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Having a choice is generally a good thing, and being able to choose among several college acceptances should be a wonderful thing indeed. But let's face it: the cost of a college education these days ranges from expensive to obscenely expensive. So the decision is likely to be tougher and more emotional than most parents and children imagined as they weigh offers from colleges that have given real financial aid against others that are offering just loans. While some students will be able to go to college only if they receive financial aid and others have the resources to go wherever they want, most fall into a middle group that has to answer this question: Do they try to pay for a college that gave them little financial aid, even if it requires borrowing money or using up their savings, because it is perceived to be better, or do they opt for a less prestigious college that offered a merit scholarship and would require little, if any borrowing? It's not an easy decision. "It's not just the sticker price and the net costs," said Sarah Turner, professor of economics and education at the University of Virginia. She added, "How likely is it that you will get into medical school or law school or have some other opportunities" if you choose the more prestigious college? That's the rational argument. In these decisions, though, emotion often wins out, and it can lead to the slippery slope of excessive borrowing. "Families really need to look realistically at what they can afford," said Lynn O'Shaughnessy, author of "The College Solution" and a blog of the same name. "Sometimes, they'll look at a package and say, 'It's not enough, but we can sacrifice and send our children to the school they really want to go to.' They have to realize this a four to five year commitment." Ms. O'Shaughnessy said she was trying to counsel a father in New Jersey who was on the verge of making a horrendous financial decision. His daughter had received a full scholarship to attend Rutgers University but her first choice was New York University, which, even with financial aid, would cost the family 32,000 a year. The father, an engineer who was also out of work, said he was going to send her to N.Y.U. "I can't even believe he's considering it," she said. "I was floored. It's irrational." But, unfortunately, that father is not so unusual. While it is hard not to give our children what they want, here are some ideas on how to think about this financial dilemma without going broke or at least know why you will be broke. The competition to get into top colleges is fierce in many cities and towns in America, but nowhere is it more so that at the country's elite institutions. And many parents feel compelled to reward all that hard work. The debate between paying full tuition at an elite institution or accepting a merit scholarship from someplace less prestigious "is a conversation we have all the time," said James Conroy, chairman of post high school counseling at New Trier Township High School in Winnetka, Ill., an affluent suburb in Chicago. "It's a tough conversation because what it gets down to is the values of the family." But he said many parents did not realize that their children were going up against other children who were identical to them at least on paper. "There are 100 schools that we talk about in this office day after day after day," he said. "But those are the same schools that every New Trier across the country talks about." Prestige has always been part of the equation, but he said he had expected parents to start looking for value in colleges after the 2008 financial collapse. Instead, parents have come to see the elite universities as the only way to give their children a chance at success. They feel jobs are hard to come by and companies are only going to look to hire at the elite universities. "Whether it's true or not, I have no evidence," he said. "But that was what was out on the bongo drums in the community." Ms. O'Shaughnessy knows this thinking well. The New Jersey father she described has many contemporaries willing to try to pay for something they could not afford. And there's no guarantee, she said, that N.Y.U. will bring his daughter greater success. "Frankly, I think that's why East Coast schools that aren't in the top tier but are in cities can get away with charging outrageous amounts of money and giving mediocre financial aid packages," Ms. O'Shaughnessy said. "Students fall in love with these schools, and there are parents who are willing to sacrifice beyond all rational reasoning." But economists are not sure this trade off is worth it. In two much discussed studies about the value of a degree from an elite college one with people who graduated in the 1970s and the other with more recent graduates Alan B. Krueger, then an economist at Princeton University, and Stacy Berg Dale, a senior researcher at Mathematica Policy Research, found that equally smart students had about the same earnings whether or not they went to top tier colleges. The big difference, their studies found, came from minority and low income students who went to top tier colleges: They did better later on. Lawrence Katz, a professor of economics at Harvard University, said he could envision circumstances where there might be a benefit to attending the more elite institution, but he could see more instances when paying to go to a large, nonelite university was a waste of money. "The difference between going to Swarthmore and Penn State is greater today than it was in 1976 because there are higher returns to all upper end skills and connections," he said. By contrast, a larger, private, expensive nonelite university was not necessarily better than "the flagship campus of a top notch state university." For parents willing to pay more for that nonelite, private university, Professor Katz said they should not think about it as an investment but as a form of consumption. "If your kid is dead set on it, you can splurge on it," he said. "But you should view it like a wedding or a vacation. There are plenty of things that you can do that make your life better if you're upper middle class, and that's fine." This spending becomes problematic, of course, when parents cannot really afford to pay and, worse, Professor Turner said, when students borrow heavily without thinking about the kind of life they want after graduation. "Am I certain I'm going to end up on Wall Street?" she said. "If you know that's what you want to do, borrow and go to N.Y.U. But borrowing does not make a lot of sense if you want to go to culinary school." In most cases, though, the decision is what Professor Turner called, "a choice under uncertainty": few high school seniors really know what they want to do and, by extension, what they will earn. Parents and their children trying to make the decision now need to be honest with themselves, Ms. O'Shaughnessy said. If they decide to pay more than they can afford for the coming school year, they need to remember that they're looking at a four year expense and that given increasing tuition, the total cost will be more than four times the cost of freshman year. "If you have a smart student who can get into some of these expensive schools, they'll do well in other places," she said. Parents and students also need to look at the graduation rates of the colleges they're considering. While taking on a lot of debt is not good, taking on a lot of debt and not graduating from college is even worse. And if the students received any merit scholarships, they should consider them. They are a sign that a college really wants the student. For parents who will be in this situation in a few years, you could do worse than take a page from the playbook of James Montague, director of guidance and support services at Boston Latin School, the oldest public school in the United States and one that selects students based on exams and grades. Mr. Montague said his students, a third of whom are on subsidized lunch programs, do not often have the options of their peers at wealthy suburban schools. Their parents are not going to be able to find or borrow 30,000 a year for four years. To prevent disappointment or to force the students who want to be bakers to go to work on Wall Street to pay back their loans he said he encouraged students to apply to at least one state college that would give them merit aid and to stick to the federally subsidized loan limits. "Our students are reasonable about this," he said, adding, "Our students are very resilient. They're going to make it work." And ultimately, that will be what determines success long after a college is chosen. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Your Money |
LOS ANGELES Automakers claim to have discovered a new segment of vehicle: the small, city friendly crossover. In actuality, this category was discovered some years ago, it's just that automakers left it behind as they kept building bigger and bigger versions of the utilitarian little crossovers introduced in the mid 1990s. Remember the original Toyota RAV4, Honda CR V and others of that size that were easy to park, easy on the wallet and just big enough to hold a manageable amount of cargo? Customers haven't forgotten. Perhaps that is why recent compact crossovers like the Buick Encore have sold well. So Mazda introduced its new CX 3 at the 2014 Los Angeles auto show here Wednesday, a little crossover that will compete with other debutantes at the show, including the Honda HR V, the Fiat 500X, the redesigned Nissan Juke and the Jeep Renegade. The 2016 CX 3 fits into the automaker's lineup below the CX 5 crossover, which is about 10 inches longer and proportionally larger in most other dimensions. But the CX 3 offers utility nearly comparable to the CX 5 because of efficient, not to mention stylish, packaging. The appointments on the vehicle seemed more upscale than competitive offerings from other automakers, and Mazda promised that the CX 3 was engineered to be just as "fun to drive" as the company's sportier vehicles. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Automobiles |
"Winning the presidency is not merely or even largely a question of merit," writes Michelle Cottle in her column, "Elizabeth Warren Had a Good Run. Maybe Next Time, Ladies." "It's hard for any candidate to get the formula right. For women, it is harder because of a host of unconscious biases." Since Elizabeth Warren's departure from the presidential race on Thursday, readers too have left comments discussing the degree to which gender kept back women in the 2020 race. Ms. Cottle shared more of her thoughts on the issue with readers. Their exchanges, below, have been edited for length and clarity. 'Our system is designed for the horse race' Lisa Cabbage, Portland, Ore.: I think Elizabeth Warren ran a near perfect campaign. The logistics of the campaign's organizing and volunteer efforts were outstanding did any other campaign come close to her phone banks and outreach? Women have better outcomes in parliamentary systems; our system is designed for the horse race, demanding excitement and charisma. Too many people find middle aged women neither charismatic nor exciting. That's their problem, and our country will go down the tubes because of it. Michelle Cottle: Lisa, you make an important, often overlooked point about the peculiar nature of our presidential elections, and one that also speaks to how we wound up with a woman as speaker of the House well before we had a female president. Nancy Pelosi did not have to charm the public to win the House's top job. She had to prove herself to the members of her caucus. Not that this was an easy task. Congress has its own sexism issues, and Ms. Pelosi endured plenty of patronizing eye rolls and insufferable mansplaining on her way up through the ranks. (Small wonder her smile looks a wee bit strained at times.) But her path to power was at least somewhat more rational than the insane process by which we pick presidents. Greg, New York: How many white men have run for the presidency since the start of the Republic? Over 1,000? How many have won? 44. It's hard to win the presidency. The fact that a mere handful of women and people of color have run and lost (excluding Barack Obama) is not representative of racism and sexism, just that it's very hard to win. MC: You are 100 percent correct that it is hard to win the presidency; it requires an almost magical mix of qualities. As much as on experience and policy proposals, candidates are judged on intangibles like leadership ability, likability and, this year especially, electability. That said, research and recent history suggests that women have far less wiggle room than men in striking an appealing balance. You know the old trope: An assertive man is a strong leader; an assertive woman is a ... witch. Assertive women, ambitious women, successful women, powerful women all tend to provoke complicated reactions, and not in a good way. All of this makes it that much harder for female candidates to strike voters as convincingly presidential whatever that means. Gender bias isn't the problem. But it is a problem. Sean, Durham, N.C.: Look at the gender breakdowns in Super Tuesday's results. The gulf between women who voted for Elizabeth Warren and men who voted for other candidates is so significant that to assume anything but sexism would be to deny reality. Warren is objectively the most competent progressive to run for president in the 2020 election cycle. Kamala Harris and Amy Klobuchar were the most competent moderates to run. The saddest part of all of this is that women, too, have been habituated and socialized to dismiss female candidates for the same sexist reasons men use to justify their preferences for old white male candidates. MC: I agree. It would be less depressing, though perhaps more enraging, if gender bias could be chalked up to sexist men clinging to their prerogatives. But it is just as much about the subtle biases, and fears, of women. This cycle, the whole question of other people's perceptions of a candidate who was likable, who was too risky weighed extra heavily on voters. This may have been true of women even more than men (as one of the polls I cited found), in part because women have their own firsthand experiences to draw on. They know the double standards are real. Annnnd now I'm even sadder. Cool Dude: My 5 year old daughter saw me looking at Elizabeth Warren's speech on CNN on Super Tuesday and she was like, "Who is that, Daddy?" I said it was someone running for president whom I supported. She said: "But she's a woman. She can't be president." It broke my heart. Warren's brief lead in the polls caused the entire media establishment to dissect her "Medicare for all" plan mercilessly. Bernie Sanders never got that level of scrutiny and he was more rigid about it. MC: At least your 5 year old and my two teenagers won't consider it odd to see women running for president. Small consolation, I know. But a kind of progress. As for Ms. Warren's Medicare for all meltdown, I agree that she was unfairly held to a much higher standard than Mr. Sanders, who tends to be big on promises but light on details. That's how he rolls, and many people are just fine with it because they find him so inspirational, believable, visionary, authentic choose your laudatory adjective. I just find him shouty. 'It will be pathetic if a woman does not wind up on the ticket' DE, Texas: I will never forget my mother calling me, crying, in 2008 after Barack Obama won the Democratic nomination over Hillary Clinton. She told me that she was worried she would not live to see a female president. The 2016 election disappointed again. Although I knew that Amy Klobuchar would probably not win, I couldn't forget my mother's tears and I early voted for Klobuchar this year. My mother is 87 and in failing health. I fear she won't live to see the day when "she" is the president of the United States. Sad. MC: Well, now I feel like crying while at the same time punching something. But amid all the grieving, it is worth celebrating that there was more than one woman who made an impressive showing in this race. Amy Klobuchar's candidacy never quite caught fire, but her third place finish in New Hampshire marked her as a serious contender. She had a strong bipartisan record of accomplishment in the Senate and understood how the levers of government work. She was a formidable debater, making a compelling, passionate case for unity and pragmatism. She knew how to connect issues to people's lived experiences, and she had a sharp sense of humor a valuable survival skill in politics. I have plenty of theories about why she didn't go farther, many of them tied up in questions of charisma and style and other nebulous factors that should be total nonsense but aren't. But I knew plenty of Klobuchar fans who were disappointed to see her go and who are rooting for her to have future bites at the apple. Susan, Ashland, Ore.: I wish it could have been a woman. It is time. Elizabeth Warren is terrific, as was Kamala Harris. But it wasn't to be. But I'll vote for any Democratic candidate. If it turns out that Joe Biden is the nominee, then he had better pick a woman as his running mate or a person of color, either gender. Another white man would be terrible. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
Gillian Morris disliked her living situation. She paid almost 1,000 a month "for a storage locker and a crash pad" in Brooklyn with two roommates, many roaches and a tedious commute to Manhattan. Almost as bad, the place was so small it was difficult to entertain guests there. She considered renting an apartment on her own but knew she couldn't afford a place large enough for what she wanted most: a dining table. So last fall, Ms. Morris, now 28, came up with an idea for her next home: part residential collective, part salon. She wanted a spacious rental with roommates who also were interested in meeting others, hosting gatherings and sharing ideas. "There aren't great community spaces within New York," she said. "People live very isolated lives. My attitude is: If it's a friend of yours, it's a friend of mine." Prospective roommates appeared and disappeared. One person was tethered to an unbreakable lease. Another feared the commitment. Some dithered. "They wanted to talk about things ad infinitum," Ms. Morris said, "and I like to do things." Meanwhile, Michael E. Gruen, whom she had met through friends, signed on. The two bonded over their love of travel and entrepreneurship. Mr. Gruen, 31, is employed by Work Market, which creates software for managing on demand labor. He was miserable in his temporary Brooklyn sublet, with an hourlong commute. Mr. Gruen was considering a purchase, "because for the first time in my life I had a real job and a real W 2," he said. But a one bedroom wouldn't work for the gatherings he envisioned. "I would be shoehorning my friends into a small space," he said. "I've done the 250 square foot thing before, and it's completely doable, but you can't have a dinner table for 16. You have to have a meal at a restaurant and it's not the same." Mr. Gruen joined Ms. Morris in the search. Landlords seemed to prefer families to roommates. Some apartments were strange inside. "They would do up the trimmings so you would have a wine refrigerator in a four person apartment that used to be a two person apartment," Mr. Gruen said. One contender was a six bedroom two bathroom rental, with 2,500 square feet, in a former commercial building on West 30th Street. Windowless rooms were advertised as "internal bedrooms." Inside, some "weird architectural decisions" had been made, Mr. Gruen said. The rent was 10,500 a month. The roommates offered 9,000, but it went to someone else. A townhouse near Ninth Avenue in Chelsea had a more suitable layout, with bedrooms separated from living space. The four bedroom three bathroom triplex covered 3,200 square feet and was offered for a pricey 15,000 a month. "I thought there might be better options," Mr. Gruen said. The location, far from the subway, was also a concern: "The point was to have people over, and the closer you can be to mass transit, the better." Things came together in a two unit rowhouse near Stuyvesant Square on the East Side. There, a four bedroom three bathroom duplex, with around 3,000 square feet, was 12,500 a month. Ms. Morris and Mr. Gruen signed the lease earlier this winter, negotiating for a lower rent and an earlier move in date. The tough to stomach broker fee was approximately 20,000. Along the way, Melissa Kwan, 31, threw in her hat, having heard about the house through a co worker. Ms. Kwan, who is from Vancouver, British Columbia, is the founder of Spacio, an app for house hunting. She often came to New York for work. "People are in New York to conquer something. You want to accomplish a goal. If you're not here for that, it's a tough city to live in. In Canada, everything is cheap and you don't have to have a roommate." She had despaired of finding a permanent place to live, and was reluctant to leave her friends. In New York, "I didn't have a person I could call for dinner or lunch," she said. Nor did she have an American credit history. Craigslist was "mayhem," she said. "I found a girl who was leasing out half her bed for 650. She worked as a bartender at night." So she jumped at what came to be called "Gramercy House," though it's closer to Stuyvesant Square than to Gramercy Park. The three roommates' rents went over budget, ranging from 2,300 to 3,200, depending on room size. The fourth bedroom is rented to various relatives and friends. In an old dwelling, repairs are inevitable. "There's a lot of space, which means there are a lot of points of failure," Mr. Gruen said. "I don't think there is one right angle in the whole apartment. The door is a slight trapezoidal shape. The stairs creak. 'Charming' is the word I use." So far, the living situation has worked out as planned. "I really feel like I hit the jackpot," Ms. Morris said. The living room holds two tables that together seat 16, no squeezing required. The roommates host breakfasts and dinners, meet ups for tech entrepreneurs talking shop, and concerts by groupmuse.com, musicians who perform in homes. Weeknight events have a "hard stop" at 11 p.m. "If I have a question related to my business, there are people to talk about it with," Ms. Kwan said. "And if not, there are people to have a beer with." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
Marcus Jahmal is following his January 2016 debut at FiveMyles, in Brooklyn, with a strong Manhattan debut, titled "Metavisions," at Canada. Mr. Jahmal took up painting about seven years ago and appears to have a sophisticated gift for it. Self taught, as most painters ultimately are, he has learned a great deal from looking at paintings in galleries, museums and books. He started out working with acrylic but graduated to oils, which he handles with loopy aplomb. His main love is color, which he uses stunningly, but he exploits everything space, surface, color, image to create various incongruities. Favored devices include depictions of mirrors, their reflections, or paintings within paintings. Most of the six paintings here depict interiors with great Gustonesque floors that may tilt or plunge while walls encroach. In "The blaze putting itself out," two facing walls one of deep aqua and the other wine red press inward while three fire extinguishers evoking sorcerer's apprentices take aim at a burning cast iron stove. A chubby radiator looks on. In "Dock at dusk," a brightly appointed living room includes a ship's mooring and a wall doubling as night sky. In "Meta vision," a brushy green plant all but merges with a brushy green wall against which leans a squiggle of a guitar (hello, modernism). Mr. Jahmal is especially impressive on the open, outdoor brick expanse of "Fishes dream." Two fish join some clouds in the blue sky. A lamb and a coral snake patrol the foreground. Center stage are four Greek columns with tightly curled Ionic capitals and fluting defined by shifts in soft, exquisite colors. There is much promise here. Michelangelo had the grand expanse of the Sistine Chapel ceiling to work with and the story of life from Day 1 to Doomsday to tell. It took him four years to do the job. Nancy Chunn has 11 walls of the Ronald Feldman gallery for the display of what is basically no less ambitious a project, a site specific, 500 panel painting about the social, economic and psychological hazards of life in contemporary America. Ms. Chunn began the project, titled "Chicken Little and the Culture of Fear," in 2003 when post 9/11 apocalyptic thinking was on the rise. She modeled her narrative on the children's tale of Chicken Little, who, when hit on the head by a falling acorn, concluded the sky was falling, and dashed off to spread the news, attracting a posse of panicked friends (Turkey Lurkey, Ducky Daddles, etc.) as she went. In Ms. Chunn's telling, the acorn is replaced by a falling television set, and Chicken Little's flight takes her through a world as reported, and shaped by, the 24/7 news cycle: polluted landscapes, impoverished cities, failing hospitals, paranoid politicians. The original fairy tale concludes, in some editions, with Chicken Little falling into the clutches of Foxy Woxy. In the Chunn version, she ends up being arrested on a bogus charge (for removing a mattress tag) and jailed, among a crowd of celebrity no goodniks, in the prison called Fox News. Every character she's trapped with from Clarence Thomas to Ann Coulter, and Ronald McDonald to Donald J. Trump is identified by name, occupation and infamy in free printed exhibition guides. Produced, like the paintings, in a crisp Pop style and annotated with mordant commentary, the guides amount to a take away show on their own and are well worth spending time with. The Sistine ceiling is about salvation; Ms. Chunn's rich, funny, furious project is about her growing desperation, and she's by no means finished with it yet. The poet John Ashbery starts many of the collages in his new show at his longtime gallery, Tibor de Nagy, with a found postcard or a color reproduction of an old master painting like Andrea Mantegna's 1497 "Parnassus." Atop these politely cropped images, he affixes some small figure cut out of an incongruously different source, a comic strip like "Popeye" or a vintage Coca Cola advertisement. He places this figure where it will reinforce rather than disrupt the original composition, so that even as he is shading, psychologizing or interpreting the painting he's chosen, he's also letting it shine as it is. The pink cheeked little boy in sailor pants in "The Pause That Refreshes," for example, activates the homoerotic potential of Mantegna's nearly naked Hermes not to mention of the collage's title, an early Coca Cola ad slogan just by diffidently waving hello. The head of Bronzino's Lucrezia Panciatichi, set against a 19th century train station waiting area in "Salle d'Attente," becomes a dramatic performance of the baroque monotony of passing time. And "Departure Mode," without obscuring the cloying tone of its vintage Valentine's card, brings out all the lonely adult tristesse waiting on the far side of any tryst by inserting a misty landscape by Caspar David Friedrich right in the middle. In the early 1970s, a strain of Endurance art appeared in which artists did things like cut themselves or had themselves shot at with a .22 caliber rifle. These performances were difficult to watch and that was the point. In "Lies" at Seventeen on the Lower East Side, Marianna Simnett offers two works that follow in this tradition. "Faint With Light" (2016) is a sound and light installation for which Ms. Simnett hyperventilated until she lost consciousness, multiple times. Horizontal rows of LED lights installed in a dark room rise with a soundtrack of her breathing and go dark when she passes out. "The Needle and the Larynx" (2016) is a 15 minute video in which a doctor injects Botox into Ms. Simnett's larynx, which has the effect of lowering the pitch of her voice. Visuals of the procedure are accompanied by Ms. Simnett's telling a made up fairy tale about a girl threatening a surgeon to make her voice lower or, if he refuses, she will cause the temperature to rise until mosquitoes feast on his blood. The denouement has Ms. Simnett speaking in a creepy, low voice. In their bodily hardships, Ms. Simnett's works call to mind waterboarding at Guantanamo Bay and Eric Garner's last words, "I can't breathe," before dying at the hands of the police in 2014. But Ms. Simnett chose the hardships in these works rather than being subjected to them against her will. And herein lies the complexity of both Endurance art and fairy tales: They remind us of what it means to inhabit a body, of the violence we inflict on others and, paradoxically, our capacity for empathy. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
On Thursday, Chief Justice John Roberts opened the impeachment trial of President Trump by swearing the Senate to "impartial justice." Why bother? By their own admission, the Republicans will not keep their oath. From the start, the trial is a sham. If the current age has taught us anything, it is that personal interest, naked political ambition or tribal affiliation trumps everything else. Since the Republicans have committed to executing "partial justice," we have little choice but to teach our children to mistrust our highest elected officials. Perhaps mutual respect and community connection can exist on more local levels where we have to look one another in the eye. But not at the federal level. That connection has been broken. Re "Ukraine Reviews Claim That Allies of President Were Spying on Envoy" (news article, Jan. 17): At long last, President Trump has gotten what he has been wishing for. The Ukrainian government is investigating corruption just as Mr. Trump requested. Not only are the Ukrainians investigating allies of Mr. Trump for spying on an American ambassador, but they are also asking the F.B.I. to help them investigate possible Russian attacks against the computer systems of Burisma, the Ukrainian company whose board Hunter Biden served on. Congratulations, Mr. Trump, you have finally succeeded in getting the Ukrainian government to fight corruption. Perhaps now you can grant President Volodymyr Zelensky the White House visit he has longed for. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
Forest fires are burning longer and stronger across the western United States, lighting up the landscape with alarming frequency. Residents are forced to flee, homes are incinerated, wildlife habitats are destroyed, lives are lost. Last year, the Forest Service spent more than half its annual budget fighting fires. Scientists have long theorized that climate change has contributed to the longer fire seasons, the growing number and destructiveness of fires and the increasing area of land consumed, though some experts suggest that the current fire phenomenon is not just a result of a changing climate, but also fire suppressing policies practiced by the government for the last century or more. In a new study published Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, scientists from the University of Idaho and Columbia University have calculated how much of the increased scope and intensity of Western wildfires can be attributed to human caused climate change and its effects. They state that, since 1979, climate change is responsible for more than half of the dryness of Western forests and the increased length of the fire season. Since 1984, those factors have enlarged the cumulative forest fire area by 16,000 square miles, about the size of Massachusetts and Connecticut combined, they found. The study uses "fuel aridity," or dryness of the climate and the forests, as a way to measure the influence of climate change on forest fires. The combination of a long period of drought in the West and hot temperatures have caused trees and undergrowth to become particularly tinderlike. Warmer air can draw more moisture, in general, from trees and plants, turning them into kindling. The scientists used the dryness of the climate to determine the dryness of the forests themselves, using eight metrics that corresponded with fuel dryness and fire danger, said A. Park Williams, one of the study's authors and an assistant research professor at Columbia's Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory. The authors found that fuel aridity in a given year has a direct relationship with the forest fire area, and that climate change accounts for 55 percent of the increased aridity from 1979 to 2015. Cyclical climate variations would have dried out the landscape some, but human caused climate change on top of those patterns caused this drying process to double. Dr. Williams said that those variations were also affected by patterns in the Pacific Ocean, which alternate between cooler, wetter periods and hotter, drier ones and also contribute to the drier landscape and a longer fire season, according to the study. In the beginning of the period examined in the study, 1948 to 2015, the West was in a cool, wet period, but has since shifted to a hot, dry period. Dr. Williams also stressed the exponential relationship between fuel aridity and the wildfire area: Every degree that temperatures warm has a much bigger effect on the fire area than the previous degree did. He also said that this pattern longer fire seasons, more burned acres of forest is likely to continue as long as there is enough fuel to burn, but that there will come a point, probably in the middle of the century, when there are not enough trees left to sustain wildfires. Some human activity such as fire suppression, land development and fire ignitions is thought to have also contributed to the wildfire problem, and Dr. Williams said that prescribed fires might be able to help slow the rapacious appetite of Western wildfires, but the effect of these factors on aridity was not included in the study. The study notes but does not include the effects of other phenomena that may be associated with human caused climate change, such as more frequent lightning strikes, the growth and spread of beetle populations that kill Western pines as a result of climate change, and the reduced snowpack in Western mountain ranges. Wildfires also release carbon dioxide, one of the main drivers of climate change, and reduce the number of trees available to absorb carbon dioxide, a double whammy for the atmosphere. "People tell me that they've never seen fires as active as what they're battling right now," Dr. Williams said. "What we're seeing in fire world is much different than what we saw in the 1980s, and in the 2030s, fires will be unrecognizable to what we're seeing now." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
It's one thing when your marriage is threatened because you never see each other and one partner feels like she's doing all the work. It's another thing when your marriage is threatened because someone flies over from Moscow to tell the husband that he may need to kill his wife. Welcome back, comrades, for the sixth and last season of "The Americans," which began Wednesday night on FX with a brisk episode called "Dead Hand" that deftly caught us up and set the show's end game in motion. Philip and Elizabeth Jennings, the Soviet spies who live in our midst (if you happen to live in the D.C. metro area) are now officially on opposite sides of the Cold War, geopolitically and in the kitchen. The season picks up in the fall of 1987, three years after the Season 5 finale, with the contentious nomination of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court (which was rejected on Oct. 23) in the news and a Washington summit meeting between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev nine weeks away. (It took place Dec. 8 10.) That would put the biggest news event of the fall, the 1987 market crash, a few weeks off (Black Monday was Oct. 19). It's hard to imagine the Jenningses won't have something to say about that capitalist meltdown, and its effects on the travel business. The strongest thing saying 1987 is Crowded House's elegiac ballad "Don't Dream It's Over" with its references to a battle ahead and building walls between us which was omnipresent on American radio (remember that?) in the spring and summer of the year. It plays over a wordless opening montage that establishes Philip's and Elizabeth's realities. Philip has indeed quit the spy business and is a happy bourgeois, opening the power roof of his comfy car and lecturing his travel agency employees on how to have the human touch. He appears to have plenty of free time, as a retired assassin and empty nester Paige is in college nearby and Henry is at the private school in New Hampshire, where he's a hard nosed hockey player with a gaggle of screaming female fans. Elizabeth, on the other hand, is working harder than ever running a honey pot sting on one hapless American, and infiltrating the home of another by working as a health aide for his wife. The montage is a greatest hits collection of Elizabeth personas: the frumpy glasses and perm working woman, the longhaired seductress, the action figure operative in her baseball cap. The primary message, driven home throughout the episode, is that Elizabeth is exhausted, and resentful of Philip's new freedom. (He has time to drive up to New England to watch Henry play and to make small talk with an attractive hockey mom.) No matter how depressed and rumpled Elizabeth gets, though, Moscow does not believe in tears, a point brought home a bit literally when we cut to a scene of her, Paige and Claudia watching "Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears," the 1980 film that was a combination of weepy Hollywood style women's picture and Soviet propaganda. (The Washington based warriors of socialism are mostly women now these three, plus Marilyn. But Norm is still around, looking unpleased.) Paige is now operational, but she's still being shielded from the nasty stuff that her mother is so good at. When a young Navy security guard hits on Paige and possibly compromises her cover, Elizabeth says it's no big deal, then tracks the guy down and shivs him in the neck. (It's the only violent moment in an otherwise quiet episode.) In her defense, he was pretty creepy, having tried to blackmail Paige into a date by keeping her college I.D. From the vantage point of 2018, it couldn't help registering as a MeToo moment. Sex, surveillance, murder AND a sudden trip to Mexico City, where Elizabeth is sent by Claudia to meet with a hard line, anti perestroika Soviet general. He tells her that the Soviets have developed a system called Dead Hand that will automatically nuke the United States should an American first strike wipe out the Soviet command structure. No human touch there. She's to monitor a member of the Soviet summit team and, if she learns that Gorbachev is planning to trade away Dead Hand in exchange for an end to the Star Wars missile defense program, she's to pass it along. Gorbachev will be dead within 24 hours. Back in Moscow, Arkady, now deputy director of Directorate S the KGB branch that runs "illegals" like Elizabeth and Philip seeks out Oleg, who's still working at his father's Ministry of Transportation. (He's also married and has a baby son.) The pro Gorbachev Arkady knows about Elizabeth's meeting, and wants to learn what her mission is. So he leans on Oleg to go to Washington and contact Philip a very dangerous proposition for the now civilian Oleg and ask him to spy on his own wife. And, if need be, "to stop her." Oleg, always the good soldier, makes the trip despite his wife's protests, and he and Philip fall right back into their spying ways a slash of chalk on a mailbox, which Philip notices even after three years out of the game; an address left in a cinder bock; a nighttime meeting in a park. Ah, the good stuff. "She's my wife," Philip says, but Oleg plays the patriotism card the future of their country is being decided right now. (He has no idea how right he is.) Philip waits up for Elizabeth, who gets home late after murdering the sailor. "I have to talk to you," he says, but she's exhausted and angry and cuts him off. "I know you love to talk," she says, a little dagger of contempt aimed at the America loving, EST attending, cowboy line dancing stranger he's become. And then she walks upstairs without another word. What would he have said to her? And what was Elizabeth thinking in the last shot, as she looked at the locket containing the cyanide pill she's been issued now that she knows about Dead Hand? There are no answers, but your speculation is encouraged in the comments. Stan and Renee, and the Aderholts, were seen briefly having dinner with the Jenningses at Stan's house. The is she or isn't she question remains hanging in the air over Renee, and maybe it's a little past it's expiration date. We see her fishing for information about "the couple" that Dennis Aderholt and Stan continue to investigate, while Elizabeth, half of the couple, tries to listen in. With the current season of "Homeland" still in progress, Costa Ronin is playing two sides of Russian foreign policy at once. As Oleg in "The Americans" he's a Soviet progressive opposed to the entrenched hawks in the KGB. As Yevgeny Gromov in "Homeland" he's a KGB hawk, three decades later, trying to bring down an American president. We've managed to make just a passing mention of the line dancing scene, which harked back to those cowboy boots Philip had his eye on in the pilot. Does Philip do this every week? The point seemed to be how comfortable and adept he was he had the boots, and he knew the steps better than most of the Americans around him. Yes, we get it, he's a trained chameleon, and how do we or he distinguish between his fitting into America and pretending to fit into America. The most prominent new characters in the episode were the Haskards, played by Scott Cohen and Miriam Shor. He's an American arms negotiator Elizabeth is surveilling and she's the bedridden artist Elizabeth is caring for. Her paintings, by the Brooklyn artist Alyssa Monks, are striking, and as Alexis Soloski detailed in this article, they fit the story Elizabeth found herself caught by an image of a faceless, nearly formless figure, like a human palimpsest. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
LONDON Making dance without music is nothing new: Choreographers as varied as Mary Wigman, Jerome Robbins, Twyla Tharp and Emanuel Gat have created works in which the only sounds are the dancers' breath and footfalls. Yet William Forsythe, still one of our most pioneering dance makers at 68, believes there's a contemporary virtue to quietness in the current political and media climate. In "A Quiet Evening of Dance," a program of new and newish material by Mr. Forsythe that runs at Sadler's Wells through Saturday, two of Mr. Forsythe's works are performed entirely in silence, and all five are choreographed with an intimacy that demands a very special kind of attention. There's another connecting thread to the evening. For decades, Mr. Forsythe has been stretching his relationship with ballet to the limit: fracturing its grammar, forcing it to extremes of balance and speed. But lately, classical ballet seems to have reclaimed his heart. If "A Quiet Evening of Dance" is a celebration of small details, it also embodies Mr. Forsythe's very personal exploration of the art form's past, rooted in the baroque dances of European royal courts. Typically, that journey is oblique, witty and rich in surprise. The evening opens with "Prologue," a bright and impish courtly duet danced by Parvaneh Scharafali and Ander Zabala. Wearing pale blue evening gloves along with their rehearsal sweats, stepping high on the balls of their sneaker shod feet, the couple circle, gesture and bow, responding to some silent music that only they can hear behind the vestigial sound of bird song accompanying the piece The elegant language of "Prologue" helps us deduce the logic of the next work, "Catalogue." At first, the dancers Jill Johnson and Christopher Roman seem to be locked in a workmanlike and very un balletic exchange of moves. Dancing in total silence, they fold and unfold their arms, squat, lunge and swivel their hands. Yet as our eyes adjust, this seemingly pedestrian exercise reveals itself as a clever, quick fire demonstration of ballet's basic elements. The dancers' arms curve and, their torsos twist into classical shapes, and as their legs rotate outward, recognizable steps begin to appear a shimmer of a "pas de chat," the stately lines of an arabesque as though Mr. Forsythe were riffling through the pages of a ballet master's text book. Variations and embellishments of these moves recur in "Epilogue," where the four dancers perform to the spare piano music of Morton Feldman. The choreography here is more tightly wrought and more spatially wide ranging around the stage. And it comes charged with the brilliantly rogue element of a fifth performer, the virtuoso street dancer Rauf Yasit, who is known as RubberLegz. Mr. Forsythe has been working with Mr. Yasit since 2017, exploring the connections between hip hop and ballet, and here he shows us tantalizing glimpses of that relationship. When Mr. Yasit dances the same material as the others, he brings to it a mesmerizing elasticity (it's clear how he earned his street moniker). But better yet is the genius with which he appropriates spiraling configurations of the classical dancer's arms and transforms them into B Boy moves, knotting and unknotting his limbs with miraculous fluidity and speed. Purely in terms of theatrical momentum, Mr. Forsythe may have miscalculated in adding yet another work to the program's long opening half: "Dialogue." The work is actually one of his finest and it is beautifully danced by Riley Watts and Brigel Gjoka. An intricate construct of sharply articulated footwork, runs and leaps, the choreography flips between steady, symmetrical phrases, woozy slow motion and accelerated flurries. But it suffers from being too close in style and scale to the preceding works. It's with the audience's eyes and ears refreshed by an intermission that the final work, "Seventeen/Twenty One," takes magisterial command of the stage. Set to music by Rameau, all seven dancers unite for the work, which features variations on the vocabulary introduced in the first half, but with a more performative and music inspired flourish. There's a virtuoso male trio of circling floor patterns and arrowy jumps, and a quietly hilarious duet for Mr. Roman and Ms. Johnson, in which he dances with the ineffable, almost pained refinement of an 18th century courtier while she casually shadows him in a mocking baseball cap. Within the tight structure of the work, Mr. Yasit, too, is allowed a flash of street dance brilliance, an exploding puzzle of shoulder spins and body locking, so fast you can't believe your eyes. "Seventeen/Twenty One" is a humdinger of a work, but it is one whose brilliance Mr. Forsythe has deliberately primed us to see through the quiet rigors of the preceding works. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
In June, his breakout hit, "Lucid Dreams" built on a sample of Sting's "Shape of My Heart" reached the Top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100, where it remained for months. It was beatific catharsis, a perfect balance of insolence and agony. And it was the purest pop distillation of the pugnacious sound that had been developing on the streaming site for almost three years. Later that month, Juice WRLD released "Legends," a mournful rumination that touched on the deaths of two of the SoundCloud generation's creative pioneers, XXXTentacion and Lil Peep. "They tell me I'ma be a legend," he sang. "I don't want that title now/'Cause all the legends seem to die out." On Sunday morning, Juice WRLD died suddenly in Oak Lawn, Ill. He was 21. Juice WRLD, XXXTentacion, Lil Peep: Together, these three artists, who began releasing music as teenagers, told the story of a sound that began as a renegade movement and was beginning to find ways to re engineer pop's center. Beginning in 2015, the hip hop emerging from SoundCloud which imported punchiness from pop punk and emo, and incorporated both rapping and singing was emotionally serrated, but also sneakily melodic. It felt like a rupture that would realign hip hop with rawness and also, thanks to the seamlessness of the internet, push these dizzyingly tragic songs toward pop's center. These three artists, more than any of their contemporaries, embodied the sound's ambitions and its potential. And yet the scene was disintegrating seemingly as quickly as it was being built. Lil Peep died of an accidental drug overdose in 2017, at 21; XXXTentacion was 20 when he was shot and killed in the parking lot of a Florida motor sports store. With Juice WRLD's death, the distorted blend of singing and rapping, boasting and pain, that shaped SoundCloud rap feels like it's reached its terrible conclusion. Rather than continuing to shape the sound of pop's next generation, it will likely be remembered with a combination of awe and regret. How did something so radical and powerful implode so swiftly? It is awful to watch a promising scene crumble into nothingness. It's more awful to know that there are systems in place to quickly extract maximum value from the art produced by its creators, but essentially none designed to protect them from the challenges that quick success can bring. That left these three musicians vulnerable in circumstances that their fame might have created, but from which fame could not protect them. His voice had an easy sweetness to it, tempered with just a touch of reluctance. In his songs, comfort was never as close as drugs were. He almost always sounded as if he was looking for a way out. In that anxiety, he was an inheritor of XXXTentacion, perhaps the patient zero figure of the SoundCloud rap movement, though also its most problematic exponent. At the time of his death, XXXTentacion was facing criminal charges: aggravated battery of a pregnant victim, false imprisonment, domestic battery by strangulation and witness tampering. In his brief career, he inspired fervent fan devotion as well as significant public backlash. In the music industry, however, his controversies were mostly shrugged off. Apart from a brief moment in which Spotify removed him from its playlists, his ascent went largely unchallenged. XXXTentacion was a phenomenon wildly popular (his first two albums reached No. 2 and No. 1 on the Billboard album chart) and also wildly influential, proving irresistible to many, including the pop star Billie Eilish (a SoundCloud rap era star in all but genre). "Bad Vibes Forever," which is billed as the final XXXTentacion album, was released on Friday. It is full of promising sketches of songs and stuffed with collaborations with more established artists, including Rick Ross and Blink 182. Just two years ago, songs like these would have sounded unlikely, but in part because of the crossover success Juice WRLD experienced he had hits with Ellie Goulding and Panic! at the Disco's Brendon Urie as well as YoungBoy Never Broke Again they sound like the direction pop was moving in. At around the same time XXXTentacion was first finding popularity, Lil Peep was working similar musical territory, albeit with a more robust emphasis on singing. Unlike XXXTentacion, who thrilled in abrasion, Lil Peep sounded like a fully formed pop star almost from the start, slowed only by emerging from a scene most hadn't heard about. He is the subject of a distressing and elegiac documentary, "Everybody's Everything," that was released last month and lays bare the tug of war between his accelerating fame and crippling fragility. In the film, Lil Peep is presented as someone who was brittle long before the music business found him, and who was particularly poorly equipped for the leeching and temptations that every rising star must contend with. Two interwoven narratives dominate this film Lil Peep's inexorable rise, owing to the emotional directness and melodic accessibility of his music; and his thin defenses against the demands and consequences of fame. Friends describe him as forever in service to others, yet his loyalty wasn't always repaid. The film includes footage, first seen online soon after Lil Peep's death, of the musician sitting motionless in his tour bus for hours, head tilted back a reminder that even in his final moments, no one appeared to be looking after him. An empire was being built upon his shoulders, but Lil Peep was collapsing. His mother and the executor of his estate, Liza Womack, filed a lawsuit in October that alleges negligence, breach of contract and wrongful death by First Access Entertainment, the talent agency that partnered with Lil Peep in a quasi managerial arrangement. (First Access has called the claims "categorically untrue.") What the lawsuit seeks seems straightforward enough: accountability. The music business tallies hits, streams, sales and profits, but generally fails to provide extramusical tools for the tolls of success. There is no scene, no sound, no movement without musicians, but they have no union, no centralized self care resources. Just the requirement that they work harder and do more. Until, that is, the circumstances of creation become so untenable that they begin to threaten the well being of the creators. Just because a musical style reaches widespread popularity doesn't mean it isn't built upon a house of cards. The SoundCloud rap era, once pulsing with promise, is over. When the worst happens, there is no data that can make the rise worth the fall. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
DURHAM, N.C. At the annual Moogfest, many festivalgoers are as fascinated with how music is made as with how it sounds. Performers wielding a copious assortment of electronic gear along with acoustic outliers like a viola da gamba or a church organ played at night in clubs and other venues in downtown Durham late last week. By day, many of them did double duty at workshops and stage interviews, explaining their artistic practices and technical solutions to audiences full of musicians. Festivalgoers could also try out all sorts of gizmos at a marketplace full of new and vintage electronic instruments and, often, the people who devised them. Moogfest has emerged as the opposite of typical electronic music festivals. It largely ignores so called "big room" dance music in favor of sounds that stretch boundaries and explore sonic phenomena. Four hour "durational" performances and an eight hour, overnight "sleep concert" favored drones and meditative music. Moogfest also, in the state that passed and then repealed a divisive law on bathroom use, made a point of featuring performers and speakers who are gay, female, transgender or nonbinary including a keynote stage interview with Chelsea Manning of WikiLeaks fame. Meditation and ritual meet the tools of the electronic rave in Aisha Devi's songs. At Moogfest she sang Asian inflected melodies in English and Sanskrit over sporadic stretches of hefty bass tones and larger than life drums. She also used the throbbing sustained tones known as binaural beats, hints of Buddhist chants and bell tones, while her video showed images from alchemy, Eastern religion and surreal modernity. The music veered dramatically between tense anticipation and the promise of serenity. Caterina Barbieri, an Italian composer based in Berlin, performed solo and in Upper Glossa, her duo with Kali Malone. Her solo pieces were built around a vintage synthesizer capability: the sequencer, repeating a series of notes ad infinitum or making changes as the repetition continued. Her pieces were pointillistic and dizzying, defining odd meters and adding and subtracting notes to make the patterns endlessly flex and realign. Upper Glossa was both more somber and more enveloping. Performing at the First Presbyterian Church, Ms. Barbieri played an introductory church organ piece. Then she and Ms. Malone created a rich, buzzing, steadily tolling electronic drone and topped it with inexorable electric guitar chords; amid all the resonances and overtones already in the room, the arrival of each chord seemed to change the light and air. "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari," the 1920 German expressionist horror film, got a live, surround sound score by the pioneering synthesizer composer Suzanne Ciani and her recent collaborator, Layne, performing with a small ensemble including a flutist and a singer. The foundation was a minor chord and a recurring sequence; above it were ghostly whispers and sporadic, three dimensional whirlwinds of dissonance. Fatima Al Qadiri pushed the giant drums and glossy synthesizer tones of trance toward the Middle East as she performed songs from her 2017 EP "Shaneera" synced to a new video that placed her in surreal, golden surroundings. Ms. Qadiri is a very high concept producer and songwriter, and "Shaneera" is a version of Arab world slang for a gender defying persona: the "evil extreme femme alter ego" that Ms. Qadiri plays, according to a news release, in the songs. She belted poppy Arab tinged melodies answered by insistent keyboard lines, looking both sultry and menacing in a long black wig that she removed with a flourish onstage when the set ended. It doesn't get geekier than this: Moritz Simon Geist builds miniaturized but still physical mechanisms that tap or pluck tiny bits of material on a computer command, then go through microphones, then come through a sound system to play what turn out to be rhythm tracks worthy of the foreground. It would be so much easier with samples and digital processing but what fun would that be? Deradoorian (whose first name is Angel) has made her own albums and backed up Dirty Projectors, Avey Tare and Department of Eagles as a keyboardist and singer; the guitarist Stephen O'Malley has worked prolifically on his own and with groups including Sunn O))). Their four hour durational duet proceeded in extreme slow motion and extreme close up. They were focused on the sonic nuances of what happens when two instruments sustain drones on pitches just a few cycles apart creating the acoustic interference patterns known as beats, which set the whole room throbbing and built up swarming, untamed overtones or linger for long minutes over just a handful of notes, smearing their frequencies with a gong. For their eight hour "sleep concert," performed to a horizontal audience on mattresses, Valgeir Sigurdsson on electronics and Liam Byrne on viola da gamba, with other musicians, conjured a concentrated, sustained hush bridging the Baroque and the Minimalistic. It was a mixture of electronic drones and string murmurs, mostly minor or modal and often using the glassy tone of bowed harmonics. Admittedly I slept through most of it, but each time I woke up the ambience was of something poised and delicate being held aloft, ever so carefully. Mr. Sigurdsson and Mr. Byrne also performed a piece called "Dissonance" in the surround sound setup. It seemed to place listeners on a soundstage in the middle of a Hollywood soundtrack orchestra. It was by turns decorous and processional, while at times interrupted by interjections of stereo traveling static or a bass tone that had escaped a dance club: juxtapositions that didn't quite make sense. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
Several months after the Harvey Weinstein scandal broke and the MeToo movement got powerfully underway, Katie Roiphe, writing in the reliably liberal Harper's Magazine, wrote an essay on what she called "The Other Whisper Network." It was the sort of piece that took great honesty to write and greater courage to publish. The original "whisper networks" comprised women quietly warning other women about predatory and abusive men in their work and social environments. But as a succession of MeToo stories unfurled in the media some of which seemed far more ambiguous and less egregious than the early headline cases Roiphe noticed something else: Women were afraid publicly to second guess aspects of a movement they felt had lost a sense of fairness and proportion, largely out of fear of social media's Jacobin call out culture. "Can you see why some of us are whispering?" Roiphe asked about this new network. "It is the sense of viciousness lying in wait, of violent hate just waiting to be unfurled, that leads people to keep their opinions to themselves, or to share them only with close friends." In recent years, these whisper networks have only proliferated from one subject, one institution, one domain, to another. Is sex, biologically speaking, binary? A columnist for The Denver Post thought so and last month lost his job, he claims as a direct result. Should writers of one race or culture be able to create characters and inhabit cultures not their own? One such writer recently had her book tour canceled over safety concerns following criticism of her novel about the plight of Mexican immigrants. You needn't take one position or another on any of these questions to notice, and object to, the overall trend. Speech is free, except where and when it isn't. Widely held religious views entail potentially ruinous professional hazards. Broad areas of intellectual inquiry are treated as off limits. Having a "bad opinion" means being a bad person. People who freely share the most intimate details of their sex lives with near strangers think twice about sharing some of their political views with old friends. And a new version of the Miranda warning seems to apply across all media, social and traditional: Anything you say, or have ever said, in context or out, deliberately or by misspeaking, can and will be held against you. Which brings me to what is perhaps the biggest whisper network of all: the one involving inner flashes of sympathy, frequently tipping into support at the ballot box, for President Trump. Plenty of people are aware of this phenomenon: One recent academic study noted that so called secret voters supported Trump over Hillary Clinton by a two to one (54 percent to 27 percent) margin in 2016. That statistic should be every bit as alarming to Democrats this time around, not least because it suggests that polls may be dramatically underweighting the scale of Trump's support. Yet beyond the question of why people might want to conceal their voting preferences reputation management, social harmony, and so on it's worth asking whether the very fact that a vote for Trump was supposed to be shameful is also what made it so attractive. After all, forbidden fruit is appealing not because it is fruit, but because it is forbidden. For every voter who pulled the lever for Trump out of sympathy for his views, how many others did so out of disdain for the army of snickering moralists (at the time including me) telling them that a vote for Trump was unpardonable? My hunch: probably enough to make the difference in the states that made the difference. I would also guess that the number has only grown as the censorious left has become more aggressive and promiscuous in its condemnations. No wonder the administration has taken up the banner of free speech: Even a president who called the media the "enemy of the people" has a case to make that his opponents are more hostile to the letter and spirit of the First Amendment than he is. Conventional wisdom about this year's election is that it will come down to about 300,000 voters across five or six states. That's probably right. Republicans will organize their campaign around the country's material prosperity under Trump; Democrats around its moral deterioration. The latter is the trickier argument to make, but it's been done before, most recently when George W. Bush promised to restore honor and integrity to the White House after eight years of Bill Clinton. How to pull it off this time? By treating Trump voters with respect. By asking why so many of them wound up in his tent to begin with. By acknowledging that not everything that's said in a hush is shameful, and that not everyone you disagree with is a bigot. By listening, not denouncing; empathizing, not ridiculing; understanding, not dismissing. Whisper networks ought to have no place in the land of the free. The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We'd like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here's our email: letters nytimes.com. Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter ( NYTopinion) and Instagram. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
A roundup of motoring news from the web: Ford said the factories that build America's best selling truck would be shut down for 13 weeks this year 11 weeks at the plant in Dearborn, Mich., and two weeks at the one outside of Kansas City, Mo. to retool for the aluminum bodied 2015 F 150 pickup. Reception of the new pickup truck design in a market that tends toward the status quo will have a significant impact on Ford's profits. (Automotive News, subscription required) Have you ever wanted to drive the Oscar Mayer Weinermobile? If you tweet a reason the company deems worthy, using the hashtag tweet2lease, you could win a one day lease in the hot dog shape truck, which is all new for 2014. (YouTube) Ferdinand Porsche's first car, an electric buggy that had been sitting in an Austrian shed since 1902, was shown off for the first time in decades in Stuttgart, Germany, on Monday. Although Mr. Porsche didn't establish the company bearing his name until 1948, the electric car, called the P1, was operational in 1898. (USA Today) According to Edmunds.com, the recent registration of a Tesla Model S in Jackson, Miss., means that Tesla Motors now has cars registered in all 50 states. (The Mercury News) | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Automobiles |
Matt Kuchar shot a bogey free six under par 66 to extend his lead in the Sony Open on Saturday at Waialae Country Club in Honolulu. He'll go into Sunday's final round at 18 under 192 with a two shot edge over Andrew Putnam, whose strong start allowed him to tie for the lead early in the third round. The 40 year old Kuchar was three under on the front side and regained the top spot. He ended the round with six consecutive pars. Kuchar will aim for his second championship in about two months after winning the Mayakoba Golf Classic in November in Mexico. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
A thick fog shrouded Trafalgar Square in London on Dec. 7, 1952. This heavy smog episode from coal burning fireplaces and cooking ranges left as many as 12,000 dead. In December 1873, London was blanketed for a week in a yellow fog so thick that people could not see their feet. "Ladies gentlemen," Mark Twain said in a public lecture at the time, "I hear you, so know that you are here I am here, too, notwithstanding I am not visible." Some 780 people died and 50 prize cattle on display at the Smithfield Club panted, wheezed and eventually died of asphyxia. Still, it took 83 more years of noxious air before the country passed the Clean Air Act in 1956. This history, described in "London Fog: The Biography," is a lesson in just how difficult it is for governments to put public health first when it comes into conflict with economic development, the political power of industry and even the polluting habits of their people. The government of India is up against all of those things. The capital, New Delhi, a sprawling city of 20 million, just lived through an extraordinary episode of air pollution that closed schools for three days. India is one of a number of middle income countries, including China, grappling with pollution problems that have ballooned along with economic growth and rapidly expanding cities. A decade ago, the scope of the problem was poorly understood because the numbers on air pollution levels and deaths were spotty. But that has changed. Satellites have given scientists far more detailed pictures, allowing them to perform ever more precise calculations. "Scientists underestimated the scale of outdoor air pollution because we just didn't have the data on what people were breathing globally," said Joshua Apte, an assistant professor of environmental engineering at University of Texas at Austin. They did not like what they saw. Air pollution is the fourth top cause of death globally, after poor diet, high blood pressure and smoking, with more than one in 10 deaths linked to it in 2015, according to the Global Burden of Disease, a vast data trove compiled by more than 2,000 researchers led by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington. The group estimates that roughly 6.5 million people died from both indoor and outdoor air pollution in 2015. Two million of them died in India. Deaths from outdoor air pollution have risen to 4.2 million in 2015 from 3.5 million in 1990. Without strong policy action, the death toll will only worsen as megacities mushroom, exposing ever greater numbers of people. "It's much worse in middle income countries than ever before," said Dr. Maria Neira, director of the Department of Public Health, Environment and Social Determinants of Health at the World Health Organization. "Fifty years ago, only a few cities had populations of more than two million. Today there are many." The highest numbers of deaths from outdoor air pollution are in China, India and Russia, according to the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation. That is in part because they have the most people. The countries with the highest mortality rates deaths from air pollution per 100,000 total deaths are in Eastern Europe: Bulgaria, Ukraine, Belarus, Georgia and Latvia. The causes vary. Some believe it could be related to a legacy of dirty Soviet industry and fleets of aging diesel cars. The key ingredient in policy change is a strong desire for it on the part of the population, said Christine L. Corton, the author of "London Fog". In England, that happened in 1952, when another heavy smog episode this time from coal burning fireplaces and cooking ranges left as many as 12,000 dead. "In the end, it has to come down to the people wanting it," she said. Pollution seems like something that must have always provoked outrage, but in Britain that was not always the case. The famous London smog, etched into history by writers like Dickens and Impressionist painters such as Monet, Turner and Whistler, was once a symbol of prosperity, Dr. Corton said. It signified home fires burning (in Dickens there are grim references to meager fireplaces with just a few lumps of coal) and thrumming factories. "The 1952 smog was a real knock to the psyche," she said. "People had been through so much the war, the Blitz. People said we didn't go through all those deprivations to die from coal smoke. They were fed up. They wanted a better quality of life." As for India, Professor Apte said he believed public opinion had shifted, and that there was a much broader recognition of air pollution as a problem. He hopes comprehensive health data from hospitals is collected from this recent episode. That could take the issue out of the realm of abstract statistics and make it real. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
Most of us hope to be remembered after death for the ways we contributed to society during our lives. I want to keep contributing even after I'm gone. The part of me that proudly checks the organ donor box every time I renew my driver's license has always been offended at the idea of throwing away the rest of a perfectly good human body. The obvious solution of donating myself to a medical school just kicks the can a few months down the road, since a body can be dissected only once. What I really want is to be as useful as possible for as long as possible. So today, tucked behind the organ donor card in my wallet, I carry another card that indicates I've been accepted to a world renowned criminal justice program although by the time I'm ready to attend, I won't need student orientation. Once I breathe my last, I'll be shipped to the University of Tennessee in Knoxville to spend my afterlife at the school's Forensic Anthropology Center, better known as "the Body Farm." There, students and researchers will study my decomposing body to learn how to recover human remains, estimate time since death and piece together who I might have been. In other words, after I die, I'm going to solve crimes. Fewer than a dozen sites around the world are devoted to the science of gathering and making sense of human remains. The Body Farm was the first. Established in 1981 with a plot of land just large enough for a single body, it's now just under three acres, large enough for 150 to 200 people at any given time to decompose in a variety of scenarios that could provide endless material for future seasons of "CSI." They're buried in shallow graves and floated in a pool, laid out in the back seat of a car and on a carpet in a shed and on the leaves beneath a tree, clothed and nude and covered with tarpaulins. Every one is a valuable and valued collection of data points for future forensic scientists and detectives learning to uncover and analyze the details of death. I first heard of the Body Farm when I wandered into an art gallery and was transfixed by an ethereal yet bracing black and white image of an anonymous body in an advanced state of decay. I took a snapshot of the label, which identified it as part of the photographer Sally Mann's "What Remains" series, shot at the Forensic Anthropology Center in 2006. Months later, I looked up the center and discovered it had a body donation program. The Body Farm doesn't solicit body donations, its director, Dawnie Wolfe Steadman, told me, because it doesn't need to. The staff participates in documentaries and gives presentations to educate the public about what it does and why it matters. People who are interested get in touch because they like the idea of their bodies being used to help the criminal justice system. "Some people are teachers who want to keep teaching after they're gone, some people want to be useful forever and ever, some people have known a crime victim," Dr. Steadman said. "There are all sorts of reasons for donation, one for every person, and we're grateful for all of them." The center does its best to accommodate the families of people who haven't preregistered as donors, but submitting the detailed donation application is the best way to ensure a plot on the Body Farm. The process reminded me of applying to colleges except that my alma mater didn't ask about my height and weight, medical and dental history, shoe size or scars and tattoos, never mind my childhood socioeconomic status and every place I'd ever lived for more than a year. Unlike colleges, the Body Farm isn't looking for specific qualities in its applicants. "We can't control when donors pass away and come to us, so it's not practical to look for donors who fit a certain demographic," Dr. Steadman pointed out. Instead, when donors arrive, about 100 times a year, they're matched to current projects. Also unlike colleges, the Body Farm doesn't encourage visits. It's closed to the public, surrounded by a fence topped with barbed wire and hung with signs that are deliberately ambiguous about what lies within. That is mostly meant to keep gawkers and pranksters away, but it also helps ensure that a donor's family member doesn't catch a distressing glimpse of their loved one's progress from corpse to skeleton like puberty, an awkward, unattractive transition most people would prefer not to be remembered by. Nonetheless, I've managed to glean a notion of what lies beyond the fence, because the Body Farm's donor paperwork also includes a photography release. That's how Ms. Mann came to shoot there, how National Geographic filmed a documentary there, and how you can look up news videos showing jawless skulls resting artfully on foliage as a voice over explains how detectives investigate murders. You can even watch an episode of the 2008 BBC documentary "Stephen Fry in America," in which the actor and author tours the facility and flinches at the smell of a body folded into a trash bin. Yet minutes later, equilibrium restored, he declares the Body Farm a fundamentally optimistic place because it's used "for extraordinarily good purposes." He might like to leave his own body to the Body Farm, Mr. Fry concludes, as a way to do more good in death than he did in life. So far, 1,800 people who shared that sentiment have ended up there; another 4,000, including me, have arranged to join them eventually. It's a comforting thought not because I'm in any hurry, but because I like knowing what to expect. Barring certain highly infectious diseases or an accident from which I can't be recovered, my post mortem destination is booked. When it's time for me to head to Knoxville, I've instructed my loved ones to dress me in a favorite T shirt quoting a Frank Turner song: "Not Dead Yet." I don't have a spouse or children to object, and I hope that will amuse the Body Farm's staff members as they match me to my paperwork, confirm that I have no preferences about my disposition (some donors specify that they want to be placed face up, or clothed, or not in water), and cart me out to wherever they need me to be. In the first part of my afterlife, my most frequent visitors will be beasts, birds and bugs. The only humans to see me will be students and researchers. If I'm exposed to the elements in the heat of summer, this stage could take a few months; if I become part of a longer experiment, like one measuring and identifying the gases a buried body emits over time, I might be "in the field" for years. Still, after an average of six months to two years, I'll be reduced to bones. At that point, my remains will move indoors to the W.M. Bass Donated Skeletal Collection, a permanent, curated collection representing a cross section of Americans of many ages, ethnicities and walks of life. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Well |
It's got everyone's favorite farting warthog, graceful giraffes, lumbering elephants and a whole cast of realistic looking animal characters. Watching Simba and his pals try to regain their rightful place in the kingdom may have you thinking that Disney's "The Lion King" is a pretty accurate depiction of what happens in the African savanna. But it's no nature documentary. Real lions don't rule over other creatures. And they certainly don't try to return home once they've left the lion pride. Disney took a lot of creative license when it comes to lion behavior and family dynamics, zoologists and lion researchers say. If the movie were true to big cat life, the rivalry between Simba's father, Mufasa, and his uncle, Scar, would not have existed, and the lion cub would not have been forced to flee so young. In fact, Mufasa would not have ruled the pride at all. "It's always a matriarch who actually leads a lion pride," said Craig Saffoe, the curator of great cats at Smithsonian's National Zoo in Washington. Simba's mother, Sarabi, would have been the more likely leader of the group. And the movie would have been more accurate if it were called "The Lion Queen," as National Geographic pointed out. Although male lions appear much bigger and more aggressive, females are more dominant, Saffoe said. They do the important decision making. They are in charge of the majority of hunting and cub raising. They also have to protect their territory against other intruding females and decide when to let in new males. In a typical African pride, there are three to six adult females. Most daughters are recruited to stay with their mother's pride until they die, so there are often several generations of related females, making the lion society quite matriarchal. Two or three adult males also live with the females. They are usually brothers or pride mates who have formed a coalition to help protect the females. But they spend only a few years with the pride long enough to produce more offspring before they go out and seek a new one. So if Disney had followed typical big cat behavior, Scar and Mufasa would have happily existed together in their pride. "It would have been highly unlikely for them to show aggression toward each other," Saffoe said. "It's possible that Mufasa would have been the more dominant one in the coalition, but one of the females would have been dominant over both of them." One aspect of lion family life that Disney did get right, however, is the affection Mufasa shows to his son. When adult males return from patrolling the pride territory, they seem to enjoy getting to know their cubs, with lots of licking, head rubbing and purring involved. "It is ridiculously cute," Saffoe said. In a pride, each lioness has two to four cubs, all of whom bask in their father's attention. Sometimes lionesses may give birth to a single cub, which would create a relationship like Simba and Mufasa's. But even when there are more cubs around, adult males treat all the little ones equally tenderly. That's because when female lions ovulate, they shed a lot of eggs that may be fertilized by the same male or by different males. "Fathers can't tell which cubs are theirs, so they just decide 'I'll be nice to all of them' as a handy rule of thumb," said Craig Packer, the director of the Lion Research Center at the University of Minnesota. If Disney's Mufasa had lived until Simba was 2, he would have run his own son out of the pride. Then Simba would have roamed the savanna for a year or two until he joined a new pride around the age of 5. In the Kavango Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area, or Kaza, a giant network of parks across five African countries, researchers rarely see male lions return to their maternal pride once they leave. So no matter why Simba left, or regardless of whether the conspiracy theorists who say that Simba and Nala are related are right, it is unlikely that he would have ended up back in the pride with his childhood love interest. "Male dispersal is an evolutionary mechanism to ensure that genetic diversity remains among lions," said Dr. Kim Young Overton, the Kaza director for Panthera, a global wild cat conservation organization. In the wild, males may easily wander up to 100 miles from their maternal pride to find a new home. If food and water are scarce, they may search even farther, Young Overton said. Lion habitats, though, are becoming fragmented. The species is now limited to just 8 percent of its historical range, which once included almost the entire African continent. Where lions once lived, humans are developing land for agriculture and mining. And, in some areas, livestock has begun to replace lions' natural prey, which has led to human lion conflict; lions have been killed in retaliation for eating valuable cattle. Poaching and trophy hunting have also depleted the population. There are now fewer than 20,000 lions in Africa, and they are listed as vulnerable to extinction by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, which determines the conservation status of species. Lions are already extinct, or possibly extinct, in 29 African countries. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
Mr. Ahtone is the editor in chief of The Texas Observer and a member of the Kiowa Tribe. Dr. Lee is a lecturer in American history at the University of Cambridge. This is how deep it goes. Even an essay calling for a fairer America missed the injustice at the core of the nation's character. "From some of its darkest hours, the United States has emerged stronger and more resilient," the Times editorial board wrote. "Even as Confederate victories in Virginia raised doubts about the future of the Union, Congress and President Abraham Lincoln kept their eyes on the horizon, enacting three landmark laws that shaped the nation's next chapter." Among those laws was the Morrill Act of 1862, which appropriated land to fund agricultural and mechanical colleges a national constellation of institutions known as land grant universities. A graduate of Montana State University went on to develop vaccines; researchers at Iowa State bred the key corn variety in our food supply; the first email system was developed at M.I.T. It's easy to see why The Times looked to the Morrill Act as a blueprint for a more progressive future. But ask who paid for it, and who's still paying today. The Morrill Act was a wealth transfer disguised as a donation. The government took land from Indigenous people that it had paid little or nothing for and turned that land into endowments for fledgling universities. An investigation we did for High Country News found that the act redistributed nearly 11 million acres, which is almost the size of Denmark. The grants came from more than 160 violence backed land cessions made by close to 250 tribal nations. When adjusted for inflation, the windfall netted 52 universities roughly half a billion dollars. The coronavirus pandemic has magnified the United States' disparities and prompted conversations about its values. A cleareyed history of how land grant universities profited from violence and expropriation can provide a starting point to confront the nation's record of genocide. Western states selected tribal land within their boundaries. The University of Idaho, for instance, got started with 90,000 acres that had been taken from the Shoshone Bannock Tribes, the Schitsu'umsh, the Te Moak Tribe of Western Shoshone and the Nez Perce tribe between 1855 and 1873. The Nez Perce tribe continues to dispute the 1863 "thief" treaty that stole 90 percent of its territory. By 1890, the tribe's population had dropped by as much as two thirds because of federal policies that led to armed conflict, malnutrition, poverty and poor sanitation, all of which made periodic epidemics far deadlier. That year, Idaho became a state and received its agricultural college grant a haul worth 13.1 million when adjusted for inflation that it assigned to the University of Idaho. In 2018, the university had 11,841 students enrolled. Only 114 were Native American or Alaska Native. The Nez Perce reservation is only an hour and a half from campus. Back East, as well as in the South and Midwest, the Morrill Act provided states with vouchers for distant lands, known as scrip. Selling the scrip funded institutes of science and technology like Virginia Tech, state flagships like The Ohio State University and future Ivy League schools like Cornell, which converted nearly a million acres into the largest Morrill Act fortune. The University of Vermont profited from 150,000 acres, once home to more than 50 tribal nations. More from "The America We Need" With the money filtered through speculators and state governments, most of these universities never knew where their bounty came from and never bothered to ask. As the universities grew, the grant income typically faded in significance, but in some cases it remains substantial. New Mexico State University earned nearly 1.6 million in fiscal year 2019 from leases of its grant land, most of which is still owned by the state. Roughly 13,500 of its 250,000 grant acres came from a Navajo Nation land cession made in 1868 after the Long Walk, a 400 mile death march that sent 10,000 Navajos from Arizona to live under concentration camp like conditions in New Mexico. Today the Navajo Nation faces a surge in coronavirus cases exacerbated by limited access to clean water and inadequate health care resources guaranteed by the federal government and backed by the Constitution in exchange for the same land New Mexico State University still profits from. Profiteering from dispossession hardly made land grant universities unusual at the time of their founding. The Pacific Railway Act and the Homestead Act, the other two Civil War era laws flagged for inspiration by The Times, followed a similar pattern while redistributing far more land. Thousands of other federal laws, emboldened by racism and designed to expand United States territory, converted a continent's worth of Indigenous territory into settler property. This process was so fundamental to the history of the United States that it's easy to overlook or compress into perfunctory acknowledgments. But continuing to champion legislation built on ideas of racial superiority won't lead us to a fairer future. It maintains the status quo by erasing Indigenous communities. This stolen land brought intergenerational wealth to settlers, their corporations and institutions; created tax bases for state and local governments; and disadvantaged citizens of tribal nations in ways that persist today. And yet the Morrill Act is a practical starting point for imagining a new chapter for the United States. Unlike homesteaders who passed away long ago, the Morrill Act's original beneficiaries are still here and their gains are still on the books. And unlike railroads, whose corporate charters favor shareholder interests, land grant universities are committed to serving society. Instead of clinging to an origin story that starts with free land, those universities have a chance to acknowledge debts that are impossible to repay but unconscionable to ignore. Ideas for reconciliation include curriculum reform that includes the mandatory teaching of this history, budget reallocation to aid Indigenous students and faculty, the establishment of satellite campuses on reservations, and buyback programs to purchase and return land to tribal nations. Some schools, like South Dakota State University, have already taken some of these steps. Others could start by talking to the tribal nations that unwillingly enabled their success. They could form committees to investigate their shared histories, like the Truth and Healing Council established in California to grapple with its bloody past. They could address the moral questions raised, in the same way colleges have started reckoning with their ties to the slave trade. If the United States is to have a serious dialogue about forging a fairer nation, it must face its history of genocide and dispossession. Land grant universities could provide the leadership to take concrete action, or risk reinforcing the racism that built this country. Tristan Ahtone is the editor in chief of The Texas Observer and a member of the Kiowa Tribe. Robert Lee is a lecturer in American history at the University of Cambridge. The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We'd like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here's our email: letters nytimes.com. Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter ( NYTopinion) and Instagram. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
According to Walt, the dominant narrative after the conclusion of the Cold War was that history was on America's side, even, as Francis Fukuyama put it in a famous 1989 essay in The National Interest, that so called history had ended and all that remained was economic materialism. Globalization would lead to what Karl Marx had called in the Communist Manifesto a "universal interdependence" among nations; warfare would become a thing of the past. America's mission was to push other states to protect human rights and to help them transition to democracy. In Walt's view, "despite minor differences, both liberal and neoconservative proponents of liberal hegemony assumed that the United States could pursue this ambitious global strategy without triggering serious opposition." But the very steps that America took to enhance its security, Walt suggests, ended up undermining it. He reminds us, for instance, that George F. Kennan warned in 1999 that NATO expansion eastward was a "tragic mistake" that would, sooner or later, ignite Russian nationalism. Under Vladimir Putin's leadership, Russia became a revanchist power that launched cyber attacks on the Baltic States, seized Crimea, invaded Ukraine and interfered in the 2016 American presidential election. In Walt's telling, "the energetic pursuit of liberal hegemony was mostly a failure. ... By 2017, in fact, democracy was in retreat in many places and under considerable strain in the United States itself." Walt reserves his greatest ire for what Barack Obama's adviser Ben Rhodes dismissively referred to as the "Blob," or Washington's foreign policy elite. Some of his vexation is personal. He reports that the advertisement he signed attacking the invasion of Iraq has disappeared into the foreign policy memory hole: "In the 16 plus years since the ad was printed," Walt observes, "none of its signatories have been asked to serve in government or advise a presidential campaign." Walt's own zest for intellectual combat, though, can lead him into rhetorical overkill. "Instead of being a disciplined body of professionals constrained by a well informed public and forced by necessity to set priorities and hold themselves accountable," Walt writes, "today's foreign policy elite is a dysfunctional caste of privileged insiders who are frequently disdainful of alternative perspectives and insulated both professionally and personally from the consequences of the policies they promote." Walt points to the Council on Foreign Relations, the Atlantic Council and the Center for New American Security, among others, as constituting a kind of interlocking directorate that fosters groupthink and consists of mandarins intolerant of dissenting views. But Walt's depiction of these organizations misses the mark. There's plenty of debate in Washington; whether it amounts to much is another question. He also focuses excessively on several rather obscure academic projects that he believes epitomize the sterile moribundity of American strategic thought. It would have been more illuminating had he zeroed in on those few organizations that really do exercise outsize influence in Trump's Washington, like the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which is helping to shape Iran policy. Walt persuasively contends that Washington's bungled interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya helped propel Trump, who has consistently derided foreign policy experts, to the presidency. But so pervasive is the influence of the foreign policy elite, Walt argues, that it has managed to capture Trump himself. In Afghanistan, Trump ditched his campaign vows and bolstered American force levels, claiming that they would engage in counterterrorism rather than nation building. Trump has presided over an approach toward Russia and China that is driving them into each other's arms, precisely as realist doctrine would predict. Walt also drubs Trump for his embrace of foreign autocrats, which amounts to a pursuit of illiberal hegemony: "The United States still sought primacy and its global military role was undiminished, but it was no longer strongly committed to promoting liberal values." With foreign policy hawks like the national security adviser John Bolton and the secretary of state Mike Pompeo on the White House team, Walt perceptively observes that, far from being an isolationist, Trump has enabled a return to the confrontational unilateralism of Dick Cheney. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
I miss the meat dress but what a diamond on the Oscars red carpet! Even in the context of high fashion fashion, she's playing it awfully safe. It is possible, after all, to go high end and high concept at the same time. Designers do some eccentric stuff. Consider, for example, the Armani dress she work to the 2010 Grammys, with an entire orbital system rotating around it, which gave new meaning to the phrase "out there." It is, of course, entirely Gaga's right to mutate every few years into a new persona, both artistically and stylistically. In fact, such mutation is part of her identity. This is, after all, the woman who once emerged from a giant egg, above, at the Grammys. She claimed to have been marinating inside it for approximately three days. And to be fair, her fashionization has probably been coming for awhile. We should have seen it coming when she accepted the 2016 Golden Globe for best actress in a limited series for her role in "American Horror Story," wearing Marilyn Monroe esque black velvet Versace. In some ways you can trace the evolution of her dress in the evolution of her career, from underground superstar to actor, and also, the evolution of her stylists. There were her early shock factor years with Nicola Formichetti (he later became creative director of Diesel and now has his own line); her more classic bombshell period with Brandon Maxwell, who put her in a lot of Alaia and with her encouragement also opened his own brand (he has a real thing for old Hollywood); and now, Sandra Amador and Tom Eerebout. But I can't believe I am the only one who feels like this particular pupal stage Gaga, the Hollywood royalty version is a little less inspiring, a little more mundane, and definitely less complicated than the others. She looks good, no question. Glamorous. But she also looks just like everyone else: a cog in the carpet marketing machine. Maybe we should chalk it up to growing up. It's not fair to demand our superstars remain rebels forever. It's probably not even possible. And yet. And yet. I find myself waxing nostalgic about those weird horn implants she had for awhile under her skin. I miss the crazy hoof like shoes. I never thought I would say that, but there you go. Once upon an Oscars we, the watching public, thought Bjork and her famous swan dress were as wild as it was going to get, but just imagine what early Gaga could have done with current Gaga's red carpet moments. The mind boggles. Also, just imagine what Ryan Seacrest would have done with any of those particular fashion moments. They might actually have rendered him speechless. Which would have been a small step for one woman, and a big step for womankind. Would appearing in her erstwhile eye popping outfits have jeopardized Gaga's chances at an Oscar, or those of her film? Maybe. They could have offended an interest group (PETA), which could have hurt the box office and swayed the Academy. T hey could have become the story, when she wanted her tale to be about talent. They could have been an unproductive distraction. So perhaps the classic choices are the diplomatic choices. (Not that toeing the party line has equated to more or less success for the film.) And they would certainly have been an irresistible dare to the doyennes of the worst dressed lists , and landing on those probably isn't much fun. Except of all people, Gaga never seemed to care too much about such bourgeois concerns. That was part of the point of her: other people's worst dressed lists were her best loved teachable moment. By embracing her own weirdness and pushing the limits of "acceptable" and "societal" she gave everyone else, all her little monsters, permission to do so too. She could have done the same for her new silver screen peers , now. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
NEW DELHI For the last 10 years, India seemed poised to take its place alongside China as one of the dominant economic and strategic powerhouses of Asia. Its economy was surging, its military was strengthening, and its leaders were striding across the world stage. But a summer of difficulties has dented India's confidence, and a growing chorus of critics is starting to ask whether India's rise may take years, and perhaps decades, longer than many had hoped. "There is a growing sense of desperation out there, particularly among the young," said Ramachandra Guha, one of India's leading historians. Three events last week crystallized those new worries. On Wednesday, one of India's most advanced submarines, the Sindhurakshak, exploded and sank at its berth in Mumbai, almost certainly killing 18 of the 21 sailors on its night watch. On Friday, a top Indian general announced that India had killed 28 people in recent weeks in and around the Line of Control in Kashmir as part of the worst fighting between India and Pakistan since a 2003 cease fire. Also Friday, the Sensex, the Indian stock index, plunged nearly 4 percent, while the value of the rupee continued to fall, reaching just under 62 rupees per dollar, a record low. The rupee and stocks fell again on Monday. Each event was unrelated to the others, but together they paint a picture of a country that is rapidly losing its swagger. India's growing economic worries are perhaps its most challenging. "India is now the sick man of Asia," said Rajiv Biswas, Asia Pacific chief economist at the financial information provider IHS Global Insight. "They are in a crisis." But after more than a decade of largely futile efforts not only to tap into India's domestic market but also to use the country's vast employee base to manufacture exports for the rest of Asia, many major foreign companies are beginning to lose patience. And just as they are starting to lose heart, a reviving American economy has led investors to shift funds from emerging market economies back to the United States. The Indian government recently loosened restrictions on direct foreign investment, expecting a number of major retailers like Walmart and other companies to come rushing in. The companies have instead stayed away, worried not only by the government's constant policy changes but also by the widespread and endemic corruption in Indian society. The government has followed with a series of increasingly desperate policy announcements in recent weeks in hopes of turning things around, including an increase in import duties on gold and silver and attempts to defend the currency without raising interest rates too high. Open or closed on Thanksgiving? Here are stores' plans for Thursday and Friday. Then Wednesday night, the government announced measures to restrict the amounts that individuals and local companies could invest overseas without seeking approval. It was an astonishing move in a country where a growing number of companies have global operations and ambitions. The Indian stock markets were closed Thursday because of the nation's Independence Day, but shares swooned at Friday's opening. Stocks lost another 1.5 percent Monday, and many analysts predicted that the markets will continue to decline. "I think things will get much worse before they get better," said Sonal Varma, an India economist at Nomura Securities in Mumbai. "The government is between a rock and a hard place." The problem for India, analysts say, is that the country has small and poorly performing manufacturing and mining sectors, which would normally benefit from a weakening currency. Meanwhile, India must buy its oil, much of its coal and other crucial goods like computers in largely dollar denominated trades that have become nearly 40 percent more expensive over the past two years. That is helping feed inflation, which jumped in July to an annual rate of 5.79 percent from 4.86 percent in June, far above what analysts had expected. The Reserve Bank of India, the central bank, has recently responded to the rupee's weakness by raising interest rates, but those moves have already begun to hurt a huge swath of India's corporate sector. Growth rates had already slowed to 5 percent in the most recent quarter, and India now has a far harder time meeting its current account deficit. Analysts fear that higher inflation, softening growth, a falling currency and waning investor confidence could spin into a vicious cycle that will be difficult to contain. "There's a risk of a spiral downward," said Mr. Biswas, the IHS Global economist. "It will be very hard to break." The submarine explosion revealed once again the vast strategic challenges that the Indian military faces and how far behind China it has fallen. India still relies on Russia for more than 60 percent of its defense equipment needs, and its army, air force and navy have vital Russian equipment that is often decades old and of increasingly poor quality. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Global Business |
There was no question where Craig Vagell would live. As an applicant for a firefighting job in Jersey City, he had a residency requirement to fulfill. Mr. Vagell had been a volunteer firefighter in his hometown of Cedar Knolls, N.J., since his high school graduation. When he met Katie Guenther nearly two years ago, he was renting a studio in the Hamilton Park section of Jersey City for 1,275 a month. His apartment, in a brownstone, had both a washer dryer and a dishwasher, unusual for that type of building. Mr. Vagell, now 33, commuted to Manhattan for his job in broadcast operations at a television network while he waited for his name to reach the top of the firefighters' list. "She had her eye on me," Ms. Guenther said. "She talked about Craig to me and I was, like, 'No way.' " Dating a colleague's son "would be a disaster." She changed her mind, and the two are now planning to marry in summer 2017. Around the time they met, Ms. Guenther, who is from Lawrenceville, N.J., rented a one bedroom in a large apartment complex in Randolph, N.J., paying around 1,390 a month. Late last summer, the couple went on the hunt in Jersey City for a one bedroom to share. "I had never really gone over to Jersey City except for maybe some auto shop to get my car fixed," Ms. Guenther said. But as she spent more time there, she concluded that "this is better than Hoboken," where she had lived for a time before she moved to Randolph, with more diversity and "a more mature scene." The couple loved Jersey City's handsome brownstone neighborhoods. One bedroom rents there were on the low end of their price range of 2,200 to 2,800 a month. They browsed brownstones briefly, looking for "for rent" signs, but were always led to an agent who charged a fee. They felt broker fees were high and unnecessary. Furthermore, "it was really hard to find a brownstone with a washer dryer," which was essential, Mr. Vagell said. Few had much closet space, either. They preferred one of the city's new rental buildings, which typically have a convenient gym something Mr. Vagell wanted, "to make sure all the firehouse food wasn't going straight to my belly." At Avalon Cove on Washington Boulevard, built in 1999 on the waterfront, the monthly rent for one bedrooms was in the mid 2,000s. The couple liked the outside, but inside "it was blah and there was carpeting that looked old," Ms. Guenther said. Mr. Vagell noted the apartments had little overhead lighting. "You had to bring in lamps," he said. "You are tying up a lot more of your outlets, leaving fewer for other electronic items needing plugs." As a firefighter, he is always careful to make sure "you are not overloading power strips and are managing the electrical load as safely as possible." They crossed the street to see Marbella, built in 2004. At that point, no one bedrooms were available. They visited a staged two bedroom, but the monthly rents for one, starting in the low 3,000s, were well over budget. Its connected sister tower, M2, was rising. Mr. Vagell was concerned about construction noise. (It is now about to open.) As for the pool, it would serve both towers. "I wasn't sure if, amenity wise, that was going to accommodate two high rise towers without being overcrowded," Mr. Vagell said. "Katie wanted a pool, but I was indifferent, really." On Morgan Street in the Powerhouse Arts District, a new Toll Brothers rental tower, the Morgan, was under construction. There, the couple saw assorted floor plans and renderings. Wearing hard hats, they toured some unfinished units. "We walked into an apartment that didn't even have a refrigerator installed, and it was dusty, but even so, we loved it," Ms. Guenther said. It included a walk in closet and a stacked washer dryer. The lighting was fine. The couple selected a one bedroom on a lower floor for 2,780 a month. After each paid the 75 application fee, they signed a two year lease. The many amenities, available for an annual fee of 500 per unit, include a 24 hour concierge, an unstaffed pub and an outdoor pool and barbecue area. Garage parking is 225 a month. In the fall, almost three months later, they were among the first tenants to arrive. Meanwhile, Mr. Vagell was hired by the Jersey City Fire Department, and is now a probationary firefighter. He continues to work part time in television. "We got to know the door staff they call us the Originals," he said. The couple met some of their neighbors at building sponsored gatherings. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
A few years ago, my wife, Amanda Shires, was touring in Scandinavia with John Prine, and when they arrived in Sweden she saw him write "songwriter" on his customs form as his occupation. "When did you decide that it was OK to write 'songwriter' on these forms?" she asked him. "Today," he told her. "I usually put dancer." John Prine was not a dancer. He was a songwriter and one of the best that ever lived, but he did love to dance. He danced around his house in Nashville with his wife, Fiona, danced in the driver's seat of his beloved Cadillac and danced offstage every night, twirling an imaginary pocket watch. Once while performing onstage with John, I noticed him glance down past his Italian driving shoes to check the digital clock on the floor, and he saw me notice. He leaned in and whispered, "I wish we had more time." When John developed squamous cell cancer on his neck in 1998, his doctor told him he might never be able to sing again. John told him, "Doc, you've never heard me sing." He didn't consider himself to be much of a singer; his honest delivery had always been what mattered most. Cancer and the subsequent treatments left John with a low whisper of a singing voice, but one that, if anything, aligned even more perfectly with the hard won wisdom of the characters he created. John was in his early 20s when he wrote "Hello in There" from the perspective of an old man sharing an empty nest with his lonely wife. Hearing him sing the song after decades of hard living and surviving numerous illnesses brought new meaning to the lyrics, now delivered by a man who had caught up with the character he created. John always said when he grew up, he wanted to be an old person. John was known for his ability to tell stories that related universal emotions through the lens of his gigantic imagination. He constructed what Bob Dylan called "Midwestern mind trips" from the tedium of the everyday, and he was a master at concealing the work involved. His songs sounded like they'd been easy to write, like they'd just fallen out of his mind like magic. He was praised for his dry humor and loved for his kindness and generosity. John had the courage to write plainly about the darkest aspects of the American experience in songs like "Sam Stone," about a drug addicted Vietnam veteran; "Paradise," about the devastating effects of strip mining on a Kentucky town; and "The Great Compromise," about his disillusionment with his country. Among his peers in the legendary Nashville songwriting community of the 1980s, his songs were the gold standard. Of all the things I love about John's songwriting, my favorite is the way he could step so completely into someone else's life. John had the gift and the curse of great empathy. In songs like "Hello in There" and "Angel From Montgomery," he wrote from a perspective clearly very different from his own an old man and a middle aged woman but he kept the first person point of view. He wrote those songs and the rest of his incredible debut album while a young man working as a letter carrier in Chicago. "Angel From Montgomery" opens with the line "I am an old woman/named after my mother." I remember hearing his 1971 recording of this song for the first time and thinking, "No, you're not." Then a light bulb went on, and I realized that songwriting allows you to be anybody you want to be, so long as you get the details right. John always got the details right. If the artist's job is to hold a mirror up to society, John had the cleanest mirror of anyone I have ever known. Sometimes it seemed like he had a window, and he would climb right through. After John faced a second bout with cancer in 2013, it seemed as though he was playing in extra innings but he made the most of every bit of it. When Amanda a fiddler and one of John's favorite people and I went into the studio to play and sing on his final album, 2018's "The Tree of Forgiveness," we were amazed by the beauty of the songs he'd written after more than 50 years of writing music. John was still razor sharp and he still had a story to tell. On the subsequent tour he played to the biggest audiences he'd ever drawn. He turned 72 that year. But John's work wasn't just about his own music. In 1984, he and his longtime manager Al Bunetta and Dan Einstein started the independent record label Oh Boy Records. In the mid '80s the major labels seemed like the only game in town, but Oh Boy succeeded against the odds. It released John's albums along with records by Kris Kristofferson, Dan Reeder and Todd Snider, and it's still finding new talent and operating with its artists' best interests in mind. He was a mentor to me and to my wife, who even helped him work on his songs sometimes, in between playing pranks on him while they were on tour. John saw her as a brilliant songwriter in her own right, and if John said you were a great songwriter, you knew it was true. And there was more to John's life than music. John and Fiona Prine had a beautiful relationship, loving and balanced and kind. Fiona understood John better than anyone else. After Amanda and I were married, Amanda started asking all the couples we knew, "What's the secret to staying together?" John and Fiona gave the same answer, and it was the best one we've heard so far: Stay vulnerable. John remained vulnerable in love and in his work. He never played it safe. When I was a baby, my 17 year old mother would lay me on a quilt on the floor of our trailer in Alabama and play John Prine albums on the stereo. Forty years later, my daughter would call him Uncle John as he bounced her on his knee. My wife and I would sing his songs with him in old theaters or sometimes in his living room. In the summer, we'd all eat hot dogs with our feet dangling in his swimming pool. Now he's gone and my heart is broken. This week, John Prine danced off this stage and onto the next one, and I like to think he's somewhere sharing a song and a cocktail with all the friends he outlived. The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We'd like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here's our email: letters nytimes.com. Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter ( NYTopinion) and Instagram. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
Action painting, textiles, photography any medium female artists have tried, they've excelled in. Now an exhibition in Boston is giving them credit. By 1973, Linda Nochlin was a famed feminist art historian, but a portrait of her from that year at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, highlights another, equally important role she held: as a mother. In a painting by the American artist Alice Neel, full of broad brush strokes and vibrant colors, Nochlin looms large as a matriarch, her wide eyes confronting the viewer head on, as she protectively envelops her daughter, Daisy, who like her mother stares out expectantly from the canvas. The portrait is among the first visitors to the M.F.A. see when they enter "Women Take the Floor," an exhibition, through May 3, 2021, that features 200 mixed media works by more than 100 women over the past century. (The museum announced on Thursday that it was closing over concerns about the coronavirus.) It's a fitting introduction to a show that interrogates the historic exclusion and devaluation of women in the art world an appeal Nochlin put forth in her now classic, 1971 essay that the exhibition cites: "Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?" As Nonie Gadsden, the exhibition's chief curator and the museum's senior curator of decorative arts and sculpture, put it: "If we're not showing them in our museum galleries, if we're not teaching them in our classrooms, how are these names going to get to the point of being a Jackson Pollock that people want to come see?" Underrepresentation of female artists is a problem many institutions share. Women account for only 13 percent of artists represented at 18 major museums across the country, including the M.F.A., according to a study published last year in the online journal PLOS One. The M.F.A. has accepted women's works into its collection since its founding 150 years ago, when the Arts and Crafts movement unfolded here. (Those pieces are the focus of "Boston Made: Arts and Crafts Jewelry and Metalwork," through January.) But female identifying artists have represented only 5 percent of the M.F.A.'s acquisitions in the last decade. The seven galleries of "Women Take the Floor" divided into themes like landscape and action painting, textiles, printmaking and photography and abstraction were meant to fix this oversight. Works were pulled from the museum's collection as well as private collections, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Danforth Art Museum in Framingham, Mass. "It's a great idea that comes with tons of baggage the baggage being that not everyone agrees with separating women artists," she said. "Some people think it's tokenism and implies that women can't hold their own against their equivalent male artists, " she added. "Others say it's a necessary corrective after years of gender discrimination in museums, the academy, the marketplace and galleries." Then there was the matter of perpetuating gender binaries by staging an exhibition with "women" in the title just six months after the museum debuted "Gender Bending Fashion," a show that featured clothing from designers who have upended the rules of dress. But sly works like "She," a 1992 piece by Lorna Simpson, question traditional notions of masculinity and femininity. While the title implies the subject is a woman, the four photographs crop out the face of the model, whose brown suit and body language spread legs and hands splayed across the upper thighs suggest the sitter is a man. In the photography gallery, rotating works by the Moroccan born artist Lalla Essaydi incorporate Islamic calligraphy, a sacred art form dominated by men in part because of the training required to master it. In "Converging Territories 30," currently on view, Essaydi inscribed it on her models' clothing, bodies and surroundings with henna, a decorative dye traditionally applied by women. The four women and girls pictured are in a house where female members of Essaydi's family including Essaydi were locked in isolation, sometimes weeks at a time, for disobedient acts like entering spaces impermissible to women. "These women 'speak' through the language of femininity to each other and to their house of confinement, just as my photographs have enabled me to speak," Essaydi has written of the series. The gallery "Beyond the Loom: Fiber as Sculpture" showcases artists like the German born Anni Albers, who defied traditional notions of weaving as "women's work," using textiles as forms of resistance and modern art to create large scale, sculptural pieces in the 1960s and '70s. Also included is the Colombian artist Olga de Amaral, whose 2007 piece, "Strata II," puts a twist on her country's indigenous weaving traditions. Composed of shimmering, cascading woven strips of linen painted with gold metal leaf, which evoke rays of sunlight, the piece looks as fit for Studio 54 as it does for a museum. After World War II, action painting also known as Abstract Expressionism emerged as a radical new art form after a pair of leading New York art critics, Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg, put the works of Jackson Pollock and his male contemporaries on the map. But in doing so, the critics and the artists overshadowed the contributions of female artists, according to Ms. Gadsden. "Art was considered something that was a little more feminine to sell the concept of this, these guys had to make it macho," she said. The "Women of Action" gallery attempts to fill in some of those omissions, featuring "Sunspots," a 1963 painting by Lee Krasner, who was married to Pollock. Krasner painted the canvas with a broken arm serving as proof of her artistic obsession, according to Ms. Gadsden resulting in the small, thick yellow and brown dabs that distinguish the piece from the typically longer brush strokes that came to define Krasner's style. When she wasn't painting, Krasner promoted her husband's career and didn't receive recognition for her own work until after Pollock's death in 1956, when she was in her 50s. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
Our three European theater critics pick their favorite productions of the year plus a turkey for the festive season. The ever acute English writer Penelope Skinner turned her sharp eye on the MeToo movement in this Edinburgh Fringe hit: a depiction of masculinity in free fall that finds its lone character, Roger, railing against a "gynocentric" world. Starting out as a genial, welcoming presence, the American actor Donald Sage Mackay's shrewdly observed performance charts a slide toward psychosis that allows the actor to both charm and chill. The "angry Alan" of the title refers to an online activist messiah who leads Roger toward real danger in a production, directed by its author, that will transfer to London's Soho Theater in March. It's a small play, with big impact. Stephen Sondheim and George Furth's Tony winning 1970 musical made waves in its day for serving up a situation instead of a plot, and suggesting new directions for the American musical. In 2018, a production broke ground again, this time by reimagining its 35 year old bachelor, Bobby, as the unmarried Bobbie, a Manhattan career woman, played with warmth and a quiet wisdom by Rosalie Craig. The strength of this version, directed by Marianne Elliott, is that you now can't imagine "Company" done any other way, and a supporting cast that includes the proven Broadway legend Patti LuPone only further ices an already very rich cake. What's in a name? Pretty much everything in the 1980 drama "Translations," a play about place naming that is one of the two certifiable masterpieces ("Faith Healer" is the other) from Brian Friel, the Irish dramatist. I've never seen so intimate a play in such a capacious setting as the gifted director Ian Rickson came up with for the National Theater's largest space, the Olivier. Telling of a rural Irish community in 1830s County Donegal, the play spoke to a present day climate itself obsessed with national identity and cultural autonomy: Mr. Rickson's final visual coup haunts me still. Robert Icke has worked his transformative magic on Shakespeare ("Hamlet"), Schiller ("Mary Stuart") and Chekhov ("Uncle Vanya"), but his reappraisal of Ibsen's darkest play just may represent this English director's finest achievement to date. Using his own adaptation, the modern dress production was performed with the houselights often up, and coupled the labyrinthine moral and sexual byways of Ibsen's wounding original with a meta theatrical commentary on the playwright's own life. The production finished earlier this month, but Icke's eye on the canon continues: He will next direct Arthur Miller's "The Crucible" for Theater Basel in Switzerland. Nearly 20 plays by David Hare have received their premieres at London's flagship theater, so it is doubly astonishing that his latest, "I'm Not Running," seems quite so clumsy. Set against the cut and thrust of contemporary politics while shifting back and forth in time, the play has distressingly little of import to say, and Mr. Hare's gift for writing women's parts hasn't extended to the doctor Pauline Gibson, who becomes a single issue politico; the fine actress Sian Brooke ("Sherlock") is wasted in the role. Still, Mr. Hare's busy workload means this misfire may soon be forgotten: His own Ibsen rewrite, "Peter Gynt," is on the National's schedule for 2019. Milo Rau, the new director of the NTGent theater in Belgium, went from strength to strength in 2018. Before opening his first season in Ghent, he unveiled "La Reprise Histoire(s) du Theatre (I)." Inspired by the real story of Ihsane Jahfi, a gay man who was beaten to death in 2012, this meticulously realized production was the sensation of the Avignon Festival. By combining a recreation of his team's research into the events with a re enactment of the crime, Mr. Rau managed to get to the heart of its senseless brutality while questioning our experience of it as audience members. Theater makers are increasingly engaging with France's colonial past, and "Saigon" led the way in 2018. Caroline Guiela Nguyen, who is of Vietnamese descent, wrote, directed and acted in this affecting saga, which moves back and forth between Vietnam and Paris. The story starts in 1956, as the last French troops prepare to leave what was then French Indochina, and covers three decades of family history and exile. Performed in a mix of French and Vietnamese, the production delicately explored the complex identities born of colonial rule, all from the setting of a family run restaurant. Vanessa Larre wasn't the first director to tackle Virginie Despentes's 2006 memoir, but she delivered the right production at the right time. In the wake of the MeToo movement, her polyphonic staging led by three women reaffirmed the radical power of Ms. Despentes's prescient writing. Ms. Larre stripped away the aura of scandal that is still often associated with an author who reclaimed her body after being raped by prostituting herself, and who has always refused to be victimized. "King Kong Theory" celebrated Ms. Despentes as an important writer and thinker as she should be. French theater's contribution to the 50th anniversary of the Paris uprisings of May 1968 was muted, but Wajdi Mouawad's "Notre Innocence" ("Our Innocence") captured a young generation's ambivalence toward the legacy of that revolutionary spring. In it, the Lebanese Canadian director of the Theatre de la Colline cast 18 students from the National Conservatory of Dramatic Art as an arresting chorus. They spoke as one, with derisive force, of the world they have inherited, and pulled no punches when portraying the know it all generation of '68. Some audience members walked out, and in some ways, the hopelessness of the text prefigured the social unrest that has gripped France at the tail end of 2018. Subtlety is not Vincent Macaigne's strong suit. The French playwright and director, 38, threw every possible special effect at the audience in "Je Suis un Pays" ("I Am a Country"), an exhausting, overblown postapocalyptic tale. Humanity has just been wiped out when the play starts, but there's only so much smoke, fake blood and ear piercing screams one can take before pining for another nuclear catastrophe. Mr. Macaigne has done better in the past when tackling the work of other playwrights: He would do well to set aside the se lf indulgent excess of "Je Suis un Pays" and do less, but better. Four favorites from our German theater critic On a nearly bare stage, the French writer Edouard Louis's 2016 autobiographical novel about a sexual assault and its aftermath comes vividly to life through a series of crisp monologues and maddening interrogations, in an adaptation by the director Thomas Ostermeier. Laurenz Laufenberg and Renato Schuch give blistering performances as victim and perpetrator, and Mr. Ostermeier provokes them to dig deep into their characters' anguish, fury, cowardice and shame. In terms of dramatic focus and emotional directness, this engrossing stage translation of a novel invites comparisons to the work of Simon McBurney, the English director whose emotionally raw production of Stefan Zweig's "Beware of Pity" is also in repertory at the Schaubuhne. The centerpiece of Armin Petras's final season leading the Schauspiel Stuttgart was a devastating staging of "King Lear" from the director Claus Peymann that was this year's finest Shakespeare production in German. Mr. Peymann, who recently stepped down as artistic director of the Berliner Ensemble, presided over a restrained and focused performance that allowed the actors to shine in the play's overpowering darkness. Martin Schwab's bitter and irascible Lear avoided melodramatic gestures, letting us see the mad king's distress in a decidedly unheroic fashion. Lea Ruckpaul did double duty as Cordelia and the Fool, imbuing both roles with tenderness and vulnerability. An unsentimental and sobering "Lear" of rare dramatic purity. As always, a number of plays had me squirming in my chair wondering how long the agony could last. There's only one, however, I wish I could un see: Kay Voges's "Das 1. Evangelium," which originated at the Schauspiel Stuttgart and later traveled to the Volksbuhne in Berlin. This migraine inducing romp through the New Testament combined pseudo intellectualism with high camp on a constantly rotating stage. Mr. Voges and his team went all out for this garishly lit and intricately choreographed show, which follows the dysfunctional shoot of a biblical film. It doesn't take long for the novelty of the brightly colored set pieces to wear off and for boredom to set in: "Das 1. Evangelium" is too indulgent and puerile to even cause offense. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
Francisco Toledo, the celebrated Mexican artist and cultural philanthropist who drew on his indigenous pre Columbian heritage to create striking works suffused with shamanistic animal imagery, died on Thursday. He was 79. President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of Mexico announced the death on Twitter, calling Mr. Toledo "a true defender of nature, customs and traditions of our people." No other details were given. Mr. Toledo was regarded by many as Mexico's greatest living artist, one who could trace his lineage to the Zapotecs, who flourished before the 16th century Spanish conquests in what is now the southern state of Oaxaca, his native region. His paintings, drawings, prints, collages, tapestries and ceramics were largely inspired by that heritage. The scorpions and grasshoppers and alligators, monkeys and tapirs that he encountered in his childhood appear in his art as symbols and metaphors, alluding to everything from sex and fertility to a dying natural landscape. "Toledo's is the art of shamanism," Christopher Goodwin of The Guardian wrote in 2000, "in which people are transformed into beasts and animals may take on human characteristics." In some works Mr. Toledo's stick like figures and jigsaw patterns also recall the Expressionism of Paul Klee and Jean Dubuffet, whose work he saw while living in Europe. Mr. Toledo had a huge civic impact on the city of Oaxaca, where he lived most of his life. Its historic Spanish colonial center was decaying before Mr. Toledo contributed his time and money in the 1980s to cultural institutions there, including the Oaxaca Museum of Contemporary Arts, the Graphic Arts Institute of Oaxaca, a library for the blind, a photographic arts center and a botanical garden. Equally important, he helped scuttle proposed real estate developments glossy hotels and office buildings, street expansions and sprawling parking lots that would have destroyed much of the city's historic quarter. "His prestige is so great that he has been able to raise civic awareness and convince private individuals and associations to join in his crusades," Rodolfo Ogarrio, a Mexico City based entrepreneur who joined several of Mr. Toledo's public spirited projects in Oaxaca, told Town Country magazine in 1996. In a profile in Smithsonian magazine this year, the writer Paul Theroux called Mr. Toledo "the embodiment of Oaxaca's vortex of energy." "Toledo is known as El Maestro," Mr. Theroux wrote. "That is an appropriate description: the master, also teacher and authority figure. His work, and the results of his campaigns and his philanthropy, can be seen everywhere." And yet he if Mr. Toledo is little known outside Mexico, it is in large part because he never courted celebrity. "The man himself is elusive," Mr. Theroux noted. "He hides from journalists, he hates to be photographed, he seldom gives interviews, he no longer attends his own openings, but instead sends his wife and daughter to preside over them, while he stays in his studio, unwilling to speak a great example of how writers and artists should respond letting his work speak for him, with greater eloquence." Francisco Benjamin Lopez Toledo, one of seven brothers, was born on July 17, 1940, and typically identified his place of birth as Juchitan, a town on the Isthmus of Mexico in Oaxaca, though in at least two interviews he acknowledged having been born in Mexico City. He moved with his family to the smaller community of Minatitlan, in the adjoining state of Veracruz, where his father was a shopkeeper. In interviews with Mexican newspapers, Mr. Toledo recalled following his grandfather, a hunter of wild animal pelts, through the jungle and encountering the insects and animals that would inhabit his art. The elders in his family would tell him of the Zapotecs who lived on the isthmus and regale him with their folklore. "Many of the animal drawings I've made come from these memories," Mr. Toledo told Bomb magazine in 2000. His father recognized his son's precocious talent for drawing and painting and sent him to study at an art institute in the city of Oaxaca when he was 12. From there he went to Mexico City to study etching techniques. By 19, he had been given gallery showings in Mexico City and in Fort Worth. In 1960, like many Mexican artists and intellectuals who preceded him, Mr. Toledo moved to Paris on a scholarship. When the funds ran out, he received assistance from the Mexican essayist and poet Octavio Paz and the painter Rufino Tamayo. They introduced him to French galleries and collectors. Returning to Mexico in 1965, Mr. Toledo spent the next decade experimenting with a variety of themes and techniques. Many of his works in the 1970s and '80s recalled the depictions of human and animal figures on painted sheets, called codices, used by pre Columbians to tell their histories and convey their beliefs. Mr. Toledo even took to painting on the same material as that of the codices, a fibrous taupe colored paper made from tree bark . | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
As family secrets go, Stanford Solomon's is a whopper. "I was born Abel Paisley," the dying 69 year old confesses to his daughters in 2005. Having emigrated from Jamaica to London more than three decades earlier, Abel and his childhood friend the original Stanford find jobs as the two "chosen wogs" in an all white ship crew. When the real Stanford is killed by falling cargo, and their crewmates confuse him for "the other black guy," Abel seizes the opportunity to fake his own death, assume Stanford's identity (they "actually did look alike") and begin a new life in America, away from his unhappy marriage and young children back in Kingston. A more linear family saga might simply explore the impact of Abel's lie on future generations. But "These Ghosts Are Family," Maisy Card's rich, ambitious debut novel, zigzags back and forth in time, between Abel's relatives in Harlem, Jamaica, Brooklyn and Newark. While his actions affect a daughter, Irene, who grows up without her father, they also preverberate, so to speak, for his great grandmother Louise, a white passing child in colonial Jamaica who learns her mother was a slave. Instances of false or fuzzy parentage recur up and down the bloodline, stirring questions of identity and origin that have haunted fictional characters from "The Winter's Tale" to "Billie Jean." Each character gives Card a fresh opportunity to play with form: Chapters shapeshift here into historical fiction, there into folklore. Collective and second person narrators feature alongside 19th century diary entries and court documents recreating Warm Manor, the sugar plantation where Florence, Abel's great great grandmother, is brutally enslaved. Card deftly grounds these experiments in subtle details that reveal history's imprint on everyday family life. Like Abel's freckles, light skin and red hair, which show up in his children and "meant that somewhere in his tree, someone was white," so too do legacies of racism, colonialism and misogyny emerge in moments as casual as a domestic joke: When Vincent, Abel's son, marries a white woman descended from slaveowners, he quips that "maybe God had brought them together so he could avenge his ancestors by getting close enough to wring Debbie's neck." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
For months, the weather has dominated discourse about the economy. Analysts attributed the dearth of shoppers, the weak employment numbers and the overall decline in economic activity to the cold and snow in the eastern half of the nation, the freakish storms in the South and Midwest, and the drought in the West. But finally a set of numbers is emerging that takes the temperature of the economy without the taint of severe weather. And while some of the data is disappointing for starters, exports slowed in April and productivity gains have been modest over all the economy appears to be getting back on a moderate growth path after the setbacks of the first quarter. "You're getting an underlying look at what the economy looks like," said John Canally, an economist for LPL Financial. "And it looks good, though it's not all the way back to where it's been." On Wednesday, the Commerce Department said total April exports of 193.3 billion and imports of 240.6 billion resulted in a goods and services deficit of 47.2 billion, hitting a two year high and up from a revised 44.2 billion in March. The numbers, along with other statistics released in recent days, indicate an upswing in business activity and expectations for greater spending in the months ahead, economists said. That is a silver lining to the clouds over the economy generated by the nation's overall inability to produce enough domestically to match the demand for consumer goods from abroad. "Rising imports are not a sign of economic weakness," said Joshua Shapiro, chief United States economist for MFR Inc. "To the contrary, it's a sign of economic demand." Economists are already looking ahead to the Labor Department's jobs report for May, which will be released Friday morning. But already there are signs that things are moving in a better direction. Some of the data released on Wednesday fell short of expectations but was viewed as consistent with solid growth in the second quarter after the pace of economic activity fell at an annual rate of 1 percent in the first quarter. New numbers show that productivity, which measures the output of the economy per hours worked, has slowed since 2012. Nonfarm business sector productivity fell at a 3.2 percent yearly rate in the first quarter. Output fell 1.1 percent even though hours worked grew 2.2 percent. In another report released on Wednesday, the Institute for Supply Management index of nonmanufacturing activity rose to 56.3 in May from 55.2 in April, the highest reading since August. The release of the Federal Reserve's so called Beige Book reinforced the picture of an economy generally expanding nearly everywhere in the country. The report, compiled by the Fed's 12 regional districts and issued about two weeks ahead of each of the central bank's regular monetary policy meetings, characterized growth as moderate in its Boston, New York, Richmond, Chicago, Minneapolis, Dallas and San Francisco districts, and said growth elsewhere was modest. The Kansas City area was the only district that slowed slightly compared with the previous report. Based on informal surveys of local businesses, the Fed's regional banks found that consumer spending was continuing to expand, though it was held back to varying degrees by a late Easter and late spring. Non auto retail sales grew at a healthy clip. The Fed report said lingering wintry weather weighed on sales in parts of Boston and New York. Kevin Spacey was ordered to pay 31 million to the 'House of Cards' studio after sexual harassment allegations. Netflix buys a visual effects company in a move to support its global ambitions. The spring season is generally when the real estate market kicks into high gear, but the Fed report found that residential housing activity was mixed as low inventories slowed sales in areas like New York and Kansas City. Most economists do not put much credence in the Beige Book because it is largely anecdotal. But it still offers a window into the health of various regions. On the West Coast, a fatal hog virus is plaguing the district, driving up pork prices, and the region's farmers are struggling from too little rain. But Midwestern districts are being drenched by too much rain. In West Virginia, a closed coal mine has reopened because of strong demand from European and Chinese customers. "The Beige Book isn't so much a road map as a history lesson," said Lawrence R. Creatura, a portfolio manager at Federated Investors. "It's always fascinating reading. The job of investors is to figure out what happens next." Other economists have devised their own methods for interpreting the fine print of the 50 page report. Mr. Canally, of LPL Financial, counted the 34 mentions of weather in Wednesday's report, noting that most were in a positive light about improved conditions. March's Beige Book, by contrast, mentioned the weather's negative impacts in almost all of the 119 times it was cited, he said. Separately, the monthly survey of hiring by ADP Employer Services, a unit of the payroll processor Automatic Data Processing, showed fewer hires than economists had expected, but the numbers were still rising. Private sector payrolls increased by 179,000 nonfarm jobs from April to May, according to the ADP report, which revised its April employment increase down to 215,000, from 220,000. Small businesses added an estimated 82,000 jobs, ADP said. Manufacturing added 10,000 jobs and construction added 14,000 jobs. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Economy |
In all seriousness: What can't Yuja Wang do? This star pianist has built her reputation on breathtaking mastery of the standard repertory, like the chamber works she played last Wednesday with the violinist Leonidas Kavakos at Carnegie Hall. Or Robert Schumann's Piano Concerto, which she'll do with the Boston Symphony Orchestra later this week. But in between those two dates, she stopped by Carnegie's Zankel Hall on Monday for something entirely different: a comedy show. One with music, of course. And, as always, she was radiant in Rachmaninoff and Lutoslawski. But there was more. She rapped! She sang and danced through a "West Side Story" medley! She did one legged, upside down yoga on a piano bench! And along the way, she never lost an ounce of virtuosity. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
Habitats on land rain forests, steppes, woodlands, deserts, alpine meadows, all well explored over the centuries make up less than 1 percent of the planet's biosphere. Why so little? The band of life is narrow. Fertile soil goes down only a few feet, and even the tallest trees stretch up only a few hundred feet. Birds can fly higher, but must return to the surface for nourishment. Water, however, is a different story. It covers more than 70 percent of the earth's surface and goes down miles. Scientists put the ocean's share of the biosphere at more than 99 percent. Fishermen know its surface waters and explorers its depths. But in general, compared with land, the global ocean is unfamiliar. Which helps explain why scientists have only recently come to realize that the bristlemouth a fish of the middle depths that glows in the dark and can open its mouth extraordinarily wide, baring needlelike fangs is the most numerous vertebrate on the earth. "They're everywhere," Bruce H. Robison, a senior marine biologist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in California, said of the bony little fish. "Everybody agrees. It's the most abundant on the planet." By human standards, the brute is tiny smaller than a finger. But this strange little fish makes up for its diminutive size with staggering numbers, as well as a behavioral trick or two. It starts life as a male and, in some cases, switches to become a female. Scientists call it protandrous that is, a male first hermaphrodite a phenomenon also seen in certain worms, limpets and butterflies. John C. Avise, the author of "Hermaphroditism," said the adult male bristlemouth tended to be smaller than the female and had a better developed sense of smell apparently, he said, to find mates in the darkness. "They occupy an environment that's hard to access," Dr. Avise said of the fish, so there is "precious little information" about their behavior. A slightly repulsive means of adding to that information has been to inspect the stomach contents of larger fish. Predators of the bristlemouth turn out to include dragon fish and fangtooths, denizens of the abyss with daggerlike teeth. Though the portrait of the bristlemouth is incomplete, scientists know enough to confidently assert that it far outstrips all other contenders for the title of most common vertebrate on the planet. Noah Strycker, the author of "The Thing With Feathers," a book about birds, recently told an interviewer that the domestic chicken "has more numbers" than any other vertebrate. He put the planetary figure at 24 billion. In contrast, ichthyologists put the likely figure for bristlemouths at hundreds of trillions and perhaps quadrillions, or thousands of trillions. "No other animal gets close," said Peter C. Davison, a fish scientist at the Farallon Institute for Advanced Ecosystem Research, in Petaluma, Calif. "There are as many as a dozen per square meter of ocean." The bristlemouths are a rapacious family of deep sea fishes that include the wildly successful genus Cyclothone Greek for "circular," in apparent reference to the creature's gaping mouth. They are also known as roundmouths. The genus has 13 species, such as the shadow bristlemouth. The main distinguishing features are subtle differences in the fins and luminous organs. All members wield bristlelike teeth. Over all, the fish are one to three inches in length, tan to black in color, and at times display a kind of ghostly translucence. The first hints of the fish's ubiquity came during the voyage of the H.M.S. Challenger, a British ship that sailed the globe from 1872 to 1876 and helped lay the foundations of oceanography. It lowered nets at dozens of research sites and hauled up the creatures from as deep as three miles. The expedition's thick reports described the tiny fishes as having rows of luminous organs, conspicuous jaws and sharp teeth. The studies noted different species but said little else. Just learning of the fish's existence was hard enough. The first scientist to view the animals in their dark habitat was William Beebe. In the early 1930s, Beebe, a senior explorer of what is now the Wildlife Conservation Society, plunged into the depths off Bermuda in a spherical submersible, gazed through its porthole and saw aliens. "Numberless little creatures" raced through his light beam, he wrote in his 1934 book, "Half Mile Down." They turned out to be bristlemouths. A color plate in the book shows a group with jaws wide open while chasing a school of copepods, tiny crustaceans with long antennas. Increasingly, bristlemouths won the abundance title as more and more nets and divers explored the deep. By 1954, N.B. Marshall, a distinguished marine biologist at the British Museum and author of "Aspects of Deep Sea Biology," called them "the commonest fishes in the ocean." But a mystery proceeded to cloud the claim. During the Cold War, the United States Navy puzzled over a global phenomenon known as the Deep Scattering Layer. It reflected sound waves back to the surface so effectively that, at times, it was mistaken for the seabed. Biologists judged that it was composed of hordes of living things, because it migrated up near the surface at night and back down in daylight. The Navy wanted to better understand the layer to improve its tracking of enemy submarines, as well as hiding from them. Research showed the region to be made of many creatures krill, squids and long, gelatinous animals known as siphonophores. It also harbored many fish, but apparently few bristlemouths, which managed to avoid the nightly swim to the surface. If the most common fish in fact had little to do with the teeming layer, had its abundance been overstated? Ocean textbooks from the 1970s to the 1990s said little about Cyclothone, the main genus of bristlemouths. Quietly, the king had been dethroned. Then came a new wave of research, centering on careful trawls of the deep ocean with a new generation of nets in which the mesh was much finer. No matter how far the nets plunged, up came vast numbers of bristlemouths. A team that trolled the Atlantic down to a depth of more than three miles reported in 2010 that the tiny fish "dominated the catches." Dr. Davison of the Farallon Institute, when he was a graduate student at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, worked with colleagues there to plumb the Pacific off Southern California, doing so repeatedly from 2010 to 2012. Again, the little fish ruled. Last year, oceanographers from Spain, Australia, Norway and Saudi Arabia reported on a research cruise that circumnavigated the globe to probe the life densities of the inky depths. It, too, reaffirmed the new wisdom, calling bristlemouths of the genus Cyclothone "the most abundant vertebrate on earth." It has taken roughly a century and a half, but science has finally come to know the bristlemouth and its ranks of trillions fairly well, even if questions remain. Not so other creatures of the deep. If the tortuous route to identifying the dominant fish is any indication, it will take longer still for science to learn about the uncommon forms of life that roam the sunless depths the planet's main biosphere. "We keep seeing lots of different critters we haven't seen before," Dr. Robison said of voyages in the Monterey Canyon and beyond. He added, "The deeper you go, the stranger things get." The current tally of animal species on the planet runs to about two million, including the bristlemouths. Dr. Robison said the global ocean might harbor a million more species unknown to science. "It's at least a million," he said. "That's because there's so many places we haven't looked." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
New shows come to the streaming giant all the time too many to ever watch them all. We're here to help. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
The bosses haven't yet introduced facial recognition technology at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel. But from her perch behind the front desk at the pink neo Moorish palace overlooking Waikiki Beach, Jean Te'o Gibney can see it coming. "Marriott just rolled it out in China," enabling guests to check into their rooms without bothering with front desk formalities, said Ms. Te'o Gibney, a 53 year old grandmother of seven. "It seems they know they will be eliminating our jobs." Similar fears simmer throughout Marriott's vast network of hotels, the largest in the United States. Over the last two weeks, Ms. Te'o Gibney and thousands of other Marriott workers cooks and cashiers, bellhops and housekeepers have voted to authorize their union, Unite Here, to strike at dozens of locations from Waikiki to Boston and San Diego to Detroit. Alongside the usual demands for higher wages and better workplace safety, the union is bringing another issue to the table, asking for procedures to protect workers affected by new technologies and the innovations they spur. "You are not going to stop technology," said Unite Here's president, D. Taylor. "The question is whether workers will be partners in its deployment or bystanders that get run over by it." Unlike manufacturing workers, whose jobs have been lost to automation since as far back as the 1950s, workers in the low wage portion of the service sector had remained until now largely shielded from job killing technologies. Many earned too little to justify large capital costs to replace them. A typical hotel or motel desk clerk earns just over 12 an hour, according to government data; a concierge just over 13.50. And many of the tasks they perform seemed too challenging to automate. Technology is changing this calculus. There is no equivalent measure on the penetration of software systems like Alexa or touch screens in the workplace. But in 2014, automakers in the United States had 117 robots for every 1,000 workers, according to research by the economists Daron Acemoglu of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Pascual Restrepo of Boston University. In service businesses, there were virtually none. Maria Mendiola, a concierge at the San Jose Marriott, frets that Amazon's agreement to deploy its Echo device in hotel rooms across Marriott's properties will eventually make her position pointless. "Alexa might do my job in the future," she said. At the Sheraton Waikiki, next to the Royal Hawaiian, cashiers at the beachside lounge worry about a newly deployed computer system that will allow servers to close out their own checks making cashiers redundant. There are automatic dishwashers on the market; machines to flip burgers and mix cocktails; robots to deliver room service or help guests book a restaurant reservation. New technologies are reconfiguring the workplace in other ways. Doormen are losing tips as guests turn to Uber and Lyft instead of regular taxis. So are bellhops when guests use Seamless, a food delivery app, instead of room service. How many jobs will technology take out? Hoteliers have yet to figure out how guests will react to a more tech heavy experience. A Marriott spokeswoman said in a statement that the chain was not deploying technology to eliminate jobs but was "personalizing the guest experience and enhancing the stay." Cliff Atkinson, senior vice president for hospitality at MGM Resorts, said new technologies had changed job descriptions at properties across his chain but had not eliminated jobs. Front desk clerks displaced by automated check in kiosks are deployed as "lobby ambassadors" or concierges. As technology gets better and cheaper, there are lots of new tasks it could take over. "It is a new, uncharted area for our company and our industry as a whole," Mr. Atkinson said. "We have talked about one or two brands being fully automated and self service for the guest." 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. David Autor, an economist at M.I.T., says it is plausible to foresee a future in which as airlines have done hotels deploy humans to tend to elite guests and automated systems for everybody else. Workers generate costs well beyond their hourly wage, Professor Autor argued. They get sick and take vacations and require managers. "People are messy," he noted. "Machines are straightforward." Last year, the McKinsey Global Institute issued a report projecting that technology would drive a 30 percent decline in jobs in food service and lodging from 2016 to 2030. That's almost on a par with the 38 percent decline in manufacturing jobs from 1960 to 2012. Unions would rather not have manufacturing's story repeat itself in the service sector. "We are trying to get ahead of that," said Anand Singh, president of Unite Here's local in San Francisco. "We are not Luddites, but we are seeking a real voice at table." The International Brotherhood of Teamsters is also worried about technologies hurtling into the present. As it squared off for contract negotiations with United Parcel Service this year, the union put a bold proposition on the table: to prohibit using drones or autonomous vehicles to deliver packages. But in September, when the union sent the agreement to members for a ratification vote, there was no such provision. Edward Wytkind, who until this year headed the Transportation Trades Department of the A.F.L. C.I.O., said unions could not stop technology if they tried. "Maybe you can stop it through one round of bargaining or slow it down," he said. "But innovation has been going on for 100 years and has never stopped." And he noted what might be the cost of success: "Are we winning a future for workers? Not if the company goes out of business." A better strategy might be to demand a say in how technology is deployed. The Teamsters' tentative deal with U.P.S., for instance, calls for six months of advance warning to the union of technological deployments and for the creation of a committee with union and company representatives that would negotiate "regarding the effects of the proposed technological changes." Unite Here is following a similar path. Mr. Singh listed the union's goals for Marriott contracts: "We want to talk about how technology can assist the work we perform and ease the rigors of our work, how our members are trained, what happens to workers who would otherwise be tagged as redundant, how our members are repositioned to succeed or hired into other workplaces." In June, the union managed for the first time to include protections from technological change in its contracts covering workers at the Las Vegas properties of MGM Resorts and Caesars Entertainment. Workers will be trained to do jobs created or modified by new technology, allowing them to share in the productivity gains. The contracts also provide for the company to try to find jobs for displaced workers. But the union's key achievement was to get 180 days' warning of technological deployments. "They have to let us know and show us the prototypes and must negotiate with us," Mr. Taylor said. "At the end of the day, they can move forward, but this gives us time to understand the effects." If they could choose a precedent from American labor history, today's union leaders might follow the path of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union. In the 1960s and '70s, dockworkers were walloped by one of the most revolutionary technical innovations of the 20th century: containers. At a stroke, containers slashed both the time and number of workers needed to load a ship, saving vast amounts of money. Instead of trying to stop the big boxes, the union covering the longshoremen on the West Coast demanded a share of the spoils: rich retirement packages for workers who were let go, and hefty remuneration for those who stayed. As a result, longshoremen working full time, year round, now make 168,000 to 186,000 a year on average. But you need a lot of power to get a deal like that. The longshore union could shut down ports at will, imposing huge costs on shippers. For workers lacking that kind of clout, the gains achieved by the longshoremen seem out of reach. Unite Here is not powerless. Nationwide, only 7.6 percent of workers in the accommodation industry are unionized, according to government statistics. But in San Francisco, for instance, Unite Here represents 89 percent of workers at Class A hotels. That's partly why housekeepers in San Francisco make 22.64 an hour, the union notes, more than double the national median of 10.09. Unite Here's victories so far have been hard won. "It was not an easy ask," Mr. Taylor said of the language on technology in the Las Vegas deals. "It does infringe on hotels' right to do what they want." The outcome might or might not deliver a greater share of the gains from technology to workers. But front desk clerks and concierges will have better options than severance when Alexa or computer software takes over some of their tasks. "It was a good resolution," Mr. Taylor said. "Time will tell if it is good enough." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Economy |
Shirts for Lifelong New Yorkers and Those Who Would Like to Pass for One Recently, in the basement of my mom's house upstate, I discovered two boxes full of clothes that somehow got diverted from me back in 1997. They were full of gems old merch from "Twin Peaks" and "In Living Color," peak era Gap and so on. But I was most warmed to re encounter the ones so specific that they'd be essentially meaningless to almost anyone else. The best is a fire truck red shirt that reads, "Goodbye Old Stuy." I was part of the first class that graduated from the new Stuyvesant High School building in 1993. These shirts were given to students when we left the old building on East 15th Street the year before. My New York is a small and obscure one, full of private corners that I still lurk in when the world turns cruel, and darkened by the shadows of places that have been swallowed by time (and developers). It'd be nice if I had photos of those places, but mostly I don't. It'd be nicer, even, to have a memento. I would pay who knows how much for a T shirt from my beloved El Greco diner in Sheepshead Bay, in outer Brooklyn, where in the mid to late 1980s I ate approximately one million French fries and stuffed the Galaga machine with quarters sneaked to me by the women who worked the cash register. It was knocked down a few years ago and is now a condo tower with units that can sell for over 1 million. It was vernacular vintage: a reconstruction of New York memory, one faded garment at a time. Fantasy Explosion is the work of Kevin Fallon, 30, a musician who moved to New York from West Greenwich, R.I., six years ago. "I wanted to feel more connected when I moved here," he told me recently. In between jobs, he began going to thrift stores. "Originally," he said, "I was finding things that were important to me 'cause I'd been there 'I had a sandwich at this place.' But that feeling for me started turning into, 'Whoa, what does this mean to other people?'" Quite a bit, it turns out. After selling online since last year, Fantasy Explosion opened a micro stall in the Williamsburg Mini Mall in April. (The retail location is in partnership with the pin brand Pintrill, which also sells from the space.) I stop in whenever I'm nearby, though I generally know what's in stock from its Instagram story. Mr. Fallon estimates that about half of his stock is regionally specific. Some recent highlights include street vendor shirts from the 2003 blackout; a teal beauty from the 1998 New York State Gymnastics Championship; a cap from the Chemical Bank fishing club; a bizarre comedy list about Roth Pond, in Stony Brook, N.Y.; an embroidered shirt from the meat seller Pat LaFrieda. On one recent trip, I spied a shirt from Downstairs Records, a go to for hip hop in the 1980s and '90s, which was too small for me. But I took a picture and posted it on Instagram, where one of my friends, a onetime patron of the store, saw it and immediately snapped it up. AS I GET OLDER, I find myself more interested in wearing items of clothing that reflect, down to a microscopic level, my history. This sort of vernacular vintage is made up of clothes that convey cachet a bone dyed New Yorker and intimate knowledge. "They're code and status symbols," says Brian Procell, the owner of the vintage emporium Procell on the Lower East Side and a vintage archivist. Wearing certain pieces, he said, is one way to communicate membership in "a New York City elite." Items like these serve as a reminder that no matter how big and overstuffed the city gets, New York remains a cult brand. Mr. Procell has sold shirts like these for years, with a special emphasis on city institutions like museums. "Coming across one is like a luxury," he said. "It's the ultimate souvenir." Over the last few years, more and more stores have begun offering these kinds of shirts. On one recent afternoon at Round Two's new vintage store on Ludlow Street, there was a rack devoted to New York specific items, including a tee from the Highbridge Advisory Council Child Care Center in the Bronx ( 40). Kevin Hagen for The New York Times At La Petite Mort, a vintage shop on the Lower East Side that was open from 2014 to 2017, Osvaldo Chance Jimenez, an author and onetime party promoter, was selling deeply specific New York City vintage. I bought an anniversary edition T shirt from Moshood Creations, which has been in the Fort Greene section of Brooklyn for two and a half decades. New York clothing, Mr. Jimenez said, was like "certain slang that only some people will know." He found that young art and fashion people who had recently moved to the city were as attracted to it as the local lifers. "The whole conversation about gentrification was really heavy at that time," he said, "and this was a way for them to identify themselves, their way of saying, 'I'm not a gentrifier.'" Nicolas Heller, a documentarian of New York's vernacular corners and mom and pop businesses, likens New York vintage to Metallica and Iron Maiden shirts. "When I see one, my first question is, 'Do they have a history with this place?'" he said, while conceding that late adopters are acceptable, too. THE CURRENT MOMENT of New York specific vintage comes at the same time that vernacular styles have become part of the aesthetic of many clothing companies. Last year, the T shirt for the annual Social Studies gathering, which brings together the progressive edge of haute street wear, was a Virgil Abloh designed remake of the Stuyvesant Physical Ed. Leader shirt worn by Ad Rock of the Beastie Boys in the video for "(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (to Party!)." The skate brand Grand Collection recently made a hoodie that's effectively a business card for Around the World, the defunct West 37th Street fashion magazine haven. The nu prep line Rowing Blazers has made shirts in collaboration with the 90 year old pizzeria John's of Bleecker Street, Nom Wah Tea Parlor in Chinatown and Harry's New York Bar, in Paris. Reception Clothing, a French brand sold at Token, makes high end merch style T shirts celebrating restaurants around the world: Suzy's Warung in Bali, now closed; Ama Lachei, in Athens; Le Cabaret, in Tokyo; and so on. Fantasy Explosion has made a few vernacular bootlegs of its own, including a college style Guggenheim hoodie and shirts based on a D.I.Y. Metropolitan Transportation Authority jacket with embroidered buses and a Ludacris lyric: "When I move you move/ Just like that." At the same time, the vernacular style of New York's tourist shops the type that clutter Times Square and, decreasingly, Canal Street has become widely used source material for Vetements and Balenciaga as well as more niche concerns, like the goods made for Dev Hynes's Blood Orange project. Wearing these garments is unusually revealing , as if you're wearing a shirt with your own face on it. It starts conversations, and it's a kind of recommendation engine. But mostly it is a map to my private life, a hint of some of the stuff I'm made of. It's why I keep eBay alerts in hopes I may one day find a Crazy Eddie T shirt that's not a filmy sausage casing; a 1980s Carvel ice cream shirt; some other Stuyvesant memorabilia. Or maybe someone will dig an El Greco shirt from the bottom of a storage unit and offer it up for sale, a lock in search of a key. I'll be there. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
It's taken nearly a decade, but the rooftop space at the Brooklyn Children's Museum in Crown Heights is finally ready for the small visitors it is intended to serve. And it arrives with an impressive design pedigree. That starts with the 118 year old museum's current building, designed by Hugh Hardy (who died in March) and then extensively remodeled by Rafael Vinoly in 2008. Mr. Vinoly's reimagining, which gave the museum its arresting facade of curved yellow walls, included a 20,000 square foot terrace on the first floor roof, conceived as a gathering space. Another high profile architect, Toshiko Mori, designed a pavilion for the terrace, stretching translucent high tech fabric over a framework of tubular steel. That structure, looking like a winged creature, has perched there since 2015, visible from the neighboring Brower Park and accessible to those attending special events but not open to day to day visitors. The museum lacked the money to make the terrace a fully functioning space. But with grants totaling 575,000 from elected officials, channeled through the New York State Dormitory Authority, the museum was able to hire Future Green Studio, a rising Brooklyn landscape architecture firm, to make it "a gateway to nature," Stephanie Hill Wilchfort, the museum's president and chief executive, said during an inspection on Tuesday. In one corner, a mini woodland has sprung up with a boardwalk zigzagging through it. Sweetbay magnolia and sassafras trees have materialized. More plants as well as chairs and tables are on the way, Ms. Wilchfort said. She said the space would open in August, during a Senegalese drum and dance festival. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
LOS ANGELES Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin, testifying in a closely watched copyright trial on Wednesday, said that until recently he had never heard the song he has been accused of plagiarizing in the band's 1971 hit "Stairway to Heaven." A couple of years ago, Mr. Page said, his son in law told him that people online were comparing "Stairway" to "Taurus," a 1968 song by the lesser known group Spirit. But when Mr. Page finally heard the other song, it sounded "totally alien" to him. "I know that I had never heard it before," he said. Mr. Page, 72, and his bandmate Robert Plant, 67, are defending themselves in the music industry's latest copyright trial, a year after Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams were ordered to pay 5.3 million to the family of Marvin Gaye over their song "Blurred Lines." The suit over "Stairway to Heaven" was filed by Michael Skidmore, a trustee for the songs of Randy Wolfe, a member of Spirit, who died in 1997. The suit says that Mr. Page and Mr. Plant copied "Taurus" for the distinctive acoustic guitar part that opens "Stairway," and that the men had heard Spirit's song when the two bands crossed paths on the road. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
BRUSSELS European Union legislators overwhelmingly approved a law on Thursday that puts about 130 of the euro zone's largest banks under the direct scrutiny of the European Central Bank. The legislation contains provisions that would give the European Parliament somewhat more oversight of a supervisory body, operating under the aegis of the central bank, when the body assumes its new authority. The vote is an important development, but not the final one, in a winding process that began in early 2012, during one of the most fevered periods in the euro zone financial crisis. To take effect, the measure still needs approval from European Union governments, though that is expected to be a formality. The Single Supervisory Mechanism, the body it creates, is expected to start work during the autumn of 2014 after the European Central Bank conducts a "stress test" on the lenders coming within its purview. The idea is that the central bank would do a better job than national supervisors of nipping financial problems in the bud so that governments would not need to resort to bank bailouts that destabilize the euro and penalize taxpayers. Once up and running, the new supervisory authority will have a range of powers to intervene when it detects problems, including the ability to conduct inspections that could lead to sanctions on banks or their managers. The measure is the first step toward a broader, Europewide vision of banking. The next stage of that effort, creation of a single system for shutting or restructuring banks, is under way. But progress has been slowed by the reluctance of Germany to commit to a banking union that could lead to euro zone nations' being responsible for one another's debts. Even so, the approval on Thursday was among the "most important votes of this parliamentary term," Michel Barnier, the European Union commissioner overseeing financial services, told lawmakers after the vote. The law, he said, will help to "improve and restore confidence our citizens have in our system, as well as the confidence of the rest of the world in our system." Mario Draghi, president of the European Central Bank, issued a statement hailing the vote as "a real step forward in setting up a banking union, which is a core element of a genuine economic and monetary union." Lawmakers had delayed the vote, originally scheduled for Tuesday, reflecting demands for more power to oversee the central bank. The approval came only after the president of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz, told members that Mr. Draghi had agreed to "strong parliamentary oversight" resulting in "a high degree of accountability." Under the agreement, the central bank agreed to share detailed records of meetings of the supervisory body with the Parliament, but the bank would not be required to provide copies of the minutes of the body's meetings. Open or closed on Thanksgiving? Here are stores' plans for Thursday and Friday. The European Parliament also would share power with European Union member governments over selection of the head and the deputy head of the supervisory board. And the Parliament's influential Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee would have the right to summon the supervisory board's head for hearings. But the Parliament would not have the power to veto actions taken by the supervisory authority or by the central bank's governing council. The demands by the Parliament, the legislature of the European Union, were signs of its growing assertiveness. In his statement, Mr. Draghi said: "We will do our utmost to put in place all organizational requirements, with the aim of assuming our supervisory responsibilities one year after the legislation enters into force, and look forward to working with national authorities to contribute to the restoration of confidence in the banking sector." The new Single Supervisory Mechanism will be compulsory for the largest banks operating in the euro area. European Union countries that are not part of the currency bloc can opt to put their banks under the system. Banks with headquarters outside the European Union but with subsidiaries there, like some big American lenders, could see some of their subsidiaries come under the purview of the single supervisory authority. The lawmakers, meeting in Strasbourg, France, voted 559 to 62, with 19 abstentions, to put the single supervisory body under the aegis of the central bank. Originally, France and the European Commission called for all 6,000 euro area banks to be directly overseen by the new supervisory structure. But Germany successfully resisted that plan, arguing that supervising so many banks would make the central bank's job unmanageable. The government in Berlin faced intense pressure from a powerful domestic banking lobby trying to shield many small savings banks from closer scrutiny. Germany nonetheless agreed to let the European Central Bank, at its discretion, step in and take over supervision of any euro zone bank. In most cases, only banks holding assets worth 30 billion euros, or 40 billion, or those holding assets greater than 20 percent of their country's gross domestic product would be directly regulated by the European Central Bank. Central bank officials say that means in practice that about 130 banks, representing about 85 percent of bank assets in the euro zone, would fall under the direct oversight of the new supervisory authority under a formula agreed to by finance ministers last December. Separately, a senior European Union court official said in an opinion on Thursday that one of the rules devised by European Union officials to stem the euro crisis should be rolled back. The official, Niilo Jaaskinen, an advocate general at the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg, said the agency that oversees the European Union's financial markets should not be allowed to ban short selling in any member state. The British government had challenged the rules, saying they went beyond the jurisdiction of the agency, the European Securities and Markets Authority, based in Paris. Opinions handed down by advocates general are not binding on judges. But judges follow the advice in a majority of cases when they make a definitive ruling months later. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Global Business |
A handy tip: If you are a character in a play and you are invited to a get together, don't go. Don't go to dinner parties. Don't go to cocktail parties, reunions, anniversaries or showers. A costume party? Absolutely not. And if a Dublin woman recovering from a suicide attempt throws an inexplicable shindig to celebrate the completion of her new kitchen extension, RSVP no. That absurd soiree activates Isobel Mahon's "Party Face," an unlikely comedy at City Center Stage II that recently toured Ireland under its original title, "Boom?" Before the evening is out, drinks will have been drunk, insults lobbed, upchuck hurled and a topiary sculpture annihilated. Thanks for coming. Don't let the canapes hit you on the way out. Why has an audience been asked over? Well, that probably has something to do with the eternal sweetheart Hayley Mills ("Pollyanna," "The Parent Trap"), who has been given a plum role and makes a dainty meal of it, all while wearing high heels and pink silk capri pants. No small feat. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
On Monday, Emma Boettcher grabbed a small piece of television history, dethroning the "Jeopardy!" juggernaut James Holzhauer just as he was poised to break a longstanding record. Boettcher was no one game wonder. She won her next two games, making some think she might go on her own Holzhauer esque streak. But in the game that aired on Thursday, she finished third, closing the books on her run. "Being on 'Jeopardy!' had to end sometime, and I'm not unhappy with the way it did," she said in an interview. "It was just marvelous to be there." Boettcher, 27, a librarian at the University of Chicago, beat Holzhauer during the episode broadcast on Monday, preventing him from surpassing the 2.52 million Ken Jennings won during his record 74 game streak in 2004. Holzhauer departed with 2.46 million and commended Boettcher on a "world beating performance." How Emma Boettcher did what 64 other players could not: defeat James Holzhauer. Before Final Jeopardy on Thursday, Boettcher was trailing the leading player, Brendan Roach, by only 200. But when the host, Alex Trebek, said the final clue had to do with "American music legends," Boettcher said, she knew it would be difficult for her. The final clue: Steinbeck called him "just a voice and a guitar" but said his songs embodied "the will of a people to endure and fight against oppression." All three contestants placed large bets, and Boettcher was the only one who answered incorrectly. She first wrote "Who is Bob Dylan?" before realizing it was one of the Guthries. She wasn't sure which, so she crossed out Dylan's name and wrote in "A. Guthrie," but the correct response was Arlo's father, Woody Guthrie. Even if she had gotten it right, though, she would have lost because Roach, who works in speechwriting and communications at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in Cambridge, Mass., answered correctly and bid enough to cement his lead. Boettcher took home a 1,000 consolation prize to add to the 97,002 from her three victories. "I knew I wasn't going to go on a long streak," Boettcher said. "If the categories worked out in my favor, then I could probably get through a couple more games. And that was a big if." Boettcher said in an email on Thursday that she had been nervous to be in the spotlight after the news broke that she had beaten Holzhauer. But she said she appreciated the outpouring of support from former "Jeopardy!" contestants, former teachers and "librarians near and far." On Tuesday, one of Boettcher's colleagues at the University of Chicago brought in a cake designed to look like Monday's "Jeopardy!" board, with sprinkles around each clue that Boettcher had answered correctly, she said. Holzhauer's 32 game streak, which stretched over two months, turned him into a national celebrity. He claims the top 16 spots for the most money won in one episode. As for Boettcher, she will be forever linked to Holzhauer in "Jeopardy!" lore, as Nancy Zerg is to Jennings. (After defeating him, Zerg lost the next game.) Boettcher had never even heard Holzhauer's name before she arrived at the "Jeopardy!" studio on March 12. She had not seen him play before she had to face him. (Holzhauer's first win aired on April 4.) During her second game, Boettcher bet all she had on a Daily Double clue, prompting Trebek to say, "Influenced by James, are we?" (Holzhauer made money at such a rapid pace partly because of his large bets.) Boettcher said in an email on Thursday that she reacted that way because, at that moment, she had seen Holzhauer play only one game the one he lost to her and in that game he made relatively modest bets. Boettcher said she knew to bet high from her years watching the show not from watching Holzhauer in particular. "I hadn't had the opportunity to watch him yet," she said. "I only wish my nerve hadn't deserted me when I got Daily Doubles late in the game!" | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
In 1994, just before they were married, Mary Beth Kraese, who runs a marketing and social media business from her home, and her husband, Phillip, a steamfitter, bought a home in the community of South Huntington. Mr. Kraese had grown up in the neighborhood and she had spent her youth just to the north in Huntington Station. "I crossed Jericho," she said, referring to Jericho Turnpike. The busy commercial street, rife with car dealerships, divides Huntington Station from South Huntington a census designated place, or hamlet, in the heart of Long Island. Ms. Kraese, who volunteers with a first aid squad and a fire department, said she doesn't feel that she left her childhood friends behind, because she runs into them frequently, as happened recently when she entered a Panera Bread cafe at the southern end of the Walt Whitman Shops, which was until recently called the Walt Whitman Mall. The mall is a prominent feature in South Huntington, but the hamlet's side streets are generally tree lined and quiet. Like many Long Island communities, South Huntington has overlapping designations. Addresses use the Huntington Station ZIP code of 11746, but South Huntington is also the name of the school district that serves part of Huntington Station and other areas. The Huntington Manor Fire Department encompasses both areas and bits of others. David Gillmor, who recently moved from Huntington Station to South Huntington, is enthusiastic about his new home. "We think the area is awesome," said Mr. Gillmor, who sells commercial doors and hardware in a family business in Huntington Station. When he and his wife, Melissa, began looking for a larger home, they first considered Centerport or Greenlawn, both part of the highly regarded Harborfields Central School District. But the properties were beyond their budget, he said. In South Huntington, they found a five bedroom two and a half bath colonial on nearly half an acre "where my son can ride his bike in the street." He said he paid less than the list price of 439,000. "We didn't want to pay more just for a school district," Mr. Gillmor said. "We're very happy with this district." When he enrolled his son, Nicholas, now 6, in kindergarten last year, he said, he was impressed that teachers spoke highly of David P. Bennardo, the new district superintendent, who was previously the principal of Harborfields High School. He liked the district's full day kindergarten he also has a 3 year old daughter, Holly and dual language program in kindergarten through fifth grade. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
Like a Diamond in the Sky: The Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree Has a New Glow Daniel Libeskind's architectural feat all 900 pounds, 70 spikes, and three million Swarovski crystals of it will light up the night at Rockefeller Center. None Tony Luong for The New York Times Daniel Libeskind, the world renowned master plan architect for the reconstruction of the World Trade Center, first saw the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree as a teenager, in 1961, shortly after he had moved to New York from Poland though the star was not at all memorable. Now, after two years of intensive design, Mr. Libeskind, the first architect to design a Swarovski star, has created a memorable piece : a 3 D, 900 pound architectural feat with 70 spikes and three million crystals with LED lighting spots that Mr. Libeskind said would emit rays so that the sculpture can be seen from all angles. When he first saw the tree as a boy, its crown, he said, was like a pin. "This is not a pin," he said of his own work. "It's truly a star." The piece uses double cone crystals that sparkle more than other types, and it has 70 aluminum components and 140 LED lighting spots, for a radiant glow. The assembling of the internal wiring and components of the Swarovski star: 70 aluminum components are used in its core and it has 140 LED lighting spots. Tony Luong for The New York Times Swarovski introduced a 550 pound star in 2004, and outfitted it even more in 2009. This year's Libeskind Swarovski creation may be the most architecturally advanced piece to top the Rockefeller Center tree, which appeared as part of a formalized annual tradition starting in 1933. This year's lighting ceremony at Rockefeller Center will be on Nov. 28, and the tree will be on view through Jan. 7. The tree, a 72 foot tall Norway spruce from Wallkill, N.Y., was hoisted into place on Saturday in its spot overlooking the skating rink, and will be clad in 50,000 lights and, of course, the star. "It's a renaissance of the star," Mr. Libeskind said, referring to his design of a decoration that has a tradition as a symbol of hope. Inspired by the abstract concept of starlight and Leonardo da Vinci's studies of geometric forms, Mr. Libeskind said he started out with sketches, which he then had to translate into the three dimensional form. He also created a model of the star, which will sit in the plaza next to a holiday retail kiosk, so that observers can look at the design up close. A special heat fix and glue were used to place the crystals on each of the three sides that makes up one spike. Josh Welt, an industrial engineer, examined the crystal placement in Smithfield, R.I., recently. Tony Luong for The New York Times Some of the three sided spikes that will be installed on the Swarovski star for the Rockefeller tree in New York. Tony Luong for The New York Times In his process, Mr. Libeskind used complex technology to make sure the geometric shape, formed with glass and crystals, matched up to his sketches. It was a challenge to make the technical piece look organic, he said. Part of the process involved using a special heat fix and glue to apply the crystals to the six millimeter glass. The Rockefeller Center tree, with its star as a beacon of hope, has endured : In the grip of the Depression, in 1931, workers erected the first known tree in a muddy plaza on Christmas Eve it was 20 feet tall and draped in garland. The first formal tree went up in 1933, when Rockefeller Center decided to create an annual tradition. The star has changed forms over the years, whether a spiky burst of colored wood, a silver star or a five point star outlined in bulbs. Here are some of the highlights of the trees and their decorations, from the archives of The New York Times. A double row of candles lined the walkway to the tree in 1939. It was "undecorated except for the floodlights" and "the silvery gleam of a gigantic star in its topmost branches." The tree in 1945, when it was illuminated for the first time since 1941. A 1939 article describes the tree: "It is the biggest set up there since the custom was started and will stand undecorated except for the floodlights now being connected and the silvery gleam of a gigantic star in its topmost branches." An 88 foot tree with 800 plastic ornaments, white in the daytime and glowing red, blue, green and gold at night, appeared in the plaza in 1940. This tree came from a strip of forest near the Hyde Park estate of President Roosevelt. Organ pipes of gold lined the walkway. The star glowed brighter than ever in 1949, according to a Times report: "A white star crowned the shimmering sight and seemed to send glints of fire almost to the top of the seventy story RCA building in back of the tree." Workers in 1957 attaching the star to the tree as it was readied to be put into position. In 1951, the tree was adorned with 7,500 incandescent bulbs red, green and white and about 2,000 people attended the lighting. This was also a momentous occasion for another reason: the lighting ceremony was televised for the first time, and it featured the Rockefeller Center Choristers and Kate Smith singing Irving Berlin's "White Christmas." In 1955, a four foot white plastic star was wired to the top before the 65 foot tall Norway spruce was hoisted into place by crane. A six story scaffold was erected around the tree, where 20 men would work for a week to decorate it. The lighting: "2,500 seven watt 'firefly' bulbs and 1,400 plastic globes, illuminated with lamps ranging from fifteen to 100 watts." The Rockefeller Center tree in 1966, a gift from Canada in honor of its centennial year. In 1973, the tree was dimmed, having fewer lights because of the energy crisis. In 1975, an article read: "As 55 foot balsam fir blazed into light, a two year old said, 'Lights.'" In 1980, trumpeting heralds led the way as the tree was lighted in 60 degree weather. Announcements of the tree were rare in the 1980s and it made vague appearances in reports, perhaps because it had almost become part of the fabric of the city . In a 1990 column, Anna Quindlen wrote: "Elsewhere the holidays transform drab Main Streets into Bavarian villages, but in New York the effect is a little like a woman already wearing a bracelet and earrings who decides to add a brooch. The lighted tree towering above skaters at Rockefeller Center." In 1991, a 65 foot tree decorated in 25,300 lights, "strung on five miles of wiring," stood in the plaza. The lighting ceremony held extra significance in the shadow of Sept. 11. The first lady, Laura Bush, joined Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani for the flip of the switch, which bathed the tree in red, white and blue. "This is really a salute to the heroes, traditions, strengths and unity of the United States of America," Mr. Giuliani said. The Christmas tree, lighted in 2001 by the first lady, Laura Bush, and Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani. Mrs. Bush's appearance with the mayor, the Police Commissioner Bernard B. Kerik, Fire Commissioner Thomas Von Essen and Richard Sheirer, the emergency management director, highlighted an evening of patriotic themes and somber references to the attacks on the World Trade Center. "Dozens of American flags have taken the place of the silver banners that hung near the tree in prior years, and the tree's patriotic color scheme has replaced a larger palate that included green and amber," a New York Times report said. In 2004, the 550 pound crystal Swarovski star replaced a fiberglass one that had been decorated with gold leaf, leading the star to become a veritable piece of art. The glittery design, by the German artist Michael Hammers, was nine and a half feet wide and "fitted with a secret weapon, a glowing light emitting diode implant that will signal that the star is alive," The Times reported. With the first redesign of the Swarovski this year, Mr. Libeskind said he hoped his version of the star could exist as a "microcosm of the city radiating its light in all directions." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
What to Read Before or After You See 'If Beale Street Could Talk' None Barry Jenkins's adaptation of James Baldwin's 1974 novel, "If Beale Street Could Talk," is an opportunity to revisit an author, an era and a set of themes that still reverberate today. The movie (closely following the book) tells the love story of Fonny and Tish, young people in early 1970s New York City negotiating an impossible situation. Fonny, an enigmatic, Greenwich Village sculptor, has been falsely accused of rape, sending him through a gauntlet of racist institutions as he and Tish try to maintain their deep love. It's a vision of black life in the city at a moment of change, as the achievements of the Civil Rights movement have begun to curdle. It's about the persistence of community and solidarity in the face of prejudice. And it captures Baldwin's genius: illuminating the bruising, personal toll that American society often exacts. Read The Times review of "If Beale Street Could Talk." For those who felt provoked by the movie and the period, here's a bookshelf's worth of possibilities for further reading: Around the same time he wrote "If Beale Street Could Talk," Baldwin was working on "Little Man, Little Man," an enigmatic picture book pitched halfway between children's and adult literature. The story, which was written for Baldwin's nephew, centers on a 4 year old named T.J. who lives in Harlem and loves playing ball with his friends, but also has to navigate a neighborhood where drug addiction and police violence are daily realities. 'No Place to Be Somebody,' by Charles Gordone Gordone's 1969 Pulitzer Prize winning play tells the story of a black bartender in a Greenwich Village bar who attempts to outwit a white mobster syndicate. Gordone drew on his own experiences working at bars in the neighborhood throughout the late 1960s, capturing the sense of desolation among the men and women gathered at his counter to drink. Collins, a largely forgotten artist and filmmaker who died in 1988, also wrote short stories, though it was only in 2016 that her daughter collected them in this book, one which the critic Dwight Garner described as "a revelation." They are peopled by black intellectuals living in New York City at a moment of ferment. Coates's first book was a memoir mostly centered on his father, Paul, a Vietnam vet, onetime Black Panther and an autodidact who started a publishing company in his basement dedicated to telling the true history of African civilization. It's about a son trying to understand an enigmatic father and the principled way he chose to live his life. Lorraine Hansberry's early death at 34 meant that she was remembered mostly as the playwright of "A Raisin in the Sun" and not much else. But, as Perry's biography illuminates, she was at the center of a world of black intellectuals, including her close friend James Baldwin. His work, read alongside hers, can sometimes seem, as Perry puts it, like a "call and response." Naylor's novel, which won a National Book Award in 1983, offers seven interlocking narratives, each centered on a different woman living in a decrepit housing project. The women struggle together against an indifferent and hostile world, drawing on their friendship and solidarity to face the reverberations of rape, homophobia and a child's death. 'Go Tell It On the Mountain,' by James Baldwin Baldwin's 1953 debut novel was the semi autobiographical story of a young man growing up in Harlem in the 1930s and the role of the Pentecostal church in his life. "It does not produce its story as an accumulation of shocks (as most novels of Negro life do), or by puffing into a rigid metaphysical system (as most novels about religion do)," wrote a reviewer in the pages of The Book Review at the time. "It makes its utterance by tension and friction." 'Locking Up Our Own,' by James Forman Jr. The character of Fonny in "Beale Street" is sentenced to prison during a moment when the 1970s war on crime began a move toward the disproportionate and mass incarceration of black men. Forman's contribution is to show the role played by black mayors, judges and police chief, taking office amid a surge in crime and drug addiction, in putting in place measures that would prove devastating for poor black neighborhoods. 'The Sweet Flypaper of Life,' by Roy DeCarava and Langston Hughes DeCarava was the Cartier Bresson of Harlem, capturing daily lives on the street of the city in the 1950s. Though taken a generation before the story of Tish and Fonny, these photographs tell the story of a community rooted to the concrete ground. Together with the words of Langston Hughes, DeCarava aimed to illuminate, as a reviewer in The Times put it, "black joy, black love and resistance through art." This novel captures the lives and voices of a group of poets and musicians who emerged from the black nationalist movements of the late 1960s and served as important precursors to rap and hip hop. Otten, a Dutch journalist, tracked down members of the group to tell this textured story about an era of anger and change. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
Dean Valentine in his home with "Untitled (Scream 3)" by Simphiwe Ndzube. Some People Put on a Show. Others Stage an Art Fair. LOS ANGELES For a certain set of collectors, opening a private museum has become de rigueur. But Dean Valentine started a small art fair instead, with an eye to giving everyone a chance to discover new talent the way he does. The fair, called Felix, was founded with the local art dealing brothers Al and Mills Moran. It drew 40 dealers who offered their wares in a series of rooms and cabanas at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel (it was held Feb. 14 17, timed to be concurrent with the first edition of the Frieze Los Angeles fair). "I learned a lot of what I know about art from hanging out with dealers in the mid 90s and asking them, 'Why is this any good?'" said Mr. Valentine, the former president of Walt Disney Television and the former chief executive officer of UPN. Most of the works were made in the last few years, like Joyce Pensato's painting "Iceman Batman" (2016) and Sanya Kantarovsky's oil "Lavender Arrest" (2015). Exceptions are a 1996 version of Andrea Zittel's customized "A Z Escape Vehicles," a small metal trailer, and a couple of painted Greek vases dating to 500 B.C. that he bought at Sotheby's. "I respond to complexity," Mr. Valentine said. But he also enjoys provocation: The master bedroom features a fanciful full length Kurt Kauper painting of Cary Grant, nude, complete with tan lines, and standing by a roaring fire. Ms. Adelson, a film and TV producer, lets her husband field the collecting duties. "He's broken me down," she said, smiling. The couple has given away more than 600 artworks over the years, to the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles and the Hammer Museum, among others. "I've always thought it'd be really nice that, when I'm gone, my kids will be wandering through a museum and they'll see, 'The gift of Dean Valentine and Amy Adelson,'" he said. "I think that'll be meaningful to them." The day after Felix opened, the couple talked about the origins of their collection. Here are edited excerpts from the conversation. How did this get started? DEAN VALENTINE It was 1994, before my father died. At one point he was at New York's Sloan Kettering, and I was visiting him a lot. And at the time I was running Disney Television, and there's that gap of a few hours where New York is up and buzzing, but everybody in L.A. is still having breakfast. So I'd walk around New York, and one day I wandered into an art gallery. VALENTINE Works by Yuri Kuper, who did these beautiful, Cy Twombly esque things on things on blackboards. For whatever reason, they spoke to me. That was the first acquisition. Did your emotional state affect the purchase? VALENTINE It changed my relationship to art, that it wasn't this decorative thing, it was something that conveyed emotion and feeling. From what I have read, a mortality event almost always lies at the core of some collection mania. It certainly was in my case. AMY ADELSON I will say, I have a vivid memory of one of the first pieces he brought home, on approval: A piece from Mihail Chemiakin's Angels of Death series. ADELSON I said to him, 'I know you are coping with issues of mortality right now and you're mourning the imminent loss of your father, but this is going to be really hard to live with. Laughs Do we have to manifest your mourning through this?' We didn't keep it. Dean, did working for Disney inform your collecting at all? VALENTINE I ran the Walt Disney network animation for a number of years, which was my favorite job there. And I love animation; I think I'm just inherently drawn to it since childhood. And being around animators and hanging out with artists, I think it deepened my connection to art. So it wasn't about Hollywood creativity generally? VALENTINE Otherwise, no. I think everybody always assumes there's this inherent connection between Hollywood and art collecting. And the truth is, most people here don't collect. They don't know anything about art; they don't have any inclination for it. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
Even Spider Man's webs were not strong enough to hold Sony and Disney together. After months of negotiations over the terms of their partnership on that film franchise, Sony announced on Tuesday that Kevin Feige, who helped steer Disney's Marvel Studios and its "Avengers" series to immense global success, will no longer play a role in the next live action "Spider Man" movie starring Tom Holland. The news alarmed fans of the "Marvel Cinematic Universe," who fear that future big screen installments of the linked superhero stories would be weakened or even thrown into plot chaos without friendly relations between Sony, which owns the film rights to Spider Man, and Disney, which owns the rest of the Avengers. Could the M.C.U. go on without your friendly neighborhood web slinger? Sony put the onus for Mr. Feige's departure squarely on Disney. "We are disappointed, but respect Disney's decision not to have him continue as a lead producer," the company said on Twitter. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
I hope by now you've managed to come to grips with the fact that we're no longer going to have Jeff Sessions in our lives. "It's been a real adventure for me," Sessions said in his concession speech this week, after he lost the Republican Senate nomination to a former football coach whose biggest campaign moment probably came when his bus caught on fire. Not clear which adventure Sessions was referring to scampering out of the Senate to become Donald Trump's attorney general and wage his long dreamed of war against immigrants? Accepting the advice of Justice Department lawyers and recusing himself from the Russia investigation? Being attacked by a furious Trump who had purposely put Sessions in the job to get protection from the forces of ... justice? Truly, he's been badly treated by the man who he helped propel into the presidency. Hehehehe. It's a little weird contemplating Sessions now. Trump's treatment of him was outrageous, but if anybody's going to suffer a political stab in the back, you have to be glad it's the guy whose policies as attorney general ranged from keeping more people in prison longer to "good people don't smoke marijuana." Tommy Tuberville, the football coach who beat Sessions, doesn't seem to have any ideas beyond flexing his muscles and promising to do whatever President Trump likes. Alabamians have no idea what he would do if Joe Biden was president, since Tuberville will never acknowledge such a possibility. The nominee will go on to fight against Senator Doug Jones, the Democrat who you'll recall won his seat in a race against a judge with a history of making improper advances to teenage girls. Tuberville will presumably be more of a challenge. I guess we'll have to chalk the Alabama primary up as a win for Trump, who assured voters that Sessions was "not mentally qualified." (This was before the president gave that wild, rambling press conference in which he claimed Biden was opposed to windows.) We're deep into the Senate election season now, with primaries right and left, setting the stage for the Democrats' attempt to take control of the majority in 2021. Everything is on the line taxes, economic recovery, Supreme Court justices. Let's look at a few of the battles brewing. You'll be able to discuss them with your friends over virtual cocktails. And if you want to send a donation or two to candidates who strike your fancy, go for it. In Maine, Republican Senator Susan Collins is fighting for survival. You may remember Collins as the self styled brave independent moderate, who spends most of her working days caving in. Her opponent will be Sara Gideon, the speaker of the state House. Gideon won the Democratic primary Tuesday over two lesser known women who seemed to spend much of their time attacking her for not agreeing to enough debates. That's an important rule for political campaigns: When all else fails, demand more debates. John McCain insisted that he and Barack Obama have 10. Trump is already complaining about Biden's refusal to go beyond the three scheduled. Gideon showed up for two, which seemed OK given the fact that she was about a mile ahead in the polls. But it's perfectly fair to have your doubts about a candidate who won't debate at all. Coach Tuberville, for instance, said he backed out of any new encounters with Sessions because of: B) Donald Trump already having praised his mental capacity. Yeah, he blamed the coronavirus. Hardly exists at all for the Trump camp, unless somebody is asking you to do something you don't want to do. Moving west there's Arizona, which looks like it's going to be huge. This is the one that could tip the balance for the Senate Democrats. The Republican incumbent is Martha McSally, who lost a Senate race in 2018, but then was appointed to the state's second seat after John McCain died and his successor quit. You could argue that she's been through a lot. Everything, really, except being elected to her job. We're pretty sure McSally's Democratic opponent is going to be former astronaut Mark Kelly, even though Kelly first has to weather a primary against someone named Bo Garcia. All we know about Bo is that his nickname is "Heir Archy" and he's running as a write in candidate. Really, that's all. No campaign website, no nothing. But if you write in his name on your ballot, they'll count the vote. Do not be dispirited because some of the people running for high office in America appear to be phantom candidates from nowhere. Think of it this way: It's sort of inspiring how wide open the system sometimes is, as long as you don't expect to actually get elected to anything. One of my favorite meaningless races was for an Idaho Senate seat in 2010. Nobody had any doubt that Mike Crapo, the Republican incumbent, was going to win. Eventually Democrat William Bryk volunteered to oppose him, just so Crapo would have some competition. This came after he noticed that you did not actually have to live in Idaho in order to run there. Bryk was, in fact, a bankruptcy lawyer in Brooklyn. His campaign slogan was, "If Elected, I Will Move." Right now, that sort of sounds better than Make America Great 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. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
Five Bedrooms and a Quiet Garden in Dublin This five bedroom, three bath house is on a quiet lane in the Ballsbridge neighborhood of Dublin. It was built on the site of a coach house and stables for an adjacent property in the 1970s, when the owners of that property decided to downsize, said Harriet Grant, an agent with Savills, which has the listing. "Because they were building for themselves in their own garden, they were able to choose the size of the garden for their new mews house," Ms. Grant said. "So the property has a bigger garden than you would normally get." The current owners expanded and modernized the 0.7 acre property in 2003 by extending the foyer and kitchen in the front of the brick house, adding a third floor with a spacious terrace and erecting sliding glass doors and walls in the living areas for an indoor outdoor feeling. There is a courtyard garden in the front and a large, professionally landscaped garden in the back. In a nod to the property's past, two wrought iron hay feeders remain attached to the stone wall that conceals the home from passers by, Ms. Grant said. A wood gate in the wall opens to a paved front courtyard, which has space for parking and a garden with a raised wood deck. Inside the 2,250 square foot house, a covered entryway opens into a foyer off the dining area, where a glass door slides opens to the courtyard. The kitchen and breakfast room are to the left of the foyer, with glass walls facing the courtyard. The living room extends the width of the back of the house and has glass doors that slide open to the rear garden. A glass sided staircase leads to the second floor, where there are four bedrooms. One of the bedrooms has an en suite bathroom, and the other three share a bathroom with a tub. The master suite, on the third floor, has a sitting room, a shower with a glass ceiling and large glass doors that open to a sheltered terrace overlooking the neighborhood. One of the priciest sections of Dublin, Ballsbridge is home to most of the city's foreign embassies, which are interspersed with upscale hotels and restaurants. It is also home to many sports clubs and Aviva Stadium, which holds the home games of the national rugby union team and the national football team. The neighborhood's tree lined streets are prized for their Victorian and Georgian homes, Ms. Grant said. Raglan Lane, where this house is, once served as a simple entryway to the coach houses on neighboring Wellington Road. Today, it is "one of the hottest stretches of mews property in the country," according to the Irish Times. The property is less than two miles from Sandymount beach, on the eastern coast of Ireland, and less than two miles in the other direction from the historic center of Dublin. The nearest bus stop is a five minute walk. Dublin Airport is 10 miles north, about a half hour drive without traffic. Housing prices in Dublin have recovered about 80 percent of their value since the market peaked before the financial crisis of 2008 and then bottomed out in 2012, according to the May 2019 property price index report from the country's Central Statistics Office. But after several years of rapidly increasingly prices, the market is cooling. Prices in Dublin rose 0.6 percent during the year ending May 2019, a marked reduction from the 10.7 percent growth during the same period a year earlier. (Across Ireland, prices increased by 2.8 percent from May 2018 to May 2019, following a 12.4 percent increase during the previous year.) "The madness on the prices is coming to a cooling point, but there's still very much a functioning market," Ms. Grant said. Paul Murgatroyd, the director of research and business development at the Dublin based agency Douglas Newman Good, attributed the slowdown to mortgage lending rules instituted in 2015 by the Central Bank of Ireland that aimed to curtail reckless lending and borrowing. The laws restrict buyers from borrowing more than 3.5 times their gross income. First time buyers must put down at least 10 percent; others must put down at least 20 percent. The laws make buying property especially challenging for entry level buyers in Dublin, where the average resale price in the second quarter of 2019 was about 455,000 euros ( 510,000), Mr. Murgatroyd said. "Like many capital cities in the world, it's not a market that's favorable across the board for first time buyers," he said. "If they could build more starter homes, more apartments, they would sell, undoubtedly, because there is pent up demand for anything under 325,000 euros," or about 365,000. Consequently, prices continue to rise at the lower end of the market, while at the upper end homes priced over 500,000 euros ( 560,000) they are on the decline, he said. Returning Irish expatriates, as well as British citizens and Europeans, make up the largest share of foreign buyers, Ms. Grant said. The country's Immigrant Investor Programme, introduced in 2012, grants visas to foreigners who invest at least 1 million euros ( 1.12 million) in certain properties, funds or businesses. Applicants must have a minimum personal net worth of at least 2 million euros ( 2.24 million), and their investment must be for a minimum of three years and may not be financed through a loan. The program has primarily attracted Chinese investors, many of them bringing their families to Ireland to live, Ms. Grant said. Legal fees range widely, and there is no set scale, Mr. Colbert said. The only other significant cost associated with buying property is stamp duty, calculated as 1 percent on the first million euros of the sales price, and 2 percent above that. The seller is responsible for paying the agent's commission. The annual property tax on this home is 3,362 euros ( 3,770), Ms. Grant said. For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: nytrealestate. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
A Furby From 'Uncut Gems' Can Be Yours (for a Good Cause) None Adam Sandler and that very special piece of jewelry in "Uncut Gems." Early on in the frenetic thriller "Uncut Gems," Adam Sandler's jeweler character shows off a prized piece of merchandise: a diamond encrusted Furby toy with controllable eyes that dart back and forth. Fans who viewed that creation with more envy than fear are in luck: In an effort to raise money for organizations supporting New York communities during the coronavirus pandemic, A24, the company behind "Uncut Gems" and other art house favorites, will soon auction off an array of original props including one of those twinkling Furbys in the Safdie brothers' movie (those diamonds aren't real; they're crystals) and a carved mermaid figurine that plays a significant role in Robert Eggers's "The Lighthouse." The mermaid carving from "The Lighthouse" is among the props up for sale. "It's nice to see when stuff that's made for a movie can live on," Eggers said in a phone interview. "The craftspeople that make these props put a lot of time and effort and love and sweat and tears into creating them, so if it can have another life, that's great. And it couldn't be for a better cause." Auctions will take place in April and May, and will be held online. A24, which is based in New York, will give the proceeds to four local organizations: the FDNY Foundation, which supports the New York City Fire Department; the hunger relief nonprofit Food Bank for New York City; the public health care organization NYC Health Hospitals; and the Queens Community House, which provides services to children and adults throughout Queens. The first auction begins Wednesday at a24auctions.com. Each auction will last 16 days. Other items going on the block include the 33 pound floral dress worn by Florence Pugh for the finale of Ari Aster's "Midsommar"; a skateboard from Jonah Hill's "Mid90s"; a shoe box time capsule from Bo Burnham's "Eighth Grade"; and the enormous replica lighthouse lens that enthralls the keepers played by Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe in "The Lighthouse." You can bid on the floral confection Florence Pugh wore in "Midsommar." Asked what the prop lens might be like to own, Eggers replied, it's "quite beautiful in person, and hypnotic." But he added a note of caution for the lucky buyer: "It weighs a ton. Literally, I think. Or half a ton." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
The "ETLE Universe" is much more than a dance show. It is in the words of its principal creator, Sarah A. O. Rosner, director of the A. O. Movement Collective "a queer feminist cyborg time travel epic thing." Among its many facets are a graphic novel, a video game, a music album, 3 D printed jewelry, photography and pornography. This past weekend at Loft 172 in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, the performance portion was fully revealed: a 90 minute production called "ETLE and the Anders." The story could be a feminist take on the "Terminator" movies. A cyborg (ETLE) has traveled from the future into our present to alter history. That yet to happen history involves an epidemic that causes women to drift through multiple dimensions of time. There's a repressive government agency and a violent rebellion. But the crucial twist is the means the cyborg has chosen to save the world: the A. O. Movement Collective. It's possible to glean some of this story during the show, even as the purposefully jumbled production thwarts linearity and clarity, decrying those qualities as restrictively male. In place of coherence, the show has energy. Goaded by the live music of Idgy Dean, a one woman band, the eager cast of 10 continually passes through the central space on multiple trajectories, sometimes hurling their bodies with great force, sometimes balancing against one another with delicacy. None of this, though, achieves the show's ambitions of transformative theater. When the performers are clear, earnestly lecturing on standard concepts from feminist and queer theory, they are persuasive enough, but the truth that cuts deepest comes in self deprecating jokes. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
Credit...Peter Prato for The New York Times Facebook's A.I. Whiz Now Faces the Task of Cleaning It Up. Sometimes That Brings Him to Tears. For half an hour, we had been sitting in a conference room at Facebook's headquarters, surrounded by whiteboards covered in blue and red marker, discussing the technical difficulties of removing toxic content from the social network. Then we brought up an episode where the challenges had proved insurmountable: the shootings in Christchurch, New Zealand. In March, a gunman had killed 51 people in two mosques there and live streamed it on Facebook. It took the company roughly an hour to remove the video from its site. By then, the bloody footage had spread across social media. Mr. Schroepfer went quiet. His eyes began to glisten. "We're working on this right now," he said after a minute, trying to remain composed. "It won't be fixed tomorrow. But I do not want to have this conversation again six months from now. We can do a much, much better job of catching this." The question is whether that is really true or if Facebook is kidding itself. For the past three years, the social network has been under scrutiny for the proliferation of false, misleading and inappropriate content that people publish on its site. In response, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's chief executive, has invoked a technology that he says will help eliminate the problematic posts: artificial intelligence. Before Congress last year, Mr. Zuckerberg testified that Facebook was developing machine based systems to "identify certain classes of bad activity" and declared that "over a five to 10 year period, we will have A.I. tools" that can detect and remove hate speech. He has since blithely repeated these claims with the media, on conference calls with Wall Street and at Facebook's own events. Mr. Schroepfer or Schrep, as he is known internally is the person at Facebook leading the efforts to build the automated tools to sort through and erase the millions of such posts. But the task is Sisyphean, he acknowledged over the course of three interviews recently. That's because every time Mr. Schroepfer and his more than 150 engineering specialists create A.I. solutions that flag and squelch noxious material, new and dubious posts that the A.I. systems have never seen before pop up and are thus not caught. The task is made more difficult because "bad activity" is often in the eye of the beholder and humans, let alone machines, cannot agree on what that is. In one interview, Mr. Schroepfer acknowledged after some prodding that A.I. alone could not cure Facebook's ills. "I do think there's an endgame here," he said. But "I don't think it's 'everything's solved,' and we all pack up and go home." The pressure is on, however. This past week, after widespread criticism over the Christchurch video, Facebook changed its policies to restrict the use of its live streaming service. At a summit in Paris with President Emmanuel Macron of France and Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand on Wednesday, the company also signed a pledge to re examine the tools it uses to identify violent content. Mr. Schroepfer, 44, is in a position he never wanted to be in. For years, his job was to help the social network build a top flight A.I. lab, where the brightest minds could tackle technological challenges like using machines to pick out people's faces in photos. He and Mr. Zuckerberg wanted an A.I. operation to rival Google's, which was widely seen as having the deepest stable of A.I. researchers. He recruited Ph.D.s from New York University, the University of London and the Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris. But along the way, his role evolved into one of threat removal and toxic content eliminator. Now he and his recruits spend much of their time applying A.I. to spotting and deleting death threats, videos of suicides, misinformation and outright lies. "None of us have ever seen anything like this," said John Lilly, a former chief executive of Mozilla and now a venture capitalist at Greylock Partners, who studied computer science with Mr. Schroepfer at Stanford University in the mid 1990s. "There is no one else to ask about how to solve these problems." Facebook allowed us to talk to Mr. Schroepfer because it wanted to show how A.I. is catching troublesome content and, presumably, because it was interested in humanizing its executives. The chief technology officer often shows his feelings, according to many who know him. "I don't think I'm speaking out of turn to say that I've seen Schrep cry at work," said Jocelyn Goldfein, a venture capitalist at Zetta Venture Partners who worked with him at Facebook. "It's never going to go to zero," he said of the problematic posts. One Sunday in December 2013, Clement Farabet walked into the penthouse suite at the Harrah's hotel and casino in Lake Tahoe, Nev. Inside, he was greeted by Mr. Schroepfer and Mr. Zuckerberg. Mr. Zuckerberg was shoeless. Over the next 30 minutes, the C.E.O. paced back and forth in his socks while keeping up a conversation with Dr. Farabet, an A.I. researcher at New York University. Mr. Zuckerberg described A.I. as "the next big thing" and "the next step for Facebook." Mr. Schroepfer, seated on the couch, occasionally piped up to reinforce a point. They were in town to recruit A.I. talent. Lake Tahoe was the venue that year for NIPS, an academic conference dedicated to A.I. that attracts the world's top researchers. The Facebook brass had brought along Yann LeCun, an N.Y.U. academic who is regarded as a founding father of the modern artificial intelligence movement, and whom they had just hired to build an A.I. lab. Dr. Farabet, who regards Dr. LeCun as a mentor, was also on their shortlist. "He basically wanted to hire everybody," Dr. Farabet said of Mr. Zuckerberg. "He knew the names of every single researcher in the space." Those were heady days for Facebook, before its trajectory turned and the mission of its A.I. work changed. At the time, Silicon Valley's biggest tech companies from Google to Twitter were racing to become forces in A.I. The technology had been dismissed by the internet firms for years. But at universities, researchers like Dr. LeCun had quietly nurtured A.I. systems called "neural networks," complex mathematical systems that can learn tasks on their own by analyzing vast amounts of data. To the surprise of many in Silicon Valley, these arcane and somewhat mysterious systems had finally started to work. Mr. Schroepfer and Mr. Zuckerberg wanted to push Facebook into that contest, seeing the rapidly improving technology as something the company needed to jump on. A.I. could help the social network recognize faces in photos and videos posted to its site, Mr. Schroepfer said, and could aid it in better targeting ads, organizing its News Feed and translating between languages. A.I. could also be applied to deliver digital widgets like "chatbots," which are conversational systems that let businesses interact with customers. "We were going to hire some of the best people in the world," Mr. Schroepfer said. "We were going to build a new kind of research lab." Starting in 2013, Mr. Schroepfer began hiring researchers who specialized in neural networks, at a time when the stars of the field were paid millions or tens of millions of dollars over four or five years. On that Sunday in 2013 in Lake Tahoe, they did not succeed in hiring Dr. Farabet, who went on to create an A.I. start up that Twitter later acquired. But Mr. Schroepfer brought in dozens of top researchers from places like Google, N.Y.U. and the University of Montreal. Mr. Schroepfer also built a second organization, the Applied Machine Learning team, which was asked to apply the Facebook A.I. lab's technologies to real world applications, like facial recognition, language translation and augmented reality tools. In late 2015, some of the A.I. work started to shift. The catalyst was the Paris terrorist attack, in which Islamic militants killed 130 people and wounded nearly 500 during coordinated attacks in and around the French capital. Afterward, Mr. Zuckerberg asked the Applied Machine Learning team what it might do to combat terrorism on Facebook, according to a person with knowledge of the company who was not authorized to speak publicly. In response, the team used technology developed inside the new Facebook A.I. lab to build a system to identify terrorist propaganda on the social network. The tool analyzed Facebook posts that mentioned the Islamic State or Al Qaeda and flagged those that most likely violated the company's counterterrorism policies. Human curators then reviewed the posts. It was a turning point in Facebook's effort to use A.I. to weed through posts and eliminate the problematic ones. Though the company initially dismissed its role in misinformation and the election, it started shifting technical resources in early 2017 to automatically identify a wide range of unwanted content, from nudity to fake accounts. It also created dozens of "integrity" positions dedicated to fighting unwanted content on subsections of its site. By mid 2017, the detection of toxic content accounted for more of the work at the Applied Machine Learning team than any other task. "The clear No. 1 priority for our content understanding work was integrity," Mr. Schroepfer said. Then in March 2018, The New York Times and others reported that the British political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica had harvested the information of millions of Facebook users without their consent, to build voter profiles for the Trump campaign. The outcry against the social network mushroomed. Mr. Schroepfer was soon called to help deal with the controversy. In April 2018, he flew to London to be the designated executive to face questions from a British parliamentary committee about the Cambridge Analytica scandal. He was grilled for more than four hours as one parliamentary member after another heaped criticism on Facebook. "Mr. Schroepfer, you have a head of integrity?" Ian Lucas, a Labour Party politician, said to the grim faced executive during the hearing, which was live streamed around the world. "I remain unconvinced that your company has integrity." "It was too hard for me to watch," said Forest Key, chief executive of a Seattle virtual reality start up called Pixvana, who has known Mr. Schroepfer since they worked together at a movie effects technology start up in the late 1990s. "What a burden. What a responsibility." The challenge of using A.I. to contain Facebook's content issues was on and Mr. Schroepfer was in the hot seat. 'Talking engineers off the ledge of quitting' From his earliest days at Facebook, Mr. Schroepfer was viewed as a problem solver. Raised in Delray Beach, Fla., where his parents ran a 1,000 watt AM radio station that played rock 'n' roll oldies before switching to R B, Mr. Schroepfer moved to California in 1993 to attend Stanford. There, he majored in computer science for his undergraduate and graduate degrees, mingling with fellow technologists like Mr. Lilly and Adam Nash, who is now a top executive at the file sharing company Dropbox. After graduating, Mr. Schroepfer stayed in Silicon Valley and went after thorny technical undertakings. He cut his teeth at a movie effects start up and later founded a company that built software for massive computer data centers, which was acquired by Sun Microsystems. In 2005, he joined Mozilla as vice president for engineering. The San Francisco nonprofit had built a web browser to challenge the monopoly of Microsoft and its Internet Explorer browser. At the time, few technical tasks were as large. "Browsers are complex products, and the competitive landscape is weird," said Mike Shaver, a founder of Mozilla, who worked alongside Mr. Schroepfer for several years. "Even early on in his career, I was never worried about his ability to handle it all." In 2008, Dustin Moskovitz, a co founder of Facebook, stepped down as its head of engineering. Enter Mr. Schroepfer, who came to the company to take that role. Facebook served about two million people at the time, and his mandate was to keep the site up and running as its numbers of users exploded. The job involved managing thousands of engineers and tens of thousands of computer servers across the globe. "Most of the job was like a bus rolling downhill on fire with four flat tires. Like: How do we keep it going?" Mr. Schroepfer said. A big part of his day was "talking engineers off the ledge of quitting" because they were dealing with issues at all hours, he said. Over the next few years, his team built a range of new technologies for running a service so large. (Facebook has more than two billion users today.) It rolled out new programming tools to help the company deliver Facebook to laptops and phones more quickly and reliably. It introduced custom server computers in data centers to streamline the operation of the enormous computer network. In the end, Facebook significantly reduced service interruptions. "We can now catch this sort of thing proactively," Mr. Schroepfer said. The problem was that the marijuana versus broccoli exercise was not just a sign of progress, but also of the limits that Facebook was hitting. Mr. Schroepfer's team has built A.I systems that the company now uses to identify and remove pot images, nudity and terrorist related content. But the systems are not catching all of those pictures, as there is always unexpected content, which means millions of nude, marijuana related and terrorist related posts continue reaching the eyes of Facebook users. Identifying rogue images is also one of the easier tasks for A.I. It is harder to build systems to identify false news stories or hate speech. False news stories can easily be fashioned to appear real. And hate speech is problematic because it is so difficult for machines to recognize linguistic nuances. Many nuances differ from language to language, while context around conversations rapidly evolves as they occur, making it difficult for the machines to keep up. Delip Rao, head of research at A.I. Foundation, a nonprofit that explores how artificial intelligence can fight disinformation, described the challenge as "an arms race." A.I. is built from what has come before. But so often, there is nothing to learn from. Behavior changes. Attackers create new techniques. By definition, it becomes a game of cat and mouse. "Sometimes you are ahead of the people causing harm," Mr. Rao said. "Sometimes they are ahead of you." On that afternoon, Mr. Schroepfer tried to answer our questions about the cat and mouse game with data and numbers. He said Facebook now automatically removed 96 percent of all nudity from the social network. Hate speech was tougher, he said the company catches 51 percent of that on the site. (Facebook later said this had risen to 65 percent.) Mr. Schroepfer acknowledged the arms race element. Facebook, which can automatically detect and remove problematic live video streams, did not identify the New Zealand video in March, he said, because it did not really resemble anything uploaded to the social network in the past. The video gave a first person viewpoint, like a computer game. In designing systems that identify graphic violence, Facebook typically works backward from existing images images of people kicking cats, dogs attacking people, cars hitting pedestrians, one person swinging a baseball bat at another. But, he said, "none of those look a lot like this video." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
What a difference a decade can make. Copenhagen today is a city transformed, a polestar across creative fields from art to architecture, design to dining. No longer a sleepy Scandinavian capital, this good looking city found success by tinkering with expectations. Cyclists own the avenues even in the depths of winter. The near barren land gave birth to a culinary movement. And despite its distance from Europe's vineyards, the Danish city is considered among the best in the world for natural wine. The only problem for travelers visiting today, faced with new and noteworthy openings nearly every week, is keeping up. Your introduction to the evolving nature of the city is Inderhavnsbroen (Inner Harbor Bridge), a cycling and pedestrian bridge that connects the Nyhavn and Christianshavn districts. Completed in 2016, the structure is the final link of the Harbor Circle, an eight mile route for cyclists and pedestrians traversing this maritime city's myriad waterways. Although the bridge itself is unremarkable, the impressive panorama spans both the past and future: historic Nyhavn with its colorful rowhouses and 17th century canal; influx Papiroen island; the gray stone building that formerly housed Noma (the acclaimed New Nordic restaurant reopened nearby in February); and modern architectural landmarks, including the neo futuristic Opera House and the Royal Library with its angular black facade. Danes are known for their design savvy, but the innate sense of style also extends to their wardrobes. To appropriate an understated Scandinavian look, visit Project 4, a small Latin Quarter shop packed with functional canvas Sandqvist backpacks, woolen Klitmoller Collective sweaters, and leather jackets from the Copenhagen based label Ventil Studios. The spinoff store downstairs, Concept 4, is stocked with durable Rains raincoats and interior items ranging from Kinfolk tomes to cork bound Nomess notebooks. Then browse the showroom of Hofmann Copenhagen, a niche brand for women, known for high neck blouses and wide leg trousers. After transforming a once derelict stretch of Jaegersborggade into a culinary destination with the Michelin starred restaurant Relae and the eco bistro Manfreds, the chef Christian Puglisi turned his attention to a forlorn stretch of Guldbergsgade. Today the lively block is home to two Puglisi run establishments as well as Brus, an enormous new brewpub opened by the local brewery To Ol in an old iron foundry. Start there, at one of the smooth wood paneled booths, with a glass of The Boss, a double dry hopped I.P.A., and an order of fermented fries with mushroom mayonnaise (55 Danish kroner, or about 9.10). Later, stumble across the street to Baest, Puglisi's version of an Italian trattoria serving house cured charcuterie and artisan cheeses made with milk from the restaurant's herd of Jersey cows, like creamy stracciatella that's dolloped on the simple but sublime tomato pizzas (110 kroner) with perfectly blistered crusts from the wood fired oven. In a city filled with excellent watering holes, one of the most impressive newcomers is Himmeriget, an unassuming bar in a former butcher shop. At this all are welcome neighborhood hangout, the cocktail list is handwritten on the white tile wall and ten taps pour well chosen craft beers (one owner is Jeppe Jarnit Bjergso of Evil Twin Brewing). If wine is what you're after, look for the neon pink teardrop marking the entrance to Gaarden Gaden, a nearby bar specializing in natural wines with some 300 bottles in the cellar. Whatever you wake up craving, it's likely being served at Moller Kaffe Kokken, a bustling Norrebro cafe favored by locals serious about their morgenmad (breakfast). From the menu of two dozen or so small dishes (all under 50 kroner), create your ideal smorgasbord: maybe Danish porridge with sea buckthorn jam, tart apple slices with lime and sea salt, fried eggs with herbs, crushed potatoes with yogurt and parsley, and waffles with marmalade and creme anglaise. A basket of homemade bread sourdough, dark rye and whipped butter is a must. Afterward, stroll through Superkilen, a half mile long urban park whose colorful, eclectic design mirrors Norrebro's multicultural diversity. Bredgade stretches from Nyhavn canal to the moats of Kastellet, but this street is more than a convenient thoroughfare. It's also home to a cluster of world class contemporary art galleries, including Galerie Mikael Andersen, where exhibitions regularly feature noteworthy Danish artists, like Kristian Touborg and Elisabeth Toubro. Across the street, find art of a different form at Designmuseum Danmark, where graphic design and fashion are spotlighted alongside an exhibition of the 20th century Danish chairs that solidified the country's reputation for outstanding design (admission, 115 kroner). What's all the fuss about natural wines? To understand the drinking trend that has swallowed this city whole, descend a half flight of stairs to Den Vandrette, a harborside wine den that feels like a sommelier friend's living room, with flickering candles and flowers in bottles with artsy labels. Here, enthusiastic servers sing the natural wine gospel, pouring tastes from a magnum of Bodega Cueva's Tardana Orange and urging you to poke around the wine cellar. Order a jar of olives and stay a while, or continue a wine pilgrimage to the under a bridge locale of Rosforth Rosforth, an influential wine importer that hosts weekly tastings and summertime pop ups on the quay. There's no escaping Noma's influence on the local dining scene, where nearly every top chef has logged time with Rene Redzepi. But no restaurant is as closely tied as 108, the first Noma spinoff that opened in a spacious stone building in 2016. The chef and co owner Kristian Baumann (formerly of both Noma and Relae) adheres to the foraging pickling fermenting culinary philosophy, serving blue mussels with salted gooseberries and roasted yeast oil, peas with a dollop of caviar encircled by edible petals, and an astoundingly beautiful bouquet of zucchini flowers and summer greens. What distinguishes 108 is its accessibility: There's an a la carte menu, prices are comparatively modest (most dishes are under 200 kroner), and there are seats for walk ins in the lively, laid back dining room. Atmosphere is paramount in a country so adept at making things cozy that the Danish term hygge became a worldwide trend. Down a half flight of stairs on Boldhusgade, CUB Coffee Bar nails the concept, with fur pelts draped on chairs, an adorable bear cub logo and aromatic roasts from Copenhagen Coffee Lab. Order a croissant and a frothy cappuccino to savor in one of the homey nooks lit by candles and classic Poul Henningsen pendants. For a different brand of hygge, visit the fashionable Cafe Atelier September, which serves light roast coffee from Sweden's Koppi roastery and the city's most photographed avocado toast. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
Andy Murray has made an art form out of playing on the edge and counterpunching his way out of danger. That talent was on full display Tuesday at the United States Open, as Murray flirted with elimination all afternoon and somehow pulled out a win following a nearly five hour match with Yoshihito Nishioka of Japan, 4 6, 4 6, 7 6 (5), 7 6 (4), 6 4. "I'm tired," Murray said during his on court interview when the four hour, 39 minute match was over. "My toes are the worst." Getting into a marathon slugfest with Nishioka was a terrible idea for Murray, who is still early in his singles comeback from hip replacement surgery. He had little choice though. Nishioka, 24, is a steady baseliner who, though just 5 foot 7 can puzzle opponents with both his relentlessness and ability to mix up his shots. In other words, a smaller and, so far, less effective version of Murray, but with two healthy hips. Coming back from a career threatening injury as Murray is trying to do is always a fraught and risky endeavor. That is especially the case right now, with the coronavirus pandemic disrupting tennis and so many sports. Normally, Murray would play a series of smaller tournaments to sharpen his game against lesser competition, gain rankings points and then hopefully a seed at a major tournament. Being seeded would protect him from top opponents for a round or two. But with the tennis world on hiatus from March until August, there was little opportunity for Murray to play himself into Grand Slam form. The challenge of long, withering matches was going to come quickly. Was he still fast enough to cover the court? Could he last five sets after so much time away from Grand Slam tennis? The early answers yes, and yes, at least against the No. 49 player in the world. This was Murray being so Murray, carrying on that high volume dialogue with himself throughout, spraying flat back hands and topspin lobs and the soft drop shots that once carried him to the world No. 1 ranking. Murray played from behind nearly all afternoon, dropping the first two sets and then going down a break early in the third as he struggled to find his rhythm and beat so many forehands into the middle of the net. He said he started out too tentative, then overcompensated by taking too many chances. He popped a string during one crucial point and couldn't figure out how to break Nishioka's relatively soft serve, which averages less than 100 miles per hour. But then he somehow worked his way into a third set tiebreaker, chasing down drop shots and even bending a forehand around the side of the net. He survived the first tiebreaker just barely, and when he did he let out a primal scream, trying to will a higher level of play out of his 6 foot 3 inch frame. Crowds are hard to come by at the U.S. Open this year, but Murray managed to attract one. As the fourth set moved into the later stages and especially in the tiebreaker, players began appearing in the seats of Arthur Ashe Stadium. Novak Djokovic, the world No. 1, popped out of his luxury suite, one which he and all seeded players here each were assigned to take in any action during their downtime. Amanda Anisimova, the 19 year old American who won her first round match earlier Tuesday, took a seat in the lower bowl. Murray beat back a match point for Nishioka in the fourth set, and when he prevailed in the fourth set tiebreaker, his fellow players filled the 22,000 seat stadium with applause, or at least tried their best. "It's rare you have lots of players watching your match," he said. "In some ways that can be a little distracting." Murray's father in law was also watching, as was his brother, Jamie, and he noticed some of the other British players had come out. "Although the atmosphere was very flat, at the end as I was starting to turn it around and I could see some faces in different points of the court to see some encouragement. That definitely helps." The fifth set brought Murray to the brink again. Nishioka broke Murray to go up 3 2, only to have Murray, who had noticed that Nishioka could sometimes struggle to make a service break stick, break back to tie the set. Somehow, he saved his best tennis for the final games, landing 79 percent of his first serves in the final set, nailing 16 of his 64 winners. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
SAN FRANCISCO Officially, the title "Unbound" applied to the 12 new ballets that had their premieres over four evenings with San Francisco Ballet, commissioned from 12 choreographers. But the word summed up the company's dancers even more. Under the artistic direction of Helgi Tomasson, San Francisco has long been among the world's most elegant and refined companies but sometimes in past seasons it has seemed too polite, demure, withheld. Not so with "Unbound." Individual dancers have been outstanding; so has the larger ensemble. Though from a wide variety of backgrounds, the dancers share the same virtues of intensely elegant clarity, high refinement and fervent commitment. New York has two influential ballet companies, New York City Ballet and American Ballet Theater, to both of which San Francisco Ballet owes debts. (Mr. Tomasson created roles for both George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins as a City Ballet principal, and his company's repertory contains works created for both New York companies.) But the limpid sophistication of the San Francisco style is apart from either. Eight of the 12 commissions turned out to be vividly distinct examples of dance theater. Cathy Marston's "Snowblind" retells the bleak tale of Edith Wharton's "Ethan Frome": the younger husband, the older wife, the external snowscape and human society. Annabelle Lopez Ochoa's "Guernica" plunges into the erotic bullfighting of Picasso. Arthur Pita's "Bjork Ballet" created a series of changing landscapes in response to the music of Bjork. True, I'm eager to revisit only two of these "Your Flesh Shall Be" and "Hurry Up" but these eight were so striking, so fully developed along their own lines, that the four evenings all felt substantial. As for the four I found less individual Edwaard Liang's "The Infinite Ocean," Dwight Rhoden's "Let's Begin at the End," Myles Thatcher's "Otherness" and Stanton Welch's "Bespoke" you could easily see why each had its admirers. And "Bespoke" did more than any other ballet of the season to showcase the really remarkable beauties of the company's classical style. Mr. McIntyre's "Your Flesh Shall Be" and Mr. Pita's "Bjork Ballet" are both to recorded music and both amazingly odd. Because Mr. McIntyre's subject is often the vulnerability and private impulses of young adults, his ballets can come close to sentimentality; what fends that off is the peculiarity of the ardently human behavior he dramatizes. Each Garneau song here features a different group of young people, all outgoing and endearingly raw (with choreographic phrasing of wonderful dynamics), until it ends with the two solos for Benjamin Freemantle, who not only dances with a four legged stool but at one point buries his face into it as if into a mask. The quality of private fantasy here is as disconcerting as it is touching. Mr. Pita's "Bjork Ballet," the festival's largest scale work in terms of both dancers onstage and scenic properties, includes an overhead display of 40 silver tall grasses, a masked fisherman, an erotic male female couple (embraces, kisses, physical proximity) and large groups that conjure various kinds of exotica. Near the piece's start, the 40 grasses all fall plop! onto the stage, from which point it's clear we're in an entirely unfamiliar stage world. It's kitsch, camp, weird so outlandishly so that it stays entertaining. But it's also trivial and lacking in any dance composition of note. The Bosso score for Mr. Dawson's "Anima Animus" is a Romantic and expansive form of Minimalism: Mr. Dawson responds to this with a limited vocabulary of space devouring steps, with dancers (led by Maria Kochetkova and Sofiane Sylve) wheeling like large birds borne by currents of wind. The visual beauty is an important achievement. (Mr. Ingalls lit all 12 ballets; "Anima" is his most hauntingly lovely work.) On the negative side, the vocabulary, over a long period, generates a certain ennui. The central story of Ms. Marston's "Snowblind" is a consciously overwrought but firmly told rendition of adulterous love and wifely jealousy, set amid a snowscape in which the corps de ballet move slowly, more snowdrift than snowflakes. In Ms. Lopez Ochoa's "Guernica," the space is presented as a bullfighting ring, with pairings and groups that refer to a range of Picasso ideas: all strongly stated, theatrically imposing, but ultimately hollow, without telling detail. I object to the over partnering and repeated groin displaying configurations of Mr. Liang's "The Infinite Ocean," with body language often far bigger than its Oliver Davis score. And a similarly drastic overemphasis soon proves tiresome in Mr. Rhoden's "Let's Begin at the End," whose choreography treats its collage of music by Bach, Philip Glass and Michael Nyman as if those scores were interchangeable. Far better and more musically responsive (to Bach violin concertos) is Mr. Welch's neoclassical "Bespoke," with Frances Chung and Angelo Greco paragons of style; but several exaggerated lifts mar the elegance, as do features that tip classical style into mannerism. Mr. Thatcher's "Otherness" was the festival's most inept offering, a twee, schematic study of opposite teams finding they have things in common with no interesting steps or structures to enliven the message. Did the festival show any broader trends? Yes. Female choreographers, so often overlooked in 21st century ballet, are holding their own. Choreography for same sex couples is now a well established ingredient; sometimes it looks like tokenism, just as male female couples can also look cliched in lesser hands. And a high proportion of ballets are now costumed with bare legs, at the risk of knees and musculature distracting attention from overall line. If you read the festival program, you learned much more sometimes perplexingly about each choreographer's intended subject matter (life, death, society and so on). But none of these 12 needed explanations. The dances were the real statements. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
Universal Pictures on Saturday canceled plans to release "The Hunt" a thriller about a group of "globalist elites" killing people for sport after two recent mass shootings that left a total of 31 people dead in El Paso and in Dayton, Ohio. "The Hunt," which stars Betty Gilpin, Hilary Swank and Emma Roberts, was scheduled to be released on Sept. 27. "While Universal Pictures had already paused the marketing campaign for 'The Hunt,' after thoughtful consideration, the studio has decided to cancel our plans to release the film," said a statement from Universal Pictures posted to the film's website. "We stand by our filmmakers and will continue to distribute films in partnership with bold and visionary creators, like those associated with this satirical social thriller, but we understand that now is not the right time to release this film." A spokeswoman for Blumhouse Productions , the company behind the movie and others like "The Purge" and "Get Out," said it was not issuing a statement. It was not clear if the movie might be released at some later date. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
An X ray of a patient with a vaping habit, showing lung damage densities or whitish cloud like areas typically associated with some pneumonias, fluid in the lungs or inflammation.Credit...Intermountain Healthcare An X ray of a patient with a vaping habit, showing lung damage densities or whitish cloud like areas typically associated with some pneumonias, fluid in the lungs or inflammation. An 18 year old showed up in a Long Island emergency room, gasping for breath, vomiting and dizzy. When a doctor asked if the teenager had been vaping, he said no. The patient's older brother, a police officer, was suspicious. He rummaged through the youth's room and found hidden vials of marijuana for vaping. Dr. Pirzada is one of the many physicians across the country treating patients now totaling more than 215 with mysterious and life threatening vaping related illnesses this summer. The outbreak is "becoming an epidemic," she said. "Something is very wrong." Patients, mostly otherwise healthy and in their late teens and 20s, are showing up with severe shortness of breath, often after suffering for several days with vomiting, fever and fatigue. Some have wound up in the intensive care unit or on a ventilator for weeks. Treatment has been complicated by patients' lack of knowledge and sometimes outright denial about the actual substances they might have used or inhaled. Health investigators are now trying to determine whether a particular toxin or substance has sneaked into the supply of vaping products, whether some people reused cartridges containing contaminants, or whether the risk stems from a broader behavior, like heavy e cigarette use, vaping marijuana or a combination. On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a warning to teenagers and other consumers, telling them to stop buying bootleg and street cannabis and e cigarette products, and to stop modifying devices to vape adulterated substances. Read more: The Trump administration is weighing a ban on some flavored e cigarettes. The illnesses have focused attention on a trend that has been overshadowed by the intense public concern about soaring teenage use of e cigarettes, with its potential for hooking a new generation on nicotine: the rise of the vaping device itself. It has introduced a wholesale change in how people consume nicotine or marijuana, by inhaling vaporized ingredients. Vaping works by heating liquid and turning it into steam to be inhaled. Broadly speaking, e cigarettes are considered less harmful than traditional cigarettes, which work through the combustion of tobacco that sends thousands of chemicals, many carcinogenic, into the lungs. But vaping has its own problems: Nicotine or THC, the high inducing chemical in marijuana, is mixed with solvents that dissolve and deliver the drugs. The solvents, or oils, heat up during aerosolization to become vapor. But some oil droplets may be left over as the liquid cools back down, and inhaling those drops may cause breathing problems and lung inflammation. "Inhaling oil into your lungs is extremely dangerous behavior that could result in death," said Thomas Eissenberg, who studies vaping at Virginia Commonwealth University. "That is probably the biggest message we can get out of this." Many vaping ingredients are not listed on the products. Vitamin E oil appears to have been a common substance associated with the severe and sudden respiratory problems in some of the New York cases, according to state health officials. It is not known how it was used. Vitamin E is sometimes advertised as a supplement in cannabidiol oil, which is not designed for vaping but has been used that way. Now some subset of these products is causing a serious lung disease that even cigarettes, while lethal in the long run, don't cause in young people. Lobbyists and company officials in both industries are scrambling to blame unregulated products. The spate of illnesses has made news again of Juul Labs, maker of the blockbuster e cigarette device blamed for the surge in teenage vaping. In a television interview, Kevin Burns, the company's chief executive, said he did not know of evidence linking the recent cases to Juul's products. On lung scans, the illnesses look at first like a serious viral or bacterial pneumonia, but tests show no infection. "We've run all these tests looking for bacteria, looking for viruses and coming up negative," said Dr. Dixie Harris, a critical care pulmonologist in Salt Lake City, who has consulted on four such patients and reviewed case files of nine others in the state. On Aug. 6, Dr. Harris was working in a Salt Lake City area hospital she declined to provide more detail in order to protect patient privacy rights when she was called to the intensive care unit to consult on a patient with the severe lung ailment. The patient was in his 20s and a heavy e cigarette user who also vaped THC. She later consulted with two dozen hospitals around the state on patients with difficult pulmonary or critical care issues. "I saw a second case," she said. "I'm like, 'Wait a second, this is weird two hospitals, two young people, almost identical story.'" The next morning, she called Dr. Joseph Miner, the chief medical officer for the Utah state health department, who told her he would try to figure out what was going on. In the ensuing weeks, Dr. Harris saw two other patients firsthand and reviewed nine other cases for the hospital group where she works, Intermountain Healthcare, which has 24 hospitals in Utah and Idaho. She said the first 10 cases were from eight different hospitals; over all, the state of Utah reported 21 cases. Dr. Harris said that the four patients she had been directly involved with "have been doing e cigarettes with nicotine constantly, like round the clock. Maybe there's some sort of accelerant effect causing inflammation in the lung caused by the THC oil." She added that her interviews with patients suggested they were getting the marijuana liquid from friends in states with legal supplies of the drug, like California and Colorado. Some patients are suffering from another condition known as lipoid pneumonia, doctors said. When vaped oils get into the lungs, the lungs treat them as a foreign object and mount an immune response, resulting in inflammation and the buildup of liquids, which can cause lipoid pneumonia. The surge in these illnesses comes at the start of a school year, one in which parents, teachers and administrators had already braced for the challenge of educating in the age of the vape pen, which is easy to conceal. While educator and parental concern has focused on Juul, the reality is that the market for vaping devices and the liquids that fill them is vast and filled with counterfeiters and do it yourselfers, making it hard for regulators and scientists to home in on a specific product. The Vapor Technology Association, an e cigarette and vaping industry trade group, asked "public officials to thoroughly investigate the circumstances which might have led to each reported hospitalization before making statements to the public as to whether certain products are implicated in these incidents." The regulation and study of the marijuana industry is particularly complex. Even though the federal government still considers cannabis a controlled substance, 33 states now allow it to be sold for either recreational or medicinal purposes or both. Hundreds of cannabis products are sold, legally and illegally, such as THC oil, or cannabis oil with THC. The Food and Drug Administration has warned some sellers of cannabis product supplements not to make health claims, but more are doing so than the agency can keep up with. The F.D.A. oversees CBD products sold as dietary supplements, but does not regulate THC, which is illegal under federal law. Liquid nicotine and THC, sometimes sold in cartridges for use in vaping devices, can each contain oils that may be safe to swallow but can damage the lung when vaporized into a mix of unknown chemicals. While e cigarettes have been presumed less harmful over the long run than cigarettes, the ultimate impact from years of vaping is simply not yet known. Mr. Eissenberg, director of the Center for the Study of Tobacco Products at Virginia Commonwealth University, said seven cases of similar lung injuries from e cigarette vaping had been reported in previous years. "A common ingredient was vegetable glycerin, which is made from vegetable oil," he said. "If there is some incomplete process, there can be oil left in the vegetable glycerin when that person is using it, and inhaling oil and getting oil into your lungs is what is causing some of the lung injuries we see." "Basically what the F.D.A. should be doing is testing every one of these liquids to see if they have any oil at all and making a regulation that would ban oil in any of these products, whether it is a THC product or a nicotine product," said Mr. Eissenberg, who is researching vaping with a grant from the agency. Dr. Nora D. Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, a part of the National Institutes of Health, said she was surprised at the severity of the lung disease involved in this summer's cases, but not by the possibility that vaping products were causing such illnesses. "There is no oversight," Dr. Volkow said. "No one is actually evaluating the products to see whether they are pure, or if they contain toxic substances. There has to be some way of regulating them." The Long Island teenager, who was on a ventilator at one point, has a long road to recovery and doctors still haven't identified the cause of his illness. "They tested for infectious diseases. They tested for bacteria. They tested for a host of issues. It all came back negative," his father said. He requested anonymity to protect the identity of his son. "We were helpless. We didn't know what to do. The doctors didn't know what to do. They would treat the symptoms first and figure out what was killing him later." In Illinois, a woman in her 30s who had recently vaped was hospitalized and died, health officials said on Aug. 23. Another recent case involves a 31 year old Queens resident named Kevin Corrales, who in late July was in the back seat of a car heading to a Long Island beach when he started gasping for air. "It was terrifying," he said. "I was really gasping. I should have been rushed to the hospital. They thought I was exaggerating." He called an Uber to take him home. Too tired to climb the stairs of the home he shares with his parents, he stayed in a basement room for several days, until he felt better. That day, in the car, he had been vaping a Juul, the popular e cigarette. But he also occasionally vapes THC oil in a separate device. "I can buy these oils like a bag of potato chips," Mr. Corrales said. "It's hard to say whether it was the THC or nicotine," said Mr. Corrales, who used e cigarettes to quit smoking. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
Alvin Ailey II (through Sunday) This company's two week spring season, which ends this weekend, offers a welcome glimpse of the next generation of talent in the Ailey family while also introducing a number of unfamiliar choreographic names. New commissions this year include work by Kyle "JustSole" Clark, Jean Emile and Ray Mercer. Also making his choreographic debut is Jamar Roberts, an exquisite dancer with the main company, who contributes "Gemeos" (Portuguese for "twins"), a duet inspired by his relationship with his brother. Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 3 and 8 p.m., Sunday at 3 and 7:30 p.m., Ailey Citigroup Theater, 405 West 55th Street, Clinton, 866 811 4111, alvinailey.org. (Brian Schaefer) American Tap Dance Foundation (Wednesday through April 17) The annual "Rhythm in Motion" festival is a one stop shop for today's top tap. The two distinct programs feature artists who have been recognized for infusing new energy into the form in recent years, like Michelle Dorrance and Chloe Arnold, and those likely to keep the momentum going. Through her company, Ms. Dorrance has also championed wily new talent like Warren Craft and Leonardo Sandoval, who contribute their own choreography here, along with others. Wednesday through next Friday at 8 p.m., April 16 at 3 p.m. and 8 p.m., April 17 at 3 p.m., 14th Street Y, 344 East 14th Street, East Village, 646 395 4310, atdf.org. (Schaefer) Ballet Hispanico (through Sunday) This spirited troupe returns to the Joyce Theater with the company premiere of Gustavo Ramirez Sansano's 2001 "Flabbergast," a humorous take on the theme of foreign places. The season also includes a revival of Ramon Oller's "Bury Me Standing" (1998) and the popular "Club Havana" (2000), by the Cuban American choreographer Pedro Ruiz. A family matinee on Saturday includes excerpts from these and other works in the company's colorful repertory. Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m., Sunday at 2 and 7:30 p.m., Joyce Theater, 175 Eighth Avenue, at 19th Street, Chelsea, 212 242 0800, joyce.org. (Siobhan Burke) 'Broadway Takes Two' (Friday through Sunday) For those who patiently wait through musical theater ballads to get to the showstopping dance numbers, 92Y's Dig Dance series presents "Broadway Takes Two," reimagined choreography from decades of popular musicals. The featured choreographers Justin Bocitto, Megan Doyle, Ryan Kasprzak, Jeff Shade and Richard J. Hinds take inspiration from masters like Jerome Robbins, Michael Bennett and Bob Fosse, among others, setting steps to tunes from "The Pajama Game," "Company" and "American Idiot," to name a few. Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m., Sunday at 3 p.m., 92nd Street Y, 1395 Lexington Avenue, 212 415 5500, 92y.org. (Schaefer) Nora Chipaumire (Thursday through April 17) In an imitation boxing ring, the powerful Zimbabwe born dancer and choreographer Nora Chipaumire dukes it out with the Senegalese performer Pap Ibrahima Ndiaye while Shamar Wayne Watt eggs them on as coach and cheerleader. This is the setting of "Portrait of Myself as My Father," a no holds barred look at masculinity in African culture and the African male body in American culture. Paired with the physical and sociological punches is "Afro Promo 1: Kinglady," a film by Ms. Chipaumire. Thursday and next Friday at 7:30 p.m., April 16 at 8 p.m., April 17 at 3 p.m., Alexander Kasser Theater, Montclair State University, 1 Normal Avenue, Montclair, 973 655 5112, peakperfs.org. (Schaefer) Dance Theater of Harlem (Friday and Saturday) While Misty Copeland has opened doors for black ballerinas in recent years, this company has been steadily doing the same for decades. The troupe's City Center engagement highlights new ballets by women, with the New York premieres of Dianne McIntyre's "Change" and Elena Kunikova's "Divertimento." Also on deck this season are Nacho Duato's "Coming Together" and Helen Pickett's "When Love." Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m., City Center, 131 West 55th Street, Manhattan; 212 581 1212, nycitycenter.org. (Burke) Viktoria Danyi, Csaba Molnar and Zsofia Tamara Vadas (Friday and Saturday) Dance, with all the touching and body exposure, is inherently sensual. These three Hungarian choreographer/performers are just bringing the sex to the surface in "Skin Me," a work that has traveled around Europe for several years and now makes its United States debut. While an onstage rock band builds to an aural climax, the artists talk about their relationships, grope each other and strip down. "Overtly sexual," they admit, "yet not gratuitous." At 7:30 p.m., Abrons Arts Center, 466 Grand Street, at Pitt Street, Lower East Side, 212 352 3101, abronsartscenter.org. (Schaefer) E Moves (through Saturday) This Harlem Stage series pairs choreographers with mentors in the creation of new work. The 17th edition features Desiree Godsell, Laurie M. Taylor, Davalois Fearon whom audiences may know from her fearless dancing with the Stephen Petronio Company and the renowned hoofer Jason Samuels Smith, who will be joined by his fellow tap stars Dormeshia Sumbry Edwards and Derick K. Grant. At 7:30 p.m., Harlem Stage Gatehouse, 150 Convent Avenue, at 135th Street, Hamilton Heights; 212 281 9240, harlemstage.org. (Burke) Martha Graham Dance Company (Thursday through April 18) Martha Graham lived well into her 90s, and now so too has her company. The tenacious troupe that bears her name celebrates its 90th anniversary with three programs mixing its founder's masterpieces with new works by contemporary choreographers. Graham classics include "Chronicle" (1936), "Appalachian Spring" (1944), "Cave of the Heart" (1946), "Lamentation" (1930) and "Night Journey" (1947). Living contributors include Nacho Duato, Mats Ek, Pontus Lidberg, Andonis Foniadakis and the unpredictable Canadian choreographer Marie Chouinard, who contributes a world premiere for the company's women. Thursday through April 16 at 8 p.m., 90th anniversary program on April 18 at 7 p.m., City Center, 131 West 55th Street, Manhattan, 212 581 1212, nycitycenter.org. (Schaefer) Miami City Ballet (Wednesday through April 17) George Balanchine isn't new to Lincoln Center, but he is when danced by the Miami City Ballet, which makes its debut at David H. Koch Theater this week. The company presents Balanchine's "Bourree Fantasque" and "Serenade" as well as Twyla Tharp's "Sweet Fields." And while New York audiences have seen plenty of works by Alexei Ratmansky, Justin Peck and Liam Scarlett, they haven't seen the newly commissioned ones arriving with this company to receive their local premieres. Wednesday and Thursday at 7:30 p.m., next Friday at 8 p.m., April 16 at 2 and 8 p.m., April 17 at 2 and 7:30 p.m., 212 496 0600, davidhkochtheater.com. (Schaefer) Vicky Shick and Dancers (Thursday through April 16) Ms. Shick has been a captivating performer and dancemaker for decades, drawing audiences in with her keen attention to detail and gestures that can be casual or quirky, or both. In her latest work, "Another Spell," she convenes what she calls a "village of women," in which seven performers plus Ms. Shick explore their relationships, play with dynamics of community and individuality, and ultimately comment on female camaraderie and intimacy. At 8 p.m., Danspace Project, St. Mark's Church, 131 East 10th Street, East Village, 866 811 4111, danspaceproject.org. (Schaefer) Streb Extreme Action Company (through April 24) After a winter hiatus, superheroes are back in the multiplexes. More excitingly, they're back in Brooklyn, where Elizabeth Streb's gang of action heroes can be seen in "SEA (Singular Extreme Actions)," a new show that once again tests the boundaries of the human body as it navigates an army of complex, bespoke mechanical contraptions. The soundtrack shifts from show to show as audience members contribute to the playlist. Thursdays and Fridays at 7:30 p.m.; Saturdays and Sundays at 3 p.m., Streb Lab for Action Mechanics, 51 North First Street, Williamsburg, 866 811 4111, streb.org. (Schaefer) Tatyana Tenenbaum (through Sunday) Performances at Brooklyn Studios for Dance, a newly renovated space at Cadman Congregational Church in Fort Greene, have so far been informal, impromptu events. With Ms. Tenenbaum's "Thunder," the organization hosts its first evening length premiere. Building on her recent movement investigations and her early background as a composer, Ms. Tenenbaum explores the inseparability of the body and the voice, of musicality and physicality. Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m., Sunday at 6 p.m., Brooklyn Studios for Dance, 210 Lafayette Avenue, between Vanderbilt and Clinton Avenues, Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, bksd.org. (Burke) | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
OAKLAND, Calif. The 70 teachers who showed up to a school board meeting here recently in matching green and black T shirts paraded in a circle, chanting, "Charter schools are not public schools!" and accusing the superintendent of doing the bidding of "a corporate oligarchy." The superintendent, Antwan Wilson, who is an imposing 6 foot 4, favors crisp suits and Kangol caps and peers intensely through wire rimmed glasses, has become accustomed to confrontation since he arrived in this activist community from Denver two years ago. One board meeting last fall reached such a fever pitch that police officers moved in to control the crowd. Mr. Wilson is facing a rebellion by teachers and some parents against his plan to allow families to use a single form to apply to any of the city's 86 district run schools or 44 charter campuses, all of which are competing for a shrinking number of students. How he fares may say a great deal not only about Oakland, but also about this moment in the drive to transform urban school districts. Many of them have become rivalrous amalgams of traditional public schools and charters, which are publicly funded but privately operated and have been promoted by education philanthropists. Mr. Wilson is trying to bring the traditional schools into closer coordination with the charters. "If he gets it right, it's a model for moving past the polarized sense of reform that we have right now," said Robert C. Pianta, dean of the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia. But Mr. Wilson has emerged as a lightning rod partly because he is one of a cadre of superintendents who have been trained in an academy financed by the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation. Like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, Mr. Broad, a Los Angeles billionaire who made his fortune in real estate and insurance, is one of a group of businessmen with grand ambitions to remake public education. His foundation has pumped 144 million into charter schools across the country, is embroiled in a battle to expand the number of charters in his home city, and has issued a handbook on how to close troubled public schools. When Mr. Broad first announced the initiative in 2001, he noted that the average urban schools leader lasted just over two years and had little preparation in finances or management. The new academy, he said, would "dramatically change this equation" by seeking candidates in educational circles as well as recruiting from corporate backgrounds and the military, introducing management concepts borrowed from business. Those chosen embark on a two year fellowship, trained and mentored while working in their districts. The fellows meet with speakers from think tanks, other school districts, charter networks and the business world. During one session last fall in New York, administrators from large districts shared a conference room with charter leaders and discussed challenges they have in common: how to recruit racial minorities to teaching, how to staff executive teams, and how to change punitive disciplinary cultures. Regardless of training, any leader of a large school district faces daunting challenges. Superintendents "deal with a very unusual stew of people who are often divided by race and language and income and religion," said Michael Casserly, executive director of the Council of Great City Schools, a coalition of urban districts where the average chief now lasts just over three years. Those diverse groups, he said, are "all fighting over the one thing that they care most passionately about: their children." Here are more fascinating tales you can't help but read all the way to the end. None Getting Personal With Iman. The supermodel talks about life after David Bowie, their Catskills refuge and the perfume inspired by their love. A Resilient Team for a Broken Nation. With the Taliban in control, what, and whom, is Afghanistan's national soccer team playing for? The Fight of This Old Boxer's Life Was With His Own Family. A battle among Marvin Stein's family over his fortune broke out, and he suddenly found himself powerless to fight for himself. Broad trained superintendents currently run districts in two dozen communities, including Boston, Broward County, Fla., and Philadelphia. They have lasted an average of four and three quarter years, delivering incremental academic progress at best. Like others in the field, they have run up against the complexities of trying to improve schools bedeviled by poverty, racial disparities, unequal funding and contentious local politics. Some prominent academy alumni have resigned after tumultuous terms. Mike Miles, the Dallas schools superintendent, quit last June after just three years, during which he battled teachers over new evaluation criteria and performance based pay. Still, Mr. Broad said his money is well spent. "When I look at how many students are educated in public school systems where our alumni are and have worked," he wrote in an email, "there is no question that this has been a worthwhile investment." Oakland is the kind of place where philanthropists hope to make a difference. Here, across the Bay Bridge from San Francisco, close to three quarters of the 37,000 students in district run schools come from low income families. About 30 percent of the students are African Americans, and more than 40 percent are Latino. A little over a decade ago, the district was in financial chaos. The state put the district into receivership and extended a 100 million loan just to cover payroll. In 2003, the state appointed the first of a string of Broad trained administrators to run the district, free of local school board authority. Randolph Ward, who was then a state administrator of a troubled district in Compton, near Los Angeles, arrived as Oakland was embarking on an initiative to open a series of small public schools of 250 to 600 students apiece, depending on grade levels several hundred fewer than at typical campuses. During his time here, Mr. Ward opened two dozen small schools but also closed 14 schools. New charter schools were also opening, cutting into enrollment at district schools. Mr. Ward was succeeded briefly by two other Broad alumni, Kimberly Statham and Vincent Matthews. All three declined to comment for this article. Meanwhile, the district is still paying back its debt. The Broad trained superintendents along with other non Broad state appointed administrators had modest success in raising student achievement. Between 2004 and 2010, scores on standardized reading and math tests grew more than in any other California district with population similar in size. Still, less than a quarter of students met standards on tests last spring, below state averages. At the charter schools, by contrast, about a third met math standards and close to 40 percent met reading standards although the charters educate fewer students with disabilities, an element that can depress test score averages. Mr. Wilson arrived as the first Broad trained superintendent to be hired by a re empowered and elected school board. It voted for him unanimously, attracted by his record in Denver. There, he had been an assistant superintendent and worked with several struggling schools. During Mr. Wilson's tenure, Denver also led by a Broad trained superintendent combined charters and more traditional schools in one enrollment system, as Mr. Wilson now proposes in Oakland. Mr. Wilson, who is African American, describes growing up poor and being raised by a single mother and said he entered education because of a commitment to social justice. He said he had a "visceral reaction" when he heard arguments about children in poverty "and how we need to fix that first before we can educate them. I am thinking that it's actually educating them that gives them a chance to fix some poverty." By the time he arrived in Oakland, residents were frustrated by a history of financial mismanagement and persistently low test scores and graduation rates. Many educators in district schools felt as if they were fighting for their professional lives as charters took more and more students and public funding away. While the teachers' union and some parent groups worry that district run public schools will ultimately be eviscerated by competition from charters, other parents are voting with their feet, sending their children to the newer schools. Kenetta Jackson, a housing administrator and a mother of two, decided the local school in her East Oakland neighborhood was "not up to my personal standards." Her daughter, now 16, and son, 13, have attended charter schools in the Aspire Public Schools network since they were in kindergarten. Ms. Jackson said she did not understand the debates about the merits of charter schools. "It's a lot of politics beyond my reach," she said. "I'm more concerned about my children's education. I personally think that Aspire came and saved Oakland public schools because if they didn't come, I would be paying an arm and a leg for my kids to go to some private school somewhere, and who can afford that?" For his part, Mr. Wilson says he is neither for nor against charters. "I want effective schools," he said in an interview in his offices in downtown Oakland. Since he arrived, Mr. Wilson has focused on sending more tax dollars away from the central office and directly to schools, and he negotiated a contract giving teachers a 14 percent raise, their largest in 15 years, although Oakland teachers are still paid less on average than educators in surrounding counties. Mr. Wilson is also overhauling five of the city's most troubled campuses, moving principals and introducing new academic and enrichment programs. The foundation has given to the school district in other ways: it has granted about 6 million for staff development and other programs over the last decade. The Broad Center, which runs the superintendents' academy, has subsidized the salaries of at least 10 ex business managers who moved into administrative jobs at the district office. But it is the leadership turnover that has left teachers wary. "It's just a different face at the top," said Leona Kwon, who teaches ethnic studies at Castlemont High School. "I have not personally experienced a significant increase of support or resources at our school, so I'm skeptical that that's ever going to happen." Some educators give their schools chief high marks for his attention to detail. At Frick Middle, one of five previously struggling schools that the district is trying to overhaul, Ruby Detie, the administrator appointed to lead the changes, recalled that after she told Mr. Wilson that a mouse had run over the foot of a teacher interviewing for a job, an exterminator appeared the next day. After observing several classrooms at Acorn Woodland Elementary recently, Mr. Wilson pulled aside the principal, Leroy Gaines, to praise two fourth grade teachers for how often they invited students to hash out problems aloud. But in bilingual kindergarten and first grade classes, Mr. Wilson told the principal he was concerned that the teachers were speaking too much during lessons. "I was struggling to really see the degree to which the students were really doing the thinking," Mr. Wilson said. At other schools, some teachers point to missteps. At Fremont High, another school being revamped, some teachers complain that Mr. Wilson replaced a bilingual principal with a leader who does not speak Spanish, though close to 60 percent of the students are Hispanic. The school redevelopment "feels almost like a takeover," said Jasmene Miranda, a graduate of the high school who is now a media teacher there. Mr. Wilson said that he has appointed "the best possible leaders." He said he understood some of the community criticism. "I think that is just, 'Hey we're really concerned this guy might really want to sell the farm,' " he said. "Well, I don't," he added. "I do want to improve it, though." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Education |
BRUSSELS Concern over the euro moved to the forefront Monday as finance ministers of the countries using the currency held their monthly meeting. But this time, with the European Union's recession continuing, the topic was the strength of the euro rather than its many weaknesses. As confidence has grown that the Union will be able to manage its sovereign debt crisis, the euro has made significant gains against the dollar and other foreign currencies. That is making Europe's exports more expensive, a factor that could hamper growth. On Monday, France, which traditionally favors market intervention, renewed its calls for remedial steps that could include establishing a target level for the euro's value. Exchange rates need "to reflect the economic fundamentals of our economies of the euro zone," said Pierre Moscovici, the French finance minister. "Exchange rates should not become subjected to moods or speculation." Mr. Moscovici made the case to other members of the so called Eurogroup of finance ministers, asking for coordinated action to keep a lid on the value of the euro currency. Before the meeting, Mr. Moscovici said he wanted the Europeans to present a common plan later this week during a meeting of finance ministers and central bankers of the Group of 20 nations to be held in Moscow. In a news conference after Monday's meeting, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the president of the Eurogroup, who oversees the agenda for the monthly meetings, said the euro exhange rate had been discussed. But like some German officials, he appeared to give the matter short shrift, saying that the forum for further discussion should be the G 20 meeting in Moscow. "That's where exchange rates, if anywhere, should be addressed," Mr. Dijsselbloem said. Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank, warned last week that the strength of the euro could weigh on the ability of Europe to pull out of its economic doldrums. Those comments were enough to send the euro down sharply against the dollar to 1.36 from 1.34 and the yen. The euro was trading at 1.339 on Monday after falling to the low 1.20s last year. The renewed French push for greater scope to control the levers of the European economy immediately met stiff resistance from a senior German official, who decried the initiative as a poor substitute for policy overhauls. Jens Weidmann, the president of the German central bank, the Bundesbank, suggested Monday that countries like France were simply diverting attention from the need to make their economies more competitive. Mr. Weidmann also warned that an exchange rate policy aimed at weakening the euro would "in the end result in higher inflation." A number of ministers agreed Monday that intervention would be wrongheaded. "This is mainly decided by the market," Maria Fekter, the Austrian finance minister, said in response to a question on the strong euro as she arrived at the meeting. "I find an artificial weakening unnecessary." Kevin Spacey was ordered to pay 31 million to the 'House of Cards' studio after sexual harassment allegations. Netflix buys a visual effects company in a move to support its global ambitions. The strong euro means some European exports, like cars and wine, become more expensive abroad, putting European producers at a disadvantage against foreign competitors. But there are also positive effects. Imports, particularly oil, become less expensive for Europeans, which helps stimulate the economy. The push for intervention by the French is unlikely to make much real headway. Instead, it may be an illustration of the way that economic policies in the euro area are a result of a back and forth between states like France and Germany. "The French have always believed the single currency should be put to the service of exports," said Mujtaba Rahman, an analyst with the Eurasia Group, a political risk research and consulting firm. "But it's not a debate they can win, so they are most likely using this to win concessions on other baby projects, from the pace of its own fiscal consolidation, to a fiscal capacity to a short term mutualized debt instrument." Mr. Rahman was referring to the desire in France, despite its poor economic indicators, to maintain control over the speed with which it must tighten its belt under E.U. rules, and to create pools of shared European funds and bonds backed by the most prosperous countries of the euro area. The finance ministers on Monday also discussed how to handle a bailout for Cyprus. Among the potentially explosive issues is whether to force depositors in Cyprus, including wealthy Russians, to take losses on their holdings to help reduce the burden of recapitalizing and restructuring Cypriot banks. But Vassos Shiarly, the Cypriot finance minister, bluntly rejected that possibility on Monday. "I would say that the bail in of depositors is a grossly exaggerated possibility," he said. "We will not accept it under any circumstances." No agreement with the Cypriot government in Nicosia is expected until after the departure of President Demetris Christofias, a Communist, who will not be running in elections scheduled for this month. International creditors want to wait to negotiate a rescue program with the winner, who is likely to be Nicos Anastasiades of the Democratic Rally, a center right party. On Cyprus, Mr. Dijsselbloem called for a rapid analysis by an independent consultant of whether the island was properly implementing rules against money laundering. Politicians in countries including Germany have made clearing up such suspicions a pre condition for a bailout. Asked about the possible penalization of Cypriot depositors, Mr. Dijsselbloem said "all elements" would be under discussion as part of a bailout package for the island that should be ready sometime in March. Referring to the use of the European bailout instrument, the European Stability Mechanism, Mr. Dijsselbloem suggested that he wanted private sector involvement in any future direct recapitalization of banks to avoid "additional strain" on national budgets of contributing nations. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Global Business |
Jasir Robert Ryan Lee, a descendant of Venture Smith, looks out to the shore from the roof of the fort in Anomabo, Ghana, where his ancestor was held as a slave, then taken to a ship through its Door of No Return. Mandred Henry was a health care sales rep from Hartford whom people often stopped on the street, saying he was a dead ringer for Morgan Freeman. Throughout his life he identified strongly with his African American background. He was president of the local N.A.A.C.P. chapter. He remembered his mother keeping her grandmother's slavery manumission papers in her top drawer. But his awareness of his origins went back further than that. As a child he heard stories from his father of a distant ancestor who grew up among a cattle herding tribe in West Africa in the 1700s. This ancestor was captured by enemy tribesman as a boy, sold into slavery and eventually wound up in New England, where he bought his freedom, then that of his sons and his wife. That ancestor, Venture Smith, was a colossus of a man, physically and otherwise, who defied slavery at its very height, becoming a landowner and businessman in the early days of the American republic. Venture Smith's renown was great enough that his sons passed on the story of their father to their children, and they to theirs. Mandred Henry in his turn told his children of their ancestor. He dreamed of traveling to Africa himself and completing the circle of the African American experience. Mandred Henry, who died in 2007, never made it, but last September three of his children, along with a granddaughter and a great grandson, did, in a remarkable trip that took them to the slave fort where their ancestor was held and that culminated in a ceremonial gathering with the elders of the village where he was sold into slavery. I tagged along because I am researching Venture Smith for a book, and took part in an experience that I now feel every American should have a chance to duplicate, so woven is it into the country's soul. Ghana, where our journey took us, is sometimes called Africa Light by veteran travelers to the continent. To a first timer, it doesn't feel so light. A wall of stimuli rises up to greet you as you leave the airport and head into town: dust, scrub, heat, blinding sunlight, roving goats, hellbent traffic, throngs of vendors bearing their wares on their heads, crowding your vehicle at every stop, offering chocolate, feminine products, yams, everything. Give it a minute, though, and Accra, the sprawling capital, comes into some kind of focus. People are deeply friendly. And of course it helps enormously that, thanks to Britain's long colonization, almost everyone speaks English. Venture Smith's tombstone at First Congregational Church cemetery in East Haddam, Conn., in a Smith family plot. Our trip came about through a Switzerland based historical preservationist named Chandler Saint, who, after working for several years to maintain sites related to Venture Smith's life in New England, turned his attention to the three century old slave fort from which Smith left Africa. Mr. Saint had been in contact for some time with the chiefs of the town of Anomabo, 100 miles west of Accra along the infamous Gold Coast, to develop its ruined fort for tourism. But he needed traction, something that would jump start the project. He thought of bringing some of Venture Smith's American descendants to the place. He had made contact with many of them in 2007 as part of an effort to use the former slave's DNA to trace his exact origins. Mr. Saint broached the idea to some of the descendants, encouraged them to raise money for the trip and promised to set everything up. "We just had to say yes," Angi Perron, one of Mandred Henry's daughters, said. "For my dad, the idea of going to Africa was so special." As it happened, Mr. Saint's organizational abilities did not match his enthusiasm. Practically the only information he gave me about the trip was the name of a hotel in Accra and that I got only the day before my departure. On arrival, I discovered that no one else from the party was checked in, so I spent the day familiarizing myself with the capital. The next morning, the Venture Smith party, 10 people in all, ranging from 7 years old to late middle age, was there in the breakfast room of the hotel, looking bewildered. Some of them had never been out of the United States before, which partly accounted for their disorientation. But much of their anxiety came from the fact that Chandler Saint, their organizer, was not there. They were on their own. But they were a spirited group, game for what they hoped would be the adventure of their lives. As it turned out, the descendants all hailed from New England, not too far from where their ancestor had settled. Floyd Henry is an electrician on Martha's Vineyard. His sister Angi Perron is a schoolteacher in Milford, N.H.; another sister, Corinne Henry Brady, is a parole officer in Providence, R.I. We took charge of things ourselves, arranging taxis for the day, and set off exploring Accra. Our first stop was the National Museum, where the guide, in explaining the significance of the displays of beads, gold jewelry, ceremonial stools and drums, gave what amounted to an introduction to Ghana, West Africa and the slave trade. The next morning, still lacking our organizer, we hired a minibus and driver for the two and a half hour trip along the coast to Anomabo. After miles of urban sprawl, the countryside slowly emerged: red earth hills covered in hunkered vegetation, floppy fronds of banana trees, the occasional tree towering above as a reminder that much of this was once rain forest. The landscape was punctuated by an endlessly entertaining succession of signs: Peculiar International School; Perfect Circumcision; Ask God Electrical Supply. And there I stood, feet in surf, suddenly stunned, looking up and down the scallop of palm fringed beach, thinking: "The Gold Coast. The Gold Coast." It was like a first visit to the White House. Or someplace more elemental: the Acropolis, or Jerusalem's Old City. Only this, of course, was the opposite of a holy place. The Gold Coast was named for the resource that attracted first Africans and then Europeans, but eventually it became synonymous with another resource, for which the stretch of beach to the east the Slave Coast would be named. I looked down. My feet were embedded in sand that had soaked up historic misery. Chandler Saint, the man who had brought us all here, finally greeted us at the restaurant. He introduced us to one of the chiefs of Anomabo, Nana Baffoe IV. We all sat down at one long table; with the urban intensity of Accra now firmly behind us, everyone succumbed to the warm sea breeze and began chattering at once. The descendants talked about their father, their distant ancestor and the wonder of being in Ghana. In one surreal moment, I saw two of them showing Nana Baffoe, the official representative of the tribal people who had sold their ancestor into slavery, pictures of their father on an iPad. Then Corinne and Angi talked to me about their parents. "Our father had a complicated relationship to race," Angi said. Corinne added: "It was the '60s and he was part of the civil rights movement. He had his dashiki phase. But at the same time, he married my mother: a white woman. We were a blended family before it was a thing." The next morning we pulled up in front of a squat, decaying two story structure in Anomabo, the British era tribal council building. We arranged ourselves under a canopy on one side of the entrance, while on the other side sat Anomabo's traditional leaders: about a dozen men and two women, all in brightly patterned robes of kente cloth, the typical Ghanaian weave. A band of drummers and singers went to work. One of the elders danced, inviting Angi Perron to join him. Then we proceeded upstairs to the council chamber. The tribal elders settled themselves on a weathered set of maroon stuffed chairs and sofas while we visitors sat on plastic chairs near the entrance. It was dark and stiflingly hot. One of the chief's cellphones went off: bells playing "We Wish You a Merry Christmas." Mr. Saint stood and introduced each of us. The chiefs welcomed us and explained the role they traditionally played. Until a century or so ago this kind of council held sway across the country. The chiefs inherit their office through their mother's line, and in the past they performed the functions of government. Now, in all but the most remote places, elected bodies have taken over many of the responsibilities. But there is still considerable respect for traditional offices. One of our group countered that he refused to give liquor as a present, since when Europeans first made contact with Africans, they used liquor to grease the slaving transactions. The chiefs replied that the schnapps was not meant to be drunk. It was poured on the earth as part of a libation ceremony to appease and summon the spirits of the ancestors. This, in fact, had been done outside, when we came, but with their own schnapps. No one seemed to know why schnapps had become the de rigueur beverage. This cross cultural misunderstanding broke the ice, turning an event whose ultimate purpose was cloudy into an open exchange. It became clear that the chiefs hoped that Chandler Saint's project, which involved installing in the fort a permanent exhibit of panels devoted to Venture Smith's life, would economically benefit their impoverished community. "Venture Smith can stand for the thousands who passed through here," Nana Baffoe said. Getting closer to the point, another of the elders added, "Our children have basic needs: education, health care." The elders were less interested in historic preservation than in the possibility of the fort becoming a locus of tourism, and perhaps a link to sympathetic individuals and organizations in the United States. Eventually we all went back outside and organized ourselves into a loose procession. While the musicians chanted, we walked through Anomabo to the town's infamous centerpiece: the hulking whitewashed mass of the European built fort. Many of the town's 14,000 people came out to watch. The first English fort on the site was built in 1672; the current one, officially called Fort William, though known as Anomabo, dates from 1753. Given that it hasn't been used since the early 19th century, when the British abolished slavery, it looks surprisingly sturdy. There are larger slave forts up the road, at Cape Coast and Elmina, which receive more tourists, but the one at Anomabo is the only one still in existence that was built for the purpose of processing human beings. Indescribably powerful highlights, if highlights is the right word, include the auction block and the pens where men, women and children were held separately, and which, when the door is slammed shut, are black as night even on a bright day and almost airless. A few manacles are still attached to walls. Walking the parapets of the fort, meanwhile, is another experience entirely. From here lie staggering views in every direction: palm fringed beaches, the clustered roofs of the town, the endless sea. At your feet, cannons, with the British insignia from the reign of George III still visible, lie rusting along the walls. From the town side, you enter the fort via a wide doorway, which yields to the central courtyard. Exiting is another matter. You could go out the way you came, or you can do what Venture Smith and an estimated 460,000 other Africans did: leave by the so called Door of No Return. We did, by ones and twos, walking down a dark hallway, falling silent. Then from the darkness into the light: You step through a narrow door and are on the beach, with the town's wooden fishing boats lined up to your left. Hundreds of locals were there, watching with amusement as the Americans did what Mr. Saint had promised they would do at the climax of the trip: step into small vessels, as their ancestor would have been forced to do, and head out into the waves. But while the slaves were rowed to a ship, which would transport them to an unimaginably distant place, the descendants were given a tour of the harbor in dugout fishing canoes. The boat ride was more than they had bargained for. The seas were rough, and the local sailors who steered the boats didn't seem to care; the boats pitched violently as they made their circuit. Jasir, the 7 year old in the party, screamed in terror. When they were all back on shore again, Corinne Brady marched grimly away from the water, muttering, "That. Was. Not. Fun." Given what they were re enacting, perhaps it wasn't meant to be. Ghana's history is intricately tied to slavery not just involving Europeans but also slavery within Africa and his talk reflected a despair of his country's ever transcending it. What Prof. Opoku Agyemang wanted to impress on us was the difference between the way Ghanaian and African American cultures have processed the vast trauma of slavery. He talked about American music, jazz, blues, hip hop, and the achievements of African American writers. "They have not taken this legacy passively inside themselves, but have converted it," he said. And in converting it into art, he said, they have transcended it. "You can hear John Coltrane's music anywhere on earth." Then he gave us examples of Ghanaian culture. To this day, he said, houses in the north, the region where slaves like Venture Smith were taken from, are built with a front door so low you have to stoop to get inside, and then with a wall in front of the doorway that you have to walk around to enter. He asked us to ponder these architectural artifacts with him, suggesting that they dated to a time when people tried to protect themselves against marauders in search of slaves. "Slavery," he said, "has shaped tradition." Also, to this day, he said, when you enter a home in the region the host's traditional greeting is, "Are you being chased?" He told us that no one gives a thought to the actual meaning of the words, any more than people do other deep seated traditions. But, he asked us to consider, "Are they not indications of a buried trauma?" And he talked about tribal scarification ritual cuts on the face and body which is still practiced, saying that at one time people scarred their children with knives to make them less appealing to slavers. His message seemed to be that in too many ways, Ghanaian society still bears the scars of slavery. Later, we took a drive with Prof. Opoku Agyemang to Cape Coast. The city was far more appealing than Accra: smaller, and set on a hill overlooking a bay. It was breezier than the capital, more languorous, with almost the feel of an Italian village. Its fort is grander than Anomabo, has been restored, perhaps overly so, and attracts streams of visitors (President Obama visited in 2009). We had lunch at a place outside the city, right on the water, called Mabel's Table. The eponymous owner is Ghanaian; her husband is from Mount Vernon, N.Y. From our table we could see, out on a point of land, the third infamous slave fort of the area, Elmina. None of us knew what would come of Mr. Saint's project to restore the fort at Anomabo, but over lunch we brainstormed ways to use the descendants' visit to help the residents of that town. On the last day of the descendants' trip, Mandred Henry's three children went back to the beach at the base of the fort. Nobody was around; this would be a private ceremony. Corinne Brady pulled an Advil bottle from her purse. It contained some of her father's ashes. The three said a prayer, then she scattered them on the beach. "As you get older, you realize it's all about family," she said. "We were all there when my dad died. He looked around the room and he said, 'We made a really nice family, didn't we?' " | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
The United States has traditionally reported G.D.P. and some other economic statistics as annual rates. Rather than simply giving the percentage change from one quarter to the next, the government reports how much G.D.P. would grow or shrink if that rate of change were sustained for a full year. (Because growth rates compound on themselves, this calculation is a bit more complicated than simply multiplying by four. The figures are also adjusted for seasonal patterns, so they are more properly described as "seasonally adjusted annual rates.") Annual rates make it easier for analysts to compare data collected over different time periods. If you've ever estimated how much you'd save over a full year if you kicked your daily latte habit, or worked out how many home runs a favorite player would hit if his current hot streak lasted for a full season, you've performed a similar calculation. But when annual rates are applied to short term changes, the results can be misleading, as Neil Irwin of The Upshot explained in May. If you received a 500 bonus one month, you wouldn't think of it as a " 6,000 raise, on an annualized basis," because you know it's a one time windfall, not a long term change in your income. Right now, the economy is going through extreme short term changes. Activity largely halted in much of the country in April, rebounded sharply in May and June, and now looks as if it might be slowing again as surging coronavirus cases force states to slow or reverse reopenings. Those changes are real, and will have a huge effect on family incomes, business profits and state tax revenues. But it doesn't make much sense to think of them on an annualized basis. For that reason, in Times coverage of Thursday's G.D.P. report, we plan to emphasize the simple, nonannualized percentage change from the first quarter to the second. (This is hardly revolutionary it's the way most of the rest of the world already reports G.D.P. data.) We'll still provide the standard annualized figures for people who are used to seeing them that way. And where relevant, we'll show other calculations, such as the change from a year earlier, or the change since the start of the pandemic. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Economy |
Outdoor string lights have surged in popularity, thanks to their ability to make a simple backyard or patio feel like a romantic outdoor cafe. And that makes them especially appealing during a summer of social distancing. "Everybody loves the way they look," said Jesse Terzi, the principal of New Eco Landscapes, a Brooklyn based design firm that frequently uses string lights to cast a warm glow over outdoor spaces. "It makes for a different environment. When you have those lights on, compared to a single source light, it feels a little more festive." It doesn't hurt that most string lights are extremely affordable: Some barely cost more than a six pack of craft beer. And if there's an outdoor outlet available, installing them is a do it yourself project. "It's less of a process than installing most other lights," said Mr. Terzi, who often attaches hooks for string lights to exterior walls or trees, or to steel poles secured to a fence. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
"Veep" returns for a final season on HBO. And "10 Things I Hate About You" turns 20 years old. VEEP 10:30 p.m. on HBO. The "Run, Selina, Run" signs are out for Selina Meyer, the onetime president played by Julia Louis Dreyfus in HBO's farcical political comedy series, which returns Sunday for a seventh and final season. Meyer is back on the campaign trail, but she doesn't go around kissing babies (though she does make one cry). Instead, she ponders ways to spin fictional mass shootings into political assets and throws her cellphone on the ground in disgust after her staffers fly her to the wrong Iowa town. "America owes me an eight year stay in the White House," she says later. "And this time, I want a war." MRS. WILSON 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). Ruth Wilson, a star of "The Affair" and "Luther," plays a fictionalized version of her own grandmother in this mini series. It's a mysterious story of secrets and clandestine operations that begins in 1963, when Alison Wilson (Ruth Wilson) meets her deceased husband's wife. Yes, you read that right: Iain Glen ("Game of Thrones") plays that husband, a writer and former MI6 agent who dies in the first minutes of the story, leaving behind a tangle of secrets, including a hidden double life. Unraveling the mysteries becomes Alison's occupation, and the focus of the mini series. PBS is showing it in two parts, the first on Sunday and the second on April 7. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
A whole is divided into two parts, nearly equal in size. While sharing a fundamental character, they diverge just as fundamentally. A section that could be described as recalling the color blue even if it's the midnight variety is connected by a tiny, fragile bridge to an evocation of dark, churning red. Esa Pekka Salonen doesn't mention Democrats and Republicans or Leavers and Remainers, or other bitter bicameral oppositions of our time in the program notes for his new orchestral work, "Gemini." But thoughts of politics, of face offs between countrymen, were inescapable as the New York Philharmonic gave the local premiere of this two headed piece on Wednesday at David Geffen Hall. "Gemini" is the union of "Pollux" (2018) and "Castor" (2019), which can also be performed individually and are named for the half brothers of Greco Roman myth: both sons of Leda, but Castor mortal and Pollux divine. Conducting the Philharmonic in these performances, Mr. Salonen has nestled the twins amid works written by Hindemith and Schoenberg in the 1920s and '30s. Those German composers looked toward the past for inspiration and consolation at a time of national and international unease; with his classical subject matter and our similar moment, Mr. Salonen has placed himself in their company. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
Anyone else would have been sacked for it. Twelve days ago Britain's media and social media erupted in indignation and incredulity. Dominic Cummings, the prime minister's most senior aide, had been exposed for breaking the strict lockdown rules he helped to write, and which everyone else had endured for the previous two months. "Stay at home and save lives," Prime Minister Boris Johnson ordered the country. It was an incantation, an instruction not a request, backed up by the law and the police. Britain shut down. Police patrols issued instant fines, sending second home owners, day trippers and park sunbathers back home. Control the virus, save lives. People obeyed. Beloved elderly parents died alone in care homes after weeks of state ordered loneliness, sick parents cared for their children in isolation. Single people confessed their hidden agony at being utterly deprived of human touch. Only a solemn sense of communal endurance for the greater good made these private griefs and struggles bearable. We were all in this together. Until, it turned out, we weren't. Mr. Cummings, newspapers revealed, had raced out of a London in lockdown to his parents' farm, 260 miles away, with his young son and his wife, who was suffering from the symptoms of Covid 19. In doing so he had broken both the regulations and their spirit. He had stayed in what was effectively a second home, taken the virus from a high risk area to a low risk one, been seen out in bluebell woods, gone out on a 60 mile day trip to a beauty spot on his wife's birthday. This last journey, he claimed to general national ridicule, was just a drive to test whether his eyesight had been affected by his own attack of the virus. In a country fed up with its privations, the story exploded. It looked like an obvious case for sacking or resignation. Two other prominent figures had already lost their posts for much more minor lockdown breaches. But nearly two weeks later, the issue is off the front pages and Mr. Cummings still has his job. How did it happen? Mr. Johnson came out fighting for his man, saying he was only looking for potential child care, praising him for being so caring, gaslighting the entire country by claiming that somehow, retrospectively, there had been clauses in the regulations invisible to the rest of us that allowed us to do as we thought best for our families. Voters do not believe him. Polls show the price he's paying for defending Mr. Cummings. Two thirds of the country think Mr. Johnson is wrong to back him, and four fifths say Mr. Cummings broke the rules. Mr. Johnson's approval rating has dropped 20 points. The question that baffles the country is why has so much political capital been spent on saving the job of one man? The truth is that for the prime minister, Mr. Cummings is vital. Boris Johnson is a puffball of a politician who craves applause and approval. He is famously disorganized and unreliable, a man known to neither read his briefs carefully nor think through his ideas. He wants to be prime minister without doing the work that comes with the job. Last week, he grumbled to the only parliamentary committee permitted to question him that preparing for their hearings takes a huge amount of time. We have a prime minister who thinks it tedious to be expected to know what his government is doing and why. Mr. Cummings fills the gaps. Where Mr. Johnson doesn't want to be the expert, Mr. Cummings prides himself on it. He is not an incidental useful assistant but the true driver of Mr. Johnson's government. What has made him so powerful is that under him, with Mr. Johnson's agreement, power has been concentrated in 10 Downing Street as never before which really means concentrated in Mr. Cummings's hands. Cabinet power has been undermined and supplanted by a network of political advisers appointed by, controlled by and often personally loyal to Mr. Cummings. The key government priorities, like communications, coronavirus policy and improving the lives of Mr. Johnson's new working class voters? He is integral to all of them. Most important, one senior Johnson ally described Mr. Cummings to me as the "guardian of Brexit" the man the prime minister trusts above any politician to deliver it. Mr. Cummings is so embedded in every key policy that this ally says losing him would leave the prime minister "very, very vulnerable." Britain's future relationship with Europe has to be negotiated by the end of this year. Another senior member of Mr. Johnson's Conservative Party describes the relationship more brutally. If Mr. Cummings were forced out, he says, the network of people he's built that currently powers this government would wilt. Mr. Johnson knows and fears that. Some would leave, some would become leakers, some would become slackers. For a prime minister whose government is already flailing, with huge pitfalls ahead, that is unconscionable. "It's almost like Boris is a hostage," he told me. Mr. Johnson has reportedly privately raged at Mr. Cummings's behavior and told him off to his face. A Tory source close to the prime minister tells me the prime minister warned his adviser "that he'd had his nine lives, and there were none left." Mr. Johnson has been described in the press as "loyal" to Mr. Cummings. It's not loyalty, it's ruthless political need. Mr. Johnson calculates that he cannot afford to lose him, and that the current public fury will die down. The four years to the next election is an age in politics; by then, he hopes, lockdown will be a dimly remembered irrelevant fact. In this gamble, I believe Mr. Johnson is making a critical mistake. Voters will remember this episode because many will never forget how this government made them feel: foolish and deluded for willingly enduring anguish and separation while those at the top did as they pleased. Jenni Russell ( jennirsl) is a columnist for The Times of London and a contributing Opinion writer. The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We'd like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here's our email: letters nytimes.com. Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter ( NYTopinion) and Instagram. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
"The Crown," which debuted in 2016 and focuses on Queen Elizabeth's II's reign and family, was created by the writer and producer Peter Morgan. In a statement on Friday, he said that the time had come to end the series. "At the outset I had imagined 'The Crown' running for six seasons but now that we have begun work on the stories for season five it has become clear to me that this is the perfect time and place to stop," said Mr. Morgan, who also wrote the script for "The Queen," the 2006 movie that earned Helen Mirren a best actress Oscar. "I'm grateful to Netflix and Sony for supporting me in this decision." Cindy Holland, vice president of original content for Netflix, said in a statement that she fully supported Mr. Morgan's creative decision and that she was "excited to see how he, Imelda Staunton and the cast and crew of Season 5, bring this landmark series to a fitting and spectacular end." The show has cost Netflix nearly 150 million, which is about twice as much as the royal family costs British tax payers each year, and putting together the story line is no easy task. It involves a team of researchers who once a week come to Mr. Morgan's London home for script meetings, based in part on documents they have attained. There is an expectation to "deliver TV on an annual basis, but what we're making now is feature film quality stuff, and no one ever expected you to make 10 feature films a year because you'd die," he told The New York Times last November. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
On Friday, Oct. 13, locals in California's Big Sur region gathered at Pfeiffer Canyon Bridge and celebrated its reopening with a ribbon cutting ceremony. The bridge was severely damaged in early February, following a series of landslides, and rebuilt over the last seven months by the California Department of Transportation, known as Caltrans. Big Sur spans a roughly 90 mile stretch of Highway 1, and the reopening of the 310 foot long bridge is significant because without it, about 35 miles of the highway south of the bridge was closed to vehicles, said Susana Cruz, a public information officer for Caltrans. As a result, the hotels, restaurants and other attractions located along this section were either closed or struggled to maintain business as usual. "The bridge is the artery to tourism in Big Sur because it connects north and south Big Sur, from Carmel to the town of San Simeon, and for nearly eight months, it wasn't there," Ms. Cruz said. Big Sur is in Monterey County and attracts many of the 4.6 million people who visit the county each year, according to Rob O'Keefe, the chief marketing officer for the Monterey County Convention Visitors Bureau; travelers come to enjoy the spectacular vistas of the Pacific, hike among the redwoods and savor a remoteness that few destinations offer. The new bridge, he said, means that visitors can once again have easy and convenient access to the area's many attractions. Some of these attractions weren't damaged by the landslides while others were, but regardless, being open without the bridge wasn't worthwhile, according to their owners and managers, because of their inaccessibility. Ventana Big Sur, an Alila Resort, for example, reopened on Oct. 20 after being closed since the landslides in February. "Although the property wasn't really damaged, it was very challenging for anyone to get here, so we decided not to stay open," said Kristina Jetton, the resort's general manager. During the closure, Ventana underwent a renovation and introduced refurbished rooms, a new bar with views of the coastline and an expanded spa. The resort also introduced an option for upscale camping with 15 safari style canvas tents amid redwood trees. Unlike Ventana, Deetjen's Big Sur Inn, a hotel and restaurant, did see damage from the landslides: general manager Matt Glazer said that four of the property's 20 rooms were destroyed. The hotel reopened the day after the new bridge was inaugurated, but Mr. Glazer said that the damaged rooms have not yet been rebuilt. "We haven't begun reconstruction because construction vehicles couldn't get to the property, but we're fully operational with 16 rooms and serving daily breakfast and dinner," he said. Pfeiffer Beach, too, reopened on Oct. 14 to coincide with the new bridge. Known for its soft purple sand and photogenic sunsets, the beach is an ideal spot for picnics and long walks and is a favorite of photographers, said Mr. O'Keefe. Some businesses south of the bridge were open for at least some portion of the time when the bridge was closed. Visitors were able to reach them in one of two ways: they either hiked a steep half mile temporary trail through Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park, which circumvented the bridge. Or they drove via a detour on Nacimiento Fergusson Road, a remote route with no cell service, gas stations or other services; the road added between an hour to three hours of driving time to reach destinations off Highway 1, said Ms. Cruz of Caltrans. (Brent Marshall, the Monterey district superintendent for California State Parks, said that now that Pfeiffer Canyon Bridge is open, the trail will close to hikers within the next several months.) But many of these establishments were affected by the lack of tourists in the area. Post Ranch Inn, a 40 room luxury hotel, for example, reopened in late April, after being closed since mid February. Mike Freed, the property's managing partner, said that he chose to open because he wanted to keep his staff employed. "These locals are dependent on income from the hotel to survive," he said. In an attempt to give guests an incentive to stay and offer them quick access to Post Ranch, he started a helicopter service, for a fee, to the property from Monterey Regional Airport. The hotel's occupancy level with the helicopter service was around 60 percent, compared with its norm of close to 100 percent throughout the year. "People were put off from coming to Big Sur," Mr. Freed said. "They want to be here when everything is open." Nepenthe, a restaurant with water views that dates to 1949 and is considered a Big Sur landmark, was also open over the last several months, but as was the case with Post Ranch, business was a challenge, according to owner Kirk Gafill. "It was nearly impossible for people to get to us and also for supplies to reach us," he said. The restaurant saw an average of 350 diners a day over the summer, compared to its usual average of 1,000 diners. Since the new bridge opened, however, Mr. Gafill said that about 900 people a day have dined at Nepenthe, compared with the daily fall season average of 750 people. "There's been a pent up demand so we're seeing more people than we usually would in October," he said. But not every attraction in Big Sur is open quite yet: hiking and camping are popular activities in the area, and while most campsites within the region's several state parks are welcoming campers, including sites in Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park and Andrew Molera State Park, most of the hiking trails within them remain closed, said Mr. Marshall of California State Parks. "These trails are severely damaged from the landslides and we don't expect many of them to reopen until the spring," he said. "The full recovery process will take years." (Visitors should check the California State Parks website for updates.) Big Sur Bakery, a popular bakery and restaurant, is still closed, but owner Mike Gilson said that he anticipates opening within the next few weeks. "We lost some employees over the last few months because most lived north of the bridge, but now that it's open, they're coming back," he said. With much of Big Sur back on its feet, hotel and restaurant owners said that they look forward to a return to normalcy. The last helicopter ride to Post Ranch happened the same afternoon that Pfeiffer Canyon Bridge reopened. In the days that followed, Mr. Freed said, the property had a large number of reservations and is nearly booked to capacity for much of November. "I'm relieved and excited that travelers are coming back here," he said. More information about what's open in Big Sur and what's not can be found on the Monterey County Convention Visitors Bureau site, seemonterey.com/resources/travel alert/. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
Data Breaches Keep Happening. So Why Don't You Do Something? Experts caution that the stream of news about such breaches can set a new normal and instill a sense of fatalism and complacency in consumers. Anthony Vance, an associate professor and director of the Center for Cybersecurity at the Fox School of Business at Temple University, said last year's breach of information held by the credit reporting company Equifax, which affected 145 million Americans, was "a game changer." The information gleaned could be used to fraudulently open new credit accounts, he said, adding, "That should give even the most jaded American consumer pause and prompt them to do something." A Pew Research Center study found most Americans keep track of their passwords by memorizing or writing them down, with only 12 percent using a password manager, which can generate hard to crack passwords. A RAND Corporation report in 2016 said only 4 percent of people started using password managers after being notified that their data was exposed in a breach, Dr. Vance said. And an experiment conducted by Dr. Vance and other researchers found a disconnect between consumers' professed concerns about online security and their actions. In the experiment, people using their personal computers to complete an assigned task tended to ignore warnings that some sites they were about to visit were not secure. Let Us Help You Protect Your Digital Life None With Apple's latest mobile software update, we can decide whether apps monitor and share our activities with others. Here's what to know. A little maintenance on your devices and accounts can go a long way in maintaining your security against outside parties' unwanted attempts to access your data. Here's a guide to the few simple changes you can make to protect yourself and your information online. Ever considered a password manager? You should. There are also many ways to brush away the tracks you leave on the internet. He said consumers may be told the same advice repeatedly but are slow to respond unless they've already had a bad experience. Only then does this "once bitten, twice shy" lesson sink in. "You're not going to back up data, no matter what I tell you, until you lose the baby pictures of your first child," Dr. Vance said. "Sometimes it takes an incident to internalize behavior. It's so easy to get inured." Steven Andres, who teaches at the Fowler College of Business and homeland security program at San Diego State University, said it would be reasonable to think consumers would be more diligent after heavily publicized breaches, but some research indicates just the opposite. "We may adjust to this being the 'new normal,'" he said, adding that "digital natives and younger generations may perceive their personal data in a distorted sense to never have been private, so what's the big deal with it leaking out on the web anyway?" A "recency bias" leads consumers to believe that as a breach recedes in the headlines, it becomes less threatening, Dr. Vance said. However, the data in the Equifax breach does not have a half life and could be used for nefarious purposes at any point. Anticipated danger can easily be "deflected, deferred or declined" because it makes us feel anxious and stressed, said James Norrie, dean of the Graham School of Business at York College of Pennsylvania and a cybersecurity expert. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
Some credit for the almost unbearable intensity of "Perilous Bodies," the group show that inaugurates the Ford Foundation's new gallery for art concerned with social justice, goes to its 19 artists from around the world. Confronting ills from sexual violence in India to resource extraction in Africa, most of them succeed in getting to the heart of very difficult material. (The gallery was part of an overall renovation, and most of the work in the show is unrelated to the foundation's contemporary art collection .) But most of the credit is due to the show's curators, Jaishri Abichandani and Natasha Becker, who wove their work together. Because balancing artistry against anguish is so challenging, and because such a balance is even more sensitive to its context than art usually is , no single piece can be sure of landing cleanly on its own. Mohamad Hafez's delicate dioramas of half destroyed Syrian buildings might register merely as beautiful, and Tiffany Chung's backlit photos of similar rubble, taken alone, are tonally ambiguous . Tenzin Tsetan Choklay's movie "Bringing Tibet Home," which follows his friend and fellow exile, the artist Tenzing Rigdol , as he smuggles a truckload of Tibetan soil through Nepal to Dharamsala, India, is undeniably melancholy, but it's also as absorbing as "Indiana Jones." Viewed all together, though, under a spray of 418 cast foam miniature Hellfire missiles the Pakistani American artist Mahwish Chishty's memorial to the civilian casualties of American drone strikes they're as shocking as getting hit by a truck. Stagger into the next room to see Teresa Serrano's extremely disturbing short video "La Pinata," in which a man alternately gropes a small female mannequin and beats it to pieces; the Australian artist Hannah Bronte's equally unsettling all female rap video about climate catastrophe; and Dread Scott's 1999 installation of six shooting targets, one for each of six black men killed by the police in the 1990s, over a wooden coffin ("The Blue Wall of Violence"). Then go into the Ford Foundation's tranquil, tree filled atrium and sit quietly for a while. WILL HEINRICH Dumb flesh, male and female alike, was the climactic challenge of painting for Lucian Freud, whose late work grappled ceaselessly with whether a body can ever become a picture. The British portraitist, who died in 2011 at age 88, bore down on his models and refashioned them, not quite realistically, into meaty slabs of oil paint. "Monumental," the first proper show of Freud's paintings in New York since his death, is up now at Acquavella, which has assembled a baker's dozen of Freud's larger nudes from the 1990s and 2000s, depicting the outre performer Leigh Bowery, the Rubenesque model Sue Tilley, known as Big Sue, and other subjects of his obsessive gaze though not, I'm sorry to say, pregnant Kate Moss! (An exhibition of his self portraits opens this fall at the Royal Academy in London.) Self consumed and rashly promiscuous he had 14 acknowledged children, and fathered who knows how many more Freud leaned into stereotypes of the old style artistic genius in both his life and his paintings. In "Naked Portrait With Green Chair" (1999), he renders a model's drooping breasts and cellulite pocked thighs so pitilessly that the picture verges on the self parodic. Freud's dementedly long sittings, too every day for 16 months, for the model lounging in "Ria , Naked Portrait" (2006 7) can seem like a performance art version of a tortured visionary seeking unobtainable "inner truth." (Mr. Warhol and Mr. Richter look on with sweet incomprehension.) Yet look at the large, landmark "Benefits Supervisor Sleeping" (1995). Freud painted the nude Ms. Tilley asleep on a sofa, her face smushed into the floral pattern cushion, her belly flopping over her right thigh, her pasty skin cast as streaks of the artist's favored Cremnitz white. She is observed slightly from above, at an angle that feels by turns forensic or familiar. Here Freud's exactitude comes across as a much more generous act of transubstantiation, as if the body, turned into paint, might live a second life in its reconstituted form. I had seen this painting in reproduction countless times since its record breaking sale in 2008, but there is no substitute for seeing it, as Freud would say, in the flesh. JASON FARAGO Gretchen Bender (1951 2004) was part of the first generation of artists to grow up with television, and she and her fellow travelers in the art world often used television as a subject and a medium for their work. An exhibition devoted to her career was mounted at the black box theater space the Kitchen in Chelsea in 2013 and now a retrospective, "So Much Deathless," is at the glossier white box Red Bull Arts. The "black box" mention is not superfluous. In the early '90s Ms. Bender was in contact with the media critic and philosopher Vilem Flusser, who called technological apparatuses like cameras or televisions impenetrable "black boxes;" the artist's job is to penetrate these black boxes and reprogram their functioning. Ms. Bender did that beautifully, sometimes by simply printing deadpan black text onto a TV monitor and letting broadcast images babble underneath: "Race Class Gender" over cartoons, or "Narcotics of Surrealism" over images of Donald Trump on Fox News. Lesser known works are here, like "Volatile Memory" (1988), a 13 minute film she directed with Sandra Tait and starring the artist Cindy Sherman as a cyborg under government surveillance, or laminated color photographs and smaller video sculptures. Also on view is "Total Recall" (1987), an 18 minute symphony of pulsing sound, corporate logos, movie titles and computer graphics spread over 24 monitors and 3 projection screens. One would imagine that "Total Recall" would feel dated, but it remains a brilliant critical look at how media images work, capturing and directing our attention. Moreover, looking around the room and seeing viewers recording the experience on their cellphones felt like a new layer to the work Ms. Bender would appreciate, and perhaps approve. MARTHA SCHWENDENER | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
MARINA, Calif. Well, the new Mazda MX 5 Miata looks pretty. That's all that can be said about it, though, based on the little that Mazda revealed on Wednesday night at what was hyped as an unveiling of the fourth major generation of the roadster. In reality, the event held simultaneously in California, Spain and Japan was focused entirely on the car's body. Company executives ducked all the crucial questions about engine size, trunk space, price, amenities, release date and most important of all, performance. At 25 years old, the MX 5 is well into middle age, and although it's the best selling two seat convertible in history, sales have slowed in recent years. The redesign for the 2016 model year is intended to attract a new round of buyers. Derek Jenkins, director of design for Mazda North America, said at the California event that the company was under a lot of pressure to keep the car simple, lightweight, affordable "its core D.N.A." while updating its looks. Mazda made the nose of the car flatter and lower than the 2015 model, while adding prominent, peaked fenders in the front and back that are reminiscent of the Honda S2000. The headlamps are round and set in an eyelike housing, giving the car an anthropomorphic look reminiscent of the original Miata, which had signature pop up headlights. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Automobiles |
LES BALLET AFRIK AND EPHRAT ASHERIE at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (Jan. 13 14, 7:30 p.m.). The latest episode of the Guggenheim's Works and Process series focuses on a newly commissioned piece driven by vogueing and house dance styles. Les Ballet Afrik, founded by the distinguished ballroom scene veteran Omari Wiles, presents excerpts from "New York Is Burning," which commemorates the 30th anniversary of the influential documentary "Paris Is Burning," and features Wiles's fusion of African, Afrobeat and house moves. Additionally, the busy B girl Ephrat Asherie will show parts of "UnderScored," an upcoming work inspired by the wild, wonderful dancing at the Loft and the Paradise Garage, famed underground clubs of the 1970s and '80s. 212 423 3575, worksandprocess.org DANCE NOW at Joe's Pub (Jan. 12, 4 p.m.). In September, this long running festival returned to Joe's, the comfy, intimate cabaret space, where 40 dance artists attempted to satisfy the challenge of creating a complete, compelling statement in five minutes or less on a teeny stage. The top 10 were invited back for an encore after which Nicole Vaughan Diaz was declared the winner with her duet "A Portrait of Them," performed with Ryan Rouland Smith. The encore receives an encore this weekend, as Vaughan Diaz and Rouland Smith reprise their work along with the other finalists. 212 967 7555, joespub.com LIVE ARTERY at New York Live Arts (through Jan. 14). This showcase of contemporary and experimental dance provides a welcome opportunity to see works you may have missed in the past year or would like to see again, as well as premieres of and excerpts from works in progress. The range of artists is eclectic: Molly Lieber and Eleanor Smith continue their intimate exploration of trauma (Saturday, 9 p.m.; Sunday, noon) while Sean Dorsey, a San Francisco based choreographer and dancer, examines masculinity from a trans and queer perspective (Sunday, 8:30 p.m.; Monday, 8 p.m.; Tuesday, 7:30 p.m.). Other participants include Kimberly Bartosik, Jaamil Olawale Kosoko and Yanira Castro. 212 691 6500, newyorklivearts.org | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
Ballet West has been in existence since 1963, but this Salt Lake City company didn't gain national prominence until it became the focus of "Breaking Pointe," a reality show more consumed by the dancers' backstage lives than ballet. The program ran on the CW network for two seasons beginning in 2012. Now in the a five night run at the Joyce Theater, Ballet West had a chance to put the emphasis back where it belongs, on dancing. The company, under the artistic direction of Adam Sklute, features comely dancers; where it falters, at least judging from its program on March 25, is in its choice of repertory, which included the premiere of Helen Pickett's "Games." In a field where there is a frustrating scarcity of female choreographers, one wishes there were better news to report. "Games," is inspired by "Jeux," Nijinsky's 1913 sexually enigmatic ballet, set to Debussy's music, which unfolds during a tennis game. In Ms. Pickett's menage a trois, Allison DeBona and Arolyn Williams are first seen in a close embrace. But why does the sleek Ms. DeBona keep reaching for her phone? As it turns out, she's texting another dancer, Christopher Ruud, to arrange a rendezvous. What follows are kisses, fights and more kisses, yet what this dance theater production aches for is tension. Apart from Michael Andrew Currey's set in which walls are rotated to reveal both an office and a foyer where, along with a poster of Nijinsky, there are two tennis rackets cute touches override any possibility of titillation. It's a ballet that just keeps winking at you. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
In a sunlit studio space at the Juilliard School, the prestigious arts institution at Lincoln Center in Manhattan, Marie Engle emerged from a makeshift mirrored dressing room on Wednesday in a to the floor fuchsia jersey gown with a plunging neckline. "You're beautiful!" said Pam Bernstein Friedman, 71, hurrying over to a rack of shawls. "If I'm performing at a summer recital, wearing a pink dress could be fun," said Ms. Engle, a mezzo soprano from Ohio by way of Vienna who is studying for a master's degree in Juilliard's vocal arts department. She admired herself in a mirror and then returned to the dressing room to try on a dark brown velvet gown. Perhaps unconsciously, Ms. Engle began to hum. "I don't sound like that in the shower, that's for sure," Ms. Friedman said, as she rifled through a rack of garments, looking for more options. It was the second annual "shopping day" for OnStage, a program created last year by Ms. Friedman in which women donate black tie gowns and cocktail dresses to Juilliard's students, who are expected to be outfitted in fancy attire at their many auditions and performances, as well as at galas and parties. These singers try to avoid being photographed in the same ensemble twice. For students trying to pay the conservatory's tuition, as well as the cost of living in New York, this all can get very expensive, very quickly. "Last year I walked away with two Tadashi Shoji gowns," said Felicia Moore, a soprano who played the lead role in the school's production of "Katya Kabanova." "I was on the verge of tears when I tried them on." She wore one of the dresses to a gala this past summer at the Merola Opera Program in San Francisco. Ms. Friedman, a retired literary agent, began attending many concerts and recitals at Juilliard after her husband, George Friedman, died in 2012. "The music from these incredibly talented students is what is getting me through a difficult time of my life," she said. But something was distracting her. "There were these beautiful voices coming out of horribly dressed girls," she said. "I learned that they couldn't afford all the dresses and gowns that they needed." Ms. Friedman began to think of her own closet, filled with designer dresses and gowns that had long hung dormant for years. "I thought, 'I know so many women, we don't dress like this anymore, we don't go to as many black tie events and when we do, we wear just black.'" She sent an email to 50 friends, many of them entering a less on the town phase of life, asking them to "shop in their closets," she said. Within a few weeks, her Fifth Avenue dining room looked like a designer showroom, with 10 racks of finery by Carolina Herrera, Vera Wang and the like. She also took in their castoff satin pumps, brocade shawls and statement costume jewelry. Ellen Marcus, for whom the Ellen and James S. Marcus Institute for Vocal Arts at Juilliard is named, emptied her closet for the program's inaugural year, and urged a number of friends to do the same. "Fifteen years ago, when something was black tie, you wore a grand, elegant ball gown," Ms. Marcus said. "Now people dress more simply, wearing sometimes even just a pretty top with silk pants. But performances require something more." This year, Ms. Marcus cast off more gowns still, as well as four tuxedos belonging to the late Mr. Marcus, who was the board chairman of the Metropolitan Opera for many years. In fact, Ms. Friedman had tried to solicit a surfeit of friends' surplus tuxedos but she learned that most men don't have closets full of extras. Anyway, scena: For students entering the cutthroat professional world, the gift of garment bags filled with designer clothing is like being outfitted with armor. "This education, this profession, it's a balance of torture and extreme satisfaction," said Natalia Kutateladze, a mezzo soprano from the country of Georgia, who this spring will sing a lead role in "Hippolyte et Aricie" by Jean Philippe Rameau. She left with a knockout long black dress with a red satin crisscross sash by Lanvin. "For us, it's Christmas today," she said. Daryl Roth, a producer of Broadway plays including "Kinky Boots" and "Hello, Dolly!" and a friend of Ms. Friedman's, said that after having donated last year, she had less to give away and so went on a shopping spree at Bloomingdale's, in part to address that the figures of opera singers are often fuller than those of women on the Manhattan benefit circuit. "Pam had mentioned she needed more dresses in larger sizes and that was a challenge," she said. "Larger sizes tend to look matronly." Ms. Roth bought and donated 13 ensembles: dresses, shirts and tops and one jumpsuit. "It is so hard for young, talented people to make it in New York City," she said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
If molecular gastronomy evokes science fiction (foams! liquid nitrogen!), Upton 43 in Minneapolis feels more like alternate history. To eat there is to imagine a world where the spice trade never really developed, a chef driven culture built on the flavors of medieval Europe. By focusing on old fashioned techniques like fermenting and roasting, Erick Harcey, the chef, is expanding the city's eating scene and redefining the Swedish American foods he grew up with. "When you're a young chef you seem to be inspired by whatever's new at that moment," Mr. Harcey said. "As you get older, it just fell back to my roots." Those roots run deep. Mr. Harcey's grandparents owned the Kaffe Stuga, a small town diner where locals could munch on breaded walleye while talking about hockey. Mr. Harcey also owns the gastro pub Victory 44 and the rotisserie chicken hot spot the Dirty Bird, but Upton 43 was planned specifically as a tribute to his grandparents. The resulting restaurant is full of clean lines and long, narrow windows, lightly painted exposed rafters and minimal blue and white furnishings. It is formal without being austere, elegant but also family friendly. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
Hurricanes Irma and Maria devastated islands in the Caribbean last September. Six months later, how are they recovering? To find out, writers for Travel spent time in Vieques, St. Martin (below), St. John, Dominica and San Juan, P.R. A smattering of sun seekers had arrived at the beach and were greeted by two craftsmen selling necklaces and sarongs. A local chef, her kitchen located inside a rusty shipping container, grilled fish along an otherwise deserted stretch of Orient Bay beach in St. Martin. Gazing out at the calm azure water, a first time visitor might find it hard to imagine that this long crescent of powdery white sand was once lined with tiki bars, palm trees and thousands of tourists in beach chairs with matching umbrellas. About six months after Hurricane Irma pummeled this quintessential Caribbean island with terrifying force, sweeping away homes, tossing cars and boats, and wreaking havoc on its tourism infrastructure, there is still much to rebuild. "Right now, I see the sea, I see the sun and I see beautiful nature," said Lorenz G. Winter, 55, a real estate agent on vacation from Munich, Germany, who was sipping cold beers on Orient Bay with his wife and two daughters in their 20s. "Yes, nature is still here," his daughter Sarah Winter chimed in, her back turned to the skeletal remains of damaged resorts. While signs of recovery are starting to emerge across this dual nation island, split between a French and Dutch side, St. Martin has a long way to go to restore its tourism industry. Visitors seeking sun, sand and solitude will find all 37 of the island's stunning beaches open, the roads clear of wreckage and locals welcoming as ever. But blue tarps cover many deserted homes, their roofs damaged or missing entirely. Most hotels and restaurants are closed or under construction if they are there at all. The destruction across the island is impossible to ignore. In Marigot, the French capital, souvenir vendors set up stalls across from blown out buildings, seemingly untouched since the hurricane. A few miles north in Grand Case, the island's restaurant row remained largely shuttered. Out of more than 60 establishments, fewer than a dozen had reopened. Among them: the Rainbow Cafe, a waterfront restaurant and bar with beach service; two open air seaside grills, known as lolos; the upscale Bistrot Caraibes and Spiga, an Italian restaurant that the hurricane left largely untouched, despite ripping the roofs off its neighbors. By contrast, Philipsburg, the Dutch capital, was largely back to business, with the gleaming jewelry stores and revamped clothing boutiques of Front Street beckoning day trippers arriving from cruise ships. Even as workers hammered within the top story of the Holland House Beach Hotel, a mix of American and European tourists lounged on its chic wooden deck and dined on 22 lobster sandwiches in its shaded waterfront restaurant. Down the boardwalk, Pirates in Paradise, a themed bar with a cultlike following from Ohio State, served up 2 beers on a veranda shaded by a blue tarp, despite the gutted second story above it. Around the corner, Juggie Amarnaney held court at his tiny namesake bar, Juggie's Place, offering returning visitors a cold drink and a Cuban cigar beneath a canopy of some 250 bras each one representing a 5 donation to breast cancer awareness. "There are people who love this island and there are people who love the people of this island," he said. "Right now," he said, nodding to a couple from Wallingford, Conn., who had returned to the island for the 26th time, "they're the ones who are coming back." The others, he said, will wait for more hotels, restaurants and flights to open up. "They want all the bells and whistles that come with their resorts. You won't get that right now." "It's much more like the first year we came, back in 2001, a little bit quieter but just as much fun," said Jeff Kish, 64, who owns an ambulance company in Toledo, Ohio, and was vacationing with his wife, two daughters, their husbands and four grandchildren, between the ages of 4 and 14. Irma destroyed the timeshare the family usually stays at, so the Kishes booked hotel rooms in Simpson Bay, where restaurants and bars along the entertainment strip were largely open. The family had no trouble accomplishing their vacation to do list, which included offshore fishing, relaxing on the beach and snorkeling in Mullet Bay, said Mr. Kish. "We found it's been just as pleasurable, just as beautiful, once you get past the destruction." About 80 percent of the island's 5,667 guest rooms that were open before Hurricane Irma were still out of commission in March, including the 317 room Westin Dawn Beach Resort Spa, the 258 room Riu Palace St. Martin and the 83 room Belmond La Samanna. Flights scheduled for the month of March to St. Martin are down by 1,507 with 92,252 fewer seats when compared with a year ago, according to data and analytics from FlightGlobal. Yet with another hurricane season fast approaching, much of the tourist zone is not only rebuilding, but undergoing a multimillion dollar face lift. The Maho Group alone is putting more than 50 million into a revamp of the Sonesta Resorts, including overhauling the Sonesta Maho Beach Resort, and incorporating a new contemporary design. Sonesta's Casino Royale, the largest on the island, with more than 21,000 square feet of gaming, plans to reopen this summer with two new bistro style al fresco restaurants and a rooftop bar and lounge. Shiny new rental cars awaits visitors at the Alamo rental office. The Rainbow Cafe in Grand Case has a new whitewashed deck, a reconfigured layout, and chic red and white furnishings. "Everything is destroyed, so I tried to do something better," the owner, Gobert Douglas, said with a French accent. Pointing out that he could have spent less on the renovation, he said, "I prefer to do this, change the floor, all the seating, all the style of the restaurant to make it new." Other business owners said they were hopeful that the renewed development would bring tourists back. "From here St. Martin only gets better," said Sam Punjabi, the manager and diamond specialist at Shopper's Haven, a jewelry store in Philipsburg. "There are places that are completely gone. You might see something different come up. You might see something better come up. Like they say, when you hit bottom, there's only one way to go." Yet with so many places still under repair, some businesses are recommending first time visitors wait until next season to come to St. Martin. "I'm wary of bringing first time clients to the island for the moment," said Lesley Reed, the owner and broker at St. Martin Sotheby's International Realty, noting that just 25 percent of the island villas she manages would be ready by April 1. "I think it needs another six months." But even in early March, visitors appeared to be enjoying themselves. A sunburned crowd gathered at Maho Beach, adjacent to the Princess Juliana International Airport on the island's southwestern shore, and famous for up close views and the jet blasts of departing and landing aircraft. As incoming planes buzzed low overhead, swimsuit clad tourists took their positions in an attempt to capture the ultimate selfie on a quintessential Caribbean beach, with a jumbo jet coming right at them. Next door, at the Sunset Beach Bar, an estimated 400 tourists dined on wood fired pizzas and sipped cocktails from plastic cups. Perched on a stool overlooking the water, Elizabeth Schooley and her boyfriend, Scott Anthony, took in the view. "You can't beat this on the beach, the clear blue water, the sun," said Ms. Schooley, an airline operation agent from Las Vegas who had arrived for the day on a Carnival Cruise. "This is amazing." Kim Serrant, a manager working in the air conditioned gift shop next to the pool deck, said that normally the pool and restaurant would be standing room only. "A lot of people are not coming because they think the island isn't safe or that there isn't any place to stay. We have villas. There are still some hotels available," she said, pointing out that the Atrium Beach Resort Spa, next door was accepting guests. "It is still the same friendly island St. Martin, sunshine city. I would invite people to come on back. We are waiting here with open arms." Each day, progress is beginning to take hold. By the end of June, inventory on the Dutch side of the island is expected to grow by 560 rooms with properties like Divi Little Bay Beach Resort and Oyster Bay Beach Resort expected to reopen. On the French side, roughly 600 rooms will be added by year end, according to the Kate Richardson, the director of St. Martin's tourism office, including intimate boutique style properties. Among them: the Hotel La Plantation on Orient Bay (April), the Mediterranean style Le Petit Hotel (June) and the Grand Case Beach Club (October). New tourist attractions are also welcoming visitors. In November, Rainforest Adventures opened a new zip line the Flying Dutchman in Emilio Wilson Park. Visitors can tour a new museum dedicated to the history of the site, a former plantation dating back to the 1700s, and dine in a refurbished stone building that was once the sugar cane boiling house. And with the island's natural attractions still intact, tour operators continue to offer sailing trips, snorkeling excursions and hikes up to Pic Paradise, the highest spot on the island. "There are some things that the hurricane just couldn't take away, said Marc Petrelluzzi , whose family owns Le Petit Hotel and its beloved sister property, L'Esplanade. "It's the view. It's the sea. It's the beaches. It's the vegetation. It's nature." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
Erkal Aykac spent more than three decades showing Western tourists his beloved Turkey, meeting cruise ships in various ports, and shepherding groups through Hagia Sophia Church Museum and other ancient treasures in Istanbul. With four university degrees and speaking fluent English, he made enough for a comfortable life in Istanbul. He sent his daughter to boarding school, and handled the medical bills for his aging father. But the past three years have hit him hard, and with Turkey now facing an all out economic crisis, he is bracing for the worst. The Turkish lira has dropped 35 percent over the past year, and tariffs recently announced by the Trump administration don't bode well for the troubled currency. Though the lira has fluctuated in recent days, at one point it hit record lows against the United States dollar, setting off a panic over a potential domino effect that could reach other emerging markets. It was more bad news for a country that had only just begun to rebound from a horrific period of terrorism, including the June 2016 shooting and bombing attack at Ataturk International Airport that claimed 45 lives, and the March 2016 suicide attack on Istanbul's Istikal Street in the city's shopping district. The wave of attacks crippled the nation's tourism sector, and a bloody failed coup against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his government in July 2016, followed by a widespread crackdown, political instability and diplomatic rows with the United States, Germany and the Netherlands, all served to further alarm potential Western visitors. Tourism from the United States dipped more than 40 percent from 2015 to 2017, part of a plunge that saw visitor numbers to the country sag about 30 percent. In May, the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism announced that visitor numbers were rebounding in 2018 although the face of tourism to the Anatolian Peninsula looks decidedly different. Into the vacuum have come more and more holidaymakers from Russia, Asia and the Middle East, who have found Turkey with its battered economy and cultural bounty a newly affordable destination. Indeed, the exchange rate might lure some visitors. Even before the recent crisis, the average rate for a hotel room in Turkey in April 2017 stood at 67.4 euro, still a long ways off from its average of April 2015, which stood at 105 euro. Firuz B. Baglikaya, the president of the Association of Turkish Travel Agencies, said that tourism growth over the past year has broken all records, and he is optimistic about continued growth from all parts of the world, including Europe. "We are utterly pleased to see tangible improvement in all source markets," he said. "We are expecting a record number of visitors this year. I am quite certain that we will reach the target of 40 million with 32 billion revenue by the end of the year, unless developments beyond our control have a negative deteriorating impact." The influx has also given the luxury market a push; in coastal resort towns like Antalya, on the nation's Turquoise Coast, and Bodrum, which Homer called the Land of the Eternal Blue, the pace of high end development is impressive. In Bodrum alone, the past three years have seen the opening of a Lux, a Nikki Beach and the Bodrum Edition, a boutique from Marriott and the Studio 54 co founder Ian Schrager. A Banyan Tree, a Four Seasons and the first Hyatt Centric resort in Turkey are scheduled to join the pack in the coming years. Most of the coastal resorts offer packages geared toward Arab and Russian visitors, as well as programs for medical tourists. But Westerners with business ties to Turkey warn that the weak Turkish economy will take its toll. Marcus Moufarrige, the chief executive officer of Servcorp, a multinational office space provider with properties in Turkey, said that this week , as the Turkish lira crisis unfolded, that he put the brakes on a real estate deal because the landlord refused to accept Turkish lira for payment, insisting on only United States dollars. Turkey may have been able to rebound from terrorism, he said, but economic woes can pose a much greater risk for business. "If you look historically at emerging markets, the geopolitical situation hasn't alway been the biggest deterrent for investment , unless there are sanctions in place," said Mr. Moufarrige, who steered Servcorp's Asian operations through political crises in Malaysia and Thailand. "It's really only when the economy hits the fan that people get spooked." "The tourism industry here has completely changed," Mr. Aykac, the tour guide, said. "For the past two years, I haven't received a single call for business from my ordinary clients." To make ends meet, Mr. Aykac has begun working with Taiwanese groups, partnering with an English speaking Taiwanese guide who translates his notes into Chinese. The double translation creates a barrier between himself and his tourists, Mr. Aykac said. "It's almost like two blind guys conversing with each other," he said. While many Americans have hesitated to return, visitors from Iran and elsewhere have poured into the country. In 2017, 2.5 million Farsi speaking tourists arrived in Turkey, a 50 percent increase over the previous year. Turkey shares a 310 mile land border with Iran, and on June 18, train service from the northwestern Iranian city of Tabriz resumed to the Turkish border town of Van after being halted three years ago following a bomb attack. And the increasing numbers of visitors from Kuwait, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia has resulted in wider availability of halal food and Farsi and Arab language menus. "In Istanbul, a vast number of shops, restaurants and cafes have opened up that cater specifically to Middle Eastern tourists," said Paul Osterlund, a New Mexico native who has worked as a journalist in Istanbul for five years. And while the sights and inexpensive shopping in Turkey are part of the appeal for this new sector, it's the nation's relaxed attitudes toward alcohol and female dress that make it a particularly appealing getaway for Muslim visitors who want to let loose. Middle Eastern medical tourists particularly those in search of cut rate hair transplant surgeries are also realizing that Turkish doctors offer procedures at attractive prices. But whether or not the cafes and shops are full, Turkey feels irrevocably changed, said Mr. Osterlund. "The sporadic violence and horror of 2016 is gone, but the air remains thick with political tension," he said. For guides who cater specifically to English speaking tourists, times remain tough. Ansel Mullins co founded Culinary Backstreets, his now global gastronomic tour company, from Istanbul in 2009. The company (which employs Mr. Osterlund as a freelance writer) now runs English language food tours in 13 international cities, but Mr. Mullins said that interest in his Istanbul offering fell 80 percent from 2015 to 2016. Numbers are creeping back up in 2018, but have yet to fully rebound. Tour groups as a whole from Western nations are not returning to Turkey yet, he said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
If your bathroom looks more like a cluttered pharmacy than a peaceful retreat, a generously sized medicine cabinet could help clean things up. "It provides a lot of extra storage," said Winston Kong, a partner at Champalimaud Design in New York. And it also elevates and conceals potentially embarrassing or dangerous items, like medications and razors, "not only from guests, but also from kids." To choose a cabinet, consider how it will complement other fixtures in the bathroom. "One of the most beautiful parts of the bathroom is usually the vanity," he said, "so it has to integrate with that design." A traditional or rustic vanity could be paired with a wood framed medicine cabinet, for instance, while a modern, minimalist vanity might benefit from a recessed, mirrored cabinet that almost disappears. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
In July 2014, a shy 14 year old named Lynzi Doke edged herself into a mob of very fit runners and very big donkeys on the main street of Fairplay, Colo. She felt sick to her stomach. This is a big mistake, she realized, but it was too late: A shotgun blasted, the donkeys stampeded, and the World Championship Pack Burro Race was underway. Lynzi had to sprint just to avoid getting trampled. Jostling around her were more than 50 men and women, all of them running side by side with their own galloping animals. Lynzi tightened her fist around the lead rope of Chuggs, a beast of a burro she'd borrowed that outweighed her by a good 700 pounds, and tried to breathe in the thin mountain air. Looming ahead were 15 miles of dirt trail, climbing to a peak at more than 11,000 feet. Burro racing sounds like a stunt, but it's actually a grueling and fiercely competitive Rocky Mountain tradition. It dates back to Gold Rush days, when lucky prospectors were said to have thrown their gear on their donkeys' backs and run to the nearest town to register their claims. Miners began challenging each other to 20 plus mile races across the mountains to test their raw stamina and skill at handling a half ton animal that can kill with a kick. Over time, burro racing attracted world class athletes, like the Olympic caliber cyclist Barb Dolan and the five time snowshoe world champion Tom Sobal, who found it both humbled and exhilarated them like nothing else. The sport crossed my radar because I'd gotten myself into a bit of a jam. One of my neighbors in Lancaster, Pa., had asked if I could take in a poorly treated donkey he was trying to rescue from a neglectful owner. Sherman arrived at our home in terrible shape, with rotting teeth and hooves so dangerously overgrown, he could barely walk. But he needed even more than veterinary care, I was told; to truly revive Sherman, I'd have to find something to engage his mind and body. I liked the idea of making him my partner in a long distance race, but could he pull it off? Could I? Sherman had damaged feet and a battered spirit. I had zero animal training experience and no clue whether I could get him and myself in shape for something so demanding. As a team, we were pretty hopeless. That's how Lynzi became my coal mine canary. If a teenage girl who twice survived a Code Blue could handle this race, maybe Sherman and I had a chance. Lynzi was born with a severe infection that allowed fluid to gradually fill her lungs. She went into respiratory arrest at six weeks old, beginning a cycle of near death struggles that went on for years. Her heart became so weakened that just living in Colorado, where high altitude makes it harder to breathe, could eventually kill her. So the Dokes immediately sold everything and moved to the flatlands of Missouri, where they spent the next decade paying off their crippling hospital bills and nursing Lynzi back to health. "In middle school, Lynzi began running cross country to see if it would strengthen her lungs," Kelly said. "It made her so much stronger, and she actually got really good at it." By the time she was ready for high school, Lynzi had recovered enough for the family to move back home to Colorado. During a visit to the dentist, they discovered the hygienist was none other than Barb Dolan, the burro racing legend. They got to chatting, and soon after, Barb made an extraordinary offer: She was ready to retire from competition, so if Lynzi was up for the challenge, she could race with Barb's champion burro, Chuggs. Lynzi was thrilled until she found herself at the starting line a few months later. Luckily, the Pedretti brothers were there to help. Rick and Roger Pedretti are dairy farmers from Wisconsin who trailer their donkeys more than 1,000 miles every summer to compete as a tribute to their brother, Robert Pedretti. He won the Pack Burro World Championship in 1999, but struggled with depression and ended his own life in 2004. Every year since then, the Pedretti clan has made the pilgrimage to Fairplay. Ms. Doke runs with her burro during a race. "Just stick with us," the Pedrettis told Lynzi. The brothers stayed by her side for the first 10 miles, until they suspected they might be holding her back. "You got this," they urged. "Go for it!" With five miles to the finish, Lynzi and Chuggs left the Pedrettis and began moving through the pack. Soon, she was within eyeshot of John Vincent, the three time champion who was currently in first place. John wasn't too surprised that Lynzi was on his heels. For years, women have gone toe to toe with male burro racers and often won. Barb Dolan has captured nearly every title on the circuit, including a first place in Leadville at age 54 (finishing a half hour behind her in second was a man 10 years younger). She and Karen Thorpe owned the 2011 World Championship, with Barb winning the short course and Karen sprinting to win the 29.5 mile long course by one second. So why do women get stronger as distances get longer? After all, the first athlete to swim from Cuba to Florida without a shark cage wasn't Michael Phelps but 64 year old Diana Nyad. One of the world's best obstacle course racers is Amelia Boone, a 34 year old attorney who consistently defeats nearly every man in 24 hour contests. Pam Reed was 41 when she won the 135 mile Badwater ultra across Death Valley in 2002, then returned the next year to do it again. But the greatest hero of them all must be Emily Baer, who outran dozens of elite male ultramarathoners in 2007 to finish eighth overall at the Hardrock 100 despite stopping to breast feed her baby at the aid stations. There are lots of theories about why women excel at endurance sports. Is it better fat metabolism? A higher pain threshold to deal with childbirth? More self control because of lower testosterone? But maybe the mystery isn't really all that mysterious. We've been conditioned to believe sports are all about power, since most games we see on TV were created by men, for men, to show off two male attributes: bulk and speed. But compared to other species, we're actually pathetically small and slow (Care to wrestle a grizzly, or race a puma?). As human animals, we have only two real athletic skills: stamina and ingenuity. That's where we're at our best when we have to go long and think hard and it's also where men and women are most alike. "Out West, we've always known that women were cut from the same leather as men," said Curtis Imrie, the great burro sage who liked to point out that long before women were permitted to run marathons in Boston or the Olympics, they were running ultramarathons in the Rockies. "Burro racing has none of that nonsense you have back East about 'protecting' women." Curtis passed away recently, but he was there when Lynzi Doke battled her way to the finish of her first World Championship. She crossed the line in an astounding fourth overall, beating more than 50 other runners and putting a smile on Curtis's face. "That gal is the real deal. Latest in a long line of women in this sport who are incredibly fit, very competitive, and have the knack for training animals," Curtis said. "Why wouldn't they beat all the men?" | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Well |
Last week, news arrived that President Trump had lurched into what may be his most reckless obsession yet: His administration would probably seek an "emergency use authorization" for a Covid 19 vaccine long before some scientists believe it would be safe to do so. A spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services immediately addressed the obvious suspicion: "Talk of an 'October surprise'" an attempt to manufacture good news just before the November election "is a lurid Resistance fantasy." As he does often, however, the president proudly admitted to the exact thing his underling insisted was inconceivable. "The deep state, or whoever, over at the F.D.A.," he tweeted recently at Stephen Hahn, the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, "is making it very difficult for drug companies to get people in order to test the vaccines and therapeutics. Obviously, they are hoping to delay the answer until after Nov. 3. Must focus on speed and saving lives!" To that end, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has notified public health officials across the country to prepare to distribute a coronavirus vaccine to health care workers and other high risk groups as soon as late October. The president's desperate words betray a gamble: Yes, rushing out a vaccine in an emergency may save lives, but it can also jeopardize safety, further erode public confidence in vaccines and possibly kill. History offers Mr. Trump a cautionary tale. In February 1976, hundreds of soldiers at Fort Dix, N.J., contracted a new strain of the H1N1 virus that seemed to be a descendant of the one responsible for the 1918 flu pandemic, which killed at least 50 million people worldwide and possibly as many as 100 million. Questions surrounding the Covid 19 vaccine and its rollout. If Covid 19 isn't going away, how do we live with it? Katherine Eban writes that a clear eyed view is required to organize long term against an endemic virus. Why should we vaccinate kids against Covid 19? The president of the American Academy of Pediatrics explains how vaccinating kids will protect them (and everyone else). Jessica Grose spoke with experts to find out what an off ramp to masking in schools might look like. Who are the unvaccinated? Zeynep Tufekci writes that many preconceptions about unvaccinated people may be wrong, and that could be a good thing. Back in those days, the World Health Organization twice a year convened a panel of experts to determine which strains of influenza should be included in that year's flu shots, then provided the necessary "seed virus" to manufacturers. President Gerald Ford, however, decided to leapfrog the protocol in the face of the news out of Fort Dix. It was, after all, an election year, and Mr. Ford, who had risen to the presidency upon Richard Nixon's resignation 19 months earlier, was seeking his first full term. On March 22, Mr. Ford met with senior administration officials, who recommended a mass vaccination program. A memo marked "the president has seen" warned of "the ingredients for a pandemic" though also noted that "an argument can be made for taking no extraordinary action." But Mr. Ford was advised that Congress would likely act anyway which meant they, not he, would get the credit for a potentially heroic decision and that the government "can tolerate unnecessary health expenditures better than unnecessary death and illness." He was also reminded of a significant political consideration: "Congress, the media and the American people will expect some action." Two days later, he met with a so called blue ribbon panel of experts and then appeared before television cameras. Telling reporters that "we cannot afford to take a chance with the health of our nation," he announced that he was requesting an immediate 135 million congressional appropriation "for the production of sufficient vaccine to inoculate every man, woman and child in the United States." He went on to say that he was directing what was then known as the Department of Health, Education and Welfare "to develop plans that would make this vaccine available to all Americans" in the fall. An unnamed official at the W.H.O., which had not been consulted, expressed his organization's surprise in widely quoted comments, and noted that "no other countries have plans for mass inoculations" against what was popularly known simply as swine flu. U.S. officials immediately pressured the W.H.O. to endorse Mr. Ford's decision. And, as the historian George Dehner noted, "The pressure worked: by the next day W.H.O. officials were quoted in the news media as stating, 'W.H.O. endorses President Ford's plan for massive inoculation against swine flu virus.'" That fall, celebrities lined up to get jabbed with the vaccine before cameras to set an example including the president, sleeve rolled up, in the Oval Office. On "Saturday Night Live," Chevy Chase did his famous Ford impression sporting a syringe in his arm during a debate against Dan Aykroyd's Jimmy Carter. As it turned out, the H1N1 strain never made it out of Fort Dix, where only one Army recruit died. And, as it also turned out, this swine flu was not nearly as virulent as the 1918 influenza. But fast tracking the vaccine for broad distribution among the public carried risks. Of the 45 million vaccinated against the swine flu, an estimated 450 people developed the paralyzing syndrome Guillain Barre and of those, more than 30 died. The National Academy of Medicine subsequently concluded that people who received the 1976 swine flu vaccine had an increased risk for developing Guillain Barre. The emergence of Guillain Barre led the government to suspend and effectively end its mass vaccination effort in December. In all, it's a complicated tale. Were the motivations behind the crash vaccination program political, or a sincere but perhaps misguided sense of urgency about the public health, or a little of both? Philip M. Boffey, a science writer at The New York Times, summed it up this way in an article headlined "Soft Evidence and Hard Sell." Has the government acted wisely in launching the swine flu inoculation campaign? Reasonable people may reach conflicting answers. Critics consider the program a waste of money, and a potentially dangerous one at that, while proponents call it sound preventive medicine. It's clear that the scare tactics used to promote the campaign are unwarranted. Many participants in the drama have implied that another 1918 disaster is imminent. Health officials used that fear to help sell the program to their political superiors; President Ford used it to pry funding from Congress and to goad the American public to participate, and the media, ever on the lookout for a compelling news angle, repeatedly stressed the 1918 analogy. The result has been confusion and exaggerated fears that interfere with sound judgment. That said, the very reason Gerald Ford had his job in the first place was that, when Vice President Spiro Agnew resigned in scandal just as the first inklings of the possible impeachment of Richard Nixon were being raised, senators said they would confirm only a vice presidential appointee who would provide a steady, mature hand on the tiller should he rise to the Oval Office. And that was precisely Gerald Ford's reputation. If steady, mature Gerald Ford succumbed to haste when his presidency was on the line, imagine what Donald Trump will do. But maybe, just maybe, Mr. Trump can finally learn a lesson from history and move prudently, not impetuously, in rolling out new vaccines for Covid 19. And if that means they come out after the election, so be it. Jerry Ford's Hail Mary didn't work, after all: He lost to Jimmy Carter anyway. That's a history lesson even Donald Trump can understand. The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We'd like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here's our email: letters nytimes.com. Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter ( NYTopinion) and Instagram. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
A surfeit of dystopian apparel was evident on the men's wear runways this year. Junya Watanabe showed nylon anoraks, wool lumberjack jackets and firefighter coats adorned with the kind of bright reflective tape usually seen on school crossing guards. Prada trotted out padded nylon vests that look like they could repel bullets and oversize rain suits that looked like they could protect against nuclear fallout. And for his Calvin Klein Collection show in February, Raf Simons, the creative director, dressed the male models in safety cone orange jumpsuits, knee high waders and knit balaclavas, all of which gave new meaning to the term "fashion emergency." Style arbiters, including Vogue magazine, have taken to calling it "war core." "Fashion ideates what's going on around it," said Francesca Granata, an assistant professor of fashion studies at the Parsons School of Design in New York. And these days, she said, it is "making sense of societal anxieties or fears." Cultural manifestations of our collective anxiety are everywhere, said Roseanne Morrison, the fashion director at the Doneger Group, a retail and forecasting consultancy firm in New York. She points to shows including "Black Mirror" and "The Handmaid's Tale," the video game Fortnite and the constant drumbeat of news about climate change, political unrest and economic troubles. "People like to mentally prepare for the end of the world," Ms. Morrison said. "This blurring between reality and fantasy, we're seeing it in books, we're seeing it in movies, it's affecting the psyche." In other words, it's the end of the world as we know it dress accordingly. Younger designers have pushed the doomsday references further. Matthew Williams of Alyx, a brand based in Ferrara, Italy, created a tactical vest festooned with cinch straps, Velcro pockets and other details borrowed from military vests. And TakahiroMiyashita the Soloist, a men's wear brand from Japan, offers perforated face masks and emergency ponchos emblazoned with the words "The Day The World Went Away." "It is almost impossible not to make things that have some reaction to what is happening in the world," said Craig Green, a British designer, whose fall 2018 collection offered playful interpretations of masculine uniforms including coveralls with oversize utility pockets. But war core is not limited to the runway; it's appearing on store shelves and in the streets as well. On Lyst, a fashion search engine, searches for camouflage are up 38 percent, including camo cargo pants by Ralph Lauren ( 290) and a "reconstructed" version by Off White ( 1,190), according to Katy Lubin, a spokeswoman. Zumiez, a skate wear store outside of Seattle, sells items from Rothco, an army and military wholesaler, including a fluorescent orange rescue vest ( 44.95) and a black tactical vest (which is sold out). The items appeal to trend hungry young adults, not soldiers or construction workers, said Trevor Lambert Lee, a men's apparel buyer at Zumiez. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
Occasionally, and especially when one's own gym visits have receded into the distant past, one finds oneself face to navel with greatness. In this case, the man on the plinth in the rose gold metallic leather pants, topless save for a gold amulet on a chain around his neck this being, naturally, a presentation of what Calvin Klein was calling "formalwear" was Mitchell Slaggert of Fayetteville, Ga. Mr. Slaggert, 21, is the new face (and chiseled body) of Calvin Klein Collection and Calvin Klein Underwear. He is recently enough removed from the American South that he peppers his conversation with "sir." He was scouted, he said, some seven months ago, while walking to his car, and his dreams of working for the Department of Homeland Security were paused in favor of a spot on the Calvin Klein runway in Milan. In the months since, Mr. Slaggert has appeared in magazines (including the German edition of GQ Style and the Italian edition of Vogue), on more runways and in the ad campaign for DSquared2. In an email, Melisa Goldie, Calvin Klein's chief marketing officer, praised Mr. Slaggert's "raw masculinity" and "sense of athleticism." In the flesh, a gee whiz ingenuousness was just as much in evidence. How does he like modeling in his underwear? "It took some getting used to," he said. "But I asked my sister, and she said: 'You have to. It's iconic.'" In the coming weeks, Mr. Slaggert will appear in the Iron Strength campaign, tussling with another up and coming young model: Kendall Jenner. Clothes make the man, but shoes make the outfit. One newcomer to New York Fashion Week: Men's was Paul Andrew, the shoe designer who took the occasion to introduce his first men's collection. "Actually, this is not my first foray into men's," Mr. Andrew clarified. It is the first with his name attached. Mr. Andrew is an industry veteran, having designed shoes for Alexander McQueen in London in the '90s ("It was a little rough around the edges") and for Calvin Klein in New York. His first collection has already attracted interest from key stores worldwide, despite (or because of) its heady price point (from 595 to 1,295). There are the requisite sneakers in choose your beast skins (calf, buffalo and deer, some with lizard accents), evening shoes in velvet and floral jacquard. But Mr. Andrew's best styles, at least to this judge, were the unadorned lace up derbies sitting on chunky lug soles. They proved surprisingly light, thanks to a process that aerates the soles' rubber by injection. Like an Aero, wondered this diarist, meaning the English chocolate bar leavened by interior air bubbles? "It's totally like that," Mr. Andrew, an Englishman, said with a laugh. "I'm going to use that." His first women's collection arrived in 2013 and has been on an upward trajectory since: He won the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund award in 2014, and last year was nominated for the CFDA Swarovski Award for accessory design. The time seemed ripe for men's. "I didn't want to get too far down the line and stuck in this stigma of being a 'women's brand,'" he said. "If you look at some of the more established shoe brands that are doing women's, it's more difficult for them to segue into men's, because no self respecting straight guy is going to ..." He chose not to finish that impolitic thought and switched gears. "It's a selfish thing, also," he said. "I couldn't find shoes that I really liked, so why not make them?" It is now so common to see celebrities at fashion shows that there are few front row celebrities who can surprise. There's the rapper Fabolous at Duckie Brown, New York's avant garde darlings. (He could "definitely" see himself in the collection, he said backstage.) And there's Russell Tovey, the jug eared British actor appearing in "A View from the Bridge" on Broadway, taking in the endless parade of suits, many of them cuffed, at Joseph Abboud. ("Andy Cohen was just telling me he always has a cuff on his trousers," Mr. Tovey said. "I'm going to fully cuff up.") So by the time Todd Snyder had his week ending show on Thursday night, with a full bench of its front row dedicated to young actors and stars, jadedness had set in. There sat Darren Criss (of "Glee") and Tyson Beckford (of "Make Me a Supermodel"), as well as assorted cast members from "Boardwalk Empire" and "Shadowhunters." One who stood out was a rubber faced man in oversize black glasses who did not send shocks of recognition through the fashion crowd (nor, admittedly, through the Fashion Diarist). He was Tyler Oakley, a chatty YouTube personality who has 7.95 million subscribers (and 5.9 million Instagram followers, more than all his front row compatriots and the designer combined). "This is my first ever show," he said. "You don't see many YouTubers at fashion week." Fashion may be slow arriving at Mr. Oakley, but the rest of the world is not. He has appeared on Ellen DeGeneres's show and interviewed President Obama. "I was jealous," Michelle Obama said when she sat down with him for a subsequent video. "I felt like I needed my time with Tyler." Mr. Oakley said his fans respond to fashion content, and would be interested in the show. "They love it," he said. "It's a cool thing because it feels like I get to bring them along with me. It makes it more accessible to them, because sometimes it feels so distant between a show and a 13 year old in the middle of America." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
Chris Hemsworth firing a carbine while riding tall and proud in the saddle that image more or less captures what you need to know about "12 Strong," a movie with a veneer of seriousness and the slam bam boom soul of a Jerry Bruckheimer production. It opens under a pall on the morning of Sept. 11. Mitch Nelson (Mr. Hemsworth), a Special Forces officer, has just moved into a new home with his family and is watching the twin towers burn on TV. Soon, he and his team are choking on dust in Afghanistan, where references to the Alamo mix with the spirit of John Wayne jingoism. There's a story here, but first and foremost there are men. Tough, hard bodied, soulful men, the kind who, in volcanic frustration, will slam hands as big as Easter hams against walls and who can as Mitch does while idling in a military office flip over a desk as lightly as if he were chucking a toy truck. Other hard bodied men see his hurt, but as strong, discreet brothers they, too, keep their feelings in check. "Nice kill," a comrade archly says, surveying the ruins of Mitch's desk. "12 Strong" has just begun, but its world of masculine pain, private anguish and commitment to violence is already firmly in place. The movie shifts into a steady action groove once the not especially dirty dozen lands in Afghanistan. There, the Americans warily join forces with General Dostum (a charismatic Navid Negahban), a warlord who they hope will join them in their fight against the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Dostum views Mitch with skepticism and favors his subordinate, Hal Spencer (Michael Shannon). Hal, Dostum notes approvingly, has "killer eyes," which Mr. Shannon certainly doesn't disprove. Once Team USA and Team Afghan stop glowering and growling at each other, a posse hits the trail on horseback and Dostum and Mitch settle into a mentor student bond that evokes the Karate Kid and the road to wisdom. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
"The last two years have brought unimaginable pain and grief to my family and me," Aaron Rich said in a statement. "I lost my only brother to a murder that to this date has not been solved, only to then have politically motivated conspiracy theorists falsely accuse me of grotesque criminal acts." "I accept The Washington Times's retraction and apology," he continued, "and I am grateful that The Washington Times has acknowledged the indisputable truth that these allegations are, and always have been, false." In the column, James A. Lyons, a retired United States Navy admiral, asserted that "it is well known in the intelligence circles" that the Rich brothers were responsible for sharing a cache of committee emails with WikiLeaks. He also questioned why Aaron Rich had not been interviewed after his brother's death. In the retraction, The Times disavowed both allegations, writing that it had no basis to believe the statement about the intelligence community and acknowledging that Aaron Rich had been interviewed by law enforcement officials after his brother's death. Seth Rich was 27 when he was shot in the back near his Washington home in 2016. While the police have theorized that he may have been killed in a botched robbery attempt, right wing commentators have repeatedly connected the death to the leaked Democratic National Committee emails, spawning an enduring conspiracy theory. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
77TH ANNUAL GOLDEN GLOBES 8 p.m. on NBC. Netflix will likely be the big winner at the 2020 Golden Globe Awards. The streaming giant has 34 nods in total: "Marriage Story," starring Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver, received six alone, the most of any movie. Among the other contenders are "1917," "The Irishman" and "The Joker," for best drama, and "Dolemite Is My Name," "Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood" and "Rocketman" for best musical or comedy. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the group that produces the Globes, faced a backlash for excluding women in several major categories, including best director and motion picture. The best drama series category includes nominations for "The Morning Show," "Big Little Lies" and "Killing Eve," while "Fleabag," "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel" and "Barry" will compete for best comedy series. Ricky Gervais returns to host for the fifth time, which he says will be his last. Expect plenty of jabs. GOD FRIENDED ME 8 p.m. on CBS. This feel good drama series follows Miles (Brandon Micheal Hall), a reluctant hero who meets and helps New Yorkers in need through a mysterious Facebook account called God. In this midseason premiere, Miles meets a Holocaust survivor who wants to know whether his sister is still alive. And, in a twist, Joy (Jessica Lu) has a hunch that all of the people Miles has been helping are clients of the same insurance company. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
If it had stuck with its original mission digging up dirt on the rich and famous, without a care for the rules of traditional journalism The Enquirer would have had the tabloid story of a lifetime. The most powerful print publication in America might just be The National Enquirer. It functioned as a dirty tricks shop for Donald J. Trump in 2016, which would have been the stuff of farce the ultimate tabloid backs the ultimate tabloid candidate if it hadn't accomplished its goal. The Enquirer's power was fueled by its covers. For the better part of the campaign season, Enquirer front pages blared sensational headlines about Mr. Trump's rivals from eye level racks at supermarket checkout lanes across America. This stroke of genius distribution apparatus was dreamed up by the man who made The Enquirer the nation's biggest gossip rag: its previous owner, Generoso Pope Jr. The Enquirer's racks, under the current chief, David J. Pecker, were given over to the Trump campaign. This was a political gift even more valuable than the 150,000 that The Enquirer paid in a "catch and kill" deal with the former Playboy model Karen McDougal for her story of an affair with Mr. Trump. Wondering what The Enquirer's covers were worth to the Trump campaign, I called Regis Maher, a co founder of Do It Outdoors, the national mobile and digital billboard company. He said a campaign with that level of national prominence would cost 2.5 million to 3 million a month. "It's such a powerful placement," Mr. Maher said. "Everybody's gotta go to the grocery store." With the news last week that The Enquirer had admitted to federal prosecutors that it made the catch and kill payment to influence the election, it's worth stepping back and appreciating the unlikely role played by the supermarket tabloid and its parent company, American Media Inc., in electing the 45th president of the United States. Now that federal prosecutors have cleared away some of the fog that shrouded the 2016 campaign, it's easy to see that The Enquirer was more than just a publication that puffed up Mr. Trump while going after his rivals. It was the real world embodiment of the fantasy online world of trolls, Russian and domestic, who polluted the political discourse. From its perches at Publix and Safeway, it was often doing the same job as Alex Jones, of the conspiracy site Infowars, and the more strident Trump campaign surrogates on Twitter and Facebook. The Enquirer spread false stories about Hillary Clinton illnesses concealed, child prostitution, bribery, treason. Each cover trumpeting these tales was arguably more powerful than a tweet from an account with millions of followers. It's a shame it went this route, because The Enquirer was built to cover Mr. Trump's wild ride. If it had only stuck with its original mission digging up dirt on the rich and famous, without a care for the rules of traditional journalism it would have had the tabloid story of a lifetime. During the 2016 campaign season, The Enquirer puffed up Mr. Trump while going after his rivals, and its reach went beyond that. Instead, it refused to unlock its vault of Trump tips and stories as it promoted him as America's savior. Actually, make that the world's. As one Enquirer report in early 2016 had it from "a source close to Donald'' even President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia wanted him to win the White House. "It was like a double whammy," Jennifer Palmieri, Mrs. Clinton's campaign communications director, told me. "They could have been covering all of Trump's misdeeds. But, instead, not only were they not reporting on that, they were a pipeline from dark net conspiracy theories to grocery store lines." With its online cohorts, American Media Inc. helped build a distortion machine that so polluted election news cycles that, for its more receptive audiences, Mrs. Clinton not only deserved to lose the White House, she deserved time in the big house. Before making her its main target, the machine chewed up Senator Ted Cruz. It ran unsubstantiated allegations of extramarital affairs against him at a time when he was proving himself Mr. Trump's most stubborn Republican challenger. Ford and Rivian no longer plan to work jointly on electric vehicles. Elizabeth Holmes took the stand in her trial. Follow along with our reporters. Ken Griffin, head of Citadel, bid highest for a copy of the Constitution. The only person quoted by name in the affairs piece was Roger J. Stone Jr., a longtime adviser to Mr. Trump, who was quoted as saying, "Where there's smoke, there's fire." (Mr. Stone, who communicated with top campaign officials through the election, is under investigation by the special counsel Robert S. Mueller III.) One passage in the Cruz story caught my eye. Citing a report in Radar Online a gossip outlet also owned by A.M.I. The Enquirer claimed that "an individual purporting to be a representative of the hacker group Anonymous posted a disturbing Twitter video that threatens to expose 'very dirty secrets,' including information about Ted 'visiting prostitutes.'" Here's an odd thing. Radar attributed the provenance of this supposed Anonymous video to an obscure Twitter handle with only a few thousand followers that has since gone dormant. A review of the account's activity found tweets and retweets of anti Muslim and anti immigrant messages relating to Europe, as well as a critique of the United States policy on Libya linked to a video from RT, the Russian state financed cable network. It makes you wonder if the inquiring mind of Mr. Mueller would like to know more about The Enquirer than he has let on. (Federal prosecutors in New York have led the investigation of A.M.I.) Once Mr. Cruz was out of the way, two people familiar with A.M.I.'s operation told me, the company pulled up files on the Clintons that it had collected over decades some two dozen cardboard boxes filled with promising material. A.M.I. began a painstaking effort to sort through the old clips and tips concerning "pay for play" deals, rumors of affairs and Vince Foster conspiracy theories. But as the campaign wore on, The Enquirer's covers favored stories similar to those coursing through Infowars, Russian trolldom and, increasingly, your uncle's Facebook feed. As the younger Mr. Pope's history of the family business, "The Deeds of My Fathers," shows, The Enquirer was known to pull off an occasional "catch and kill" deal in the old days, including one involving Senator Edward M. Kennedy in a bid for access to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. But the tabloid usually raised hackles not because the stories it published were false, but because of its methods. This was a publication so hungry for celebrity dope that it sneaked a reporter disguised as a priest into Bing Crosby's funeral. "I am sure my father's intention with his media empire was not to be used after his passing as an outlet for fake news," the younger Mr. Pope said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
"Washington not everybody knows this Washington put his picture on every dollar," said Stephen Colbert (doing his Trump impression). "Can you imagine the royalties?" 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 on Monday held an extended cabinet meeting at the White House, where he explained why he changed his mind about holding the Group of 7 conference at his luxury golf club in Miami. Trump defended his initial choice to host world leaders at Trump National Doral, saying other presidents, including George Washington, had conducted personal business while in office. " Imitating Trump Washington not everybody knows this Washington put his picture on every dollar. Can you imagine the royalties? He got a taste of that. Daddy got his beak wet on every dollar. Not much, but it adds up.'" STEPHEN COLBERT "What business was Washington supposedly running on the side, anyway? As Trump Many people don't know this, but George Washington had a business where he gave private boat tours of the Delaware River." SETH MEYERS " As Trump Hey, if I'm going to get impeached anyway, I say it's bucket list time. G 7 is at Doral, we're serving nothing but Trump steaks, it's B.Y.O. porn star, and folks, don't forget your pistols, 'cause we're heading out to Fifth Avenue." STEPHEN COLBERT "Apparently, he just found out G 7 doesn't mean you get to play seven rounds of golf." SETH MEYERS Mr. Trump also bragged about Doral several times throughout the meeting, as well as on Twitter over the weekend. "Even Trump's announcement about not using his resort is a commercial for his resort. As Trump Look, clearly clearly I would never use the office of the president to promote one of my own properties, even the one of a kind, world famous Trump Doral. You know our motto: It's not just unbelievable, it's unconstitutional." STEPHEN COLBERT " As Trump I'm bigger than Jesus, I'll tell you this. I have way more hotels. Seriously, that guy couldn't even get into an inn, O.K?" STEPHEN COLBERT "It just came out that Mitt Romney has been using a secret Twitter account where he supported himself and criticized President Trump, and goes by the name this is real Pierre Delecto. What? Wow. Pierre Delecto. It sounds like an evil chef at Au Bon Pain." JIMMY FALLON "Romney's been running the account since 2011. Yep, Pierre Delecto is 8 years old and loves Twitter. He's just like the president." JIMMY FALLON "Mitt Romney doesn't drink, he doesn't curse, he's been married to the same woman for 50 years. You just know that Pierre Delecto is Romney's bad boy alter ego who only comes out after he's had half a can of Diet Coke." JAMES CORDEN "He recited some of the accounts he follows, including late night comedians, 'What's his name, the big redhead from Boston?' Big redhead from Boston? He has a name, sir. it's Ginger O'Pale body." STEPHEN COLBERT "Mitt is like, 'Conan? What a weird first name.' O.K., Mitt." CONAN O'BRIEN "Here are some of the tweets over the last couple of months from Pierre Delecto. There's this one: 'Does anyone else find ketchup to be too spicy? TacoTuesday, Virginmargs.' There's this one: 'The automated voice that says 'wait' at street crossings is too sexy!' Check this one out: 'Apples are too crunchy and bananas are too mushy, but you can't go wrong with a pear!' 'Just took the "Which Harry Potter Character Are You?" personality quiz, and turns out I'm the wand!' There's this one: 'These sexy Halloween costumes keep getting worse. A sheet with two holes in it? Pure pornography.' And finally: 'I had another sexy dream about that big redhead late night from Boston. What's his name again? God, he's so unmemorable.'" CONAN O'BRIEN "But I have a bone to pick with Pierre because it turns out, Conan's not the only late night host he follows he also likes Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon. No, no you know what? I get it. And I'm proud to launch our new ad campaign: 'Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon: The choice of Mitt Romney. Watch "The Late Show" only, CBS!'" STEPHEN COLBERT Desus and Mero are not thrilled about a set of stairs in the Bronx becoming a tourist trap after they were featured in "Joker." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
The Santa Clarita Valley Signal is typical of many small town newspapers across the United States, filled with articles about water use, traffic accidents and missing dogs. The paper has a circulation of about 8,000, a newsroom with about 24 reporters and editors and the slightly misleading slogan of "Your community, delivered every day" the paper is printed and delivered Tuesday through Saturday. For decades, it has been a reliable source of information about the Santa Clarita Valley, a region of more than 300,000 people that includes the city of Santa Clarita and communities such as Valencia, Newhall and Saugus, all part of Los Angeles County. "It was the one place where people had a kind of town square," said Anthony Breznican, 41, an entertainment journalist who lives in the Valley. "The great thing about it was that it was very local." But in June, the Paladin Multimedia Group sold the paper to a former publisher of The Signal, Richard Budman, and his wife, Chris. The ownership change, in the midst of a hotly contested race in the 25th Congressional District (a seat held by Republicans since the 1992 election), has produced consternation among some in the community. Adding to that feeling was a tweet by Ms. Budman in early July proclaiming that "we have to fight" to keep the district in Republican control. From 2004 to 2007, the Budmans owned a minority stake in The Signal, and Mr. Budman was its publisher. He did not hide his political views he donated 2,300 in 2007 to Mitt Romney's presidential campaign but maintained an editorial board for the newspaper and, according to former reporters, remained largely hands off. Recent comments he made to the San Fernando Valley Business Journal, however, hinted that could change. "I am involved in every aspect circulation, sales and editorial," Mr. Budman told the publication. "The paper is mine now, so the editorial voice will be mine." Accusations of bias in the media are hardly new. President Trump spent considerable time in the last week denouncing the "fake news" media at two rallies. But in this hyperpartisan time, even local news is falling under a microscope. In New York, deep layoffs at The Daily News stoked fears that important local stories, particularly in the boroughs outside Manhattan, would go unreported. And in smaller, rural communities, the decimation of the newspaper industry is being keenly felt. Since 2004, more than 1,800 newspapers have died or merged with other companies, according to research by the University of North Carolina's Center for Innovation and Sustainability in Local Media. This has left roughly 200 "news deserts" without any local newspaper coverage, and even more areas where a single source dominates, said the study's leader, Penelope Muse Abernathy, the university's Knight professor of journalism and digital media economics. Those numbers are growing. "There are more counties than you can count that are right on the line right now," Ms. Abernathy said. As a result, a lot of people are on edge about the state of local media outlets, which, in addition to printing high school sports scores and obituaries, are often doing the only meaningful watchdog reporting at a community level. "People are caring that something has changed very dramatically in the last decade, and it's threatening democracy at our grass roots," Ms. Abernathy said. "And if it's threatened at the grass roots level, that means it's threatened at the national level." Ms. Budman, 61, is listed as the vice president of operations at The Signal. "If somebody buys into those narratives that were fundamentally debunked, you have to question, what is their judgment?" Mr. Smith said. "And how are they going to accurately judge what's factual if this is what they buy into?" 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 an interview, Mr. Budman, despite his earlier comments to the business journal, denied that the paper was being influenced by his views, which he described as centrist on several issues. He said that the newspaper would continue to publish columns by people supporting Democrats and that he had yet to turn away anyone seeking to write an opinion piece. While he will have final say over editorial opinions and his wife will not news stories will cover the community fairly, he said. "This is all a bunch of hooey over nothing," Mr. Budman, 62, said. "I've been in the newspaper business for 35 years. My views haven't changed. Nothing has changed." As to Ms. Budman's tweets, Mr. Budman said, "Just because someone may retweet something does not mean they believe or support it any more than I believe or support all the opinions in the opinion columns I print." Beyond their general unease over the political bent of the new owners, many of those criticizing the Budmans can point to few specific changes in the paper's coverage. Tim Whyte, The Signal's editor in chief since June after a stint from 1994 to 2004, said he had evaluated the feedback but did not think the outcry was warranted. He said he believed that the community angst reflected many people's distrust of the media today. "This is sort of where it's landed," Mr. Whyte said. "It's not just CNN and The New York Times that are targets anymore. It's right down to your local community newspaper." Mr. Daniels and others did note that a demonstration on June 30, a Saturday when hundreds of people marched on City Hall to protest immigration detention centers, was not covered in The Signal's next print edition on Tuesday. "This is the main news source for the third largest city in L.A. County," said Philip Germain, chairman of a local progressive political action group. "And what we've seen since the new ownership has taken place is a noticeable shift to the right. What also concerns me is the lack of coverage." Mr. Budman said he could understand why readers were bothered by the lack of coverage of the rally. "It should have been in Tuesday's paper," he said. "That's not my decision. I spoke to the editor about that on Tuesday." Mr. Whyte said that there had been online coverage but not putting it in the print newspaper was a mistake. "We screwed up," he said. "That's it. It should have run on Tuesday, and it didn't. It was simple as that." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
Fifty two years ago, when the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. famously asserted the dignity of all work, he seemed to foresee this moment when it would become so clear that the labor of everyone farmworkers, grocers, delivery drivers, caregivers, nursing assistants was essential to all of our health and well being. "One day," Dr. King told sanitation workers on strike in Memphis in 1968, "our society will come to respect the sanitation worker if it is to survive, for the person who picks up our garbage, in the final analysis, is as significant as the physician, for if he doesn't do his job, diseases are rampant. All labor has dignity." Dr. King wasn't just making a moral observation. He was calling for "genuine equality" through an increase in wages, health care, job safety and economic power. "What does it profit a man to be able to eat at an integrated lunch counter," Dr. King asked, "if he doesn't earn enough money to buy a hamburger?" Today, we are forced to confront the dissonance between our nation's labeling of workers as "essential" and "heroes" and their limited wages, benefits and ability to organize. Forty seven percent of nursing, psychiatric and home health aides aren't offered even a single day of paid sick leave. A million front line health care workers lack their own health coverage. The median pay for the nursing assistants and orderlies now risking their lives in hospitals full of Covid 19 patients is 14.25 an hour. Only 13 percent of female care workers in homes have any type of retirement plan. Farmworkers doing backbreaking work to feed us clock in at 12 to 14 an hour, and in recent years less than half had health insurance. The pandemic makes it especially hard to grasp why we have for so long undervalued and under rewarded the contributions of those who take care of our older relatives and children. These are the workers that Dorothy Bolden, the pioneering African American advocate for domestic workers in the 1960s, described as "a counselor, a doctor and a nurse." They do "the work that makes all other work possible," in the words of the activist Ai jen Poo. Yet a quarter of them earn less than the minimum wage. Home health aides caring for people with disabilities, dementia and chronic illnesses make 11.63 an hour. The economic headlines in this crisis will be dominated by eye popping falls in traditional metrics like G.D.P. and employment rates, but there is a more profound narrative to be written: Will our overdue recognition of the contributions of so many workers lead to only temporary applause and pats on the back, or will it move us toward a true social compact ensuring economic dignity for all? Here we fall short miserably. Fewer than one in 10 of those who care for other people's children have any paid time off for the birth or adoption of their own. Nearly one in eight new moms in the United States cannot afford to take off more than a week of work after childbirth. One week! The pain seen in this crisis when adult children can't be with their parents in their final days is experienced in ordinary times by great numbers of workers who do not have paid leave. While four in five top earners have paid bereavement leave, only one in five of the lowest wage workers do. How can we say that workers' rank in a company should determine whether they have time to grieve the loss of a spouse or a child? There has also never been a more fitting time to legislate the principle that if there is dignity in all work, there must be a dignified wage for all workers. Conservatives like Senator Ben Sasse, Republican of Nebraska, echo progressive calls for the dignity of work and espouse the "need to be needed." Yet he and others routinely oppose virtually every policy, like a strong minimum wage and universal health security, that would enable tens of millions of working parents who are quite needed by their children to actually meet those needs. They treat the notion of a living wage as radical even though it was a Republican, Theodore Roosevelt, who called for a "living wage" that was high enough "to provide for education and recreation, to care for immature members of the family, to maintain the family during periods of sickness, and to permit of reasonable saving for old age." Conservatives, and some traditional economic analyses, claim that a living wage would lead to job loss, but that has been repeatedly contradicted by empirical evidence including a recent analysis of 138 state minimum wage increases. But even this debate misses a larger reality. We have many policies that can be used in tandem to ensure an effective living wage while alleviating any fears of job loss. The 20 an hour or more that is most likely needed for working parents to raise their children with true economic dignity can be reached by combining a 15 minimum wage with policies that do not raise employer costs at all like major expansions of the earned income tax credit and child care subsidies. We could further protect employment levels by pairing a major minimum wage increase with expansions of green jobs, health service jobs and caregiving. While some technology leaders and economists fret about robots replacing workers, they miss the reality that we actually face a huge dearth of jobs that will always require people to do them. We have a great opportunity to provide dignified work with higher pay, status and opportunities for career advancement through millions of jobs that directly help other people thrive. Call them "double dignity jobs." Such jobs include teachers and caregivers, of course, but also more direct support professionals to help empower young adults with autism, advisers to help disadvantaged students navigate the college admissions process and finish college, and school psychologists and after school program employees in low income schools. We could use an army of job navigators to assist those who have disabilities or are facing long term unemployment or are returning from prison with navigating a path to work and contribution. Investing in expanding and upgrading these jobs would lead more Americans to pursue their potential, with a high rate of return to the economy and society at large. A commitment to economic dignity must also go hand in hand with protecting workers' right to organize and bond together to prevent domination and humiliation on the job. It is an outrage that grocery, delivery and warehouse workers who lack unions fear retaliation for demanding hazard pay, personal protective equipment, stronger safety measures and paid sick leave during this crisis. The trend in recent decades toward subcontracting has been a substantial cause of economic inequality and second class citizenship in the work force at odds with notions of equal dignity. Many corporations now contract out jobs like cleaning, food service and data entry. This lets companies save on benefits for workers whom they artificially define as not essential to the "core competency" of the organization. Labor economists estimate that this type of sorting accounts for a quarter to a third of the increase of wage inequality since 1980. Janitors are now 12 times more likely to be subcontracted out than they were in 1950. Subcontracted janitors are paid less, and a California study found they are 44 percent less likely to have health insurance through their employer. Subcontracted security guards earn up to 24 percent less than their in house peers, according to a 2010 study. At major tech companies, subcontracted workers meet at the local pub when they find they are excluded from the extravagant celebration at the completion of a major project, have different rules for when they can use their cellphones, and are even denied the chance to bring their kids to Take Your Child to Work Day. These slights are more than hits to people's dignity; they also limit mobility and networking opportunities. This is one reason we no longer see the kind of upward mobility that led Gail Evans from a job as a janitor to an executive at Kodak. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
GENERAL MOTORS is said to have plans to attract more buyers to Chevrolet showrooms by introducing a diesel powered version of the Cruze, the compact sedan that was the country's best selling car in June. According to an Associated Press report last week, based on unidentified sources, United States sales of a diesel Cruze, a model already offered in other countries, are two years away. Such a fuel sipping model could arrive here with an E.P.A. compliant version of the 2 liter 4 cylinder turbodiesel available in Australia as the Holden Cruze and in other Cruze variants around the globe. The engine, developed by VM Motori of Cento, Italy a company half owned by G.M. generates 160 horsepower. The A.P. report cited a highway fuel economy estimate of 50 m.p.g. for an American market Cruze diesel. G.M responded to the report in a statement: "The Cruze is an important vehicle for Chevrolet and G.M., and we are going to look at a variety of ways to make sure that Cruze stays competitive, fresh and current in the marketplace going forward. However, we have no news to share at this time." A Chevrolet spokesman, Tom Wilkinson, said in a telephone interview that while he could not comment on the likelihood of a diesel Cruze, one advantage of G.M.'s global presence was the number of choices available to the company. This, he added, meant that the product mix could be rapidly altered in response to factors like the price of fuel and the regulatory climate. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Automobiles |
The city of Matamoros, Mexico, sits directly across the border from Brownsville, Tex. Over 2,500 people have gathered there since the Trump administration rolled out the "Remain in Mexico" policy, in a squalid encampment along the U.S. Mexico border, while they wait for their asylum hearings. They live in cramped, unsanitary quarters some in tents, others in makeshift shelters without electricity or running water. They are increasingly susceptible to respiratory illness and malnutrition. On April 1, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Executive Office for Immigration Review announced that they would be postponing all hearings because of the coronavirus outbreak. They live in constant threat of the virus, all for exercising their human right to claim asylum. But the agency's best is limited to distributing vitamins, masks and moving tents apart. Under normal circumstances, if you can call any of this normal, doctors and nurses can't do much aside from tending to a wound that requires stitches, and diagnosing strep throat or the flu. They aren't able to get tests to diagnose Covid 19. The executive director of G.R.M., who is a nurse, reports that within the camp there were five patients with Covid 19 symptoms. The agency reported these to local authorities but were refused testing. It asked that these migrants be taken away from the camp to nearby hotels, but Mexican immigration authorities have not authorized the move. Matamoros is the second largest city in the state of Tamaulipas, with a population of over 520,000. While there are no confirmed cases of Covid 19 in the camps, there are some eight confirmed cases in the city. People with mild or moderate cases could be quarantined in their tents and more severe cases sent to local hospitals. But, according to G.R.M., the city's five public hospitals have 10 ventilators and 40 intensive care unit beds between them. An outbreak would be catastrophic. Mexico has been slow to react to the coronavirus threat. In mid March, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador told reporters, "I have faith that we're going to move our dear Mexico forward, that these misfortunes, pandemics will not harm us." He has defiantly kissed and hugged supporters at recent events. Mexico has reported at least 4,219 cases of Covid 19 and 273 deaths. Medical workers have protested against the lack of protective gear. Western news organizations are abuzz with worry over migrants on our southern border. They fret over what will happen if an outbreak were to erupt in the camp. But the plight of the migrants is nothing but a morbid concern. We're treated to images, taken from helicopters, of bodies lying on top of each other, swollen by the sun, and drowned children and their parents, embracing. It's the classic voyeuristic Jonestown footage. This is a mass killing of vulnerable people of color, preyed on because they dreamed of a better life. Despite the worry now about the asylum seekers in Matamoros, no one is rushing to help them. People are just rushing to read about this impending mass grave. As the mounting toll of the coronavirus comes into view, it's clear that migrants around the world are among the most vulnerable. They often lack health insurance, struggle to make ends meet and are often in poor health. They don't have the luxury or the freedom to socially distance themselves from others. The undocumented men and women in our communities are on the front lines often with no protective equipment or safety net risking their lives to do the jobs most Americans won't. They are disinfecting hospitals and doctors' offices, delivering your food and taking care of your elderly relatives. President Trump believes the medical community's insistence on quarantine is a conspiracy to destroy his presidency. My parents are among the aging, immunocompromised and undocumented in New York City. If they get sick, they will die. The Trump administration will not help us. We migrants, on the border, or here in New York, are left to fend for ourselves. Do you know about crows? As an undocumented migrant, I've always felt an affinity for them. Research has shown that they are as smart as a 7 year old child. And yet, they are considered pests, undesirable birds, by most. People shoot them, or lay down barbed wire so they will not roost. If you hurt a crow, and it gets a good look at your face, generations of that crow flock could swoop and swerve and attack you. Crows never forget if you hurt them or one of their own. As one of the fulfilled prophecies of the American dream, I've earned the right to foretell one. If the American and Mexican governments let us die en masse, we will haunt your children, and your children's children, and their children too. They will never sleep in peace, and they will come to know our names. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
It's been a season of late career debuts at American Ballet Theater. Stella Abrera danced, heart rendingly, her first Juliet in New York. Sarah Lane took on Nikiya in "La Bayadere." Now, there will be a pair of debuts in the role of Kitri, the fan flapping, fiery heroine of "Don Quixote." At the Metropolitan Opera House on Friday, Hee Seo performs opposite James Whiteside as Basilio; and on Saturday afternoon, Ms. Lane takes the stage with Herman Cornejo. "I've been here two years longer than Hee, and now we're finally doing our first 'Don Q,'" said Ms. Lane, 33. She joined Ballet Theater in 2004 and was promoted to principal dancer last summer. Ms. Seo, 30, has been a principal since 2012. "We had a lot of guest artists before, and I think that slowed down the process," Ms. Lane said. "It's so nice that finally we can step out of our boxes." The full length "Don Quixote," a comic, technically challenging three act ballet, is a sparkling way for both of them to do just that. Their Kitris will likely have a different flavor and force not only from each other's, but also from memorable interpreters of the past, including Cynthia Harvey, Nina Ananiashvili and Paloma Herrera. Ms. Seo and Ms. Lane are on the understated side: Ms. Seo, willowy and refined, is the epitome of elegance, while Ms. Lane, smaller, even dainty, possesses a vivid expressiveness. As for Kitri, they know what's expected, and they're taking her on full throttle air bites and all. What follows are excerpts from a recent conversation. What is your approach to Kitri? SARAH LANE As I get older, I want to be more womanly in my dancing. But I've had a difficult time connecting with the idea of being a big, womanly Kitri because it's actually not who I am. For me, she needs to be more playful with lots of emotion. I'm definitely very emotional. I'll try to just use it onstage instead of at home. HEE SEO I had an image of Kitri that is very powerful and very strong with a bad temper all you can imagine with this awesome dress. She gestures to the tiers of ruffles in her lap. But as I learn the ballet, I realize that she has to be bad, because she wants to get a hold of Basilio. His eyes are all over the girls. Like "Swan Lake," I always thought the Black Swan was an evil creature, but she's not: She's doing her job and attracting this guy so he likes her. Kitri does the same thing in a more comical way. How are you approaching the humor? SEO I'm dancing with James Whiteside, and we've always joked that if we ever danced "Don Q" together, we were going to do a lot air bites. She takes a bite at the air. And really cheesy face expressions. SEO We've watched videos of it on YouTube, and some dancers do really weird stuff. But I think what is so great about this ballet is that you can be so in the moment. It's an extremely hard ballet. Irina Kolpakova, the ballet mistress usually compares it to "Sleeping Beauty" Act I. It's as hard as that, but not as serious. LANE I tend to get very nervous and to not really trust myself, and I always hate it when you tense up onstage and you're not really free and in the moment. For this ballet, it just can't be that. How did waiting so long to become promoted affect your dancing? LANE I didn't know if I would ever get these opportunities, and it came to me at a point where I was really ready to give up and move on with my life. And then it was just handed to me, so now it's about knowing how to own it. I didn't know it was going to be as hard for me mentally as it has been. I was really excited to do "Giselle" and then it started going downhill from there laughs . Just feeling insecure or not sufficient. I'm learning how to deal with it. What is it like to be in the company now without international dancers passing through? LANE Everyone is more committed, whereas before there wasn't much hope or motivation. Now people have something to work for. You are dancing with Herman Cornejo. How is that going? LANE We had several years of not really working together so much, so then to be reunited and dancing together in these ballets that I've always wanted to do it's special. He won't let me get in my head; he won't let me be stupid. Ms. Seo laughs. It's true, it's true. Poor guy. He has a really hard job on his hands. Do you have confidence issues? SEO We all have issues of self doubt. It's important for me not to concentrate on a single step, but to see a whole variation or the whole ballet. If you think about the bigger picture rather than one small thing. SEO It was training myself: If things don't work, I need to know my body well enough to fix the problem instead of going crazy. The different acts in "Don Q" are like different worlds. Where do you feel most at home? SEO Nowhere. She cracks herself up. What is the pressure like debuting a role at the Met? LANE I've watched this ballet for 15, 16 years. It's a very out of body experience. I want to do it right and I want to do it well and also enjoy it, which are two completely different things. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
What His Plays Tell Us About Our Past and Future America is massive. Shakespeare is massive. When two such cultural hyper objects meet, they're bound to create a black hole strong enough to suck in and warp just about anything around them. James Shapiro analyzes the effects of their collision in his terrific new book, "Shakespeare in a Divided America: What His Plays Tell Us About Our Past and Future." If Jill Lepore and the late Tony Judt had collaborated, this taut, swift and insightful tract might have been the offspring. Yet Shapiro's subtitle is misleading: His subject is us, the U.S., not Shakespeare plays. If you're worried about the current state of the Republic, this is a book that will stoke your fears while educating you on why you might justifiably be having them. Shapiro is already a master of creating Shakespeare treats for the literate common reader. His "1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare" and "Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare?" are as entertaining as any nonfiction of recent years. Now he's outdone himself no surprise, given his qualifications for this new volume. He not only teaches English and comparative literature at Columbia, he serves on the board of directors of the Royal Shakespeare Company and is the Shakespeare scholar in residence at the Public Theater in New York. He also edited the comprehensive "Shakespeare in America" anthology. Here, his combined scholarship and theatrical experience help him examine brilliantly the notorious 2017 "Julius Caesar" in Central Park, in which a Donald Trump look alike as Caesar was assassinated nightly to fierce outrage from the political right. Did you know there was an epidemic of men spanking women in movies in the decade after 1938? That young, pre bearded Ulysses S. Grant was cast as Desdemona in an Army production of "Othello" and rehearsed but never went on because of what amounted to homosexual panic among the producing officers in a national manliness crisis? Did you know that Steve Bannon wrote a screenplay for a sci fi "Titus Andronicus" as well as an alt right "Coriolanus"? (Neither was produced.) That Abraham Lincoln's favorite play was "Macbeth," one that helped secure the reputation of John Wilkes Booth, Lincoln's own Macbeth to be? It's all here and much more. Each of the book's eight chapters centers on a year with a different thematic focus. "1833: Miscegenation" examines contemporaneous reactions to "Othello," almost all racist, some wildly screwy, like a female Shakespeare scholar's attempt to prove that Othello was, as she effused, "a white man!" "1849: Class Warfare" provides a blistering account of New York's deadly Astor Place riots, demonstrations against the English actor William Macready that were fueled by rising economic inequality and nationalistic fervor. When police forces fired into a massed crowd, more than 20 people died and dozens were wounded. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
The multiplatinum R B singer R. Kelly, who is facing a renewed protest effort by activists who say he has sexually abused young girls and women for more than two decades, once again denied the growing list of accusations in a statement released by his management team on Friday. The response came after a new report in BuzzFeed that detailed the accounts of two women, one of whom said she began sleeping with the singer when she was 17 a year under the age of consent in Florida, where she lived in 1995, and that he became mentally and physically abusive throughout a four year relationship. A second woman told the publication that her 27 year old daughter began dating the singer 10 years ago and is currently a member of what she called the singer's abusive cult of women in Chicago and Atlanta. "R. Kelly has close friendships with a number of women who are strong, independent, happy, well cared for and free to come and go as they please," the singer's management team said in its response. "We deny the many dark descriptions put forth by instigators and liars who have their own agenda for seeking profit and fame." The statement continued: "All of the women targeted by the current media onslaught are legal adults of sound mind and body, with their own free will. Law enforcement officials in Atlanta and Chicago previously have made 'wellness' visits to check on the women in question and have found nothing to cause alarm." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
Lena Waithe doesn't so much tell stories as spill them, like a tipped bucket on a steep driveway. Over breakfast last month in Chelsea, I asked for the one about how she got the idea for her first movie, the newly released drama "Queen Slim," and she delivered a spirited cascade that sprang from a single point of origin a chance encounter with the writer James Frey into tributaries tracing the history of black Hollywood, the myth of the lone genius and the four year arc of her career. When Waithe began her answer, the waitress had just taken our orders. By the time I got to my second question, the food had arrived. Waithe's charisma and hyperactivity (in addition to writing "Queen," which she produced along with the director Melina Matsoukas, she is the creator of Showtime's "The Chi" and a BET project, "Twenties") can make her seem inevitable. Her breakout role, as best friend to Aziz Ansari on Netflix's "Master of None" (she won an Emmy for outstanding writing on the series) came by sheer force of personality: Ansari, who initially conceived the character as straight and white, met Waithe (gay, black) and rewrote it. But "Queen Slim" underscores just how unusual her rise has been. The film, starring Daniel Kaluuya and Jodie Turner Smith in a race to freedom after a doomed confrontation with a white police officer, is a rarity: an R rated, studio backed feature centered on two dark skinned characters who are far from traditional heroes. It's the kind of movie that would be difficult to imagine in a world without Waithe, which is to say, at any other time than now. At breakfast, Waithe, who wore a tan coat with a shearling collar and black Nike Air Yeezy sneakers ("Old Kanye," she clarified), switched easily between the roles of artist and agitator, framing the movie not just as a creative breakthrough but also as part of a push for structural change in Hollywood. As a black filmmaker, she said, to ignore the political realities of the day always seemed implausible. "Everything a black person does is revolutionary because we weren't supposed to survive," she said. "Everything we do is political because they politicized our skin." These are edited excerpts from our conversation. You were saying that James Frey approached you with the initial idea for this movie at a party. What about it appealed to you? The fact that no one had done it before. How weird is it that a white man thought it up? I was like, "We haven't swapped that narrative yet?" I looked for it in the culture didn't see it. I'm like "I got to do it." When people see the trailer, they're like "Whoa," because they're so used to us being the ones who get killed. Did the fact that he was a white man give you pause? No, because I thought it was a good idea. He came up with that idea, but I wrote the movie. I freaked it. To me, if someone is saying "Here's a seed," I'm going to take it and grow a tree. I think it must be hard to write movies that are inspired by contemporary tragedies like police violence; there's so much in the news already and there aren't really good resolutions available. Was it a challenge for you? I don't want this movie to be as relevant as it is. But the scary thing is the movie becomes more and more relevant with every passing day. The script is almost a result of my trauma. I'm a black person in the world watching TV like everybody else. The work that artists are doing right now, this is us trying to put a time stamp on the society in which we live. It is a violent one. It is a cold one, and yet we still are stylish and we still are funny and we still love and we still smoke weed and we still do crab boils. Even in the midst of this trauma, we survive, we live, and that, to me, is what the real meditation of this movie became. Who are Queen and Slim to you? Queen is a little bit of me. Little bit of Bryan Stevenson the lawyer and activist , a little bit of my wife. She's every woman on the bus stop I passed by. Slim can be very foreign to me, the way that his family is always at the forefront of his mind, the way that he'd rather fade into the background. But there's some of me in him as well. I wanted to give them both a piece of all black people: religion, revolution, simplicity, complexity, family trauma, family unit. The characters are sympathetic, but they don't always do the right thing. And the movie doesn't always make it clear what's right and what's wrong. If it is, I'm not doing a good job. I don't like movies that are that black and white. I don't like movies that tell me what to think. Let me wrestle with that. I can't tell someone what to take away from my art. That's not my job. Melina Matsoukas narrates a sequence from her film featuring Jodie Turner Smith and Daniel Kaluuya. Hi, I'm Melina Matsoukas. I'm the director of 'Queen and Slim' and also one of the producers. This scene is when Daniel Kaluuya, who plays Slim, and Queen, Jodie Turner Smith, first fall in love. It represents their second date, but also a moment that they are so determined to have because they might not make it to the end. They may not be afforded another chance to dance, to connect, and ultimately, to fall in love. "Oh, I don't drink." "Maybe you should start." The space is a juke joint, but it represents for them a safe haven, a place where they are connected. Thus, I named it The Underground after The Underground Railroad. I've always thought of their journey as representing a reverse slave escape narrative as they are black fugitives running from the north traveling south. They are protected here in the womb of their community, and they utilize this fleeting moment of safety to connect, and ultimately, to fall in love for the first time. The production design of the space was modeled after the photography of Birney Imes, who photographed the deep south. And he has a book on juke joints that I modeled some of the design after. But I also modeled it after these beautiful hand painted landscapes that mark many shelters in Jamaica, particularly outside of Kingston on my favorite beach called Hellshire Beach. I wanted the design to speak to the black diaspora as well as the American South and all the subtle ways in which the black community is connected. MUSIC PLAYING The scene was scripted as if it was meant to be their first dance at their wedding. I remembered the feeling of watching 'West Side Story,' one of my favorite films. And when Tony sees and dances with Maria for the first time, how they're in this bubble shutting the world out around them. And I wanted Queen and Slim to feel the same way in that moment. Another reference for this scene was 'In the Mood for Love.' I wanted them to feel shrouded in that love and in that light and the color and in these languid, poetic moments in a similar way as Wong Kar wai was so beautifully able to paint in his film. We also used Steadicam to dance with the actors. We had set up the space so we could see and rotate 360 without seeing ourselves or equipment as I wanted the camera to feel like part of the choreography. I wanted to use these long, languid shots to pull you into this moment. This is also one of the few times we used a few slow motion shots. It was important to make this moment somewhat surreal so as to mirror the feeling you get when you're lost in love and the world's slowing down around you. There's no one else in the room as they dance, not literally, but figuratively. The music drops out and we bring in for the first time this beautifully composed theme which represents their love. We call it the 'Love Theme' and it was composed by our amazing composer, Dev Hynes. MUSIC DEV HYNES, 'LOVE THEME' "What do you want?" "I want a guy to show me myself. I want him to love me so deeply I'm not afraid to show him how ugly I can be. I want him to show me scars I never knew I had." It was a choice I made in the edit to take their words from the next scene and lay them over this first dance so it's as if you can feel and hear her thoughts as she's experiencing them in real time. "And I want him to cherish the bruises they leave behind." And as the song ends and the people around them cheer the bands, it's as if they are applauding their love. This takes them back into real time and they leave together, connected and as one for the first time in their story. CHEERING MUSIC DEV HYNES, 'LOVE THEME' "We should go." Melina Matsoukas narrates a sequence from her film featuring Jodie Turner Smith and Daniel Kaluuya. The movie feels like a 50 50 collaboration between your and Melina's sensibilities. How do you pull that off and stay friends? Well we talk about everything. And I know my lane. I've tried my hand at directing it's not for me. So I would never tell her how to direct a movie, and she would never tell me how to write one. I may have thoughts: "Hey, can they pace that up?" And she'll be like, "I understand what you're saying, but this is where I was coming from." It's not easy to be a director on a film that I've written because of my place in the business, but we would work through all of that. She would say, "Do you mind if this says 'A film by Melina Matsoukas' and 'Written by Lena Waithe' in the trailer, but then on the TV spot it can say 'From Emmy Award winner Lena Waithe?'" Melina who directed the "Formation" segment of "Lemonade" is such an auteur that she's more comfortable blending in and observing, but she shouldn't be in my shadow, she shouldn't be in Beyonce's shadow she is an icon in her own right. What was it like getting this film financed? It was such a smooth thing. I always say I accidentally packaged my own movie. I wrote it and I wanted Melina to direct it. That's all I knew at first. Then I see Daniel. I told him about this movie I'm writing and he asked to read it. Very quickly afterward he emails me and is like, "I'm Slim." Once we had the three of us, we were the three stooges. We met Pam Abdy and Brad Weston from Makeready, and they had a deal with Universal, whom I love because they released "Get Out" and "Straight Outta Compton" in great ways. But I told Brad and Pam, "I'm not going to take notes from you. This is a gift and you guys should receive it as such." They were like, "O.K., we do." You've talked about the importance of having black celebrities finance more films, and named Will Smith and Denzel Washington specifically as people who could do more. Have you seen a response? Let me say on the record that I have nothing but the utmost respect for those that have come before me, particularly people like Will Smith and Denzel Washington who were and continue to be really great examples of black men and strength and dignity through the ways in which they walk through the world. I don't think that was necessarily productive for me to say what I said. I sincerely apologize to Denzel and Will for even saying their names in a way that would make people think that I don't understand the contributions they made to us as a community and in this industry. What I will say now is that what I would like to see is more black financiers, period, whether they be in the industry or not, because I think movies about black people that are funded with black money will hit harder. I also think it's a new way for us to keep black wealth in the black community. Do you ever feel like you shouldn't have to worry about what your work means for the community? In the way that white writers typically don't have to think about those kinds of things? It is a freedom we will never know. Tell me why you say that. Because they're the majority. They're at the top of the food chain, so we do have to consider other things. But I do try not to think about it when I'm writing sometimes, because I know everybody will have an opinion. Like people were going to be mad about the fact that the actors were not born in America. Kaluuya and Turner Smith are both British. Me and Melina desperately wanted American actors, but when Jodie Turner Smith walks in a room, you do not say, "Sorry, we're going with this other girl who's not as great as you but black people will be happy." I can't do that. It's like, "No, you write a movie and cast it however you want." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
For roughly the first 50 minutes of "Parkland: Inside Building 12," students and teachers recall last year's attack at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in harrowing detail: who heard what and when, who hid where, which doors were locked, who was bleeding or killed. Much of the second hour is then devoted to remembering the 17 dead, one by one. At the close, when Emma Gonzalez is shown reciting their names at the March for Our Lives rally, we have a mental image of each person. The movie, directed by Charlie Minn, is unbearable to watch, yet its centering of first person testimony supplemented with floor plans of the building and phone footage from that day makes the massacre immediate in a way that sometimes gets lost in news coverage or political debates. As you watch the teacher Ernie Rospierski say he's been avoiding thinking about could haves and should haves or hear descriptions of how precariously positioned the student Maddy Wilford was after being shot, it's impossible to avoid the sense that their survival came down to chance. These could easily be other shootings or other survivors. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
Nearly 68 million workers do not have access to work based retirement plans like 401(k)'s for companies and 403(b)'s for nonprofits and government employees. But that is now changing as more states have begun exploring different ways to create savings vehicles for those not covered by existing tax deferred savings programs. On Monday, the Obama administration took a big step to encourage the movement, issuing guidelines that clear the way for the states to forge ahead. A lack of clarity from the Labor Department, which oversees retirement plans, had prevented some states from moving forward. "It is clear that workers are not saving enough for a secure retirement," Thomas E. Perez, the secretary of labor, said in a statement. "This guidance is another plank in the economic security platform that President Obama and this administration have been building as we help create new savings options." Over the last several years, Illinois, California, Oregon and others have adopted laws to create state based retirement savings initiatives, according to the Labor Department, some of which automatically enroll workers into the plans through payroll deductions. New Jersey's legislature is currently considering a bill; altogether, about half the states are contemplating different approaches. "We know these plans work because people are 15 times more likely to save by having access to payroll deduction," said Sarah Mysiewicz Gill, a senior legislative representative for AARP. Illinois is one of the furthest along. Starting in the summer of 2017, it will introduce its Secure Choice Savings Program, which could cover as many as 1.2 million workers. Employers with more than 25 workers that have been in business for at least two years and that do not offer a retirement plan would be required to offer the state based plan. "It isn't that people don't understand they should save, but if you don't make it easy for them, inertia gets in the way," said Michael W. Frerichs, the Illinois state treasurer. "This will make it easy for them." Participating employees would have 3 percent of their paycheck automatically deducted, though they could save more, up to the regular individual retirement account limits of 5,550 annually (or 6,500 for workers over 50). The cost to run the plan would be paid for by employees, with fees limited to no more than 0.75 percent of the money invested. The state or a third party vendor will act as the retirement plan's fiduciary, a role that is typically held by employers when they sponsor 401(k)'s and other retirement plans. The Labor Department's proposed rules shield employers from that responsibility and allow them to avoid the strictures of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, or Erisa, which was enacted in 1974. But the savings initiatives must follow certain rules: The state plans must give employees the ability to opt out, and employers cannot contribute to workers' accounts. The state will choose the plan's structure and investment options, while the employer is responsible for setting up the automatic deductions. Locast, a nonprofit streaming service for local TV, is shutting down Capital One's chief executive was fined after being called a 'repeat offender.' Employees will remain in control of their own accounts and can withdraw their own contributions in the same way they can with any I.R.A. The Labor Department also issued guidelines for states that take a different approach, providing retirement plans that are subject to Erisa's rules and regulations, but allowing the state government to stand in for employers and assume responsibility for running the plans. Washington State is pursuing another approach: It enacted a law that will create a retirement plan marketplace for small businesses, where participation is entirely voluntary. Financial services firms would compete to join the marketplace by meeting a certain cap on fees and other requirements around transparency, Ms. Mysiewicz Gill said. While some financial services firms have supported the plans, other factions of the industry are staunchly opposed. The American Retirement Association, which represents four retirement industry trade groups, argued that the rules gave government run entities an unfair competitive edge compared with providers in the private sector. President Obama, encouraged by the so called nudge thesis propounded by Cass Sunstein, a prominent legal scholar and former White House official, and Richard H. Thaler, an economist at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, has supported federal legislation to automatically enroll workers into an I.R.A. if they don't have a retirement plan through an employer. But after Congress balked, more states took matters into their own hands. The new rules and state based initiatives are distinct from the new employer sponsored savings accounts known as "myRA," which are essentially starter Roth I.R.A.s for people who do not have access to employer sponsored plans. President Obama ordered their creation this year, and the accounts became widely available this month. But they come with several limitations: Workers are not automatically enrolled, have one investment option and can save no more than 15,000. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Your Money |
One of the people I credit with extending my life is struggling for her own. Over the past eight years, Alesha Arnold has served as the research nurse caring for me in a cancer clinical trial. In the summer of 2019, this bright young woman she is in her 40s was shocked by a diagnosis of Stage 4 lung cancer. A specialist in oncology, Alesha has always embodied the sedulous intelligence of our finest medical professionals, but now she also clarifies the unique problems faced by people with lung disease. Unfortunately, these issues can begin with delayed diagnoses. Since 2009, Alesha had symptoms in particular, a chronic cough and subsequent back pain that doctors dismissed or wrongly attributed to allergies and kidney stones. A series of tests yielded indeterminate results. But since her symptoms did not subside, she was eventually given a CT scan, which showed multiple small bilateral lung nodules, and then a bronchoscopy. Alesha herself had been on the lookout for breast cancer, because her mother was diagnosed with it at age 45, and died of at 51. She did not place much emphasis on the fact that her grandfather, a heavy smoker, had died of lung cancer when she was a child. During the period of delayed diagnosis, Alesha's disease reached a stage deemed incurable. For this reason, she argues that primary care physicians need to interpret their patients' conditions without assuming that age or family history can be used to rule out any sort of disease. A gene panel test established a germ line mutation, indicating to Alesha that her grandfather may have unknowingly passed on a genetic propensity for lung cancer. She wanted her brother to be tested so he could learn about his risks. Despite qualms, he says he is considering the idea. His hesitancy has persuaded Alesha that the public needs to be educated about the usefulness of genetics in early detection and treatment. The mutation made it possible for Alesha to receive a targeted therapy, the oral medication Tagrisso (osimertinib). People on this drug are told that it can delay disease progression for a mean of 18.9 months. She hopes to defy these odds as well as the general five year survival rate for lung cancer that has metastasized to the bones, which is less than 10 percent, since these rates are based on previous outcomes of a large number of people with different types of cancer and vary on a case to case basis. As a goal, five years might sound good to patients in their 80s, but to Alesha five years sounds not good enough. Five years from now her daughters will be 15 and 20, too young to lose their mother. She tries not to brood over the graduations, weddings and grandchildren that she may miss. Instead, she focuses on new treatments, such as targeted therapy and immunotherapy, which have been a game changer in extending the lives of lung cancer patients. Alesha remains convinced that cancer has made her a better nurse, one doubly dedicated to cancer research. The targeted drug that she believes is extending her life was approved for her indication only in 2018. Of course, she rarely shares information about herself with most of her patients. "Our time together has to be all about them," she tells me. Yet their pressing issues, taking her thoughts away from herself, ease the self absorption and the stress. Dealing with hospital logistics for patients as she copes with her own cancer, she better comprehends their anxieties about scans, their terror of statistics, their need for empathy, and their resentment of stereotypes. "Why does everyone assume I must have smoked?" Alesha asks me, laughing. She noted that 20 percent of lung cancer deaths are in people who never smoked, but because the disease is associated with smoking, she believes patients are regularly and unjustly blamed for their illness. "Lung cancer accounts for 25 percent of cancer deaths, but less than 10 percent of research funding," she said, adding that "lung cancer kills more women than breast, ovarian and uterine cancers all combined, and yet it receives relatively little attention." Because her lungs are compromised, Alesha works from home during the coronavirus pandemic. She hopes to continue guiding her physicians who have proved themselves willing to accept her input about approaches to scan scheduling and treatment options in part because many of them have worked with her productively in the past. Over our eight years together, Alesha frequently assured me, "Susan, I will follow you until the end." She meant that regardless of which doctor oversaw the clinical trial in which I was enrolled, she would be my nurse until the end of my life. Now we engage in small recommitment ceremonies, often over the phone. With a catch in our throats, we say that we will follow each other as friends till the end of our lives. There are no adequate words to give thanks to those who trudge along with us on the cancer trek, especially those who assist us while they themselves remain vulnerable. We reach for symbolic gestures. So, I send this tribute to Alesha in the month dedicated to raising awareness of lung cancer and on the occasion of a Thanksgiving in perhaps the most difficult year any of us has ever before encountered, one in which not only cancer patients witnessed the daily heroism of health care workers. Now let us praise our cherished and always endangered nurses. Let's do so making a joyful noise, yes indeed, but also with a strong commitment to safeguard their well being in a future it is impossible to imagine entering without them. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Well |
A. The iPad does have the ability to download more than one song at a time from your cloud based list of previously purchased iTunes music, but the controls for doing so are easy to overlook. To get started, make sure you are logged into the same iTunes account on the iPad as the one you used to buy the music. Next, open the iTunes Store app on the iPad. In the row of icons along the bottom of the screen, tap Purchased on the right side. The content you have previously purchased appears in a list on the screen. Tap the "Not on This iPad" tab at the top to filter the list down to tracks you have not already downloaded to your tablet. On the right side of the screen next to "Sort," tap the list view you want to see: "Songs by Most Recent," "Songs by Name," "Albums by Most Recent" or "Albums by Name." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
Chummy chimps in Kibale National Park in Uganda. A study drew from more than 20 years of daily observations of male chimpanzees' interactions. This article was updated with additional comments from an outside researcher. It's good to have friends, for humans and chimpanzees. But the nature and number of those friends change over time. In young adulthood, humans tend to have a lot of friendships. But as they age, social circles narrow, and people tend to keep a few good friends around and enjoy them more. This trend holds across many cultures, and one explanation has to do with awareness of one's own mortality. Zarin P. Machanda, an anthropologist at Tufts University, and her own good friend, Alexandra G. Rosati, a psychologist and anthropologist at the University of Michigan, wondered whether chimpanzees, which they both study, would show a similar pattern even though they don't seem to have anything like a human sense of their own inevitable death. The idea, in humans, Dr. Machanda said, is that as we get older we think, "I don't have time for these negative people in my life, or I don't want to waste my time with all of this negativity." So we concentrate on a few good friends and invest in them. This explanation is called socioemotional selectivity theory. Dr. Rosati and Dr. Machanda, who is the director of long term research at the Kibale Chimpanzee Project in Uganda, drew on many years of observations of chimps at Kibale. Along with several colleagues, they reported Thursday in the journal Science that male chimps, at least, display the very same inclinations as humans. The team looked only at interactions of male chimpanzees because males are quite gregarious and form a lot of friendships, whereas females are more tied to family groups. So male relationships were easier to analyze. The finding doesn't prove or disprove anything about whether knowledge of death is what drives the human behavior. But it does show that our closest primate relative displays the same bonding habits for some other reason, perhaps something about aging that the two species have in common. At the very least, the finding raises questions about humans. Ian Gilby, an evolutionary anthropologist at Arizona State University and co director of the Gombe Chimpanzee Database, part of the Gombe Stream Research Centre, who was not involved in the research, described the new study as "really elegant." "It makes the case that we should rethink our views about human behavior," he added. Laura L. Carstensen, a psychology professor at Stanford University, who developed socioemotional selectivity theory, said she thought the new paper added to the theory rather than contradicting it. Her only disagreement with the authors, she said, was that they presented too narrow a view of the theory. The kind of conscious thinking that humans may do about an impending ending death, or even moving away from a neighborhood, can be one cause of changing relationships, she said, but the theory doesn't suggest that it is the only one. "Humans can imagine such endings. Some other species likely sense them." Dr. Rosati, Dr. Machanda and their colleagues looked at several aspects of male chimp behavior as recorded in more than 20 years of almost daily observations, with 78,000 hours of observations on 21 male chimpanzees from age 15 to 58. They used the proximity of chimpanzees to one another to determine friendships friends sit together. And they used grooming to decide whether the friendships were mutual, with each chimp paying attention to the other, or one sided. As they got older, the chimps developed more mutual friendships and fewer one sided friendships. They also exhibited a more positive approach to their whole community, continuing grooming of other chimps, including those that weren't close friends, at the same rate, but with a drop in aggression. Other primates don't necessarily follow this pattern as they grow older, according to the authors. Some monkeys tend to withdraw from social relationships and their aggression levels stay high. Of course, this can also happen in humans, but the data indicate that Aunt Ratchet and Uncle Vlad are exceptions. The data analysis required for such studies is what happens after the field observation. Anyone who watches nature television shows can probably call to mind the image of Jane Goodall amid the Gombe chimps, or other similar, apparently idyllic portraits of field biologists. Dr. Machanda said that people may think it's just a matter of using an Excel spreadsheet. But she said that Excel won't accept data "after something like 168,000 rows." "For most people, that would be insane to have a table that has that many rows, but actually I think in our database, our largest table has something like 4.7 million rows of data," she added, with "dozens and dozens of tables." Dr. Gilby, who manages 60 years of data from the Gombe project, going back to the days when, he said, it was piling up in paper form at Dr. Goodall's house in Dar es Salaam, said the new work demonstrated the importance of long term studies. Why chimps concentrate on fewer friends and behave less aggressively as they age are still unknowns. It could be a question of emotions becoming more stable. And the deaths of some friends would naturally reduce the number of relationships, Dr. Gilby said. Perhaps they "just don't have the drive or the energy, or what have you to form new relationships." Or, the authors of the paper suggest, it could be that by maintaining an active and positive social life, the older male chimps maximize their chances to mate and reproduce, even at an advanced age. Older chimps do reproduce, but the authors don't know whether an active social life, even among males, keeps them in the mix, so to speak, and increases their chances to father more offspring. That's a subject for future research. Female human friendships that grow stronger over time, Dr. Machanda pointed out, are certainly helpful for scientific research. She said that she and Dr. Rosati "have known each other since 2004 when she was an undergrad and I was a grad student" at Harvard. "It really is a result of us being friends and just talking, having fun conversations about science over coffee," Dr. Machanda said. "A lot of times, we think of that kind of science as being the product of this old boys' network. But here's our middle aged girls' network, or young girls' network." And that's related to another subject for future research: How friendships among female chimpanzees change as they grow older. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
City Ballet and Chase Finlay Sued by Woman Who Says Nude Photos of Her Were Shared A 20 year old woman charged in a lawsuit filed Tuesday that a principal dancer at New York City Ballet, whom she had been dating, shared sexually explicit photos and short videos of her that were taken without her knowledge or consent with others affiliated with the company. The woman, Alexandra Waterbury, filed suit in State Supreme Court in Manhattan against the company and her ex boyfriend, Chase Finlay, who had been a principal dancer there until last month when he resigned after the company sought to question him about her allegations. The company at the same time suspended two other principal dancers Amar Ramasar and Zachary Catazaro without pay until next year, saying they had violated unspecified "norms of conduct." In her lawsuit, Ms. Waterbury accuses Mr. Finlay of sending nude photos of herself to Mr. Ramasar, who, the court papers say, sent back an image of a bare chested "female ballet member." The suit accuses Mr. Catazaro of having exchanged unspecified images with Mr. Finlay. Ms. Waterbury, who studied from 2013 to 2016 at the academy affiliated with the company, the School of American Ballet, blames the company in her suit for condoning a "fraternity like atmosphere" that "permeates the Ballet and its dancers and emboldens them to disregard the law and violate the basic rights of women." As an example, the lawsuit says that the company was aware that Mr. Finlay had caused extensive damage to his hotel room in Washington after hosting a party there earlier this year. Charles W. Scharf, the chairman of the board at City Ballet, said in a statement that the company had not condoned any of the behavior mentioned and that it "has no liability for the actions specified in the complaint and has taken the appropriate disciplinary actions for the dancers involved." Ms. Waterbury's lawsuit says that she was not alone in being victimized and that nude photos of other female dancers were also shared on the text chain, often accompanied by lewd and misogynistic language. The suit says a donor wrote to Mr. Finlay about his desire to "violate" dancers at another company, and added, "I bet we could tie some of them up and abuse them like farm animals." It said Mr. Finlay replied "or like the sluts they are." A lawyer for Mr. Finlay, Ira Kleiman, said that he had no comment. Ms. Waterbury said she discovered the texts this spring, when Mr. Finlay gave her the password to his laptop so she could check her email and "all of the text messages just popped up." "My initial feelings of shock and denial have turned into anger and embarrassment," Ms. Waterbury said at a news conference on Wednesday at the office of her lawyer, Jordan K. Merson. She has not gone to the police with her allegations, but is still considering the option, Mr. Merson said. Her lawsuit is the latest incident to rock City Ballet, which is perhaps the nation's pre eminent dance company. Its longtime ballet master in chief, Peter Martins, abruptly retired this year after the company began investigating allegations of physical and sexual abuse that were made against him. The company said it did not corroborate the accusations. Ms. Waterbury's lawsuit said that the company's failure to corroborate the accusations against Mr. Martins sent the message to Mr. Finlay and other male dancers that it was acceptable "to abuse substances and degrade, demean, dehumanize and sexually abuse women." Mr. Scharf's statement said that "New York City Ballet is confident that there is no basis for this lawsuit, and vehemently denies the allegations that the company has condoned, encouraged, or fostered the kind of activity that Mr. Finlay and the others named have participated in, which were off hours activities that were not known, approved, or facilitated by NYCB." He said that after the company learned of the allegations from Mr. Merson in June, "we investigated them and found that the actions had violated the Company's norms of conduct, and immediate and appropriate action was taken." Mr. Scharf said Mr. Merson had contacted City Ballet "to try to negotiate a payment from the company to settle the matter to avoid adverse publicity" but the company had "refused the demand." The texts apparently began last year, Ms. Waterbury's lawsuit says, when Mr. Finlay sent out a nude photograph of Ms. Waterbury and asked the other men if they had "any picture of girls" they had sex with, promising to send them pictures of "ballerina girls I've made scream." The lawsuit said that he shared nude photos of Ms. Waterbury with former students and others affiliated with the company, including an unnamed man identified as a donor. The lawsuit says that the images of Ms. Waterbury were taken surreptitiously, but does not identify how that occurred. Mr. Catazaro and Mr. Ramasar could not be immediately reached for comment on Wednesday. Ms. Waterbury, a model and dancer who is now a student at the School of General Studies at Columbia, said the incident had left her in fear. After The New York Times reported last month that Mr. Finlay had resigned and Mr. Ramasar and Mr. Catazaro had been suspended, she said, she had "received threats from random people telling me I had enemies now, and how I am a job ruiner." And she said that she worried for young girls who want to be ballerinas when they grow up. "Every time I see a little girl in a tutu or with her hair in a bun on her way to ballet class, all I can think is that she should run in the other direction," she said, "because no one will protect her, like no one protected me." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
The leadership team of the New York local of the musicians' union the union's largest local in the nation was voted out of office on Tuesday in a stunning upset, amid concerns over the underfunded musicians' pension plan and broader changes facing music, the original gig economy. It was the first contested election in nine years at Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians, and it could cause national ripples. Adam Krauthamer was elected president with 67 percent of the vote, beating Tino Gagliardi, who has held the post for nine years and played a key behind the scenes role in the city's musical life. The insurgency began with musicians concerned about their pensions. The American Federation of Musicians and Employers' Pension Fund, a multiemployer plan representing thousands of musicians around the country, has grown so underfunded that it may decide to reduce benefits in the future. The crisis has led to renewed activism by musicians. Some have sued the plan's trustees, claiming mismanagement, which the trustees have denied. Others, including Mr. Krauthamer, formed a group called Musicians for Pension Security. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
The last year has turned the United States into a country of information addicts who compulsively check the television, the smartphone and the good old fashioned newspaper with a burning question: What fresh twist could our national election drama and its executive producer, Donald J. Trump, possibly have in store for us now? No doubt about it: Campaign 2016 has been a smash hit. And to the news media have gone the spoils. With Mr. Trump providing must see TV theatrics, cable news has drawn record audiences. Newspapers have reached online readership highs that would have been unimaginable just a few years ago. On Wednesday comes the reckoning. The election news bubble that's about to pop has blocked from plain view the expanding financial sinkhole at the center of the paper and ink branch of the news industry, which has recently seen a print advertising plunge that was "much more precipitous, to be honest with you, than anybody expected a year or so ago," as The Wall Street Journal editor in chief Gerard Baker told me on Friday. Papers including The Journal, The New York Times, The Guardian, the Gannett publications and others have responded with plans to reorganize, shed staff, kill off whole sections, or all of the above. Taken together, it means another rapid depletion in the nation's ranks of traditionally trained journalists whose main mission is to root out corruption, hold the powerful accountable and sort fact from fiction for voters. It couldn't be happening at a worse moment in American public life. The internet borne forces that are eating away at print advertising are enabling a host of faux journalistic players to pollute the democracy with dangerously fake news items. In the last couple of weeks, Facebook, Twitter and other social media outlets have exposed millions of Americans to false stories asserting that: the Clinton campaign's pollster, Joel Benenson, wrote a secret memo detailing plans to "salvage" Hillary Clinton's candidacy by launching a radiological attack to halt voting (merrily shared on Twitter by Roger Stone, an informal adviser to the Trump campaign); the Clinton campaign senior strategist John Podesta practiced an occult ritual involving various bodily fluids; Mrs. Clinton is paying public pollsters to skew results (shared on Twitter by Donald Trump Jr.); there is a trail of supposedly suspicious deaths of myriad Clinton foes (which The Times's Frank Bruni heard repeated in a hotel lobby in Ohio). As Mike Cernovich, a Twitter star, alt right news provocateur and promoter of Clinton health conspiracies, boasted in last week's New Yorker, "Someone like me is perceived as the new Fourth Estate." His content can live alongside that of The Times or The Boston Globe or The Washington Post on the Facebook newsfeed and be just as well read, if not more so. On Saturday he called on a President Trump to disband the White House press corps. He may not have to. All you have to do is look at the effect of the Gannett cuts on its Washington staff, which Politico recently likened to a "blood bath." Even before this year's ad revenue drop, the number of full time daily journalists nearly 33,000 according to the 2015 census conducted by the American Society of News Editors and the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Florida International University was on the way to being half what it was in 2000. That contraction in the reporting corps, combined with the success of disinformation this year, is making for some sleepless nights for those in Washington who will have to govern in this bifurcated, real news fake news environment. "It's the biggest crisis facing our democracy, the failing business model of real journalism," Senator Claire McCaskill, Democrat of Missouri and a longtime critic of fake news, told me on Saturday. Ms. McCaskill said that "journalism is partly to blame" for being slow to adjust as the internet turned its business model upside down and social media opened the competitive floodgates. "Fake news got way out ahead of them," she said. What happened on Day 2 of Elizabeth Holmes's testimony. Kevin Spacey was ordered to pay 31 million to the 'House of Cards' studio after sexual harassment allegations. It does not augur well for the future. Martin Baron, the Washington Post executive editor, said when we spoke last week, "If you have a society where people can't agree on basic facts, how do you have a functioning democracy?" The cure for fake journalism is an overwhelming dose of good journalism. And how well the news media gets through its postelection hangover will have a lot to do with how the next chapter in the American political story is told. That's why the dire financial reports from American newsrooms are so troubling. If the national reporting corps is going to be reduced even more during such an election driven readership boom, what are things going to look like when the circus leaves town? I surveyed the higher precincts of the industry last week, and what I found wasn't entirely gloomy; there was even some cause for optimism. But there's going to be a lot of nail biting and some bloodletting on the way to deliverance. It's pretty much taken as a given that the news audience will largely shrink next year, despite what is expected to be a compelling news environment. "Is anything in 2017, politically speaking, going to be as sexy as it was in 2016? I'm not going to play poker at that table," Andrew Lack, the chairman of NBC News and MSNBC, told me on Friday. Still, though he's predicting a ratings fall of 30 percent or perhaps "much more" at MSNBC, he said, "I don't have financial pressure on my bottom line." That's not only because MSNBC and its competitors earned tens of millions of unexpected election related dollars this year, but also because they still draw substantial income from cable subscriber fees. Newspapers are the originators of that subscriber advertising setup. But as lucrative print ads dwindle, and Facebook and Google gobble up more than two thirds of the online advertising market, affecting digital only outlets, too, newspapers are scrambling to build up their subscriber bases and break their reliance on print ads. Mr. Baker of The Journal said he was confident that newspapers could make the transition but acknowledged a rough interim period that will require cuts and will be even harder to navigate or survive for smaller, regional papers (a practical invitation to municipal corruption). The cause for relative optimism comes from the performance of some of the more ambitious, well reported newspaper articles of the last year. The Times article revealing Mr. Trump's nearly 1 billion tax loss in 1995 drew some 5.5 million page views. That's huge. The Washington Post doesn't share its numbers, but behold the more than 13,000 online comments attached to just one of David A. Fahrenthold's articles about how Mr. Trump ran his charity in ways that clashed with philanthropic moral conventions. But in this new era, subscriber numbers are more important than fly by night readership. Arthur Gregg Sulzberger, The Times's newly named deputy publisher, pointed to a bright spot in last week's earnings report. Mixed in with a 19 percent drop in print advertising revenue (!) was a 21 percent increase in digital advertising and, more important, the addition of 116,000 new digital only subscriptions. The Times now has nearly 1.6 million subscribers to its digital only offerings. "It shows people are willing to pay for great, original, deeply reported and expert journalism," Mr. Sulzberger said. "That will allow great journalism to thrive." It could be Pollyannaish to think so, but maybe this year's explosion in fake news will serve to raise the value of real news. If so, it will be great journalism that saves journalism. "People will ultimately gravitate toward sources of information that are truly reliable, and have an allegiance to telling the truth," Mr. Baron said. "People will pay for that because they'll realize they'll need to have that in our society." As The Times's national political correspondent Jonathan Martin wrote on Twitter last week, "Folks, subscribe to a paper. Democracy demands it." Or don't. You'll get what you pay for. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
THE WHICH WAY TREE By 279 pp. Little, Brown Company. 26. Benjamin Shreve, the teenage narrator of 's new novel, "The Which Way Tree," unspools his tale of Civil War era Texas in a first person voice that is utterly convincing, consistent and believable. Crook never slips out of that voice for a moment. This is no small feat given that the tale involves Benjamin's demented half sister, the infamous massacre of Union sympathizing German immigrants by local Confederates, and a giant panther. Any first person voice involving a young Southern boy invites comparisons to Huck Finn. But dialects have complexities, and Crook appears to be a master of them. Benjamin's voice swings between the rhythms of the Southern hills and the lofty, elevated tone encountered in Twain and contemporary westerns (which ultimately comes from an acquaintance with the King James Bible). His speech can switch from hyperbole to understatement in the same sentence and it is a wonderfully deadpan understatement. When he describes, for instance, his younger, mulatto half sister, left physically and emotionally scarred by the same panther that killed her mother and already having endured the death of their father by fever, Benjamin's drawl is particularly dry: "She is not a joy to look at nor be with." Yet Crook's marvelous dexterity with language does not help her with narrative. Plots need to coalesce around characters with agency, characters who make things happen. They need to move beyond mere observation. Since Benjamin simply reports on what everybody else is doing, and reacts instead of taking initiative, the plot has no anchor and becomes chaotic. Benjamin is left with the care of his half sister, Samantha (or Sam), who has become obsessed with killing the giant panther think Ahab in the Texas Hill Country. In the tailwind of her pursuit the girl accumulates people, or perhaps aggregates their stories. She precipitates most of the action but remains one dimensional less a character than a mania. (It's not easy to show the inner life of an obsessive, much less from the perspective of such a young narrator.) Very little is made of the fact that Benjamin's stepmother was African American and his sister is of mixed race. That's not the story. The story is that they end up at the house of a frontier preacher to look at his aged, frail panther tracking dog: "I said, We will not take your dog. "Sam said, You are speaking for you and not me. I don't like the dog but what other chance do I have. I ain't leaving this house without him. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
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