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Chase is on the case in "Paw Patrol," but as protests against racist police violence reach their third week, criticism of fictional cops is growing, too. It was only a matter of time before the protests came for "Paw Patrol." "Paw Patrol" is a children's cartoon about a squad of canine helpers. It is basically a pretense for placing household pets in a variety of cool trucks. The team includes Marshall, a firefighting Dalmatian; Rubble, a bulldog construction worker; and Chase, a German shepherd who is also a cop. In the world of "Paw Patrol," Chase is drawn to be a very good boy who barks stuff like "Chase is on the case!" and "All in a police pup's day!" as he rescues kittens in his tricked out S.U.V. But last week, when the show's official Twitter account put out a bland call for "Black voices to be heard," commenters came after Chase. "Euthanize the police dog," they said. "Defund the paw patrol." "All dogs go to heaven, except the class traitors in the Paw Patrol." It's a joke, but it's also not. As the protests against racist police violence enter their third week, the charges are mounting against fictional cops, too. Even big hearted cartoon police dogs or maybe especially big hearted cartoon police dogs are on notice. The effort to publicize police brutality also means banishing the good cop archetype, which reigns on both television and in viral videos of the protests themselves. "Paw Patrol" seems harmless enough, and that's the point: The movement rests on understanding that cops do plenty of harm. The protests arrived in the midst of a pandemic that has alienated Americans from their social ties, family lives and workplaces. New and intense relationships with content have filled the gap, and now our quarantine consumptions are being reviewed with an urgently political eye. The reckoning has come for newspapers, food magazines, Bravo reality shows and police procedurals. On television, the hero itself is a concept under review. Just a few years ago, at the height of the antihero craze, a prestige drama could seem a little fluffy if its protagonist was not an actual murderer. There is an artistic justification for humanizing bad people and complicating good ones. It's hard to argue that a show like "Watchmen" (in which a black policewoman brutally beats suspected white supremacist terrorists) or "Unbelievable" (in which two female detectives repeatedly collar the wrong guys) would make for better television if their star cops acted more like German shepherd puppies. After Inkoo Kang, a critic for The Hollywood Reporter, described "The Wire" as painting police with a "heroic gloss," Wendell Pierce, who played Detective Bunk Moreland on the show, pushed back. "How can anyone watch 'The Wire' and the dysfunction of the police the war on drugs and say that we were depicted as heroic," he tweeted. "We demonstrated moral ambiguities and the pathology that leads to the abuses." The more salient critique of the crime genre is not how it depicts the police, but just how obsessively it privileges their ambiguities and pathologies over all other players in the criminal justice system namely, the people cops target as suspects. "As TV viewers we are locked inside a police perspective," Kathryn VanArendonk wrote recently on Vulture. Color of Change notes that defense attorneys, like Perry Mason and Matlock, "once embodied the character of the American hero," defending the American people "against the many police officers, prosecutors and judges who jumped to conclusions too quickly and stood as symbols of a deeply flawed system." But a sea change led by Dick Wolf's mammoth "Law Order" franchise has realigned the crime genre under the perspective of prosecutors and cops. "Our sympathies have generally been with victims," Warren Leight, the showrunner of "Law Order: SVU," said last week on the Hollywood Reporter podcast "TV's Top 5," in a conversation about rethinking the show. He added: "Cops behaving illegally, that's not part of Dick's brand." Cops and Hollywood enjoy a symbiotic relationship, as Alyssa Rosenberg detailed in a Washington Post series in 2016 on policing in popular culture. Cops consult on movies and series, helping mold the characters to their self conception, and then they take cues from those characters in their own police work. Police officers in Detroit have been spotted wearing the skull insignia of the Marvel antihero the Punisher, and squads in Minnesota have watched Disney's "Zootopia" as part of their anti bias training. "LAW ORDER" has become President Trump's preferred call to arms as the government dispatches police forces and National Guard soldiers against the protesters. The "good cop" trope is a standard of both police procedurals and real life police tactics, and now crowdsourced video of the protests has given cops a new stage for performing the role. In recent days, supposedly uplifting images of the police have spread wildly across the internet, competing for views with evidence of cops beating, gassing and arresting protesters. In Houston, an officer consoled a young black girl at a rally: "We're here to protect you, OK?" he told her, enveloping her in a hug. "You can protest, you can party, you can do whatever you want. Just don't break nothing." In Nashville, the police tweeted a photo of cops kneeling next to a black boy with a "Black Lives Matter" sign, smiling from behind their riot helmets. And in Atlanta, a line of National Guard soldiers did the Macarena. On the final rump shake, a black rifle slung over one soldier's back swung to the beat. These images show cops engaging in a kind of pantomime of protest, mimicking the gestures of the demonstrators until their messages are diluted beyond recognition. They reframe protests against racist police violence into a bland, nonspecific goal of solidarity. These moments are meant to represent the shared humanity between officers and protesters, but cops already rank among the most humanized groups in America; the same cannot be said for the black Americans who live in fear of them. Cops can dance, they can hug, they can kneel on the ground, but their individual acts of kindness can no longer obscure the violence of a system. The good cop act is wearing thin.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
PARIS The French choreographer Maguy Marin, whose work "Les applaudissements ne se mange pas" is being performed by the Paris Opera Ballet, is a contentious figure in contemporary dance. Part of a fecund generation that emerged in France in the 1980s, Ms. Marin has never had an identifiable style and aesthetic. Her work, which first came to notice with the brilliant "May B" in 1981, is difficult, austere, relentless, and occasionally charming and funny. But it has constantly evolved, and over the past decade has often precluded anything that might conventionally be called dance. In "Umwelt" ( 2004), dancers perform random tasks between upright mirrors, occasionally stepping through them to peer at the audience. In "Ha! Ha!," her dancers laugh to a score for an hour while bricks smash down onto seated mannequins. In "Turba" (2008), they move in a dreamlike landscape of flower strewn tables, donning and discarding costumes and wigs while reciting texts from "On the Nature of Things" by Lucretius. Although Ms. Marin won an international reputation for a "Cinderella" that she created for the Lyon Opera Ballet in 1985, her work has rarely migrated into the repertories of companies abroad. (On Thursday, it was announced that she had won the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement in Dance, awarded by the Venice Biennale.) It had not even migrated into the repertory of the Paris Opera Ballet; apart from a 1987 commission from Rudolf Nureyev, "Lecons de tenebres," the company had not performed Ms. Marin's work until "Les applaudissements ne se mange pas" opened at the Palais Garnier on Monday. It's a surprising omission, given the Paris Opera Ballet's focus on contemporary work under Brigitte Lefevre, who directed the company from 1995 to 2014 and brought in important choreographers like Pina Bausch, Angelin Preljocaj, Jerome Bel, Robyn Orlin and Sasha Waltz. That has been rectified by Benjamin Millepied, who succeeded Ms. Lefevre last year, and shocked the dance world by announcing, in February, that he would leave at the end of this season, after just 15 months. (He will be succeeded by Aurelie Dupont, a former etoile.) Mr. Millepied's focus during his short tenure has been largely on new ballet, but he spoke at his first news conference about the importance of Ms. Marin's work and his belief that the Opera dancers should perform it. He was right. Wednesday's performance of the hourlong "Les applaudissements ne se mange pas" (You Can't Eat Applause), which runs till May 3, is tough and brilliant, an unflinching portrait of human beings surviving one another or not. The title comes from writings by Edouardo Galeano, whose book "The Open Veins of Latin America" is cited in the program by Ms. Marin as the direct inspiration for the work. But there is nothing literal or specific shown on stage, where only brightly striped curtains hung on its three sides might suggest a Latino exuberance. To a humming, grinding electronic score by Denis Mariotte, Ms. Marin's regular musical collaborator, the performers, dressed in street clothes, repeatedly enter through these curtains, which prove to be strips of colored plastic. Sometimes these encounters are one on one, sometimes in groups. Always they stare warily, cautiously, at one another, eventually dropping their gazes. Fear leaks in. Bodies are dragged through the curtains, evoking those who have disappeared and an unknown darkness beyond. Ordinary movements walking, running, standing, falling are interwoven with sweeping movements that resemble martial arts, as the dancers circle their arms around one another or fall in unison to the floor. Ms. Marin manages to make everything feel equally naturalistic and deceptively simple. Images of execution, paralyzing fear, group obedience and numb acceptance come and go. A brief embrace is startlingly moving; the only evocation of human warmth in the hourlong work. As the piece progresses, Ms. Marin suggests a growing tension and fear without any obvious tricks. Mr. Mariotte's score builds and drops in volume and density; the lights dim and brighten. Sequences are repeated, and the patterns become recognizable: the ineluctable and inescapable games of power, the fear and the hope of those caught up in a world beyond their control.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
What books are currently on your night stand? There are two: The first is "Black Over White: Negro Political Leadership in South Carolina During Reconstruction," by Thomas Holt. It was published in 1979, but it's still one of the most comprehensive looks at the black elected representatives who held power in South Carolina from 1867 to 1876. To me, this is perhaps the most fascinating and tragic period in American history. The other is a galley for the novel "Touch," by Courtney Maum; it comes out in May, and I'm about halfway through it. So far it's a really smart and funny look at the insane psychological and social costs of our era of constant connectedness. I know Courtney from college, and my wife really liked her first novel, "I Am Having So Much Fun Here Without You," which got raves. What's the last great book you read? I'll name two because I basically read them at the same time, as I was working on my own book. "Ghettoside," by Jill Leovy, which is at one level just the story of one homicide detective in L.A., but is more profoundly about violence and policing and the ways in which our criminal justice system exhibits its contempt and devaluation of black lives through policing as well as overpolicing. The other is "Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life," by Karen and Barbara Fields. I'm slightly embarrassed to say that I'd not heard of it until my research assistant for the book, George Aumoithe, who's a Ph.D. candidate at Columbia, recommended it to me. It's a book of essays that grapple with a pretty simple question: What is race? It's permanently altered the way I think about the concept and the language I use to describe it. Which writers novelists, playwrights, critics, journalists, poets working today do you admire most? There are way, way too many for me to list here, particularly journalists, because there is just an incomprehensible amount of amazing work being produced right now. But here are a few: Ta Nehisi Coates; David Grann; Masha Gessen; Junot Diaz; Stephen Karam; Lin Manuel Miranda; Sarah Ruhl; Tony Kushner; Lynn Nottage; Rebecca Solnit; George Saunders; Michelle Alexander; China Mieville; and my brilliant, talented friend Alix Sobler, who is a playwright you will be hearing a lot from. What genres do you especially enjoy reading? And which do you avoid? The vast majority of book reading I do right now has to do with writing projects I'm working on, so for about a year and a half it was mostly criminal justice, policing, race and early colonial U.S. history. Now I'm reading a ton of history books about Reconstruction; in fact, it's basically all of what I'm reading. What's the first book you turned to after the election? "Fraud of the Century," by Roy Morris Jr. It's a chronicle of the 1876 election, and I turned to it for two reasons. One, 1876 was the last time that the candidate who won such a large margin of the popular vote lost the Electoral College. But more importantly, it also marked the end of Reconstruction, and the beginning of the reversal of what had been years of the most radical agenda of racial egalitarianism the U.S. has ever seen before or since. That seemed pretty relevant. 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. What books in your opinion best explain the current moment in America? Well, if you'll allow me a point of personal privilege, I think my own first book, "Twilight of the Elites," lays out the basics of our institutional dysfunction, elite failure, populist backlash and crisis of authority in ways that seem more relevant than ever. There are lots of others, but one that I've found incredibly useful is Alexander Stille's fantastic book "The Sack of Rome," about Silvio Berlusconi, who, in many ways, is the closest analogue you can really find among world leaders to Trump. And what's the one book you wish all Americans would read right now? Tell us about the best book you've ever read about American government. I don't know if it's the "best," because there have been dozens (Robert Caro's L.B.J. series comes to mind, James Wilson's "Bureaucracy," etc. . . . ), but one that always sticks out is "Cadillac Desert," by Marc Reisner. First, it's a masterpiece, an absolute tour de force of historical writing. But it also shows there is no such thing as a market without government; that the state, in a literal physical sense, constructs the conditions for market exchange; and that government and big business often operate in this partnership to tame and extract the earth. What was the most informative book you read while working on your new one? I really loved "Smuggler Nation," by Peter Andreas, because it's about, fundamentally, the fact that America is a nation of hustlers and con men, and never has that seemed, um, more true. What's the best book you read as a philosophy student in college? Is there one philosopher whose work you find yourself returning to again and again? In terms of moral resonance in my adult life, it's Camus. I return to "The Myth of Sisyphus" over and over as a kind of touchstone: Meaning is found in the struggle, not in victory; in the process, not in the outcomes. It's the closest I come to having a theology, or, I guess, antitheology. In terms of pure philosophical thought, it's definitely Wittgenstein's "Philosophical Investigations." Each paragraph of that book absolutely exploded my brain cells when I read it. No philosopher I've read has ever packed more profound insight into fewer words. How do you like to read? Paper or electronic? One book at a time or simultaneously? Morning or night? I always read simultaneously, usually electronic on my phone, because I always have it, but I've recently come to realize what the research on this topic makes clear: Reading on paper greatly enhances focus and attention. So I've started to migrate back to that. I'm reading a bunch of Reconstruction books right now, and they're all paper. I tend to read in the morning, on the subway ride into work. What book might people be surprised to find on your shelves? Hmmm. This question requires me to make a mental model of what the typical person thinks about me, and I'm not quite sure I'm up to the task. We definitely own a lot of translation dictionaries, which I always find startling when I see them: English to French, English to Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Hindi, Urdu. They're mostly my wife's. What's the best book you've ever received as a gift? When I was studying abroad in Italy in 2000, it was before the era of e books, and English books were hard to come by. My parents sent me a care package for my birthday and included "Brief Interviews With Hideous Men," by David Foster Wallace. That book is astoundingly good and vastly underappreciated, and I read it over and over that semester in Bologna, returning to it every time I ran out of English books to read. When I got back to college for senior year I actually staged a version of it in a student run theater, and one of the people I cast was John Krasinski, who would later buy the rights to it and make it into a film. Who is your favorite fictional hero or heroine? Your favorite antihero or villain? I'm not sure if Porfiry, the detective in "Crime and Punishment," is the hero or antihero, but I remember finding that character absolutely thrilling, partly because I so fully and totally reviled Raskolnikov. The best villain has to be Iago, now and forever. If I ever go back to theater and there's one role I could play, that would probably be the one I wanted more than any. What kind of reader were you as a child? Which childhood books and authors stick with you most? What books do you enjoy reading with your own children? I was a pretty precocious and active reader as a kid, but even then it was more nonfiction than fiction: history books, magazines, big technical books about airplanes. The first fiction I absolutely fell in love with was "The Chronicles of Narnia," which I tore through as a little kid and were the first chapter books I read. I tried to get my 5 year old, Ryan, into them, but she was ambivalent. She absolutely loves Roald Dahl books, however. David, who's almost 3, is a literary omnivore, but his current favorite book is "Dragons Love Tacos." That will almost certainly change by the time this is published. If you could require the president to read one book, what would it be? Well, it's pretty clear the president doesn't read, so I wonder if there'd be a movie or TV series that would make more sense. But in terms of books, I think Tony Judt's "Postwar," which is, in its own way, about how the postwar international order was created, and why, for all its tremendous faults, it is worth preserving. The thing that terrifies me most is world war, and I feel as if we've entered into a period in which the generation of people who lived through world war have nearly all died and we've forgotten, as a kind of global society, just how horrible it is. You're organizing a literary dinner party. Which three writers, dead or alive, do you invite? James Baldwin is a no brainer. (I'd let him smoke inside.) Then I'd say Walt Whitman and Hannah Arendt. Disappointing, overrated, just not good: What book did you feel you were supposed to like, and didn't? Do you remember the last book you put down without finishing?	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
The new car is a softer, more curvaceous, more elegantly proportioned variation on Lamborghini's aggressive faceted look. More in the tradition of the sleek Miura than the brutal Countach, it is built largely of carbon fiber. In an interview before his talk, Mr. Perini said the car was designed wholly on computers, without a clay model. The magic of nature that inspires him, Mr. Perini said, is not flowers or leaves, but crystals. "I like crystals," he said. "Sometimes you see minerals where they intersect. There is a bit of chaos there. We look at the intersection of volumes instead of lines in our cars." The thinking that went into the new design, he said, began one day when he was depressed by the quality of the work of the nine designers in his studio. "Everything they were drawing that week was ugly, ugly," he said. "And then I thought, how do we know what is beautiful and what is ugly?" Mr. Perini investigated. The sources of beauty, he concluded, are proportions like the Golden Section beloved by the ancient Greeks. He noted that almost everything in the Huracan is shaped around some form of hexagon, from interior gauges to headlight shapes. The hexagon, he pointed out, is the shape of some of the molecules of carbon fiber that Lamborghini is using in its cars. It is also a form found widely in nature, as in honeybee combs. Although Mr. Perini became head of Lamborghini design only three years ago, he said he had first bonded with the marque as a child. Growing up in an Italian town, he rode his bike almost every day past a Miura sky blue with gold wheels owned by a local rich man. He began drawing cars and sending them to automobile magazines.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Automobiles
Wherever the leaves change color, expect hotel rates to rise as fall color peaks. Still, there are a few deals in leaf peeping season, especially if you can travel midweek. In the Catskills, the 11 room Arnold House offers Shandelee Mountain hikes and midweek rates from 169, with breakfast. Weekends begin at 229. In the Adirondacks, Whiteface Lodge offers fall rates from 282 a night, down from 448 in high season. Apple cider treatments add seasonality to the spa. Color comes to Maine early, and rates drop at properties in the Kennebunkport Resort Collection, a group of boutique hotels in and around Kennebunkport: at the downtown Grand Hotel and the restored motel Lodge on the Cove, from 99.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
The rapper ASAP Rocky has been detained in Stockholm for two weeks while investigations continue into an assault charge. A court ruled on Friday that ASAP Rocky, 30, whose real name is Rakim Mayers, was a flight risk and must to be confined to a detention center, his lawyer, Henrik Olsson Lilja, said in a telephone interview. "He of course is very disappointed and this is a catastrophe for his tour," Mr. Olsson Lilja added. ASAP Rocky was scheduled to headline Wireless, a London festival with a capacity of 50,000, on Sunday. Tour dates in Ireland, Germany, Russia and elsewhere across Europe were also planned. Mr. Olsson Lilja said the detention was unnecessary and would be appealed. "Of course a world artist like him would come back to Sweden if there is a trial in the summer or fall," he said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
A fourth finalist was Haruki Murakami, the only one of the four considered a regular Nobel contender (according to betting websites, at least official nominations are kept secret for 50 years). Mr. Murakami dropped out, according to the prize's web page, because he wished "to concentrate on his writing, far from media attention." Perhaps in response to the Nobel's sexual misconduct crisis, a measure of gender equality was built into the process: The top two male writers and top two female authors from the public vote were named finalists. "This prize to me is so precious because it comes from the movement of citizens," Ms. Ly Thanh said in a telephone interview on Tuesday, "It's not a structure, an organization, something that is established. It's a reaction from the population." Ms. Ly Thanh said she doubted she would have been nominated for a Nobel Prize. The New Academy Prize is also distinctive for including popular genre authors: for instance, fantasy novelists such as J.K. Rowling, nominated by librarians in the first round, and Mr. Gaiman are unlikely to ever win the Nobel, which tends toward authors of literary fiction or serious minded nonfiction. Mr. Gaiman praised the prize for its "willingness to look at who are the writers who are being read, who are doing quality work, and who, in whatever department they're in, are changing the world and making people's lives better." He added that Ms. Rowling "has had more impact on more lives, I would suspect, over the last two decades, than pretty much any writer who has won the Nobel Prize for Literature ever." The New Academy Prize has received some criticism in Sweden for a perceived lack of seriousness ("The only thing really worse than the old Academy is the new one, consisting of 117 Instagram celebrities with more or less vague connections to the cultural world," wrote one Swedish columnist.) But the prize's founder, the journalist Alexandra Pascalidou, told The New York Times in July that she was not hoping to replace the Nobel but push it to be more "contemporary, open to the world, inclusive, transparent." Guadeloupe is an administrative department of France, and Ms. Conde's novels are written in French. "I belong to a small island with no say on international issues," Ms. Conde said. "Guadeloupe is mentioned only when there is a hurricane, but I have always been convinced we have a wonderful culture fabricated from various influences: Europeans, Africans, Indians, Chinese. Winning this prize would mean that our voice, the voice of the Guadeloupeans, is starting to be heard. It would be the beginning of a true Guadeloupean identity."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
Revivals and reboots are a genre unto themselves, split into the gritty ones, the straight up continuations, the spinoff in reboots' clothing, the various next generations. This new "Saved by the Bell" slots in next to "Cobra Kai" as a self aware, self satirizing but ultimately wholesome revival hoping to overcome the obscurity of its streaming platform with the fame and lingering good will toward its returning stars. It works! The new "Saved by the Bell," debuting Wednesday on Peacock, is quick and funny, and it achieves a tricky blend of staying true enough to its source material while adapting to the standards of the day. Like the more earnest revival "Degrassi," this one follows the descendants of the original gang: The slick Mac Morris (Mitchell Hoog), son of Zack (Mark Paul Gosselaar) and Kelly (Tiffani Thiessen), and the doofy Jamie Spano (Belmont Cameli), Jessie's son, are among our leads, attending the very Bayside High their parents went to. Jessie (Elizabeth Berkley) and Slater (Mario Lopez) work at the school now, she as a guidance counselor and he as a gym teacher and coach. Zack is the bumbling governor of California, whose fear of being perceived as incompetent leads to budget cuts, which lead to school closures, which in turn lead to bringing all the students from a shuttered underfunded school to Bayside. Our new Zack isn't Mac but rather Daisy (Haskiri Velazquez). She's the one who does the fourth wall breaking time outs, and she's the one with the gigantic, ancient cellphone thanks to her mom's dumb rules. But she's really more of a Jessie: ambitious and rigidly ethical. She's also poor, and she sometimes explains to her rich new classmates what that means. "When you're poor, you're worried all the time, even if you're a kid," she says. I wouldn't call that episode Very Special per se, but it's how this "Bell" has its corniness and eats it, too, both mocking and happily delivering its lessons. Everyone expects DeVante (Dexter Darden) to play football but instead he auditions for the musical, singing "The Greatest Love of All" over a montage but, you know, winking. Strong performances from the new cast balance glibness with the sweeter we all have growing up to do machinery. Aisha (Alycia Pascual Pena) joins the football team and expects some sexist backlash, so she's a little disappointed that her teammates are all feelings circle softies whose motto is "clear eyes, full hearts, full stomachs." Perhaps we will never truly escape the long, bitchy grasp of "Glee," distilled here as Lexi (Josie Totah), the transgender queen bee with her own reality show and an endless supply of showbiz zingers, who later learns about the power of empathy. Lexi's lines in particular hark back to the showrunner Tracey Wigfield's previous series, "Great News," and her work on "The Mindy Project" and on "30 Rock," which this show also resembles in its sunny cynicism. While the original "Bell" was explicitly for young viewers, this often seems to be more for the grown up crowd who reads YA, unless there are a lot of 9 year olds who know who Harvey Levin is and will get scenes that spoof HBO's naughty teenagers drama "Euphoria." Mostly this "Bell" zips along with ease and confidence, as unencumbered as the rich kids it mildly criticizes through its NPR informed lens. The moments of friction come from the adult characters grafted in from the original. Lisa (Lark Voorhies) appears only in a brief cameo, and Gosselaar and Thiessen barely appear until Episode 8, when they reunite with their high school BFFs, and are vacuous and awful. Slater's delayed maturation is one of the main narrative arcs of the series and God bless but it creates a pocket of antinostalgia, not returning to the past but dragging the past into the future. I don't have a Skip It anymore. Why do I still have this? "Saved by the Bell" has never quite stayed in the early '90s where it belonged. Its consistent syndication kept it in the popular imagination longer than, say, the similar "California Dreams," and it went through spinoffs and made for TV movies, which are amply referenced here. Then it was endlessly re metabolized through memes, and its references became substitutes for punch lines, a lingua franca of the Oregon Trail generation, ubiquitous enough that a cast reunion became one of the banner achievements of "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon," in 2015. Were we ever so young? Actually, we were, and actually, we're not anymore. As Slater says to his high school girlfriend, now colleague, kids today are "a bunch of Jessies," and he regrets always telling her to calm down and care less. "You were the only one who knew what was going on," he says. "Styrofoam is bad, drilling for oil on a football field is bad, a school sponsored bikini contest is bad." But of course that can't be brought to its natural conclusion "Saved by the Bell" was bad because a lot of us once loved "Saved by the Bell," and now we want to consider ourselves good. Because we reject dissonance, it can't be just a so so relic relegated to the archives. And so here we are, in true Zack Morris and Mac Morris fashion, pulling off the kookiest scheme of all: "Saved by the Bell" is now good.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
How do improvisations in a dance studio become theatrically coherent choreography? How is the style of a mature choreographer transferred to or transformed by the younger dancers in his or her employ? These perennial questions were bouncing off the aluminum foil covered walls of the Brooklyn performance space Jack on Thursday. The occasion was a mixed bill shared by the veteran choreographers Neil Greenberg, Jennifer Monson and Yvonne Meier. Mr. Greenberg's contribution was addenda to his 2014 work "this": a solo that was cut out of that piece and a trio that developed from it. Both derived from videotaped improvisations, culled, memorized and rearranged. The two works felt like studies or sketches, repeating sequences that didn't really bear repeating. In "this solo," Mr. Greenberg gathered a collection of movements (contractions, salutes) into a circular flow, contrasting internally focused moments with bursts of mock spectacular bounding or of bucking as he lay on his back. In "This d'Occasion," he was joined by Connor Voss and Molly Lieber. Moving for the most part independently, Mr. Voss was captivatingly serpentine and Ms. Lieber intensely concave, but more striking was an outbreak of jumps that were like falls, each short flight a preparation for a slammed down landing.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
The novel's French title, which translates literally as "Extension of the Domain of Struggle," encapsulates Houellebecq's theory of sexuality (he is typically French in his love of abstraction and theory). The sexual revolution of the 1960s, widely seen as a liberation movement, is better understood as the intrusion of capitalist values into the previously sacrosanct realm of intimate life. "Just like unrestrained economic liberalism ... sexual liberalism produces phenomena of absolute pauperization," he writes. "Some men make love every day; others five or six times in their life, or never." The latter group the losers are represented in "Whatever" by Raphael Tisserand, who is so repulsive that he has never had sex with a woman, despite strenuous efforts to seduce one. He is a proto incel, and his story builds to a disturbing scene in which the narrator urges him to murder a woman who has rejected him. In the end, however, Raphael doesn't go through with it: "Blood changes nothing," he observes fatalistically. And this is a key difference between Houellebecq's characters and criminals like Rodger and Minassian: They recognize that violence will not change their situation. They are victims of generational trends that Houellebecq believes have plunged the West, particularly France, into incurable misery. Houellebecq's second (and best) book, "The Elementary Particles," reiterates his case against "sexual liberalism," while adding a host of new culprits, from New Age spirituality and women's magazines to social atomization and the decline of Christianity. "In the midst of the suicide of the West, it was clear they had no chance," he writes of the characters in the novel, in what could be a slogan for all his fiction. This sounds like a familiar kind of reactionary pessimism. But it is not quite accurate to call Houellebecq a reactionary, since he does not believe that it is possible to return to the sexual regimes of the past in particular, arranged marriages which he suggests did a better job of providing mates for undesirable men. In his novel "Submission," Houellebecq mischievously toys with the idea that such a return could be accomplished by a mass conversion to Islam. After all, a society in which women submit to men while men submit to the divine can be seen as Houellebecq's version of utopia. "Screw autonomy," his narrator muses though he uses a more vulgar word; autonomy is the root of alienation. In his more serious moods as in "The Elementary Particles" or "The Possibility of an Island" Houellebecq imagines a more radical solution to the problem of sexual inequality. Instead of going backward to an earlier stage of humanity, these books push forward to a posthuman future in which human beings are replaced by a species that has abolished sexual reproduction, and so is immune to the torments of desire and loneliness. This perfected species looks back on us as a "vile, unhappy race, barely different from the apes." Houellebecq likes to cast his novels as the testimony of the present before the court of the future: To understand why we were so wretched, posterity will have to read him. And it is in this sense, as diagnosis and evidence, that Houellebecq's novels are now more urgent than ever. The portrayal of hatefulness is part of fiction's mandate to give a truthful account of the world; there are characters in Dostoyevsky as revolting as anyone in Houellebecq (perhaps more so, because Dostoyevsky is a better writer). Houellebecq is able to give such a convincing portrait of incel thinking because at some level he seems to share its core assumption, representing sex as something that women owe men. This misogyny can make reading Houellebecq an ordeal, and he ought to be read with the suspicion and resistance that his ideas deserve. But all the same, he ought to be read.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
Almost four years after a startling revelation that shook the art world, artworks that had been confiscated by the Nazis from German museums and eventually discovered stashed away by Cornelius Gurlitt, the son of a Nazi era art dealer, have arrived at the Kunstmuseum Bern in Switzerland. The pieces for the highly anticipated exhibition, which is to go on view Nov. 2, arrived a week late because of customs difficulties, according to the museum, which presented a preview for the news media on Friday. The pieces being shown are only those whose provenances are known. Much of the collection's origins are still being investigated in Germany. The collection, including art by Otto Dix, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Franz Marc, had been bequeathed to the museum by Mr. Gurlitt, who died in 2014. That wish led to a lengthy legal dispute initiated by a relative, but a German court determined that Mr. Gurlitt was of sound mind when he drew up his will. This exhibition, titled "Degenerated Art," will be one of two simultaneous displays of selected works from the Gurlitt collection. The Kunstmuseum Bern will display about 200 of the 1,500 pieces that were part of Mr. Gurlitt's stash, which the German authorities discovered by chance and later revealed in 2013. It will focus on art that was confiscated by the German authorities art that Hitler deemed degenerate. As part of a partnership, the show at the Bundeskunsthalle museum in Bonn, Germany, which is set to open on Nov. 1, will display a separate set of works from the Gurlitt collection with about 250 pieces that are believed to have been looted from private Jewish art dealers.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
From left, Liam Neeson, Ray Park and Ewan McGregor in "Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace." Many critics were disappointed when the film opened in 1999, but it went on to earn over 1 billion. Maybe you waited in line all night for tickets. Maybe you took your kid out of school. Maybe you sat through the somnambulant three hour Brad Pitt movie "Meet Joe Black" six months earlier, just to see the first trailer. But even if you were a casual fan in 1999, you surely felt goose bumps when the lights went down and "The Phantom Menace," the first "Star Wars" adventure after 16 years of rumors and anticipation, was finally unveiled. It took only 55 seconds for the disappointment to set in. First there was the full 20th Century Fox fanfare, leading into the glittering emerald of the Lucasfilm logo. Then a silent fade to black and "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away," a phrase that so perfectly evokes storytelling tradition while suggesting the infinite. And finally, that familiar burst of brass and percussion that opens the theme music by John Williams, welcoming the titles and the opening crawl, and a prequel trilogy that will bring a new generation of fans into the "Star Wars" family. Yes! Turmoil! The pretext to all interstellar conflict! To be fair to George Lucas, the creator of "Star Wars" and the writer director of "Phantom," which has its 20th anniversary on Sunday, nations have gone to war over less than taxation. Lucas has always been a politically minded filmmaker he was involved in the early stages of "Apocalypse Now," which he intended to direct and perhaps he wanted to suggest that mass tragedy is often rooted in the banal. Policy divisions that put you to sleep can also kill you. It was also the first indication that maybe "Phantom" was not the event it was cracked up to be. That maybe a lack of creative urgency explained all the time that had passed since the original "Star Wars" trilogy ended. And yet, the critical disappointment from that time has slowly receded as Hollywood has built on Lucas's achievements. Without "Phantom" and its sequels, the complex integration of the Marvel Cinematic Universe may not have been possible to say nothing of the screen saver gloss of its celestial destinations. All the weaknesses that plagued "The Phantom Menace" 20 years ago are still readily apparent in 2019: the actors stiffened by dialogue that must have sounded snappier in its original Huttese; the nonaction scenes that alternately appeal to the very young or to grown ups stuck in meetings all day; the midi chlorians. And then there was Jar Jar Binks, the notorious floppy eared Gungan whom Lucas intended as comic relief but who spoke and behaved like an amalgam of bad racial stereotypes "a Rastafarian Stepin Fetchit," as the Wall Street Journal critic Joe Morgenstern described him. (Lucas has fervently defended his maligned creation as recently as April, when he called Jar Jar his favorite "Star Wars" character.) And the stereotypes didn't stop with Jar Jar; multiple characters wouldn't survive the scrutiny of today's culture pages. In an outrageous riff on geek entitlement, the stand up comedian Patton Oswalt fantasized in his 2007 album, "Werewolves and Lollipops," about using a time machine not to find out who Jack the Ripper was or to stop the Kennedy assassination but to kill Lucas with a shovel, preventing him from making the prequels. We don't need to know what Darth Vader or Boba Fett were like as kids (sad), or what the Death Star looked like when it was under construction (a hamster wheel), he argued. Oswalt likened it to having Lucas offer a dish of ice cream and then handing a big bag of rock salt instead. I don't care where "the stuff I love comes from!" he screamed."I just love the stuff I love!" And yet the legacy of "The Phantom Menace" strangely redounds to Lucas's favor, setting the tone for the big movie franchises of today. The Marvel and DC universes, for example, are full of Easter eggs and other incidental details that are less about moving the story forward than about adding dimension for its own sake. The current "Star Wars" trilogy and spinoffs, of course, are too: Learning how Han Solo got his name in "Solo: A Star Wars Story" has no dramatic value. It's just a piece of trivia, another collectible to put on the virtual shelf. Computer generated imagery had been coming of age in the mid to late 1990s, but no single film had used C.G.I. to such sustained or varied effect, or so seamlessly brought digital creations into contact with flesh and blood humans. When Roger Ebert sighed, "How quickly we grow accustomed to wonders" in response to the film's critics, he had a point. We'd never seen anything like it before. Adults who grew up loving the original "Star Wars" trilogy may have groaned in disappointment, but for their kids, "Phantom" was the start of their "Star Wars" trilogy. And people packed the theaters regardless: "Phantom" grossed nearly 1 billion worldwide, according to BoxOfficeMojo.com, (the 2012 3 D release pushed it beyond 1 billion), and the sequels were wildly popular. A debut this anticipated was expected to break opening weekend records (it topped 28 million on opening day, a record then for single day returns), but its overall earnings belied the notion that audiences were completely crestfallen. The culture shifted accordingly. Franchises like the "Harry Potter" and Marvel movies, or even the "Fast and the Furious" series, are talked about now in terms of "mythology" not as mere sequels but as densely connected epics of ever ballooning scale. Pour enough detail into the work, as Lucas did, and it will take root in the popular imagination. The tragedy of George Lucas is that he was ultimately rejected from the world he created. "Phantom" had reaffirmed the durability of the franchise, Jar Jar be damned, but its flaws were enough to make fans and studios start to dream about a "Star Wars" without Lucas to question whether projects on that scale were worth ever risking on a single person's vision. And by the end of the prequel trilogy, he had inadvertently created a universe so precise that others could take the blueprint and make their own box office Death Star. Once Disney bought the franchise in 2012, a phalanx of writers and directors could be deployed to make whatever small modifications were needed to spruce it up better performances and dialogue, perhaps, or increased diversity. Lucas's idiosyncrasies could be buffed out.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
The Walker Art Center has delayed the opening of the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden by a week as the museum's executives plan the removal of a sculpture that has provoked a public outcry. The work, "Scaffold," by Sam Durant, is a two story structure that aims to evoke gallows and public executions throughout United States history. It is a composite representation of seven gallows, including those used to execute John Brown and Saddam Hussein, as well as the Dakota 38, who were executed in Mankato, Minn., at the end of the United States Dakota War of 1862. Members of the Dakota community in Minnesota protested the work, however, saying it brought back painful memories and trivialized the executions. According to The StarTribune, about 100 protesters gathered at the site on Saturday to demand the work's removal. Mr. Durant and executives from the Walker Art Center have agreed to remove the sculpture from the garden, and they will meet with the Dakota elders on Wednesday to discuss the best course of action. "I am in agreement with the artist that the best way to move forward is to have 'Scaffold' dismantled in some manner and to listen and learn from the Elders," Olga Viso, executive director of the Walker Art Center, said in a statement. "This is the first step in a long process of healing."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week's most notable new songs and videos. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at theplaylist nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once a week blast of our pop music coverage. Taylor Swift is officially a grown up now; she's 30. She has a past, personal and historical. She offers perspective on her eighth album, "Folklore": somber and pensive with the producer Aaron Dessner (from the National) and slightly more banging but still somber with the producer Jack Antonoff. Her gift for capturing a moment and an emotion in staccato, concrete one or two syllable images comes through her collaborations like "Cardigan" (with Dessner): "Dancing in your Levi's, drunk under a streetlight." She sings about how little she knew "when I was young," letting someone deceive her about how "I was your favorite." More important, she shows that she has lived through it. JON PARELES A vocalist with roots in East Africa teams up with a big band from Germany under the guest direction of a Louisianian arranger, to sing an original song that was first recorded on an album inspired by Nigerian music. It's easy to lose your place on the map when listening to Somi; maybe that's the idea. On "Ankara Sundays," over a 21 beat pattern teased out by a finger plucked guitar and tinkling cymbals, her plum like alto unfurls the story of a woman who finds respite from weekdays of thankless toil in a Sunday celebration. As the groove deepens, the reeds and brass of the Frankfurt Radio Big Band swarm around Somi's voice, rendering it almost weightless, until finally, singing in wordless harmony with the flutes, it evaporates into air. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO The better of a pair of songs J. Cole released this week (early singles from an upcoming album, "The Fall Off"), "The Climb Back" is thick with clever metaphors not heard since the 1990s over a self produced beat that's both agitated and exasperated. Cole is a charmingly patient rapper, imagistic, nimble and very keen to display all of those skills. His metrics are internal, his references are outmoded, his approach is deliberate this is a song to satisfy one's own itch, which is how most things should be. JON CARAMANICA A clip clopping cumbia beat and jovial horns back up the Chilean rapper and singer Ana Tijoux and the Puerto Rican rapper PJ Sin Suela as they address "la nueva normalidad" "the new normal" of pandemic, protests and poverty. The end revs up to a frantic, defiant merengue, as if their patience has evaporated. The song is from Tijoux's coming album, which is pointedly titled "Antifa Dance." PARELES The South African songwriter Vusi Mahlasela's live album, due in August, is named "Shebeen Queen" in memory of his grandmother, who ran a shebeen a speakeasy at her home in the township of Mamelodi. Mahlasela recorded it by putting on a concert of South African oldies in the street where her shebeen was. The mbaqanga song "Umculo" "music" in Zulu is pure upbeat three chord euphoria; the rhythm guitars are having a party of their own. PARELES Headie One and Drake, 'Only You Freestyle' Over on TikTok, Drake's toe dip into Arabic on this song is triggering several types of responses. Some of the funniest are ones that arch eyebrows at his pronunciation. And some of the purest are ones where young people play the lyrics for their mothers, who blush. CARAMANICA The Avalanches featuring Jamie XX, Clypso and Neneh Cherry, 'Wherever You Go' The Avalanches have sampled the "golden album" traveling through interstellar space on Voyager, perhaps toward alien listeners. The track moves from buzzy, beeping, tinkling abstraction to a thumping dance floor where Neneh Cherry is rhyming about how "everyone's so agitated." En route is a high voiced chorus from the Sydney based producer and singer Clypso that's both perky and threatening: "Wherever you go, you go, we go too." PARELES Named for the year of the London based drummer Kamaal Williams's birth, "1989" starts out sounding like a straight up homage to the slung back grooves and sparkling synth sounds of classic '80s slow jams. But in comes Miguel Atwood Ferguson, the violinist and arranger, who turns the track into a rainforest of rich string harmonies. Throughout, Williams's distinctive, clip clopping drums never let up on the pocket. RUSSONELLO	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
BEFORE heading out on summer vacation in a rental car, it's a good idea to check what insurance coverage you already have before opting to buy expensive protection at the car rental counter. If you carry auto insurance to protect yourself and your own car, your policy probably covers you and a rental car. Still, it's best to contact your insurance agent to clarify the specifics before you leave on a trip, said Arlene Lester, a spokeswoman for the State Farm insurance company. You should also check your policy for possible limitations, she said, including any on coverage for car rentals abroad. "Most policies will cover a loss to a rental," she said in an email, but she added that each claim must be reviewed individually. If you have dropped certain coverage like collision or comprehensive, which covers theft and other hazards to save money on premiums, then you may not be covered if your rental car is stolen or damaged, according to the Insurance Information Institute, an industry group. Insurance rules vary by state, however, so it is best to check with your agent for specifics of your policy. In New York, for instance, coverage for short term rentals is normally included in compulsory auto liability policies, and applies even if you don't carry optional physical damage coverage on your own car, according to the state Department of Financial Services.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Your Money
PARIS Few visitors to Disneyland have a world exposition on their minds as they embark on the 15 minute "It's a Small World" boat ride. But it was for the 1964 New York World's Fair, as the expo was known, that Walt Disney designed the ride. The Eiffel Tower and the Atomium in Brussels are other legacies of the world expos that have showcased technology, architecture and culture every five years since London's inaugural Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations in 1851. Today, though, hosting an expo means much more than buildings. Bidders count on an economic boost and a higher international profile as benefits from staging the six month event. "An expo marks a certain 'coming of age' for a city," Urso Chappell, an expo historian, said. "It can aid a city's physical redevelopment as well as the nation's image abroad." Jobs are created as large construction projects get under way, and international and local tourism increases, a boon to restaurants, hotels, car rental agencies and other businesses. Dubai, for instance, which is in the running for host of the 2020 expo, expects more than 25 million visitors and 270,000 new jobs if it wins. At the same time, expo organizers have to balance cost and legacy. The Shanghai World Expo 2010, for example, cost the equivalent of 4.2 billion, according to government figures. But the Chinese news media have reported that the actual cost of staging the event was more than 50 billion exceeding what was spent on the Beijing Olympics in 2008. The Shanghai Expo has also left a number of buildings that proved useless after the event and were abandoned. Some, like Germany's pavilion, were razed. The hosts of the next world expo, which will be in Milan in 2015, hope to avoid the same fate by "organizing a totally sustainable event and building the country pavilions with eco friendly materials which, if necessary, can be easily dismantled at the end," said Giuseppe Sala, chief executive of Expo 2015, which is developing the event. One of the few things that will remain after the Milan Expo will be a large park. The organizers say plans call for 56 percent of the site to remain "green" after the event. At 1.7 billion, the projected investment by the Milan Expo would also be much smaller than Shanghai's. With a reasonable budget and a sound legacy plan, a world's fair can become a transformative opportunity for a city, and even for a country, expo officials say. "For the hosts, expos are a key part of a strategic plan for urban development and act as catalysts for accelerating infrastructural transformations," said Vicente Gonzalez Loscertales, secretary general of the Bureau of International Expositions in Paris, which chooses the host cities and supervises the events. "At the same time, the expo has more intangible but equally powerful impacts on the branding of the city and of the country, and on their international image." Open or closed on Thanksgiving? Here are stores' plans for Thursday and Friday. It is exactly that "unique P.R. opportunity," as Mr. Gonzalez Loscertales calls the expo, that the 2020 bidders in addition to Dubai, Izmir, Turkey; Sao Paulo, Brazil; and Yekaterinburg, Russia, are seeking the event hope to exploit. Dubai, which would be the first host of a world's fair in the Middle East, has emerged as the front runner, offering the most financial and governmental support. Political tensions in Russia, most recently over what is viewed as an antigay law, and in Turkey could hurt the chances of Yekaterinburg and Izmir. Sao Paulo, the largest city in the Southern Hemisphere, is seen as least likely to succeed when the 100 or so delegates of the exposition bureau's General Assembly vote in November, people with knowledge of the bidding said. The fact that all of the 2020 bidders come from emerging markets is indicative of the changing landscape of international relations. More nations are using such global events to elbow their way onto the world stage. "Shanghai 2010 is a perfect example of an expo held to show that a country is an important international player," Mr. Chappell said. Held on the heels of Beijing's grandiose 2008 Summer Olympics, the expo was the most heavily attended in history, with a record 246 participating countries and organizations and 73 million visitors. Tjaco Walvis, a branding specialist who researched the impact of previous expos, said an expo "helps to put the organizing city on the mental world map." Sometimes, though, the mark it leaves can become a stain. The 1984 Louisiana World Exposition in New Orleans, which had low attendance and financing problems, was forced to declare bankruptcy. It managed to stay open until its closing day only because the United States government provided financial support.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Global Business
A beautifully designed room rarely looks better with toys scattered across the floor. But with the right storage pieces, straightening up after a child's play session can be a snap. "So much of our work is with families, and toy storage is always a primary concern," said Britt Zunino, who is a principal with the New York design firm Studio DB and has four children. "The challenge is to meet everyone's expectations including the kids'." The most important thing is creating "a realistic storage plan," she continued. "Because if you make it too complicated, the kids won't actually use it." That means, for instance, that instead of installing towering cabinets with doors that are difficult to reach, she said, you "use beautiful baskets where you can easily throw in the toys."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
Credit...David Walter Banks for The New York Times HOLLYWOOD On an October morning, Matthew Henick, the head of BuzzFeed Motion Pictures, maneuvered his black Lexus S.U.V. through thick Los Angeles traffic from his home in Silver Lake toward BuzzFeed's new campus, still under construction, in Hollywood. "This is actually the first time I'm driving to the new building from my house, so we're really testing my commute," he said. Eighteen months after BuzzFeed blew up a watermelon on Facebook Live before 800,000 viewers, the company has leased buildings on a quiet block west of Highland Avenue as it prepares to focus on creating full length movies and television series. With his shoulder length, Troy Polamalu esque hair still damp from a morning shower, Mr. Henick, 34, strode through a maze of soundstages and editing suites. It wasn't quite the Paramount lot, but neither did it look like a space for some digital start up intent on creating viral videos on the cheap. BuzzFeed started its motion picture arm in 2014. Initially, the division specialized in creating clickable video content, racking up an estimated three billion views a month. But over the last year BuzzFeed Motion Pictures has expanded its purview. These days Mr. Henick and his team of 42 people concentrate their energies on mining BuzzFeed articles, lists and video shorts for ideas that may be spun into feature length movies or television series. One of Mr. Henick's first big deals was with Warner Bros. to make a movie out of a series of posts by the BuzzFeed staff member Matt Stopera on his travels through China in search of his lost iPhone. With the working title "Brother Orange," it may go into production in China next year, Mr. Henick said, around the time when he and his wife, Alaina Killoch, 35, are expecting their first child. Mr. Henick's team is also working with Smokehouse Pictures, a production company run by George Clooney and Grant Heslov, to develop a movie based on a BuzzFeed News investigation into assassinations that may be linked to the Kremlin. Other projects include a series for the NBCUniversal cable network Oxygen that is based on an article about the gruesome death of Jessica Chambers, a teenager who was burned alive in Mississippi, and an adaptation of the online cooking show "Mom vs. Chef" for USA, another NBC cable network. Mr. Henick grew up in Great Neck, N.Y., and spent his childhood riding forklifts around his father's floor covering business at a warehouse in Brooklyn's Williamsburg neighborhood that has since been converted into an apartment building. His interest in media and technology began early. When he was 14, he and his best friend created an MP3 website that drew a cease and desist letter from the Recording Industry Association of America because it hosted the "Titanic" soundtrack. "He's an entrepreneur who knows how to build new things and new companies," Jonah Peretti, the founder and chief executive of BuzzFeed, said in an interview. "I'm always amazed at the way he's able to switch between these different models in his head and see the same things through a totally different lens." Jeff Bezos gives 100 million to the Obama Foundation. Stocks rise after President Biden says Jerome Powell will stay atop the Fed. Mr. Henick's experience as a teenage ringtone magnate gave him the idea to go west for college. "I was sort of already on that trajectory of wanting to head at least somewhere close to Silicon Valley, to figure out what was going on there," he said. He enrolled at Stanford, where he wrote for the campus humor magazine and played bass in a band called North of Cuba with his Theta Delta Chi fraternity brothers. After graduating with a degree in science, technology and society, he stayed at Stanford another year, earning a master's in digital media studies, which he now calls "completely useless." "The professor would want to talk to us about LiveJournal and Myspace to a certain extent, and the students in the class would raise their hand and say, 'Well, what do you think about Facebook?'" Mr. Henick said. "And they didn't even know about it." "I just went up to him and told him as much of my story as I could," Mr. Henick said. "We were both from Long Island, both went to U.S.C., and I was looking for a gig." Mr. Apatow brought him on as an intern before hiring him as an assistant, so Mr. Henick spent his second year at U.S.C. balancing classes with reading scripts and checking out sets. After graduation, he worked on movies like "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" and "Step Brothers" before going out on his own as a writer, script doctor and start up consultant. Along the way, he and Ms. Killoch, who met at U.S.C., started a clothing company. They also got married. "I clearly get bored very easily, because I do too many things," Mr. Henick said. "I was literally sitting in my apartment writing movies, doing all right that's sort of the dream for some people and I was like, 'What else can I be doing?'" Before Mr. Henick started at BuzzFeed, he was worried that he might end up restless yet again. But so far, he said, "I haven't been bored once." When he joined three years ago, Tasty, the site's popular food division, did not exist, and the company had yet to secure funding from NBCUniversal, which has since plowed in 400 million. During Mr. Henick's tenure, many digital media companies that once raked in millions of investment dollars found themselves struggling. A so called pivot to video a term sometimes used to cover layoffs of text oriented staff members swept the industry. Increasingly wary of the outsize influence of Facebook and Google and hoping to siphon away some of the billions of advertising dollars still devoted to television new media companies rediscovered old media, setting off a race into TV and film. His mission is to help diversify BuzzFeed's revenue stream: Executives expect that partnerships with production studios may bring in a third of the company's revenue in the coming years. Since it was founded in 2006, BuzzFeed, which is now valued at about 1.7 billion, has anticipated trends in the media business. Its move into the entertainment industry could be viewed as prescient but the company is also said to be pursuing an initial public offering of stock, and associating itself with a glamorous business may have the side benefit of attracting investors and bolstering valuations. "I don't think we do anything specifically for that reason, but it's always a byproduct," Mr. Henick said. "If our business is stronger and it's growing exponentially because we keep finding brand new businesses to get into, it's going to allow us to hopefully go public or invest in a lot more stuff elsewhere in the company." During a weekly check in meeting at the old BuzzFeed lot on Sunset Boulevard, Mr. Henick swiveled around on his desk chair, a hand under his chin. He wore jeans, a light blue button down and retro Air Jordan sneakers. Staff members talked about projects or possible deals with Netflix, MTV and Facebook. The talk turned to a recent article about the right wing website Breitbart and one of its former star employees, the rabble rouser Milo Yiannopoulos. Did anyone see a film opportunity there? Someone suggested the Oscar winning screenwriter Aaron Sorkin. "I would retire out on top," he said, "if we could get Sorkin to write it."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
On the Great Wall, Dynasties and Rivers trip, guests will hike the Jinshanling section of the Great Wall and through villages in the rice terraces of Longsheng; bike through Beijing hutongs, along Xi'an's ancient city wall and by the Li River; and kayak on the Yulong River. The itinerary includes the Forbidden City and Summer Palace in Beijing, the Terracotta Warriors in Xi'an and Ping'an Village, inhabited by the Zhuang ethnic group. The 12 day trip departs monthly from Beijing and costs 3,785 a person, including internal transportation by air and bullet train.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
SYDNEY, Australia The honey colored neo Classical facade of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney's premier art museum, projects an orderly calm amid the surrounding bucolic parkland. But for all its outward serenity, a general anxiety pervades the institution a sense of urgency, insecurity and of big things hanging in the balance. Four years after an ambitious expansion was proposed an attempt to give Sydney an art museum to match its status as the most affluent and populous city in Australia it still has not gotten off the ground. The delay has been damaging for the institution, and for Sydney itself. Years after rival art museums in Melbourne, Brisbane and Canberra completed their own expansions and reaped obvious benefits (including higher attendances), the acrimony surrounding the Sydney Modern Project, as the expansion has been called, reflects and epitomizes Sydney's deep ambivalence toward culture. This is a city in love with the idea that it punches above its weight. But it remains better known for light shows, sports spectaculars and fireworks than for great art. It also lacks a tradition of private giving to state owned cultural institutions. And so, starved of full throated government support, the Art Gallery of New South Wales and Sydney have fallen increasingly behind their rivals in Australia and around the world. The proponents of Sydney Modern hope to change this. But for years, the museum has been thwarted by budget shortfalls, competing visions and acrimonious infighting. The dispute over the expansion has pitted the gallery's besieged director, Michael Brand, against a former prime minister and a furious old guard determined to keep their beloved institution the way it was. The uncertainty is expected to be resolved on June 20, when the latest budget for the State of New South Wales is delivered. The plans for Sydney Modern would double the museum's footprint. It has been envisaged by the Japanese firm Sanaa as a series of low rise pavilions extending over an adjacent freeway and down the hill to a dramatic cavity housing World War II era oil tanks. Aware that the gallery will never become a great depository of works by European old masters, Dr. Brand, the museum's director, plans instead to give prominence to Australian art, both Aboriginal and non Aboriginal, and to contemporary art from across the world. But his efforts to mobilize stakeholders have been embroiled in bitter controversy. In a 2015 opinion piece in The Sydney Morning Herald, Paul Keating, a former Australian prime minister known for his sharp tongue, slammed the project. He accused Dr. Brand of "constructing a gigantic spoof," what he described as "a large entertainment and special events complex masquerading as an art gallery." (Mr. Keating declined to comment for this article.) The project's original 336 million cost ( 450 million in Australian dollars) has been lowered by about 53 million to 283 million ( 380 million in Australian dollars), and Sanaa's design adjusted accordingly. The gallery is hoping that around 208 million will come from the government and the remaining 75 million from private donors. No one in Sydney likes to be reminded that Jorn Utzon, the visionary Danish designer of the Sydney Opera House, was hounded out of his job by a hostile government minister. But subsequent attempts to build arts facilities here from recital halls to contemporary art museums have also faced drawn out and vexatious opposition. The government has been hesitant to help. Since his appointment in 2012, Dr. Brand has had to work with three state premiers and three arts ministers. With the current conservative government prone to jitters about populism, there is little appetite for spending on cultural institutions associated with urban elites. Mr. Quilty pointed out that the Sydney Olympic Stadium, built for the 2000 Summer Olympic Games, cost 690 million Australian dollars. "And that's 1990s dollars, remember," he said. "How can we not invest in cultural infrastructure in the same way in the biggest and most global city in the country?" Trained in Asian art, languages and history at the Australian National University and later at Harvard, Dr. Brand, 59, has a steady, slightly introverted demeanor and a stellar curriculum vitae. He was born in Canberra, but part of his upbringing took place in the United States. He came to the Art Gallery of New South Wales after a stint at the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto. Before that, he was director of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, Va., and then the Getty Museum in Los Angeles the world's richest museum. "I think I can say I'm optimistic," Dr. Brand said on a recent evening in his office, which overlooks a corner of the harbor at Woolloomooloo. The chairman of the museum's board, the businessman and philanthropist David Gonski (known here as Mr. Networks for his pervasive influence across business, government, education and culture), is also cautiously optimistic and emphasizes the long game. "I believe the generations that come after us will applaud both us and the government," he said. Dr. Brand has tried to run a tighter ship than his predecessor, Edmund Capon, an affable, energetic Englishman who led the museum for 33 years. Admired in Australia and abroad, Dr. Brand is nonetheless described by some as thin skinned. His management style has come under fire from a small but vocal number of ex staffers and outside critics. In a new book, "Culture Heist," Judith White, a former head of the Art Gallery Society, accused Dr. Brand of being in thrall to a corporate ethos inimical to art. "When I was there, there was an openness, and a willingness to let people get on and do what they do well," Ms. White said. "In recent years, there has been a desire to control everything and all the communication has been about the new building." Ms. White's book came out within weeks of an announcement that Dr. Brand's contract would be renewed for only one year instead of the anticipated five. According to Mr. Gonski, the contract decision was arrived at mutually. The institution, Mr. Gonski said, was "at a crossroads," and realistically, if funding for Sydney Modern didn't materialize now, Dr. Brand himself might prefer not to stay.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
Credit...Dustin Chambers for The New York Times SAVANNAH, Ga. Savannah's ocean ports feature skyscraping silver cranes that stand at attention on the water's edge. Container ships stretch the length of four football fields, with 40 foot containers stacked behind them like multicolored Lego bricks. But an empty patch of freshly bulldozed dirt is the first spot at the sprawling Garden City Terminal that Griffith Lynch, the executive director of the Georgia Ports Authority, wants to show off. That is the site of a new 127 million rail depot that will enable double decker trains as long as the National Mall to be loaded right at the port. It is one piece of a larger vision that Mr. Lynch contends Savannah is uniquely positioned to achieve: Shippers here will be able to deliver goods to Midwestern cities in the time it takes other ports to finish heaving cargo off a boat. "I repeatedly hear that this is the best port in the country," said George T. Powers, president and chief executive of TradePort Logistics, who has been talking to scores of shippers as he scouts business for a new 100 door loading facility and a 650,000 square foot fulfillment center he's building near the port. That local confidence in the port's potential has apparently helped insulate some of Savannah's business leaders and workers whose livelihoods depend on global commerce from anxiety over rising tensions with trading partners. When asked about the back and forth with key trading partners seeking exemptions from hefty steel and aluminum tariffs recently imposed by President Trump, hardly anyone at the port or the surrounding warehouses and transit points said they felt compelled to closely track the details. Instead of a trade war, businesses talked of a trade hiccup. "We feel very comfortable that this will just continue to grow," said Rebecca George Ogden, president of PortFresh Logistics, a 100,000 square foot cold storage and packing facility for produce that opened last year, contending that American appetites will carry the day. "The demand is so great. I really believe Americans are going to want their grapes in January and their citrus in June, this year round availability that we're accustomed to." The optimism is reflected in the shortage of industrial space a vacancy rate of 0.52 percent compared with the average 5 percent in a healthy market, according to Colliers International, a real estate services company. Tracts of land that the port puts on the market are "just gobbled up," said Clifford H. Dales, a principal of Colliers. Whatever concern about tariffs exists, it has not had an impact on business, he said. "I really don't hear much about it," Mr. Dales said about local and out of town developers. The port's fortunes have swung back and forth since the era when the world price for cotton was set in Savannah's trading post. Like other gateways up and down the East Coast, Savannah has bet heavily on attracting a hefty share of the supersize container ships routed through the enlarged Panama Canal and the Suez Canal. There is fierce competition for shippers, as well as for the additional millions of federal dollars needed to deepen waterways and create a speedy transportation network. But Savannah is poised to emerge as a winner. "Savannah has become a magnet for containers," said Walter Kemmsies, an economist at Jones Lang LaSalle, who has advised more than a dozen American ports on development. Savannah does have a few distinct assets, among them location. Its southern latitude disguises just how far west the shipping channel reaches far enough to catch a plumb line dropped from Cleveland. That makes it easier to get containers from Point A to Point B. Truckers have a single check in point when they enter and exit, and 9,700 feet of contiguous docking space. Several ships can dock on the same day, and the mechanics, crane operators and drivers working directly for the port can be quickly deployed where they are most needed. 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. In New Jersey, for instance, a trucker might make only one trip if the ship unloads at rush hour, Mr. Kemmsies said. In Savannah, warehouse owners said truckers can average four to six. The result is that this southern port in a conservative, pro business state home to the first city to outsource its entire municipal government has a competitive advantage that other ports lack. It is run solely by the government. "A private owner would not have the same outlook," Mr. Powers of TradePort Logistics said. "The port's mission is not to create profit for themselves but to provide services and create jobs for the region." This approach extends to the transportation hub, which is undergoing bridge, road and interchange modernizations designed to streamline port traffic. To finance the increased capacity on Georgia's roads, the state passed a gas tax indexed to inflation and fuel efficiency. The port's coordinated investments are helping it lure ships away from the West Coast which is more vulnerable to trade tensions with China and nip at the heels of the Port of New York and New Jersey, its biggest rival in the East. "Infrastructure drives jobs," said Ms. Ogden of PortFresh Logistics. "Georgia gets it." Her company's warehouse, cold enough for workers to wear knitted ski masks, is 15 miles from the Garden City Terminal off Interstate 16 on a 182 acre parcel bought from the county and designated for port related development. Aiming to double its building space within the next year, the company plans to expand its 120 person work force. Kia opened a factory in Georgia in 2009. Part of the draw was the port, which was already knee deep in its infrastructure overhaul. The company was impressed, said Corinne Hodges, a spokeswoman for Kia, with "how quickly can a truck get in and out and how fast can freight get off the boat and get its way into the plant." Savannah has also benefited from some unanticipated assistance. Labor troubles caused a monthslong slowdown at the nation's largest port complex in Los Angeles, stranding cargo on ships and frustrating retailers with tight deadlines. The episode pushed importers and shipping lines to diversify their points of entry and better acquainted them with the efficiencies of Savannah's port. That may be why union leaders here emphasize that no matter what happens, they intend to keep the cargo moving. "We don't think the administration is out to hurt anybody" with its trade policy, said Timothy S. Mackey, president of the 1,500 member Local 1414 of the International Longshoremen's Association. "Trump is a competitive guy, a businessman. He wants the best deal." "But we'll do what we need to do," he said. "The world keeps moving."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Economy
A torrential storm lashed tiny Cache, Okla. (population 2,906), in late May, flooding homes and forcing residents onto their roofs to await rescue. But the most devastating damage may have been to a house that has stood empty for nearly 60 years. Star House, built on Fort Sill around 1890 by Quanah Parker, the renowned last chief of the Comanche Nation, already felt like the loneliest tourist attraction in America. Open only briefly each day, the crumbling house sits on the back lot of a long shuttered amusement park. It has been deteriorating for years, especially because large sections of the roof are missing, allowing the elements to damage the upper floors. The owner and tour guide Wayne Gipson, 53, is deeply attached to Star House, and protective of it, yet acknowledges that he lacks the time and money to properly maintain or market it. Despite numerous offers, he has also refused to rent or sell the home, which is on the National Register of Historic Places, to anyone, including the Comanche Nation. But tribal leaders and Parker's descendants now see that spring deluge, which damaged or ruined original rugs, wallpaper and furniture, as the potential wellspring of the house's salvation. "I think the best thing that could have happened is the flood," said Chenoa Barhydt, director of marketing and economic development for the Comanche Nation, which again hopes to persuade Mr. Gipson to relinquish control. "This will start a conversation about saving it." "There's an open door now," said Ardith Parker Leming, great granddaughter of Quanah Parker. S. C. Gwynne's best selling 2010 book, "Empire of the Summer Moon," brought Parker and the Comanche history to a popular audience, and although he is less known by most Americans than Sitting Bull, Geronimo and Crazy Horse, he is a significant presence in Native American history. The son of a Comanche chief, Peta Nocona, and a captured white woman, Cynthia Ann Parker, he was a feared warrior during the Comanches' final years on the Southwest plains. Parker then adapted his experience and leadership skills on the reservation, earning wealth and success for himself and his people. Parker's two story, eight bedroom home features large stars on the roof to remind visitors that he was equal in stature and power to American generals. He hosted military officers and politicians, as well as Geronimo and the Kiowa chief Lone Wolf. "He made the transition from the tepees to live in a very modern house because he knew it had to happen not just for him but for the rest of the tribal members as well," said Wallace Coffey, who is in his sixth term as the Comanche Nation tribal chairman. After Parker died in 1911, one of his daughters, Linda Parker Birdsong, lived in Star House until 1957. The Army was demolishing buildings to expand Fort Sill but agreed to move Star House to an empty lot in Cache. However, as Mr. Gipson explained on his tour, the Parkers had relied on a well and an outhouse; without those on the small lot, Ms. Birdsong had to move in with relatives. Mr. Gipson's uncle Herbert Woesner bought Star House and moved it to his 250 acre property; he added other historic buildings including the home of the outlaw Frank James and, in 1960, opened Eagle Park, an amusement park, there. Soaring insurance costs closed Eagle Park in 1985, Mr. Gipson said, yet Mr. Woesner regaled tourists with Parker's story until he died in 2008. He left the property to Mr. Gipson and Mr. Gipson's sister, Ginger. But maintaining old wooden buildings is costly, and the house has been on Oklahoma's list of Most Endangered Historic Places since 2007. Mr. Gipson is willing to give tours only if visitors show up around 2 p.m. and wait for him to close up his roadside diner, gas station and trading post. It would be easy to drive past the rusted trading post and Eagle Park signs thinking this is an abandoned site. The trading post was closed when I first arrived because Mr. Gipson was next door, toiling in the diner's kitchen as he has since his mother died a few years ago. After I bought a few postcards (I was his only customer of the day) and waited and waited, we finally drove past the ruins of Eagle Park to reach the Star House, and Mr. Gipson, who had been taciturn, became a genial and chatty guide. Before the flooding, the major concern was the roof, or what was left of it. In the spring the Comanche Nation brought in a contractor to evaluate the cost of repairs, which the tribe would have paid for, according to Will Owens, tribal administrator. "We just really want to preserve it," he said. Meanwhile, a frustrated Mr. Coffey was contemplating building a replica Star House on Comanche property nearby to serve as a bed and breakfast and to educate people about Parker. "That was the only alternative I had," he said, adding that he has always consulted with Parker's descendants about each potential decision. Mr. Gipson sees his heritage as caretaker of Star House his family has owned it nearly as long as the Parkers did and it pains him to know he can't do right by it. He asked that I not take close up photos of the house because dressers, rugs and mattresses were dragged onto the porch to dry or be disposed of. Many callers since the flood don't even visit after Mr. Gipson tells them the inside is off limits, but he gave a tour that allows peeks through windows from the unstable porch: glimpses of the original wallpaper, the dining room with the original table, and the kitchen with its cast iron stove. Mr. Gipson has no solutions: "I do not have thousands of dollars to pour into this," he said. Yet he has always found reasons to say no to the Comanche Nation. They hope the flood might lead to change. In June, Mr. Coffey asked the Parker family to hold a prayer vigil at Star House (usually the site of their reunions). Two hundred people, many of them Parker descendants, attended. The state of the house raised alarms. "He might be willing to negotiate now," Mr. Owens said of Mr. Gipson. On July 1, the day after I visited Star House, Mr. Coffey announced a 15,000 grant from the National Trust for Historic Preservation to assess the house and create a stabilization plan. The tribe would like to buy the house and either elevate it on the site or move it to higher ground on Comanche property. Mr. Owens said that the total repair costs may top 1 million so the tribe is forming a nonprofit group for fund raising. If they cannot persuade Mr. Gipson to sell, they hope he and his sister would join them in running the nonprofit. "We are willing to work with him in any form or fashion," Mr. Coffey said. Several days later, Mr. Gipson sounded surprised to have been visited by the trust's team of architects and structural engineers. He was wary of the attention. "I don't know if I'm any more interested in selling now," he said, adding that he's reluctant to agree to a nonprofit until he understands how the control would be divided. He said someone from the trust explained that with proper development and marketing Star House could attract 30,000 visitors annually, more than 10 times the current total, at 5 per person, eventually providing money to cover maintenance, marketing and insurance. But he remained skeptical. "It's too soon to say," he said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
A week ago, comments began circulating among Radiohead fans that a trove of private recordings had been stolen from the band, including early demos from around the time of the band's classic 1997 album "OK Computer," and that the thieves were demanding "upwards of 150,000 for the entire set." Well, it did leak. And no, Radiohead didn't pay. The recordings about 18 hours' worth appeared online last week and were promptly cataloged in detail by a group of fans who insisted, "we are not the leakers." Still, to hear the recordings one had to be in the know until Tuesday, when Radiohead itself released the entire archive under the title "Minidiscs Hacked ," saying it would be available for 18 days through the online platform Bandcamp. (In an example of the strange full circle patterns of internet commerce, Bandcamp, which is popular among independent artists, has become one of the most successful proponents of the "pay what you want" strategy that Radiohead pioneered in 2007 with its album "In Rainbows.")	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
The underwater photographer Amos Nachoum's white whale is no whale at all, but rather a polar bear. He's swum with sharks, anacondas and crocodiles to capture stunning stills during his four decade career, but never the Arctic predator. In fact, no one has ever shot the polar bear the way Nachoum wants to while swimming with it and for good reason: These animals consider humans part of their food chain, the cinematographer Adam Ravetch points out in the film. In "Picture of His Life," the directors Yonatan Nir and Dani Menkin provide abundant newspaper clippings about polar bear related deaths while underlining Nachoum's nearly fatal attempt years before. Determined to get it right this time, the photographer embarks on a five day Canadian Arctic expedition with a small crew; what follows is less thrilling than the buildup.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
In an interview, the author and showrunner breaks down the twists and addresses the criticisms of her Amazon conspiracy thriller's first season. "I wrote it before I knew about QAnon," she said. This interview includes spoilers for the first season of "Utopia." The world of the zeitgeisty Amazon Prime thriller "Utopia" is dauntingly complex. Adapted from a 2013 British show by the same name, the series centers on a wild conspiracy theory about viral epidemics or not so wild, as it turns out, because the theory proves to be true. This revelation, and much else, has been coded into mysterious comic books ("Dystopia" and its sequel "Utopia"), whose most obsessed readers eventually learn that the epidemic has been engineered, the media and the government have been manipulated and shadowy forces are promoting a worthless vaccine. In short, the end of the world is nigh. Near the end of the show's first season, released in late September, the biotech chief executive Dr. Kevin Christie (John Cusack), who created the bogus vaccine and is also a secret human trafficker, finally reveals his master plan: His vaccine is designed to make people infertile in order to radically reduce the world's population. In Christie's view, humans are the real virus, wiping out other creatures, and he's convincing enough to make one of the show's crusading characters join his mad cult. The show's resemblance to our own very real pandemic was accidental, but it lends it an uneasy verisimilitude, inspiring a few critics to lament what felt like a validation of anti vaccine crankdom in the era of QAnon. Could that be irresponsible? Even dangerous? "I think it is a Rorschach test, you know?" said the creator and showrunner Gillian Flynn. "It's a show designed to let you find what you want from it, and have different points of view, which is exactly where we are right now." In a phone interview, Flynn sifted through some of the show's mysteries, revealed a few meaningful clues and Easter eggs, and discussed the show's debated ideology. These are edited excerpts from the conversation. One of the things that distinguishes your "Utopia" from the British version is that we actually see the "Utopia" comic book here. Did you have artist Joao Ruas embed other clues within it beyond the ones the characters find, such as the Christie Labs logo that implicates Kevin Christie? I felt strongly about seeing the comic book. I wanted people to know why the characters were obsessed with the comic, both because of the secret clues hidden within it and also the beauty of it. I got the wonderful Joao Ruas to do the art. I discovered him through Bill Willingham's "Fables." I was looking for something that was like Arthur Rackham on acid, with a Henry Darger vibe, and that was Joao. He specializes in creepy children, haunted animals and nasty situations. It might also be worth freezing the conspiracy wall Wilson Wilson (Desmin Borges) constructed. Among other things, he has a Post it note reminding him to "call Dennis K," meaning Dennis Kelly, the creator of the original series? Exactly. He's got all the answers. You know when Wilson and Christie make a connection about all the animals becoming wiped out, except the ones that are cute? Christie says, "Never in history has a creature been begging for extinction more than the panda." Well, if you look closely at Wilson's wall, there is a big picture of a panda, and he's written on its forehead: "I suck." Do you see a QAnon quality to the show's conspiracy? Absolutely. The weird thing is, I started writing this in 2013. I was intrigued by the rise of conspiracies at that time and it's only become more so but I wrote it before I knew about QAnon. Certainly there is that idea that if you look hard enough, and if you want it bad enough, you have the ability to convince yourself of anything. We're in this weird place where truth has become malleable. Even science has become debatable, which is very frightening. It puts us in a position where we are easy to manipulate. QAnon was on the fringes, but it's becoming mainstream, with political candidates and activists who are adherents. Even the president is involved in spreading conspiracy theories. He's definitely winking at it, if not coming straight out and embracing it. I'm looking right now at an issue of The Atlantic, and the cover story is how QAnon is warping reality and discrediting science. I think it's easy to get wrapped up in conspiracies, because there is sort of an interesting intellectual factor where doubting makes you feel cynical. It's easier to cross your arms and go, "Oh, but there's more to this." I just watched "The Social Dilemma," which is eye opening about how metrics can control what you're watching, what you're getting and how it's helping to feed conspiracy. It's frightening. You can spend your day reinforcing almost anything. "Climate change is not real." "The moon landing's not real." If I had written a story line that said powerful Democrats were running a secret child sex ring from a pizza parlor PizzaGate I would be laughed out of the business. It would be like, "That's the most ridiculous story line!" But there it is. Some critics have taken issue with what they see as the show's underlying ideology, interpreting it to be on the side of anti vaccine groups and pandemic skeptics because it makes conspiracy theorists the heroes. But you could also say the show exposes how indoctrination works. I wanted to play it both ways. That was a deliberate choice. I understand how conspiracies are born, and how you can find your own truth that pleases you. I also wanted to acknowledge the fact that we do live in a world where people are really trying to convince each other of incredibly odd ideas, and if you get enough followers, they can become "real." And we do live in a world where Watergate happened. We do have this proof that the people who are supposed to be in charge of us are not trustworthy. So I wanted to acknowledge both those sides of it. I did have moments where I kind of had a stomach lurch, especially as the anti vaxxer movement gained steam, and here I was writing a story where there is something bad with a vaccine. Obviously, it's because of a bad human being who is clearly out of his mind, as far as his zealotry. If people watching this show take medical advice from John Cusack, something's gone horribly wrong. Don't do that. This is fiction. John and I had lots of conversations about what the vibe of Dr. Christie had, and I always said, "He's kind of like Bill Gates." And then there was a Bill Gates conspiracy theory that he was deliberately spreading a disease so that he could profit off it. That was unsettling. It's not going to continue with the same story line about the vaccine and depopulation. I don't want it to be the vaccine show, you know? It'll go in a different direction. Season 2 of "The Boys" is probably the most brilliant Season 2 I've ever seen. You think it's going to be about Compound V, and then they just smash it all and move on. That was daring and smart. I thought that flashback in Season 2 of the U.K. "Utopia" was brilliant. I've always been a big back story writer. The audience will follow you through far out plotlines like Amy killing Desi and framing Nick in "Gone Girl" if you have a plan. So I spent months on everyone's back story, especially the Christie Milner Dad triumvirate how they met, how they started hatching this idea, how they could afford to do it. I am planning an episode where you spend the entire time back in the 1980s, as they were figuring this all out. I'd rather see it in action than expository the hell out of it. Originally, we also had in the script that Jessica would burn down Home, sort of in the symbolic "you can never go home again." But as I was writing the back story of Home, I realized I wanted to see in action how Home works, what Home feels like. So that is also something we'll play with in Season 2. You make three cameo appearances. One of them is almost immediately following a shot of the "Gone Girl: The Musical" marquee. They weren't all entirely planned. My daughter is the little girl staring down Grant on the subway in Episode 5 , but she wouldn't do the scene unless she could sit on my lap, so I'm the sleepy mom there. And I'm the bitchy woman checking in at the hotel, wearing a T shirt for the petting zoo, right before Grant goes to pull his trick to get into the penthouse in Episode 1 . And in my cameo with Rainn Wilson, I'm the waitress giving him some extra whipped cream in Episode 4 . If you look closely, you'll see the Christie Labs logo on one of my fingernails. You can also see menus with the name of the diner, Gilly's, my nickname. We had a whole delightful back story for Gilly. I don't know if that's an Easter egg, or megalomania!	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
Justin Williams is a professional American cyclist, a celebrated national champion and a standout for another reason he wishes were not so: He is one of the few Black racers in the sport. Now, he is bent on changing that. After setbacks and a long journey through professional cycling, Williams formed his own team of professional riders in Los Angeles in 2019 with his younger brother Cory. The team, called L39ION (pronounced legion), has 14 riders, including 10 professionals, who race the full gamut of events criteriums, road, gravel and cross. "L39ION doesn't force riders to conform to white norms," or the expectations of what professional cyclists should look, act, or sound like, Williams said. He brought old rivals, former teammates and friends together to form the Los Angeles based team, a roster that includes Black, Latino, Pacific Islander and white cyclists. "We wanted to win races while making the sport inclusive." This month, L39ION announced plans to form a squad that will compete in one of three tiers of racing overseen by the U.C.I., the governing body of cycling. Williams said he aims to bring diversity to a sport in which few Black riders have cracked through. He is leading a new generation of bike racing that's a far cry from the long tenured traditions of the Tour de France, circuits that have historically been filled with predominantly white, European athletes. "I've been fighting all my life, why would I stop now?" said Williams, 31. As one of the most successful riders in the country, Williams focuses on criteriums, or crits, which are short road races often looping around a city or neighborhood. Getting to where he is today wasn't easy. Williams charted a winding career path, one in which he repeatedly refused to conform to the mores in professional cycling. "I remember it being unpredictable. A lot of gang members in the community and kids selling drugs on the street," Williams said. "Other than our time riding bikes, my parents kept us inside, focused on studying. They didn't trust us to go out, which feels justified now. You could easily be caught in the wrong place and end up dead or in jail. I remember bullet holes in our street sign. I don't know what I would have done without a bike." Near the end of high school, Williams's cycling career started to take form. He focused on road racing, eyeing iconic European stage races with a dream of becoming the next Lance Armstrong. "But it was different for me," he said. "I was isolated, didn't have support, and everything felt foreign," Williams said. "Trying to develop as a young man and an athlete was impossible. It was so far from how I grew up." The numbers are stark. Only five of the 743 riders on cycling's elite World Tour are Black. None of the 113 professional riders licensed by U.S.A. Cycling are Black. (In 2020, L39ION was not licensed by U.S.A. Cycling.) This year, there was one lone Black athlete, the French cyclist Kevin Reza, out of 176 riders on the start line of the Tour de France. Williams got his start as an amateur at local crits, and in 2006, won the Junior Track National Championship. Despite his promise in the closed circuit race scene, Williams continued to dabble in a mix of disciplines from time trials to multiday stage races, an anomaly for most riders who tend to specialize in one event. With his race results improving, Williams moved to Europe in 2009, following the template for talented, young riders who dream of being the next great American cyclist. But even with moderate success, Williams frequently felt ostracized. "In Europe I was called 'difficult,'" Williams said. "They called me a charity case and stereotyped me as an angry Black man." Williams returned to the U.S. in 2010 after spending a year abroad, putting his cycling ambitions on the back burner to study graphic design at Moorpark College near Los Angeles. He would race again when he was ready, he figured. When that day came in 2016, he exploded back on the scene as part of the Cylance Pro Cycling team, winning 15 races at the highest echelon of the sport in both road races and crits. Despite his meteoric rise, Williams found himself frustrated with contracts that paid a minimum wage and did not allow for him to have any real say in his race calendar or roles within the team. "I wanted a voice that wasn't moderated," he said. Without a predictable salary, he gambled on his own training, hoping it would pay off in prize money. He went on to win back to back national championships in 2018 and 2019, a feat that few have accomplished. Williams believes the lack of diversity in cycling, and inaction, starts at the top, with team managers, race organizers, and cycling power brokers at the wheel. "Not one has spoken up about the racial justice movement because they don't have to," Williams said. "We took a hard look in the mirror and asked ourselves what type of role we would play in making change," said Dennis Kim, global vice president for marketing at Cannondale, referring to the wave of social action spurred by the killing of George Floyd. "We looked at everything from supporting youth teams to feeder teams to the World Tour, but after conversations with EF and U.S.A. Cycling, we decided working with H.B.C.U.s would create more impact. It would be amazing if this program one day created an Olympic champion, but a better sign of success is a graduate of the program returning to their community and starting their own team." On a similar timeline, two organizations have sprung up in the wake of social justice protests around the world. Bike Rides for Black Lives organizes mass rides around the country and Ride for Racial Justice creates access to cycling resources and education. "We want everyone to feel safe on a bicycle. The fact of the matter is, that many don't," said Massimo Alpian, a board member of Ride for Racial Justice. "Change only happens if we work grass roots with communities and top down with brands and local governments. To make cycling more inclusive we must change social norms, offer education, and create more representation." The movements echo the work Williams has led with L39ION. The team has a partnership with Outride, a nonprofit that aims to get children on bikes through school programs and supports young cyclists who can't afford travel costs or entrance fees to races around the country. But there's more to be done, Williams said. "As a kid, cycling freed me from so many things. It connected me with people from all walks of life and helped me grow," he said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
Richard Corliss, whose well informed and spirited movie reviews appeared in Time magazine for 35 years, died on Thursday in Manhattan. He was 71. His wife, Mary, said the cause was complications of a stroke. He had been in a hospice care center. A prolific contributor to Time who also wrote profiles, essays on popular culture, and television and theater reviews, An unabashed movie fan who believed that a couple of hours in a theater was time well spent no matter what the movie was "Everything is worth seeing," he often said, as Time's Richard Zoglin wrote in an obituary on the magazine's website he was nonetheless hardly a pushover as a critic and occasionally relished the contrarian view. Among the popular films he disdained were Robert Altman's "M A S H," the basis for the television show about American Army surgeons during the Korean War, about which he wrote in The New York Times (before his tenure at Time began) that the supposedly charming and mischievous protagonists were boorish bullies; "Titanic," the James Cameron hit whose special effects Mr. Corliss praised but whose dramatic storytelling he panned, and whose economic prospects he got spectacularly wrong ("Dead in the water," he predicted); "A Chorus Line," Richard Attenborough's adaptation of the long running Broadway musical that Mr. Corliss found, at best, inoffensive; and "The Full Monty," the British comedy about laid off steelworkers who concoct a striptease act, which he condemned as a formulaically sentimental audience pleaser, lumping it with "Ghost," "Cinema Paradiso" and other, in his phrase, "masterpieces of emotional pornography."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
For people who choose educating others over enriching themselves, college debt can seem insurmountable because it is insurmountable. To cultivate a well educated, globally competitive American work force, we must make college affordable. The American Federation of Teachers recently started a series of student debt clinics to help our members mitigate the crippling college debt incurred by millions of American students and their families. In 90 minute sessions, these clinics provide information on how to enroll in income based student loan repayment programs and to qualify for Public Service Loan Forgiveness. For some participants, the clinics have been life changing. The A.F.T. is fighting on the front lines warning students and their families about the risks of predatory behaviors by servicers, lenders and for profit educational providers, educating them on repayment options and cultivating a new generation of activists who have the potential to halt this national student debt epidemic. In October, a young adjunct professor from Miami attended a two part A.F.T. debt clinic. Crushed by more than 168,000 in student loan debt and monthly payments exceeding 2,000, this professor, a single mother, was desperate. On the first day of the training, she kept to herself. That night, she applied for income based repayment and was able to reduce her monthly payment to 700. On the second day of the training, she told the group that it was the first good night's sleep she'd had in three years. She is now a trainer herself, helping others better understand how to relieve their debt.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Education
Trevor Noah speculated on the queen's motivation for the gift. "That's right: The queen's gift for Donald Trump was a book. Either she doesn't know Trump or she's trolling him. Why would you give Donald Trump a book? Everyone knows the man doesn't read! I wish I was there when the queen gave him his gift. She's like, 'Here you go, Donald, a book about World War II.' He's like, 'Wow, this is sad.' 'Yes, many lives were lost.' 'No, I mean the fact that I have to read, it's so sad!'" TREVOR NOAH "The queen also led Trump on a tour of the royal collection where he learned about British history. As Trump 'Enough books, Liz. Boring. Show me the wizards. I know you've got them around here someplace.'" STEPHEN COLBERT In an interview with Axios that aired Sunday night, Jared Kushner was asked if he thought his father in law was racist, using Trump's birtherism in reference to President Barack Obama as an example. Kushner responded that he "wasn't involved" and therefore could not comment. "That's an interesting way to think of racism: You can only identify it if you see it firsthand. 'Was slavery racist?' 'I don't know, man! I wasn't there, O.K.? I've just heard good things, I wasn't there!'" TREVOR NOAH "But seriously, how is Jared so bad at lying? He is around Trump all the time. You would think that he would practice. It's like working at Waffle House and not knowing how to throw a punch you're going to get knocked out!" TREVOR NOAH "Wow, Jared hasn't been taken to the woodshed like that since he was carved by Geppetto." STEPHEN COLBERT "Unlike President Obama, President Trump was not invited to stay at Buckingham Palace. Yeah, when asked why, the queen said, 'We're worried about our property value.'" CONAN O'BRIEN "Really? All 52 bedrooms in Buckingham Palace are being renovated at the same time? All of them? Come on, man! Like, I know you don't want Trump to stay there, but that's a terrible excuse, because now I'm picturing the queen being like, 'Donald, I really tried to get you a room, but the manager said no. I'm sorry, Donald, it's above me now.'" TREVOR NOAH " Imitating royal aide Oh, Mr. President, Mr. President, so sorry. We'd love to have you stay here, but the chimney sweeps are cleaning the loo. It won't be done until 2020 or, God help us, 2024." STEPHEN COLBERT Conan O'Brien shared some secret audio caught during Trump's visit with the queen.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
HONG KONG Nine months after they scrapped a 19.5 billion alliance, the Anglo Australian mining giant Rio Tinto and Chinalco of China reached a deal Friday to jointly develop an iron ore project in the West African country of Guinea. The transaction, while small, may be a sign that tattered relations between Australia and China are mending. Still, tensions remain as China prepares to put four Rio Tinto employees, including an Australian citizen, on trial for commercial spying. On the Guinea deal, Rio said on Friday that it would put its 95 percent stake in the Simandou project into a joint venture. The state owned Chinalco, or Aluminum Corporation of China, as it is formally known, then plans to acquire 47 percent of the venture by investing 1.35 billion over the next two to three years. That would take Chinalco's stake to 44.65 percent, Rio said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Global Business
These are good times for Libbey, a 125 year old American glassmaker that nearly went bankrupt four years ago. The company's shares have risen to almost 20 from below 1, sales of its tableware are at a record high, and its energy intensive factories saved more than 5 million in 2012 as natural gas prices fell. Despite all the upbeat news, however, Libbey recently announced it would lay off 200 workers at its plant in Shreveport, La., and move some production to Mexico as it cuts costs and discontinues several products. Libbey's decision is just one example of why manufacturing, for all its renewed promise, is likely to fall far short of the claims by industry groups that millions of new factory jobs are about to be created in the United States because of the unlocking of abundant supplies of domestic energy. "Even though the U.S. is more competitive globally, manufacturing doesn't give you the kind of direct job creation it did in years past," said Joseph G. Carson, director of global economic research at AllianceBernstein, a Wall Street investment firm. "At the end of the day you still want a strong manufacturing base, but there aren't as many people on the factory floor." Indeed, while the sector has added 500,000 jobs since the recession ended and the value of what the nation's factories churn out is close to a high, there are nonetheless two million fewer manufacturing workers today than in 2007. Ever since the early 1960s, the share of jobs in manufacturing has been on a nearly uninterrupted downward slope, now accounting for less than 9 percent of all employment in the United States. The dream that a reinvigorated manufacturing sector will restore prosperity to the middle class and bring back millions of well paying blue collar jobs has made for some unlikely political bedfellows recently. Even as heavy industry has garnered strong support from the White House in his State of the Union address in February, President Obama proposed financing 15 new centers for manufacturing innovation a number of lobbying groups have been promising that more drilling for natural gas will lead to a jobs boom in dozens of industries that would benefit from cheaper energy. They argue that if additional land is opened for exploration, especially shale formations where hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, can increase production, millions of manufacturing jobs that migrated overseas will return to the United States. Fracking's environmental impact has made it a flash point for activists, but the promised job gains, other than in the petrochemical industry, have been slow to materialize. For all the caution of experts like Mr. Maurer and Mr. Carson, industries that benefit from cheaper gas have not been shy about talking up the coming manufacturing jobs bonanza they foresee. A December 2011 report by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Association of Manufacturers predicts fracking could help add one million manufacturing jobs in the United States by 2025. "It definitely is a game changer for the United States," said Chad Moutray, chief economist at the National Association of Manufacturers. "It puts us in a position that we might not have been in a couple of years ago." A May 2012 study by the American Chemistry Council, which represents the chemicals industry, estimated that increased gas production could create 200,000 jobs in the broader manufacturing sector, including several thousand in the glass industry. "It's resulting in a renaissance in manufacturing," said Kevin Swift, the chemical council's chief economist. 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. But glass industry veterans say cheaper natural gas, which is used to melt sand into glass and is critical to the manufacturing process, isn't a game changer in terms of jobs, however beneficial the cost savings are. Pressure from inexpensive imports remains intense, and labor in Mexico and China is still cheaper than in the United States. While demand for their products is improving thanks to a more robust housing market and other factors, don't expect a ramp up in hiring, said Richard A. Beuke, vice president for flat glass at PPG Industries, a Pittsburgh based glassmaker. The production lines run 24 hours a day, seven days a week at PPG's plants, including one in Carlisle, Pa., that makes flat glass. It's among the plants benefiting from a rebound in housing. "Because it is automated, we won't have to add a lot of employees with the upturn in the construction industry," Mr. Beuke said. "You don't touch a piece of glass in our factories." At PPG, production is up 10 percent since the recession but employment remains flat. Glass isn't the only manufacturing sector that has struggled to add jobs recently. Other industries identified by American Chemistry Council as potential winners from the energy boom, like paper producers and foundries, have continued to lose jobs in recent months. It's not that manufacturing itself is disappearing. But nearly all of the American manufacturers that survived the lean years of the last decade are globally competitive companies that depend on high productivity and advanced technology for their success more than masses of assembly line workers. "There is this incredibly powerful long run trend of declining employment in manufacturing," said Robert Z. Lawrence, a professor of economics at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. "It's the same story as in food and farming. We're producing more food with many fewer workers. The only way we compete with our higher wages is by being more innovative." But while Libbey's Shreveport plant is close to some of the most abundant gas supplies in the country, it's ultimately more efficient to run six production lines off one furnace instead of four each on two furnaces, with 200 fewer workers. Libbey officials declined to be interviewed. In a statement, the company said it has "right sized its Shreveport plant to be more focused, flexible and run more efficiently with improved asset utilization." On the ground, that means saving well over 5 million a year, said David Broussard, who represents the workers in Shreveport for the United Steelworkers union. Mr. Broussard says he can't argue with the logic of saving that money and moving some production of beer mugs and other glassware to factories in Monterrey, Mexico, and Toledo, Ohio. "They're a decent company to do business with and this is a pretty docile union," said Mr. Broussard. "It was a business decision. I'm never O.K. with losing members but when you understand the dynamics behind it, it's tough to disagree with." Even boosters of natural gas development concede that the benefits they foresee won't translate into a jobs boom in some parts of the manufacturing sector. "There are industries you may never see come back to prerecession levels," said John Larson, a consultant with IHS Global Insight who helped produce a study for America's Natural Gas Alliance in 2011 that estimated the shale gas industry could eventually create 1.6 million jobs in the coming decades. "Jobs are not the only measure," he said. "It's also about how productive American workers are."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Economy
Mariah Carey and the Art of the Disaster For all the confusion, charges, and countercharges surrounding Mariah Carey's ill fated New Year's Eve performance, one thing has now become clear: Team Mariah is waging an all out war to ensure that she does not become the next Janet Jackson. Ms. Carey's representative could have taken the predictable route of issuing a statement defending its star and then moving on. Instead her manager has heaped blame on the producers of ABC's "Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve With Ryan Seacrest," including an extraordinary, profanity laden interview with Entertainment Weekly. The implicit takeaway from these fireworks is that Ms. Carey's allies are bent on protecting her reputation so that her career does not suffer like Ms. Jackson's after her infamous "wardrobe malfunction" at the 2004 Super Bowl halftime performance. To understand the strategy of the Carey camp, let's walk through the events in question including the strong denials of the show's producers that they did anything wrong. Below is a blow by blow analysis that illuminates the stakes for Ms. Carey and the producers. By 2 a.m. on Sunday, Ms. Carey's Twitter account posted a response to the social media maelstrom that had exploded since the just before midnight performance. "Have a happy and healthy new year everybody!," she wrote. "Here's to making more headlines in 2017." The account moved on to promoting Ms. Carey's reality series on E!, which, coincidentally, was airing that night. And Ms. Carey's supporters go to work "I will never know the truth, but I do know that we told them three times that her mike pack was not working and it was a disastrous production," Ms. Carey's manager, Stella Bulochnikov, told Us Weekly magazine on Sunday. "I'm certainly not calling the F.B.I. to investigate. It is what it is: New Year's Eve in Times Square. Mariah did them a favor. She was the biggest star there, and they did not have their" act together. A spokeswoman, Nicole Perna, told The Associated Press that Ms. Carey was not at fault for the performance. "Unfortunately there was nothing she could do to continue with the performance given the circumstances," she said. Ms. Perna also told Billboard magazine that the production had "set her up to fail." Dick Clark Productions, which produced the show for ABC, released a statement in which strenuously and emphatically denied it was in any way at fault for the glitches on New Year's Eve. "To suggest that Dick Clark Productions , as producer of music shows including the American Music Awards, Billboard Music Awards, New Year's Rockin' Eve and Academy of Country Music Awards, would ever intentionally compromise the success of any artist is defamatory, outrageous and frankly absurd. In very rare instances there are of course technical errors that can occur with live television, however, an initial investigation has indicated that Dick Clark Productions had no involvement in the challenges associated with Ms. Carey's New Year's Eve performance. And on into Monday Which brings us to Monday, when Ms. Bulochnikov gave a detailed some might say exhaustive interview to Entertainment Weekly, running down the events of the night and who was at fault minute by minute. It's now four minutes to showtime. She says, "I hear nothing in my ears, my ears are dead." The other stage manager says, "It will work right when we go live." Then things start to get chaotic. They start counting her down four minutes, three minutes. Mariah: "I can't hear." Them: "You're gonna hear when it goes live two minutes!" So, right when it goes live, she can't hear anything. The ears are dead. They're dead. So she pulls them out of the ear because if the artist keeps them in their ears then all she hears is silence. Once she pulled them off her ear she was hoping to hear her music, but because of the circumstances there's noise from Times Square and the music is reverberating from the buildings all she hears is chaos. She can't hear her music. It's a madhouse. At the point, there's no way to recover. She called the production company "disgusting" for not apologizing to Ms. Carey. Why the impassioned defense of their artist? Aside from loyalty, Ms. Carey's representatives know all too well that when a performer stumbles or even appears to stumble justice is delivered swiftly in the court of public opinion. Famous stumbles, and who got the blame Janet Jackson: the lights go dark, and the world goes mad In 2004, Justin Timberlake ripped a key piece of Ms. Jackson's costume during a Super Bowl halftime performance, thrusting the word "wardrobe malfunction" into everyday language. The incident came at the end of their final song. Ms. Jackson clapped a hand over her breast, and the lights went dark. In the days and years that followed, neither performer was ever able to completely escape the performance, though Mr. Timberlake was far more successful than Ms. Jackson. Radio and television stations refused to play her songs, a planned performance at the Grammys was canceled, and nearly every interview she gave for the next decade at least mentioned the incident. "I probably got 10 percent of the blame," Mr. Timberlake told MTV. "I think America's probably harsher on women, and I think America is, you know, unfairly harsh on ethnic people." In 2014, Michael Powell, who was the chairman of the F.C.C. during "nipplegate," told ESPN The Magazine that Ms. Jackson unfairly took the brunt of public shame for the incident. "I personally thought that was really unfair," Mr. Powell told the magazine. "It all turned into being about her. In reality, if you slow the thing down, it's Justin ripping off her breastplate." In January 2013, as Beyonce was singing "The Star Spangled Banner" at President Obama's second inauguration, the bombs were bursting in air when she reached up and, seamlessly though somewhat dramatically, removed the earpiece from her left ear. The performance was celebrated, though the next day it was revealed that she had been lip syncing. CNN reported that she chose to rely on a recording because she hadn't had time to rehearse with the Marine Corps Band. Beyonce's reputation did not suffer. Even the Marine Corp Band's spokesperson took pains to call Beyonce a gifted singer whose musical ability had nothing to do with the performance. Ms. Simpson, who had already performed her song "Pieces of Me" on "Saturday Night Live" and was about to perform another as a musical guest in 2004. Instead, "Pieces of Me," complete with Ms. Simpson's recorded vocal track, began to play. She lifted the microphone to her mouth, then let it drop, then gave up and started dancing a jig. Then she walked off the stage. The producer Lorne Michaels told "60 Minutes" that it was the first time, to his knowledge, that a performer had lip synced on his show and that had he known that was the plan, he would not have allowed it to happen. "If the plan had been, ya know like, they'd done the Thursday rehearsal and had lip synced and said, 'Well, that's what we do,' then we would have said, 'No, we can't do that'," he said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
GHENT, Belgium The NTGent theater here was out of step with its surroundings last weekend. As the bustling, family friendly Christmas market of this handsome port city was still going strong, with craft and jewelry stalls half framing the theater's doors, inside a somber audience gathered for a new stage production about a family's collective suicide. Under the circumstances, the bleak subject matter could easily have felt gratuitous. Yet that sense of detachment from the world is at the heart of the play, Milo Rau's "Familie," which links suicide to a sense of contemporary hopelessness. The production was inspired by the story of a family of four, the Demeesters, who killed themselves in Calais, France, in 2007. Rau, a Swiss born theater director who has been at the helm of NTGent since 2018, enlisted another real family to imagine what might have happened on their last night: the married couple An Miller and Filip Peeters, who are stage and TV actors, and their daughters, Leonce and Louisa. Most directors would probably draw the line at asking amateur teenage actors to simulate their own suicide, but Rau loves an ethical minefield. Last year, he made work in a former war zone in Iraq and cast former migrant workers in a cinematic retelling of the life of Jesus in Italy. "Familie" completes a trilogy about violent episodes in modern Europe, starting in 2016 with "Five Easy Pieces," about a child abuser in Belgium, and followed by "La Reprise Histoire(s) du Theatre (I)," a stunning exploration of the murder of a gay man. All of these productions have invited controversy, and not always with a clear payoff. I found Rau's recent "Orestes in Mosul," which asked Iraqi war victims to re enact traumatic events for the benefit of European audiences, exploitative in practice, for instance. And while "Familie" is a smaller scale project, its explicit staging of the protagonists' suicide led the Flemish Center of Expertise in Suicide Prevention to express concern before the premiere in the Belgian newspaper De Morgen that the play might inspire copycat attempts. Soon enough, 15 year old Louisa sits down in front of a video camera outside the house to tell us about the genesis of the production, using one of Rau's favorite directorial tricks. She looks reticent as she shares that a friend killed himself; suggests that she, too, has contemplated suicide; and tells how she discovered the Demeesters' story. As often with Rau, it's impossible to tell whether all of this is true or whether it's part of the director's intentional blurring of the lines between reality and fiction. We learn from Louisa that there was no suspicion of foul play after the Demeester family's deaths, and that there was no history of illness or trauma. The note they left behind simply read, "We messed up, sorry." Their story doesn't fit neatly into any patterns, as specialists noted after the event, which makes it initially hard to reconcile on an intellectual level with the ordinary lives that "Familie" depicts. As "Familie" progresses, however, that ambiguity allows Rau's superb cast to imagine how their own final night might unfold. They have dinner and watch home movies in near silence. Afterward, they clean up and dress up in fancy clothes in preparation for the end. On a screen above the stage, we see their faces up close, filmed by a discrete crew, with minuscule cracks occasionally appearing in their composure. The family's decision is never discussed directly. Internal monologues are the only clue to each person's thinking. "I don't know what's good or bad anymore," the mother, Miller, says wistfully. Near the end, though, Louisa breaks the fourth wall again. "While rehearsing this play, we discussed the meaning of life, but no one had an answer that convinced me," she says, before briefly alluding to global leaders' inaction on climate change: "The world is broken, sick."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
THE PERFECTION (2019) Stream on Netflix. If you enjoyed watching Allison Williams channel her dark side in "Get Out," this twisted psychological thriller from Richard Shepard offers an equally delicious dose of crazy. The "Girls" star plays Charlotte, a former cello prodigy who abandoned her dreams years ago to care for her ailing mother. A decade later, Charlotte reaches out to her former teacher and is invited to judge a competition where she meets Lizzie (Logan Browning), the star pupil who has taken Charlotte's place at a prestigious Boston academy. Each is fascinated by the other, both enviously and sexually. From there, the movie zigs and zags and plunges into campy horror territory. PITCHING IN Stream on Acorn TV. In this limited series drama, a widower (Larry Lamb) reconsiders selling his camping park on the North Wales coast when his unpredictable daughter (Caroline Sheen) moves back home and offers to help out. 4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS AND 2 DAYS (2008) Stream on Mubi; Rent on Amazon, iTunes or Vudu. With the debate over abortion rights playing out in the United States, this moving drama shines a light on the issue through the eyes of Gabita (Laura Vasiliu), a university student in Communist Romania who asks her friend Otilia (Anamaria Marinca) to help her secure an abortion. The procedure is illegal under Nicolae Ceausescu's rule, so the girls turn to a secret abortionist (Vlad Ivanov) who agrees to help under one revolting condition. You may find what ensues difficult to watch but impossible to look away from.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
Optical illusions and other neat looking tricks, achieved by a lithe cohort of dancer athletes and an extensive design team, have long been the selling points of Momix. Established three decades ago by Moses Pendleton, a founding member of the equally spectacle oriented Pilobolus, the company specializes in teasing the eye through lighting and video effects, often exploring themes related to nature. (Recent entries in its globally touring repertoire include "Botanica," about the seasons, and "Lunar Sea," about the moon.) Even if there's not much choreographic substance, there's cool stuff to see. But Mr. Pendleton's latest endeavor, "Alchemia," seen on Monday at the Joyce Theater in the middle of a four week run, falls short even on that front. This roughly 90 minute production, which purports to celebrate "the art of alchemy and the alchemy of art," strives to astonish. It has billowing fire (a silk sheet manipulated by metal poles), glow in the dark skeletons (or are they frayed nerves?), outer space projections, a stretchy golden pyramid, kaleidoscopic mirrors and lots of look how sexy we are dancing. (One thing it lacks: an intermission.) At best, it's mildly entertaining; at worst, trite and shoddily assembled. The show's abundant stunts, arranged into a long series of short vignettes, are less mysterious than predictable, even transparent. When one dancer comes back to earth after alighting in a luminous, midair whirl (thanks to an aerial harness), three others try to mask her costume change into one of their floor skimming hoop dresses but the transformation is both audible and visible. So much for illusion. Other clunky transitions, like shepherding that sheet of fire offstage, similarly quench any sparks of magic. The dancers of Momix are strong, agile and exceptionally controlled. The choreography requires heavy lifting, of props like long, tubular columns in the first section and of other dancers. But the performers are at the mercy of their ridiculous trappings.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
Goldstone's forthright and often witty asides keep this complicated story bowling along at a terrific pace. Commenting on young James VI of Scotland's penchant for toadying to his aunt, England's aging Queen Elizabeth, Goldstone notes that "this expedient was somewhat put to the test in the aftermath of his mother's beheading." Pondering the multiple duplication of names in regal dynasties, she tartly comments that it's "no wonder no one understands this period." Goldstone is right. In addition to her book's genealogical chart, a timeline might have helped readers follow the intricate twists in the chain of power that led from beheaded Mary, via her son, to his brave, charming and accomplished daughter Elizabeth. The irresistibly poignant Elizabeth Stuart, sister of Charles I (another monarch who lost his head), was called "the winter queen" after her ill starred single season reign as Queen of Bohemia. Hard though Goldstone works, she fails to inject the daughters of her book's title (Princesses Elizabeth, Louisa, Henrietta Maria and Sophia) with the charisma of their mother, also known in her day as "the queen of hearts" and even as "the most charming princess of Europe." Beneath that charm lay a will of steel. In 1636, the widowed Elizabeth commissioned the Dutch painter Gerrit van Honthorst to celebrate her in a work called "Triumph of the Winter Queen." An immense group portrait, Honthorst's painting imagines the moment when his patron's family (its benevolent ancestors beaming down encouragement upon the living) will vanquish their enemies and return to Heidelberg, whose fortress was captured during the king and queen's misguided move east into Bohemia. Regaining the lost Palatinate became Elizabeth's prime objective. It was one in which her daughters were expected to play a key role, through expedient alliances. But thanks to Sophia, youngest and liveliest of the four young women, the family gained another, larger prize. Sophia, recorded late in life as an indefatigable walker and a forthright septuagenarian with "not one wrinkle in her face," was both clever (she held her own against Leibniz, possibly the greatest philosopher of the day) and acid tongued (declaring that her aunt Henrietta Maria, Charles I of England's fugitive French queen, had teeth "like guns protruding from a fort"). When her sister Louisa, a talented artist who became abbess of a nunnery, tried to convert her to Roman Catholicism, Sophia briskly denounced it as "a very evil religion." Loyalty to her mother's faith almost brought its own reward: Had she lived just 54 days longer, Sophia, rather than her son, would have become England's first Hanoverian monarch.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
LONDON When Helena Morrissey, chief executive of the money manager Newton, brought home an industry award for "Most Influential Woman in Asset Management" in October, her 5 year old son asked whether there was a similar category for men. There was not. "It showed we're just not there yet when it comes to gender equality," Mrs. Morrissey said. That is why she set up an initiative last month, backed by the chairmen at the Lloyds Banking Group, HSBC, the retailer J Sainsbury and other companies, to elevate more women to management boards. The chairmen pledged to spread the word among senior executives about the need for more diversity on boards in Britain, many of which had never had a female director. The goal is to raise the number of women on boards to about a third by 2015 without resorting to the quotas that are now law in Norway and France and are being phased in by Spain. At the 100 largest publicly traded companies in Britain, 12.5 percent of directors were women this year, compared with 12.2 percent last year and 12 percent the year before, according to a study by the Cranfield School of Management, which referred to "a situation of stagnation." About one in four companies still have exclusively male boards, including the energy provider International Power and the retailer Associated British Foods. "The initiative is a third way between doing nothing and introducing a quota," Mrs. Morrissey said, conceding that the 30 percent goal was ambitious. "We want to get there with momentum instead of regulation." Like the British government, Mrs. Morrissey says she believes that introducing a quota should be a last resort, preferring to focus on merit. She also said a quota was undesirable because it could create the perception of discrimination. Theresa M. May, the British home secretary, indicated in a speech last month that improving equality should be more up to the individual and less to regulation. She also suggested using the concept of "fairness" rather than "equality," which she said had become a "dirty word" and was "seen by a lot of people as something that is available to others, and not to them." Mrs. Morrissey's initiative, named the 30% Club, seems well timed. The financial crisis had exposed the shortcomings and weaknesses of management boards and made chairmen ponder whether a more diverse board might lead to better decision making. A new British corporate governance code that took effect in June, partly to help avoid another banking crisis, says that boards should be "well balanced," with gender diversity, to avoid "group think." Prime Minister David Cameron picked gender equality as a priority when he took office in May. As a first step, he commissioned a report on what the government could do to increase the number of women on boards, something he says he believes would increase productivity. The findings are to be published in February. Ruth Sealy, deputy director of the International Center for Women Leaders at the Cranfield School of Management, also noticed "the momentum is gathering in Britain." "People have been talking about this for a long time, but the noise and the seniority of people who joined the discussion has increased," Ms. Sealy said. Richard Emerton, managing director at the recruitment advisory company Korn/Ferry International in London, said he had "a surprising number of requests from chairmen today for lists of and introductions to possible female candidates." "The debate is now moving from purely technical skills to finding people that can help improve the boardroom dynamic," Mr. Emerton said. But many companies continue to hold on to strict criteria for board candidates, limiting the number of female candidates, Mr. Emerton said. It is a custom in Britain, for example, to hire only nonexecutive directors who already have a board seat somewhere else. Edward Davey, minister for employment relations, said the government might have to persuade chairmen to be less specific. Mrs. Morrissey dismissed the notion that there were not enough suitable female candidates. At Newton, an asset management firm owned by Bank of New York Mellon, 26 percent of the senior work force is women, partly because the firm has tried to draw a broader list of job candidates and women have been attracted to working at a place with a female chief executive. Part of Newton's strategy is to check whether companies it wants to invest in have a well balanced management board. However, Mrs. Morrissey said that more needed to be done to deepen the pool of candidates. She mentioned the need for senior executives to mentor more female employees and special career advisers who help women before and after maternity leave. Mrs. Morrissey recalled how women would drop by her desk and say, "I'm concerned, I want a child, but how do I balance it?" "They look ahead in their career and don't like what they see culturally," she said. "But the more women there are, the more appealing the image will become." Mrs. Morrissey, 44, knows what she is talking about. When she is not in charge at Newton, with about 70 billion of assets under management, she is spending time with her children and husband, Richard, who quit his job as a journalist to take care of their six daughters and three sons. Mrs. Morrissey, who studied philosophy at Cambridge University, was not always an ambitious campaigner for greater gender diversity. She joined Newton in 1994 after the founder, Stewart Newton, noticed her talent as a bond analyst for Schroders in New York. When Bank of New York Mellon bought Newton eight years later, the new organization decided to improve equality and Mrs. Morrissey was asked to set up a women's group. "I slightly resisted because I felt I didn't need that focus," she said. "But you need to be mindful that developments in this area go in fits and starts, and I look at my daughters and see that their expectations are pretty high." Mrs. Morrissey said the support of male executives for her initiative was crucial. "A lot of these initiatives are just women talking to women," she said. In fact, her own idea for the 30% Club came after a women only lunch at Goldman Sachs last year, and the club's other leaders include senior female executives from Rothschild, Deutsche Bank, KPMG and others. "It is essential that senior male executives spread the word about the importance of gender balance on boards," Mrs. Morrissey said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Global Business
LOS ANGELES The chief executive of Sony's underperforming entertainment division, Michael Lynton, announced Friday that he would step down to focus more intently on the popular messaging service Snapchat, where he was an early investor. Mr. Lynton, who weathered various corporate crises at Sony Entertainment over his 13 year tenure, including a devastating cyberattack and a battle with activist investors, will step down on Feb. 2, the company said. After that, Kazuo Hirai, the president and chief executive of Sony Corporation, based in Tokyo, will take a more hands on role at the conglomerate's movie, television and music division, at least for a time. Mr. Hirai will begin keeping a second office at Sony's studio complex in Culver City, Calif., the company said, and take the additional title of co chief executive of Sony Entertainment. Mr. Lynton will also serve as co chief executive for a six month period starting in February to help Mr. Hirai learn the inner workings of the fast changing movie and television businesses and select a permanent successor. In the meantime, Mr. Lynton, 57, will officially become chairman of the board at Snap Inc., which owns Snapchat. Snap is expected to go public with an eye toward being valued at 30 billion or more this spring. As chairman, Mr. Lynton is not expected to play a direct management role, but rather focus on matters involving strategy and governance in support of Evan Spiegel, Snap's chief executive.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
In 1981, Mary Steenburgen won the best supporting actress Oscar for "Melvin and Howard." On Monday, she will find out if she's earned her second ever Academy Award nomination, in a very different category: best original song. "Glasgow (No Place Like Home)," which she wrote with Caitlyn Smith and Kate York for the music drama "Wild Rose," made the shortlist of potential nominees. "I won't lie it was amazing," Steenburgen said about receiving that news. The achievement is especially remarkable considering she took up songwriting relatively late in life, under what even she calls "strange" circumstances. Twelve years ago, she woke up after minor arm surgery and felt like her thoughts had turned into music. "I don't know how to explain what happened to me," she said. "All I can say is music came into my life. I think something during the surgery opened up a little part of my brain that I just hadn't felt before." Steenburgen, 66, who's married to Ted Danson, spoke about the musical detour her life has taken in a recent telephone interview. These are edited excerpts from that conversation. How did you get involved with "Wild Rose"? For a number of years, I've been writing for Universal in Nashville. They put out calls about which films are looking for songs. I heard about this one, and it sounded intriguing. My manager got the script for me, which was super helpful. I realized the song wasn't just going to play over the end credits. It was much more pivotal. Jessie Buckley's title character, a Scottish singer songwriter who's traveled to Nashville in search of stardom and come back to her hometown, performs it at the film's emotional climax. How did you channel the spirit of Glasgow? I haven't spent a lot of time there, but I called one of our dearest friends, who was raised in Glasgow, and asked her to talk to me about it. She was our nanny and lived with our family for 18 years, so she's like a sister to me. Her family's stories about Glasgow are a huge part of my life and my children's lives. Is the song's title an intentional homage to "The Wizard of Oz"? Yes. The character had spent so much time focusing on Oz, which is Nashville. She had not looked around at where she came from and what it had given her. You can be so focused on the golden thing that's in front of you that you don't look around and see you're already there. Does that idea resonate with you personally? It does. As a young actor in New York, I was a waitress for six and a half years, and I remember thinking, "You can't just be focused on life beginning when you're successful." This theme of dreams and goals and noticing where you're at has been a constant in my life. Our business can be very distracting. It must have been disorienting to win an Oscar for only your third film. What's your most vivid memory of that night? Truthfully, I was a young mother who had never left her baby before, and I remember being very freaked out that I would need to nurse her. I also really needed to thank a number of people, like Jack Nicholson, who was my first director and leading man, in "Goin' South." He had been incredibly good to me. I also needed to thank my teacher Sandy Meisner and Jonathan Demme, whom I adored, and who directed "Melvin and Howard." A lot of what I remember about that night is thinking, "Don't cry, and make sure you thank them." Is it hard to believe that was nearly 40 years ago? It is. It's been a long time since I've actually won any awards, but I've worked a lot she's now appearing in the NBC show "Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist" , and I've had to learn to make the joy of work, whether it's acting or music, be my own reward. Songwriting is not a vanity thing or passing fancy for me. It's something I've done extremely quietly and consistently for 12 years, and I've earned my right to be here. Now, do I still have a million miles to go? Yes. But I'm getting better. How does it feel to be taking on a new challenge at this stage of your life? To say yes to something brand new when you're not young is a really interesting thing to do. Our society doesn't encourage that. You're encouraged to try new things when you're young, and then nobody says that to you anymore at a certain age. I did get a little pushback. People said, "You already have a career. Why are you doing this?" Because my heart is desiring it so fiercely I can't ignore it. If you're lucky enough to be alive, why would you creatively kill yourself off? Why not say yes to all of it at any age?	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
The Danish government will slaughter millions of mink at more than 1,000 farms, citing concerns that a mutation in the novel coronavirus that has infected the mink could possibly interfere with the effectiveness of a vaccine for humans. Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen made the announcement at a news conference on Wednesday. There are 15 million or more mink in Denmark, which is one of the world's major exporters of mink furs. She said the armed forces would be involved in the culling of mink. Kare Molbak, the head of the State Serum Institute, the government's public health and infectious disease arm, warned at the news conference that a mutation could interfere with the effectiveness of future vaccines. The government has notified the World Health Organization of the virus mutation, and also said 12 people in its Jutland region are known to have it and that it shows a weak reaction to antibodies, according to news reports. The W. H.O. acknowledged by email that it had been "informed by Denmark of a number of persons infected with coronavirus from mink, with some genetic changes in the virus." The W.H.O. said that Denmark was "investigating the epidemiological and virological significance of these findings, and culling the mink population. We are in touch with them to find more about this event."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
THE 500 horsepower Porsche Panamera Turbo is fast enough to qualify as a bullet train. And with the car's six figure price tag, you might need a federal subsidy to procure one. The company's previous move into family transportation, the Cayenne sport utility introduced in 2002, was met with derision and dismay by hardcore Porsche enthusiasts. But the Cayenne became the company's best seller and brought a new group of customers into Porsche dealerships. Porsche says it created the Panamera to offer a sports car experience in a spacious four door package. Indeed, customers are likely to include those who have looked wistfully at Porsche's 911 sports cars, but need four usable seats. My test car was the top of the line Turbo, which includes all wheel drive. The Turbo starts at an eye opening 132,600, and with nearly every available option, the sticker price of the basalt black car ballooned to 157,040. Two other V 8 models, the S and all wheel drive 4S, start around 90,000. In June, Porsche will add two versions with V 6 engines at 75,000 and up, broadening the potential market from the truly rich to the simply well to do. You start the car by inserting a clever "Panamera shaped" key into a slot and pressing a button. The front mounted engine an adaptation of the motor in the Cayenne Turbo emits a serious growl. As you expect from a Porsche, especially one with such a lofty price tag, the Panamera is a technological tour de force. When the chassis and engine management systems are set to the full performance mode, "PASM Sport Plus," the Panamera is more like a rocket sled than a family car. Porsche's chassis magicians used everything in their bag of tricks to keep this two ton beast dancing on its Teutonic tiptoes; the car does not become one with the road, it beats the pavement into submission. On nearly empty back roads near the base of Mount Hood, I felt as if I were at the wheel of a Dodge Viper that had gone to finishing school. During a day of spirited driving, the routine was simple: I'd dive deep into a corner, slam on the ceramic brakes (an 8,840 option) with their flashy yellow calipers and point the car where I wanted to head next as I exited the turn. Then I'd smash on the throttle and suddenly find myself at the entrance to the next corner. All that was missing was the blurring of the stars that occurs when the Enterprise hits warp speed. The 7 speed PDK transmission a dual clutch automated manual gearbox that behaves like an automatic was flawless, shifting crisply and intuitively. I didn't like the placement of the paddle shifters on the steering wheel, but it really didn't matter; the Panamera's computer was smarter than I at picking gears. No conventional manual is offered in North America. The all wheel drive system was unobtrusive and transparent in execution. Despite the Panamera's heft and firepower, the economy rating (15 m.p.g. in the city and 23 on the highway) is high enough to avoid the gas guzzler penalty imposed on rivals like the Maserati Quattroporte and Aston Martin Rapide. The acceleration is linear, relentless and remarkable. In testing by Road Track magazine, the Turbo rocketed from 0 to 60 m.p.h. in just 3.4 seconds. Porsche says the top speed is 188 m.p.h. While those numbers are impressive, sampling even a fraction of the car's performance potential on speed limited American roads could cost you your car, your keys and your friends. While pushing the Panamera's limits might be great fun for the driver, it could prove less amusing for three passengers expecting a quiet drive in the country not a re enactment of La Carrera Panamericana, the grueling 2,000 mile race through Mexico in the 1950s for which this Porsche is named. In my experience, few people describe the Panamera's styling as stunning, or even handsome. The "gulping guppy" face is similar to the Cayenne's. In fact, all the new Porsches, including the sports cars, have similarly bland front end styling as if the designers decided on one look for all models and then hung up their creative coats. Others may disagree, but I think the Panamera looks best viewed from the rear. Following a Panamera down an Oregon freeway, I found the sloping rear end has a "bustle back" evocative of vintage Bugattis. The shape raises the roof enough to create usable headroom in the rear seat. Indeed, the design has been described as an accommodation for the corporate champion of the Panamera project, Wendelin Wiedeking, the 6 foot 2 former chief executive who insisted on being comfortable in all four seats. The rear fenders flare out provocatively, and the four exhaust tips suggest that this is a serious autobahn tourer. Because of the steep rear slant, there is limited visibility through the back window. For tight spaces, an icon of the car shows up on the navigation screen amid zones that turn from green to yellow to red as you draw closer to obstacles. It's not a bad system, but in a world where 30,000 Hondas have backup cameras, a real picture of what's around you would be more useful. The cockpit is futuristic. The center console has a bewildering array of controls, and there are no fewer than 10 switches overhead. Alas, the navigation system proved no better than those in most German vehicles. While Porsche's touch screen is more user friendly than the iDrive style controls of many luxury cars, the computer had difficulty finding accurate routes to my destinations. A secondary navigation display in the gauge cluster is easily viewed by the driver. This makes it easy to follow directions (even if they are wrong) at a glance. When my daughter tried to charge her iPhone with the console adapter, she got this message: "This accessory is not designed to work with an iPhone." Well, thanks for letting us know. In a grudging concession to Americans' need to slurp, there is a single large cup holder in the console. But the two other front cup holders should I call them "drink spillers"? are similar to those in my wife's new BMW 528i, which is to say nearly useless. They pop out from the dash, they are flimsy and they tend to splash liquids on your legs. But as with most German cars, the ashtray and lighter are perfectly situated. Go figure. During my weeklong test, I kept trying to reconcile the car's two very different personalities: spacious and luxurious touring car vs. brilliant high performance sport sedan. But ultimately, the elements of the Porsche heritage that are so appealing about the Panamera, like its nearly sublime grace under high speed pressure, seem at odds with the typical uses of a four door car. Would you use the launch control intended for lightning quick starts at the racetrack to get the kidlets to school faster? Would you press the Sport Plus button to stiffen the suspension as you slide sideways into the A P parking lot?	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Automobiles
The number of measles cases in the United States has risen to 695, the highest annual number recorded since the disease was declared eliminated in this country in 2000, federal health officials said on Wednesday. The total has now surpassed the previous high of 667 set in 2014, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The virus has been detected in 22 states. Most cases are linked to two large and apparently unrelated outbreaks. One is centered in Orthodox Jewish communities in New York City and its suburbs; that outbreak began in October and recently spread to Orthodox communities in Michigan. The other outbreak began in Washington State. "The longer these outbreaks continue, the greater the chance measles will again get a sustained foothold in the United States," the C.D.C. said in a statement. The virus mostly has stricken families that do not vaccinate their children, and the C.D.C. blamed "organizations that are deliberately targeting these communities with inaccurate and misleading information about vaccines." The agency appealed to Americans to seek advice from their family doctors instead. Get answers to common questions about the measles outbreak. The New York outbreak was set off by Americans who had visited Israel, where cases have been spreading in Orthodox communities since early last year. City officials have taken extraordinary measures to crack down on resistance to immunization. Mayor Bill DeBlasio declared a state of emergency and threatened residents of four Brooklyn ZIP codes with 1,000 fines if they refused to vaccinate. Rockland County, N.Y., the center of another outbreak, initially barred unvaccinated children from all indoor public places, including schools, malls, supermarkets, restaurants and houses of worship. After a court blocked that order, the county instead barred from public spaces anyone who had measles symptoms or who had recently been exposed to the disease, threatening them with fines of up to 2,000 a day. There have been no confirmed measles deaths in this country, but officials believe it is just a matter of time. Dozens of victims most of them young children have been hospitalized. Here's our full coverage about the measles outbreak. Two of the cases detected in New York City were in pregnant women, the city health department said. The virus can cause miscarriages or stillbirths. Even with modern medical care, the disease normally kills about one out of every 1,000 victims, according to the C.D.C. Pneumonia and encephalitis swelling of the brain are the most common severe complications, and epidemics among malnourished children who cannot get modern hospital care have mortality rates of 10 percent or more, according to the World Health Organization. Measles is among the most contagious of diseases. Virus laced droplets can hover in still indoor air for up to two hours after someone infected has coughed or sneezed. Up to 90 percent of people who are exposed will catch the virus if they are not immunized. The vaccine is considered very safe, and two doses are about 97 percent effective at conferring immunity. The vaccine is normally given at ages 1 and 5, but during outbreaks pediatricians may give it to healthy children as young as six months old. Around the world, measles cases fell 80 percent between 2000 and 2016, with deaths dropping to 90,000 a year from 550,000. But two years ago, cases began rebounding, driven by a combination of poverty, warfare, tight vaccine supplies and, in some countries, hesitation about vaccination. Earlier this month, the W.H.O. said there were three times as many measles cases around the world this year as there were in the first three months of 2018. Outbreaks of tens of thousands of cases have occurred recently in poor or war torn countries like Madagascar, Ukraine and Yemen. But case numbers are also climbing in wealthy countries with modern health care systems, like Israel, Britain, France and Italy. Deaths from measles have occurred in those countries. Before measles vaccination became widespread in the United States in 1963, up to four million Americans got measles each year, the C.D.C. said. Of the roughly 500,000 cases that were reported to medical authorities, about 48,000 were hospitalized, 4,000 developed encephalitis, and 400 to 500 died. Nationally, since the mid 1990s, more than 91 percent of American children have been vaccinated against measles. (Anyone born before 1957 is assumed to have had the disease as a child and to be immune to it.) Like the Science Times page on Facebook. Sign up for the Science Times newsletter. Immunization levels vary from state to state, largely dependent on how easy state legislatures make it to get exemptions. All states permit exemptions for children who are allergic to the vaccine, have a compromised immune system or have another medical reason to avoid it. Some states permit religious exemptions, even though no major religion opposes vaccination, and a few states also permit "philosophical" or "personal choice" exemptions. Only Mississippi, West Virginia and California allow solely medical exemptions; California previously had a very permissive law, but it changed it after the measles outbreak that began at Disneyland in 2014. Now the state has high vaccination rates among kindergartners. Some states with high vaccination rates have "pockets of unvaccinated people," the C.D.C. said. At various times, some religious minorities like Orthodox Jews and the Amish in Ohio have had low vaccination rates. Some wealthy liberal communities, like Vashon Island in Washington State, have also had low rates. Recently right wing groups opposed to vaccines have sprung up, such as Texans for Vaccine Choice, which is associated with the Tea Party.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
Latest Project She recently appeared in Sports Illustrated's annual Swimsuit Issue. The topless photo was accompanied by an essay by Ms. Dalbesio, reconciling her feminism with being a model. "I always say that body autonomy is one of the pillars of feminism," she said. "Who's going to tell me what I'm going to do with my body?" Next Thing Ms. Delbasio is developing a talk show on Super Deluxe, a youth oriented entertainment company owned by Turner Broadcasting System, where she will investigate the creative processes of (mostly) female artists, activists and trailblazers. Possible subjects include Chelsea VonChaz, a founder of Happy Period, which distributes menstrual hygiene kits to homeless women. No Calvin Clone When Ms. Delbasio, who is a size 10, appeared in the Calvin Klein ads in 2014, it prompted some controversy over what the fashion industry considers plus size. "When I started, there was no space within the agencies for any girl my size, unless you would go to the plus size board," she said. "It's often very skinny girls and then plus size girls and there's no in between. That has changed a lot. I hope I played a part in that."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
Though its political implications are yet unclear, the publication of an email chain in which Donald Trump Jr. arranged a June 2016 meeting with a lawyer peddling the Russian government's help for his father's presidential campaign ought to inspire some pretty obvious tech advice: Step away from the inbox, stupid! That's not a partisan slight. I said pretty much the same thing last year about the emails of John D. Podesta, Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman, whose inbox emptied across the internet after he clicked on a link he shouldn't have. What was most notable about the Podesta stash not to mention earlier releases from the Democratic National Committee and Mrs. Clinton's own server was the Clinton campaign's apparent slavishness to email. No thought appeared too big or too small to escape documentation and discussion over a fundamentally insecure communication channel invented more than 50 years ago, and meant for subjects far less weighty than a campaign for the presidency. The Democrats' email troubles suggested how thoroughly email had seduced us, and how deeply we'd all overcommitted to it and how desperately we all needed to move to something more secure. The younger Mr. Trump's emails only underline that point. But they also suggest what we'll lose when, inevitably, the world does move on to something better than email an unmatched historical record of some of the most important stories in the world.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
'MAGNUM MANIFESTO' at International Center of Photography (through Sept. 3). This museum has taken a more tech inclined tack since it moved to the Bowery last year, but its current 75 artist retrospective of photojournalism is a TBT to its earlier days. Magnum was founded as a photographer run commercial agency in the years after World War II, and its first members, among them Henri Cartier Bresson and Robert Capa (the brother of this museum's founder), shot humanistic reportage with new, lightweight cameras. But now that everyone with a smartphone is a potential documentarian, Magnum's young members lean artsier: Alessandra Sanguinetti shoots the Promenade des Anglais in Nice, France, after the terrorist attack there last summer, as a nearly abstract blackout; Paolo Pellegrin documents the refugee crisis in the Mediterranean by picturing not bodies, but waves. (Jason Farago) 212 857 0000, icp.org 2017 WHITNEY BIENNIAL at the Whitney Museum of American Art (closes on June 11). This Biennial is arguably the best in years, and perhaps the best ever in its combination of demographics, aesthetics and political urgency. Nearly half the featured artists are female, and half nonwhite. Their works reach from figure painting to virtual reality. Such realities as income inequality, racism, misogyny, immigration and violence are confronted in ways that set a high standard for social engagement sustained by formal ambition. (Roberta Smith) 212 570 3600, whitney.org	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
"I built this kind of shield around me and kind of this persona, almost to hide behind," Paris Hilton said.Credit...Daniel Jack Lyons for The New York Times "I built this kind of shield around me and kind of this persona, almost to hide behind," Paris Hilton said. Lounging cross legged on her bed at home in Beverly Hills and wearing a turquoise hoodie, Paris Hilton appeared at ease. There were none of the affectations that have defined her public image for two decades: the flat baby voice, the tiny, shimmering outfits, the faux ditziness, the stance that everything cool was "hot." "I built this kind of shield around me and kind of this persona, almost to hide behind, because I've been through so much where I just didn't even want to think about it anymore," Ms. Hilton, 39, said over Zoom. Behind her stood a towering mirror illuminated by a sea of LED lights that refracted off her platinum hair like diamonds. Before there were influencers, there was Paris Hilton: a beautiful blank slate of a person onto whom all kinds of ideas and brand sponsorships could be projected. She was the celebrity burnished, if not created, by a sex tape. She was the face of the Sidekick (and the victim of a Sidekick hack that brought more of her personal life into the public eye). She was a reality star, trying her hand at manual labor as a rich person. She recorded music, modeled, appeared at parties, made TV cameos, wrote an advice book. And she was mercilessly criticized, written off as "famous for being famous." Now, moreover, she's ready to talk about the past. On Sept. 14, the documentary "This Is Paris" will be released on YouTube. It aims to crack the facade she created in the aughts, focusing instead on the decade that preceded her fame. Ms. Hilton said that she gave the director, Alexandra Dean, full creative control over the project. "It was really difficult for me because I'm so used to having so much control and 'The Simple Life,' just having everything perfect and edited," she said. "And with this, I had just to let go of all that control and let them use everything." There are moments of opulence in the film jet setting around the world, endless racks of gowns and stilettos and closets stacked with jewelry she's never worn and she's quick to remind that she's "never been photographed in the same thing twice." But at the heart of the documentary is trauma, stemming from Ms. Hilton's years spent in boarding schools for troubled teens. The last one she attended was Provo Canyon School, a psychiatric residential treatment center in Utah, where she would spend 11 months. The night she arrived at Provo, Ms. Hilton recalls in the documentary, she was taken from her bed as if she was being kidnapped. She said she and her peers were routinely given mystery pills, and when Ms. Hilton refused to take them, she would be sent to solitary confinement for sometimes 20 hours at a time without clothing. She also claims emotional, verbal and physical abuse from teachers and administrators. "It was just like living in hell," Ms. Hilton said. The school has noted on its website that it changed ownership in 2000, after Ms. Hilton was a student. A representative from Provo said the school does "not condone or promote any form of abuse." They added that "any and all alleged/suspected abuse is reported to our state regulatory authorities, law enforcement and Child Protective Services immediately as required." In the years since, Ms. Hilton has grappled with nightmares and avoided therapy, which played a big part in her residential treatment programs. "From being at Provo and those types of schools, just the therapists in there I felt were just not good people," she said. "I just have never, ever trusted them." The experience broke other forms of trust, too, Ms. Hilton said. In the documentary, she can be seen installing spyware in her house before her boyfriend stays there while she's out of town. "To have that come out, such a private moment, and for the whole world to be watching it and laughing like it's some sort of entertainment, was just traumatizing," Ms. Hilton said. Still, in some ways, the exposure turbocharged her career as something other than an heiress, leading to reality show gigs and other deals; her friend and former assistant, Kim Kardashian, followed the same path to worldwide fame a few years later. "Kim and I have been friends since we were little girls and have traveled the world together," Ms. Hilton said. "I could not be more proud of everything she has accomplished." Publicly, Ms. Hilton has not always voiced support for women who have come forward with stories of abuse. But since she told the reporter Irin Carmon, in 2017, that the women who accused President Donald Trump a family friend of sexual misconduct were looking for "fame" and "attention," her perspective has changed. "I'm happy that there's been the MeToo movement where people have completely changed their views on that," Ms. Hilton said. "But at the start, it was just really unfair for a woman to be treated that way because somebody exposed them." She learned to mask her emotions. "In every relationship I've always been like, 'Oh, this is amazing. I've never been so happy,'" she said. "It was just something I would just say to the world, even when the worst things in the world were happening to me in my relationships. I didn't want anyone to know because I didn't want my brand to be affected." Susanne Daniels, YouTube's global head of original content, said she doesn't see these documentaries as a "defense." "They know that their image is complex, and at some point, they're ready to share all the complexities of why they've made the choices they have," she said, of the celebrities. "I think to a certain extent it can be considered brave." For Ms. Daniels, every documentary YouTube takes on is "a leap of faith" that there's going to be a "surprise or twist." "I thought to myself, 'OK, either this is a really good hook that these producers created because they're really good producers, in which case maybe they could make it work, or just for real, it's going to be incredibly compelling," Ms. Daniels said. She was won over. "I hope the audience is, too, because I think Paris is deserving of that revelation," she said. Now, Ms. Hilton hopes to use her brand for good. She wants to expose institutions that administer cruel psychiatric treatment to minors, working with former students who said they had similar experiences to do so. "I'm really going to dedicate a lot of my life to helping make this happen and shutting these places down," she said. She's no longer interested in playing a character, she said. "I'm happy for people to know that I am not a dumb blonde," she said. "I'm just very good at pretending to be one."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
Vampires, demons, Michael Myers in horror, many things never die. One Cleveland television station is betting there's something else that's immortal: the appetite for horror hosts. Halloween night brings the third episode of "The Big Bad B Movie Show," a new locally produced schlock horror movie series on CW43, the city's CW affiliate. It's hosted by Zachariah Durr, 40, and Laura Wimbels, 37, who play Leopold and Lenora, two dapper, wisecracking ghouls trapped in a vault. The two are part of a new generation of horror hosts, those late night cheeseball M.C.s who supplement terrible movies with wink wink sketch comedy and goofy gags, delivered in accents that land somewhere between Transylvania and the Catskills. What's unusual about "The Big Bad B Movie Show" is more than just "the two weirdo people" who host it, as Durr put it. Most horror hosts today stream exclusively online, and it's usually too costly for a local broadcast station to produce a new weekly horror series. (It also streams online after the broadcast concludes.) But in Durr, a video producer for CW43, the station lucked out: He eagerly agreed to host the series as a labor of love. "We are all trapped in our cities," he said. "We might as well be producing something fun." Horror hosts have been (mildly) scaring fans since the 1950s, first on broadcast television and then online, where they remain ubiquitous. The formula a hammy host, a B movie, hokey skits has barely changed. Neither, really, have gender roles; men are generally funny, women are usually vamps. This Halloween, Leopold and Lenora are two of many horror hosts helping to feed the pandemic bred appetite for nostalgic comfort viewing, a welcome distraction for families with kids who will spend Halloween at home because of coronavirus restrictions. In Austin, Tex., Joseph Fotinos, a local host known as Professor Anton Griffin, kicks things off with an after midnight special in the wee hours of Halloween morning on the city's CBS affiliate. In the Quad Cities market, covering southeastern Iowa and northwestern Illinois, Marlena Midnite will host a Halloween night double feature of "The Brain That Wouldn't Die" (1962) and "Lady Frankenstein" (1971) on a MyTV station. Cassandra Peterson better known as the vixen horror movie hostess Elvira said that when real life terror becomes overwhelming, a family friendly B movie presented by a chummy ghoul can help take off life's scary edge. "Horror hosts show you comforting things from your childhood that you watched with your family or friends," she said. "That those things have horror themes is neither here nor there. It just feels good to go back to that place." According to Stacey Abbott, the co author of "TV Horror: Investigating the Dark Side of the Small Screen," the horror host format emerged as local stations in search of cheap content bought packages of old Hollywood horror movies to create a programming slot with minimal production costs. Station employees were often enlisted to moonlight as costumed creatures after their evening shifts ended. "It made more of an event of screening old movies, and it worked really well," Abbott said. The format first clicked in 1954, when a young Finnish American actress named Maila Nurmi squeezed into a cinched black dress and applied a crimson lip to become Vampira, a va va voom bloodsucker on KABC in Los Angeles. Three years later, John Zacherle played an undertaker host on TV in Philadelphia, where he was known as Roland, and later in New York, where he took the name Zacherley. The phenomenon took off in other cities, where hosts became local celebrities. In 2011, the first class in the virtual Horror Host Hall of Fame included three personalities from Ohio alone, including Cleveland's Ghoulardi, played by Ernie Anderson, the father of the acclaimed filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson ("There Will Be Blood," "Phantom Thread"). Abbott said the format started to peter out in the 1970s as stations moved toward more syndicated content and away from paying people to make original shows. But that changed in the '80s, when Elvira helped usher in a new Golden Age by introducing the VHS generation to the horror host format in her show "Movie Macabre." The gig helped make her a household name. Fast forward to the digital age, and anyone with a laptop, green screen, vintage frippery and pancake makeup can have his or her own series. A few long timers are still at it. Joe Bob Briggs, a noncreature host, has a series on the horror streaming platform Shudder. Dick Dyszel has played Count Gore De Vol, a love child of Bela Lugosi and Sid Caesar, since the 1970s and has been online since the early days of the internet. Svengoolie, a long running Chicago horror host originated by Jerry G. Bishop and now played by Rich Koz, has a weekly show on MeTV stations that, according to the network, reaches an average three million viewers each week. Horror hosts also have a documentary about their weird world, "American Scary," streaming on Amazon, and a virtual meeting place at EerieLateNight.com, where horror hosts and their fans chat and watch old horror movies around the clock. What they don't have is women and people of color as hosts, at least not in the numbers that reflect the diversity of horror fandom. CW43's Wimbels, a freelance photographer who is Hispanic and grew up in Cleveland, said she was thrilled to expand even slightly the small circle of female hosts of color. "I was one of the uncool kids," she said. "Growing up, I was dark and stuck out like a sore thumb. I was adopted. We didn't have cable. But I watched 'The Twilight Zone' and old movies and TV shows, and they gave me comfort. To get to be a horror host it's incredible." "The Big Bad B Movie Show" is CW43's first local non news program of original scripted content in almost 30 years. Erik Schrader, the station's vice president and general manager, said the idea surfaced around July when he needed to fill the Saturday prime time slot. "We asked ourselves, do we show repeats or something creative?" he said. "We went for the creative angle because we believe that advertisers are going to be interested in something locally produced that has an original energy." Schrader said he had been looking for locally produced programming when the opportunity to buy some old horror movies came across his desk. A fan of "Mystery Science Theater 3000," he gave "The Big Bad B Movie Show" a greenlight because the idea was a hit at the station and because the production costs were "not going to rival 'Star Wars.'" The set a deliberately cheap looking basement vault is a storage room.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
John Legere, the chief executive of T Mobile since 2012, was the public face of the company and its biggest cheerleader. He tirelessly promoted T Mobile's price promotions and gleefully bashed its rivals before his millions of followers on social media. On Monday, T Mobile announced that Mr. Legere would step down at the end of April after his contract expires. The announcement comes at a crucial time for T Mobile, which is moving closer to acquiring a smaller rival, Sprint, to create a wireless carrier with more than 100 million customers, putting it within striking distance of Verizon and AT T. T Mobile and Sprint had earlier said Mr. Legere would be the chief executive of the combined company after the deal was completed. Instead, he will be succeeded at T Mobile by Mike Sievert, T Mobile's president and chief operating officer, who is now expected to become boss of the new company. The merger, valued at 26.5 billion, is central to T Mobile's strategy to gain ground in an industry that is spending billions of dollars building out 5G cellular networks while engaging in intense price wars. Mr. Legere, 61, has fashioned himself a new kind of telecommunications executive. He made public appearances costumed in the bright magenta color that T Mobile uses to market itself. On Saturday, to bring attention to a cross promotion deal with Taco Bell, he posted a photo of himself wearing a giant foam hat in the shape of a taco. At T Mobile, Mr. Legere was known for slashing prices, introducing new mobile plans and merrily calling out rivals Verizon, AT T and even Sprint. (That was before the merger.) His cut rate pricing plans paid off, allowing T Mobile to more than double its subscriber base. His enthusiasm helped drive the acquisition of Sprint. Mr. Legere used social media to talk up the plan since the two companies announced their intention to join forces in April 2018. He also played a strong role in lobbying lawmakers and regulators, an effort that included stays by him and other T Mobile executives at the Trump International Hotel in Washington . Although Mr. Legere has been the face of T Mobile for many years, his departure was characterized by the company as part of a "comprehensive, multiyear, leadership succession planning process." Mr. Legere was characteristically jaunty in a Twitter thread on Monday, writing that he was handing "the magenta CEO reins" to Mr. Sievert. "You've heard me joke that he's 'my son,'" he added, "but in reality, since I hired him in 2012, SievertMike's been my mentee, my secret weapon and my friend." Mr. Sievert had been waiting in the wings. A provision in his employment agreement guaranteed that he would be paid as much as 58 million if there was a change in leadership at T Mobile and the job did not go to him. 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. Despite a few bumps, the company's acquisition of Sprint, which is controlled by SoftBank of Japan, had been moving forward over the last two years. In recent months it won approval by the Justice Department and the Federal Communications Commission after T Mobile and Sprint agreed to sell off significant portions of their businesses to the pay television operator Dish Network as part of a plan to create a potential new major wireless company. But a significant hurdle remains: a lawsuit filed by attorneys general from 15 states and the District of Columbia who are trying to block the merger. They argue that the reduction of major wireless carriers from four to three would inevitably drive up prices for cellphone customers and result in a significant loss of jobs. The deal cannot go through until the suit is resolved. The trial is expected to start next month. Letitia James, New York's attorney general, has argued that the deal would cost subscribers at least 4.5 billion annually and is "exactly the sort of consumer harming, job killing mega merger our antitrust laws were designed to prevent." Mr. Legere said that he felt good about the possibility of settling the suit but that if it went to trial, "we're ready." Because of the lawsuit, the original deadline for T Mobile's acquisition of Sprint has come and gone. In the meantime, T Mobile has pushed to renegotiate the terms of the deal. During this period of uncertainty, Mr. Legere was also considered for the job of chief executive at another company controlled by SoftBank: the commercial real estate start up WeWork. SoftBank recently bailed out WeWork, and Sprint's executive chairman, Marcelo Claure, became WeWork's executive chairman as part of SoftBank's rescue effort. The possibility of Mr. Legere's move raised questions of a possible conflict of interest because of Softbank's role with both WeWork and Sprint, the T Mobile merger partner. On Monday, however, Mr. Legere said he had not talked to the company about the job. "I was never having discussions to run WeWork, and because we had this announcement pending, I couldn't say it but it did create a weird awkward period of time," he said on a call with investors. Masayoshi Son, SoftBank's founder, had long sought a way for Sprint to get bigger as the telecommunications business has turned more cutthroat. The company has been a perennial fourth place carrier. In recent years, it has been losing customers and bleeding cash. Separately, Mr. Son is leading the management turnaround at WeWork, whose founder and chief executive, Adam Neumann, was forced to resign after an expand at all costs strategy drove the business into the ground. Mr. Legere said he had no plans to retire. "I've got at least 30 or 40 years and at least five or six acts left in me," he said, adding that he'll eventually talk to "companies that could use cultural transformations or leadership." His departure from T Mobile could result in a big payday: an exit package totaling an estimated 96 million, according to the research firm Equilar. For now, he is focused on completing the Sprint merger and making way for his successor. "It's Mike's time, we know that, he's ready," Mr. Legere said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
An official engagement photo released by Kensington Palace of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, who wore a dress by Ralph Russo. On Wednesday night Meghan Markle finally walked down the wedding aisle, resplendent in a lacy, sparkling white dress. It was, of course, the "Suits" season finale, and she was marrying her on show fiance. But it was also a mere three weeks or so before Ms. Markle herself biracial American, now former actress, divorcee, United Nations women's advocate will walk down the aisle in Windsor Castle to to marry her real fiance, Prince Harry (beloved royal soldier and hell raiser turned mental health activist). That made for a digital frenzy about what may be coming, which is only going to grow as the days wind down. After all, the drip drip drip of details has already sped up. The betting is closed. On what? The still outstanding question: What will she wear? There are economic and cultural repercussions riding on the answer. And you thought it was just a dress. Pshaw. First, odds were on Ralph Russo, makers of Ms. Markle's official engagement dress. Then Erdem Moralioglu. After all, he is a Canadian Ms. Markle lived in Toronto while she filmed "Suits" who has become a stalwart of London Fashion Week, famous for his way with a romantic lace dress, and Ms. Markle told Vanity Fair she had been wearing his clothes for years. Then Burberry became a favorite, because well, Britishness. (It probably won't be the Anne Barge "Versailles" gown Ms. Markle wore in "Suits," though that extravaganza did have a princess vibe.) The answer won't be certain until the bride appears on May 19, but what is increasingly clear is that whoever the designer is, he or she will be vaulted into the global conversation. In today's influencer culture, when an individual's ability to ignite far reaching trends simply by dint of her own appeal is more effective than any advertising campaign, and a photo can carry a message round the world more powerfully than any words, it is beginning to seem as if Ms. Markle could be the most influential of all. Even though she has deleted all of her social media accounts. At Everlane, there are more than 20,000 people on a wait list for the tote she carried, according to the company. When Michael Preysman, the Everlane founder and chief executive, was asked to come up with an equivalent celebrity, he said: "Angelina Jolie." The white wrap coat by the Canadian company Line the Label that Ms. Markle wore for the engagement announcement sold out almost immediately, the brand said, and the website crashed. Traffic to the website of Birks, the Canadian jeweler responsible for the opal and gold stud earrings she was wearing in the same appearance, spiked 500 percent, according to Birks, and does so each time she wears a Birks piece. That lesser status is why Brand Finance, a British consultancy that specializes in brand valuation (especially of intangible assets), originally projected that the wedding would be worth about 500 million pounds (approximately 696,859,000) in tourism and unofficial endorsements: a meaningful event, but not a phenomenon. But as soon as the report was issued, said David Haigh, the chief executive, "people went bananas. I don't think I've ever seen a press release get more coverage." Mr. Haigh began to revise his projections upward. Now, he believes, the wedding itself will have economic repercussions "closer to GBP one billion and to be honest, it could be more than that." Ms. Markle herself, he said, could contribute 150 million pounds ( 209,057,850) annually simply to British fashion in the form of unofficial endorsements. She "will quickly match or even surpass the Duchess of Cambridge in her incredible influence on the fashion industry," he said. If Sophie Gregoire Trudeau, the wife of the Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, first brought the eyes of the world to Canadian fashion, Ms. Markle has raised the focus exponentially. "People globally are glued to her," said Vicky Milner, the president of the Canadian Arts and Fashion Awards, who invited Ms. Markle to award the International Canadian Designer of the Year prize in 2016. (It went to Jason Wu, the designer whose clothes Ms. Markle continues to wear.) There are at least two blogs Meghan's Mirror and Mad About Meghan devoted to chronicling her choices. "When you have a figure like that, it changes everything for designers and the country when it comes to fashion," Ms. Milner said, noting that there had been a stereotype of Canadian fashion as significantly less creative or trendsetting than Paris or Milan, but that Ms. Markle's patronage could change all that. "For people to be able to see Canadian brands in a new light is huge." She wore his pinstriped day dress to her first major event as a representative of the royal family, at the Commonwealth Youth Forum last week (website visits up 400 percent, Instagrams up 300 percent in the hours following, according to a spokeswoman for the brand). "We are not a millennial street style brand," Mr. Altuzarra said. "We are a niche brand in a niche area. She changes how people think of us." There may not have been another public figure whose clothing choices were obsessed over to such an extent since Michelle Obama, who inspired a study by a New York University professor in the Harvard Business Review that analyzed her effect on the fashion stock market. Indeed, since the Obamas left the White House, there has been something of a vacuum when it comes to a public figure consciously using fashion in a creative way to advance specific ideas, and ideals. Melania Trump has proved reluctant to engage consistently in strategic dressing, and Brigitte Macron, the first lady of France, has been notably loyal to French brands, especially Louis Vuitton. If Ms. Markle has a role model for how to use her job as "wife of" to advance a broader agenda, it may be Mrs. Obama. "We've seen that Meghan Markle is very considered in her choice of what she wears, and understands the soft power fashion can have in terms of connecting to a community, shining a light on local companies and using what you wear to challenge conventions," said Caroline Rush, the chief executive of the British Fashion Council. A random assortment of the brands Ms. Markle has worn include some major British labels (Burberry, Alexander McQueen, Stella McCartney), but as a whole they range in price, profile and place of origin, and the majority come from smaller contemporary brands from across the Commonwealth (and the former colonies). It is a description oddly reminiscent of Mrs. Obama's fashion history, though in its particulars it reflects both Ms. Markle's own story and the anticipation that she and Prince Harry will be tasked with acting as "international ambassadors," according to Mr. Haigh; that in the shadow of Brexit, these royals cross borders, literally and symbolically. Also, perhaps, that Ms. Markle stands for something more than simply aspiration she stands for change. That may be expressed in clothes but goes far beyond it. That's the reason Time magazine included Ms. Markle and Prince Harry on its list of the 100 Most Influential people of 2018 (right next to President Trump), an acknowledgment of their decisions to support what may traditionally have seemed risky causes for a royal family: depression, women's empowerment and L.G.B.T. rights. As Mr. Altuzarra points out, Ms. Markle also "represents inclusivity." If Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, was the first commoner to wed a royal in 450 years, Ms. Markle represents the 21st century and its attitudes in multiple ways, including race and nationality. "Aside from the fairy tale, from a sociological standpoint she seems like a very modern woman, with an accessible idea of luxury that allows young women to identify with her as someone who makes her own choices," said Jean Christophe Bedos, the chief executive of Birks Group, which owns the Birks brand. (A friend of Ms. Markle's, the stylist Jessica Mulroney, reportedly helps her on an unofficial basis.) "She's less conventional than any of her potential royal peers," Mr. Bedos said. She has been criticized because of it there were complaints about the ripped jeans, the sheer dress, her messy bun, her penchant for wearing thumb rings but also cheered. It has the effect of appealing to a different constituency. Think of it this way: Catherine wears the requisite sheer stockings when she appears in public. Ms. Markle doesn't. It's a detail, but it's telling. "It all seems genuine," Mr. Altuzarra said which is, on the surface, an odd thing to say, but also important. We have gotten so used to being force fed imagery red carpet appearances, festival Instagrams by celebrities who are paid or have formal relationships with brands that the idea of someone who is making her own choices with her own agenda, unfettered by financial obligation, has significantly more power. Fashion on its own gets you only so far; it's the content and character the clothes represent that is the propulsion mechanism. As the hype and hope and gossip continues to build, and the collective breath is held for whatever the big dress (or maybe it won't be so big?) on the big day will be, that's a lesson worth remembering.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night's highlights that lets you sleep and lets us get paid to watch comedy. We're all stuck at home at the moment, so here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now. President Trump is still planning to hold his campaign rally in Tulsa, Okla., on Saturday, though local officials have urged him to cancel it, out of fear of the coronavirus. Some have suggested holding it outdoors; if that happens, Trump's got a name picked out, Jimmy Fallon said on Tuesday: "He's going to call it 'Covid chella.'" "They'll have food and music and a designated area where you can do your very own Bible photo op." JIMMY FALLON "The forecast in Tulsa on Saturday calls for thunderstorms. To stay safe, Trump is going to have Don Jr. standing next to him with a 9 iron." JIMMY FALLON "President Trump dismissed criticism of his decision to resume campaign rallies amid the coronavirus pandemic, and wrote on Twitter yesterday that his opponents are attempting to, quote, 'Covid shame' him. But I guess that's what happens when you have opponents like science, math and reason." SETH MEYERS "Last week, the daily number of new coronavirus cases went up in 22 states, but that's not going to stop Trump from holding a rally this Saturday in Tulsa, Oklahoma, no matter how many people want him to stop. In an editorial yesterday, Tulsa's largest newspaper, The Tulsa World, opined, 'This is the wrong time and Tulsa is the wrong place for the Trump rally.' But you know what they say, two wrongs make a rally full of whites." STEPHEN COLBERT "The paper explained, 'The city and state have authorized reopening, but that doesn't make a mass indoor gathering of people pressed closely together and cheering a good idea.' Yes, it's not. Otherwise, I would still be doing it in the Ed Sullivan Theater. I have forgotten what laughter sounds like, and it is killing me but not as fast as having an audience would kill them. That's why I'm sitting in my study, shouting jokes into the draperies." STEPHEN COLBERT "This is an interesting sign of the times, a small show of progress, perhaps. Johnson and Johnson announced via Instagram their plan to help heal our nation's wounds, a line of racially inclusive Band Aids. The Johnsons wrote: 'We hear you. We see you. We're listening to you. We stand in solidarity with our Black colleagues, collaborators and community in the fight against racism, violence and injustice.' They are literally putting a Band Aid on the problem of racism." JIMMY KIMMEL "Now, don't get me wrong: I think it's long overdue for racial minorities to have products that recognize their existence. It's just a little weird that Elmo got Band Aids before black people." TREVOR NOAH "But good for Band Aids for finally opening things up beyond the shade they've been using for a hundred years, a color known internally as 'Ed Sheeran's Neck.'" JIMMY KIMMEL "I also hope they stop at a few shades, because if you give people too many options, it's going to become a problem. Yeah, you'll be bleeding out in the store like, 'Uh, uh, I'm bleeding no, not that one. No that's not no, no. I spent a bit of time in the sun.'" TREVOR NOAH The "Late Night with Seth Meyers" writer Amber Ruffin stars in an ad for a Covid era R B album, "Quarantine Love."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
This article contains spoilers for Season 8, Episode 6 of "Game of Thrones." After everyone else at the Great Council voted for Bran to be the king of Westeros in Sunday's "Game of Thrones" finale, his sister Sansa announced, "The North will remain an independent kingdom, as it was for thousands of years." It was a bold, unexpected move to everyone except maybe Bran. It might also have prompted a little buyer's remorse for a few other members of the council. Yara Greyjoy once bargained for Iron Islands independence with Dany a concern that seemed suddenly to have taken flight like a dragon in mourning. The new prince of Dorne also leads a region that once enjoyed independence; judging by their raised eyebrows, they might both have just realized that they missed an opportunity. If so, they didn't say much, and so Bran was declared king and lord of the newly reconfigured "Six" Kingdoms. But the leaders of those kingdoms could just as well have made the same claim Sansa did. Read the recap of the "Game of Thrones" series finale. According to the books, before Aegon Targaryen united Westeros under his rule, seven kingdoms enjoyed independence for thousands of years: The Kingdom of the North, the Kingdom of the Mountain and the Vale, the Kingdom of the Isles and the Rivers, the Kingdom of the Rock, the Kingdom of the Stormlands, the Kingdom of the Reach, and the Principality of Dorne.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
For resizing and moving, you can expand a window by clicking the square Maximize icon on the far right side of a window's title bar. When you right click a Windows title bar, or press the Alt key and the space bar, you also get Move and Size options in the menu. When you select Move and then slide the cursor to the center of the screen, you can use the arrow keys on the keyboard to nudge the window over; press the Enter key when you have it where you want it. Selecting the Size option lets you use the keyboard arrow keys to resize the window. On a Mac, you have a few ways to reel in wandering windows. If you are not sure what you have open, go to the Mac's Mission Control view to see miniature versions of all the open windows at once and select the one you need. Just press the Mission Control key (often F3 on an Apple keyboard) or the Control and up arrow keys; you can also get into Mission Control by clicking its icon in the desktop dock, using the Control Strip on compatible MacBooks or swiping up with three fingers on a trackpad. To move and resize windows even if the desktop Dock is in the way, hold down the Option key and click the green dot in the window's upper left corner to resize the window to fit the screen. Clicking the green dot by itself expands the window to the full screen size. You can drag any of the four sides of a window to change the size, and holding down the Shift and Option keys while you drag an edge resizes the whole window proportionally. If you can click on part of a visible window, you can also go to the Window menu in the Mac's tool bar and choose Zoom to resize the window to fit the screen.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
ASSAD OR WE BURN THE COUNTRY How One Family's Lust for Power Destroyed Syria By Sam Dagher "Bashar al Assad assassinated!" shouted a man as he cycled past Manaf Tlass, an exiled Syrian general once a member of Assad's inner circle, as he sat in an outdoor cafe in Paris in 2017. A childhood friend of the Syrian president's, Tlass had fled Syria five years earlier, denouncing the government that he expected to fall at any moment. The cyclist's cry may have suggested that this outcome was finally at hand, but Tlass greeted the news with a pained smile. "That's Ali, the guy I buy my newspapers from. He tells me this every time I see him," he explained to Sam Dagher, the author of "Assad or We Burn the Country." Tlass, the main insider source for this account of the Assad family's half century in power, was one of many who underestimated the regime's strength after the start of the Arab Spring uprising in Syria in 2011. "We're coming for you," one rebel threatened Assad in a television address the following year. Opposition forces attacked Damascus and Aleppo, the two biggest cities. Foreign governments assumed that Assad was on his way out and overconfidently discussed the best place for him to go Africa or South America after he had stepped down. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton assured more than 100 foreign ministers assembled in Paris in the summer of 2012 that there was "a steady inexorable march toward ending the regime." The march turned out to be in the other direction: Assad and his regime gradually reasserted their grip and today hold most of the country, aside from the scantily inhabited northeast, ruled by Kurdish led forces backed by the United States, and the large enclave around Idlib in the northwest held by Al Qaeda type groups. The regime was never quite as weak as it appeared to the outside world: Utterly ruthless, it was prepared to kill anybody who got in its way, had a cohesive leadership united by kinship and kept the loyalty of core units of the army and Mukhabarat (secret police), which were often led by members of the Alawite sect, approximately two million strong, who saw themselves as battling not only to keep power but for their very existence. The means used by the regime to defeat its enemies had not changed much since Hafez al Assad, an Alawite air force general, seized power in 1970. Dagher describes in detail the crushing of an uprising in the Sunni city of Hama in 1982 by indiscriminate bombardment and mass executions (methods very similar to what was inflicted on places like Daraa, Homs and Douma 30 years later). The militarization of opposition to Bashar al Assad's regime actually worked in the government's favor because it had superior forces, leaving Syrians with a stark choice between the Assad clan and an insurgency that came to be dominated by Sunni Arab religious extremists. Dagher is at his most convincing when drawing up the charge sheet against the Assads: Hafez, Bashar, his younger brother Maher, his maternal cousins Rami and Hafez Makhlouf, along with long term loyal followers of the family like Mustafa Tlass, the defense minister, who was Manaf's father. "Ten families run Syria and control everything," one dissident economist is quoted as saying. After Bashar succeeded his father as president in 2000, there were hopes of liberalization. "People thought maybe the reign of the kingdom of fear was coming to an end," recalled a Damascus native who returned home. Instead, Syria remained a police state in which there was a lot to be frightened of arbitrary arrest, torture and execution inside a prison system of hideous cruelty. In Dagher's book, this is graphically described from grim personal experience by the human rights lawyer Mazen Darwish, who had been one of the earliest protesters. The book's subtitle is "How One Family's Lust for Power Destroyed Syria," but Dagher overemphasizes the degree to which the Assads differed from other dictators in the region. Their hated rival, Saddam Hussein, ruled Iraq in much the same way as they ruled Syria, coup proofing his regime through multiple forms of allegiance and repression, drawing on loyalties of clan, sect and party, distributing patronage and setting up competing security forces. The popular uprisings of 2011 failed in Syria, but they also failed almost everywhere else in the Middle East, leaving Syria, Libya and Yemen to be ravaged by ceaseless warfare and producing even more repressive autocracies than before in Egypt and Bahrain. Dagher is open about his detestation of the Assad family and all their works, which he observed at close hand for two years as the only Western reporter stationed permanently in Damascus. He was briefly held by pro regime militiamen in an underground prison and was summarily expelled by the Mukhabarat in 2014. This gives his description of events a credibility lacking in many other accounts. But there is also a tension between his tendency to blame everything on the Assads and seeing them as the consequence of religious and social hatreds. Speaking of the major fault lines that have fueled conflicts in Syria since the 1960s, Dagher writes: "Broadly, it was the conservative Sunni majority against the secular and, in its eyes, godless minority led regime." For a short period in the early days of the protests, it seemed possible to imagine that a liberal democratic agenda might succeed in Syria. The international media were often blind to the extent to which the odds were stacked against such an outcome. Foreign governments were equally unrealistic, though their diplomats in Damascus were far less sanguine. One ambassador wrote at the height of the demonstrations in July 2011 that Assad could count on 30 to 40 percent of the population, half of those supporters being Alawites, Christians or members of other minorities. Traditional religious animosities, exacerbated by mounting social inequality, always shaped events. The center of Damascus filled with luxury shops and boutique hotels, but it, along with other Syrian cities, was ringed by what became known as "the misery belts," inhabited by people fleeing poverty and drought in the countryside. "Hafez ruled Syria through a pact with the impoverished Sunni countryside," Manaf Tlass said. "Sure, everyone was trampled on, but at least their basics were taken care of." This pact lapsed under Bashar al Assad as the inner circle of the regime gained great wealth in an orgy of crony capitalism. It was to be the ignored rural and slum dwelling Sunni who were to form the hard core of the insurgency. Once armed action had replaced peaceful protests from about the end of 2011 and the beginning of 2012, the initiative passed to outside powers. The regime and the insurgents both needed money, weapons and, at a slightly later date, foreign fighters; these could come only from abroad. A fatal paradox for the Arab Spring in Syria (and the rest of the region) was that the main financial backers of a movement that had begun by demanding freedom and democracy should then become dependent on Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, which were resolutely antidemocratic and sectarian, and the last absolute monarchies on earth.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
If the recent cheating scandal makes you want to read more about the college application process, here's a place to start . The college admissions scandal that erupted yesterday in which federal prosecutors charged 50 people in a scheme to buy spots in the freshman classes at Yale, Stanford and other big name schools has exposed the lengths to which rich, entitled parents including Hollywood celebrities and prominent business leaders are willing to go to get their progeny into the "right" university. But it was also a reminder of just how filled with mystery and anxiety that process is so much so that unlocking it was worth millions to those who could afford it. For a more affordable price or for free at your public library check out these books that provide a glimpse into to those back rooms where college admissions take place in America today. 'Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life,' by William Deresiewicz In this scathing takedown of higher education, Deresiewicz, a former professor at Yale, accuses our country's most elite schools of fostering a learning environment devoid of creativity and critical thinking. In his review, Dwight Garner noted that Deresiewicz "spends a long time considering college admissions because a vast number of crimes, he suggests, are committed in its name." Korelitz's delicious, page turning novel about buried secrets is also an unabashed peek into the cutthroat world of Ivy League admissions. Its main character is a Princeton admissions officer, Portia Nathan, who has the responsibility of "winnowing the stupendously remarkable from a vast field of the only normally remarkable." 'Crazy U: One Dad's Crash Course in Getting His Kid Into College,' by Andrew Ferguson Ferguson captures the world of higher education for what it truly is: an industry, one replete with consultants, high priced tutors, coaches and strategists. The pursuit of getting into the best schools has long ceased being a question merely of merit. But Ferguson approaches this panicked subject in a style that makes it a "calm, amusing, low key meditation," Dwight Garner wrote in his review. It's a book many parents are sure to grip "as if it were a cold compress they might apply to their fevered foreheads." 'The Price of Admission: How America's Ruling Class Buys Its Way Into Elite Colleges and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates,' by Daniel Golden Golden, a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter, applied his investigative skills to try and understand the admission process. After two years and hundreds of interviews, he revealed just how often qualified applicants get passed over in favor of wealthy students with lesser credentials. Writing in the Book Review, our reviewer called the book "a delicious account of gross inequities in high places." 'Where You Go Is Not Who You'll Be: An Antidote to the College Admissions Mania,' by Frank Bruni The Times columnist Frank Bruni tries to understand the thick coat of anxiety that covers everything related to college admission, the sense that this one decision could make or break a whole life. "There's no single juncture, no one crossroads, on which everything hinges," Bruni writes. "So why do so many Americans anxious parents, addled children treat the college admissions process as if it were precisely that?" His aim is to get parents and students to relax and put higher education and what it represents into proper perspective. A burning desire to get accepted to Harvard sits at the center of Moore's novel, which explores how the admissions process ripples through a high achieving Bay Area family. For Angela Hawthorne, the eldest daughter, there was "no stopping, no sleeping, until Cambridge. You get there, and then you can rest." 'The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy,' by Nicholas Lemann No conversation about college admission can avoid the outsize role played by the SAT, the exam created to provide an allegedly level playing field and ensure a meritocratic system. Lemann's book puts the lie to that notion by offering a historical look at the test's origins and the ways it has been used over the decades to cement class and racial divides. One of Lemann's prescriptions still seems resonant: "Test prep should consist of mastering the high school curriculum, not learning tricks to outwit multiple choice aptitude exams."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
The Forresters will be back scheming and sashaying on set on Wednesday when CBS's soap opera "The Bold and the Beautiful" becomes what is believed to be the first scripted U.S. broadcast series to return to production amid the pandemic. The Emmy winning series, which has filmed more than 8,000 episodes since its premiere in 1987, was recently renewed through 2022. Production has been shut down since March 17 because of coronavirus related restrictions, and the last original episode aired in April. Of course, it's unsure when viewers will be able to see the drama unfold, as no air date has been set for the series' return. But the hope is that it would be in early to mid July, said Eva Basler, the vice president of communications at Bell Phillip TV Productions, the studio that produces the series. Safety protocols will include masks for all actors and crew members except the actors who are filming a scene as well as regular testing for cast and crew, and shorter work days with fewer actors on set and staggered call times. All of the measures are in accordance with the Covid 19 guidelines set by the city, county and state; the series also hired a Covid 19 coordinator to ensure compliance.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
Dr. Flonza Isa and Daniel Ryan Kinney were married Oct. 14 at the Topping Rose House, a hotel in Bridgehampton, N.Y. The groom's father, a retired Wisconsin judge, officiated. Dr. Isa, 34, will keep her name. She is an instructor in infectious diseases at Weill Cornell Medical College in Manhattan, and conducts clinical research on tuberculosis. She graduated magna cum laude and received a medical degree from N.Y.U. She is a daughter of Midzaret Demko Isovski and Remzi Isovski of the New Springville neighborhood of Staten Island. Her father is a building superintendent at ABM, a facility services company in Manhattan. Mr. Kinney, 32, is a talent agent in the branding and digital practice at Agency for the Performing Arts in Manhattan. He graduated from the University of Wisconsin and received a certificate in publishing from N.Y.U.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
This year's Emmy nominations were announced on Tuesday. James Poniewozik and Margaret Lyons, two television critics for The New York Times, conducted a brief conversation about this year's snubs, surprises and most deserving nominees. MARGARET LYONS So comedies are better than dramas, it's official. The variety and flair of the comedy categories performing, writing, even directing are just way, way more interesting than the sort of blah drama contenders this year. JAMES PONIEWOZIK This is the story of TV nowadays. Comedy is more vital than drama, including but not limited to comedies that are veined with drama here, "Barry" and "Fleabag," the latter of which is a very likely candidate for Best Anything on TV this year. I know some people get bothered by shows straddling the categories (it used to be a constant beef with "Nurse Jackie," for example). But we don't have a dramedy category, and life is unfair! Drama, though: Shall we address the dragon in the room? "Game of Thrones" got 32 nominations. Thirty two! I am skeptical that there are 32 Emmys. Apparently the voting body missed out on the five million "'Thrones' Fandom Intensely Divided" pieces we generated in the spring. Here's what happened at the 2019 Emmy nominations See a list of Emmy nominees. LYONS Sure, but some of those are categories like "sci fi fantasy costumes," which, fair enough? I actually hope "Good Omens" takes that one, but on technical fronts, I think "Thrones" had a fine enough season. The bigger issue for me is the acting categories. Did anyone have a big acting year on "Thrones"? I don't think they did at all. Maybe Gwendoline Christie? PONIEWOZIK Disagree! Well, a tiny bit. The one major "Thrones" nomination I could most solidly endorse is Emilia Clarke's, perversely because the character turn of Daenerys was so poorly handled. (Tl;dr: clues are not characterization.) To the extent that her end was emotionally affecting at all, it was pretty much through her pushing it over the line by force of will. The most intense battle in King's Landing was between her and the script. LYONS I think this also points to an interesting split: Where dramas and the drama performances feel plain and kind of ... out of touch to me, the limited series nominations and performances are where the real "drama" of TV currently lives. "Chernobyl," "When They See Us," even "Fosse/Verdon," which I had good but mixed feelings about those are all so much more interesting and daring than, I don't know, "Ozark." (Except I didn't like "Sharp Objects." Sue me!) Get TV and movie recommendations delivered to your inbox from Watching. PONIEWOZIK I liked "Sharp Objects." You'll be hearing from my attorney. But really, I'm also just happy that the Television Academy managed to remember back to something from last summer, which can feel like two decades ago in Peak TV years. Speaking of which, this may be more a TV critic issue than a real person issue, but it feels increasingly weird to build the Emmys around a June to May eligibility period. That follows the traditional network TV season, but feels alien to the way people experience TV today, which is more on the same annual calendar that the Oscars operate on. LYONS Oh, I actually still like it? The Oscar calendar creates such a forced "summer blockbuster" vs. "holiday time prestige" vs. "dump the lousy movies during this lull" rhythm; I like that any given month could be the month that the best show of the year comes out. Keep me on my toes, programmers! Shall we talk a little about what didn't make the cut? I was hoping to see "Better Things," "High Maintenance," "Jane the Virgin" or maybe even a parting gift for "Crazy Ex Girlfriend," somehow, even though it was a real long shot. I was also hoping Nicole Byer would get nominated for hosting "Nailed It!" (The show was nominated, but she wasn't.) I wish "Shrill" had earned Aidy Bryant a nomination, but it's such a crowded category. PONIEWOZIK It's funny that the reality competition category, one of the newer genres in the Emmys, can be so hidebound. So I was happy to see "Nailed It!" in at all, but I would also have loved to have seen "Making It," which was just a delightful treat last summer. (The hosts, Amy Poehler and Nick Offerman, did get nominated.) You really could put together a solid comedy list entirely from shows that were overlooked: Besides Pamela Adlon, who did the work of her career on "Better Things," I'd have loved to see best comedy nominations for "PEN15" and "Ramy," for starters, but that's probably dreaming. In drama, "The Good Fight," one of the most timely and nuanced political series on TV, was hosed again, and "My Brilliant Friend" deserved better. And I thought we might see a best drama nomination for "Homecoming," a rare wholly successful streaming drama (maybe in part because the episodes were a half hour long). Star power gets you only so far, I guess! LYONS I also thought "Homecoming" would be on there not that I loved it so much, just because it seemed like it would be. We should note that "PEN15" did get a writing nod, which is a welcome surprise. "Lodge 49," "Queen Sugar" and "You" somehow did not merit any drama nods, which is bad and wrong. But I do want to talk about what's good and right: "Schitt's Creek"! "BoJack Horseman" (in animated series, but still)! "Fleabag" in a bunch of categories. "Russian Doll" and Natasha Lyonne. "The Good Place." I'm stunned. Elated, but stunned. PONIEWOZIK I have to give the academy credit for being willing to look beyond the usual suspects. "Schitt's Creek" has grown over time, but still, Pop is neither a high profile traditional network nor a buzzed about streaming platform. (The Emmy voters have clearly been reading my Twitter feed, which was gaga for that show this season.) And while FX certainly has a higher profile at the Emmys, I was delighted to see a best drama nomination for "Pose," which is just a visual and emotional feast and swings big. That's the sort of thing I like to see rewarded. LYONS I am very happy for "Pose," and it's part of what makes the best drama category sort of hilarious to me: "Hmm, which show is more accomplished, interesting, distinctive, special, evocative, etc.? 'Pose' or 'Bodyguard'? How shall I decide?" Like, "Bodyguard" is pretty good, but come on! "Hmm, which is better at excavating the human condition: 'Better Call Saul' and its artful perceptiveness, or 'This Is Us' and its nonsense?" I firmly believe in different strokes for different folks, and there are lots of great ways to be a drama. But this is just unbalanced and goofy to me. PONIEWOZIK This is a conversation we could have every year lately, but we maybe no longer need a TV movie category? (From a creative standpoint; from a serving the industry standpoint, of course we're stuck with it.) I'm not sure this year's choices were bad, considering the alternatives, but none gets within shouting distance of "When They See Us." And Ava DuVernay chose, purposely and fruitfully, to tell that story as a limited series rather than as a movie. We have the movies for movies! LYONS I actually wrote down in my notes "seems like there's an opening for TV movies," so we're in the same chapter but not on the same page. I'd love to see a resurgence in TV movies, and I think things that go straight to streaming have an interesting future. It feels as if someone (besides HBO, I guess) could really dominate in this category with maybe not that much effort. Not that these aren't perfectly fine TV movies, but is this the most fascinating and robust category I have ever seen? No, it is not. PONIEWOZIK This is where the whole blurry line between Netflix and movies gets interesting. You throw in "Roma" or "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs," and we've got a competition! (I continue to say that "Buster" was a perfectly excellent six episode limited comedy series.) But then we'd have to get into fisticuffs with our movie critic colleagues. LYONS Which "Bandersnatch" path gets assessed? (I maintain that episodes of "Black Mirror" are not movies; this makes me furious, but somehow I will find the strength to go on.) I thought "Bandersnatch" was an interesting thing to try, but at no point did I think, "What a marvelous film this is."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
Our weekday morning digest that includes consumer news, deals, tips and anything else that travelers may want to know. Carnival Corporation, operator of 10 cruise lines including Holland America Line, Princess Cruises, Cunard and Carnival Cruise Line, plans to add more ships in China next year to tap into the world's fastest growing cruise market. Costa Cruises and Princess Cruises will each move a ship in their fleet to China in 2016, for a total of four Costa ships and two Princess ships operating in the region. Together, the two brands will offer about four million passenger cruise days next year to Chinese cruisers. In the summer of 2017, Princess plans to add a newly built 3,600 passenger ship to the Chinese fleet. Separately, Carnival also plans to invest 32 million in Spain to build a second private cruise terminal at the Port of Barcelona, which is visited by seven of the company's lines. Construction will start next year and the terminal is expected to open in 2018. Carnival currently operates four ports around the world and will open Amber Cove in the northern Puerta Plata region of the Dominican Republic in October. NEW RACE IN NEW ZEALAND A new mountain bike race, the Pioneer, is set to hit the rugged trails of New Zealand's Southern Alps in the Southern Hemisphere summer, between Jan. 31 through Feb. 6. The seven day race will string together established bike trails with overland rides across farms and hillsides over 358 miles from Christchurch to Queenstown, with tent villages set up nightly for racers.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
In an interview, the singer Nina Simone once said, "An artist's duty is to reflect the times," by which she meant, basically, politics of the day, and in her case, racial politics. "I think that is true of painters, sculptors, poets, musicians," she added. "As far as I'm concerned, it's their choice, but I choose to reflect the times." Institutions can make that choice, too. The International Center of Photography did when it opened its doors in 1974 as a showcase for socially concerned photography, which encompassed photojournalism and so called street photography. For over 40 years, the center has stayed on mission, even as the technology of picture making has expanded, and the main street has become the internet. A new exhibition, "Perpetual Revolution: The Image and Social Change," reflects those shifts. It's as committedly topical as anything the center has done, with sections focused on climate change, immigration, gender issues, racial turmoil, terrorism and the 2016 election. At the same time, it looks different from shows past because digital media smartphone videos, Twitter outtakes, Instagram feeds outnumber photographic prints. For the center, the transition has been bumpy. It started decisively with the 2016 exhibition "Public, Private, Secret," the institution's inaugural venture on the Bowery. Some people loathed the show, finding it a meanspirited mess that mixed too many media to no discernible end. (For me, it captured the random, narcissistic viciousness of internet culture to a T, and gave it a history.) "Perpetual Revolution" is an improvement. It pushes the use of new media even further, but in a directed way, and with nuances attributable, my guess is, to the fact that this is a group effort. The center curators Carol Squiers and Cynthia Young have led a team that includes the assistant curators Susan Carlson and Claartje van Dijk, and the adjunct curators Joanna Lehan and Kalia Brooks, with assistance from Akshay Bhoan and Quito Ziegler. Different curators handled individual sections, but everyone was working with a shared model. The opening section, on climate change, gives a sense of the governing method. It starts with a familiar photograph: the 1968 NASA shot of the Earth, as seen from the moon, an image that became a kind of logo for a nascent ecology movement, which produced the Environmental Protection Agency two years later. Next comes a bit of digital wizardry in a recent video charting temperature changes across the globe during roughly the past century. Then the apocalypse, or what looks like one, in a clip from the 2012 film "Chasing Ice," in which melting glaciers, filmed by the American photographer James Balog, split apart and collapse in agonized slow motion. Other works bring cosmically scaled events down to ground level. In a mural like collage, made from internet sourced photos and Post it notes, the artist Rachel Schragis reconstructs the New York People's Climate March of 2014. Instagram pictures by the Native American photographer Camille Seaman document a protest in progress against the laying of a fuel pipeline at the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota. Here we're in breaking news territory. The collage, with its miniature banners and countless, tightly packed figures, looks like a flashback, or flash forward, to the recent Women's March. Ms. Seaman's photographs are whiplash reminders that, in his first week in office as president, Donald J. Trump not only ordered a go ahead for the pipeline but also imposed a communications blackout on the E.P.A. You'd be hard pressed to find any relief to this grim picture, though the show comes up with one in a fanciful video by Mel Chin, shot in Paris during the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference, when the city was still reeling from terrorist attacks. The film makes the point that all violence personal, ideological, environmental is connected. And it does so through an apparitional figure: an Inuit visitor who drives a sled pulled by French poodles through Paris parks and insists that the earth's condition, though dire, is reparable if people will lay down their arms and work together. The show's second section, "The Flood: Refugees and Representation," also blends static and moving images, but makes a strong case for traditional photography as a form of evidence and a vehicle of emotion. There's digital work here, including a video starring and that's the right word an unfailingly cheerful Syrian refugee named Thair Orfahli, who documented a hazardous Mediterranean crossing and a rescue by the Italian coast guard in emails, tweets, videos and selfies generated by his smartphone, his only possession. It's a spirit lifter to encounter Mr. Orfahli (and infuriating to think that if he'd arrived on American shores under our newly proposed refugee policies, he might have been turned away). Yet my eye kept returning to conventional photographs hung or projected on the gallery wall: to black and white images of people trying to flee war torn Europe in the 1930s and '40s, by Robert Capa and Ruth Gruber; and 2015 pictures of Middle Eastern refugees arriving, exhausted and shaken, in Greece, by Daniel Etter and Sergey Ponomarev. Is my partly unconscious preference for the still picture simply the result of long established habits of looking? Or is there another, resistant factor involved? When I look at moving images, my viewing time and pace is predetermined; I'm on someone else's clock. When I look at a photograph, I'm on my own clock. I see an image, but I also have the option of contemplating it, living in it, savoring its details, thinking it through. The show picks up on the bottom level of the center's duplex space, with nearly three dozen photographs in a section called "Black Lives (Have Always) Mattered." These pictures are from the center's collection and constitute a capsule tour of African American history from before the Civil War to the 1960s. It's a story of heroes (Marian Anderson, Elizabeth Eckford) and horrors (an 1863 shot of a man's whip scarred back; a 1968 picture of a Black Panthers' office window pierced by police bullets). It's also about everyday African American life, intrinsically political and captured in images of 19th century cotton field workers; World War I soldiers; black members of the South Carolina legislature during Reconstruction. And the chronicle is brought up to date in three strong video pieces connected to the Black Lives Matter movement. One, by the collective HowDoYouSayYaminAfrican?, is a solid wall of images, playing on 32 stacked monitors, related to the killing of Michael Brown by a white police officer in Ferguson, Mo. Another is a set of digital memorials to Philando Castile, who was also killed by a white officer, compiled by the Minnesota website Pollen Midwest. And the third video, by Sheila Pree Bright, layers old and recent documentary material, including Ms. Simone's interview, to make a case for a new black civil rights movement. And that movement overlaps with another, explored in an adjoining section called "The Fluidity of Gender." There are a few vintage items: a video clip of the transgender pioneer Christine Jorgensen, giving a poised, no nonsense press interview in 1952; and a sassy slide show paean to 1980s performers by Linda Simpson titled "The Drag Explosion." A lot of what's here, though, is new. From last year comes the music video "I Am Her," by the African American trans singer Shea Diamond, and one by the self described multigendered Mykki Blanco (born Michael David Quattlebaum Jr.), delivering a rap version of Zoe Leonard's 1992 election year anthem about wanting a lesbian for president. The ethnic variety of this section is wide, as suggested by hashtags like queerappalachia and QueerMuslim. And the degree, and kind, of self invention is dizzying, and contagious. Unsurprisingly, this sense of openness bumps up hard against the show's penultimate section, "Propaganda and the Islamic State," which consists of ISIS promotional videos. Designed for internet distribution, they're complicated and artful. They, too, play with self invention and theater, but with the aim of hammering down, rather than loosening up, utopian possibilities. It's oppressive stuff, installed, as if for maximum discretion, like a traditional photography display: a line of small, harmless looking framed things video screens in this case on the wall. Oppressive, too, is the exhibition's coda, "The Right Wing Fringe and the 2016 Election." With Facebook, Twitter and Instagram as the primary platforms for its racist and misogynistic images, it suggests two things. One, that with the unedited flow of visual information now streaming through the internet, "concerned photography" has both a weaker, and potentially more powerful, presence than ever. And, two, that to an unprecedented degree, images call them art or not reflect and shape the times. At the moment, the shaping power is up for grabs by opposing revolutions, one led by the White House, the other by feet in the street. The street needs to take visual culture including photography and make it its own, right now. This is where artists come in.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
Hassan Hajjaj in his shop and studio on Shoreditch, East London, on Sept. 20. A major retrospective of Mr. Hajjaj's work is showing at the Maison Europeenne de la Photographie in Paris. LONDON Hassan Hajjaj was in his element. On a recent afternoon, friends and strangers wandered into the Moroccan born British photographer's shop in the Shoreditch district here, clustering amid the joyous mess. There were stacks of multicolored T shirts, racks of sweatshirts and djellabas, and piles of slippers with mock sports brand insignia . Grocery store cans and boxes marked in Arabic script served as decoration and furniture. Crowding the walls were vintage advertising posters and of course Mr. Hajjaj's own photographs. In his instantly recognizable style of portraiture, he styles his subjects in a kind of faux orientalist swag, using items like the ones in the shop as props. In fact, he makes portraits right here, on the street, taping onto the brick wall his flamboyant backdrops, and shooting in full view of passers by. This fall, Mr. Hajjaj has brought the vibes to Paris, where a retrospective of his work is taking over the entire Maison Europeenne de la Photographie, the photography museum. The city's mayor, Anne Hidalgo, attended the opening, which included Moroccan Gnawa musicians performing with Yasiin Bey , the rapper once known as Mos Def. Mr. Hajjaj, who spent childhood in Larache, a fishing town, and now has a riad in Marrakesh as well as a home in London, has become Morocco's most visible artist. He shoots his friends, many of them working class, such as the "henna girls" who adorn tourists in the Jemaa el Fna square in Marrakesh. He hires tailors and artisans to run up outfits for his subjects. And recently, he organized a salon there, where he showed works by less well known Moroccan photographers. But he is even more a creature of London. Mr. Hajjaj arrived here in 1973 at age 12, with his mother and siblings, joining his father, a laborer who could not read or write. After dropping out of high school, he landed in the precarious economy of the early Thatcher years. Selling flowers in Camden Market, then clothes, while also promoting underground club nights and working on film shoots and fashion shows, Mr. Hajjaj became a utility player in the emerging London bohemia of immigrants' children, fed on reggae and pirate radio, that produced bands like Young Disciples and Soul II Soul. His clothing label, R.A.P., sold streetwear before that was a fashion category. His Covent Garden shop was a central city hangout and haven from the ambient racism and class hierarchies of the time. "In the '80s you have to remember that London was just starting to blend," Mr. Hajjaj said, in the North London accent he acquired on arrival. "We all came from different backgrounds. We had to create something to find our space." Simon Baker, the director of the Maison Europeenne de la Photographie and a former Londoner himself, previously curator of photography at Tate Modern said that Mr. Hajjaj was a quintessential Black British artist, in the expansive usage of that time. The retrospective, Mr. Baker said, "tells the story of someone with London street knowledge, network, and background, but who is also very passionate about where he came from." Yet it took many years for Mr. Hajjaj to think of himself as an artist. "I didn't think I was worthy," he said. "I had all these friends who studied art, music, fashion, who prepared themselves, who were technically very good. I just took pictures. It was more to hang out with people, to listen to music and create a mood." By the time he started showing his photography, in the mid 1990s, he had reconnected with Morocco, following a trip in 1993 to take his daughter to meet her relatives. Even among the London set, Morocco evoked tedious stereotypes "caftans, hashish, camels," Mr. Hajjaj said that irritated him. What he found was the place he remembered, at once ordinary, with its canned goods and fast fashions, and vibrant according to its own cultural melange. "I wanted to show my friends that we have something cool," he said. "And that I suppose is what started me entering the art world." The Paris exhibition presents Mr. Hajjaj's work organized in six series of large format prints, many in custom frames, inset with items like cans of tomato sauce or motor oil, or children's building blocks marked with Arabic letters. The galleries are decorated with wallpaper he has designed, and seating areas have been converted with his furnishings. Several video works are on view. One photo series is his famous "Kesh Angels," in which women in gowns and face veils pose on motorbikes. They are glammed up, yet authentic. These are workers in Marrakesh tourist economy whom Mr. Hajjaj has known and photographed for years, and who use the bikes to get around town. Mr. Hajjaj's stylings mixing camouflage, polka dot, or animal prints with traditional fabrics from the souk; adding cheap plastic sunglasses shaped like hearts; printing Louis Vuitton logos onto the motorbike body bring a sense of play that melds Moroccan heritage with a patchwork hip hop swagger. Rather than launch a polemic against the tourist gaze that fetishizes veiled women on motorbikes, Mr. Hajjaj drowns it out with maximalist compositions that mash up references, disorganize expectations, and seize control. "It's about taking this orientalism vibe and saying, 'O.K., let's take ownership of it,'" Mr. Hajjaj said. "Me being Moroccan, you being a Moroccan subject, let's take that kind of thing, and do it in our way." The same method applies to other series by Mr. Hajjaj: "Gnawi Riders," a male counterpart to "Kesh Angels," with Gnawa musicians; the "Dakka Marrakchia" headshots of women; and "Vogue: The Arab Issue," styled like fashion spreads. All use clothes and accessories sourced from the local market, to reclaim control: not just cultural, but also economic, and ultimately, psychological. Mr. Hajjaj's work gets linked to Pop Art, with comparisons to Andy Warhol that he subverts in his clothing line "Andy Wahloo," which translates to "I have nothing" in Arabic . But he is equally inspired by photography studios of smalltown 1960s Morocco, where families went for special occasions. The classic studio work of Seydou Keita, Sory Sanle and Malick Sidibe one of his idols is another clear reference. "I always think that Hassan's work looks as if someone electrocuted with color an African studio," Mr. Baker said, alluding to that tradition. "Which of course would have been full of color, but the pictures we have from them are black and white." One room in the show presents, for the first time, Mr. Hajjaj's own black and whites. "That's to show the journey, and my love of photography," Mr. Hajjaj said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
As some reports would have it, this is the beginning of the end. Three coronavirus vaccines have posted excellent results, with more expected to come. But this is not the beginning of the end; it is only the beginning of an endless wait: There aren't enough vaccines to go around in the richest countries on earth, let alone the poorest ones. That's why it makes little sense that the United States, Britain and the European Union, among others, are blocking a proposal at the World Trade Organization that would allow them, and the rest of the world, to get more of the vaccines and treatments we all need. The proposal, put forward by India and South Africa in October, calls on the W.T.O. to exempt member countries from enforcing some patents, trade secrets or pharmaceutical monopolies under the organization's agreement on trade related intellectual property rights, known as TRIPs. Yet mounting pressure from poor countries at the W.T.O. should give the governments of rich countries leverage to negotiate with their pharmaceutical companies for cheaper drugs and vaccines worldwide. Leaning on those companies is the right thing to do in the face of a global pandemic; it is also the best way for the governments of rich countries to take care of their own populations, which in some cases experience more severe drug shortages than do people in far less affluent places. Last month, the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal denounced the TRIPs waiver proposal put forward by India and South Africa as a "patent heist," adding that "their effort would harm everyone, including the poor." In fact, the effort would help everyone, including the rich if only the rich could see that. Achal Prabhala is the coordinator of the AccessIBSA project, which campaigns for access to medicines, and a fellow of the Shuttleworth Foundation, in Bangalore. Arjun Jayadev is a professor of economics at Azim Premji University, in Bangalore, and a senior economist at the Institute for New Economic Thinking. Dean Baker is a senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C. 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.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Opinion
Stefano Ukmar for The New York Times An instructor on the Mirror device puts her through her paces. Stefano Ukmar for The New York Times As a working mother of two, Dr. Leslie Bottrell has little time for exercising, let alone getting herself to a fitness studio in her Upper West Side neighborhood for a group class. And because her schedule varies week to week, she can't settle into classes with fixed time slots anyway. So when Mirror the streaming fitness device with a Hollywood following was installed in the yoga studio of Dr. Bottrell's apartment building, 222W80, it quickly became her go to exercise solution. "It gives me the benefit of a class," she said of Mirror, which looks like a standard looking glass until activated, when it reveals an instructor who takes you through a fitness regimen of your choice. "But I don't have to go out and find it and fit it in with my schedule." Mirror and other fitness equipment with on demand instruction may primarily be used in private homes, but the devices have been migrating to the gyms of luxury residential buildings. There they have been a boon for buildings that don't have the space to hold classes led by real life fitness instructors or a large enough residential population to fill them. Such devices are also a way of showing tech savvy residents, and prospective residents, that a building is on the cutting edge. "It's the new craze," said Carole Bloom, founder of the Bloomstone Group, a real estate advisory firm. Exercise/yoga studios in luxury building gyms are often equipped with video screens where on demand classes can be called up. With Mirror, users can be face to face with an instructor, while also seeing their own bodies reflected back. They can choose from a variety of live or taped classes, including boxing, dance cardio, high intensity interval training and yoga. Many buildings have also replaced some or all of their standard stationary bicycles with much pricier Peloton bikes, which have screens that display instructors who provide spin class style workouts. At 49 Chambers, a 1912 bank building in Lower Manhattan that's been converted to a luxury condominium, the bikes even clinched a sale. A prospective buyer who was considering a two bedroom unit early in the sales process asked whether the gym would have Pelotons, recalled Ariel Chetrit of the Chetrit Group, the building's developer. Although the bikes hadn't been planned for the building's gym, the query prompted the developer to add two. The two bedroom unit sold. "We assumed if one buyer wanted them, others would as well," Mr. Chetrit said. (He was smart to have nabbed the bikes when he did a Peloton spokeswoman said that the company has ceased selling to multifamily buildings and will focus its sales on its core buyers: individuals.) Mirror, meanwhile, has in some cases replaced classes with real life instruction. At Dr. Bottrell's building, 222W80, a 72 unit rental building owned by Friedland Properties and managed by Rose Associates, yoga classes that were attracting only a few practitioners were terminated. But there are now more than 60 registered users on the building's Mirror, according to Santos Rivera, the building's resident manager. "At some point we may need to have a sign up sheet," he said. Meditation is another activity where on demand options are attracting interest.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
One of the first things visitors to Israel notice is the soldiers. They're everywhere. Some are on duty, but others are slouched over coffee at a cafe, napping on a bus or just glued to their phones like everyone else. It can seem a peculiarly casual presence, but the ubiquity reflects how the military pervades all aspects of Israeli life. Reflecting on his career, the choreographer and performer Yossi Berg realized that its presence had infiltrated his dance work, too. "I'm playing a soldier in quite a few pieces," he remembers telling his romantic and artistic partner, Oded Graf. That realization, which he and Mr. Graf talked about in a recent Skype interview, was a catalyst for their new work "Come Jump With Me," coming to New York Live Arts on Friday and Saturday. (It's part of a series presented by the American Dance Festival, where it was performed this summer.) Also this week, a few blocks uptown at the Baryshnikov Arts Center, another Israeli choreographer, Roy Assaf, is presenting a program that includes "The Hill," a male trio inspired by a popular Israeli song about a pivotal battle in the 1967 Six Day War. Mr. Assaf, Mr. Berg and Mr. Graf are part of a recent wave of independent dance artists working outside of established troupes like the Batsheva Dance Company and the Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company. And with more voices, Mr. Graf pointed out, come "more points of view." Among these voices are several who are more willing to address their country's complex politics in overt ways onstage. Of the works in New York this week, "Come Jump With Me" is the most direct in its dissection of, and ambivalence about, modern Israeli nationalism. "From the beginning, we knew we wanted it to be a love hate poem to Israel," Mr. Graf said. With spoken text, assorted props and extensive jump roping, Mr. Berg and Olivia Court Mesa, a South American immigrant to Israel, investigate their complicated relationship with the country. The conversational and confessional work, in which Mr. Berg lists his theatrical portrayals of soldiers, is a departure from the type of abstract, highly physical work that has come to define much of contemporary Israeli dance. Jodee Nimerichter, the director of the American Dance Festival, said she was attracted to the work's nuance and intimacy. "They're not afraid to reveal themselves on so many levels," she said. For his part, Mr. Assaf, 35, said he wasn't initially interested in tackling politics or engaging in self examination. He was just drawn to the urgent rhythm and mood of the military song, "Ammunition Hill" by Yoram Taharlev, which his choreography matches with quick gestures and combative partnering. "The tension was right," he said of the music in a Skype interview from Israel. But as "The Hill" evolved, from a solo to a trio, he found that the lyrics and gender dynamics added unexpected layers. "Maybe I unconsciously wanted to deal with this subject," he said. Referring to his all male cast, he added, "I needed this unit, this brotherhood." In the work, the men catch and console one another, and get tangled up in one another's bodies an illustration of both the vulnerability and camaraderie of being in the military. Military service is compulsory in Israel three years for men, about two for women and, like his peers, Mr. Assaf joined the army at 18, serving as a paratrooper and commander. Though he had very little dance training before joining, he said his dance skills proved useful. He approached military exercises like choreographic routines, and was praised by his superiors for his agility. "I was aware of my body and that I'm using it in the same ways I learned movement," he said. After his discharge, eager to continue dancing, he joined Emanuel Gat's company, with which he danced for six years. Mr. Graf, 38, didn't have any dance to draw on when he served in the air force but found refuge in it afterward. The day he was discharged, he said, he left his base in the desert and entered an "inexperienced guy" dance class at the Kibbutz company's school at Kibbutz Ga'aton in the verdant north of the country. "I really, really wanted to do something different from the military service," he said. "Suddenly I'm in an atmosphere surrounded by art. It was magical." Mr. Berg, 41, didn't serve in the military, a decision he discusses in "Come Jump With Me." When it was time to enlist, he had just been accepted to Batsheva, and military service would have forced him to leave the company, so he sought and received an exemption. (About a quarter of male prospects receive exemptions for a variety of reasons like religious observance or health.) His decision would not have been necessary had he been accepted into a program that the Israel Defense Forces, or I.D.F., began in the 1990s. It allows promising dancers, called "excellent dancers," to continue their training while fulfilling their service, an option that was already available to musicians and athletes. The excellent dancers there are currently 63 are given administrative positions at bases near Tel Aviv, where the majority of dance schools and companies are, and have flexible hours for training and performances. But whether a dancer served in a combat unit, behind a desk, or not at all, the symbol of the soldier follows Israeli artists throughout their lives and can fight its way into their work, even if that wasn't the intention. In Mr. Assaf's work, the military feels like an elusive memory, while in Mr. Berg and Mr. Graf's work, its continuing presence haunts them. "This obsession with being a soldier, the army mentality," Mr. Graf said, "it's about a mode that you are, and how you relate to your country." Or, as Mr. Berg put it, it's about "still not being able to escape the reality here."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
The author and his Porsche Speedster racecar met again this month, more than half a century after their last race. CARMEL, CALIF. A whole new world, one that included learning the difference between a racing driver and a driver of racing cars, came full circle here on the Central Coast last week, where I was reintroduced to my 1958 Porsche Speedster after more than half a century. All this began in January 1956 when I returned to Europe and to Stars and Stripes, the United States armed forces newspaper where, a few years earlier, I had completed my Army service alongside such future bright lights of the profession as Larry Merchant, later to become television's outstanding boxing commentator. Others who came before or after us included the Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist Bill Mauldin, the veteran New York sports columnist Jimmy Cannon and Louis Rukeyser of "Wall Street Week." It was a great place to work and to roam around Europe when the dollar was worth 4.25 German marks. There I was though without a car to drive. I thought the contract said yes, mine would be shipped from the United States, but it was actually no. And so this stick and ball sportswriter, who didn't know or care about the four strokes of a car's internal combustion engine, had to buy one. A few days later I saw it in a store window long, low, red and black with wire wheels, and I had to have it. It was an Austin Healey 100, and it taught me several lessons, including to be careful what you wish for, as reliability, in either English or German, was not in its vocabulary. But, I found, there were a surprising number of people who did things with cars like these other than drive them to work. There were races and hill climbs (especially big in Europe); one thing led to another and I found myself at a driving school at Monza, Italy, learning that I was faster than most people and that time was more important than speed in auto racing. I also found that an Austin Healey, in mid 1950s Germany, was not the car. Porsches were it, and the 356 models were so numerous in competition that there were usually three subclasses for them: one for the 60 horsepower version, one for 75 horse Supers and one for the roughly 100 horse Carreras with their relatively complicated four cam engines. Fast forward to the purchase of a 60 horsepower model: I did well on the track, and inevitably, needed to go faster. Having no money, I borrowed 3,000 from a bank. The next move was to talk Porsche into taking one of its lightweight Carrera Speedsters and installing a Super engine and a transmission with an AABB gearset (that was a factory designation; by this time I was well past learning the four strokes). It was this car built as a hill climb special, short of top end speed but great on acceleration that I met again days before the Pebble Beach concours. No. 84912 was delivered in August 1958 and the cost at the factory was 3,194 with a 10 percent discount, given for no reason that I could discern. The Porsche's recipe worked; I won my class in various hill climbs in France, did well in races in Germany and the Netherlands (had to swap transmissions a few times to match the ratios to the courses) and even beat the Carreras in Germany's Rallye Bad Neuenahr, which included a 20 lap run at about 8/10ths racing speed around the Nurburgring at night. It helped to know where you were going. In those days, the Nurburgring served as an adult playground for some of us. It may seem preposterous by today's standards, but in the late 1950s we could rent the 14.2 mile circuit for 12.50 an hour (50 marks, by then at 4 to 1). When I stopped counting, in 1960, I had close to 800 laps. In the spring of 1959 a call came from Porsche: A driver was needed for the Nurburgring 1000 Kilometer endurance race, Germany's event counting for the world sports car championship along with the Targa Florio in Italy, the 12 Hours of Sebring in Florida, the Le Mans 24 Hours and Britain's Tourist Trophy. When I arrived in Stuttgart, the first person to greet me in the racing department was a young lady named Evi Butz, who said, "Great, now I can practice my English." She later married an American racing driver; her name became Evi Gurney. I was to drive the Super 90 prototype with Pedro Rodriguez of Mexico. We finished either 10th or 13th overall I can't remember which beating a number Carreras in the process, and because of the mechanical problems that plagued some of the faster factory cars, took second in the 2 liter sports car class. I can recall only vaguely staying right on the tails of a few supposedly faster cars at some points during the race, but my encounter with Stirling Moss, the eventual winner, was another story. He came up behind me, and before I could decide where to let him pass he had done so. And then he turned slightly and waved his thanks. This was the same Aston Martin I had hung on the tail of about a half hour earlier. There is a difference. Late that summer, with a coming marriage and too many work related projects on my mind, I made the mistake of entering Germany's European Hill Climb Championship event, the classic Schauinsland climb in the Black Forest near Freiburg, 6.9 miles of curves. I was really flying on the first practice run when, with about 200 yards to go, I lost concentration, left the road and wound up against the only tree between me and a 400 foot drop. Porsche made a quick repair and I drove in the event, but it wasn't the same. Racing drivers, as opposed to drivers of racing cars, put these things behind them. I finished second to someone I used to beat, drove another event, sold the car, got married. There were three final races the next year, including winning the class in the first six hour race at the Nurburgring with Walter Schneider, a world champion on BMW motorcycles, and fourth in class in the 4,700 kilometer Argentine Gran Premio Standard in a 600 cc NSU Prinz. I came home, got divorced and joined The New York Herald Tribune to write about Joe Namath rather than Phil Hill. When the Trib folded in 1966, I wrote a racing history, "Ford: The Dust and the Glory," and spent 20 plus years with Mercedes Benz of North America, occasionally writing for magazines. My Speedster was long forgotten. Until last Jan. 14, when Andrew Larson called from Boulder, Colo. His father, Karl, who died in 2012, had bought the Porsche in 1990 and had it restored to its previous beauty. This month, the car came to California with the Larsons, who were taking part in the vintage races at the Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion at the Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca track, for me to see.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Automobiles
We started through narrow alleys at 5 a.m., moving past somnolent cows curled against doorways and gaunt dogs on steps and women in saris moving toward us through the gloom, a motorbike vrooming in the distance. "Watch where you walk," said our guide, nicknamed A.K. a native of this ancient city of nearly 1.2 million in northeast India, a short, sturdy man distinguished by his white cap with Reebok logo leading us toward our dawn boat ride on the Ganges. "Organic land mines," he warned us as we hopscotched over the cow patties and turned into an alley slightly wider than the first. A.K. knew what patter worked with Westerners, how to put at ease first timers to India like us, now at one of the holiest places in Hindu lore. "The Ganges flows east and west," A.K. said, part of his practiced routine, "but here it flows north and south, so it can touch Varanasi." My wife, Nancy, and I had strolled New York, Buenos Aires, Barcelona and Paris on trips during our long marriage, but "pedestrian" was no longer in our lexicon here. My right calf was still smarting from a neighborhood stroll we tried to take in Delhi, where the rear wheel of a tuk tuk caught the back of my leg, nearly sending me to the hospital as the next stop on our itinerary instead of the Taj Mahal. A horn blared as a motorcycle, headlight looming, pinned us in the alley before twisting away. Calmly, A.K. waved us on. Meeting up with our driver, we were taken a gridlocked mile to a blockaded street (though motorcycles zigzagged through) and, my camera at the ready now, we stepped out into a stream of people passing kiosks selling firecrackers, chewing tobacco, incense, plastic figurines of Vishnu and Ganesh, and swamis with painted faces offering to pose for 50 rupees, about 75 cents, toward broad steps of the ghat, a word derived from the Sanskrit term for embankment. Hailing from the Gulf Coast of the United States, I understood how public piers attract tapestries of people. A ghat in Varanasi is far more a series of wide stone platforms descending to the Ganges, hectic with spiritual seekers and morning bathers and boatmen reaching out to help visitors aboard dinghies. A.K. led us to a lean boatman with sinewy arms who gave us a hand. Nancy and I sat astern, A.K. on a gunwale, as the boatman took his position in the bow and began to pull his oars. Next to the street clamor, the Ganges was deeply quiet, the swish of oars a ghostly whisper on the meandering river. More boats pushed out, some with tourists, others with Indians, saris gathering color as the sun edged up from the East. From one boat, then another, rose hypnotic Hindu songs. A.K. told us the story of the goddess Ganga, whose river was brought down from heaven to this earth, so powerful that only Lord Shiva's hair could hold the currents. Soon its purifying waters coursed through the land, bringing the devout to its banks to wash away sins. The ghat became as bright and startling as an Indian miniature painting as the sun combed the landing. The backdrop rose, too centuries old Hindu temples and weathered four story residences deep red and yellow with high balconies and steps down to the river. Monkeys traced the rooftops, keeping us in their gaze. As a traveler I want to lose myself in a faraway place, to slough off the familiar and be transported by what's strikingly foreign, to forget my name and learn that of others. In the spirit of discovery we typically make up our own journeys, but advice from veteran travelers to India persuaded us to have a travel agency secure guides and drivers and arrange other details. Otherwise, we'd have been confounded. The riverfront became crowded with hundreds of the penitent, men stripping down to underwear, women in full dress, stepping into the water's edge, looking eastward, hands pressed together. One man lifted a bowl of river water and sluiced it over his head, another plunged under, another dipped in a cup and drank heartily. I wanted to be enveloped in the moment. My eye behind a lens, I recorded this ritual of purification. We arrived at another ghat where women slapped their laundry against the rocks. "And you complained about our old washing machine," I joked to Nancy. Two women held opposite ends of a wet sheet, pulled it taut, set it on rocks to dry. "Could I swim in the Ganges?" I asked A.K. "Is it clean?" He rolled his head, side to side, "What is your opinion?" I looked down at the murky water. A.K. took over from the boatman, pulled the oars, then I signaled to him. "Can I?" He moved aside. I took my place at the bow, grabbed the handles and started to pull. "Take my picture," I asked Nancy, and she readied the camera, happy to defer to me as the ham in the family. "Laugh like Buddha," A.K. suggested, having told us of the Buddha of happiness. Buddha had traveled these parts, too, having preached his first sermon at Sarnath, a half hour's drive from here. I leaned back and, joined by the men, laughed loudly, freely, as buoyed up as our little vessel. I laughed in gratitude, in joy. The digital camera was clicking. I lost my grip on one of the paddles and it slipped through the oarlock, floating away. I reached for it, leaning far out, but the boatman intervened, latching onto the end of it before it could sweep downriver. These men earn their tips. Cotton burning in pots as part of a ritual. Poras Chaudhary for The New York Times There was shouting a naked man in long beard and matted hair ran from three men in street clothes, who yelled and waved at him to hurry away. "Some sadhus are very aggressive," A.K. explained. Sadhus are the holy men who dwell along the river, outside of society, extreme ascetics. Many are gentle, otherworldly in their fashion. Some, A.K. said, are not. Finally the sadhu took his place high on the ghat, alone behind a turret, hands pressed together. I zoomed in for a close up. As we headed the other way, the boatman at the helm again, the ghat was teeming with men selling religious figures, others wrapping themselves in towels, women bending and talking, food sellers, enormous parasols that look stitched from a dozen fabrics angled against the strengthening sun, wandering cows, brahma bulls, goats, an old woman washing her hair, a man scrubbing his shoulders. I saw smoke in the distance. In Agra, before traveling to Varanasi, we had seen the magnificent Islamic expression of remembering the dead the Taj Mahal, the mausoleum vast and seemingly delicate, built by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan for his favorite queen. Its white marble, with its iconic dome and minarets, looked like spun sugar as we approached it, a confectionary that might rise up. The miracle of its workmanship, the gemstones set into the marble, the intricate geometric shapes belied the fact that, in the end, nothing wards off our final breath. Here in Varanasi, though, there was a different kind of memorial. As we approached the smoke blackening the sky, A.K., who told us he was Hindu, said, "Take your last photo." "No more pictures," he said, gravely. As the boat moved farther on I saw the shoreline more closely a funeral pyre, a cremation sending up flames and smoke. When he glanced away I was tempted to snap one more, but an eerie feeling held me back. I turned off my camera, put away my notepad, and just looked. We were in someone else's sacred space. I wondered who was there. An elderly shopkeeper whose body was carried through the streets here this morning? A youth felled by high fever? A professor from the nearby university who taught medical sciences? A grandmother, a child? Their ashes, soon scattered in the river, would join those of millions of others, ashes of loved ones brought by Hindus from around the country to be tossed onto the mystical waters. The Ganges was dark, as if it had swallowed the light, its murkiness a quality, I realized, that made it different from other waters under a blast of sunlight. We were borne on a river of souls. They carried us, passing mortals, like water bugs skittering along the surface of time. There was no scrim between me and the burning fires no camera, notebook, guidebook, only the waver of flames. On this river I had no name. Our dinghy bumped against the dock and we filed off, followed A.K. up this new ghat, where fresh cords of wood awaited us, past a man squatting next to another shaving his whiskers, a cow before a restaurant nosing into the door, narrow streets with private altars of Shiva behind iron gates. "OK," he said, waving us onward. "Take pictures."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
MANCHESTER, England In the wake of the May terrorist attack at Manchester Arena, which killed 23 people, including the attacker, the space outside the nearby Royal Exchange Theater became a site of public mourning. St. Ann's Square slowly filled with flowers and other tributes soft toys, football jerseys, balloons covering an area the size of a swimming pool. Every day for three weeks, the theater's staff walked past on their way to work. At the time, the artistic director Sarah Frankcom was facing a gap in her autumn schedule, the result of a leading actor's clashing commitments. One play kept coming to mind: Thornton Wilder's "Our Town." An all American classic, Wilder's 1938 portrait of small town life at the turn of the century nonetheless seemed to Ms. Frankcom to chime with the atmosphere in Manchester at that moment. "All over town, there was a real sense that people were meeting each other in simple, everyday actions," she recalled. The scene in St. Ann's Square was a case in point. "We suddenly all went, 'Oh, that's why we have town squares, isn't it?' It wasn't about looking at flowers, but about needing to be together." "Our Town" has that quality at its heart. It's not just that Wilder returns us to a simpler time an era of face to face communication and community spirit, a place where everyone knows everyone else. It's that he taps into something universal. Her production, which began performances in mid September, combines a professional cast with a community chorus of local residents teenagers, parents and pensioners. It's an attempt to put the city itself onstage, inviting Mancunians to see their town in "Our Town." On the surface, Wilder's play might seem an odd choice. Though it's a syllabus staple in American high schools, a Pulitzer Prize winner regularly staged by amateur drama clubs, "Our Town" isn't particularly well known in Britain. Moreover, the lives it depicts feel a long way away historically, geographically and, indeed, culturally from modern day Manchester. For Ms. Frankcom, however, the distance serves to highlight the similarities. Wilder himself was writing about a way of life 30 years earlier. "He described it as looking into a microscope through a telescope,'' she explained. "The further away the telescope is, while still picking up detail and specificity, the more it allows you to see some beautiful, truthful things about how we all live." To that end, Ms. Frankcom is leaving the connection unspoken, and the text will remain unchanged. However, with British company members retaining their native accents, Ms. Frankcom hopes audience members will see the two towns as one: a Grover's Corners populated with Mancunians. And the casting is deliberately diverse, with the Stage Manager our guide to the town played by Youssef Kerkour, a British Moroccan actor of Muslim faith, who moved to New York at 18. Mr. Kerkour welcomes the responsibility: "Islam's in the news in a negative way all the time. The discourse around it has been hijacked on both sides by those committing atrocities and by right wing groups pushing the politics of fear. Any time you can subvert that, that's a good thing." The role lets him connect closely with audiences "700 scene partners," he called them. "In the context of what's just happened, I'm overjoyed to say, 'Yes, I'm a Muslim. Come watch the play. Hear my American accent. Look at my beard. We have more in common than we have differences.' " A number of American productions of "Our Town" have lately showcased diversity in their casting. A Chicago staging set the play in a Latino community, and a Miami production this fall will feature characters speaking in English, Spanish and Creole. Deaf West Theater is about to open a version at Pasadena Playhouse that integrates Wilder's writing with American Sign Language. And few plays make room for nonprofessionals so comfortably. Without it, the Royal Exchange, one of Britain's most respected regional houses, which receives public funding from central and local governments, wouldn't be able to stage it. Annie Rogers, 19, joined the Young Company two years ago. "Before that, I felt a bit lost in Manchester," she said. "It's given me a sense of belonging in this city." She's playing Si Crowell, the local paperboy, and sees the play as strengthening the city's resolve: "Now more than ever, at a time when Manchester's been shaken by terror and fear, our city needs to be unified and I believe 'Our Town' is a symbol of that spirit." The Royal Exchange bears its own scars. Twenty years ago it closed for two years after an I.R.A. bomb destroyed its glass dome. "For some people who work in this building, that trauma is still in their bones," Ms. Frankcom said. But after the May attack, which occurred as young music fans were streaming out of a concert by the pop singer Ariana Grande, Ms. Frankcom perceived "an amazing sense of solidarity" in the city. In St. Ann's Square mourners sang impromptu rounds of Oasis's "Don't Look Back in Anger." Thousands got tattoos of the city's worker bee symbol an emblem of Manchester's industrial roots to raise money for charity. For Mr. Kerkour, the effect has been bigger than that. "What we saw in Manchester wasn't just the city coming together it was the whole world coming together with Manchester," he said. Staging "Our Town" only underscores that, he added: "This is such a universal story, and it's through that universality that you get real healing going on."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
On Jan. 10, 1999, a mobster walked into a psychiatrist's office. What happened next over the course of eight years was a television revolution. By the time the writer and producer David Chase brought "The Sopranos" to a close on June 10, 2007, he had helped establish HBO as a cultural force and make literary symbolism, cinematic style, long form storytelling and complicated antiheroes the norm for high end TV dramas. With the 20th anniversary of "The Sopranos" premiere happening this week, there's a lot of chatter right now about the show's legacy. If you're already a fan, it might prompt you to want to do a rewatch. But who has time for 86 hourlong episodes? If you're interested in a more efficient way to re immerse yourself, what follows are some suggestions, for both a short dip and a deeper dive. This guide is designed for people who've already watched the entire "Sopranos" series at least once, broken down by different viewing strategies. Spoilers are kept to a minimum, though, so in theory, newcomers could try one of these paths as well. David Chase looks back at "The Sopranos" 20 years after its debut including that ending. So grab a platter of "gabagool" and "moozadell," keep an eye out for wily Russians and let's head back to Jersey. (Stream the entire series on HBO or free on Amazon with a Prime subscription.) "The Sopranos" begins as the New Jersey mafia boss Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini) reluctantly seeks therapy for help with his panic attacks. Through six seasons (seven by some counts, as the final season was 21 episodes and split in two), the series grows into an increasingly complex, violent and morally ambiguous story about changing times and old grudges. Throughout, Chase and his writers, directors and actors challenge viewers to consider what they might have in common with a criminal. Fans argue vehemently over which episode is the series's high point. "College?" "Pine Barrens?" "Whitecaps?" But the first "Sopranos" episode sometimes listed as "Pilot" and sometimes as "The Sopranos" isn't just one of the series's best, it is easily among the best first episodes of any TV drama. In a tightly constructed 60 minutes, Chase, as the writer and director, skillfully introduces the premise, themes and tone of the show within a largely self contained story that would be a classic even if HBO had never ordered any more. Framed by two therapy sessions between Tony and his new psychiatrist, Dr. Jennifer Melfi (Lorraine Bracco), "The Sopranos" pilot defies expectations at every turn beginning with the way it compares the familiar mob milieu of seedy dives and old Italian American neighborhoods with the yuppie trappings of the suburbs. The modern version of organized crime on this show isn't just about gambling, labor unions, prostitution and hijacking. It is also about junk bonds and health care scams ... and it's more than a little sad. Read our Q. and A. with the authors of a newly published guidebook to the series, "The Sopranos Sessions." Dig into the episodes that are widely considered the best of the best. Episode 11 of Season 3, "Pine Barrens" (directed by Steve Buscemi, with a teleplay credited to Terence Winter, the future creator of "Boardwalk Empire," from a story by Tim Van Patten, a frequent "Sopranos" director), is a fan favorite for good reasons. The story of the Soprano lieutenants Paulie Gualtieri (Tony Sirico) and Christopher Moltisanti (Michael Imperioli) getting lost in the woods while trying to dispose of a not quite dead body is a peerless example of the show's dark sense of humor and is one of the many times the creators refused to grant the audience closure. Along the same lines, also from Season 3, "Employee of the Month" (Episode 4) has a difficult main plot, in which Dr. Melfi is sexually assaulted by a stranger and weighs whether she should call on Tony for vengeance. The writers ask viewers whether it's healthy to root for violence, even in a work of fiction, and then answer their own question in a chilling final line of dialogue. The most thematically significant episodes of this batch, though, are the companion pieces "College" (Season 1, Episode 5) and "University" (Season 3, Episode 6). In "College," Tony takes his daughter, Meadow (Jamie Lynn Sigler), on a tour of Maine colleges and runs into a former colleague, now in witness protection. In "University," Meadow deals with an annoying Columbia University roommate, at the same time that Tony and his henchmen are distracted by an emotionally needy stripper. Both episodes build to shocking acts of emotional and physical brutality, meant to remind fans that these characters while damnably likable have been corrupted by a life in which inconvenient people are considered easily disposable. Throughout the series, "The Sopranos" balanced episodic storytelling with more sweeping arcs, as Tony made decisions about how to dispatch some of his pesky in family rivals: his jealous uncle, Junior (Dominic Chianese); his meanspirited mother, Livia (Nancy Marchand); the brooding ex con Richie Aprile (David Proval); the obnoxious Ralph Cifaretto (Joe Pantoliano); the sad sack Tony Blundetto (Steve Buscemi); the F.B.I. informants Sal Bonpensiero (Vincent Pastore) and Adriana La Cerva (Drea de Matteo); and even his own judgmental wife, Carmela (Edie Falco). The show's biggest conflicts were usually resolved by season's end. So if you're going to watch 10 episodes, watch some finales. Make time for "I Dream of Jeannie Cusamano," the Season 1 finale, when Tony reasserts his power after surviving an assassination attempt. At the time, Chase didn't know if he would get a second season, so Season 1 comes to a satisfyingly poetic conclusion. Be sure also to see the Season 4 finale, "Whitecaps," in which four seasons of marital woes between Tony and Carmela boil over into arguments as gruesome as any mob hit. Carmela is a complicated character who wrestles with the bargain she made when she married Tony, trading complicity with his sins for upper middle class comforts. The couple's barbed back and forth in "Whitecaps" is overdue, and harrowing to watch. Watch some of the pre finales, too. Although there's a big murder in the Season 2 finale, "Funhouse," the more important death happens in the episode before, "The Knight in White Satin Armor," in which a difficult choice gets taken out of Tony's hands. Similarly, while the final two episodes of Season 5 feature farewells to two major characters, that season's penultimate episode, "Long Term Parking," is the one that really rises to the level of tragedy. If you have time to watch 20 episodes, you can fill in some of the key "Sopranos" story lines and character arcs, or you can finish an entire season. If you're going the full season route, do Season 3, which is rich with subplots and personal conflict. Otherwise, spread out, and tackle a few choice episodes from each season. Season 2 shifts the show's focus somewhat, examining what happens to the people close to someone as self centered and temperamental as Tony. In Episode 3, Meadow gives a party in her grandmother's house, then refuses to take responsibility when her friends trash the place. (Her indignant "I could've taken ecstasy but I didn't!" is a top tier example of the Sopranos family's talent for blame shifting and goalpost moving.) Also watch Episode 7, in which Christopher finds himself torn between his dreams of being a filmmaker and his commitment to becoming a mafia bigwig. The best Season 2 episode, though, is Episode 10, "Bust Out," with its step by step depiction of how Tony destroys the life and business of an old friend who owes him a debt. "Bust Out" really gets into the finer points of how Tony and his crew see themselves: as shrewd operators, delivering righteous punishment and life lessons to folks who've crossed the wrong line. The various Ralph Cifaretto story lines of Seasons 3 and 4 come to a head in the Episode 5 of Season 4, "Pie O My," in which Tony falls in love with a racehorse and begins to see Ralphie's indifference to the animal as an unforgivable moral failing. The Tony Blundetto arc in Season 5 is best represented by Episodes 3 and 8, which take different angles on how an ex con struggles to re enter society and go straight and how those problems eat at Tony Soprano. The "roads not taken" for these characters become a major theme in Season 6. In Episode 3, a hospitalized, comatose Tony imagines himself as a nebbishy Middle American salesman on a business trip; meanwhile, in the waking world, Tony's trusted right hand man, Silvio Dante (Steven Van Zandt), becomes the acting head of the family and begins to understand why his boss is always in such poor health. Later, in Episode 8, the closeted gay hit man Vito Spatafore (Joseph R. Gannascoli) goes on the lam to a quaint New Hampshire town, where he pretends to be a writer and wonders if he can avoid his grim fate back home. As the series winds down especially after Tony recovers a sense of wistful "Is this all there is?" melancholy settles over several of the best episodes. In Episode 9 of Season 6, the frequently distracted and shortsighted Paulie cuts costs on an annual festival, with disastrous results. And in Episode 18, (written by Chase and the "Mad Men" creator, Matthew Weiner), Tony faces the realization that Christopher may never get the kind of satisfaction he's looking for from this life. Both of these episodes are resonant with one of the show's dominant emotional notes: the feeling that whatever was holding the world together, it broke irreparably, long ago.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
Jim Carrey, the elastic actor and star of films like "The Mask," "Dumb and Dumber" and "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," will be the latest performer to take on the role of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., the Democratic presidential nominee, at "Saturday Night Live." NBC said on Wednesday that Carrey will play Biden on the coming 46th season of "S.N.L.," which begins on Oct. 3. Carrey, who has hosted "S.N.L." several times over the years and rose to stardom on the Fox sketch show "In Living Color," will be the latest performer to impersonate Biden on "S.N.L."; the role has previously been played there by Jason Sudeikis, Woody Harrelson and John Mulaney. Alec Baldwin, who has been playing President Trump for "S.N.L." since 2016, will be returning to that role.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night's highlights that lets you sleep and lets us get paid to watch comedy. If you're interested in hearing from The Times regularly about great TV, sign up for our Watching newsletter and get recommendations straight to your inbox. President Trump took to Twitter on Thursday to taunt former Vice President Joe Biden. Earlier this week, Biden had suggested in a speech that he would like to fight Trump one on one. Trump pushed back on Twitter, saying that Biden would "go down fast and hard" in a fight with him. Both Trevor Noah and Seth Meyers were amused. "Personally, I have no idea who would win this fight. I mean, Biden seems scrappy, but if 70 years of McDonald's couldn't take Trump down, I don't know what can." TREVOR NOAH	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
Uber's offices in Hong Kong, where the company found that commuters were more eager than casual riders to return. OAKLAND, Calif. In late February, Uber executives were set to gather in San Francisco to form business plans for the year as the coronavirus steadily spread beyond China. While some executives who were initially invited had been told to stay home, the remaining few huddled at Uber's headquarters to make plans for the inevitable pandemic. One of them, Susan Anderson, who managed Uber's business in Australia, New Zealand and North Asia, delivered bad news: In Hong Kong, Uber trips had declined rapidly as the coronavirus took hold. Months later, Uber is facing its greatest crisis: keeping the ride hailing business afloat when many people are still staying home. Coronavirus totals in the United States, Uber's highest revenue market, continue to grow, challenging cities and local businesses that are trying to reopen. And rides, not surprisingly, are only haltingly returning to a semblance of what they were. Hong Kong, on the other hand, has recovered from the pandemic faster than most other cities where Uber operates. The outbreak has been less severe there than in the United States, and many commuters have gone back to work. Although Uber's business in Hong Kong is small and doesn't generate much revenue, the foothold gave the company a preview of how quickly its business would slip away during the pandemic but also a best case example of what its recovery elsewhere could look like. At first, drivers were reluctant to get back behind the wheel. Commuters returned to Uber once restrictions were lifted, while infrequent riders didn't. Hong Kong also provided a testing ground for new virus safety features, like facial recognition software to detect whether drivers were wearing masks, before they were introduced globally. The city began lifting restrictions in February, but a second wave of cases in March caused another dip in rides a sign of the unsteady recovery that Uber is likely to see in the United States. "If the world looked like Hong Kong, we would be in great shape," Uber's chief executive, Dara Khosrowshahi, said during a March call with financial analysts. At the peak of the outbreak in Hong Kong, rides declined 45 percent, Uber said. In major U.S. cities, Uber rides dropped as much as 80 percent. On average, they had begun to recover about 12 percent last month, the company said. The recovery in Hong Kong has been stronger, with business up 70 percent from its lowest point. There were signs of recovery in states that began reopening, like Georgia, where business was up 43 percent, and Texas, up 50 percent. But those states are starting to see virus numbers spike, and Uber's experience in Hong Kong suggests that a downturn in business is likely to follow. "It's been very beneficial for us having a presence here," Ms. Anderson said of Hong Kong. "It's given us a few more weeks to understand what this might look like." She added, "There are some things that are going to hold globally true, and some things that really need regional tailoring." Some safety measures, like providing sanitizing products to drivers, became part of Uber's global plans. After Hong Kong commuters returned to Uber more quickly than casual riders, the company increased its promotion of its commuting services. In May, Uber began to require masks for drivers and passengers in the United States, but the simple act of asking people to put on a mask has become contentious. In Australia, public health officials did not recommend masks, so Uber did not require them there. Because of its history of dealing with virus outbreaks, including the SARS outbreak in 2003, residents of Hong Kong are acutely aware of the risks. Gary Yau, an Uber driver in Hong Kong, stopped accepting passengers in January because he was worried about catching the coronavirus and infecting his wife and infant son. Now he picks up four or five passengers a day. He finally felt comfortable reopening his Uber app after offices reopened, while some social distancing regulations and border closures remained in effect. Riders are starting to come back, too. In addition to the return during commute hours, Uber has seen an uptick in local tourism, Ms Anderson said. "A lot more people on weekends use Uber to go out to the hiking trails and the beaches in the outskirts of Hong Kong," she said. But in some ways, Hong Kong has always been an anomaly for Uber. The city has efficient subway and bus systems, which have become full again in recent weeks. Its widely used taxi service, which has its own app with card payment and bilingual features, costs less than Uber. The city has also seen sustained pro democracy protests. Those who use Uber are often looking for a more comfortable alternative to standard taxis. Ride sharing is not legal in Hong Kong, and 28 Uber drivers were arrested in sting operations in 2017 and fined for driving without limousine permits in 2018. Despite the regulatory challenges in Hong Kong, Uber has seen steeper ride hailing declines in the United States. In the months after the February leadership meeting, Uber's business in larger markets all but vanished. By mid March, its rides were down 70 percent in Seattle, and the outlook for the rest of the United States looked grim. In May, the company was forced to drastically cut costs. It has laid off about 25 percent of its work force, sold its bike and scooter business, and pulled its food delivery service from some of the markets where it lost too much money. As cuts have continued, Uber's message of recovery has become increasingly urgent. After running advertisements in April urging riders to stay at home and avoid the risk of transmitting the virus, the company has shifted to encouraging consumers to take their "second first ride" a return to a new Uber, one shielded by masks and social distancing rules for riders and drivers. In some cities, reopening is well underway. But as in Hong Kong, it is likely to happen in fits and starts. A now familiar cycle is playing out for Uber in Atlanta, which began to lift restrictions in mid May. "I have not logged in," said J.D. Harrison, who drives for Uber in Atlanta and runs a mobile dog grooming business. "I have no interest in logging in, just until I can guarantee myself I'm not at risk by doing this type of work." Kate Conger reported from Oakland, and Tiffany May from Hong Kong.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
Frank Lloyd Wright houses may be architectural masterpieces but finding a buyer isn't always easy. Take a tour of Tirranna, on the market in New Canaan, Conn., for 7.2 million. In mid September, Frank Lloyd Wright aficionados are expected by the busload in New Canaan, Conn., passing through a gate with the name "Tirranna" carved into the metalwork, to tour a 6,917 square foot hemicycle house largely designed by America's master architect. They'll examine the mahogany cabinetry, admire the mitered glass windows that erase the barrier between inside and outside, snap photos of the swimming pool that cantilevers out over the Noroton River, and wander the 15 acre grounds. Although the house, one of Wright's last grand works, is for sale at 7.2 million, it is unlikely that any of these visitors will be putting in offers. Rather, the visit to Tirranna will be a high point of the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy's annual conference, which this year takes place in New York City and commemorates the 150th anniversary of the architect's birth, a milestone being marked by numerous special events around the country, including a major retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art. For Doug Milne, the Houlihan Lawrence associate broker who has the listing, inviting conference participants was in keeping with the support of the conservancy exhibited by Tirranna's last owners, who have died, and also a good opportunity for exposure. "Who knows? There may be some well heeled people who could afford it, or it might trigger something. A lot of it is word of mouth," said Mr. Milne, 65, noting that few people have seen the house since Ted and Vada Stanley bought it in 1992 and spent two and a half years restoring it. For brokers like Mr. Milne, marketing these houses offers unique challenges, including the need to become a Wright expert, to devise a strategy for separating potential buyers from sightseers, and to develop a convincing argument for why someone should pay a premium to live in a house with small bedrooms and a snug kitchen, cinder block walls, cement floors, narrow doorways, a carport instead of a garage and, quite likely, no air conditioning. For potential buyers, it means becoming the steward of a legacy, which includes instant membership in an exclusive, sometimes intrusive, society of Wright enthusiasts. In his lifetime, Wright designed about 450 buildings, 380 of which remain standing, according to Barbara Gordon, the executive director of the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy, a nonprofit organization in Chicago. While people are most familiar with his public projects like the Guggenheim Museum, or his showcase houses like Fallingwater in western Pennsylvania, Wright designed more than 300 houses, most of which incorporated natural surroundings and materials into a design of clean, angular lines, with an emphasis on public spaces. About 45 Wright properties have changed hands in the last five years, Ms. Gordon said. The process is not easy, with many going on and off the market over many years, as owners try to find buyers willing to assume the responsibility while appreciating what they are getting. "These houses may not have the number of bedrooms or baths and the large, open kitchens that people demand now," Ms. Gordon said, "but the livability comes with the warmth and light, and that special feel you have being in these homes." Here are the stories of five Wright houses that have recently changed hands or are now on the market. Fred Taber knew he had his work cut out for him in late 2012 when he was approached to sell the three bedroom Eppstein House in Galesburg, Mich. One of four Wright houses built for scientists from Upjohn in a 70 acre compound known as the Acres, the 2,250 square foot house had been largely neglected for more than 15 years. The roof leaked, the boiler had rusted out, the 60 year old wiring needed updating, and the pool surrounded by a chain link fence was an eyesore. Mr. Taber, a Realtor with Jaqua Realtors in Kalamazoo, spent two years encouraging the owner, who lived in Washington State, to get the 1953 house in livable shape before putting it on the market. The next task was arriving at an asking price. It made no sense to compare it to other 1950s ranch houses in Galesburg, where the current median listing price of a house is 112,000, according to Realtor.com, or to Wright houses in Chicago or Madison, Wis. Wright's 1953 Eppstein House in Galesburg, Mich., is owned by Marika Broere and Tony Hillebrandt. It can be rented for a night on Airbnb. "This house is in a small community. Most people don't even know these houses are here," said Mr. Taber, 46, who finally settled on 475,000. Mr. Taber created a blog for the house, and held several open houses, which typically drew two audiences: locals "who would come through and say how horrible it was and that it looked like a prison," and Wright fans who would try "to show they knew more about the house than I did." In July 2016, Marika Broere and Tony Hillebrandt of Ontario, Canada, bought the house for 368,000. They have spent almost as much again rebuilding the roof, updating electricity and plumbing, re staining the woodwork, double glazing the windows, adding air conditioning and removing the pool. Self described house "hobbyists" who have bought and renovated several properties in Canada, the couple became interested in Wright houses after moving to North America from the Netherlands 12 years ago, but never imagined they would own one. "Would you believe it if somebody told you that someday you'd own a Rembrandt?" asked Ms. Broere, 60. "For us, this is first an amazing piece of art, and second, it is a home." This fall, they will begin renting the house on Airbnb for about 310 a night. The house had been on and off the market for about 15 years without receiving a single offer when Ms. Brownell, a Realtor with Atlantic Sotheby's International Realty, received the listing in March 2016. The owner had a magnificent art collection, and Ms. Brownell spent several months convincing him to put it in storage. "With a house of this magnitude, you really needed to remove all that stuff to see the house. This was the work of art," Ms. Brownell said. Having succeeded in her request, Ms. Brownell created a video to demonstrate what living in a Wright house might be like. And she did extensive research on the architect, and the market for his houses, which prompted her to lower the asking price to 2.75 million from 3.75 million. She limited showings to those who could produce proof of available funds. "This was not a sightseeing event," she said. Within eight days of putting the house on the market in August 2016, she had not one but two offers, both shy of the asking price. "I said, 'I don't have anyone willing to pay 2.75 million, or 2.5 million, but I do have the only offer you've ever had in 15 years,'" Ms. Brownell said. The owner finally settled on a 2.3 million offer, which, with concessions, ended up being 2.2 million, but not before he learned the intentions of the prospective buyer, a local businessman who had been interested in the house for the last 30 years. "It was no different than if he had a daughter, and the buyer wanted to take her hand in marriage," Ms. Brownell said. When their son Jonathan was told he had a bipolar disorder after a psychological breakdown in 1988, the couple decided to dedicate their fortune to mental health research. They donated more than 800 million to the Broad Institute, a biomedical research cooperative in Cambridge, Mass., which will also receive the proceeds from the sale of Tirranna. Jonathan Stanley said he had no qualms about his would be inheritance going to fund research. "How can you complain about a guy who spent 2 percent of the money he made in his life and gave the rest to charity?" asked Mr. Stanley, 51, a board member of the Treatment Advocacy Center in Arlington, Va. "My dad loved me a lot, and what happened to me deeply affected him and gave him a cause for his charity." The house went on the market for 8 million in January, drawing attention from prospective buyers in New York, Los Angeles, Australia, Saudi Arabia and London, said Mr. Milne, who reduced the asking price in May. The median asking price for houses in this New York City suburb is currently 1.794 million, according to Realtor.com. Two out of three of the bedrooms in Dan Nichols's 1,500 square foot Wright house in Cherry Hill, N.J., have been out of commission since he jackhammered the floors to get at the radiant heating pipes that recently sprang a leak. "We've got this really cool heating system, but like everything with a 66 year old house, eventually they need repair," said Mr. Nichols, 51. This is just one of the many projects Mr. Nichols, an architect with Ragan Design Group in Medford, N.J., has taken on since purchasing the Sweeton House in 2008 for 350,000. Completed in 1951, the house cost the Sweeton family 24,000 to build, plus a 1,500 commission to Wright. The Sweetons had requested something to fit their "unpretentious lifestyle," according to a letter from J. A. Sweeton to Mr. Wright. The same could be said of its current owners. "My wife and I are very solidly middle class," said Mr. Nichols, whose wife, Christine Denario, is a mental health clinician and a yoga instructor. "Some can throw money at the work and then move on. We've had to pay as we go, setting our priorities and working on it incrementally." Tucked behind an office building off a busy highway, the house will likely never be a tourist destination. "Considering where it is, it has to survive as a house. And has to be desirable for the next owners to live in," Mr. Nichols said. With that goal in mind, Mr. Nichols has worked diligently to make the house more livable, adding a second bathroom behind a folded corner door, building a sliding library ladder to access the high upper cabinets in the kitchen, and carving out space for a washer dryer and a computer station. "It's like a puzzle for an architect. I think, 'If Wright were redoing this kitchen, what would he do?'" said Mr. Nichols, who has pored over the correspondence between the Sweetons and Wright that he inherited with the house. "The house is just plain old fun to live in," he said. "The way the light plays on it. The way the moonlight shines in. The blur between inside and out. It's really neat."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
The Bolshoi Theater is going ahead with a ballet based on the life of legendary dancer Rudolf Nureyev this December, its general director said on Friday. The ballet, originally scheduled to premiere in July, was postponed three days before its opening, while its director, Kirill S. Serebrennikov, was charged with embezzling government funds and placed under house arrest. "Nureyev," which depicts the world famous dancer's life up until his death in 1993 from AIDS related illnesses, will now play at the Bolshoi December 9 and 10. In July, the Bolshoi's general director, Vladimir G. Urin, insisted that the ballet was postponed for artistic reasons, due to an under rehearsed cast. Many in Moscow's cultural circles balked, contending that the ballet's depiction of an openly gay man fleeing the Soviet Union had been deemed too controversial for the country's most prominent stage. There was also an outpouring of support for Mr. Serebrennikov, one of Russia's most prominent and innovative directors, whose charges were widely seen as part of a suppressive effort against dissenting voices. Mr. Urin confirmed that Mr. Serebrennikov, who remains under house arrest, gave permission for the production to be mounted in his absence, according to a report by the Russian state news agency, Tass, which interviewed Mr. Urin. The ballet's choreographer, Yuri Possokhov, will oversee final rehearsals and, with court approval, may confer with Mr. Serebrennikov on artistic details.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
Toots Hibbert in 1974. He was adored by critics and fellow musicians for a body of work that helped establish some of reggae's fundamentals. Toots Hibbert, one of the fathers of reggae music, whose vocals imbued the genre's sound with an exhortatory power drawn from American soul, died on Friday night in Kingston, Jamaica. He was believed to be 77. His death, in a hospital, was announced on the social media accounts of his band, Toots and the Maytals. No cause was specified, but he was recently reported to have been hospitalized with Covid like symptoms. Mr. Hibbert holds a firm spot in Jamaica's musical pantheon as the first artist to use the word reggae on a record, on the rollicking 1968 single "Do the Reggay" by his group, which was originally billed simply as the Maytals. By some accounts, it was an accidental coinage Mr. Hibbert has said he was thinking of "streggae," local slang for a "raggedy" woman but it stuck, branding the new sound that would become Jamaica's greatest cultural export. On classics like "Pressure Drop," "Monkey Man" and "Sweet and Dandy," Mr. Hibbert sang in a raw but sweet tone that had echoes of Ray Charles, and he was often compared to other giants of soul music. "As a singer, he's amazing," Keith Richards said in a profile of Mr. Hibbert in Rolling Stone last month. "His voice reminds me very much of the timbre of Otis Redding. When you hear him do 'Pain in My Heart,' it's an uncanny resemblance." Like Marley, Mr. Hibbert came to embody the message of early reggae as hopeful and uplifting, yet unsparing in its portrayal of common people's struggles. As a songwriter, Mr. Hibbert crafted simple morality tales, often with just a handful of lyrics that boil up in repetition. With their musky arrangements and lilting upbeat, the songs were so danceable that Mr. Hibbert's subtle commentaries on poverty and injustice could be overlooked. "54 46, That's My Number," from 1968, is a stark portrayal of a police shakedown ("Stick it up, mister"; "Turn out your left pocket") based on Mr. Hibbert's own arrest in 1966 over marijuana possession; he spent about a year in jail, though he long maintained that he had been framed. Another song, "Sweet and Dandy," captures the jitters among a poor family before a wedding, where the menu includes inexpensive cake and "kola wine." "A hundred years from now, my songs will be played, because it is logical words that people can relate to," Mr. Hibbert told Rolling Stone in 2010, when the magazine put him at No. 71 in its list of the greatest singers of all time. Further hits, like "Bam Bam" from 1966, made Mr. Hibbert and his group among the decade's biggest stars in Jamaican music. They found a wider international audience thanks to "The Harder They Come," the seminal 1972 Jamaican crime film, in which the Maytals make a cameo appearance, performing "Sweet and Dandy" in a recording studio. That song, along with "Pressure Drop" later covered by the Clash was included on the film's hit soundtrack album, which made reggae a sensation around the world. In "The Harder They Come," Jimmy Cliff plays a character, Ivan, whose background bears a resemblance to Mr. Hibbert's a country boy who arrives in the big city and seeks fame through music, then sells away the rights to his song for a pittance. Frederick Nathaniel Hibbert was born (sources differ on the date, but his representatives say it was Dec. 8, 1942) in the rural town of May Pen, Jamaica, to parents who were Seventh day Adventist preachers and owned local businesses, including a bakery. The youngest of several children, Frederick who was given the nickname Little Toots by a brother was drawn as a teenager to Kingston, about 35 miles away, where he got a job at a barbershop. Around 1962, he formed a vocal trio with Raleigh Gordon and Jerry Matthias, and the young men soon became a top act in the new scene that developed around ska the up tempo style, heavily influenced by American R B, that predated reggae. Their earliest hits, like "Hallelujah" and "Six and Seven Books of Moses," both from 1963 and both produced by Coxsone Dodd, reflected Mr. Hibbert's religious upbringing and offered a taste of the excitement he could bring to a simple melody. Those and other early records were sometimes released overseas under the names the Vikings or the Flames. Mr. Hibbert recently told Rolling Stone that Mr. Dodd, one of the most influential Jamaican producers of the era, who died in 2004, had sometimes paid Mr. Hibbert for his songs with food. For the early track "Hello Honey," he said, "Coxsone gave me one patty." "I was very hungry," Mr. Hibbert added, "and I love a patty, and that's what I got paid for my first song." Over the years, he frequently complained that, like other reggae pioneers, he had not been compensated fairly for his music. In 1966, the Maytals' "Bam Bam" won a major national song competition. Its forthright lyrics "I want you to know that I am the man/Who fight for the right, not for the wrong" positioned Mr. Hibbert as an assertive voice for social justice. The victory brought the group media attention throughout Jamaica, but shortly after, while returning home from a tour date on the country's northern coast, Mr. Hibbert was arrested and jailed on the marijuana charge. "Bam Bam" became a reggae standard. In 1982, another song with that title, by the singer Sister Nancy which drew heavily from the Maytals' original entered the lexicon of hip hop as well, sampled by dozens of artists including Gang Starr, Kanye West and Lauryn Hill. Mr. Hibbert had long been the Maytals' main songwriter and charismatic focal point onstage, and by 1969 the group was billed as Toots and the Maytals. In 1970, it charted overseas for the first time, with "Monkey Man" reaching No. 47 in Britain. After "The Harder They Come," the band signed with Island Records and in 1975 released "Funky Kingston," a compilation that drew from two recent albums one of them, confusingly, was also called "Funky Kingston" and had nearly identical cover art and was recognized almost instantly as a reggae classic. The 1975 version includes Mr. Hibbert's takes on John Denver's "Take Me Home, Country Roads" with "West Virginia" in the lyrics changed to "West Jamaica" and the garage rock mainstay "Louie Louie." In its 1950s original, by the American R B singer Richard Berry, "Louie Louie" told the story of a lovesick Jamaican sailor.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
Jay Lynch, an artist, writer and satirist who was a central figure in the underground comics revolution of the 1960s and '70s, died on March 5 at his home in Candor, N.Y. He was 72. His cousin Valerie Snowden said the cause was lung cancer. Mr. Lynch, who had a wry, deadpan sense of humor, held strong views about the importance of underground comics, which differentiated themselves from the mainstream through raunchy and grotesque depictions of sex, drugs and violence. "Underground comix were the most important art movement of the 20th century," he wrote, using the "comics" spelling preferred by underground cartoonists, in the introduction to "Underground Classics: The Transformation of Comics Into Comix" (2009), by Denis Kitchen and James Danky. Mr. Lynch played several roles in the underground comics world. Using a retro style with a tight crosshatching technique, he created comics like "Nard n' Pat," about a conservative man who bickers with a hip cat. "It was sweetly rooted in the past," the cartoonist Art Spiegelman said in an interview. "Two characters who oddly refracted the themes of old comic strips, but now they surrealistically dealt with sex, drugs and cheap thrills." Mr. Lynch founded Bijou Funnies with his fellow cartoonist Skip Williamson to publish his work and that of other artists, and acted as a publicist for the loosely defined industry. "He put people together," said Patrick Rosenkranz, who is writing a biography of Mr. Lynch. "He publicized what was going on. In the back of Bijou, he had small free ads for other underground comics. He was a crossroads figure." But his most significant role might have been as an archivist of underground comics history. He kept nearly everything from his teenage years on: letters, original art, comics, fan magazines, merchandise and publicity campaigns. He donated it all to the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum at Ohio State University. "We have letters between 14 year old Art Spiegelman and 17 year old Jay talking about their favorite EC Comics and Mad magazines and about reading the first issue of Spider Man," said Caitlin McGurk, the museum's associate curator. Mr. Spiegelman recalled that about a year ago he asked Mr. Lynch to let him see some of their old letters. "So he sent me a bulging three inch thick binder with a Xerox of every letter he received from 1961 to 1963," he said. "He kept all this history so well organized, but if you had taken a camera pan of the rest of his daily life, it would have been the opposite." Mr. Lynch's early life was a bit unconventional. Jay Patrick Lynch was born in Orange, N.J., on Jan. 7, 1945, and grew up in Belmar. His father, William, and his mother, the former Alice Mangan, divorced when he was young, and he was raised in his grandmother's house, surrounded by aunts, uncles, his cousin Ms. Snowden and his grandfather. At age 11, he moved with his family to Miami, where he focused on his artwork, painting murals for neighbors' homes and stage sets for school productions. He later moved to Chicago, where he attended the Art Institute. The education that pointed him to his future in underground comics was provided by Mad magazine, whose editorial mastermind was Harvey Kurtzman, and The Realist, a satirical political journal founded by Paul Krassner in 1958. "After reading my first issue of The Realist, I was in a daze which almost bordered on frenzied religious ecstasy," Mr. Lynch was quoted as saying in Mr. Rosenkranz's book "Rebel Visions: The Underground Comix Revolution" (2008). "Here was a magazine that pointed out, through satire, the hypocrisies in the society that nobody else dared even speak of, let alone print discussions of." His path to underground comics took him through fanzines, college humor magazines and alternative newspapers. He contributed to Wild, Cracked, Whack and Sick magazines. Mr. Lynch's comics never reached as broad an audience as some of his more famous brethren's. Mr. Rosenkranz suggested that this might have been because he did not use sex as much in his work as others and was not part of the so called "slash and drip" school of underground cartoonists. "He was more interested in intellectual ideas," he said. Some of Mr. Lynch's work reached the mainstream through Playboy in the 1980s, but more regularly through Topps, the trading card company, which provided an income for artists like Mr. Spiegelman and Mr. Lynch. "They were our Medicis," Mr. Spiegelman said. Over a few decades, Mr. Lynch illustrated Bazooka Joe comics; Garbage Pail Kids, which began as a satire of Cabbage Patch Kids; and Wacky Packages, which parodied consumer culture. He recalled that he was told which food conglomerates not to mock, but with a list of products that he could parody, "I would go to the supermarket and buy those products."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
LOS ANGELES Racing to make good on a 2016 pledge to double female and minority membership by the end of next year, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences said on Monday that it would increase the Oscar voting pool to roughly 9,000 people, a new high. By the academy's count, about 50 percent of the 842 film industry professionals invited to become members this year are women, including stars like Lady Gaga ("A Star Is Born"), Gemma Chan ("Crazy Rich Asians"), Claire Foy ("First Man"), Elisabeth Moss ("Us") and Letitia Wright ("Black Panther"). About 29 percent are minorities, including Jimmy Chin, who co directed the Oscar winning documentary "Free Solo," and the "Girls Trip" writer Tracy Oliver. Other notable invitees include the Scottish singer songwriter Annie Lennox; Jamie Bell, whose credits include "Billy Elliot" and "Rocketman"; and Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, the creative team behind movies like "Spider Man: Into the Spider Verse." The new class would not do much to change the overall makeup of the elite group. If all the invitations are accepted some people have declined in the past, one being Woody Allen female membership will rise to 32 percent from 31 percent, according to the academy. The percentage of minority members would remain 16.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
Regarding President Trump's peace plan for the Israeli Palestinian conflict, the instant conventional wisdom is that it's a geopolitical nonstarter, a gift to Benjamin Netanyahu and an electoral ploy by the president to win Jewish votes in Florida rather than Palestinian hearts in Ramallah. It may be all of those things. But nobody will benefit less from a curt dismissal of the plan than the Palestinians themselves, whose leaders are again letting history pass them by. The record of Arab Israeli peace efforts can be summed up succinctly: Nearly every time the Arab side said no, it wound up with less. That was true after it rejected the 1947 U.N. Partition Plan, which would have created a Palestinian state on a much larger footprint than the one that was left after Israel's war of independence. It was true in 1967, after Jordan refused Israel's entreaties not to attack, which resulted in the end of Jordanian rule in the West Bank. It was true in 2000, when Syria rejected an Israeli offer to return the Golan Heights, which ultimately led to U.S. recognition of Israeli sovereignty of that territory. It was true later the same year, after Yasir Arafat refused Israel's offer of a Palestinian state with a capital in East Jerusalem, which led to two decades of terrorism, Palestinian civil war, the collapse of the Israeli peace camp and the situation we have now. It's in that pattern that the blunt rejection by Palestinian leaders of the Trump plan the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, denounced it as a "conspiracy deal" should be seen. Refusal today will almost inevitably lead to getting less tomorrow. That isn't to say that the plan, as it now stands, can come as anything but a disappointment to most Palestinians. It allows Israel to annex its West Bank settlements and the long Jordan Valley. It concedes full Israeli sovereignty over an undivided Jerusalem. It conditions eventual Palestinian statehood on full demilitarization of a Palestinian state and the disarming of Hamas. It compensates Palestinians for lost territories in the West Bank with remote territories near the Egyptian border. The map of a future Palestine looks less like an ordinary state than it does the M.R.I. of a lung or kidney. Then again, much of what the plan gives to Israel, Israel already has and will never relinquish which explains why the plan was hailed not only by Netanyahu but also by his centrist rival Benny Gantz. Critics of Israeli policy often insist that a Palestinian state is necessary to preserve Israel as a Jewish democracy. True enough. But in that case, those critics should respect the painful conclusions Israelis have drawn about just what kind of Palestinian state they can safely accept. More important, however, is what the plan offers ordinary Palestinians and what it demands of their leaders. What it offers is a sovereign state, mostly contiguous territory, the return of prisoners, a link to connect Gaza and the West Bank, and 50 billion in economic assistance. What it demands is an end to anti Jewish bigotry in school curriculums, the restoration of legitimate political authority in Gaza and the dismantling of terrorist militias. Taken together, this would be a historic achievement, not the "scam" that liberal critics of the deal claim. The purpose of a Palestinian state ought to be to deliver dramatically better prospects for the Palestinian people, not tokens of self importance for their kleptocratic and repressive leaders. That begins with improving the quality of Palestinian governance, first of all by replacing leaders whose principal interests lie in perpetuating their misrule. If Abbas now in the 16th year of his elected four year term of office really had Palestinian interests at heart, he would step down. So would Hamas's cruel and cynical leaders in Gaza. That the peace plan insists on the latter isn't an obstacle to Palestinian statehood. It's a prerequisite for it. At the same time, it's also essential to temper Palestinian expectations. The Jewish state has thrived in part because, dayenu, it has always been prepared to make do with less. The Palestinian tragedy has been the direct result of taking the opposite approach: of insisting on the maximum rather than working toward the plausible. For all the talk about Trump's plan being dead on arrival, it says something that it has been met with an open mind by some Arab states, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. They know only too well that the Arab world has more important challenges to deal with than Palestinian statehood. They know, too, that decades of relentless hostility toward the Jewish state have been a stupendous mistake. The best thing the Arab world could do for itself is learn from Israel, not demonize it. That ought to go for the Palestinians as well. The old cliche about Palestinians never missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity has, sadly, more than a bit of truth in it. Nobody ought to condemn them to make the same mistake again. 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.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Opinion
Visitors to Google's home page on Wednesday, the first day of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, were greeted by a doodle of several objects hanging above a woman kneeling on a mat: the Japanese American artist Ruth Asawa. Don't miss an event: Subscribe to the Times Culture Calendar. Asawa, who died at 87 in 2013, was best known for creating intricate, woven wire sculptures, many of them hanging mobiles. She lived in San Francisco and created several public fountains around the city, including one near Union Square that she completed in 1972 with the help of 200 schoolchildren.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
Fox News said Friday that Kimberly Guilfoyle, a longtime co host of the afternoon panel show "The Five," had left the network, an abrupt end to a 12 year tenure during which she became one of the cable news channel's most recognizable pundits. Best known for her day job in the Fox News commentariat, Ms. Guilfoyle, 49, had become an increasingly prominent figure in Republican politics. President Trump considered hiring her as his White House press secretary, telling allies that he was impressed with her presence on TV. (Ms. Guilfoyle stoked talk of the potential role by giving an interview about it to a paper based near her native San Francisco.) In the early 2000s, she was married to the liberal politician Gavin Newsom, now the lieutenant governor of California. She recently revealed that she is dating the president's son Donald J. Trump Jr., a relationship that had been a source of tension with some journalists in the network's newsroom.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
"I'm good at landing on my feet," Joey Himelfarb, 61, said. But he has never been unemployed for this long. Joey Himelfarb estimates that in his 25 years in sales, hawking everything from Hewlett Packard computers to cars and swimming pools, he has been laid off or downsized at least a half dozen times. The most recent occasion came in April, when he got a call from the chief executive officer of the start up in northern Virginia that had hired him 10 months earlier. The company sells systems that extract data from video. Mr. Himelfarb worked remotely from his apartment in Belle Mead, N.J. "I was working my tail off," he said. "We were busy." But now, the boss told him, because of the coronavirus pandemic, the company could no longer afford his mid five figure salary. You will never meet a more relentlessly upbeat job seeker. "I'm good at landing on my feet," Mr. Himelfarb said. "I'm good at networking." His business card reads, "Positive Beats Negative Every Day." But Mr. Himelfarb, 61, has never been unemployed for this long. He managed financially as long the federal relief program supplemented his 346 weekly unemployment check with an additional 600. That extra support has ended, forcing him to dip into his savings. Economists who study the employment and retirement of older Americans are worried about people like him. Once, older workers benefited from a so called experience premium: Because of their years on the job, they earned more than younger employees and were less likely to be laid off during downturns. But "the premium has been shrinking over time," said Richard Johnson, an economist at the Urban Institute who studies employment and retirement among older adults. Workplaces have grown steadily less friendly to older workers, who lost bargaining power as unions weakened, the gig economy arose and age discrimination laws remained laxly enforced. Even before the pandemic, the position of this group had become precarious. An Urban Institute study that followed about 2,000 older workers from 1992 to 2016 found that about half suffered involuntary job separations, despite the sample having stable full time employment and higher education levels than most adults in their 50s and above. The coronavirus and the resulting recession have intensified their job insecurity, said Teresa Ghilarducci, a labor economist at the New School. "It accelerated the trend toward involuntary retirement a polite way of saying 'being pushed out of the labor market.'" The New School's Retirement Equity Lab reported in early August that 2.9 million workers ages 55 to 70 had left the labor market since March meaning that they were neither working nor actively job hunting and projected that another 1.1 million might do so by November. "They're exiting the labor force at twice the rate they were during the Great Recession" of 2007 to 2009, Dr. Ghilarducci said. In July, more than 9 percent of workers over age 65 were unemployed, according to an Urban Institute analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data. Using a broader definition, including those employed part time who would prefer full time positions and those not working for other reasons, the proportion rises to 16.5 percent a sharp decline from the spring, but still a sobering number. Unemployment rose higher still for older women, Black and Latino workers, and those without college degrees, Dr. Johnson found. "In good times and bad, unemployment is always higher for people of color and people with lower education," he said. Such disparities "become even more pronounced during a recession." Researchers can't yet say what role health concerns have played in the displacement of older workers. Only about a third can work from home, Dr. Ghilarducci said, so fears of contracting the coronavirus at workplaces may prevent some from returning to work. It's more likely, she said, that employers are quicker to rehire younger people, who they think will cost less in health benefits and stay on the job longer. Industries where older workers have been hardest hit include construction, manufacturing, transportation and warehousing, education and other nonprofessional services, the Urban Institute found. In leisure and hospitality, more than a third of workers over 55 lost their jobs. Among them is Becky Schaffner, 64, who had worked at the Omaha Marriott since the hotel opened 39 years ago, most recently as an administrative assistant in sales, making 16 an hour. "I loved my job," she said. "Talking to people from all over. Taking care of their needs." Ms. Schaffner was furloughed along with most of her co workers in mid March, then laid off in July. Now that the 600 federal supplement has ended, her unemployment comes to 338 weekly, making it hard to cover the mortgage on her Fremont, Neb., home. A knitter and needlewoman, Ms. Schaffner has for years held a part time job at Michaels, the crafts chain. Working there boosts her morale, she said, but every dollar she earns is deducted from her unemployment. Several weeks spent submitting online applications have so far yielded three or four no thanks form letters and one interview that seemed to go well, but the employer hired someone else. "It takes the air out of your balloon," Ms. Schaffner said. Job losses at older ages, when there is less time to recover, can cause financial damage that ripples into later life. It takes older workers longer to get rehired, for instance. During the Great Recession, Dr. Johnson has reported, only 41 percent of laid off workers over age 62 found employment within 18 months, compared with 78 percent of those ages 25 to 49. After involuntary job separations, only one in 10 older workers ever earned as much again; at age 65, their median household income was 14 percent lower than for those who were not pushed out. Such patterns have economists predicting downward mobility for the middle class. Lower income groups have always struggled in retirement and rely on Social Security, Dr. Ghilarducci noted. But if they endure protracted unemployment or involuntary retirement, "it's middle class older workers who will draw down their nest eggs," years before they had planned. They may tap Social Security early, permanently reducing their benefits. "They also have access to credit and can take a second mortgage or max out a credit card and go into debt," she added. She and other economists have urged Congress to again raise unemployment benefits to keep older workers from falling into poverty. Congress could also pass legislation making age discrimination suits easier to win, after a 2009 Supreme Court decision made it more difficult.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
When Charles Carlini, a jazz impresario, moved recently, he confronted two decades of furniture and accumulated memorabilia duplicate copies of signed books, vinyl LPs, reams of publicity photos, a CD rack from Tower Records. But rather than taking it with him to his new apartment, he took the opportunity to declutter the Midtown prewar he was leaving. "That was part of the reason for the move," he said. "Just to unload 20 some years of accruing." In doing so, Mr. Carlini faced a situation that will be familiar to many New Yorkers. Decluttering may be liberating, but when you live in the city and you have a lot of junk, how do you dispose of it? You can't hold a yard sale if you don't have a yard. As it turns out, you don't need a yard. All you need is the right app or website. Mr. Carlini and others have discovered that there are apps and sites to simplify selling, streamline the posting process, protect buyers and sellers from scams, arrange furniture delivery and handle the exchange of goods and cash, so that sellers and buyers never have to meet face to face. As Mr. Carlini put it, referring to the new online options, "It's Craigslist on steroids." And, of course, Craigslist, the granddaddy of free online classified listings, has several apps as well. "Craigslist is the workhorse," Mr. Carlini said. "But I have been having more success with 5Miles, which I supplemented with OfferUp and LetGo." In a single week, he said, he sold a vacuum cleaner, two light fixtures, a mirror, a microwave, a Fender bass soft case, a mini fridge, a sofa bed and a bookshelf. "I am living like a Zen monk," he said, "and I'm loving it." Below are eight apps and websites that will help you dispose of your stuff. The 5miles app and website solve a problem common on many platforms for selling your stuff: As each new item posts, yours is pushed down the list. With a free feature called "boost," you can move your item back to the top every four hours. Other apps have similar features, but they aren't free. AptDeco is not an app, but the website offers buying, selling and delivery services in New York City and Washington. The app has other fees, though: If you want to use "sales tools" like marking an item "must go" or adding a "click to call" button that lets prospective buyers call you with one touch, you'll pay 2 to 5. The app tries to discourage scammers from using multiple identities. By connecting email addresses, phone numbers and Facebook pages and requiring two of them for "certification" it makes it easier to confirm that users are who they say they are. This is also one of the few apps that lets users post services as well as goods, so you can sell your fish tank and hire someone to deliver it, all in the same place. The app "seems to be the one that is getting me all of the action," said Mr. Carlini, who also enjoyed touches like the coin drop sound the app makes for some notifications. "I was having so much fun with this." LetGo reduces typing to streamline selling. It recognizes what you are selling from your photos and writes the headline for you. It also lets buyers and sellers text each other from a list of stock phrases, like "Yes, it's still for sale" and "What's your offer?" Several of these apps let users connect their posts to social media sites like Twitter and Facebook, as well as to other sales sites like Craigslist and Etsy, but LetGo does it in a novel way: A feature called the "commercializer" digitally places your item in a parody video an action movie trailer, say, starring Dolph Lundgren that you can post on social media or send as a text. And it's all free. Although the AptDeco site has no app, it's still worth a look if you live near New York City or Washington the only areas where it is currently available because it offers pickup and delivery services. But this level of service comes at a price: The site takes a cut of your sale which can be as much as 29 percent on top of the delivery fee, which varies depending on size. Extra large items requiring a team of three or more to move are generally 145; large items like beds and sofas are 95; and small items like lamps are 35. OfferUp lets users sell a variety of goods. And while it doesn't process payments like many of these services do, it doesn't charge fees either. The one exception: a boost feature called "bump" that moves your item back to the top of the queue for 2. The app's "TruYou" program aims to weed out scammers by requiring a photo of your driver's license and access to your Facebook page. Of course, the downside of sharing your sign in information is that you're giving the app access to your public profile, friend list and email addresses. Some users have also reported problems getting certified, and complained about a lack of customer support. Poshmark specializes in clothing (men's, women's and children's) and accessories. It tends to have higher end apparel than the apps that sell everything and it takes a 20 percent commission but it processes transactions with major credit cards, Apple Pay, Android Pay, PayPal and Venmo. It also facilitates shipping by sending the seller a prepaid label after a sale. Items that sell for more than 500 go to Poshmark before they are sent to buyers to ensure they are authentic and in the condition advertised. Poshmark also holds virtual events with themes like "Kate Spade, Tory Burch, J. Crew, Lilly Pulitzer, Anthropologie Kendra Scott Party." Members not only host these parties but choose others' listings to include, and there can be a lot of politicking involved. "It's a big honor to be chosen as a host," said Beth Cooper, a member who lives in Baltimore. She said that other members message the host in an effort to ingratiate themselves. "It's high school 'Mean Girls' for clothes, but it works." Pronounced "curb," this app was recently bought by the decorating site Apartment Therapy, which is rebranding it as Apartment Therapy Marketplace. The app specializes in furniture and home goods listings, which are free. But there is a 10 percent fee for handling credit card transactions; when a sale is complete, funds are transferred to the seller's bank account. To boost a listing to the top of the queue, the app charges a "credit," which can be purchased for 40 cents to 1, depending on how many are bought at once. The app certifies that users are who they say they are with a check mark after they have used a credit card to complete a purchase or buy credits. It also provides a money back guarantee: If an item doesn't live up to the description, it is returned to the seller, and the Marketplace pays the shipping both ways. ThredUp works something like a consignment shop, sending users a "clean out bag" they can fill with a laundry basket's worth of women's and children's clothes and accessories. ThredUp pays the shipping costs if the items are donated; if they are for sale, a "bag fee" of up to 10 is deducted from the payout. But ThredUp is choosy: It prefers "like new" items from 35,000 specified brands. If items are rejected, sellers can pay a 11 fee to have them returned; otherwise, they will be resold elsewhere or recycled. "Nothing ends up in a landfill," said ThredUp's chief executive, James Reinhart. ThredUp determines which items sellers will get paid for immediately on receipt, and which will be paid for only after a sale. In either case, sellers receive 5 percent to 80 percent of the price ThredUp initially lists the item for. Chairish alters the photos you post, to make furniture look as though it was shot in a studio with a white backdrop. It also has an augmented reality feature that lets the buyer take a picture superimposing whatever they are thinking of purchasing onto a room in their home, to see how it would look there. It is also one of the better organized apps, making it comparatively simple for buyers to search by category and refine a search by features like color, price and style. Chairish uses a tiered commission system that takes 20 percent of the first 2,500 of a sale, 12 percent of the next 2,501 to 25,000, and 3 percent of anything above 25,000. The site will arrange flat rate shipping and charge it to the buyer; the seller also has the option of picking up the tab. The cost ranges from 10 to 300, but for "white glove" shipping which includes packing, crating, insuring and cleanup after delivery it can top 1,000.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
For many people, an important financial task looms amid December holiday celebrations: taking required withdrawals from retirement accounts by the end of the year. After savers turn 70 1/2 , they typically must begin taking required minimum distributions each year from their individual retirement accounts and 401(k)'s. The requirement applies to most types of I.R.A.s, including traditional, Simple (Savings Incentive Match Plan for Employees) and S.E.P. (Simplified Employee Pension) accounts. Roth I.R.A.s. are an exception. They have no required minimum distribution because they are funded with after tax money, said Howard Milove, a certified public accountant with Access Wealth Planning in Roseland, N.J. Generally, the rules apply to 401(k) accounts only if you have stopped working. In many cases, if you are still working, you can probably wait until you retire to start making withdrawals, said Maura Cassidy, vice president of retirement at Fidelity Investments. The Internal Revenue Service requires the distributions because most retirement accounts enable people to postpone paying taxes on the money, to encourage saving. But the government won't allow the deferral of taxes indefinitely, since it needs revenue. So it sets rules for when the money must be withdrawn. As of early November, however, Fidelity reported that about half of its 970,000 I.R.A. customers hadn't made any required withdrawals for 2017, while an additional 12 percent had taken a partial withdrawal. Some people may have trouble adjusting to the idea of taking money out of retirement accounts after decades of putting cash into them, Ms. Cassidy said. Or it may be that because the stock market has been doing well, people are more reluctant than usual about taking money out of equities. Whatever the reason, neglecting to make the withdrawal on time can be costly, said Frank Fiumecaldo, a financial planner and director of client services at wealth manager R. W. Roge Company in Bohemia, N.Y. You may face a penalty of 50 percent of the money you didn't withdraw. If, for instance, you were required to take out 3,000 but didn't, you could owe a penalty of 1,500. It's possible to have the penalty waived by filing a form with the I.R.S. and offering a reasonable explanation, he said. But why risk it? If you don't need the money right away for living expenses, you can invest it in a taxable account. Or you can donate it to charity. As long as the money up to 100,000 goes directly to the charitable organization, you'll avoid paying income taxes on it (although you can't claim a tax deduction for the gift), Ms. Cassidy 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.' Clients who depend on their R.M.D.s to meet regular living expenses often ask to have the funds dispensed monthly, Mr. Fiumecaldo said. Here are some questions and answers about required minimum distributions: Is the deadline for R.M.D.s always at the end of year? You must make an initial withdrawal by April 1 of the year after you turned 70 1/2 . Then, after the first distribution, the annual deadline switches to Dec. 31. So if you turned 70 1/2 in 2017 (meaning, you were born between July 1, 1946, and June 30, 1947, Ms. Cassidy said), you can wait another three months to make an initial withdrawal. But be aware that there's a potential downside to waiting, depending on your specific financial situation, Mr. Milove said. If you delay your first withdrawal to early 2018, you won't have to worry about paying a penalty. But you'll have to take another annual distribution for 2018 by the end of the year. Taking two withdrawals in one year will increase your taxable income. "You could push yourself into a higher tax bracket," Mr. Milove said. On the other hand, say you worked during part of the year you turned 70 1/2 . Adding an R.M.D. to the income from your job might also push you into a higher tax bracket. So it might be better to wait and take two distributions the next year. "There are times when it makes sense," Mr. Fiumecaldo said. It's helpful to consult with a tax adviser or financial planner, he said, to see what works best for you.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Your Money
The closure of theaters would seem to have gravely wounded "The Painted Bird," whose nonstop horrors and nearly three hour length demand a concentrated immersion. Whether the Czech screenwriter producer director Vaclav Marhoul's ambitious adaptation of Jerzy Kosinski's 1965 novel quite translates to the screen is another matter. A boy (Petr Kotlar) who barely speaks and, until the end, goes pointedly unnamed passes from person to person in the Eastern European countryside during World War II. He witnesses violence and bears it, picked apart like the bluntly metaphorical fowl of the title a bird marked with paint and then sent skyward only to be attacked by its fellows.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
In a move intended to give Americans greater control over their medical information, the Trump administration announced broad new rules on Monday that will allow people for the first time to use apps of their choice to retrieve data like their blood test results directly from their health providers. The Department of Health and Human Services said the new system was intended to make it as easy for people to manage their health care on smartphones as it is for them to use apps to manage their finances. Giving people access to their medical records via mobile apps is a major milestone for patient rights, even as it may heighten risks to patient privacy. Prominent organizations like the American Medical Association have warned that, without accompanying federal safeguards, the new rules could expose people who share their diagnoses and other intimate medical details with consumer apps to serious data abuses. Although Americans have had the legal right to obtain a copy of their personal health information for two decades, many people face obstacles in getting that data from providers. Some physicians still require patients to pick up computer disks or even photocopies of their records in person. Some medical centers use online portals that offer access to basic health data, like immunizations, but often do not include information like doctors' consultation notes that might help patients better understand their conditions and track their progress. The new rules are intended to shift that power imbalance toward the patient. They will for first the time require doctors and medical centers to send a core set of medical data directly to third party apps, like Apple's Health Records, after a patient has authorized the information exchange. In addition to lab test results and vital signs, the data will include clinical notes about a patient's surgeries, hospital stays, imaging tests and pathology results. Dr. Don Rucker, the federal health department's national coordinator for health information technology, said access to medical data through consumer apps would give people more detailed insights into their health and greater choices over their health care. He compared it to ride hailing apps like Uber and Lyft that let consumers make pricing choices in advance. "We as patients have not gotten really anywhere near the benefits from modern computing that we could or should get," Dr. Rucker said. "The ability of smartphones to take the care with you, to be continuous, to be engaging, is going to allow totally different ways of thinking about chronic illness." Jackie Nelson, a retired police evidence officer in Ormond Beach, Fla., said she hoped the new rules would eliminate the kinds of obstacles she recently experienced. When she moved from Texas, she said, her doctor there asked her to pay an exorbitant fee more than a thousand dollars to provide her with a copy of her medical records. "People like myself, I'm a senior, I'm on Social Security I don't have a thousand dollars to pay for my records," said Ms. Nelson, who is managing multiple health conditions. She said she hoped the new data access rules would "stop doctors from withholding" patients' data and "make the doctor accountable for what they are doing." Health regulators are opening patient access to their medical records against a backdrop of a virtual gold rush for Americans' health data by hundreds of companies. So many entities have access to Americans' medical records including identifiable medical data and pseudonymous files that track people by ID codes that it can seem easier for third parties to acquire patient data than patients themselves. Dozens of professional medical organizations and health industry groups have pushed back against the rules, warning that federal privacy protections, which limit how health providers and insurers may use and share medical records, no longer apply once patients transfer their data to consumer apps. "Apps frequently do not provide patients with clear terms of how that data will be used licensing patients' data for marketing purposes, leasing or lending aggregated personal information to third parties, or outright selling it," Dr. James L. Madara, the chief executive of the American Medical Association, wrote in public comments to health regulators last year. "These practices jeopardize patient privacy." Dr. Rucker, the health department's technology coordinator, said the new rules take patient privacy into account. When patients initiate the data sharing process with apps, he said, their providers will be able to inform them about privacy risks. But even federal health regulators acknowledge the privacy risks. An infographic on patient data rights on the health agency's website warns: "Be careful when sending your health information to a mobile application" because health providers are "no longer responsible for the security of your health information after it is sent to a third party." The rules introduced on Monday are part of a federal effort to centralize medical data online in the hopes of helping doctors get a fuller picture of patient health and enabling patients to make more informed treatment choices. One of the rules requires vendors of electronic health records to adopt software known as application programming interfaces, or A.P.I.s. to enable providers to send medical record data directly to patient authorized apps. Another rule similarly requires Medicare and Medicaid plans to adopt A.P.I.s. That software will enable people to use apps to get their insurance claims and benefit information. Health providers and health record vendors will have two years to comply with the A.P.I. requirements. Electronic health record vendors that impede such data sharing a practice called "information blocking" could be fined up to 1 million per violation. Doctors accused of information blocking could be subject to federal investigation. Health technology executives welcomed the new requirements, but said the initial data set available to patients through apps would be limited to more basic information like prescription drug history and not data like radiology images. "It's a decent amount of data if you're relatively healthy and you just want to check on what your lab test results were," said Deven McGraw, the chief regulatory officer at Ciitizen, a start up that helps people obtain and centralize medical records from multiple providers. "But it's not enough data if you're really sick and you need that record." But people who choose to send their sensitive medical data to consumer apps will largely be left on their own as far as patient privacy is concerned. While Apple has said its Health Records app does not have access to users' medical information because it is encrypted and stored locally on their iPhones, other apps may share or sell patient data. Dr. Rucker, the health regulator, said people would choose the health data app brands they trusted. "Just like with banks, just like with brokerage firms, people will go to organizations they trust with their data," he said. "We don't put our money into, you know, some guy running a bank out of a pickup truck on the corner. We go to someone who has a clear brand."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
Lounge chairs are defining pieces in most living rooms, but they take up a lot of space. And if your living room is on the small side, that can create problems. "One of the biggest mistakes people make is buying furniture that's the wrong scale for the space," said Sheila Bridges, the New York based interior designer. Giant lounge chairs, she noted, can easily overwhelm a small room. But there are plenty of compact lounge chairs that provide an outsize dose of style and comfort in a smaller than average footprint. "When you scale smaller, there's an opportunity to add more things, which is how you build a nice looking interior space," Ms. Bridges said. "It's always easier to add to the furniture than subtract, once you've bought it."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
Though "The Devil Wears Prada" may have been unintentionally documentary, not every viper pit cliche about fashion and its affiliates holds true. The loopy, fragile and gifted individuals who populate that world also often operate as an extended family, albeit a loose knit and occasionally dysfunctional one. Seldom is this more evident than when trouble befalls one of their own. Such is the case with Pat Cleveland, 68, a superstar model celebrated for her catwalk swirls, her irrepressible spirit and her occasionally dotty New Age pronouncements. Not long after a stellar March appearance in a Tommy Hilfiger show during Paris Fashion Week, Ms. Cleveland returned to France from her home in southern New Jersey she and her husband, the former model Paul Van Ravenstein, raise peacocks there to film a L'Oreal ad with her daughter, Anna Cleveland, also a model, and was taken ill. A doctor at Le Meurice hotel prescribed pain relievers for what were thought to be ordinary stomach complaints and suggested she check back with him in the morning. By then her condition had worsened, and she was advised to check herself into the American Hospital of Paris immediately. "The doctor there said, 'We just got you in time,'" Mr. Van Ravenstein said this week in a Skype call from the French capital, where Ms. Cleveland is recovering from emergency surgery for colon cancer. "She could have died."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
When the Paul Taylor Dance Company announced its big plans last month to reinvent itself in the coming year as Paul Taylor's American Modern Dance few definitive details made clear what this enterprise would look like. Perhaps the most concrete news: The company, from here on, will perform (sometimes) with live music. At the Michael Schimmel Center for the Arts at Pace University, the troupe's junior ensemble, Taylor 2, is giving us a glimpse of that future. On Thursday, from a section of seats in the audience, the 13 members of the chamber orchestra American Virtuosi, led by Kenneth Hamrick, provided bracing, nuanced accompaniment for Mr. Taylor's "Airs," "The Uncommitted" and, finally, the celebrated and celebratory "Esplanade." The only drawback to this arrangement was the music's tendency to upstage the dancing, though increasingly less so throughout the evening, as the six dancers sank more deeply into their roles. (You can't not throw yourself into "Esplanade.") The disparity was most pointed during the joyous, wistful "Airs" (1978), in which Taylor hallmarks proud, scurrying runs or low, darting leaps felt tepid compared with the lilting Handel overture. The dancers, who vary in skill level, abandoned some of that decorum for "The Uncommitted." This more visceral piece from 2011, to plangent Arvo Part, deploys one anguished soloist after the next in the center of the stage. Each is swept up by a tempestuous ensemble and swiftly replaced by another; everyone here is equally alone. Later, they direct that tormented energy toward one another: Hank Bamberger and Gabriel Speiller hurl themselves through a convincing dance fight, as others enact slow motion brawls in the background.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week's most notable new songs and videos. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at theplaylist nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once a week blast of our pop music coverage. Beyonce brings full gospel dynamics and sets aside the original Broadway score in her showpiece for the remake of "The Lion King." She belts, "Your destiny is coming close stand up and fight!" The song's intro chants "Long live the king" in Swahili, but Beyonce's exhortation is not just for this lion king it's for every righteous striver facing doubts. Her vocal, urged on by a choir, builds in wave after wave, from breathy eagerness to full throated cry, then topped by a different kind of humility at its peak: just piano and Beyonce's soprano, envisioning a biblical transcendence, "to be one with the Great I Am." JON PARELES The good news is that even though pop music has iterated past him a couple of times over, Justin Bieber is nimble enough to keep up. On this new version of Billie Eilish's swinging "Bad Guy," Bieber sings with the same robot doing cabaret cadence as his host. He touches on his tattoos, his jewelry, his desire for more sleep a Sinatra for the SoundCloud era. JON CARAMANICA A convincing Southern rock stomper from Angelica Garcia, who has a ferociously quavering voice and an even more ferocious sense of purpose. "It Don't Hinder Me" is a statement of cultural pride and social resistance: "I want the cooking that my grandma made/I want the bed that I was yelled at to make." This sharp song is rowdier and swampier than Garcia's 2016 debut album "Medicine for Birds," a sign of a singer getting ever more comfortable, and ever less bothered. CARAMANICA As of now there is no American award not the Grammy, not the Pulitzer, not the Oscar or the Tony that could adequately reward the miracle that is the never ending rollout of "Old Town Road." Each time it courts death, it pivots. This latest version is the one you'd ask for in a fantasy but never think was possible. Billy Ray Cyrus is still here, crooning. And then there's Young Thug, less nonsensical than usual, game to be in on the joke. But the crowning moment is at the end, with the arrival of the viral yodeling preteen Mason Ramsey, who shows up to sing about his Razor scooter, cows and his giddy up. It's the perfect twist ending to this internet born and enabled saga: meme recognize meme. CARAMANICA Ed Sheeran: Successful enough and powerful enough and deep enough into his career to orchestrate an opportunity to rap on the same song as Eminem and 50 Cent; rhymes "misfit" with "Ipswich." Eminem: Far enough removed from the peak of his success and the peak of his talent that the opportunity to rap alongside Ed Sheeran is not an automatic no; over delivers, perhaps out of mild embarrassment. 50 Cent: Tries out a Sugarhill Gang flow, hopes no one is looking. CARAMANICA Swelling, underwater electric bass; a grainy, distorted guitar that travels from woozy chords to neatly chopped rhythm; a high, corkscrewing horn part that could have been plucked off a radio signal in the Balkans, or maybe North Africa. You'd expect nothing less than this absorbing mix from Nerija, a septet to watch of young London musicians. The group includes the much discussed young tenor saxophonist Nubya Garcia and the trumpeter Sheila Maurice Grey, who wrote this tune and takes a rewarding solo across most of the track. Nerija has a debut album, "Blume," due Aug. 2. RUSSONELLO Here's a song about dreaming about a song about death: "It had the most moving chord changes/She was certain the lyrics went about burying someone's ashes and then having a cigarette." Jenny Hval starts it as a bemused incantation over misty chords; then the beat comes in, the keyboards start answering her with hooks, and her meta pop musings verge on turning into pop themselves. PARELES Victor Gould never sounds totally at ease at the piano, but that doesn't mean he's not in control. He plays in shapely, looping harmonies, with debts to Hank Jones and Cedar Walton, but there's some physical conflict, some audible work, in each gesture. This is what sets him apart and underneath the sturdy, well balanced flow of his arrangements, it's the real reward. "October" gives a glimpse of his skills as an arranger here, for jazz sextet and strings and his increasingly distinctive voice as an improviser. The track comes from Gould's new album, "Thoughts Become Things." RUSSONELLO	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
And next year, the 90 minute, 11 actor play is coming to Broadway. "The Minutes," directed by Anna D. Shapiro and produced by Jeffrey Richards and Steve Traxler, will begin performances in February. Neither a cast nor a theater has been announced. News and reviews of Broadway and beyond: Sign up for our free weekly Theater Update The play is one of two by Mr. Letts slated to run on Broadway this season; the other is "Linda Vista," which is to be presented this fall by Second Stage Theater. He has had two previous plays on Broadway "August: Osage County" in 2007, and "Superior Donuts" in 2009 and is currently starring on Broadway in a revival of "All My Sons." The producer Scott Rudin had previously announced an intention to bring "The Minutes" to Broadway, but is no longer attached. "I wrote three plays in quick succession 'Mary Page Marlowe' and 'Linda Vista' and 'The Minutes,' and it's been a job to get them to New York they've all had their bumps in the road," Mr. Letts said. "But I'm really happy 'The Minutes' is coming to Broadway, and happy about the timing, because it's politically themed, and as we round the curve here into 2020, I know a lot of people are interested in the topic." The play, set in a fictional town called Big Cherry, explores the fractious American political scene through the dynamics of a government meeting. Mr. Letts began work on it before the 2016 election, and finished afterward.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
LONDON Greg Stevenson was trying to refinance the mortgage on his four bedroom home in eastern England when things started going awry. An attempt by his bank, TSB, to shift data to a new computer system had gone spectacularly wrong. For several maddening days, he could not connect to his account, transfer funds or reach anybody at the bank for help. "I felt abandoned," said Mr. Stevenson, a 31 year old software developer. "I needed to be moving money around, and I needed access to my bank." The systems failure in April, affecting nearly two million TSB customers, was a breaking point for Mr. Stevenson. He moved his money to Monzo, a British start up that is among a growing number in Europe offering checking accounts and A.T.M. cards, but lack physical branches everything is done through an app. So called fintech companies have sought to take on the world's biggest banks for years, but only recently have companies like Monzo begun to build a critical mass. Millions of customers across Europe, most in their 20s or 30s, have signed up over the past two years. And thanks to favorable regulations in the region and an influx of venture capital, that shift is accelerating. Here in Britain, officials have been concerned about the power of large banks in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, and they see the start ups as weakening the hold of traditional lenders. The authorities have adopted policies such as a "regulatory sandbox," allowing what are known as challenger banks to test new financial products and get feedback from regulators before proposing them to customers. In contrast, while some policymakers in the United States are trying to make it easier to open new banks, progress has been slow. States do not want to cede oversight, and without a license, American financial start ups must set up partnerships with traditional banks to hold deposits. Support from regulators in Europe has given momentum to companies entering the market there. In addition to making slicker apps, the companies have slashed fees for spending overseas and wiring money. Last year, Monzo became one of the first challenger banks to receive a license allowing it to hold customers' deposits on its own, a milestone no start up in the United States has achieved. "Our regulator is pretty forward thinking," said Tom Blomfield, 33, the co founder and chief executive of Monzo, referring to Britain. But Mr. Blomfield who sat for an interview at his London apartment after walking the office dog, a cockapoo named Bingo argues that day to day retail banking has been relatively unaffected. Monzo, like other start up banks, still has to figure out how to be profitable. But it has already begun to reimagine banking for an increasingly cashless society. Customers of the future won't need branches when they can text a customer service representative. Detailed spending breakdowns help account holders control their spending. Doing without retail space and tellers keeps costs down, allowing the company to reduce fees and hire programmers. "The internet lets you run these traditional businesses at a fraction of the cost," Mr. Blomfield said. The company sends celebratory GIFs on Twitter to new customers, and offers a bright coral color A.T.M. card that is Instagram ready. Users can visit the office to see what's being worked on, test new features and perhaps even pet Bingo. Or they can view the company's product road map, published online. Monzo got started with crowdfunding and remains a minnow compared with the giants of British banking, but customers notably younger, wealthier ones are signing up. Roughly 75 percent of Monzo's 900,000 clients are under 40, split evenly between men and women. On average, they make more than 50,000 pounds, or about 65,000, a year, nearly double the median British salary, and Monzo is adding more than 2,000 customers a day. Digital banks face innumerable issues, though. Chief among them is how they will make money. A slick app and basic checking accounts are unlikely to be enough, unless they can offer services like mortgages and other loans that come with higher interest rates. Last year, Monzo's losses quadrupled to PS33.1 million. The company is developing a marketplace where customers can shop for financial services offered by other firms, with Monzo collecting a fee. In the meantime, it makes some money from overdraft and A.T.M. charges, and is experimenting with giving out short term loans of up to PS1,000. As they expand, these start ups will also face more regulatory scrutiny and targeting by fraudsters. Traditional banks must ensure, for example, that a certain proportion of the deposits they hold are kept in reserve, as a safety net. Such policies help guarantee that a bank will not lose its customers' money, but they make it harder to turn a profit. Now that Monzo holds customer deposits, it must also meet these requirements. Start ups also have to fight inertia. People rarely change banks, whether because of an existing mortgage or the headache of updating a Netflix account. Less than a quarter of Monzo's customers deposit their paychecks into their accounts; most use it as an add on, to take advantage of perks like cheaper foreign exchange transactions. Even Mr. Stevenson, who does his day to day banking with Monzo, had to go to another local lender to refinance. "The big question is, will millions of people switch their primary transaction accounts, where their checks get deposited and where they pay their bills, and do their key transactions," said Hans Morris, a former executive at Citigroup and Visa who now manages Nyca, a New York venture capital fund. "If you're making a historical bet, you would say that they aren't going to switch." At the same time, traditional banks are adapting. JPMorgan is testing a mobile focused banking service called Finn, which offers savings and budgeting tools similar to those of Monzo. Goldman Sachs has introduced Marcus, an online savings and lending product that has more than 1.5 million customers. Mr. Blomfield is confident his company's young customer base will eventually turn to Monzo for other, more lucrative, financial services that it intends to eventually offer. Monzo plans to announce in coming weeks that it is raising about PS100 million, at a valuation of more than PS1 billion, according to two people familiar with the deal. The deal will make it one of the biggest start ups in Europe, and Monzo will use the funds to help enter the United States as early as next year. Revolut, another banking start up, has more than 2.75 million customers across Europe, and it is adding 7,000 each day. After raising 250 million in April, it, too, wants to offer services in the United States. Government policies there are more constraining, however. As a result, most fintech firms in the United States have focused on payment services like Square, and mobile money transfers like Venmo, though companies including Chime have entered partnerships with licensed lenders to offer banking accounts more like Monzo. Still, investors in Europe have been won over. A record 1.2 billion has been pumped into banking start ups globally so far this year, 70 percent of which has gone to European companies. That is more than double last year's figure, and a tenfold increase on the amount invested in 2014, according to CB Insights, a market research firm. Martin Mignot, a partner at Index Ventures and a member of Revolut's board of directors, said TSB's systems failure this year encapsulated the issues traditional banks face: costly retail space and slow, legacy computer systems. Revolut and others are more nimble than their older, larger competitors. "It's a different mind set," he said. Even some who once felt that app based banks were a gimmick have been won over. "I was a bit skeptical, but I'm definitely a convert," said Sinead Loftus, a legal assistant in Ireland who joined Revolut after growing frustrated with her local bank's fees. "I've convinced my mom to get one, I told all my co workers to get one, I got my boss one."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
Although Rembrandt lived and worked in Amsterdam starting in late 1631 and died there in 1669, it's fair to say that he has never proved to be the same kind of tourist draw as another Dutch painter, Vincent van Gogh, or the diarist Anne Frank, even though all three of them have dedicated museums in the city. But in recent months the 17th century Dutch master's life and work, particularly his final years, have been getting a reappraisal. Two exhibitions celebrate his last two decades, the blockbuster "Late Rembrandt" at the Rijksmuseum (previously shown at the National Gallery in London) and "Rembrandt's Late Pupils" at the artist's former home, the Rembrandt House Museum, running concurrently until May 17. To coincide with these shows, Rembrandt related events include a walking tour and a boat trip highlighting his life in Amsterdam. Since the "Late Rembrandt" exhibition opened on Feb. 12 at the Rijksmuseum, visitors have crowded in to feast their eyes on 100 works, including masterpieces such as "The Jewish Bride," the "Syndics of the Drapers' Guild" and "Bathsheba With King David's Letter," as well as "The Portrait of Jan Six," regarded by many as the most exquisite Rembrandt still in private hands. In its first two and a half months, some 250,000 people have seen the exhibition. Because of its enormous popularity, the museum has had to limit the flow of visitors to 1,100 at a time, and it has added nighttime visiting hours. The show has contributed greatly to renewed interest in Rembrandt, who in the 20th century was sometimes regarded as the "darker" predecessor to the Rijksmuseum's other big draw, the beloved colorist Johannes Vermeer. "There was a period of feeling here at the museum that Vermeer was the star," said Taco Dibbits, the Rijksmuseum's director of collections, "but this exhibition proves the opposite. We are amazed that so many people in the world love Rembrandt, but it is only logical." Landmarks associated with the artist dot Amsterdam. Those taking the self guided Rembrandt walking tour can browse the lovely narrow byway of Staalstraat, where the "Syndics" was painted inside what's now the Droog design shop, and the Doelen Hotel, which houses the former Great Hall of the Kloveniersdoelen, where the "Night Watch" was first displayed. The 16 euro boat tour, organized by Blue Boat Company, passes by the Oude Kerk, the church where Rembrandt's wife is buried, as well as Rembrandt's former homes. Born in Leiden, Rembrandt van Rijn moved to Amsterdam at about age 26 and gained fame almost immediately, particularly after his early commission for the Amsterdam Surgeon's Guild, "The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp," became a sensation. He remained one of Holland's most popular artists in the 1630s and 1640s. He fell out of fashion in the 1650s when the Flemish Baroque style, popularized by Anthony van Dyck, became the new vogue. It's easy to understand why scholars have often regarded the end of Rembrandt's life as tragic: His wife of eight years died in 1642 at age 29, he went bankrupt in 1656 and had to auction off most of his possessions and sell their home. When he took up with one and then another of his housekeepers, he was socially reviled. He fell out of favor with city officials and patrons in The Hague and wasn't selected for major public commissions. And by the time he died at 63, he was so poor that he was buried in an unmarked grave. But a very different picture emerges from research associated with these new exhibitions. Though he certainly struggled with his life circumstances, the last 20 years of Rembrandt's life appear to have been remarkably productive, if not happy. "It's a very fertile period," said David de Witt, the chief curator at the Rembrandt House, who was responsible for the exhibition. Around 1651, the artist decided to ignore convention and focus on a new way of painting, employing the "looser brushwork and the powerful dynamism that comes with that," said Mr. de Witt, adding, "You see this move toward greater introspection, and less overt extreme emotions, more thought processes." Today, most scholars seem to agree that those ambitions were achieved. Among the works assembled for the "Late Rembrandt" exhibition are paintings that are undeniably the strongest of his oeuvre; images that are a reminder that Rembrandt was both a master in his time, and a timeless master. People seem to respond to these latest attractions on a visceral level. As Mr. Dibbits put it, "The reactions are that people are saying, 'It's so beautiful,' or 'I can see my old father in it,' or 'I have tears in my eyes. ... ' "	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
Epic Bar makes gluten free and low carb protein bars of grass fed meats mixed with fruits, nuts, seeds and spices. They come in nine flavors like chicken with sriracha and lamb with currant and spearmint ( 2.79). Wilderness Poets has single serve packs of nut butters in six varieties including pistachio and pecan ( 3 to 4).	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
Plenty of people regularly ate sandwiches as kids. But few, if any, have spun that experience into culinary gold like Mason Hereford, whose restaurant Turkey and the Wolf in New Orleans was lauded by Bon Appetit as America's best new restaurant in 2017. "I sure enough ate my share," said Mr. Hereford, 31, who grew up Charlottesville, Va., before moving to New Orleans in 2008 and working his way from line cook to chef de cuisine at Coquette, a respected contemporary Southern bistro. "But it wasn't until I came to this city of po' boys that I began to consider the creative potential of a sandwich." Sandwiches are the stars at this 40 seat, no reservation restaurant with street front patio seating for 25 more, a former barbecue joint and a wings shop in the Irish Channel neighborhood. Inside, cinder block walls are painted sea foam green and decor runs to thrift store whimsy. Patrons order at the counter and eat at sundry chrome dinettes off mismatched dishes (including plastic Disney plates), seasoning their food with kitschy vintage salt and pepper shakers.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
makes her debut in The Book Review this week. Below, she discusses some of her favorite books, and why she thinks romance matters. You're The Times's romance fiction columnist. What on earth qualifies you? This is like having to write a cover letter for a job I already have! I started writing about romance novels not to review them, but to explore how they fit into the world culturally and politically. I've been thinking about not only how good, fun and smart these books can be (very, very and very), but also why they matter, what motivates romance authors and what readers find in their work. Let's be real, what qualifies anyone to be a book critic? Here's what I'm trying to do. First, to look for books that are worth talking about because they're great, because they're interesting or because they're important. But criticism is neither pure evaluation nor pure dissection. Second, to come to books with an open mind I like to think about how a book achieves its own goals, and what those goals are, rather than how it meets my own expectations. The Gray Lady ... covering romance novels? Why now? Romance is one of the biggest genres in publishing. That's unfortunately been part of why, I think, it's so often written off. The Times covering romance is an important recognition that these books are a vital part of literary culture. Some readers stick to romance, but plenty of romance readers including myself read it among many other genres. And we read The New York Times, too.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
STRASBURG, VA. If you're old enough to remember 1970s trucker films like "Smokey and the Bandit," "Convoy" and "White Line Fever," you may think of truck drivers as free spirited individuals tethered to the world by nothing more than citizens band airwaves. That depiction was a stretch even then, but today's truckers are often as Web connected as the technophiles occupying the local Starbucks. Even on the loneliest stretches of the Interstates, smartphones and tablet apps provide diversions and lend a helping hand. The number of freight hauling trucks on American roads rose to nearly 11 million in 2009, the latest numbers available from the federal Transportation Department, from fewer than six million in 1980. In an industry where a few cents a mile per truck can add up to big money on a haul of thousands of miles, trucking companies and owner operators have grown much more concerned about efficiency. Apps for mobile devices like smartphones and tablets are taking a leading role in trucker tech, as they have in many other facets of modern life. Consider shipping a load of asparagus from Mexicali, Mexico, to New York City from a trucker's perspective. Along the way, the driver will travel vast expanses of deserted open road, but will also have to negotiate several congested metropolitan areas. The driver has to take into account low overpasses, tight turns and restricted access roads. In the past, the best anyone could do to find the best route was to look at a map, listen to the radio for updates and hope fate would keep the truck out of stalled traffic, dead ends and bad weather. Those risks haven't disappeared, but even without an expensive computer in the cab which some trucks do have drivers with smartphones and tablets are a few clicks away from the latest information on traffic, weather, routing, fuel prices, meal deals, preventive health tips and just about anything else they might desire.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Automobiles
For anyone who has ever been told by a smarty pants 7 year old, "There's no such thing as Brontosaurus; it's called Apatosaurus" it is payback time. "We have good evidence now for the resurrection of Brontosaurus," Emanuel Tschopp, a paleontologist with the New University of Lisbon, said on Tuesday. He was referring to the name, not to the creature itself, of course, and to an exhaustive study of 80 or so fossils in a group of long necked giants called the Diplodocidae, familiar from natural history museums the world over. These plant eaters grew to lengths of more than 100 feet and weighed thousands of pounds, and it is thought they could crack their long tails like bullwhips, creating sonic booms to scare away predators. The name Brontosaurus was first used in the late 1800s to describe fossils of a dinosaur now on display at the Yale Peabody Museum, but by 1905 it had been reclassified as Apatosaurus, because it was so similar to another sauropod dinosaur of that name. More than a century after the name Brontosaurus was reclassified as Apatosaurus, pictured, a study says the name should be resurrected. Dr. Tschopp and his colleagues Octavio Mateus at the New University and Roger B. J. Benson at the University of Oxford in England decided that although Brontosaurus and Apatosaurus are similar, there are actually two different genera and the Yale specimen is really a Brontosaurus after all. So are several other museum specimens, they said, including one at the University of Wyoming, and a baby Apatosaurus at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh. Their paper, released online on Tuesday in the journal PeerJ, with all of its nearly 300 pages freely available to anyone, will not be the last word on whether the Brontosaurus name should come back into scientific use. Names of species and genera are matters of expert opinion. There is no national or international board of official dinosaur names that decides who is right. "What's interesting to me is that Brontosaurus and Apatosaurus are still extremely close," said Matthew T. Carrano, a curator at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History. "This provides a lot of new information for the argument, but the argument will continue." Dr. Tschopp and his colleagues looked at 477 distinct traits that could be identified on the fossil bones and then analyzed them in several ways to look for differences. Dr. Benson said they set a standard based on the differences between two well known species of similar long necked dinosaurs, Diplodocus and Barosaurus. "Brontosaurus is at least as different from Apatosaurus as Diplodocus is from Barosaurus," he said. Researchers concluded that the specimen displayed at the Yale Peabody Museum is actually a Brontosaurus. Dr. Benson pointed out that "the names are just handles" that help scientists study how life evolves into different forms. Most of the differences are highly technical and noticeable only to anatomists, said Dr. Tschopp. To pick one understandable example, he said, "Apatosaurus has a relatively wider neck than Brontosaurus." But it is the number of differences that is important, he said. Jeffrey A. Wilson, a paleontologist at the University of Michigan, said that he did not have a position on whether the name should be resurrected but that he found the criteria for distinguishing between Apatosaurus and Brontosaurus arbitrary. It was a matter of judgment that involved deciding how different was different enough to justify two distinct genera. "It's as if they had a pizza," he said, and "cut it in six pieces." Why not cut it into four pieces? he asked. The name game is played not only by scientists. There are pitfalls for parents and children doing their obligatory museum visits. The Apatosaurus on display at the American Museum of Natural History is probably still an Apatosaurus, said Dr. Tschopp, as is the adult skeleton at the Carnegie Museum. In the end, it may be too complicated for parents to remember which is which. So the 7 year olds may continue to rule.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
When it comes to lawsuits alleging discrimination, the wheels of justice sometimes turn even more slowly than usual. "It's a difficult process, more difficult than it needs to be," said Jeff Vardaro, a civil rights attorney in Columbus, Ohio. These cases can become complex and expensive, and defendants and their attorneys have incentives to drag them out. Over the past year or so, I have reported on several suits involving older adults' complaints of discrimination based on age, sex and disability status, all of which are prohibited under federal law. Plaintiffs have won some victories: A preliminary injunction, for example, allowed an elderly wheelchair user back into her Manhattan assisted living facility, although perhaps temporarily. But older plaintiffs have encountered defeats as well, including the dismissal of a suit brought by a married couple after a retirement community in Missouri rejected them because both spouses are women. 'I don't think anything has changed' At Ohio State University, two veteran instructors in English as a second language felt pushed out by administrators who made disparaging remarks about age in emails and office discussions. Both instructors had felt forced to retire in 2014, years before they had intended; many of their older colleagues also were demoted or squeezed out. The two women sued under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act. Last summer, the university settled the case, reinstating Julianne Taaffe, 63, and Kathryn Moon, 68, with back pay and benefits. "Every day, I'm grateful to have a job," Ms. Taaffe said recently. "I've read so many articles about how difficult it is to get back into the job market after a job is eliminated, and how often they are eliminated." But the women and their attorneys have been frustrated by what they considered inaction on other important elements of the settlement. The university had agreed to "a review of its policies and guidelines for preventing and investigating discrimination," including creation of a so called second look process. That would allow workers with age discrimination complaints to request review by a neutral party if they believed, as the plaintiffs did, that their allegations had been inadequately or inaccurately investigated. In February, Ohio State notified the women's attorneys, as required, that the review had begun. But "no one has told us who's doing it, and how," said Fred Gittes, whose law firm in Columbus, Ohio, along with the AARP Foundation, represents the women. The university has made no public announcement about a review and provided no opportunity for students, staff and faculty to participate, he said. "We had high hopes that Ohio State was ready to take a significant step to prevent this from happening again," said Mr. Vardaro, who also works at the firm. Instead, a human resources administrator one described in employee depositions and emails provided to the court as having encouraged age discrimination received a promotion. An Ohio State spokesman said the review would yield an interim policy to be announced on Aug. 1, followed by feedback from students, faculty and staff, with a final policy "in the future." He also said the second look process had been instituted. Mr. Gittes called that "a secret process" that "gives us no confidence that the university truly intends to conduct a real policy review or make serious, informed changes." "Ultimately, I don't think anything has changed in the way the university handles and investigates civil rights complaints," Ms. Taaffe said. The plaintiffs' lawyers are considering their options. Mary Walsh and Beverly Nance had planned carefully for their later lives. After investigating several options, in 2016 they put down a deposit at Friendship Village in suburban St. Louis, Mo. As a continuing care retirement community, it provided independent and assisted living, plus a nursing home, so that residents could stay within the community as their needs for care increased. That mattered to Ms. Walsh, a retired AT T manager, and Ms. Nance, a retired professor. If one of them had to move to another unit because of declining health, the other would remain close by; they could still have dinner together. "We wanted to be together, no matter what happened," Ms. Walsh told me a year ago. Friendship Village, a faith based but nondenominational facility, initially seemed eager to move them into a two bedroom apartment costing 235,000. Then the staff inquired about the nature of their relationship and learned that, after almost four decades as a couple, they had married in Massachusetts in 2009. The facility declined their application, mailing to the couple a copy of its cohabitation policy defining marriage as "the union of one man and one woman, as marriage is understood in the Bible." Last year, the women brought suit in federal court alleging sex discrimination in violation of the federal Fair Housing Act. If either spouse had been a man, their lawyers argued, the community wouldn't have turned them away. In January, a district judge dismissed the case. She cited a ruling in 1989 that discrimination against "homosexuals" is not prohibited under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. She noted other cases finding that discrimination of this sort was not prohibited by the Fair Housing Act, either. Ms. Walsh and Ms. Nance appealed. Then the Supreme Court agreed to hear three cases this term involving alleged employment discrimination against L.G.B.T. plaintiffs. The Missouri case is on hold pending that ruling. "We believe the district court got it wrong," said Julie Wilensky, senior staff attorney at the National Center for Lesbian Rights, which represented the women, along with the A.C.L.U. of Missouri and private attorneys. "Being lesbians doesn't remove Mary and Bev from the law's protection." But for Ms. Nance, 69, and Ms. Walsh, 73, the damage has been done. Both have suffered deteriorating health, and they had to scramble to enter an assisted living facility. "It creates challenges that were exactly what they'd hoped to avoid," Ms. Wilensky said. Through her attorney, Ms. Walsh called the dismissal of their case "devastating, but we're continuing our legal battle and haven't given up hope." A retired lawyer known in court documents only as Jane Doe, disabled by osteoporosis, had for five years enjoyed living at VillageCare , an assisted living facility in Manhattan. In April 2017, after being hospitalized with complications from a urinary tract infection, she entered a nursing home for rehabilitation. When she was ready to return home in July, VillageCare administrators refused to readmit her because she had begun to use a wheelchair. State law barred residents who needed wheelchairs or physical assistance to transfer in and out of a wheelchair, they told Ms. Doe and her brother, who held her power of attorney. New York State did have such 40 year old regulations on the books. In April 2018, Ms. Doe, her brother and the Fair Housing Justice Center sued VillageCare, three other assisted living communities in the city with similar policies, and the state health department, charging violations of the federal Fair Housing Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act. They sought a preliminary injunction to allow Ms. Doe, 70, to return to VillageCare while the case proceeded. New York has since revised its assisted living regulations, removing prohibitions against wheelchair users. That rendered the suit against the state moot, officials argued. "If that were the case, we'd be dancing in the streets saying we won," countered Susan Silverstein, a senior lawyer for AARP Foundation, representing the plaintiffs. "What we're looking for is changes in practices," including training for assisted living operators and monitoring to ensure that they comply with the revised law. The judge has not yet ruled on a state motion to dismiss the case. But in September 2018, he granted a preliminary motion, finding that Ms. Doe had "a likelihood of success on the merits" and would suffer "irreparable harm" by being forced to remain in a nursing home. That allowed her to move back to VillageCare in October. At the moment, after another hospitalization, she's back in rehab.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
The Ecosystem in Immigrants' Guts Is Shaped by the Place They Call Home Bodies that migrate across borders undergo tremendous change. Immediately, feet alight on alien terrain, ears channel novel sounds and noses breathe in unfamiliar scents. More gradually, daily routines fall into new rhythms, cultural norms hybridize and dreams evolve. Another transformation occurs deep within the body, two recent studies from the Netherlands and United States find, as the trillions of microbes that live in the human digestive system shift in composition. While many factors may influence how this change occurs, the studies suggest that scientists should consider individuals' migration status and ethnic origin as they aim for clinical interventions based on the gut microbiome. Researchers are trying to understand what governs gut microbial composition, in part because of increasing evidence that the trillions of microorganisms teeming in our guts influence health in myriad ways. Most chronic diseases have been tied to deviations in gut microbiome, though the specifics of cause and effect still need to be parsed out. Like the Science Times page on Facebook. Sign up for the Science Times newsletter. The first study, published in Nature Medicine in August, compared the gut microbiomes of adults from Amsterdam's six largest ethnic groups. A team led by Melanie Deschasaux, an epidemiologist at the Academic Medical Center in Amsterdam, assessed stool samples from 2,084 individuals who were ethnically Dutch, Ghanaian, Moroccan, Turkish, African Surinamese or South Asian Surinamese. Most of the non Dutch participants had immigrated to the Netherlands as adults. Between ethnic groups, the researchers discovered significant differences in overall gut microbe composition. Of the various factors studied, ethnicity was the strongest determinant of gut microbial makeup. Across the Atlantic, Pajau Vangay and Dan Knights, of the University of Minnesota, worked with two local communities to study how migration alters the human gut microbiome. They published their results in Cell last week. One community, the Hmong, began arriving in Minnesota in the 1970s as refugees from the CIA backed Secret War and Vietnam War, which ravaged their communities in Laos. The second group, the Karen, arrived in Minnesota in larger numbers in the past decade, fleeing human rights abuses in Myanmar. Stool samples and other data from more than 500 women revealed that immigrants from these groups began losing their native microbes almost immediately after resettling. They picked up American microbes, but "not enough to compensate for the loss of native strains, so they end up losing a substantial amount of diversity overall," Dr. Knights said. Furthermore, losses were greater in obese individuals and children of immigrants. Dr. Vangay, a second generation Hmong immigrant, partnered with Kathie Culhane Pera, a family doctor, to involve Hmong and Karen community researchers. Together with the academics, the community researchers developed the study's design, recruitment methods and strategies for sharing results. After resettling in the United States, members of ethnic groups from Myanmar began losing the ability to digest certain types of plants, including this jungle fern. Separately, advisory boards of Hmong and Karen health professionals and community leaders gave input, resulting in a project conducted largely by and for the communities it studied, said Houa Vue Her, a Hmong advisory board member. The study would not have worked otherwise, she added. Some Hmong with traditional spiritual beliefs might resist giving samples for laboratory testing, for instance, out of fear that it would interfere with reincarnation. Lingering trauma from the wars and the federal government's secrecy might prevent many others from trusting outsiders. The most obvious culprit behind the loss of native gut microbes is diet. Along with native gut flora, immigrants lost enzymes linked to digesting tamarind, palm, coconuts and other plants commonly eaten in Southeast Asia, the study found. The longer immigrants lived in Minnesota, the more their gut microbiomes shifted to one reflective of a typical American diet high in sugars, fats and protein. But diet alone could not explain all of the changes, Dr. Knights said. Other factors might include antibiotic medications, different birthing practices and other lifestyle changes. The divergence might relate to differences in typical Dutch and American diets with perhaps less sugar, fat and meat and more raw vegetables in Dutch diets and possibly lower rates of acculturation by the Dutch immigrants compared with Hmong and Karen refugees, Dr. Deschasaux speculated. Myanmar is on the verge of civil war. Following a military coup on Feb. 1, unrest has been growing. Peaceful pro democracy demonstrations have given way to insurgent uprisings against the Tatmadaw, the country's military, which ousted the country's civilian leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi is a polarizing figure. The daughter of a hero of Myanmar's independence, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi remains very popular at home. Internationally, her reputation has been tarnished by her recent cooperation with the same military generals who ousted her. The coup ended a short span of quasi democracy. In 2011, the Tatmadaw implemented parliamentary elections and other reforms. Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi came to power as state councillor in 2016, becoming the country's de facto head of government. The coup was preceded by a contested election. In the Nov. 8 election, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi's party won 83 percent of the body's available seats. The military, whose proxy party suffered a crushing defeat, refused to accept the results of the vote. Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi could face time in prison. She was detained by the junta and secretly put on trial. If convicted of all 11 charges against her, which include "inciting public unrest," she could be sentenced to a maximum of 102 years in prison. Yet both studies have implications for health disparities. Obesity, diabetes and metabolic syndrome all have been linked to the gut microbiome, and the ethnic groups Dr. Deschasaux studied in Amsterdam experience varying degrees of these conditions. Compared to the ethnic Dutch, for instance, Dutch Moroccans in her study had a higher prevalence of obesity, and South Asian Surinamese had a higher prevalence of type 2 diabetes and metabolic syndrome. Similarly, research has shown that living in the United States increases the risk of obesity among immigrants, and Southeast Asian refugees are particularly vulnerable. "It was actually a challenge finding participants who fell in the normal range of body mass index for the study," said Mary Xiong, a second generation Hmong American and a community researcher in the Minnesota project. "That opened my eyes about how much of a concern this is." That urgency in part motivated Dr. Vangay and her collaborators to relay their results back to community members. "Many of these communities are not even aware that the gut microbiome exists," Dr. Vangay said. In many ways, she added, "our best recommendation to community members was to hold onto their roots." For instance, the researchers partnered with Yia Vang, co founder of Union Kitchen, a Minnesota based Hmong pop up restaurant, to hold cooking workshops for the Hmong community. One of the dishes that participants made was zaub qaub, or fermented mustard greens. In addition to being packed with probiotics, zaub qaub "is one of the most iconic Hmong dishes," as kimchi is to Koreans, Mr. Vang said. "When I eat it, I'm partaking in the history of our people. The flavor I'm eating is the same flavor my great great grandmother ate on the hills of Laos."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
The official poster for the 2020 French Open shows a view of a sunlit clay court through a dense ring of green leaves. But that poster was commissioned long before the start of this year's tournament was postponed from May to September because of the coronavirus pandemic. If it were being painted for the French Open's new dates, falling leaves and chestnuts would be more appropriate. "The trees are shedding," said Sven Groeneveld, a veteran coach. "On court you have plenty." Roland Garros, synonymous with Paris in the spring, has turned autumnal this year. Put away your Panama hats and bring on your pumpkin spiced lattes. "So, so cold," said Rafael Nadal, who is usually the one sending shivers through the draw. Nadal was speaking on Friday after his latest practice session in temperatures in the 50s that he termed "a little bit extreme" for an outdoor tournament. "Conditions here probably are the most difficult conditions for me ever in Roland Garros for so many different facts," Nadal said. Nadal, it should be noted, has made a career out of downplaying his chances just about everywhere, including the French Open, where he has won a mind boggling 12 singles titles. That is no surprise a record, and he remains the oddsmakers' favorite to extend it to 13 this year despite the presence of No. 1 Novak Djokovic and No. 3 Dominic Thiem, the 2020 United States Open winner. Both are phenomenal clay court players themselves. "Clay is Rafa's domain," said Paul Annacone, a former coach of Roger Federer who is now working with the American Taylor Fritz. "I will be shocked if Rafa is not holding the trophy on Sunday, Oct. 11." Yet it remains true that this is a French Open like no other, and that Nadal is not only a born competitor but also a creature of habit. Luckily, there is no ban on lining up his water bottles or sweeping the lines with the soles of his sneakers. "He does like his routines," said James Blake, the former American star who was 3 4 against Nadal and is now an ESPN analyst. "I know they are limiting the size of the teams, and he's used to the same team in the same restaurant doing the same things. You wonder if any of that will throw him off." This is not the first time a major tennis event has been played at Roland Garros in the autumn. France played Davis Cup matches there in 1981 versus Japan, in 2002 against the United States and in 2014 against the Czech Republic. The French women lost to Russia in the 2005 Fed Cup final at Roland Garros with 15,000 people in the stands. But none of those events ended in mid October, and none of them had to deal with the coronavirus, which is on the rise again in France and in the Paris region. The second wave forced organizers to scale back their grand plans for a nearly full house to a meager 1,000 spectators per day on the entire grounds. "That represents the equivalent of 120 square meters per person, which is 30 times more than the normal requirement," said Bernard Giudicelli, the president of the French Tennis Federation, upset by the government mandated reductions. A happier change is the new retractable roof over the main Philippe Chatrier Court, which will allow play to continue on at least one court if the forecast of frequent rain for Week 1 turns out to be correct. The French Open is the last of the four Grand Slam tournaments to have a roofed stadium, and the others Wimbledon, the United States Open and the Australian Open all have at least two. The French Open was a laggard in part because tennis can be played on its clay court surface in light rain and in part because of legal disputes that delayed the modernization of the stadium by several years. "We were behind, but the whole process took so long," said Guy Forget, the French Open tournament director. "But finally we have it, and we will probably have another one a few years down the road." The structure is more canopy than roof. It covers the court but leaves a gap for air circulation rather than creating a true indoor environment. If it is rainy and chilly outside, it will be dry but still chilly on the court with the canopy closed. The Chatrier court and the 11 other courts at Roland Garros also have been equipped with lights for the first time, which will allow play to continue after dark. There are no U.S. Open style night sessions on the schedule, at least not this year, but matches that begin on one of the lighted courts will be played to their completion instead of being stopped and resumed the following day. The lights were set to be installed on the main show courts even before the pandemic, but they should play an essential role with the move to the autumn. But Nadal, who has won clay court titles in all kinds of weather, also expressed concern on Friday about the new brand of ball being used at the tournament this year: Wilson instead of Babolat, which is one of Nadal's sponsors. Nadal said the new balls were "slow" and "heavy." "But this year is what we have," he said. "I am just staying positive with this. I know we are going to have to play with this ball, so I need to find the best feelings possible with these conditions." This is indeed a year for adapting. So much is different at Roland Garros, which is also now without its much loved No. 1 Court, nicknamed the bullring, which was demolished in 2019 to make room for a vast public lawn that has yet to be created because of the pandemic related building delays. But the daily public all 1,000 of them will have little problem finding room to stretch their legs. The French Open's normally crowded alleyways will be much emptier; its lavish sponsors village and most of its restaurants and concession stands are shut down. "It's not the same tournament I played before and that I dreamed about," said Gael Monfils, the French star who is a crowd favorite in Paris. "We can't say it's the tournament where we'll walk into a crazy atmosphere with the fans and the magic, the big magic." Paris in the autumn has not inspired nearly as much poetry and song, but for now, it's all the French Open has to work with.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
This fall, thousands of billboard and lawn signs will be erected all over the country in advance of the midterms, bearing names of politicians up for election. But a new campaign by the organization For Freedoms aims to use those tools not to promote specific candidates but to galvanize debate and political participation through art. The organization has enlisted artists like Sam Durant, Theaster Gates and Marilyn Minter to create public artwork and lead town halls as part of a 1.5 million dollar campaign. "We are hoping to bring art to the center of public life in the lead up to the midterms, which is where we think art should belong," Eric Gottesman, one of the organization's founders, said in a phone interview. A central aspect of the effort, called the 50 State Initiative, will be a fund raising campaign to put up billboards across the country starting in September. Fifty two Kickstarter campaigns will seek to raise 3,000 per state plus Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico. Dozens of artists, including the three mentioned above as well as Tania Bruguera, Trevor Paglen and Carrie Mae Weems, will contribute billboards. Mr. Paglen's work, for example, will focus on the ethics of data collection; Ms. Bruguera will work with the Rhode Island School of Design to create a billboard there. For Freedoms has also enlisted over 200 local partners from museums to universities to galleries to collaborate on free public programming. The Fralin Museum of Art, for example, will use public dialogues and art making sessions to educate Charlottesville, Va., residents about the history of slavery and discrimination in that city. And the Telfair Museums in Georgia will host a community day, with the exhibiting artists Erin Johnson and Ken Ueno leading tours of their work. More than 175 artists, including Nina Chanel Abney and Emma Sulkowicz, will participate in various ways across the country.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
HONG KONG The economic disruptions from Japan's crisis have cascaded into another, crucial link in the global supply chain: cargo shipping. Fearing the potential impact on crews, cargo and vessels worth tens of millions of dollars, some of the world's biggest container shipping lines have restricted or barred their ships from calling on ports in Tokyo Bay over concerns about radiation from the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Meantime, ports in China are starting to require strict radiation checks on ships arriving from Japan. And in California on Friday, the first ship to reach the Port of Long Beach since Japan's earthquake was boarded and scanned for radiation by Coast Guard and federal customs officials before being allowed to dock. Big Japanese ports much farther south of Tokyo, like Osaka and Kobe, are still loading and unloading cargo. But the Tokyo Bay ports of Tokyo and Yokohama are normally Japan's two busiest, representing as much as 40 percent of the nation's foreign container cargo. If other shipping companies join those already avoiding the Tokyo area, as radiation contamination spreads from Fukushima Daiichi 140 miles north, the delays in getting goods in and out of Japan would only grow worse. The shipping industry's fears have escalated since port officials in Xiamen, China, earlier this week detected radiation on a large container ship belonging to Mitsui O.S.K. Lines and quarantined the ship. The vessel had sailed down Japan's northeast coast and reportedly came no closer than 80 miles to the damaged nuclear power plant; the official Xinhua news agency said on Saturday afternoon that the vessel had left a berth at the port on Wednesday afternoon and then anchored briefly at sea. Hapag Lloyd, a German container shipping line that is one of the world's largest, halted service to Tokyo and Yokohama after the tsunami swamped Fukushima Daiichi. The shipper has not resumed service to those ports. "We put safety ahead of everything else," said Eva Gjersvik, the company's senior director for corporate communications, adding that the company was reviewing daily whether to resume sailings to Tokyo. Reuters reported that another German shipper, Claus Peter Offen, has also stopped calling at Tokyo and Yokohama. OOCL, a shipping line based in Hong Kong, said late Friday that the company had decided to halt all traffic to Tokyo and Yokohama. OOCL will take Tokyo bound containers to Osaka instead and send them overland from there, said Stanley Shen, the head of investor relations. The company has also drafted contingency plans to prevent its containers from traveling even overland to Tokyo if radiation levels increase in the Japanese capital, Mr. Shen added. Merchant vessels may have to be scrapped if quarantined even temporarily for radioactivity, because they would face extra coast guard checks for years at subsequent destinations, said Basil M. Karatzas, the managing director for projects and finance at Compass Maritime Services, a ship brokerage in Teaneck, N.J. The extra inspections make it hard to keep a schedule. "The charterers in the future will try to avoid the vessel because of the likelihood it will be delayed again," Mr. Karatzas said. It is not only commercial ships that are giving the radiation region a wide berth. A senior nuclear executive said on Friday evening that the United States Navy had moved nuclear powered vessels like the Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier far from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant after officers became concerned that radiation from the plant could enter the ships' air ducts. The worry is not that the radiation would pose a threat to the vessels' crews, but that even trace contamination of the ducts could create problems in the extremely sensitive equipment aboard nuclear powered vessels that is intended to detect any hint of a radioactive leak from onboard systems, said the executive, who insisted on anonymity to protect business connections. Shippers, even if they can avoid radiation exposure, know that cargo coming from Japan is now subject to new delays. In California on Friday, the ship scanned for radiation at the Port of Long Beach carried about 2,500 containers from four ports: Kobe and Nagoya in the south and Shimizu and Tokyo farther north. Under protocols established after the Sept. 11 attacks, the United States Customs Service usually inspects all arriving shipments in radiation scans in the port. But according to Art Wong, a spokesman for the Port of Long Beach, concerns from dockworkers prompted Coast Guard and customs inspectors to board the Japanese ship in the harbor and scan the cargo for radiation with hand held scanners. Only then was the ship allowed to dock. Mr. Wong said he expected a slowdown. "One of the problems we've been hearing is they have transportation issues of getting things from northern Japan," he said. "Which is why we expect to get a slowdown of autos and auto parts. That should hit us in a few more weeks." One of China's largest ports, Yantian port in Shenzhen, next to Hong Kong, announced Friday that it had begun screening all arriving vessels and containers for radiation if they had been to Japan in the preceding 28 days and if Yantian was their first port of call in China. These vessels will not be allowed to unload until after all screening has taken place. The port of Hong Kong announced earlier this week that it would begin screening random vessels for radiation as well. Hapag Lloyd has started unloading Tokyo bound containers near Osaka and sending them overland. Shippers are allowed to send containers to areas north of Tokyo, but must pay for them, because the company will not take them back afterward. Maersk of Denmark and the German shipper Hamburg Sud have maintained port calls at Tokyo but are reassessing weather conditions and radiation there almost hourly, company officials said. The main weather worry is that a north wind might blow radiation south from the damaged nuclear reactors and then rain might wash radioactive particles out of the sky and onto vessels.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Global Business

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