has he done so far in his role as HUD secretary other than purchase a 30,000 table for his conference room?" asked a Pennsylvania reader. This is a complaint that goes back to early 2018. On the other hand, that was possibly the last thing many of us heard from Carson. But after all was said and done, Barr swept the field. "Betsy DeVos can't destroy our public education in the brief time she has left in office, and Mike Pompeo can't cause an international crisis just by making the State Department a ghost of its former self," wrote a voter from Woodstock, N.Y. "But when the country's top law officer ignores the rule of law to protect Trump from prosecution and advance the president's political interests, it is downright scary, not to mention a threat to our democracy." "He has flushed down the toilet the rule of law." "Not since Tom Hanks won back to back Oscars has someone been so deserving of a repeat win." "Last year I really had to ponder this choice; this year it's not even close go Barr! (No, really, go!)" 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 |
WASHINGTON The Senate on Thursday brought the Federal Reserve Board a little closer to full strength, confirming Lael Brainard, a former Treasury Department official, to one of the three open seats by a vote of 61 to 31. The Senate also confirmed Stanley Fischer as the Fed's vice chairman by a vote of 63 to 24; it had confirmed his appointment to the board last month. Jerome H. Powell, a current member of the seven person board, was confirmed to a new term by a vote of 67 to 24. Ms. Brainard is expected to be sworn into office before the scheduled meeting next week of the Fed's policy making committee. Fed officials are expected to trim back again on monthly bond purchases, and to debate the next steps in a gradual retreat from the Fed's long running economic stimulus campaign. Ms. Brainard has given little public indication of her views on monetary policy, but analysts expect her arrival alongside Mr. Fischer's last month to strengthen the hand of the Fed's chairwoman, Janet L. Yellen, who has championed the Fed's focus on job creation and wants to retreat slowly from its stimulus campaign. Some officials favor a faster retreat, citing concerns about financial stability. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Economy |
Since it started in the Southern California desert in 1999, Coachella has become the premier name in pop festivals. Now it is extending its reach to the Alabama coast through a deal with a smaller festival. Goldenvoice, the company behind the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, announced on Monday that it had entered into a joint venture with the Hangout Music Festival in Gulf Shores, Ala., and that it would help produce that festival. The Hangout partnership is the latest step in a nationwide expansion for Goldenvoice, a subsidiary of the global concert giant AEG Live, as well as for the broader Coachella brand. Last year, Goldenvoice struck a similar deal with the Firefly festival in Dover, Del. On Monday, the retail chain H M, a festival sponsor, revealed a Coachella branded clothing line that capitalizes on the event's reputation for hippie chic. The deal signals the growing importance of festivals, a number of which have joined forces in recent years. Last year, Live Nation Entertainment, the world's largest concert promoter, bought C3 Presents, the company behind the Lollapalooza and Austin City Limits festivals, and SFX Entertainment has built a portfolio of dozens of dance events around the world, like Electric Zoo, Sensation and Tomorrowland. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
FRANKFURT Navel orange, royal blue and purple, Black Forest green: A color psychologist would have a field day here. "It's uplifting," says the German sculptor Tobias Rehberger happily puffing a Lucky Strike in the citrus hued bedroom filled with silk screened prints that recreate every canvas painted by the avant garde Swede Olle Baertling. Mr. Rehberger, 51, is known for his abstract mixtures of art and architecture. He's built sports cars just by eyeballing them, recreated his favorite New York bar in his hometown and designed a Japanese garden in Manhattan in August with snow. Bright color is constant in his work. The other unchanging factor is the work with which he surrounds himself. Nearly everything here was made by friends, some of them no longer living. In the blue and gray living room are curtains designed by Jorge Pardo, Douglas Gordon and Rirkrit Tiravanija, one depicting the sun as flames, another as an ominous hand and eye, the last as a terse haiku. In an orange hallway leading to the rooms of his three children is a pair of cartoonish paintings by Michel Majerus, the tech obsessed Luxembourger who died in a plane crash at 35. Down the corridor, there are two paintings by his former assistant Andreas Eriksson, next to absurd works of Mr. Rehberger depicted as a baby and another in which he resembles a doddering version of the German screenwriter Werner Herzog. Both are by Martin Kippenberger, sketched on a menu and stationery from the Musee d'Art Moderne stationery in the early 1990s. "The drawings were portraits of mine that Kippenberger made because I used to be a student of his," Mr. Rehberger explains. The ground floor is a strange secondary living room with an apocalyptic mural of floating Karl Marx heads over decaying, Brutalist concrete assembled by the little known local artist Holger Wust. Below are edited excerpts from a conversation with Mr. Rehberger. Berlin is such an artistic city, why live in Frankfurt? It's not like Berlin. Not a place where you have a big art scene. I have an apartment in Berlin as well, but I always liked working here. It's a bit rougher, more straightforward. There aren't so many distractions. You have a green, white and red wall in your driveway. That's a wall painting by Gunther Forg from the '80s. A long time ago, I traded a work of mine with him. He was a friend. I was always interested in his wall paintings and finally I had a wall, a nice wall where I could put it up. The concept of his wall painting is, you hire a normal painter and he paints it on. So whenever I hit it with my car, I can always have the painter come again and paint over it. What's it like to be surrounded with art made by close friends? I wouldn't call it a collection. There's no system in it other than I like the work of friends. Or maybe they're my friends because I like their work. Both are a little bit true. Some of them are made for me, like these pieces that are curtains. I asked Douglas and Jorge Pardo and Rirkrit Tiravanija if they would make work that could be used as a curtain. Did you ever ask Douglas the meaning of that witchlike hand he drew? It looks a bit evil. I never asked. Of course, whatever they would do, I wouldn't say "Oh, it doesn't fit the room." At nighttime, does it have a different tone with that piece and Karl Marx in the other corner? I feel my house is very friendly and livable. It's not dark at all, somehow. Even if Douglas I don't know why he brought a little bit of darkness into it. But next to it is Jorge's orange and yellow curtain and Rirkrit's curtain that says "The sun is gone but we have the light," it kind of levels out. A lot of my work is based on personal relationships and making something for somebody I know. That's also how I collect. I like things that, when they're made for me, almost like a portrait, it reflects what they think I am or what I like. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
GENEVA When the Israeli pianist and conductor David Greilsammer was a student at Juilliard in the early 2000s, he never imagined performing a program as radical as the one he rehearsed here recently with the Geneva Camerata orchestra. He had a traditional music education, and at first glance, the Camerata program, called "Dance of the Sun," would seem to reflect that: a suite from Jean Baptiste Lully's "Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme" paired with Mozart's Symphony No. 40 in G minor, both played on period instruments. But it's wildly innovative in what it asks musicians to do and, in a way, audiences to accept. Like other audacious performances by this orchestra that have won over Europe, "Dance of the Sun" which travels to New York for the Camerata's American debut on Nov. 6 at the 92nd Street Y is a genre blurring mix of music, dance and theater, conceived by the choreographer Juan Kruz Diaz de Garaio Esnaola. The players don't just sway to the music; they often dance, sometimes simple steps and sometimes with seeming abandon. Mr. Greilsammer, the orchestra's artistic director, conducts "Dance of the Sun" while also fully participating in its dramatic choreography. At one point during the Lully, the solo dancer Marti Corbera, a 22 year old Spaniard taking over the role for the orchestra's tour attempts to mingle with the players, who have rebuffed him with suspicion so far. Agitated, he lunges at Mr. Greilsammer. The musicians encircle their leader to ward off what could be an attack. But in time, Mr. Corbera's dancer disarms them with his allure and seeming innocence. In another episode, Mr. Corbera and Mr. Greilsammer engage in an erotic duet: They cradle each other's heads, stroke each other's faces and entwine their arms and legs, until finally Mr. Corbera lifts Mr. Greilsammer onto his shoulders, from which height the conductor goes back to leading the orchestra. Although Mr. Greilsammer, 42, didn't grow up thinking he would one day perform a seductive duo with a dancer, he argued in an interview that the Camerata's programs far from being gimmicky take the kinds of risks he thinks are long overdue in classical music. With the old subscription ticketing format looking wobblier than ever, many major orchestras have acknowledged that institutions must shake things up and make each program distinctive, something not to be missed. In this regard, the Geneva Camerata is a model of innovation. You may love a program or find it contrived, Mr. Greilsammer said, but these intrepid players are showing what classical musicians are capable of and inventing ways to make the great works of the past "alive today," as he put it. Even during Mr. Greilsammer's student days, he said, he worried that classical music was becoming disconnected from the world at large. He thought musicians needed to "challenge the very way we listen," he recalled, and question the "whole show" of classical music. "I knew what I had in my dreams," he said, but "I didn't know how to define it." Early in his career, Mr. Greilsammer attracted attention as a Mozart champion, playing marathon cycles of that composer's 19 piano sonatas. With the Geneva Chamber Orchestra, he performed all 27 Mozart concertos, conducting from the keyboard. (He and the ensemble recorded a sparkling, playful and probing account of the Ninth Concerto for Sony.) But, determined to do something about a nagging restlessness, he founded the Geneva Camerata with Celine Meyer, who became the orchestra's general director, in 201 3. They each plopped 50 Swiss francs on a cafe table and vowed to create a risk taking orchestra, Ms. Meyer said in an interview. Mr. Greilsammer did not at first anticipate the large role that choreography would come to play in the Camerata's offerings. He simply wanted to present orchestra programs that were as adventurous as the piano recitals he had been performing and recording, like "Baroque Conversations," which alternates works by Baroque composers with fiercely contemporary scores. The Camerata collaborated with jazz singers, funk musicians, directors and actors. Then came choreographers, who naturally suggested that the musicians get up and dance. Conservatories, Mr. Greilsammer said, should encourage students to take dance classes. A Bach piano suite, after all, is made up of movements based on dances like the gavotte and gigue. Yet musicians are "so inhibited in our bodies" and the "narrow spaces we play in," he said, especially pianists, who perform hunched over a keyboard. He added that it has been "amazing" to see the players in the Camerata let go as they embrace the choreographic elements of their programs. Members of the ensemble in interviews during a rehearsal, then on a bus trip to their tour stop in Bourg en Bresse, France said that the movement has been liberating. Ricardo Gil Sanchez, a violist, said that the dancing, while demanding, released his inner actor. Indeed, the hard part for him was to memorize a Mozart symphony. Clara Rada Gomez, a cellist, said that she loves it when, in the Mozart, the dancer tilts back her chair and she must continue playing with her instrument resting on her body. She finds it exhilarating. Lully's music, written for Moli e re's "Bourgeois Gentilhomme," practically screams for a dancing complement. And the Camerata's performance gets you thinking: Why shouldn't musicians be the ones to do it? Mr. Garaio Esnaola 's choreography puts a powerful contemporary spin on Moliere's comedy , which tells of a pompous, bourgeois gentleman who longs to be accepted by the aristocracy. The Camerata's version focuses on a stranger a suspicious "other," the dancer who shows up and wants to join the players. But, not knowing what to make of him, they put him off at first. Eventually, there are some scenes of courtly mingling and good will; yet the musicians end by slowly marching offstage, playing a stately dance, some of them shedding their shoes the only remnants of the encounter the dancer is left with. Flawless execution, even with players this skilled, would be impossible, given the demands of moving, dancing and playing from memory. Yet the performances in Bourg en Bresse were impressive, incisive and richly expressive. "Before anything, we demand from ourselves to be a top notch orchestra with a level of excellence on its own terms," Mr. Greilsammer said. Otherwise, he added, these "radical projects" will have "no life beyond." Although the orchestra's programs regularly offer contemporary even commissioned works, each one includes core repertory, frequently in traditional (which is to say dance free) performances played from sheet music. The orchestra's debut recording, "Sounds of Transformation," released last year by Sony, juxtaposes works by Lully, Henry Purcell and Jean Philippe Rameau with jazz styled arrangements and transformations of the pieces, featuring the pianist Yaron Herman. These pairings are clustered around Ravel's Piano Concerto, with Mr. Greilsammer as both the soloist and conductor, one of the most exciting accounts of this piece available. This season, the Camerata is presenting the five ambitious programs of its main Prestige series at the Batiment des Forces Motrices, a former hydropower plant from the late 19th century that was converted into a performance space in Geneva. Another series is called "Les Concerts Sauvages" (wild concerts) , with soloists from the orchestra joined by jazz, folk and world music artists. There are also family concerts and special programs, totaling nearly 40 performances more than half of which are presented on tour, and all of which are nearly sold out. Because the ensemble's season doesn't add up to full time work, most players live elsewhere; 17 nationalities are represented in all. Geneva, a center of finance and diplomacy, might not seem the most obvious town for an experimental orchestra. In fact, the Camerata gets most of its funding from local corporate sponsors and foundations . Ms. Meyer, the orchestra's general director, said that the most frustrating part of her job can be explaining to presenters exactly what category the Camerata belongs to. Is it an orchestra? A dance group? Some kind of music theater ensemble? The answer to all these questions may be yes. If Mr. Greilsammer and his colleagues succeed, he said, each "different, radical, mind provoking project" should explain itself. The Camerata has laid down a marker for classical music. If a group of fearless musicians can push the boundaries this far and thrive , then even major orchestras should be able to move beyond their traditional comfort zones. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
If I had to categorize the French Algerian choreographer Rachid Ouramdane, I'd label him an expressionist minimalist. I can't think of anyone else to whom that tag applies in dance, and Mr. Ouramdane reminds me of nobody else. His vocabulary is small, but it suggests that he has urgent points to make that go beyond dance. He's original, peculiar, limited, irksome, haunting. In "Far...," presented at Dance Theater Workshop in 2008, he created a strange documentary theater about political torture in which his dancing seemed to express a numbed state of post invasion, post traumatic stress syndrome. "Ordinary Witnesses," shown at New York Live Arts in 2011, was partly a docudrama about people's efforts to convey the effect of mass killings and political brutality, partly a dance quintet that suggested the wordless consequences of such violence on individuals. The subject of "Tordre (Wrought)," the duet he is presenting this week at Baryshnikov Arts Center, is female self revelation, and the production has a beginning, a middle and an end. The beginning and end are deliberately trite, with showbiz music; but the middle is separate, extended, odd. The start is a joke, a series of entrances in which Annie Hanauer and Lora Juodkaite keep returning to the stage to strike "Here we are" poses; the end, though with a few more steps, is equally conventional. Between these sections, most of what occurs are extended solos. Ms. Hanauer, tall and lissome, has a left arm that is visibly artificial from the elbow down but deployed as an organic part of her motion. What's memorable about her solos is the expressive way she angles her body between knee and neck: She leans, arches, tilts. Ms. Juodkaite, dressed in black tights and polo neck sweater, spins around the stage for several minutes on end, more than once. As she spins, she changes positions of arm, head and upper body. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
Since 2011, when Robert Battle became the artistic director of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, his choice of new repertory has been the subject of much scrutiny. This season's arrivals, while once again introducing welcome variety, are not all felicitous. What's more consistently striking is the ensemble he's cultivating: how the company, under his direction, is working together as a whole. The teamwork required to do what these dancers do is so glaring as to be almost invisible, so integral as to be taken for granted. Individual stars, of which there are many that describes almost everyone enhance but rarely eclipse the group. In three recent programs at City Center, as the troupe continued its five week run, that sense of in this together companionship animated every piece. In some instances, it was the only thing propping up flimsy material. Such was the case on Sunday afternoon with Jacqulyn Buglisi's "Suspended Women," created in 2000 but new to the company this season. Why Mr. Battle chose to resurrect this work, which makes an almost cartoonishly heavy handed statement about the oppression of women shedding no new light, just well worn darkness is mystifying. Inspired by the poet Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, "Suspended" features 14 dancers buried beneath the satin and tulle of A. Christina Giannini's pastel ball gowns. It paints a grim, binary portrait of female experience: women in dresses struggling against men in suits, straining to escape their grasp or being carried lifelessly aloft. Again and again, the women hinge back and collapse forward; they crawl and sob on the ground. Their commitment to these tasks was the sole redeeming factor. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
Q. The other day, my Mac laptop would not turn on when I pressed the power button, but a technician was able to get it to start by holding down a bunch of keys. What is this fix? A. If a Mac does not respond to its power button after you have checked its battery, connections and monitor, there might be a serious issue but not always. In this case, the computer's original failure to react when you pressed the power button was most likely a symptom of an issue with the System Management Controller (S.M.C.), a microcontroller on the computer's logic board that handles various power, light and sensor functions for Macs with Intel processors. Holding down the Shift, Control and Option keys while pressing down on the power button (or Touch ID button) for at least 10 seconds is a shortcut for resetting the S.M.C. on MacBooks with sealed batteries. If this was the case, the laptop starts up normally again when you press the power button again. An S.M.C. reset may help if you notice things like the battery is not charging properly, the Mac does not recognize devices plugged into its USB C port, the keyboard backlight is not working correctly or the sleep function is out of whack. Other symptoms include the computer fan's running at high speed or the Mac's acting sluggish, even if you are not using a lot of processor hogging programs. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
If you've managed to run your own dance company for 20 years, chances are you haven't made it alone. Pascal Rioult, the director of Rioult Dance New York, had some serious mentors as a young artist: May O'Donnell and Martha Graham, with whom he danced in the 1980s and '90s. On Friday at the 92nd Street Y, Mr. Rioult extolled those women and their influence on him as he introduced "Martha, May and Me," a program that will debut officially at the Joyce Theater in June. The Y evening, a preview open to critics, included excerpts from O'Donnell's "Suspension" (1943) and Graham's "El Penitente" (1940), alongside two of Mr. Rioult's signature pieces. The juxtaposition had the intended effect: to underscore what he called "my roots in American modern dance." O'Donnell (a celebrated Graham dancer in the 1930s) was ahead of her time with "Suspension," which stood out for its formal abstraction in a pre Merce Cunningham era of modern dance concerned with storytelling. Today, it feels vintage. (Any chance of updating those stirrup unitards?) But its balance of flurried motion and protracted stillness, of symmetry and asymmetry, remains intriguing, as seven dancers resist gravity (springlike stag leaps) and give in to it (deep lunges that plummet with the piano chords in Ray Green's weighty score). Mobilizing the entire stage including a two tiered platform in one corner, where Sara Seger, the most natural performer throughout Friday's program, relished O'Donnell's original role the dancers seem to pull taut the space around them. Side bending torsos and abrupt directional changes, backed by deliberate intention, recall Cunningham's technique, a reminder that he, too, started out with Graham. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
When Crystal Marie Garcia decided to try the home rental service Airbnb for the first time, she had a few questions. Ms. Garcia, who is from El Paso, was planning a May trip with her family to the Chicago area and wanted to know if the places she was considering could accommodate her needs as someone with muscular dystrophy. Unfortunately, she said, her questions appeared to scare off at least two potential hosts. She said she feels that if she had not mentioned her disability, "they would have rented to me, no issue." Ms. Garcia is not alone in feeling that way. Other users have reported similar bias, and a new Rutgers University study based on more than 3,800 Airbnb lodging requests sent by the researchers suggests it may be common: Travelers with disabilities are more likely to be rejected and less likely to receive preapproval, or temporary clearance, for a potential stay, the authors found. Hosts granted preapproval to 75 percent of travelers who made no mention of a disability, according to the study. That rate fell to 61 percent for those who said they had dwarfism, 50 percent for those with blindness, 43 percent for those with cerebral palsy and just 25 percent for those with spinal cord injuries. Some of that disparity can be explained by hosts who followed up with questions for the travelers with disabilities, the researchers said, thus preventing the request from being classified as preapproved. Requests were sent to hosts throughout the country over a nearly six month period last year. The researchers could not solely blame the findings on personal prejudice. They said physical inaccessibility was a major factor behind the disparity in hosts' responses. That, they said, raised concerns that businesses like Airbnb could exclude users with disabilities even as they expand access to services over all. "Here's the flip side of our tech revolution: Platforms like Airbnb seem to be perpetuating or increasing opportunities for exclusion, both economic and social," said Lisa Schur, a professor in the Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations and one of the study authors. With more than three million listings, Airbnb has introduced new lodging options around the world, including many that meet the needs of people with disabilities. Last year, the company also instituted a nondiscrimination policy and took steps to better handle complaints of bias, including assurances that users treated unfairly will have a place to stay. Still, like many businesses in the sharing economy, Airbnb operates in a regulatory haze, and protections imposed on other forms of lodging under the Americans with Disabilities Act may not always apply to Airbnb listings, which are often a homeowner's primary or secondary residence. "If we're entering an era where these new types of hotels, which are essentially private homes, can't offer accommodations, it defeats and undoes all of the progress we've made with the A.D.A. as far as equal access is concerned," said Mason Ameri, one of the authors of the Rutgers study and a postdoctoral fellow at the university's School of Management and Labor Relations. "The law needs to catch up with services like Airbnb." Alice Wong, a former member of the National Council on Disability and founder of the Disability Visibility Project, said that if Airbnb did not lay out and enforce strict guidelines for listings that claim to be handicapped accessible, the company was making a false promise to travelers. "Discrimination is often based on ignorance," said Ms. Wong, who is in a wheelchair. "People with disabilities deviate from the image of a typical customer, so the way they are discriminated against is hard to pin down but very real." Some hosts in the study, like the ones who denied Ms. Garcia, rejected inquiries from Mr. Ameri and his colleagues with little explanation. Others referred the fictitious traveler to listings that could better accommodate their needs or asked what could be done to make the listed space more accessible. A few made rude or insensitive remarks. The introduction of Airbnb's nondiscrimination policy in September had little effect on the findings of the study, which was conducted from June to mid November, the authors said. In fact, some hosts violated those guidelines, which ban rejecting or charging extra for assistance animals. But, the authors acknowledge, that may change as hosts become more familiar with the rules. Airbnb is valued at about 30 billion. The market capitalization of Hilton Hotels is nearly 22 billion. To improve access to homes by the disabled, the researchers suggest that Airbnb make sure hosts understand and follow federal disability guidelines, and engage with advocacy organizations and travelers with disabilities to understand their needs and frustrations. Technology has long created opportunities for people with disabilities, Ms. Wong said, whose life has been "tremendously positively impacted by tech," she said. "But tech is really slow to catch up with regard to human rights issues," she added. "The new platforms amplify the way people already do things. That's how people get left out of opportunities, especially people who are already marginalized." Airbnb said that it has teamed with several disability organizations to better educate hosts and that it expects to release new accessibility listing and filtering features this summer. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
Even in television news, a little stunt casting can't hurt. MSNBC turned heads on Wednesday when, minutes before the House impeachment hearings got underway, the network announced a surprise guest: George T. Conway III, the conservative lawyer and husband of President Trump's White House counselor, Kellyanne Conway. Little known outside legal circles before his wife's ascent to political stardom, Mr. Conway has become a liberal sensation by emerging as an unlikely critic of the president. His Twitter account, once a sleepy province of corgi and cat videos, is now a favorite of Trump detractors eager for Mr. Conway's sweeping and spiky denunciations. But while Mr. Conway has also ventured onto newspaper op ed pages ("Trump is a racist president" was the headline of his Washington Post opinion piece in July) and other media forums, he had drawn the line at appearing on Mr. Trump's favored medium. Until now. "I don't, frankly, want to be on television," Mr. Conway said during the Wednesday morning broadcast from the MSNBC set in New York, where he had been granted a perch across from the co anchors Brian Williams and Nicolle Wallace. "But this," he added, referring to Mr. Trump's conduct, "I just don't get why people can't see this, and why people are refusing to see this. It's appalling to me." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
The study was almost laughably arcane: Air Force cadets' pupils tended to dilate more when they read cartoons they thought were funny than for ones they didn't think were funny. But the real punch line of this 1978 experiment "Pupillary size as an indicator of preference in humor," published in the journal Perceptual and Motor Skills is what became of one of the authors, listed as Sullenberger, C. B. Chesley B. Sullenberger III is the retired airline captain who safely landed US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River in 2009 and the hero of the new Clint Eastwood directed movie "Sully." By virtue of publishing his small experiment, he is also a member of an unusual club. Call it the you'll never guess who wrote that collection of authors of psychology studies. In a paper in the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science, two psychology trivia buffs selected 78 published psychology papers from unlikely authors, from a 1784 report by Benjamin Franklin and others on the fantastical claims of the physician Franz Mesmer about animal magnetism and what would become known as hypnotism through a physicist's 2013 debunking of a proposed "optimal ratio" of positive to negative emotions. In between is a gallery of improbable contributors, including politicians on the left and right (Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Tom DeLay), actors, a Supreme Court chief justice, three pygmy chimpanzees, and perhaps the greatest power forward in basketball history. Their collective findings are uneven, to put it mildly, but that in itself reveals something about psychological research, the paper argues. Senator Elizabeth Warren questioning John Stumpf, chairman and CEO of Wells Fargo, earlier this month. "The two of us are psychology trivia nerds, and we were just impressed by how widely psychological research had penetrated the wider culture," Steven Jay Lynn, of Binghamton University, said of himself and his co author, Scott O. Lilienfeld of Emory University. Several of the weakest papers were by Nobel laureates in other scientific fields, Dr. Lynn and Dr. Lilienfeld found. "Doing psychology well is harder than it looks that's certainly one of the takeaways," Dr. Lynn said. To build their "listicle," as they call it, Dr. Lynn and Dr. Lilienfeld scoured their own memories of publications over red wine and Italian food. They ran the names by friends and spouses, and measured the level of surprise by the exclamations of "really?" with each author they found. Some of the authors, like Richard Alpert (a.k.a. Baba Ram Dass, a counterculture writer) and his colleague Timothy Leary, were psychology professors before they became public figures. Others, like Chief Justice Warren E. Burger and former Education Secretary William Bennett, wrote widely on social issues. Charles Krauthammer, a political columnist, trained in psychiatry at Harvard; his 1978 paper on manias associated with physical illness or drugs has been widely cited in medical literature. Yet most of the papers are like Mr. Sullenberger's in that they provide fleeting glimpses of the authors' interests at a particular moment in life, often well before they achieved fame in an unrelated field. In her 1898 paper "Cultivated motor automatism; a study of character in its relation to attention," the Harvard student Gertrude Stein tested people's susceptibility to the Ouija board effect, in which subconscious thoughts direct actions. Mayim Bialik, who plays a neurobiologist on the popular television show "The Big Bang Theory," was an author of a 1999 paper on how the brain processes emotional versus linguistic information. She later earned a doctorate in neuroscience. The Academy Award winning actress Natalie Portman was also drawn to brain science as a psychology student at Harvard, and is listed as an author on a 2002 brain imaging study under her given family name, Hershlag. "I don't know if it's true, but years ago, I had heard that Tim had framed the first page of the chapter and hung it in his house," Dr. Leary said. "I also heard that, when his teammates on the Spurs found out, some called him 'Dr. Duncan' for a while." Dr. Lynn and Dr. Lilienfeld rate the papers by Ms. Stein, Mr. Duncan, Ms. Portman and Ms. Bialik as scientifically solid, but are less generous when evaluating the contributions of senior scientists from other fields, particularly physics and chemistry. In 1968, the journal Science published a paper by the chemist Linus C. Pauling, who received two Nobel Prizes. The paper argued that certain mental disorders, including schizophrenia, were caused in part by vitamin deficiencies. This theory, called "orthomolecular psychiatry," has been discredited. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
The game, a phenomenon a decade ago, shut down on New Year's Eve. But its legacy for better and for worse carries beyond gaming. In early 2009, when Facebook was still nascent in its efforts to swallow as much of the internet as possible, online games were not yet the behemoth they would become. Then, that June, came FarmVille. If you weren't among the tens of millions of people tending a cartoon patch of land on Facebook each day, piling up an endless stream of cutesy collectibles, you were still getting copious nags and nudges from your friends asking for help. The game either pulled Facebook users into an obsession or persistently reminded them that they were missing out on one. The Flash based game created by Zynga, designed to be played within Facebook, shut down on Thursday yes, there were people still playing it though its sequels that can be played through mobile apps will survive. (Flash, the software that powered the game, also shut down at the end of the year.) But the original FarmVille lives on in the behaviors it instilled in everyday internet users and the growth hacking techniques it perfected, now baked into virtually every site, service and app vying for your attention. At its peak, the game had 32 million daily active users and nearly 85 million players over all. It helped transform Facebook from a place you went to check in on updates mostly in text form from friends and family into a time eating destination itself. "We thought of it as this new dimension in your social, not just a way to get games to people," said Mark Pincus, who was chief executive of Zynga at the time and is now chairman of its board of directors. "I thought: 'People are just hanging out on these social networks like Facebook, and I want to give them something to do together.'" That was accomplished partly by drawing players into loops that were hard to pull themselves from. If you didn't check in every day, your crops would wither and die; some players would set alarms so they wouldn't forget. If you needed help, you could spend real money or send requests to your Facebook friends a source of annoyance for nonplayers who were besieged with notifications and updates in their news feeds. Ian Bogost, a game designer and professor at Georgia Tech, said the behaviors FarmVille normalized had made it a pace car for the internet economy of the 2010s. He did not mean that as praise. The game encouraged people to draw in friends as resources to both themselves and the service they were using, Mr. Bogost said. It gamified attention and encouraged interaction loops in a way that is now being imitated by everything from Instagram to QAnon, he said. "The internet itself is this bazaar of obsessive worlds where the goal is to bring you back to it in order to do the thing it offers, in order to get your attention and serve ads against it or otherwise derive value from that activity," he said. While other games had tried many of the same tactics Mafia Wars was Zynga's top hit at the time FarmVille was the first to become a mainstream phenomenon. Mr. Pincus said that he frequently used to have dinner with Mark Zuckerberg, a co founder of Facebook, and that in early 2009 he had been told that the platform would soon allow games to post to a user's news feed. He said Mr. Zuckerberg told him that Zynga should flood the zone with new games and that Facebook would sort out the ones that resonated. Though farming was far from a hot genre of games at the time, Mr. Pincus saw it as a relaxing activity that would appeal to a broad audience, especially among adults and women who had never spent hundreds of dollars on a console like the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 or Nintendo Wii. It would be a preview of the soon to explode market for mobile games, with casual gamers shifting away from desktop as smartphones took hold. The gaming industry was always chilly to FarmVille, despite its success. A Zynga executive was booed as he accepted an award at the Game Developers Conference in 2010, and Mr. Pincus said he had had trouble recruiting developers, who thought their peers wouldn't respect them for working on the game. To many, the game will be remembered more for its presence in people's news feeds than for the game itself. Facebook was well aware of the complaints. After hearing from nonplayers that the game was spammy, Facebook restricted how much games could post to news feeds and send notifications. Facebook now aims to send fewer notifications only when they're more likely to make an impact, said Vivek Sharma, a Facebook vice president and head of gaming. He credited FarmVille for much of the rise of social gaming and said the "saga" over excessive notifications had taught Facebook some important lessons. "I think people started to figure out some deeper behavioral things that needed to be tweaked in order for those applications to be self sustaining and healthy," he said. "And I think part of that is this idea that actually people do have a limit, and that limit changes over time." Even if people were annoyed by the notifications, there's little doubt that they worked. Scott Koenigsberg, a director of product at Zynga, noted that the requests had been sent by players opting in to send them. "Everybody saw a 'lonely cow' notification at some point or another, but those were all being shared by their friends who were playing the game," he said. Mia Consalvo, a professor in game studies and design at Concordia University in Canada, was among those who saw FarmVille constantly in front of her. "When you log into Facebook, it's like, 'Oh, 12 of my friends need help,'" she said. She questioned how social the game actually was, arguing that it didn't create deep or sustained interactions. "The game itself isn't promoting a conversation between you and your friends, or encouraging you to spend time together within the game space," she said. "It's really just a mechanic of clicking a button." But those who went back every day said it had kept them in touch with friends and acquaintances, giving them something to talk about. Maurie Sherman, 42, a radio producer in Toronto, said that he and a receptionist had played together and that he had gone to her desk daily to chat about it. "She would tell me about the pink cow she got," he said. He enjoyed it as an escape, a virtual stress ball and a soothing activity that would let his mind wander. He said he had spent more than 1,000 that's real money over the years to improve his farm or to save time. And he was absolutely guilty of sending the notifications, he said but they always succeeded in getting him the help he wanted. "There are people who would mute you or unfriend you just because they were tired of hearing that you needed help with your cows," he said. Jaime Tracy, 59, of Lancaster, Pa., said she had been "one of those annoying people" who made frequent requests for help until her friends and relatives had told her to knock it off. But she loved the game, which she saw as a form of meditation, and played for more than five years. With her children grown and out of the house, "I had nothing else to do," she said. "You could just turn your mind off and plant some carrots," she said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
On Feb. 14, 2018, at 3:13 p.m. 54 minutes after the shooting started at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. got a text from a producer at "Anderson Cooper 360," asking him to appear on the show that night. "They only contact me when it's going to be bad," says Cullen, the author of "Columbine." He wasn't sure he wanted to do it. At that point, he'd been covering mass killings for so long he had begun suffering from a secondary form of traumatic stress, sometimes "sobbing all day, mostly in bed, then slumped in a chair." Almost immediately, though, this tragedy seemed different from the earlier ones. For one thing, one of the students, David Hogg, quickly became more famous than his attacker by issuing a plea for gun control on CNN. "Took less than 24 hours," Cullen says. "Can you imagine Charles Manson being overshadowed by one of his victims?" Cullen hopped on a plane to Florida. "I had been so depressed and angry about this political stalemate we had been trapped in, running a political rat maze with no exit, and these kids just punched a hole in it and shouted 'Follow us!'" Cullen recalls. "I knew I had to tell their story. I had to write this book" "Parkland," which debuts this week at No. 14. "Gun reform seemed hopeless," Cullen says, "until David Hogg called us out, and what a painful slap that was. The truth hurts, and letting our children die, that's despicable. We hated ourselves for that, so the torch was simmering, waiting for someone to grab it and run with it. We weren't expecting children, and we couldn't have imagined a whole team of them, but when they rose to the challenge, we responded immediately." As he followed Hogg and the other students including Emma Gonzalez and Cameron Kasky on their gun control campaign, something happened to Cullen: He began to heal. "I had no idea how much sadness was still in me until I saw the 'after' picture from 10 months with them the happy Dave from pre Columbine," he says. "I wasn't just writing about them, I was writing about the impact I was witnessing in their wake. The kids at every stop, an army of young activists, who had never imagined themselves as activists until that Valentine's Day, never had a clue how, never would have believed themselves capable. They are now believers. And they're doing it. I think this book is about the birth of something extraordinary: the birth of a movement, but also the rebirth of hope." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
ARLINGTON, Texas The shortest and strangest season in Major League Baseball history will finish with a clash of coasts and contrasts. The Los Angeles Dodgers and the Tampa Bay Rays big spenders and bargain hunters will crown one region with an unofficial title no one saw coming: inter sports champion of the pandemic era. The 116th World Series, to be played at Globe Life Field here starting Tuesday, will be the third championship series for a big four North American sports league to be decided this fall. The Tampa Bay Lightning won the Stanley Cup on Sept. 30 and the Los Angeles Lakers took the N.B.A. finals 12 days later. Now, either Tampa Bay or Los Angeles will add another trophy. For the baseball teams themselves, though, a championship would be a long time coming. The Dodgers have not won the World Series since 1988, a decade before the Rays started play as the American League's most recent expansion franchise. They dropped their original name, the Devil Rays, before the 2008 season, when they reached their only World Series, a five game loss to the Philadelphia Phillies. The Dodgers have reigned over the National League West for eight consecutive seasons they were baseball's best team this year, at 43 17, three games better than the Rays but have always fallen short in the end. They lost the World Series in 2017 and 2018 and return now after rallying to beat the Atlanta Braves in the N.L. Championship Series after losing three of the first four games. "From the moment that we were able to put a season together once they figured out the Covid thing, everybody was expecting us to get to the World Series," said the Dodgers utility man Enrique Hernandez, who tied Game 7 with a pinch hit homer in the sixth inning. "We were expecting to get to the World Series. "Up to the point where we went down 3 1 in this series, we hadn't really gone through any adversity at all during this season. So that was the one thing: It was time to get it done." Did they ever. The Dodgers had faced a three games to one deficit seven times in their postseason history but had never managed to force a Game 7. This time, they won the pennant with a modern twist on a well worn formula: pitching, defense and timely home runs. They smacked three homers in Game 5, including two by Corey Seager, the series' most valuable player, and a go ahead three run shot by catcher Will Smith. Seager and Justin Turner went deep in the first inning of Game 6, giving starter Walker Buehler and the bullpen all the run support they needed. In Game 7, the Dodgers did a bit of everything: a home run robbing catch in right field by Mookie Betts, a critical double play keyed by the whirling Turner at third, homers by Hernandez and Cody Bellinger, and six no hit innings from relievers Blake Treinen, Brusdar Graterol and Julio Urias to finish the game. 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. "All season we've been controlling games and controlling series, but it seems like we were getting handled a little bit early on," Betts said. "We were able to get ahold of everything, get ahold of ourselves and start to fight back. It just shows the type of group we have. We're never going to give up." The Rays followed their own distinctive trail to the World Series with a best of seven path never taken before: win, win, win, loss, loss, loss, win. The Houston Astros were trying to join the 2004 Boston Red Sox as the only team to recover from a 0 3 deficit, but in the end the Rays made history of their own by ending a free fall. To do so, they used the veteran moxie of starter Charlie Morton who also closed out the Dodgers for Houston in the 2017 World Series and the daily magic of outfielder Randy Arozarena. Morton worked five and two third steely innings in Game 7, and a first inning homer by Arozarena his seventh home run of the postseason, a rookie record gave the Rays a lead they never lost. "Randy Arozarena, I don't have any words to describe what he's done, what he's meant to us this postseason," Rays Manager Kevin Cash said. "But for him to have a bat in his hand with an opportunity for a big home run really settled a lot of people in the dugout. It certainly did me." The power surge has made up for the Rays' lack of contact: After leading the majors in strikeouts in the regular season, they whiffed 81 times in seven games against Houston. The last team with so many strikeouts in a postseason series was the 2018 Dodgers, who beat Milwaukee in a seven game N.L.C.S. despite fanning 82 times. That Brewers pitching staff relied mostly on an ever shifting array of arms to keep the Dodgers off balance, a strategy Tampa Bay has also embraced. While the Rays have three solid starters the right handers Tyler Glasnow and Morton and the left hander Blake Snell they rarely let them face hitters three times in a game, turning quickly to a bullpen filled mostly with young, hard throwers firing from a variety of angles. Only die hards will recognize many of the names on the back of the Rays' jerseys. But they identify and cultivate low cost players with specific skills the ability to crush certain types of pitchers, perhaps, or to excel at various spots on defense and use them in just the right spots. "We're not a team that's built with superstar after superstar," Cash said. "We're a team that maximizes opportunities and tries to get matchups to help us win games." The Rays carried 14 position players in the A.L.C.S., and all of them started at least once. They used four different leadoff hitters in the last five games, and none of the games started and ended with the same eight position players on the field. Only Arozarena and shortstop Willy Adames started every game. "They've got the same amount of men," Astros Manager Dusty Baker said during the A.L.C.S., "but it seems like they've got more men than you because they've got a lot of interchangeable parts and they're used to using them." In the 2018 World Series, the Dodgers relied so heavily on matchups that Bellinger who was rookie of the year the previous season and M.V.P. the next started only two of five games against the Red Sox. In the Game 5 clincher that year, which included a homer by Betts for Boston, Hernandez hit third for the Dodgers after not even starting the previous two games. Now the Dodgers have a much more settled lineup, with Betts, Seager, Bellinger, Turner, Max Muncy, A.J. Pollock and Smith all in the order for 10 of the 11 postseason games. The Dodgers did not exactly plan that, Roberts said, but responded to the players' performance. "The players have earned that," he said. "When lefties are hitting lefties and righties are hitting righties, they've earned that. And in '18 there's a couple of guys that didn't show that. I think we would have beat the Red Sox if we would have had Mookie Betts." Betts, 28, has not homered yet this postseason, but he is hitting .311 with a .407 on base percentage and flashing his usual standout defense. The Red Sox traded him in February rather than risk losing him in free agency, but the Dodgers made sure Betts never reached the open market, signing him in July to a 12 year, 365 million contract extension through 2032. "I love the coaching staff, the players, the front office everything about the Dodgers is winning," Betts said. "That's in my DNA, so that's why I chose to stay here." The Rays do not compete for expensive veterans like Betts. Their prorated payroll this season was just 28.2 million, higher than only Pittsburgh and Baltimore, according to Spotrac, which tracks teams' financial data. The Dodgers ranked second at 107.9 million, trailing only the Yankees. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
The landing site for the Mars InSight mission is "as close to a 100 kilometer long parking lot as we could find anywhere," said the mission's principal investigator.Credit...NASA The landing site for the Mars InSight mission is "as close to a 100 kilometer long parking lot as we could find anywhere," said the mission's principal investigator. NASA's Mars InSight spacecraft, scheduled to launch on Saturday, is headed to one of the most boring places on the red planet. Its landing spot will be Elysium Planitia, an idyllically named expanse that will likely be flat as far as the spacecraft's eyes can see no mountains in the distance, probably not even many large rocks nearby. "We picked something as close to a 100 kilometer long parking lot as we could find anywhere," said Bruce Banerdt, the mission's principal investigator. NASA's Mars InSight landing is happening Monday, Nov. 26. Follow along with it here. InSight the name is a compression of the mission's full name, Interior Exploration Using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport is in many ways a diversion from "follow the water," the mantra that has kept NASA focused on the possibility that the sun's fourth planet may have once been hospitable for life. This mission will instead probe the mysteries of Mars's deep interior and help answer geophysical questions about the planet's structure, composition and how it formed. Since there was not much interest in what InSight will find at the surface, a safe that is, flat landing spot was selected. Mars is, like Earth, largely rock. But it is considerably smaller half as wide as Earth and one ninth the mass. A cubic foot of Mars weighs, on average, 245 pounds, making it almost 30 percent less dense than Earth. (Because Mars is smaller, the gravity is weaker, and the center is not squeezed as tightly.) Many other details remain unknown. How often does the ground shake with marsquakes? Just how big is the core? How thick is the crust? How much heat is flowing out? "We know some, but we don't know a lot," Dr. Banerdt said. The new mission aims to provide "foundational information of the planet's history and its activity," he added. "I'm looking forward to making the first map of the inside of the planet." Sign up here to get a reminder of the launch on your calendar The 1,380 pound spacecraft is currently sitting on top of an Atlas 5 rocket at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Launch is scheduled at 4:05 a.m. local time on May 5, and the southward trajectory could offer a predawn light show for early risers in Los Angeles and San Diego. Tagging along for the ride is Mars Cube One two briefcase size satellites which are to test communications technologies for relaying signals from InSight to Earth. This will be the first time such small satellites, known as CubeSats, have been sent on an interplanetary journey. If weather or other issues prevent a Saturday launch, NASA has additional opportunities over the next five weeks to get InSight off the ground before Mars and Earth move too far out of alignment. Even if the launch slips, InSight's arrival date at Mars remains the same: Nov. 26. After landing, InSight will take a few months to deploy two instruments: a dome shaped package containing seismometers and a heat probe that will hammer itself about 16 feet into the Martian soil. The 814 million mission hinges on detecting something that has never been definitively detected before: marsquakes. That is not for lack of trying. NASA's two Viking landers in the 1970s carried seismometers. Only the one aboard Viking 2 was successfully deployed. But it was mounted on the spacecraft, and not placed on the ground, so it ended up measuring the buffeting of wind gusts rather than marsquakes. Only one event, which occurred at night when winds are generally calmer, may have been seismic. But the weather station was turned off at the time, so the possibility that it was just another gust could not be ruled out. "It was ambiguous and not particularly useful," Dr. Banerdt said. Russia's Mars 96 mission, launched in November 1996, was also slated to make seismic measurements, but because of a rocket malfunction, it fell back to Earth. InSight itself missed its initial launch date two years ago. Leaks in the vacuum enclosure around the seismometers would have rendered them useless. Rather than risk failure, NASA postponed the mission. Dr. Banerdt said a redesigned vacuum enclosure has passed all of the tests. The spacecraft is, in large part, a copy of a two decade old design that has experienced failure and success at Mars. The failure occurred in December 1999, when the Mars Polar Lander spacecraft, descending to the surface, vanished. An investigation concluded that the spacecraft may have plunged to its demise when its computer misinterpreted vibrations from its unfolding landing legs and shut off its engines too early. NASA had already built another almost identical lander for another mission, Surveyor 2001. It canceled those plans, and put the spacecraft in storage. After fixing the spacecraft's shortcomings, most of the Surveyor 2001 lander was recycled into a new craft, Phoenix Mars, which landed successfully in 2008. InSight looks almost the same on the outside, but has been outfitted with improved electronics and modestly larger solar arrays. It is all newly built except for one piece of vintage spacecraft hardware. The robotic arm that will place the seismometer dome and the heat probe onto Mars is the one left over from Surveyor 2001. It did not fit the needs of the Phoenix mission and remained stored away until it might find another use. The planet is cooling and shrinking, and its crust likely occasionally cracks, setting off a marsquake up to magnitude 6.0 or maybe even 7.0. Similar rumblings are known to occur on Earth's moon, which is smaller than Mars. Moonquakes were recorded by seismometers placed on the surface by NASA astronauts during the Apollo moon landings. The hope is that InSight will record enough marsquakes to generate what is essentially a sonogram of the planet. The instrument can measure surface movements less than the width of a hydrogen atom. Not only can it detect the vibrations of a distant marsquake; it can also detect the even fainter vibrations of waves circling Mars the second time around. That sensitivity and multiple measurements are needed to figure out where the marsquake occurred, within a few tens of kilometers. Scientists expect at least 10 to 12 marsquakes over two years, the length of the spacecraft's primary mission. Additional seismic events could be generated by meteors slamming into the surface. By piecing together a three dimensional image of the planet's interior, the researchers expect they will finally know how thick the outer crust of Mars is. From gravity measurements of orbiting spacecraft, scientists can discern which parts are relatively thicker and thinner, but they have no ruler to put a precise thickness at any particular location. All that will help tell how much heat is welling up from the interior of Mars, and Elysium Planitia is believed to be typical of the planet, said Tilman Spohn of the German Aerospace Center's Institute of Planetary Research, the instrument's principal investigator. "We think it would be a very average, boring, but characteristic location on Mars," he said, "and therefore good for us." A third experiment takes advantage of the onboard radio communications system to measure to within a few inches the distance from a radio antenna on Earth to the spacecraft on Mars, tens of millions of miles away. "It's really excellent precision," said Suzanne Smrekar, the deputy principal investigator for the mission. With that precision, scientists can track the wobbling in Mars' spin. The sloshing of liquid deep inside the planet affects the pace and magnitude of the wobble. The measurements will help pin down the diameter of the core, currently estimated at 2,200 miles. Although the emphasis of InSight is on geophysics and not the possibilities of life, its data could help fill in some important blanks. For example, scientists could learn more about early eruptions from Mars' now dormant volcanoes, the largest in the solar system, and how much gas bubbled out of the magma to fill the atmosphere. "Those are all things the people who are concerned about habitability would like to know," Dr. Banerdt said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
Credit...Bryan Anselm for The New York Times With distressed assets, one investor's loss can be another's gain. Robert Lomison has worked in the funeral business for nearly four decades, building his wealth buying mismanaged cemeteries and funeral homes. One of his standout acquisitions was a collection of struggling funeral homes and cemeteries in central Texas. Bruce Deifik saw a different opportunity to resurrect a business from the dead. He bought the Revel Casino in Atlantic City, which opened in 2012 but had fallen in and out of bankruptcy. Buying a business out of bankruptcy might seem like a good deal. But it is a risky investment, even in a booming economy. After all, someone else tried with the same business and failed. If the new owners are savvy, they stand to make a considerable return on their investments. But sometimes they are lucky to break even or escape without going bankrupt themselves. The opportunity for a buyer is that any equity in the business held by former investors is wiped out in bankruptcy. Banks that hold debt on the company will accept a lower amount than they are owed. Still, the process takes time and a lot of money. "If you want to buy something from a bank, you've got to hire lawyers and accountants and you generally have to produce a valuation methodology that justifies your price," Mr. McNutt said. "You also have to overcome objections from the people who are getting wiped out. That said, if you have a lot of capital and a strong stomach, it's sometimes an opportunity." That opportunity calls for as much caution as strategy. Here are some takeaways from people who invest in bankrupt businesses and have survived to tell their tale. Mr. Lomison saw an opening with a group of three funeral homes and two cemeteries in Texas that he said had been mismanaged. "Families were buying something grave markets, headstones, burial vaults and they wouldn't deliver it for six months," he said. "Families were at the gates protesting." Mr. Lomison paid 800,000 for a 4.6 million loan in default. But he knew that was just the beginning of his investment. He had to give clients the headstones and markers they had purchased. He also upgraded a fleet of limousines and hearses. That was 10 years ago, and now he is realizing the return on his investment. "It's a slow process," he said. "It isn't something that happened overnight. It was customer by customer." Some investors in distressed properties find partners with expertise. Ivan Q. Zinn, the chief investment officer of Atalaya Capital Management, a 3.5 billion investment fund, said he formed a partnership with a real estate investor in Colorado to buy properties at a steep discount. He said he could do that only by having someone there with a deep knowledge of the market. "He's really adding value in the context of being the on the ground operator," Mr. Zinn said of his partner, Andrew R. Klein of Westside Investment Partners. "He can figure out how something can go from one type of operator to another and know what these residential lots should trade for." Mr. Klein gave an example of a 700,000 square foot building they recently bought where the main tenant, who occupied 400,000 square feet, was leaving. That would be unappealing, if not disastrous, to many owners. But for Mr. Klein, "it's about managing that risk," he said. "The big false indicator is how much money the other people have already lost," Mr. McNutt said. Buyers think it is an indicator of value, but it often is not. Distressed properties often require more investment. The Revel Casino, on the north end of Atlantic City's boardwalk, cost more than 2.4 billion to build. Mr. Deifik paid 200 million to buy it out of bankruptcy, then spent another 200 million to update it. He plans to reopen it on June 28 as the Ocean Resort Casino. "I'm betting that it's a great buy," Mr. Deifik said. "My operating expenses are substantially less than the group that opened it in 2012." Mr. Deifik was granted a casino license on Thursday, only a week before the casino is scheduled to open. He knows he has a lot of work still ahead. He still has to meet a 115 million annual payroll. But he is optimistic: He has plans to complete 12 unfinished floors and increase the number of rooms to 2,000 from 1,400. "If we give the customer what he wants, if we deliver service at a high level, I think the casino has an opportunity to rise," he said. Sandy and Jim Cannon bought Geets Diner in Williamstown, N.J., out of bankruptcy last year, having each gone there as children. The diner, on the Black Horse Pike between Philadelphia and the Jersey Shore, dates to the 1940s. But it had fallen into disrepair before its 2017 bankruptcy. "The previous owner owed everyone from the food and beverage people to the taxman," Mr. Cannon said. "It was in bad shape." The business's economics had fallen so far that he had to compete with a buyer who wanted to tear down the diner and redevelop the land. The couple paid 3.9 million for the property, on the basis of the diner's reputation and its location at a busy intersection. Committed to restoring the property, they set about renovating it and re establishing relationships with suppliers. Yet Mr. Cannon said their philosophy since reopening in March was to just give it a try. "We kind of fell into it," he said. "We weren't planning for it." One of the risks in buying any bankrupt business is that wiping out the debt may not be enough to make the business profitable. It may just make it less unprofitable, Mr. McNutt said. "It's like the old rule about buying vintage cars," he said. "The fact that some dermatologist wanted to spend 150,000 restoring his old Beetle does not mean it's worth 150,000. It means some dermatologist had 150,000 and wanted to spend it on his old Beetle." So what should buyers do? Hire experts and take to the white board. That's what Peter Patel did when he bought a coal mine outside Pittsburgh. At the time, Mr. Patel had experience owning pharmaceutical companies and hotels. He had never owned or even worked at a coal mine. But when he got a call in 2016 to buy one, the opportunity made sense to him. The mine had failed for two reasons: poor management, caused by fighting between the partners, and a collapse in coal prices. Mr. Patel bought the mine for 5 million at a time when coal was trading for 80 to 90 a ton. He upgraded the equipment by buying newer pieces from other struggling companies. And he brought in a marketing team to find new markets for the coal. Then the price of coal began to rise, topping 300 a ton. Mr. Patel said his lack of knowledge about coal was not an impediment. "The most important thing I understood was, every industry needed a structure and you needed to stick to a business plan," he said. "Most often, a business isn't well organized and we don't stick to the plan." He is looking to buy a second mine in Arkansas. "You've got to stay focused no matter what happens," he said. "With a distressed asset, a lot of problems are coming at you." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Your Money |
NEW DELHI Forty six people have been killed, more than 250 injured and four mosques set on fire in the sectarian violence in Delhi that coincided with President Trump's visit to India. The violence, which lasted over three days and nights and was mostly directed at Muslims in northeastern areas of Delhi, was not surprising. Over the past six years, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, his colleagues in the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, their armies of social media trolls and a vast majority of India's television networks have consistently been building an atmosphere of hatred, suspicion and violence toward India's Muslim minority. The pogrom in Delhi follows in the wake of the discriminatory citizenship law that Mr. Modi's government passed in December. Indians, especially Muslims, have been protesting the law. Before the killings in Delhi, 19 people were killed when protests broke out in the neighboring state of Uttar Pradesh, which is administered by the B.J.P. In recent elections in Delhi, Mr. Modi's party ran a dangerously sectarian campaign. Its leaders equated the protests against the citizenship law with treason and called for the murder of protesters. The B.J.P. lost the Delhi elections and the protests continued. On Feb. 23, Kapil Mishra, a leader of the B.J.P., incited mobs in northeast Delhi to remove a group of Muslim women who were holding a sit in and blocking a road to protest the citizenship law. Violence erupted soon after. A week later, the detailed accounts of violence raise fundamental questions about the role played by the Delhi police in abetting the Hindu mobs and targeting Muslims. When Mr. Mishra gave the speech that lit the fire, Ved Prakash, the deputy commissioner of police for northeast Delhi, stood beside him and did not intervene. The next day, as the mobs swung into action, Mr. Prakash and other police officers were shaking hands with a Hindu mob, which shouted slogans celebrating the Delhi police and its support. Top police officers casually expressed their support of the Hindu mobs and their fear of Muslims. "Jai Shree Ram," the old devotional chant praising the Hindu deity Ram, has been adopted as a war cry by the Hindu nationalist mobs in the past three decades. There were reports of the Delhi police personnel charging at Muslim neighborhoods while shouting, "Jai Shree Ram!" A particularly gruesome video, which has been fact checked and verified, shows Delhi policemen standing around five badly injured Muslim men lying on the road, forcing them to sing the national anthem. They can be heard hurling abuses. One of the men has died of his injuries. Similar behavior by the Delhi police was visible before last week's violence. On January 30, a gunman opened fire on protesters at Shaheen Bagh in southeast Delhi. Photographs and videos from the site show an armed man facing the protesters, leisurely taking his aim as lackadaisical Delhi policemen stand and watch in the background. This partisan behavior of the Delhi police is not simply a question of the police reflecting the biases of the population they are recruited from. It is an active compliance with the kind of conduct they believe will be rewarded by Mr. Modi's government and the ruling party. This belief has been reinforced by what has transpired in earlier bouts of large scale religious violence in India, in particular in the western state of Gujarat in 2002 and in the pogrom in Delhi in 1984 when more than 3,000 Sikhs were killed by Hindu mobs. In February 2002, soon after Narendra Modi took over as chief minister of Gujarat, a train carrying Hindu religious volunteers was allegedly set on fire in the town of Godhra by a group of Muslims. Fifty nine people died. Mr. Modi ensured the bodies of the dead were paraded through Ahmedabad, the largest city in Gujarat. Hindu mobs fueled by incendiary rhetoric from leaders of organizations affiliated with Mr. Modi's party attacked homes and businesses owned by Muslims. Over a thousand people were killed, over 700 of them Muslims. The Gujarat police faced the same allegations of abetting the rioters or doing nothing to stop the violence against Muslims. A few police officers stood out for ensuring that the violence did not overwhelm the areas under their charge. All of them were transferred shortly afterward by Mr. Modi and his confidant and then Gujarat home minister Amit Shah. In the following years, those upright police officers were harassed by the government. Every officer serving in the Delhi police today would be well aware of the fate of the police officers in Gujarat. Like the officers in Gujarat, they report directly to the Modi government since Delhi's status as the national capital ensures policing responsibilities lie in the hands of the federal government. Mr. Modi's old confidant Mr. Shah is now the federal home minister. These officers also had the benefit of an experience much closer at hand. In the first week of November 1984, following the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards, over 3,000 Sikhs were massacred by Hindu mobs in Delhi. The role of the police came under widespread scrutiny and a government appointed commission concluded: "There is enough material on record to show that at many places, the police had taken away their arms or other articles with which they could have defended themselves against the attacks by mobs. ... After they were persuaded to go inside their houses on assurances that they would be well protected, attacks on them had started." A subsequent commission indicted 72 police officers and recommended that action against them be taken by an agency other than the Delhi police. The recommendation was never acted upon. Many of the police personnel and officers who were attacking protesters last week in Delhi along with the Hindu mobs would have either served under or been trained under the very same officers who escaped any punishment for their role in the 1984 pogrom. And the message from Mr. Modi's government is consistent and clear and goes beyond the police: Justice S. Muralidhar, a Delhi High Court judge who sharply criticized the police and ordered the Delhi police to investigate the role of the Hindu nationalist politicians, was swiftly transferred to a court in a different state. While the decision to transfer him was already in place, the timing was of the Modi government's choosing. A lawyer explained that it is unprecedented that a judge is posted elsewhere while he or she is in the middle of hearing such an important subject. The message is not lost on anyone. A majoritarian government backed by a huge mandate is not going to let judicial or bureaucratic precedents stand in the way of carrying out its agenda. The police personnel who are accountable for the violence will face no legal action. They may have not stood by the Constitution, but they did stand by the B.J.P. When Hindu mobs next target a Muslim in any part of the country administered by Mr. Modi's party, we can be sure that no police will stand in their way. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
WASHINGTON It took only one question the very first in Tuesday night's Democratic presidential primary debate to make it clear that the issue that united the party in last year's congressional elections in many ways now divides it. When Jake Tapper of CNN asked Senator Bernie Sanders whether his Medicare for All health care plan was "bad policy" and "political suicide," it set off a half hour brawl that drew in almost every one of the 10 candidates on the stage. Suddenly, members of the party that had been all about protecting and expanding health care coverage were leveling accusations before a national audience at some of their own in particular, that they wanted to take it away. "It used to be Republicans that wanted to repeal and replace," Gov. Steve Bullock of Montana said in one of the more jolting statements on the subject. "Now many Democrats do as well." Those disagreements set a combative tone that continued for the next 90 minutes. The health care arguments underscored the powerful shift the Democratic Party is undergoing, and that was illustrated in a substantive debate that also included trade, race, reparations, border security and the war in Afghanistan. The leading progressives, Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, fended off attacks from underdog moderate challengers. "How you doing?" "It's good to see you! I'm good." "Democrats win when we figure out what is right, and we get out there and fight for it." "I think Democrats win when we run on real solutions, not impossible promises." "But I'm a little more pragmatic." "If we embrace a far left agenda, they're going to say we're a bunch of crazy socialists. If we embrace a conservative agenda, you know what they're going to do? They're going to say we're a bunch of crazy socialists. So let's just stand up for the right policy." "We need to have a campaign of energy and excitement and of vision." "We are more worried about winning an argument than winning an election." "Folks, we have a choice. We can go down the road that Senator Sanders and Senator Warren want to take us, which is with bad policies like Medicare for all, free everything and impossible promises that will turn off independent voters and get Trump re elected." "Democrats flipped 40 Republican seats in the House and not one of those 40 Democrats supported the policies of our front runners at center stage." "I get a little bit tired of Democrats afraid of big ideas." "I don't understand why anybody goes to all the trouble of running for president of the United States just to talk about what we really can't do and shouldn't fight for." "Senator Warren's plan, basically that she put out, we would not be able to trade with the United Kingdom." "But why do we got to be the party of taking something away from people?" "No, no one is the party " "That's what they're running on. They're running on " "What do you say to Congressman Delaney?" "You're wrong." "... Bernie, you don't have to yell." "But throw your hands up." "All right!" "You haven't " "You don't know that, Bernie. "Second of all I do know, and I wrote the damn bill." "But you are playing into Donald Trump's hands." "If you think any of this wonkiness is going to deal with this dark psychic force of the collectivized hatred that this president is bringing up in this country, then I'm afraid that the Democrats are going to see some very dark days. There is an injustice that continues to form a toxicity underneath the surface, an emotional turbulence that only reparations will heal." "Thank you very much. Senator Sanders " "... Medicare for all is comprehensive. It covers all health care needs." "I have a better path: Medicare for America." "I just have a better way to do this." "My plan, BetterCare, is fully paid for." "That's the concept of my 'Medicare for all who want it' proposal." "Thank you, Ms. Williamson. Thank you, Ms. Williamson." "Hope you'll come back to me this time." "Go ahead." "Thank you, mayor." "And Washington can't deliver " "Thank you, mayor." "You can't expect " "Thank you, congressman. We're going to move on. We're going to move on." "Stand by please, stand by please. Please abide by the rules." The leading progressives, Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, fended off attacks from underdog moderate challengers. It is likely to repeat itself during Wednesday night's debate, whose lineup includes former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Senator Kamala Harris of California. He supports building on the Affordable Care Act by adding an option to buy into a public health plan. She released a proposal this week that would go further, eventually having everyone choose either Medicare or private plans that she said would be tightly regulated by the government. Democrats know all too well that the issue of choice in health care is a potent one. When President Barack Obama's promise that people who liked their health plans could keep them under the Affordable Care Act proved to be untrue, Republicans seized on the fallout so effectively that it then propelled them to majorities in both the House and Senate. On Tuesday night, Representative Tim Ryan of Ohio evoked those Republican attacks of years ago on the Affordable Care Act, saying the Sanders plan "will tell the union members that give away wages in order to get good health care that they will lose their health care because Washington is going to come in and tell them they have a better plan." Republicans watching the debate may well have been smiling; the infighting about taking away people's ability to choose their health care plan and spending too much on a pipe dream plan played into some of President Trump's favorite talking points. Mr. Trump is focusing on health proposals that do not involve coverage lowering drug prices, for example as his administration sides with the plaintiffs in a court case seeking to invalidate the entire Affordable Care Act, putting millions of people's coverage at risk. It was easy to imagine House Democrats who campaigned on health care, helping their party retake control of the chamber, being aghast at the fact that not a single candidate mentioned the case. Mr. Sanders's plan would eliminate private health care coverage and set up a universal government run health system that would provide free coverage for everyone, financed by taxes, including on the middle class. John Delaney, the former congressman from Maryland, repeatedly took swings at the Sanders plan, suggesting that it was reckless and too radical for the majority of voters and could deliver a second term to Mr. Trump. Mr. Sanders held firm, looking ready to boil over at time "I wrote the damn bill," he fumed after Mr. Ryan questioned whether benefits in his plan would prove as comprehensive as he was promising. Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, the only other candidate in favor of a complete overhaul of the health insurance system that would include getting rid of private coverage, chimed in to back him up. At one point she seemed to almost plead. "We are not about trying to take away health care from anyone," she interjected. "That's what the Republicans are trying to do." Bernie Sanders "wrote the damn bill." Everyone else is just fighting about it. Mr. Delaney has been making a signature issue of his opposition to Medicare for all, instead holding up his own plan, which would automatically enroll every American under 65 in a new public health care plan or let them choose to receive a credit to buy private insurance instead. He repeatedly disparaged what he called "impossible promises." He was one of a number of candidates including Beto O'Rourke, the former congressman from Texas; Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind. who sought to stake out a middle ground by portraying themselves as defenders of free choice with plans that would allow, but not force, people to join Medicare or a new government health plan, or public option. (Some candidates would require people to pay into those plans, while others would not.) The debate moderators also pressed Mr. Sanders and Ms. Warren on whether the middle class would have to help pay for a Sanders style plan, which would provide a generous set of benefits beyond what Medicare covers to every American without charging them premiums or deductibles. One of the revenue options Mr. Sanders has suggested is a 4 percent tax on the income of families earning more than 29,000. In defending his plan, Mr. Sanders repeatedly pointed out how many Americans are uninsured or underinsured, unable to pay high deductibles and other out of pocket costs and thus unable to seek care. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
For all its sci fi sparkle and requisite fate of the world stakes, the most salient aspects of Marvel Studios' "Black Panther" may be the most basic: It is the first major superhero movie with an African protagonist; the first to star a majority black cast; and in Ryan Coogler ("Creed," "Fruitvale Station"), the first to employ a black writer and director. Those distinctions may add up to a public relations victory for the blockbuster factory responsible for "The Avengers" and the rest of the 13 billion Marvel Cinematic Universe, but it's a mixed one to count the film's racial milestones is to acknowledge the homogeneity of its predecessors. (There have been 17, since we're counting.) As often happened in the comic books, however, the house that "Iron Man" built can ably dismantle the very norms it once codified. And in that sense, "Black Panther" may punctuate an emerging trend. It follows the mold breaking work of James Gunn's stylish "Guardians of the Galaxy" movies and Taika Waititi's self aware "Thor: Ragnarok," suggesting after 10 years of Tony Stark that Marvel's tolerance for risk might be growing along with its financial clout. Get recommendations on TV shows and films to stream from Watching. "Black Panther" is also, of course, a shrewd bet on the social and economic muscle of black filmgoers. Mr. Coogler's film, based on an unsung 1960s creation of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, has inspired a level of anticipation that wildly exceeds the name recognition of its title character owing, in part, to pent up demand for a megabudget movie devoted to black life. As with "Wonder Woman" last year, another movie that spoke to an underserved population at a moment of acute political anxiety, audiences have reacted with partisan fervor. "Black Panther" is already a phenomenon on social media, where eager fans are teasing their opening night outfits, ruminating on race and representation with the hashtag WhatBlackPantherMeansToMe and showing their support for the BlackPantherChallenge (a spontaneous campaign to buy tickets and popcorn for children). The film recently broke the advance ticket sales record for any movie released in the first quarter, according to the online vendor Fandango, surpassing "The Hunger Games" and the 2017 live action remake of "Beauty and the Beast." The morning after a red carpet premiere in Hollywood last month that left Twitter swooning, the stars, director and producer of the film gathered for a spirited conversation about their role in challenging standard depictions of the African diaspora on screen. Taking part in the discussion were Mr. Coogler; Chadwick Boseman, who plays T'Challa, a.k.a. Black Panther, king of the fictional African nation of Wakanda; Lupita Nyong'o (Nakia, a Wakandan spy and T'Challa's love interest); Michael B. Jordan (Erik Killmonger, an African American adversary of Black Panther's); Danai Gurira (Okoye, Wakanda's greatest warrior); and Kevin Feige, a producer of "Black Panther" and president of Marvel Studios. These are edited excerpts from the conversation. I read a funny tweet the other day that said this movie is basically reparations. CHADWICK BOSEMAN I still want my reparations! I still want my reparations! It's silly, but is there a kernel of truth there for any of you? The idea that Disney and Marvel investing so much in a movie with a black cast and crew can count as something like restitution? DANAI GURIRA What it does in such a beautiful way, to me, is it sets a precedent. We've read a lot of subtitles for German and Russian we can read subtitles for African languages now. People can't go back and say, "No, that's going to be too hard, it's Africa." They can't do that. And that is so thrilling to me. MICHAEL B. JORDAN It couldn't have been done on a bigger level. If Marvel is behind it, then it's gotta be O.K. Moving forward, everybody's going to start to have the courage to tell bold stories that people didn't think were lucrative, didn't think that anybody wanted to see. All of that, I feel, is getting ready to dissolve. COOGLER What I'll say is, this is my second time working in the studio system, and they say it's the studio system, but it's really the people system. It's who's running the studio? How are they running it? When you look at Disney with Tendo Nagenda, executive vice president for production at Walt Disney Studios, and Nate Moore, a producer at Marvel Studios and an executive producer of "Black Panther" , it's a place that's interested in representation, not just for the sake of representation, but representation because that's what works, that's what's going to make quality stuff that the world is going to embrace, that's what leads to success. KEVIN FEIGE I certainly hope so. One thing I would always remind Ryan of when we would talk about humor and entertainment value in the film was that the biggest statement this movie can make is to be a success around the globe. And I think he's delivered a movie that's going to do that, and that disproves beliefs that had maybe never been true but had never been tested. For the actors, what did joining this film mean to you and how did it feel different from other movies you've done? BOSEMAN I've done other films that have had historic significance because of what has happened in the past, but this not only refers to the past, it sets the stage for where we're going. GURIRA I've had a passion for telling African stories for a really long time, being American born and Zimbabwe raised. That biculturalism is something that I try to address in my work as a playwright her 2016 drama "Eclipsed" was nominated for a Tony for best play , but nothing can address it like a Marvel movie. I had a childlike glee after my meeting with Ryan I kind of floated around, found my car somehow. You think you're alone in the struggle until you meet someone and then you think, "Oh wow, we're all in it together? And y'all are doing this already? And I just have to be in it?" It was just so beautiful. BOSEMAN A lot of times, being a black man in Hollywood, when you get material you'll read it and you'll be like, "That's not us." When I got the initial call from Kevin Feige, my hope was that they would have the courage to give Black Panther its true essence and put somebody behind it that would have my same passion for what it could be. And they did that. On set, did you have that feeling of "This is important" or did you just try to do good work like normal? COOGLER I learned a skill from playing football. I was a wide receiver they throw you the ball, you can't drop it. So I learned that you gotta tune everything else out. If I get to set and there's a hundred black people on the side of a waterfall and Lupita is dressed in this adornment and Danai is dressed in this adornment and they're like, "Hey Ryan, do I stand here or here?" I can't think, "Ah, this is amazing, I'm making 'Black Panther' and there's all these black folks on screen!" I really gotta tell Danai that she needs to move over here, and I gotta tell her five reasons why she's gotta move over here, because she's gonna wanna know 'em! Laughter In that moment, I was like, "This is big." I had never been on a set with so many black people before and we were all so focused and I could feel a vibration in the air. We all felt so privileged to have an opportunity to be a part of this moment in history. Michael, one of the interesting complexities of the film comes from Killmonger's identity as an African American, which contrasts against T'Challa's African ness. What did you want to bring to the character? JORDAN Ryan and I started getting into the back story of where he came from and how his upbringing really affected his personality, his outlook, his rage, his agenda. We felt like we could show where Erik is coming from and make people feel why he is so angry, why he is so lost. He doesn't know who he is, but he knows the answers are out there. In the movie, Wakanda disguises vast technological resources from the world, and white people who aren't in the know refer to it dismissively as a primitive backwater. That's a very real view that a lot of people hold about Africa, as recent comments attributed to the president made clear. What do you hope will be the effect of introducing audiences to this counternarrative about the continent? COOGLER The narrative about the continent that we know is actually a fairly recent narrative, if you think about human history. It's a narrative that was born out of what happened when the countries of Africa were conquered. But the truth is that some of those places that people might refer to as backwaters and these recent comments definitely aren't the first time somebody has said something like that were the cradle of civilization. They were the first places to do anything that we would consider to be civilized. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
There could be a bomb in your house, and you put it there. In recent years, we have brought home a slew of new battery powered devices, including smartphones, laptops, tablets, electronic cigarettes, electric cars, drones, hand held vacuums and toys. But while we celebrate how these devices have improved our lives, we haven't realized that many are also capable of exploding because of battery malfunctions. At first, it was just the odd gadget erupting into flames, an anomaly of a single battery that may have been defective. But as of late, such malfunctions seem to be happening every week or so. Just scan the headlines from the last month. There was the man in Owensboro, Ky., who was at a gas station convenience store when an e cigarette battery exploded in his pocket, causing severe burns along his right thigh. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
If you're considering a getaway to Mexico, plan your trip before May to get the most for your money, according to Zachary Rabinor, founder and chief executive of Journey Mexico. "Mexico is coming off its peak tourist season, and hotels, tour operators and restaurants lower prices to bring in more business," Mr. Rabinor said. Besides value, he said that travelers can expect still tolerable temperatures before the heat of summer sets in. So whether you're interested in a sun and sand vacation, a culture heavy trip or one that includes gastronomy, a spring trip to Mexico is possible without breaking the bank. Ancient Ruins and Waterfalls on the Mayan Trail Mayan Trail from G Adventures is an 11 day trip that begins in Playa del Carmen and ends with a few days in Guatemala. Travelers get guided tours of the ancient Mayan civilization Chichen Itza, Merida, the capital of the Yucatan State, and San Cristobal de Las Casas, known for its colonial architecture. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
AFTER five years of being unemployed or underemployed, Rosanna Horton, 55, is back where she wants to be: working full time. In July 2007, Ms. Horton left her job at the University of California, Irvine, and moved north to San Francisco to take care of her mother and finish her dissertation. She sold her condominium, intending to live off the proceeds. She figured she would have no problem going back to work in a better position. A year and a half later, she had completed her dissertation and received her doctoral degree in education. But the job market was a disaster. Even with her new doctorate in hand, she found nothing suitable, setting in motion an unexpected downward spiral. At times, Ms. Horton, said she was "sofa surfing," or sleeping on a relative's or friend's couch. "It put you in a position of thinking, 'I should not have left my job,'" she said. "I am the kind of person who thinks things happen and you take responsibility and you move on." Ms. Horton barely scraped by, she said, making it through a long period without much income only with the help of a "very small circle" of family and friends. She worked in unpaid fellowships, temporary and contract positions before finally turning, in September 2013, to the San Francisco Jewish Vocational Service, an organization that helps people build skills and find jobs. The recession was over, but it was still a challenge to find a decent job in a rapidly transforming economy. In what she calls her "aha!" moment, Ms. Horton decided to take her degrees off her resume all of them so as not to be perceived as overqualified, and to get her "foot in the door." At the beginning of 2014, she was hired as manager of radiology and biomedical imaging at the University of California, San Francisco, where she has been working ever since. She is making more money now than she was when she left her job in 2007. "What better way to end your career than doing something you care about and can affect others in a positive way?" she said. Her goal now? "I'm working till I'm 70." Long term unemployment "is a challenging and often hidden problem," said Abby Snay, executive director of the San Francisco Jewish Vocational Service, which is part of a larger network, the International Association of Jewish Vocational Services. In the economic downturn that began in late 2007 and persisted through the middle of 2009, millions of people in their 50s and 60s were laid off, bought out, downsized or otherwise left without a steady paycheck. The Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, in a report titled, "How Will Older Workers Who Lose Their Jobs During the Great Recession Fare in the Long Run?" found that the recession hit many more workers over 50 compared with previous downturns. By 2012, many of these people were still out of work, said Matthew S. Rutledge, a labor economist at the Center for Retirement Research and a co author of the paper. "It was really difficult for them to get back in," he said. "It didn't matter if they had retired or were laid off." Locast, a nonprofit streaming service for local TV, is shutting down Capital One's chief executive was fined after being called a 'repeat offender.' The stock market decline and the collapse of the housing market also took a huge toll on the financial resources of older Americans. For those without jobs, that put even more pressure on them to return to the work force and impelled many to keep working well past their original target for retirement. One result is that the work force is growing older. According to Andrew G. Biggs, an American Enterprise Institute resident scholar and a former top official at the Social Security Administration, there are 3.9 million more workers ages 60 to 64 today than in 2005, the last full year before the beginning of the economic slowdown. By comparison, he noted in an op ed in The Wall Street Journal, there are fewer Americans ages 20 to 55 working today than in 2005. For older Americans, paths to returning to full time work vary. Some go into consulting, others seek specialized knowledge and new contacts by working as a volunteer. Still others resume their education through courses online or at a for profit or community college, while some enroll in professional association courses. Many decide to start a business. The biggest challenge for those seeking a new job after an extended period of unemployment is updating their skills for the current workplace. "If you have been laid off or retired for a couple of years, skill sets may have moved on quite rapidly without you," said Mark Schmit, executive director of the SHRM Foundation, a research affiliate of the Society for Human Resource Management. "This puts you at a disadvantage to the people who are working, including peers who are the same age." Rich Feller is a professor of counseling and career development at Colorado State University, past president of the National Career Development Association and a thought leader with AARP Life Reimagined. Dr. Feller said a key credential for returning to the work force is the ability to "document your technology skills." If you can, he said, employers will "overlook your age." He suggests community college or online courses as a way to master new skills. The popular belief that younger workers are more productive than older workers is "largely a myth," Mr. Schmit said. "The only evidence we have of that is in physical labor. It's absolutely true that older people can learn and are motivated to learn just as younger people are." Rick Dottermusch, 58, began taking courses at Montgomery College, at first as a "diversion" until he found his next job. Five months ago, he began working in web development at a technology company in the Washington area, moving out of sales, his job for 30 years. "The students whether high school graduates or those with a master's are looking for current skills and they're willing to spend their time taking courses if they are courses aligned with the market, with what employers need," said Steve Greenfield, dean of work force development and continuing education at Montgomery College, a community college outside Washington. "We do labor market research before we even run a class." But just getting the training is not enough. "Networking is an important part" of a job search, Mr. Dottermusch said. "If you know someone who can provide an entree, anyone who can tell you more about the company, if nothing else pick their brain what is the best way to approach that company?" And those seeking a change in the type of work they do must be prepared to lower their expectations, at least initially. "If you have retrained for a new career and learned a new skill, expect to start at a lower level, lower pay grade," Mr. Schmit said. For Dave Gustafson, 61, moving from working as an employee for 30 years to working as a real estate broker on a commission only basis has been taxing. "It takes a certain amount of courage," he said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Your Money |
While the rest of the nation waits to learn if it will ever get to read the final report of the special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, and debates whether a recent letter written by Attorney General William P. Barr provided an adequate overview of the two year investigation and its results, "Saturday Night Live" is here to tell you what it all means. In its opening sketch this weekend, Robert De Niro returned to "S.N.L." in his recurring role as Mueller, composing his report, which, section by section, was then summarized by Barr (Aidy Bryant), which in turn was distilled into a tweet posted by President Trump. Each performer offered an introduction at the start of the sketch. De Niro said, "Dear Attorney General Barr, officials from the Justice Department and esteemed members of Congress." Bryant said, "Hey, guys, William Barr here. You might want to sit down for this one." And Baldwin said, "Guess what? Guess what? Guess what? Daddy is about to freak." The sketch continued in this round robin fashion, setting up exchanges like these: Bryant: "I am writing almost four pages." Baldwin: "I am reading zero pages, but Sean Hannity has read it and he was so excited that he texted me an eggplant." De Niro: "On the charge of obstruction of justice, we have not drawn a definitive conclusion." Bryant: "But I have, and my conclusion is: Trump's clean as a whistle." Baldwin: "Free at last, free at last." De Niro: "As for conspiracy or collusion, there were several questionable incidences involving the president's team, but we cannot prove a criminal connection." De Niro: However, we have indicted 34 individuals in connection with this probe" Bryant: "Most of them, very good people." Baldwin: "The pardons are already in the mail." De Niro: "In conclusion it is my hope that this report will be made public, with a few redactions." Baldwin: "We're going to black out everything except the words 'no' and 'collusion.'" "S.N.L." returned to the subject of the Mueller report in another sketch later in the evening, this time from the perspective of the Russian president Vladimir Putin (Beck Bennett) as he sheepishly acknowledges to his underlings at the Kremlin that Trump is not one of his agents. Pleading his case to the North Korean leader Kim Jong un (Bowen Yang, an "S.N.L." staff writer) and an interpreter (played by guest host Sandra Oh), Bennett said, "We don't know everything in the report yet. Plus, Mueller handed off a lot of stuff to the Southern District of New York. That's where the real action is." Interpreting for Yang, Oh replied to him, "Glorious Leader says you sound like Rachel Maddow right now." At the "Weekend Update" desk, the anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che continued to riff on the fallout from Barr's letter. Well, this week made me feel insane. All the people I was told were bad guys all got away with it. Donald Trump, Jussie Smollett and worst of all, Duke. The big story, of course, was that white O.J. was not indicted for collusion. And that Robert Mueller did not reach a conclusion about whether Trump obstructed justice. Or, as it was reported on Fox News, plays a montage of smiling Fox News personalities, set to Kool the Gang's "Celebration" . I haven't seen Fox News anchors smile like that since I.C.E. agents pulled into a Home Depot parking lot. So, Trump found out that he's not getting indicted in the Russia investigation, and I'm sure that he was grateful that it's all over, and he's completely ready to move on. Plays video of Trump saying, "All of the Democrat politicians, they have to be held accountable." Wow. It's like if Scrooge woke up on Christmas morning, discovered he had a second chance at life, then found Tiny Tim and took a crowbar to his good leg. Man, I can't believe I actually thought for a second that the F.B.I. was going to lock up the sitting President of the United States, simply because he's guilty. I think it's 'cause I'm around white people all the time. And white people have this thing I call toxic optimism. It's the kind of optimism that makes you believe you can get into college because your mother's Aunt Becky. I'm sure Aunt Viv's kids don't have that much optimism. Black people just aren't that optimistic. I said the phrase "checks and balances" to a black lady and she rolled her eyes at me for so long, I thought she fell asleep. Cecily Strong returned to the "Weekend Update" desk as the Fox News host Jeanine Pirro, celebrating her return to television after she was rebuked by her own network and temporarily taken off the air after she questioned the loyalty of a Muslim lawmaker. As Strong said, "This Mueller report completely exonerated the president and therefore everybody on the Trump Train. So somebody at Fox News said my name into a bathroom mirror three times and here I am." She went on to thank her "superfans," describing them as "mean, horny men laying in hospital beds and white prison gangs who control the remote on Saturday." When Jost told her she didn't have to shout, Strong replied, "Mama's got one volume and it's three Chardonnays deep at a crowded party." It seemed inevitable that this week's "S.N.L." would have a sendup of "Us," the hit horror movie written and directed by Jordan Peele. But it did so in a surprisingly clever fashion: This filmed commercial seemed to be a parody of a Discover credit card campaign, with a woman (Ego Nwodim) informing her spouse (Kenan Thompson) that some weird charges have recently turned up on their bill and she's calling the company. "With Discover Card, you get to talk to a real person who's just like you," she says cheerfully. But the operator she reaches is her doppelganger (also played by Nwodim) an estimable recreation of the evil duplicate played by Lupita Nyong'o in "Us." Nwodim tells the operator that someone used her credit card to buy a bunch of red jumpsuits, motorcycle gloves, hundreds of rabbits and giant scissors. In a halting voice, the evil doppelganger replies, "When you go on vacation ... I sit in ... a cave." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
When he was 13, Leo Mandella began posting photos of his street wear outfits to his Instagram account, gullyguyleo, and with his sophisticated color sense, confident poses and baby face, he was a quick hit. His hundreds of posts earned him a follower count comfortably in the six figures, but still he craved more. "I want to show that I'm more than a kid who wears outfits," Mr. Mandella, now 15, said in a recent interview. "I've always known if this blows up, I can create a brand on the back of it." Making clothing of his own would be a natural extension of his brand Mr. Mandella eventually released a few items under the Gully brand name but he wanted to make a loud, unexpected splash. His idea: a coloring book, with 25 line illustrations of him wearing high end street wear, accompanied by a pack of Gully crayons. Released late last year, it sold several hundred copies. "We wanted to make it exclusive, for the people who were actually passionate about buying," Mr. Mandella said. Consider it the modern day equivalent of the private press LP or the small batch zine, amplified for social media and very late capitalism. Buying merch T shirts, key chains, mugs, etc. to support a band, or a favorite actress, has been a common expression of fandom for decades. And in recent years, merch has begun to infiltrate fashion on two fronts. Companies like Bravado, the merchandising arm of the Universal Music Group, have propelled traditional musician merch into the hypebeast cycle. And brands including Vetements and Balenciaga have absorbed merch aesthetics into meta referential clothing. Now, though, small batch merch a couple dozen to a couple thousand items can be made available for almost anyone, from emergent social media or reality TV demicelebrities to casual dadaists who toy with the dissemination of ideas in the modern marketplace. In an era when personal branding is presumed, no following is too small to monetize. Want to show support for Sean Bryan, a.k.a. the Papal Ninja, an American Ninja Warrior contestant and lay minister? There's a shirt (and laptop case) for that. Enthralled by the 1980s sunglasses worn by the rubber legged teen social media star Roy Purdy in his absurdist dance videos? For a while, he sold them, too. Obsessed with Gordie, the French bulldog owned by Alex Tumay, who engineers Young Thug's records? Buy a shirt. "I'd never pitched myself as a product to people," Mr. Tumay said. "It was kind of a sellout angle I was worried about." But he's sold around 50, and the money he took in paid for flights for him and his partners to go to the South by Southwest Music Festival in Austin last month. Peloton, the home indoor cycling business, has a stable of a dozen instructors, and sells merch inspired by each. Jill Foley, Peloton's director of boutique apparel, said the company has sold hundreds of T shirts and tank tops with instructor catchphrases like "It's Not That Deep" (Cody Rigsby) and "Sweat Sing Repeat" (Jenn Sherman). "We're getting messages to people in this micro way," Ms. Foley said, emphasizing the intimacy of the relationship Peloton riders develop with their chosen instructors. "We're in people's homes in their daily life." At times, the micromerch comes before the notoriety. On the most recent season of "The Bachelorette," Lucas Yancey spent most of his energy screaming "WHABOOOOOOM," rather than pursuing Rachel Lindsay. Conveniently, he was already selling shirts with the phrase on his website. Instead, she began selling her own tissue boxes (in truth, a printed sleeve with line drawings of Ms. Iaconetti's forlorn face sheathing a plain white tissue box) along with other merchandise. "Snooki was Snooki, and now she's kind of her own brand," she said. "Also, Kylie lip kits subconsciously encouraged me." (Indeed, the peak micromerch endgame is something like Kim Kardashian West's Kimoji, which sells pool floats, mouse pads and Post it notes shaped like her derriere, among other items.) These nascent micro personality businesses may never reach that level of name recognition or profitability, but they're something more than mere pet projects. "The easiest term is to call it a brand," Matthew Hwang of Pizzaslime said, but conceded that wasn't quite sufficient. "We almost need to come up with new words." Pizzaslime is a creative agency specializing in creating viral moments, and also a rapid response merchandise business specializing in capitalizing on them. Early last year, a sharp tongued teenager, Danielle Bregoli, went viral following a hilarious moment on "Dr. Phil" where she threatened judgmental audience members to "cashmeoussidehowbowdah" (say it slow). Within two weeks, Pizzaslime had made a slew of merch for her featuring the catchphrase, including a 250 blanket featuring her face all sold out. "When anyone is smart enough to build a following on social media, strategic in the ways they build their content, they can utilize those same sort of strategies for merchandise," Mr. Hwang said. Which raises the question of what the smallest following a person can have while still being able to sell merchandise can be. "I've worked with people who have 10 million Instagram followers and they've done less than someone with 20,000," said Chase Ortega, who owns the Hyv (pronounced "hive"), a merchandise company that primarily handles emerging musicians, but which has employed the same infrastructure to service merch for several nontraditional clients, including the feminist artists Grace Miceli and Molly Soda, the social media star Too Poor (an ex girlfriend of Lil Peep and something of a modern day Nancy Spungen), and the surrealist comic artist Zack Fox. "I think of it as a new record label. I'm not trying to be Bravado," Mr. Ortega said. "I want to be the Matador. I want a cool roster." That frees him up him to sell, with Mr. Fox, a couple of hundred water bottles emblazoned with a reclaimed bigoted phrase (that can't be published here) derived from a Twitter meme. For Mr. Fox, merch isn't strictly about celebrity. "I've always leaned more into making things artistically valid to me," he said. In buying the water bottle, he explained, "You're buying a piece of performance; you're not really trying to rep Zack Fox." That tension between the intentions of the purchaser and creator also intrigues Ayesha Siddiqi, a creative consultant specializing in trend forecasting with a robust Twitter following who, in partnership with the artist and musician Saba Moeel, recently collaborated on the design of a collection of shirts and hoodies. Some are drawn directly from Ms. Siddiqi's tweets, like the hoodie that reads Spider Labor Solidarity. "It means what it says that my solidarity is with the workers, especially those who work quietly and alone and for the benefit of all those around them," Ms. Siddiqi wrote in an email. But even though they weren't intended as personal merch, some people have been buying them, she said, "because they were fans of ours to begin with and liked the opportunity to support something we'd made." In some cases, micromerch may be the pretense for providing an undersupported creative with some revenue, a cousin of Patreon subscriptions or Twitch micropayments. For Mr. Fox, selling merchandise has provided an alternate revenue stream, and one with ideological punch. "The idea is a seed, and it's always going to upstream to someone making money off it," he said. "Me selling this stuff is a way to, in one moment, protect the idea and also give myself what's due." It can also be a way to extend a moment that might otherwise be fleeting, give it physical form so that it might travel far beyond where it began. And it can lead to bigger things. Recently, Mr. Mandella was tapped by a Converse to help relaunch the One Star sneaker. On his Instagram, he posted a photo of himself inside a bus covered in a 15 foot tall photo of him. Who's micro now? | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
All year long as Earth revolves around the sun, it passes through streams of cosmic debris. The resulting meteor showers can light up night skies from dusk to dawn, and if you're lucky you might be able to catch a glimpse. The next shower you might be able to see is the Southern Delta Aquariids, also known as the Delta Aquarids. Active between July 12 and Aug. 13, the show peaks around Monday night into Tuesday morning, or July 29 30. The Southern Delta Aquariids come from Comet 96P Machholz, which passes by the sun every five years. Its meteors, which number between 10 and 20 per hour, are most visible predawn, between 2 a.m. and 3 a.m. It tends to be more visible from the Southern Hemisphere. Sign up to get reminders for space and astronomy events on your calendar. Where meteor showers come from If you spot a meteor shower, what you're usually seeing is an icy comet's leftovers that crash into Earth's atmosphere. Comets are sort of like dirty snowballs: As they travel through the solar system, they leave behind a dusty trail of rocks and ice that lingers in space long after they leave. When Earth passes through these cascades of comet waste, the bits of debris which can be as small as grains of sand pierce the sky at such speeds that they burst, creating a celestial fireworks display. A general rule of thumb with meteor showers: You are never watching the Earth cross into remnants from a comet's most recent orbit. Instead, the burning bits come from the previous passes. For example, during the Perseid meteor shower you are seeing meteors ejected from when its parent comet, Comet Swift Tuttle, visited in 1862 or earlier, not from its most recent pass in 1992. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
When the California Labor Commissioner's Office ruled last month that an Uber driver was an employee deserving of a variety of workplace protections and was not, as the company maintained, an independent contractor it highlighted the divided feelings many Americans have about what is increasingly being called the "gig economy." On one hand, start ups like Uber, which is appealing the decision, and Lyft make it possible to conjure up rides on a smartphone in a few seconds' time. On the other, Uber which directly employs fewer than 4,000 of the more than 160,000 people in the United States who depend on it for at least part of their livelihood and similar companies pose a challenge to longstanding notions of what it means to hold a job. As it happens, though, Uber is not so much a labor market innovation as the culmination of a generation long trend. Even before the founding of the company in 2009, the United States economy was rapidly becoming an Uber economy writ large, with tens of millions of Americans involved in some form of freelancing, contracting, temping or outsourcing. The decades long shift to these more flexible workplace arrangements, the venture capitalist Nick Hanauer and the labor leader David Rolf argue in the latest issue of Democracy Journal, is a "transformation that promises new efficiencies and greater flexibility for 'employers' and 'employees' alike, but which threatens to undermine the very foundation upon which middle class America was built." Along with other changes, like declining unionization and advancing globalization, the increasingly arm's length nature of employment helps explain why incomes have stagnated and why most Americans remain deeply anxious about their economic prospects six years after the Great Recession ended. Last year, 23 percent of Americans told Gallup they worried that their working hours would be cut back, up from percentages in the low to midteens in the years leading up to the recession. Twenty four percent said they worried that their wages would be reduced, up from the mid to high teens before the recession. Even if the economy continues to improve, the lingering malaise will almost certainly be the central issue in next year's presidential election. But the tidal wave sweeping through the American economy has already reshaped the political landscape from the rise of an anti Wall Street movement on the left to the Tea Party on the right and is sowing frustration among a large mass of voters. "Whether America will be America or not hinges on whether we have a downward spiral around wages," said Neera Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress, a think tank closely aligned with Mrs. Clinton. "People know things are changing. They don't feel like anyone has a handle on it. There's a yearning for a political vision that addresses that." In retrospect, the Uberization of the economy began innocently enough back in the late 1970s. David Weil, who runs the Wage and Hour Division of the United States Labor Department, describes in his recent book, "The Fissured Workplace," how investors and management gurus began insisting that companies pare down and focus on what came to be known as their "core competencies," like developing new goods and services and marketing them. Far flung business units were sold off. Many other activities beginning with human resources and then spreading to customer service and information technology could be outsourced. The corporate headquarters would coordinate among the outsourced workers and monitor their performance. Cost was unquestionably an advantage of the new approach: Workers were typically cheaper when off the corporate payroll than on it, and the arrangement allowed a company to staff up as needed rather than employ a full complement of workers at all times. But simply cutting costs wasn't the primary motivation. The real advantage was to enable the organization to focus on what it did best rather than distract itself with tasks for which it had little expertise and which were not especially profitable. "In the past, firms overstaffed and offered workers stable hours," said Susan N. Houseman, a labor economist at the W. E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research. "All of these new staffing models mean shifting risk onto workers, making work less secure." 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. The hospitality industry has led the transformation. In the 1960s, according to data cited by Dr. Weil, only a small fraction of United States motels were franchised, meaning they weren't owned and typically weren't managed by the chains that branded and marketed them. As of 1986, the franchised figure was 68 percent worldwide for the top hotel chains, like Hilton and Marriott. By 2006, it was 78 percent. The hotels are frequently owned by outside investors and run by separate management companies, which, in turn, contract out a variety of other functions, like housekeeping, maintenance and janitorial services. Industrywide, wages have fallen since 2000, and labor law violations are rampant. Though the broader phenomenon of shifting work to nonemployees is difficult to quantify, data on contingent workers suggests rapid growth in the last decade. The number for the category of jobs mostly performed by part time freelancers or part time independent contractors, according to Economic Modeling Specialists Intl., a labor market analytics firm, grew to 32 million from just over 20 million between 2001 and 2014, rising to almost 18 percent of all jobs. Surveys, including one by the advisory firm Staffing Industry Analysts of nearly 200 large companies, point to similar changes. Apple is a vivid example of the trend toward relying on outsiders, directly employing fewer than 10 percent of the more than one million workers around the world who are involved in designing, making and selling all those iMacs and iPhones. The leaner, more flexible workplace is unquestionably a boon to many workers. A company called HourlyNerd, based in Boston, connects alumni of top business schools and other specialized programs to companies with projects in need of completing, like market analysis or examinations of pricing strategy. The most sought after experts enjoy a steady stream of work, earn well into six figures and can winter in Buenos Aires if they choose. "I had an offer from another consulting firm, but I wanted more flexibility with my life," said Carlos Castelan, who started taking on HourlyNerd projects while still at Harvard Business School and now plans to build his career around the platform. "I can work from home, have more control of my schedule." It is not just people with advanced degrees who can benefit. Corey Becker spent a few years working as an independent contractor for a company called Cascom, which in turn contracted with Time Warner Cable to install cable, Internet and phone service. Mr. Becker was paid by the task, not by the hour. He was hard working and efficient, and had no family obligations. He recalled that he made 1,000 to 1,500 in a typical 60 hour week, before taxes and expenses on tools, gas and vehicle upkeep, which he shouldered himself. "I thought it was a great deal," Mr. Becker said. But many of his colleagues did not fare so well. "Some of the techs were slow, not as good at it," he said. "Or the home was a mess and you had to fix it you're working longer for the same result, same payout." Mr. Becker estimated that in some cases, these technicians' hourly pay would fall below minimum wage. In 2009, the Labor Department sued Cascom for misclassifying workers as independent contractors; a judge ruled against the company in 2011 and later awarded some 250 installers nearly 1.5 million in back wages and damages. Such arrangements can send even highly skilled workers into a precarious state. Unlike many of their colleagues in the fast growing legal outsourcing and temping market, lawyers who work for Axiom, one of the industry's leading players, receive health insurance, paid time off, 401(k)'s and money comparable to what they would make at a traditional firm or corporation. Yet many live with the uncertainty of not knowing how long they will go between assignments, during which time they earn no income from the company. "When I'm done with this job, it could be a month, two months" before another one, said a lawyer who worked for Axiom until 2013 and requested anonymity to avoid drawing attention to her current employer. "It was a stress point for me. My family depends on me." (An Axiom official said the company worked hard to minimize unwanted downtime, which he said had fallen significantly in the last few years.) Contingent workers still represent a limited corner of the nation's approximately 17.5 trillion economy. But even many full time employees share an underlying anxiety that is a result, according to the sociologist Arne L. Kalleberg, author of "Good Jobs, Bad Jobs," of the severing of the "psychological contract between employers and employees in which stability and security were exchanged for loyalty and hard work." All of which helps explain a discouraging trend in incomes. According to a study by the economists Michael Greenstone and Adam Looney, most men were earning substantially less in 2009 than men of similar ages and education did in 1969, adjusted for inflation. Sara Horowitz, founder and executive director of the Freelancers Union, an advocacy organization, puts the scale of the dislocation on a par with that caused by the spread of railroads before and after the Civil War and the boom in the mass production of goods during the early 20th century. "The economic argument is that those who have power in the labor market do better, and traditionally it's been higher skilled workers," Ms. Horowitz said. "Today, it's unclear who has the skills necessary to remain relevant amid all the disruptions." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Economy |
LONDON An artwork by Khadija Saye, a 24 year old British artist who died in the Grenfell Tower fire here last Wednesday, will be hanging in the memorial space of Tate Britain. "Sothiou" (2017) is a silk screen print of one of Ms. Saye's photographs in the series "Dwellings: in this space we breathe," currently showing in the Diaspora Pavilion of the Venice Biennale. Andrew Wilson, a Tate senior curator in modern and contemporary British art, said in an email that the display, which began on Tuesday in the small memorial gallery, "celebrates the leap that Khadija made with this work and might also stand in some way as a means to remember her and her neighbors in the community in Grenfell Tower who were tragically killed." Ms. Saye, who was born and grew up in Britain, was a photographic artist whose subject was often her Gambian heritage. "Her work was all portrait based, and most of it is highly personal, which is pretty brave for someone of that age," said David A. Bailey, the co curator of the Diaspora Pavilion, which is showing pieces by 12 British based emerging artists, as well as their mentors, through Nov. 26. The Diaspora program was founded two years ago by Mr. Bailey and the portrait artist Nicola Green to help racially and culturally diverse emerging artists and curators. Ms. Green, who met Ms. Saye three years ago while on a selection committee for an exhibition, said she was immediately drawn to her photographs and to the artist. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
The Jets and Giants Are Both 0 5. Can It Get Worse? These are dark days for New York football. Though both the Jets and the Giants have had their share of bad seasons, this is the first in which both teams have started with an 0 5 record. Just how bad are these teams? And is there any hope for aggrieved New York football fans in the weeks ahead? Has New York City ever started 0 10 before? The Giants have staggered to an 0 5 start on five previous occasions, most recently in 2017 on the way to a 3 13 season. That debacle was particularly distressing since it followed an 11 5 regular season and a playoff appearance in 2016. This season is actually the third 0 5 start in a decade for the Giants, who also started 0 6 in 2013. They also failed to win in the first five games in 1987 (two losses by the real team, then three by a particularly poor group of strike breaking players), 1979 and 1976. Although the Jets did not start 0 5 that year, 1976 was probably the nadir for New York professional football ... at least so far. Both local teams finished with 3 11 records. The Giants began the season 0 9, the worst start for a New York team ... again, so far. The Jets came perhaps as close as a team can to a winless season while still winning. The only teams they beat were the 0 14 Buccaneers and the 2 12 Bills (twice). This season is only the third 0 5 start in Jets history. The most recent came in 1996, a season in which they lost the first eight games, then finished 1 15. The much reviled Coach Rich Kotite left after the season with a two year record of 4 28. Their other 0 5 start came in 1980, after Jimmy Snyder, the oddsmaker better known as Jimmy the Greek, had inexplicably selected them to go to the Super Bowl. And then came 2020, when the two MetLife Stadium tenants' 0 5 starts have for the first time coincided in a grim syzygy. A bigger building block is the point. The New York teams don't have many of those either. The Giants and Jets rank 31st and 32nd in points scored. On the defensive side, the Jets rank tied at 30th for points allowed, while the Giants are at least mediocre, ranking 20th. 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. Ultimately, N.F.L. teams win by passing the ball efficiently. The Giants and Jets rank 28th and 31st in net pass yards per attempt. And while the teams' receivers and their game plans must take some blame, the bulk of it is always going to fall on the quarterback. Of the 28 quarterbacks with at least four starts this season, the Giants' Daniel Jones ranks 26th in adjusted yards per pass while the Jets' Sam Darnold ranks 27th. Only Carson Wentz of the Philadelphia Eagles is lower. The running game doesn't usually help a team that's losing, and the Jets threw up a white flag this week by releasing running back Le'Veon Bell after they couldn't find any team willing to trade for him. What are the coaches and players saying? Adam Gase does not like Mondays. After Sunday losses, the Jets' head coach has had several tough conversations with players regarding personnel changes, injury accommodations and scathing tape reviews to figure out how to change the outcome the following weekend. Injuries, including Darnold's belabored absence, have forced the team to adjust in reaction to who's available, and recently that's been nearly game day decision making. The exception: This week, Gase released running back Le'Veon Bell Tuesday night, shocking some in the locker room. "I had no idea it had even happened, I had people calling me and telling me about it," said wide receiver Breshad Perriman, who is hoping to play in the Jets' next game. "It was surprising to all of us," tight end Chris Herndon said. "We're all wishing him the best for wherever he lands next." Gase, by contrast, was placid in the face of yet another roster move, one that he'd had control over. "We're going to try to figure out what's best for us going forward, who we want to use in the backfield and at wide receiver and all those things," he said Wednesday. With slightly more roster consistency than the Jets, Giants Coach Joe Judge said he was focusing on individual conversations with each of his players to bolster the team. "We're very blunt, open and honest," he said. "I'm going to tell you the truth every day." Giants coaches said quarterback Daniel Jones has been particularly hard on himself because of the team's start and that practices emphasize working on the passing, running and kicking games. So, most things. "It's just doing your job and executing at a high level, play in and play out," Jones said Wednesday. "You don't know which play is going to ultimately decide the game." The Giants have some results that are at least creditable. A 4 point loss at the 4 1 Bears in Week 2. An 8 point loss at the 4 1 Rams in Week 5. You might give the Jets a nod for losing their season opener to the surprising Bills by only 10. But since then it's been ugly, capped by a home loss to the otherwise winless Denver Broncos and a 20 point shellacking, again at home, at the hands of the Arizona Cardinals. The number crunchers who rate teams agree that the Giants are bad and the Jets are abysmal. The Sagarin, SRS, Inpredictable and Massey ranking systems use various methods to rate each team's overall ability. They all rank the Giants either 30th or 31st in the league. They all have the Jets dead last. The Jets' best chance at a win may be their home game against the Dolphins on Nov. 29, and a few other home games may be winnable. But they could find themselves as huge underdogs in most of their remaining road games: perhaps two touchdowns to the Chargers, Seahawks, Patriots and Rams, and maybe even three touchdowns in a potentially ugly game on Nov. 1 at the Chiefs. Feeling a bit more optimistic? Of the 158 teams that have started the season 0 5, dating to the 1922 Columbus Panhandles, five managed to claw back to a .500 record, most recently the 2009 Tennessee Titans. And an 0 5 A.F.L. team, the 1962 Buffalo Bills, somehow finished 7 6 1. But no 0 5 team has made the playoffs. Yes, the playoffs have been expanded to 14 teams this year. No, that won't help. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
The Chinese giant salamander, the world's largest amphibian and a critically endangered species, has quietly slipped toward extinction in nature. Following an exhaustive, yearslong search, researchers recently reported that they were unable to find any wild born individuals. "When we started the survey, we were sure we'd at least find several salamanders," said Samuel Turvey, the lead author and a senior research fellow at the Zoological Society of London. "It's only now that we've finished that we realize the actual severity of the situation." Millions of giant salamanders live on farms scattered throughout China, where the animals are bred for their meat. But another study by Dr. Turvey and his colleagues shows that reintroducing farmed animals is not a simple solution for saving the species in the wild. In the wild, Chinese giant salamanders were not just one species but at least five, and perhaps as many as eight. On farms, they are being muddled into a single hybridized population adapted to no particular environment. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
Golfers have found that aiming putts at the raised hole liners being used on many courses is advantageous because a ball that barely skims the liner's edge can count as holed. The culture of golf is swathed in a code of honor, with players compelled to call penalties on themselves. Golf during a pandemic, however, has introduced quirks to test the game's noble protocols. New safety regulations, adopted by golf courses to adhere to coronavirus guidelines, have altered certain game fundamentals and left some golfers quibbling over artificially low scores which can in turn upend the hierarchy, and gambling outcomes, of a regular golfing foursome. Even the hole in one, golf's holy grail, is prompting disputes over what constitutes a holed tee shot. "There's definitely been a little change in attitudes," Howie Friday, the head golf professional at the Stanley Golf Course in New Britain, Conn., said with a chuckle last week. In April, Friday had grown accustomed to scores of golfers thanking him for the opportunity to play. "A month ago, it was nurses, doctors and golf pros and we couldn't do anything wrong," he said. "Not so much anymore back to normal." The principal source of consternation, a concern shared mostly by serious not casual golfers, is new health guidelines that have affected the golf hole itself. In an effort to reduce high touch surfaces from golfers reaching into holes to retrieve their balls or removing the flagstick, course operators have tried various solutions, including raising the white liner cup, which is normally inserted in the hole, to about two inches above the green surface. An approaching ball bounces off the cup liner instead of falling into the hole. The United States Golf Association, a national governing body, issued a temporary rule amendment in March that qualified such a situation as a holed shot with caveats (more on that later). Other golf courses have instead inserted into the hole a small piece of foam, similar to noodle shaped flotation devices used in swimming pools. It allows the ball to descend into the hole, but only slightly, so a player can easily retrieve it without touching anything else. Golfers, however, have universally found that aiming at the raised hole liner is easier than putting in normal conditions, in part because sometimes the ball barely skims its edge. The same shot, without the modification, would likely lip out or scoot past the hole. Golfers have also appeared to putt more confidently, knowing that an overly aggressive putt would just bang into the cup liner and still be counted as a holed shot. The pool noodle option has its complexities, too, since some well struck putts seem to descend into the hole only to rebound and keep going. Since many golfers like to wager a few dollars, or much more, on matches, deciding the outcome of a putt or several putts by four players across 18 holes can lead to squabbles with financial implications. Dominic Namnath, who routinely plays with a group of 12 golfers at the Santa Barbara Golf Club in California, said such arguments are settled with common sense. "If it hits the cup, it hits the cup. That's it," Namnath said. But Floyd Young, the longtime owner of the Bluffton Golf Club in Ohio, said golfers there have suspended their big money golf games for now. "I don't want to gamble a lot if someone doesn't have to worry about the break of a putt and can just ram it in there and then say, 'Well, I hit the hole,'" Young, a P.G.A. golf professional for 47 years, said. "That's a big advantage." Counting those putts as holed has unquestionably lowered the scores of thousands of golfers in the past few months, according to dozens of course operators and golfers interviewed last week. Lower scores might seem like a good thing, but in golf, there is always a consequence. When recent scores are recorded to calculate a golfer's handicap, the approximation of a golfer's average score over par, the handicap number will drop, which could give a false impression of the golfer's ability. But that can only happen if a golfer enters those recent, lower scores. This spring, many golfers, cognizant or disapproving of the changed hole conditions, are declining to enter their scores. Their handicaps have not dropped. Golfers are expected to record virtually every round played to keep competitions, or regular foursome matches, fair. Golfers who do not post good scores are called "sandbaggers," which sounds nicer than "cheater" but carries much the same connotation. Meanwhile, somewhat easier scoring conditions are viewed as an attraction to casual golfers, who make up most players and led to a significant surge in golf participation last month. Tom Bugbee, the chief operating officer of CourseCo, a golf management company with 38 golf facilities in six states, said his firm is weighing ways to continue using modified holes at various times even after coronavirus restrictions are lifted. Finally, there is the debate over holes in one, which are a powerful concept in a vexing game since they are moments of unsurpassable perfection. The argument about holes in one goes like this: A golfer hits a screaming line drive for a tee shot at a short par 3 hole and after the ball bounces once on the green, it slams into the side of a raised cup liner at high speed. Common sense might say such a shot would never have fallen into a traditional hole or remained there. Which is more or less what U.S.G.A. officials have tried to advise golfers who have regularly phoned its New Jersey headquarters with questions familiar to the times: Does that count as in or out? Did I make a hole in one? "It's not holed," Craig Winter, a senior director of rules and amateur status at the U.S.G.A., said when asked about the example of a shot rocketing into a raised hole liner. "I don't think any golfer would think that." Becky Dengler, a golf pro at the Ed Oliver Golf Club in Wilmington, Del., hit a tee shot that may have glanced off a raised hole liner recently while playing with three other women. The group paused for a moment to assess what they had seen. Was it a hole in one? | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
A striking scene in "Incident at Hidden Temple" coolly captures the allure of vintage film noir: A woman (Rosanne Ma) listens to a radio broadcast in a room bathed in chiaroscuro shadows, light seeping in through Venetian blinds. A frisson of mysterious danger hovers in the air. So much is suggested in a few seconds that the lighting designer, Pamela Kupper, should share authorship with the playwright, Damon Chua. Unfortunately, this second act opener is too brief and too late to save Mr. Chua's new play, directed by Kaipo Schwab for Pan Asian Repertory. In addition to mood, noir is famous for labyrinthine plots (please raise your hand if you have figured out "The Big Sleep"), but the one here is just muddled. As with his previous effort, "Film Chinois," Mr. Chua takes us to 1940s China. This time, he found inspiration in World War II footnotes, such as Ernest Hemingway's 1941 trip there and the actions of the Flying Tigers, American pilots who fought the Japanese alongside the Chinese Air Force. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
To conquer Aurora is proof that a dancer is on her way to becoming a ballerina. On Wednesday afternoon at the Metropolitan Opera House, Cassandra Trenary killed it. For this American Ballet Theater soloist, who made her New York debut in Alexei Ratmansky's production of "The Sleeping Beauty" opposite James Whiteside, the performance was too fresh to analyze. "I learned that I'm capable," Ms. Trenary, 22, said in an interview at the Metropolitan Opera House shortly after she had taken her final curtain call. "Even if it wasn't the most incredible thing anybody's seen, I was able to get through it, and I really did enjoy myself. For that, I'm happy." But Ms. Trenary's debut in this challenging part was a triumph; her spunk and delicacy came as no surprise to anyone who has watched her this season in other ballets by Mr. Ratmansky, including "The Golden Cockerel." A native of Lawrenceville, Ga., Ms. Trenary grew up studying not only ballet, but also jazz, modern dance and hip hop at her local dance studio. At 12, she began training at Ballet Theater's summer intensive program and from there attended the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School. In 2011, she became a member of Ballet Theater where, last summer, she was promoted to soloist. The first thing the vivacious Ms. Trenary, who is married to Gray Davis, a fellow company member, did in the press room at the Met was to remove her sandals. She had that post performance glow, and rightly so, as she chatted about the photographer shooting the performance for The New York Times, who had kept her company in her dressing room. To her shock and delight it was his first time experiencing ballet. "I love what I do, and this is such a big deal in my world, but he didn't quite understand why it was a big deal," she said. "It was like, oh yeah you're right. There are other things happening in this world." At Saturday's matinee, Ms. Trenary will dance the role of Princess Florine. What follows are edited excerpts from a conversation early Wednesday evening. That was major. How do you feel? I'm speechless. I don't know what just happened. It doesn't feel real. I had so much fun. There were moments that didn't go so well, but I was able to get to a place mentally where they didn't freak me out. It didn't ruin anything. I was able to move past it and breathe. That first act is such a doozy. The Rose Adagio and that first variation into the coda I've never felt like that before. It is the most challenging thing I've ever done. Is there a reason beyond the technique? A lot of it has to do with the pressure of all the eyes being on you. We take class every day and we do that much all the time. It's just a different level. What did make it enjoyable was making eye contact with everybody catching eyes with my best friends. My husband was one of my suitors! How did you feel in the Rose Adagio, which requires some formidable balances? Rose Adagio felt relaxed. Either you're on or you're not. I didn't hold any exciting balances or anything, but for me, the most important thing is the way you look at the next person. If you keep a smile on your face, it does something for you mentally. It needs to look not scary for the audience. What did you do between acts? You know what's crazy? We have to change so much, so really a lot of it is getting the next headpiece on. I kept a banana at my spot to nibble on. I tried to keep drinking water. I changed my shoes every act. I changed my makeup a little bit, because I wanted the second act to be a little more mature she's not a little girl anymore. She's a vision, so I wanted to wear a darker lipstick. It was smart. What did you do to prepare for this last night? I needed to sew my point shoes for today, and I'm the worst. I'm such a procrastinator. I ordered some chicken Parmesan. Sewed my shoes and watched "Grace and Frankie." James recommended it. It's so good. I'm on Episode 4 already. Did you take class today? I took class up until small jumps just enough to get everything where it needs to be. I took my time and breathed and relaxed and then I put my costume and my shoes on just in time to enter. Oh, I did a pinkie circle with my maids of honor. We lock pinkies and stand in a circle and chant, "We can do it, we can do it, we can do it!" and then we kick our legs and go, "Good!" It was nice. How did you want your Aurora to be? I think my favorite performers are the people who look like people. I still wanted it to be me, and obviously this is a fairy tale, but I wanted Aurora as a person, I didn't want it to look too much like ballet, ballet, ballet. Be a human being. I remember Alina Cojocaru doing this role in the old production, and she fell out of a pirouette, and she turned around to everybody and went, "Oops!" and just kept going. She didn't care, and I remember being like, that's awesome. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
WHAT IS IT? The smallest and least expensive Jeep, and the lowest priced compact sport utility on the market. HOW MUCH? Base version, the Sport, starts at 15,995; Latitude X model as tested, 28,450. WHAT'S UNDER THE HOOD? A 2.4 liter 4 cylinder rated at 172 horsepower and 165 pound feet of torque; 5 speed manual or continuously variable transmission. (Front drive models come with a 2 liter 4, rated at 158 horsepower.) IS IT THIRSTY? Rated at 20 m.p.g. city, 23 highway. My combined mileage was slightly less than 20 m.p.g. BACK in the early to mid aughts Jeep looked out across the exurbs and office parks, saw all the RAV4s and CR Vs scooting about and came to a conclusion: The people driving them might not know an off road trail from a frozen foods aisle, but the sales figures could not be ignored. And so Chrysler, still under the aegis of Daimler at that point, decided it would try to sell Jeeps to people who didn't need Jeeps. For 2007, it introduced a pair of compact crossovers, the Patriot and the Compass, that were loved by approximately no one. Critics assailed the Compass for its plasticky interior, anemic powertrain and design affectations; the too cute styling and car based unibody construction seemed a rejection of the brand's very ethos. The Patriot had many of the same issues, critics said, but at least it looked like a Jeep. I'm as much of an independent thinker as the next guy, but I'll have to admit that all of this negativity preconditioned me to hate the Patriot. So I spent most of my first day with the test car looking for confirmation of my prejudices. Yes, that seat adjuster handle was rather flimsy, and yes, I did notice the sluggish response when I merged into the fast lane on the Grand Central Parkway. And yes, the braking was a little unresponsive, just as I'd read somewhere at least until I got the feel of the pedal and pressed harder. Jeep upgraded the interior for the 2011 model year with softer door trim and a new steering wheel with integrated controls, while the top of the line Latitude X test vehicle had leather trimmed seats, an automatic temperature control, a voice activated navigation system and SiriusXM satellite radio. (For 2012, styling changes are limited to some new exterior colors.) The engine did nothing to exceed my low expectations, but that wasn't really an issue as I tooled around the polite streets of Great Neck looking for a lunch spot. To get a truer sense of the Patriot's capabilities and presumably its failures I needed to give it a workout worthy of its Trail Rated badge. This posed a problem, as I'm one of those people who doesn't really need a Jeep. I went camping in college, sure, and I'm willing to do it again so long as an air mattress is involved. But short of a chemical spill on the freeway I'm mostly content to stick to the purple byways forged by Google Maps. So not knowing any better, on the second day I took my wife up to Bear Mountain State Park an hour north of Manhattan. I had imagined an off road paradise webbed with steep, boulder strewn paths and muddy, tire rutted creek beds. What we found were well paved roads, which we circled in a steady rain, looking for a rugged trail. With low gear engaged I charged up hills and barreled around curves; the Patriot handled these with relative ease, holding fast to the slick asphalt. As for off road thrills, the closest we came was a gravel turnabout, which we found at the end of a scenic loop. The surface was as smooth as a Zen garden, but we took a couple of laps in 4 wheel drive mode anyway, before my wife began to complain of nausea. Eventually we gave up and went shopping at Ikea. While lacking in white knuckle adventure, I submit that my experience amounted to an ideal real world test of this oversize Tonka toy. Anyone who's halfway serious about going off road won't even consider the Patriot; they'll stick with the Wrangler, the Liberty or the Grand Cherokee. The rest of us can enjoy the intangible satisfactions of having a seven slot grille and a Trail Rated badge on what is essentially an entry level compact car. There were still some issues, even for a low impact driver like me. Sight lines were poor. The C.V.T. hiccuped at times, especially at low speeds. (Jeep says it has recalibrated the transmission for 2012.) And despite the independent rear suspension, the ride on regular city streets was a little bumpy. Whether this should be a considered a flaw or a touch of rugged authenticity is open to interpretation. Still, we're talking about a sport utility ish vehicle that can be had for less than 16,000. It's fair to ask whether the nearly doubled price for the loaded version the one you might want to drive undercuts this as a selling point. But soon it may not matter. The industry rumor mill has suggested that the Patriot and Compass will be replaced by a Fiat based crossover. But Chrysler has not announced such an intention, and Kathy Graham, a company spokeswoman, said both models had exceeded sales expectations this year and would "continue to be built for the foreseeable future." With that in mind, I'll hold off on burying the Patriot, and instead offer some faint praise: it wasn't as bad as I expected. And at least it looked like a Jeep. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Automobiles |
WASHINGTON The Federal Reserve moved into the ready position Wednesday for the next phase of its retreat from its post crisis economic stimulus campaign. In a statement after a two day meeting of its policy making committee, the Fed said it would start reducing its bond holdings "relatively soon" so long as moderate economic growth continues. The Fed remains officially sanguine about lower than expected inflation. The stance is likely to reinforce market expectations that the Fed will take action to increase borrowing costs at its next meeting, in September. Rather than raising its benchmark rate, the Fed is expected to announce it will begin to reduce its bond holdings. The Fed accumulated more than 4 trillion in Treasury securities and mortgage backed securities as part of its campaign to reduce borrowing costs for businesses and consumers. Under its exit plan, which it described in June, it would gradually reduce those holdings initially at the slow pace of 10 billion a month. The Fed has held borrowing costs at low levels since the financial crisis to increase economic activity by encouraging borrowing and risk taking. The agency is now trying to raise costs to reduce those incentives. By the end of the year, the Fed projects that interest rates could return to a level that would neither encourage nor discourage economic activity. So far, however, markets have largely shaken off the Fed's retreat. Borrowing costs remain low and loan terms have shown little sign of tightening. Some measures show financial conditions have eased since the Fed began its retreat. At its last meeting, in June, the Fed raised its benchmark interest rate for the third consecutive quarter, to a range of 1 percent to 1.25 percent. The agency also described its plans for reducing its bond holdings, a process that analysts expect to begin at the Fed's next meeting. Those steps reflected the Fed's confidence in the health of the economy. Since then, however, some Fed officials have expressed concern about continued weakness in inflation. The agency's preferred measure declined in the last three monthly reports, to 1.4 percent in May from an annualized pace of 2.1 percent in February. The Fed aims to keep inflation at a 2 percent annual rate. While high and rising inflation is economically disruptive, lower inflation can cause problems, too. Neel Kashkari, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, has been the most vocal among Fed officials in warning that the agency may be raising interest rates too quickly. He voted against the quarter point rate increases in March and in June. Several other members of the Fed's policy making committee have expressed concern about weak inflation in recent weeks. Janet L. Yellen, the Fed's chairwoman, has acknowledged the recent weakness, but she has said that she expects inflation to rebound. Job growth remains strong, with most Fed officials seeing a tight labor market that is likely to result in higher prices. The Fed has predicted one more rate increase this year, but analysts do not expect a decision earlier than December, so the Fed has time to consider the incoming data. Some investors saw evidence in the Fed's statement that the central bank is a little less likely to raise rates in December. The dollar weakened against foreign currencies, continuing a recent trend. The dollar's exchange value reflects market perceptions of the relative strength of the American economy compared with the rest of the world. Stock indexes rose after the 2 p.m. announcement, as equity investors like low rates. The S. P. 500 index ended the day up very slightly at 2,477.83. The yield on the benchmark 10 year Treasury fell slightly because bond investors like high rates. Analysts saw little evidence of a shift in the Fed's monetary policy plans. "We think the Fed has laid out its policy plans quite clearly and it is unlikely to deviate from them unless there is a very dramatic change to inflation and employment trends," said Rick Rieder, BlackRock's chief investment officer of global fixed income. Michael Feroli, chief United States economist at JPMorgan Chase, said investors were overanalyzing minor changes in the Fed's wording. "We don't sense a significant loss of confidence from the FOMC that inflation will return to target over time," he said, referring to the Federal Open Market Committee, the Fed's policy panel. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Economy |
WASHINGTON Some of the same spoilers that interrupted the recovery in 2010 and 2011 have emerged again, raising fears that the winter's economic strength might dissipate in the spring. In recent weeks, European bond yields have started climbing. In the United States and elsewhere, high oil prices have sapped spending power. American employers remain skittish about hiring new workers, and new claims for unemployment insurance have risen. And stocks have declined. There is a "light recovery blowing in a spring wind" with "dark clouds on the horizon," Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, said Thursday, at the start of meetings here that will focus on Europe's troubles and global growth. Ms. Lagarde implored world leaders not to become complacent. Forecasters have said that the trends point to a moderation of economic growth in the United States, but they still expect the recovery to continue this year. The slowdown in part reflects an unusually warm winter, which pulled forward economic activity, making January and February seem artificially good and perhaps making recent weeks look worse than they truly were. Still, the breadth of the recent weakening of activity shows that the economy remains fragile, as is typical in the years following a financial crisis. The Standard Poor's 500 stock index had been generally rising from last summer through March, but has fallen more than 3 percent since early April. Initial jobless claims had been on a long, slow fall since 2011, but have jumped about 6 percent in the last three weeks, according to a Labor Department report released Thursday. Persistent economic worries about both a potential slowdown in the near term and almost certain sluggish growth in the long term have formed the backdrop for the annual spring meetings of the monetary fund and the World Bank. Finance ministers and central bankers are convening in Washington to discuss how to lift growth and reduce unemployment. The fund this week upgraded its estimate of global growth in 2012 and 2013 from estimates made in January, but did so with major caveats. "An uneasy calm remains," said Olivier Blanchard, the International Monetary Fund's chief economist. "One has the feeling that any moment, things could well get very bad again." Europe remains the central concern. In a report released this week, the fund's economists said that financial institutions in the European Union would shrink their balance sheets by up to 2.6 trillion by the end of next year, reducing the availability of credit for businesses and households by as much as 1.6 percent. Europe and the United States together account for about a third of global trade flows, and their financial systems are inextricably linked. For that reason, Mr. Geithner has urged European leaders to keep up efforts to bring down bond yields and bolster growth. "It's very important to get that balance right" between growth and austerity, he said. "You're undermining the prospects for some stability in growth" by cutting too fast, he added. Today in On Tech: Imagine not living in Big Tech's world. Dollar Tree will raise prices to 1.25 by the end of April. Bank regulators released a 'road map' for crypto regulation that is short on details. But some domestic indicators have weakened in recent weeks as well. First, there are signs that the sharp decline in the unemployment rate which fell to 8.2 percent in March from 8.9 percent in October might be over, with economic growth not robust enough for employers to continue adding jobs so rapidly. In March, employers added just 120,000 new jobs, the fewest since November. The recent rise in new jobless claims has raised worries that the April report will also be disappointing, although some forecasters say the jobless claims statistics have been affected by the timing of Easter. In addition, oil prices remain stubbornly high, though they have dropped in recent days. Nationwide, gas prices are about 3.90 a gallon, up from 3.85 a month ago and 3.84 a year ago. That has cut into household's budgets and hit consumer sentiment, which had been rising. Falling industrial production and home sales also point to a spring slowdown, as occurred in 2010 and 2011 as well. A third straight year of economic disappointment could have major political implications, hurting President Obama's re election campaign and helping Mitt Romney, the likely Republican nominee, make the case against Mr. Obama. Economists are divided over the import of the recent slowdown, with many saying it is more likely to seem like a blip than a major change. "After a few months of good data, people got more aggressive with their expectations," said Ian Shepherdson of High Frequency Economics. "The data are having a brief pause, or a consolidation. The consensus forecast had gotten stronger, so it's easy to overshoot." Moreover, recent signals have been mixed. Retail and auto sales, for instance, have posted significant gains. And oil prices have moderated, partly as a result of an effort by the White House and its international partners to talk prices down and bring new sources of oil on line, with major exporters increasing production. Nevertheless, the United States is forecast to grow at a relatively sluggish pace of about 2.5 percent this year. And the global economic picture remains characterized by anemic growth and high unemployment. The leadership of the monetary fund and the World Bank will underscore these problems at the meetings in Washington. Officials plan to warn low income countries not to depend on investment from debt soaked advanced economies, and caution that aid and remittances may fall this year. They will also urge cash rich middle income countries, like China, to ensure a soft landing if their economies cool off. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Economy |
LONDON As any pilot will tell you, landing an aircraft in a crosswind is a challenge. So, too, is deciding on where or whether to build a new airport runway. The political winds in Britain have shifted countless times over the decades on the question of expanding aviation capacity in and around London, which is already served by six commercial airports. No fewer than 10 government studies on the subject have been commissioned since 1946. Conditions have grown particularly gusty lately as the government attempts to grapple with the airports question yet again amid ballooning budget deficits and an economy that has slid into a double dip recession. The debate pits London's business leaders, who argue that new runway capacity is vital for Britain's global competitiveness, against environmentalists warning of the implications for the country's carbon emissions targets, and local residents who are already among the Europeans most affected by airport noise. It also appears to have thrown a wedge into the fragile governing coalition of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, who came to power in 2010 with a joint promise to reverse the course of the previous Labour government and block any expansion at London's three largest airports: Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted. Meanwhile, stark economic reality has begun to shake the support of the Conservative mayor of London, Boris Johnson who is campaigning to be re elected during a vote this week for a bold, PS50 billion, or 81 billion, project to replace Heathrow with a new airport hub. "What has happened is we have now got the worst economic crisis in the postwar era," said Simon Buck, chief executive of the British Air Transport Association, a trade group. "The government recognizes that it is vital for the economic recovery that we rebuild our international trade links." At the crux of the airport debate is Heathrow, Britain's main international air hub, located to the west of the capital and, with more than 69 million passengers a year, the third largest airport in the world, after Hartsfield Jackson Atlanta and Beijing Capital International. While it still serves significantly more passengers than any other airport in Europe, Heathrow, which has just two runways, has been operating at almost 100 percent capacity for a decade and been constrained from growing further by government indecision over whether to build a third runway. Other major European airports, meanwhile, are catching up in terms of traffic: Charles de Gaulle Airport near Paris and Frankfurt International Airport, which each have four runways, last year had their passenger numbers rise 5 percent and 6.5 percent, respectively, while traffic at Amsterdam Schiphol, which has six runways, jumped more than 10 percent. Reports commissioned last year by Heathrow's owner, BAA, estimate that Britain could miss out on roughly PS14 billion in international trade over the next 10 years, while 141,000 jobs would be lost, if the airport continued with two runways. "I am really worried this is another industry that Britain risks slipping from a position of great strength to one of mediocrity," said Kwasi Kwarteng, a Conservative legislator and a transport committee member who supports building a third runway at Heathrow as the most economical near term solution to the capacity problem. "In the face of a growing market, to say that we are not going to build anymore seems absolutely crazy." As Britain's economic crisis deepens, political leaders who had fiercely opposed any new runways at London's existing airports may now be softening their stance. An aviation strategy paper that Justine Greening, the Conservative transport minister, had been expected to publish at the end of March was abruptly postponed until the summer. According to media reports, George Osborne, the Conservative chancellor of the Exchequer, said at a cabinet meeting in March that the government intended to include new runway construction among the options to be considered to the fury of Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat deputy prime minister, who opposes any further airport expansion on environmental grounds. Britain has said the aviation sector's carbon dioxide emissions by 2050 must not exceed 2005 levels of 37.5 million tons a year. Representatives for Mr. Osborne and Mr. Clegg declined to comment on those reports and Ms. Greening, in a statement, said the government's position against expansion at Heathrow "has not changed." Today in On Tech: Imagine not living in Big Tech's world. Dollar Tree will raise prices to 1.25 by the end of April. Bank regulators released a 'road map' for crypto regulation that is short on details. That probably means the government will take a closer look at the case for expanding London's other main airports Gatwick, Stansted, or possibly Luton with an eye to migrating some of Heathrow's domestic and European flights there, analysts say. London City airport has not been considered an option for adding capacity because its urban location makes any significant expansion impractical. London Southend, a former military airport that re opened for scheduled passenger flights in April, can be expected to accommodate no more than two million passengers a year by 2020, a tiny fraction of the nearly 134 million passengers who pass through all London area airports today. But apart from such incremental solutions is a far more ambitious proposition by Norman Foster the British architect whose firm, Foster Partners, designed the new airports in Beijing and Hong Kong to replace Heathrow with a new air and rail hub in the Thames River estuary, around 40 miles, or 65 kilometers, to the east of the capital. Mr. Foster's proposal is breathtaking in scale: A four runway airport, to be built on reclaimed marshland, connected to London via high speed rail, whose access tunnel would double as a flood protection barrier and hydropower generation plant. A few years ago, the idea captured the imagination of at least one very influential advocate: Mr. Johnson, the London mayor, who lobbied hard to persuade aides to Prime Minister David Cameron to support the project. "We should not be so short sighted as to aim at catching up" with other European airports, said Hew Thomas, a partner in Mr. Foster's firm. "What we should do is leapfrog." He added, "New jobs in intellectual services and other 21st century sectors will not rely on Victorian era steam engine infrastructure." Yet critics of the project, which some have mockingly dubbed "Boris Island," abound. London First, an influential lobby representing 200 of the city's largest employers, says that London cannot afford to wait the 20 to 30 years that a new hub would take to build. While Mr. Foster argues that most of the PS50 billion cost can be borne by private investors, including foreign sovereign wealth funds, many politicians on the left and the right expect that taxpayers would end up footing a sizable part of the bill. Meanwhile, environmental campaigners, including Greenpeace, the World Wildlife Fund and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, oppose the destruction of protected estuary habitat for up to 500,000 migratory birds, many of them endangered. Even the biggest player in British aviation remains unconvinced of the feasibility of an all new hub to replace Heathrow. "I give credit to the mayor of London," said Willie Walsh, chief executive of International Airlines Group, the parent company of British Airways, which is based at Heathrow. "At least he's thinking big. At least he's getting the question discussed. But this is an idea whose time never seems to come." Among the questions that Mr. Walsh and others say remain unanswered is how the economy of west London, an influential political constituency, would cope with the closure of Heathrow and the loss of up to 200,000 jobs. "If a Thames airport were built, it would have a significant and devastating impact on the west London economy," acknowledged John Stewart, chairman of Hacan ClearSkies, a group representing west London residents opposed to an expansion of Heathrow. "Heathrow is almost too big to fail," Mr. Stewart said. "I can't foresee any government actually closing it down. You can argue that it's in the wrong place, that it causes tremendous noise problems, which are all true. But equally, in the real world, we are stuck with it." Mr. Johnson, having perhaps seen the political writing on the wall, has grown noticeably less vocal on the airports issue in the run up to London's elections. Neither the mayor nor his aides agreed to be interviewed for this article. But in a telling quip to The Independent on Sunday recently, he said: "Contrary to popular belief, I am not the slightest bit wedded to some remote archipelago in the Thames estuary." By ruling out expansion at Heathrow in 2010 and failing to back Mr. Johnson's Thames project, some observers said the coalition government had backed itself into a corner. "It was very much a political decision to rule out the new runways," said Mr. Buck of the British Air Transport Association. "Now they are under intense pressure from a number of their own supporters and an increasing number of business people to do something to ensure we maintain good trading routes so that future economic growth doesn't end up going elsewhere in Europe." The government has set itself a deadline of next year to agree on a way forward. But given the extent of the current political paralysis, analysts said they were keeping their expectations low until at least the next general election in 2015. "There is no reason to think any clear definitive solution will be happening anytime within the current government and probably next five years," said David Feldman, managing partner at Exambela, an aviation consulting firm based in Paris. "This is not a decision for the current government, but probably for three governments from now." By that time, according to Mr. Feldman, London may well be on its way to becoming a second tier hub for air travel. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Global Business |
In "The Dragon and the Wolf," the most recent season finale of "Game of Thrones," a lot of people have a lot to talk about. The warring factions of Westeros have convened a truce to discuss the frosty cold undead army of the White Walkers approaching from the north. It reunites characters with deep history who have been separated for ages: Brienne (Gwendoline Christie) and the Hound (Rory McCann); the Hound and the Mountain (Hafthor Julius Bjornsson); Tyrion (Peter Dinklage) and Bronn (Jerome Flynn); Tyrion and Cersei (Lena Headey). Read our complete guide to "Game of Thrones" and sign up for our newsletter. Friendships are reaffirmed; old grievances are reopened; negotiations are broached. But then: silence. No one has anything left to say. They're just waiting for the dragons to arrive. The scene encapsulates what "Game of Thrones" has become, as it begins its last fire belching spin around the HBO firmament Sunday : a dragon delivery device, a collection of spectacular images, to which character, complexity and conversation have become secondary. The series's changes, in part, reflect the ambitions and limitations of today's big ticket TV. Rewatch the earliest episodes, from 2011, and they already seem to belong to another era. It's not simply that Arya (Maisie Williams) was more innocent then, Westeros more peaceful, Ned Stark's head still attached to his body. (No spoiler alert! Honestly, you've had plenty of time.) This executive producer is a behind the scenes "Game of Thrones" star. It's how much of the series was simply people talking, how it was able to draw import from relatively small incidents. The second episode, "The Kingsroad," for instance, focuses its main story line on nothing more high stakes than the death of a child's pet. That's it. Roll credits. No magic, no dragonfire. But so much character and foreshadowing are concentrated in this high fantasy "Old Yeller." It establishes, in one sword stroke, that Robert, pushed by Cersei and his bratty son, is weak and inconstant; that the Stark children will become unmoored from their roots (the direwolf is the symbol of the North, and this is the first of several lupicides to come); that Joffrey is a dangerous monster; that the Starks will pay a high cost, principles will be tested and the innocent will die. Compare this with "The Battle of the Bastards" in Season 6, where Jon Snow (Kit Harington) sees his adoptive brother Rickon (Art Parkinson) murdered before his eyes. The moment barely has time to land. If viewers remember it at all, it's as the opening casualty for the breathtaking war scene, which took nearly two months to shoot, that gives the episode its title. To be fair, the George R.R. Martin books on which the series is based establish a premise in which the mythic and epic will become more commonplace. "Game of Thrones" is about a world in which magic used to exist, seemed to disappear and is slowly returning. This happens gradually, then accelerates. The dragons take a season to hatch, then they grow up fast; war breaks out, then it engulfs the world. In the saga's best seasons roughly the middle of its run the showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss held its human and fantastical sides in balance. It managed stunning set pieces the Battle of the Blackwater, the Red Wedding but it was grounded in ideas. The recent 20th anniversary of "The Sopranos" reminded us of a tension that series always had, between its creator, David Chase, who insisted that relationships were as important to the series as the mob wars, and his more bloodthirsty fans, who wanted, as the phrase went, "Less yakking, more whacking." "Game of Thrones" has had that tension itself over the years. But unlike Chase, who stubbornly stuck to his vision, "Thrones" has increasingly given into the fan contingent that wants more big action moments. Less blabbing, more stabbing! In a way, the evolution of "Game of Thrones" over the seasons shows how it bridged the distance between two eras of TV. It began, in 2011, in the wake of HBO's "Sopranos" era, which took familiar genres (the gangster saga, the cop show, the Western) and set them in worlds of moral grayness and complexity. "Thrones" felt like the natural extension of that approach, a realpolitik fractured fairy tale in which good and bad were harder to distinguish than they were among Tolkien's orcs and elves. "The Kingsroad" is like the first season "Sopranos" episode "College," in which Tony offs a mafia rat while on a road trip with his daughter a small, definitional story that tells you you're watching something familiar, but different. This is what "Game of Thrones" became. With a few exceptions, it was memorable more for visually stunning or shocking scenes than for well constructed episodes. People describe its signature moments like "Friends" titles: "The One Where the Mountain Smooshes the Viper"; "The One Where Danaerys Says, 'Dracarys'"; "The One With the Ice Dragon." Yet the scenes that stick with me from "Game of Thrones" are almost invariably conversations. Robert and Cersei talking with resigned familiarity about their marriage. Arya and Tywin (Charles Dance) discussing legacy and power. Any scene involving Olenna Tyrell (Diana Rigg) and her thorny tongue. The Hound ordering the chicken. These moments have become rarer as the series has gone beyond the plot of the uncompleted books and its pace has accelerated (sometimes, to be fair, improving on sluggish source material). And I have to wonder if the turn toward spectacle stems from Benioff and Weiss's much stated belief that they're making a "73 hour movie." By that analogy, their blockbuster series is obligated to provide an extended, explosive third act. "Game of Thrones" has indeed produced the kind of awe inspiring, culture dominating entertainment you used to have to see in a theater. If HBO age TV were 1970s Hollywood, it would be the "Star Wars" to Tony Soprano's "Godfather." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
You Look Like a Morrissey Fan On Nov. 10 and 11, the British pop singer and cultural icon Morrissey played two sold out shows at the Hollywood Bowl. I attended both shows, admittedly with reservation: Morrissey, my longtime favorite singer, lyricist and hair icon, is making headlines again for his questionable comments, this time about Muslims, migrants, multiculturalism and men behaving badly. I write very openly in my book, "Mozlandia: Morrissey Fans in the Borderlands," that I have been a Morrissey fan for decades and have no plans to stop. But my fandom ebbs and flows. These days, it ebbs. So, when Nov. 10 came around Morrissey Day, no less, as declared by the Los Angeles City Council I needed something to remind me of why this man, deep down, still mattered to me and the thousands of fans who packed the Hollywood Bowl that day and the next. How to get in the mood? I play some vintage Morrissey, circa 1992, the year I most associate with my own fandom, when his songs from "Bona Drag," "Kill Uncle" and "Your Arsenal" were the only ones I wanted to hear. "Every Day Is Like Sunday" still stirs my emotions. And "Glamorous Glue," bratty and brassy, struts along. The music I know and love from 1990s Moz plays on, and my excitement grows. I sing along to "Our Frank" and "The Last of the Famous International Playboys" and start to dress for the concert. As I trudge up the path to the Hollywood Bowl with my traveling companions, I watch the thousands of fans making their way up. Moz fans are not unlike the decked out Dodgers fans swathed in their team's colors, scripts and logos on game day. (Often, they're the same people.) And they're not so different from the paisley purple clad Prince fans, or the Michael Jackson fans who rock a single white bedazzled glove, a sequined bomber jacket and a tipped forward black fedora. Moz fans, too, have a code that identifies them. In his 2013 "Autobiography," Morrissey wrote about his fans in their "fastidious attire" of "'Viva Hate' emblems; art hound Ts, tank tops and bags graffitied in Morrissey code." He invented this code, and fans receive the message. It's plain to see in these photographs, where the iconography of Moz appears in unexpected, occasionally covert combinations: scarlet red lips, sharp eyeliner and gold hip hop inspired bamboo hoop earrings. Brown skin indelibly inked with Morrissey's name, face and lyrics. Oscar Wilde and Old English lettering commingle with leopard prints, faded denim and Dickies jackets stitched with Smiths patches. And everywhere I look, I see great hair. Many Morrissey fans, myself included, pay homage to him by wearing our hair like his, or by invoking the 1950s style typically associated with Morrissey and his band. Our shiny, full black hair looks fabulous swept up in pomaded pompadours or pinup girl curls, looks that remind us of pachucos and pachucas, of motorcycle rebels and rock 'n' roll stars. James Dean and Ritchie Valens meet Frida Kahlo and Selena. "We look to Los Angeles for the language we use, London is dead," Morrissey sings in his 1992 hit "Glamorous Glue." He sang this song on Morrissey Day, and judging by the fans' response, Los Angeles especially the fans looks to Morrissey for the language it uses. We speak in the idioms of the Smiths and Morrissey, swapping lyrics like lovers' letters or fighters' fists. We style our hair, paint our faces, tattoo our skin, don Doc Martens and Dickies and denim stitched with Smiths patches, rainbow flags and Union Jacks. The social outcast, outlaw outsider; the maligned and marginalized and misunderstood; the unrequited lovelorn and dispossessed depressed have all found meaning in Morrissey's music and lyrics, Smiths and solo, over the years. For the moment, making my way to my seat and floating in the sea of Moz Angeles fandom, I forget the headlines about the man we're all here to see. After all, Morrissey implores us to "stop watching the news" on his new song, so I heed his call for now. I'm ready for history to be made at the Hollywood Bowl on Morrissey Day. I look around and take in the scene. It's a crisp autumn evening in the Hollywood Hills, and electricity is in the air. Morrissey is here. And so are his fans, wearing their love on their sleeves, shirts and skins. It's showtime and we carry on, waiting for the man who sings us to sleep. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
Samuel K. Wasser, 62, a zoologist at the University of Washington, is a Sherlock Holmes of the wildlife trade. With modern biochemical tools and old fashioned shoe leather, he sleuths out the merchants behind the market for poached animal products. Dr. Wasser's work is funded by the Paul G. Allen Foundation, the State Department and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. We spoke for three hours at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington and later by telephone. A condensed and edited version of our conversations follows. Q. What is your actual profession? A. I'm a conservation biologist, a professor and a research scientist. Among things my lab does is forensic analysis using DNA to determine the origins of elephant ivory seized by international law enforcement. If customs officers in Singapore or Vietnam intercept a large shipment let's say a half ton or more of poached ivory, I'll be called in to see what we can learn from it. Lately, people in my lab have started applying what we've learned about how the ivory trade works to pangolins. They are an African and Asian mammal the size of a cocker spaniel. It is, probably, the most poached animal in the world. It is killed for its meat and its scales, which in Asia are thought to have medicinal value. They are highly threatened. How did you become a wildlife detective? Long story. In the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, I was in Mikumi National Park in Tanzania, studying competition among female baboons. As part of that, I developed a technology to extract hormones from baboon feces. This was useful for measuring their stress, fertility and nutrition without actually handling them. At the same time I did this, ivory poaching was exploding all over Africa. These were the years when more than 700,000 elephants were slaughtered. I worked in a protected area, and yet wherever I went I saw elephant carcasses. I started thinking, "God, if only I could apply the baboon tests to elephant conservation, that would be wonderful." Figuring out how to do that took many years. However, in 1997, my lab and others published papers showing how to extract DNA from feces. Because elephant stools are large and easy to find, this allowed me to map elephant genetics across the continent. A year later, we succeeded in getting DNA out of ivory. Now I could compare the DNA in the seized tusks to the genetic map. It was finally possible to use science to show where the contraband had originated. How accurate is your test? I can take a tusk from anywhere in Africa and trace its origins to within 300 kilometers of where that elephant was killed, often to the very park or reserve. This has given us a new understanding of how ivory trade works. From what we've learned, organized bands of poachers appear to kill over and over again at the same sites. They operate in places with lots of elephants, where they can move in easily without getting caught and where they have a way of getting the tusks out of the country, which implies, often, some kind of high level corruption. This is actionable intelligence. If you know that contraband ivory comes from one pinpointed site, it tells you where the next poaching event will be. Sometimes you can stop it by sending in armed rangers. However, the poachers are often better armed. They've got AK 47s, night goggles, sometimes even helicopters. This is major organized crime. Interpol says that the wildlife trade is the fourth largest type of transnational crime, right after weapons, narcotics and human trafficking. Where are the poaching hot spots you mentioned? Poaching is going on all over Africa. Over the last decade, all of the large ivory seizures I've analyzed showed that 22 percent of it came from forest elephants in Gabon and the Congo, and 78 percent from an area centered in Tanzania. Between 2002 and 2007, we identified Zambia as another poaching hot spot. Forensic reports from our group and from colleagues showed that large amounts of contraband came from Tanzania and, at that time, Zambia. Both petitions were unsuccessful. Have your investigations helped with the prosecution of poachers and smugglers? So far, we've had one major conviction in Africa with our DNA evidence. This was someone alleged to be the largest ivory dealer in West Africa. He was caught in Togo. They raided his warehouse, and I analyzed those samples. I showed the tusks came from multiple countries, and a colleague showed that the ivory was from recently killed animals. He got the stiffest sentence in Togo: two years in prison and a fine. He's already out. Is the sale of ivory legal in the United States? There are several states that have bans on ivory sales New York, California, Washington. And just a week ago, the federal government enacted a near total ban on selling African elephant ivory across state lines. That means that someone in Kentucky can't legally sell an ivory piece to someone in Virginia. However, they can sell permitted ivory to a Kentucky buyer. Also, there are some exceptions to the ban: musical instruments, furniture and firearms that use less than 200 grams of ivory, antique pieces. Game hunters with permits can bring two elephant trophies into the country every year. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
For months, public health experts have been eagerly watching the companies developing spit tests for the coronavirus that could be used at home, producing results in a matter of minutes. If these rapid saliva tests worked, as many news articles have pointed out, they could greatly expand the number of people getting tested. Some experts have even said they could perform as well as a vaccine in curbing the spread of the coronavirus and paving a path back to normalcy. But so far, the technology is not panning out as some have hoped. E25Bio and OraSure, two companies pursuing rapid at home coronavirus tests, have abandoned efforts to use saliva in their products. Their tests, which detect pieces of coronavirus proteins called antigens, will for now rely on shallow nose swabs instead. "If I was placing a bet which I am, because I'm leading an antigen based testing company I would say it's going to be very difficult for antigen based testing to work on saliva samples," said Bobby Brooke Herrera, an E25Bio founder and its chief executive. The notion that the virus sets up shop in the mouth and produces enough antigen to be picked up by today's technology, he said, "is far fetched." The two companies pursued saliva (or "oral fluids," in the case of OraSure) for months in the hopes of their tests being more comfortable than swabs, some of which go painfully deep into the nose, and less reliant on sputtering supply chains that have caused long delays for laboratory tests. "There's nothing more convenient than spitting in a tube," said Dr. Valerie Fitzhugh, a pathologist at Rutgers University. But as they continued to tinker with their tests, researchers at both E25Bio and OraSure found saliva's performance to be more lackluster than anticipated, and were forced to pivot. "This was a result of optimization studies," said Stephen Tang, OraSure's president and chief executive officer. A saliva antigen test is still theoretically possible, Dr. Tang added. But after comparing the amount of coronavirus antigen found in the nostrils and throat, as well as different parts of the mouth, including the cheeks, gums and tongue, "we decided to optimize around the nasal cavity," he said. Spit also differs vastly among people, and can even change over the course of a single day. "We've all noticed that there is variable performance," said Sarah Jung, scientific director of clinical microbiology at Children's Hospital Colorado. Who should get a booster shot? It depends, Dr. Scott Gottlieb says. Both E25Bio and OraSure plan to seek authorization from the F.D.A. to sell at home antigen tests using nose swabs instead of spit, a technique similar to the one used by the much talked about Abbott antigen test that takes about 15 minutes. The E25Bio test would require people to swab their nose, stir the sample into a chemical soup, apply the mixture to a paper strip and wait up to half an hour for bands to appear. E25Bio's test picks up on about 80 percent of the infections that ultrasensitive laboratory tests detect the F.D.A.'s bare minimum for a regulatory greenlight. OraSure declined to give any details about its test's methodology or accuracy. Saliva does seem to be working when used in laboratory tests known as P.C.R., which look for bits of the virus's genetic material, or RNA, rather than antigens. P.C.R. tests detect minute amounts of coronavirus RNA, making them far more sensitive than antigen tests. Research teams at Rutgers and Yale have been granted emergency authorization for these spit P.C.R. tests. At the University of Illinois, some 10,000 of the institution's in house P.C.R. tests are performed each day on saliva from students, faculty and staff members roughly 1 percent of the nation's daily tests. Standard P.C.R. tests, however, take hours to run and are subject to shortages of laboratory supplies, such as pipettes and chemicals, often leading to delays in getting results. Other scientists, like Dr. Zev Williams of Columbia University, are working on variants of rapid saliva tests that, like P.C.R., detect RNA, but don't require expensive laboratory machines. That's too bulky and expensive for at home testing. But he said the test could be deployed in places where crowds gather, like schools, offices and travel hubs, granting safe passage to those who test negative while sending the infected back home. His team has submitted an application for emergency approval from the F.D.A. In the meantime, they've partnered with Sorrento Therapeutics, a San Diego based company, to scale up production. The Columbia saliva test relies on a technique called LAMP that's generally faster but a bit less accurate than P.C.R. The spit sample is briefly boiled and mixed into a cocktail of chemicals that then gets incubated at 145 degrees Fahrenheit for half an hour. If the tube's contents turn from red to yellow, the test is positive. The latest data shows the Columbia test performs as well as a laboratory deep nose swab test more than 96 percent of the time, even when using saliva from sick patients who gave messy samples. "Even if there was food or blood, we took it," Dr. Williams said. That wouldn't fly with most other saliva tests in use, he said, which ban eating, tooth brushing and even gum chewing in the hour or so before depositing drool. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
When Emily and Malcolm Fairbairn decided to make a 100 million gift in 2017 to organizations that combat Lyme disease, they chose Fidelity Charitable, the country's largest charity by assets, to distribute the money. But the Fairbairns contend their donation was mishandled, costing the charities they wanted to support millions of dollars. They sued Fidelity Charitable, which says it followed the law. The case sheds light on the limitations of a popular charitable vehicle the Fairbairns used, known as a donor advised fund, which disburses money over time but offers an immediate tax deduction. It also shows how donors can find themselves in conflict when they try to maximize the tax benefit and still retain control of how that donation is managed. "People are saying, 'Hmm, I didn't know this could happen,'" said David A. Levitt, a principal at the nonprofit law firm Adler and Colvin. "But with attorneys and sophisticated clients, we're aware that this can happen. There are many issues like this that never make it to a case." The case has the potential to cool a fast growing area of charitable giving. Donor advised funds held 110 billion in assets in 2017 and accounted for 19.08 billion in grants, according to a report from the National Philanthropic Trust. That same year, 29.23 billion was donated to these vehicles. The funds have faced other criticism, including a lack of transparency. Donors can remain anonymous, which can be a concern if they are using the fund to obscure political activity or other causes, said Jacqueline Elias, managing director at J. P. Morgan Private Bank. The funds have been particularly popular in Silicon Valley, where tech executives time the donation of stock in conjunction with their firm's initial public offering to maximize their tax benefit and avoid paying a capital gains tax. It's important to understand the nature of donor advised funds. Think of them as a charitable spending account. Donors can put cash or assets, like stocks, into a fund and then make grants from the fund to charities of their choice. The funds are housed at a sponsor, such as the charitable arm of a large firm like Fidelity, Schwab or Vanguard; a community foundation focused on a city or an area; or a boutique firm that focuses on a niche area like the environment. Because that sponsor is considered a public charity in its own right, donors get the tax deduction when they donate to the fund. When the money is doled out to other public charities, donors do not get a second deduction. By law, the donors have given up control of their donation when they put the money into the fund. But in practice, their grant requests generally go through a cursory review to ensure the money will go to a public charity and not pay for trips, gala tickets or a job for a child. This lack of control becomes crucial when donations include less traditional assets that can be sold, like stock, private equity or hedge fund holdings or even shares of a private business. Donor advised funds "generally sell off most any type of salable investment, be it a long term capital asset, real estate, jewelry, privately held stock," said Page Snow, chief philanthropic officer of Foundation Source, which helps private foundations with administration. Donors would have more control if they set up a private foundation to handle their charitable giving, but they would also have to deal with the administration costs and burdens, or find someone to oversee those tasks. "In a private foundation, you can hold jewelry, art work, maps," Ms. Snow said. "We had a client who had a helicopter, and somebody who donated a saddle." Still, the tax deduction is always greater if the donation goes to a public charity, like a university, hospital or, yes, a donor advised fund, Ms. Snow said. In the case of the Fairbairns, the 100 million donation included shares of Energous, which makes wireless charging technology. The shares had appreciated substantially on the regulatory approval of the company's transmitter. By using a donor advised fund, the Fairbairns would not have to pay taxes on the capital gains in those shares. They would also receive a higher tax deduction for both the stock and cash portion, and ultimately be able to give more to charities as the stock price rose. The Fairbairns' complaint alleges that Justin Kunz, a relationship manager in Fidelity's family office group, which serves its wealthiest clients, made certain promises over how the donation would be handled. One of those promises, the suit says, was to sell the stock over time and not let any sale exceed 10 percent of the daily trading volume. A quick sale would decrease the value of the shares and whittle down the 100 million. Vincent Loporchio, a spokesman for Fidelity Charitable, declined to make Mr. Kunz or anyone from Fidelity Charitable available for an interview. But in emails, he disputed the Fairbairns' claims. He said that it was Fidelity Charitable's policy to sell any securities as soon as they were received and that the Fairbairns had known this. "Their claim that they were told something different is entirely false, and not supported by any evidence," Mr. Loporchio said in an email. The Fairbairns' lawyers would not comment on the case, but they contested Fidelity's response in their legal filings. They argued that Mr. Kunz and another executive at Fidelity Charitable who handled complex assets had told the Fairbairns that the stock would be sold gradually to maintain the price. The case is more than just a battle between a donor and a charity. It is a challenge to how the funds are becoming the dominant charitable behemoths in the United States, experts say. Mr. Levitt, who is not involved in the lawsuit, said the fact that the case was allowed to proceed was already a victory for donors like the Fairbairns. The presumption, he said, is that once the donation is made and the tax deduction is received, the money belongs to the fund, not the donor. Most funds try to adhere to a donor's wishes, but they don't have to. In some ways, these donor advised fund are the ultimate middlemen. They give the tax benefit that donors crave, for which they collect management and investment fees that can add up to millions of dollars annually, but they hint at a vestige of control. The longer the funds hold the charitable assets, the more fees they earn. But the fund managers insist that distributions are made, pointing to annual giving rates that exceed the 5 percent required donation rate for private foundations. (In its marketing materials, Fidelity promotes a 17 percent increase in giving last year, to 5.2 billion in grants out of 27 billion in assets.) The Fairbairns' lawsuit is being closely watched in the industry. "What happens if they win?" asked Jane Wilton, general counsel of the New York Community Trust, a 95 year old sponsor of charitable funds in the city. Fidelity's quick sale of the shares highlights that there is no rule that mandates that a donor advised fund must sell what it receives immediately. But that could change. The New York Community Trust works with its brokers on how to sell something slowly to maximize the charitable proceeds. Ms. Wilton said she remembered holding a stake in a private company for years, before the company was sold and the donation became liquid. "We sat on stock for five years, but it was a big return," she said. J. P. Morgan Private Bank markets its donor advised fund as being able to handle illiquid and sensitive assets. It has regularly liquidated charitable donations over several years. "We need to make decisions that are in line with being a fiduciary," said Jeanne Sun, managing director and head of the bank's advice lab, which includes philanthropy. "We would be working very closely with the client who is running the company so as not to have an adverse impact on it with the sale. That's not in anyone's best interest." Still, selling all assets quickly is legal. Once the donation is made to the fund, it becomes the fund's property. The donor is given some oversight, largely in the form of deciding where the money eventually winds up. What was different about the Fairbairns' donation was the size. More than half the accounts at Fidelity contain less than 25,000, and only 8 percent have more than 250,000, according to the fund's 2019 annual report. Mrs. Fairbairn said she was concerned not about the loss of a tax deduction but about the loss in the donation's value after the shares were sold. "With Fidelity's clients, most of them are small, and if something isn't done properly on their behalf, they have no voice," she said. "I want charities to get their money back. It's their money. It's no longer my money." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Your Money |
Q. I have a long series of text messages on my iPhone between my son and me. Is there a way to copy these from my phone to my computer and save the files in a Microsoft Word document? A. Extracting a text conversation from your iPhone and saving it as a word processing document is certainly possible, and there are a few ways to go about it. Many methods involve backing up the iPhone's contents to the Mac with Apple's free iTunes software, so if you have not already done so (or have not recently backed up your phone), consider this the first step and you get the bonus of having a fresh backup file as well. If you do not care for a lot of technical fiddling, get one of the several programs designed to copy files from an iPhone to a computer with a few clicks. For example, the 40 iExplorer program, for the Windows and Mac operating systems, can grab a specific text conversation from the iTunes backup file and save it in a more common format like a plain text file (which can be opened and saved in Microsoft Word), a comma separated values file or as a PDF file. Photos and other attachments can also be retrieved. Similar apps include the 40 iMazing program for Windows and Mac, 20 CopyTrans Contacts for Windows and the 30 PhoneView for the Mac. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
In Michael Goi 's watery ghost story , "Mary," the British actors Emily Mortimer and Gary Oldman are dumped on a haunted sailboat, saddled with American accents and subjected to a series of recycled, yawn inducing scares. Not helping matters is a tension sucking script (by Anthony Jaswinski ) that reveals almost immediately who among the tiny cast will survive to see the end credits. Flashbacks fill in the blanks as a bedraggled Sarah (Mortimer) is found floating on what remains of the vessel and is interrogated by a suspicious police detective ( Jennifer Esposito ) on what happened to her family and crew. It's a tale of supernatural shenanigans undergirded by a shaky marriage, beginning when Sarah's husband (Oldman), tired of being a captain for hire, impulsively buys the mysteriously abandoned boat to start his own charter business. Though maybe a trip through the Bermuda Triangle wasn't the best idea for a maiden voyage. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
Life has changed drastically in New Jersey in the past six weeks. The state has reported more than 146,000 cases of Covid 19, at least 10,000 people have died, and Gov. Phil Murphy's stay at home order has been extended indefinitely. In the state with the most cases and deaths after New York, residents are volunteering time, energy and money and businesses are using their resources to help others, and ensure that the needy in their communities are fed. Restaurants are donating meals. Volunteers with Toni's Kitchen, the food ministry of St. Luke's Episcopal Church in Montclair, bag and deliver meals to their neighbors. Volunteers with Umbrella, a company that connects older adults with nearby neighbors who can lend a hand, shop for groceries and provide contact less delivery to seniors. In East Rutherford, the Meadowlands Y.M.C.A. hosts a food bank that brings in over a mile of cars weekly; it is also hosting blood drives with the Red Cross and running an emergency day care center for front line workers. Eva's Village, a Paterson social service organization that aids people struggling with poverty, hunger and homelessness, has adjusted to treat patients who are also battling with coronavirus. Engineering students at Rowan University in Glassboro work with their professor on intubation boxes for local hospitals, and Nauti Spirits Distillery in Cape May has teamed up with a local pharmacy to produce hand sanitizer. Doctors are offering telehealth services and social workers are volunteering their time by calling older people in hopes of easing anxiety and loneliness. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
The new play " Reparations " gets underway in an innocuous enough manner. Two strangers meet at a book party; they end up at her Upper East Side condo, where they chitchat with flirtatious casualness before retiring to the bedroom; in the morning, she makes them breakfast. Reg is young and black, with the relaxed assurance of a guy about to score. Ginny is white and older, and ready to start dating again seven months after her husband's death Reg barely flinches upon learning she's a grandmother. So far, so rom com. Complications follow, of course, and based on the title of James Sheldon 's play, the characters' racial identities or the fact that we are at the historically African American Billie Holiday Theater, you may draw some conclusions about their general nature. The play, however, is not about slavery itself. Red herring! Rather, Sheldon is interested in the cost of righting a wrong and what people are willing to do to get their due and whether trying to overcome a dramatic event by blanking it out is a wise option. The story does follow a relatively predictable path at first, outlining the lead characters' differentials in politics and access to power. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
"The Inheritance," an ambitious and award winning two part play that explores contemporary gay male lives against the backdrop of recent history, is coming to Broadway this fall. Although written by an American and set in New York, the play began its life in London, where it was staged last spring at the Young Vic, and then transferred to the West End. It was a commercial hit and a critical success, honored with this year's Olivier Award for best new play. Written by Matthew Lopez ("The Legend of Georgia McBride"), "The Inheritance" is inspired by E. M. Forster's novel "Howards End." Stephen Daldry ("Billy Elliot") will direct the production, which runs more than six hours over two separately sold sections. Matt Wolf, writing in The New York Times, called the play "capaciously moving." Dominic Cavendish, writing in The Telegraph, described it as "perhaps the most important American play of the century so far" and said, "Star ratings are almost beside the point when confronted by work of this magnitude but hell, yeah, five." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
If you are going to have a guide for a walking tour of Ljubljana in the footsteps of the local girl Melania Trump, her ex boyfriend is hard to beat. For starters, Peter Butoln, in gold ascot, blue blazer and blond hair pinned back under gold framed glasses, dresses the part. And Mr. Butoln, a public relations man, is a font of information, about not only this charming medieval town with terra cotta roofs and Baroque fountains, but also the potential next first lady of the United States, who attended high school here as Melanja Knavs nearly 30 years ago. I was in Slovenia in the spring, conducting interviews and research for a profile on Ms. Trump for The Times, and one morning in Presernov trg, the historic square between Old Town and the 19th century neighborhoods on the west bank of the Ljubljanica River, Mr. Butoln introduced himself under a bronze statue of the Slovenian poet France Preseren. The poet was depicted with a longing gaze toward the window of the woman who inspired his romantic verses, and Mr. Butoln looked intently in the same direction, at the outdoor pub now called Kavarna Tromostovje, where he first laid eyes on Ms. Trump. We walked across Triple Bridge, a masterpiece adorned with balustrades and milk colored glass and composed of a stone bridge dating to 1842 and two side bridges designed by the architect Joze Plecnik in 1932. From there, we went to Cafe Romeo, where, Mr. Butoln said, Ms. Trump drank sodas and he drank wine mixed with Cockta, a cloying Tito era version of Coca Cola. He pointed out the dance hall ("a nice discotheque"), which is now a restaurant called Sokol, decorated with stuffed hawks. Farther up the river, on winding cobblestoned streets scored with the violin strains emanating out of classical music academies, he recommended restaurants and paid tribute to historical landmarks. "Here are the famous stairs," he said outside St. Florian's Church. "If you wanted to make romantic you would go up to the castle." In the last three decades, Ms. Trump who grew up in the small town of Sevnica before moving to Ljubljana for high school went from Slovenian teenager to international fashion model and the wife of the Republican nominee, living in Trump Tower and Mar a Lago with her husband and son. She has matured and changed. But so has Ljubljana (pronounced LOO blee ah nah), which became the capital of Slovenia after the country declared independence from Yugoslavia in 1991. "We had this problem of putting the city on the map," said the mayor, Zoran Jankovic, who is credited with revitalizing this not so secret gemstone of southern East Europe. The city's most famous landmark, Ljubljana Castle, is an imposing medieval complex home to Slovenian artifacts (a 5,000 year old wheel and axel, medieval frescoes) and a watchtower overlooking Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant churches; the bronze dragons guarding Dragon Bridge; the elegant Art Nouveau accents on buildings and bridges; the city's business districts; and the hills ringing the city. Melania Trump on the first day of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. Eric Thayer for The New York Times Since Ms. Trump made it big, Mr. Jankovic closed the historic city center to traffic, extended the hours of shops and much improved restaurants and virtually erased crime. The city now has JB Restavracija, a Michelin starred restaurant named after its chef, Janez Bratovz, and 1.5 million tourists a year who stay overnight, three times as many as did in 2007. More than 55,000 college students, 7,000 of whom come from abroad, fill stylish cafes and impromptu galleries, and drink mediocre Slovenian beer (Lasko) and good Slovenian wine (Movia Brda). The city recently renovated its opera house and National Gallery. Music is everywhere. And this year, in recognition of this bicycle obsessed city's strides in sustainability, the European Commission designated Ljubljana as European Green Capital for 2016. To celebrate, the castle is bathed in emerald light at night, casting a magical "Wizard of Oz" mood over the evenings. The mornings are filled with the clinking of espresso cups and the hum of conversation at Bar Pritlicje, an ur hip cafe and the de facto headquarters for the city's gay scene on the ground floor of City Hall. The city exudes a friendly, welcoming vibe. But just as in the United States, where Ms. Trump has drawn criticism for echoing her husband and cribbing lines from Michelle Obama, Ljubljana sometimes seems less than tolerant of its former citizen. "I think she's not coming back," said Jozica Trstenjak, a designer who was mending dresses in the atelier portion of Singer Atelier Caffe, which Ms. Trump frequented when it was called Bar Clementino. She didn't think the city suffered for the absence. "It's a new city with new bars," Ms. Trstenjak said. "It's much better." Across the street from the cafe, a domed poster kiosk advertised a Janacek opera under a whimsical open air chandelier. Art instillations pop up here like the buttercups in the surrounding hills. Across the river, white benches are painted with the phrases of poets. Ljubljana is a rewarding town in which to wander, even without the gossipy guidance of Mr. Butoln. Not far from the Singer cafe I was drawn by the smell of fresh bread to Pekarna Osem where a baker in a sleek white shop kneads eight ("osem") kinds of bread every morning. Farther down a gently curving street lined with design shops and galleries sits Piranske Soline, a shop selling canvas bags bulging with prized Slovenian salt, a "national treasure" from the Secovlje Salina Nature Park. Closer to the river, boutiques like Lola sell floral bicycle seat covers. The food in Ljubljana is more reliable. At Compa, a casual restaurant in the funkier, slightly grittier section of the city center, regulars hang out by an old Tito calendar, as the chef sprinkles Slovenian salt on perfectly grilled steaks and Treviso radicchio. The goulash at Gujzina had a kick, though the gnocchi with a pumpkin seed pesto was less memorable than the famous Prekmurska gibanica a layered cake made from poppy seeds, walnuts, apples, raisins and cottage cheese. Everything can be washed down with excellent wines or Radenska, an effervescent mineral water, salty tasting enough for gargling. Some locals have Trumpian complaints that the influx of outsiders drawn to the city's charms has taken its toll on the Slovenian character. At Valentin, a fish restaurant in a handsome dining room behind a white tiled fish market, my waiter feared that the city had reached a tipping point. Slovenian could only be heard in the daytime, he said. At night, the Italian, German and English speakers drowned out the native tongue. And yet, I saw no "Make Ljubljana Great Again" hats. Instead, many locals credit the immigrants and tourists with loosening the city up after decades of Communist control. At Tivoli Park, the stunning gardens and ponds that unfold a few blocks below the outdoor market and puppet theater, people now venture onto the grass and sunbathe. Teenagers hang out under a statue of Ivan Hribar, the mayor who drowned himself in the river when Italian Fascists annexed part of Yugoslavia in 1941, and mix with tourists in the Italian level gelato shops. And on Friday nights, the vibe is downright Kit Kat Club, the New York nightclub where the Trumps met in 1998. The bars on the bank of the river are so packed with beautiful people that the Slovenian novelist Lenart Zajc has nicknamed the stretch Snobbyland. It starts with Patisserie Lolita, decorated with hanging lamps in the shape of red cherries, and reaches up to Slovenian House, which has embraced the traditional polka dotted coffee pots of yesteryear. There's the Vander Urbani Resort hotel, with Veuve Clicquot pillows and a pool glowing turquoise on the roof. Kavarna Macek, a well known cafe, features the photos of everyday Ljubljanans on the wall. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
The editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values . It is separate from the newsroom. As of Sunday afternoon, more than 93 million Americans had cast a ballot in the November elections. That's about two thirds of the total number of people who voted in 2016, and there are still two days until Election Day. This is excellent news. In the middle of a global pandemic that has taken the lives of nearly a quarter of a million Americans, upended the national economy and thrown state election procedures into turmoil, there were reasonable concerns that many people would not vote at all. The numbers to date suggest that 2020 could see record turnout. While celebrating this renewed citizen involvement in America's political process, don't lose sight of the bigger, and darker, picture. For decades, Americans have voted at depressingly low rates for a modern democracy. Even in a "good" year, more than one third of all eligible voters don't cast a ballot. In a bad year, that number can approach two thirds. Why are so many Americans consistently missing in action on Election Day? For many, it's a choice. They are disillusioned with government, or they feel their vote doesn't matter because politicians don't listen to them anyway. For many more, the main obstacle is bureaucratic inertia. In New York City, a decrepit, incompetent, self dealing board of elections has been making a mockery of democracy for decades. Just in the past four years, tens of thousands of absentee ballots have been sent to the wrong addresses, and hundreds of thousands of voters have been wrongly purged from the rolls. For the past few days, some New Yorkers have been forced to stand in line for four or five hours to cast their ballots. But across the country, the group most responsible for making voting harder, if not impossible, for millions of Americans is the Republican Party. Republicans have been saying it themselves for ages. "I don't want everybody to vote," Paul Weyrich, a leader of the modern conservative movement, told a gathering of religious leaders in 1980. "As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down." This strategy has become a central pillar of the G.O.P. platform. It is behind the party's relentless push for certain state laws and practices like strict voter identification requirements and targeted voter purges that claim to be about preserving electoral integrity but are in fact about suppressing turnout and voting among groups that lean Democratic. The strategy also is behind the partisan gerrymandering that Republican state lawmakers have mastered over the past decade, redrawing district lines to keep themselves in power even when they lose a majority of the statewide vote. (Democrats gerrymander when they can, too, but the most egregious examples of the past decade have been by Republicans.) And the party is behind the early shutdown of this year's census, which the Trump administration insisted on over the objections of longtime Census Bureau officials, and which it hopes will result in an undercount of people in Democratic leaning parts of the country. The Supreme Court's conservative majority has greenlit the Republicans' anti democratic power grabs. In 2013, by a 5 to 4 vote, the court struck down the heart of the Voting Rights Act, giving free rein to states with long histories of racial discrimination in voting. Last year, the court, again by a 5 to 4 vote, refused to block even the most brazenly partisan gerrymanders, no matter how much they disenfranchised voters. This year, in the face of the unprecedented hurdles to voting introduced by the coronavirus pandemic, Republicans are battling from coast to coast to ensure that casting a ballot is as hard as it can be. In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott mandated a single ballot drop box per county including the increasingly Democratic Harris County, population 4.7 million. Republican lawmakers there are also suing to throw out more than 100,000 ballots cast by Harris County voters from their cars, at drive through sites. In Nevada, the Trump campaign and the state Republican Party have sued to stop counting mail in ballots until observers can more closely monitor the signature matching process. In Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Wisconsin, Republicans have fought to prevent the counting of all mail in ballots that arrive after Election Day, even if they are postmarked on or before Nov. 3. This all amounts to "a concerted national Republican effort across the country in every one of the states that has had a legal battle to make it harder for citizens to vote," said Trevor Potter, a Republican lawyer who formerly led the Federal Election Commission and worked on both of John McCain's presidential campaigns. The effort has been turbocharged by President Trump, who has spent the past year falsely attacking the integrity of mail in ballots. Mr. Trump's lies have been echoed by the attorney general, William Barr, who has claimed that mail balloting is associated with "substantial fraud." Not remotely true. Mr. Trump's own handpicked F.B.I. director, Christopher Wray, has said there is no evidence of any coordinated voter fraud effort. Scholars, researchers and judges have said for years that voting fraud of any kind is vanishingly rare in this country. That hasn't stopped Republicans from alleging that it happens all the time. They know that accusations of fraud can be enough by themselves to confuse voters and drive down turnout. When that tactic fails, Republicans turn to another tried and true one: voter intimidation. Frightening people, particularly Black people, away from the ballot box has a long history in the United States. Modern Republicans have done it so consistently that in 1982 a federal court barred the national party from engaging in any so called anti voter fraud operations. The ban was renewed again and again over the decades, because Republicans kept violating it. In 2018, however, it expired, meaning that 2020 is the first election in which Republicans can intimidate with abandon. All the while, Mr. Trump happily plays the part of intimidator in chief. He has urged his supporters to enlist in an "Army for Trump," monitoring polls. "A lot of strange things happening in Philadelphia," Mr. Trump said during a recent campaign stop in Pennsylvania. "We're watching you, Philadelphia. We're watching at the highest level." Representative democracy works only when a large majority of people participate in choosing their representatives. That can happen only when those in power agree that voting should be as easy and widely available as possible. Yet today, one of the two major political parties is convinced it cannot win on a level playing field and will not even try. What would a level playing field look like? For starters, it would have more polling places, more early voting days and shorter voting lines. Since the Supreme Court gutted the heart of the Voting Rights Act in 2013, almost 1,700 polling places have been shut down, most of them in the states that had been under federal supervision for their past discriminatory voting practices. It's no surprise that voters in predominantly Black neighborhoods wait 29 percent longer to cast ballots than voters in white neighborhoods. A fair election would mean giving all states the necessary funds to implement automatic voter registration and to upgrade old voting machines. It would mean allowing people with criminal records to vote as soon as they have completed the terms of their sentences. Many of these reforms have already been adopted in some states, and they have enjoyed bipartisan support. In the case of early voting, some Republican led states are ahead of their Democratic counterparts. Georgia, for example, has long offered many weeks of early voting far better than New York, which began the practice only last year, and for only 10 days. (It's worth noting that Georgia once had even more early voting days. Republican lawmakers cut them back by more than half after Black voters started taking advantage of early voting in 2008.) To help ensure that voting is easier for everybody, the federal government needs to take action. Currently, there are two comprehensive voting rights bills in Congress, the Voting Rights Amendment Act and H.R. 1, also known as the For the People Act. The first bill would update the old map the Supreme Court invalidated in 2013 and would identify the states and localities that are racially discriminating against their voters today, requiring them to seek federal court approval before changing any election laws. The second bill would, among other things, create a national voter registration program; make it harder for states to purge voting rolls; and take gerrymandering away from self interested state legislatures, putting the redistricting process in the hands of nonpartisan commissions. The House of Representatives passed both of these bills in 2019, with all Democrats voting in favor both times. The Voting Rights Amendment Act got the vote of a single House Republican. H.R. 1 got none. The Republican led Senate has refused to act on either. Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, mocked H.R. 1 by referring to it as the "Democrat Politician Protection Act." Listen to him closely. He is only repeating what most Republicans have believed for decades: When more people vote, Republicans lose. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
Claiming that she has been disinherited out of 6 million and potentially 1 billion more, the granddaughter of the mogul Sumner M. Redstone has joined the lawsuit challenging his mental competence, asserting that he has been unduly influenced by his daughter. Keryn Redstone, Mr. Redstone's 34 year old granddaughter, filed court documents in Massachusetts on Tuesday, officially aligning herself with Mr. Redstone's two longtime confidants who were ousted from the trust that will control his companies after he dies or is declared incompetent. The beneficiaries of that trust, now valued at more than 5 billion, include Keryn Redstone and Mr. Redstone's four other grandchildren. The development increases the tension in an already intense corporate and family battle that includes court fights in three states. Earlier this year, Keryn Redstone stood in opposition to her aunt, Shari Redstone, when she aligned with Manuela Herzer, a former companion and onetime romantic partner of Mr. Redstone, in a separate suit challenging his competency. It is not clear how the development could affect the on again, off again attempts to settle the legal battles over the 93 year old Mr. Redstone's 40 billion media empire, which are being fought in Massachusetts, California and Delaware. While the other parties in the dispute could reach an agreement separate from Keryn Redstone, she now is a plaintiff in the Massachusetts suit and her involvement could make settlement discussions more difficult. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
Once again, the bitterly contested claims to the mountainous region of Nagorno Karabakh in the South Caucasus have erupted into violence. What exactly is going on is difficult to glean from the exaggerated statements and propaganda of the feuding Armenians and Azerbaijanis, but hundreds have been killed, rockets have struck both the capital of the enclave and also Azerbaijan's second largest city, and the fighting threatens to escalate into a regional debacle with ramifications far beyond. In past eruptions, Russia, the United States and France the "Minsk Group" charged by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe with seeking a resolution of the conflict have managed to restore calm, though never establish a permanent peace. Refreezing the conflict without resolving the deep hatreds and differences at its core is not the optimal solution, but the immediate goal is to put out the flames before they spread. For that to happen, a dangerous new element has to be confronted. That is Turkey. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, whose authoritarian ambitions at home have been matched by his growing aggressiveness in the region, has taken sides with Azerbaijan, whose Muslim majority is of the same Turkic ethnic group as the Turks. Mr. Erdogan has dismissed calls to help secure a cease fire while vowing to support Azerbaijan until it has recovered territory lost to ethnic Armenians when the Soviet Union disintegrated. "Turkey continues to stand with the friendly and brotherly Azerbaijan with all its facilities and heart," he declared. That has meant supplying arms to an already well armed Azerbaijan and, according to France, injecting Syrian mercenaries into the fray. All that spells danger. Though the conflict is largely over an enclave with little economic or strategic importance to the world at large, it has ramifications beyond its 1,700 square miles. Turkey is a member of NATO with a long history of bad blood with Armenia over the genocide of Ottoman Armenians a century ago. Important gas and oil pipelines run through the South Caucasus; Israel sells arms to Azerbaijan; Armenia has the active support of a large and cohesive diaspora in France and the United States; and Iran shares a border with both Armenia and Azerbaijan and has sizable minorities of ethnic Azerbaijanis and Armenians who already have begun to hold demonstrations. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
Meet Steve. He's a blandly cheery white guy, originally from Long Island, but living in Dallas for so long by now that he says "y'all." On the surface, his marriage to Genevieve looks perfect, but then it splits apart and so does he multiple Steves, variations on a theme, all of them living in Genevieve's head. And some of them in her house. Meet John well, Juan, really; he's from Mexico. But he always wanted to be a John, and now that he's married to Anne, Genevieve's sister, he insists on it. Their union, on his side, may not exactly be a love match. He's gay, and he needed a green card, and he's barely around. John has multiple selves, too, but Anne is very, very good at ignoring them. "Do you mind if we stop talking about John," she says to her family, and it is not a question. But the women of Will Arbery's surreal, funny, ultimately muddled "Plano" return and return and return to the subject of their men. If these sisters Anne (Crystal Finn), Genevieve (Miriam Silverman) and the youngest, Isabel (Susannah Flood) are cursed, which they believe they are, it is with the need to devote vast emotional acreage to men who do not return the favor. Part of Clubbed Thumb's Summerworks series at the Wild Project, this beautifully paced production by Taylor Reynolds is as comically headlong as Mr. Arbery's script, its slip slide of time fast and ever shifting. "I'll introduce him later," Anne tells her sisters when she first gets together with John (Cesar J. Rosado). Then, instantly: "It's later, here he is." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
Toward the end of "Chambers," a 10 episode endurance contest new to Netflix on Friday, one of the young protagonists declares, "Yeah, well, I wished for clear skin but instead I got a demon put inside of me." Yeah, well, we all have to be careful what we wish for. Woke horror is hot in movie theaters, and that may be what Netflix thought it was getting in "Chambers," a possession story set in Arizona and straddling racial and economic divides. Sasha (Sivan Alyra Rose), a Native American high school student living in a poor town near the reservation, receives a transplanted heart from Becky (Lilliya Scarlett Reid), a wealthy white girl. Soon Sasha is not only having visions of her dead benefactor, but she's also being taken in by Becky's ominously new agey parents and transferring to the plush school in Crystal Valley, their Sedona like enclave. She's being culturally appropriated along the lines of the African American hero of Jordan Peele's "Get Out," but without the advantage of Peele's gift for satire. "Chambers" (created by the actress and writer Leah Rachel) works that angle hard, with Becky's father (Tony Goldwyn) burning sage for his guided meditations and a Native huckster selling "aura photographs" popular among Crystal Valley Instagrammers. The cultural content is just local color, though, in a threadbare story that would have been stretched thin in a 90 minute movie. Trying to combine a supernatural mystery thriller with a coming of age melodrama, Rachel and her collaborators (Alfonso Gomez Rejon, an "American Horror Story" regular, is an executive producer and director) don't manage to locate the pleasures of either. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
This six bedroom, colonial style home is in the center of San Miguel de Allende, a city in the hills of central Mexico, about 170 miles northwest of Mexico City. A two story, four bedroom main house and two one bedroom casitas are enclosed on a quarter acre lot, which is unusually large for the tightly packed city of 140,000 residents, said Rebecca Crosby, an agent with Agave Sotheby's International Realty, which has the listing. The courtyard style property has professionally landscaped gardens, two stone fountains and a swimming pool. There has been a house on the site since the 1940s, but the property was completely renovated in the early 2000s, Ms. Crosby said. The design features stone arches, exposed wood beams and Saltillo tile floors, reflecting the traditional style of the region. "The past owners scoured the countryside for original old doors and old wood to include in the building and renovation," she said. A colonnade runs along the ground floor, connecting several rooms, including a bedroom currently used as a library. Beneath its wood beamed ceiling is a large lounge area with a stone fireplace. In traditional Spanish style, the kitchen is a separate room, with a wooden island, thick wooden ceiling beams and a small dining area. Off the kitchen, the formal dining room has a rounded brick boveda ceiling and glass doors that open to the courtyard area. Three bedrooms are upstairs, each with tall windows and its own bathroom. The master suite has antique columns and doors, a walk in closet and a balcony. A veranda runs across the length of the second floor, leading to stairs and an open air terrace above the dining room. (There is no central air conditioning or heat in the house, which is typical of homes in the area.) From the yard behind the main house, twin stone stairways lead down to the pool area and the stone casitas, which are separated by a lounge area. Stairs from the large garage lead to the servants' quarters, a laundry room and a room that could be used as a game room or wine cellar, Ms. Crosby said. San Miguel de Allende is a Unesco World Heritage site, attracting tourists from around the world. Silver was discovered in the surrounding mountains in the 16th century, making San Miguel one of the region's wealthiest cities. Later, it developed as a center for art and music, which has helped make the narrow cobblestone streets a popular destination for North Americans. This property is close to one of the city's largest parks, the Parque Juarez, and a 10 minute walk from its main church, the Parroquia de San Miguel Arcangel, the social and cultural center of the area. It is within walking distance of many of San Miguel's best restaurants, as well as art galleries, coffee shops and the Rosewood, a popular hotel. Guanajuato International Airport, just outside the city of Leon, is about two hours west. Many people fly into Mexico City International Airport, about three and a half hours southeast. In the state of Guanajuato, where San Miguel is, home prices were up 9.5 percent in the first quarter of 2019 compared with a year earlier, and 39 percent since 2015, according to an index compiled by the Federal Mortgage Society, a government agency. Tourism is the main driver of the housing market in the area, agents said. San Miguel is routinely named one of the top cities in the world to visit by travel magazines, and many buyers are North Americans looking to retire or buy a second home at prices well below what they might pay in their home countries. Sales have been steadily increasing in San Miguel for the last five years, said Nancy Howze, the principal broker for CDR Christie's International Real Estate, in San Miguel. A recent spike in drug cartel related violence in the region has had little effect on home sales, she said. But while prices in Guanajuato have generally increased, those in San Miguel have declined following a recent surge in new home construction, she said: "Construction starts were at a 10 year high during the past two years." Many of those projects are in the hills outside the city, where developers are using vineyards, spas, golf and equestrian facilities to lure buyers, said Alma Cecilia Ramirez, the owner of Colonial Real Estate, a brokerage in San Miguel. "San Miguel de Allende is becoming a playground for the wealthy and the well off retiree," said Anne Nicolai, who has lived in San Miguel for 11 years and has a blog called Move to Mexico!. Despite the influx of wealthy buyers, sales are slower at the top of the market, agents said. This property, for example, has been on the market for more than 250 days, which is not unusual, Ms. Crosby said: "There isn't a huge market for the really high priced houses." The most popular homes are priced between 250,000 and 500,000, Ms. Ramirez said, and "we're seeing more interest in secondary markets like gated communities, where homes are a little bit more affordable in all price ranges." Ms. Howze said her clients are evenly divided between American and Mexican citizens, including buyers from Mexico City and Leon looking for weekend homes. "The U.S. citizens are looking for second homes, vacation rental investments or preparing for retirement," she said. But other agents said they see a higher ratio of foreign buyers. About 90 percent of Ms. Crosby's clients are from the United States. Ms. Ramirez, of Colonial Real Estate, said about 80 percent of her agency's buyers are from the United States or Canada. Buyers pay a transfer tax, the notary fee and registration fees, which usually amounts to about 6 percent of the sale price, agents said. The seller pays the capital gains tax and broker's commission, which is typically around 5 percent. The annual property tax on this home is about 1,000 a year, Ms. Crosby said. For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: nytrealestate. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
Versace will not hold its usual fashion show this coming Sunday, the opening night of the couture spring 2017 shows in Paris, opting instead for a number of "major client events" during the year in cities around the world, including Hong Kong and New York, according to its chief executive, Jonathan Akeroyd. After men's wear events in Milan this week for both the main Versace line and the secondary Versus Versace line; after outfitting celebrities such as Blake Lively and Naomi Campbell at the Golden Globes, and presumably readying for the upcoming British Academy of Film and Television Arts (known as Bafta) and Oscar nights; and before the women's show in February, the house has decided that, well, six is enough. "At the moment, we do six shows a year, and my feeling is: That's a lot of shows," Mr. Akeroyd said. "Eight, if you count couture, seems excessive. And we all know the model is changing quite a lot, so why not take the opportunity to try something new?" The change is Mr. Akeroyd's first big move since joining the Italian brand last spring after more than a decade at Alexander McQueen. And though the cancellation could be interpreted as a cost saving choice, especially for a company rumored to be preparing an initial public offering, Mr. Akeroyd said that budget was not the issue. Stress was. Also relevancy. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
The holiday season began at the New York Philharmonic on Wednesday, with the crisp snap of strings and the dignified mellow blare of horns. Christmastime is associated with Baroque music "Messiah," the "Brandenburg" Concertos and the orchestra was happy to oblige, with a program of Handel and Rameau at David Geffen Hall. Leading the polished, if muted, festivities from the harpsichord was Emmanuelle Haim, a French conductor making her Philharmonic debut. A specialist in this repertory, with an instinct for the crucial balance between energy and eloquence, she has given me two of my most memorable opera performances in recent years, Rameau's "Hippolyte et Aricie" in Paris in 2012 and a thrillingly vigorous rendition of Handel's "Il Trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno" at the Aix Festival in 2016. As with many conductors who concentrate on early music, Ms. Haim makes the strongest impression at the podium of the period ensemble she founded (Le Concert d'Astree, formed in 2000). But she has become a go to leader for modern orchestras making once or twice a year forays into the early 18th century and thereabouts. You can't turn the New York Philharmonic into Le Concert d'Astree in a few days of rehearsal, nor would you want to. Reduced to about 30 players for this program, the Philharmonic obviously uses modern instruments and has sacrificed none of its rich vibrato to conform precisely to Baroque style. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
To prevent distractions, Conor Dougherty, an economics writer, dumped social media and anything fun even his browser from his smartphone. How do New York Times journalists use technology in their jobs and in their personal lives? Conor Dougherty, who covers economics from San Francisco, discussed the tech he's using. What tech tools do you rely on most to do your reporting? This isn't very remarkable or unexpected, but I spend a lot of time on news apps. Throughout the day I cycle through The San Francisco Chronicle, The Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, East Bay Times, three of California's Bees (Sacramento, Fresno, Modesto) and, of course, The New York Times. I also read and listen to a lot of books, so I spend a lot of time on the Audible app. In the case of really important books that I'm using for research, I'll buy the print book and shift between reading it in print and listening on my phone. (I have a monthly subscription to Audible and a lot of unused credits, so it feels as if my audiobooks are free even though they're anything but.) Yes, I've packed my phone with news so that I use it less. Yeah, so, there's a catch. The catch is that I have zero social media on my phone. Like a lot of people, I've been trying to look at my phone less and to have a better work/life balance. In the past I tried some of those phone monitoring apps but didn't find them helpful. Instead I hit on what you might call a design solution, which is to curate my phone so that it's mostly a work tool. I cover California and the economy and have to read news for work, so the mental bargain I've made with myself is that I can use my phone as much or as long as I want so long as I'm reading books or news. Aside from news, Audible, and service type things like maps and airline apps, I have nothing on my phone. I even disabled the browser. I find this keeps me mostly sane and mostly productive. A decent definition of technology is any sort of machine or process that helps people do more or better work, so my basic rule of phone curation is: Things that help me work stay on my phone and things that don't, don't. Technology is a hard balance for everyone these days, but it's especially hard for reporters, who in the pursuit of readers and stories can convince themselves that Twitter wars ("being part of the conversation") and YouTube holes ("cultural research") are productive uses of time. My biggest problem with social media is that sometimes I used it for work and sometimes I used it to goof off, and somewhere along the way I lost track of which was which. Don't get me wrong: I love wasting time. I just prefer to waste it on things like beer, skateboarding and video games (some of my favorite weekend activities) instead of an argument with someone I've never met (and who probably isn't even who they say they are) on Twitter. I still use my phone too much, but I use it less than I did before and naturally get bored of it because I don't have an endless stream of feeds as you do with social media. Even though news apps are updated constantly, there are really only a handful of significant stories on any given day, so I have some semblance of completion after I've cycled through a few of them. Plus, most reporters spend a lot of time on social media, and not that many read lots of hyperlocal news. I get a lot of great story ideas just scanning various small papers and trying to put the pieces together and looking for emerging trends. I once wrote a story about a single house in Berkeley, Calif., whose long and complicated story held various important lessons about how California dug itself into a horrific housing crisis. The germ of that idea came from reading about a bunch of contentious City Council meetings. But reading is only part of your job. Indeed. I also interview a lot of people and lately have developed an expensive addiction to transcription apps. I've tried several, but the one I use the most is Rev. It costs about 1 per minute, more for rush orders. I find that I do better interviews when I don't have to stress out about writing quotes exactly right, but transcription takes forever. This solves that. It's probably the most useful tech tool I've ever come across. I can't say enough good things about transcription, with the only downside being cost. Are you worried about privacy? Not really. I use Rev only to transcribe on the record interviews. I turn off my recorder when people go off the record. So your phone has reading tools and reporting tools. Do you have writing tools, too? Actually none. With the exception of breaking news, which I write with a keyboard and in a fugue state, I start all my stories longhand on yellow legal pads. When I'm typing on a keyboard, I have that thing that a lot of people have where they compulsively backspace and correct things until each sentence is clean, which is great in editing but messes up the flow of first draft composition. Word processors are sort of paralyzing to me. Whenever those squiggly green and red lines pop up to remind me to check grammar and spelling, I find myself sitting there and fiddling until the marks go away and I can begin a clean new sentence. At one point I looked into getting the Freewrite keyboard, but it seemed a little expensive, and at this point I've gotten so used to writing my first drafts longhand that I feel that typing would mess up my rhythm. I'm very social and easily distracted I love chatting with my colleagues, though I'm not sure if they love it back so when it's time to really go for it, I try to create conditions that help me do better and more efficient work. The best conditions are what I might call manufactured silence. In the days before a big deadline, I have this little system where I print out all my notes and go into a conference room with a stopwatch ( 5.99 on Amazon) and put on a set of ear protectors (the kind people use at a gun range) and outline the story on paper, then write the first draft longhand. No phones or computers allowed. Later I enter what I've got into a word processor, which doesn't feel like a waste of time because it's sort of like the first round of self editing. Sticky notes are also great. I put a lot of sticky notes in my books. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
The showroom and factory of M S Schmalberg is in a soot gray building in Manhattan's garment district, seven stories above a street level women's apparel wholesaler called Belma Fashions. On a recent morning, the firm's 61 year old president, Warren Brand, was leading a tour there for a group of fashion students from Mississippi State University. They had come to see a unicorn, a scrappy holdout, a working museum of old fashioned artisanship that somehow had to turn a modern day profit. Schmalberg, a fourth generation family business founded in 1916, makes artificial flowers from silk and other fabrics for clients including milliners, theatrical costume designers, fashion stylists, bridal houses and designer labels like Oscar de la Renta, Ralph Lauren and Marc Jacobs. But in the age of fast fashion and offshoring, the business of Manhattan fabric flora is not exactly bustling. Michael Kaback, a retired garment district worker who has become the area's unofficial historian, said there were once upward of 10 artificial flower firms plying their trade. Now, Schmalberg is the only survivor. Mr. Brand gathered the students in the factory's assembly area, where five women were seated around two tables, painstakingly layering fabric petals together with wire and craft glue. Delicate purple flowers were strung on tiny wire lines; finished flowers are hung like clothes to dry. "What Carmen is doing here is she's making buds," Mr. Brand said, describing the work of Carmen Garcia. He picked up a loose petal made of python. "If you look at this and fold it up, it becomes a bud. Then you put another piece behind it." A big bellied man who wears beachy clothes in all seasons, Mr. Brand refers to himself as "the flower guy." He has worked in the fabric flower trade since his teens and remains, he said, "obsessed about it." Sometimes he lies in bed at night and thinks up new shapes to make with the firm's hundreds of flower molds. He called the students' attention to a printed photo of an old man taped to a nearby wall: his late father , Harold Brand, a Holocaust survivor born in Poland. "He had two brothers, a sister, a mom and dad. They all got perished ," Mr. Brand said, explaining how Harold emigrated to America after the war and worked at Schmalberg, which was started by his uncles. Harold eventually bought the business and ran it until the 1980s, when Warren and his sister, Debra, took over. "Years ago, when I was a kid," Mr. Brand told the students, "we sold thousands of flowers to children's companies for little girls' dresses. And then all that big industry of children's garments stopped being made in America." The family used to have a street level store on 35th Street. "Next door to us was a button man. The other side was a thread man. And a zipper guy," he said. "Now you walk the streets and everything's coming in a box, off a boat, made in La La Land." Warren's son, Adam Brand, who is 35 and began working with his father nine years ago, watched from the sidelines. Among his many duties, the younger Mr. Brand handles marketing and social media, essential for finding new, younger clients to replace the lost accounts. The responsibility weighs on him. "I feel a lot of pressure," he said. "And sometimes I don't know what the heck to do." Sensing the students' disinterest in matters of global trade, Adam asked them, "Do any of you watch 'Say Yes to the Dress'?" "In a minute," he said, "one of the producers is coming up here to talk to us about possibly making flowers for them." Though his father sometimes dolefully tells tour groups to "bring home a souvenir we'll give it to you less than wholesale," Warren ended the tour on a hopeful note. "Anything can put us back on the map," he said. "We need to keep up the positive vibes. We're O.K. today." "I went in there and I was floored," Ms. Benzinger said. "Not that there were beautiful flowers, but that there were women at tables making them. Are you kidding me? We're talking 2019 in New York. I mean, this doesn't exist." Designers for Marchesa, a company specializing in formal and bridal wear, have for years hired Schmalberg to make custom floral embellishments, including for Anne Hathaway's memorable 2008 Oscar dress with its shoulder strap of red silk roses. Anna Holvik, the brand's design director, compared the company to a specialized French atelier like Maison Lesage, the embroidery house in Paris. "In fashion today, or any creative industry for that matter, things are changing and moving so quickly that age old techniques are often forgotten," Ms. Holvik said. "To work with people who have dedicated their lives to keeping the craft alive, it's really an honor." Ms. Holvik called Schmalberg's headquarters "a place of wonder," and said she loves to roam the shelves of ready made flowers, which are stored in long cardboard boxes. Labeled "Peony" or "Black Clusters" or "Assorted White Petals," the flowers are grouped by color, with samples stapled to the box fronts, and the visual effect, as Ms. Holvik put it, is of flowers "literally dripping off the walls." To make artificial flowers first requires industrial brawn. Typically, clients provide the material, such as silk satin faced organza or thick velvet, which gets dunked in a plastic bucket of fabric stiffener and hung on a wooden rack to dry. The stiffened fabric is placed under a cutting machine that stamps down on the mold to make flower shapes, as a cookie cutter cuts dough. The resulting petals have no detail beyond what is on the fabric. To emboss floral like veining onto them, a hydraulic press applies heat and pressure. The finished petals are then hand assembled into tulips, carnations or other varieties though, as Warren Brand said, "Not everything is horticulturally on the money here." Alex Nelson, 63 and a Bronx resident, runs the cutting machine and sings along to WCBS classic hits radio as he works. He came to Schmalberg in 1984. Alvaro Davila, 63, who operates the hydraulic press, once worked at a competitor, Dulken and Derrick. When Mr. Davila was laid off, Schmalberg gave him a job. Miriam Baez, 70, who oversees the flower assemblers, started at Schmalberg in 1979, after the flower factory on 14th Street where she worked relocated to Florida. A crafting wiz, Ms. Baez is the one who helps fashion designers realize their ideas. One day, she worked with a designer from Vera Wang to construct flowers with 10 inch petals, the fabric a gorgeous soft blue and mint green, the petals delicate and floppy yet still structured. "I did retire once, but I'm still here," Ms. Baez said. "I don't want to stay home. Every day here I'm doing new things." "Then every few years, flowers would come in," said Mr. Brand, who graduated from SUNY Cobleskill on a Tuesday in 1977 and went to work for the family business on Wednesday. "We'd be busy again with flowers." In October of 1981, Harold tried to break up a fight between two male employees and was shot point blank in the neck by one of them, the bullet lodging near his spine. Warren, then 23 and newly married, living in Manhattan and going to rock concerts and partying hard, got the call at his apartment midday. Warren rushed back to the store, where his father was being loaded into an ambulance and taken to the emergency room. The surgeons saved Harold from becoming a paraplegic, but they couldn't remove the bullet and his recovery was slow and painful. Warren stepped in to run the business, eventually taking over. (Debra, his sister, is retired.) Whether it expands or (mostly) contracts depends on caprices of fashion and popular culture. In the early 2000s, during the popular run of TV series "Sex and the City," Carrie Bradshaw, the fashion plate lead character, accessorized her outfits with floral pins and appliques. Fabric flowers became trendy. Schmalberg increased staff, and its employees put in workweeks of 60 hours and up to fulfill orders for Talbots and other retailers. "We rode the wave," and conserved the profits, Mr. Brand said. Adam Brand came to work for his father during that windfall summer to help out. And, he said, "I started to recognize what we had here." After graduating from Stony Brook University with a degree in psychology, Adam decided to become, like his grandfather and father, a flower guy. And then there is the trickle of independent designers, like Mina Mann, who may stop by Schmalberg for piecework say, to embroider a wrap. Ann Claire, a milliner, was there not long ago to get flowers for a hatpin she was making for the HBO adaptation of "The Plot Against America," a Philip Roth novel. Ms. Claire moved to New York, she said, because she couldn't easily find wire, buckram and other supplies for her work elsewhere in the United States. And she could find silk flowers only in the garment district, at Schmalberg. "Everywhere else is in Europe," she said. Today Ms. Claire was in search of a bright, dahlia shaped flower that she would then hand paint. "I've got to find a pale, pink velvet," she said, rooting through a box of samples in that general shade. She huddled over some flowers with Lucia Reynoso, a veteran employee, asking, "Can these come higher? What do you think? Bigger or smaller?" A tremendous amount of time, labor and expense would go into creating one hatpin for one character's costume in a single fleeting scene. "And probably viewers won't even notice," Ms. Claire said ruefully. "It's such a dying thing. Yet people want that quality. But it gets harder and harder to find it." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
A yoga studio has signed a three year lease for 1,000 square feet on the third floor of this 12 story commercial loft building. A four story 1904 mixed use walk up features 10 market rate apartments, as well as two vacant retail spaces 2,040 and 740 square feet with basements formerly occupied by B G Clothes. The retail spaces in this 11,404 square foot building can be combined, or leased separately at 60 a square foot. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
As part of a restructuring, NBCUniversal named Susan Rovner on Monday as its chairman of entertainment content, a job that gives her creative control over the company's TV and streaming properties. The appointment of Ms. Rovner, a longtime Warner Bros. executive, is yet another move in a monthslong reshuffling at NBCUniversal's television holdings. She will be in charge of content at the NBC television network and cable properties like E!, Bravo and USA, as well as original programs for Peacock, the company's new streaming service. Ms. Rovner is now effectively the creative counterpart to Frances Berwick, who was named the chairman of NBCUniversal's entertainment networks in August. Ms. Rovner will be charged with finding the best programming for the properties she oversees; Ms. Berwick is in charge of the business operations of the networks, including marketing, communications, acquisitions and business affairs. (Ms. Berwick does not have business control over Peacock; that belongs to Matt Strauss.) This year has been one of dizzying executive turnover at NBCUniversal as the company tries to keep up with viewers who have increasingly turned away from cable in favor of streaming. Jeff Shell, who replaced Steve Burke as chief executive in January, has been quick to put his stamp on the company. In May, he put Mark Lazarus in charge of the company's entertainment properties and Cesar Conde in control of the NBC Universal News Group. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
Pre and post impact images of the site on the asteroid Ryugu struck by a copper projectile. Images by Arakawa et al., 2020 In April last year, a Japanese spacecraft launched a strike from above on an asteroid. Japan's space agency was not declaring war. The bombardment was part of the work of Hayabusa2, a robotic space probe that is gathering hints about the origins of the solar system by studying the rocky object, Ryugu. It is a type of asteroid that is full of carbon molecules known as organics, including possibly amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. The mission also provides information that could help defend our planet in the future. Ryugu, a diamond shaped body more than half a mile wide, is among the asteroids that swing inside the orbit of Earth as they travel around the sun. Ryugu itself is not expected to collide with our planet anytime soon, but other similar asteroids might. In the April experiment, the spacecraft released an apparatus, the Small Carry on Impactor, and scurried to a safe location behind the asteroid. Plastic explosives accelerated a four pound copper projectile to 4,500 miles per hour into its surface. A camera deployed by Hayabusa2 recorded the impact. "That was wow, what a big surprise," said Seiji Sugita, a planetary scientist at the University of Tokyo and one of the authors of a paper describing the results of the cratering experiment that was published on Thursday by the journal Science. From the size of the pockmark they made, scientists infer that the asteroid Ryugu looks extremely young for its age. Even though Ryugu is made of stuff dating back to the birth of the solar system 4.5 billion years ago, its surface is just nine million years old. The gargantuan difference in ages between the materials of Ryugu and its surface appearance is not a contradiction. Ryugu probably coalesced out of debris knocked off a larger asteroid, and that collision and coalescence could have occurred just nine million years ago. Dr. Sugita thinks that Ryugu is somewhat older than that. The expected age of asteroids the size of Ryugu is about 100 million years, he said. Some event that occurred nine million years ago, like a speeding up of the asteroid's spin, could have erased and filled in the older craters. (Think of it like Botox for the solar system.) Ryugu does appear to have been spinning much faster at that time, which would explain the bulge around its Equator. Hayabusa2 has also spotted landslides on the surface, which could have occurred as the asteroid later slowed back down. Here is how the scientists analyzed the crater. The hole excavated by the blast was a semicircle, not a full circle. That indicates that a large buried boulder deflected part of the impact's energy. The scientists had predicted a hole would be up to 30 feet wide. Instead, the diameter of the crater was close to 60 feet, with a depth of a couple of yards. "The volume of the ejecta is about 10,000 hand buckets of worth of sand and pebbles," Dr. Sugita said. If the impactor had hit rock, it would have carved a small crater; the energy would have dissipated into breaking apart the rock. But when it slammed into material that was loosely held together, the impactor kicked up far more debris. (Think of the difference between dropping a cannonball on a concrete sidewalk versus a beach.) Ryugu is covered with boulders, and indeed, one large buried rock led to the semicircle shape of the crater. But the neighboring material seems to be held in place just by the asteroid's weak gravity. Comparing the size of the crater with the results of laboratory experiments on Earth, scientists concluded that much of Ryugu was made of bits like coarse sand grains. The large crater size on Ryugu shifted the estimated age of the asteroid's surface. Smaller collisions occur more often, so the pattern of pockmarks on Ryugu could have been produced in just nine million years. Results from a small German French lander that Hayabusa2 had dropped onto Ryugu's surface months earlier also fit the picture of an asteroid only loosely held together. In a paper published last week in the journal Nature, the researchers working on the lander describe infrared images taken on the surface, which show that the asteroid is made almost entirely of highly porous material fragments from a larger asteroid that was shattered by impacts. The fragile structure of the asteroid also helps explain why so few carbonaceous meteorites are found on Earth's surface, even though three quarters of asteroids, including Ryugu, fall in this category: They largely disintegrate and burn up in the atmosphere before reaching the ground. Hayabusa2, which arrived at Ryugu in June 2018, also picked up some dirt and small pebbles from the surface of the asteroid, which is named after Ryugu jo, or dragon's palace a magical undersea lair in a Japanese folk tale. After nearly a year and a half of exploration, Hayabusa2 headed back toward Earth last November. Near the end of this year, it will drop off a canister containing the samples, which will land in an empty part of Australia. Scientists will then be able to examine the composition of Ryugu in much more detail. A NASA mission, OSIRIS REx, is exploring another carbon rich asteroid, Bennu, and it, too, will attempt to collect bits of it to bring back to Earth, although it will not return with its samples until September 2023. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
SAN FRANCISCO Have you ever wondered whether you have fallen prey to a Russian misinformation campaign? Soon, you will be able to find out. Facebook said on Wednesday that it planned to roll out a new tool later this year to help figure out if that new page you followed on Facebook or account you added on Instagram was secretly being run by Russia's troll army. The tool, which you will find through a newly created portal on your Facebook or Instagram page, is part of an effort to "protect our platforms and the people who use them from bad actors who try to undermine our democracy," Facebook said in a blog post. The social network is trying to assuage critics who said Facebook did not do enough to stop Russian propaganda from spreading on its platform ahead of the 2016 presidential election. The social media giant, along with Twitter and Google, were grilled by lawmakers on Capitol Hill several weeks ago about their role in the election and the unintended consequences of their technology. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
I gasped so loudly, it sounded like Judy Garland had shown up at my Christmas party. It happened during "Dashing in December," a new holiday film on the Paramount Network about two men who fall in love on a ranch. I involuntarily inhaled as Wyatt, a stuffy venture capitalist, locked lips with Heath, the sweetheart ranch hand. Watching it made me feel like Santa put me at the top of his nice list. I'm gay. I kiss men. Never at a ranch, once at a Denny's. But there was something so surprisingly renegade about the movie's smooch. Leading men just don't kiss each other in the conservative fraternity of holiday TV movies. They do now. As I recently reported, this year there are six new holiday themed films with gay and lesbian leading characters, including "Happiest Season" (Hulu), "The Christmas House" (Hallmark Channel) and "The Christmas Setup" (Lifetime). In this chaste genre, that's a milestone. Nia Fairweather thinks so, too. She plays an Afro Latina woman of fluid sexuality in the new indie "A New York Christmas Wedding," now on Netflix. "There's a list a list where there never was a list," Fairweather said. "That lets us know this year has been different." This change is significant for me, a holiday movie fan whose biggest gay Christmas memory is George Michael gazing lovingly at Andrew Ridgeley on the cover of the Wham! album "Last Christmas." But as I reported the article, I wondered if I was overstating the arrival of a New Queer Christmas Cinema. Will we look back on horrible 2020 as I think we will as the year that finally gayed up Christmas movies? I called up holiday movie aficionados to ask: Is this a big deal? "This is a big deal," replied Joanna Wilson, the author of several books about Christmastime entertainment. "Queer people have been bosses and co workers and siblings of the main characters. Being the central romance is very exciting and comes not a moment too soon." Blake Lee, who stars with his husband, Ben Lewis, in "The Christmas Setup," framed it as an answer to a chaotic 2020. "We are four years into a presidency that has attacked the L.G.B.T.Q. community and projected hate," Lee said. "I feel like these writers with these stories were like, now's the time." What holiday films provide nostalgia, predictable formulas and an escape from real world adversities like Covid 19, bankruptcy, bigotry can be especially comforting to queer people, said Michael Varrati, the screenwriter of several holiday films, including the new "Christmas With a Crown." "Movie Christmas is a lot different than real Christmas," Varrati said. "Not everybody has a great relationship with their family or has pristine memories of yesteryear." In holiday movies, he added, queer people "get to live in the Christmas they always wanted or didn't get to have." Jake Helgren told me he wrote and directed "Dashing in December" as an Americana romance and a "love letter to the ending" he wanted in "Brokeback Mountain." Lawrence Humphreys, the film's production designer, said the set was a teary mess as he and other crew members, straight and gay, watched the leading men kiss. "We knew what we created was something beautiful," said Humphreys, who has worked on several Christmas films. "It's the sweetest thing I've ever been a part of and the one I'm most proud of." L.G.B.T.Q. holiday entertainment has roots in the days when the word "queer" landed with a punch to the face. Performers surreptitiously conveyed stereotypical gayness through winks, camp, sass, frippery that was evident to in the know audiences but sailed over others' heads. Liberace's television show featured a Christmas episode in 1954. Paul Lynde starred in "'Twas the Night Before Christmas," a 1977 ABC special. That same year, "All in the Family" ran groundbreaking Christmastime episodes about the murder of Edith Bunker's friend Beverly LaSalle, who refers to herself as a transvestite. (She was played by Lori Shannon, the drag stage name of Don McLean.) L.G.B.T.Q. characters are now regulars on holiday themed TV. But until this year, queer leads in holiday movies were few, relegated to low budget indies like "Too Cool for Christmas" (2004), which was also released in a straight version, and "Make the Yuletide Gay" (2009). Supporting queer characters were mostly on the sidelines and white. That changed this year, as actors of color took on leading roles, including Fairweather, who is Afro Caribbean, and Juan Pablo Di Pace, the Latino actor who plays Heath in "Dashing in December." Transgender characters and actors are still rare, though. So is sex. Couples of all orientations rarely get heavier than a kiss in mainstream holiday fare. "Dashing in December" is a little more sexually adventurous, and by adventurous I mean a scene in which Wyatt, in just underwear, encounters a wet Heath in a towel. By the chaste standards of holiday rom coms, "Dashing in December" is "Cruising." And yet it's not. What you won't see in these new films are activists, leathermen, butches or foul mouthed drag queens. That's not the Lifetime or Hallmark brand, so that's no shock. But that's what happens with assimilation. If gay people want straight people to believe our love deserves a holiday movie, don't be surprised when straight people expect that movie to look like theirs. To counter the new gay sweetness, I binged renegade holiday movies about queer people who are raunchy, vulgar, camp, deranged. Or as BenDeLaCreme, the "RuPaul's Drag Race" star, put it: "the beautiful, bizarre things that queer people exposed themselves to when they had to search harder." BenDeLaCreme is doing her part with a saucy new holiday special on Hulu with the "Drag Race" Season 5 winner Jinkx Monsoon. Whatever the opposite of "The Christmas House" is, I watched it. There was "Naked City: A Killer Christmas" (1998), a Peter Bogdanovich film that used the fear of an Andrew Cunanan style gay serial killer in service of a lurid thriller. On Amazon, the ensemble dramedy "Some of My Best Friends Are ..." (1971) was set on Christmas Eve at a bustling Greenwich Village gay bar, featuring moving performances from Rue McClanahan and Candy Darling. (This paper called it "a very sad gay movie.") | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
Audis needing new brake discs and Corvettes with low oil in their differentials are among the mechanical problems addressed in the latest technical service bulletins from automakers. Compiled by alldatapro.com, the bulletins offer automakers' insights into recurring problems with various models. The bulletins, called T.S.B.'s, are not recalls; they are information provided to dealers' service departments and mechanics. Unless noted, carmakers do not offer payment assistance for the repairs beyond the normal warranty. Alldata.com sells a more comprehensive version of the bulletins to consumers. Here are some recent examples: ACURA Sometimes the most irksome noises are the simplest to fix. According to T.S.B. 13 039 issued on Oct. 23, Acura's parent company, Honda, said ticking from the dashboard of some 2014 MDX crossovers was probably because paint on the underhood noise damper near the windshield base was sticking to the body. Adding stickers to shim the damper away from the body should stop the clicking. AUDI Uneven roads may rattle the front axles of some 2011 13 A8s. In T.S.B. 461360 issued on Oct. 16, Audi said the noise might be caused by looseness in the pins that hold two piece brake discs in place. Replacing the front discs should clear up the trouble. BMW A new battery may be needed in some 325i models. In T.S.B. 611613 issued on Dec. 1, BMW said the batteries produced by Banner had exhibited a shortened life span. The company will inspect the batteries in 2010 12 models and replace them, if necessary, at no charge. CHEVROLET Low differential oil may plague some just delivered 2014 Corvettes. In T.S.B. 13384 issued on Nov. 7, General Motors said the vehicles might have been shipped this way, and most were on dealer lots. A loud whine or bearing noise can result. Also, some 2014 Chevrolet Silverado 1500s and GMC Sierra 1500s may have a loose rear axle pinion nut. In T.S.B. 13430 issued on Dec. 9, G.M. said the nut might not have been tightened properly at the factory. The company will inspect and tighten pinion nuts without charge. LAND ROVER Water in the interior may be an issue with some 2013 Range Rovers. In T.S.B. Q2772 issued on Dec. 9, Land Rover said the charge warning light might be set off by water entering either of the back corner roof posts. Sealing the leak should stop the moisture and keep the light off. MAZDA Difficult shifts especially into first gear may plague some Mazda 3 models with manual transmissions. In T.S.B. 0500713 issued on Dec. 12, Mazda said the shift control cables on some 2014 models might have been misaligned during production, requiring readjustment. Also, vibrating hoods may rattle CX 5 owners. In T.S.B. 0903612 issued on Dec. 10, Mazda said the problem in 2013 14 models might be caused by insufficient sealant in the space between the inner frame and an outer panel at the bottom of the hood. Adding more sealant should stop the shaking. MINI The company will inspect timing chain tensioners on certain 2006 9 Clubman, Hardtop and Convertible models. In T.S.B. M110413 issued on Oct. 1, Mini said the timing chain tension was not consistent on the 1.6 liter turbo engine, causing engine rattles on cold start ups or at idle. The company will replace timing chains without charge on cars deemed to need the repair. SUZUKI Although this company stopped selling cars in the United States in 2012, owners of some 2009 Grand Vitaras haven't heard the last from it. In T.S.B. 3512103 issued on Dec. 10, Suzuki said some models with 2.4 liter engines would get an extended warranty in the event of a crack between the cylinder head bolt and casting plug. Owners would notice engine overheating and engine oil contaminated by coolant. The repair will be warranted for seven years or 102,000 miles. TOYOTA Accessing the cargo bay of some RAV4s may be difficult. In T.S.B. SB0168 13 issued on Nov. 12, Toyota said stuck power liftgates on some 2013 RAV4s might be a result of one or both power door actuators separating from the ball mounts on the hatch or the body. Replacing the actuator units should solve the problem. VOLVO A clicking noise may come from the front of some 2012 14 S60s and S80s. In T.S.B. TJ28204 issued on Oct. 16, Volvo said the noise could indicate a problem with the front control arm, which would need replacing. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Automobiles |
Amy Heckerling, who wrote and directed the 1995 teen classic "Clueless," is now remaking that movie as an Off Broadway musical.Credit...Erik Tanner for The New York Times Amy Heckerling thought "Clueless" should be a musical, right from the beginning. "Even when we were shooting the movie," she said, "it felt like, at any point, it should burst out in song." Back then, in 1994, people around her agreed that it had the heart of one. She would watch Alicia Silverstone and Paul Rudd as Cher and Josh, tiptoeing around each other as they fought and flirted, and wonder why they couldn't just burst into song. "Two people falling in love, well, they got to sing," she said. But the people who usually fund these ventures did not agree. A musical was considered too expensive, and not worth it. People wouldn't see it, they told her and blah, blah, blah. She'd always wanted to make a musical. She had in mind a black version of "Bye Bye Birdie," with Richard Pryor, Prince and a very young Will Smith. "I was told you can have a black actor with a white actor, but you can't have more than that." So, no to that, too. But she never stopped trying with "Clueless." She never stops trying with anything, really, even when the parts of her that wonder if the world is trying to tell her something seem louder than her certainty that Cher Horowitz should live. In those moments, she looks inside herself and realizes she really can't let "Clueless" go. In light of the success of "Clueless" as a movie, in light of the fact that it seemed that every film more than 10 years old was now being adapted into a Broadway show and yes, in light of how much its creator still wanted to spend time with the material Heckerling pursued a stage version. By the time of this rehearsal, Heckerling had been trying to mount this thing for years. It was first in workshops with Barry and Fran Weissler ("Chicago"), who told Heckerling they wanted her to be involved, she said, but then only invited her to readings. Their version of "Clueless" wasn't exactly in line with her vision. Their team wanted the musical to start with the daily arrival of the hired help housekeepers, gardeners, etc. into Beverly Hills on city buses. The story of this privileged world would be seen through their eyes. But "Clueless" isn't a story about class. It's a fantasy, written by someone who grew up without a lot of money in New York and who always wondered what life would be like in a place where things seemed easy, where it was always summer and a girl could be loved and accepted and keep a positive outlook. "That's like, 'What's it like to live in a Fred Astaire movie?'" she said. "You don't go, 'There's a Depression outside.'" The Weisslers didn't renew their option on "Clueless," and Heckerling had been introduced to a producer from the Dodgers, the producers behind hits like "Jersey Boys" and "Matilda the Musical," who would help get this iteration of "Clueless" off the ground. They attached Kristin Hanggi and Kelly Devine, the director and choreographer team behind hits like "Rock of Ages." Scott Elliott, the founding artistic director of New Group, had been at a few table reads and had kept an eye on the production. Eventually, "Clueless, The Musical" had a home. They hired their Cher: Cameron, who starred in "Liv and Maddie" and "Descendants" and who looks like an anime drawing under 72 Instagram filters. They cast their Josh, their Dionne, their Murray. Slowly, as Heckerling watched younger movies become musical hits (like "Mean Girls"), "Clueless" began to find its way. It was finally happening more than 20 years since "Clueless" hit movie theaters, it was finally happening. (The show, now in previews, opens on Dec. 11 at the Pershing Square Signature Center, in a New Group production.) Which is great it is but it's also a little nuts. Heckerling was a pioneer as a female director of touchstone '80s comedies like "Fast Times at Ridgemont High," "National Lampoon's European Vacation" and "Look Who's Talking." She was a woman who was somehow able to join a fraternity and thrive in it. And yet, lately, she's been relegated to directing episodes of other people's TV shows. But now, she is re emerging, with a new show made from an old movie which is great news, truly. But it all raises the question of where she's been and why her career seemed to halt after "Clueless." Maybe "Clueless" was her masterpiece and she had nothing to say after it. Or maybe she got tired of dealing with all the ways that trying to have creative output can diminish you in the world. The complicated answer is that she doesn't quite know. The studio told them it would never work. They said you needed something nostalgic when you wrote about kids like, "American Graffiti." It was released in just 498 theaters. But something happened the weekend it went to screen. People loved it. The studio released it into more theaters in coming weeks, and "Fast Times" became a Top 5 movie. "Johnny Dangerously," her 1984 follow up, was about gangsters in the 1930s her favorite genre, equal only to musicals. But the movie was testing poorly, and she was worried about her future. "I thought, well, men can have a failure. Women can't, and so I have to have something that will make money, and it has to already be in the works so that they'll discount 'Johnny Dangerously's' failure." She jumped on "European Vacation," a sequel to a successful film, with Chevy Chase and Beverly D'Angelo, both of whom she had nothing to say about. ("I don't like saying bad things about people.") She hated it. "Oh my God, I despise that movie. I just felt very, like, I don't know if I even want to ever do this again." Then, after "Johnny Dangerously" came out, she said, "I wanted to kill myself." The theaters were empty, and she felt sick. She didn't realize she felt sick because she was pregnant. She had promised herself that she would not have a child until she'd directed three movies, and there she was, three movies under her belt, and now a fetus there, too. She gave birth to her daughter, Mollie, during her second marriage, to the screenwriter Neal Israel. One day, soon after Mollie was born, and soon after she found herself no longer married for a second time, she was thinking about what life might look like to her baby. She imagined an ongoing monologue in Mollie's head. Was this a movie? She and Israel batted it around as a movie idea. She thought no, it was corny. But eventually she began to consider it: a talking baby who observed its single mother as she tried to figure out her love life. She made the baby a boy so that she could fool the studio into not realizing that this was actually a movie about a postpartum woman's love life. Or about Heckerling herself. Mollie's father is not Israel, but the director Harold Ramis. If you would like more details on this, you can watch "Look Who's Talking," which is a fairly accurate account of the whole thing. She became depressed. She didn't know how to feel better, but then picture the Electric Fountain in Beverly Hills lighting up behind her "Clueless!" She wrote "Clueless in California" for 20th Century Fox, but she said the studio had too many notes on the script. It had just released "PCU" and "Airheads," which hadn't done as well as it hoped. She took it everywhere else, and finally to Paramount. Heckerling loved MTV, and she handed the script over with a VHS tape of Alicia Silverstone in the Aerosmith video for "Crazy." "Clueless" opened at No. 2. "In the midst of a summer of mostly desultory films, along came 'Clueless,'" wrote The New York Times. "The wickedly funny farce about rich teenage girls in Beverly Hills emerged this weekend as a sleeper hit of the summer." Heckerling told a reporter at the time that she was "blown away" to have a hit on her hands, but the box office was nothing compared to the movie's afterlife. It spawned a TV show that ran for three seasons and a series of 21 novelizations (Sample title: "Cher's Guide to ... Whatever"). Two decades later, it is still hard to find a weekend where "Clueless" isn't playing on cable. "One of the things that I think is very clear in her work," Rudd said, "is just how much she loves young people and doesn't talk down to them, and treats the things they're going through with respect and a relatability that she never seems to have lost. So there's something kind of timeless about her work and about her." Crowe remembers the opening weekend for "Fast Times," the teen classic that would disprove the studio's skepticism. Crowe went to see his predicted failure of a movie in the theaters, and afterward, he called Heckerling, who was sitting at home, sad. He said, "Go see the movie." So she dragged herself to a theater and listened to the audience recite lines at the screen. People knew the dialogue, as if they'd already seen it multiple times in its first weekend. She didn't know what to do with that success. "That's the Amy combo," Crowe said. "It's the happy/sad. It's the beautiful combination. It's like, humble, and self deprecating, and wildly original and eccentric at the same time." She tries not to think about moments like that one too much. She puts them in a jar, and every now and again she takes them off a shelf and opens them up. Now she's on 42nd Street with her musical, which takes pop hits from the '90s and revises the lyrics. She remembers coming up from the subway in a stroller and seeing Times Square for the first time. A camel smoking. A 7Up pouring. The signs were alive. The place was alive. She thought this must be the center of everything. "Clueless" was back where it belonged, in Heckerling's hands, which was a relief. The year after the movie left theaters, Heckerling signed on to write and direct episodes of the "Clueless" television show for ABC. She has read the novelizations; she watched that Iggy Azalea video that she thought was cute, but still. This year a show called "The Unauthorized Musical Parody of Clueless" was mounted at a lounge in Los Angeles, which annoyed her to no end. ("I called my lawyer. He said it's parody. I said, 'So then can I steal everything I want and make parodies?' Because I have a lot of things I would like to parody.") People don't really understand that "Clueless" is hers. "Clueless" shouldn't be something you can mimic and reference and repeat and extend for a quick dollar. That's what these people never understood. "Clueless" is there to save your life. IF SHE CAN, Amy Heckerling writes all night and sleeps until 2 p.m. She's heard that night people don't live as long, but she read somewhere that when we were all tribes running around together, some people, the nervous types, were tasked with staying up all night to keep guard and serve as human alarm clocks. That's her, she said. She lives on the Upper West Side with her 83 year old mother and Mollie; Mollie's boyfriend; and their 4 year old daughter, Harper. She's happy to be back in New York, where she doesn't have to drive all the time. She didn't even know how to drive when she arrived in Los Angeles all those years ago. She lost count of how many times she failed the driving test before she passed. Upon waking, she makes her mother food. If they don't have a doctor's appointment to go to, she exercises on the treadmill, where she watches what she calls "Law Order: Sexy Victims Unit" or "the Nazis," which refers to whichever documentary on the Third Reich is playing on TV at that particular moment. At night, she writes longhand, on the backs of old screenplay pages, so she doesn't waste paper. Or, she'll watch one of her favorite movies: "A Clockwork Orange," "Mean Streets," "West Side Story," "Bye Bye Birdie," "8 1/2 ," "Blazing Saddles," "Bicycle Thieves." When Heckerling was attending the High School of Art and Design in New York, she had to write an essay on what she wanted to do when she grew up. She was not raised to believe she'd do great things. Her father, who was an accountant, was upset that she didn't learn how to type. She still can't type. She wrote in her essay that she wanted to be a writer for Mad Magazine. But the kid next to her wrote that he was going to Hollywood to make movies, and that made her angry. "First of all, he copied off of me all the time," she said. "What was he going to do in Hollywood?" She decided that she would be going to Hollywood to make movies. In the '80s, she read an article about slob comedies, which included "Fast Times," and was immensely proud of being the woman amid all the men behind them "like 'Police Academy' and 'Animal House' with young people behaving badly or stupidly or whatever and raunchy humor." "I was the only female that did a slob comedy, and I was kind of proud. They're saying these movies are stupid and they're lowering the art form and raunchy. I'm going, 'I'm the only woman.'" She always tried to act like she lived and worked in a post sexist world. She hears things now about people not getting hired because they're women, and in her own case, all she can think is: "Oh, I don't know. You know, I keep thinking, like, well, it's my fault. If I was better, it wouldn't have happened. I don't go around going, boy, I'm so good, but I do see a lot of guys that I don't think are that good and they get more chances or whatever, but I tend to think if I was better this expletive wouldn't have happened to me." After "Clueless," she wasn't sure what to do next. Before that, she'd always had goals. She wanted to make a big studio film before she was 30, and she did that. She wanted to make a hit "the way boys had hits, not like a girl hit that made 50 million, but a boy hit that made hundreds of millions," she told Charlie Rose, and she did that. Now she decided that she would focus on the stories she really wanted to tell. Silverstone said that "Vamps" showed what heart there is in Heckerling. "These characters are really interested in fashion and clothing and looking a certain way in 'Clueless' and in 'Vamps,'" she said, "but they also are really battling with deep things you know they're trying to be good people. They're deeper questions that are put in a really sweet, silly, fun setting." "Vamps" went straight to video. You can think of Heckerling as being less in demand than she should be simply because she's a woman, and you'd be sort of right. But it's hard to know what held Heckerling back from a more prolific career because she's so singular in both her tastes and her temperament, and because she had success so early on. "Amy predates the problem even," Crowe said. What he means is that Heckerling was being hired before anyone was really even asking why women don't get hired, so how do you apply these questions to her? Heckerling was hired, so wasn't the game hers to lose? But there are other ways to be sexist than simply not hiring a woman. Heckerling's movies got dismantled at the edges: The studio wouldn't fund a soundtrack. It would release the movie into a tiny amount of theaters, and then you don't get hired again because your last opening flopped because it opened in a tiny amount of theaters. Distribution deals would fall apart. To all this, Heckerling said: "I mean, I don't know, maybe they just don't like me. You go, well, maybe if I had been more brilliant and thought of better solutions, it would have come out great, or maybe if I, you know, was, like, more of a schmoozer and knew how to work with people? But I don't, and I depend on other people to do that, and I'm not a wheeler dealer. I'm, like, a middle of the night scratching on paper person, and so I feel like it's my fault." So according to her, maybe if she had been a better director, or something, she would have been hired more. Or maybe, as Charlie Rose told her: "I talk about you as one of the mainstream top line female directors." Or, according to Bob Thomas, writing about "European Vacation" for The Associated Press in 1984: "Amy Heckerling seemed miscast as director of the 17 million comedy ... She is slender to the point of being slight, and she seemed lost amid the cluster of technicians around the camera. But when she commanded 'Action!' and 'Cut!' there was no doubt who was in charge." Or, according to Roger Ebert, after seeing "Fast Times:" "If this movie had been directed by a man, I'd call it sexist. It was directed by a woman, Amy Heckerling and it's sexist all the same. It clunks to a halt now and then for some heartfelt, badly handled material about pregnancy and abortion." I could have filled this entire article with a list of these things. Sexism in Hollywood doesn't always mean not being hired; it doesn't always mean that you were sexually harassed. Sometimes sexism is a plethora of compliments that make your brilliance a constant exception. Sometimes sexism is taking someone who has self doubt, like many creative people do, and yielding to it, instead of propping her up. Sometimes sexism is taking the extremely relatable content of a person's soul and not being able to figure out why it would be worth the trouble to release it not taking seriously the women who would find comfort and release in a movie that so clearly understood their complicated emotions. You do this enough times, the self doubt turns out to have been a prophecy. There Heckerling was, making movies about her experience as a very particular and very regular kind of woman: A woman who had been scorned, a woman raising a child, a woman who would stay up all night if only you'd let her. But things would go wrong, as they often do in moviemaking, and in her case there would be no executive or producer who would rescue her project. But Heckerling? All she can ask is, "What did I do wrong?" All she can think is that if she were better, she'd be working more. Here's how "Vamps" ends: Goody is tired. She's tired of learning the new technology. She's tired of youth. A series of events force her to rapidly age. She says, "I want to be in the center of things," which means back to Times Square, where she remembers her whole life. She sees Broadway as it was before it was "Broadway," then she sees it as it would have been when young Amy Heckerling saw the lights for the first time. She sees the people she's loved through the years, and in her face there is something of an understanding: that all her contributions to the world will live on, maybe in different forms, but that's the right order of things. She turns to dust, and the wind carries the dust away and all through the city; the things she's created go forward with a piece of her attached forever and ever. She is able to move on and blah blah blah. Maybe some day. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
Ed Cray, a journalist and educator who explored a broad spectrum of Americana with well regarded biographies of Woody Guthrie, Chief Justice Earl Warren, the California serial killer Juan Corona, George C. Marshall and the bluejeans maker Levi Strauss, died on Oct. 8 in Palo Alto, Calif. He was 86 . The cause was congestive heart failure and complications of Alzheimer's disease, his daughter, Jennifer Cray, said. Trained in college as an anthropologist, Mr. Cray invited readers along as he quenched his curiosity about American life and American figures in 18 book length odysseys. He delved into broad subjects, including police misconduct and medical care ("The Big Blue Line" in 1967 and "In Failing Health," in 1970) and entrepreneurship ("Levi's: The Story of Levi Strauss Co." in 1978 and "Chrome Colossus: General Motors and Its Times" in 1981). And he mined folklore, assembling "The Erotic Muse: A Completely Uncensored Collection of the Songs Everyone Knows and No One Has Written Down Before" and "Bawdy Ballads" (both in 1969) and several sequels. The author Douglas Brinkley called Mr. Cray's "Ramblin' Man" one of "the two great" biographies of Woody Guthrie. His "Ramblin' Man: The Life and Times of Woody Guthrie" (2004), the music critic Robert Christgau wrote in The New York Times Book Review, "vividly conveys how difficult Guthrie's life was and how heroic his achievement." The author Douglas Brinkley, a Rice University professor and Guthrie fan, told The Times in 2012 that the "two great biographies" of Guthrie were by Mr. Cray and the political columnist Joe Klein ("Woody Guthrie: A Life," 1980). "Ed was a meticulous craftsman of American biography with a penchant for deep research," Professor Brinkley said in an email. "What mattered most to Ed was being a judicious judge of the past. There are no false notes in his body of work." In 2010, Mr. Cray and Bill Nowlin were nominated for a Grammy Award for writing the liner notes for "My Dusty Road," a four CD set of Guthrie's music released the year before by Rounder Records. Reviewing "Chief Justice: A Biography of Earl Warren" (1997) in The Times, Herbert Mitgang described the book's view of Warren as "idealized," but added that its account of decision making by the court made the profile a "readable and innovative work." Published in 1997, Mr. Cray's biography of Chief Justice Earl Warren won an award from the American Bar Association. Professor Joe Saltzman, a former colleague at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California, where Mr. Cray also taught, said in an email, "Although his books were not best sellers, they always offered solid reporting and new insights into his subjects." In "Burden of Proof: The Case of Juan Corona" (1973), Mr. Cray, who worked as an investigator for the defense, argued that Mr. Corona was convicted in 1973 of killing 25 migrant workers because he had failed to prove his innocence even though the burden of proof was on the prosecution. His conviction was voided because of what an appeals court ruled was incompetent legal representation . Mr. Corona was convicted again, still insisting he was innocent, but in 2011 he admitted his crimes at a parole hearing. He died in March while serving 25 concurrent life sentences in prison. Edward Beryl Cray was born on July 3, 1933, in Cleveland to Max and Sara (Negin) Cray. His mother was a teacher, and his father, a French Canadian, was a truck driver. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
New York City Ballet has selected an interim leadership team pending an internal investigation into sexual harassment allegations against Peter Martins, its ballet master in chief, the company announced on Saturday. Earlier this week, Mr. Martins, 71, requested and was granted a temporary leave of absence in the wake of an accusation made in an anonymous letter sent to the School of American Ballet. The group overseeing the artistic management of City Ballet will be led by Jonathan Stafford, a ballet master and former principal dancer with the company. Joining him will be Justin Peck, City Ballet's resident choreographer and soloist, along with Craig Hall and Rebecca Krohn, both ballet masters. "It was the board's absolute priority to provide ongoing support and stability for the company's extraordinary artists," Charles W. Scharf, City Ballet's chairman, said in a statement. "We are very fortunate to have an exceptional artistic staff already in place, who will now work closely with Jonathan, Justin, Craig and Rebecca to ensure that our dancers and musicians will continue to give the remarkable performances that they present night after night." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
LIKE many parents of young drivers, Shane Coulter wants his 16 year old daughter's car to be as safe as possible when she takes to the road. But like many older vehicles, the 2008 Jeep Wrangler that he bought for her lacked many high tech safety features, like a rearview camera, that are increasingly found in newer cars. But that didn't mean he had to be left out of the technological revolution. Audiovox makes a rearview camera that can be added on. "I actually put it on my daughter's Jeep," said Mr. Coulter, who lives in Warner Robins, Ga. The rearview camera is one of the most popular of a growing list of add on devices and services that promise to bring modern features to aging jalopies. "Lane departure and collision warning, pedestrian warnings, high beam control and traffic sign recognition all of those can be retrofitted in a customer's car," said Elad Serfaty, a vice president at Mobileye, whose technology is built into a variety of vehicles from BMW, Volvo and other carmakers that offer collision detection and prevention. A warning and monitoring system that can be added to older vehicles, like the Mobileye 660, costs roughly 1,000 including a professional installation, Mr. Serfaty said, but he pointed out that the benefits could outweigh the costs. A Highway Loss Data Institute study of Honda Accords and Crosstours equipped with lane departure and forward collision warnings, for example, found a 14 percent reduction in damage claims compared with models without the systems. The Mobileye warning and monitoring system can be added to older vehicles. Consequently, many car accessory companies are joining the driver assistance trend. Garmin, hoping to resuscitate flagging sales of portable navigation devices, has incorporated such technology in its 400 nuviCam LMTHD. The navigation device has a built in video camera that scans the road ahead, offering not only directions but also chimes and yellow icon warnings whenever a driver drifts out of the lane or starts tailgating. Usually cited as a major distraction to drivers, smartphones are also being enlisted to create alert systems. One of the earliest and most extensive driver assistance apps was iOnRoad, now owned by Harman International. Using a smartphone's built in camera, the app monitors the car's speed and distance from the vehicle ahead, sounding a loud alarm if the distance shrinks too quickly or the driver fails to brake sufficiently. Using the app can feel like having a digital back seat driver that chides you every time you drift too close to the fog line. But iOnRoad's constant pings can work to adjust driving habits, like improving driver alertness and increasing the following distance between cars. "If you have a teenage driver, the app will allow you to analyze driving habits," said Alon Atsmon, vice president for technology strategy at Harman. "It can log events, such as tailgating and lane departure warnings, then score his driving compared to other drivers around the world." The basic app is free; a premium 5 version adds dashcamlike video recording and speed limit sign recognition. Many customers decide to upgrade the older family car when it gets handed down to a new teenage driver, according to Keith Imbriglio, the manager at Long Radio, an installation firm in Hadley, Mass. Among the most popular add ons, he said, are rearview cameras like the one Mr. Coulter installed on his daughter's Wrangler. They all but eliminate blind spots behind vehicles. The Viper app works with Apple and Android smartwatches. The app can remotely start, locate and unlock a car from a compatible watch. The Audiovox ACA900, which Mr. Coulter purchased, is a 129 wide angle backup video camera with an ultrasonic sensor. It mounts in a rear license plate bracket and sounds proximity warnings and displays a picture in a dashboard LCD screen or replacement rearview mirror. When the car is put into reverse, the rearview picture appears, including distance and parking guidelines. If the driver gets too close to a pedestrian or nearby obstruction, the system beeps loudly and powerfully and shows a red "STOP" alert on the video monitor. The biggest problem with the systems, Mr. Imbroglio said, is that they take a lot of time to install. Labor can add 70 to 100 to the price for consumers, many of whom may balk at sinking more money into an aging vehicle with tens of thousands of miles on it. So some drivers opt for do it yourself tracking and car monitoring devices that simply plug into the onboard diagnostic or OBD II port under the dashboard of cars built from 1996 onward. The proliferation of OBD II devices include models like those pitched by insurance companies promising to lower rates for good driving habits or those from Silicon Valley start ups looking to capitalize on the connected car trend. Taking connected car apps to the next level, Viper, which makes car alarms, has just introduced software that works with Apple and Android smartwatches. The Viper SmartStart 4.0 app can remotely start, locate and unlock a car from a compatible watch. The forthcoming Android app will even obey voice commands, like "O.K., Google, start my car," according to the company. A typical Viper module package costs 399, installed, with geofencing alerts which let parents know when their child strays outside a preset zone available for an annual fee of 99. "I could be anywhere in the world and I can lock and unlock the car," said Mr. Stewart, who had a Viper system professionally installed in his 2014 Lexus RS350. Initially, he was interested in adding a remote start feature for cold weather days, but liked the additional features. "And when the alarm triggers, it gives you a notification on your phone." For all the technical sleight of hand, there are limits to what aftermarket upgrades can bring to a car. Unlike built in options in new cars, none of these systems can automatically brake a vehicle to prevent a crash or steer a car toward the center of the lane when the driver wanders. And none of the upgrades will stop a car remotely like OnStar can in the event of a theft. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Automobiles |
DYNAMIC DUO Sarah Pekkanen, an author, and Greer Hendricks, an editor, worked together on seven books before they decided to write one as a team. This week, their third thriller, "You Are Not Alone," lands at No. 7 on the hardcover fiction list. In the old days, the two were astonished by all they had in common. Hendricks says: "We both studied psychology and journalism. We're both terrible cooks. We're both close to our brothers, who are both named Robert. We'd always order the same food when we went out to eat. We'd show up dressed alike." In 2015, when Hendricks left Simon Schuster after 20 years, Pekkanen went to her with a proposal: "I said, 'Let's write a book together! Why not?' It was just this instinctual reaction because we were so close and our narrative instincts are so similar." Hendricks responded with a literary prenup: Either author could back out at any time if the partnership wasn't working. She says: "We both went to our shelves and pulled down our favorite books from the past two years. Unsurprisingly, there was a lot of overlap: S. J. Watson's "Before I Go to Sleep," and "Gone Girl", and a lot by Liane Moriarty. We realized these books had strong female protagonists and were psychological in nature. So there was our launching point." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
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