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It is the beginning of the holiday shopping season on Fifth Avenue, even if the festive spirit is dampened a bit by the long guns of stationed police officers and the regular presence of bomb sniffing dogs. Some of the city's most storied stores have found themselves blocked behind police barricades. In the days since the presidential election, protesters have come through angrily, shutting down Fifth Avenue, filling the streets from Trump Tower at East 56th Street down to the Valentino store between 54th and 55th Streets and beyond. Even when the protesters take their placards elsewhere, camera wielding gawkers loiter on the sidewalk, gazing up at the tower where Donald J. Trump, the president elect, is taking meetings. Pedestrian access is largely restricted on the east side of Fifth Avenue between 56th and 57th Streets, where Mr. Trump both lives and works. So outside Tiffany's, Trump Tower's neighbor to the north, and Gucci, whose Fifth Avenue flagship is within the tower (though with its own entrance), scarf wearing employees have been dispatched to the sidewalk, doing their best to usher shoppers, following police bag checks, past the barricades. In the final months of the Obama presidency, as the president elect plans his transition, Trump Tower has become the seat of power. For neighboring retailers, the congestion, the blockages, the protests and the occasional street closures have already affected foot traffic and are a cause for concern: The holiday season accounts for an outsize stake of retail business. "You always hear the number 40 percent for Christmas," said Dan Biederman, the president of the 34th Street Partnership, a neighboring Business Improvement District. On a recent weekday, Maria Mammis, a regular visitor and Fifth Avenue shopper from Montreal, was walking by the barricades as quickly as she could in teetering stilettos. "I'll avoid all these shops," she said. "We're avoiding this whole area. It's terrible." Few retailers care to admit they are worried. Major brands, including Louis Vuitton, Armani and Polo Ralph Lauren, all of which have stores nearby, declined to comment; inside stores, clerks and security guards said they were specifically instructed not to talk about anything "political." For those who would, a spirit of make do reigns. "We've been through a lot of different things," said Jeff Bennett, a market vice president of Tiffany who oversees the Fifth Avenue flagship. "We've been a resilient New Yorker for nearly 180 years." The company has been in frequent communication with the New York Police Department and the Secret Service regarding safety and security, and decided to cancel two events in the immediate aftermath of the election: one celebrating its capsule collection with Eddie Borgo on Nov. 10 (it was rescheduled for early December) and one to unveil the holiday windows on Nov. 14. Nevertheless, the holiday windows are up and customers are finding their way around the obstructions, Mr. Bennett said. (Helping Tiffany is the fact that the store also has an entrance on East 57th Street.) Tiffany declined to discuss specifics of foot traffic or sales numbers. "For international tourists, it's creating a little bit of excitement," Mr. Bennett said. "Occasionally, when it's appropriate, the police and our Tiffany ambassadors are taking pictures. The combination of our ambassadors and the N.Y.P.D. out there, it's creating a nice environment." For one couple, who wanted to get engaged at Tiffany, the aid of "a very understanding member of New York's Finest" became "a memorable part of their proposal and their lives together," Mr. Bennett said. A representative for Gucci declined to comment on how the agitation and blockages had affected the store. The response from the city was not initially sympathetic. "I will not tell you that Gucci and Tiffany are my central concerns in life," Mayor Bill de Blasio said at a news conference held outside of Trump Tower, following a meeting with the president elect on Nov. 16. But at a subsequent news conference on Nov. 18, the mayor and the police commissioner, James P. O'Neill, announced their intention to keep Fifth Avenue open, following three temporary closures in the immediate aftermath of the election and the protests that followed. "We are devoted to making sure the city will keep moving," Mr. de Blasio said. "This is a big challenge and an unprecedented challenge, we know that. We're committed to making it work." He said that he was "very concerned to make sure that businesses continue to thrive, continue to be able to serve their customers and do well," but also asked that New Yorkers avoid the area between 53rd and 57th Streets, between Madison Avenue and Avenue of the Americas, "to the maximum extent possible," a request not likely to please those retailers in this high priced luxury corridor, where rents can run a reported 5,000 per square foot. On Fifth Avenue between 56th and 57th alone, there are stores for Abercrombie Fitch and Prada, as well as the multiunit Crown Building at 730 Fifth Avenue, home to Mikimoto, Piaget and Bulgari. Ermenegildo Zegna plans to open a store there. Jason Maurer, the leasing agent for the property, declined to discuss the building. "We are hopeful that a solution can be found to address the security concerns while allowing for New York residents and visitors to continue enjoying Fifth Avenue, the country's pre eminent shopping district," Joshua Schulman, the president of Bergdorf Goodman and Neiman Marcus International, wrote in a statement. "We were pleased to unveil our holiday windows on Tuesday, November 15 without any issues, and we have not modified our hours of operation or our entrances." But those in the epicenter of the ongoing commotion are likely in for continued disruption, especially given the announcement that Melania Trump and the couple's son, Barron, are to stay in New York until the end of the school year. The president elect plans to move to the White House, said Hope Hicks, a spokeswoman for Mr. Trump, though speculation endures that he will continue to spend time in New York. "It's going to be terrible for those poor retailers that are between 55th and 57th," said Joseph Sitt, the chief executive of Thor Equities, a landlord, developer and leasing agent with commercial properties up and down Fifth. "Everyone between 55th and 57th has a nightmare on their hands." Representatives of the Fifth Avenue Business Improvement District, which includes the area, did not respond to requests for comment. At Henri Bendel, on Fifth Avenue between 55th and 56th, anti Trump protests had forced the store to close a few times and to reschedule a holiday shopping event. "We obviously have been affected by that," said Pina Ferlisi, Bendel's creative director. "We had to close three times, as a lot of other businesses in the area had to." The store's holiday display, a "Love Wall" of painted hearts by the artist James Goldcrown, ended up being "kind of timely," Ms. Ferlisi said. Mr. Goldcrown was at Henri Bendel installing the wall the night after the election, as protests raged outside. "I don't think any of us really knew what we were in for," he said. "It was just bonkers. It was very exciting, actually." Asked whether business has since returned to normal, Ms. Ferlisi said that Bendel is busy. "Our focus is on giving our customers the best holiday shopping experience on Fifth Avenue," she said. "It's the new normal." Shoppers are adjusting as well. "I was determined to buy sunglasses," said Marina Rabinovich, a Brooklynite who had a stroller with her infant and bags from Christian Louboutin and Tiffany in tow. "The barricades don't bother me. For New Yorkers, it's not a problem." Indeed, said Mr. Sitt, Trump Tower could serve as a boon to retailers a few blocks south, functioning as a new tourist attraction and "anchor" for Fifth Avenue. South of "bedlam," as he called the area between 55th and 57th on Fifth, "they're doing business like they haven't done it in a while." "Their business are booming, booming, booming," Mr. Sitt said. "Somebody joked with me that they're even getting tons of business from the protesters. It's come, protest, shop." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
In 1971, the O in a "LOVE" sculpture was lowered into place at the entrance to Central Park at Fifth Avenue and 60th Street. VINALHAVEN, Me. Jamie L. Thomas has spent most of his 54 years on this remote island off the Maine coast, where he cobbled together a livelihood from an assortment of jobs. And, in recent years, caring for Robert Indiana, the Pop Art great, who retreated to this island decades ago and lived alone in a sprawling home overlooking the harbor until his death in May at 89. When the details of Mr. Indiana's will were disclosed a week later, it turned out that Mr. Thomas had also been entrusted with an unlikely new job: shaping how the artist, best known for his depiction of the word "LOVE" with the jaunty, tilted O, will be remembered by the rest of the world. These are the sort of responsibilities that would test even a veteran administrator. In Mr. Thomas's case, they will pose a particular challenge. He has no formal art training, no experience in running an institution. Perhaps most significantly, he was accused this spring in court of having tarnished the artist's legacy while Mr. Indiana was still alive. In a lawsuit filed in New York a day before the artist's death, a business agent for Mr. Indiana said Mr. Thomas, his caretaker, had purposely isolated the artist to enable a scheme by an art publisher, Michael McKenzie, to forge and sell multiple works falsely attributed to Mr. Indiana. Both men have denied the accusations. But the F.B.I. began poking around the island after Mr. Indiana died, even as art experts questioned how Mr. Indiana could have agreed to some of the works sold as his late in life creations clumsy, overtly commercial material, they said, at odds with the deeper themes that inspired his LOVE and HOPE works. One sculpture, BRAT, was created as a homage to bratwurst and was sold to a Wisconsin sausage company. Another sculpture, WINE, was created for the publishers of a wine magazine. Luke Gottwald, the record producer known as Dr. Luke, said that last year Mr. McKenzie discussed with his former business partner in CORE bottled water the possibility of having Mr. Indiana design a sculpture by that name. Mr. McKenzie said the idea petered out because Mr. Indiana only wanted to do something monumental. The colors, proportions and subject matters of these late works did not seem to match what Mr. Indiana typically produced, said John Wilmerding, emeritus professor of American art at Princeton University, and a friend of the artist. "I would be surprised," he said, "if any serious and informed Indiana critic or writer would accept these works, in my opinion." If one wanted to escape the New York art world, as Mr. Indiana did in the 1970s, Vinalhaven would be a good place to start. Summer visitors might spark a line at the candy store, but year round this rocky place 15 miles off the coast is home to only 1,200 people. For generations, Mr. Thomas's family has accounted for some of them. Tall with a set jaw, Mr. Thomas first worked for Mr. Indiana in the 1990s, one in a crew of young people who helped the artist stretch canvas and other tasks. But before long he moved on to other jobs and pursuits. He was in a country blues band, BarnRatt, ran the island's recording studio, the Flophouse, and acted in local productions of the Vinalhaven Players, where one of his last turns was as Leo Clark, a down on his luck actor in Ken Ludwig's "Leading Ladies." Certainly, all access to the artist came to flow through Mr. Thomas, who could be rude in defending his boss's privacy. In 2014 dozens of people gathered outside Mr. Indiana's house to celebrate his birthday and "International Hope Day," an event Mr. McKenzie had organized to promote the HOPE works. Mr. McKenzie sold prints to the crowd as they waited for the artist. But after several hours, Mr. Thomas came to the front door with a blunt announcement a bluer version of "It ain't freaking happening," according to Kathleen Rogers, a publicist whose clients included Mr. Indiana "It was so disappointing for everyone," she said. By 2016, Mr. Indiana had given his power of attorney to Mr. Thomas. Three of the artist's former assistants have signed sworn statements that say the artist later denied to them that he had ever made the transfer. But it was witnessed by several people who said the elderly artist did so willingly. By this time, anyone who tried to email or phone the artist found that everything was routed through Mr. Thomas. Close aides, friends like Ms. Rogers, Mr. Indiana's New York gallerist and several art scholars said in interviews that they could no longer get through. Sean Hillgrove, who had worked for Mr. Indiana for decades, said Mr. Thomas took such control that salary payments eventually had to be approved by him. And then suddenly the payments to him stopped. His key no longer worked in Mr. Indiana's front door. "The allegation of Jamie not letting him talk to anybody is not true," said Chris Clarke, an artist whose studio is directly across the street from Mr. Indiana's former home. "Bob didn't want to talk to anybody." Friends of Mr. Thomas say he was, in fact, the helper always willing to be on call, to bring in meals, to stay over when Mr. Indiana fell ill, or to repair the boiler at his home, the rambling Star of Hope, a former Odd Fellows Hall that dominates Main Street here. "Jamie was devoted to Robert Indiana," said John Wulp, the playwright and resident of Vinalhaven. "I believe he kept him alive during the last few years of his life." Mr. Thomas did not respond to several requests for comment. But John D. Frumer, a lawyer for Mr. Thomas, said his client always acted in Mr. Indiana's best interests. Mr. Thomas's role in Mr. Indiana's life is likely to draw even greater scrutiny in coming months as the artist's estate is settled, the effort to create the museum expands and the lawsuit filed against him proceeds. In the case, Morgan Art Foundation, a for profit company that owns the rights to Mr. Indiana's LOVE image, argues that it was damaged when Mr. Thomas and Mr. McKenzie conspired to put forward what they characterize as a bunch of bogus Indianas that were not up to the artist's standards. Mr. McKenzie and Mr. Thomas have said in their court responses that it is the Morgan company that actually defrauded Mr. Indiana, by failing to pay royalties on the sale of Indiana related products. Mr. Thomas said in his court filing that he had uncovered "numerous instances of the Morgan Art Foundation, and Simon Salama Caro, as its agent, breaching their obligations to Indiana," a charge the company has denied. Mr. McKenzie, who said he paid Mr. Indiana 1 million a year in royalties, has images of Mr. Indiana signing some of the works whose authenticity is disputed in the lawsuit. Divining whether art has been authorized, or not, can get murky when artists employ staff to help create their works. Throughout his career, Mr. Indiana employed foundries and printmakers, like Mr. McKenzie, to produce his sculptures and prints. Mr. McKenzie, whose business association with Mr. Indiana dates back to the 1990s, operates out of a studio in Katonah, N.Y., where he produced most of Mr. Indiana's latest works, including those now challenged as forgeries. In his response to the lawsuit, and in an interview, Mr. McKenzie said Mr. Indiana had personally signed all the works they produced together, citing that as evidence they were all authorized. But Luke Nikas, the lawyer for Morgan Art, said the company had found a video that "proves the opposite." The video, posted on social media in 2013 by one of Mr. McKenzie's studio assistants at the time, depicts an automatic signature machine signing a series of Indiana prints. On the video and the surrounding text, she expresses concern that her boss had asked her to use the machine. "Forgery," she intones at one point. Mr. McKenzie said use of the machine for one series of 200 prints was approved by Mr. Indiana. "For me, if he blesses the signature machine, that's the same thing as signing," he said. Criticism of the authenticity of the late works was misinformed, he added. Mr. Indiana in recent years had decided to try new things, and was open to the commercial opportunities that fellow Pop artist, Andy Warhol, had once explored. The BRAT sculpture reminded Mr. Indiana of his Midwest roots and was designed to be his largest ever, he said. The WINE work sprung from the artist's long love of it a passion that several other friends said they had never witnessed. The CORE sculpture, Mr. McKenzie said, had actually been the beverage company's idea, and one that Mr. Indiana considered because he had become fascinated with the idea of doing something related to water. Mr. Thomas, acting on Mr. Indiana's behalf, approved some of the later works, according to court papers filed by Mr. McKenzie. In some cases, Mr. McKenzie said in an interview, Mr. Thomas generated new ideas by bringing to Mr. Indiana's attention things the artist had drawn in old sketchbooks. The question of whether all these works were authorized by Mr. Indiana will be explored at a hearing this month in Maine, called by Mr. Indiana's lawyer, James W. Brannan, who is also the executor of the estate. Mr. Brannan has expressed concern in court papers that the disputing parties may have sold works by Mr. Indiana, or works "derivative of" the artist, without paying him his share. In an interview in his office in Rockland, Mr. Brannan said he had no idea whether all the works produced by Mr. McKenzie or sold through Morgan had been authorized. "I was not involved in who did what in terms of works of art," he said. "Those decisions are going to have to be made by somebody else, maybe even a jury." Mr. Brannan came to work with Mr. Indiana in 2016 and redid his will that year. He had previously helped the artist as the lawyer on some real estate transactions. Now he also helped create the Indiana foundation, known as Star of Hope Inc., on which he serves alongside Mr. Thomas as one of the two current board members. Under an earlier version of the will, the foundation was to have been established by Ronald D. Spencer, Mr. Indiana's trust and estates lawyer for 10 years. The nearby Farnsworth Art Museum had also expressed an interest in helping convert Mr. Indiana's house into a public space for his art. But in 2016, Mr. Spencer said, he received a one line letter, signed by Mr. Indiana, firing him. He called and emailed to get an explanation, he said, but never heard from Mr. Indiana again. The new will indicated that all of Mr. Indiana's estate would be placed in the care of the foundation led by Mr. Thomas. Mr. Brannan serves as the foundation's secretary. Mr. Brannan, when asked if Mr. Thomas was the right person to lead the museum, did not hesitate. "Bob Indiana thought he was," he said, "that's why he said what he said in his will." Mr. McKenzie said Mr. Thomas, as a Vinalhaven native, will be the perfect emissary for the museum on the island. Mr. Indiana told friends that, as a gay man living alone on the island, he had not felt particularly welcome in the years after he moved there. The reception warmed, friends said, after Sept. 11 when Mr. Indiana happened to be in New York and saw the towers after they had been attacked. When he returned to Vinalhaven he painted huge images of billowing American flags across the front of his home. "He is the right guy," Mr. McKenzie said of Mr. Thomas. "This is not going to work if the island does not really embrace it. This is where it is going to be. If people don't like it they are going to be graffitiing it. He mitigates this." Others are not convinced that Mr. Indiana was well cared for in his last years. Webster Robinson, 50, who worked for Mr. Indiana for 25 years as a studio assistant, said in a sworn statement that in February, when he still had access to the house, he arrived one day to find Mr. Indiana had fallen on the floor. He said in an interview that Mr. Indiana had been there for hours, pressing his medical alert necklace. "His arms and legs were like that big around," said Mr. Robinson, using his fingers to demonstrate how slender Mr. Indiana's limbs had become. "The only thing big on him was his belly." Earlier this year, Ms. Rogers, the former publicist, made a report of elder abuse to the Maine Department of Health and Human Services. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
LONDON Victoria Beckham did not want her runway show on the Sunday of London Fashion Week to be seen as a homecoming. "I feel reluctant to call it a homecoming because this is not a big blockbuster event. It is not a spectacle full of specially made clothes that won't ever go on to get made or sold, or a retrospective in any way," Ms. Beckham said, smiling nervously. This was 24 hours before the designer commemorated the 10th anniversary of her namesake brand by unveiling her spring/summer 2019 collection here, after a decade showing in New York. She was deep in last minute fittings for the show in a studio at her offices, scanning photo boards of models and tweaking looks, this way and that. "I want the show itself to be quite intimate, with lots of my customers and those who have supported me along the way who haven't been able to come to a show before," Ms. Beckham said, who planned to run the register on Sunday afternoon that allowed the clients to shop the show from her directly. "But it really isn't about looking back. I am always looking to the future we have to be so the collection is about creating clothes that women would want to buy and wear now. I want to give them choices." Business as usual, it would seem. And yet, as a small crowd gathered for coffee and breakfast bites at her elegant Mayfair flagship store the walls lined with recent campaign shots by the photographer Juergen Teller featuring Ms. Beckham crawling out of a giant shopping bag the mood was one of shared pride and celebration. That grew when guests ambled next door to Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, housed in a recently restored Dover Street townhouse for the main event. And it reached a barely restrained fever pitch when Ms. Beckham's husband, David Beckham, accompanied by the couple's four children, Brooklyn, Romeo, Cruz and Harper, arrived, fighting through a paparazzi scrum to seats next to the gallery's grand central sweeping staircase, as assorted parents, sisters, nieces and nephews assembled nearby. Then came the clothes themselves; chic and versatile, contemporary but also with clear nods to many of the design codes upon which Ms. Beckham has spent a decade forging her name. From the opening look a fluid, bold white trouser suit worn by the model Stella Tennant to the strong shouldered blazers, slouchy yet considered slacks and split flared pants that came thereafter, smart tailoring that flattered took center stage, softened by lace trimmed camisoles, vests and blouses. A palette of tomato reds and ochers, periwinkle blues, black and white had been inspired by the painting Blue Knickers also ten years old this year by the artist Nicola Tyson, and worked well on classic "VB" sculpted silhouettes, like sleeveless shifts, tunics and polo dresses with fluid kerchief skirts. Other kinds of femininity came later in billowing floral print dresses with high buttoned collars or spaghetti straps, and knitted, layered midi dresses with matching stilettos some styled over slim cut pants. Then to close, a handful of elegant evening wear looks, like a halter neck gown with a trail of tiny buttons, or a white Grecian style robe, with a blue rope belt and cape that fell behind. The milestone show came 10 months after Ms. Beckham's company took on investment of about 40 million, roughly equivalent to one year's gross revenues at the time, to ramp up expansion efforts, including new stores and new product categories. There have been growing pains, too. This year, about 60 workers were laid off, according to The Daily Mail. As '90s power anthems like "Back to Life" by Soul II Soul and "You've Got the Love" by Candi Staton blasted on the sound system, Ms. Beckham, looking emotional, graced the runway to take her bow, dressed in a camel blazer and a casual ponytail. She reached out to her family for a squeeze, before putting her hands over her face. The former Spice Girl may not have committed to Britain for further shows, but at that moment, she appeared more than happy to be in her home city. London seemed happy to have her. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
It was only a few years ago that some economists were arguing that Europe was "decoupling" from its long dependence on trade with the United States and predicting that the Continent's future lay with the so called tiger economies of Asia. German carmakers, at least, had a different vision of the future. The recovery in the United States auto market, which produced big earnings growth at Chrysler and Ford in their fourth quarters, has also been a boon for Germany's big three Daimler, BMW and Volkswagen. The double digit increases in their American sales last year reflected an overall surge in demand by American buyers for European and, above all, German products. Well designed vehicles and machinery, so coveted a Germany specialty that they can often fetch premium prices, were by far the biggest categories of European exports to the United States. As a result, overall German exports to America rose 24 percent in October from a year earlier, outpacing the 18 percent growth for euro zone exports to the United States. In many ways, the success of the German carmakers has let them invest to produce further success in the American market. The German companies are cashing in on years of commitment to the United States, which remained an important market for them even as the global auto industry trained its sights on China. Volkswagen, for example, has invested 4 billion in the United States since 2008, building a factory in Chattanooga, Tenn., that began churning out Passat sedans in 2011. "Five years ago, we reset the clock here in America," Martin Winterkorn, the chief executive of Volkswagen, said in Detroit last month. "The Passat was made in America for America." BMW and Daimler's Mercedes Benz unit have been making sport utility vehicles and other autos in America since the 1990s: BMW in Spartanburg, S.C., and Mercedes in Tuscaloosa, Ala. BMW and Mercedes have also expanded their appeal in the United States by moving carefully into more affordable parts of the market. Mercedes, for example, sells an entry level Mercedes sedan for less than 30,000. All of that has contributed to a sales surge. BMW vehicle sales in the United States rose 14 percent last year, including the Mini brand; sales of Daimler's Mercedes and Smart brands increased more than 15 percent; and Volkswagen's sales soared 34 percent, including Audi brand cars. For Mercedes and VW, those were better growth rates than in China, and they helped to offset slower sales there. The German automakers' strong financial results contrast with those of European rivals like Renault and PSA Peugeot Citroen, which abandoned the United States market decades ago. Now the French carmakers are short of ways to counterbalance the stricken European market. It is probably too late for them to re enter the United States, even if they could afford the cost of re establishing a dealership network. Kevin Spacey was ordered to pay 31 million to the 'House of Cards' studio after sexual harassment allegations. Netflix buys a visual effects company in a move to support its global ambitions. Mercedes and VW are so well placed in the United States that they even did a little strutting during the televised Super Bowl football championship on Sunday, showing splashy commercials. In the Mercedes spot, the actor Willem Dafoe, playing the devil, offers a young man a new CLA sedan in exchange for his soul. After a fantasy sequence in which the young man cuddles with the model Kate Upton, dances alongside Usher and overtakes Formula One cars on a racetrack, he sees a billboard advertising the CLA for 29,900. He realizes he can afford one without the devil's help. The euro zone recession would clearly be much worse than it is without the income that European companies are bringing in from the United States. While Germany has been the main beneficiary, accounting for 40 percent of euro zone exports to the United States, countries including France, Italy and Spain also recorded big gains in sales in America of products that span categories from chemicals to wine. Britain, which is in the European Union but not the euro zone, expanded exports to America by 11 percent in October from a month earlier. That made Britain second to Germany in total sales of goods to the United States that month, with about 4 billion euros, or 5.4 billion, in October versus 8 billion euros for Germany, according to official figures. The renaissance of United States demand is a big shift from a few years ago, when all the action seemed to be in Asia. The realignment has prompted some companies and governments to re examine their priorities, and it helps explain why European Union leaders like Angela Merkel of Germany and David Cameron of Britain have been pushing hard for a new trade agreement between Europe and the United States. A deal would eliminate tariffs and harmonize regulatory requirements for cars and other products. America has always been important to German manufacturers. But the recent pickup in United States demand for factory equipment, which is closely linked to the auto industry as well as natural gas exploration and chemical production, came as a surprise. After past economic downturns, United States demand for machinery never fully recovered to precrisis levels, said Peter Leibinger, vice chairman of Trumpf, a company based in Ditzingen, Germany, that makes machines used to cut and form sheet metal. "It was always a step down," Mr. Leibinger said by telephone from Farmington, Conn., where a Trumpf factory employs about 700 people. But this time it was different. After an initial plunge following the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008, Trumpf's American sales have soared, rising about 90 percent to 274 million euros from June 2010 to June 2012. The German carmakers are benefiting from a general recovery in the premium end of the American market, as well as from more aggressive financing incentives. But they are also in position to meet demand for less expensive models, as with the BMW X3 SUV, which starts at about 39,000. Volkswagen, which only a few years ago flirted with irrelevance in the United States, has come back after a campaign that began in 2008 and included a high tech makeover of the buildings that house Audi dealerships as well as efforts to improve service. The Passat made in Tennessee is less costly and simpler than the European version. It has helped VW compete better in the United States with the Toyota Camry and Honda Accord. "The VW brand has historically had more of a cult following," said Jeff Schuster, senior vice president at LMC Automotive. "The new Passat is larger and more in line with midsize cars in the U.S. It has more mass appeal than cult appeal." VW has also invested heavily in marketing in the United States. The company's Super Bowl spot portrayed an office worker from Minnesota speaking in a Jamaican patois and exhorting his dour co drones to "turn the frown the other way around." Then he took them for a ride in a red Beetle. The slogan is: "Get In. Get Happy." (Some commentators said the commercial was culturally insensitive, but Jamaica's tourism minister liked it, The Associated Press reported.) Mr. Schuster said he thought VW sales would continue to grow this year, though perhaps not as fast. In January, sales of the German brands rose less than the American car market over all, although it was not clear if the relatively poor performance was a trend or an anomaly. Over all, vehicle sales in the United States were up 14 percent in January from a year earlier. Mercedes sales rose 11 percent over that period, VW and Audi unit sales rose 7 percent, and BMW and Mini sales were up only 2 percent. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Global Business |
A photograph from a spacecraft orbiting Mars shows a long, white wisp, close to a thousand miles long, spilling out of a giant volcano. Could the volcano, thought to be dormant for some 50 million years, be about to blow? "It's just a cloud," said Eldar Noe Dobrea, a scientist at the Planetary Science Institute, which is based in Tucson, Ariz. Sign up to get reminders for space and astronomy events on your calendar. This week, the European Space Agency released a picture taken by its Mars Express orbiter that showed what it described as "a curious cloud formation" stretching from east to west near Arsia Mons, the southernmost in a string of three volcanoes. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
DAVENPORT, Iowa "So if you're with pineapple the first round, and there are enough voters, do pineapples become viable and you can no longer change to blueberries?" a man at the table near me asked. We were in a room full of trainees for the Iowa presidential caucus that would occur in 19 days. People arrived for the training session from all over the state; I had driven an hour from my hometown. The Iowa caucus is not a simple exercise it requires 1,678 gyms, churches, libraries and schools across the state. Each location executes a complicated choreography in which hundreds of people migrate around a room to aggregate in their candidate's corner. Their presence is their vote. At our training session at the Davenport Public Library, we practiced navigating the chaos by using fruits as stand ins for the Democratic candidates. Each fruit contender had its own display table, complete with produce props: oranges, apples, blueberries and tomatoes. One table contained a pineapple, meant to represent undecided voters. During the caucus vote, there is a first round, where people walk around a large room and stand in their candidate's corner. Then, after everyone is tallied, candidates without a 15 percent of the total voters present are swiftly removed from the caucus ballot. Their voters are forced to quickly pick another candidate. The community activist Maria Bribriesco cued us to begin. At first, people gravitated toward the blueberries, which had enticed us with promises of edible samples. Ms. Bribriesco counted everyone. Tomatoes were out. People who clustered around the pineapple wanted to know if they could stand in the undecided corner in the first round of the caucus and then choose a candidate during the second round. That way they could select from a whittled down slate. (If there are too many undecided people after the first round, caucus guidelines state that they can't leave the group). Mark Penn and Andrew Stein write that "only a broader course correction to the center will give Democrats a fighting chance in 2022" and beyond. Tory Gavito and Adam Jentleson write that the Virgina loss should "shock Democrats into confronting the powerful role that racially coded attacks play in American politics." Ezra Klein speaks to David Shor, who discusses his fear that Democrats face electoral catastrophe unless they shift their messaging. Ross Douthat writes that the outcome of the Virginia gubernatorial race shows Democrats need a "new way to talk about progressive ideology and education." Twenty five of the 35 people at the training session had been to an Iowa caucus, but even some of the more experienced ones were confused. A woman sitting next to me told me that she had been to the Democratic caucus in 2016, in which voters chose between Hillary Clinton, Martin O'Malley and Bernie Sanders. She came back for the training, because "you forget," she said. There are so many rules, as well as new updates for 2020. Be in line before 7 p.m. or you won't be allowed to enter. Iowans had to preregister by mid January if they wanted to vote in the caucus while out of state. Voters have to stay long enough to be counted at the caucus, sometimes more than three hours. Fortunately, the training lasted only two and a half hours. "We set it up intentionally to be chaotic because this is going to happen," Ms. Bribriesco said. We had started the evening with a practice run for the Republican caucus, in which voters mark who they want to run as the official G.O.P. candidate, (this part was uneventful, and ended quickly). Then the other guide, Emiliano Martinez of the Iowa Democrats, gave a slide show presentation that offered an overview of the caucus. Each slide was full of lingo like "viable," "locking in" and "alignment." Ms. Bribriesco said the hardest part is figuring out the math. Precinct specific calculations determine whether your candidate will get a state level delegate vote. Delegates then vote for that candidate at the Democratic National Convention in July to determine the national party nominee. If there are three delegates and 35 people in your precinct, how many people do you need in your candidate's group to gain one of Iowa's 41 delegate votes? Mr. Martinez pulled out his phone to do the calculation while reassuring us that when the real caucus day came the precinct captains would check the numbers. As we sat and tried to follow, the women around me discussed the rules. Are you allowed to leave in the middle of the caucus to go to the bathroom? What happens when there's a tie? (The answers to these questions were not clear). If you don't know the math of how many voters each candidate needs to gain a delegate's vote, and you don't know which candidate you want, it's extremely difficult to be strategic. "But if it's too much like a primary, we lose our first in the nation status," Ms. Bribriesco said when I asked her if the Democratic caucus process needed to change. She spoke positively of it all despite the fact that this year, the caucus site she will attend in Bettendorf will include 12 precincts packed into the Quad Cities Waterfront Convention Center. Kathy Laird from Bettendorf (who happens to be Ms. Bribriesco's cousin) recalled that in 2016, she had chosen Mr. O'Malley during the first round but had to choose between Mr. Sanders or Mrs. Clinton after Mr. O'Malley didn't gain enough voters and was ousted from the ballot. The four Iowans in the O'Malley group were bombarded by supporters for the other candidates trying to convince them to join. Usually, voters get around 15 minutes to decide. But things would be different this year, with 12 candidates to choose from. She expects pure chaos to reign. In the last election cycle, Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Sanders were almost exactly matched with the tip to Mrs. Clinton by a 0.3 percent margin and in individual precinct counts, numbers are rounded up and down to determine whether someone receives a delegate vote. How can we trust the Iowa indicator? Ms. Bribriesco said that in 2016, getting a total head count for each candidate was like "herding cats." This year, at least, there are paper ballots to keep track of the number of people in each candidate's corner. This way, people whose candidate moves on can leave after the first round; the paper becomes their placeholder, and votes can't be changed after the second round. Some precincts, we learned, would flip a coin or draw straws to break a tie. It was disillusioning to hear that some delegate votes were left up to chance, given how close the caucus was last time even if now most people agree that the luck of the draw couldn't have changed the outcome of 2016. Two newcomers to the party at the caucus training, the former registered Republican Dave Scott from Bettendorf and his wife, want to beat President Trump, even if it means putting a Democrat in the house. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
Standing around Samsung's tech filled event space in Manhattan in striped knit dresses and jumpsuits, miniskirts with wavy designs and leggings that went over their heels, PH5's models looked like disco mod glam bots sent from the future. It was impossible to tell just by looking, but among the models at the presentation on Thursday were several nonprofessionals, including two alumnae of the Girls Who Code program, which aims to close the gender gap in technology through education. "This is my New York Fashion Week debut," said Adriana Chavez, a home schooled high school junior who wore a gray sweater with a sleeve that landed past her knees. Mijia Zhang, the creative director of PH5, and Wei Lin, the company's founder, have been working with Girls Who Code to design a sweater with a special code on it. "As a brand, we have some influence, and we really want to bring a good influence to people," Ms. Zhang said. Most of the clothing that PH5 produces is made with a computer: Ms. Zhang works with programmers to code various stitches based on her vision, and a machine creates the pieces from there. "With knitwear you have to constantly program," she said. "I think that's something people aren't aware of. You can be into computers and work in the fashion industry." Ms. Zhang, a Parsons graduate from Qingdao, China, who won the Kering Empowering Imagination award in 2014 and worked at Christopher Kane and Nike, did not know how to code when she began working with Ms. Lin, her onetime roommate. "I understand more of the language now," she said. "I learned how they make the different stitches. I know what the code names are." Ms. Lin's mother runs the factory in Dongguan, China, where all of PH5's clothing is produced. ("My mom worked her way up from being a factory worker to running a factory," she said.) As it happens, Ms. Zhang was the first designer to work directly with the factory, "The engineers had never seen a designer before," Ms. Lin said. As someone who had grown up with the factory as a central aspect of her life, Ms. Lin, who had worked in consulting, decided in 2014 that she could give it a new identity. "I could utilize the factory's full capacity and give it a shot at becoming a fashion house," she said. She recruited Ms. Zhang to design, signed herself up for the business end and PH5 was born. "There is more and more fashion coming out of Asia," Ms. Lin said. "It's going from 'Made in Asia' to 'Designed by Asians.' We're just part of this movement." At the PH5 presentation, Reshma Saujani, the founder and chief executive of the Girls Who Code program, was there to support its alumnae. "One of the things we tell our girls is we have to change the image of what a coder looks like and the industries where coders are most prominent," Ms. Saujani said. "When you think of coding, you don't necessarily think of knitwear." As a society, Ms. Saujani said, "we've told our girls that they're not multidimensional. They're either nerds or not nerds. We've taught our girls to hate math and science even if they love it." She listed examples, like a girls' T shirt produced by Forever 21 with "Allergic to Algebra" printed on it and an "I'm Too Pretty to Do Homework" tee that J.C. Penney targeted at girls. "You can be supersmart and have your hair done to the nines," Ms. Saujani said. "We have to stop putting girls into boxes and see them for who they are." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
LONDON " This is really the m oney shot for this hotel," said Philip Blackwell, gesturing at a marble fireplace, soft lit lamps with printed shades, and books, books, books. He was showing off the library at the Ham Yard Hotel in Soho, for which Mr. Blackwell's company Ultimate Library selected about 5,000 books for the shelves, an act of curation that's literary and visual. Ultimate Library sells books by the meter to luxury hotels like the Ham Yard. Founded in 2011, it has capitalized on an explosion of interest in books as decorative objects, shown plainly in popular bookshelf images on Instagram and Pinterest, with the hashtags shelfie or bookstagram. Mr. Blackwell, 60, is erudite, affable and well read; he says he gets "twitchy" when he doesn't have a book on him. He comes from family that has been in the book selling business since 1879, when one of his ancestors founded Blackwell's Bookshop in Oxford. Mr. Blackwell was involved with the company until 2006, when he stepped down as C.E.O. of the book selling arm and began traveling while on gardening leave. It was then that something started to bother him: In the hotels where he stayed, the libraries were ill kempt, full of what he called "orphan books." They were also, apparently, ugly. "Hotels would put so much effort into every other aspect of interior design, but not books," he said. That led to Ultimate Library, which Mr. Blackwell affectionately calls his "gap year project gone wrong." The company has selected books for clients in more than 40 countries, including the Philippines, Greece, the Maldives and Tanzania. In addition to hotels, they include restaurants, private apartments, shops and boats (in case, for example, your yacht lacks a suitable library). Ultimate Library honors highly specific requests: a restaurant in Paris that wanted only books with red spines, or another client who wanted a library based around the subjects of China and horse racing. Books as design objects are nothing new. In the 1820s in Britain, custom bound books started to become popular for elites, with collections that were meant to be uniform for a single family, sometimes bearing their crest or other signature design. The concept of collections trickled down into the mass market. In the 1920s, American publishers like Modern Library put out reissued set of classics with pretty spines that you could buy as a set: starter kits, of sorts, both for reading and showing off your reading. The rise of the shelfie has created a whole new economy of books as backdrops. At the high end of the market is Ultimate Library, w hich peddles what Mr. Blackwell calls "intelligent luxury," books handpicked one by one to give a highly specified feel to a space . Mr. Blackwell said prices range from roughly 2,000 for small collections to 150,000 for whole libraries on a grander scale. But there are also D.I.Y. options for anyone interested in pulling together a pretty library quickly. Nancy Martin, the owner Decades of Vintage, sells vintage books b y the foo t, in sets by color or style. One foot of blue or red books costs 68; you can get rainbow shades for 80. "My theory is that before social media, you decorated your living space and then you went and lived in it," Ms. Martin said. "Now, with the onset of pictorial engagement, you have people who want to be influencers or popular online, and the way to do that is new content. So people have started styling for holidays or seasons, and just making tweaks to their living environments. Books are a really inexpensive way to decorate." Her colors sell seasonally. "Around this time of year people start buying green, and in the summer, aquas and turquoises and yellows," Ms. Martin said. "In the fall, what a phenomenon. People buy brown and brick and terra cotta and orange." Around the holidays, people will buy gold and white, or sometimes special collections she makes of red and green. Blue is evergreen. It's easy to feel a little uneasy about the idea of books intended explicitly for staging photos. (The old decorator's trick of arranging them by the rainbow is particularly polarizing; Kinsey Marable, a private library curator with clients including Oprah Winfrey, said, "I really scoff at that. I think it's just ridiculous. It's just absurd.") Then there's the obvious question: Are people actually reading any of these books? Mr. Blackwell thinks they are, though even if they aren't, there's still value to it. "Someone might see a book on a hotel shelf they've always wanted to read, and then it's in their head, that title, and they'll carry it with them later," he said. And even if nobody does, clients are at least buying books, some of which no one wanted to read in the first place, giving them a second life. Chuck Roberts, a used book seller, calls this "book rescue." He had always sold decorative books in his stores and eventually started a side business, Books by the Foot, as a way of repurposing books that wouldn't sell in his stores: a health or diet book that's gone out of fashion, or a Stephen King best seller, of which the store has hundreds of copies. Almost all these books would be pulped by other book dealers, Mr. Roberts said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
Most tourists who venture to the tiny town of Khajuraho in northern India are drawn there by the thousand year old Jain and Hindu temples, especially the scandalously explicit sex depicted in the statues adorning the walls. But when the author and mathematician Amir Aczel visited in January 2011, he was looking for something else. After wandering the temple complex for hours, he found it: Tucked behind a doorway framed by an amorous couple was a four by four "magic square" carved into the wall. Among the 16 numbers making up the square was a familiar looking "10," written in easily recognizable Hindu numerals. It is one of the earliest known representations of the numeral zero. "Finding Zero" is Dr. Aczel's story of his quest for the origins of the most elusive of numbers: zero. It is zero, Dr. Aczel points out, that makes our place value number system possible. Without it, there is no way to distinguish among 48, 480 and 4,080. Zero is indispensable for our familiar arithmetical operations, and it is half of the binary language of modern computers. And yet, even though we can hardly imagine life without it, Europeans had no concept of zero until the 13th century, when they referred to it as and Indian or Arabic numeral. Where then did this epoch making concept originate? Determined to find out, Dr. Aczel turns to the East. Dating from 954, the magic square at Khajuraho predates European zeros by a full three centuries, and yet it is not the oldest confirmed zero in India. This can be found the city of Gwalior, where a temple inscription from 876 records a grant of land 270 "hastas" long. But Dr. Aczel is looking for something even older: The date of the Gwalior zero, he worries, is contemporaneous with the Baghdad Caliphate, which might lend credence to the theory that the zero was transmitted to India from the West by Arab traders. Although this claim was prevalent among scholars in the early 20th century, Dr. Aczel considers this claim European bigotry. The zero, he has no doubt, is the creation of what he calls "the Eastern mind." Westerners, according to Dr. Aczel, have mainly used numbers for commerce and other utilitarian purposes. Zero, however, is not just a useful symbol, but a paradox a sign that represents absence, or "something" that is also "nothing." Little wonder, he believes, that the practical minded Europeans never stumbled upon it. In Eastern thought, however, the rigid oppositions between existence and nonexistence are blurred, allowing for intermediate states such as "neither existing nor not existing." This fluidity, Dr. Aczel believes, allows for the startling juxtaposition of mathematics and sex at Khajuraho. More profoundly, it accounts for "shunyata," the positive emptiness that is the goal of Buddhist meditation. And zero, in Hindi, is "shunya." Dr. Aczel's connections between early zeros and Eastern thought are powerful, but his opposition of East and West suggests that he might be guilty of some Western binarism himself. One need consider only that the Pythagoreans, founders of the Western mathematical tradition, were a religious cult to realize that the mystical use of numbers was far from unknown in the West. Conversely, the recording of dates and measurements in Gwalior and elsewhere suggests that ancient Indians could be as practical in their use of numbers as Europeans. Furthermore, exchanges between the Indian subcontinent and the Mediterranean world date to at least to the Persian Achaemenid Empire, more than a thousand years before the Baghdad Caliphate. Ideas circulate and are reinterpreted in different contexts. The quest for the pure original zero may well be a lost cause. Yet "Finding Zero" is a captivating story, not just an intellectual quest but a personal one. Dr. Aczel's passion for numbers goes back to his childhood, when he sailed the Mediterranean as the son of the captain of Israel's glamorous cruiseliner, the Theodor Herzl. During port calls, he bonded with Laci, his father's steward, who at one time had been a mathematics doctoral student in Moscow. From Laci, he learned that numbers were an astounding intellectual achievement, perhaps the greatest in history. How did such abstractions arise in the human mind? And where did the systems to represent them come from? Back in 1929, Dr. Aczel learns, the French archaeologist George Coedes translated an inscription found in the ruins of a Cambodian temple, which includes the date 605, equivalent to A.D. 683 . The discovery was celebrated at the time, but the inscription had since been lost, quite possibly destroyed by the Khmer Rouge. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
It's a night of sitcom beginnings and endings as "Abby's" debuts on NBC and "Broad City" concludes on Comedy Central. ABBY'S 9:30 p.m. on NBC. Episodes of NBC's newest sitcom begin with this twist on a common preshow message: "'Abby's' was filmed before a live outdoor audience." And it's true; this multicamera sitcom, created by Josh Malmuth (a writer and producer of the now over Zooey Deschanel sitcom "New Girl"), stars Natalie Morales ("Parks and Recreation") as a former Marine who builds a bar in her backyard. Its regulars quickly come to include characters (in every sense) played by Neil Flynn ("The Middle"), Nelson Franklin ("Veep") and Jessica Chaffin ("Search Party"). While the idea of a tavern peppered with weirdos is well established (see "Cheers"), the show's outdoor filming promises to shake up the convention, something that the camera makes a point of reminding viewers of when it occasionally peels away to show the live crowd. "You see the audience; you see that we're, like, literally on the side of a cliff in Universal Studios; you see the Los Angeles city lights; and then you see us on this weird little outdoor set, acting," Morales recently told The New York Times. "It's going to feel familiar, but it's also going to feel very novel." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
The monumental, imperial ambitions that once drove the transformation of Ostend where the painter James Ensor was born, lived and worked his entire life from a modest fishing port surrounded by dunes and marshes on the short, flat coast of Belgium into one of Europe's grandest seaside resorts, first become visible on its outskirts. Leaving behind the tidy, low lying green polders of Flanders, the huge railway viaducts leading into the town along the industrial harbor are bordered by elegant granite balustrades ornamented by finials and huge carved balls of stone. The station itself, currently being renovated, is a bombastically beautiful 1913 building with an arched concourse flanked by a pair of monumental buildings with huge slate covered mansard roofs. Despite a certain operetta set quality to it all, the Pharaonic seriousness of King Albert I's rail works, and the station, still accomplish what they were intended to do, which is suggest that you've reached an important destination, a splendid place conjured up out of the sand by a royal house insistently seeking a public appearance of power and permanence; the Belgian throne had only been created in 1831. This is also what makes a first glimpse of the town itself a little puzzling; greeted by the sharp cries of sea gulls overhead and invigorated by the iodine rich North Sea air, I had the impression of having accidentally blundered backstage as I walked along the stone lined quays of its working fishing port, lined with snug brick houses. The psychic and social tensions of Ostend's dual identity clearly had a powerful impact on James Ensor's artistic sensibilities, since a finely developed sense of social satire is a recurring element in his work. Ostend is not Versailles. The atmosphere was appealingly bluff and briny, and the fish market next to the port was busy selling piles of the tiny gray North Sea shrimp (one of Ensor's favorite foods when prepared in deep fried croquettes), and huge flat winged skates like the one he painted in his bluntly erotic "The Skate" (Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium). I bought a cup of sea snails cooked in court bouillon as a snack, and ate them while sitting on a bench in Zeeheldenplein, an open air square overlooking the English Channel and the port, dominated by a statue of a fisherman. Watching the drama of the sunlight suddenly piercing the thick gray clouds over the English Channel, creating fleeting wells of silvery light that briefly polished the flinty looking sea, I mused on how essential this town had been to Ensor's art. Among other things, the painter had been deeply nourished by the sea, the constant emotional scouring of Ostend's beaches by North Sea breakers, and the daily absolution offered by the tides. "I was guided by a secret instinct, a feeling for the atmosphere of the seacoast, which I had imbibed with the breeze, inhaled with the pearly mists, soaked up in the waves, heard in the wind," Ensor wrote to a friend. So within just a few hours of arriving, I understood that the art of James Ensor was as inextricably linked to Ostend as the fiction of James Joyce is to Dublin or the poetry of Fernando Pessoa is to Lisbon. For these first sparks of insight, I have a museum guard I met in Antwerp almost 30 years ago to thank. On a snowy morning in that Flemish port city, I'd gone to the Koninklijk Museum Voor Schone Kunsten (Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp) to see "The Dance of the Bride" by Pieter Bruegel, and whatever other treasures the standoffishly formal museum with hissing radiators might offer me, when I found I had it all to myself aside from the tall, bald museum guard with a red beard and a gray flannel suit who shadowed me from room to room. Then I came around a corner and was stopped in my tracks by "The Intrigue," the big, raw colorful canvas of demented looking figures that gave birth to my fascination with James Ensor. Who were these people, and why had the artist depicted them in such a grotesque way? It was a disturbing painting, which made it perversely irresistible, so I kept returning to that gallery. I'd just decided the faces weren't really faces at all, but maybe masks of some kind, when the museum guard spoke to me: "Sir, if you really want to understand Ensor you'll have to go to Ostend. It was the prism through which he saw the world." Now that day had finally come, but to know where to track Ensor in Ostend, I met Xavier Tricot, an artist, writer and one of the world's pre eminent Ensor scholars, for a coffee in the cafe at De Grote Post first. The popular cultural center was created from the town's beautiful former main post office designed by the talented Ghent architect Gaston Eysselinck, and built from 1947 to 1953 and it opened in 2012. Today it's become a gathering spot for an arty, free spirited crowd where Ensor would have fit right in. "People ask why Ensor stayed in Ostend instead of moving to Brussels or Paris, but I think he felt safe here because it was a small place which he knew, and where he was known," said Mr. Tricot, an Ostend native and resident. "Ensor also loved being by the sea, and the light here, and the implicit eccentricity of the town, which offered him a ringside seat on a miniature version of the great social, political and artistic dramas and traumas that shaped Europe over the course of nearly a century, until his death in 1949," Mr. Tricot said. "Even after King Leopold II transformed the town into a resort for the nouveau riche bourgeoisie, at heart it was still the same salty old port it had always been. "Of course, the paradox of Ensor is that he was an elegant man who was very conscious of his social status. When he was young he witnessed the political and social upheavals in Belgium, and sympathized with the anarchists and the socialists, but he also identified a lot with his English father, who was well born and had studied medicine in Germany, as opposed to his rather dour mother, who came from a simple Flemish family and ran a souvenir shop. Ensor's father had attempted to make a life for himself as a doctor in the United States but it didn't work out, so he came back to Europe and married Ensor's mother on the rebound. So they were not social equals, and this caused a lot of tension in the couple," Mr. Tricot said. Ensor also had a complicated relationship with Ostend. "He was a pariah until he had his first solo exhibit in Brussels in 1895. Then his genius was finally recognized by the local bourgeoisie, and the Belgian king made him a baron in 1929. He was very proud of that. To best put Ensor in the context of his times, you must visit the Oostends Historisch De Plate (De Plate Ostend Historical Museum)," Mr. Tricot explained. This intimate, atmospheric museum, with its creaky parquet floors, shows how the town changed completely after 1838, when it became the terminus of a new rail line from Brussels. Across the English Channel, a rail line from London to Dover had also just opened, and in 1846 a Belgian steamship company began service with the purpose of attracting British tourists to the Belgian coast. More important, the little port had found favor with King Leopold I, the first regent of Belgium, who built the handsome villa and spent his holidays here with his French born queen, Louise Marie d'Orleans. Slightly creepy in a way that Ensor would probably have relished, her deathbed room is preserved intact. The palmy travel posters and black and white photographs of the grand hotels and casino on the seafront in the town's turn of the century heyday as a resort also led me to understand that Ensor was something of a voyeur in relation to all this splendor. "I can give you some more information on my childhood and family," he wrote to a friend. "A picturesque detail to note. My grandparents had a shop in Ostend in the Rue des Capuchins that sold seashells, lace, stuffed rare fish ... Chinese porcelain, guns, a mess of strange objects that were always being knocked over by several cats, parrots with deafening voices and a monkey. I spent many long hours in the company of the cats, parrots and monkey. The shop smelled of mold and the monkey's sour urine ... while the cats walked on the precious lace. However, during the summer season, this strange place was frequented by the most distinguished foreigners, including William I, Prince of Prussia; Leopold I, King of the Belgians; the Duke of Brabant, the Duke of Flanders, etc." The house at the corner of Vlaanderenstraat and Van Iseghemlaan, where the shop was located, and Ensor grew up, was demolished in 1999. But the one at Vlaanderenstraat 27, where he moved in 1917 and spent the rest of his life, became the Ensorhuis (Ensor House), part of the Mu.Zee, in 1952. None of the painter's original works are displayed, but the house is scrupulously preserved as the painter had lived in it and so offers an almost uncomfortably intimate experience of the psychic climate of his private world. From the souvenir shop on the ground floor, with its wooden cases of shells, toy boats and leering papier mache masks sold for Ostend's springtime carnival, to the stuffy parlors with vases of feathers, elaborately patterned wall to wall Brussels carpeting, damask curtains and bric a brac everywhere, it's a stifling terrarium like place where it's easy to imagine Ensor in his waistcoat and waxed mustache playing his harmonium in front of one of his best known works, "The Entry of Christ in Brussels," today hanging at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. After visiting this psychologically fraught place, I needed some air, so I walked along the Albert I Promenade, overlooking Ostend's broad beaches, to see remnants of what the seafront had looked like when Ensor was alive. Today it is lined with modern structures built after World War II, but the long, colonnaded King Boudewijn Promenade, with its harlequin floor and benches to rest on, survives, as does the imposing if faded Art Deco era Thermae Palace hotel at its end. The huge windows of the Brasserie Albert, the hotel's restaurant, offer fine views of the North Sea and the well made Belgian comfort food, including deep fried shrimp croquettes and steak tartare, that Ensor enjoyed. After two days spent getting to know him in Ostend, I was eager to see some of Ensor's work again, so I headed for the Mu.Zee, the town's contemporary art museum. It was empty on a weekday, so I had the Ensor gallery to myself. This meant I could contemplate one of the artist's oddest paintings, "Ma Mere Morte (My Mother Dead)," depicting, behind a foreground of medicine bottles on a tray, his mother on her deathbed, with the same cool delectation the artist might have felt painting it. Then I moved along to a canvas that I consider to be the museum's Ensor masterpiece, "Self Portrait With a Flowered Hat." In this 1883 painting, the artist impassively returns the viewer's gaze, as if to say, "Yes, I am wearing a flowered hat with a big feather, and what of it?" And I concluded that it was this very pose, of frank but well mannered iconoclasm, that made James Ensor Ostend's perfect son. What to See James Ensorhuis (James Ensor House) (Vlaanderenstraat 27, muzee.be) The house in which James Ensor lived from 1917 until his death in 1949 is now a museum. Ostend Tourist Office (Monacoplein 2; open daily; visitoostende.be). "The Scent of Ostend" is a self guided walking tour of the town that points out some of the Ensor's favorite places, including the Falstaff cafe on the Wapenplein. The tour, in English, can be downloaded to your iPod from the website, but it's worth stopping by the tourist office to pick up the accompanying map. Hotel Andromeda (Albert Promenade 60; andromedahotel.be). Located right on the beachfront and across the street from the casino, this large comfortable modern hotel has an indoor pool. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
LOS ANGELES It was the golden hour here when Sunny Suljic tumbled out of a black S.U.V. and onto Sawtelle Boulevard, a commercial strip just west of Route 405 lined with Japanese noodle joints and third wave coffee shops. His mother was in tow, carrying his skateboard. With his shaggy mop of hair stuffed under a beanie, the 13 year old walked with a half swagger, half shuffle toward a storefront covered up with newspapers. As the city's skate wear fanatics are well aware, it is the future home of the Courthouse, a well known skate shop in West Los Angeles. He was getting a sneak peek of the store. Being a local skater not to mention the star of "Mid90s," the coming of age skate movie directed by Jonah Hill has its perks. "This is such a good area," said Mr. Suljic, who lives a few blocks away. Like many teenage boys his age, he spoke with a giddy up speak, punctuated with laughter. "It's highly populated, Sawtelle. Even later at night, there'll be so many people here." At the entrance, he did a bro handshake (high five to fist bump) with Jesse Tien Jacobs, a rangy redhead who owns the shop. Around them were a group of young men carrying skateboards and wearing Dickie pants and hooded sweatshirts. It's the West Coast equivalent to cats and their bodegas: No skate shop is complete without its in house crew. Mr. Suljic, who was wearing black Dolce Gabbana track pants, a black graphic T shirt by Old Friends and Yeezy 500 Desert Rat sneakers, made his way inside the store, leaving his posse to hang back on the street. His mother stayed behind, too. Skating is a defining part of his world, which aligned perfectly with "Mid90s." He was discovered two years ago by Mikey Alfred, one of the film's producers, at the Stoner Skate Park nearby (yes, that's its real name). "He knew that was my local park," Mr. Suljic said. Mr. Alfred then ambushed him by bringing Mr. Hill and Lucas Hedges, who also stars in the film, to see the young skater on his turf. "I was like, 'Wait, is that Jonah Hill?' I mean, I'm a big fan," he said. "My friends were like, 'Were you just talking to Jonah Hill?' And I was like, 'Oh yeah, it's no big deal.'" He was cast as Stevie, a prepubescent boy who falls in with a group of teenage skateboarders and learns more than just ollies and heel flips. Set in the mid 1990s, the film is part time capsule, part bildungsroman and part hagiography of skating's predigital glory days. "This was a dream job," he said. "Like, 100 percent a dream job." Despite some echoes, this is not another "Kids," the 1995 film starring two real life skaters, Leo Fitzpatrick and Justin Pierce, who were discovered by the director Larry Clark in Washington Square Park in New York. For one thing, Mr. Suljic is a trained actor. He moved to Los Angeles after he came here for a talent showcase and an agent at Monster Talent Management urged him to relocate from Atlanta. It quickly paid off. Last year, he had a supporting role in "The Killing of a Sacred Deer," a psychological horror thriller, alongside Colin Farrell and Nicole Kidman. And earlier this year he was in "The House With a Clock in Its Walls," a family film starring Cate Blanchett and Jack Black. "Mid90s" is his first starring role, and likely not his last. When he is not auditioning or being home schooled, he's out skating. He picked up the board when he was 3 and hasn't stopped since. "That's what I like about skating and acting you don't have to be a certain age to do it professionally." "One thing that I really related to about Stevie is that we're both really dedicated to skating," he said. He did a lap around the modestly sized store, which was a little more than a week away from opening. Unfortunately, there was not much to look at yet, which left him slightly deflated. Stacks of unopened cardboard boxes lined the perimeter. A checkout display case was empty. Still, there were signs of life: Hoodies and snapback hats were hung along one wall, and a few skateboard decks were stacked in a corner. "They're still fixing it up," he said, looking around. "It's going to be dope, though." Truth be told, he probably knew the store's inventory better than its employees. "I'm usually at the shop more than at my actual house," he said. "It feels like a family. That's why I wanted to come here." "I hate saying this, because it sounds corny, but skating is a lifestyle," he said. "People usually ask me, 'What is skating culture? What does it mean to you?' The movie explains it. And it's so authentic and specific to that era. And perfectly filmed. So I'll just let the film do all the work instead of me trying to explain it." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
Several familiar faces pop up in the trailer, including Bond's MI6 comrades M (Ralph Fiennes), Q (Ben Whishaw) and Moneypenny (Naomie Harris) as well as C.I.A. field officer Felix Leiter (Jeffrey Wright). Christoph Waltz returns as the supervillain Ernst Blofeld, only this time he's imprisoned, a la Hannibal Lecter in "The Silence of the Lambs." There are also plenty of explosions, chase scenes and new gadgets Bond's Aston Martin now features Gatling guns that pop out of its headlights. Plus, the signature catchphrases "Bond, James Bond" and "license to kill" are heard in the clip. Directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga ("True Detective"), "No Time to Die" will be released in American theaters on April 10. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
The future of your favorite carry on bag may be precarious. At its annual summit in Miami Tuesday, the International Air Transport Association suggested a new standard for carry on luggage to be stowed in overhead bins, and it's not getting larger. Working with aircraft manufacturers, the association has decided the best luggage size to create optimal cabin storage space for all passengers is 21.5 inches tall, 13.5 inches wide and 7.5 inches deep, according to an I.A.T.A. news release titled "Airlines to Address Carry On Bag Dilemma." That's a few inches shy of what most airlines, international and domestic, currently allow. So, what's the dilemma? Compliance, Tom Windmuller, I.A.T.A.'s senior vice president for airport, passenger, cargo and security, said in a video posted to the association's website. Each airline has a different idea of what size is acceptable; airline staff must quickly judge by sight which bags comply and which don't; and if passengers can't get aboard the aircraft early enough to snag limited overhead space, it's likely they will have to check it at the last minute anyway. The move to smaller luggage in cabin will "theoretically" enable every passenger aboard an aircraft of 120 seats or more to make use of the overhead compartments, according to the I.A.T.A. To assist airline staff with spotting compliant bags, the association has been working with Okoban, a luggage security and tracking company, to create a new logo for manufacturers to attach to bags that meet the new standard. Several companies, including Samsonite, Tumi and Delsi, are working with the association to create compliant baggage, expected to be introduced later this year. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
The Covid 19 surge in the South and Sun Belt states is a direct result of President Trump's monumentally dismal failure of leadership. We're already into July and still no nationalized testing. Still, no national plan to provide masks and other personal protective equipment for hospitals. Still, no national plan for contact tracing. Still, no plan to safely reopen the economy. His response to all 50 states: You're on your own. His response to us: "I take no responsibility." And now, he demands that all schools reopen in the fall, leaving safety measures up to each state, which if implemented poorly would put our children and the rest of our families at risk of illness and/or possible death. While the president continually exacerbates the problem with happy talk, misleading statements, outright lies and setting bad examples by not wearing a mask in public, the virus continues to spread like wildfire. It has always been true that the character of a person is revealed during a crisis. Some immediately rise to meet the challenge, while others shrink away and blame others. It's abundantly clear that our sitting president is the latter. Re "England Opens Its Doors, but Not to U.S. Visitors" (news article, July 4): For over three decades, my husband and I took one vacation each year, and it was always to the same place: England. We loved everything about it fish and chips, hunting for antique cheese dishes, the Thames. But most of all, I loved when people asked me where I was from: New York City America! They would hang on every word I said, and tell me how they yearned to visit our country one day. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
Experts have long known that rich people generally live longer than poor people. But a growing body of data shows a more disturbing pattern: Despite big advances in medicine, technology and education, the longevity gap between high income and low income Americans has been widening sharply. The poor are losing ground not only in income, but also in years of life, the most basic measure of well being. In the early 1970s, a 60 year old man in the top half of the earnings ladder could expect to live 1.2 years longer than a man of the same age in the bottom half, according to an analysis by the Social Security Administration. Fast forward to 2001, and he could expect to live 5.8 years longer than his poorer counterpart. New research released on Friday contains even more jarring numbers. Looking at the extreme ends of the income spectrum, economists at the Brookings Institution found that for men born in 1920, there was a six year difference in life expectancy between the top 10 percent of earners and the bottom 10 percent. For men born in 1950, that difference had more than doubled, to 14 years. For women, the gap grew to 13 years, from 4.7 years. "There has been this huge spreading out," said Gary Burtless, one of the authors of the study. The growing chasm is alarming policy makers, and has surfaced in the presidential campaign. During the Democratic debate Thursday, Senator Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton expressed concern over shortening life spans for some Americans. "This may be the next frontier of the inequality discussion," said Peter Orszag, a former Obama administration official now at Citigroup, who was among the first to highlight the pattern. The causes are still being investigated, but public health researchers say that deep declines in smoking among the affluent and educated may partly explain the difference. Over all, according to the Brookings study, life expectancy for the bottom 10 percent of wage earners improved by just 3 percent for men born in 1950 compared with those born in 1920. For the top 10 percent, though, it jumped by about 28 percent. (The researchers used a common measure life expectancy at age 50 and included data from 1984 to 2012.) It is hard to point to one overriding cause, but public health researchers have a few answers. In recent decades, smoking, the single biggest cause of preventable death, has helped drive the disparity, said Andrew Fenelon, a researcher at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As the rich and educated began to drop the habit, its deadly effects fell increasingly on poorer, uneducated people. Jessica Ho, of Duke University, and Mr. Fenelon calculated that smoking accounted for a third to a fifth of the gap in life expectancy between men with college degrees and men with only high school diplomas. For women it was as much as a quarter. Obesity, which has been sharply rising since the 1980s, is more ambiguous. The gap between obesity rates for high earners and low earners actually narrowed from 1990 to 2010, according to an analysis by the National Academy of Sciences. By 2010, about 37 percent of adults at the lower end of the income ladder were obese, compared with 31 percent at the higher end. More recently, the prescription drug epidemic has ravaged poor white communities, a problem that experts said would most likely exacerbate the trend of widening disparities. Limited access to health care accounts for surprisingly few premature deaths in America, researchers have found. So it is an open question whether President Obama's health care law which has sharply reduced the number of Americans without health insurance since 2014 will help ease the disparity. At the heart of the disparity, said Elizabeth H. Bradley, a professor of public health at Yale, are economic and social inequities, "and those are things that high tech medicine cannot fix." Life expectancy for the bottom 10 percent of male wage earners born in 1920 was 72.9, compared with 73.6 for those born in 1950, the Brookings researchers found. For the top 10 percent, life expectancy jumped to 87.2 from 79.1. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
Credit...Michelle Groskopf for The New York Times LOS ANGELES Hype House, the physical location of a new content creator collective, is a Spanish style mansion perched at the top of a hill on a gated street in Los Angeles. It has a palatial backyard, a pool and enormous kitchen, dining and living quarters. Four of the group's 19 members live in the house full time; several others keep rooms to crash in when they are in town. And all day long, a stream of influential young internet stars come by to pay homage to the new guard. Hype House was formed in December by some of TikTok's most talked about stars. They introduced themselves with a Backstreet Boys esque photo shoot, and within minutes hypehouse began trending; videos including the hashtag hypehouse have accrued nearly 100 million views on TikTok. The group handle that distributes their content surpassed three million followers on TikTok in just over a week and a half. In the days leading up to Christmas it was all anyone under the age of 18 on TikTok seemed to be talking about. So called collab houses, also known as content houses, are an established tradition in the influencer world. Over the last five years they have formed a network of hubs across Los Angeles. In 2014 members of an early collab channel called Our Second Life lived and worked together in what they called the 02L Mansion. The next year, nearly all the top talent on Vine moved into a large apartment complex at 1600 Vine Street. Soon after, YouTuber mansions were popping up all over the city. The Vlog Squad shacked up in Studio City, while Team 10, Jake Paul's infamous YouTuber collective, rented a giant house in West Hollywood before eventually decamping to a mansion in Calabasas. Another group of YouTubers rented a 12 million mansion in the Hollywood Hills and deemed it the Clout House. Residents also must be able to film. Many influencers prefer the short term rental structure of Airbnb, in part because obtaining a lease can be tough when you're young and have an unpredictable income. But unfortunately many Airbnbs in Los Angeles have a no filming rule. (Homeowners worry about, among other things, tripods scratching the floors and the potential property damage that comes with YouTube stunts.) The location Chase and Thomas found for Hype House checked all the boxes and had some additional features that make it perfect for TikTok: plenty of giant mirrors and a bathroom the size of a small apartment to film in. Because everyone just moved in, Hype House is also nearly without furniture, which makes shooting easier. On Dec. 30, members clustered into the bathroom in rotating groups, doing back flips in front of a phone propped up on a roll of toilet paper supported by a Smartwater bottle. Fifteen second clips of a DaBaby song looped until everyone had memorized the agreed upon choreography. After one group finished filming, they headed downstairs to lounge on three beanbag chairs. The house has a large glistening pool, but it's too cold to swim in it right now. Hype House members prefer to hang out on the stone porches overlooking it. The sweeping staircase is also a popular backdrop. Alex, Thomas, Daisy Keech, 20, and Kouvr Annon, 19, live at the house full time. As the oldest, Thomas acts as a default den mother. Though Chase helped put money down for the house, Thomas manages schedules, handles the house issues and resolves the inevitable conflicts. Unlike Team 10 and other groups, Hype House doesn't take a cut of anyone's revenue. The house does have strict rules, however. Creators can have friends over, but it is not a party house. If you break something, you have 15 days to replace it. And if you want to be a part of the group, you need to churn out content daily. "If someone slips up constantly, they'll not be a part of this team anymore," Thomas said. "You can't come and stay with us for a week and not make any videos, it's not going to work. This whole house is designed for productivity. If you want to party, there's hundreds of houses that throw parties in L.A. every weekend. We don't want to be that. It's not in line with anyone in this house's brand. This house is about creating something big, and you can't do that if you're going out on the weekends." In order to make a splash on the internet, you need the right people and so Chase acts as Hype House's unofficial talent scout and a behind the scenes operator. He has a knack for spotting influencers early and knows what qualities it takes to get big online. You have to be young, you have to "have a lot of energy and personality and honestly a little weird. The weird people get the furthest on the internet," Chase said. "You either have to be talented at something, or a weird funny mix, or extremely good looking." The undisputed star of the group is Charli D'Amelio, a 15 year old from Connecticut known as the reigning queen of TikTok. She and Chase appear to be dating; the two most often speak of each other as best friends. Charli has amassed more than 15 million followers since joining the app this summer, and her fan base continues to grow at a wild rate. Her dance routines spur thousands of copycat videos; her rise has been so sharp and fast that she has become a meme. Charli's sister, Dixie D'Amelio, is 18 and has five million followers. Because they are still in school, both girls will continue to live with their parents in Connecticut but come out to Los Angeles when their schedules allow. Charli is polite, thoughtful and soft spoken in person. She is a trained dancer and has ambitions to dance full time. In December she performed with Bebe Rexha at a Jonas Brothers concert. Hype House has provided a safe space to help her cope with the stress and attention that come with overnight fame. "The internet can be a little harsh," she said. "Everyone here is ready to bring positivity and kindness." Charli also credits the group for expanding her creativity and helping her branch into new content formats like vlogging. "I'm trying things outside my comfort zone that I might not have done if I was alone in my room," she said. But her roots remain in dance. "I grew up in the dance competition world everyone's dream is to dance onstage. I've been a performer my whole life," she said. "I say all the time, this is a dream. I'm living out everything I've ever wanted to do so early." Marc D'Amelio, who is Charli and Dixie's father, said: "As parents, one thing we say all the time is that this is just about creating options for our kids. We don't know where this is going, we don't have any plans for Charli or Dixie to do this or that. We're just riding it and enjoying it, and hopefully they can do things they love and most importantly be happy." Too much hype inevitably attracts drama, and Hype House members are extremely wary of it. They are careful about who they film with, what they wear, how they act and how things can be interpreted online. If a Hype House member has a girlfriend, for instance, that member may avoid filming with another girl alone, so as not to start rumors. The house itself could bring drama someday. MaiLinh Nguyen, a former videographer for Jake Paul, said money can play a huge role in trouble. "I don't think it's sustainable to just be a collective forever," she said. "At some point if they want to do a pop up shop, or release Hype House merch, they need to figure out how to divvy things up financially and they're going to have to legitimize it as a business." Michael Gruen, the vice president of talent at TalentX Entertainment, said many of these collectives are creating valuable intellectual property. A commission structure should be negotiated from the start, he said, and thought should be given to incorporation and insurance and everything else that comes along with running a business. Carson King, 20, a YouTuber who lives in a collab house with several YouTuber friends, said that for him and many others, a looser arrangement can work great, and creates less pressure. "I think it's a dream for a lot of people to be able to move in with friends and be able to work on whatever you want to work on," he said. He and his housemates keep things like whiteboards around their collab house so they can write down video ideas anytime. "The big struggle creators have is that people around them don't understand at all the culture of what they're doing," said Mitch Moffit, 31, a YouTuber who lived in a collab house when he was starting out. This is the value for young people: If you want to immerse yourself in influencer and internet culture, there's no better place to be. Chase, Thomas, Charli and other members of Hype House are aware of how lucky they are, how fleeting fame can be, and they don't want to squander the opportunity. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
Dashed hopes, breathless victories and painful regrets make up "Shot in the Dark," a documentary that has the rhythm of some spare yet deeply felt street poetry. Taking place mostly on Chicago's West Side, the film centers on Orr Academy High School and its basketball team, the Spartans. Lou Adams, the head coach, trains his athletes in the gym and pleads with them to avoid trouble outside it: We see neighborhood memorials to young men killed in gun violence, and learn that more than 20 people in the community died during the time the documentary was made. Tyquone Greer and Marquise Pryor, two star players, have visions of college careers, but the call of gangs and parties often proves too seductive. The director Dustin Nakao Haider follows them as they navigate their days and nights, on and off the court. Though the premise is familiar see "Hoop Dreams" or any of the countless feature films about youth sports the excitement still stays high when the games begin. At other times Mr. Haider records his subjects without comment; no one here is prodded to overexplain. This director isn't afraid of silence, and he's prepared to let a quiet moment speak for itself. Attentive viewing is required, and rewarded. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
"Creating an experience that's meaningful has always been the point of things," Ms. Comey said. "I was struggling with a runway format. All these people would come, and I had no idea who they are, did they get it? Are they the customers?" Some are, like the actress Tavi Gevinson, 21, who reviewed the experience by bringing her fingers to her lips and smacking a "chef's kiss," and some may soon be, like Ms. Bernhard, whom Ms. Comey had never met, but invited all the same. (She left with the words "We'll be in touch," Ms. Comey reported.) At one table, Joyce Carpati, 85, was taking in her first Comey show, in the company of Ari Seth Cohen, the Advanced Style blogger and photographer. Ms. Carpati has seen much she met Maria Callas as a young opera singer in Milan and worked alongside Helen Gurley Brown at Cosmopolitan in the 1970s and found much to like here. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
SOPHOMORE SUCCESS Writing a debut novel requires gumption and perseverance, but at least it's a solitary endeavor. An author attempting a follow up has an audience in mind, which can be discombobulating. One minute these invisible readers are cheerleaders; the next, they're pelting the computer screen with popcorn. Yaa Gyasi says she was intimidated by the prospect of a second novel after "Homegoing," which she worked on for seven years. "With the first book, it's like writing in the dark, unsure of whether or not your book will ever see the light of day. It's such an intensely private and intimate experience," she explains. "But then after 'Homegoing' came out into a light that was so bright, I became keenly aware that there are people who will pick up my books. That was wonderful, but it took me a little bit to figure out how to return to the quiet that had allowed me to write in the first place." Gyasi's new book, "Transcendent Kingdom," now at No. 6 in its second week on the hardcover fiction list, was inspired by a visit to a Stanford University lab where an old friend worked. It wasn't intended as a research trip. The friend, a neuroscientist, was approaching the end of her doctorate and had just published a major paper that Gyasi tried to read, to no avail. She says, "I literally could not understand any of the paragraphs." So, in a gesture of support and encouragement, she asked to shadow her friend for the day. There was no lightning bolt moment while she was there just the sense of fascination that a writer learns to lean into. "When I started to think about what I wanted to write about next, I remembered this time in the lab," Gyasi says. She channeled that inspiration into her narrator, Gifty, a neuroscience graduate student who studies reward seeking behavior as it relates to depression and addiction. Our reviewer wrote, "'Transcendent Kingdom' trades the blazing brilliance of 'Homegoing' for another type of glory, more granular and difficult to name." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
It was all too fitting that an anti commercialism Christmas classic, broadcast over the public airwaves every year since 1965, would be sidelined in 2020 to a paid streaming service operated by a tech giant. Such was the widespread reaction in October when Apple TV Plus obtained the exclusive rights to the "Peanuts" catalog, including the widely beloved "A Charlie Brown Christmas," not to mention "A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving" and "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown." It meant families could no longer watch the holiday specials on ABC they would have to be streamed on the service Apple has been pushing since its debut last November. To many, including the more than 260,000 people who signed a petition, it was a theft of holiday traditions befitting of grinches and blockheads, even though Apple would make the specials available for free for a few days under its agreement with the companies that own "Peanuts." On Wednesday, Apple eased its grip on the shows, announcing a deal that would allow PBS to show ad free versions of the Thanksgiving special on Sunday and the Christmas special on Dec. 13. The announcement did not say whether the specials would return to public television after 2020. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
Itzhak Perlman is a superstar in classical music. And not just there: No other violinist enjoys his level of recognition among people who don't even go to traditional concerts. Many have seen him on "Sesame Street," or at Madison Square Garden appearing alongside Billy Joel. They might have heard him speaking about disability issues, informed by the childhood bout of polio that took away the use of his legs. They might have teared up listening to the theme from "Schindler's List," which Mr. Perlman infused with ineffable melancholy. Mr. Perlman has been so ubiquitous that it is easy to take for granted his status as "the reigning virtuoso of the violin," as his marketing materials put it. But with his 75th birthday arriving on Aug. 31, this may be a moment to reassess how that reign began and what has happened to the realm and all the superlatives. For some guidance, there is a new box set from Sony of 18 CDs, from a 1967 Prokofiev album with Erich Leinsdorf conducting the Boston Symphony Orchestra to the klezmer tribute "Eternal Echoes," from 2012. Part of my discomfort that evening came from the discrepancy between the live performance he was giving and my memory of his albums. Like many, I had come to know Mr. Perlman through his recordings. By the time I was in my teens in the 1980s and becoming serious about studying the violin, virtually every album of fiddle music I owned featured him. The Solo Sonatas and Partitas of Bach, in which his sustained, radiant sound seemed to draw ribbons of light in the dark. The concertos of Sibelius and Tchaikovsky, in which his violin cut jubilantly through the orchestral forest in even the most acrobatic passages. His Bruch simmered. His Mozart was flirtatious and sunny. He was a universal entry point to classical music. On that 1967 debut recording, with Leinsdorf conducting the Boston Symphony, he played Prokofiev's Second Concerto. Appropriately, the first notes are Mr. Perlman's alone, and his sound in that ruminating statement is soulful and knowing. Elsewhere, in passages of agitated difficulty, the bravura and bite of the young violinist's technique are evident. But it is the heat and depth of tone that announced, from the beginning, an artist of uncommon magnetism. Mr. Perlman rose to fame as an earlier cohort of star violinists Jascha Heifetz, David Oistrakh, Yehudi Menuhin faded from view. With his glamorous tone and dazzling technical skills, he was their natural heir. More collaborations with Leinsdorf followed, and with the pianist Vladimir Ashkenazy, who would become a preferred chamber music partner for years. By the 1980s, Mr. Perlman was the standard and some degree of standardization seemed part of the package. His facility with acrobatic bowing techniques made him one of the most persuasive champions of 19th century showpieces, like the Paganini caprices or Sarasate's "Carmen Fantasy." And his signature tone resulted in definitive renditions of war horses of the concerto repertory. Glossy, voluminous and cleanly contoured across the range, his sound was uncommonly reliable, reproducible and brightly projected. It aligned perfectly with the high fidelity technology that was changing both the way people listened to music at home and what they expected to hear in live concerts. And onscreen: Mr. Perlman proved a natural communicator on television, advocating for music and disability rights with a winning combination of self deprecating charm and self assurance. In 1993, it was his violin that deepened the pathos of the "Schindler's List" theme, which for a vast swath of listeners remains his signature tune. On Spotify, it has been streamed over 35 million times five times as many as his most popular classical tracks on the service: an eye wateringly difficult Paganini caprice and a somewhat stodgy summer storm from Vivaldi's "Four Seasons." In 1994, Mr. Perlman formalized his increasing devotion to education. His wife, the violinist Toby Perlman, founded the Perlman Music Program, through which both continue to nurture gifted teenage string players. The course includes a robust course of contemporary music, taught not by Mr. Perlman but by visiting specialists: His own dips into the music of his time have been rare, and even more rarely on the experimental side of things. Yet even as Mr. Perlman's fame grew outside of the classical music scene, his stature inside it shrank. One reason is that, with fewer media opportunities for classical artists, the hierarchical shape of the field began to cave in, even as that field narrowed. The historically informed performance movement revolutionized approaches to early music and whipped up an appetite for fleeter and more feathery readings, especially of Bach. A new generation of concert violinists, like Janine Jansen, have found ways to integrate the lessons of the period instrument movement with symphony hall glamour and punch; by contrast, Mr. Perlman's style can seem staid and dated. Other trends moved from niche markets into the mainstream, where tastes were more open to diversity. Contemporary music created specialist players familiar with its techniques and technological demands. The cellist Yo Yo Ma, among others, used his star power to familiarize concert audiences with non Western instruments. No one violinist could preside over such a polyglot scene as the reigning virtuoso. And Mr. Perlman's skills began to deteriorate. Critics called out his "careless playing" and "effortful intonation." That matched my own experience at Lincoln Center in 2014, a program which began with a rendition of a Vivaldi sonata that was almost obtusely old fashioned and stodgy. His tone was still vibrant and vigorous, but it had lost much of the pliancy and depth that had warmed earlier recordings. But the printed part of the program (which also included works by Ravel, Beethoven and Schumann) was only the prelude. Mr. Perlman played eight sweet and flashy encores, which he picked, miming impatience, from a huge stack of sheet music before introducing them with the odd anecdote or droll comment. Though the show of generosity and spontaneity felt manipulative to me, the audience loved it. Undoubtedly charisma had a lot to do with this. And I suspect that what many listeners heard was a palimpsest combining the Perlman they knew from recordings with the one playing live in front of them. If the flaws in his playing registered at all to such listeners, they might not have perceived as such. String instruments can have a very direct way of showing the age of their player unlike the piano, on which weakening faculties more often translate into simple flubbed notes. A violin can betray, but also humanize an aging musician. Recent footage of Ida Haendel, who died last month at (it is thought) 96, and Ivry Gitlis, now 98, offer a fascinating mix of frailty, beauty and ironclad talent. As I watch these videos, I come to believe that part of the fascination lies in the way the corporeality of the player presses to the forefront. After a lifetime dedicated to doing justice to great composers, when we expect performers to be almost transparent vehicles for the music, nature invites us to consider their humanity not in some abstract, transcendent manner, but flesh and blood, warts and all. Mr. Perlman's playing is still far from wrinkled. While his Vivaldi now bears the sepia tint of another era, he has been in business long enough to have seen fashions come and go. And it is strategic for him to make his late career concerts a bit more about him and a bit less about Vivaldi. The sheer brilliance of his sound goes a long way in disarming scholarly scruples and critical quibbles. And whether or not they subscribe to every detail of his style, aspiring soloists would do well to study an art of which he is indeed perhaps the reigning virtuoso: engaging an audience, and playing it both for pathos and laughs. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
Jupiter Okwess, from the Democratic Republic of Congo, provided the fiercest grooves at the 15th installment of Globalfest. Rapping punctuated by Indian flavored melodies and tabla drumming. A Celtic murder ballad sung above a baleful electronic drone. Songs in Guadeloupean Creole backed by blues guitar and sousaphone. Iranian indie rock. Brazilian neo psychedelia. A mariachi version of Nirvana's "Come as You Are." They were all onstage at Globalfest, the world music showcase that had its 15th edition on Sunday night. There were 12 international groups playing overlapping sets at the Liberty Theater and, across a frigid 42nd Street, at B.B. King Blues Club Grill and its annex, Lucille's. A central theme of Globalfest has been that while borders are permeable, cultures can maintain an identity even as they change. Connections spread constantly, and musical ideas travel especially fast. Every musician, even the ones who care most about holding on to tradition, has to make constant judgments about balancing local (or tribal or regional or national) materials and imported ones, about what to retain and what to update. That murder ballad, for instance, was sung in unmistakably traditional style somber and lingering by Jarlath Henderson, who is from Northern Ireland. But the band surrounding him included one musician deploying a nest of electronics while the others switched between folky and non folky uses of bass, guitar, fiddle and keyboards; each song set Mr. Henderson's voice in a distinct, customized environment. Delgres, a trio based in Paris that's led by its Gaudeloupean guitarist and singer, Pascal Danae, bases its music on a historical moment: 1802, when Napoleon reimposed slavery in Guadeloupe and some islanders escaped to New Orleans. It's reason enough to back up Mr. Danae's slide guitar with drums and a quintessential New Orleans instrument, sousaphone, in songs that envision a Guadeloupean blues with rawboned guitar riffs that could suddenly reveal the staccato intricacies of African and Afro Caribbean guitar styles. But the night's fiercest, most diverse grooves belonged to Jupiter Okwess: the singer, songwriter and bandleader Jupiter Bokondji and his band, from Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo, with songs that joyfully carried conscientious messages like "Protect women." The briskly upbeat rhythm of Congolese soukous, well known worldwide, was only part of the set. Mr. Bokondji traveled extensively in Congo and learned many local, lesser known styles that infuse his songs, giving them variety and bite. He's also clearly fond of what a wah wah pedal can do. Grand Tapestry is an alliance of hip hop loving Indian classical musicians with a Los Angeles rapper, Eligh. The group's main composer is Alam Khan, who plays the 25 stringed sarod and also runs a laptop; he's the son of the renowned sarod player Ali Akbar Khan. Grand Tapestry's set veered among Indian classical duets by Mr. Khan and Salar Nader on tabla; rock ish instrumentals with Mr. Nader on trap drums instead; and, most promisingly, the rapid fire, positive thinking raps from Eligh backed by the two musicians. Mohsen Namjoo's songs are steeped in Persian classical music and poetry, merged freely with raucous Western rock. He was an acclaimed and sometimes controversial songwriter in Iran who has lived in exile in the West after being sentenced, while abroad, to five years in prison for setting Quran verses to music. Even across the language barrier his songs are in Persian his commitment was unmistakable, and his chameleonic voice could hold the nuanced clarity of Persian classical singing or turn into a rocker's howl, an old man's cackle or a theatrical sob. There were smart echoes of tropicalia, Brazil's iconoclastic (and dictatorship defying) music of the late 1960s, in the set by Ava Rocha and her band: amiable melodies, poetic lyrics, hints of Brazilian rhythms and taut arrangements that sometimes let the guitars get noisy. Her performance suggested a playful, elusive ritual. She arrived onstage bearing a decanter of what looked like wine, and drank some of it; before she finished her finale, she balanced it on her head. In between, she sang with sultry nonchalance and traced slow motion gestures both elaborate and inscrutable. Flor de Toloache, the New York mariachi band that won the Latin Grammy for Best Ranchero/Mariachi Album in November, mingled mariachi tradition with tangents of their own, like Andrews Sisters harmonies, occasional lyrics in English and that Nirvana song. Other performers hewed closer to tradition. The Iberi Choir, from (the country) Georgia, sang gorgeously harmonized songs, many of them a cappella, with convoluted passages of eerie dissonance; one song had lyrics dating back to the 12th century. Miramar with lead singers from Puerto Rico and Tennessee and a Chilean American keyboardist and composer devoted itself to urbanely lovelorn Puerto Rican style boleros, some vintage and some written by group members. Eva Salina lent her poised, lustrous voice to complexly morose songs from the Balkans in a duo with the Serbian style accordionist Peter Stan, who backed her with oompah chords and puckish, skittering obbligatos. And Thornetta Davis, a Detroit blues singer, brought backup singers (from her church, she noted) and a horn section for a hearty, formidable set of optimistic blues even when the optimism came from finally ditching a no good man. For a musician in the 21st century, those traditions are a matter of choice, not the result of isolation, nostalgia or birthright. Even in a connected world, they're strong enough to draw new practitioners with their music alone. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
If you happened to find yourself scouring the internet in search of an Intex inflatable pool last spring, only to come up empty handed, you had company. According to Sabeena Hickman, the president and chief executive of the Pool Hot Tub Alliance, pool sales skyrocketed as Americans faced a quarantined season at home. Based on permit numbers, 94,000 new in ground residential pools will be built by the close of 2020, an increase of almost 21 percent from 2019. (The demand for hot tubs is more appreciable: Numbers are up 400 percent this year from last, according to Ms. Hickman, and tubs are largely backlogged six months.) A dearth of conventional pools has brought a new type of soaking apparatus to the forefront, aided by social media: the stock tank pool. Crafted from a galvanized metal tank traditionally used as a feed trough for farm animals, a stock tank pool can be assembled in a day with a few D.I.Y. items that can be found at most hardware stores. With cooler weather approaching, and states headed toward probable lockdowns, some water lovers are opting for the next best thing: the make your own hot tub. "Every time we've done a hot tub related project like this in a scrappy vein the thumbnails for it have just generated massive amounts of clicks," he said. The popularity of the hot tub videos reflects both the zeitgeist and this particular moment of the pandemic, Mr. Uyeda said. "You start with the essentials, and then you add things for efficiency." He said that people are now more likely to take up D.I.Y. projects that are lifestyle upgrades, unlike early in the pandemic, when they sought remedies for immediate problems. For Andrew Rowland, 30, and Caitlin Wallace Rowland, 29, who live in New Orleans, the recent addition of a stock tank hot tub was a luxury that followed a long list of home renovations. "We kind of renovated our entire front and backyards, and then we were sort of running out of activities," Ms. Wallace Rowland said. After taking numerous weekend trips to the Mississippi coast so that their 2 year old daughter, Laurel, could swim, they decided a pool was the next project to tackle. In September, they fashioned what is now their hot tub out of a galvanized stock tank, with a heating apparatus configured from a propane tank. Ms. Wallace Rowland, an artist and textile designer, planned where the pool would go and designed a landscaping scheme for it. Mr. Rowland, a director of system operations for a charter school, assumed the task of building the actual tub, which he described as "a very peaceful install." The result is a tub that suits their petite yard and allows for year round enjoyment. Sara Haddox, 34, installed a stock tank hot tub at her home in Llano, Tex., which she largely rents out on Airbnb, in September, as well. "My husband went on a big hunting trip, and while he was gone, I was bored, so I decided to go ahead and bring the hot tub idea to life," Ms. Haddox said. Calling upon her degree in construction science, Ms. Haddox, who manages her family's rental property, created an insulated stock tank hot tub with an electric heater (rather than a propane one) so that it reaches a higher temperature and stays hotter for a longer time. Her initial inspiration, she said, came from Pinterest and Instagram, where people had posted photos of stock tank tubs in stunning settings. "I just loved these shots of these, like, isolated tubs, where you could just, you know, be in nature and just see forever and just enjoy being outside in a new way," she said. "Those pictures really sunk in." She had considered building a tub for several years, she said, but the events of 2020 forced her hand. The result is a tub that has drawn attention to her family's Airbnb, which appears on Instagram as houseonthellano. Although visitors may not be able to enjoy the nearby ice cold Llano River in winter, or the city's restaurants and museums, they can enjoy the property's fire pit and, now, its winter friendly hot tub. "We needed to offer a more complete vacation package," Ms. Haddox said. Her homemade hot tub helped. A hot tub began as a hot weather pool project for E. Spencer Schubert. A sculptor in Kansas City, Mo., Mr. Schubert, 43, decided to add a stock tank pool to his property at the start of the pandemic as a way to make up for his family's lost summer. He and his wife, Ryann, 42, rented an excavator and installed an eight foot stock tank swimming pool with surrounding decking. As for converting the pool into a hot tub, that was "just the next iteration," Mr. Schubert said. The stock tank is now heated with a propane heater, and Mr. Schubert has converted the yard into a multi season oasis, with a fire pit and "circus lights." "During the reasonable temperature part of the year, the place of the house that we use the most is the backyard," he said. Although the temperature of the tub reaches about 90 degrees, Mr. Schubert said that Missouri's cold winters will likely limit their use of it in February. Nonetheless, the D.I.Y. hot tub will lengthen the life of the Schubert family's pool season. The stock tank pool rose in popularity early in the pandemic, said Jovana Johnson and Janice Luna, the owners of H20 Tank Avenue in Santa Clarita, Calif., which delivers stock tanks to customers in that state, Arizona and Nevada. When they started their company in May, Ms. Johnson and Ms. Luna immediately sold all of the 27 tanks they had ordered. "We said: 'OK, you know what? I think we're going to order another set of tanks, but this time we were going to go distributor status,'" Ms. Johnson said. She and Ms. Luna placed their second order for 150 stock tanks, many of which sold on pre order via Instagram. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
Kristen Gibbons Feden, who served as a special prosecutor in Bill Cosby's sexual assault retrial. "I'm a very loud person, and I don't like seeing people get picked on," she said. If cameras had been present, it would have been a viral moment. Partway through her closing argument on Tuesday, Kristen Gibbons Feden, a 35 year old prosecutor, strode across the courtroom and stared down Bill Cosby from a few feet away. Fighting off the defense's attempts to paint Mr. Cosby's main accuser as a "con artist," Ms. Feden told the packed house that the real con artist was "the man sitting right there." At another point, Ms. Feden saw what she thought was a smile spreading across Mr. Cosby's face. "He's laughing like it's funny!" she said, a shot that later prompted Mr. Cosby's team to dispute that he had laughed. And she lit into Kathleen Bliss, one of Mr. Cosby's lawyers, who had attacked some of the women who testified against him as promiscuous party girls out for cheap fame and a payday. "She's the exact reason why victims, women and men, of sexual assault don't report these crimes," Ms. Feden said. Her starkly confrontational closing sent a jolt through the courtroom, as a young lawyer known locally as a rising star dramatically seized the moment in the first high profile sexual assault trial of the MeToo era. Ms. Feden, the veteran of many sex crime trials in Montgomery County outside Philadelphia, is a dogged preparer. But her closing words, she said on Friday, sprang as much from her basic human reaction as from courtroom experience. "I'm a very loud person, and I don't like seeing people get picked on," she said in her first interview since the jury returned a guilty verdict. "I'm also a very emotional person. That can be a flaw, but it can also be used as a tool." Ms. Feden's role in the closing argument, which she shared with another prosecutor, M. Stewart Ryan, was a surprise to some close followers of the case, who had expected Kevin R. Steele, the Montgomery County district attorney, to handle it, as he had in Mr. Cosby's first trial last year, which ended in a jury deadlock. But her effectiveness was no surprise to those who have watched her in action over the years. "She's very bubbly and nice, the kind of person who would come up to you and hug you, but in the courtroom, she becomes a very fiery, aggressive lawyer," said Judge Garrett D. Page of Montgomery County Court of Common Pleas, who once had Ms. Feden as a clerk and later presided over cases argued by her. "She can go right from her script and do things that will really have an effect on the jury," he said. "She's flowing with the traffic." Ms. Feden grew up in Willingboro, N.J., across the Delaware River from Philadelphia. Her father was a physician, her mother a speech pathologist. She attended Lafayette College in Easton, Pa., where she majored in neuroscience. She thought she would become a doctor, until her older sister, who was in medical school, pointed out that she didn't like bugs or blood. But she had always been a huge fan of "Law and Order: SVU." "Everyone knew not to bother me when it was on," she said. After two years as a financial analyst at Bloomberg in New York, she enrolled in law school at Temple University, where she was an editor on the Temple Political and Civil Rights Law Review. She joined the Montgomery County district attorney's office in 2012, and soon began working on sex crimes and elder abuse cases. She recalled the first sex crime case she prosecuted alone, a juvenile case involving a defendant accused of raping his cousin repeatedly over many years. She lost the case. "It was devastating for everyone involved," she said. But it also taught her the value of helping accusers confront defendants in court, whatever the outcome. "One thing I stress is that a conviction is not necessarily going to change anything," she said. "But it may make you feel that much better that you can look someone right in the eye and say, 'You did this to me.' " In a news conference following the verdict on Thursday, Mr. Steele, the district attorney, credited Ms. Feden with helping spearhead the effort to prosecute the case after a previous district attorney had declined to do so. "She was adamant, adamant about what to do," he said. It was Ms. Feden who traveled to Toronto with a group of detectives in August 2015 to meet with Andrea Constand, the former Temple University employee who accused Mr. Cosby of drugging and sexually assaulting her. (Ms. Feden recalled the date easily, she said, "because I had to miss my sister's birthday.") After Mr. Cosby's first trial, Ms. Feden, who is married to another lawyer and has two young sons, took a job at the Philadelphia law firm Stradley Ronon. Bill Sasso, the firm's chairman, had personally called to recruit her after seeing her on the cover of Philadelphia Business Journal, which had named her one of its "40 Under 40." Ms. Feden took a leave from the firm to serve as a special prosecutor for Mr. Cosby's retrial. She handled some of the testimony, including Ms. Constand's, then took on the responsibility of helping sum up the prosecution's case for the jury. Some news reports described the jury wincing as the defense, in its own summation, attacked Ms. Constand and other women who testified against Mr. Cosby as being motivated by "money, press conferences, TV shows, salacious coverage, ratings." Ms. Feden had already outlined what she was going to say during her turn, but after hearing the remarks by Ms. Bliss, the defense lawyer, she began scribbling additional notes. "What I tried to do was contrast her character assassination with these very humane, very human emotions that had been flowing from the witness box," she said. Andrew Wyatt, a spokesman for the defense, declined to comment Friday on Ms. Feden's riposte to Ms. Bliss. In court, Ms. Bliss had said that sexual assault is a "worldwide problem" but that "questioning an accuser is not shaming a victim." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
Solana Beach, Calif.: An Aspirational Suburb, But Can You Afford It? SOLANA BEACH, Calif. Sally Rollinson loves being at home in her sunny kitchen not so much because she loves to cook, but because of the view. Her home is at the top of a slope, and the kitchen's large picture window faces north. That means that Ms. Rollinson, 52, a former school principal and mother of three, has an ideal perch whenever she does dishes or makes a batch of cookies. She can see Skyline Elementary, where all three of her children go, as well as Earl Warren Middle School, where her two sons will matriculate next year. "Even though Solana Beach is a suburb, it's really a town," Ms. Rollinson said. "The actual things that you need in life are within walking distance, and it's neat to be able to allow your children some independence without having to get into a car. The reason we came to Solana Beach is because we knew we wanted that feel of living in a town." Solana Beach, an affluent coastal enclave in San Diego County that sits atop striking Pacific Ocean bluffs, seems at first glance to have it all. A self contained city with its own mayor, fire department and elementary schools, it's a 30 minute drive from downtown San Diego and connected by both freeway and train to all the resources that California's second largest city has to offer. At second glance, it has it all if you can afford it. For the Rollinsons, buying a home in Solana Beach took more than one try. Ms. Rollinson and her husband, Austie, 51, the chief designer of Odyssey putters at Callaway Golf, first landed in the area five years ago when they bought a home in the scrublands of Rural Del Mar, an adjacent community where prices are slightly lower. Their children still qualified for Solana Beach schools. But then their daughter, Phoebe, was diagnosed with leukemia, and her weakened immune system prevented her from being outdoors. The Rollinsons' home sat on an acre of land, but they were forced to spend much of their time inside. They sold the house, but couldn't afford a new home in Solana Beach proper. So they headed to Carlsbad, a larger coastal community 10 miles north with excellent schools and a cooler housing market. They spent 125,000 on upgrades to the property, which was built in 1968, ripping out the downstairs carpet, updating the kitchen and installing new drainage and irrigation systems. They also knocked down the creaking back porch and created space for a sweeping yard that basks in the leaning shade of a massive, handsome Torrey pine. "We were ideally going to stay below 1 million," said Ms. Rollinson. "But in Southern California, the situation is always that you're looking for anything that has four walls and a roof, passes inspection, and you can get a loan for. You're just trying to find something you can possibly afford." Kelli Miller, an agent with Compass Diego, agreed that "affordability is definitely a thing here." "Families would love to be in Solana Beach. It's a highly desirable family neighborhood, but the price points don't always agree," she said. Ms. Miller, 35, grew up in nearby Encinitas and has lived in Solana Beach since 2007. Despite the high prices most detached homes here start well above 1 million she called the vibe "chill and easygoing." "This is the best part of all of San Diego," she said. "It's walkable, it's quaint, it's active and healthy. Everybody wants to feel like they belong, and everybody wants a sense of community. And you have that all here." Solana Beach is bisected north south by Interstate 5 and east west by Lomas Santa Fe Drive. It juts against the Pacific Ocean to the west, with Fletcher Cove, a family friendly area that has picnic tables, basketball courts and a playground, its most popular beach. Highland Drive and the edges of San Dieguito County Park form most of its eastern border; Via De La Valle sits at its southern boundary; and the city reaches up to the swampy edges of the San Elijo Lagoon Ecological Reserve to the north. 826 SEABRIGHT LANE A five bedroom, five and a half bath house, built in 2019 on 0.24 acres, listed for 4,350,000. 858 259 6400. Cody James for The New York Times A stretch of Route 101, the storied highway spanning the entire West Coast, cuts right through Solana Beach, where it is lined with breweries, bistros and boardshops. The Solana Beach train station, where Amtrak Pacific Surfliner trains depart regularly for downtown San Diego, Los Angeles and beyond, sits just across the street, at the intersection of Cedros Avenue which itself is a bustling design district of galleries, boutiques and quaint shops. Most new development is centered around Cedros Avenue, especially at the southern end, where a farmer's market shuts down the street each Sunday and new coffee shops and home goods stores are popping up. 528 CANYON DRIVE A four bedroom, five bath home built in 2005 on 0.25 acres, listed for 7,950,000. 858 775 9100. Cody James for The New York Times To guard against rising sea levels and coastal erosion, much of Solana Beach's coastline is protected by a sea wall, which is partly funded by a fee levied on oceanfront property owners. The sea wall is not without controversy homeowners with bluff top properties welcome its protection, while the California Coastal Commission argues it accelerates erosion and chips away at public beach space. With about 3.6 square miles, Solana Beach is a small area, and inventory is tight. This past September, there were only 11 detached, single family homes on the market, with a median sales price of 1.36 million. In the same period in 2018, there were 20 detached homes on the market at a significantly higher median price of 1.875 million. 872 COFAIR COURT A three bedroom, two and a half bath condo built in 1988, is listed for 1,649,000. 858 259 6400 Cody James for The New York Times Condos and attached homes are similarly limited: This September, there were 14 on offer, at a median price of 880,000. In September 2018, the inventory was 12 attached homes, with a median price of 733,000, according to the North San Diego County of Realtors. For renters, prices range from under 2,000 a month for a studio apartment to around 3,000 for a two bedroom townhouse to 8,000 for a luxury beachfront condo. A 24 million, mixed use project dubbed Cedros 330, offering a restaurant, retail and office space, and eight luxury apartment units for rent, is slated to open in early 2020. 506 PACIFIC AVENUE A four bedroom, two bath house, built in 1949 on 0.1 acres, listed for 2,995,000. 760 201 0688. Cody James for The New York Times "I always joke that when you go somewhere in Solana Beach, you could be gone for a while because you will run into someone and you want to catch up," said Emily Behrmann, an agent with New Wave Real Estate who lives in Solana Beach with her husband and two children. "It's a really friendly town." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
Paul declined to comment on Tuesday. Davis refused to speak to reporters before New Orleans's game on Tuesday night against the Houston Rockets. In another high profile case of a player's trade request this season, Jimmy Butler was not fined after pressing to be dealt from the Minnesota Timberwolves in September, because neither Butler nor his agent, Bernie Lee, openly discussed Butler's wishes with the news media. The Timberwolves ultimately traded Butler to the Philadelphia 76ers on Nov. 10. But in a subsequent example, Cleveland's J. R. Smith who is also represented by Paul dodged a fine after he publicly requested a trade in November. Smith was sent away from the Cavaliers in a mutual decision between the team and Paul to allow Cleveland to try to find a new home for Smith. The Los Angeles Lakers are at the forefront of teams trying to persuade the Pelicans to surrender Davis before the Feb. 7 trade deadline. The Knicks are also determined to establish themselves as a factor in the bidding for Davis, according to a person with knowledge of the team's plans. The Knicks, though, realize that they might not be able to make their bid for Davis until May, when the order for the top of the June draft is set, according to the person, who was not authorized to discuss the situation publicly. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
Stephen Curry, center, is spending his summer watching golf, and the N.B.A., instead of playing for a championship. "It's weird," he said. Want more basketball in your inbox? Sign up for Marc Stein's weekly N.B.A. newsletter here. LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. The phone rang Sunday night with a giddy Stephen Curry on the other end of the line. The most renowned long distance shooter in basketball was driving home from what he described as a true bucket list experience: Curry followed the last three groups at the P.G.A. Championship from the closest vantage point he could have imagined for such a prestigious event. "Right on the ropes," Curry said. "You almost forgot it was a major tournament because it was so quiet out there." Curry was among the select few who had the juice to gain entry to T.P.C. Harding Park in San Francisco when it was closed to the public. It was not terribly surprising given that Curry just led the Golden State Warriors to three championships in five years, and won back to back N.B.A. Most Valuable Player Awards at the start of the run. That the experience was such a pinch me scenario for him should also be understandable by now; Curry openly loves golf as much as he relishes uncorking 3 pointers from distances that were widely considered unacceptable until he made the practice of hoisting 30 footers so routine. Yet these are also strange times for Curry, which made the next level access at the year's first golf major even more meaningful. It was an escape from the constant reminders that he and his Warriors are somehow irrelevant in the N.B.A. for now. "Obviously I was happy to see basketball back on TV, but that first week I had major FOMO," Curry said, using the popular term for the "fear of missing out." "Once you see Bron and Kawhi and P.G. go at it, and you remember how much fun it is to play in those types of games and that kind of level, you miss it badly," Curry added, referring to the July 30 showdown between LeBron James's Los Angeles Lakers and the Los Angeles Clippers' Kawhi Leonard and Paul George. The Warriors are one of eight teams cheekily christened the "Delete Eight" by The Athletic's John Hollinger that were not invited to participate in the N.B.A. restart here at Walt Disney World. After Curry broke his left hand in October, Golden State went 15 50 this season and, truthfully, did not want an invitation. The team was already bracing for a tough year without Klay Thompson, who tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee in June 2019 during the finals. It is nonetheless bizarre to see players and staff members from 22 teams moving throughout the sprawling N.B.A. campus at Disney World and to never see anyone in Warriors gear. The franchise that lorded over the league for the better part of a decade has zero presence at this so called bubble. The struggle to process that dichotomy hits Curry every time he visits the Warriors' practice facility for a weekday workout. Only four players are allowed in the gym at any time, for precautionary health reasons, but games from the bubble are always on the nearest television screen, even if Curry is getting his work in at 11 a.m. Pacific time. "It's just weird," he said. Yet he's convinced that the Warriors have a big rebound in store, even though Curry (32), Thompson (30) and Green (30) are all on the wrong side of their 20s now. He is adamant that Golden State with the former No. 1 over all pick Andrew Wiggins on its roster and a 2020 top five draft pick to keep or trade is the one team that would surely benefit from going nine months, or potentially longer, without playing a meaningful game. "Our roster kind of speaks for itself in terms of what me, Klay and Draymond have been through, and what we've got left in the tank," Curry said. "But it's on us to use this time wisely. It's just unchartered territory, whether you're in the bubble or not." Curry does have more pipelines than most to stay connected to what's happening in Florida. Beyond the frequent bubble updates he gets from friends on other teams, like Miami's Andre Iguodala, Sacramento's Kent Bazemore and Memphis's Anthony Tolliver, he has a natural rooting interest: Seth Curry, his younger brother, is here with the Dallas Mavericks. "For most of my career, I'm usually the one who's been home watching Steph late in the season," Seth Curry said. "Now it's the other way around and I'm still at work. I can tell it's a little tough on him." If the Mavericks can spring a first round playoff upset they will likely play the Clippers, whose coach, Doc Rivers, is Seth Curry's father in law Stephen Curry said he may push to make Seth's short list of family members allowed to enter the bubble after Aug. 30. Failing that, Stephen Curry said, he is serious about wearing one of Seth Curry's No. 30 Mavericks jerseys as a virtual fan for an upcoming game. But the foremost bubble curiosity for the eldest Curry brother is how campus inhabitants cope with the extended time away from their families. Monday was Seth Curry and the Mavericks' 33rd day here after arriving July 8, with the playoffs not scheduled to begin until Aug. 17. "If you say I get to play basketball, sleep and play golf on my off days, that's not a bad setup," Stephen Curry said. "From a day to day perspective, how you fill your time, I would have no problem adjusting to that. But you can't take family out of the equation. I don't think any of us have been away from our families for that long before." That level of commitment and the determination of so many of his peers to speak loudly on social justice issues throughout the N.B.A. restart are two big reasons Curry said he is "proud of every single one of these players." Noting how President Trump has been critical of N.B.A. players' kneeling during the national anthem before games to protest racial inequality, Curry said: "My barometer is always, if the current president is upset about something that somebody's speaking out on, then you're probably saying the right thing. Whether they've knelt, or sacrificed an interview to talk about Breonna Taylor, or whatever's important, they're talking about it and they're backing it up with action." To cope with the FOMO, Curry said he relies on all the bonus family time he's getting with his wife, Ayesha, and their three children, business endeavors and then special occasions like Sunday's P.G.A. outing. He "jumped around from hole to hole" with Kris Stone and Bryant Barr, two of his closest friends and business partners, and with his Warriors teammate Damion Lee, who is married to Sydel Curry Lee, Stephen and Seth's sister. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
The website has seed funding from the Arts Council, which invests government funds and National Lottery proceeds, and quickly drew the support of Ed Vaizey, the minister of state for culture and the digital economy. He noted that creative industries are the fastest growing force in the British economy, pumping almost 80 billion pounds, or about 113 billion, into the country's economy a year, accounting for 6 percent of British jobs and growing three times faster than any other sector. Mr. Vaizey added that he "hadn't thought twice" about whether to host the event at the prime minister's office, a gesture that he said was "a clear sign of our commitment to the movement, and the confident, empowered community it is trying to create for creatives across the U.K." Mr. Cameron, although otherwise occupied in Switzerland, had prepared a statement to show his support for the project, too: "From Asia to America, they're dancing to our music, watching our films and wearing our designers' latest creations," the statement said. "With all this talent, it's no wonder that our creative industries form the fastest growing part of the economy." "I want us to build on that," he continued. "And that means backing the best entrepreneurship in the sector, providing a focal point for the start up support and resources creative people need. Creative Entrepreneurs does just that and its website is the first of its kind. I hope this, alongside the other measures we are taking to boost businesses, will help make one of this country's great success stories go from strength to strength." The Conservative government, while traditionally an advocate for small businesses, has come under fire in recent months for policies that could have a negative impact on creative sectors, in which starting salaries remain low. For example, beginning in April, workers from outside the European Union who have lived in Britain for five years or more will have to prove annual earnings of at least PS35,000 to stay in the country legally. And as a referendum looms on whether Britain should stay in the European Union, creative leaders have been quick to emphasize the importance of funding from the bloc and of ease of mobility for young artists between countries all of which could be lost if voters were to choose to leave the union. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
"What does it mean, the conservation of this work?" The curators Ana Janevski and Thomas J. Lax, who with their colleague Martha Joseph organized the exhibition "Judson Dance Theater: The Work Is Never Done." A group of dancers sat on the floor of a gallery at the Museum of Modern Art one day last week, looking intently at two plywood boxes. The room was motionless and silent except for what sounded a little like bird song. Walking in mid rehearsal, you might not have realized there were people inside the boxes, whistling heard but not seen. The choreographer Simone Forti observed from the sidelines, responding to the dancers' questions. She was acquainting them with her Dance Constructions from the early 1960s, a collection of performance pieces that also make use of a seesaw, a wooden ramp and simple rope contraptions. In "Slant Board," dancers resemble rock climbers scaling a tilted surface; in "Hangers," they stand still in loops of rope suspended from the ceiling. Cropping up three times a day, three times a week, over the next several months, works from this collection will be part of an ambitious new exhibition, "Judson Dance Theater: The Work Is Never Done," which opens on Sunday. Through archival materials, film screenings, discussions and live performance, the show explores the history and impact of Judson Dance Theater a loose collective of artists, based at Judson Memorial Church in Greenwich Village, who threw open definitions of dance in the 1960s. In the past decade, the museum has often presented the work of Judson founders Trisha Brown, Steve Paxton, Yvonne Rainer but it's hard to think of another MoMA show that has committed so fully to excavating this chapter, or any chapter, of dance history. That Judson is relatively recent history, and that many of its founding members are still living and active as artists, was one impetus for presenting the exhibition now. The curators Ana Janevski and Thomas J. Lax, who organized the show with Martha Joseph, said they began to work on it after the museum acquired Ms. Forti's Dance Constructions in 2015. (Ms. Forti, 83, was not a Judson regular but a friend of, and inspiration to, many of its participants.) The constructions, when not being performed, essentially exist as a set of instructions for how to perform them. "It was this pivotal moment in the start of thinking: What does it mean, the conservation of this work?" Ms. Janevski said. A performance is not, say, a painting; keeping the constructions in good form would mean teaching them to a new generation, or as Ms. Janevski put it, "body to body transmission of knowledge." And who better to transmit that knowledge than Ms. Forti? "We really benefited in making the exhibition from working directly with the majority of the artists whose work we're presenting," said Mr. Lax. That benefit is not lost on the choreographers. In the first of several performance programs in the museum's Marron Atrium, Yvonne Rainer, 83, will offer a selection of her dances from the '60s. (Later programs highlight the work of Mr. Paxton, Ms. Brown, Lucinda Childs, Deborah Hay and David Gordon.) "It's sort of my last hurrah in terms of that period," she said. "I don't expect it will ever happen again." Ms. Rainer has often joked, referring to Mr. Paxton, that "Steve invented walking and I invented running." If one word has come to define the aesthetic upheaval that took place at Judson, it might be "pedestrian." But, as Ms. Rainer pointed out, there was more to what she and her colleagues were doing. "People think of Judson as being about minimalism," she said. "But there was all kinds of work. There were dancers who were dancing, and I was one of them." Ms. Janevski and Mr. Lax said they were interested in honoring that stylistic range. "Part of what we're trying to do is not to say that Judson was about one aesthetic winning out over another," Mr. Lax said. Instead, he added, the show seeks to recognize that "these different approaches could exist in and alongside one another, through disagreement, through negotiation, without resolution." Another point of curatorial interest was "enlarging the space of downtown" often associated with Judson, Mr. Lax said. The second of three galleries, under the banner "Downtown," draws connections between Judson Memorial Church and nearby cultural hubs, including the jazz club Five Spot Cafe, the Living Theater and the headquarters of the literary newsletter The Floating Bear. This constellation of places nods, if subtly, to an often overlooked aspect of Judson: the influence of black culture and black artists, like the pianist Cecil Taylor and the writer Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones at the time), on the largely white collective. As Mr. Lax writes in the exhibition catalog, "Judson was predominantly made up of white artists, but black culture nevertheless persisted in its sanctuary." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
Landi Livingston, whose family raises beef cattle in Ellston, Iowa, says her insurance plan under the Affordable Care Act is too expensive. Iowa is seeking approval from the Trump administration to opt out of some of the law's main features. WASHINGTON With efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act dead in Congress for now, a critical test for the law's future is playing out in one small, conservative leaning state. Iowa is anxiously waiting for the Trump administration to rule on a request that is loaded with implications for the law's survival. If approved by the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, it would allow the state to jettison some of Obamacare's main features next year its federally run insurance marketplace, its system for providing subsidies, its focus on helping poorer people afford insurance and medical care and could open the door for other states to do the same. Iowa's Republican leaders think their plan would save the state's individual insurance market by making premiums cheaper for everyone. But critics say the lower prices come at the expense of much higher deductibles for many with modest incomes, and that approval of the plan would amount to another way of undermining the law. Already the administration has slashed funding for advertising and outreach to help people sign up for insurance, and President Trump is preparing to issue an executive order allowing more access to plans that don't meet the law's standards. Adding to the uncertainty, the Washington Post reported last week that Mr. Trump in August asked Seema Verma, the federal official in charge of reviewing Iowa's plan, to reject it. Some supporters of the law saw that as a deliberate effort to keep premiums high; Mr. Trump frequently cites sharply rising premiums as proof that the health law is failing. Neither C.M.S. nor the White House would comment on whether Mr. Trump had pushed for the application to be denied. A spokeswoman for C.M.S. said only that the plan remains under review. In Des Moines on Tuesday, Gov. Kim Reynolds told reporters that her team was in constant contact with the White House and C.M.S. about the plan, including a call with Ms. Verma this week, trying "to get to yes." She said the administration has been "very receptive" to the plan as a solution to the "unaffordable," "unworkable" health law until it can be repealed. Iowa calls its request a stopgap plan that would allow the state to opt out of the federal health insurance marketplace, HealthCare.gov, for 2018 and create a state run system that its insurance commissioner says would lower premiums for the 72,000 Iowans who currently have Obamacare health plans, including 28,000 who earn too much to get subsidies to help with the cost. But the cheaper premiums would come with a big trade off: higher out of pocket costs. The only option for customers would be a plan with deductibles of 7,350 for a single person and 14,700 for a family. The proposal would also reallocate millions of federal dollars that the health law dedicates to lowering costs for people with modest incomes and use the money for premium assistance to those with higher incomes, no matter how much money they make. The individual insurance market is particularly fragile in Iowa, partly because the state has allowed tens of thousands of people to keep old plans that do not meet the health law's standards. Aetna and Wellmark Blue Cross Blue Shield, the state's most popular insurer, are both withdrawing at the end of the year. The only insurer planning to remain, Medica, is seeking premium increases that average 56 percent, blaming Mr. Trump's ongoing threats to stop paying subsidies known as cost sharing reductions that lower many people's deductibles and other out of pocket costs. Wellmark has said it will stay if the stopgap plan is approved. "What we are trying to address is a really large number of people being priced out," said Doug Ommen, the state's Republican insurance commissioner. Two other states, Alaska and Minnesota, have already won permission to shore up their Obamacare markets with waivers allowed under the law; they will use federal money to help insurers cover the claims of their most expensive customers next year. But Oklahoma abruptly withdrew a similar request in late September one that state officials said would have reduced premiums by an average of 30 percent saying that the Trump administration had reneged on a promise to approve it by Sept. 25 and they were out of time. (A C.M.S. spokeswoman said, "At no time was an approval package or an approval date ever agreed upon.") Iowa's waiver request is more far reaching, providing what Timothy S. Jost, an emeritus professor of health law at Washington and Lee University, has called a "watershed moment" for Obamacare. "It's a decision to abandon a number of key principles of the Affordable Care Act," he said. Under the law, people who don't get insurance through work can buy it through the online marketplace. They get federal subsidies to help with the cost if their income is below 400 percent of the poverty level, or about 65,000 a year for a couple. Those whose incomes are below 250 percent of the poverty level 40,600 a year for a couple also get cost sharing reductions. Iowa's plan would reallocate much of that federal assistance, using it to provide premium subsidies based on age and income for even the wealthiest individual market customers. It would also be used to create a "reinsurance" program, like Alaska's and Minnesota's, to help insurers cover their sickest customers. The law's essential health benefits and protections for people with pre existing conditions would remain in place, but every individual market customer would get the same standardized high deductible plan. Mr. Jost and other supporters of the law say Iowa's proposal does not meet the requirements for so called innovation waivers, including that the coverage they provide must be at least as comprehensive and affordable as Obamacare plans, because poorer people would face higher deductibles and other out of pocket costs. That, they say, leaves the plan open to almost certain legal challenges. Seemingly acknowledging that problem, Mr. Ommen has tweaked Iowa's proposal including with a supplemental filing to the Trump administration on Thursday to preserve subsidies that reduce out of pocket costs for roughly 21,000 low income Iowans. But those at slightly higher income levels would lose cost sharing assistance completely, facing the 7,350 deductible and other out of pocket expenses. "You still have some real problems from the perspective of making sure low income people can afford coverage," said Joel Ario, a managing director at Manatt Health who worked on the Affordable Care Act at the Department of Health and Human Services during the Obama administration. But for the roughly 28,000 Iowans who have Obamacare coverage but earn too much to get subsidies, the need for a shake up is urgent. And with open enrollment starting in about three weeks, time is of the essence. Dozens of them, including many farmers, submitted comments to Mr. Ommen or testified at public hearings in favor of the stopgap plan, with many saying they would be forced to drop their insurance next year if it were not approved. "Fortunately both my husband and I have already prepaid our funeral expenses," write a woman identified as Nancy K., of Bellevue, who said she could no longer afford her coverage. "Every single item, even our cemetery marker, is paid for or covered for my death in the event that we cannot afford insurance to pay for any so called catastrophic health care." Landi Livingston, whose family raises beef cattle in rural southern Iowa, said she was paying almost 500 a month for a Wellmark plan and dreaded having to switch to Medica next year, with what she assumed would be significantly higher prices. If the Trump administration approves the state's request, Ms. Livingston's premium would likely drop to around 350 a month, according to estimates from the state, saving her 1,800 next year. But her 3,000 deductible would more than double, meaning that if she had high medical expenses she could end up paying more toward those bills. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
If the past is any guide, the hit to the global economy and markets should be relatively brief but that's a big if. The big surprise was not that global markets fell sharply this week on fears of the coronavirus, but that it took so long for them to wake up to the threat. Before Monday, Wall Street was full of instant experts in epidemiology predicting on the basis of widely circulated charts showing that the number of new cases had peaked in China that "it's over." This sanguine state was symptomatic of a bull market that is now 11 years old, the longest in history, and also one of the calmest. In the past decade, stock prices approached a full 20 percent "correction" only twice, and suffered even minor dips much less frequently than in most previous bull markets. Even insignificant market tremors were met with new offerings of easy money from the Federal Reserve, so every dip was greeted as reason to buy, and no global crisis seriously rattled the market. Until last week, Wall Street was unusually blase about the coronavirus too, and had reacted with far less alarm than it did during any of the eight global contagions since World War II. Not only had market players been lulled into complacency by easy money and the long calm of the bull market, but they also began this year in a state of unbridled optimism. The buzzword on Wall Street was "melt up," suggesting stocks could rise as fast in 2020 as they normally fall in a meltdown. After all, the global economy was in an upswing when the coronavirus first appeared in December. The tariff war between the United States and China appeared to be ebbing. The threat to Wall Street implied by the growing popularity of a socialist candidate for the White House was simply dismissed by investors who, surveys show, give President Trump an 80 to 90 percent chance of re election. By noon Monday that all changed. Amid reports that the coronavirus had spread well beyond China and that Beijing might lower its guard and ease its quarantines, the American market suffered its worst day in two years and ended down by nearly 5 percent from its peak last week. That drop is now right in line with the average at this stage of the eight postwar contagions, which go back to the Asian flu of 1957. Markets are worried but as the doctors would say, within normal limits. By Tuesday morning, a semblance of stability was returning to global markets. What happens next depends in part on the impact to the global economy. The latest estimates suggest that the hit from the coronavirus could make the first three months of 2020 the slowest quarter for global growth since the crisis year of 2008. If the past is any guide, however, the growth scare should be relatively brief. Recent global contagions going back to the SARS virus in 2003 have seen a sharp slowdown lasting about a quarter, followed by a sharp recovery over the next quarter. That's why the consensus on Wall Street is that there will be no global recession, and within six months the whole scare will be over. Still, the quarantine of 16 cities in China has had a visible impact on economic activity, reducing traffic on roads, railways and at airports, emptying out theaters and other public spaces. Analysts skeptical of official Chinese data have started to track alternative sources, from satellite images of road congestion in urban areas to the density of smog over Hong Kong and traffic on Chinese search engines. All those unofficial trackers also point to a hard hit. Beyond China, however, the economic impact will vary from nation to nation, depending on how much stimulus a country can afford. Already Beijing has been cutting interest rates and encouraging banks to increase lending. Investors are confident the authorities will do whatever it takes to keep the economy moving. That is one reason, despite the fact that China is ground zero of the epidemic, that markets have held up better there than in other developing countries. The same is true of the United States, where investors still seem to trust the Federal Reserve to keep growth alive, come what may. The American stock market has also fallen less than the global average. The hardest hit countries will be those with less wherewithal or inclination to spend more money. High in the at risk category: Japan and Italy. Japan is now battling to prevent the coronavirus from disrupting the summer Olympic Games in Tokyo even if it means locking down an economy that is already technically in recession. Whatever course the coronavirus takes, it is already accelerating de globalization, which began when countries turned inward after the global financial crisis of 2008 and cross border flows of people, goods and money slowed. Fear of contagion is likely to deepen the conviction of populist politicians who want to erect barriers to block imports, immigrants and cultural influences at the border anyway. The trend toward localization companies looking to produce more locally, and consumers looking to buy from local brands was getting underway and is likely to pick up speed. Perhaps most clearly, the roster of manufacturers who are moving factories out of China, in search of lower wages and a more friendly business environment, is likely to grow after this episode. The longer the virus lasts and the farther it spreads, the bigger these impacts will be. Hopefully, the consensus view among investors is right and this epidemic peaks and passes quickly. But one thing coronavirus has already shown is that Wall Street's medical opinions always need to be read with caution. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
The term "electronic cigarette" refers to a battery powered device that heats a tank or cartridge of liquid usually containing nicotine, flavorings and other chemicals, but not the cancer causing tar found in tobacco cigarettes. Users inhale and exhale the vapor. The devices come in numerous shapes, including ones that look like pens, flash drives and hookahs. Many consumers are confused about the health implications of e cigarettes. This is a primer about what research so far shows about these devices. Are they safer than traditional cigarettes? Yes. But that does not mean they are safe. E cigarettes contain far fewer dangerous chemicals than those released in burning tobacco. Tobacco cigarettes typically contain 7,000 chemicals, including nearly 70 known to be carcinogenic. E cigarettes also don't release tar, the tobacco residue that damages lungs but also contributes to the flavor of tobacco products. In the United States, cigarettes are associated with 480,000 deaths a year from coronary heart disease, stroke and numerous cancers, among other illnesses. The research on e cigarettes is young because the products have only been around for a little over a decade. Exacerbated by the voltage of a given device, certain e cigarette flavors can irritate the airways, researchers say: benzaldehyde (added to cherry flavored liquids), cinnamaldehyde (gives cinnamon flavor), and diacetyl (a buttery flavor that can cause lung tissue damage called "popcorn lung.") Some flavors become irritants when added to vaping liquids. The process of turning liquid chemicals into vapor releases harmful particulates deep into the lungs and atmosphere, including heavy metals. Can they really help smokers quit? It's unclear. The Food and Drug Administration has not yet approved the marketing of e cigarettes as smoking cessation aids. Observational studies of their effectiveness reveal mixed results. Some show that a majority of adult users are former smokers, suggesting the devices are useful in helping them quit. Others reveal that many e cigarette users also smoke conventional cigarettes. Still others say that a large percentage of e cigarette users, particularly teenagers, never smoked traditional cigarettes. A 2018 study concluded that e cigarettes did not help smokers quit at rates faster than smokers who did not use them. But this summer, a British Parliament committee resoundingly endorsed them, even going so far as to suggest that e cigarettes be made available by prescription through the National Health Service. Nicotine is not known to cause cancer. It is a stimulant and a sedative, helping to release dopamine in the brain's pleasure centers. Some research suggests it can improve memory and concentration although long term smoking has been associated with cognitive decline. Inhaled nicotine can increase heart rate and blood pressure. The major cause for alarm is that nicotine is highly addictive. It is the chemical in tobacco and e cigarettes that binds the user. The nicotine in smoking cessation aids like gum, patches and lozenges is absorbed more slowly than in cigarettes. "In tobacco smoke, the nicotine is delivered to the lungs, which have a large surface area," said Maciej Goniewicz,a pharmacologist and toxicologist at the Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center in Buffalo, N.Y. "In one or two puffs, the smoker feels the nicotine go right to brain." The e cigarette brand Juul in particular "seems to closely match tobacco cigarettes in terms of the speed and amount of nicotine delivery," said Dr. Goniewicz, who studies the absorption of such chemicals. Like the Science Times page on Facebook. Sign up for the Science Times newsletter. What are the concerns about teenagers and e cigarettes? The human brain develops into the mid 20s. Researchers worry that adolescents who vape will be most affected by nicotine addiction, which they can develop with less exposure than adults require. Though studies have not conclusively shown that e cigarettes can be relied upon to help adult smokers quit, there is substantial evidence that teenagers who use them have a higher risk of smoking cigarettes. Teens are also using vapes to inhale marijuana. "It seems that kids who use e cigarettes are more likely to use marijuana in general smoked or vaped. Is there a gateway effect? We're just getting data now. But it's concerning," said Dr. Rachel Boykan, an associate professor at Stony Brook medical school who researches adolescence and tobacco control. Can parents tell if their teenagers are vaping? "E cig use can be very challenging to detect because they are discreet devices that don't emit much odor," said Dr. Sharon Levy, director of the adolescent substance use and addiction program at Boston Children's Hospital. Parents can look online for photos of devices and pods. If you find those items in your child's room, pockets or backpack, "you should assume that your child is using it," Dr. Levy said, "not 'just holding it for a friend.' " If children say they have only tried e cigarettes a few times, Dr. Levy said, ask them to stop. Then tell them you will check their room and backpack. "And then do it. Kids who have used only sporadically should be able to stop without much intervention." How can you treat teen nicotine dependence? There aren't widely accepted protocols for teenagers. Dr. Levy urges families to consult a medical professional. Limited interventions with nicotine replacement therapies like patches, gum or medications may be effective in older teens, she said. But "this should be done in conjunction with a good evaluation, since mental health disorders like depression and anxiety and use of other substances are common in kids with nicotine use disorder," she cautioned. On Dec. 5, the Food and Drug Administration is holding a public hearing to discuss possible nicotine withdrawal therapies specifically for teenagers which, if restrictions on flavored e cigarette brands proceed, could be an imminent challenge. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
Since the Museum of Modern Art reopened this month, it has devoted its fourth floor Studio space to a strangely wonderful, interactive installation: David Tudor's "Rainforest V (variation 1)." Throughout the room hang about 20 mundane objects, including a metal barrel, a wooden box, a lampshade, a reflective disc, a glass jar, a vintage computer's hard drive and more. Collectively they become a kind of urban jungle, suspended like Calder mobiles with the anti utilitarian aesthetic of Duchamp readymades. Then, as you wander around them, you realize: This jungle emits noises, and they alter according to your proximity. You may also notice that every object is fitted with a sound transducer, giving each its own resonance. The box, the can, the jar they're all acoustic sources, as if they were seashells. A window in the gallery overlooks 55th Street, but the constantly changing polyphony of "Rainforest" transports you quite elsewhere. This was Tudor's first music written for Cunningham's repertory. But he knew the Cunningham tradition: The choreographer would tell a composer the duration and title of a piece he had in mind. Often, the score would be written independent of the choreography the music usually had a different title but in this case, Cunningham's title inspired Tudor, who at once responded, "Oh, then I'll put lots of raindrops into it." In the end, the differences were only a matter of capitalization: Cunningham's dance was "RainForest," and Tudor's score "Rainforest." For the next three decades, Cunningham commissioned scores from Tudor, always eliciting imaginative sound dramas. But this first one proved a seedbed for Tudor's imagination. The scenic design of "RainForest," after all, featured Andy Warhol's "Silver Clouds," whose theatrical interactions with the dancers inspired Tudor: From the 1970s onward, he developed the material of his score for various spatial setups. One of those iterations, "Rainforest IV" (1973), was devised with musicians who later became known as Composers Inside Electronics. Three of them John Driscoll, Phil Edelstein and Matt Rogalsky then realized "Rainforest V," an installation version that can play by itself. And so the installation at MoMA is available to see and hear at all hours. Throughout the fall, though, the museum is also presenting performances by Composers Inside Electronics of "Forest Speech," another Tudor score belonging to the "Rainforest" family. For this, the Studio is outfitted with benches and cushions, and its blinds are lowered to darken the space. The roster of musicians will change with each performance (there are six more through Dec. 15); on Sunday, they were Mr. Edelstein, Marina Rosenfeld, Stefan Tcherepnin , Spencer Topel and Jeremy Toussaint Baptiste . The performers were visible at one end of the room, but their sounds came out of the installation's galaxy of suspended hardware. Here again was the spectrum of isolated chirrups, growls, trills, squeaks, purrs, avian alarm calls. It was hard not to hear the sounds of frogs, cicadas, isolated birds, giant cats and even elephants. (Cunningham said he took the title of his dance from the Pacific Northwest, "from the rainforest of the Olympic Peninsula"; he had also been thinking of Central Africa, inspired by the anthropologist Colin Turnbull's book "The Forest People." Perhaps he was also thinking of the "Rainforest" sculptures by his friend Louise Nevelson?) The aural collage of Tudor's musique concrete squeaks, burbles, rumbles, booms also evokes more fictional realms, as if a "Star Wars" droid had wandered into the arboreal conclave of Ents in "The Lord of the Rings." These sounds may seem a sonic illusion, but listen closely and you'll know they are just electronics using the frequencies of everyday objects. Tudor's music is multidimensional: fantasy and fact, technology and escapism, poetry and game. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
After visiting dozens of doctors and suffering for nearly five years from pelvic pain so severe that he could not work, Daniel Davidson, 57, a dentist in Dalton Gardens, Idaho, finally found a specialist in Phoenix who had an outstanding reputation for treating men like him. Dr. Davidson, whose pain followed an injury, waited five months for an appointment and even rented an apartment in Phoenix, assuming he would need surgery and time to recover. Six days before the appointment, it was canceled. The doctor, Michael Hibner, an obstetrician gynecologist at St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center, had learned that members of his specialty were not allowed to treat men and that if he did so, he could lose his board certification something that doctors need in order to work. The rule had come from the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology. On Sept. 12, it posted on its website a newly stringent and explicit statement of what its members could and could not do. Except for a few conditions, gynecologists were prohibited from treating men. Pelvic pain was not among the exceptions. Dr. Davidson went home, close to despair. His condition has left him largely bedridden. The pain makes it unbearable for him to sit, and he can stand for only limited periods before he needs to lie down. "These characters at the board jerked the rug out from underneath me," he said. In an email, Dr. Hibner confirmed that he had stopped treating men, who he said had made up about 10 percent to 15 percent of his practice. He said his staff was trying to find other physicians for about 100 male patients. Other men are in a similar situation, unsure of where to turn for help. A number of nerve and muscle problems can cause debilitating pelvic pain syndromes in both men and women, but the problems are more common in women, and gynecologists often have the most skill in treating this type of pain, experts in the field say. The gynecology board differs, saying that many other types of doctors can treat these ailments in men, according to a spokesman, David Margulies, who heads a public relations firm in Dallas. Board members declined to be interviewed. The same board reversed itself for another group of male patients last month, however, and said gynecologists would be permitted to screen and treat men who are at high risk for anal cancer. The board has also informed one patient, who appealed to it directly, that he can continue being treated for pelvic pain by Dr. Hibner the same doctor in Phoenix whom Dr. Davidson had hoped to see. In an email, which the patient shared with The New York Times, a board official said the intent of its policy was "not to have doctors abandon their current patients like you." But Mr. Margulies said the permission for that patient's treatment did not mean that the overall policy had changed. He said, "A one time exception was made for one individual." A specialty group, the International Pelvic Pain Society, wrote to the gynecology board, requesting that gynecologists be permitted to continue treating men for pelvic pain. The board declined. The pain society has 300 to 400 members; about half are physical therapists, and 40 percent are obstetrician gynecologists, said Dr. Richard Marvel, a former president and an obstetrician gynecologist in Annapolis, Md., who has treated men for pelvic pain. In an email, the pain society said, "Gynecologists with the appropriate skills, experience and knowledge who choose to participate in the care of men with chronic pelvic pain should not be at risk of losing their board certification, solely because they participate in the care of patients who have a real need, suffer tremendously and have limited options for treatment." Stephanie Prendergast, president of the pain society and a physical therapist at the Pelvic Health and Rehabilitation Center in San Francisco, said in an email, "I can assure you these gynecologists are better equipped to treat male patients with pelvic pain than most urologists, neurologists, orthopedists, etc." Pelvic pain is poorly understood and in men is frequently misdiagnosed as prostate trouble. Major nerves and muscles involved are the same in men and women, so some gynecologists began accepting male patients. Patients say the pain can be excruciating, and constant. In an interview, one man, 34, who had pain for years before finding treatment that helped, said, "I never would have been an end my life kind of person, but if I got run over by a car I wouldn't have been that disappointed." Treatment may involve physical therapy, daily medication, nerve block injections, counseling, lifestyle changes and, as a last resort, surgery. It can take months, or longer. Dr. Marvel said that he had treated 66 men in the last three and half years, and that many had already consulted other doctors. Sometimes the trouble starts with biking; a few patients have been bull riders. Often he finds that patients have not even been examined properly. Pelvic pain often arises from injured or irritated nerves, and diagnosing it may require sensory testing with pinpricks and cotton swabs in the genital area a type of exam that many doctors are not comfortable performing, Dr. Marvel said. Regarding the board's ruling, he said: "I'm a little stressed out about it. Obviously I don't want to lose my board certification." Asked if he would continue treating men, he hesitated, then said: "Well, I mean for now, I plan to still see men if I have men who need the care. But I'm not sure." He added: "We don't really want to fight with the board. But we do want them to see our position, that we're just trying to help these patients who can't get help any other way." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
COLUMBUS, Ohio The transformation of the Short North a 14 block artsy strip here from scruffy to chic began in the 1980s. And the scrappy neighborhood, which connects downtown Columbus to the sprawling campus of Ohio State University, has defied the recent economic downturn by continuing that evolution with a string of new developments. Developers just broke ground on the city's first full service boutique hotel, the Joseph, at the south end of the Short North. The hotel is part of a 59 million multi building project. Several residential developments are also under way and city officials have committed public funds to consider ways to improve the infrastructure in the area. Supporters of the Short North describe it as a place where bohemians, lower income city dwellers and better off suburban residents come to mix and to find an eclectic groove that can be found nowhere else in Ohio. "It is now, frankly, the premier arts district in the nation," said Mayor Michael B. Coleman of Columbus. But it wasn't always so. In the 1980s, the Short North, so named by the Columbus police for dispatch calls that fell short of being in the northern part of the city, was the "kind of place where you locked your door and hit the gas pedal," said John Angelo, executive director of the Short North Alliance, a group of business and property owners. Filled with great red brick commercial stock and side streets lined with grand old houses, the area eventually started to draw artists and gay people. Historic preservation commissions were formed to protect Victorian Village to the west of High Street, the principal road, and Italian Village to the east side. The Joseph, the boutique hotel, will bring a different aesthetic to the Short North. Designed by the Miami based architectural firm Arquitectonica, the 11 story modernist high rise will feature 135 rooms, an in house restaurant and spa services. The Joseph, a Le Meridien hotel, will also serve as a place to show pieces from the world class modern art collection of the Columbus based developer Ron Pizzuti, 72. The Pizzuti Companies is developing the hotel as part of its million project on the two sides of High Street. Named after Mr. Pizzuti's father, Joseph, an immigrant from Calabria, Italy, the entire project will be managed by his son, Joel Pizzuti, 40, and it is one of a half dozen real estate developments in the works in the Short North, City officials last year approved a 500,000 engineering study to review future improvements, including buried utility lines, better pedestrian level street lighting and sidewalk bump outs for alfresco dining. The seeds for the Short North's transformation were planted in the late 1970s, when pioneers like Sanborn Wood, a banker turned developer, started rehabbing homes and businesses, dodging the seedier side of life. Today, Mr. Wood, 74, has turned over the Wood Companies to his son, Mark, who is overseeing a four story apartment building projecting over the strip's popular Northstar Cafe. The Short North's renaissance began in earnest in 1986 with the opening of the now renowned Rigsby's Kitchen in one of Mr. Wood's first acquisitions on High Street. The restaurant drew followers of the chef Kent Rigsby from throughout Central Ohio. Around the same time, art galleries started to appear. The Gallery Hop on the first Saturday of every month began 27 years ago and now attracts 10,000 to 20,000 people each month. The perennial and defiantly countercultural DooDah Parade on July 4 also was born in the late 1980s. "The Short North," said Mr. Angelo of the Short North Alliance, "gives Columbus swagger." Losing that quirky, artistic edge would be bad for business, so design is closely monitored by historic preservation commissions and the alliance. Even with a proposal for a premier art gallery, the Pizzutis spent four years getting approval for their contemporary project. Following the cues of the more traditional red brick design is the Hubbard on High, a 27 million, mixed use project jointly developed by two local development companies, Elford and Wagenbrenner. The Hubbard will have 72 apartments above 17,000 square feet of retail space, a 322 space parking garage and a designated outdoor event space with a bar and fountain. WesBanco, a regional bank out of Wheeling, W.Va., is financing most of the project while the garage will be built with tax incremental funds, said Jeff Meacham, a partner with Elford Development. The only condominium development among the recent projects, the Jackson on High, offers a fitness center and a year round rooftop pool for the owners of the 44 units, designed with cool, modern interiors, floor to ceiling glass windows and upscale kitchens. Mr. Coleman said the creation of a special improvement district 12 years ago, a joint venture of the City Council and the neighborhood, bolstered development and has provided the city with a template for four other similar districts. Assessments for 80 commercial property owners and nearly 600 condo owners bring in 380,000 annually to the Short North. These funds helped pay for the purchase and installation of 17 lighted arches across High Street, modern recreations of arches erected in 1888 to commemorate the centennial of the Northwest Territory as well as a gathering of Civil War veterans. The city has invested about 16 million in the Short North since 1982 when it was declared the first Neighborhood Commercial Revitalization District, more than half of that since the special improvement district's creation, said William Webster, the city's deputy director for jobs and economic development. "The arches that are down there," said Mr. Meacham, "really help unify that whole stretch of High Street." Developers point to a new Kroger grocery store that opened a year ago at the north end of High Street as a sign of the area's growth. The 60,000 square foot marketplace style store, which hosts wine tastings, was built right up to the sidewalk, replacing a 30 year old model that had been set back behind a sea of parking. "That was an amenity that was really missing," said Ricky Day, a neighborhood developer who appeared on the scene in the early 1990s and helped canvass the area to promote the special improvement district. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
On the Upper West Side, New Digs for Old Souls Some things don't change much on the Upper West Side: the classic prewar co ops, the caravans of baby strollers, and Zabar's, the grocer of choice for many smoked fish aficionados. But just down the block from the market's lox counter, on the corner of 81st and Broadway, a new luxury condo building is rising, with a familiar name attached. "You could practically reach out your window and pick up a bagel," said Robert A.M. Stern, whose firm, Robert A.M. Stern Architects, is designing the latest new residential tower in the neighborhood. As his firm has proved before, new doesn't have to mean glass curtain walls and a modernist bent. And classicism is not a hindrance to price: The project, a brick and limestone tower with contemporary touches, will compete with some of the ultramodern towers now rising on the Far West Side. Located at 250 West 81st Street, the 18 story building will have retail on the first two floors and 31 condo units above, ranging in price from 3.7 million for a two bedroom apartment, to 15.75 million for the five bedroom penthouse. Construction is underway and is expected to be completed in early 2019, with sales launching this fall. Hill West is the architect of record. The developers, Alchemy Properties and Carlyle Group, bought the site, which was home to a low lying retail building, for 51 million last year. They are expecting a sellout value of about 226 million, according to documents filed with the office of the State Attorney General. "Finding sites on the Upper West Side is nearly impossible," said Kenneth Horn, the president and founder of Alchemy, adding that broad swaths of the area are under landmark protection. But unlike new development downtown, where finding adequate sites is also rare, Mr. Horn said the Upper West Side is not accustomed to flashy glass towers, and buyers gravitate to what is familiar and family friendly. "We wanted to blend into the fabric" of the neighborhood, he said, but with amenities that the grande dame, prewar co ops often cannot provide. There will be 6,000 square feet of amenities, including a gym, golf simulator, basketball court and a professional music studio open to children and adults. The interiors will feature oak flooring in a herringbone pattern, custom wood cabinetry by Smallbone of Devizes, and some units will have private outdoor spaces. In total, there are just seven new residential projects on the Upper West Side that have filed offering plans recently, said Gabby Warshawer, director of research at CityRealty, a real estate data firm. At One Waterline Square, a 37 story condo and rental tower designed by Richard Meier and Partners Architects, the average price is 2,905 a square foot, Ms. Warshawer said, the highest among new projects in the area. Amenities at the tower will include a skate park, a rock climbing wall and a bowling alley. At 250 West 81st Street, Alchemy is seeking an average 2,817 per square foot, putting them in competition with buyers who might be tempted by the glassy, Far West Side developments. "I think we have a different buyer," said Alexa Lambert, an agent with Stribling Marketing Associates, which is handling sales with Alchemy. "Obviously we're looking for families," she said, because of the mix of larger units. But you can't discount the appeal of a new masonry building, she said, especially one with Mr. Stern's name attached. Mr. Stern's firm is not new to the Upper West Side. In 2007, they finished the Harrison, a 125 unit brick condo building with prewar flavor. Soon after, they finished 15 Central Park West, the limestone tower that many credit as the catalyst for the ultraluxury condo boom that followed. In 2012, Sanford Weill, the former Citigroup chairman, sold his penthouse there for 88 million, a record at the time, to an entity controlled by Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev. Unlike 15 Central Park West, which attracted several high profile international buyers, Mr. Stern said his new project will have a local vibe, on a more intimate scale. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
With the global pandemic keeping many of us indoors for extended stretches, outdoor excursions have started to feel more like therapy than leisure. Whether you're by the beach, camping, or in your backyard, not much can disrupt a late summer idyll quite like a mosquito buzzing incessantly in your ear. Mosquitoes are, of course, dangerous too, carrying diseases like Zika, West Nile virus and Eastern Equine Encephalitis. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, cases of vector borne diseases, which include those transmitted by mosquitoes, more than tripled in the United States between 2004 and 2016. They also note that the vast majority of vector control organizations "lack critical prevention and control capacities." In other words, you're on your own. Thankfully, there are now more options to handle mosquitoes than just covering yourself head to toe with a smelly DEET based repellent. I've been covering bug and mosquito control products for Wirecutter (The New York Times Company that reviews and recommends products) for over two years, interviewing researchers, academics and manufacturers along the way. I've spent quite a bit of time on the phone with the American Mosquito Control Association and I've tested dozens of mosquito related products some successful, some not. Here are a few that I've found to be effective. Spray repellents have a reputation for being oily and smelly. Fortunately, there are options that are neither. When spending time outside, whether in the woods or for a walk around the park, we recommend Sawyer Premium Insect Repellent (starts at about 7 a bottle). This EPA approved product has a 20 percent concentration of picaridin, a chemical ingredient that provides protection from mosquitoes and ticks for up to 12 hours. It's as effective as the notoriously strong smelling DEET, but comes with none of the downsides: picaridin is mostly odorless, doesn't have an overly slick feel, and won't damage plastics and synthetic fabrics, like sunglasses, rayon and spandex. Any repellent with a 20 percent concentration of picaridin should have similar effectiveness, but Sawyer stood out from the pack thanks to to its nice, even spray, double safety cap, wide range of available sizes, and decent availability at many major retailers. Spatial repellents are for times when coating your skin in a spray isn't practical. Maybe you just want to eat dinner on the porch or enjoy a little fresh air on the patio before turning in for the night. These devices work by emitting a small amount of repellent into the air, creating an area, usually about 10 feet by 10 feet, protected from mosquitoes. Our favorite is the Thermacell Radius Gen 2.0 (about 50). Unlike other spatial repellents, the Radius is powered by a rechargeable lithium ion battery (most others use a small butane canister). The machine, about the size of a cellphone, heats up a replaceable repellent cartridge, dispersing the odorless vapor out of the top of the unit. The whole thing is so unimposing that it's easy to forget about it and leave it on which is why we like the timer setting that automatically shuts it off after 120 minutes. For a budget version of a spatial repellent, we like the Pic Mosquito Coils (10 pack for about 10). They're much less expensive than the Thermacell Radius, but they do come with additional downsides. Each one is a green coil, about the size of a drink coaster, that sets up on a little stand, elevating it above the table surface. When the end is lit, the coil slowly burns down like a stick of incense. As it smolders, it releases a repellent containing a pyrethroid into the air. Unlike with the Radius, the smoke is visible and it has an odor. Each coil lasts about seven hours and, like other spatial repellents, it loses effectiveness in a breeze. The Pic coils don't come with an ashtray, so you'll have to set it on your own plate to keep the ash off the tabletop. Because of the smoking ember, the Pic coils also require careful monitoring, given the potential fire hazard. Even with these drawbacks, it's a low cost, fairly simple way to keep mosquitoes at bay. If you're looking for protection from mosquitoes as well as ticks, treat your clothing and gear but not your skin with a permethrin based formula. Ticks, like mosquitoes, can transmit a number of debilitating diseases such as Lyme and Rocky Mountain spotted fever. Permethrin protects tents, shoes, backpacks and clothes for up to six weeks, or through about six washings. As with the spray repellents, the most important part is to get a product with 0.5 percent permethrin. Our favorite is the Sawyer insect repellent (starts at about 8 a bottle). To treat an item, you have to really soak it, so a bottle of spray can get used up pretty quickly. According to Sawyer, a 12 ounce bottle can treat four garments. At that rate, it's impractical to treat an entire wardrobe, but it's worth treating any items you consistently wear in the outdoors. Also pay attention to whatever shoes or boots you wear regularly while hiking. One study showed that those who wore permethrin treated shoes and socks were about 74 percent less likely to get a tick bite. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
Our guide to plays and musicals coming to New York stages and a few last chance picks of shows that are about to close. Our reviews of open shows are at nytimes.com/reviews/theater. EAST TO EDINBURGH at 59E59 Theaters (performances start on July 10). New York theater is a little short on festivals this year, but the one in Edinburgh is going according to plan, and 59E59 is hosting several companies before they head off to Auld Reekie. This year's lineup includes mystery, comedy, religion, impressions, impressionism, a tragic Donald Trump and a documentary piece based on interviews with women who served in the Vietnam War. 212 279 4200, 59e59.org 'GONE MISSING' at New York City Center (June 11 12). The 2017 death of the composer Michael Friedman left an irreparable hole in New York theater. There's some comfort, though, in this Encores! revival of one of his most charming and best loved musicals, written for the Civilians with a book by Steve Cosson. Ken Rus Schmoll directs a cast that includes Taylor Mac, Susan Blackwell and Aysan Celik. 212 581 1212, nycitycenter.org 'THE HOUSE THAT WILL NOT STAND' at New York Theater Workshop (previews start on July 11; opens on July 30). An imaginative adaptation of Federico Garcia Lorca's "The House of Bernarda Alba," Marcus Gardley's play saunters down to New Orleans in the days before the Louisiana Purchase. Under Lileana Blain Cruz's direction, Lynda Gravatt stars as a woman of color with three daughters she hopes to see married or placed with willing men. 212 460 5475, nytw.org | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
Environmental factors are more importan t than genetics in determining who gets cavities, a new study reports. Australian researchers recruited 250 twin pairs when their mothers were still pregnant. They collected health and demographic data on them at 24 and 36 months' gestational age, at birth, and at age 18 months. When they were 6 years old, the 172 twin pairs still in the study underwent dental examinations. The comparison of identical and fraternal twins is frequently used to study the degree to which a trait is genetic as opposed to environmental. Identical twins are more alike than fraternal twins: They share 100 percent of their genes, while fraternal twins share only 50 percent. So if a condition is genetic, identical twins should look more like each other than fraternal twins look like each other. In this study, when it came to the number of cavities, fraternal twins looked just as much like each other as identical twins looked like each other. This suggests that genetics does not play an important role in tooth decay. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Well |
So deep is my remembered shame that even now, sitting at my keyboard at the age of 43, I'm blushing. I know that times have changed, that today boys can like whatever they like, are even applauded for it. But in the 1980s, when it seemed the only real options for me were "The Hobbit" or the Hardy Boys or Choose Your Own Adventure books, stories that as I recall all involved dragons and trap doors and motorcycle chases, sneaking home one of Ann Martin's books about a group of 12 year old girls from fictional Stoneybrook, Conn., felt like a crime. I mean, all of the covers were pastel. It was a moment. I think I read the first 15 books in the series over the course of fourth grade; whatever was in my school's library and I certainly didn't share my enthusiasm then with another soul. My great immersion in the friendship of Kristy Thomas, Mary Anne Spier, Claudia Kishi and Stacey McGill (and Dawn, Mallory and Jessi you know I couldn't forget the later additions) is something I've had reason to revisit lately. That's because my two daughters, 10 and 7, are now obsessives of the Sitter verse. They have read the books, tracking down the out of print ones as e books. They have devoured like torn at each other's hair to get at Raina Telgemeier's graphic novel reboot of the series, which debuted in color in 2015. And for the past year their bedtime routine involves listening to audio versions of the books, all 131 of which were recently produced by Audible. As if that weren't enough, they have been counting down the days to a television adaptation streaming on Netflix beginning July 3 that will offer a modern day update. Basically, I should have bought real estate in Stoneybrook. Their love of the BSC was unexpected. I've pushed a lot of books on them in their short lives, from Roald Dahl to Judy Blume to Kate DiCamillo. But not these. Maybe because I remembered them as hidden, guilty pleasures, I imagined, in the way overbearing parents do with their children's reading, that they lacked nutritional value, that they were just pulpy books about preteens. But I'm prepared now to make a claim that makes me feel almost as embarrassed as admitting to loving those books: I think they primed me more than any others for appreciating literary fiction. It's true that each entry in the series is predictably paced like a half hour sitcom and not of the Dadaist "Seinfeld" variety; more like the "Diff'rent Strokes" or "Growing Pains" of my youth: conflict sprinting toward resolution as the sound of the theme song plays at a slowed down tempo and a lesson is learned. But what made the series unique and unlike the other monster slaying books thrust upon me were the knots that had to be untied in the world of the Baby Sitters Club, which all had to do with personality, with the friction of one girl's character bumping up against another's. Want to keep up with the latest and greatest in books? This is a good place to start. None Learn what you should be reading this fall: Our collection of reviews on books coming out this season includes biographies, novels, memoirs and more. See what's new in October: Among this month's new titles are novels by Jonathan Franzen, a history of Black cinema and a biography by Katie Couric. Nominate a book: The New York Times Book Review has just turned 125. That got us wondering: What is the best book that was published during that time? Listen to our podcast: Featuring conversations with leading figures in the literary world, from Colson Whitehead to Leila Slimani, the Book Review Podcast helps you delve deeper into your favorite books. Stoneybrook may have had a Pleasantville vibe, full of kindly neighbors and clean streets, but the girls were flawed. There was Kristy and her hard exterior hiding the vulnerability of a girl whose father had walked out on the family when she was 6; Mary Anne and her passivity, afraid to assert herself, scarred by the death of her mother; Claudia, tortured and artistic, underestimated and misunderstood by her family; Stacey, forever the outsider, afraid that her diabetes would always keep her apart. The books were an introduction to perspective. Each is recounted by a different girl in the club, in her voice and each in her way an unreliable narrator. I'm pretty sure that a big part of why they were exciting for me had to do with the illicit thrill of eavesdropping on the thoughts of girls, older ones at that, even when what pulled a story along could be as low stakes as Mary Anne searching for her lost kitten. It's the same for my daughters, in a way. As they age out of being small children, they want to understand how people work, how relationships work. And these books, though not Chekhov, offer a lot of insight in this department. There is a plainness, a smallness of frame, but that's precisely what makes them fascinating. These days as I'm putting the girls to sleep I end up sitting with them and listening along and I'm struck by how many of the stories deal with the slippage between how things are and how you want them to be, hanging out on that threshold between the dreaminess of childhood and the compromises of adulthood. There are scenes like one in "Claudia and the Sad Good Bye" (book No. 26, for completists) after the death of Claudia's beloved grandmother Mimi. A few days after the funeral, Claudia returns to school, confused that everyone seems to be ignoring her, incapable of dealing with her grief. Claudia herself doesn't know what to feel. She isn't looking for any special attention, but she wants her loss to be acknowledged somehow. The moment feels realistic in its complicated humanness as complicated as Claudia's outfit (she's the "fashionable" one); I had to check the description to make sure I was remembering correctly: "At the moment I'm wearing lavender plaid cuffed pants with suspenders over a green shirt with buttons down the front, a matching lavender beret ... and fleece lined, high top sneakers." Or there's a conflict like the one in "Stacey's Mistake" (No. 18) when the rest of the club members visit Stacey in New York City after she's left Stoneybrook. It's a very 1980s New York City, full of muggers and cockroaches. What starts as excitement quickly turns fraught when Stacey has trouble fitting her suburban friends into her city girl life. All the tension comes entirely from the girls' inability to speak openly about how disappointing their reunion has turned out to be. I asked Raina Telgemeier what drew her to the club. The creator of insanely popular graphic novels for girls, books like "Smile" and "Sisters," Telgemeier traced her own love of the series to the moment when she herself was first learning how to narrate. "My memories of reading the Baby Sitters Club books are so enmeshed with the time in my life when I started keeping a diary and making my own comics." From the remove of adulthood, she could see that it was the girls' imperfections, their insecurities and sibling rivalries, that made them so real to her. "I was so relieved, as a thoughtful and slightly angsty 9 year old, to see my inner world reflected on the page." Rachel Shukert, the showrunner of the Netflix series, told me it was Ann Martin's world building that has stayed with her "finely tuned in a John Updike kind of way," Shukert said. And the many details come from what the girls take in, what catches in the filter of a child's mind: "You might not notice what someone's family dynamic is but you do notice how their mother is dressed, what kind of couch they have, what birthday presents they got." It's that aspect of inner world, of interiority, that I think I responded to as well, and what felt so absent from the "boy books." The girls have their routines club meetings three nights a week, baseball practice, homework and when the dramas of divorce or death or moving away intrude they think through them and we listen in on them doing this thinking. I'm also struck now by how much diversity and realism Martin included at a time when this wasn't exactly common for middle grade books, populating Stoneybrook with a Japanese American family (Claudia's) and a black family (Jessi's). There are books in the series that deal with eating disorders and autism, racism and sexism and even the problems of class (see "Kristy and the Snobs," No. 11). I'm glad my daughters are into these books, though I find myself sometimes trying to counterprogram by suggesting Narnia and Harry Potter. I want their imaginations to stretch, too. Maybe their reading taste is too domestic? Is it strange that I worry about this? Absolutely, yes. One day they'll be able to appreciate "Mrs. Dalloway" or "The Sound and the Fury" and perhaps it will be because they spent so many hours with a group of girls sitting on the floor of Claudia Kishi's bedroom, eating junk food around a rotary phone and waiting for babysitting jobs. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
After a day of social media blowback, the criticism is now coming from inside the network. Stars and producers of hit NBC series along with Rachel Maddow, the highest rated anchor on MSNBC have joined those assailing NBC News over its decision to air a town hall event with President Trump at 8 p.m. on Thursday, the same time ABC will offer a forum with his opponent, Joseph R. Biden Jr. Ms. Maddow, one of the few NBC News anchors with the clout to publicly chastise the network's executives, raised the issue on her Wednesday show, asking Mr. Biden's running mate, Senator Kamala Harris, if she "was as mad as everybody else is that NBC is doing a town hall with President Trump tomorrow." (Ms. Harris demurred.) The anchor also called NBC's scheduling decision "as odd as you think it is" alongside a graphic that said, "Apparently They Are Not Kidding." On Thursday, more than 100 actors and producers including Sterling K. Brown and Mandy Moore, both of the NBC hit "This Is Us," and Mariska Hargitay of the NBC staple "Law Order: SVU" sent a letter to NBC management calling the scheduling of the forum "a disservice to the American public." Inside the news division, some producers have invoked the ghost of NBC's campaign coverage past: the "Commander In Chief Forum," a September 2016 prime time special featuring back to back interviews with Mr. Trump and Hillary Clinton before an audience of veterans and service members. The event was a ratings bonanza nearly 15 million watched on NBC and MSNBC but its moderator, Matt Lauer, a star "Today" anchor, was savaged by critics who said he had bullied Mrs. Clinton and deferred to Mr. Trump. Mr. Lauer is long gone from the network, and the NBC News chairman who oversaw the forum, Andrew Lack, left in May after a stormy tenure. The division's current leader, Cesar Conde, previously ran Telemundo and Univision. Mr. Conde, who has limited experience with the rough and tumble of political coverage, issued a statement on Thursday addressing the criticism. "We share in the frustration that our event will initially air alongside the first half of ABC's broadcast with Vice President Biden. Our decision is motivated only by fairness, not business considerations," he wrote. "We aired a town hall with Vice President Biden on Oct. 5 at 8 p.m. If we were to move our town hall with President Trump to a later time slot, we would be violating our commitment to offer both campaigns access to the same audience and the same forum." As Ms. Guthrie prepared for her hot seat moment, one of her "Today" predecessors declared that NBC had made the wrong call. "Having dueling town halls is bad for democracy voters should be able to watch both and I don't think many will," Katie Couric wrote on Twitter. 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. Privately, anchors and producers inside NBC News said they were perplexed, and in some cases dismayed, by the decision to schedule Mr. Trump against Mr. Biden. They expressed pride in their coverage of Mr. Trump's tenure, particularly given the president's frequent taunting of MSNBC ("MSDNC") and its parent company, Comcast ("Concast"). At a rally in North Carolina on Thursday afternoon, Mr. Trump continued his attacks on Comcast, as well as the "NBC Nightly News" anchor Lester Holt, the "Meet the Press" moderator Chuck Todd and Ms. Guthrie. "She's always lovely," he said of Ms. Guthrie, with apparent sarcasm. Of the town hall, Mr. Trump said, "They asked me if I'd do it, and I figured what the hell? We'll get a free hour of television." A correspondent from the news division, Kristen Welker, was chosen to moderate the presidential debate scheduled for next week, making this the second presidential campaign in a row when an NBC journalist took charge of a general election matchup. Producers said the scheduling snafu was an unwelcome reminder of the network's missteps in the 2016 campaign. In addition to Mr. Lauer's forum, the news division faced criticism for allowing The Washington Post to scoop it on the notorious "Access Hollywood" tape that showed Mr. Trump bragging about sexually assaulting women; NBC News had obtained a copy of the video days before it was made public. The NBC comedy franchise "Saturday Night Live" was also criticized for allowing Mr. Trump to host the show in November 2015, during the run up to the Republican primaries, and Jimmy Fallon has never quite shaken the moment when he tousled Mr. Trump's hair on "The Tonight Show" in September 2016. Given Mr. Trump's recent contraction of the coronavirus, NBC executives had made clear to his campaign that they needed independent proof that he would not be contagious a tall order, since White House doctors had repeatedly declined to provide details on his health. NBC officials persuaded the campaign to submit the president's medical data to a clinical director at the National Institutes of Health, which collected a coronavirus test and reviewed information provided by the White House physician, Dr. Sean P. Conley. The review was assisted by Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert, and it amounted to the first quasi independent assessment of Mr. Trump's condition what NBC considered a small journalistic coup. Those bragging rights were soon dashed amid the online outcry over the time slot. NBC said it merely wanted to give Mr. Trump the same playing ground that Mr. Biden was offered at a town hall on Oct. 5, also an outdoor event in Miami that aired at 8 p.m. Eastern. Mr. Biden's ABC forum on Thursday, however, had been scheduled several days before NBC announced its event with Mr. Trump. The Biden forum last week had hiccups, too. Though NBC billed the event as one with "undecided" voters, three of the people who asked Mr. Biden questions had previously appeared on NBC programs expressing a preference for him, the right leaning Washington Free Beacon revealed. For Thursday, NBC promised a Trump event featuring "a group of Florida voters" with no mention of their political leanings. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
Whether your idea of going coastal involves surf spray intensity, paddleboard calm or some gently lapping middle ground, this new crop of Asian hotels and resorts celebrates the sea in a range of moods. Room styles vary too, from dwelling above coral heads to fronting an industrial wharf. (Dollars are accepted at these properties unless otherwise noted.) In recent years, development in Sanya, a beach resort at the tip of Hainan Island off China's far southeastern coast, nicknamed the "Hawaii of China" for its expansive beaches and tropical climate, has boomed with new hotels. Opened in October, Shangri La's Sanya Resort and Spa is a 45 acre property that offers two pools, bike paths, a beach soccer field, sand volleyball court and a gym with yoga and tai chi classes. Many of the larger of its 340 rooms are designated for families and stocked with child size robes and slippers. Rooms from 1,200 renminbi ( 200 at 6 renminbi to the dollar); shangri la.com/sanya/shangrilasanya. Opened this month, the Park Hyatt Sanya Sunny Bay Resort fronts a private beach with wade in access to coral reefs for snorkelers. The 17 acre property hosts 207 rooms and villas, each featuring bathrooms with deep soaking tubs set beside panoramic windows in view of the South China Sea. Designed to keep guests entertained without leaving the premises, the resort has five pools, a children's camp, a lakeside spa with eight treatment villas with their own showers and bathtubs, and eight eating and drinking establishments. Rooms from 2,500 renminbi; sanya.park.hyatt.com. With a 30 acre footprint, the new 313 room Ritz Carlton, Bali stations its reception and villas with private pools on a cliff overlooking the sea, with more suites, pools and a 14 treatment room spa at sea level. Catering to a broad demographic range, the resort features two wedding chapels and a children's club with a private pool. Among five dining choices, the Indonesian entry includes a cooking school. And through partnerships with local artisans, culturally curious guests can visit the ateliers of lace makers, furniture designers, the couturier Sebastian Gunawan and the shoemaker Niluh Djelantik. Rooms from 480; ritzcarlton.com/bali. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
How Should Big Tech Be Reined In? Here Are 4 Prominent Ideas The Justice Department is investigating them, as is the Federal Trade Commission. Congress and state attorneys general have their sights on the companies, too. There is no shortage of people arguing that America's large technology companies namely Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google have gotten too big and too powerful. That has helped spur the scrutiny by the government officials. But what to do about the issue? On that, the industry's critics are split. Some would like to see the businesses broken up. Others want more robust regulation. And there are shades of gray on both sides. Here are four of the most prominent prescriptions being debated. This is the most drastic surgery, splitting off large portions of the big tech companies. The guiding principle is simple. If you own a dominant online marketplace or platform, you cannot also offer the goods, services and software applications sold on that marketplace. So Amazon could not own the leading e commerce marketplace and sell Amazon label goods there. Or Google could not have both the dominant search engine and its Google Shopping service, which shows up in search results. Apple could own an app store that offers music services, but not also its own music service sold there. And so on. Bundling businesses on top of a dominant platform invites conflicts of interest and discrimination against rivals, thwarting competition, proponents of this countermeasure say. "The world is going to be better off after we break up these companies," said Barry Lynn, executive director of Open Markets Institute, a research and advocacy group. But such a sweeping overhaul of the tech industry could bring unknown risks for the companies and shareholders. Many economists are leery of broadly prohibiting companies from entering new businesses, fearing potential losses of efficiency and consumer welfare. The last big government mandated breakup targeted AT T in the early 1980s, and that was the dissolution of a government granted monopoly. Still, the idea is not unthinkable. The remedy initially proposed in the government's antitrust case against Microsoft in the 1990s, endorsed by three leading economists, was to split the Windows operating system business from Microsoft's Office productivity software business. After George W. Bush was elected president, his administration settled the case without a breakup. This is a case by case approach to breakups rather than a broad rule applied to all the tech giants. A current example is a plan that would require Facebook to shed Instagram and WhatsApp. A detailed proposal on this, laying out the alleged anticompetitive conduct, was developed by two leading antitrust scholars, Tim Wu of Columbia Law School and Scott Hemphill of New York University Law School, along with Chris Hughes, a co founder of Facebook. (Mr. Wu is also a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times.) Typically, regulators challenge mergers when they give a company a big share of an established market. That was not the case when Facebook paid 1 billion for Instagram, a start up with 13 employees in an emerging field. Instead, the three argue, the strategy was to buy out budding threats. "We think that's the better perspective of what was going on maintenance of monopoly in the social network market," Mr. Hemphill said. In Facebook's case, Mr. Wu said, "the remedy is straightforward: Unwind the acquisitions." But an issue in spinning off a unit like Instagram is whether doing so enhances competition. Would a stand alone Instagram be a real rival to Facebook, or would consumers simply stay with the dominant social network, Facebook, and Instagram suffer? Getting breakups approved by the nation's courts, which are generally conservative on economic matters, would be a stretch. Besides, some experts argue, a more comprehensive way to police the big tech companies would be with a beefed up force of regulators. The new regulator was the central recommendation of a recent report about the digital platforms that was sponsored by the Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State at the University of Chicago. Ms. Scott Morton led a group of eight antitrust experts and technologists who worked on the study. Since the report was released in May, members of the group have made a series of presentations to policymakers. In online markets, the flywheel of network effects the more people who use a service, the more users, developers and advertisers it attracts is especially powerful, creating dominant companies. Yet even in digital markets, the door to new entrants must remain open, said Ms. Scott Morton, a former senior official in the Justice Department's antitrust division. In traditional antitrust, regulators and courts move at a measured pace, slowly and often after the fact. The goal of a new digital regulator, she said, "would be to save the rival before it is killed." The authority, Ms. Scott Morton said, could receive a complaint from a competitor and schedule a hearing two weeks later, when both sides would present testimony. A new regulator? It would be a tough sell in today's political environment. But we do have specialist federal regulators in many other industries, including banking, aviation, transportation, drugs and agriculture. Reining in the big tech companies, Ms. Scott Morton said, is increasingly becoming a bipartisan concern. "At some point, society will say this is too much power without real oversight," she said. There are also narrower, targeted regulatory proposals. Some of these involve rules that would loosen a dominant company's control of user data, by either forcing that company to share the data with a smaller competitor or giving users more ability to take their data from one service and move it to a competitor. The Stigler Center study cited those data moves in a list of potential regulations and enforcement actions. The idea, broadly, is that data can be a barrier to competition, and that freeing up the personal information collected by the tech giants could lower that barrier. The big online platforms are data monetization machines, collecting, analyzing and exploiting information from consumers, merchants, advertisers and others. And the network effect of data is formidable. The more data the companies have, the more fuel to feed the machine learning algorithms that power their businesses. "Data is the real trump card these platforms have," said A. Douglas Melamed, a professor at Stanford Law School and a member of the Stigler Center study team. Mr. Melamed, a former senior antitrust official at the Justice Department, favors a rule that would require dominant digital platforms to give other companies access to their user data for a fee. That would help level the playing field for new entrants and other rivals, he said, but wouldn't be free for them, either. "You let the competitors have access to their back rooms for a reasonable fee," Mr. Melamed said. Such a solution would require regulatory oversight to set guidelines for fair licensing terms. Data sharing would also entail some privacy risk, since no privacy protection technique is foolproof. A related idea is to mandate that tech companies make user data portable. That means consumers could move their information from one service to another, forcing digital businesses to compete with superior offerings rather than data lock in. The regulator would need the technical skills to ensure that the consumer data was handed over in a way that would let a competitor use it easily. "The details are crucial, if you're really going to give consumers more choice and control," said Jamie Morgenstern, a computer scientist at the Georgia Institute of Technology who worked on the study. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
Consumer spending and personal incomes were flat in June, according to government statistics released on Tuesday, the latest indication that the economy would continue to struggle in the second half of the year. The Commerce Department figures, which were seasonally adjusted, showed that personal income was steady in June, compared with a slight 0.3 percent rise in May. It was the lowest level this year and the first time in nearly a year that personal incomes have not risen compared with previous months. Disposable personal income, or income after taxes and expenditures, was also flat, compared with slight increases in May. "It reinforces the general idea that consumers are busy deleveraging and saving money," said Dan M. Greenhaus, the chief economic strategist for Miller Tabak. "The problem with this type of a situation, where consumers become more concerned with reducing debt and constraining spending, is you have no idea how long it will last," he added. "It could be one month or one year." The report shows that consumers are pulling back because of several factors, including a tight job market, stock market volatility and a poor housing market, Chris G. Christopher Jr., IHS Global Insight's senior principal United States economist, said in an interview. "The underlying story that I seem to be saying over and over is that consumers are not feeling good enough to start spending on things that count, such as durables and houses, because the unemployment level is basically so high," Mr. Christopher said. "And firms don't feel the need to hire." "These two things are feeding off of each other," he said. "Someone has to make a break for it. Right now the consumer is actually retrenching so businesses are not going to have the urge to rehire. It's a Catch 22 situation." Personal expenditures were flat, after increasing 0.1 percent in May and reversing a decline of 0.1 percent in April. The last time that figure was lower was in September 2009. Consumer spending serves as a closely watched indicator for the pace of the recovery, and it accounts for most of the economic activity in the United States. The flat reading on consumer spending was weaker than analysts had estimated. "The bottom line is the expansion in consumer spending over the past year has been moderate, and for lots of reasons it should be constrained going forward, too," said Steven Wieting, Citigroup's United States economist. "We are not in a really robust recovery that has resulted in large job gains," he added. Economists are anticipating an unemployment report on Friday that will show a slight rise to 9.6 percent in the unemployment rate from 9.5 percent. In addition to releasing consumer spending figures, the Commerce Department reported that factory orders declined 1.2 percent in June to a seasonally adjusted 406.4 billion. Analysts expected a smaller drop. The agency also revised May's decline to a sharper 1.8 percent instead of 1.4 percent. And the National Association of Realtors said that the number of people who had signed contracts to buy homes dropped in June. The group said that its seasonally adjusted index of pending home sales declined 2.6 percent in June to a reading of 75.7. The association also slightly lowered May's reading to 77.7. Economists surveyed by Thomson Reuters had expected the June index to increase to 78.1. The decline reflected the reliance of the housing market on the 8,000 tax credit for buyers who signed contracts before April 30, in pulling demand forward, economists said. "We expect activity to eventually settle down somewhere between the inflated data spurred by the tax credit and the depressed results that are now being reported in the immediate aftermath of the expiration of the credit," said Joshua Shapiro, the chief United States economist for MFR Inc., in a research note. Economists said the picture on personal incomes had already been flagged in the report last week for gross domestic product, which set growth at 2.4 percent in the second quarter, down from 3.7 percent in the previous quarter. Consumer spending was weaker than previously thought. The recovery of the job market is pivotal to whether consumer confidence will return and the public, in turn, will spend more. "Our own view is that the labor market recovery will be a grudging one, that consumers will enjoy only modest gains in wages and salaries for some time, and that consumer spending growth will therefore be moderate at best," Mr. Shapiro said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Economy |
No pensions. Roller coaster retirement accounts. Longer lives and higher health care costs. Aging parents. Children in college. A will to work but fewer jobs to be had. It is a familiar and potentially disastrous mix for the generation now entering retirement. And worse, most do not have a clue how to plan for it, according to experts like Anna Rappaport, chairwoman of the Society of Actuaries Committee on Post Retirement Needs and Risks. Putting it even more bluntly, "The baby boomers are going to have to figure out how to have enough money to live on in retirement on their own," said Joan Entmacher, vice president for family economic security at the National Women's Law Center, an advocacy organization in Washington. Lately there are signs that at least some of those on the brink of retirement are getting the message. And increasing numbers are seeking out people like Marsha G. LePhew, a financial planner and certified public accountant who is also certified as a life counselor by the Kinder Institute of Life Planning. Just how many people engage life planners as they face retirement is not certain, but in the last five years, the number of planners who have participated in at least one program offered by the institute has more than doubled to over 2,000. About 300 planners have received the Registered Life Planner designation, up from 100 five years ago, according to Maryellen Grady, operations and accounting manager at the institute, which is based in Littleton, Mass. Clients are people like Melissa Birdsong, 64, a former retail executive who lives with her husband in Davidson, N.C. For three years before she retired this spring, she wrestled with what life would be like. "It was an avoidance behavior on my part," she said. "I was going to work forever." But then things changed at the company where she had worked for 18 years, and Ms. Birdsong decided to make her move. "It was just time," she said. "We did the math." And then they called Ms. LePhew. With Ms. LePhew, "We painted some scenarios," Ms. Birdsong said, figuring out some contingencies for the first year. "I knew what retirement would look like ahead of making the decision," she said. Knowing they could pool their resources Ms. Birdsong's husband, already retired, has a pension and teaches at a community college nearby the couple focused on creating a detailed budget for what they expected their lifestyle to cost. They used spreadsheets to map their anticipated monthly spending, including categories like home, utilities, entertainment and travel. "We tend to eat out frequently. We wanted to know: What are we spending on that per month?" Ms. Birdsong said. Locast, a nonprofit streaming service for local TV, is shutting down Capital One's chief executive was fined after being called a 'repeat offender.' They decided they would pay off their mortgage so they would know exactly what their monthly housing expenses would be. She decided to heed the oft repeated advice to postpone taking Social Security and will delay it until at least 66. Ms. Birdsong toyed with building a small art studio on her property. But Ms. LePhew urged against anything radical in the first year. "Put the studio on hold," she said. Ms. LePhew also advised budgeting more for medical expenses. "Health care is becoming a bigger line item than what people expect it's going to be," she said. Traditionally, there are two ways to calculate how much you will need for retirement, experts say. One is to assume you will need 75 to 80 percent of your preretirement gross income, and the other is to create a budget. The first approach assumes that your expenses will decrease if, for example, you no longer commute to a job and you take fewer clothes to the dry cleaner. The 80 percent rule of thumb is "just something to get you started," said Mary A. Wallack, a financial consultant with Brown Miller, a wealth management group of Wells Fargo Advisors. It doesn't factor in whether you have paid off your mortgage, if you intend to sell your house and downsize, if you're going to relocate to a less expensive market and what kind of lifestyle you want to have. Creating a budget does. It is a "spending plan going forward," said Ms. Rappaport. "Are you going to move or are you going to stay put?" Downsizing can save you 35 percent or more on housing costs, she said. "You really need to think about the long run." And for those in their 60s, that can be 20, 30 or more years, based on longevity calculators. "Depending on what you're spending, 1 million isn't necessarily going to get you through life," Ms. Rappaport said. For those in the 55 to 64 age range, whether they have saved well or not, it is a propitious time to plan, retirement specialists say. The approach can be "How can I readjust my lifestyle so that I can afford it?" Ms. Rappaport said. Most agree that the earlier you start planning, the better. Yet, even for those who planned, many Americans became aware after the recent recession that "life is very uncertain these days," said Jean Setzfand, AARP vice president for financial security. Even if you are just five to 10 years from your target retirement date, there is still time to adjust your spending habits, save more and create a plan that can work for you. One key to success is to assess where you are financially and where you would like to be within a particular period of time, whether it Is five, 10 or more years. "Recognize that we're in a new paradigm," Ms. Wallack said. In a low interest environment, even those with significant assets have to reconsider their strategy. "You have to modify your approach to retirement," she said. Ms. Wallack and others note there are various streams of income available depending on your financial situation. Yet, by their late 60s, about half of Americans get most of their money from Social Security, said Virginia P. Reno, vice president for income security policy at the National Academy of Social Insurance, a research organization in Washington. After 80, three quarters get most of their income from Social Security. If you have a pension, you may believe you are set. But experts caution that you need to consider inflation if you enter retirement at 62, with a potential life expectancy of 85 or more. Ms. Birdsong said she had a "head full of ideas" of things she would like to do: build her studio, continue to work in her field and focus on her art and design. As her last day of work approached, she had already taken a photography class to learn how to use her new digital camera and she plans to take a two week course in woodcut printing at the Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts. "I'm still a woman on a mission," she said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Your Money |
Twelve years after the city of Basel, Switzerland, rejected a claim for restitution of 200 prints and drawings in its Kunstmuseum, officials there have reversed their position and reached a settlement with the heirs of a renowned Jewish museum director and critic who sold his collection before fleeing Nazi Germany. In 2008, the museum argued that the original owner, Curt Glaser, a leading figure in the Berlin art world and close friend of Edvard Munch, sold the art at market prices. The museum's purchase of the works at a 1933 auction in Berlin was made in good faith, it said, so there was no basis for restitution. But after the Swiss news media unearthed documents that shed doubt on that version of events, the museum reviewed its earlier decision and today announced it would pay an undisclosed sum to Glaser's heirs. In return, it will keep works on paper estimated to be worth more than 2 million by artists including Henri Matisse, Max Beckmann, Auguste Rodin, Marc Chagall, Oskar Kokoschka, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Erich Heckel. Among the most valuable pieces are two Munch lithographs, "Self Portrait" and "Madonna." The turnaround is a major victory for the heirs but also a sign, experts said, of a new willingness on the part of Swiss museums to engage seriously with restitution claims and apply international standards on handling Nazi looted art in public collections. "Switzerland was neutral during the war, but it was a marketplace for art," David Rowland, the New York lawyer representing Glaser's heirs, said. "It is now making great progress in coming to grips with these cases. This is a big step forward." "It has taken a long time, but this is good news," said Valerie Sattler, Glaser's great niece and one of his heirs. "We were initially all very skeptical that anything would change with this review." Born in Leipzig, Glaser began work as an art critic in 1902. From 1909, he was a purchaser for the Royal Gallery of Prints in Berlin. He began to build his own collection and was appointed director of the city's Kunstbibliothek, or art library, in 1924. At regular art salons, Glaser and his wife entertained artists and intellectuals over tea and liqueurs in their Berlin apartment in the 1920s. Soon after the Nazis seized power in 1933, Glaser was ousted from his post and the accompanying apartment. He decided to leave Germany and sold most of his collection in two auctions in Berlin. Among the bidders at the Max Perl auction house in May 1933 was Otto Fischer, a curator for Basel's public collections, who had been given permission to "make cheap acquisitions." The Kunstmuseum says its research suggests Glaser received the proceeds for the sales. He left for Paris in 1933 and eventually made his way to the United States in 1941. He died there in 1943. Glaser's heirs first approached the Kunstmuseum in 2004. Four years later, the government of Canton Basel, which oversees the museum, rebuffed their claim. It argued the prices that had been paid for the works were typical of the time. It said the auction catalog had given no indication that the works belonged to Glaser and the Kunstmuseum had "exercised all requisite care" in its acquisition. The heirs, most of whom live in the United States, accused the canton and the museum of "failing on a human level" and "minimizing the Holocaust in all of its aspects." But in 2017 the Basel Art Commission, a committee that supports and advises the museum, agreed to review the case. There were several triggers for this reassessment. In 2014, another Swiss museum, the Bern Kunstmuseum, inherited the tainted collection of Cornelius Gurlitt, a recluse who had hidden away in his Munich and Salzburg homes about 1,500 works inherited from his father, an art dealer for Adolf Hitler. His bequest, and the burden of responsibility it placed on the Bern museum, trained a spotlight on Switzerland's patchy record in restituting Nazi looted art and raised public awareness of the plunder and of works sold under duress that had made their way into some museum collections. Then in 2017, the Swiss public television channel SRF reported that Basel had not been entirely open in its assessment of the Glaser claim. Minutes from 1933 meetings revealed that the art commission at the time was aware the works belonged to Glaser. They also described the purchases as "cheap," if not "fire sale prices." Meanwhile, other museums and private collectors, particularly in Germany, had agreed to restitute Glaser works sold at the two 1933 auctions. Among those that returned art to the heirs were the Museum Ludwig in Cologne in 2014, the Hamburg Kunsthalle in 2015 and 2018, and Berlin's State Museums, which also installed a plaque honoring Glaser at the Kunstbibliothek in 2016. When the Gurlitt case drew wide attention to the Kunstmuseum in Bern, Felix Uhlmann, the president of Basel's Art Commission, said the committee took up "informal contact" with officials there to discuss best practices when it came to international restitution standards. "The Gurlitt case opened up lots of questions and prompted us to look more closely at the legal basis for restitution decisions," he said by telephone. "We also looked at how other institutions had responded to Glaser claims, and saw that some had reached different conclusions to the Basel decision in 2008. So we thought we must at the very least revisit this case." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
I've been fired more times than I care to admit. I have even more resignation letters to my name. Work and paranoid schizophrenia aren't exactly a recipe for success. At one job I had, on the ground floor of a city office, there were bars on the windows. The bars were no doubt put in for security reasons, like all the other shops and offices on the street. But I grew increasingly convinced that they were placed there just for me as part of a grand conspiracy. I have always felt that people are setting me up for heinous crimes or that I've committed one that I can't remember and that the police are spying on me to gather evidence. With the windows I felt they'd been fitted by a stranger who knew of me, sometime before I started work, to send me the message that I would soon "be behind bars." Seeing a policeman on the street outside the office or hearing a helicopter fly by would set my heart racing. I was convinced they'd finally come for me. I didn't last long in that office. The sedative effects of my medications also mean I often oversleep and get into the office late. Really late. Sometimes 90 minutes late. The head of my department at another job I had didn't seem to mind, as I always made the time up in the evening. But colleagues did mind, others in the office told me, including the girl who sat next to me. Back then, I wasn't open about having schizophrenia. I didn't want to stigmatize myself by giving reasons for my tardiness. So I assume people just thought I was lazy. Far too often, I would regard an off the cuff remark by a work colleague, a roll of the eyes when I offered an idea at a meeting, or a sigh when I arrived late, as aggressive and threatening, an insult directed toward me. At another office where I was working as a commercial copywriter it still pains me to recall the time someone asked what I was listening to on my headphones. When I replied "Coldplay" and my colleagues all laughed, I wasn't sure why. Maybe they found me as depressing as the artists I listened to? Once again it felt like I was being bullied. I quit that job shortly afterward. To this day I am unsure if I was a victim of bullying in the office or just overly sensitive to others. And a 9 to 5 office role is relentless. It doesn't allow me the flexibility to see a therapist on a regular schedule. I also often forgot general medical checkups, and many times forgot to re order my medication at the pharmacy, which would send me into a panic attack. Luckily, every office has its own underdog or "pecked hen." They usually gravitated to me as a kindred spirit, taking me aside to calm me down or nip out for a cigarette. I remember on one occasion catching the girl who sat next to me glancing at my computer screen to see what I was working on. But she held the glance for about 10 seconds, which seemed like a really long time, more like an intrusive stare. I got very upset and sent a strongly worded email to the company manager, with a few line managers cc'd for good measure. The email was so strongly worded that my colleague had tears in her eyes when she was called in about it and was granted permission to leave work for the day. She even brought some chocolate to say sorry to me and mentioned more than once that she was Christian. Once I left that job she unfriended me on Facebook, on my birthday. Even though by that point she knew I had mental health problems. When I got my dream job as a fashion writer in London, at a very decent salary, the "flights of ideas" that are part of my illness, compounded by the restlessness brought on by my medications, sabotaged my success. I'd been there for two weeks when I asked if it was possible I could take a six month leave to work as a trainee reporter at a local newspaper in Hawaii. That wasn't allowed, but two weeks later I took three days of holiday and a weekend away to travel to Paris to write a deodorant review for a small, independent magazine. I took another week off soon after to host writing workshops for people with disabilities. My boss was very understanding, and I did last in that job for 18 months but ended up resigning to be closer to my mother, who was having health problems. My office goodbye card was memorable: Even though I hadn't told many people about my condition, all the notes went along the lines of "I'll miss the madness." An important lesson I have learned by overcoming adversity in the workplace and learning to live with mental illness is that we can build castles with the stones that life throws at us. I now work from home as a freelance writer, at hours to suit, which allows me the flexibility to get the regular therapy sessions and medical checkups that I need. I mostly write about mental illness. I am also writing my first book, "A Beginner's Guide to Sanity," with a highly regarded professor of psychiatry. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Well |
The day's work was in full swing, the men in the platoon needed a break, and one of them began imitating his leader's style of walking. Head down, elbows flapping, legs flying forward, he soon had the other soldiers laughing and calling out modifications: Swing your arms out more! No, really throw your legs out! Don't forget to look like you're about to punch somebody! The "rhino walk," they called it, and it was a way to ease the tension of long days in southern Kandahar Province. The platoon leader loved it, too, at first. "I thought the rhino walk was funny, and totally true; they got me," Lt. Courtney Wilson, who served in Afghanistan in 2010 and 2011, said in a recent interview. But by the time she was in her bunk, she wondered. "Was it just being funny, or were they getting exasperated with me? That was the hard part," she said. "I started feeling a little like it was me versus them. I was worried the men didn't like me. I wasn't sure if they were making me one of the guys, or completely disrespecting and making fun of me." In the months to come, that sense of exclusion would deepen into depression. Halfway through her deployment, she sent an email to a friend at home saying she was determined not to kill herself. "Clearly these data beg us to account for why there's this apparent surge in felt hopelessness and alienation among so many women service members during deployment," said Dr. Loree K. Sutton, a retired brigadier general, a psychiatrist and the commissioner of the New York City Mayor's Office of Veterans' Affairs. "This is a critical endeavor, and it's got to go beyond individual factors and look at group dynamics." Any self doubts Lieutenant Wilson had about deployment were buried in a stampede of forward motion. She arrived in Afghanistan on April 1, 2010, landing at Kandahar Airfield a dusty, chaotic staging area, swarming with convoys and contractors. "It reminds me of those postapocalyptic towns in 'The Terminator' and 'The Matrix,'" she wrote in an email to a friend back home. Soon she was leading a platoon in the 864th Engineer Battalion on projects outside the wire, in the Kandahar region and beyond. Her team moved heavy equipment; built security towers, barriers and fences; shored up roads and buildings; and leveled terrain for construction crews. After graduating from Phillips Exeter Academy, a preparatory school, she attended the women's college Wellesley and majored in English, with a minor in psychology. There, she joined the Reserve Officers Training Corps. She graduated first in the R.O.T.C. cadet class from the Paul Revere Battalion. "When she decided to officially enlist, I interrogated her," said her father, David Wilson. "Are you sure you really want to do this? Why? She said it was the people. She said: 'They have my values. They stand for something.'" On missions in Afghanistan, Lieutenant Wilson projected determination. Her soldiers worked to exhaustion, without complaint. "I'm biased, of course, but I don't think there's a better platoon out there," she emailed a friend at home. She also learned how to handle the rich girl comments: "So what, I'm here just like you." But soon the "rhino walk" ribbing started, and her self doubt, dormant in the initial rush of deployment, stirred. As social scientists have sought to understand the increased rates of depression and suicide among enlisted women, they have looked at research on other groups at the margins of a culture, whether blacks in the Ivy League, whites attending a nonwhite high school or women in male professions. And they have found that the mental costs borne by those in the minority are similar. Members of such groups tend to report as many insults and bad days as members of the dominant culture. But compared with the majority, they feel far less secure. A research team led by Amy Street of the National Center for PTSD and V.A. Boston Healthcare System, and Ronald Kessler of Harvard University has ransacked Army data for factors that might explain the spike in suicide rates. In the journal Psychological Medicine, the team in March ruled out some of the most plausible explanations: Women did not enter the Army with more psychological problems than men. Reported sexual assaults did not explain the elevated rate. And the proportion of women in a given unit did not seem to matter. The search for answers continues. With the departure of the U.S. military on Aug. 30, Afghanistan quickly fell back under control of the Taliban. Across the country, there is widespread anxiety about the future. None Vanishing Rights: The Taliban's decision to restrict women's freedom may be a political choice as much as it is a matter of ideology. Far From Home: Some Afghans who were abroad when the country collapsed are desperate to return, but have no clear route home. Can Afghan Art Survive? The Taliban have not banned art outright. But many artists have fled, fearing for their work and their lives. A Growing Threat: A local affiliate of the Islamic State group is upending security and putting the Taliban government in a precarious position. Researchers are now asking how much "all those little things" the differences inherent in being on the margins of a culture affect a person's mood, especially under the stress of combat. One of the little things, in Lieutenant Wilson's case, nearly led to starvation. The rhino walk comments prompted a psychological retreat. She never doubted her ability, and neither did anyone else. "Lieutenant Wilson is a model officer whom I would trust with the most difficult mission," her company commander wrote in September of 2010. But she was less certain she inspired affection. "Courtney doesn't have that laid back humor a lot of guys have, so she'd get teased and didn't know how to shrug it off," said Lieutenant LaPonte, who became a close friend. "She took everything personally." Perhaps no more so than when a couple of soldiers cracked that she looked fat. It was a bad joke, at best; a distance runner, she worked out whenever she could. Still, it got under her skin. "I was living on carrots and water," she said. "I was down to 122 pounds, so skinny you could see my clavicle. It was crazy, but I felt I had to prove something to them." Jack Daniel's and Coke blunted the anxiety, but the relief did not last. She tried biofeedback, prayer, meditation and psychiatric medications. Finally, reluctantly, she began regular talk therapy with a psychologist at the Fort Hood military base in Texas. "She really struggled to connect with other people, and in part it's because she was trying to be someone she was not," Roger Belisle, a clinical psychologist at Fort Hood's Resilience and Restoration Center, said in a phone interview. That type of person high expectations, tough on others, tougher on oneself, averse to asking for help is a well worn military role that is hard enough to fill for men. For women, it is an invitation to isolation, psychiatrists said. The best fighters are fierce, but they have a deep well of support from buddies. "It creates a kind of bond between members, a love that transcends anything you've ever known," David H. Marlowe, the founder of the Army's behavioral health unit, who died last year, once said. "You come to the absolute belief that the noblest and most important thing you can do is die for the others." Like Lieutenant Wilson, many women in the military did not have that kind of love at least when they were deployed. "It's like, I got all the downside of serving in the Army and none of the upside, the camaraderie," Lieutenant Wilson said. Out of the service, she is now in close contact with her friends, her parents and her brother. Whenever her mood wavers, she phones one of them "therapy time," she calls it. In a final session, her therapist, Dr. Belisle, asked: What is your passion, right now? In August last year, Lieutenant Wilson finished her contract with the Army. On Oct. 29, after visiting with her brother and parents, she flew to Madrid. She was determined to visit India and Africa, before returning. Or not. This time the mission was open ended, and the goals much harder to measure. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety said on Thursday that three minivans had failed its "small overlap" front crash test, with one van experiencing the deepest intrusion into the passenger compartment of any vehicle ever evaluated in the test. The organization, which is financed by the insurance industry, said the minivans showed "the worst possible outcomes" for this type of test, including indications of what would be severe leg injuries to the driver in the Nissan Quest. The Chrysler Town Country and the Quest both earned the lowest overall rating of Poor; by extension, the Dodge Grand Caravan, which is nearly identical to the Chrysler, got a Poor rating as well. A fourth minivan, the Toyota Sienna, earned an Acceptable rating. The group grades on a scale of Good, Acceptable, Marginal and Poor. With this most recent round of testing, the group has now evaluated all the conventional minivans on the market except for the Kia Sedona, which was recently redesigned. The Honda Odyssey, which was tested in 2013, received the highest rating of any minivan, a Good, on the small overlap test. A smaller van, the Mazda 5, received a Poor rating when it was tested this year. The small overlap test replicates what happens when the front corner of a vehicle collides with another vehicle or a solid object like a tree or utility pole. In the test, 25 percent of a vehicle's front end on the driver's side strikes a rigid barrier at 40 miles per hour. "Seeing the results for the Nissan Quest and the Chrysler Town Country just emphasizes the reason for doing the small overlap front testing," David Zuby, executive vice president and chief research officer for the insurance group, said in a telephone interview. "Both vehicles earn Good or Acceptable ratings in all of our old tests, but it's clear they are not providing broad spectrum protection for frontal crashes." The group began conducting the small overlap test in 2012 because its research found that those crashes accounted for about 25 percent of serious and fatal injuries in vehicles that had earned a Good rating in the organization's older moderate frontal overlap test. "On the basis of these crash tests, I don't think people should run out and get rid of their Nissan Quest," Mr. Zuby said, adding that the other crash tests showed that the model still offered "pretty good crash protection." The group says it is difficult for any vehicle to do well in the small overlap test because the impact bypasses the front crash absorbing structure in most vehicles. That makes it difficult for the crumple zone to absorb crash energy before it reaches the passenger compartment. As a result, the compartment can collapse. Of the 134 vehicles tested since 2012, 30 have failed the test and 42 have received a Good rating. The test may be especially difficult for minivans because they are usually built on car platforms but are much wider than cars, the group says, so more of the front of the vehicle is beyond the main crash absorbing structure. The structure of the Quest was pushed in nearly 24 inches at the lower part of the windshield pillar. Mr. Zuby said the intrusion in small overlap crash tests ranged from 1 1/2 to 19 inches. The Quest's parking brake pedal was pushed 16 inches toward the driver. In the Quest, the crash dummy's left leg was trapped between the seat and the instrument panel, and its right foot was caught between the brake pedal and the floor, which was pushed up toward the pedal. After the tests, technicians had to cut out the seat and use a crowbar to free the dummy's right foot. The forces measured by sensors along the dummy's left leg, from the thigh to the foot, were very high, in some cases exceeding the limits of the sensors. "There is virtually no chance that a real person would have walked away without severe fractures of the bones of the leg," Mr. Zuby said. "Putting those bones back together and getting someone to walk normally again is unlikely." The Town Country's structure collapsed as well. The skin on the dummy's left lower leg was "gouged by the intruding parking brake pedal and its left knee skin was torn by a steel brace under the instrument panel," despite the deployment of the knee airbag. The report said that a person in a crash that severe would most likely suffer injuries to the left hip, knee and lower leg. Even though Toyota had modified the front structure of the 2015 Sienna to improve small overlap protection and it was the best minivan tested, the insurance group said the Sienna's structure was still "subpar." The results for the Town Country and Grand Caravan apply to the 2008 15 model years (and to the discontinued 2009 12 Volkswagen Routan). The Quest's results apply to 2011 15 models. The Sienna's rating applies only to 2015 models. The group did not include the Sedona in this round of testing because Kia said it was planning to make improvements to the vehicle to improve small overlap crash protection. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Automobiles |
It's a dirty job, but someone has to jump start serious reconsideration of that dark, amorphous phenomenon known as American painting in the 1980s a veritable pit of macho swagger, nostalgia and money. Most New York museums have looked the other way, but on Friday, Jan. 27, the Whitney Museum of American Art will revisit this incredibly busy, visually rich if oft maligned decade with the unveiling of "Fast Forward: Painting From the 1980s." This show's 37 artists will be represented by 41 works from the museum's collection, mostly paintings, but also drawings and prints. Neo Expressionism, abstraction, graffiti, feminism, Conceptualism, Pop and appropriation are among the tendencies, strategies and influences to be highlighted. The decade's stars including Julian Schnabel, David Salle and Kenny Scharf will be shown alongside others who worked with less fanfare, like Nellie Mae Rowe, Kathe Burkhart and Carlos Alfonzo. If the show is not the full on revisionist effort that the decade needs, it can't help being a necessary beginning. (Through May 14; whitney.org.) | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
In "What Lies Upstream," the documentarian Cullen Hoback begins by investigating the 2014 chemical spill that left 300,000 West Virginians without safe tap water. The resulting movie, national in scope, lays out damning (if not always cohesive) arguments about how government regulators tend to defer to the companies they are supposed to supervise, how legislative fixes aren't permanent and how mandated safety checks are useless if they aren't performed or performed properly. Some compelling camera personalities emerge. Randy Huffman, at the time the secretary of the State Department of Environmental Protection in West Virginia, wants to "give the benefit of the doubt" to organizations. When Mr. Hoback, who has read a report suggesting that tens of thousands of violations of the Clean Water Act went uninvestigated in the state, cites that number to him, Mr. Huffman brushes it off as "not that many." Dr. Rahul Gupta, who begins the movie as executive director of the Kanawha Charleston Health Department and becomes the state's commissioner of health and human resources, is presented as a dogged health advocate who is cowed as he rises in stature. Throughout the movie, Mr. Hoback looks for a smoking gun a revelation that will explain pollution not only in West Virginia, but also in Flint, Mich. and elsewhere and seems to think he finds one. But the problems appear systemic, tied to human nature and economics. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
Guiana was a backwater of British colonialism, though, and the postal system did not always work as planned. In 1856, a resupply of stamps that was supposed to arrive by ship did not. The one cent magenta was a temporary fill in, one of a batch of hundreds, it's reasonable to speculate, created on the printing press of a local newspaper. That obscure beginning elevated the stamp to its elite perch. It was so insignificant that it became unique. The stamp was discovered in 1873, by a 12 year old boy sorting through his uncle's old letters. Within five years, the world's most renowned stamp experts had recognized its rarity, and the one cent magenta was transported into the world of the ultrarich, where its value began to appreciate rapidly. Its first wealthy owner was a Parisian aristocrat who would leave bundles of money hanging on a wall and trust stamp sellers to take the amount they were owed. The stamp passed through the hands of a crass New York textile magnate; the young wife he had tried to disinherit; a consortium of investors from Wilkes Barre, Pa.; and John E. du Pont, the chemical company heir now most famous for murdering the wrestler Dave Schultz (and being portrayed by Steve Carell in "Foxcatcher"). Though the men who buy the magenta are linked by their interest in stamps, they are unusual specimens of power and privilege. Since the stamp's first two owners are average enough men, this short book could have been even more compact: It is only once the stamp travels to Europe that the truly crazed and crazy collectors appear and Barron's detailed attention to each one pays off. Interlaced with the history of the magenta is the question of its worth today, when the prestige of stamp collecting is all but obsolete. Barron first learns of the stamp from a Sotheby's auctioneer and strings along the small drama of its sale throughout the book. The resolution of the auction and Barron's unveiling of its winner are less satisfying than the new owner's reason for buying the magenta: He's not interested in stamps so much as one of a kind treasures. Barron recognizes that for most people stamps' romance has long since dissipated, but he succeeds in showing why this one stamp, at least, is still alluring. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
A roundup of motoring news from the web: Mazda announced at the SEMA show this week that it would commence a new Global Cup race series for its all new 2016 MX 5 Miata. The automaker has not yet released detailed track information, but said the series would be held in North America, Europe and Asia, culminating in a season ender at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca in Monterey, Calif. (Mazda) After three years of fleet only sales, General Motors is killing the Chevrolet Captiva, a rental fleet favorite. The end of the Captiva makes way for the Chevrolet Trax, a small crossover that will join the larger Equinox and Traverse in the automaker's crossover lineup. Production of the Captiva will continue in Mexico for sale there and overseas. (Automotive News, subscription required) Honda has received a second order from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to produce documents related to seven recalls involving parts from Takata, the airbag supplier. The safety agency imposed a Dec. 15 deadline, stipulating that Honda should also include internal communications regarding the recalls. (The Detroit Free Press) Hyundai and Kia said in a statement Thursday that they planned to increase the average fuel economy of their vehicles by 25 percent by 2020. The increase would help the South Korean manufacturers meet fuel economy requirements in the United States and Europe. The automakers said they would accomplish the goal by developing new engine and transmission technology, and by reducing vehicle weight. (Business Insider) | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Automobiles |
SKIING down the mountain in the morning and golfing on the fairways in the afternoon, with just a five minute drive in between? How can that be possible? And yet it is exactly what some intrepid sportsmen are doing in the northwest corner of New Jersey, where the Crystal Springs/Mountain Creek resort in Sussex County continues to produce artificial snow, but has also opened its golf courses a full six weeks earlier than normal. "We call it the ski and tee package," said Bill Benneyan, the vice president for marketing at Mountain Creek. "It's 50 degrees out, and there's still snow on the mountain." Nevertheless, Mr. Benneyan said, ski business is down 15 percent at Mountain Creek this winter, which has been particularly mild, especially compared with last year's. With almost no natural snow, the task of enticing people to spend the day at the ski resort, formerly known as Great Gorge and Vernon Valley, not to mention invest in real estate here, has proved challenging. "It's been a tough winter," said Jason Brinker, a sales associate with the McCullough Group at Re/Max Connection in West Milford. "But buyers realize it's a gamble every year. But our buyers are a different breed. They're not looking to go to Killington, Vt. They're coming here because of the easy commute to New York." Those trying to market the hundreds of condominiums, town houses and single family homes in close proximity to the ski resort have had to adjust their pitch somewhat, first by letting prospective buyers know that Mountain Creek has some of the most sophisticated snow making machinery in the country, and second by promoting the area's four season appeal. To that end, Crystal Springs and Mountain Creek's new owners, a group of investors led by Eugene Mulvihill, have been enhancing the area's amenities, not only opening a 55,000 square foot ski lodge and increasing the number of tubing lanes to 35, but also planning a zip line and a roller coaster for the summer. The area already has seven golf courses, a water park, downhill bike trails and two spas. When prospective buyers come to visit, Mr. Brinker said, he gives them the grand tour the ski trails, the lake communities, the spas. While admitting that the scarcity of snow has had an influence on clients' impressions, he said, "They have to realize, I make them realize, it's been a bad winter here." Still, snow or no snow, this area is considered one of the most depressed real estate markets in the state so the main driver of sales lately has been fire sale prices. Kevin Detwiller, a broker at Mountain Resort Properties, which handles most of the sales at the several developments connected to the resort, said business had been brisk of late. Returning from vacation recently, he said, he found three offers awaiting him on condominiums in Great Gorge Village, a 1,400 unit mountainside development. "I'm feeling a percolation at the bottom of the market," Mr. Detwiller said. "As prices come down, people are starting to buy." (He also said it had been a fairly good ski year, "albeit, no natural snow.") Prices are down significantly from what they were six or seven years ago, after some of these developments opened. For instance, Mr. Brinker said, he sold a one bedroom one bath condominium unit in the Appalachian Hotel in November for 42,000 on a short sale. A similar unit sold for 275,000 in 2004, he said. One attraction, at least potentially, is that as a condominium hotel, the place allows owners to "bank" their units and rent them out for about 175 a night. Nigel Cunniffe, a broker/sales manager at Mountain Resort Properties, said he had had offers on nine town houses being sold as short sales at Black Creek Sanctuary, a gated community whose units once went for more than 500,000 and are now selling in the mid 100,000s. But inventory remains high. The town of Vernon has 350 homes for sale, with 49 sold in the last three months, according to Mr. Brinker. Neighboring Hardyston has 141 houses listed, with 21 sold since early December. "There are a lot of homes on the market," he said, "and not many people are buying them." Mr. Cunniffe estimated that half his recent business had been in short sales. Prices will remain relatively low until the excessive short sale inventory is sold off, he predicted. Still, "a lot of people are deciding it's a great time to buy," he added. "People are buying multi units, either to put into the rental market, or for the appreciation they're going to see. If someone is paying 150,000 for one of these places, you can't even build it for that much." Richard Blas of North Bergen, interested in getting back into skiing after a hiatus, decided he wanted a ski house for his family, and in December 2010 ended up buying a two bedroom bilevel condo next to the mountain in Great Gorge Village for 95,000. He said he had been out on the trails only twice this season, noting, "It's been nothing like last year." But he isn't complaining about the mild winter, because it has allowed him, his wife and two children the chance to take advantage of other amenities at or near the resort. "You can get a ski place anywhere," Mr. Blas said, "but what are you going to do if there's no snow? Here you can go to the pool, go horseback riding. They've got the lodge and the nightclub. It's like being on a cruise ship. You can go out and have a couple of cocktails and not have to worry about driving home at night." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
Varsha Srivastava, 20, appeared to have the perfect college experience at Boston University. She was in the College of Communication, worked on a campus podcast, was a swim instructor and played club water polo. But emotionally, she was falling apart. Her story has been edited and condensed. I grew up in the Silicon Valley, where the norm is that you excel in academics. A lot of my friends were going to school at the Universities of California but I didn't get into the ones I wanted, or they didn't have what I wanted. B.U. is a great school, but I wasn't very happy there. My parents were paying too much for school and for me to fly across the country. I never had problems making friends, but I wasn't committed at B.U. But I felt this pressure to have a great freshman year. I use social media a lot, and all my friends looked like they were having a great time. I'd go to holiday parties, and when I was asked about Boston, the only honest thing I could say is that it was cold. I didn't realize other students were having similar problems. My first semester, I got the lowest grades I ever got: two B's and two C's. I beat myself up so much. I was really ashamed of myself. I thought with these grades, I was stuck, that I couldn't transfer to another school. The second semester, I said I'd get myself together, but it just got worse. I was so anxious about my grades. Because I was used to being a high performing student, I couldn't take small steps. I needed to jump in, and I needed to get an A. Every assignment and every class became a huge project that would stress me out so much that I would avoid it because I didn't know how to cope with it. I recognize this now, but at the time I had no idea what was going on. I scheduled an appointment with behavioral medicine at student health services. I was not sleeping. I was pulling all nighters three times a week the whole semester. I was falling apart. I went to the appointment, and it was the first time I told someone. The person referred me off campus to a psychiatrist. I had never met with a psychiatrist, never met with a therapist before. It didn't really work out because I didn't feel comfortable talking to the psychiatrist. I would pretend I was getting better. Over the summer, I didn't tell anyone not my friends or parents. I felt I was not only lying about my experiences but who I was as a person. My sophomore year, I had no self confidence, and I had no way to advocate for myself because I was so ashamed of everything. I would enthusiastically sign up for classes and be excited about the content, and then when I started to slip, I felt like I was not worthy. I'm personable and get along, then I'd hit a bump and I would see my professors' disappointment and confusion. At the end of my sophomore year, I went home. And after I got the worst grades I ever got, my mom saw me crying in the bedroom and I told her. She wanted me to see a therapist. I fought it for a long time, I think partly because it was coming from my mom. I met with a therapist all summer, but in the fall semester, things were not noticeably better. Then I met with my academic adviser and I was telling her how difficult things were, and she referred me to B.U.'s Center for Psychiatric Rehabilitation, and I met with Courtney. Courtney Joly Lowdermilk is a college coach at the center and manages Niteo, which she says means "thrive" in Latin. Niteo is a one semester program that offers resilience, wellness and academic skills classes, as well as coaching to students from all over the county on leave for mental health reasons. It costs 8,500 per semester, and some scholarships are available. I told her all about my experiences. I didn't even know what self advocacy was she helped me write emails to professors asking how I could improve. She helped me organize my work. Ms. Joly Lowdermilk said Varsha's situation was not unusual: "She is a very bright, very high achieving student overwhelmed by responsibilities. She had very high expectations of herself. She needed to take some things off her plate and to learn self advocacy to let people know when she was struggling. Fall semester, I was on probation because of my grades it killed me. And at the end of fall semester I was suspended for a year. Coming from a family where education and excelling at school is so important, it was awful. It was the first time. I talked with my parents. They didn't want me to go back to Boston, but Courtney spoke to them about the Niteo program. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Education |
BETTER CALL SAUL 10 p.m. on AMC. When the fourth season of this "Breaking Bad" prequel wrapped up in 2018, The New York Times's David Segal expressed high hopes for Season 5 in his recap. "All of the major characters are on the verge of becoming even more compelling," he wrote, "and as 'Better Call Saul' merges with the timeline of its chronological successor, it will get only more interesting." Alas, Season 5 is here, and it opens with the small time lawyer Jimmy McGill (Bob Odenkirk) settling into his new practice as Saul Goodman the sleazy lawyer to the guilty we first met in "Breaking Bad." This episode kicks off with a black and white glimpse at the future and then returns to the present, where Saul's new life proves problematic for his relationship with his girlfriend, Kim (Rhea Seehorn). The series will air in its regular time slot, Mondays at 9 p.m., starting Feb. 24. DISNEY FAM JAM 8:25 p.m. on Disney. Spending the night in with the kids? Tune into this new dance competition series, hosted by Trevor Tordjman and Ariel Martin of the Disney television movie "Zombies 2." The choreographer Phil Wright coaches two families who then go head to head on the dance floor, whipping out their best moves for the chance to win a 10,000 cash prize. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
"Heart and Lights," a new dance oriented show featuring the Rockettes, has been canceled less than a week before it was supposed to open at Radio City Music Hall, its producer announced on Friday, saying that "it has become clear that additional work is needed" before the production is ready for audiences. The producer, MSG Entertainment, provided no further details on the nature of the problems that caused the delay in the opening, which is now anticipated to be in 2015. "Heart and Lights" was to have played 59 times over a five week period, and was promoted for its "groundbreaking technology" and "state of the art puppetry," including a 26 foot tall model of the Statue of Liberty. A person associated with the production said that, in contrast to the mechanical stumbles of recent high tech Broadway productions like the recently closed "Spider Man: Turn Off the Dark," the problems with "Heart and Lights" were more old fashioned. "The narrative was not coming together," the person said, requesting anonymity because MSG has not authorized those affiliated with the show to discuss the matter. There were problems with the music, that person added, and, as a result, there "was not enough time to make the changes we needed." One clear sign of problems was the cancellation of a dress rehearsal in recent days. That was preceded by doubts that came to light and then grew during the first full run throughs of the production in recent weeks. "Every time our Rockettes took the stage, the energy and excitement soared," Tad Smith, the president and chief executive of MSG, wrote in an email that was distributed after the announcement was made. He added, "Nevertheless, we needed a bit more time to improve the narrative and ensure we got the most out of the amazing songs that are an important part of the show." Ordinarily, the next step would have been to delay the opening for a few weeks until all the parts gelled to the satisfaction of everyone involved. "Unfortunately, Radio City Music Hall is fully booked, starting in early May and continuing through the 'Christmas Spectacular,' so we simply ran out of time to make the desired changes," Mr. Smith said. Not quite a traditional musical or a standard revue, "Heart and Lights" tells the story of two teenage cousins roaming New York, trying to decipher their grandmother's past. The search takes the girls to various landmarks around the city and, as originally conceived, includes dance numbers to evoke places like the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Central Park and the Stock Exchange. The book for "Heart and Lights" was written by Doug Wright, whose 2004 play, "I Am My Own Wife," brought him a Tony Award and a Pulitzer Prize. The show is choreographed and directed by Linda Haberman, artistic director of the Rockettes, best known for the annual Christmas extravaganza at Radio City. "You're going to see a lot of stuff you've never seen the Rockettes do before," Ms. Haberman said in an interview with The New York Times last September, amid rehearsals. "I'm definitely expanding their vocabulary. In this show, I felt like there were no limits." Mr. Wright, asked about Mr. Smith's reference to narrative problems in the show, replied by email: "Working for Linda Haberman was an absolute joy. Beyond that, I am saving the rest of the story for my memoirs. It promises to be a darkly satiric and at times heartbreaking chapter." "Heart and Lights" was to have been the Rockettes' first spring production at Radio City since 1997. The show had been lavishly promoted for months, and had been scheduled to open for previews on Wednesday and to close on May 4. Significant amounts were spent on print and television advertisements, and cast members have appeared on television shows like "America's Got Talent" to perform teaser bits. Financially, the cancellation of the long planned five week run looks to be a blow to MSG Entertainment. More than 350,000 tickets were available, at prices ranging from 49 to 149, so the losses in sales alone are likely to exceed 5 million. MSG Entertainment has been searching for years for a blockbuster hit to run in Radio City Music Hall during prime tourist weeks in the late spring and summer. While many Broadway shows thrive with swelled audiences during that period, Radio City has never had a durable long running hit, akin to its Christmas show with the Rockettes, that can return each year. Asked whether ticket sales had played any part in the decision to cancel the opening, a spokeswoman for MSG responded, "We were pleased with the response to ticket sales and had already sold over 100,000 tickets to date, even though we were just entering peak selling period." The postponement of "Heart and Lights" until next year also leaves a big hole in Radio City's spring schedule. That gap could be filled, at least partly, by pop music acts still seeking to book shows in New York. MSG Entertainment, part of the Madison Square Garden Company, declined to speculate on how the hole might be filled, saying it was too early to do so. It said that all tickets for "Heart and Lights" purchased via Ticketmaster, telephone or the Internet would automatically be refunded. Other tickets "will be refunded at point of purchase," MSG said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
A pop music diva wins an Oscar for her big screen breakthrough as a performer who overcomes doubts about her looks to become a superstar. If that happens for Lady Gaga, whose turn as a rising singer songwriter in "A Star Is Born" has made her a leading contender for best actress at the 2019 Academy Awards, history will have repeated itself. Nearly 50 years ago, Barbra Streisand took home that honor for "Funny Girl." Only there was a jaw dropping twist: She tied with Katharine Hepburn for "The Lion in Winter." After a stunned Ingrid Bergman announced the two winners in 1969, Streisand famously opened her acceptance speech by greeting the statuette with a saucy "Hello, Gorgeous!" echoing her ironic first line in "Funny Girl." "I didn't plan to say, 'Hello, Gorgeous,' because, quite frankly, I didn't plan to win," Streisand said in an email. "Just being nominated for my first film along with four of Hollywood's most extraordinary actresses, Patricia Neal, Vanessa Redgrave, Joanne Woodward and the magnificent Katharine Hepburn was great!" "It was as humbling as it was exciting," she continued. "Then how could you ever plan to be sharing an award with Katharine Hepburn? It was a thrill you can't anticipate. And when I was holding that beautiful gold statue in my hand, 'Hello, Gorgeous' just popped out ... and seemed to capture the moment!" "She's one of only a handful of people who has delivered a phrase in an Oscar speech that's still quoted today," the Turner Classic Movies host Dave Karger said in a recent telephone interview, adding that the few other quotable winners included Sally Field ("You like me!") and James Cameron ("I'm the king of the world!"). Hepburn had earned her record breaking 11th acting nomination for playing the feisty Eleanor of Aquitaine, but she was not attending, as was her custom. Instead, the film's director, Anthony Harvey, accepted her award, quoting her as saying, "I suppose if I've lived as long as I have, anything can happen." (Hepburn was 61 at the time; Streisand was 26.) Actors had tied only once before in Oscar history, when Wallace Beery ("The Champ") and Fredric March ("Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde") were both named best actor in 1932. At that time, nominees within three votes of each other were considered tied, and Beery had received one vote fewer than March. The rules were later changed, and Hepburn and Streisand were actually deadlocked. "I assure you, it was a precise tie," Frank Johnson, of the accounting firm Price Waterhouse, said. "We always do at least one recount, but you can imagine all the recounts we did on that one." The 1969 tie proved controversial because the academy had broken with the tradition of inviting only actors who had at least two credits to join; it admitted Streisand as a member, even though she had acted in only one film. (The practice of not offering admission after only one credit still holds.) If she hadn't been able to vote for herself which she presumably did she wouldn't have tied with Hepburn. Gregory Peck, then the academy's president, justified the membership decision by citing Streisand's Tony nominated Broadway turn in "Funny Girl": "When an actress has played a great role on the stage and is coming into films for what will obviously be an important career, it is ridiculous to make her wait two or three years for membership." Streisand also raised eyebrows with her Oscar night attire: an Arnold Scaasi sheer pantsuit with bell bottoms (which she tripped over on her way to the podium) and strategically placed fabric patches to maintain a modicum of modesty. "I had no idea when I wore it to receive the Academy Award that the outfit would become see through under the lights," Streisand said when Scaasi died in 2015. "I was embarrassed, but it sure was original at the time." She could have gone with a safer look. "I was choosing between two different outfits one was lovely but very conservative, then there was the pantsuit with plastic sequins," Streisand told W in 2016. "I thought to myself, I'm going to win two Oscars in my lifetime, and I'll be more conservative next time." Her prophecy came true. Streisand shared the award for best original song with Paul Williams for "Evergreen," the love theme for her 1976 version of, yes, "A Star is Born." She wore her own design, a red gown with a capelet, which stirred no controversy. Hepburn, who had won best actress the year before, in 1968, for "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner," would go on to become the sole actor to earn four Oscars (including her wins in 1934 for "Morning Glory" and in 1982 for "On Golden Pond"). Yet that star appeared live at the awards only once, to present her friend and producer Lawrence Weingarten ("Pat and Mike," "Adam's Rib") with the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award in 1974. "I'm the living proof that a person can wait 41 years to be unselfish," she said during the ceremony. Hepburn's math was off by a year: She made her film debut in "A Bill of Divorcement," in 1932. In 1969, Streisand told reporters backstage at the Oscars, "I know you won't believe it, but honestly, my work is my reward." The comment echoed something Hepburn had said when she was nominated for best actress for "The Philadelphia Story," in 1941, but lost to Ginger Rogers for "Kitty Foyle": "As for me, prizes are nothing. My prize is my work." It's such a good line that Lady Gaga might want to borrow it. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
How "Cheer's" Superstar Coach, Monica, Gets It Done The Cut Maybe you were inspired, rather than disturbed, by Aldama's determination to get the trophy? The Cut interviewed her for their "How I Get It Done" column, where she shared her daily routine, how she ended up in cheerleading instead of on Wall Street, and how her political views are "some of the very conservative, some very liberal." She also answers some of the criticism around her pushing a male cheerleader to practice with a back injury. The Pathos of "Cheer" and the Wild Deceptions of Cheerleading The New Yorker "In cheerleading, as in gymnastics, the upper difficulty level is being pushed higher at a thrilling and alarming rate," writes Jia Tolentino in The New Yorker. "Much of what the Navarro cheerleaders do onscreen was barred from competition, if not physically impossible, when I was cheering at a Texas high school, in the early two thousands." She notes that cheerleaders have to be shiny and smiling, no matter the difficulty or pain of their routines. If you're wondering what to watch after "Cheer," consider USA's "Dare Me," a soapy noir show centered on a high school cheerleading squad. For Vulture, Jen Chaney says that the two shows are very different, but both use cheerleading to "convey the same message, just in different contexts: As soon as you can't rely on the people around you to provide support, everything in your world very well may crumble to the ground." On this episode of NPR's "Pop Culture Happy Hour," the conversation also focuses on "Cheer" and "Dare Me." Linda Holmes describes "Cheer" as a show "I find quite inspiring at times, and also unbelievably bleak." Together with Barrie Hardymon and Christina Tucker, Holmes breaks down why Aldama has been such a divisive character, and wonders if getting the win is always the best thing for the kid. The trio also dig into the team's racial dynamics not investigated by the show including the fact that the female cheerleaders are white, while a lot of the male cheerleaders are black. What does Aldama mean when she says some cheerleaders just have the "look"? On the Mat We're Briefly Perfect: On Netflix's "Cheer" LA Review of Books Arielle Zibrak dives into how strangely time operates in the show, from the time cards noting how long we have until the competition in Daytona Beach to the mind boggling fact that "A cheer routine is two minutes and fifteen seconds long. The team spends an entire season rehearsing it. It is only performed in competition once at Daytona." What does it mean to work so hard for just a couple of minutes? "The fantasy of that 2:15 is so very seductive: to be briefly perfect, to be completely seen and adored," she writes. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
In 2001, Stefan Erik Oppers and Gary Penn popped the question. The New York Times said no. A year later, Daniel Andrew Gross and Steven Goldstein popped the question. The Times demurred but this time did not shut the door entirely. Then, after a few more days' thought, it said yes. The question, of course, was, "Will you print an announcement of our civil union in your society pages?" Mr. Goldstein was checking his desktop computer in Brooklyn on a Sunday morning, shortly before their commitment ceremony. Awaiting him was a message from The Times. "I started screaming: 'Daniel! Daniel! The New York Times has changed its policy!'" he said. "'And we're going to be the first couple!'" What seemed like a sudden turnaround in Times policy had actually been the byproduct of decades of debate in and outside the gay community. Though The Times had covered the issue of whether to legalize same sex marriage for years, it did not seem especially urgent to lesbian and gay advocates in the 1980s. They were more focused on discrimination, antigay violence and the AIDS epidemic. While the epidemic prompted many hateful and misinformed responses, it also exposed society to couples who cared for each other until parted by death as fundamental a marital obligation as any. AIDS also showed how cruelly unwed partners could be treated. They were denied hospital visits, insurance proceeds and estate inheritance. Commitment ceremonies were growing common. But The Times hesitated to bestow what amounted to an institutional benediction of those unions in its society pages. "We're likely to hide behind the argument that those pages just record legal weddings," Joseph Lelyveld, then the managing editor, told a gay journalists' organization in 1992. The prospect of legal same sex weddings seemed remote in 1996, when President Bill Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act, effectively banning federal recognition of same sex unions. Even after Vermont first recognized civil unions in 2000 creating "same sex marriages in almost everything but the name," as The Times reported the paper's position held fast. Nor did it change in 2001, when the Netherlands became the first country to recognize same sex marriage. That was when Mr. Oppers and Mr. Penn requested an announcement of their wedding, which was to take place in the Netherlands. Allan M. Siegal, an assistant managing editor, told the couple that their request had been considered seriously but that the newspaper would continue limiting announcements to marriages legally recognized in the United States. Mr. Siegal, now retired, was too smart to believe the issue had been resolved, however. Howell Raines, then the executive editor, asked Mr. Siegal in spring 2002 to lead a committee that would devise a policy. "We wanted to treat same sex unions, in print, the same way we treated lawful marriages, but without implying that the unions were marriages, still a hot button issue at that time," Mr. Siegal said in an email. The new policy was instituted in September 2002. That coincided neatly with the plans by Mr. Gross and Mr. Goldstein to formally celebrate their civil union in North Hero, Vt., on Sept. 1. On Aug. 24, 2003, The Times published a wedding announcement of Peter Freiberg and Joe Tom Easley, who were married in Toronto. On Feb. 22, 2004, The Times published a wedding announcement for Dr. Helen Sperry Cooksey and Dr. Susan Margaret Love, who were married in San Francisco. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
For Site, the San Francisco foundation that brought Ai Weiwei's art to Alcatraz in 2014, has just finalized plans for another politically engaged, site specific show, "Sanctuary." This fall, For Site is blanketing a decommissioned chapel in Fort Mason with prayer rugs designed by 36 contemporary artists, including Mr. Ai, Diana Al Hadid, Mona Hatoum and Cornelia Parker. The participating artists, from 22 countries, are predominantly Middle Eastern, said Cheryl Haines, the founder of For Site. Originally, she explained, she was considering a group show featuring only artists from the countries named in President Trump's initial travel ban. "But I realized that restricted travel and forced migration are larger concerns that affect so many more people and interest so many artists." To take on the idea of sanctuary what it means to secure it, lose it or provide it she asked the artists to create their own versions of the prayer mats that are used daily in Muslim religious observance. Several of the rugs incorporate images of war. Mr. Ai, who has just completed a film about the international refugee crisis, has contributed a design using interlocking images of machine guns and handcuffs, evoking the industrial forces behind displacement. The Syrian artist Tammam Azzam has created a repeating pattern of a man carrying a child through rubble. The Iranian Canadian artist Sanaz Mazinani has made a more traditional looking tapestry with a geometric border, but the medallions are, on closer inspection, images of nuclear mushroom clouds. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
SAN FRANCISCO Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's chief executive, plans to integrate the social network's messaging services WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook Messenger asserting his control over the company's sprawling divisions at a time when its business has been battered by scandal. The services will continue to operate as stand alone apps, but their underlying technical infrastructure will be unified, said four people involved in the effort. That will bring together three of the world's largest messaging networks, which between them have more than 2.6 billion users, allowing people to communicate across the platforms for the first time. The move has the potential to redefine how billions of people use the apps to connect with one another while strengthening Facebook's grip on users, raising antitrust, privacy and security questions. It also underscores how Mr. Zuckerberg is imposing his authority over units he once vowed to leave alone. The plan which is in the early stages, with a goal of completion by the end of this year or early 2020 requires thousands of Facebook employees to reconfigure how WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook Messenger function at their most basic levels, said the people involved in the effort, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the matter is confidential. Mr. Zuckerberg has also ordered that the apps all incorporate end to end encryption, the people said, a major step that protects messages from being viewed by anyone except the participants in a conversation. In a statement, Facebook said it wanted to "build the best messaging experiences we can; and people want messaging to be fast, simple, reliable and private." It added: "We're working on making more of our messaging products end to end encrypted and considering ways to make it easier to reach friends and family across networks." By stitching the apps' infrastructure together, Mr. Zuckerberg hopes to increase Facebook's utility and keep users highly engaged inside the company's ecosystem. That could reduce people's appetite for rival messaging services, like those offered by Apple and Google. If users can interact more frequently with Facebook's apps, the company might also be able to increase its advertising business or add new revenue generating services, the people said. The change follows two years of scrutiny of Facebook's core social network, which has been criticized for allowing election meddling and the spreading of disinformation. Those and other issues have slowed Facebook's growth and damaged its reputation, raising the hackles of lawmakers and regulators around the world. Mr. Zuckerberg has repeatedly apologized for the problems and has vowed to fix them. Knitting together Facebook's apps is a stark reversal of Mr. Zuckerberg's previous stance toward WhatsApp and Instagram, which were independent companies that Facebook acquired. At the time of the acquisitions, Mr. Zuckerberg promised WhatsApp and Instagram plenty of autonomy from their new parent company. (Facebook Messenger is a homegrown service spun off the main Facebook app in 2014.) WhatsApp and Instagram have grown tremendously since then, prompting Mr. Zuckerberg to change his thinking, one of the people said. He now believes integrating the services more tightly will benefit Facebook's entire "family of apps" in the long term by making them more useful, the person said. Mr. Zuckerberg floated the idea for months and began to promote it to employees more heavily toward the end of 2018, the people said. The effort has caused strife within Facebook. Instagram's founders, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, left the company abruptly last fall after Mr. Zuckerberg began weighing in more. WhatsApp's founders, Jan Koum and Brian Acton, departed for similar reasons. More recently, dozens of WhatsApp employees clashed with Mr. Zuckerberg over the integration plan on internal message boards and during a contentious staff meeting in December, according to four people who attended or were briefed on the event. The integration plan raises privacy questions because of how users' data may be shared between services. WhatsApp currently requires only a phone number when new users sign up. By contrast, Facebook and Facebook Messenger ask users to provide their true identities. Matching Facebook and Instagram users to their WhatsApp handles could give pause to those who prefer to keep their use of each app separate. "As you would expect, there is a lot of discussion and debate as we begin the long process of figuring out all the details of how this will work," Facebook said in a statement. Marc Rotenberg, president and executive director the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said on Friday that the change would be "a terrible outcome for internet users." He urged the Federal Trade Commission, America's de facto privacy regulator, to "act now to protect privacy and to preserve competition." Representative Ro Khanna, Democrat of California, criticized the change on antitrust grounds. "This is why there should have been far more scrutiny during Facebook's acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp, which now clearly seem like horizontal mergers that should have triggered antitrust scrutiny," he said in a message on Twitter. "Imagine how different the world would be if Facebook had to compete with Instagram and WhatsApp." People in many countries often rely on only one or two text messaging services. In China, WeChat, which is made by Tencent, is popular, while WhatsApp is heavily used in South America. Americans are more divided in their use of such services, SMS text messages, Apple's iMessage and various Google chat apps. For Facebook, the move also offers avenues for making money from Instagram and WhatsApp. WhatsApp currently generates little revenue; Instagram produces ad revenue but none from its messaging. Mr. Zuckerberg does not yet have specific plans for how to profit from integrating the services, said two of the people involved in the matter. A more engaged audience could result in new forms of advertising or other services for which Facebook could charge a fee, they said. One potential business opportunity involves Facebook Marketplace, a free Craigslist like product where people can buy and sell goods. The service is popular in Southeast Asia and other markets outside the United States. When the apps are knitted together, Facebook Marketplace buyers and sellers in Southeast Asia will be able to communicate with one another using WhatsApp, which is popular in the region, rather than using Facebook Messenger or another, non Facebook text message service. That could eventually yield new ad opportunities or profit generating services, said one of the people. Some Facebook employees said they were confused about what made combining the messaging services so compelling to Mr. Zuckerberg. Some said it was jarring because of his past promises about independence. When Facebook acquired WhatsApp for 19 billion in 2014, Mr. Koum talked publicly about user privacy, and said, "If partnering with Facebook meant that we had to change our values, we wouldn't have done it." Last month, during one of WhatsApp's monthly meetings for staff members, it became clear that Mr. Zuckerberg's mandate would be a priority in 2019, said a person who was there. One WhatsApp employee then conducted an analysis of how many potential new users in the United States the integration plan could bring to Facebook, said two people familiar with the study. The total was relatively meager, the analysis showed. To assuage concerns, Mr. Zuckerberg called a follow up meeting with WhatsApp employees a few days later, three of the people said. On Dec. 7, employees gathered around microphones at the WhatsApp offices to ask him why he was so invested in merging the services. Some said his answers were vague and meandering. Several WhatsApp employees have left or plan to leave because of Mr. Zuckerberg's plans, the people said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
Re "City Dwellers Weigh Saying Goodbye to All That" (front page, April 20): My husband and I don't have an escape place, but even if we did, we wouldn't abandon the city. We're among those supporting the few restaurants still open for pickup and delivery. We're the ones keeping our food and drug stores open. We realize the world as we knew it is over. It may take years for all of us to feel safe enough to gather in large groups, to meet in the tight confines of Broadway theaters. And social distancing would destroy the economics of large productions. As someone who has covered New York theater for decades, 13 years as a first night critic, I believe that there will be localized culture. New York will be changed, but it will thrive. Nothing can replace the serendipity that takes place in person to person encounters. Nothing can make up for the vibrancy that density encourages. When we leave our apartment, it is surreal to pass our mask wearing neighbors. We marvel at how relatively quiet the city is, even though there are still some cars and bicycles moving. There are runners getting their exercise, and most important there are people. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
As part of a trip to France in 1984 to study floral painting, Dianne Bernhard spent time in Monet's gardens at Giverny. It was there, among the flowers that inspired him, that she heard Cartier was creating a new perfume in Paris made with jasmine, roses and vanilla. "I said, 'I'm going to go straight to Cartier as soon as I get out of class,' " said Mrs. Bernhard, a painter and former president of the National Arts Club in New York. "I loved the smell." The fragrance she found there was a musk, but she didn't like how it smelled on her skin. But instead of giving up, she had a chemist begin mixing, and he ended up creating the scent that Mrs. Bernhard and only Mrs. Bernhard has worn for the last three decades. "It was just something that became me," she said. "If the scent of this woman changed, my grandchildren, my family and many of my close friends would be sad." When most people think of bespoke goods, they think shirts, suits, wedding gowns, maybe an haute couture dress. But bespoke perfume takes the world of personalization to an entirely new level. For starters, it costs a lot to find the right mix of flowers and oils to create a smell particular to you. Thomas Fontaine, a perfumer at Jean Patou who helped revive Joy, a perfume that has been around for eight decades, and create Joy Forever, said it could cost someone 30,000 to 50,000 to create a personal scent. "The most expensive thing is the development," he said. "To create a fragrance for only one person or one million people, the cost is the same." In contrast, Joy is a comparative bargain at 800 an ounce. But taste is tough to price. Mrs. Bernhard said her perfume had certainly not been cheap over the years. She said it cost several thousand dollars for the scent to be created, back in 1984, and over the years, it has cost the equivalent of several hundred dollars a bottle. Laurent Le Guernec, a perfumer at International Flavors and Fragrances, a large perfume creator, and the recipient of eight awards for perfume design, said the challenge was always to personalize it. When he created Lovely, a scent for the actress Sarah Jessica Parker, the perfume was meant to appeal to the millions of fans who wanted to smell just like her. But what was that scent? "She was creating something for herself and hoped other people would like it," he said. "She had a very lavender oil, a musk oil and that was basically it. And she said, 'Can you do something like that?' " Each year, about a thousand fragrances are created and introduced by perfume companies in a similar way, up from about 90 scents in the 1970s, said Elizabeth Musmanno, president of the Fragrance Foundation, a perfume industry group. Given that selection on top of existing perfumes Ms. Musmanno questioned the need for a bespoke scent in the first place. "While I think it's very interesting for certain people to try, it's also kind of the equivalent of me hiring a great chef and telling him how to cook," she said. "You need training for years and years to begin to be able to smell the difference in certain fragrances. For a lot of money you could come out with something that isn't any better than what is on the market today." For those who want to try, it begins with a conversation. Audrey Gruss, a former marketing and advertising executive, is just beginning the process of creating a fragrance. She has a name Hope Springs Eternal and a purpose to bring in donations to the Hope for Depression Research Foundation. She founded the charity eight years ago to find ways to battle depression, which plagued her mother, Hope. Mrs. Gruss's sense of smell is already refined. "I have a white flower garden in our summer home," she said. "I love jasmine, freesia and lily of the valley." "Some of those fragrances can be relaxing and soothing and uplifting," she said. "We don't profess to practice medicine without a license, but the idea of aromatherapy has been quite well documented." These days, no scent is unattainable. Mr. LeGuernec occasionally auctions off his perfume making skills for charity. He remembers his strangest project. "A lady said, 'I really want to make a perfume that smells like my horse,'" he recalled. "I said, 'Whoa.' " While the winning bidder was a serious equestrian, she didn't want to smell like a stable but something redolent of her love of riding, which began in childhood. "That kind of challenge I don't get every day," he said. "There is not a big brand that wants to launch a fragrance that smells like a horse. But in the end it was very sensual." He described what they created as musky and leathery, with orange blossom as the dominant floral scent. Most of the time, of course, people would like to smell like a memory a spring day in the mountains or the breeze off a favorite lake. But the struggle is one of translation: Perfumer and customer often do not speak the same language. One is describing something ephemeral; the other is trying to translate that into flowers and oils. "When it's bad, you're starting to speak a lot to know what they mean and what they're expecting," Mr. Fontaine of Jean Patou said. "It's the same problem you have if you're working on a project or a brand and they don't know what they want to sell to the consumer." Typically, it takes six months to a year to create a scent and at least half a dozen meetings. But that is predicated on the person having enough time to devote to the process, which even some of New York's most soignee socialites do not want to expend. Muffie Potter Aston said she had been wearing the same perfume Fracas by Robert Piguet since high school, with occasional dalliances with other scents. "The olfactory nerve brings back all the memories of smells," she said. "My mother wore Joy and Chanel No. 5, and if I smell someone wearing Joy or Chanel No. 5, I think of my mother. My grandmother wore Shalimar. If I smell someone wearing Shalimar, I think of my grandmother." Yet when Mrs. Potter Aston first started wearing Fracas, it was a scent she could get only in Paris. "If I had a friend going to Europe or I was going to Europe, I always made sure I brought a bottle back," she said. "Perfume doesn't last forever. You can't just go and buy 10 bottles. It's elusive." But once Fracas became available at Neiman Marcus, the scent was less appealing to her. And now a couple of her friends on the New York social circuit also wear the scent. She has been contemplating working with Kilian Hennessy, a perfumer living in Paris and descendant of the founder of the Hennessy Cognac company, to create her signature scent. Yet she has been hesitant to start the process. "With my twin daughters, I haven't had the time to pursue it," she said. "They're 10, and my signature scent these days is just clean, out of the shower. So many times I don't have time to get the perfume on." But a perfume that is a signature scent provides, it seems, a contentment and confidence whether what is in the bottle is off the shelf or concocted just for you. "I'm happy that in the decade of excess, the perfume I chose was not that expensive," Mrs. Bernhard said of her bespoke Cartier scent, "but it was the most fabulous thing for me." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Your Money |
The notion that female choreographers are underrepresented at major dance companies has hit the mainstream, so much so that just about any program with the word "women" in its title is starting to feel more than merely unimaginative: It has an air of pandering. On Wednesday night, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater continued the trend by opening its season at the David H. Koch Theater with "Celebrate Women," featuring works by Jessica Lang, Judith Jamison and Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, and concluding with "Revelations," Alvin Ailey's 1960 masterpiece and the company's meal ticket. It keeps the crowds coming back (just in case an all female choreographer program doesn't), Leading off the company's brief Lincoln Center season was Ms. Lang's "EN," her first work for the company and her 100th dance in total. Ms. Lang and Robert Battle, Ailey's artistic director, have known each other since their days at the Juilliard School. Ms. Lang's husband, Kanji Segawa, is a member of the Ailey company and previously danced with Mr. Battle's troupe, Battleworks Dance Company. (He was featured in "EN," naturally.) It was a chance, you hoped, for Ms. Lang to dig beneath her usual sleek, designed surface. But while handsome, "EN," named after a Japanese word with multiple meanings a circle, destiny, fate or karma fizzled out. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
These claims have received intense media attention, despite the fact that scientists haven't been able to sufficiently explain the link between obesity and Covid 19. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 42.2 percent of white Americans and 49.6 percent of African Americans are obese. Researchers have yet to clarify how a 7 percentage point disparity in obesity prevalence translates to a 240 percent 700 percent disparity in fatalities. Experts have raised questions about the rush to implicate obesity, and especially "severe obesity" (B.M.I. greater than 40), as a factor in coronavirus complications. An article in the medical journal The Lancet evaluated Britain's inclusion of obesity as a risk factor for coronavirus complications and retorted, "To date, no available data show adverse Covid 19 outcomes specifically in people with a BMI of 40 kg/m2." The authors concluded, "The scarcity of information regarding the increased risk of illness for people with a BMI higher than 40 kg/m2 has led to ambiguity and might increase anxiety, given that these individuals have now been categorised as vulnerable to severe illness if they contract Covid 19." Promoting strained associations between race, body size, and complications from this little understood disease has served to reinforce an image of black people as wholly swept up in sensuous pleasures like eating and drinking, which supposedly makes our unruly bodies repositories of preventable weight related illnesses. The attitudes I see today have echoes of what I described in "Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia." My research showed that anti fat attitudes originated not with medical findings, but with Enlightenment era belief that overfeeding and fatness were evidence of "savagery" and racial inferiority. Today, the stakes of these discussions could not be higher. When I learned about guidelines suggesting that doctors may use existing health conditions, including obesity, to deny or limit eligibility to lifesaving coronavirus treatments, I couldn't help thinking of the slavery era debates I've studied about whether or not so called "constitutionally weak" African Americans should receive medical care. Fortunately, since that event I attended five years ago, experts focused on the health of African Americans have continued to work to direct the nation's attention away from individual level factors. The New York Times' 1619 Project featured essays detailing how the legacy of slavery impacted health and health care for African Americans and explaining how, since the era of slavery, black people's bodies have been labeled congenitally diseased and undeserving of access to lifesaving treatments. In a recent essay addressing Covid 19 specifically, Rashawn Ray underscored the legacy of redlining that pushed black people into poor, densely populated communities often with limited access to health care. And he pointed out that black people are overrepresented in service positions and as essential workers who have greater exposure than those with the luxury of sheltering in place. Ibram X. Kendi has written that the "irresponsible behavior of disproportionately poor people of color" often cited as an important factor in health disparities is a scapegoat directing American's attention from the centrality of systemic racism in current racial health inequities. Evaluating the inadequate and questionable data about race, weight and Covid 19 complications with these insights in mind makes it clear that obesity and its affiliated, if incorrect implication of poor lifestyle choices should not be front and center when it comes to understanding how this pandemic has affected African Americans. Even before Covid 19, black Americans had higher rates of multiple chronic illnesses and a lower life expectancy than white Americans, regardless of weight. This is an indication that our social structures are failing us. These failings and the accompanying embrace of the belief that black bodies are uniquely flawed are rooted in a shameful era of American history that took place hundreds of years before this pandemic. Sabrina Strings is an associate professor of sociology at the University of California at Irvine and the author of "Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia." 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 |
As concern grows over the potential for children to become seriously ill from the coronavirus, a new study paints the most detailed picture yet of American children who were treated in intensive care units throughout the United States as the pandemic was taking hold in the country. None of the children in the study, published Monday in the journal JAMA Pediatrics, were stricken by the new mysterious inflammatory syndrome linked to the coronavirus that can cause life threatening cardiac issues in children. They suffered from the virus's primary line of attack: the severe respiratory problems that have afflicted tens of thousands of American adults. The study looked at 48 cases from 14 hospitals, infants up to age 21, during late March and early April. Two of the children died. Eighteen were placed on ventilators and two of them remain on the breathing machines more than a month later, said Dr. Lara S. Shekerdemian, chief of critical care at Texas Children's Hospital, and an author of the study. Over all, the study both reinforces the evidence that only a small percentage of children will be severely affected by the virus and confirms that some can become devastatingly ill. "You can read this either like a half empty glass or a half full glass," said Dr. Daniele De Luca, the president elect of the European Society for Pediatric and Neonatal Intensive Care, who was not involved in the study. "At the end of the day, we have to realize that this disease can actually be serious in children. It's not like in the beginning when some people said, OK, this is never going to happen." The vast majority of the patients 40 children, including the two who died had pre existing medical conditions. Nearly half of those patients had complex developmental disorders like cerebral palsy or lifelong technology dependent treatments like tracheostomies or feeding tubes, children "who have trouble walking, talking, eating, breathing," Dr. Shekerdemian said. Other pre existing health issues included cancer and suppressed immune systems from organ transplants or immunological conditions. Perhaps because it was so early in the pandemic, none of the children in the study displayed the newly identified pediatric multisystem inflammatory syndrome, which experts believe may be a latent condition that develops weeks after the initial coronavirus infection and assaults a child's circulatory system with inflammation rather than directly attacking the lungs. Over the weekend, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York reported that three children in the state have died of that illness, and last week the journal Lancet reported a death in England. The new study also suggests that, at least at this point in the pandemic, "nobody knows what the appropriate treatment is for these very sick children," said Dr. Nigel Curtis, a professor of pediatric infectious diseases at the University of Melbourne, who was not involved in the research. Hospitals used many methods of breathing support, as well as unproven medications like hydroxychloroquine, remdesivir and tociluzimab to treat the children. Other approaches included inhaled nitric oxide and blood plasma. "They get a variety of different treatments in a very nonsystematic way because, of course, quite understandably, these intensive care doctors are going to do their best by these children and so they're going to try different potential therapies," said Dr. Curtis, who is also head of infectious diseases at the Royal Children's Hospital Melbourne. The study was conducted by members of an international collaborative of more than 300 pediatric intensive care and infectious disease specialists formed to study coronavirus in children and make recommendations. Forty six hospitals agreed to participate in the study, which included patients with confirmed coronavirus infections who were admitted to pediatric I.C.U.s in North America between March 14 and April 3, said Dr. Shekerdemian, who is also vice chair of pediatrics at Baylor College of Medicine. But only 16 of them had cases during that span, and only 14 reported data in time for publication, she said. The 14 hospitals were all in the United States, and reflected the trajectory of the early pandemic, concentrated on the East Coast, with scattered cases in Texas and elsewhere. Young people up to age 21 were included, but all but three patients were 18 or younger, Dr. Shekerdemian said. Given the small number of cases, it's hard to know how representative the results are. For example, while studies on children in China and an early report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggested that infants and preschool aged children were at highest risk, fewer than a third of the pediatric I.C.U. patients in the new study were that young. The two children who died were 12 and 17. Dr. De Luca, who is chief of the division of pediatrics and neonatal critical care at Paris Saclay University Hospitals, said it made sense that older children with developmental disorders and other complex long term problems would be more vulnerable than infants or toddlers to a virus like Covid 19. "As they get older, they have lower immunity, they don't move much, and their weakening muscles affect their respiratory condition," he said. Fourteen of the patients in the study had only mild or moderate coronavirus symptoms, and it's possible that because of the previous fragile state of their health they were admitted to I.C.U.s as a precaution, experts said. Another was asymptomatic but was already in the I.C.U. for other reasons. Still, 33 young people became severely or critically ill. And of the 18 who required ventilators, six needed additional respiratory interventions, including one child who needed a last resort heart lung bypass machine. Thirty patients experienced lung failure, and at least 11 also had failure of one or more other organs, such as the heart, kidneys or liver, Dr. Shekerdemian said. Two had neurological symptoms, primarily seizures. The children's cases were followed through April 10. At that point, 15 remained hospitalized, but most were no longer severely or critically ill, the study said. Four were on ventilators then, one of whom was also on the heart lung bypass machine. Those four remain hospitalized now, with two still on ventilators, Dr. Shekerdemian said. The small number of patients treated by the hospitals in the study echoes C.D.C. figures so far, which report that 2 percent of confirmed American coronavirus cases have been in children under 18. That's similar to data in China and higher than rates reported in Italy and Spain. As of May 6, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 10 deaths in children 14 and younger and 48 deaths between the ages of 15 and 24. But the actual prevalence and effects of coronavirus in children remain unknown, and last week, the National Institutes of Health announced it was starting a large study to learn more. Scientists are also studying why most children seem less affected than adults, a question that could help them learn more about how the virus works in general. Theories include that cells lining the blood vessels and heart change as we age or that children's lung cells express lower levels of proteins that help the virus enter the cells and replicate. And doctors emphasize the need for standardized treatment approaches for children. "It's critical that we try all these therapies in a systematic way," Dr. Curtis said. "Clinicians worry that because there are small numbers of children that they'll be left out of clinical trials, but it's important that children are included." Like the Science Times page on Facebook. Sign up for the Science Times newsletter. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
AT YOUR FEET: Looking south from 111 Central Park North, the view takes in Harlem Meer. Prices there have set records in Harlem. IT can seem hard to believe, but there was a time when people didn't value Central Park for its views. In the late 1800s, after the park was created, most buildings were still no more than five stories high, residents often decorated with heavy curtains, and an infestation of malaria carrying mosquitoes was a cause for alarm. That was before skyscrapers began shooting up around the park, giving rise to the notion of "park views." Today, those two words are worth untold millions in the world of New York real estate. Apartments overlooking the park can command prices of as much as 88 million, for the full floor penthouse at 15 Central Park West, and the developer Gary Barnett is betting he can sell the two floor penthouse at 157 West 57th Street, the crown jewel of his One57 project, for 115 million. But if park views at the south end bring such eye watering premiums, what about residences at the north end? To find out, I visited the Harlem side of the park. After getting off the subway at 110th Street, I walked just a few steps to 111 Central Park North. There, from an 18th floor apartment with a sizable terrace, you can look out on an idyllic view of Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux's landscaped wonder. Ducks glide through the Harlem Meer. Older residents walk slowly with canes next to groups of adolescent girls strolling through the garden during lunchtime. Just beyond the trees along Fifth Avenue is the Conservatory Garden, where brokers say they have seen brides being photographed. Absent were the horse drawn carriages (and the accompanying trail of manure) and hordes of tourists that occupy the southern and southwestern side of the park. The Harlem side is known as the "mountain" region of the park, for its more hilly terrain. On this day the southern sun was shining brightly, and the terrace at 111 Central Park North offered eastern and western exposures as well. From here, you can see the opposite edge of the park, including the Plaza, and a construction crane hovering over One57 through the haze that offers a reminder of how that 90 story building will tower over most others in Midtown. Harlem, it turns out, is one of the few remaining places in the city where you can get a park view for relatively low prices. The price of this view? The three bedroom three bath condo, with 1,914 square feet, is listed at 2.39 million. In 2008, as the financial crisis took hold, a buyer sold a penthouse in the building for 8 million, 500,000 less than he had paid, after trying to flip it for 12 million, said Jill Sloane of Halstead, a broker on the deal. Walking east along Central Park North I passed low slung residential buildings of no more than six stories, a correctional facility that houses the disgraced Tyco executive Dennis Kozlowski, and a church on the corner of Fifth Avenue. A small organic food store is expected to open soon on the block, a sign, real estate brokers say, of the area's gentrification. On the east side of the intersection, an agent gave me a tour 1280 Fifth Avenue, which opened last year and was designed by Robert A.M. Stern, the architect of 15 Central Park West. The Harlem building offers tranquil, unobstructed views of the northeast corner of the park. There are "intimate" views from one seventh floor corner unit I visited, and "panoramic" views from the higher floors of the 20 story building. "People realize they would be paying double and triple in Midtown and would not have this kind of vista," said Tom Postilio, a broker at CORE. "People with a little more pioneering spirit are here investing." About half of the buyers in the building so far have been foreign, and have predominantly been all cash buyers, according to Kathleen Corton, a principal of Brickman, the developer. Parul Brahmbhatt, a sales associate at CORE, parsed the difference for me in pricing at 1280 Fifth to help me understand the premium placed on park views. Unit 7B, which faces the park, has 1,480 square feet and is listed for 1.87 million. A north facing unit on the same floor with no park view is going for 1.265 million and is just 10 square feet smaller. Regardless of which side of the park an apartment faces, brokers and appraisers say a Central Park view is worth 25 percent to 50 percent more than a nonpark view for a similar sized residence. New York is one of the few cities in the United States that put a higher premium on a park view than a river view, said Jonathan J. Miller, the president of Miller Samuel real estate appraisers. Views of the Hudson command a 10 percent to 25 percent premium. "We are inward looking," Mr. Miller said. It's remarkable to think that in the 19th century "the park was simply a kind of protector, a presentable front yard," said Christopher Gray, who writes the "Streetscapes" column for The New York Times. Early on, the park also was a health concern. An Oct. 13, 1877, edition of The Real Estate Record and Guide noted that malaria in the park was "becoming more palpably widespread and painful." The "chills and fevers and other malarious disorders" were causing a "widespread prejudice" among residents "against choosing any locality in the proximity of the park for a place of residence," The Record and Guide reported. Still, by the turn of the century, Fifth Avenue opposite the park was already the most desirable house site in the city, Mr. Gray said. Despite the health concerns, developers pushed to build taller buildings. By 1930, the 27 story San Remo towers and residential hotels like the Ritz, at 101 East 57th, were offering spectacularly different views. About a dozen buildings of that size were built before the Depression intervened, halting most construction. "The typical building in 1960 was no different in mass than the typical building in 1925 they were all 15 to 18 stories," Mr. Gray said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
Biased? Probably. Oppositional? Maybe. Essential? In theory. But the enemy? Not so much. President Trump last week called the news media "the enemy of the American people." But in interviews around the country this week, Americans of varying political affiliations, even those with serious misgivings about the media, largely allowed that the president's characterization had gone too far. "I think that was a bit much," said Mark Huizingh, 67, a Trump supporter and furniture store owner in Grand Rapids, Mich. "That was a little too strong." Mr. Trump's presidency has exacerbated already deep ideological divisions in the country, and Americans on one end of the political spectrum increasingly find themselves unable even to look their counterparts in the eye. But if there has been one instance in the last month when the rift has not seemed quite as large, perhaps it has been the response to Mr. Trump's harsh rebuke of the media. Still, the feeling toward the news media among those interviewed was far from warm and fuzzy. Many said they believed the media was flawed in general, and certainly when it came to the coverage of Mr. Trump and his administration. "Trump may be exaggerating," said Jodi Littell, 55, an English teacher from Miami, who was strolling around a shopping center with her husband. But, she added, "to some degree he's right that the media is out to get him." Mr. Trump's attempts to demonize the mainstream media are nothing new. He has referred to the news media as the "opposition party" and repeatedly called legitimate news organizations "fake news." He and his aides have also consistently attacked the media's credibility, calling out factual mistakes made by organizations sometimes even after corrections were made. But if the tactics were meant to convince the public that the media was a deceitful adversary, they did not appear to be having quite the desired effect. According to a Quinnipiac University poll released on Wednesday, 61 percent of respondents said they disapproved of the way Mr. Trump talked about the media. Fifty two percent said they trusted the media more to tell the truth about important issues, while 37 percent said they trusted Mr. Trump more to do so. The political divide, however, is stark: Among Democrats, 86 percent said they trusted the media more to tell the truth, while 78 percent of Republicans said they trusted Mr. Trump more. A Fox News poll released last week showed respondents about evenly divided on whom they trusted more to tell the truth. "Nobody is perfect," said Nick Lortie, 24, a plumber from Merrimack, N.H., who voted for the Libertarian candidate, Gary Johnson, in the presidential election. "It's like if the weatherman says it's going to rain and it doesn't if someone tells them something and it turns out to be wrong, it's not their fault," he said, referring to the media. Charles Mellison Jr., 77, a retired long haul truck driver and registered Democrat in Miami, said he thought Mr. Trump's comments were intended to "throw people off." "He should be more respectful," he added, as he sipped a cup of coffee. "The media are not liars." Rick Rutter, 56, a pastor and executive director of a local rescue mission from Nashua, N.H., chuckled at the idea that the media was the enemy of the American people. But he, like many others interviewed, said he did see a litany of problems with the press. "It's like that quote," he said. "'If you don't read the paper, you're uninformed. If you do, you're misinformed.'" Retail earnings and Black Friday: the week in business. Elizabeth Holmes will resume her testimony in her fraud trial. The news media, however, was acting like an enemy in at least one respect: It was exhausting him. During the run up to the election, Mr. Rutter said, he had cut the cord in part because keeping up with different interpretations of current events on television had become fruitless. "I think it's right and wrong," Ted Friedman, 59, a part time furniture upholsterer in Grand Rapids, said about likening the media to the enemy. "I think the media definitely is out there to stir the pot up and see what comes out of it." But he added that his complaints were directed at national news outlets, not his local media. "I think what we're seeing in the mainstream we're talking CNN, Fox and so forth I think we're seeing the kids are on the playground," he said. "Donald Trump's on the playground, the media's on the playground, and they're all fighting for that one little swing." Gary Abernathy, 61, the editor and publisher of The Times Gazette in Hillsboro, Ohio, which endorsed Mr. Trump for president, said part of the problem with the mainstream media's coverage of Mr. Trump was that reporters at major newspapers "don't really get other parts of the country." "I do think it's a failure to understand, and also a failure to respect the opinions of Trump voters," he said. "I'm just a big believer in good journalism, and that's what I hate seeing fall by the wayside in the coverage of Trump," he added. "I think Trump should be critically covered, but he should be covered with fairness not with animosity, not with a point of view. You want the press to simply be fair." Often, a negative perception of the media reflected a deeper frustration with coverage unrelated to coverage of Mr. Trump. "Holy moly in my opinion, I believe they're pretty biased," Amber McDowell, 37, who owns a flower shop in Broadus, Mont., said about the news media. Still, Ms. McDowell, a registered Republican who said she had never voted for a Democrat in a presidential election, said she "wouldn't go as far as 'the enemy' " in describing the news media. "It's just a lot of the bad events. You don't ever see any of the good stuff with the soldiers and the good stuff with the police," she said, adding, "In small town U.S.A., I believe that's probably how a lot of us feel." Charles Funderburk, 46, a contractor in Little Rock, Ark., and a conservative Republican, said he felt he was "only getting half truths" from the news media. "The media has its own agenda, just like the Democrats and Republicans do," he said, as he loaded supplies into his pickup truck at Home Depot. "They want to tell us what they want to tell us when they want to tell us, if they want to tell us." Cindy Lyons, 40, who helps her husband run a tent rental business in Grand Rapids, also stopped short of siding with Mr. Trump's characterization of the media but allowed that he might not be that far afield. "I don't know if I agree with it, but I see where it's coming from," she said. Ms. Lyons, a mother of five boys who described herself as "kind of in the middle" in terms of her political leanings, said that while she did not think the media was untruthful, she, too, was put off by the frequent negative coverage. "You turn on the news, and you very rarely hear the good," she said. "I know that's the norm, because people aren't really out reporting on things that are going great." But even those critical of the news media and its coverage of Mr. Trump appeared ready to give it all a rest. "People already voted him in," said Richard Bryant, 48, a construction project manager in Little Rock. "Let's move on and make America great again." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
FOR the well traveled, the idea of retirement abroad can seem an idyll. You pick a place you've loved visiting, whether it's the thrumming avenues of Paris or the sunny strands of Panama, and jet off for the perfect permanent vacation. But the fantasy can become less carefree if you haven't figured out in advance what to do about health insurance. The best policies, those offering the broadest coverage and giving access to the best hospitals, can be jarringly costly. More affordable alternatives can come with exceptions that may surprise people accustomed to the comprehensive coverage offered through many United States employers. Many countries offer high quality care France is a prominent example but retirees won't be able to access it without insurance or paying out of pocket. And in almost all cases, Medicare doesn't pay for health care provided outside of the United States. "Health insurance really is a primary consideration when retiring overseas," said Brendan Sharkey, director of individual products for HTH, which sells and administers GeoBlue international health insurance. "People may want sunshine and affordable living, but they'll also want to make sure they'll be covered adequately." That means not just buying a policy, but also assessing the quality of health care in the country where they plan to settle. "If you've had two heart attacks, you have to ask yourself if it makes sense to retire in Nicaragua, where the underlying quality of care just isn't there," Mr. Sharkey said. More practical alternatives might be Panama or Thailand warm, affordable countries known for better quality care, he said. For health insurers, age equals risk senescence brings sickness. So older people can expect to pay up for international health insurance, especially as they reach their middle to late 70s. "It's the same everywhere in the world the older you get, the more expensive the premiums," said Steve Nelson, product development manager at Medibroker, an insurance brokerage in North Shields, England. At Cigna, international health premiums can range from a couple of hundred dollars a month for the most basic plan to several thousand for a comprehensive one, said James T. O'Brien, head of the Americas region for Cigna's global individual plans. "Our product is designed to take all comers we've made it modular and flexible," Mr. O'Brien said. Cigna offers three levels of inpatient coverage, with total annual limits of 1 million, 2 million or 3 million. A customer can then choose among several deductibles, ranging up to 10,000 a year, and can add coverage for such things as outpatient care, medical evacuation and vision and dental services. Anyone shopping around should understand that insurers individually assess applicants for international medical policies, Mr. O'Brien added. Coverage isn't automatic, as it is with Medicare. The insurer reviews an applicant's health, typically either through a questionnaire, an examination of medical history or both. The insurer then decides whether to offer coverage, what the premium will be and whether to exclude any conditions. Cigna imposes no age limits on its plans, but some insurers won't cover people who have crossed an age threshold. Allianz Worldwide Care, for example, won't accept applications from people past their 76th birthday, said Alexander Bender, a senior manager for client relations, based in Dublin. Once Allianz does enroll people, it guarantees lifelong coverage as long as they pay their premiums, he said. HTH sets a similar limit for its longer term GeoBlue policies. Age also can bring ailments that complicate coverage. "The older you are, the more underlying conditions you may have," said Mr. Sharkey. "Once somebody starts having multiple conditions maybe high blood pressure, obesity and high cholesterol it becomes difficult to cover them in one of our long term plans." Locast, a nonprofit streaming service for local TV, is shutting down Capital One's chief executive was fined after being called a 'repeat offender.' Like many insurers, HTH offers policies that can cover either short or long stays abroad. The short term ones are intended for travelers and snowbirds, while the long term ones are for full time foreign residents. "For longer term coverage, there are medical conditions that are an automatic decline if you're a pacemaker recipient, if you're diabetic and insulin dependent, if you're undergoing cancer treatment," said Mr. Sharkey. Another consideration is whether you want coverage in the United States. Some international health insurers won't cover domestic care, and others charge more for it. Allianz, for example, offers policies that provide coverage that is worldwide or worldwide minus the United States. Allianz singles out this country, sometimes even doubling its policy premiums, because health care costs more here than elsewhere, Mr. Bender said. Despite the many factors, expatriate retirees find ways to cover their health costs that are as varied as the places they pick as their new homes. When Joseph S. Coyle and his wife, Sigun, retired to Paris about a decade ago, they acquired coverage by joining the Association of Americans Resident Overseas, a Paris based group that represents United States expatriates. Members can buy into a group plan insured by Swiss Life in Zurich. The Coyles pay about 10,000 euros a year (around 13,720), Mr. Coyle said. "When we started, it was much less, but I'm 78, so the coverage has bumped up for me," he said. It has gotten expensive enough that the Coyles are considering returning the United States. "If one of us gets seriously sick, we're going to have to go back," he said. Not everyone opts for American style insurance coverage. Holly S. Carter and her husband, Scott, signed up for the health plan offered through the nearby Chiriqui Hospital when they retired from California to Boquete, Panama. The plan operates like a traditional H.M.O.; members pay a monthly fee, plus an annual rider for cancer coverage. The Carters pay 75 a month for the basic insurance, and 100 extra a year for the cancer coverage, Ms. Carter said. Those rates are probably lower than many retirees would see because they retired early she's 48, and he's 47. But according to the hospital's current rates, they'd pay only 200 a month if they were both 80, she said. The Carters arrived in Panama last year, and have already used the hospital, when Mr. Carter had a hernia operation. Ms. Carter said the care was excellent and much cheaper than in California. "It was going to be 8,000 out of pocket in California after insurance," she said. "Here, he stayed a night in the hospital, and it was 2,500." They paid the full cost because Mr. Carter had the hernia before they joined Chiriqui's plan. Some retirees forgo health insurance. That's what Kristin Cunningham and her husband, Joel, opted to do. Ms. Cunningham was a registered nurse in the United States before they retired to David, Panama. Her medical knowledge, plus low health care prices there, led the Cunninghams to choose to pay out of pocket. "We looked around for international health insurance, but it was more than we wanted to pay," she said. Josef D. Woodman, author of "Patients Beyond Borders," a book that guides people on finding affordable health care outside of the United States, said that a few countries allow retirees who have established residency to participate in their national health plans. But gaining access to these plans can entail the use of public hospitals and lengthy waits for nonemergency services, he said. Mr. Woodman cautioned against going without coverage, and said most retirees should consider buying at least a high deductible policy covering catastrophic illness. "Even in places like Thailand where good health care is really cheap, cancer is going to be expensive," he said. "I can't think of any country where cancer or a serious car accident wouldn't be financially disastrous." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Your Money |
Let's get this out of the way up front: "An African City," the steamy Ghanaian web series about five young women looking for love in Accra, is an unabashed rip off of "Sex and the City." There are the ubiquitous five inch strappy sandals, the scene stealing dresses made of Fanti fabric and the bevy of men who hop in and out of the beds of Nana Yaa, Makena, Zainab and Sade. The women are as free and liberal about sex as their American HBO foremothers, with the exception of the fifth character, Ngozi, who is such a Charlotte. The women fit perfectly into Carrie or Miranda type boxes. Nana Yaa, the main character, is a radio journalist who ponders existential dating questions in voice overs throughout the show. Zainab and Makena both function as a Miranda fiercely independent and all about their business. Ngozi is the church girl who works for a nongovernmental organization and purses her lips at too much talk about the male anatomy. And Sade is Samantha, with condoms spilling from the designer handbags that her rich, married boyfriend buys for her. The women spend an enormous amount of time sipping cocktails in dimly lit restaurants as they chat about rolling power outages, good condom etiquette and men who expect them to leave their jobs and make fufu all day. But the show's creator, Nicole Amarteifio, who moved from Ghana to New York and then back again, is also presenting an unseen side of culture on a continent that is usually depicted with footage of war, famine and poverty. There is none of that here. Instead, "An African City" struts into the lives of well off African women. Makena is an Oxford trained lawyer, and Sade graduated from Harvard Business School. Zainab sits atop a growing shea butter empire, and Nana Yaa's father is the country's minister of energy. Through the five women, "An African City" explores what it means to be a westernized young woman readjusting to the culture and surroundings of her home continent. The five women are all "returnees," the children of families who left Ghana for the West and then came home with so called "returnee savior syndrome." The phrase "to whom much is given, much is required" could be their unofficial motto, as it frames their interactions and challenges their way of thinking. They are constantly fretting about whether they would tip so little if back in Manhattan, or why the "white wedding" is considered better than a traditional one. The show has received deserved criticism for the distance it maintains from the side of Ghana that doesn't yet have street signs or personal chauffeurs. Some of the women's biggest problems are the usual complaints of the well off. Are their maids stealing their bras? Shouldn't their neighbors buy expensive silencers for their power generators so the women can sleep a bit more peacefully at night? This is Ghana's 1 percent, portraying a lifestyle that few on the continent can relate to. Just like the original, "Sex and the City." But the show's appeal comes from the ability to turn the same discussions that women around the world are having over cocktails and in group texts into a salient critique of Western and African cultures. Bringing a handsome lawyer from Washington home to meet the traditional West African family reveals the divide between black people in Africa and black people from the United States. The question of entitlement is explored through familial connections high up in government. And a conversation about a particular form of birth control earns a quick and snappy referendum on colonialism, as Zainab says, "The only time you will hear me support the pullout method is happily discussing the British pulling out of Ghana in 1975." In an interview, Ms. Amarteifio said most of her audience outside of Africa is in the United States, followed by Britain, France and Canada. Though the themes of love and sisterhood are universal, she assumes most of those viewers are members of the African diaspora. "It's definitely my mother's generation who come up to me and say, 'Good job, good job, keep it going!'" she said. "And I'm assuming it's because they like the fact that these are five young women talking so freely about sex, and there's something so liberating about these five women. Maybe they didn't feel in their day that they were that free." In an episode from Season 1, some of Sade's luggage is held up at customs for upward of three months, leaving her without her beloved vibrator. She says she would have brought it in her carry on instead "if I had known that you can't get one in Togo, Benin, Ghana anywhere in West Africa for that matter." A later episode has them mystified by social media and its role in a society that is already confounded by the murky lines drawn around traditional marriages. After Zainab's date assures her that he is not married or seeing anyone, he friends her on Facebook without bothering to hide his actual marital status. "When a man in Ghana says that he's single, it means that his wife is just in another country or in another city or the other room," Sade tells her. In Season 2, Makena's African American boyfriend is upset to learn that her family's houseboy calls her uncle "master," and she herself goes into personal crisis when her aunt tells her that the family once owned slaves. One episode shows a store clerk pushing bleaching cream on one of the girls, telling her that she would be so much prettier if she weren't so dark. Ms. Amarteifio is a returnee herself, as are many of the cast members. She moved back to Ghana after attending graduate school at Georgetown, intent on doing development work in her own country. She got a job with the government in development, but her heart wasn't really in it. Then she fell in love, got her heart broken and binged on the DVD box set of "Sex and the City." Watching it, she said, felt like watching her and her friends gallivanting around her own version of New York City. "These women are actually very familiar," she remembers thinking. "Women I know in Accra, women I know in Kigali or Nairobi or Lagos or Monrovia." So she wrote her own series. "An African City" features music from Ghanaian hip hop artists like Jayso, chic home decor from Ghanaian interior designers that are highlighted in detail on the show's Instagram page, and clothing from fashion designers like Christie Brown, Archel Bernard, Kiki Clothing, Osei Duro and Afrodesiac. The vibrant colors and pop patterns have been the toast of the series, especially as members of the African diaspora have begun to incorporate kente cloth crop tops into their wardrobes and wear traditional patterns to big events like prom. Ms. Amarteifio had initially planned to release the first season episodes online, build a following, then pitch the series to a network like BET or the Africa Channel. But she didn't even make it to the finale before those same channels were seeking her. It has since been shown on EbonyLife TV and A , a subsidiary of the French channel Canal . She's been in talks with some of the networks to move forward with the show, but those discussions have stalled. She has also talked with Netflix, which she said is likely to be the future home for Seasons 1 and 2. And she and Netflix are discussing "The Republic," another show that she's working on. It will be an African version of the ABC show "Scandal." Meanwhile, she has begun work on Season 3 of "An African City." She doesn't foresee the happily ever after ending that "Sex in the City" had, a bow tied finale that remains scrutinized today. Rather, she says, she wants to continue to tell stories about Ghana through the eyes of young returnees looking for love on their home continent. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
"Thoroughbreds," the 2018 debut feature of the playwright Cory Finley, was not to every taste, but for acid wit and gliding camera moves, it could hardly be beat. Finley's second feature, "Bad Education," which airs Saturday night on HBO, traffics in a kindred casual misanthropy. The movie offers an agreeably slick account of an early 2000s scandal in which a former superintendent of schools in Roslyn, N.Y., pleaded guilty to stealing 2 million from his district. And like the character played by Hugh Jackman, the superintendent Frank Tassone, "Bad Education" initially keeps its cards close, playing tricks with viewers' sympathies. Frank, his hair gelled back and his face always wrenched into a grin, goes out of his way to be presentable. He remembers details about students from years earlier or recognizes their siblings. He meets with a parent who pushes for accelerated treatment for her third grader. He maintains (or at least fakes) an interest in the lives of his teachers. He even welcomes an unscheduled interview with a school newspaper reporter, Rachel (Geraldine Viswanathan), encouraging her to dig deeper on a story about a school construction boondoggle. This, it turns out, is one of his less sharp moves. (The real life student journalist who helped break the story of the scandal wrote about her experiences for The New York Times.) | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
THEY WILL HAVE TO DIE NOW Mosul and the Fall of the Caliphate By James Verini Read by Ray Porter "It makes no difference what men think of war," says the Judge in Cormac McCarthy's "Blood Meridian." "War endures. As well ask men what they think of stone. War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner. That is the way it was and will be." The interplay between the "was" and the "will be" of war runs powerfully throughout "They Will Have to Die Now," James Verini's account of the battle to retake Mosul from the Islamic State. Verini, who covered the battle for The New York Times Magazine and National Geographic, has written not only a deeply human account of the conflict but also a fascinating historical investigation of Mosul itself. Verini traveled to Iraq for the first time in the summer of 2016, feeling a need "to write about this country whose story had been entwined with my country's story for a generation now, for most of my life, so entwined that neither place any longer made sense without the other." Shortly after arriving, he embeds with the elite and American trained Counter Terrorism Service, known as C.T.S., the shock troops at the vanguard of the Iraqi government's fight to retake territory seized by the Islamic State. Verini is a skilled observer of combat. "Experientially," he writes, "war is mainly sound. In the news, in a movie, you see a war, but once amid a war, you mostly hear it." His descriptions are sharp, as of "the last word metallic clangor" of heavy machine guns; and how, in an effort to appear less threatening to communities, "soldiers had wedged bouquets of pink plastic flowers into the bullet holes in the windscreens of their Humvees." In the audiobook version, Ray Porter's forceful narration heightens the propulsive quality of Verini's writing, while also highlighting the general and enduring absurdities of war. When the battle to retake Mosul begins in October 2016, Verini is along for the ride and it's a long one. An operation that was supposed to take four to six months instead bleeds into 10, and his reporting spills well into that next year. In chapters spanning the millenniums of Mosul's history from the Assyrian kings to the Ottoman sultans to the British crown one year starts to feel like a very small unit of measure. If this audiobook has a shape, it isn't the classic narrative arc with a beginning, middle and end, but rather a helix, in which the past and the present are chasing each other on parallel axes, defined by but never touching each other. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
Some of the world's most cataclysmic volcanic eruptions are associated with the collapse of a caldera, a depression in the top of the volcano that forms and deepens as a reservoir of magma below it empties out. The two largest of the 20th century Pinatubo in 1991 in the Philippines and Novarupta in Alaska that formed the spectacular Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes in 1912 both blew their tops this way. Caldera collapses are rare, and when they do occur they usually happen quickly, in hours or a few days. But when Bardarbunga, a large volcano under an ice cap in central Iceland, erupted in August 2014, the caldera sank and collapsed gradually over the course of the six month eruption. That gave scientists a unique opportunity to study it. In a report published Thursday in the journal Science, volcanologists reveal that the sinking caldera actually helped drive the eruption, by keeping pressure on the magma chamber as the hot rock flowed out. "We are talking about a hydraulic system," said Magnus T. Gudmundsson, a researcher at the University of Iceland and lead author of the paper. The caldera, he said, pushed down on the reservoir of magma, which flowed nearly 30 miles through a fracture in the volcano before emerging at the Holuhraun lava field. Because the caldera collapse happened under the Vatnajokull ice cap, which is about 1,500 feet thick on average, Dr. Gudmundsson and his colleagues had to study it indirectly using seismometers, radar and other instruments. They also placed GPS sensors on top of the ice, which enabled them to gauge the collapse of the caldera because the ice followed it as it sank. The caldera is roughly oval in shape, covering about 40 square miles, making the collapse the largest ever monitored. Over the course of the eruption it sank about 200 feet. Dr. Gudmundsson said the research showed that the eruption started when pressure increased within the magma chamber, which is at a depth of about seven miles. The caldera collapse began about five days later, when an estimated 12 percent to 20 percent of the magma had already left the chamber. If the collapse had not started, Dr. Gudmundsson said, the eruption might have ended at that point because the loss of all that magma had reduced the pressure in the chamber. But the collapse put new pressure on the chamber, and the flow of lava continued. The caldera, he said, "is like a piston pushing down on a body of fluid, and there is a pipe going from this container of fluid sideways to the surface." John Stix, a volcanologist at McGill University in Montreal, said the Bardarbunga findings were fascinating for what they showed about the mechanics of the collapse. "One would think that calderas don't collapse like pistons," he said. "But effectively that's what's happening." He said the study would help scientists better understand what drives extremely large eruptions like Tambora in what is now Indonesia, which led to what became known as the "year without a summer" when it erupted in 1815. Dr. Gudmundsson noted that scientists did not notice that the Bardarbunga caldera was collapsing until about two weeks after it started. That would not happen today, he said, thanks to this research, which identified the kinds of seismic signals that indicate the start of a collapse. "That's very important to know," Dr. Gudmundsson added, "because not all collapses are as gradual and well behaved as this one." For instance, if Yellowstone were to erupt again it would no doubt involve a collapsing caldera and be far more catastrophic than the one observed in Iceland. Despite some of the hysteria about Yellowstone, which last erupted 640,000 years ago, the odds of another eruption happening anytime soon are vanishingly small. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
"I Know This Much Is True," an HBO limited series based on Wally Lamb's 1998 brick of a book, begins when Thomas Birdsey enters a public library and amputates his right hand. This is only the first calamity. A decades long story of love and sacrifice, the show stars Mark Ruffalo as both Thomas and his identical twin, Dominick. The director Derek Cianfrance ("Blue Valentine," "The Place Beyond the Pines") also wrote all six episodes of the series, which premieres on May 10. Onscreen, Ruffalo alternately fights, comforts and runs after himself, a tricky double act Cianfrance captured via shrewd camera placement, occasional CGI and a six week production shutdown. That was when Ruffalo, who had shot for 17 weeks as Dominick, went away to gain 30 pounds and walk back his skin care routine in order to return as Thomas, who has schizophrenia. The show is Cianfrance's first series and the first for Ruffalo in 20 years. Last month, the actor and the director logged onto a Zoom meeting, Ruffalo from his house in upstate New York, Cianfrance from his Brooklyn home. During a 90 minute discussion, with occasional breaks to repark cars and rejigger Wi Fi, they talked about catastrophe, twinning and why a family tragedy might be just what people sheltering with their families need now. These are edited excerpts from the conversation. Did you ever think, in reading the book, that there was maybe too much catastrophe? MARK RUFFALO I didn't think there was enough, actually. I was just so moved by it. It was personal in a lot of ways. I lost my brother, of course. Scott Ruffalo, Mark Ruffalo's younger brother, was killed in 2008. That will always be something that I'll draw from. We were basically Italian twins, barely a year apart from each other. DEREK CIANFRANCE I like slow songs. I like the ballads. A tragedy about one man and his relationships, that seemed like an honest and deep and rich text to draw from. Maybe that's just my messed up taste. Mark, why did you want to do a series? RUFFALO My wife is an avid show watcher. She turned me on to it. I was jealous that actors were getting to really dig into characters. But there's a continuity in having one director and one writer, which I insisted on from the very beginning. Me and Derek both, we've always talked about it as a six hour movie. We shot it that way. CIANFRANCE On 35 millmeter film. We shot like 1.78 million feet of film, 590 hours of 35 millimeter film stock. Our motto was, Let's keep Kodak in business. It gave us some real interesting limitations on set. When you shoot digital, you can kind of shoot forever. If you put a load of film in, you have nine minutes and 20 seconds. Film sets this natural boundary. There's a sacredness, a kind of preciousness to the time. Tell me about the challenge of playing twins. RUFFALO I've always been a little crazy, you know? I've always bit off more than I can chew, as a form of self destruction. But some part of me also is willing to meet the challenge as best as I can. Derek and I, we didn't want it to feel like I would shoot Dominick and run and put on a wig and shoot Thomas. I had shot "Normal Heart" the 2014 HBO film based on Larry Kramer's play , and we'd shut down so Matt Bomer an actor in the film could lose all that weight. So I knew HBO would conceivably let us shut down production so I could gain weight. We really wanted to create two separate people that were so distinctly different from each other, even though they were identical. Dominick, he's the favorite son, brought up in this very masculine way. We couldn't find Dominick's character until Derek told me to do 50 push ups between each take. That became how we grounded Dominick very upper body, very tense, very aggressive. Thomas has a mental illness. He's living with schizophrenia. But he has a kind of emotional facility that's alien to Dominick. How much research did you do about what it's like to live with schizophrenia? RUFFALO A lot. That was the most daunting thing for me. We tried some iterations of it along the way; none of it was working, and we knew so much was riding on it. But I got to know someone who was living with schizophrenia: Richard Wiedeman is doing it beautifully. One thing about YouTube and social media is that you can get to know people who are living with this, they speak so openly about it. I probably watched 1,000 hours of people living with schizophrenia. We tried many different versions of Thomas, even on set. A lot of times I see people playing the illness as personality. That's the trap of it, a trap that I have to admit that I had fallen into myself. Finding the personality of Thomas was the most difficult part of it. On the first day that Mark came back as Thomas he was basically locked in this trailer. Mark is the least prima donna actor you'll ever find, right? CIANFRANCE I went to his trailer and spent about an hour with him. Mark went out to set and there was an audible gasp from the crew as they saw Mark. People didn't know what to do. They didn't know if they could talk to him. Mark sat down and he was absolutely in the pocket immediately. There was nothing we had to force, he just found it. To play someone who has a mental illness is a big responsibility we all breathed a sigh of relief because it felt honest, it felt true. It didn't feel like an affectation. What did you do during those six weeks away from the set, Mark? RUFFALO Not push ups. I started to sequester myself. I was trying to imagine a life of hearing these voices that are constantly judging you and attacking you. And eating and eating and eating. I mean, there was a point where I was like, I can't make it. RUFFALO I was a basket case. The last two weeks I was by myself in a rental house and I got really bad indigestion so I couldn't even enjoy the food. I had to sleep sitting up at night because I had such bad acid reflux. In the end, it was only oatmeal with like half a stick of butter and heavy whipped cream and maple syrup that got me got me to where I needed to be. You previously described the shoot as "brutally tough." I'm starting to understand why. RUFFALO Listen, in one sense it's been the most amazing thing I've ever done. But it's 600 pages of dialogue. I was on every page. I mean, I can retire now. My feeling of, Did I push myself? Did I leave it all there? I've never felt that. I've always held back something. With this thing, I made a decision: I'm 52 years old; I'm not going to leave anything behind. How did you work the twinning? CIANFRANCE For Dominick, Mark needed someone to be Thomas. He needed a real actor so that he could be alive. My good friend Gabe Fazio, who was in "The Place Beyond the Pines," I asked him, "Would you be interested in acting in this movie opposite Mark Ruffalo, being his twin brother? But here's the caveat. No one's ever going to see a frame of your performance." And Gabe, without hesitation, said yes. There's a version of the movie out there that's all Gabe. Like a bootleg. RUFFALO I told Derek so many times: "He's doing it so well. I don't know that I can do any better than that! Maybe we can make him look like me?" There was even a point where we had a mask made of my face that we put on him. It didn't work at all. CIANFRANCE There are different ways to do the twinning: shot/countershot, with motion control, or through head or face replacement where there's no way to do motion control. There's a handful of those moments throughout the six hours. Jody Lee Lipes, the cinematographer , early on, we're like, "Let's shoot this movie the way we want to shoot and let the technical side figure itself out." RUFFALO When the two characters are touching each other, when they're in direct physical contact, that's the only place where it really gets tricky. So we stayed away from that except for these precious moments, beautiful moments. What do you think it means for the show to arrive at this strange time? CIANFRANCE My family and I, we're isolating at home, we try to watch something every night. The point of entertainment and art is to help people, comfort people, be people's friends. That's what art has always done for me. People can either take this or not, they want to see it or they don't. We tried to make something as honest as we possibly could. My biggest hope is that it keeps people company, that it's a friend to people. Sometimes a very dramatic friend. You're not afraid it's going bring everybody down? CIANFRANCE Sometimes when you go through the toughest things, drama makes you feel not alone. That's why I started making movies. When I watched movies where everyone was perfect and the actors all had nice teeth, I always felt like left out, because my own life didn't match. I have been trying for the beautiful ugliness of real life. RUFFALO It's all about family right now and our show is all about family, the responsibility we have to each other and how challenging it is, but also so essential. The show is right for this strange experience we are living through. It is raw and sincere and so comforting in its basic truth: We are bound to each other, whether we like it or not. We are better for it. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
Get in a faux lather, rinse with bile, repeat ad nauseam right? The list of Mr. Trump's sexist attacks on women he likes to call them "nasty" is long. He seems to delight in going after women of color, like his criticism this summer against the mayor of Washington, Muriel Bowser, and the mayor of Chicago, Lori Lightfoot. But the attack on Ms. Powell Jobs was craven even by Mr. Trump's standards for its plainly sexist effort to diminish her by raising the specter of her husband, the Apple co founder Steve Jobs, being displeased with how she was using his enormous fortune. This, even though Mr. Jobs has been dead since 2011, and the money was also always hers, since the pair had been married 20 years. Better not tell Mr. Trump then that there are two even wealthier women from the world of tech Mackenzie Scott, who recently divorced from the Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos, and Melinda Gates, who is married to the Microsoft co founder Bill Gates who are also having a significant influence on this nation with efforts the president surely doesn't like. Worse for him, they will continue to profoundly reshape society in the years to come. And before those who don't know how modern marriages actually work claim that these women did not come to their power by inventing anything themselves, let me point out that the Trump children and Mr. Trump himself try to pretend they are where they are due to talent and not family relationships. More to the point, as someone who has had a front row seat covering tech for more than 30 years, I've seen first hand how all three women had a significant impact on the companies and on their spouses, especially in the very critical early days of their careers. But these are the facts now: Ms. Powell Jobs is the sixth richest woman in the world, with more than 20 billion; Ms. Scott has close to 68 billion, making her the world's wealthiest woman; and the Gates couple share a 116 billion fortune. Let's start with the highly visible Ms. Gates, who was a well regarded executive at Microsoft when she met her husband decades ago. She has since moved on to bigger things, most significantly co chairing the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, a 40 billion charitable organization that's one of the most influential philanthropies in the world. While centered on education and poverty, the charity's most significant efforts have been aimed at global health, including what has been a valiant effort to eradicate malaria. Recently, the foundation has been focused on a coronavirus vaccine. Ms. Gates, primarily through an investment and incubation company called Pivotal Ventures, has also been pushing the issue of women's inequality to the forefront. A spate of new venture firms led by women and aimed at the funding disparity between male and female founders all have major investments from her. In an interview in The Times two weeks ago, she did not hold back when discussing the need to address gender disparities or when addressing Mr. Trump's botched pandemic response. "If we want to build back a better society, and also have a quicker recovery, then we have to look at the specific gender pieces that we need to work on in every country around the world," she said. "The U.S. has been completely lacking at leadership on this issue. And because of that, we have put our children and our elderly at the greatest risk in the world. And that is a crime." Ms. Scott, who is also a novelist, has been quieter over the years but not recently when it comes to doling out very loud amounts of money. This summer she announced 1.7 billion in donations to a variety of causes around social justice, part of a promise to give away most of her wealth in her lifetime. About 600 million is going to racial equity causes, 400 million to economic mobility initiatives, 133 million to gender equity causes and 46 million to L.G.B.T.Q. equity organizations. "I began work to complete my pledge with the belief that my life had yielded two assets that could be of particular value to others: the money these systems helped deliver to me, and a conviction that people who have experience with inequities are the ones best equipped to design solutions," she wrote in a blog post. Which brings us to Mr. Trump's target du jour, Ms. Powell Jobs, who is employing a varied and perhaps more creative approach to distributing her vast wealth. Ms. Powell Jobs founded the Emerson Collective, an umbrella organization for her philanthropy and businesses focused on social change across many areas, like education, immigration rights, media, health and social justice. That includes policy programs and, perhaps most interestingly, funding a number of artistic efforts. The Emerson Collective, for example, backed "Carne y Arena," an immersive virtual reality show about the immigration experience of crossing the border, right down to letting the audience touch the actual shoes of migrants. In 2017 I interviewed Ms. Powell Jobs along with Senator Kamala Harris. Ms. Powell Jobs talked about her willingness to work with all sides on the immigrant issue, including having a closed door meeting with Mr. Trump about the plight of the so called Dreamers. "We have enormous talent and ingenuity and I.Q. dispersed throughout this world; we do not have equal opportunity dispersed throughout this world," Ms. Powell Jobs said at the time, stressing the need to avoid partisan sniping. But it is in impact investing in media that she is perhaps becoming best known. That includes majority ownership of The Atlantic, the well regarded magazine that published a devastating piece last week about Mr. Trump's disdain for military service members. The article said that Mr. Trump called those who died in battle "losers" and "suckers." Much of the report has been confirmed by a wide range of other outlets, including Fox News. Thus, the Trump tweet at Ms. Powell Jobs, in response to another about her political donations, also showed that he does not seem to understand that she is not guiding the editorial coverage of the magazine. (That would be the article's author and The Atlantic's editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg.) Still, as he does with Mr. Bezos and The Washington Post, Mr. Trump cannot conceive of owning a media entity without making use of it as a score settler. Not that Ms. Powell Jobs cares about a mean tweet. To her and these powerful women, it's about the bigger picture of the future. Speaking in a more recent Times interview about her husband's influence on her, she said: "One profound learning I took from him was that we don't have to accept the world that we're born into as something that is fixed and impermeable. When you zoom in, it's just atoms just like us. And they move all the time. And through energy and force of will and intention and focus, we can actually change it. Move it." So, my advice to Mr. Trump on facing powerful women like these? Tweet all you like, but you might want to get out of the way. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
Who among us didn't learn something from Caroll Spinney's Big Bird over the years? Spinney, who for decades brought the Gentle Giant to life (and also Oscar the Grouch), died on Sunday, but the lessons he shared live on with the millions of people who grew up watching "Sesame Street." Beyond alphabet recitals and numerical countdowns, everybody's favorite feathered friend had valuable things to say to both children and grown ups about the value of cooperation and the best ways to navigate complex emotions. Life can be tough, he told us, but it's going to be all right. Here are a few of the tricky topics Big Bird broke down for viewers young and old. Flightless Big Bird felt insecure about himself after reading about "another bird" the pioneering aviator Admiral Richard E. Byrd, who was the first to fly to the South Pole and back. What could Big Bird possibly do that might compare? "All I ever do is just sit here and play jacks and eat birdseed. And I'm never the first anywhere." Diana Ross helped boost Big Bird's confidence during her Season 13 guest spot when she sang "Believe in Yourself," advising him to swap "I can" for "I can't." Big Bird always encouraged kids to eat the fruits and vegetables they're often eager to avoid. In Season 29, he shopped at the Union Square farmers market and visited an upstate farm called Blooming Hill, where he marveled at all the fresh produce. Big Bird also teamed up with a pair of First Ladies to promote healthy eating Hillary Clinton in Season 25 and Michelle Obama in Season 40. "Broccoli! Yum, yum, yum, yum," Big Bird said, making dinner time a tad easier for parents around the country. As part of the "Eat Brighter" campaign, Big Bird teamed with Obama and Billy Eichner on an odd (but Emmy nominated) segment of "Billy on the Street," where they played a grocery store game called "Ariana Grande or Eating a Carrot?" (As in, which is better? Answer: the carrot, of course.) For the very young, healthy eating can mean breastfeeding, which Big Bird did a lot to help normalize. When the cast member Buffy Sainte Marie welcomed her son Dakota to the show, it gave her a chance to teach Big Bird how to deal with his jealousy that the baby was receiving more attention than he did, and to explain different kinds of love. ("Different People, Different Ways.") She also demonstrated that nursing her infant was perfectly natural. "See, he's drinking milk from my breast," she told the curious bird. "Lots of mothers feed their babies this way. Not all mothers, but lots of mothers do." Out in the real world, everyday moms were still being humiliated and shamed for nursing in public, so it meant a lot for Big Bird to see and accept it back in 1977. "You know, that's nice," he said. (In 2012, thousands of parents petitioned for "Sesame Street" to feature more breastfeeding.) Big Bird had a tough time getting grown ups to believe him. They dismissed his super reclusive pal Mr. Snuffleupagus as an imaginary friend or maybe even an elaborate lie. And after 14 seasons, Big Bird's insistence otherwise was beginning to call his general credibility into question. One grown up did believe his stories Mister Rogers, during a crossover episode in Season 12. But was it too late? Even Mr. Snuffleupagus was a skeptic, doubting Big Bird several times. ("Et tu, Snuffy?" Big Bird moaned). It all made Big Bird question his ability to distinguish fantasy from reality. Finally, though, inspired by a string of high profile (but ultimately problematic) child sex abuse cases, "Sesame Street" allowed Big Bird to rally support for his claims in Season 16 and prove them in Season 17 showing kids that grown ups would believe them when they actually did tell the truth. Big Bird always enjoyed friendly competition, but was never sure if he should be happy when he won if someone else had to lose. After a footrace with Mr. Snuffleupagus, for example, he said, "He's going to be sad he didn't win, and he might even be angry because I beat him." (Fortunately, Mister Rogers was still on hand, and helped Big Bird realize that he could be a gracious winner and still let his friend know that he cared about his feelings.) Many years later, Big Bird competed against Jason Schwartzman on "Lip Sync Battle," and when he won the round, asked the host LL Cool J to make it a tie. "I know you said that you can't have two winners, there could only be one, but couldn't just this once, couldn't we change the rules?" Big Bird had his share of minor accidents that's the point of "Everybody Makes Mistakes." But in Season 32, over the course of five episodes, Big Bird had to deal with the wreckage of his nest by a hurricane. ("My home, my nest, my everything!") The grown ups pitch in to restore his modest digs a process only made possible through friendship and cooperation. When the job is done, Big Bird is deeply grateful for all their help and tells them so ("I Want to Thank You for Being My Friends"). The lesson: Disasters will sometimes happen, but possessions are replaceable people are not. Big Bird is no stranger to nightmares, and he suffered a big one during a sleepover with Gabi in Season 27. But he also got a fright when Gabi hid under the blanket and was making "Wubba wubba" noises a sound usually uttered by "Sesame Street" monsters. When he realized that it was only Gabi, Big Bird asked her to do it again, "because sometimes it's fun to be scared." When the actor Will Lee, who played the grocer Mr. Hooper, died in 1982, "Sesame Street" was unsure how to deal with his loss. Should the story line have his character retire to Florida? Instead, his absence became a lesson for Big Bird and the children watching about understanding death and dealing with grief. After consulting with child psychologists, the show decided on a direct approach, and the result was the first "Sesame Street" episode to treat a difficult topic in a profound but age appropriate way. Big Bird had to process an array of conflicting feelings shock, confusion, frustration, regret, anger. Big Bird's portrait of Mr. Hooper still hangs on the wall, even though an art dealer offered to buy it in a later episode. Out in the real world, Big Bird expressed his grief over the death of the Muppet master Jim Henson by singing at his memorial service, a moving way to send off his very best friend. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
Jimmy Fallon and other late night hosts have been bemused over the damaging but, apparently, not disqualifying reports about Joe Biden's conduct with women. 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. As former Vice President Joseph Biden contemplates entering the presidential race, the late night hosts have been working their way through the complex dynamics. On Tuesday, Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers both raised their eyebrows at Biden's continued advantage in early polls despite the women who have said he made unwanted physical contact with them. "A new poll has Joe Biden leading the Democratic field. It's a tricky situation: Some people think Biden's too inappropriate with women to beat the other Democrats, and yet still not inappropriate enough to beat Trump." JIMMY FALLON "According to a new poll, former Vice President Joe Biden is favored among Democratic primary voters. That's right, he's the hands down favorite. No, Joe put your hands down!" SETH MEYERS Conan O'Brien pointed out that Biden has plenty of competition. On Monday, yet another Democrat joined the race: Representative Eric Swalwell. "There are now 18 Democrats running for president, and more are on the way, they said. Yes, in fact, for this month only, if you announce you're running for president you can get all you can eat crab legs at Red Lobster." CONAN O'BRIEN "You have to admit one thing about Donald Trump: He literally makes everyone think they could be president. It's an amazing power." CONAN O'BRIEN Two days after Kirstjen Nielsen was forced out as secretary of homeland security, touching off a firing spree across her former department, Stephen Colbert mused about who might take those jobs. "It is going to be tough to find people to fill those positions. If only there was a group of folks willing to do jobs Americans don't want to do." STEPHEN COLBERT Colbert said the administration's lack of success in containing the flow of people across the southern border explained President Trump's frustration. "There's been a huge spike in illegal immigration since he took office, and he looks like an idiot. Not sure which one of those things came first." STEPHEN COLBERT James Corden played video of a man in California who was shown stealing a chain saw from a hardware store by stuffing it down his pants. "The suspect got away. Police are describing him as medium height, medium build and extremely circumcised." JAMES CORDEN "During a recent meeting about immigration with top officials, Trump was 'ranting and raving, saying border security was his issue.' Sir, don't sell yourself short. You have tons of issues: commitment, uh, trust, uh, daddy." STEPHEN COLBERT "Barr said he plans to release the Mueller report within a week just as soon as he's done rolling big swaths of black paint all over it. This report is going to have more blackouts than Brett Kavanaugh in college. It will be heavily redacted." JIMMY KIMMEL Jimmy Kimmel took it upon himself to disprove the conspiracy theories claiming that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has died. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
Forget lounging around in your hotel room while donning a bathrobe, the standard in room amenity at many midlevel and high end properties. Some hotels want their guests to have pajama parties instead. They're selling and giving away pajamas to guests and turning to popular sleepwear brands to design fashionable pairs. Claridge's, in London, recently introduced women's silk pajamas in a black and white striped pattern that is inspired by the hotel's Art Deco floor in its lobby. The handiwork of the British sleepwear designer Olivia von Halle, they are available to purchase for PS350 (about 450) and also included with certain room packages. Some guests, such as those who stay at the hotel frequently, receive a free pair monogrammed with their initials, said Paula Fitzherbert, the hotel's public relations director. But why offer pajamas, and why now? Ms. Fitzherbert said that the idea was inspired by the fact that a growing number of guests were ordering dinner or evening cocktails in their rooms. "We thought, why not make hanging out in your room fun and slightly decadent? Pajamas that reflect our heritage seemed like the perfect way to do so," she said. The Lowell hotel, in New York City, selected the Italian linen brand Frette to design 300 thread count pajamas for men and women both are white with gray piping and cost 300, but like Claridge's, the Lowell occasionally gives them free to guests. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
The Metropolitan Opera's introduction of Sunday matinees this season already seems to be popular with audiences. The company reports that, so far, single ticket sales for these matinees have been higher than those for performances on any other day of the week. And the house looked nearly full on Sunday for Gluck's "Orfeo ed Euridice." Yet the Met has long been used to getting a welcome day off after the heavy lift of two performances every Saturday. Under the new schedule, the company presented four operas from Friday evening to Sunday afternoon which may be why this revival of Mark Morris's 2007 choreographed "Orfeo" took a while to gain energy and focus. The excellent British conductor Mark Wigglesworth, best known for his work with the English National Opera in London, drew out the warmth and refinement of Gluck's score. But the Met Orchestra's playing lacked precision and crispness, especially during the bustling overture, which sounded somewhat wan and limp. The mezzo soprano Jamie Barton, who last appeared at the Met this year as a gripping Fricka in Wagner's "Ring," sang her first Orfeo (as well as her first trouser role and first title role, as she playfully pointed out on Twitter). Her plush, melting voice was ideal for the music. But her singing, especially in the opening scenes, lacked bite and intensity. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
The inspiration for Cecily von Ziegesar's latest novel? Lice. About eight years ago, when her two children were in elementary school in Brooklyn, she couldn't shake the idea that their hair, and her own, were infested with the bloodsucking insects. "I would go down to the nurse and be like, 'Can you check my head?' I was combing my kids' hair every single night," von Ziegesar said in an interview. "I heard that if you put mayonnaise on your head and wrapped it in Saran Wrap, that would drown them, so I was doing that to my hair every day." A similar lice encounter kicks off her book, "Cobble Hill," which Atria publishes on Nov. 10, except that instead of a mother of two having a meltdown, it is Stuart Little, a has been rock star whose wife, Mandy, it is soon revealed, has faked multiple sclerosis so that she can stay in bed and shirk her parental duties of school drop offs and paying taxes. If that behavior sounds maniacally self centered, it's the kind of character that von Ziegesar, the author of the best selling young adult series "Gossip Girl," specializes in and defends when necessary. "I love Mandy," she said, a hint of protectiveness in her voice. "I admire her for having the guts to just be, like, 'This is what I need to do right now.'" Call it guts or selfishness or gutsy selfishness, those traits can be found in most of her female characters, von Ziegesar noted, from the scheming Blair Waldorf and the backstabbers who surrounded her in "Gossip Girl" to the four female characters of "Cobble Hill." In addition to Mandy, there is a British expatriate working at a Conde Nast esque magazine, a high school nurse with a crush on a student's parent and an evasive artist. "I didn't want them to be characters that you love to hate," von Ziegesar said. "Cobble Hill" comes out on Nov. 10. Those women and their families feel like characters that teenage fans of "Gossip Girl" might have graduated to. After all, since her first book came out in 2002 and the television adaptation began airing in 2007, those fans are now reaching prime adulthood, considering career shifts, buying homes and trading their youthful insecurities for more grown up ones. That might include, as is the case with these characters, giving up on passions for unfulfilling careers that pay the bills, landing jobs they don't know how to do but pretend to or learning that maybe they don't love their spouses as much as they used to all while agonizing over how other people perceive them. "I couldn't write the 'Gossip Girl' books now, but I couldn't have written 'Cobble Hill' then," von Ziegesar, 50, said. "Hopefully I've progressed as a writer." She herself is a product of the Upper East Side world where "Gossip Girl" is set: Though she grew up on the Upper West Side, she went to school there and had the "funny little experiences of being able to walk around the corner from school and go to my friend's house," she recalled. "And I had a few friends whose parents were a little reluctant to let them come over to my house." The idea for "Gossip Girl" emerged when von Ziegesar was an editor at the book packaging company Alloy Entertainment, now a division of Warner Bros. Television Group. At the time, the young adult book market was full of series like "Sweet Valley High" that featured made up locations. "That was so weird to me," she said. "Why not write about a real place? It just so happened that the real place that I knew was the Upper East Side." Precise sales figures of the "Gossip Girl" books are hard to come by because the first of the series arrived before tracking was made available, but some estimates suggest it has sold over 4 million copies. The TV series ran for six seasons and helped make celebrities out of cast members such as Blake Lively, Leighton Meester, Penn Badgley and Ed Westwick. An HBO Max reboot is now in the works. In 2002, when von Ziegesar's debut book came out, she had her first child. By the time the TV series was coming to an end in 2012, she had two children who were old enough to be hooked. "We would watch the show together as a family," she said from the recently vacated room of her daughter, who is starting her first year at college. "I remember putting my son to bed and he was like, 'I don't think I can go to sleep,' and I asked why not, and he's like, 'I'm so worried about Chuck.'" The voyeuristic lens von Ziegesar applied to old money Upper East Siders, exploring the tension between their nervous inner lives and perfect outward appearances, is what she sought to bring to "Cobble Hill," which is named for the expensive Brooklyn neighborhood where she and the characters live. Except this book is more relatable, more normal: Instead of elbowing their way into Ivy League schools or throwing parties on Park Avenue, these characters are trying to find babysitters so they can go out for a drunken night of karaoke. "I think I just asked for it to be longer," he added. (Mandy, it turns out, is also his favorite character.) Von Ziegesar has published several books since the last "Gossip Girl" installment, including "Cum Laude," about students at a small college in Maine, and "It Girl," a "Gossip Girl" spinoff whose cover model was a young Hope Hicks, now one of President Trump's advisers. Though they used the same formula of delving into the trials and tribulations of adolescence, they didn't have the impact of "Gossip Girl." "Cobble Hill" is a greater departure for von Ziegesar. And, she mentioned, there are already early whispers of potentially turning it into a TV series as well. In the years she worked on the book, von Ziegesar who admitted her writing process has never been neat or methodical continued to jot down flashes of inspiration, ideas and real life events on Post it notes that she'd stick around her house. "Unlike 'Gossip Girl,' where I was writing a series and there were two a year, this really is like a culmination of so many things," she said. "I was working on it very sporadically for a long time." This year, as von Ziegesar was cleaning out one of her closets, she found a box of old Post its. "I looked up and said to my husband, 'Oh my god, it all went in the book,'" she said. Follow New York Times Books on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, sign up for our newsletter or our literary calendar. And listen to us on the Book Review podcast. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
On a recent Saturday afternoon, Lauren Lovette surveyed her dancers before sliding into a split one of her go to positions when she's contemplating a step and rose suddenly to move through a dynamic passage in her new ballet. She calls this part "soft serve." In it, dancers line up along a diagonal and pirouette away as their arms swirl above their heads like curlicues topping a dip of Dairy Queen. She made some tweaks; her dancers peeled away from the line with more refinement but no less verve. "I think that's going to work," she said, half to herself. "I believe it." Ms. Lovette, a principal with New York City Ballet, frequently uses that phrase when assessing her choreography, which, like her dancing, is lush. "That's when you know it's good," said Indiana Woodward, one of the leads in Ms. Lovette's new work. "Because she believes whatever you just gave to her." This fall, Ms. Lovette, 24, is working from that place of conviction. Ms. Lovette, one of two women who will unveil new works at City Ballet's fall gala on Sept. 20 the other is the choreographer Annabelle Lopez Ochoa is under some pressure. Last year, City Ballet commissioned works by four men, which had people wondering: Where are the women? Female choreographers remain rare in classical ballet, and Ms. Lovette knows it; she doesn't want to coast. With "For Clara," her 15 minute work she was given a time limit featuring a cast of 17, she has chosen a dense, classical score: Schumann's Introduction and Concert Allegro, Op. 134. "I haven't choreographed anything in six years, so going into this whole process was scary," she said. "I listened to the music and I loved it. That was number one." Susan Walters, who will perform its piano solo, said: "It's like a complete concerto. Everything is large except for the amount of time." Ms. Lovette had been at it only a week but said that she already found that her nerves had calmed. She was sleeping through the night. "Solidly," she said during a rehearsal break at the City Ballet affiliated School of American Ballet. "I've had a couple of rehearsals where I get in the room and have five faces staring at me like, O.K., what's happening?" she said. "I'm like, 'No idea!' But I like the stuff that happens when I'm at that mental empty place. That's so cool, because in already a short amount of time, I'm learning to trust myself. It's empowering. It's because when you do something scary, you get stronger. Always." Since Ms. Lovette joined the company in 2010, Peter Martins, its ballet master in chief, has approached her every year about returning to choreography. He had seen her dances when she took part in the Student Choreography Workshop at the school. And every year, Ms. Lovette gave him the same answer: She needed to focus on dancing. After he promoted her to principal in 2015, she said he told her, "You have no excuse." This time when Mr. Martins asked if she would choreograph a ballet for the fall season, she accepted; later, she said, she thanked him for giving her, a woman, a chance. "He said, 'No, no, no, no I'm not giving you this because you're a woman. I'm giving this to you because I think you're good, and I believe in you.' That was really important for me to hear. I'm glad to put that thought out of my mind. It's just junky." "For Clara" is named for Schumann's wife, a musician and composer. Though Schumann dedicated it to Brahms, the score was a birthday gift for Clara in 1853; she loved the music and performed it throughout Europe. "She wanted it to be something," Ms. Lovette said. "I feel there's a responsibility there, too. I thought if I could do anything in a small way, I could give this to her." Ms. Lovette discovered it on Spotify, but to her disappointment her musician friends either dismissed it or hadn't heard of it. One day, she asked Ms. Walters if she could play a recording of it for her. Ms. Walters stopped her five minutes in. "She was like, 'Lauren, I love this piece, and I want to play it really badly,'" Ms. Lovette said. Even though she said she doesn't know what it means yet, she can see that her ballet, which features costumes by Narciso Rodriguez, is personal. "It's pieces of my life," Ms. Lovette said. "It's me getting out different things that I've felt over the years." In it, Emilie Gerrity and Chase Finlay are a couple at the start of a relationship; another pair, Unity Phelan and Zachary Catazaro, are more tempestuous, even violent, as they go to battle in a pas de deux. "And then there's this catalyst that keeps coming out," Ms. Lovette said of Ms. Woodward's role. "Piano riffs go down, and I see Indiana always with her fiery, free spirit. She is like that as a person: independent and strong, but happy. The music crescendos into Indiana's solo: She doesn't really need anyone the whole ballet. She doesn't have a partner. I like that." If Ms. Lovette is represented by anyone in her ballet, it would seem to be Ms. Woodward, who exudes a kind of independence in her role. Ms. Woodward sees the connection, too. "I want to try and carry her through the piece," Ms. Woodward explained. "I feel Lauren when I'm dancing." There are probably other references to Ms. Lovette's life in her ballet, however veiled. Until last fall, she was engaged to Mr. Finlay; now she is his choreographer. "I think it's healing all around," she said, adding that there was a new dynamic between them. "I wasn't sure how that would be. I always follow my gut, but sometimes I'm like, 'Are you sure, gut?'" Ms. Lovette has also relished the opportunity to use another part of her brain. In her private life, she likes to make things: She cooks, she crochets, she knits, she sketches, and she makes collages. "I pull trash off the street and I turn it into stuff and hang it on my walls," she said. "I like a lot of artistic things outside of dance, but usually they're just for me. They don't get judged by anybody. But this is O.K. because it's still for me." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
M.G. Orender rattles off a list of the great sporting events he has attended: the Super Bowl, the Olympic Games, the Kentucky Derby, the United States Open (tennis and golf), the Daytona 500 and the Indianapolis 500. "I've had the chance to see about every major sporting event there is," said Mr. Orender, a founder of the golf course management company Hampton Golf. And he saw them all in style: "I don't believe I ever went to an event and sat outside the ropes. I always had a seat in the infield or wherever the premier spot was." Sporting events have long drawn companies eager to throw up a tent near the action and host clients with food and drink. But in recent years, a desire for an even better and more exclusive experience at events that are already pretty exclusive has driven event organizers to create their own private luxury parties and charge handsomely for them. And the red carpet has rolled out to other areas, including concerts, food festivals, art fairs and museum exhibits. Mr. Orender singled out two of his V.I.P. experiences that did not come cheap: Berckmans Place at the Masters golf tournament at Augusta National, a premium venue within what is already one of the most strictly controlled events in sports, and the Players Club, a luxury package for the Players Championship, a golf tournament being played this week in Ponte Vedra, Fla. Entry to Berckmans, which has replicas of several of the Augusta National greens inside, is rumored to cost 8,000; the Players Club limits the number of 6,000 tickets it sells to 500 people. Jared Rice, executive director of the Players Championship, compared the Players Club to packages at other sporting events, but also to the Aspen Food Wine Festival. "We wanted to have something to match aspirational event seekers," he said. That includes not only golf fans but those who want to experience any event at its most luxurious. Unlike many other golf courses, TPC Sawgrass, the course that hosts the Players Championship, was designed with the fan experience in mind, offering spectators views better than most golf events and something more akin to the way they would watch a baseball or football game. But the Players Club pass, now in its third year, aims to offer a higher level of luxury. There are many vantage points to watch players try to land shots on the 17th hole's famous island green, which is surrounded on all sides by water. But the Players Club pass puts holders in a club 30 feet in the air, with a cocktail in their hand. One of the first organizations to come up with this idea on a large scale was the National Football League, with its NFL On Location program at the 2006 Super Bowl in Detroit. "The N.F.L. could package its own assets and create a pregame party inside the stadium," said Frank Supovitz, who created the program. He said the N.F.L. realized it had extra tickets for V.I.P.s but it also had hotel rooms that were reserved in bulk years in advance. "With multiple venues inside the stadium, we could take all of these things and package them together," he said. "A ticket that is worth 1,000 is now worth 10,000." For that experience to be worth the money, though, Mr. Supovitz said it needed three things: high quality, exclusivity and uniqueness. For instance, at the highest price point for the Super Bowl package, fans get to go on the field after the final down is played. But this model does not work with all sporting events. The World Series and the Stanley Cup are not as easy for event planners because the location of the games is not known far enough in advance. And with baseball and hockey playing seven game series for their titles, it's hard to know when and in which stadium a championship is going to end. In contrast, the host cities for the Super Bowl are known several years out, and events like the U.S. Open tennis tournament and the Masters are played at the same place every year. Concerts would seem like a big draw for private events, but for wealthy people, the enticement of briefly meeting a performer backstage is not always enough. Instead, they opt to arrange a private concert for a small group of peers. These high dollar events are not limited to sports and music. Art festivals have gotten in on the game by offering an insider's edge. Pamela Cohen, head of V.I.P. relations and sponsorships at Art Miami, which runs seven fairs in Miami and New York, said her group's platinum packages cost 5,000 a ticket and give buyers access to private receptions and conversations with well known artists. But the real value to serious collectors is the preparation her team does to accommodate connoisseurs before they arrive knowing which works or artist they would be most interested in seeing, and making it happen. "We do almost all of the work for them and give them an easy, short time to see everything they want," she said. "We're really providing that curated experience for them." Some exclusive art events work differently. The Brooklyn Museum, for instance, is selling a premium 2,500 ticket to its David Bowie exhibit that gives two patrons access to the show when the museum is closed to regular visitors. It also includes Bowie merchandise and a private guide. Masha Rubtsova, the general manager of Indochine restaurant in Manhattan, which Mr. Bowie frequented, said she recently went to the exhibit with a friend. On a tour with the museum's "Aladdin Sane" ticket, she ran into people from the restaurant world and was able to network. Super fans are certainly willing to pay more for an elite event, but people who go just for the experience can become jaded and more demanding. Some companies that use high priced events as a marketing tool have had to add even more exclusive events to their roster to compete. Consider private jet companies like NetJets and Wheels Up. Both had big V.I.P. facilities at the Masters and big parties featuring professional golfers and television commentators. NetJets hosted the Zac Brown Band one night, while Wheels Up recreated Rao's, the exclusive East Harlem restaurant, by flying the chef and staff down to Augusta, Ga. Both companies also have parties at the Super Bowl and the Art Basel art fair in Miami Beach, Fla. "The No. 1, 2 and 3 reasons for these events are retention, retention, retention," said Kenny Dichter, chief executive of Wheels Up. "If people show up, they'll always renew." But if other jet companies and luxury purveyors in general are throwing the same great parties at the same exclusive venues, the events lose their unique appeal. After a five figure initiation fee, Wheels Up charges 4,500 to 7,500 an hour. Another industry rival, VistaJet, which aims for a more global client and so has bigger jets, charges 12,000 to 19,000 an hour. To woo their well heeled clients, such companies create events so intimate that they beggar belief. Want to play tennis with Roger Federer? NetJets has organized that. If you'd prefer Serena Williams, Wheels Up has set up private events with her. Then there were private viewings of the David Rockefeller collection before it went to auction this week at Christie's. To see it all meant hopping among international destinations, and VistaJet took care of it. "In London, 20,000 people saw it, but I arranged a dinner for 12 people in Christie's ballroom with the head of Christie's London and the head curator of the Rockefeller auction," said Matteo Atti, executive vice president for marketing and innovation at VistaJet. "I put people in the room who might like each other." And for many, that's the cachet: rubbing elbows with other equally wealthy people who may have shared interests or present a business opportunity. Of course, sometimes the bar is not that high. Mr. Orender recalled a simple perk of having exclusive access to the Olympic Games: "There was a special line so no one was hassling you and you didn't have to wait to go in." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Your Money |
Every great partnership has to begin somewhere. For Karen O and Danger Mouse, it was a drunk dial in 2008. At least, that's how half of this duo featuring the queen of the aughts rock revival and the versatile Grammy winning producer remembers it. Karen O drew a blank when Danger Mouse (born Brian Burton) brought it up late last month at Electric Lady Studios in Greenwich Village, where they worked on their new album, "Lux Prima." "I got this phone call, and you were like, it's Karen O. I was like, what?" Burton said. His flummoxed collaborator at the other end of the couch slowly recalled what had happened: After years of saying they wanted to work together but only meeting briefly, Karen O had seized the moment. "I get excited about things after a couple of drinks then I'm like, yeah, I'm going to call him now!" she said. "That's so me, too," she added and let out the Karen O cackle, a high, sharp peal of laughter. Sipping tea in an upstairs studio at the storied recording complex, both musicians were in Clark Kent mode, Zen and studious. (To be fair, this is Burton's forever mode.) Since 2001, Karen O short for her last name, Orzolek has been best known as the frontwoman for the trio Yeah Yeah Yeahs, a stage devouring, beer spraying punk who can swing a microphone around her head while nailing every note with an ecstatic grin on her face. Burton was a cross genre producer searching for his niche when "The Grey Album" his unauthorized mash up of Jay Z's "The Black Album" and the Beatles record known as the White Album became a cause celebre (and almost ended his career before it started) in 2004. He went on to form Gnarls Barkley with CeeLo Green; work with Gorillaz, Beck, the Black Keys and U2; and collaborate with James Mercer of the Shins in a group called Broken Bells. Never miss a pop music story: Get our weekly newsletter, Louder. They've both recently entered their 40s: not old enough to be old, but old enough to question what's coming next. It's something that was on their minds as they began their journey into "Lux Prima," an album of sprawling, soulful, cinematic psych rock filled with astral bass lines, gauzy strings and Karen O isms like "You're not coming for me/I'm coming for you." "I'm on a vision quest of sorts: What does it mean to be a woman artist in her 40s? And how can I lay it down so that's like, something expletive awesome," Karen O said a few days later at a tony Lower East Side hotel that sprouted up two blocks from the tiny Mercury Lounge, where Yeah Yeah Yeahs played their first show, opening for the White Stripes. "It's not a paved road, it's not a well beaten path," she added. It's "find your way through that wilderness and write us a postcard." THOUGH THEY MET AROUND 2005, had that fateful phone call in 2008 and ran into each other again in 2012, the Karen O and Danger Mouse project didn't get moving until 2016, a year after Karen O gave birth to her son, Django. Yeah Yeah Yeahs had last put out an album in 2013 "Mosquito," which concluded their contract with Interscope and the singer followed up with an indie release called "Crush Songs," a quiet series of meditations on romance she'd written alone in her New York apartment around 2007. She was relishing her newfound freedom. "On the one hand," she said, "Yeah Yeah Yeahs have had the great fortune of the label not meddling in our process. But there's expectations for singles and the trajectory that you have to hit." She added, "Until I was out of that deal, I didn't realize the subtle psychic weight that I'd been carrying for like a decade." Nick Zinner, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs guitarist who did a little playing on "Lux Prima," said the pressures of the band were "something that you can spend a lot of energy trying to not think about," and he knew this kind of independence was something Karen O "was yearning for." Karen O compared working with Burton to when she wrote her "psycho opera," a decidedly noncommercial art project called "Stop the Virgens," in 2005 (it was staged in Brooklyn and Sydney, Australia, in 2011 and 2012): There were no expectations from the outside and no limits. Before they got started, Burton played her Michael Kiwanuka's "Cold Little Heart," the beautiful, shape shifting 10 minute song that kicks off the London artist's 2016 album, "Love Hate," which he produced, and it struck a nerve. Because the "Lux Prima" material was the first original music Karen O had written since giving birth, "I was really wondering what would be streaming out of me after that experience," she said. "I felt more deeply connected to the cycles of life and like, consciousness. And I had a deep sense of love that was different." Zinner said he saw his longtime collaborator wrestling with a new set of concerns. "Whatever Karen does, she's working through something that's happening with her," he said, adding there was a "different element" in the mix this time. "Definitely being a mom. And being a woman in the age of Trump." Burton was struck by Karen O's process she writes lyrics in the studio, which they both called torturous. But Karen O likes it because it helps her find an arc for the full album. And the primacy of the album was critical. "There were only a couple of times we were like, 'Should there be a single in this?'" Karen O said. "There's plenty of hooks and melodies in the record, but as far as like a single in 2019, what does that sound like, especially in alternative music?" The nine tracks on "Lux Prima" unspool grandly, from the ominous lullaby "Ministry" to the stomping girl group squall of "Woman" to the compact psych funk groove of "Leopard's Tongue." The duo will present the album as a "multisensory art installation" in April at the Marciano Art Foundation in Los Angeles. The event, overseen by the creative director Barnaby Clay (Karen O's husband), will use lighting, projections and other stimuli to creative an immersive experience the antidote to the kind of glance listening that dominates pop's current era of distraction. Holding people's attention isn't easy in 2019. Danger Mouse later shared the advice he gives the young artists on his label, 30th Century Records: "Just have faith that if you're doing the stuff you want to do, it will be heard at some point." Dan Auerbach, the Black Keys singer and guitarist, admires Burton's ability to pull the best from his collaborators. Burton, who has worked on four albums with the band, was the first outside producer the duo let into their world. "I think we just liked how drum heavy his stuff was, kind of dusty and funky and always so rhythmic," Auerbach added. "He just has a sixth sense with melody." Despite having worked with some of the most successful artists in music, including Adele and Red Hot Chili Peppers, Burton's guiding ethos remains heart over trends. "Usually when I work with somebody I tell them, 'This is probably going to be your least selling record, and if we make a couple of accidents that work out, it could be your best selling record,'" he said. "'But it's probably not going to be anywhere in between.'" James Mercer, the Shins leader who teamed with Burton in Broken Bells, said his band was listening to "The Grey Album" backstage in Copenhagen the night Burton showed up unannounced to meet them. "That's the type of person he is, he's that brave and gregarious," Mercer said. "He's very good at being open to new ideas, so he definitely has stuff he learned from working with U2 and the Chili Peppers." Mercer wasn't surprised when Burton joined forces with Karen O, saying they'd listened to Yeah Yeah Yeahs together in the past: "He's a fan of female singers, and she's kind of the best." Burton's admiration for Karen O is obvious. "She has a voice I believe," he said. "My whole thing was making sure that one of the coolest chicks in the world likes what we're doing." Manson turned her attention to the music industry, which she called "a really staunch patriarchal system" that devalues women as they get older. "You have to walk through the valley of death yourself and figure out who you will be. Karen's going to have to find out for herself what Karen O will be, and she'll figure it out fine." Karen O tends to look to the left when she's talking, and her gaze remained fixed as she described that midlife crisis. "I felt those cliche things," she said. "Like, wow, maybe I'm not going to get around to doing all those things I wanted to do. I've just been wildly ambitious and idealistic and actually quite optimistic about making stuff." Suddenly she was struck by how hard it felt to create, and how fleeting and impermanent everything can seem. She said she turned to a friend who was a punk rocker in the late '70s and early '80s for advice, "And she said to me: 'Yeah, ashes to ashes, man, isn't it great? Once you realize that, you're free.' And I was like, wow. I can't process that quite yet, but once I do, that's going to be expletive good times." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
Tina Satter, right, is directing Emily Davis in "Is This a Room," a play about the F.B.I.'s 2017 interrogation of the military contractor Reality Winner. Last December, the theater director Tina Satter was stuck at a desk, temping as a receptionist, when she fell down an internet rabbit hole. After reading the New York magazine profile of Reality Winner the 20 something military contractor charged with leaking a single top secret document about Russian election hacking Ms. Satter clicked a link to a blog post about Ms. Winner's pantyhose, and then another link to a grainy PDF of an official F.B.I. transcript. It recorded the moment in June 2017 when a fleet of federal agents entered Ms. Winner's Georgia home, interrogated her and extracted a confession. Ms. Satter read the transcript online, but when she recalls it now, she makes the gesture of dramatically flipping pages in the air. "Immediately I thought, This is a play," she said. "This is a thriller." Reading the government document through the lens of a director, Ms. Satter saw a title printed across the top "VERBATIM TRANSCRIPTION" followed by a list of "participants," or characters: Reality Winner, whose name alone feels theatrical; the two special agents who interrogated her that day; and a mysterious figure listed only as "Unknown Male." The transcript was intriguing in its precision. Every stutter, sigh, and stray sound was noted. It was also jumping with subtext: Even as they circled Ms. Winner with an espionage charge, the F.B.I. agents made small talk about the weather, CrossFit and her cat. Everyone there was struggling to act casual in the least casual of circumstances. And then there was Ms. Winner herself, with whom Ms. Satter quickly grew fascinated. Ms. Winner is an Air Force veteran fluent in several Afghan languages. In 2017, she was 25 and working at a Georgia contractor complex, translating communications related to Iranian aerospace. She taught yoga for fun and scribbled on "pretty paper" at work. She tweeted insults about President Trump. She owned guns pink guns. In the transcript, she toggles seamlessly between high level intelligence language and jokes about her "resting bitch face." Ms. Winner seemed to represent a new kind of figure. "I could totally relate to her dismay at living through America over the past two years, and her sort of pop response to it," Ms. Satter said. "This is such a patriot of right now." But Ms. Winner's status as a young woman navigating an unfamiliar world connected it to other Half Straddle shows. Ms. Winner opens a window into a new kind of subculture: the banal office grind at the heart of the American security state, which has expanded so relentlessly that thousands of otherwise ordinary Americans have insight into classified material. Thanks to websites that surface the day's "trending" classified "articles," which Ms. Winner browsed while bored at work, even top secret material begins to seem almost public. And while "Is This a Room" is on its face a re enactment, there are elements of the transcript that pitch it into the surreal, and allow for interpretive space. Lines attributed to "Unknown Male" dreamlike fragments of loose F.B.I. chatter picked up by the interrogators' recorder are all played on stage by Half Straddle company member Becca Blackwell. (The play's title, "Is This a Room," is one of them.) Swaths of the transcript are redacted in black, and in the weeks leading up to the premiere, Ms. Satter was still puzzling out how to dramatize them. On stage, the surreality will be punctuated by the disorienting sounds of Sanae Yamada, a musician who has written a synth based score as well as a pop song about Ms. Winner called "Pretty Paper." At a recent rehearsal at the Kitchen, Ms. Satter stalked around the bare set in a Mickey Mouse T shirt, blocking the strange moment when the F.B.I. agents (played by Pete Simpson and T.L. Thompson) drum what sounds like a confession out of Ms. Winner, and then seamlessly return to discussing her cat, who is on a diet. ("Oh, she's a big girl," Unknown Male tells Ms. Winner.) Here the actors slowed their speech and tipped their bodies, giving the impression of a mind spinning, as the synth music closed in. The transcript itself was a crucial artifact in the legal proceedings. Her defense argued that the transcript, and its apparent confession, ought to be barred from court, as the F.B.I. never read Ms. Winner her Miranda rights or told her she was free to leave her home. But the government argued that the transcript proved that the agents had been so "exceedingly friendly" to Ms. Winner that she could not have been forced into talking. Staging the transcript felt like a way to reveal its hidden power dynamics. "There was so much happening right underneath the surface of the language," said Ms. Davis. The actress shares both a physical resemblance to Ms. Winner and a South Texas background. She sees Ms. Winner as a "vibrant and sparkly person" who became isolated by her work for her country and ended up in a "lonely, vulnerable place." And she is sensitive to the fact that in the play, she is moving about the world as Ms. Winner while Ms. Winner herself is locked away. Those sensitivities were heightened when Billie Winner Davis, Reality's mother, heard about the production and reached out. A snapshot of Reality Winner taken on the day of her arrest. Ms. Winner's mother provided it to the production, and it has inspired an actress's costuming. Ms. Satter and Ms. Davis have since been in close contact with her, and have exchanged letters with Reality herself. Both sides have approach the contents of the play gingerly; Ms. Satter has not asked Ms. Davis Winner for insights into her daughter, and Ms. Davis Winner has not inquired about the theatermakers' process. (She will attend the first performance, with some trepidation: While she is eager for others to learn of her daughter's story, "I don't know whether I'll be able to sit through it all," she said.) She did assist in one way: She sent a photograph the F.B.I. took of Reality outside her home on the day she was arrested, which inspired Ms. Davis's costume. In the photo, she's leaning against a brick wall in jean shorts and canary yellow Converse. Her hands are clasped politely in front of her and her eyes are turned down. It's an image of Ms. Winner on the precipice between regular young woman and accused felon. She is outside in the Georgia sun, but the F.B.I. has her in its sights. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
Every spring, male deer undertake a unique biological ritual: sprouting and rapidly regrowing their massive, spiky antlers. A complex matrix of bone, living tissue and nerve endings, deer antlers can reach 50 inches long and weigh more than 20 pounds before they are shed in winter. Not only are the antlers useful in attracting mates and fighting, they qualify deer as the only mammal that can regrow lost body parts. Now, researchers say they have identified the two genes primarily responsible for antler regeneration in one species, fallow deer. The study, reported Tuesday in the Journal of Stem Cell Research and Therapy, notes that these genes are also found in humans, potentially opening new avenues of research into bone trauma and diseases. "Deer antler formation shares similar biological mechanisms with human bone growth, but deer antlers grow much faster," said Peter Yang, an orthopedic researcher at the Stanford University School of Medicine and senior author of the study. Perhaps by studying the newly identified genes in humans, scientists may be able to developed treatments that could "reproduce the rapid bone growth of deer antlers in human bone," and provide relief for people who suffer ailments like osteoporosis. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
"If you want to be a creative in any field, at some point you have to stop listening to what everybody else is saying about what you're doing and just do."Credit...Mamadi Doumbouya for The New York Times "If you want to be a creative in any field, at some point you have to stop listening to what everybody else is saying about what you're doing and just do." "The internet is an actual dumpster fire," said Franchesca Ramsey to an audience in March, explaining why, though she's built her career online, she'd been retreating from social media lately. As a woman of color, she said, she dealt with a lot of harassment, and unplugging had been "paramount for my mental health." Ms. Ramsey was on stage at Caveat, a Lower East Side speakeasy tucked underground behind a nondescript door and a long set of stairs. She was one of three comics who had been invited to speak on a panel as part of The Box Show, an "intersectional feminist" program run by writer and director Kaitlin Fontana, who had for several years been performing inclusive comedy skits with a multicolored cast. That night's presentation was The Box Show's last. Ms. Ramsey's work, as a comedian, writer and actress who comments on inequality, is perhaps particularly vulnerable to vitriol and a new book may expose her to more. In "Well, That Escalated Quickly: Memoirs and Mistakes of an Accidental Activist," out May 22, she mines her own errors and condenses what she's learned into a sort of manual on social justice, complete with a glossary of terms like ableism (discrimination against people with disabilities) and ally (someone who defends the rights of marginalized groups to which they do not belong). Over lunch in early April, she expressed some anxiety over how her book would be received. "I feel very vulnerable," she said. Ms. Ramsey wore a burnt orange shift dress and a chunky wooden necklace with an abstract black and white pattern. Her signature embellished nails were painted a light pink with a gold glitter edge, a trio of glued on gems on each of her index fingers. She'd taken to ignoring her trolls some of whom have created a host of videos dissecting and disparaging her work and role as a "social justice warrior," a pejorative term used to describe activists who speak out online but with the publication of her book, she said, "I know it's going to ramp back up." Ms. Ramsey, 34, got her start on YouTube, and her big break came in 2012, after her video "Sh t White Girls Say ... To Black Girls" a parody of the seemingly innocuous but actually offensive comments some white women make when interacting with black women went viral. In the video, Ms. Ramsey wears a long, platinum blonde wig, and, in scene after scene, her character makes problematic statements such as "Is it, like, bad to do blackface?"The video made Ms. Ramsey an online celebrity, and she pioneered a particular type of content: politically correct, identity focused comedy skits and commentary. In 2015, she signed a deal with MTV to create and host a web show called "Decoded," now in its sixth season, where she creates similar videos for a broader audience. And her subject matter has expanded to address issues like xenophobia, classism and mental health stigma. In 2016, she also joined the now canceled "Nightly Show With Larry Wilmore" as a writer, bringing her internet expertise to a standing segment called " HashItOut with Franchesca Ramsey," where she dissected the Twitter controversy of the moment. Ms. Fontana, the producer of The Box Show and a collaborator of Ms. Ramsey's, said Ms. Ramsey has done "what we all wish we could do," which is "as we get better in terms of technical acumen and writing, and all the parts of the puzzle get sharper, the core of that person's work and what they believe in stays the same and true to who they are. I think that's true of her for sure." Want to keep up with the latest and greatest in books? This is a good place to start. None Learn what you should be reading this fall: Our collection of reviews on books coming out this season includes biographies, novels, memoirs and more. See what's new in October: Among this month's new titles are novels by Jonathan Franzen, a history of Black cinema and a biography by Katie Couric. Nominate a book: The New York Times Book Review has just turned 125. That got us wondering: What is the best book that was published during that time? Listen to our podcast: Featuring conversations with leading figures in the literary world, from Colson Whitehead to Leila Slimani, the Book Review Podcast helps you delve deeper into your favorite books. In person, as in her videos, Ms. Ramsey is expressive and animated, often pumping her fist into her hand to punctuate a point or breaking into an impression in the middle of a story, but she pairs this playfulness with biting sarcasm. In the first episode of "Decoded," for instance in which she discusses the ramifications of associating black Americans with watermelon and fried chicken there is an interlude in which she bites into a slice of watermelon, moans and, with a knowing look to the camera, says, "Tastes like oppression." In another, she plays an instructor at a "race ambassador" training and cheerfully promises to teach the group of people of color to navigate the "brand new, awesome responsibility" of representing an entire culture in their office or neighborhood. But she also has a sober side. On the panel on mental health in March, she was thoughtful and subdued. She listened more than she spoke, her face relaxed into an expression of concern while one of the other comics joked about the excruciating process of having her eggs frozen. Ms. Ramsey gave career advice, encouraged positive self talk and offered the audience resources for finding a therapist. Later, when I introduced myself to her, it occurred to me that, though Ms. Ramsey is tall at 5 foot 10 inches, and I am nearly a foot shorter at 5 feet, she bent to my eye level. "I think it's just part of my personality," she said a month later, when we met again on a rainy, blustery day in late April, this time at a nail salon near Union Square. Ms. Ramsey says she inherited her father's emotional breadth (at the panel in March, she quipped, "My dad's basically Drake"), and that she often tries to put herself in others' shoes. This ability to empathize even with those who disagree with her is core to her work. But it's gotten her some blowback. "I've had lots of people say, 'Oh, Franchesca's content is just for white people," she said. "But I try to talk about identity in a way that's accessible to lots of people and is not a pointed finger," because "we can't all wake up and know everything." Even before YouTube or Twitter, the internet was kind of Ms. Ramsey's thing. An only child, she was raised in West Palm Beach, Fla. and exposed to computers early; she took a typing class in the third grade and had a website by the time she was in high school. It was the mid 1990s, and she didn't own a digital camera, so she'd upload scanned photos to her site and blog about what was going on in her life. Ms. Ramsey attended a performing arts high school, and later tried to study acting in college, but found the experience "emotionally abusive" for its insistence that students draw from their most painful memories. She switched to graphic design and worked her way through college doing freelance design. Her senior year, she started dating her now husband, Patrick Kondas. And in 2009, when he got a scholarship to study law at St. John's University, they moved to New York, where she tried breaking into the entertainment industry. "I burned DVDs, and I had a sticker made with my headshot on the disc," she said, a little mortified, "I sent it out to all these agents, and I was so heartbroken, because I didn't get one call. I couldn't get auditions." She never thought her YouTube videos, which she used as a creative outlet, would help her career. But they did, and now, Ms. Ramsey may soon be taking her talents back to television. In January, she premiered a pilot at Sundance called "Franchesca," a short form docuseries where she explores the intersection of beauty and culture. She also has a comedy sketch show "with an identity focus" in development with Comedy Central. Ms. Ramsey said she wants to do "less educating and more 'slice of life' commentary" to showcase her creative range. Ms. Fontana, who directed "Franchesca," said about her: "I think she has the potential to be a contemporary Oprah, because there is this dazzling quality to her, but she also seems like a real person that you can hang out with, spend time with, feel like you have a connection to, laugh with and make laugh, and it doesn't feel like she's untouchable." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
When people talk about books, they often characterize either the genre (science fiction, romance) or the feeling the author strives to impart (a thriller is, presumably, thrilling). But there are, to my knowledge, only a handful of geographically specific kinds of reads. There's the "beach read," a phrase we all hear often come every summer season. There's the notoriously disposable "airplane read." And for getaways in the woods, you've got the "cottage" or "cabin read." And that's about it. Nearly all of these designations are pejorative. The designation of a "beach read" suggests a book that's frothy and engrossing, but ultimately ephemeral one that you can sink into as you slump in a folding chair in the sand, but you won't miss too much if you forget it at the hotel. The term "airplane read" is even more of a dismissal, the idea being a book you can breeze through in the time span of an average flight, and then discard. (The one and only Mack Bolan adventure novel I've ever read was one I discovered in a seatback on a puddle jumper from Toronto to Harrisburg, Pa.) The "cabin read" has a bit more prestige: It implies the kind of pleasurable literary project you lug on an isolated retreat and tackle over an uninterrupted week or two. Unlike the beach read, it cannot feel meandering. Like a train, the narrative must move with as few delays as possible, and also be transportive. When I'm packed into a musty, fluorescently lit rail car during rush hour, I want to be anywhere else, and fast. The beach and the cabin are inherently relaxing, calming and rejuvenating environments. Needless to say, the subway is none of those. Unlike the hours one has during air travel to while away on, say, an unexpected Mack Bolan, my time on the subway (probably 20 to 30 minutes, tops) feels constrained and precious, so I demand high reward reading. While I envy the razor focused commuters who crouch over a dog eared Dostoyevsky, I've learned that my subway brain, addled by constant announcements and the overheard conversations of my neighbors, can't give a dense classic the close attention it requires. Nor can I abide playful meta fiction, digressive autofiction or anything that's coy with its charms. If the perfect "beach read" is like a slowly melting margarita, to be kept close at hand and sipped at lazily, then the perfect "subway read" is like the hypodermic needle that gets jabbed through Uma Thurman's breastplate in "Pulp Fiction." It delivers a jolt, stat. So I want thrilling plots, yes but also thrilling language. I want sentences I'll stop to read twice. This is why standard throwaway airport thrillers don't migrate well beneath ground. The writing may be "muscular" and "spare," but if it's not also "inventive" and "excellent" there's a good chance the book will wind up abandoned on a platform bench. With a long day behind me and a wearying commute ahead of me, I don't want to settle for distraction; I want to look forward to reading my book with the palpitating excitement of a second date with someone I've already fallen for. I want to miss my stop. Ideally, I'll miss a few. My quest for the perfect "subway read" has affected me as a writer, too. When I sat down to start what would become my first novel, "Shovel Ready," a crime thriller set in New York, I hoped to evoke an experience that encompassed exactly the qualities mentioned above. The book is jittery, dark, occasionally jarring and, ideally, unpredictable you know, like a ride on the M.T.A. And one of my most rewarding experiences came later, via the Twitter account CoverSpy, which chronicles the books people are spotted reading on the subway. One day, a mention sneaked into my timeline: Male, 20s, navy N.H.L. cap, on the R train, reading "Near Enemy," a book of mine. Writers are always happy to encounter their readers, but a subterranean one was especially meaningful to me. Herewith, a few of the best contenders for the category that I've discovered recently. "The Transmigration of Bodies," by Yuri Herrera, is a slim and potent novel about an unnamed city emptied out by plague, and one character's desperate scramble to unite two warring clans (think Baz Luhrmann's film "Romeo and Juliet," but set in the landscape of "Children of Men" and written in the jagged glass prose of James Cain). Jenny Offill's "Dept. of Speculation" also fits the bill; it's a shiv of a book about a blocked writer watching her marriage unravel. But perhaps my favorite "subway read" to date is James Ellroy's "L.A. Confidential," which is even more sprawling, sordid and satisfying than its film adaptation. I devoured it in less than a week, or about three or four round trips. You'll find yourself racing to the end, even as you don't want the end to arrive a truly rare feeling when it comes to the urban commute. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
There was once a home in Houston. It teemed with amenities, and on the outside it shimmered. But inside, termites gnawed at the floors, a sewage pipe neared bursting and structural issues diminished its value. The Texans are that home. And the caretaker and architect was Bill O'Brien, who was fired on Monday for letting it lapse into disrepair. The projects O'Brien favored over the past 16 months or so turned the Texans from the envy of their neighborhood into a fixer upper blighted by weeds in the yard. As a leading voice in personnel matters and, as of January, the team's general manager, O'Brien flipped premium draft picks in several deals and dealt one of the N.F.L.'s best receivers, DeAndre Hopkins, to Arizona for a relative pittance. As the Texans' coach, O'Brien guided them to four A.F.C. South titles in his first six years but a winless start to this season through four games. At their apex, the Texans boasted Hopkins, defensive ends Jadeveon Clowney and J.J. Watt, safety Tyrann Mathieu and the cornerstone quarterback Deshaun Watson stars who positioned them for potential glory. All who are left are Watt and Watson, who have watched the team's depth and quality erode around them, especially since blowing a 24 point lead to Kansas City in the playoffs after the 2019 season. The front office mortgaged the future by compromising draft capital Houston didn't make a first round pick in 2020 and doesn't have a first or second rounder in 2021 and subsequently depleted the roster of young talent on team friendly contracts. Trading Hopkins and a 2020 fourth round pick, for the running back David Johnson, a 2020 second round pick and a 2021 fourth rounder, left Watson without a dominant No. 1 receiver in a league that prioritizes passing. Collectively, the moves ratchet up the difficulty for O'Brien's successor as general manager, who must figure out a way to maximize Watson's prime while gaining more financial flexibility. 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. Even if the timing of O'Brien's dismissal is peculiar ownership empowered him to expend precious draft picks, award over market extensions and contracts and also deal Hopkins, but then fired him just four losses into this pandemic afflicted season in which a seventh team from each conference now makes the playoffs the Texans, at least, have a head start on vetting possible replacements. The associate head coach Romeo Crennel, a former head coach with Cleveland and Kansas City, will coach the Texans for the remainder of the season. In a league where about three quarters of the players are people of color but most coaches and executives are white, Crennel, who is Black, raises the number of nonwhite head coaches to five. The play that inspired a thousand memes the staring contest as the Cowboys' onside kick in Week 2 just rolled on by encapsulates the scope of Atlanta's despair. It is hard to win in the N.F.L., but the Falcons make it needlessly so. Their defensive collapses reflect poorly on their defensive minded coach, Dan Quinn, who, heading into Monday night's game at Green Bay (a 30 16 loss), had presided over six of the 15 worst blown leads in franchise history. Two came in consecutive weeks 20 points at Dallas, 16 against Chicago while the other came in some big game, a Super Bowl or something, a few years back. The Falcons' owner, Arthur Blank, is a patient man, but his tolerance for infuriating performances has to be waning. The Lions are the N.F.C. North version of the Falcons, just cloaked in Honolulu blue and without the Super Bowl calamity. The coach, Matt Patricia, took over a nine win team after the 2017 season, and under his stewardship the Lions, 10 25 1 in his tenure, have gotten worse every year. They lost by 6 points to New Orleans on Sunday, which wouldn't seem so terrible except that they led by 14 in the first quarter and then went on to trail by 14 at halftime. Do you know how mind bendingly difficult that is to do? According to the Elias Sports Bureau, that's happened only three other times in league history. The Lions tend to traffic in the absurd they lost to Chicago in Week 1 after both blowing a 17 point fourth quarter lead and dropping the potential game winning touchdown in the end zone with six seconds left and considering the sorry state of their defense, they're unlikely to morph into situational masters anytime soon. And if they do, Patricia might not be around to witness it. Another autumn tradition is unfurling in North Texas, just with a different coach: the Cowboys under Mike McCarthy are proving their whole is less than the sum of their parts. The Cowboys have (by far) the most talented roster in a gruesome N.F.C. East, as they often did under Jason Garrett, but despite a quarterback on pace to throw for roughly eleventy billion yards and the league's best receiving corps, they are a successful watermelon kick away from being 0 4, having surrendered a league high 146 points. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
Suze Orman Is Back to Help You Ride Out the Storm Although Suze Orman has written more than a dozen books over the last 25 years, her favorite thing to read is people. She reads millennials taking 30 year mortgages on properties they can't afford, and she reads people in their 50s and 60s holding on to houses merely because their adult children come home a couple of times a year for holidays. She reads guys who aren't C.E.O.s leasing C.E.O. cars, and she reads middle and working class women who buy jewelry and spend too much on clothes. Trusting one's husband with money is another thing she just can't deal with. "Women may fake orgasms," she said during a series of interviews last week. "Men fake their finances." Not that she knows from personal experience. Ms. Orman, whose wife, K.T. Travis, manages her business, loves telling people she's a "68 year old virgin." When the economy is good, Ms. Orman's business does fine. But your bust is her boom. That's when she emerges as the personal finance equivalent of Harvey Keitel's character in "Pulp Fiction": the suave, self confident fixer who saves the day when two unfortunate gangsters wind up with a dead guy in the back of a car. She will stand over you, telling you how to clean the blood off the seat, but you'll do the job yourself. When it's over, she will spray you down with water, and send you off in clothes that cost less, wiping away your illusion of being a big shot. Ms. Travis stood by, and Ms. Orman discussed what else? managing money during the coronavirus pandemic. She gave much advice and lamented continually why more people don't listen to her until it's too late. "You've heard me say for years, you need to have an eight month emergency fund," she said. "If you had an eight month emergency fund, you wouldn't be freaked out about paying your mortgage, or your rent or your bills or anything. But so many of you didn't. You had 150,000 coming in a year, 200,000, whatever it is, and your bills were exorbitant because you know and I know that you were spending more money than you had coming in, and now, maybe for the first time in your life, you still have all these bills that have to be paid, you don't have any money to pay them with, and you're totally freaked out." At this point, Ms. Orman is almost as well known for Kristen Wiig's "Saturday Night Live" impersonation of her as she is for her books and her own television appearances. Ms. Orman speaks in superlatives and tops them off with big gesticulations. She loves a rhetorical question to which the answer more often than not is "no." Want to get her approval for a two week jaunt to Australia? Want to take a big loan so you can buy a house just to flip it? "She's a naysayer," said David Zaslav, a friend and the president and chief executive of Discovery Communications. "The majority of the financial market is driven by commission and convincing you how you can do more by spending more, and Suze is a great voice as an equalizer. And when the 2008 financial crisis hit, the people who listened to Suze were OK. They weren't buying houses they couldn't afford, they weren't overleveraged." Ms. Orman grew up with two older brothers on the South Side of Chicago. Her mother was a secretary who sold Avon cosmetics for extra money. Her father owned a chicken shack that burned down twice. He didn't have insurance on it and lost everything. "One catastrophe after another," she said. After high school, Ms. Orman went to the University of Illinois, Champaign and graduated in 1976 with a degree in social work. She moved to Berkeley, Calif., where she borrowed 50,000 to start a restaurant. It didn't work out because the money evaporated after she handed it to a broker at Merrill Lynch, who used it to trade speculative options, she said. That taught Ms. Orman a couple of things. First, that investors who don't understand what is being done with their money are the most likely to lose it. Second, that if the idiot she trusted with it was capable of getting a job in finance, so was she. Soon, she got her own training in finance at Merrill Lynch. She became an account executive there, specializing in retirement planning. In 1983, she moved over to Prudential as a vice president. "Which really is a bogus term," she said, "because it only has to do with how much commission you make, but that's beside the point." Four years later, she left to start her own advisory firm, the Suze Orman Financial Group. There, she began writing and distributing booklets of financial advice to clients. They seemed to love them. So she found a literary agent, Linda Mead, and pitched her an idea for a book about long term care insurance. Ms. Mead thought the subject was too dreary. She advised Ms. Orman to do a book of more general financial advice for boomers. Few publishers were interested, but Ms. Orman managed to strike a 15,000 deal with a small house, Newmarket Press, whose publisher, Esther Margolis, had worked with Jacqueline Susann and saw in Ms. Orman a similar ability to connect with women other publishers ignored. Ms. Orman toured the country and went on Q2, the sister channel of QVC. When the book, "You've Earned It, Don't Lose It," became a best seller, she went to meet a better known agent, Amanda Urban, known as Binky. It was love at first bite. First, she walked into Ms. Urban's office and was impressed with the way she chewed someone out on the phone. Then Ms. Urban told her to lose 30 pounds. To Ms. Orman, that was a sign she would keep it real. Ms. Orman then told Ms. Urban a few things. First that she was a lesbian, which she worried may get in the way of her becoming a brand name personality. Second, that she could not write. Ms. Urban was thrilled. "Finally,'" she said, "an author who knows she can't write!" By 2002, Ms. Orman was hosting her own Saturday night show on CNBC, where she took calls from viewers who largely asked for permission to buy things that they knew they couldn't afford. "Are you kidding me?" she would say. "That is the stupidest idea I ever heard. " When they didn't follow her advice and wound up in bad shape, Ms. Orman was sympathetic. But she never hesitated to say "I told you so." Andy Siegel, 57, chauffeurs her around Miami. He has driven Paul McCartney, Billy Joel, Diana Ross and Rod Stewart but says Ms. Orman is the only one who's ever become a real friend. "You've got to handle celebrities with kid gloves, but she makes it easy," he said. "You just got to do what she wants you to do and then everything's good." That means "do not ever look at your phone, when you're with her, because it'll be the last time you ever drive her. And do not ever, ever, go through a yellow light." After Ms. Orman and Ms. Travis sold properties in New York and Miami and moved full time to the Bahamas, Mr. Siegel continued to serve as a kind of valet, shipping food and goods to her that she can't get locally. Her diet, he said, is almost compulsively healthy. No candy, no alcohol. She doesn't even really approve of coffee, although that has less to do with blood pressure issues than the amount of money people spend on it at Starbucks. "It's not even the coffee they're buying it's the status and a place to go," she said, noting that 100 a month placed into a retirement account accruing at 10 percent a year for 40 years (the last seven have been 14.3 percent) would bring a person 560,000. Ayanna Benjamin, 36, preferred Dunkin' Donuts. That's where she went daily before appearing in one of a series of videos Ms. Orman did with domestic violence survivors, in a project produced by the National Domestic Violence Hotline and Avon. When the taping was done, Ms. Orman told Ms. Benjamin to stay in touch. "She asked me to email her, but no one got in touch to give me her email," Ms. Benjamin said in an interview. A few months later, she got an invitation to go see Ms. Orman at the Apollo Theater in Harlem. There, Ms. Benjamin was ushered backstage. The first words out of Ms. Orman's mouth were: "Why haven't you emailed me?" Within weeks, they were texting regularly. Ms. Orman bought Ms. Benjamin a coffee machine and shipped it to her house. When Ms. Benjamin followed her advice to stop overspending on clothes, Ms. Orman sent her two pairs of jeans that she said were great and would last a really long time. "Gap, I think," Ms. Orman said. When Ms. Benjamin went to City College, Ms. Orman paid her student loan. When Ms. Benjamin graduated, Ms. Orman and Ms. Travis were in the audience. Ms. Orman and Ms. Benjamin do a fair amount of bickering. "The thing about Suze is, she knows how to flip a 20," Ms. Benjamin said. "She knows how to make money, and if you don't listen, she's going to make you feel. When I'm bad, she'll hang up the phone, and I know. She's not with that." That happens not to be her plan for her own money. She bought a huge number of stocks between February and March and made what she says was a "serious sum of cash." Then, when she became convinced several weeks ago that the market was overbought, she sold most of them. "But you have to remember," she said from the Bahamas, "most of my peeps only have money in 401(k)'s or I.R.A.s. They are in index funds. If they get out, they will never get back in." And, she said, "I don't need the money that is in the market. That's not true of my peeps." Nor is she going to get into speculative trading, plunking money down on Royal Caribbean, which day traders have made a killing buying up, selling off and then shorting numerous times over the last two months. "Are you kidding?" she said, separating the words out for maximum effect. "I wouldn't touch it. I'm never taking a cruise again in my life." Recently, one of her cousins called to say that she'd bought a pile of Delta stock, which has tumbled. "I said, 'That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard!'" As the market rallied in recent weeks, Ms. Orman became increasingly convinced we haven't reached the bottom. Partly because she considers the federal response to the coronavirus to be disastrous. And don't get her started on the election. "You still have people who want to vote for Trump. You still have people who think he's doing a great job," she said. "I see a trail of devastation that he left, of people's lives that they won't get back, they won't get their jobs back, they won't recover from this." She wants to live in a world where taxes on the wealthy "skyrocket," even if she no longer has any faith about where her dollars are going. "I don't know where the money goes," she said. "None of it makes sense to me." She wants to believe "everything happens for the best" and that we will emerge a stronger country from all this. But the more likely diagnosis for how this crisis will shake out, she said, is "the rich will get richer and the poor will get poorer. Sorry." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
In the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, the XFL football league shut up shop, just five weeks into its ballyhooed restart. Then it filed for bankruptcy. It seemed like an abrupt, but final, end for the revived league, which first rose to notoriety for a single season 19 years ago. But now the league has found some buyers for its assets. And one of them is the Rock. Dwayne Johnson, the actor and former wrestler known as the Rock; Dany Garcia, his business partner and ex wife; and the investment firm RedBird Capital Partners bought what remained of the XFL for 15 million, pending bankruptcy court approval, it was announced on Monday. Johnson said in a statement that he looked forward to "creating something special for the players, fans and everyone involved for the love of football." A news release did not specifically report when or if the XFL would be revived. It said the new owners planned "to option live entertainment intellectual property for further expansion across sports, live events and original entertainment programming." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
Neil Simon "could write a joke that would make you laugh, define the character, the situation, and even the world's problems," wrote Harvey Fierstein on Twitter. Neil Simon, the playwright behind hits like "Barefoot in the Park" and "The Odd Couple," died on Sunday. Mr. Simon wrote for television and movies, but his work on Broadway came to define his legacy. He was remarkably prolific, racking up over 9,000 performances of his work between 1965 to 1980. After his death, writers, actors and others spoke to The New York Times and took to social media to remember his life and influence. "You wanted Neil Simon in the room while you were rehearsing his plays, because when he laughed you knew you'd hit his truth!!! He was extremely generous to me in his writing and in his care of the process of bringing that writing off the page. He was the one and only, and I am grateful beyond words for what he gave me ... for what he gave us all." Linda Lavin, a Tony Award winner for "Broadway Bound" (1986) "Before I met him, Neil Simon taught me how to tie a tie without looking. I was forced to learn in 'The Odd Couple' in high school. Years later, when I first met him I told him he had made a big impact on me when I was a kid. He responded with, 'When, last week?' " Santino Fontana, starred in 2009 Broadway revival of "Brighton Beach Memoirs" "I was in college when I got my first Broadway show Neil Simon's 'Plaza Suite.' There couldn't have been a better way to begin a career. Doc Simon was the Albert Einstein of funny." Bob Balaban "Neil Simon, you wrote every character for me, you just didn't know it at the time. Thank you. Rest in Hilarity." Jackie Hoffman "Neil Simon's ability to chronicle the humor of everyday relationships makes doing his play eight times a week in San Diego in 2018 feel as fresh and relatable as it did in New York in the early '60s. There's a tendency to consign these plays to the dusty past, but you'd be wrong to do so. It's Neil's words that bring us vividly to life night after night. And they consistently bring audiences laughter, tears, and tears of laughter." Kerry Bishe and Chris Lowell, now starring in "Barefoot in the Park" at the Old Globe through Sept. 16. "I think Neil Simon is the Norman Rockwell of comedy. His artistry will only gain ground as the years pass." Treat Williams "Hard to overstate the impact that NeilSimon has had on comedy in our lifetime. 'The Odd Couple' is a Master class in character creation and his plays hold up to this day. We all learned from him." Steve Levitan, co creator of "Modern Family" "If you write comedy, if you write period, you learned something from Neil Simon. A truly great American storyteller." Randi Mayem Singer, "Mrs. Doubtfire" screenwriter "I loved 'The Odd Couple' on TV but never really appreciated Neil Simon. Then I read his book. I learned how dedicated he was to his craft how insanely hard it is. I was blown away. Then I saw 'Lost In Yonkers' soon after I wrote my 1st play. MUCH RESPECT to a GREAT WRITER!" Stephen Adly Guirgis, Pulitzer Prize winning playwright "I met Neil Simon by chance after a performance of 'Laughter on the 23rd Floor' in 1993. We had a lovely chat and he was generous with his advice and encouragement. He gave me three pieces of advice for writing and producing comedy: Write by hand on legal paper that has a narrow rule so that you can get as much as possible on a single page. Make sure the set has a ceiling. It's hard to get laughs without a ceiling. And make sure that the faces of the actors are well lit. He said at the end of our time together: 'We're in the same business, you and I. It's a constant fight for respect, writing comedy for the stage.' " Ken Ludwig, playwright "Thank you, Neil Simon. For the laughs, for the inspiration and for the example you set for this comedy writer. The times we were together are among my most memorable." Alan Zweibel, television writer and producer "The world is permanently less funny now." Larry Wilmore, television personality and creator "Neil Simon channeled the New York sensibility, helping to show the world, character by character, what it means to be a New Yorker." Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York "'If no one ever took risks, Michaelangelo would have painted the Sistine floor.' Neil Simon, RIP, and thanks for a million laughs, and quite a few good cries, too." Scott Simon, NPR "Neil Simon brought a unique eye for life to stage and screen. Through sharp characters and dialogue, he prodded us in laughter and tears to contend with the traits that make us human. Another voice who understood the power of art in our American story now belongs to eternity." Dan Rather, journalist | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
Running With My Mom: Nowhere to Go but Up Welcome to the Running newsletter! Every Saturday morning, we email runners with news, advice and some motivation to help you get up and running. Sign up here to get it in your inbox. When my mom called me last Saturday morning, she was a jangle of nerves. We were taking the train from Philadelphia to Manhattan that afternoon to tackle the New York City Marathon Training Series 18 Mile Run the next day. It would be her longest training run for her first marathon. It would also be her longest run ever, so the nerves were understandable. When she asked me how I was feeling, it wasn't just out of politeness. My grandmother on my father's side had died two days before. She was 85, and my last living grandparent. "Like I don't want to go," I told her. "You know, that's not exactly what I want to hear," she said. My parents had been divorced for more than 20 years, so she hadn't been part of the last two days of unwinding what my grandmother had left behind. I hung up on her and put my head down on my dining room table. I'd just spent two days propping up one parent. I didn't think I had anything else left to give. I've run through grief before. I trained for my first 10 mile race soon after my grandfather on my mother's side died in 2007. I finished the 2017 New York City Marathon days after the death of my paternal grandfather. He'd wanted no funeral, no service, no memorial, so there was not much else to do but go out and run a marathon. But I did it alone. My grandmother who had been married to him for nearly 60 years had expressed the same wishes, so there was no ceremony to mark her passing. Again, I had the opportunity to pound out my grief through running. But I couldn't do it alone this time. I'd promised Mom that I would run the marathon with her, and do at least one long training run with her too. She called me back, but I didn't answer. She texted me and said we didn't have to go. But we'd already paid for the run, the train and the hotel, and I knew how important these 18 miles would be for her confidence going into the marathon, so I shoved some clothes in a backpack, put on my headphones, flipped up my hoodie and went. The training run is three loops of Central Park. Mom runs about four minutes per mile slower than my easy pace, so I knew I could cover the distance. My challenge was to make sure not to push her too hard, and to figure out what she needed from me, that sweet spot of being supportive but not annoying and let her run her own race. My grandmother had gone to the hospital on Sept. 2 for what was supposed to be a straightforward gallbladder removal, but her health had taken a downward turn. I'd been listening to the soundtrack of "Mary Poppins Returns" nonstop during the last two weeks (though I skipped the songs about loss) because it's peppy and bright, and familiar without having the land mines of memories of listening to the soundtrack of the original, which I'd watched many times with my grandmother. So when Mom said she was going to listen to Enya through one headphone (which is music that calms her down while running), I put on "Mary Poppins Returns" and sang the songs to her even though I only knew three of every four words. I thought it would be funny. "You're singing off key," she said. On the second lap, we fell into a groove. I stopped singing. I walked next to her when she ran uphill. At crowded aid stations, I ran in first to make a path for her to follow. If she wanted to talk, she did. If she didn't, I ran by her side and let my mind unspool across my memories of my grandmom, which were tangled up with memories of the other grandparents I had lost before. "They were really very different," I said as we passed the statue of Alexander Hamilton for the second time. "Well sure," she said. Her father had served in World War II; his in Korea. Her parents were strict but loving Catholics. His were the life of the party. One of the last coherent things Grandmom said to me was that after surgery, she wanted me to bring her a big glass of wine with a lot of ice just how she liked it. She never got better enough for me to fulfill that promise. "I miss all of them," I said. "I know she wasn't young, but it's never easy, Jenny," she said. "And remember: It's only been three days." Then, after a pause, "Thank you for being here." On our third lap, the crowds fell away a lot of runners finished all three laps in the time it took us to do two. Mom looked fine, but she said she was tired still running, but tired. "Do it again," she said. "Sing me the soundtrack." So I did leaning in to the fact that I didn't know all the words, that my British accent was worse than Dick Van Dyke's in the original "Mary Poppins," and that yes, I sung off key. It was a sunny day with temperatures in the 80s, and my phone screen and finger were sweaty, so when I wanted to skip the songs about loss, I wiped my phone on the one patch of my mother's shirt that was not soaked with sweat. I added dance moves, to the point that my mom warned me not to throw my arms around to avoid hitting another runner. "What other runners? There aren't many left," I said, flinging both arms open wide and smacking her in the shoulder. The last song in my medley was the movie's finale, "Nowhere to Go But Up," a rousing song about how things can only get better from here. I skipped in front of her then ran back to sing, "And if you don't believe just hang onto my sleeve, for there's nowhere to go but up!" The word "up" reached up and caught me in the back of my throat. Yes, I was putting on a show, but I was still so tired and so sad, and proud of her too. I could tell she was struggling: the tightness in her shoulder, the grim forward stare, but she kept putting one foot in front of the other. Three miles to go, then two, then one, then none. "Here comes Jen Miller and Mary Miller, maybe they're related!" the announcer at the finish line called as we crossed. We were among the last people to finish that day. We did it in four hours, 48 minutes, 49 seconds well under my mom's goal of five hours. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Well |
Nico Rosberg scored his third victory of the year, winning the Austrian Grand Prix on Sunday and holding off his teammate, Lewis Hamilton. The race featured not only an intense duel between the Mercedes drivers, but also a challenge from Valtteri Bottas and Felipe Massa, drivers for the resurgent Williams team. Bottas ultimately came in third behind Hamilton, earning his first Formula One podium finish. Massa took fourth, ahead of Ferrari's Fernando Alonso. Sebastian Vettel, the defending series champion, had another forgettable weekend, with an electrical problem on the second lap that caused him to retire from the race. Rosberg now leads Hamilton 165 points to 136 in the race for this season's driving title. In other racing news from the weekend: Carl Edwards played late race caution periods to his advantage to take the lead in the 350 mile Nascar Sprint Cup race at Sonoma Raceway in California on Sunday. Then he managed to hold off Jeff Gordon by a half second to score the victory. Dale Earnhardt Jr. came in third, followed by Jamie McMurray and Paul Menard. The victory, Edwards's first in a Nascar road course race, was his second of the season. It essentially guaranteed him a berth in the season ending playoff for the driver's championship. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Automobiles |
In 1960, the literary critic Leslie Fiedler delivered a eulogy for the ghost story in his classic study "Love and Death in the American Novel." "An obsolescent subgenre," he declared, with conspicuous relish; a "naive" little form, as outmoded as its cheap effects, the table tapping and flickering candlelight. Ghost stories belong to brace yourself for maximum Fiedlerian venom "middlebrow craftsmen," who will peddle them to a rapidly dwindling audience and into an extinction that can't come soon enough. Not since Herman Melville's publishers argued for less whale and more maidens in "Moby Dick" ("young, perhaps voluptuous," they dared to dream) has a literary judgment been so impressively off the mark. Literature the top shelf, award winning stuff is positively ectoplasmic these days, crawling with hauntings, haints and wraiths of every stripe and disposition. These ghosts can be nosy and lubricious, as in George Saunders's "Lincoln in the Bardo," which followed a group of spectral busybodies in purgatory, observing the arrival of Abraham Lincoln's newly deceased young son. They can be confused by their fates, as in Martin Riker's new novel, "Samuel Johnson's Eternal Return," in which a man is unsettled to discover that his essence has migrated into the body of the man who killed him. Spirits crop up in fiction about migration (Viet Thanh Nguyen's "The Refugees"; Wayetu Moore's "She Would Be King") and complicate what might have been straightforward portraits of relationships (Ben Dolnick's "The Ghost Notebooks," Laura van den Berg's "The Third Hotel," Lauren Groff's "Florida," Helen Sedgwick's "The Comet Seekers"). They terrify, instruct and enchant sometimes all in the same book (Carmen Maria Machado's short story collection, "Her Body and Other Parties," features a veritable taxonomy of the type). M.R. James, the Edwardian master of the ghost story, once listed the crucial features of the form, including distant screams, no sex and "a modicum of blood, shed with deliberation and carefully husbanded." But the ghost story has always floated free of such strictures. The protagonist of James's era the scholar in his dim library was supplanted in our imaginations by curious young women roaming gloomy manors and innocently unleashing hell. Think "The Turn of the Screw," "The Haunting of Hill House" or any number of Edith Wharton's classics of the genre. Stories came lavishly garnished with sex and gore. The ghost story shape shifts because ghosts themselves are so protean they emanate from specific cultural fears and fantasies. They emerge from their time, which is why Jacobeans saw ghosts wearing pale shrouds and Victorians saw them draped in black bombazine. It's tempting to regard these apparitions as dark mirrors Tell me what you fear and I'll tell you who you are. I'm reminded of the governess in "The Turn of the Screw," who arrives at her new posting and is delighted to discover that her room has two full length mirrors, an unimaginable luxury and a clever bit of narrative forecasting; she will soon encounter mirrors of a different sort in the form of two ghosts (or are they?) haunting her young charges. Want to keep up with the latest and greatest in books? This is a good place to start. None Learn what you should be reading this fall: Our collection of reviews on books coming out this season includes biographies, novels, memoirs and more. See what's new in October: Among this month's new titles are novels by Jonathan Franzen, a history of Black cinema and a biography by Katie Couric. Nominate a book: The New York Times Book Review has just turned 125. That got us wondering: What is the best book that was published during that time? Listen to our podcast: Featuring conversations with leading figures in the literary world, from Colson Whitehead to Leila Slimani, the Book Review Podcast helps you delve deeper into your favorite books. However, ghost stories are never just reflections. They are social critiques camouflaged with cobwebs; the past clamoring for redress. The writer Philip Ball has described traditional ghosts as social conservatives who enforce norms the visitors to Ebenezer Scrooge, for example, or the ghost of Hamlet's father, who protests the horror of his murder as well as the offense of it: "Murder most foul, as in the best it is; / But this most foul, strange, and unnatural." In the modern ghost story, especially the American kind, something different occurs. Ghosts protest norms slavery, Jim Crow, mass incarceration the norms that killed them. Among the slew of new books, you will find such ghosts in Jesmyn Ward's "Sing, Unburied, Sing," Hari Kunzru's "White Tears," Natashia Deon's "Grace," Angela Flournoy's "The Turner House," Brit Bennett's "The Mothers." These novels are impossible to generalize; they are as various as the spirits who inhabit them: the blues musician avenging himself on the white hipsters who stole his music in "White Tears," the ghost of a young boy killed in Mississippi's Parchman Farm prison in "Sing, Unburied, Sing." But the spirits all speak with an authority older than any norm or nation. In "Grace," an enslaved woman on the run is shot by bounty hunters but hovers on earth. She will not leave her child; she will try to trump death. These ghosts are of America's making. And in testifying to their deaths at the hands of police, poverty and racist violence, they lead us back to the nation's foundational crimes of chattel slavery and genocide as well as its energetic amnesia. The historian Thomas Laqueur has noted that unlike in Germany or South Africa, with their prevalence of monuments, museums and plaques to national crimes, there is "no remotely comparable memorial culture in the United States to the legacy of slavery." If the crimes of America's origin are routinely whitewashed in public life, they remain central to its literature, in which the nation has been depicted not only as haunted but cursed, from Hawthorne on. His novel "The House of the Seven Gables" tells the story of the unhappy Pyncheons, who live under an ancestral hex for cheating a family out of their home. The notion of a curse flows through the work of Toni Morrison and Cormac McCarthy. It's the central strand in Faulkner, as J. M. Coetzee described it: "The theft of land from the Indians or the rape of slave women comes back in unforeseen form, generations later, to haunt the oppressor." "Sing, Unburied, Sing" emerges from this lineage. "I like to think I know what death is," says Jojo, the young protagonist. "I like to think that it's something I could look at straight." It turns out his path to manhood depends on it, on learning to acknowledge the dead and the persistence of the past opening his eyes to a landscape bloated with the phantoms of Hurricane Katrina, the living ghosts rotting in prison. But in a few of these books America becomes the ghost; America is shown to terrorize and consume. "America that green ghost, been after me for at least a couple hundred/years somehow once convinced me to do its dirty work for it sharp in a/warm bath," the Native American poet Tommy Pico writes in his collection "Nature Poem." "You don't seem too haunted, but you haunted," repeats a line in Terrance Hayes's "American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin." In Hari Kunzru's "White Tears," whiteness itself is seen as radioactive, fraught with danger. Seth and Carter, partners in a New York based recording company, are obsessed with black blues musicians, the more elusive and "authentic" the better they want the "ghosts at the edges of American consciousness." They cannibalize black art and awaken a frightening ghost when they forge a record. But it's clear that there is something unsteady, almost vaporous about the men themselves: Seth with his nagging feeling of hollowness, and frenetic Carter with his blond dreadlocks and mysteriously acquired family wealth their taste their only identity. "I pass through the world, but I leave no trace," Seth says, echoing a line in Colson Whitehead's "The Underground Railroad," set decades earlier, in the American South. Cora, Whitehead's heroine, escapes a brutal plantation in Georgia and takes temporary shelter in an attic in North Carolina. Through a hole in the wall, she observes white people in town, roaming in the twilight. "No wonder the whites wandered the park in the growing darkness," she thinks. "They were ghosts themselves, caught between two worlds: the reality of their crimes, and the hereafter denied them for those crimes." Far from obsolescent, how hardy the ghost story proves as a vessel for collective terror and guilt, for the unspeakable. It alters to fit our fears. It understands us how strenuously we run from the past, but always expect it to catch up with us. We wait for the reckoning, with dread and longing. When the ghost of Hamlet's father appears on stage, Horatio's words to him are beautifully ambiguous: "Stay, illusion!" he commands. He might mean, Come no farther, ghost. He might mean, Remain a phantasm. He might even be speaking to himself, biding his illusions to wait a minute more, intimating that the ghost's revelations will remake his world. "Stay, illusion!" Horatio commands. And in the stage directions, the ghost opens his arms. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
Investors enthusiastically snapped up Greek short term securities on Tuesday after European Union leaders pledged to stand behind the country's debt. Investors bid 3.9 billion euros on Tuesday for the 600 million euros of 52 week Treasury bills, the Greek Public Debt Management Agency said, meaning the offer was oversubscribed 6.54 times. An auction of 26 week bills, also seeking 600 million euros, drew bids totaling 4.6 billion euros, for an oversubscription ratio of 7.67. The demand allowed Greece to sell 780 million euros of bills in each auction. But economists warned that Greece still faced immense long term problems. In the worst case, Greece could still default, analysts said. More likely, in coming years it will require serial bailouts by its euro zone partners. "Even under relatively conservative assumptions the Greek debt situation is unsustainable," said Erik F. Nielsen, the chief European economist at Goldman Sachs in London and a former International Monetary Fund official. "Something has to give." Left to fend for itself, Greece would probably run out of money and default, analysts say. But other European countries are likely to conclude, however reluctantly, that continuing to support Greece is less costly than letting the country go under. A Greek default would cause borrowing costs to spike in other overly indebted countries like Spain, creating a much graver crisis that would threaten the credibility of the euro. "Greece is too small to fail," said Stuart Green, economist at HSBC Bank in London. "The policy of E.U. leaders is to nip the problem in the bud with Greece before it becomes more expansive." Still, the successful bond sale seemed to validate the decision by European governments on Sunday to provide 30 billion euros in loans if Greece was unable to raise money at a reasonable cost. The International Monetary Fund is expected to provide another 15 billion euros in aid. A trader at bank in Athens. Treasury bills were auctioned at higher rates than usual. The demand on Tuesday for Greek debt also seemed to indicate that Athens would not need to ask for the help right away. "We can turn our attention with greater calm to domestic challenges and promote the necessary changes," Prime Minister George A. Papandreou said, according to Reuters. However, the rates on the notes 4.85 percent for the 52 week bills and 4.55 percent for the 26 week bills were more than double those Greece paid on Jan. 12 on similar maturities. In addition, yields on debt with maturities of two or more years were still at least 6 percent in Tuesday trading, meaning the government will have to pay a high price as it seeks to refinance 40 billion euros more in debt this year. "There seems a strong chance that the government will eventually be forced to seek funds from the rest of the euro zone," Ben May, of Capital Economics in London, wrote in a note. The need to refinance debt is only the most immediate of Greece's problems. The Greek government has based its plans to shrink the budget deficit, which is nearly 13 percent of its gross domestic product, on a modest economic downturn of 0.3 percent this year. The government expects growth to resume in 2011. But economists at UBS, the Swiss bank, warn that those assumptions could be way too optimistic. UBS forecast a plunge in G.D.P. of 5 percent this year and next as cuts in public sector wages and other austerity measures feed through into the broader economy. If so, Greece could become caught in a vicious circle where declining output undercuts attempts to reduce the ratio of borrowing to G.D.P. The debt burden would increase at the same time the government's ability to pay was declining. European leaders will also be mindful of how deeply exposed their own banks are to Greece. All told, Greece owes 252.8 billion euros to European banks. The country's debt situation is certain to be a main topic yet again when European Union finance ministers meet in Madrid beginning late Thursday. Ultimately, Greece's fate rests on the ability of Mr. Papandreou and his government to create a more competitive economy. As a euro member, though, Greece cannot take the traditional route to competitiveness in world markets and devalue its currency to cut the price of its exports. "The only way to be competitive is by adjusting costs, and that means wages going down," said Diego Iscaro, an economist at IHS Global Insight in London. "That is likely to be a long and painful process." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Global Business |
MILAN We were at the bottom of an imaginary ocean in an industrial headquarters somewhere in Milan. There being no folding chairs on the seabed, red dots had been scattered across the floor for guests to anchor themselves. The glistening flotsam of thousands of plastic bottles caught in fishnets stretched above our heads. It was as though we'd gotten stuck on the underside of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and, standing and waiting on Saturday for the Marni show to begin, like coral polyps drifting in a crazy current, we were encouraged to reflect on the disheveled state of poor old Earth. It is probably worth remembering that there was a time not so long ago in this fashion capital when rampant excess was a given, when sustainability was thought to be of concern mainly to American tree huggers and when designers used the pelts of exotic animals so profligately that the survival of certain endangered species seemed like an oversight. That has all started to change. And, while there is ample reason to be dubious about the environmentalism that has crept up on the men's wear shows here, taken in aggregate it appears as though sustainability as a key element of modern design may be more than just another example of fashion attempting to be on trend. Consider labels like Ralph Lauren, which at an impeccable Purple Label presentation held in a Liberty era palazzo as liveried waiters circulated through lily heaped salons with trays of hors d'oeuvres showed a suite of knife sharp tailored men's evening suits in saturated yellow, orange and fuchsia silk shantung adjacent to a grouping of RLX waterproof parkas and sailing jackets made from recycled plastic. "It's polyester, basically," said John Wrazej, the label's creative director for men's design, who added that a companywide initiative is underway to shift toward environmentally sustainable production over the next five years. Consider an announcement made last week by Prada at the Pitti Uomo trade fair in Florence that the gear it has created for the Luna Rossa Pirelli team to wear in the America's Cup competition everything from parkas to wet suits will be crafted entirely from what the company termed "naturally renewable" and biodegradable merino wool. Consider that Ermenegildo Zegna, which opened Milan Fashion Week Men's, was held in the dystopian setting of a colossal industrial ruin outside the city limits. From its founding in 1906 until the last of its furnaces closed in 1995, the Falck steel mill produced the raw materials to fuel the growth of the Lombardy region as Italy's industrial superpower. When the facility was shuttered, it left behind a desolate brownfield poisoned by toxic seepage. Cleaned now, the area is destined to become an immense new "City of Health," designed by the Pritzker Prize winning Italian architect Renzo Piano and featuring affordable housing, a neurology hospital and an institute devoted to cancer research. The ghostly hulking carcass of the mill will remain. The choice of setting underscored an environmentalist message put forth by the Zegna designer Alessandro Sartori, who presented an array of crinkled, somber suits in a machine shop palette, much of it created using industrial offcuts. As much as 20 percent of the clothes shown to guests, who included the two time Academy Award winner Mahershala Ali, were crafted of waste fabrics recycled from the Zegna mills in northern Italy. (Current research, according to Mr. Sartori, suggests wool and nylon can be recycled as many as four times.) The Marni designer Francesco Risso called his spring 2020 show ACT 1 and accompanied it with an oracular manifesto about sustainable practice and ethical values. "We are here today to confirm our position in the world and to move towards action," the designer said in printed show notes hilariously mistranslated into English the bottles suspended above the show were described as "a cloud of waste that hoovers over our heads" and layered with kidlike sincerity and trippy metaphor. "Let's be vocal about our beliefs," Mr. Risso insisted, as he conjured up a mythical marriage between Truman Capote and Che Guevara. (Picture that love child.) In Mr. Risso's telling, the two meet cute when the American writer decides one day to ditch his society swans and seek out the Marxist revolutionary in the "guerrilla jungle." The dress code for their impossible union, held beneath the "hoovering" Damocles of plastic and presided over by a shamanic spirit called MC Magma, is "camouflage meets carnival." Somehow it made sense. When the show at last got started, the wedding party of Marni rebels snaked its way along the pathway of yellow polka dots that wound through the guests stationed on red ones. The rebels were alternately dressed in tailored or safari suits; striped polo shirts; two tone work jackets patched with flap pockets; checkered shirts splashed with scrawls and painterly daubs; V neck sweaters that looked as if they had been swiped from granddad's closet; camouflage overshirts patterned with random slashing; high waist trousers so wide at the hem a wearer would not get far as he bushwhacked through that jungle. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
One morning last spring Tiler Peck woke up, but she wasn't the same Tiler Peck. She didn't recognize herself. She couldn't. "I was afraid to use my eyeballs to look because I was in so much pain," she said. On April 23 she has been keeping a journal she was diagnosed with a severe herniated disc in her neck. Doctors couldn't pinpoint exactly how it happened. During the past five or six years, Ms. Peck, a New York City Ballet principal, had experienced a stiff neck from time to time, but this was different. "It wasn't like I danced and felt something," she said. "I just woke up and I had so much pain down my right arm I couldn't do anything. I'd never been in that much pain in my life." Just before City Ballet's spring season, she had an M.R.I. scan. She was packing her bag to go to the theater when her doctor called and asked her if she was sitting down. "He said, 'You have to promise me you won't go into work today,'" Ms. Peck said. "I just could tell by the tone. I said, 'I'm going to be able to dance again, right?' And he said to me, 'Well, we're just going to take it one day at a time.' It was one of the worst days of my life." Though she's performed in two dances at City Ballet since November, her return to the stage is still a cautious one. It has involved six doctors, five of whom advised surgery. "They were all telling me different things," she said, "but basically the scary thing was that they made me feel like if I was walking down the street and somebody were to nudge me, I could never walk again." Her injury, which prohibited her not just from dancing but from much ordinary movement, has made her reprioritize her life. "When you're told that you might not dance or even walk, you start to think, Oh my God, what is there?" she said. "What am I? Who am I? Am I more than just a dancer?" From April to August, the most exercise Ms. Peck had was riding on a stationary bike for 10 minutes without resistance. "For someone who's so used to being physical?" she said. "I couldn't even do life things." When she was first told that she needed to stop dancing, she called Marika Molnar, the physical therapist and director of Health and Wellness at City Ballet, whom she has worked with since she was 15. "She went with me to every single doctor," Ms. Peck said. "I needed someone to be on my side. She kept saying: 'I know your body better than anyone. They don't know. Your body just knows how to fix itself. They can't feel that.'" Ms. Peck said her gut kept telling her not to have surgery one doctor, pushing for it, asked if Ms. Molnar would be responsible for Ms. Peck if she were to become paralyzed afterward. Ms. Peck also worried that the surgeons she spoke to, who were opting for disc replacement or fusion, didn't fully understand her profession; the use of epaulement, or the position of the shoulders, head and neck, is imperative to a ballet dancer. "They'd say, 'Oh, it's just one segment, so if you get a fusion, you won't even notice that you don't need that,'" she said. "But I'm not a football player. I need to be able to use my upper body." Finally, she met with Dr. Frank P. Cammisa Jr., who specializes in the surgical treatment of spinal disorders. He told her that there was a good chance of her spine healing on its own. He advised taking off the summer beyond not being able to dance, she didn't really move her head for six months before getting another M.R.I., which she did, in August. (She will have another in March.) It showed improvement. Ms. Peck could start moving again. She wasn't taking pain medication so she could report all of her symptoms the tingling and pain to her physical therapists. She and Ms. Molnar worked carefully but consistently, every day if not twice a day, focusing on movements that don't put excess stress on the neck. "I like to take care of the environment of the body so that no matter where your injury is at least the rest of you is taken care of and it's not just pinpointed to one specific area," Ms. Molnar said. "So we slowly moved in until we were able to do some head and neck movements. She just started jumping." In November, Ms. Peck performed the Sugarplum Fairy in "George Balanchine's The Nutcracker"; in January, she was the female lead in "Allegro Brillante," a fleet, virtuosic gem of a Balanchine ballet. It was a challenge, but it paid off. As she put it, "I was like, I'm really dancing." Ms. Molnar doesn't want Ms. Peck near new choreography that could put her at risk; she is also enforcing two days of rest between performances. Ms. Peck may be dancing again, but these are still early days. Fouettes can be traumatizing for dancers, but until now they haven't posed much of a challenge for Ms. Peck, always the most polished and vibrant of dancers. (She once told me that she considered the fouette a rest step.) Jonathan Stafford, City Ballet's artistic director, was watching the rehearsal. Obviously, he knows her. "Let's just keep it at 10 though," he said. "Don't get in there and be like, Oh I feel good." Ms. Peck performed a single fouette followed by six doubles, in which she rotated twice around. With a shake of the head, she forced herself to stop, adding with a giggle, "I think it's fine." Though she was cutting her fouettes short and skipping her jumps, there was something transformative about her dancing. Her neck looked longer. Her back had both a newfound delicacy and expansiveness that made her arms appear more willowy. And she even looked taller. "I have to have better posture all the time," she said with delight. Ms. Molnar has noticed the changes, too: "She's a beautiful mover," she said. "It was always kind of free flow and now I would say she looks so much more sophisticated. I don't know what it is, but it's just so elegant." She may be the unofficial president of Ms. Peck's recovery team, but Ms. Molnar is not its only member. When she first received her diagnosis, Ms. Peck was treated by a chiropractor who put her in touch with a sports psychologist. A condition like Ms. Peck's affects more than the body; when a visit to a doctor was upsetting, her symptoms including tingling in the face would flare up. Now, she sees an energy healer, Rob Jokel, once a week. Before, she said, that would have been unthinkable: "If someone told me they went to an energy healer I'd probably be like: 'What is that? That probably doesn't work.' But I was like, I'll try anything, the weirder the better." She said that an important part of their sessions is just talking, which made her uncomfortable early on; he would become silent. "But it was his way to see what my energy did when I talked about things," Ms. Peck said. "It could be a person I brought up. We didn't just talk about the injury." For Ms. Peck, it meant dealing with life issues, including the 2017 breakup of her marriage with Robert Fairchild, a former City Ballet principal. "A lot of what he said to me was that I had to connect more with my heart than with my head," she said of her sessions with Mr. Jokel. "I think, too, maybe with what happened with Robbie was that I had just kind of shut off and this was a way that I had to reawaken that part of me. It became this whole person experience." During her time off, Ms. Peck focused on offstage projects like acting (she appeared in episodes of "Ray Donovan" as well as in "Tiny Pretty Things," a forthcoming Netflix show). She worked on her dance wear collection for Body Wrappers and choreographed a refined, sculptural ballet for six at the Vail Dance Festival. She said the choreographer William Forsythe told her: "This is the time when you really know if you can choreograph or not it's when you can't dance. Just use it." She also wrote a children's book, "Katarina Ballerina," with her friend Kyle Harris that will come out in May. And she wants to write another book about the experiences surrounding her injury. "It can be such a lonely road," she said. "It's so hard to describe a weird tingling feeling in your finger without somebody being like, 'Oh that's just your imagination.'" Then, as is now, it was fitting: "Swan Lake" requires a ballerina to be vulnerable. "I felt like I was able to bring so much of that to my white swan and now to be able to bring this to my white swan?" she said. "It keeps coming up at the most perfect times. It's just kind of weird." But right about now everything is a little weird to Ms. Peck, who has worked hard to heal, she said, "her mind, her body and her heart." For much of her recovery, she kept quiet about her injury and distanced herself from City Ballet and the dance world. "What I came to realize is dance is just one part of who I am," she said. "I just needed the time to focus on me. I really think that's what's healed me in the end." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
Kansas City Chiefs fans watching a training camp practice at Arrowhead Stadium last month, while observing social distancing guidelines. For Thursday's game, the stadium will admit 22 percent of its normal capacity. The N.F.L. opened its season Thursday night with a game between the Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs and the Houston Texans, a milestone reminder of normalcy during a completely abnormal time. The kickoff, which came after the Texans remained in their locker room during the national anthem and one member of the Chiefs knelt during the playing of it, marked the culmination of months of intense planning and negotiations between the league and its players' union, who sought to resolve a central question: How could a sport contested by players who slam into one another on every play begin safely amid the coronavirus pandemic? They agreed on several measures intended to reduce the risk of contracting the virus, from administering daily testing to restricting who can enter team facilities, and the low rate of positive tests emerging from training camp encouraged the league that its protocols were working. A number of referees and team personnel wore masks on the sideline, including Kansas City Coach Andy Reid, who wore a plastic face shield. The opening matchup, which the Chiefs won, 34 20, showcased two of the N.F.L.'s best players, the dynamic young quarterbacks Patrick Mahomes of Kansas City and Deshaun Watson of Houston, but it also served as a microcosm of the social activism coursing through the league after a tumultuous summer. Both organizations have been among the more active in calling attention to social injustice. Mahomes and Chiefs safety Tyrann Mathieu have been vocal in stressing to their teammates the importance of voting and of registering to vote, and their teammate Alex Okafor knelt Thursday night during the national anthem. Texans receiver Kenny Stills, who has knelt during the national anthem, was arrested in July in Louisville, Ky., for protesting the police killing of Breonna Taylor. The N.F.L. had resolved not to let the pandemic stop or alter the season. Even as transmission rates surged and team facilities closed, as training camp was restructured and the preseason abandoned and locker rooms reconfigured to diminish the spread of coronavirus, the league pledged that the season would start as scheduled, on Sept. 10. And it did, after the most challenging off season in N.F.L. history, before a reduced number of fans on Thursday night at Arrowhead Stadium. Whether the season ends as scheduled, in Tampa, Fla., on Feb. 7, 2021, with Super Bowl LV or is interrupted, by a deluge of positive tests or player boycotts in protest of racial injustice remains a mystery. The answer depends greatly on players' and coaches' individual discipline, the caprices of a viral scourge and the power wielded by players, who are using it, across all sports, like never before. The sport will still be contested on a field measuring 360 by 160 feet, and the football is, same as ever, made of cowhide, but so much else about how football is played this season will look, feel and sound strange and disorienting. Here is a sampling of what that entails: Will players be tested for the coronavirus? Building off the encouraging success of training camp, when daily testing confirmed the diligence of players and team personnel in adhering to protocols, the N.F.L. and its players' union agreed to continue to test players and essential employees every day of the week, except the day of the game. Final testing will occur the day before the game, and if the results from that test are inconclusive the player will undergo further testing. They will be permitted to play as long as those results come back as negative two hours before kickoff. 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. In the league's latest round of testing, which ran from Aug. 30 to Sept. 5, over 44,000 tests were given to 8,349 players and team personnel. Only eight new positive cases one among players were confirmed. The challenge, now, though, will be maintaining a safe environment and the same vigilance over reducing exposure risk once games begin, as teams travel and increase potential for contact. Anyone who tests positive will be isolated and barred from visiting team facilities or having direct contact with players or personnel. "The big thing for us is to not get comfortable," N.F.L. Commissioner Roger Goodell told reporters on a conference call last week. "We're dealing with a lot of uncertainty. We really have to adapt to the medical community. We will look at further changes to testing as we get into the season. We're continuing to be vigilant, flexible and adaptable." Will teams be able to replace players who become infected? Accounting for the likelihood that players will contract the virus, the N.F.L. offered several roster concessions. It expanded game day rosters to 55, from 53, with the extra two spots taken from the practice squad a rule bound to be exploited, as it has been by New England Patriots Coach Bill Belichick, master of the loophole, who opted not to keep a kicker on his active roster ostensibly because he can merely sign one to the practice squad and promote him before Sunday's game. The league created a distinct reserve list for players who either test positive or who come into contact with someone who has. It also increased rosters on practice squads the auxiliary unit generally filled with younger players to 16 from 12, with six slots allocated for veterans. And in a move that should delight coaches and executives who love churning the bottom of their rosters, teams are now permitted to protect four practice squad players every week who can't be signed to another team's active roster. These changes will, in all likelihood, inhibit teams from looking beyond players already cleared to be in their buildings, considering the testing protocols new players will have to undergo. What about the sidelines? In most stadiums, the experience will be stripped to its essence: two teams playing football. Only six teams are permitting fans in Week 1, all at diminished capacities. To combat uncomfortable silences, teams will be permitted to play league issued canned crowd noise, particular to their stadium, from the public address system at a level of 70 decibels the hum, more or less, of a normal conversation. The sideline itself, traditionally crammed with all sorts of ancillary personnel, will appear, by comparison, barren, with no cheerleaders, mascots or sideline reporters allowed. The ban extends to pregame pageantry, as well, with no live performances of the national anthem permitted inside stadiums. How will the league handle protests against racial inequality? The N.F.L. is primarily populated by Black players but has few Black coaches, owners and executives. For years the league has failed to heed the concerns of its Black constituency as Goodell acknowledged in early June, after the police killing of George Floyd. The civil unrest roiling the country has also shaken the N.F.L., with players, coaches and owners finding their own paths of protesting racism and police brutality. Many teams, spurred by the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wis., canceled practices, and they will doubtless continue to fight for racial equality over the course of the season. Among the players who have said they intend to kneel are Arizona Cardinals quarterback Kyler Murray and New Orleans Saints running back Alvin Kamara, who are Black. Cleveland Browns quarterback Baker Mayfield and Houston Texans Coach Bill O'Brien, who are white, are among those who have said they will join the protest. To spotlight victims of police brutality, players will wear decals with their names on the backs of their helmets, a rare amendment to the league's stringent uniform policy; Seahawks receiver DK Metcalf, for instance, has said he will honor Emmett Till, the Black teenager lynched by two white men in Mississippi in 1955. During warm ups, players will be permitted to wear a T shirt, designed by Texans safety Michael Thomas, that says, "Injustice against one of us is injustice against all of us" on the front and "End racism" on the back. The latter phrase will be written behind one end zone at every stadium, with "It Takes All of Us" marked behind the other. The song "Lift Every Voice and Sing," known as the Black national anthem, will be played before every Week 1 game. Though nothing has been announced, it's also possible that players will choose not to play one week, or perhaps more, in solidarity with peers in other professional sports leagues, like the N.B.A., W.N.B.A. and Major League Baseball, who walked out of games in August to protest social injustice. "They all have a choice, an individual choice and right to either sit out or protest, however one would characterize it," Troy Vincent, the league's executive vice president of football operations, told reporters on a conference call last week. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
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