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Whenever I think of those alternate realities, those theories of time where new dimensions split open every time you choose between hot or cold coffee, I feel like hurtling myself into the sun. It's just too big, there's too much, and I begin to feel shackled by the "shoulds." Which decisions might, or might not, make me the person I'm supposed to be? And, sometimes when you order cold brew they give you yesterday's coffee on ice, and it's like: Great, why can't I be in the dimension where I have drinkable coffee? There's something so freeing about abandoning it all, or maybe just the urge to. The way in elementary school my paintings just ended up being a puddle of gray, and the art teacher would sit down with me and ask, "What were you going for? What happened?" And I would stare down at my gray puddle, unable to explain what happened. In the vast mythology of New York, it's the place you go to become who you always wanted to be. You move here and everything finally happens for you in the way where you feel like you're struggling, but then you eventually get it together enough to look back at it with enough material for a humble yet thoughtful memoir that includes a passage about the way there used to be neighborhoods, before the city became a strip mall. And the people back home who never understood you still don't understand you, and their lives are so nice looking. Good for them. Maybe it's the obnoxious way I was, you know lowers shades , born here. Or maybe it's because my former co workers, annoyed and fed up, eventually renamed our group text to "True New Yorkers," where they began composing paragraph long fictional texts from the perspective of a rat battling landlord named Sal who couldn't find a ride to Fairway. It seems like being from here is the most obnoxious thing I could have done, but also it's probably that I can't walk down Second Avenue without mentioning my first kiss, when I sneaked into Lit Lounge at 14. There is something humbling about someone conflating the response to an explosion at Port Authority and the fear that people know you're vulnerable. He said that he couldn't have imagined a "more New York response than, 'yeah don't I seem ok?'" He also said he constantly misses New York and thinks he'll come back, because no one out there would have posted that meme of a bunch of rats eating a birthday cake captioned, "brunch with my girls." Another friend who left New York missed it because "there was the sense that we were all in it together." That sentiment turns on a dime, though, when transplants reminisce about how "back home" people don't need an excuse to say hi to you. I have to remind myself that the default is community. That intense or potent solitude is abnormal and even perverse. When I worked in an office, I'd often go home on Friday and return Monday without having spoken to another person. Like other quests for the bottom, I began to fetishize how unhealthy that isolation was to the point of asceticism. Maybe it's that I've always been single when I've lived in the city. All my relationships were in college or on brief stints away. Maybe, for me, the community I've always known and my ability to really "share my life" with another person are mutually exclusive. Everyone used to say that if you grew up in New York, you're destined to die in New York. There is always something pulling you back during those brief stints elsewhere: the energy, the pacing of time, family, the golden handcuffs of a good deal on an apartment. Or the way the older Upper West Side women would tap me on the shoulder and kindly tell me I had "a run in my stockings," when they were so worn and tattered they more resembled those webs when they've given spiders LSD. Or the way I will say hello to familiar faces in the neighborhood for years without knowing their name, occupation or anything else besides the casual conversation of which gym they belong to and what they think of the weather. The casual anonymity is another facet, the adjacent face of the diamond of intimacy, the way small talk and cute sayings on mugs of coffee are joyously cynical, like how standard it is for spouses to joke about hating each other, or for parents to mockingly roll their eyes about their kids. The permission to be fed up with each other is the highest mark, to me, of intimacy and trust. A casual elevator conversation that includes an eye roll, a complaint, shared grievances. Keeping satisfaction, the good things, close to the chest. Why should we commiserate so often about gratitude? Are we bragging? There is a togetherness in the low grade annoyances, the permission to share that fleeting intolerance, the striving for something better, the simultaneous ungratefulness and optimism of, "Eh, could be better." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
The first roller coaster Jim Seay rode was the wooden Cyclone at Coney Island when he was 9 or 10 years old. He admits being "pretty scared." Today, Mr. Seay, 59, is behind award winning, heart in throat thrill rides around the world. After graduating from Cornell University with a mechanical engineering degree, Mr. Seay worked at the Hughes Aircraft Company in California in the company's aerospace department. In the late 1980s, as military spending dropped, Mr. Seay shifted into entertainment, working for Six Flags before opening Premier Rides, based in Baltimore, which designs, constructs and tests attractions like Revenge of the Mummy at Universal Studios and the soon to open Dragonfire in Qatar. As president of Premier Rides, he spends more than half the year traveling to rides or to explore future coaster destinations. Below are edited excerpts from a conversation with Mr. Seay. What was it like to make the leap from aerospace to roller coasters? There was a significant learning curve. At Hughes Aircraft it was a white collar engineer environment. In the theme parks, there's a very technical side. The engineers are developing the attractions, but there's also an entire team of electricians and mechanics. They are the people who actually know how to make things work. I learned that the people at the theme parks tend to understand the equipment better than even the suppliers who are building it. They live with it daily. They inspect it daily. I learned a tremendous amount about the safety and maintenance side of things from the front line technicians. How do you come up with your ideas? Sometimes we design our own attractions based on the creative talent at Premier Rides. Sometimes you have people who want to develop something around an intellectual property and you work together to develop something. We were very fortunate to do that with Universal Studios on the Revenge of the Mummy attractions. That ride is now in three locations around the world. Over 160 million people have ridden those rides. It's very humbling. What is it about roller coasters that make people such fanatics? It's a way to escape the complexity and stress of everyday life. You put yourself into an environment where you know you will be safe, but you're not in control of where you're going, how fast, how it's going to turn and maneuver. And you're usually sharing the experience with someone. I see people riding with their wife or child and they're screaming the whole time. At the end, they catch their breath, don't say anything and high five each other. They remember the ride for the rest of their lives. How are parks around the world different? You see people love rides and love to be thrilled no matter where you are, but there are cultural differences that make the experience more unique. The Chinese put on these amazing shows, very elaborate Cirque du Soleil like performances. Here people think of going to a park as a destination, but the parks in Europe are very much part of the community. There are parks like Tivoli Gardens (Copenhagen) or Liseberg (Gothenburg, Sweden) where people will go after dinner to listen to music or ride rides. I was at a park in Finland called Linnanmaki when they put on tango music and all these people just danced on the midway. It wasn't planned. They just love the tango in Finland. It was really interesting. Parks are just part of your community there. In the Middle East they don't want to build a traditional theme park. They want it to be very, very special. For example, if you go to Abu Dhabi there's Ferrari World. They enclosed the entire theme park with a bright red, Ferrari themed roof which you can see from outer space. That's an expense that would be hard to justify in other areas, but that's the scale that they do it at in the Middle East. Do you have time to be a tourist? I do. I think it's very important when you go to a location to immerse yourself. I make it a point to always have time to disappear into the community, meet local people, try local food. I've never had a problem communicating, never had a problem working with anyone. I think if you respect people when you travel, that respect is returned. People are not as different as we think they are. What have been some of your favorite places to visit? There are some amazing places to go in Chile. I was on a business trip to Santiago and was looking at other places to go while we were there. The only way to get to Easter Island is to fly from Chile. There's a direct flight. At the last minute, my wife, a friend of ours and I decided to jump on one of those flights. We spent three or four days exploring Easter Island. There are volcanoes on the island that you can go to and you'll be next to 30 of the famous Easter Island heads. I've wanted to go to Africa since I was a child. I just haven't been. Business is what drives my travel. I don't take vacations because I always get a few days when I go somewhere. I consider those my vacations. There are a number of countries in Africa seeing tremendous growth, so I think there will be a reason to go there soon. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
OXON HILL, Md. When National Harbor, a 300 acre, 2 billion minicity on the Potomac just south of Washington, opened for business in 2008 at the start of the recession, the entire venture was regarded as something of a gamble. Now the project's developer, Peterson Companies, is betting even more on the project, which is anchored by the 450,000 square foot Gaylord National Hotel and Convention Center, the largest property of its type on the East Coast. Peterson is betting that casino gambling will add even more luster, and it has signed an agreement with MGM Resorts International, a major casino player, to make it happen. But there's a catch. Maryland voters must first approve an initiative in next month's election to allow table games here in Prince George's County and at five other locations in the state that already have slot machine parlors. The majority of voters in Prince George's County must also approve it. The contest has generated multimillion dollar campaigns and pits not only local proponents and opponents of gambling but also gambling behemoths against one another. Further, it has become a battle among states: Maryland, which seeks to gain the revenue that flows from taxes on the casinos, versus others, notably Pennsylvania and Delaware, which added table games in 2010 and 2011, and seek to protect the revenue they now receive. It's a high stakes battle, with the competing casino interests having spent more than 36 million for television spots, direct mail, robo calls and telemarketing calls, Web sites and other promotional efforts more than twice the total of 17 million that was spent by the two main candidates in the 2010 governor's race. "We're in the midst of a full blown modern campaign and everything that goes with it," said an MGM spokesman, Gordon Absher. The amount MGM is investing in the campaign is constantly changing, he said, because "the other side is fighting desperately to protect its revenues." The proposal is backed by Rushern L. Baker III, the Prince George's county executive, who voted against slot machine gambling as a state legislator in 2007. But he now believes a high end casino with name entertainers and other Las Vegas style features would help economic development and replenish depleted county coffers in a struggling economy. For the opposition, Penn National Gaming, which owns betting parlors that would be most affected, has contributed 21.6 million to a committee calling itself "Get the Facts Vote No on 7." Meanwhile, the pro casino committee, "For Maryland Jobs and Schools," has received 14.4 million from MGM, 3.4 million from a Baltimore group, and about 1.2 million from Peterson Companies. Publicly traded Penn National Gaming, based in Wyomissing, Pa., owns 20 casinos with 31,749 slots and 725 tables. Its holdings include casinos in Delaware, Pennsylvania and West Virginia, all close to the Maryland border. Its television spots contend that promises of money for education from casino taxes and 4,000 new jobs are untrue or misleading. "This whole thing is a lot of hot air," according to the script of a recent telemarketing call, read by a person who would not say where he was calling from. The Penn National casino with perhaps the most to lose is at the Charles Town, W.Va., racetrack, an hour's drive from Washington and Baltimore. National Harbor supporters say that 34 percent of the Charles Town customers come from Maryland, and 41 percent from Virginia, to bet at the casino's 3,500 slot machines, 100 table games and 50 poker tables, according to their own surveys. Kevin McLaughlin, a communications consultant hired by the opponents, would not discuss strategy or a new casino's impact on the West Virginia operation. "The question is whether Question 7 is good or bad for Maryland residents. The answer is it's bad. Anything else is not pertinent." However, Mr. Baker, the Prince George's county executive, said, "Make no mistake: it's Maryland versus West Virginia. It's about economic development. This is critical in this time, when we're looking for every dollar we can get." Stephen S. Fuller, director of the Center for Regional Analysis at George Mason University in Arlington, Va., says casinos present "a mixed picture" in terms of economic benefits. In Atlantic City, for example, he said, casinos have created jobs and revenue for the state but failed to lift the city itself. A casino at National Harbor "will generate some jobs, some tourism, some spending," Mr. Fuller added, but it could be "a distraction" for a county that might not "strive to build on its natural assets" to develop a more diversified economy. Nonetheless, he said, National Harbor is "certainly a logical location for a casino." The huge Potomac River development where Maryland's sixth casino would probably be located had failed to materialize under a succession of developers over 30 years. Then, Peterson Companies stepped in. Peterson's alliance with the Gaylord convention center, which had indirect personnel ties to casinos elsewhere, led to speculation that gambling was on the table. But as construction got under way in 2004, Milton V. Peterson, the company's patriarch and chairman, disavowed any such intention, yielding both to local opposition on moral grounds and to what he said were his own personal feelings about gambling. But those feelings have changed. "The whole perception of gaming in this country has changed," said Mr. Peterson, a lanky, 76 year old New Englander. When he first rejected the idea, he said, fewer than a dozen states had legalized gambling; now more than half do. "Then, gaming was an anomaly, strange, not normal." Initially, National Harbor seemed to thrive despite the sagging economy, as organizations and trade groups booked conventions at the Gaylord. Thirty restaurants and six hotels opened, and a marina was built. But the economy took its toll. Condo sales stalled. Then Disney canceled plans to build a 500 room resort hotel. Over all, Mr. Peterson said, his company has lost 11 million on National Harbor. The proposed casino would rise on a site where a previous developer had proposed a 60 story office tower designed by the architect Philip Johnson. The site adjoins the Capital Beltway, providing Interstate highway access. Peterson had also planned to use the site for offices. Under a previous developer in the 1980s, the tract would have been called Port America, with the office tower in a campuslike setting and with low rise condos, restaurants and a waterfront promenade below. James J. Murren, the MGM Resorts chief, said plans are well under way to spend 800 million to develop the tract. "We don't want to be presumptuous," he said. "It all could be for naught come November. But we're hopeful and confident we can prevail." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
As you make your way through the cramped lobby into the theater of the Joyce, one of New York's venerable dance spaces, it's best not to look down. But there it is again that carpet, with its hotel chain print of zigzags and intersecting stripes in shades of beige, maroon and pink. How does a space and what surrounds it, a crucial frame for choreography, affect a performance? Can a theater become something new, reclaiming its aesthetic territory, without hiring a demolition crew to knock it down and start over from scratch? With its fixed proscenium stage and outdated decor, the Joyce Theater is finally facing a demon head on: its own staleness. The choreographer Lar Lubovitch has come up with a way to breathe new life into the space. Inspired by an 18th century dance performed in a rectangular formation, he has conceived and organized the performance series "NY Quadrille." For the two week series, the Joyce will temporarily transform its theater, adding a new stage a runway like platform that will cover several rows of seating that allows for viewing on four sides, with risers on what is normally the stage. "We are trying to construct a new experience at the Joyce," Mr. Lubovitch said. "The theater looks a certain way, the curtain goes up on a company, and whatever happens on a stage can be vastly different from week to week. However, the experience itself of attending the Joyce has grown to be somewhat regular, and this is a way to challenge that." Mr. Lubovitch originally came up with the idea to reconfigure the theater for one of his own works but decided to go in a different direction. An avid dancegoer, he also enjoys programming and is a founder and artistic director of the Chicago Dancing Festival. In "Quadrille," which starts on Tuesday, Sept. 27, he has selected four choreographers, whom he described as "very different and each in their own way quite iconoclastic," to present programs: Loni Landon, Tere O'Connor, RoseAnne Spradlin and Pam Tanowitz. All but Ms. Spradlin have previously shown their work at the Joyce. Ms. Landon, 33, who has attended performances at the Joyce since she was a child, said that, to her, the Joyce has the feeling of a retro '70s theater. (Before its conversion, it actually was the Elgin Theater, a movie house.) "This is giving it a makeover," she said. "It's a big risk for the Joyce, but I think it's an exciting risk. I think it's going to be so refreshing because everyone in the dance community has almost stopped going to the Joyce. To be honest, I don't go because I can't even afford to go." Linda Shelton, the Joyce's executive director, said she wants to see how the new stage works before offering it to other companies that want an alternative to the proscenium. She added that the Joyce was also considering the possibility of a more permanent makeover that would involve rebuilding the space. "We're just starting a study to look at what we can do," she said. The Quadrille artists, each of whom received a 15,000 commission plus a performance fee, will present a mix of new and recent works. Ms. Tanowitz leads with "Sequenzas," a premiere set to music by Luciano Berio his sequenzas for viola, trombone and harp and David Lang's "Stuttered Chant." She has some surprises in store regarding her costumes (remember the carpet?) and sets, for which she is collaborating with the artist Suzanne Bocanegra to create unconventional backdrops in tribute to the Joyce's willingness to open up its space. In keeping with the four sided stage, Ms. Tanowitz has had to consider the challenging prospect of "choreography in all directions," as she put it. "Even though I don't use front in my proscenium, I can control where people are looking." She added: "A lot of times what I love is having something very detailed happening at the same time as a full picture composition, so the viewer can choose to follow one dancer's track or to look at the whole picture. It's like a painting: You can look up close or get the full picture." Mr. O'Connor will present two works, including his new "Transcendental Daughter," a trio for Natalie Green, Eleanor Hullihan and Silas Riener. He said he had been thinking about "the multidimensionality of the space, whether it's proscenium or not" since his dance "Rammed Earth" in 2007. In that piece, first presented at the Chocolate Factory, audience members sat on folding chairs scattered across the stage. "In all of my work, I look at it from many viewpoints," he added. "I really want to enhance that in people's viewership." Part of that, he said, relates to how you can imagine the back of the dance even while watching the front. "Because there are often multiple points of activity in my dances, one of them may be frontal and the other might be a secondary thought that isn't taking up that kind of attention," he said. "The viewer becomes a director of the work in that instance." For Ms. Spradlin, whose new trio, "X," explores the idea of an abandoned space, working with a platform stage isn't an alien experience. She used one for "beginning of something" (2011), and is versed in how to make swift changes once in the performance setting. "Even if it's the side that you've paid no attention to, there are interesting things to be seen," she said. "They get revealed to you in a lucky way, and I'm hoping that will happen again." Ms. Landon will show two works, "Fast Love," a premiere featuring four electric guitarists that explores human connection in the modern age, and a reprise of "Rebuilding Sandcastles," which she knows will look vastly different in the new setting. She welcomes the change. "We're so conditioned to watch dance in a certain way," she said. "I think this is going to spin the Joyce on its head." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
The sight of empty grocery shelves widely shared on social media combined with the dread of an invisible threat seem a perfect recipe for widespread hysteria. But, so far, despite mixed messages from government officials and shortages of tests and hospital capacity, there is little evidence of widespread panic. In fact, research into decision making under threat suggests that concerns about looming mass panic are badly misplaced, according to Ido Erev, a professor of behavioral science and management at Technion Israel Institute of Technology, in Haifa, Israel. Dr. Erev is president of the European Association for Decision Making. The following conversation has been edited slightly for clarity. When does precaution turn to panic in the midst of a threat? What we find is that there are large differences between individuals in terms of how they respond to threats like this. Everyone tends to overreact somewhat at the beginning. But then, a little experience reverses that sense in most people, and they begin to believe that "it won't happen to me." A minority of people 10 to 30 percent, depending on the situation continues to overestimate the risk and behave more hysterically, or overreact. These are the people who are causing much of the rush on supplies like toilet paper and emptying the shelves. This is a problem, of course, because it can prompt the same kind of behavior in others. But the important point is that this is a minority. Most people have the opposite problem. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
By contrast, for Buttigieg's co winner, Sanders, the botched count actually balances his apparent failure to win decisively, making him a winner in the voting and the fiasco both. Yes, it's not as good an outcome for Sanders as a thumping 10 point win or a big delegate edge, but the solidity and national spread of his support means that he has the clearest path to the nomination in a permanently divided field, and if one of the main effects of the Iowa disaster will be to delay any winnowing, that's almost certainly good news for him. And the fact that it's Buttigieg rather than Biden sharing the win is also probably good news for Sanders, given that Mayor Pete has negligible support in many national polls and little traction with minority voters. A race where Biden collapses and Buttigieg and Bloomberg scramble to fill that space is almost certainly better for Sanders than a quick consolidation into a Sanders Biden battle of the septuagenarians and the first scenario just became a lot more likely. But less likely than it would have been without the fiasco, which is why Biden, the big loser of the actual voting, is probably the biggest winner of the tabulation debacle: It obscures just how much he slipped beneath his polling, lets Iowa be swallowed up by other stories (the State of the Union, impeachment, coronavirus and then ... New Hampshire!), and makes it modestly more likely that he can limp through to South Carolina with a chance to make a stand. That effect is only modest because voters aren't momentum obsessed pundits, and if Biden's support is as fundamentally weak elsewhere as it proved in Iowa, that will manifest itself going forward regardless of the caucus headlines. But at the very least we can say that Biden is the only candidate competing in Iowa for whom the delayed announcement of the victor is unqualified good news. For Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar, the disaster's impact is somewhat less significant. Warren's apparent third place performance keeps her in the running, but if she can't beat either Buttigieg or Sanders in the early states, then her campaign's only purpose will be to accumulate delegates for a hypothetical brokered convention. In which case maybe the meltdown helps her a little, by making such a marathon more likely but it might also just obscure her weaknesses relative to the top finishers, giving her a reason to burn donor cash a little longer than she reasonably should. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
CHINCHINIM, Goa, India Seven young men sprinted down paths, darting behind houses and vaulting low walls. Each one carried a long handled net. From yards, alleys and streets the din of canine outrage filled the air, announcing the invasion of the neighborhood. Some dogs hid, others retreated a bit before resuming their chorus of barking. The most wary fled long before the catchers got near. Too bad. Getting caught could be the best thing that ever happened to them. T shirts emblazoned with a paw print logo are the uniform worn by the dogcatchers who work for Mission Rabies, and the team carries the canine rabies vaccine. Once given a shot, a dog should be safe for at least a year. Goa, India's smallest state that was originally colonized by the Portuguese, is a popular tourist destination set between the Arabian Sea and the mountain range of the Western Ghats. Although its churches and the importance of Roman Catholicism set it apart from the rest of India, Goa shares with other states the same abundance of street dogs. In town centers, in middle class neighborhoods with fenced yards, and around palm thatched huts where women cook over open fires, dogs black and white, dusty brown, friendly and furtive are everywhere. As is rabies . Worldwide, about 59,000 people a year die from rabies, most in Africa and Asia, 99 percent of them because they were bitten by a rabid dog. About 40 percent of the victims are children, according to the World Health Organization, which has announced a campaign to reduce human deaths from dog transmitted rabies across the globe to zero by 2030. The W.H.O. estimates the death toll in India at about 20,000 a year. Mission Rabies, which is part of Worldwide Veterinary Service and supported partly by Dogs Trust Worldwide, both nonprofits, has targeted Goa as a place to demonstrate the viability of its program to stop the spread of canine rabies. It spends about 300,000 a year and has vaccinated 100,000 dogs a year since 2017, about 50,000 a year before that. Deaths of people from rabies in Goa fell to zero last year from 15 in 2014, when the campaign started. There are none so far in 2019. The program has gained the full support of the state government, which now contributes about 70,000 per year. And its work is widely recognized as effective. Ryan M. Wallace, a veterinarian who heads the rabies epidemiology unit at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta and who has collaborated with Mission Rabies in Haiti, said its effort in Goa is "one of the most successful programs in lower/middle income countries that I have seen in a decade." Part of that effectiveness depends on men in yellow shirts whom I've been trailing as they sprint after dogs, between houses, in 90 degree weather. In most cases, and in most parts of the world, rabies is a death sentence. The patient is kept isolated and tied to a bed in a dark room. Death is often preceded by seizures, pain, and hallucinations. As if the deadliness of the virus weren't terrifying enough, rabies is spread by humanity's oldest animal friend. For 15,000 years or more we have lived with dogs, loved them, buried them alongside us, written poetry and songs to them. And for 4,000 years at least, and probably much longer, some of them have wagged their tails and licked our faces one day only to infect us the next. The disease is described in texts from Greek and Roman antiquity, and in an ancient Ayurvedic text, the Sushruta Samhita. Some of the old records suggest an understanding that it was the saliva that transmitted the disease. But it wasn't until Pasteur developed his vaccine more than a century ago that anything could be done. Since then, the rabies virus, which looks like a bullet in images made with an electron microscope, has been exhaustively studied. Neuroscientists have even adapted a disabled version of the virus to study how the brain works, because the virus predictably travels through nerve and brain cells, synapse by synapse. The consensus among rabies experts is that if the level of vaccination in the dog population can be kept at 70 percent over a period of seven years, the variant of the rabies virus that thrives in dog populations will disappear. Effective vaccination depends not only on technical tools but also on an understanding of dog human relations. Who owns or cares for dogs in any given community? And how much control do the humans have over the dog population? In countries where dogs have become leash bound pets, like the United States and Western Europe, canine rabies has been eliminated. The result is that there are one to three deaths a year caused by rare contact with bats, dog bites outside the country or bites from other animals, like raccoons. In most of the Americas, North and South, national governments have devoted the money and political will to vaccinate the vast majority of dogs every year, so even in countries where the disease is not eliminated, deaths are rare . In Africa, where tens of thousands of people die from rabies each year, most dogs, even if they run free, are owned by families, as in the Americas, and vaccination drives can concentrate on the owners, who will bring them to vaccination locations. India is different. Street dogs and people in India often have a kind of understanding. The dogs aren't wild, but they aren't owned either. Free roaming dogs are often supported by the community, but nobody decides when and where they live, eat or mate. Some, like village dogs around the world, are a pale, dusty brown, but there are black and white dogs, and brown and white dogs that have a look of spaniel or hound, most likely because owned dogs, some of them purebred, also run free and breed as they choose if they haven't been sterilized. Almost all street dogs are short haired and medium size, weighing 25 to 30 pounds. Rahul Sehgal, the India Asia director for the Human e Society International, who is based in Ahmedabad, said, "In other places people don't feed dogs." But, he said, "I haven't seen a single place in India where dogs are not fed by individuals or community." For example, a family living by the side of the road in Vadodara, where the Humane Society was conducting a sterilization campaign, shared their life and what food they could earn, or were given, with a few dogs. They said quite definitely that they did not own the dogs, but they did want to know when the black dog taken away to be neutered would be returned. Not everyone in India loves dogs, of course. Packs of dogs have attacked people. And occasionally communities erupt with violence against dogs. In Kerala in 2016 when several people died from being mauled by dogs vigilantes engaged in widely publicized killing of street dogs. There are about 35 million dogs in India , Dr. Sehgal estimated, compared with 90 million dogs in the United States. India is only a third the size of the United States, geographically, and three times the size in population, so the number of dogs per suburban acre, or city block, is about the same, and the number of dogs per person far less. But any visitor walking through a neighborhood in India could be forgiven for thinking that India has a much denser dog population. The difference is that in India, the dogs are mostly outside; in the United States, they're mostly indoors. Rabies campaigns in other countries often involve getting owners to bring dogs to central vaccination points, but that poses problems in India, because of the lack of individual ownership. The answer, according to Mission Rabies, is to send out teams to find and vaccinate street dogs, using a variety of techniques with about 40 percent requiring capture by nets. The v accination workers in Goa first cover neighborhoods in pairs, traveling by foot or on a scooter, calling to friendly dogs who will approach and allow themselves to be held and vaccinated and talking to people who own or feed dogs. All vaccinated dogs get a paint marking that will last for a week or so. When I went along during this phase, we picked up puppies to vaccinate, were invited in for tea by one devoted dog lover and encountered none of the frantic barking that accompanies the net catchers. Instead she supports population control. "The sterilization of dogs is a must," she wrote. "There is no other way." The parent organization of Mission Rabies does include programs that train vets and sterilize dogs. And population control of dogs, through sterilization (with vaccination), is the approach preferred by Humane Society International. But that approach poses its own challenges for the future. In North America and Western Europe, increasing wealth has led to a change in the status of dogs, which has certainly made rabies control by vaccination much easier. As Dr. Wallace put it, they move off the streets, "into our yards, then our houses, then our beds." In India, a big reduction in street dog populations would mark a significant cultural change, which, Mr. Sehgal said, is already beginning. As India becomes more urban and standards of living increase, he said, "Suddenly people are intolerant of dogs." People travel to other countries, he said, and "they don't see dogs in the street." Over time, street dogs may disappear in the cities. "There will be apartments, there will be malls, there will be gated communities that will not tolerate the survival of these dogs." If so, that would be a very different India. Despite noise, feces, bites and the always present chance of rabies, the attitude of many Indians toward free roaming dogs is still extraordinary tolerance. At a community meeting in Vadodara, run by the Humane Society, people complained about dogs stealing shoes. But when I asked if they wanted fewer than the 20 or so dogs that lived in their neighborhood, there was not the outcry I expected. No, several people said. They didn't want the dogs taken away. And they didn't want fewer dogs. But if the dogs could bark less, that would be much appreciated. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
A colossal canyon on Mercury may provide evidence that the tiny planet is shrinking. Using data from NASA's Messenger spacecraft, researchers have discovered a 620 mile long, 250 mile wide and 2 mile deep valley on the planet's southern hemisphere. It's about the size of Montana and twice as deep as the Grand Canyon. In the elevation map above, the dark blue chasm leads to a large purple crater known as the Rembrandt impact basin. The researchers believe the "great valley" formed as Mercury's interior cooled, which caused the planet's crust and upper mantle to contract and bend. The findings appeared Wednesday in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. Unlike Earth, which has multiple tectonic plates, Mercury's lithosphere is made of a single plate. As it cooled, it buckled like a grape shriveling into a raisin. Researchers are still piecing together all of the clues about how Mercury, the closest planet to the sun, cooled. Some scientists think it may have also undergone a more recent warming period after it formed. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
Calvin Klein features a red and white quilt in its provocative ad starring the Kardashian Jenner sisters, who are languorously sprawled across the blanket in nothing but their underwear. The French label A.P.C. sells a range of limited edited quilts at its stores, alongside its utilitarian jeans and chicly no frills shirts. And Loewe, under the direction of its craft happy designer Jonathan Anderson, showcased a collection of artisan made quilts at the Milan Furniture Fair in April. The fashion world's love affair with quilts a humble item long associated with Grandma's attic and dowdy flea markets has reached a fever pitch. Evoking traditional craftsmanship and the comforts of home, quilts have made their presence felt all over the fashion landscape of late, especially in high end men's wear. Prices reach into the thousands. "For me, this is how I relate to domestic life and how I relate to the emotions of a consumer," said Emily Bode, a designer at Bode, a men's wear label based on the Lower East Side of Manhattan that uses old fabrics for new designs. "To me, you'd want to wear it because of what is intrinsic to the fabric itself, it's innateness." Ms. Bode says there is a physical and emotional comfort from quilts that resonates with her customers, who pay 1,500 for her one of a kind boxy jackets made from dead stock or found fabrics. "We had two customers who, the day they bought their quilt jackets, slept in them," she said. With the fashion tribe glued to their Instagram feeds, there's an understandable allure to the tactile quality and homespun feeling of these blankets. Quilts are also highly personal, said Amelia Peck, a curator of American decorative arts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Quilts are interesting because people can put their own spin on them," she said. While quilts have been documented around the world, including in China, Egypt and Europe, the form blossomed in America as the cotton industry exploded in the mid 1800s (a period that Ms. Peck thinks of as the "heyday" of quilting). Quilts enjoyed a comeback in the late 1960s. "It was very much linked to outsider hippie culture and going back to the land, so it had a political message," Ms. Peck said. Roderick Kiracofe, the author of "The American Quilt: A History of Cloth and Comfort," recalls the popular exhibition "Abstract Design in American Quilts" at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1971 as a touchstone. "That really turned people's attentions to quilts as art," Mr. Kiracofe said. Ms. Peck and Mr. Kiracofe also mentioned the AIDS quilt as bringing quilts, and all their associations with community and craftsmanship, to the American consciousness. For Mr. Kiracofe, the fashion world's embrace of quilts is long overdue. "Quilts have been ghettoized or boxed in as women's work or Americana,'" he said. "To see them get a little more edgy, it's important." At the Calvin Klein store on Madison Avenue, one of a kind quilts dating from the 19th and early 20th centuries have been "hand selected from across the country," according to its website, and are lovingly displayed on the second floor, with prices ranging from a few hundred dollars to 4,250. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
The U.S. Tried to Teach China a Lesson About the Media. It Backfired. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is better known for yelling at journalists than consoling them. But when Mr. Pompeo got on the phone with the publishers of The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times on March 21, he said he was there to offer help, according to a person with direct knowledge of the call. And he acknowledged that the Trump administration's latest shot at China had been, if not wrong, poorly timed. That's because on March 2 a month after President Trump banned travel from China, and the day the number of confirmed coronavirus cases in the United States passed 100 the State Department announced a long planned expulsion of about 60 employees of five Chinese state media outlets working in the United States. The U.S. move gave the Communist Party the perfect excuse to get rid of pesky American journalists who had, over the previous two months, offered the world a window into China's deadly mistakes in responding to the outbreak of the virus. On March 17, China slammed that window shut, announcing the expulsion of reporters for The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and New York Times, and forcing the firing of Chinese nationals who worked for those outlets as well as for Voice of America and CNN. "Given the fact that it's vital to have good information out of China right now because of coronavirus, the U.S. decision was pretty disastrous timing," said Megha Rajagopalan, a correspondent for BuzzFeed News whose visa was not renewed in 2018 after she reported about the mass internment of Muslims in China. Ms. Rajagopalan and other expelled reporters stressed, however, that the U.S. crackdown in no way compares with the brazen Chinese efforts to undermine a free media. "The Chinese government is at fault, far and above the U.S. government," she said. A senior administration official, who explained the policy on the condition of anonymity after I reached out to the State Department, told me that the U.S. move had been on the wish list of American counterintelligence officials and China hawks, and was pursued "on a totally different track from coronavirus." The official argued that even in early March, the virus was "not the all consuming epidemic that it was now." But the ill timed U.S. action underscores how slow the Trump administration was to recognize that the coronavirus would effectively be the most consuming issue this year. The United States made its point but paid a big price for it. China lost reporters for low impact state media outlets, while American citizens and leaders lost access to rare up close reporting in an increasingly closed state. The administration "didn't really accomplish much," said Marcus Brauchli, a former Wall Street Journal editor and former China correspondent. He said that he doubted the U.S. government had "better sources on the ground than the journalists who were expelled. So they just sacrificed one eye for what?" These questions are not easy ones. The rise of Xi Jinping's authoritarianism in China is the story of a generation. The battle now is over who controls that story, and that battle has only intensified as citizens around the world try to understand the coronavirus crisis and governments around the world try to deflect blame for the deep losses it has caused. China's openness peaked around the 2008 Olympics, and tensions over foreign correspondents have been rising since then. In 2013, after The Times reported that Bloomberg News had spiked a sensitive story involving the party elite and a Chinese tycoon, the Chinese government signaled that it would not renew visas for either outlet. The Obama administration debated expelling Chinese media executives in return, but ultimately did not, after Vice President Joe Biden persuaded Chinese government officials to renew the American reporters' visas. The logic at the time, said Ryan Hass, who was then the director for China on the National Security Council, was that "it's pretty difficult to win a race to the bottom with the Chinese." This time around, the Trump administration has a broader goal of strengthening the U.S. position against China on all fronts, abandoning the once broadly held theory that China's embrace of open markets and engagement with the West would ultimately lead it to adopt democratic values. The president wants to rebalance the relationship, and one obvious imbalance is that Chinese journalists in the United States operate far more freely, and obtain visas more easily, than their American counterparts in China. And so the Trump administration began in 2019 by forcing state media employees to register as foreign agents. Things escalated this year when, at a Feb. 24 meeting, Mr. Pompeo's team proposed the expulsion of some Chinese state media staff members, said an official with knowledge of the meeting, who wasn't authorized to discuss it. The administration was trying to "stand up for the ability of American media outlets to keep reporting the news out of China," Matthew Pottinger, the deputy national security adviser who is a former Wall Street Journal reporter, said on a call with journalists on March 2. (Reporters participated in the call on the condition they identify Mr. Pottinger only as a "senior administration official"; I wasn't on the call, and a person with direct knowledge of it later identified Mr. Pottinger to me.) A tense era in U.S. China ties. The two powers are profoundly at odds as they jockey for influence beyond their own shores, compete in technology and maneuver for military advantages. Here's what to know about the main fronts in U.S. China relations: Pacific dominance. As China has built up its military presence, the U.S. has sought to widen its alliances in the region. A major potential flash point is Taiwan, the democratic island that the Communist Party regards as Chinese territory. Should the U.S. intervene there, it could reshape the regional order. Trade. The trade war started by the Trump administration is technically on pause. But the Biden administration has continued to protest China's economic policies and impose tariffs on Chinese goods, signaling no thaw in trade relations. Technology. Internet giants have mostly been shut out of China, but plenty of U.S. tech companies still do big business there, raising cybersecurity concerns in Washington. Mr. Xi has said China needs to achieve technological "self reliance." Human rights. Under Mr. Xi, China's confrontations with the U.S. over values and freedoms have become more frequent, including standoffs over Beijing's crackdown on pro democracy protests in Hong Kong and mass detentions of Muslims in Xinjiang. World leadership. China's leaders see signs of American decline everywhere and they want a bigger voice in global leadership, seeking a greater role in Western dominated institutions and courting allies that share their frustration with the West. China acted quickly, and its officials portrayed the expulsions as purely a reaction to the American move. "It was all initiated in the United States," Cui Tiankai, China's ambassador to the United States, said in an interview with GZero World. But the expulsions appear to have been long sought by China. And a commentary in the state run Global Times confirmed that it was about the content of the reporting, citing coverage of the detentions of Muslim minorities in Xinjiang as well as reporting about the coronavirus as part of the government's motivation. U.S. officials acknowledge that they didn't see the expulsions coming. Now, the U.S. and Chinese governments seem to be shifting their focus to the blame game. Mr. Pottinger has been pushing the plausible, but unproven theory that the pandemic started with an accident in a Chinese lab. The claim has entered the Washington spin cycle, with echoes of the run up to the Iraq war. And the fewer independent American reporters there are working in Beijing, the more the China story may be shaped by U.S. officials. The Chinese government "is going to discover the cost of not having a significant presence of reporters on the ground," said Mr. Buckley, an Australian New York Times reporter who has also been told to leave China after his visa expired when he was in quarantine in Wuhan. "The China story as a whole becomes even more hostage to these lurid representations and misrepresentations of the country that you would think the Chinese government would have some interests in allowing people to rebut." Meanwhile, a Chinese journalist in Washington told me that China Global Television Network already has a plan to replace the staff it sent home: They'll hire some American journalists on contract to help with the propaganda broadcasts. In this job market, they probably won't be hard to find. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
With debates about the appropriate role for the federal government in public education increasingly polarized, the secretary of education, Arne Duncan, insisted on Monday that the administration would not back away from annual testing for students and performance evaluations of teachers based in part on the results of the tests. In a speech on Monday to outline the administration's priorities for a revision of No Child Left Behind, the signature Bush era education law, Mr. Duncan said that "parents, teachers and students have both the right and the absolute need to know how much progress all students are making each year towards college and career readiness." Annual testing has become a point of contention in the often bitter discussions about how best to improve public education. In July, the National Education Association, the country's largest teachers' union, called for an end to mandated yearly testing, and a growing number of parents and educators have been pushing back against what they see as excessive testing and test preparation. In August, Mr. Duncan said that testing issues were "sucking the oxygen out of the room in a lot of schools" and allowed states to delay using test scores in teacher evaluations. The requirement that schools test students every year in reading and math between third and eighth grade and once in high school was enshrined in the No Child Left Behind Act. The tests were intended as a way for schools to see whether all student groups, but particularly minorities and poor students, were being taught adequately. That law, which governs how 23.3 billion in federal education funding is spent and was passed with bipartisan fanfare in 2001, has been up for reauthorization since 2007. So far, Congress has been unable to agree on a new version. The House passed a bill in 2013, but the Senate version did not make it out of the Education Committee. In a telephone interview Sunday night, Mr. Duncan said the primary purpose of the education law was to guarantee that public school students all have a chance at educational and economic mobility. "Is this simply a good idea for some or is it important for all?" he said. "I don't think any of us should feel comfortable if we're going to just do something good for a few and neglect the many." Mr. Duncan said the administration was also committed to increasing federal funding for education and providing more support for teachers. President Obama's 2016 budget would include a request for an additional 2.7 billion for the Education Department's program, including 1 billion for the program that funnels money to schools with high proportions of poor students. Mr. Duncan noted that a new education bill should include provisions for public preschool for all families who want it. "We don't have any kids where it's O.K. to throw them away," he said. With a new Republican majority in Congress, leaders in the Senate and the House are expected to introduce versions of education bills this month, perhaps as early as this week. In 2013, Senator Lamar Alexander, the Tennessee Republican who is now chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, introduced a version of the bill that gave more freedom to the states to fashion academic standards and accountability systems for schools and teachers but that retained the annual testing requirement. More recently, Mr. Alexander has indicated a willingness to listen to public criticism about annual testing. "Of course we should be asking the question: Are there too many tests?" he said in a statement. Much of the furor around testing has focused on how the results are used in school ratings and, under policies promoted by the administration, in teacher evaluations. "The use of testing for high stakes consequential decisions rather than a fixation on strategies and interventions that are geared toward having all kids succeed has been the biggest problem," said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, the country's second largest teachers' union. A group of 19 civil rights advocacy organizations, including the N.A.A.C.P., the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, echoed Mr. Duncan's call to retain annual testing as a way of gauging educational quality and equity, particularly for the most disadvantaged students. "It's really important for us to have data to help us analyze the progress that has been made," said Wade Henderson, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights in Washington. Commissioners of state education departments, represented by the Council of Chief State School Officers, also called for a continued federal mandate of annual tests. Education advocates said the fact that state leaders were calling for mandated yearly tests was particularly striking. "The people that you would expect to be delighted to be told, 'You don't have to,' are saying, 'No, make us do this,' " said Kati Haycock, president of the Education Trust, a nonprofit group that works to close achievement gaps. In his remarks, Mr. Duncan noted that No Child Left Behind was itself a revision of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, originally introduced half a century ago by President Lyndon B. Johnson as part of a broader civil rights and antipoverty campaign. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Education |
Cadillacs with lights that seem to have a mind of their own and Jeep Wranglers that overheat are among the mechanical maladies covered in the latest technical service bulletins. The bulletins, which are compiled by alldatapro.com, offer automakers' insights into some recurring problems with various models. The bulletins, known as T.S.B.s, are not recalls; they are information provided by manufacturers to dealers' service departments and mechanics. Unless otherwise noted, the carmakers do not offer payment assistance for these repairs beyond normal warranty coverage. Alldata.com sells a more comprehensive version of the bulletins to consumers. Here are some recent examples: ACURA A vibration felt through the seat of RDX models in cold weather may be traced to an unexpected source. In T.S.B. 14 001 issued on Jan. 15, Acura said that at low temperatures the rubber in the propeller shaft coupling flanges of some 2013 14 models does not absorb vibration as intended. Replacing the propeller shaft should stop the shaking. CADILLAC Hazard warning lights that turn on without warning may rattle the nerves of some CTS owners. In T.S.B. 13429 issued on Feb. 17, General Motors said the flashers on some 2014 models may turn on when the vehicle is shut off and unattended, possibly draining the battery. The company will replace the hazard warning switch on affected vehicles at no charge. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Automobiles |
"Don't Bail Out the States," by Scott Walker (Op Ed, May 21), ignores the fact that state and local budget shortfalls will exacerbate the nation's unemployment situation and prolong the nation's economic recovery. This isn't just the view of America's cities, towns and villages. The Fed chair, Jerome Powell, recently affirmed that "state and local government layoffs and lack of hiring did weigh on economic growth" during the last financial crisis. Without direct federal assistance, history is poised to repeat itself. Now more than ever, municipal governments need direct federal aid to stabilize local government operations, keep workers on the job, facilitate the reopening of America and jump start the national economic recovery. There is a growing bipartisan consensus that supporting local communities, which stand to lose over 360 billion in revenues over the next three years, is essential as our nation begins to reopen economies that have been devastated because of Covid 19 shutdowns. These shutdowns were bipartisan in nature, and the solution needs to be bipartisan as well. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
For many, this dance is still associated with Broadway style showmanship or fluttering jazzlike improvisations. But tap today has a broader theatrical scope and emotional range. This week the pioneers of a new age of tap bring their vision to "Rhythm in Motion," presented by the American Tap Dance Foundation and featuring some furiously inventive women, like Brenda Bufalino, Michelle Dorrance and Chloe Arnold, among other innovators. (Tuesday through Sunday, Theater at the 14th Street Y, 344 East 14th Street, Manhattan, 212 780 0800, atdf.org.) A quieter but no less thrilling and palpable kind of rhythm is found in the architecturally complex and playfully spiritual work of Trisha Brown, who has been exploring the rhythms of the body through sways and swings, bounces and breath since the 1960s. Fine examples on display this week include "Solo Olos" (1976); the male duet "Rogues" (2011); "Opal Loop/Cloud Installation 72503" (1980), with a cloud sculpture by Japanese fog artist Fujiko Nakaya; and the welcome reconstruction of "Son of Gone Fishin' " (1981). (Tuesday through Sunday, New York Live Arts, 219 West 19th Street, Chelsea, 212 924 0077, newyorklivearts.org.) | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
The Winter Lantern Festival at the Snug Harbor Cultural Center Botanical Garden on Staten Island runs until Jan. 12. Looking for seasonal cheer without inflated prices? Then take your holiday spirit on the road after Christmas. It's the season of lights, holiday markets and caroling. And it's also a time of crowds and inflated hotel rates. But many cities keep the seasonal lights on in January, when the throngs and prices ease. Many also add events to entice travelers, including food and arts celebrations. The following cities make a thrifty financial case for celebrating the holidays in January. The family friendly Fifth Third Bank Winter Wonderfest at Navy Pier continues through Jan. 12 with an indoor holiday playground, inflatable slides, aerialist shows and carnival rides (from 20). A Chicago resident, I start every New Year's Day at the Skating Ribbon at Maggie Daley Park, an outdoor ice path (free; skate rentals from 13). There's also free skating at nearby Millennium Park (through March 8). It may be freezing, but as far as crowds go, January is an uncongested month to visit Chicago, with added attractions that include the Chicago Sketch Comedy Festival (tickets from 15; Jan. 9 to 19) and Chicago Restaurant Week (Jan. 24 to Feb. 9). As the temperatures drop, so do hotel rates. The first weekend in January, Expedia recently had rates at the Ace Hotel Chicago at 131, about 100 less than in mid December. "Kansas City is a Sister City with Seville, Spain, and much of the architecture of the plaza looks like Seville," said Diana Lambdin Meyer, a Kansas City based freelance writer who has written travel guides to Kansas. "It has beautiful Moorish architecture you don't expect to see in the Midwest and if you go late at night, when there are no cars and a little snow on the ground, it's magical." At downtown's Crown Center, the Mayor's Christmas Tree this year a 100 foot tall conifer decorated in 10,600 white bulbs will remain in place through Jan. 5. But ice skating at the adjacent Crown Center Ice Terrace will continue through March 8 (admission 7; rentals 4). In recent searches, the Sheraton Kansas City Hotel at Crown Center didn't show much fluctuation in rates between December and January, starting at around 134 on Orbitz. But a stay at the art filled 21c Museum Hotel Kansas City dropped by about 100 a night in January to around 225. Post holiday, visitors can also take advantage of Kansas City Restaurant Week, which runs Jan. 10 to 19, featuring menus at 15 and 35 at more than 200 restaurants. There are more displays in other boroughs, including Queens, where the Hello Panda Festival at Citi Field features seasonal light displays, contemporary art exhibitions and interactive games through Jan. 26 (adult admission from 25). Staten Island's Winter Lantern Festival runs to Jan. 12 (from 23). In the Bronx, the New York Botanical Garden runs its Holiday Train Show through Jan. 26 (from 23) and the Bronx Zoo turns on its holiday lights Jan. 3 to 5 (from 22.95). Hotel savings are significant: In early January, rates at the W New York Times Square could be found on Google for 156 a night, hundreds of dollars cheaper than on a mid December weekend. "Travel in January is just so much more astoundingly affordable in New York," said Pauline Frommer, the editorial director of Frommer's and author of "Frommer's EasyGuide to New York City 2020." For continued festivities, she highlighted the No Pants Subway Ride (Jan. 12), Winter Jazzfest (Jan. 9 to 18) and NYC Restaurant Week, which offers discounts (Jan. 21 to Feb. 9). Winter, she added, "is risky weather wise, but so much of the action in New York is inside that it really doesn't matter as much." During the holidays in San Antonio, more than 2,200 strings of lights drape the bald cypress trees that line the riverside public walkway known as the Riverwalk and stay in place through Jan. 13. Nearby, a new outdoor ice rink joins the 50 foot Christmas tree in downtown Travis Park, open for skating through Jan. 31 (admission 10; skate rentals 4). About three miles north, Light the Way, an installation illuminating the University of the Incarnate Word, runs through Jan. 6. Reflecting its Latin American culture, San Antonio widely celebrates Three Kings Day, the day the three wise men presented Jesus with gifts, according to the Bible. The Puerto Rican Heritage Society Fiesta de los Tres Reyes takes place Jan. 5 and includes music and a telling of the story at downtown's San Fernando Cathedral (free). In addition to its display of nine million lights, SeaWorld San Antonio will stage appearances by the kings from Jan. 1 to 5 (admission from 54.99). | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
SAN FRANCISCO Facebook has been targeted by lawmakers over its treatment of political ads and has been misused by Russians to spread disinformation. But on Wednesday, the social network showed those challenges had little effect on its business. The Silicon Valley company said its revenue in the third quarter rose 29 percent from a year earlier, to 17.7 billion, while profits jumped 19 percent to 6.1 billion. The results surpassed Wall Street estimates. Facebook also reported 2.8 billion regular users across its family of apps which includes Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger and Facebook's core social network up from the year previous. More than 1.6 billion people visit Facebook on a daily basis. Shares in the company rose about 5 percent in after hours trading. Facebook's financial performance is a regular bright spot for the social giant, which has been embroiled in scandals in recent years over the way it handles customer data and the spread of misinformation. Regulators and lawmakers are now examining Facebook's power and whether it is stifling competition. Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat running for the presidential nomination, has proposed breaking up the company. The quarterly report is also a brief distraction from the company's current controversy involving the way it handles political advertising across the service. For weeks, the company has been criticized for a recent decision to not require that ads bought by political candidates be fact checked for accuracy. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's founder and chief executive, has defended the policy, arguing that Facebook doesn't wish to be the arbiter of free speech across the platform. "People having the power to express themselves at scale is a new kind of force in the world a Fifth Estate alongside the other power structures of society," Mr. Zuckerberg said in an address delivered to Georgetown students this month. Facebook has taken significant criticism for the policy on political ads. Internally, employees dissatisfied with the decision wrote an open letter to company executives this week, imploring them to consider revising the decision. And on Wednesday, Twitter escalated the issue by barring all political advertising from its platform entirely. "Paying to increase the reach of political speech has significant ramifications that today's democratic infrastructure may not be prepared to handle," Jack Dorsey, Twitter's chief executive, tweeted Wednesday afternoon. "It's worth stepping back in order to address." Instead of wavering, Mr. Zuckerberg reaffirmed the company's position on Wednesday. "From a business perspective, it might be easier for us to choose a different path than the one we're taking," he said on a conference call with investors. "But in a democracy, I don't think it's right for private companies to censor politicians, or the news." He pushed back on the notion that Facebook chose the policy to support a given political party. And he shot down the idea that Facebook continued to serve the ads out of purely financial motivations. Facebook expects political advertising will contribute less than 0.5 percent of revenue next year, Mr. Zuckerberg said, the first time he has ever cited such a statistic. "I could be wrong, but my experience running this company so far has been that if we do what we believe is right, even when it's unpopular for years at a time then eventually it has worked out best for our community," Mr. Zuckerberg said. After the 2016 election and a string of scandals that plagued the company, Facebook saw its revenue growth begin to slow, spooking investors and slicing the company's market value. But Facebook's business has mostly kept chugging along. People continued to use the company's products, and recruiting new employees continues to surge; more than 43,000 people are employed by Facebook. The company expects that employee related expenses will surge into 2020 to help handle security and regulatory issues. Although the business continues to grow, David Wehner, Facebook's chief financial officer, warned analysts on Wednesday that Facebook's days of blockbuster revenue growth might be slowing. Mr. Wehner said that increased regulatory scrutiny and an emphasis on user privacy might limit Facebook's ad targeting tools, and therefore the company's ability to add to its revenue as rapidly. Mr. Zuckerberg also announced that Sue Desmond Hellmann, chief executive of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, would step down from Facebook's board of directors. Ms. Desmond Hellmann cited the increasing demands of her work and family life, as well as taking care of her health. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
WASHINGTON House and Senate negotiators are deadlocked over how to prevent a deep cut in Medicare payments to doctors who treat millions of Medicare beneficiaries, an impasse that could threaten broader legislation on a payroll tax cut. Lawmakers in both parties said they wanted to give doctors a small increase, but could not agree on how to cover the cost. The issue, which is being negotiated as part of the talks over maintaining a reduction in payroll taxes for 160 million Americans, pits health care providers against one another doctors versus hospitals in a type of conflict that is most likely to become more common as the federal government tries to throttle back the growth of Medicare costs. The payroll legislation would also continue jobless benefits for many of the nation's unemployed. In the absence of agreement, doctors' fees will be cut 27 percent next month, and many doctors say they could not continue treating Medicare patients under the lower payments. "Because of this uncertainty, some doctors are already telling patients they will no longer be able to accept Medicare," said Representative Allyson Y. Schwartz, Democrat of Pennsylvania. Ms. Schwartz is one of 20 lawmakers trying to work out differences between the House and the Senate. To help offset the cost of paying doctors, House Republicans want to reduce certain Medicare payments to hospitals. By contrast, Democrats and at least one powerful Republican senator, Jon Kyl of Arizona, want to cover the cost with money saved by winding down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. An influential federal advisory panel has voted to recommend cutting Medicare payments to hospitals for some of the most common outpatient services, and House Republicans cite that recommendation to justify their plan. The panel, the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, says the government should pay the same rates for "evaluation and management" services regardless of whether they are performed in doctors' offices or hospital outpatient departments. Rates for hospital clinics are now much higher for example, 124 compared with 69 for an office visit involving a medium level of services to an established patient, the commission said. Hospitals say the higher payments are justified because they treat sicker patients and have much higher overhead costs, resulting from the fact that they are open round the clock and stand ready to respond to medical emergencies. Kenneth E. Raske, president of the Greater New York Hospital Association, said that if the cuts took effect, hospitals would curtail services and close some clinics. "The cuts would reduce access to care for many of the nation's most vulnerable patients and destroy our ability to invest in outpatient care, which everybody from the White House to the statehouse says we need to do to keep people healthy," Mr. Raske said. The American Medical Association and other doctor groups are making an all out push for Congress to scrap the formula used to calculate their payments. The formula sets annual goals for Medicare spending on doctors' services. When actual spending exceeds the goals, payments are supposed to be reduced. If Congress intervenes to block a cut as it often does Medicare is supposed to recoup the money by making deeper cuts in future years. Dr. Peter W. Carmel, president of the medical association, said: "There have been 13 short term patches passed by Congress. These patches increase both the long term cost to taxpayers and the severity of scheduled cuts to physicians who care for Medicare patients." Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California and a member of the conference committee, said "it makes a lot of sense to use war savings as a primary source of money" to eliminate the Medicare payment formula. "It was Congress's mistake to set up that formula," Mr. Waxman said. "We should not make Medicare beneficiaries and physicians pay for our mistake." Mr. Kyl said it was logical to use war savings to wipe out the debt that Congress had built up by repeatedly overriding reductions in payments to doctors. "What I'm proposing is using one budgetary gimmick to pay for another specifically, using funds budgeted for the wars and wiping clean the bad debt accumulated" under the Medicare formula, Mr. Kyl said. Aides to Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana and chairman of the Finance Committee, said he saw that approach as "a viable way" to make sure older Americans could continue visiting their doctors. But Representative Dave Camp, Republican of Michigan and chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, said the purpose of the House Senate conference committee was to resolve differences between the House and the Senate. The use of war savings to pay for Medicare is "outside the scope" of the committee because it was not in the legislation passed by either house, he said. House Republican negotiators prefer the savings in the House passed bill, which calls for "parity in Medicare payments" in doctors' office and outpatient hospital clinics. Cori E. Uccello, a member of the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, said, "It just does not make sense to pay a lot more for pretty much the same service in the hospital setting." Hospitals around the country are buying up physician practices, and in many cases Medicare then pays the doctors at the higher rates allowed for outpatient hospital services. Glenn M. Hackbarth, chairman of the Medicare commission, said that this shift could under current law increase costs for the Medicare program and for beneficiaries, who would have higher premiums and co payments. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
The cash strapped Baltimore Symphony Orchestra locked out its musicians on Monday, as it sought to pressure the players into agr eeing to a new contract with fewer paid weeks of work. "Due to the Baltimore Symphony's urgent need to address longstanding financial issues and change its business model, the B.S.O. has made this extremely difficult decision," Peter Kjome, the orchestra's president and chief executive officer, said in a statement. The orchestra's management has been trying to get the musicians to agree to a new contract that would cut their number of paid weeks of work to 40, from the current 52. Orchestra leaders have said that such a cut is needed to keep the orchestra afloat after years of deficits and difficulty raising money in Baltimore, a struggling city. This spring, Maryland state lawmakers approved 3.2 million in aid to help the troubled orchestra get through the next two years, but Gov. Larry Hogan has indicated that he will "probably not" release the money, The Baltimore Sun reported. That complicated the orchestra's plans to take out a short term loan until the state aid materialized. A few weeks ago, the orchestra's management abruptly canceled a series of summer concerts that it had announced earlier in the spring. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
The British fashion writer and artist Michael Roberts recalled that he was on his way to Feathers, a boutique in London run by the trailblazing retailer Joan Burstein, when "this mad person came rushing out, across the road, in the traffic." "Me!" said the luxury shoe designer Manolo Blahnik, the owner of the Georgian townhouse in Marylebone where the two men were now gathered, having tea. "I did that to everybody when I wanted to know them." He succeeded, and this week the culmination of that friendship, "Manolo: The Boy Who Made Shoes for Lizards," a documentary directed by Mr. Roberts, will have its premiere. The movie is a colorful collage of hilarious archival footage, poetic docudrama shorts, intimate moments with Mr. Blahnik and surprisingly touching interviews from fashion power players such as the Vogue editor Anna Wintour, the photographer David Bailey and the designer John Galliano. What it does show, however, is the vibe between the two men, cultivated over more than four decades and the uncredited character at the heart of the film. At this stage, they riff off each other like fashion's version of Bogart and Bacall, alternately needling, praising and encouraging each other. One cannot start a sentence without the other adding commentary. To experience that, you need to be in the room, to listen in on the whistle stop tour of their history and relationship. Beginning with that first meeting. Mr. Blahnik, 74, who grew up in the Canary Islands, had just arrived in London after studying politics and law at the University of Geneva, and art and set design in Paris, and took the job at Feathers as a sales assistant to secure his immigration papers. "I was in charge of New Man jeans," said Mr. Blahnik, nattily attired in a bespoke vanilla linen suit, sky blue and white striped knit tie, and saddle shoes. "They had jeans in the most beautiful acid green denim. I bought them." Mr. Roberts, 69, who was dressed in a faded navy raincoat, blue plaid Gap pajama pants, and saddle shoes, said, "And I bought them in orange." "And we were wearing it in the streets of " "Chelsea," Mr. Roberts said. "Lemon yellow crepe de Chine tunics, with cord belts. And we were walking around the back streets of Chelsea, trying to get a cab. And of course, no one would stop, because I was wearing the tunic, and my hair was dyed shocking pink, and I had no eyebrows." "That's right!" Mr. Blahnik said. "You didn't have eyebrows at all. How awful that was. It was horrific." "It was horrific, Michael," Mr. Blahnik said. "You looked like you were in Fritz Lang's 'Metropolis.'" When Mr. Blahnik started making shoes (the idea came from Diana Vreeland, then the head of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute), the fashion editor Grace Coddington became a fan, and, he said, she put him in British Vogue "all the time, with pictures by Norman Parkinson and the model Apollonia." "That was a major moment for you," Mr. Roberts said. "The things you were doing back then. Bottines nobody was doing bottines. And mules." "Every week I would meet with Mr. Penn down at the studio and present him with a list of potential people we would like him to photograph," Mr. Roberts said. "And he'd say, 'No, no, my dear boy. No, no, no. And then, in 2003, he said yes to Manolo." During the shoot in New York, Mr. Penn told Mr. Blahnik: "'Now, hold something. Do you have some kind of jewel? No! I need a heel!'" "So we ran to the office, and we got two heels," Mr. Blahnik said. "And he said, 'That one.' Then he said, 'Think about something.' So I thought about Santa Teresa" the 16th century Spanish Carmelite nun "and her memoirs. And he said, 'Yes! Get yourself possessed by Santa Teresa! And now, hold the heel!' And he took the picture." After leaving The New Yorker in 2006, Mr. Roberts made, among many other projects, a series of short films for and about Mr. Blahnik. The first, "Jealousy," was a stormy tango themed love story inspired by one of Mr. Blahnik's shoe collections, starring their longtime friends the photographer Lucy Birley and the actor Rupert Everett, and shown on YouTube. Sometime later Mr. Roberts produced several Super 8 style black and white movies about his friend's childhood in the Canary Islands, with a boy in a crisp white shirt, dark knit vest and lederhosen scampering around a formal garden, playing with lizards and fashioning shoes for them out of the foil wrappers of Cadbury chocolate bars. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
MIAMI Dalia Carmeli, who drives a trolley in downtown Miami, voted for Donald J. Trump on Election Day. A week later, she stopped in to see the enrollment counselor who will help her sign up for another year of health insurance under the Affordable Care Act. "I hope it still stays the same," said Ms. Carmeli, 64, who has Crohn's disease and relies on her insurance to cover frequent doctor's appointments and an array of medications. Mr. Trump and Republicans in Congress are vowing to repeal much or all of the health law, a target of their party's contempt since the day it passed with only Democratic votes in 2010. If they succeed, they will set in motion an extraordinary dismantling of a major social program in the United States. But for now, with open enrollment for 2017 underway, people are steadily signing up or renewing their coverage, and in conversations last week in South Florida, many refused to believe that a benefit they count on would actually be taken away. Even though Gov. Rick Scott fiercely opposes the law, more than 1.5 million Floridians were enrolled in marketplace plans as of March, the last time the Obama administration released data. And some of the problems that have plagued the marketplaces in other states have been less of an issue here: The premium increases and overall prices have been lower than average, and at least in urban areas, a number of insurers are still participating. Jay Wolfson, a professor of public health and medicine at the University of South Florida, said that while many Floridians would be happy to see the law disappear, and the state's Republican leaders have never shied away from attacking it, failing to come up with a substantive replacement could be politically risky. "The question I think we all have is, how do they transition out of it?" he said. "How do they do it without dumping millions of people off the edge of a cliff?" Despite the law's problems, including sharp premium increases for next year, millions of people, including many in states that Mr. Trump won, have come to depend on it. Texas, North Carolina and Georgia, like Florida, have large numbers of people insured through HealthCare.gov. And 16 states that now have Republican governors or governors elect expanded Medicaid under the law, including Indiana under Mike Pence, now the vice president elect. The Obama administration said last week that over the first 12 days of open enrollment, plan selections in the states that use the federal marketplace were up by about 5 percent compared with the same period last year. Some of the states that run their own marketplaces have reported brisker business: In Colorado, sign ups are running 30 percent higher than they were at this point in the last open enrollment period, according to Kevin Patterson, the chief executive of the state's marketplace. If the pace continues, hundreds of thousands more people could be added to the insurance rolls, even as Republicans discuss alternative legislation that could drop millions. "Even with the whole situation, it's been a great start," said Odalys Arevalo, an owner of Sunshine Life and Health Advisors, an insurance agency that she said has enrolled tens of thousands of Floridians, mostly working class Hispanics, in health law plans over the past three years. She added, however, that people were confused and were asking many questions about the future of the law. Nonprofit groups with federal grants to enroll the uninsured are conducting an ever more strategic search for them working, for example, with the consulates of Mexico, Colombia, Brazil and Uruguay in Miami to identify "lawfully present" immigrants who might want coverage (they qualify for subsidies under the law, even without citizenship) and with a small American Indian tribe in the Panhandle. "We're in the here and now, and nothing has changed at the moment," said Karen Egozi, the chief executive of the Epilepsy Foundation of Florida, repeating a new mantra among the group's 90 enrollment counselors. As of Tuesday, they had signed up 277 people for insurance since Nov. 1, when enrollment began, she said, compared with 193 over the same period last year. In South Florida, a teeming mix of retirees who may not have reached Medicare age, hotel and restaurant workers and recently arrived immigrants working for small, homegrown businesses has helped ensure robust enrollment in the subsidized plans offered through the marketplace. While the Republican leaders of the state have refused to expand Medicaid, individuals with annual incomes of about 12,000 to 47,500 qualify for subsidies that pay some or most of the cost. Ninety one percent of plan holders in Florida this year receive premium subsidies a higher percentage than in any other state and 71 percent also have reduced deductibles, a benefit available to people at or below 250 percent of the poverty level. Some of them, like Ms. Carmeli, voted for Mr. Trump. She pays 45 toward her monthly premium, with a subsidy of about 600 covering the rest. She is looking at a new premium of 171 if she keeps her current plan, but she believes that she will find a more affordable option. "Trump is going to keep it for a while, at least the part where if you have a disease you can still get coverage," she said, adding that she would turn 65 next summer and get Medicare, so she would stay covered regardless. More vulnerable are people like Gerardo Murillo Lovo, 44, a construction worker who never had health insurance before signing up for a marketplace plan in 2014. He pays 15 a month and gets a subsidy of 590 for a plan that covers his wife, as well. When he renewed his coverage last week at the Epilepsy Foundation, he learned that the price would not increase next year. "I've heard that what he wanted to do first is get rid of Obamacare," Mr. Murillo, a Nicaraguan immigrant who is a citizen but did not vote, said of Mr. Trump. "But my personal opinion is that he will discuss it with other people who will convince him that we can't get rid of this. I think it's going to be maintained one way or another, and I'm going to keep it as long as I can." Mr. Trump has suggested he would like to keep popular parts of the law that guarantee access to insurance for people with pre existing conditions and that allow children to stay on their parents' policies until they turn 26. Congressional Republicans have floated other ideas, like providing tax credits to people who buy their own health insurance, but have not yet unified around a replacement plan. The challenge they face, health care economists say, is keeping prices down without requiring everyone to have coverage, the way the Affordable Care Act does. Even the possibility of repeal is causing extreme anxiety among some people with health problems. Mary Benner, 57, who lives near Tampa and voted for Hillary Clinton, will undergo a test next week to determine whether a spot on her lung, discovered on a routine X ray, is cancer. "This has been a nightmare for me," she said of having a health scare just as Mr. Trump won the presidency and renewed his promise to repeal the law. "What I'm really hoping is that they won't be able to come to an agreement and can't get anything passed, so everything just stays the same." "I actually believe Trump's rhetoric," said Mr. Perez, 55, an Uber driver and maintenance worker at the Miami Beach Convention Center. Mr. Perez is paying 107 a month for his plan this year, but next year the price will drop to 49 a month, with a 484 subsidy, in part because his daughter came from Cuba and joined his household as a dependent. Because his income is low, the government also covers his deductible. After Mr. Perez left, Mr. Garcia, the insurance agent, allowed that he hoped Mr. Trump would, in fact, change the law. It is not fair that low income people get help with their deductibles, he said, while marketplace customers with slightly higher incomes, like himself, do not. "Maybe Mr. Trump can make it better by making it more equal," he said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
The drive by Senate Republicans to repeal the requirement that most Americans have health insurance is not only likely to discourage people from signing up for coverage during the current enrollment period, but also could result in higher premiums. If repeal is approved, people could opt out of buying policies because they would no longer face a tax penalty and millions could go uninsured. With the Affordable Care Act already weakened by the Trump administration, big drops in enrollment would deal yet another body blow to the law and wreak more havoc in the individual insurance market. Many consumers would likely to turn to the cheap, short term policies that already skirt provisions of the law and may not cover pre existing conditions or basic medical needs. "If you get rid of the mandate, you open the floodgates," said Robert Laszewski, an industry consultant in Alexandria, Va. These plans sometimes sold by brokers using tactics rife with fraud were only supposed to last for three months. But President Trump recently signed an executive order that loosened regulations to allow such coverage to be extended up to a year. The proposed repeal of the individual mandate is part of the Senate Republicans' tax package, and a vote on the legislation is expected this week. Without a mandate, the cost of coverage could increase by double digits on top of already high premiums as healthy people left the market and sick people needing costly care stayed in it. While repeal supporters argue that people would benefit by having the choice to buy less expensive plans, state regulators have been cracking down on rogue agents who have misled customers about what such inexpensive plans cover or more important don't. Their insurer, HHC Life, refused to pay the bills. "We freaked out," Ms. Conroy said. "What were we going to do? It was 900,000." The insurer informed the Conroys the policy was "rescinded," to use the industry jargon. After poring through his medical records, HCC claimed Mr. Conroy failed to disclose he suffered from alcoholism and degenerative disc disease, conditions he said were never diagnosed. "When one thing didn't work, they went to another," Mr. Conroy said. HCC Life, a unit of Tokio Marine HCC, says it will defend its case. The company is also the subject of a multistate review by insurance regulators to see if it engaged in unfair or deceptive acts. It says it has fully cooperated. HCC Life stopped selling short term policies last May. A major player in this area is UnitedHealth Group, which abandoned the Affordable Care Act market after incurring sizable losses. United offers short term plans through its Golden Rule unit. Before the federal law, Golden Rule was among those insurers criticized for rescinding policies. The company recently told investors it was excited by the president's executive order because that would mean an increase in business for these plans. Last year, a short term policy averaged 109 a month for an individual, according to a recent analysis by eHealth, an online broker, compared with 378 a month during last year's open enrollment period for an A.C.A. plan. The policies are particularly attractive to the millions of people who don't qualify for federal subsidies; only about half of the 17 million people buying coverage are subsidized, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Another target audience would be the 28 million who are uninsured. And some brokers are deliberately promoting the policies without pointing out they do not meet the same levels of coverage of A.C.A. plans, said Scott Flanders, the chief executive of eHealth. "They're selling the hell out of it," he said. Jeff Smedsrud, a founder of Healthcare.com, an online insurance shopping site, "There are companies that aggressively, and some very aggressively, market it as a panacea." In recent years, state regulators have investigated the marketing practices of particular brokers, and consumers have sued to expose the actions of some bad actors. In Pennsylvania during the past two years, the state took action against seven agents for misrepresenting the plans they sold. One woman who had a stroke was left with 250,000 in unpaid medical bills because the policy did not cover prescription drugs and other basic treatment. While a handful of states, including New Jersey, now effectively ban short term plans, others review rates and make sure the policies follow state law, said Dania Palanker, an assistant research professor at Georgetown University. But other states will likely do little to prevent more sales of these policies, said Katherine Hempstead, a policy expert at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. "You're going to make it easier in places where it is already easy," she said. Industry experts estimate as many as a million people may now have these policies, though the official tally is much lower. And others may fall under this umbrella, because it's hard to distinguish from alternatives, like so called limited benefit plans, which cap how much the insurer will pay, and association plans, available to small businesses, that will also be expanded under Mr. Trump's executive order. Several companies are poised to capitalize on a less restrictive environment. Health Insurance Innovations, which markets short term policies, including those once offered by HCC Life, is under scrutiny by state insurance regulators. It recently told investors that there were "tens of millions" of people who could benefit from these plans. The company declined to comment. These plans typically offer much higher commissions to brokers selling them, and they can be much more profitable for insurers. UnitedHealth's Golden Rule spent about half of every dollar it took in premiums for medical expenses, according to regulatory filings. Under the federal law, insurers must spend at least 80 cents of each dollar on care for their customers. UnitedHealth declined to comment. Some experts speculate that insurers are likely to exploit the existing A.C.A. market as a way of selling short term policies to people until they have serious medical conditions. Coverage sold under the federal law would become increasingly expensive, with people priced out of the market if they didn't get subsidies, Mr. Laszewski, the industry consultant, said. While the market for subsidized coverage is largely protected, the market for those who pay the full cost is already shrinking, he said. Like the insurance that was sold before the federal health care law, people with chronic conditions or a history of illness are mostly turned away. Companies will sometimes rescind policies if an individual has high medical bills. UnitedHealth's Golden Rule recently won a lawsuit involving one of its short term policies, claiming it did not have to cover 400,000 in medical bills because it said a woman with breast cancer had an abnormal mammogram before she enrolled. The case is being appealed. "Insurance companies today are interpreting their short term health insurance policies so as to label any condition that arises during the policy term as a pre existing condition for which the company can exclude coverage," said a lawyer representing Ms. Jones in a statement. UnitedHealth declined to comment. Customers often have had to argue about whether something was a pre existing condition. When Karen Campbell and her husband looked for insurance before Obamacare, "we had this extensive, unbelievable interview, each of us about our medical history," she said. After rupturing her Achilles' tendon, which required 30,000 in surgery and physical therapy, the insurer asked for medical records to make sure it wasn't something she previously had. "They just made it really difficult," Ms. Campbell said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
Diane di Prima with her companion and fellow poet Amiri Baraka, known at the time as LeRoi Jones, in 1960. She made her mark as a Beat poet, but she later said that label was "very much of one time, a long time ago." Diane di Prima, the most prominent woman among the male dominated Beat poets, who after being immersed in the bohemian swirl of Greenwich Village in the 1950s moved to the West Coast and continued to publish prolifically in a wide range of forms, died on Sunday in San Francisco. She was 86. Her husband, Sheppard Powell, confirmed her death, at a hospital. She had been living at an elder care home since 2017 because of various health problems, having moved there from the couple's home in the city's Excelsior district. Ms. di Prima was initially known as one of the Beats; she published her first poetry volume, "This Kind of Bird Flies Backward," in 1958, two years after Allen Ginsberg's celebrated "Howl and Other Poems" appeared. It cost 95 cents. Lawrence Ferlinghetti provided the introduction. "Here's a sound not heard before," he wrote. "The voice is gritty. The eye turns. The heart is in it." But her Beat period was only the beginning; over her long career Ms. di Prima published some 50 poetry books and chapbooks. "I don't mind that people use the Beat label," she told The Chicago Tribune in 2000. "It's just that it's very much of one time, a long time ago. A lot of people kept being Beat writers in terms of the language they used. I can do it sometimes but not most of the time." Ms. di Prima wrote about her romantic and literary explorations in "Recollections of My Life as a Woman: The New York Years," published in 2001. Ms. di Prima lived a life that was light years away from the suburban housewife world that has become the prevailing image of the 1950s taking an assortment of lovers, doing some nude modeling to make money, courting arrest with the publications she and her circle printed. She wrote about her romantic and literary explorations in "Recollections of My Life as a Woman: The New York Years" (2001). She had earlier written the startlingly erotic "Memoirs of a Beatnik" (1969), which had autobiographical elements but was more novel than memoir. A French publisher, Maurice Girodias, had contracted her to write an erotic take on the Beat era, and, as the Tribune article noted, "Girodias kept sending back the manuscript, scrawled with notations for 'more sex,' and di Prima obliged with fictionalized passages of erotic acrobatics." Yet the book attained cult status as a rare feminist window onto a period when men got most of the attention and sexism was much in evidence. Ammiel Alcalay, one of her literary executors, said the free spirit elements of Ms. di Prima's life belied the serious scholarship underpinning her poetry. "Because of the life she lived and the iconic image of the 'Beat woman,' the extraordinary range of sources and knowledge that went into di Prima's writing and thought has hardly been explored," Mr. Alcalay, a professor at Queens College and the Graduate Center, said by email. "From discovering Keats as a teenager to visiting Ezra Pound during his incarceration at St. Elizabeths Hospital, Diane was always connected to both her elders and her most vital contemporaries." Mr. Alcalay has published her work as part of a series of books called Lost Found. Among Ms. di Prima's most ambitious works was a mythologically and spiritually themed series of poems, under the title "Loba," that she added to and revised for decades; in 1998 Penguin published a collected version more than 300 pages long. David Levi Strauss, a writer and teacher who was part of Ms. di Prima's circle in San Francisco in the 1980s, studying with her in the Poetics Program at New College of California, recalled how seriously she took the craft. "She taught something called Hidden Religion, which was about spiritual and political heresies," he said by email. "The intention of the whole course of study in the Poetics Program was to give students an intellectual base to build on, and sources that they could draw on for the rest of their lives as writers." Ms. di Prima's startlingly erotic 1969 memoir offered a rare feminist window onto a period when men got most of the attention and sexism was much in evidence. Ms. di Prima was named poet laureate of San Francisco in 2009. At an event commemorating the appointment, she read a new poem called "First Draft: Poet Laureate Oath of Office." It ends this way: my vow is: to remind us all to celebrate there is no time too desperate no season that is not a Season of Song Diane Rose DiPrima (her brother Frank DiPrima said she adjusted the family name to lowercase the "di" and put a space after it because she thought that that was truer to her Italian ancestors) was born on Aug. 6, 1934, in Brooklyn. Her father, Francis, was a lawyer, and her mother, Emma, was a teacher. Ms. di Prima often spoke of the influence of her maternal grandfather, Domenico Mallozzi, a tailor and anarchist who had immigrated from Italy. He was, she wrote in her 2001 memoir, "regarded somewhat as a family treasure: a powerful and erratic kind of lightning generator, a kind of Tesla experiment, we for some reason kept in the house." Her collection "Revolutionary Letters" (she wrote a series of poems under that title) included a poem about him, "April Fool Birthday Poem for Grandpa," which begins this way: Today is your birthday and I have tried writing these things before, but now in the gathering madness, I want to thank you for telling me what to expect for pulling no punches, back there in that scrubbed Bronx parlor Yet, she wrote, her maternal grandmother, Antoinette, and the other women in the household in which she grew up taught her the practicalities of survival. "It was at my grandmother's side," she wrote, "in that scrubbed and waxed apartment, that I received my first communications about the specialness and the relative uselessness of men." Her mother imparted an early appreciation of poetry. "Our household was extremely verbal," Frank DiPrima said in a phone interview. "My mother would speak verse every day of my life." Ms. di Prima attended Hunter College High School in Manhattan and stayed three semesters at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania before leaving to join the Greenwich Village scene. In 1961 she was a founder of the New York Poets Theater, which staged works by poets and avant garde writers. She produced a literary newsletter, The Floating Bear at first with her lover, the poet LeRoi Jones, who later adopted the name Amiri Baraka, and then on her own. But she grew disillusioned with New York and in 1968 made her way to San Francisco to work with the Diggers, a collective known for street theater and for passing out free food and leaflets. "I was writing 'Revolutionary Letters' at a fast clip and mailing them to Liberation News Service on a regular basis; from there they went to over 200 free newspapers all over the U.S. and Canada," she said in a written version of her poet laureate talk. "I also performed them, sometimes with guitar accompaniment by Peter Coyote, on the steps of City Hall, while my comrades handed out the Digger Papers and tried to persuade startled office workers on their way to lunch that they should drop out and join the revolution." Mr. Powell, in a phone interview, said such a caravan was not unusual. "People constellated around her," he said. "People were just drawn to the dynamo that was Diane." Four of the children in that group were her own, by various fathers; a fifth came later. In addition to her husband, whom she had been with for more than 40 years, and her brother Frank, her children Jeanne DiPrima, Dominique DiPrima, Alexander Marlowe, Tara Marlowe and Rudi DiPrima survive her, along with another brother, Richard; five grandchildren; and three great grandchildren. One of Ms. di Prima's best loved poems, written in 1957 for her first child, Jeanne, is called "Song for Baby o, Unborn": Sweetheart, when you break thru you'll find a poet here not quite what one would choose. I won't promise you'll never go hungry or that you won't be sad on this gutted breaking globe but I can show you baby enough to love to break your heart forever. One of the poems Ms. di Prima read at the event celebrating her appointment as San Francisco's poet laureate was "The Poetry Deal," written in 1993. It was, she explained to the audience, about the pact she had made with the poetry muse the "you" in the poem was poetry itself. One verse goes like this: I'd like my daily bread however you arrange it, and I'd also like to be bread, or sustenance for some others even after I've left. A song they can walk a trail with. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
Sandy Alderson, who left his post as the Mets' general manager last summer because of a cancer recurrence, will return to his baseball roots now that his health has improved. The Oakland Athletics announced on Tuesday that Alderson, 71, would rejoin the club as a senior adviser in the baseball operations department, two decades after he left the team in the hands of Billy Beane. Alderson announced on Saturday at the New York Baseball Writers' Awards dinner, where he received an award honoring his career, that he had been cancer free for four months. He received a standing ovation. Alderson began his baseball career with the A's in 1981 and was one of the sport's pioneers in sabermetrics. Back then, he counseled Beane, his successor, whose reliance on advanced statistics kept the small market team competitive and was famously documented in the book "Moneyball." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
Among the leading gospels coming out of Brooklyn over the last century has been that of Jehovah's Witnesses. Members carried forth their message on street corners and at subway stops, handing out pamphlets printed at their headquarters, known as the Watchtower, a complex of beige brick factories at the base of the Brooklyn Bridge. But during the last decade, a new Brooklyn gospel arose, one of techies, artisans and entrepreneurs. It turns out the Watchtower makes a pretty nice cathedral for them, too. With a move of their headquarters to Warwick, N.Y., the Witnesses have been selling their city holdings more than 30 buildings over the last 10 years, largely to residential developers. Among the properties were immaculately maintained townhouses and the Bossert Hotel, where the Dodgers used to stay, and the huge old warehouse at the foot of Atlantic Avenue that now houses the One Brooklyn Bridge Park condominiums. The most obvious use for the six brick behemoths, also known as Brooklyn Bethel and clustered around Pearl and Sands Streets, would have been loft apartments; Dumbo has quickly become one of the most expensive residential neighborhoods in the borough. But the Bloomberg administration was desperate to keep the spaces commercially zoned, to provide homes for the city's growing tech sector. So last fall, Jared Kushner, owner of 666 Fifth Avenue and the Puck Building and scion of a New Jersey development dynasty, and Aby Rosen, custodian of the Seagram Building, Lever House and 17 State Street, teamed up with Asher Abehsera, a longtime Dumbo developer, and Invesco, the Atlanta institutional investor. Together they bought the 1.4 million square foot complex for 375 million. The buildings in the Dumbo Heights project are getting a top to bottom makeover before tenants can move in. At the time, the price seemed extreme, but with borough grown talent bursting from their lofts in Dumbo and Williamsburg and with prices soaring across the river in SoHo, the Flatiron district and Chelsea, the huge, state of the art offerings in the old Watchtower buildings have begun attracting some of the top young companies in the city. "We really want to create a product you won't find anywhere else in Brooklyn, or most of the city for that matter," Mr. Kushner said during a recent tour of what has been nicknamed Dumbo Heights. "This is really Class A space the dark fiber, the new elevators, the restaurants and roof decks inside the classic industrial spaces these firms love." The team behind Dumbo Heights has the luxury of rebuilding the entire space from top to bottom, inside out without any existing tenants to get in the way which was not the case for many of the old loft buildings that became hubs for the likes of Google and Tumblr. And the partnership has a bit of an advantage over traditional developers in knowing what tech companies want. Mr. Kushner works with his brother Josh's Thrive Capital, one of the city's top venture capital shops. The result is grander spaces for maturing businesses looking to take big blocks of space. Hence the name, meant to evoke the gritty lofts of Dumbo and the lofty grandeur of Brooklyn Heights. Little has outwardly changed in the five industrial buildings, built between 1909 and 1967 and ranging between nine and 12 stories. The interiors are largely raw, with plenty of room for media walls, sculptures and amorphous furniture, though just below the surface will be the latest fiber optics and wireless technology. A mix of pieces by Brooklyn and international artists from Mr. Rosen's collection will also fill the spaces. Outside, the green framed windows and castellated roof of the Watchtower remain, to be converted into decks and bars, but all the familiar signage was taken by the Witnesses. (A second complex of two warehouses on the other side of the bridge with the famous clock greeting those entering the borough over the Brooklyn Bridge has yet to be sold, though a deal is said to be in the works.) The Dumbo Heights team is building on the success of Two Trees Management, the father son partnership of David and Jed Walentas, who are responsible for almost single handedly transforming Dumbo into what it is today, from twee retailing to eight figure penthouses. "Two Trees has really mastered the 500 to 2,500 square foot office suite for start ups, but these companies need somewhere they can grow without having to leave the borough," said Natalie Hurwitz, a broker at Sholom Zuckerbrot and a former city planner. "People live in Brooklyn, they want to work in Brooklyn, but businesses are almost totally out of room. Dumbo Heights is just what the borough needs." As if to prove the point, Etsy, the darling of Dumbo, left its old cobbled together offices, some 80,000 square feet inside 55 Washington Street, to move up the hill. Announced in May, the deal was the first lease for Dumbo Heights, and a big one at that: 200,000 square feet for the entire building at 117 Sands Street and part of 55 Prospect Street, connected through one of the complex's signature sky bridges. "We'll remain firmly planted in Brooklyn, where so many independent, creative businesses are flourishing," Chad Dickerson, the company's chief executive, wrote on the company's blog. "We'll continue to influence and be influenced by the mix of industries here." The state gave the company a 5 million tax credit to stay in the borough, which some criticized since Mr. Dickerson had said he couldn't fathom relocating anywhere else. The development itself, however, is borough agnostic. This month, WeWork, the Manhattan co working company that leases out offices as small as a single desk up to thousands of square feet, reached a deal to open its first Brooklyn outpost in the refurbished complex. WeWork took the entire 90,000 square feet of office space inside 81 Prospect Street, its 11th branch. Given that the developers are focused on larger tenants, WeWork will offer much of the incubator space for Dumbo Heights, as well as networking services and facilities management tools like an app to check in visitors. That leaves only three commercial buildings, with some 600,000 square feet, up for grabs. Leases so far are in the mid 50 a foot, but upper floors in remaining spaces are asking as much as the mid 60 range per foot. For companies considering relocation, it is almost twice the going rate as other parts of Brooklyn and competitive with Lower Manhattan though also less than Chelsea and SoHo. Besides the sky bridges, what binds the complex together is the 90,000 square feet of ground floor retailing. Much as he did while working at Two Trees in the last decade, Mr. Abehsera is responsible for attracting the kind of restaurants and shops that have become synonymous with Kings County. Expect gluten free bakers, Edison bulb lighted bistros, maybe a beer hall and of course sushi, all run by some classically trained, tattoo covered chefs. "It's going to be like our little hipster kibbutz," Mr. Abehsera said. The retail landscape is especially important since Dumbo Heights may be on the border of two great neighborhoods but is also somewhat removed from them, surrounded as it is by the access ramps for the bridges. Still, it offers unparalleled views of Manhattan and sits at the heart of the newly created Brooklyn Tech Triangle, which stretches from Dumbo to the Metrotech Center in Downtown Brooklyn and the Brooklyn Navy Yard. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
"This is not Lear," said the distinguished actress and dancer Valda Setterfield. She wasn't kidding. Although those are the lines written for the title character of "King Lear," the "Lear" that had its United States premiere at New York Live Arts on Wednesday, a collaboration between Ms. Setterfield and the Irish choreographer director John Scott, was a reduction of Shakespeare's play in many senses, only one of which could be considered positive: The show lasts not much more than an hour. Besides Ms. Setterfield, the cast numbers just three: the three men who play Lear's daughters. "Lear" doesn't make much of this cross gender casting, but then it doesn't make much of anything as it witlessly deploys one hackneyed Brechtian or postmodern device after another: a bit of text here, a bit of movement there. In the middle of snippets of Shakespeare, the performers address one another by their real life names. They refer to other productions of "King Lear." They manipulate pieces of paper, a kind of word cloud of the play that serves as nearly the only prop. In an attempt to give the production more contemporary relevance, Mr. Scott and Ms. Setterfield also include telephone conversations between present day parents and children, talk of elderly parents' medications and frailty, of nursing homes and busy adult children promising to visit more often. Yet the potential poignancy of this flipping of filial relationships, and its relation to Shakespeare's themes, is entirely undercut by the theatrical shenanigans. The three men don't speak their lines; they screech them. The choreography a mess of spins, posturing and angry hopping makes the three sisters into the same brat, and when the three men play the Fool, it's worse: They're like the Three Stooges trying to do cabaret. Amid all this, the British born Ms. Setterfield is a balm. More regal than ever at 81, she can speak Shakespearean verse with mellifluous intelligence; a former Merce Cunningham dancer, she can invest simple pantomime with gravitas. The production doesn't take advantage of her ironic wit as did, say, David Gordon's "Dancing Henry Five," a 2004 production that artfully and meaningfully used all the postmodern devices present in "Lear" but she maintains her dignity. The strongest pathos that this "Lear" provokes is the feeling that she deserves better. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
Advanced computers have defeated chess masters and learned how to pick through mountains of data to recognize faces and voices. Now, a billionaire developer of software and artificial intelligence is teaming up with top universities and companies to see if A.I. can help curb the current and future pandemics. Thomas M. Siebel, founder and chief executive of C3.ai, an artificial intelligence company in Redwood City, Calif., said the public private consortium would spend 367 million in its initial five years, aiming its first awards at finding ways to slow the new coronavirus that is sweeping the globe. "I cannot imagine a more important use of A.I.," Mr. Siebel said in an interview. Known as the C3.ai Digital Transformation Institute, the new research consortium includes commitments from Princeton, Carnegie Mellon, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of California, the University of Illinois and the University of Chicago, as well as C3.ai and Microsoft. It seeks to put top scientists onto gargantuan social problems with the help of A.I. its first challenge being the pandemic. The new institute will seek new ways of slowing the pathogen's spread, speeding the development of medical treatments, designing and repurposing drugs, planning clinical trials, predicting the disease's evolution, judging the value of interventions, improving public health strategies and finding better ways in the future to fight infectious outbreaks. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
Alex Zhang Hungtai is a man of many names. As Dirty Beaches, he released several critically acclaimed indie rock albums, mixing what Pitchfork called "grimy, dissonant love songs" with a 1950s greaser look that made fashion editors take notice. But just as he was gaining popularity, he ditched the pomade and began making jazz inspired music under the name Last Lizard. Recently, he released an album with a trio called Love Theme and popped up on the Showtime reboot of "Twin Peaks" as a member of the fictional band Trouble. In his personal life, Mr. Hungtai, 37, has shown a similar aversion to being pinned down. Born in Taiwan, he moved frequently as a child, living in Toronto, Hawaii and in Queens. He has kept up his rootlessness as an adult, bouncing among Los Angeles, Montreal, Berlin, Lisbon and Taipei (when he is not touring the world playing music). Last year, he decided to leave the United States permanently, for reasons both political and personal. Over a few months this year, I emailed with Mr. Hungtai while he was touring. The correspondence ranged from global affairs to his thoughts on Prince and his habit of stocking up on underwear abroad. Consider his emails transmissions from a global nomad, a man who is "Stateless," as he titled a 2014 Dirty Beaches release. In Cairo, Egypt, now and just played a concert here last night. Will be here until April 2, then heading to Beirut to play another concert. Please keep in mind that internet in Lebanon is incredibly slow and unreliable, so the replies might be a bit delayed. Send over the email while I'm still in Egypt so I can actually answer you. Nice to hear from you. Cairo! What venue did you play and what was the audience like? And do you have rituals or routines when you travel to a city, trying local food or shopping? Upon arrival, we were stuck in traffic for an hour when we witnessed a minor accident between a bus and a car. The men in the car gathered around the bus driver and pelted stones and bricks at the bus. It kind of set the tone for the trip. That being said, the people we have met and those who housed us have been incredibly generous and kind. Local food was interesting, especially ful and koshari. Shopping wise, for me, it's usually used old men uncle style shirts from local shops or markets. They have great soft cotton underwear that's significantly cheaper in this side of the world. I try to stock up on them. I've been reading stories about you, and watching interviews on YouTube. One of those interviews struck me. You said: "I'm not scared of moving. For a lot of people, they have a lot to lose. Whereas I don't have anything to lose. So I can just move wherever I want." I admire this. Uprooting seems scary. And exhausting. I don't like this rootedness about myself, but sometimes I guess I do like it, too. I have my records and books around me, and I can't imagine living without them, and it's hard being a nomad with 1,000 LPs. I wonder if your outlook is shaped by your background, the way you moved around so much as a kid. Can you imagine your itinerant lifestyle as something that lasts years or decades, or are you starting to feel the pull toward a fixed home? Where in the world most feels like home to you? My wife is Norwegian, and she travels for work as frequently as I do. Our relationship is based on the idea that our home is each other, rather than a specific place geographically. I'm turning 37 this coming September and can relate to how you feel. Eventually this lifestyle takes its toll on you. My entire belongings have been cut down to four Rubbermaid boxes currently sitting in my sister's basement in Taipei. As of last year, I've stopped "relocating" but rather just travel for work. A physical home is essential for raising children, as I wouldn't want to put them through what I went through. The only place where it truly felt like home was Hawaii. I lived in Honolulu from age 14 to 24, my most formative years. Hawaii is distinctively American, but also un American. This dichotomy was both the reason why I moved to L.A. as an adult, and the reason why I left America last September prior to the election results. It didn't matter to me who won the election because I had realized it wasn't my country after all. The feeling of being a permanent foreigner percolated my sense of being. P.S. I'll be in Beirut from now until April 9. The concert will be on April 8. April 10 to May 10 I will be in Taipei to meet up with my wife and spend some family time with my mother and sisters, and June I will be in Montreal back to work for some recordings. I hope this email finds you well. I thought of you after the news of the bombings in Egypt earlier this month, and how you were there just days before. How was Beirut? Can you tell me a little about the show and the crowd, as you did with Egypt, but also what you did in your off time, and your sense of the city at this moment? Currently back in Taipei now, and slowly adjusting to the slow pace here. Cairo and Beirut seem so distant. This was my third visit to Beirut, so the novelty aspect of the city naturally wore off this time. Mostly it was as if I lived there, reading and meeting friends for coffee and lunch, playing music from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. and maybe a drink at Demo Bar in Gemmayze to end the night. I don't go back to Beirut because of the city; I go back there because of the people, people that I think dearly of like family and brothers and sisters. The concert went very well from our perspective (not sure how the crowd felt). It was part of Irtijal festival showcasing experimental music in Lebanon along with some international guests. This particular concert was a special one because it was focused on my bond and friendship with Khodor. You know that feeling when you were 5 years old, playing toys with your brother or buddy, and you have this private world you created together? It felt like we reclaimed some of our childhood back and did it in public. I've heard you talk about "Purple Rain," and thought your comments about the record were spot on the way everybody assumes it's a pop record because it sold well but it's actually pretty strange when you listen to it. What ambitions do you have for your music and your career? What two or three records mean the most to you? Do the things you listened to as a teenager still move you? Also: How did you come up with the name Last Lizard, and what does it mean? As far as Prince is considered, I'm a mere tourist fan, but even on that kind of basis his genius can be felt in multiple layers and complexities. How he managed to hustle people into thinking it's "pop music" is where the genius and his purple magic is. I think for any artist the goal is to imprint his/her vision onto the real world. It could be an idea, could be creating a physical object, a performance, etc. The goal is to project and manifest that view and infuse it into reality. The first CD I ever bought on my own allowance was Janet Jackson's "Rhythm Nation," which I still listen to today. Another all time favorite is Vincent Gallo's "When." Still jam it. The name Last Lizard comes from a Yukio Mishima short children's story. I hope this email finds you well. Our photo editor saw you on "Twin Peaks"! How did that come about? Also, would you talk a bit about your approach to style and image, both on and offstage? Do you think it's important for a musician to cultivate a stylish image? I know you're a big fan of Wong Kar wai, which comes through in your cinematic videos. Do you see yourself as part musician, part visual artist? I first met David Lynch in Paris when he invited me to play at his club Silencio. This was in 2012, I believe. That meeting introduced me to Dean Hurley, who is David's sound engineer. When Dean asked me to record some sax for this song he's working on, I drove over to Mulholland Drive and, as usual, Dean worked his magic. Last year, when the filming of "Twin Peaks" started, Dean invited me to join the filming of this fictional band. It's strange to be a fan when you're a kid and then later become part of the "Twin Peaks" universe. Do I think it's important for a musician to be fashionable? Whatever floats their boat, because in this world the only important thing to me is to understand the importance of not letting anyone instill fear in you, whether it's fashion or not. Taste is irrelevant until proven otherwise. Everything is seasonal and temporary. That's how I feel about style. To answer your question in regards to visual work: yes, it is integral. The visual world is important to an artist or musician because we must project the ideal of a world that we wish to live in, when the reality of it has failed us over and over again. It is important to paint this dream, in our work, because we owe it to the world. It's what makes us human, we dream. P.S. Sorry I forgot to answer your question in regards to Wong Kar wai. Yes, he was very crucial in my teenage years when I first discovered his films because all the characters were real human beings with complex emotions, unlike how Asians are portrayed in Hollywood. It was a lifesaving moment to be relieved from those images drilled into your head while growing up. From "Sixteen Candles" to "The Hangover," the list goes on. It's important to see yourself and not hate yourself because everything around you while growing up in this country was made to make you feel inadequate. It is especially important to challenge authorities now, more than ever. The world is changing. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
This week on the Billboard album chart, the Weeknd holds at No. 1, while the "La La Land" soundtrack shoots to No. 2 after the film won seven Golden Globe Awards. The Weeknd's "Starboy" (XO/Republic) stays at the top for its second week in a row, and the third time since the album was released in November. In the week that ended Thursday, it was credited with the equivalent of 63,000 sales in the United States, according to Nielsen data. That is mostly because of its popularity on streaming sites; the full album itself sold only 14,000 copies. But the surge of "La La Land" (Interscope) is the biggest news. The soundtrack had inched its way to No. 15 on last week's chart, in the run up to the Golden Globes. Then in the week that included the awards show and its aftermath, the soundtrack with songs by Justin Hurwitz sung by the film's performers did even better than expected. Its sales increased 83 percent to a total of 42,000, most of which came through traditional sales and downloads, rather than streaming. By sales alone, "La La Land" did far better than "Starboy," but Billboard's charts are now computed using a formula that incorporates both sales and streaming data. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
"Summer in the Forest" is an extraordinarily tender documentary that asks what it means to be human. Here, even the most gentle scenes raise mighty questions. In the 1960s, Jean Vanier founded L'Arche, a community near Paris that has become home to many men and women with developmental disabilities. The filmmakers follow Mr. Vanier, now in his 80s, as he lives and works with those who have Down syndrome and other conditions. Though Mr. Vanier provides some background in his comforting voice over, we mostly survey L'Arche residents as they go about their lives. Decades ago, it was a radical experiment to remove those with disabilities from institutions. But by doing so, Mr. Vanier says, they have greater freedom and can prompt those without disabilities to redefine what is considered "normal" and "happy." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
Honestly, I didn't think our Mediterranean vacation could get much better. The dozen of us on the trip had already swum several miles a day through astonishing turquoise waters off Kas, a remote village on Turkey's southwest coast, where cliffs soar up from the sea, the soft air is scented with jasmine and views of the glimmering bay are downright therapeutic. Amid a ring of seven islands earlier in the week, our group of open water swimmers glided alongside limestone coastlines, the sunlight spangling the underwater landscape of smooth boulders and serrated pillars. We swam over marine forests swaying in the current. We crossed into the open sea, pulling rhythmically through a panorama of royal blue, a laser show of sunbeams funneling into a gleaming ring in the depth. "It's like swimming in the sky," my reluctant swimmer wife, Susan, would say later in our breezy hotel room. Susan; our daughters, Jenna and Michaela; and I were on a weeklong adventure a swim vacation. It is a puzzling thing to many but is slowly gaining popularity among water lovers. The tours are a tiny sliver of one of the fastest growing segments of tourism, so called adventure travel, which typically involves some sort of physical activity, connection with nature and cultural immersion. Think of trekking through gorilla habitats in Rwanda or kayaking down the River Kwai in Thailand the antithesis of a package tour to Las Vegas. Now, we were on the final leg of our longest single swim, a 5K international crossing from a large rock near the Greek island of Meis to the Kas peninsula, our guide Bruce Allender leading the way in a dinghy. I cruised through the pack looking for our daughters and saw them swimming side by side at the front. Ever since they were young, I had been trying to get these two to love swimming as much as I do. Both had reluctantly agreed to swim on their high school teams, but had no interest in chlorinated laps as young adults, now in their mid 20s. They didn't like swimming in lakes or at the beach, either, with little tolerance for critters, waves or cool, dark water. I steered in between them, smiling in the clear, blue green sea. We were arcing our cupped hands into the water in unison, catching views of one another with each breath. It was bliss. And it was followed by another magical moment, when I swam the next day in sync with a large sea turtle that surely was inviting me to hitch a ride. Our family agreed that it was our best holiday ever. Not everything was perfect, of course. I would have preferred actually stepping onto the isle of Meis to start the Greece to Turkey swim instead of hopping from the boat a long way offshore. (That shore to shore crossing is undertaken by locals in an annual race in June and at night by refugees passing through Turkey to seek asylum in Greece. Ali Gumrukcu, the captain of the daily ferry between Kas and Meis, said that of the roughly 400 refugees crossing the water into Greece each month, most of them from Syria, 10 to 20 brave the swim, waiting for nights with no moonlight so they would be undetected.) There were confusing moments when a local competitor of SwimTrek veered his big boat toward one of our dinghies and yelled threats. And then there were the two fighting dogs that crashed through the doorway of a dance bar and nearly bowled me over. Like most people, we had never heard of a swim vacation. When Jenna visited us in London in 2014 and arranged a hiking tour in Portugal, I wondered if there were such a thing for swimming, too. We went online and, sure enough, several companies offered trips. His association, based in Seattle, jointly published the United Nations World Tourism Organization's latest global report on adventure tourism. It noted how spending had surged in recent years as travelers increasingly sought authentic experiences in remote locales. Swimming wasn't on the association's list of 34 adventure activities, from backpacking to caving to safaris. But swim tours, he said, are in sync with the growing number of people and travel businesses customizing trips and combining interests like hiking and bird watching, cycling and wine. "It's engaging in immersive experiences," Mr. Stowell said. It's "so much more meaningful than the highly packaged tours." Simon Murie came up with the idea for SwimTrek in 2000, when he spent a week organizing a trip to Turkey to swim the Hellespont, the fabled stretch of water between Europe and Asia described by Lord Byron and prominent in Greek mythology. The logistics were such a hassle he figured that others would be interested in the trip if someone else did all the work and they could just turn up and swim. He led his first tour in 2003, island hopping in Greece. Since then, Mr. Murie said, the business has grown from 90 swimmers a year to more than 2,500 taking trips to more than 30 locations around the globe, including the Hellespont in late August. Interest in open water swimming enjoyed a boost when it was added to the Beijing Olympics in 2008, and open water races around the globe are flourishing. Several companies are adding swim tours, some in Turkey. "It's going to be the next hot swimming spot, we think," said Hopper McDonough, who runs the American company SwimVacation, which this year added a Turkish coast swim tour to its Hawaii and yacht based British Virgin Islands trips. Kas, which dates back to antiquity and has a bohemian vibe, is popular with swimmers because of the dramatic setting of mountains and Mediterranean its waters clean, calm and free of Jet Skis and sharks. It became popular with backpackers in the 1980s, later with divers, now with swimmers. People who take these tours have at least two common bonds swimming and a sense of adventure. Our group included a British design engineer, a Swedish geologist, a retired molecular biologist from New Zealand, a 30 something Irish couple who did the Ironman 140.6 mile triathlon in 2014, an English investor training for the Ironman, and his 17 year old daughter. We all hit it off right away. "It's like holidays as a child," she said. We started with a briefing under a rising full moon at a table outside our hotel. Our guides, Bruce, an Australian masters swimming coach, and Alice Williams, a British beach lifeguard, explained that we would be divvied up into three teams based on speed and that we'd never be more than a moment or two away from our escorts in boats. Our 7:30 a.m. orientation swim, hopping from a deck on the limestone ridge into jade green water 20 feet deep, was meant to assess our abilities. But something was strange. The water was a bit cool, then suddenly ice cold in large patches and blurry, as if baby oil had been poured in. We were swimming through what locals call sweet water, percolating down from mountaintops, pouring out cold and mineral rich through rock just below the surface. After breakfast at the hotel (weak coffee, delicious local tomatoes), we trooped down the narrow brick streets flanked by low rise apartments and hotels, their balconies draped with thick strands of pink, white and blue bougainvillea. Under a hot sun at the harbor, we stepped onto the gulet a 46 foot cross between a tiny yacht and a giant pontoon owned and piloted by Mustafa and Zeynep Sarica. We motored 25 minutes to a peninsula. The sea was a slightly chilly 77 degrees. Our three groups stuck close to the rocky coastline to avoid the current. At times we swam a foot or two above the cragged shelves of submerged rock, as if soaring over canyons. We would swim about 20 minutes and stop to rest and drink from water bottles or to check out a turtle floating below, some passing trumpet fish or another otherworldly seascape. When we emerged onto the teak slatted deck after an hour or so, me shivering, hot tea never tasted better. The grilled chicken and fresh salads prepared by Zeynep for lunch seemed more flavorful. Later, Bruce and Alice videotaped our strokes from above the water and below for technique pointers. Jane Evans, from outside of Dublin, joked that in Ireland they say there are 50 shades of green; here, there are 50 shades of blue. One of my favorite routes was the archipelago swim. One minute we were peering underwater at the waves plowing fizzily into an island's limestone bank; the next, we were in open sea more than 100 feet deep, as if drifting through an indigo dome, with no bottom in sight. The day with the most variety was our swim and hike at the ruins of Aperlai, which long ago made a rare purple dye for the Roman empire. An earthquake about A.D. 600 submerged part of the town, and we swam over the outlines of the storehouses for the shells that held the prized pigment. On the way to the ruins, tilting my head to breathe on the right, the view reminded me of the Delaware Water Gap in the Poconos, the dark green mountainside towering against the bright blue sky. Breathing to the left, I was back in the Mediterranean, the shoreline hemmed by thick ridges of white and gray limestone that sloped into the crystalline water. Climbing up a steep, rock rutted trail, we stopped to inspect large stone tombs with curved lids and posed for group pictures against ancient crumbling walls. From the highest point on the hill, the shallow bay was a kaleidoscope of aquamarine and electric blue, the boat like a little toy in the water below. On the last full day of swimming, I was exploring an azure bay after lunch when I came across a dark circle, maybe 25 feet below. I took a deep breath and scooped down through the water, every six feet or so pinching my nose and blowing out to pop my ears a tip I got from Mike, the retired scientist. A geometric pattern of a shell sharpened as I descended to the floor, and I fanned my fingers across its ridges. The turtle rose up slowly as I rushed to the surface for air. When I came back under it was floating as if in slow motion, flapping prehistoric looking fins, banking to the left. I glided above, mimicking its underwater flight, as sunlight flickered across its shield. We swam for eight minutes, me several feet above, plunging down to rub its shell. The turtle kept close. It was almost as if it were welcoming me to latch on. So I did. For three rides, several seconds each, swooping through an ocean of velvety blue. The tours generally range from one to eight days with eight to 14 swimmers and routes of two to three kilometers, twice a day. Weeklong tours start about 1,000 a person, including hotel, boat and daytime meals but not flights, dinners or tips. The pricier tours are based on boats. Swimmers are often in their 30s to 50s, though ages range from 16 to the 80s, and as many are single as couples and families. Some operators also offer private tours. Travel insurance is required. What to Consider It's best to have some open water swimming experience to get the most out of a trip; even avid pool swimmers can get freaked out when surrounded by the sea with no bottom visible. But tour operators cater to both advanced and novice swimmers and offer stroke analysis and coaching. Swimming in the sea can be easier than in a pool because of the buoyancy, and there are fins to speed the pace. How Safe Is It? The locations usually feature clear, relatively calm water free of watercraft and sharks. The tour guides are certified beach lifeguards with first aid training and powerboat licenses. They say the biggest hazards can be Jet Skis, jelly fish, sudden storms and swimmer fatigue. Bring a rash guard and a lot more sunscreen than you think you will need. SwimTrek (swimtrek.com) is the largest operator with more than 30 destinations. Trips run January to November, from a one day swim at Alcatraz to eight days in the Greek Sporades. SwimQuest (swimquest.uk.com) offers tours from Britain to Thailand, as well as coaching weeks in the Mediterranean with the Olympic open water medalist Cassie Patten. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
MUMBAI, India A strike at the biggest Indian car company, Maruti Suzuki, idled one of its four major production plants for the fifth consecutive day on Tuesday. The dispute pits the aspirations of manufacturing workers against the economic realities of a national labor glut. The strike is the latest in a series of labor relations problems at the four year old plant in Manesar, about 30 miles south of New Delhi, that are crimping sales for the automaker. The company, which makes about half the cars sold in India, is majority owned by Suzuki of Japan. Maruti Suzuki has said that its sales fell 20.8 percent in September from a year earlier, to 85,565 cars, largely because of earlier problems at the Manesar plant. The factory, where workers began the current strike Friday, has the capacity to produce 1,200 cars a day, including popular models like the Swift, A Star and SX4. Shares of Maruti Suzuki were little changed in Mumbai on Tuesday, but the stock is down more than 24 percent this year. Other Indian auto companies have also been hit by labor unrest this year. In March, some workers at a General Motors factory in the western state of Gujarat went on strike for nearly three months. There is a growing dissatisfaction among Indian factory workers, particularly those in the auto industry, that they are not sharing in the financial success of their companies at a time when inflation in India is running at nearly 10 percent. Union workers are also angry over the growing use of contract workers, who are paid far less than regular employees and unlike permanent workers can be laid off without government approval. In some auto factories, contract workers make up more than half the staff. Monthly manufacturing wages in India range from 6,000 rupees, or about 120, for contract workers, to about 35,000 rupees (about 710) for highly skilled and experienced workers. While those wages are better than the average income in India about 81 a month living on them at the lower end of that range can still be tough. Still, while government protection against layoffs gives union autoworkers some leverage, they know they have few employment alternatives especially in north India where Maruti Suzuki and many other auto companies have built their factories. About half of the country's population is 25 or younger, and nearly 12 million people become of working age every year. But India creates only a few million new jobs each year because of its stringent labor laws, weak infrastructure and anemic education system. One striking worker at the Manesar plant, Satyawan, a 24 year old who has been working at Maruti for five years and uses only one name, acknowledged that good factory jobs were few and far between. "Unemployment is increasing by the day so we won't get a job, even if we look for one," he said. A company spokesman, Puneet Dhawan, said the company was not negotiating with the workers, who he said had seized "effective control" of the plant. He accused the workers of breaking furniture and damaging equipment at the plant. "Negotiations can happen only when there is an environment for that," Mr. Dhawan said by telephone. "Right now, we are looking at a mob of people who are going on a rampage." Workers at some Maruti Suzuki parts suppliers, a Suzuki engine factory and a Suzuki motorcycle factory also went on strike Friday, but some production has since resumed at those factories. The Manesar auto plant, which began operations in 2007, has been the site of several disputes between managers and workers since July. The crux of the disagreement is whether workers there can form a new union, rather than join a union that also represents workers at Maruti Suzuki's older plants in nearby Gurgaon. The Manesar union workers contend that the older plants' unions are too compliant with management. The strike could have serious ramifications for the company. The lead up to the Indian festival of Diwali, which is on Oct. 26 this year, accounts for a large chunk of the sales at Indian car companies because many Hindus consider it auspicious to buy new cars and other big ticket items during the holiday period. And sales for all carmakers had already been declining in recent months because the Indian central bank has been raising interest rates and the government has lowered subsidies on gasoline and diesel fuel. Sales fell 1.8 percent in September from a year earlier, the third consecutive monthly decline. So far, the new Maruti union has not made specific demands for higher pay or better benefits. But leaders have said that they will negotiate for better working conditions longer breaks and bus service to the remote plant and push the company to provide permanent employment to contract workers, once their union is recognized by the company. Workers and management reached a settlement Oct. 1 that did not include the company's recognizing the new union, the Maruti Suzuki Employees Union. But less than a week later, the workers went on strike again, because they said the company had not rehired 1,200 contract workers who had joined the previous strike. The workers also demanded that the company reinstate 44 suspended workers. Mr. Dhawan, the company spokesman, said Maruti had planned to take back contract workers as production increased in coming days. But he said the company would not reinstate the 44 workers, who face disciplinary action under company rules and under the agreement reached with the union. The president of the employees' union, Sonu Gujjar, said the union now wanted the 44 suspended employees reinstated right away, without disciplinary action, because the company had reneged on its agreement by not rehiring contract workers. He said the union was asking members of 40 to 50 unions at nearby manufacturers to rally outside the Maruti factory Thursday to put pressure on the company. "It will affect the whole industry and even the government," Mr. Gujjar said. He added that the other unions would also write letters to their managers expressing support for the Maruti Suzuki workers. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Global Business |
Each week, the Open Thread newsletter will offer a look from across The New York Times at the forces that shape the dress codes we share, with Vanessa Friedman as your personal shopper. The latest newsletter appears here. To receive it in your inbox, register here. Good afternoon! The fallout from the Weinstein scandal has been extraordinary this week, with women in multiple industries coming forward to tell their stories. Modeling has, unsurprisingly, gotten swept up in the torrent, and I really hope this (finally) leads to change in the industry. There's a compelling prose poem/mea culpa from Scott Rosenberg about his responsibility as a screenwriter in the Weinstein orbit, but I think it applies equally to fashion. Take a look. In the interest of further sharing, I was very excited to receive a lot of thoughtful responses to my questions of last week about Gucci giving up fur, Supreme's new status and Coach Inc.'s new name and wanted to pass on a few excerpts: "I would say it might have something to do with the company trying to tap into the zeitgeist of sustainable living. Consumers are now more environmentally conscious, and if they are going to spend thousands of dollars on an item, they want that decision to be an ethical one." Tim, Seattle | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
Lava Thomas has earned the right to design San Francisco's monument to the poet and civil rights activist Maya Angelou again. Last year, an opaque selection process opened a rift between public officials and local artists when the city suddenly rejected Ms. Thomas's winning design. The reversal attempts to heal divisions. On Monday, the San Francisco Arts Commission unanimously voted to approve a previous recommendation made by a 2019 review panel for Ms. Thomas to design the luminary's sculpture. The commission also terminated a second selection process that began earlier this year after City Supervisor Catherine Stefani the legislative sponsor behind the project rejected the artist's proposal because she disliked its nonfigurative elements, which included a nine foot tall bronze book with Angelou's portrait on one side and her words on the other. Stefani's decision angered many local artists, who began scrutinizing how San Francisco chooses public artworks amid a citywide effort to diversify its monuments. At a time when classical bronze statues of men are falling out of favor across the country, some artists saw the scrapped Angelou monument as an example of politicians' thwarting visions of a more diverse future. Backlash against the municipal process reached a fever pitch over the summer when Ms. Thomas was abruptly muted and refused extra time during her testimony in a public hearing with the commission. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
Chicago's 77 neighborhoods including Lincoln Park, home to the new Wrightwood 659 gallery offer myriad reasons to stray from the beaten path. But lately the Loop, as the downtown district is called for the elevated train tracks that encircle it, is fighting for your attention with a new architecture center, writers' museum, river walk, design centric hotels, destination restaurants and Art on the Mart, a digital art installation broadcast across a 2.5 acre building facade on the river. All of the city's train lines fan out from downtown, making it a great base from which to explore beyond, particularly for those in search of vibrant storefront theaters, design shops and breweries. Late fall and winter are bargain times to appreciate them, when rates for everything from airfare to hotel rooms drop. But the best reasons to visit Chicago now largely defy climate. Two new cultural stars have concentrated the appeal of the Loop district. The former Chicago Architecture Foundation moved to a prominent riverfront location in August and, having added an intriguing museum with models of famous buildings worldwide, renamed itself the Chicago Architecture Center. It's the start of the center's famous riverboat architectural tours ( 47), now launching from across the street (through Nov. 19). Out of river season, join one of the downtown walking tours ( 26) that tell the story of Chicago's design evolution. Nearby, the interactive exhibits of the American Writers Museum, including manual typewriters where patrons are encouraged to add to crowdsourced stories, bring the art of storytelling to life (admission 12). At the new Bellemore, diners in the West Loop are treated not just to refined food and glamorous design, but the kind of pretension free dining that characterizes Chicago's vibrant restaurant scene. The chef Jimmy Papadopoulos uses global ingredients and cooking techniques to create richly flavored, multi textured seasonal dishes including, recently, a salad with port marinated pears ( 14) and grilled lamb belly with eggplant, pickled grapes and chickpea crackers ( 36). Menu splurges include the Instagram famed oyster pie ( 68), but guests needn't succumb to enjoy what is simultaneously a down home and dressed up dinner while listening to David Bowie and ogling the taxidermy birds above the bar. Chicagoans may be divided on the merits of deep dish pizza, but when it comes to homegrown invention, no one disputes the reign of improv comedy. Members of the seminal Compass Players went on, in 1959, to form Second City, whose alumni range from Bill Murray to Tina Fey. Catch a late night improv show at Second City's slick Up Comedy Club in the Old Town district (tickets from 18). Or Uber about a mile west to iO Theater, where the Improvised Shakespeare Company specializes in long form improv using the playwright's language to craft two act comedies based on a single audience title suggestion (tickets 20). 4) 10 a.m. Art History at Home and Abroad You don't need us to tell you to go to the Art Institute of Chicago (admission 20 to 25). But while you're there, here are a few specifically Chicago centric exhibitions you might otherwise overlook. Through Jan. 6, "Hairy Who? 1966 1969," features the boldly graphic work of six countercultural South Side based artists. Then make your way to the quirky Thorne Miniature Rooms, a subterranean collection of 68 dollhouse scale architectural vignettes from a Gothic church and Tudor great room to a New Mexican dining room in the 1940s. All were designed by Narcissa Niblack Thorne, a Chicago artist and the wife of James Ward Thorne, heir to the Montgomery Ward retail fortune. From Nov. 17 to Jan. 8, several of the rooms are decorated in denominationally appropriate holiday style. For a panoramic lunch, dine at Cindy's, the conservatory like rooftop restaurant at the Chicago Athletic Association hotel overlooking Millennium Park and Lake Michigan. Share the generous seafood cocktail ( 22) and cast iron chilaquiles ( 27) while taking in the views. Then continue north to the Chicago River to stroll on the two year old Chicago Riverwalk, a 1.25 mile long, water level promenade. In fair weather, the kayak launches, picnic lawns and cafes bustle, but even in the off season, the walkway offers good perspectives on the surrounding landmark high rises. After appreciating design in the city, take a souvenir home from a clutch of North Side shops that specialize in architectural salvage, modern design and antiques. Begin trolling at the vast warehouse where Architectural Artifacts trades in decorative building castoffs from wrought iron railings and wooden mantelpieces to terra cotta gargoyles as well as more portable art tiles and juggling pins. In the nearby Andersonville neighborhood, visit Brimfield for vintage plaid blankets and college pennants. Next door, Scout deals midcentury furnishings and funky finds as well as Impressionist Chicago cityscapes by the local artist Chuck Meyers. The explosive Chicago microbrew scene is largely neighborhood based, from Argus Brewery in the South Side Pullman district and Moody Tongue Brewery in Pilsen to Temperance Beer Company in north suburban Evanston. Among the most popular, Half Acre Beer Co. recently opened a tap room, restaurant and beer garden just west of Andersonville. Claim a rustic wood table and a pint of its signature Daisy Cutter pale ale, Pony pilsner (each 6) or wet hopped black ale Sticky Fat ( 8) to relax in the family friendly locale. Alcohol free options include local Dark Matter Coffee ( 2) and 164 Soda ( 3). When hunger strikes, don't miss the housemade bread ( 6) and roast chicken ( 18). Five major theaters in Chicago, including Steppenwolf and Goodman theaters, claim Tony Awards. But it's the city's small, often storefront based theaters over 200 of them exist that form the backbone of the rich theater community. Go intimate at A Red Orchid Theater in Old Town where the actor Michael Shannon is a founder. The ensemble focused Strawdog Theater in the North Center neighborhood is known for immersive staging of new works and rewritten classics such as "Great Expectations." Steep Theater in the Edgewater area has strong ties to contemporary playwrights such as Simon Stephens, and often stages searing shows before audiences of 60 or fewer, who toast performances post curtain at the theater's new adjacent bar. In a town where nightclubs and bars stay open an extra hour on Saturday nights, there's a nightcap for every mood. The polished new Z Bar at the Peninsula Chicago hotel offers bird's eye views over Michigan Avenue's Magnificent Mile downtown. In bohemian Wicker Park, the intimate Up Room atop the Robey hotel channels a midcentury lounge with Chicago accents, including drinks inspired by the Great Fire of 1871, such as Holy Cow milk punch ( 15). In the Loop, enter through a neighboring diner to reach the neo dive bar Moneygun and huddle in a circular booth with a classic cocktail like a Pink Squirrel ( 11.75). Nearby, play a game of foosball or bocce ball at the retro Game Room in the Chicago Athletic Association. Eighteen miles of paved pathway edges Lake Michigan, the Great Lake that moderates much of Chicago's weather. Biking is the best way to appreciate the city's sparkling outdoor asset. Rent a hybrid, town cruiser or road bike from Bike and Roll Chicago at Millennium Park or Navy Pier (from 12.50 an hour) and head southbound for a traffic free cruise and stellar skyline views on your return back north (the heavier Divvy shared bikes are another option at 3 per 30 minutes). Winter occasionally disrupts this plan, in which case head to Maggie Daley Park next to Millennium Park to skate on the meandering ice ribbon that simulates a frozen prairie path amid surrounding high rises (free; skate rentals 14). In recent years, the Museum of Contemporary Art (admission 15) has used innovative exhibitions such as the recently closed group show "I Was Raised on the Internet" and the current "Picture Fiction" on Kenneth Josephson's conceptual photography (through Dec. 30) to attract younger patrons, rejuvenating the gallery experience. Stop in to see how, then head to the museum's new ground floor restaurant Marisol for brunch. Its chef, Jason Hammel, a farm to table pioneer with Lula Cafe in Logan Square, brings his savory skills downtown to the fittingly modern space. Indulge in a housemade doughnut ( 4) frittata ( 14) and crispy pork succotash ( 16), then walk it off on the nearby Magnificent Mile stretch of Michigan Avenue. The 1929 vintage Carbide and Carbon Building newly houses the 364 room St. Jane hotel in the Loop. Named for the pioneering social worker Jane Addams, the hotel plans to donate 1.1 percent of hotel revenue to a local charity. Guests will find local brands in the minibar and a destination all day American brasserie, Free Rein, on the ground floor. Rooms from 269; stjanehotel.com. Though occasional downtown apartments come up on Airbnb, most rentals tend to cluster in more residential neighborhoods. Those in the Old Town district tend to run from 64 to 130 and offer easy mass transit access north or south via the Red or Brown Line trains. In the opposite direction and conveniently on the Red Line, look for good deals in Chinatown, where apartments start around 65. Airbnb.com. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
Before he was the familiar bald and bespectacled founding father, Benjamin Franklin was a 17 year old neophyte printer with burning ambition and something of a punk rock visual sensibility. Or so it seems from the very first piece of his printing, which will go on view at the University of Pennsylvania on Tuesday Franklin's 311th birthday after having been out of sight for nearly 200 years. Penn Libraries recently acquired the only known surviving copy of a 1723 Franklin broadside, showing an elegy for a Philadelphia poet and printer named Aquila Rose, and topped with a bold skull and crossbones motif. The broadside, created when Franklin was 17, first surfaced in the 1820s, amid a wave of antiquarian interest in America's founding generation, but then disappeared from view, until a dealer recently discovered it pasted inside a scrapbook. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
PARIS It was a bit of a shock to the fashion world on Sunday at the end of Milan Fashion Week when Miuccia Prada announced that Raf Simons would be joining her company as co creative director. But only a bit of a shock. "Raf to Prada" rumors had been circulating for months. The more surprising news was that he and Ms. Prada would be equal design partners, a first of its kind long term arrangement. In recent years, there had only been one similar partnership, when Christian Lacroix collaborated with Dries Van Noten for one show just one season. But a partnership with "no end date to the contract," as Ms. Prada said at the secretive surprise news conference? That was a big deal. And one that might inspire other brands caught in the sales driven cycle of hirings and firings to consider similar moves. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
Dale Chihuly, the artist whose show of 20 glass art installations is on display spread across the 250 acres of the New York Botanical Garden, used a group of unpaid assistants for 15 years to create works that were attributed solely to him, a man claimed in a lawsuit filed on Friday in Seattle. In an unusually detailed answer and counterclaim, Mr. Chihuly's lawyers also on Friday told of the artist's deteriorating mental state, and said the lawsuit was "nothing more than an ugly and reprehensible display of opportunism and exploitation" by the man, who the lawyers said was seeking money to keep quiet about the artist's condition. The lawsuit was filed by a former contractor, Michael Moi, who said he first met the artist through a shared acquaintance, did construction work for him and eventually participated in "myriad clandestine painting sessions." It names as defendants Mr. Chihuly, 75; his wife, Leslie Chihuly; and Chihuly Studio Inc., and asks for a finding that Mr. Moi is a co author of certain works and owns an interest in them. "The artist has long relied on a collection of discreet and trusted individuals to work in the shadows to create the drawings and paintings on paper glass plexiglass and canvas that bear his name," the suit claims. "This small group which has never been acknowledged has two requirements: secrecy and unwavering loyalty." In the counterclaim, Mr. Chihuly said he had long used assistants to help him execute his artistic vision, but denied that Mr. Moi, whom he described as "a handyman," had been one of them. Instead, Mr. Chihuly's lawyers wrote, Mr. Moi had threatened to expose embarrassing information about the artist unless his demands for money were met. Mr. Chihuly's lawyers wrote that the artist had been diagnosed with "bipolar disorder, symptoms of which include depression, hyperactivity and/or mania, paranoia, impaired judgment and irrational behavior," something that was rarely discussed publicly because his family and friends wanted to shield him from the "often cruel and judgmental glare of public scrutiny." Mr. Moi, the countersuit said, possessed confidential documents that supposedly reflect Mr. Chihuly's personal struggles. "Under the thin guise of this litigation, Mr. Moi is threatening to make such documents public as purported 'evidence' in his lawsuit unless Dale, his family, and Chihuly Inc. pay him 21 million for his silence," according to the countersuit. For years it has been common for artists to employ groups of assistants whose tasks ranged from stretching canvases to maintaining archives to supplying materials. Some artists, such as Andy Warhol or Jeff Koons who once told an interviewer that he was "an idea person" have employed assistants who had a direct hand in creating paintings or sculptures, sometimes even being paid an hourly wage and functioning like members of an assembly line to produce works that later sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars or more. The lawsuit filed by Mr. Moi describes a less formal arrangement, saying he was never paid by Mr. Chihuly, became an employee or signed any type of work for hire agreement. Rather, the suit claims, Mr. Chihuly "repeatedly and consistently" promised him future compensation, saying that his studio kept careful records, and that he would at some point "take care of him" which Mr. Moi took to mean that his share of the profits of works they had created would be ascertained and awarded. By most measures, Mr. Chihuly whose work is in more than 200 museums around the world and who is known for large public exhibitions, and for a 1986 solo show at the Louvre in Paris and Mr. Moi would seem to make an odd team. Mr. Moi's lawsuit said the two got to know each other in 1999 aboard Mr. Chihuly's boat, the Meteor, which was captained by Billy O'Neill, a mutual acquaintance. Mr. O'Neill eventually became Mr. Chihuly's assistant, the lawsuit said, and Mr. Moi was hired to repair roofs on houses owned by Mr. Chihuly. Before long, Mr. Moi's lawsuit states, he began receiving phone calls from assistants including Mr. O'Neill asking him to take part in "frequent and impromptu painting sessions." The lawsuit described that process: Mr. Moi and Mr. O'Neill would pour paint onto lines of heavy stock French watercolor paper arranged on floors. Mr. Moi would then use foam mops to create the background and body of pieces. Mr. Chihuly would follow, adding dots, drip and lines and, finally, his signature. Later, the suit said, Mr. Moi used a blowtorch to "'burn' thick layers of paint and metallic dust" onto works being created by Mr. Chihuly. By 2012, the lawsuit said, Mr. Moi began working on plexiglass paintings at the Chihuly studio. At that point, Mr. Chihuly played no part in the creative process, the lawsuit said, adding that his role was confined to signing finished pieces. Mr. O'Neill was fired from the studio in early 2015, the lawsuit said, and, around the same time, Mr. Moi's contact with Mr. Chihuly trailed off. He was later told that a new group of assistants had been hired, the suit claimed, saying he then realized that "neither Chihuly nor the Chihuly studio was going to compensate him for his years of painting work as promised." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
A lot of Cold War symbolism accumulated around the 1972 world chess championship match between Boris Spassky and Bobby Fischer, but that was nothing compared with the weighty baggage piled onto the Washington Square Park chess tables in "Fish Men," a drama by Candido Tirado receiving its New York premiere at Intar. The story brings five men together around the tables, which are a New York City institution. By the time each has unloaded his back story, we've been given a history of genocide, a helping of survivor guilt, a course in the hazards of gambling, and much, much more. Too much, really. Cash (Shawn Randall) is a verbose hustler who tries to lure people into playing against him for money, something he especially needs on this day because his child's birthday is imminent. John (Gardiner Comfort) is another hustler with a gambling debt. Jerome (David Anzuelo) is one of the last park denizens willing to play chess just for fun, and all of them revere an elderly fellow known as Ninety Two (Ed Setrakian), who doesn't play anymore but was once a chess prodigy. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
Thomas's friends are finally getting a little more diverse. With more than 1 billion in annual retail sales, Thomas the Tank Engine and his locomotive pals constitute one of the world's largest preschool toy and television franchises. Created in 1946 by a British clergyman, Thomas has charmed generations of boys and girls especially boys by teaching gentle life lessons on the fictional island of Sodor. But the property's old fashioned sensibility makes some parents angry. In 2014, for instance, an essay attacking the "Thomas Friends" series for a lack of diversity, among other things, spread quickly online after publication in The Guardian. Mattel, which bought Hit Entertainment, the owner of "Thomas Friends," for 680 million in 2012, lists about 100 characters on the brand's official website. The vast majority are male and apparently white. At the same time, Mattel has been eager to capitalize on its investment by finding ways to make the franchise more popular in fast growing markets around the world. Enter Yong Bao and Carlos, among others. In an expansion two years in the making, Mattel is giving Thomas 14 new friends, with many coming from countries like India, Brazil, China and Mexico. Four are female trains. The characters will be introduced in a DVD movie called "The Great Race" that is scheduled for staggered global release starting in August; related merchandise will jointly arrive worldwide in stores. (In some foreign countries, including Britain, the movie will have a theatrical release beginning in May.) | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
Dr. Summers is an assistant professor of geography and global metropolitan studies at the University of California, Berkeley. On Feb. 23, a 25 year old black man named Ahmaud Arbery left his home in Brunswick, Ga., to go for a Sunday afternoon run. As he entered a nearby subdivision, he was followed and later shot dead by a father and son while their neighbor recorded the incident on his phone. Mr. Arbery's crime of running while black speaks to a history of racial surveillance and containment enforced by the American state and supported by white people with the means and opportunity to cause great harm. The American state has restricted black people's mobility at least since the time of slavery. These regulations included convict leasing, Black Codes, loitering laws, redlining, racial zoning, redistricting (legal and illegal), the prison industrial complex and increased surveillance. This history has given us entire cities built to shepherd black labor and presence. One might even consider the black experience as a kind of never ending quarantine and indeed Jim Crow laws that grew partly out of concerns that black people spread "contagion," like tuberculosis and malaria, affirmed as much. The eugenics movement, popular in the early 20th century, led many doctors and scientists to attribute the precarious state of black health to physiological, biological and moral inferiority, instead of structural causes like poverty and racism. Nearly a century ago, my grandparents fled the Jim Crow South, joining the millions of black families that moved north and west as part of the Great Migration. No matter how many thousands of miles they crossed, they met the same thing: not freedom, but constraint. Even in some of America's most "progressive" cities like San Francisco, where my family ended up, black people were relegated to parts of town with limited housing, overcrowded schools and low paying jobs. The police were everywhere. Consider the glaring contrasts between the architecture and development of the large scale public housing units and suburban bedroom communities of the 1950s. Two very different outcomes one black, one white from one ostensibly shared aim of creating affordable housing. Black people were trapped in poorly maintained towers, like the notorious Pruitt Igoe homes in St. Louis, that kept them far away from the city's arteries and public transportation. The 33 buildings of the complex were so uninhabitable that they had to be destroyed after only two decades. Meanwhile, all white suburbs like Levittown, N.Y., which also received government subsidies, were designed expansively with front lawns, public parks and wide sidewalks. More from "The America We Need" The same freeways and boulevards that made it easy for suburbanites like those from Levittown to zoom in and out of cities destroyed black neighborhoods, either by cutting them off or by bulldozing them entirely. Now many of these roads are being retooled in the spirit of "new urbanism" to make way for more bike lanes and wider sidewalks. But who will these benefit the most? A wealthier and whiter population that wants better access to a walkable, gentrified city. Today cities are asking, demanding and even coercing black people to shoulder the burden of work that is fundamental to their functioning, but without protecting those people in return. Whatever mobility people have is largely for executing low wage jobs, which are now recognized as "essential" because they directly benefit white infrastructures. This, in addition to the crowding in black neighborhoods, is one reason we see an overrepresentation of black people among the Covid 19 dead in places like Detroit; Chicago; St. Louis; Richmond, Va.; and Washington, D.C. Another reason is racial disparities in testing and treatment. In Illinois, just under 10 percent of those tested for the coronavirus are black. But among those who test positive, 18 percent are black. And among those who die, a stunning 32 percent are black. Furthering the problem, some hospitals have turned black residents away, only for them to die, despite their showing the same symptoms as white people who receive testing and treatment. This suggests that bias is playing a role. If cities were to test all residents, treatment would not depend on any preconceived notions about who is deserving of care and who is not. The historian Nikhil Pal Singh recently observed that the "pandemic will not create the social transformation we need, but it will set the terms for it." The history of black quarantine provides us with our plan in reverse. Colorblind responses only make the problems worse. Rather than corporate bailouts, we need a public bailout, one that involves an increase in public spending to support equal access to education, affordable housing and transportation. One that provides paid sick leave and health insurance for all. The Department of Housing and Urban Development has declared a temporary moratorium on foreclosures of Federal Housing Administration insured mortgages and evictions from public housing units. Several cities have offered similar solutions for their most vulnerable residents, and more should follow. Evictions disproportionately burden black people, especially black women, who experience homelessness at alarming rates. Cities and the federal government should also come up with a plan for comprehensive debt forgiveness. This will make it easier for essential workers to pay for the increasing costs of education, food and transportation. Measures like these would actually contribute to the growth of our economy by freeing up capital for people to lead healthy lives. We ask our cities to be smart, but are we asking them to be just? We talk about access in symbolic ways, but don't think about the core geographies of inequality that emerge in the making of a mobile, technologically driven city. The creative, progressive city with its fine dining, bike shares and crowded parks relies on the same workers of color that it relegates to the margins. We can even take a lesson from the protesters demanding, wrongly, an end to the quarantine. We can fight for opening our cities politically, economically and racially with the same energy they are putting toward opening our streets. We must create solutions that benefit the masses, not a select few. A true end to quarantine demands ending the quarantining city. It may not be the best we can do, but it's the least we can ask. Brandi T. Summers, an assistant professor of geography and global metropolitan studies at the University of California, Berkeley, is the author of "Black in Place: The Spatial Aesthetics of Race in a Post Chocolate City." 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 |
Game 1 of the World Series did not include all of the usual pregame festivities, but making it to this point in the season was a victory for Major League Baseball. ARLINGTON, Texas It is a memorable image of nearly every World Series opener: The members of each team standing shoulder to shoulder along the baselines, the players in the lineup announced one by one, the managers shaking hands over home plate. A celebrity belts out the national anthem while dozens of people clutch the edges of a giant American flag stretched across the outfield. None of that happened at the beginning of the 116th World Series, between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Tampa Bay Rays, at Globe Life Field on Tuesday. Even the ceremonial first pitch was delivered in the middle of the outfield, a safe social distance from the pitcher's mound. The anthem played, but only on the scoreboard. The lineup announcements had all the majesty of a midweek game in April. "We're so close to the end here, and I think the feeling is we just don't want to do anything that would jeopardize that," Dr. Gary Green, Major League Baseball's medical director, said in an interview. "In the regular season, you did have some flexibility in terms of doubleheaders, or you could move games to the other team's site, or you could reschedule games you can't do that now. If we had an outbreak and we had to stop for a week or two weeks, that would really just kind of ruin the whole postseason." Dr. Green spoke on Thursday, between Games 2 and 3 of the World Series. The next morning, M.L.B. made its weekly announcement of coronavirus test results a source of dread weeks ago, now a source of pride. The 3,597 monitoring samples collected and tested in the previous week had yielded zero new positives, the league said, and no player had tested positive for 54 days. In all, there have been 91 new positives 57 players and 34 staff members among the 172,740 tests conducted this season, or 0.05 percent. For a league that weathered early outbreaks of 18 positive tests for Miami Marlins players and 10 for St. Louis Cardinals players, it has been a remarkable turnaround that essentially saved the season. "I'll appreciate everyone that made this possible for as long as I live," Rays starter Charlie Morton said, adding later: "It's weird to go to the stadium and not see the parking lots just filled with people and local TV crews just hanging out, you name it. It's weird, it's sad but it's still very exciting." That is a fitting tagline for this season: weird, sad, but very exciting. There were no fans in the stands, except for limited crowds at the National League Championship Series and the World Series, where the Game 1 attendance 11,388 was the lowest since Game 6 in 1909, when Ty Cobb and Honus Wagner roamed Bennett Park in Detroit. But the games went on, and the intensity was real. Elsewhere, a brutal off season has already begun, with even big market teams like the Chicago Cubs initiating dozens of layoffs. After a year of reduced revenue, owners may be reluctant to spend big on players in free agency, which could raise tensions between the league and the players' union as they enter the final year of their collective bargaining agreement. None Everyone Loves Ohtani: The Angels' two way star was a unanimous pick for A.L. M.V.P. and his superfans redefine devotion. Phillie Phavorite: Bryce Harper truly committed to Philadelphia and now he's back on top of baseball, winning the N.L. M.V.P. Cy Young Winners: Milwaukee's Corbin Burnes and Toronto's Robbie Ray had hit rock bottom before they worked their way up to stardom. Baseball Is Stuck in Neutral: The potential of a lockout has a star studded group of free agents waiting for the dust to settle. Free Agency Tracker: Get the latest updates on signings, contract extensions and trades. But for now, the sides can celebrate the shared achievement of staging a season even with a schedule of just 60 regular season games and neutral sites for three postseason rounds in 30 ballparks (including one minor league stadium) during a pandemic. "The biggest thing that's gotten us through is flexibility and dealing with uncertainty," Dr. Green said. "Sports thrive on certainty and routines, and for players, what time they get to the ballpark, everything they go through for their pregame and postgame well, we've disrupted all of that. Some teams didn't find out their game was rescheduled or canceled until right before the game, and yet they've still been able to focus on playing and doing all the things they need to." The Marlins' season took a week's hiatus after only three games, and the Cardinals missed 16 days after playing only five games. Both teams rallied to make the expanded playoffs, and with creative scheduling including seven inning games for doubleheaders all but two Cardinals games were played. During the Cardinals' absence, baseball tightened health and safety protocols, expanding mask requirements for players and staff members, restricting the places players could visit outside the ballpark and instructing compliance officers to monitor clubhouses and team hotels. The feeling of being locked down wore on some players. "I like to go out and clear my mind, because baseball is hard; if you always think about baseball, you're going to go crazy," Rays shortstop Willy Adames said. "And if you're going bad, you need some fresh air, you need some distraction, go have dinner and you distract your mind. That's been the hardest part for some of us young guys: We like to do all that kind of stuff, and obviously all those protocols we've got to follow, they're hard. You've got to adjust to it." The players did, and just as important as the new rules, Dr. Green said, was the sobering example from the Marlins and the Cardinals of just how precarious the season could be. "One of the things we've seen with the virus, not only with baseball but throughout society, is it really can find gaps in your coverage," Dr. Green said. "We were very lucky in the beginning that we didn't have very many positive cases, and then all of a sudden we had these outbreaks, and I think people realized: 'Hey, these things are there for a reason, and any deviation from that can potentially really wreck the whole season.' So that was a wake up call." Dr. Green also said that M.L.B.'s ability to use its own laboratory in Utah to analyze test samples turned out to be critical because the methodology was consistent and the lab was able to validate a saliva test. "The nasal swabs are not very comfortable," he said, "and if you're talking about testing people every other day during the season and every day during the postseason, the saliva test is a much more palatable way to do that." Players had a powerful financial incentive to follow the rules. Their 2020 salaries were prorated based on the truncated schedule, meaning that they made roughly 37 percent of their anticipated income before the pandemic. The shared sacrifice, and the especially close proximity to one another particularly before families were allowed into the postseason secure zones brought some teams closer together. "I know we haven't been able to be around family, but I feel like this team is family," said the Dodgers' Mookie Betts. "We spend so much time together at the hotel, here at the field, and nobody gets tired of each other we're all laughing, joking. I couldn't ask for a better group of guys to call family, man, it's just been amazing. "So going through this season with Covid and whatnot hasn't been so bad, because I have these guys." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
A cafe and art gallery that opened earlier this year as MoMaCha must change its name, logo and website at least temporarily in the latest chapter of a legal battle over the cafe's name, which the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) said infringed on and diluted its trademark. It's now going by MAMACHA but even the new name might not be enough. A preliminary injunction ordered the cafe to stop "using, displaying or promoting the MOMA or MOMACHA marks, and the domain name." Judge Louis L. Stanton of United States District Court for the Southern District of New York issued the decision last week. The shop, on the Bowery, opened in April with a logo similar to the museum's, and MoMA filed suit that month. (The museum logo uses a proprietary font, MoMA Gothic.) In his ruling, Judge Stanton wrote, "Without a preliminary injunction against MOMACHA, the Museum will suffer irreparable and unquantifiable harm to its reputation and good will," and that "the Museum has sufficiently demonstrated serious questions on the merits to make them fair grounds for litigation." In a statement on Wednesday, the cafe's owner, Eric Cahan, blasted the museum for proceeding with the lawsuit. "While I respect Judge Stanton's conclusion, I disagree wholeheartedly with the problematic nature of the suit itself," he said. "This is a case of a major institution using taxpayer dollars to bully a downtown business." Christopher B. Spuches, a lawyer for the cafe, said that the litigation was ongoing, and that he was weighing options, which could include an appeal. He has sought to have the case dismissed. The MoMaCha logo used Gothic lettering and in late April, it changed to an all capital logo, in a different font, that read "MOMACHA," and made the change on several websites like Yelp. But on beverage cups and some social media accounts, the old logo still showed, according to court documents. The cafe had a sign that said it had no affiliation with MoMA. Even so, the museum argued in court papers that the name would cause confusion among customers. In the initial court filing, lawyers for MoMA said that the cafe was "targeting the very visitors that frequent MoMA's museum, stores and restaurants," suggesting that the shop was even hoping that MoMA would sue for the free publicity. In May, the coffee shop responded, explaining that MoMaCha was a combination of "more" and matcha," not "MoMA" and "cha" and that the museum's mark wasn't famous enough to confuse customers. In trademark law, "famous," refers to how likely it is that someone not affiliated with a brand will recognize the logo. Judge Stanton did not seem swayed by this argument, writing in his ruling, "Some MOMACHA consumers on social media have assumed that MOMACHA is affiliated with the Museum." He added, "Therefore, the Museum's exclusive use of its mark for a significant length of time, its advertising in numerous publications, its unsolicited press coverage, and MOMACHA's attempt to copy the Museum's mark all support the finding that the mark has acquired secondary meaning in the public mind." The cafe's URL was changed to mamacha.nyc on Monday with a different logo and a disclaimer on its home page that reads, "MAMACHA has no affiliation with the Museum of Modern Art or any museums." A spokeswoman said new cups had been ordered. MoMA did not respond to a request for comment, but ArtNet reported that Sabrina Larson, a MoMA lawyer, said in an email: "We are pleased with the court's thoughtful and well reasoned decision. The court recognizes the strength of the MoMA mark and the need to stop confusion in the marketplace based on the relevant factors. Such confusion has already occurred and is likely to harm the Museum's excellent reputation, as the court took into account." And it turns out, even the new name might not stick. Mr. Cahan received another cease and desist letter on Wednesday from MoMA's legal team, saying that the new name was in violation of the court order. The letter, which Mr. Cahan provided to The Times, closes by saying: "Changing the 'O' in MOMACHA to an 'A' merely indicates your clients' continued contempt for MoMA's trademark rights. Your clients' decision to change to a mark of such an infringing nature will be done at their peril." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
TOKYO Japan inched closer to the end of deflation and factory output picked up, government data showed Friday, offering proof that the real economy is slowly catching up to the high expectations set by its recent bold economic policies. Industrial production rose by a better than expected 1.7 percent in April from a month earlier, as exports started to recover on the back of a yen that has weakened by almost 20 percent in the last six months. But exports were still down 2.3 percent from the same month a year earlier. Core consumer prices, which exclude fresh food, fell 0.4 percent in April from a year earlier, for the sixth straight month of declines, though the clip was slower than the 0.5 percent decline in the year to March. Prices were supported partly by rising energy costs, as the weak yen added to Japan's fuel import bills. Consumer prices in Tokyo for the month of May rose 0.1 percent from a year earlier, the first increase in more than four years, a sign that nationwide prices could soon follow suit, ending the deflation that has long weighed on Japan's economy. Household spending cooled slightly after a strong showing in the first quarter, rising 1.5 percent in April from a year earlier in price adjusted real terms. That uptick fell short of a median market forecast of 3.1 percent, though economists still expect spending to gain traction as consumer sentiment continues to improve. The data offered a reprieve to recent market anxiety. A rally in the Japanese stock market, propelled by optimism over Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's efforts to overhaul the long suffering economy, has faltered in the last week as investors became nervous over the effectiveness of those efforts, as well as their potential side effects. A 5.2 percent slide in Tokyo shares on Thursday took the Nikkei 225 share index to more than 13 percent below its peak last week. The sharp market correction followed a surge of more than 80 percent in the index from mid November to mid May, when trading suddenly turned volatile as investors took stock of the challenges that face Mr. Abe's economic turnaround program. Still, it remains unclear whether Mr. Abe's agenda, nicknamed Abenomics, can bring about a goal, set by the Bank of Japan, to achieve 2 percent inflation over the next two years in a country where prices have fallen for over a decade. The high cost of gas is forcing families to cut back on activities and essentials. Clearview AI does well in another round of facial recognition accuracy tests. Elizabeth Holmes will resume her testimony in her fraud trial. To jolt Japan out of its deflationary slump, the central bank unleashed an audacious stimulus program last month, promising to inject 1.4 trillion into the economy to kick start growth. In addition, the government bolstered spending on public works projects. The stimulus has also driven the yen to a 4 1/2 year low against the dollar, a boon to Japan's exporters. But many economists have called the two year time frame ambitious. A recent Reuters poll of analysts suggested that the Bank of Japan might have to pursue its program for up to five years before it stokes enough inflation. Some members of the Bank of Japan's policy board are also skeptical of the two year time frame, according to minutes released this week. A spike in long term interest rates, which poses high risks for Japan's highly indebted government, has added to the worries. Analysts and investors are also eager for progress on promised structural overhauls, which many see as crucial to the overall economy lifting efforts of Mr. Abe's government. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Global Business |
BALTIMORE The unemployment rate among Americans with college degrees was just 2.3 percent in November, a number that suggests employers are now competing for well educated workers. Janet L. Yellen, the Federal Reserve chairwoman, went to the University of Baltimore on Monday to congratulate graduates on joining that fortunate group. "After years of a slow economic recovery, you are entering the strongest job market in nearly a decade," said Ms. Yellen, the keynote speaker at the university's midyear commencement. Better yet, she told the graduates, "economists are not certain about many things, but we are quite certain that a college diploma or an advanced degree is a key to economic success." Ms. Yellen's speech did not touch directly on the Fed's policy plans, but it did underscore the Fed's increased satisfaction with progress of an economic expansion that is in its eighth year and has been especially generous to the well educated. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Economy |
The Chinese born artist James He Qi's "Peace, Be Still" (1998) depicts Christ stilling the waters in bold colors that recall stained glass window. He blends Chinese folk customs and modern western art. Close your eyes and imagine that Jesus is in front of you. Is the man kneeling in prayer in the Garden at Gethsemane Chinese? Is the man sitting at the table of the Last Supper Navajo? Is the man dragging his cross toward Golgotha Nigerian? Or is the crucified figure a woman? Likely as not, the image that presents itself to most Americans is of a lithe, bearded man with shoulder length, chestnut colored hair. And whether he is a dashboard Jesus or the nearly 100 foot tall Cristo Redentor, arms outstretched atop a mountain rising over Rio de Janeiro, he is likely to be male and white. This confounded me as a young child the image of a white Christ (in my case, blond and blue eyed) printed on the hand held fans cooling the black congregants of my grandmother's church in Los Angeles. Even at that age, with only a peripheral awareness of the brutal attacks on civil rights marchers in Birmingham, Ala., and the bombing of the 16th St. Baptist church there that killed four little girls, the youngest not much older than I even in my innocence, worshiping someone who didn't look like us seemed incongruous. As it turns out, at about that time, "God" as depicted in the form of Jesus Christ was beginning to look more and more like me. Only I didn't know it. By the middle of the 20th century, the global center of Christianity had begun shifting away from Europe to Africa, Asia and Latin America. "Christianity around the world was becoming less white, and pictures of Jesus hanging in churches from Jordan to Japan to Jamaica were looking more like the people, instead of the standard white portraits from Europe or North America," said Todd Johnson, co director of the Center for the Study of Global Christianity, at the Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Mass. Thomas Hastings, the executive director of the Overseas Ministries Study Center in New Haven, Conn., said, "They did their own version of Christianity, to put it simply." Dr. Hastings, who taught for decades in Japan, recalled how the Rev. Tamura Naoumi, an American educated Japanese pastor in the early 20th century, sought to change the Western based Sunday school images of Jesus to those reflecting his culture and that of his students. Mr. Tamura employed local artists to illustrate his books. "The images of Jesus are Japanese images," Dr. Hastings said. "The images of his disciples are Japanese images. The images of the Old Testament prophets are Japanese images." There is also a long tradition of adapted local appearances and iconography to the Christian message in the West. "Early Christian artists appropriated images of the long haired pagan gods like Zeus to symbolize the power of Jesus," said Joan E. Taylor, a professor who studies early Christianity and Judaism at King's College London, and the author of "What Did Jesus Look Like?" The artists, she added, were referring to "other gods the people of that era would know." "Even with that, over the centuries in the West there have been changing fashions in the way Christ was represented that are as variable as hem lines," she added. So Jesus, a Jewish man from the Middle East, probably didn't look like the Nordic Messiah portrayed on the church fans of my childhood. But should it make any difference? "Multiethnic representations of religious symbols of all kinds are important to everybody, but particularly in our communities, "said Dinorah Nieves, a sociologist and author in Los Angeles. "It's important for us to see melanin and sacredness as connected and not opposites." However, Ingrid Reneau Walls, a missionary who teaches literature and theology in Akropong Akuapem, Ghana, points out that among many Caribbean and American black people, even if pictures of a blond haired Jesus hung at home or in church, "The worship was inevitably distinctly African derived." "The way we moved, envisioned, reached for and cried out to Christ, was not to a Christ who was white, for such a Christ would not have necessary comprehended our groans, moans and shouts, " Dr. Walls said. As Easter approached this year and the persistence of the coronavirus created a mushrooming feeling of apprehension, I felt the urge to go on a pilgrimage in search of more authentic renderings of Christ ones reflective of race, but also of gender and sexual orientation. With the help of scholars , I selected 12 images from around the world that are "true" in the way they translate local idioms and sensibilities into the universal ethos Christianity strives to represent. This is Jesus and Judas as we have never seen them extraordinarily buff, dressed to show off their weight lifting physiques. The men's arms seem to almost touch. The drawing is by Richard Bruce Nugent (1906 1987), an African American writer, painter, illustrator and bohemian of the Harlem Renaissance whose stream of consciousness poem, "Smoke, Lilies and Jade," was an ode to bisexuality and interracial sexual attraction. Stamatina Gregory, the director of curatorial programs at the Leslie Lohman Museum of Art, says the drawing suggests a cruising scene. "We always think of the Jesus Judas encounter as only one of betrayal," Ms. Gregory said. "What Nugent is proposing is essentially the unthinkable that such an encounter might be sexual, and that the deepest betrayal could only have come from someone who was the closest person to the Christ figure in the world." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
The game of thrones at NBCUniversal has begun. The company on Monday announced a series of executive changes that could set the stage for the next generation of leaders at a media empire that includes the NBC broadcast network; Universal Film Studios; and cable channels such as Bravo and MSNBC, which has seen a ratings surge during the Trump administration. Stephen B. Burke, the chief executive, streamlined the management structure by putting Jeff Shell in charge of Hollywood operations, including the international business and Telemundo, and having Mark Lazarus oversee the broadcast network, the news division, the cable networks and the sports group. Bonnie Hammer, 68, the longtime head of the company's profitable cable portfolio, has been put in charge of an advertising supported streaming service that was announced Monday and is expected to debut early next year. It will compete with new stand alone streaming products from the Walt Disney Company and AT T's WarnerMedia, as well as entrenched players like Netflix and Hulu. Disney's and WarnerMedia's products are expected to debut at the end of this year. Many in the industry interpreted the moves as Mr. Burke's positioning a showdown between Mr. Lazarus and Mr. Shell to be his possible successor. Effectively, Mr. Burke, 60, has set up an East Coast and West Coast divide: Mr. Lazarus will control much of the company from NBC's operations in New York and Stamford, Conn., and Mr. Shell will take over the Hollywood assets from Burbank, Calif. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
It's not common for actors to snag three major awards for a single performance, but Cynthia Erivo did just that in 2015 for her role as Celie in the Broadway revival of "The Color Purple," earning her a Tony, a Grammy and an Emmy and putting her just one step away from the coveted EGOT club the rare group of performers who have all those awards plus an Oscar. Now, the actress, singer and songwriter could join the club: on Monday she was nominated for two Academy Awards, for best actress and best song, for the biopic "Harriet." Those are the first Oscar nominations for the 33 year old star, who has become known for her powerful soprano and swift Hollywood breakthrough. If she does take home an Oscar, she will be the youngest person ever to become an EGOT winner and in the least time: it will have taken less than five years. Reached by phone after flying 12 hours to Japan, where she was scheduled to give concerts, Erivo described the news as crazy, mad. "The whole thing is loopy," she said. But she was also mindful that she was the sole black star nominated for an acting Oscar this year. The nominations came less than a week after the British academy BAFTA put forward an all white list of acting nominees. That organization invited Erivo to perform "Stand Up," her empowering "Harriet" ballad, but she told "Extra" that she had turned down the invitation because it "didn't represent people of color in the right light." Would she perform it at the Oscars if asked? Speaking from Japan, Erivo said she would and described it as a responsibility: "I want to make sure that that song is put forward. And I want to make sure that song is celebrated just as well." For "The Color Purple," Erivo not only took home a Tony for best actress in a musical in 2016 and a Grammy for best musical theater album in 2017, but she also won a Daytime Emmy award in 2017 for outstanding musical performance in a daytime program. About 15 artists have achieved the elusive EGOT status, including Whoopi Goldberg, Rita Moreno, Audrey Hepburn and Mel Brooks. Her potential Oscars would come for her turn as the runaway slave turned abolitionist Harriet Tubman, who made history for leading enslaved people to freedom through the Underground Railroad. The drama infuses historical events with the director Kasi Lemmons's gothic mystical style. "It means the world to me to be able to portray her and to put her legacy onscreen and allow people to understand who she was and what she did and the work she was able to do with so little," she said in the interview. The film, which premiered in November, was the first biopic of the American hero and stirred a lot of buzz, including some negative, after some critics protested Erivo's casting because she is British and not a descendant of enslaved African Americans, like Tubman. Erivo said at the time that she understood the frustrations of her casting, because there is a lack of opportunities for black actors in Hollywood, but had asked viewers to give her a chance. "I think that the best actor should have the role. And I think that there is a world in which we can play different people," Erivo said in an interview with Oprah Winfrey last year. "Like, I didn't become an actress to play loads of English women. I became an actress to play really wonderful characters." Erivo in 2018 also starred in Drew Goddard's "Bad Times at the El Royale" and Steve McQueen's "Widows," which was her first ever film shoot. She is currently appearing in the upcoming HBO mini series "The Outsider" and National Geographic's anthology series "Genius," in which she will play the late soul singer Aretha Franklin. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
"I'm still in recovery from the president of the United States not condemning white supremacy," Ethan Hawke said the morning after the first Biden Trump debate. "That's an easy thing to condemn." For Hawke, disavowing white supremacy was not just a matter of responsible leadership or simply the right thing any American citizen should do. It was the defining ideology of John Brown, the white abolitionist the actor is currently playing in Showtime's "The Good Lord Bird." Hawke said Brown was the most challenging, rewarding and politically urgent character he had played in his 35 year acting career. "It's like getting to be King Lear, but even better," he said in a recent phone interview. "It's playing a King Lear that hasn't really been played." Hawke also created, with Mark Richard, the seven part mini series, which is based on the 2013 National Book Award novel of the same name by the Black writer James McBride. Part satire, part historical fiction, both versions are told from the point of view of the fictional character Henry Shackleford, who introduces himself after telling us that Brown rescued him from slavery as a boy. Mistaking him for an adolescent girl, Brown calls him Henrietta or, more often, by the nickname Onion, and they travel together throughout the United States and Canada on Brown's antislavery crusade, culminating in a raid on a military arsenal in Harpers Ferry, Va. (now part of West Virginia) on Oct. 16, 1859. For McBride, the story of John Brown shaped his childhood. "I remember my older brothers talking about John Brown trying to start some kind of provisional government," McBride said. His church still sang "John Brown's Body," a 19th century marching song popularized by Black Union regiments during the Civil War and sung in Emancipation Day festivities and later adapted by professional choral groups of the era, like the Fisk Jubilee Singers. (The author ultimately felt comfortable with two white men adapting his book partly because "Mark was a Southerner, and he really understood Southern things," he told The New York Times Magazine. "He understands the familiarity between whites and Blacks in the South.") Hawke, on the other hand, spent his early years in Texas "hearing he was a nut," he said of Brown. It's a common divergence. These differences in a collective memory, in which John Brown appears either as a martyr who willingly sacrificed himself and his family to end slavery or as a madman who violently murdered his fellow white Americans, have traditionally been divided along racial lines. Like McBride, I was raised to believe Brown was not just a hero but an exception: a rare white abolitionist who not only believed that African Americans should not be enslaved but also that they were his equal. A few years later, Hollywood began cementing Brown's image as an uncontrollable maniac. In the 1940 film "Santa Fe Trail," based on the biography of the Confederate officer J.E.B Stuart, the actor Raymond Massey played Brown as wild eyed, irrational and impulsive. In his essay "Black People's Ally, White People's Bogeyman," the historian Louis A. DeCaro Jr. noted that upon the movie's release, one of Brown's grandchildren unsuccessfully tried to sue Warner Brothers for "vilifying misrepresentation." Strangely, 15 years later, Massey played Brown again, a bit softened and only slightly more sympathetic, in the movie, "Seven Angry Men." In the 1971 comedy western "Skin Game," a chest length beard wearing John Brown appears so crazed that any gains to be made when he disrupts a live slave auction are undermined by the ensuing chaos that he produces in the town. Hawke prepared for his role by reading the letters Brown wrote from jail in the week before his execution. "They're not the scratches of a lunatic," Hawke said. "They're the writings of a person with a cause, somebody who has something to die for, and somebody who's not confused that we're all made from the same creator." In order to externalize Brown's own emotional reality and character growth, Hawke focused on the beard, which Brown originally grew as a disguise but which artists often portray as his defining feature. "I got obsessed with the beard because I knew that iconography of that Noah esque beard," Hawke said. "So I came up with this idea that I'd start being clean shaven and then just grow the beard throughout. I hope to show he's becoming John Brown, and that he's not finished when we meet him." Hawke's own fascination with John Brown began in 2015 while shooting on set in Louisiana for Antoine Fuqua's "Magnificent Seven." While there, a cameraman suggested that Hawke read "The Good Lord Bird" and that he should one day consider playing Brown. After reading it, Hawke became an evangelist for the novel. "I shared that book with everybody," he said. "It is so painful to talk about our past in this country that we just don't like doing it we want to move on." "But I thought that McBride pulled off a magic trick, which is that he told the story about slavery," Hawke continued, "with so much love, and so much wit, so much silliness, human stupidity and human folly." Part of what makes the story compelling is also McBride's irreverent depiction of icons like the abolitionist Frederick Douglass, played in the series by Daveed Diggs ("Hamilton"). The renowned orator, who in real life posed for at least 160 images and was perhaps the most photographed American of his time, is presented as an image obsessed Black Dandy who lives with both his Black wife, Anna, and his white mistress, Helen. Not since Jewell Parker Rhodes's 2002 novel, "Douglass' Women" has the messiness of Douglass's domestic life been so cheekily depicted. "We had fun with the Frederick Douglass character," McBride said. "We don't mean any disrespect to him and to the many thousands of historians who revere him and then the millions of people who revere his memory. But his life was rife for caricature." "He is considered almost godlike in terms of what he has done for the African American and American community," McBride continued. "But what about the man who gave his life and whose one act changed the course of American history? If Harpers Ferry hadn't happened, there's a good argument to be made that the Civil War would have been pushed back 10 or 15 or 20 years." Brown's raid, of course, did not end up being the slave rebellion igniting spark that he envisioned. After briefly taking the armory, he and his 21 men were overwhelmed and 10 of them, Black and white, were killed. (Sixteen people were killed in all.) Two of Brown's sons were among the dead, and the man himself was arrested, tried and publicly hanged. In "The Good Lord Bird," Henry is able to reveal his true self as well as express his eternal debt to Brown, right before the old man's execution. Today, an unassuming stone obelisk stands at the site of Brown's raid at Harpers Ferry to commemorate the stand he took. But, instead of offering an image of Brown, its facade is blank, making it possible for people to project onto it their own interpretation of him and the different hopes and fears he represents for different people and races. But the lack of imagery also makes it far easier for us to forget Brown the actual man and to a certain degree, the myth. Hawke challenged himself to erect a different monument to Brown's life. Not one that is stoic or static, but rather a moving image that aimed to present Brown as unbridled in his pursuit of justice for all. In his 2005 edited collection of essays "The Afterlife of John Brown," Eldrid Herrington, a professor of English, wrote, "John Brown's body revives whenever the United States shames itself, when the body politic bears wounds, when it imprisons citizens without trial, or prosecutes an unjust war in an unjust manner." In other words, John Brown reappears at peak moments of peril as a warning, and to help us find a way through it. Originally, Showtime planned to debut "The Good Lord Bird" in February but ended up pushing it back first to August, and then October, without specifying why. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
LOS ANGELES The second that Robert A. Iger stepped down as Disney's chief executive on Tuesday almost two years sooner than expected Hollywood broke into frenzied gossip. "The king abdicates the throne!" a prominent film producer texted a reporter. "Surprising and baffling," a senior executive at a rival studio said in an email. Another asked, "Do we think Iger might run for president after all?" And then came a second round of questions: Chapek who? Bob Chapek, who replaced Mr. Iger effective immediately, is well known inside the Walt Disney Company, where he has quietly worked for 27 years, mostly in unflashy businesses like consumer products and film distribution. Most recently, he ran the Disney division that includes theme parks and cruise ships. Mr. Chapek, 60, would gladly skip a red carpet premiere to spend a quiet night at home, friends say. He lives on the outskirts of Los Angeles, far from the fashionable Brentwood and Pacific Palisades neighborhoods where most power players reside. He and his wife, Cindy, have been married for 38 years. At media events, such as the 2018 opening of Toy Story Land at Walt Disney World in Florida, Mr. Chapek amiably performs his role (in that case, yukking it up with Buzz Lightyear on a stage). But he is happy to not be the center of attention. Mr. Chapek, known as "Bob C" inside Disney, has almost no experience in television, which remains a 25 billion annual business for Disney and where Mr. Iger cool and charismatic made his name before taking over as chief executive in 2005. But comparing Mr. Chapek to Mr. Iger may be missing the point. No one can reasonably be expected to fill Mr. Iger's shoes, not only because he has a singular personality but because the company has changed so much during his tenure. When Mr. Iger took over as chief executive, Disney had two movie studios. Now it has eight, including Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm, Blue Sky and Searchlight. The company had two cruise ships in 2005. It will soon have seven. Annual theme park attendance has grown to 159 million worldwide, from about 115 million. Disney has two major new streaming services, Hulu and Disney Plus, both of which are making original programming to compete with Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and the coming HBO Max. With all of the sprawl, not even Mr. Iger can run Disney the way he has run it. In the past, he has been more involved in creative decisions than people might realize. He personally pushed ahead "Black Panther" and "Captain Marvel." He tasted all of the food planned for Shanghai Disneyland, gave feedback on ride operator costumes and personally chose the spot where a statue of Walt Disney would be placed. And despite his low profile in the broader entertainment industry, Mr. Chapek is not a surprising choice. Mr. Iger signaled that Mr. Chapek was a leading candidate in his memoir, "The Ride of a Lifetime," which was published in September. At one point, Mr. Iger recounted a moment in 2016 when Mr. Chapek rose to multiple challenges at once opening the Shanghai Disney Resort, handling a secret security threat at Disney World in Florida and dealing with the death of a toddler (by alligator attack) at a Disney World lake. "The bond you form in high stress moments like this, when you're sharing information that you can't discuss with anyone else, is a powerful one," Mr. Iger wrote of Mr. Chapek. 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. Mr. Chapek also has training wheels. For the next 22 months, he will report to Mr. Iger, who took the title executive chairman, and to the Disney board. Mr. Iger will serve as a type of chief creative officer. "My intention is to really spend time on all of our creative endeavors, whether at ESPN or the Fox studios or our media networks," Mr. Iger told analysts. People inside Disney described Mr. Chapek as no frills. He is known for setting clear goals and empowering lieutenants to accomplish them. Colleagues admire his work ethic and the manner in which he has climbed from humble roots in blue collar Hammond, Ind. He doesn't let sacred cows stand in his way, numerous Disney executives said. At the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, for instance, Mr. Chapek pushed through an overhaul of a free fall ride then known as Tower of Terror. Themed around a hotel from the golden age of Hollywood, the attraction was a guest favorite. But Mr. Chapek and his team in the face of criticism from traditionalists inside and outside the company made it a mission to supercharge Disney parks by incorporating more film franchises. So they remade Tower of Terror as an outpost for "Guardians of the Galaxy," the blockbuster Marvel film series. The revamped ride is now one of the most popular in Disney's entire theme park portfolio. Under Mr. Chapek's reign, the theme park division used expansions, new fees (like charging for parking at some Disney World hotels) and higher ticket prices (annual increases of as much as 9 percent for daily entry) to deliver five consecutive years of growth. The division generated 6.8 billion in operating profit last year 46 percent of Disney's total income. "He's classy and, at the same time, he can put on a pair of jeans and a flannel shirt and be as blue collar as the next guy," said Gill Champion, president of POW! Entertainment, which counts the comics legend Stan Lee as a co founder. "He lives and breathes the Disney lifestyle." The announcement allows Mr. Iger to crown Mr. Chapek at Disney's annual meeting on March 11. It was also seen as a move by Mr. Iger to head off any potentially distracting executive jockeying inside the company. The abruptness of the announcement, however, led to rampant speculation about a reason. Some noted that Disney is set to have a difficult financial year. The company's 2020 film slate boasts fewer surefire blockbusters; there will be no "Star Wars" movie this year, for instance. Cord cutting seems to be accelerating, putting ESPN under more pressure. And the coronavirus has already closed Shanghai Disney Resort and Hong Kong Disneyland and threatens other resorts and Disney Cruise Line. Mr. Chapek told CNBC on Tuesday that the coronavirus was "certainly a bump in the road" but said the company was prepared. "We'll come through this like we've come through every other challenge that we've had," he said. Mr. Chapek will be the public face of the company, but he is best known by the chief executives of the major retail chains, whom he got to know while serving as Disney's DVD chief in the 1990s and when running Disney's consumer products division from 2011 to 2015. "We visited Walmart stores together more than 20 years ago," Doug McMillon, Walmart's chief executive, said in an email on Wednesday. "He's always been someone who's willing to learn what Walmart customers are looking for and come to us with big and creative ideas." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
Christiane Amanpour identifies universal aspects of relationships in a new series. And the lustful melodrama "The Beguiled" arrives on HBO. CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: SEX LOVE AROUND THE WORLD 10 p.m. on CNN. Christiane Amanpour, CNN's chief international correspondent and the anchor of the global affairs program "Amanpour," takes a turn toward the intimate in this new six part series. Each episode brings her to a different country in Asia, Europe and Africa to explore carnal taboos and norms. Her first stop is Tokyo, where she gasps at 17th century erotic art, interviews a hotel health worker and attends a host club that offers "private hospitality" to women. Given that Anthony Bourdain is among the show's executive producers, it's no surprise that the style is reminiscent of "Parts Unknown" with a sensual twist. NYC ST. PATRICK'S DAY PARADE 11 a.m. on NBC 4 New York; also on NBCNewYork.com. A green sea of New Yorkers washes over Fifth Avenue to celebrate the city's 257th parade. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
Jerry, 9 years old, dissolved into his Game Boy while his father described his attentional difficulties to the family pediatrician. The child began flitting around the room distractedly, ignoring the doctor's questions and squirming in his chair but then he leapt up and yelled: "Freeze! What do you think is the problem here?" Nine year old Jerry was in fact being played by Dr. Peter Jensen, one of the nation's most prominent child psychiatrists. On this Sunday in January in New York, Dr. Jensen was on a cross country tour, teaching pediatricians and other medical providers how to properly evaluate children's mental health issues especially attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, which some doctors diagnose despite having little professional training. One in seven children in the United States and almost 20 percent of all boys receives a diagnosis of A.D.H.D. by the time they turn 18, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It narrowly trails asthma as the most common long term medical condition in children. Increasing concern about the handling of the disorder has raised questions about the training doctors receive before diagnosing the condition and prescribing stimulants like Adderall or Concerta, sometimes with little understanding of the risks. The medications can cause sleep problems, loss of appetite and, in rare cases, delusions. Because the disorder became a widespread national health concern only in the past few decades, many current pediatricians received little formal instruction on it, sometimes only several hours, during their seven years of medical school and residency. But the national scarcity of child psychiatrists has placed much of the burden for evaluating children's behavioral problems on general pediatricians and family doctors, a reality that Dr. Jensen and others are trying to address through classes that emphasize role playing exercises and spirited debate. "Most continuing medical education is somebody standing up at a podium transmitting facts," said Dr. Jensen, the former associate director of child and adolescent research at the National Institute of Mental Health. "But with A.D.H.D. that's like showing a slide show of how to swim the butterfly, and expecting people to go home and swim the butterfly. It takes real hands on training. "If all we change is residency, we won't see benefits for 20 30 years," he added. "We have the problem now, and it needs to be addressed now." Pediatricians and family doctors handle the majority of office visits for children being medicated for A.D.H.D., according to a 2012 study in the journal Academic Pediatrics. Most experts blame the relative rarity of child psychiatrists: There are only 8,300 in the United States, compared with 54,000 board certified general pediatricians, according to their professional organizations' statistics. The result is that some rural families must drive 100 miles or more for an appointment with a child psychiatrist or neurologist, who often have long waiting lists and accept insurance less often than a family pediatrician. Yet many practicing pediatricians, family doctors and certified nurse practitioners say they have received little training to prepare for today's rising number of families asking that their children receive mental health evaluations. Pediatric residency programs since 1997 have been required to include a month on developmental behavioral pediatrics, a category into which A.D.H.D. can fall. But many doctors say the actual programs can vary widely and cover too many conditions too briefly. "When I trained, most of pediatrics was treating infectious disease," said Dr. William Wittert, 57, a pediatrician in Libertyville, Ill. "But we don't treat bacterial meningitis anymore. We are being asked to evaluate and handle mental health issues in kids like A.D.H.D. We have to get up to speed." Dr. Wittert acknowledged that for years his handling of the disorder was inadequate. He said he often would run down a list of vague symptoms like distractibility and forgetfulness. "If you had enough yesses, then you pretty much got the diagnosis of A.D.H.D.," he said. Harriet Hellman, a certified pediatric nurse practitioner in Southampton, N.Y., who is licensed to make mental health diagnoses, said that there were times she would identify the disorder through mere instinct, a "hair on the back of your neck feeling." Many postgraduate and web based continuing medical education classes are staffed and shaped by pharmaceutical companies, raising concern about bias toward encouraging diagnoses and subsequent prescriptions. Wary of this, Dr. Wittert and Ms. Hellman said they were immediately drawn to Dr. Jensen's seminars, held by the Resource for Advancing Children's Health Institute, the nonprofit he founded in 2006. About 2,000 health providers have paid about 2,000 for intensive three day sessions, which Dr. Jensen holds about 10 times a year across the United States. The recent event in New York focused on A.D.H.D. But the day's key acronym was D.J.D.S.: "Don't just do something." It was a reminder to the audience to resist the urge to simply prescribe medication and that a proper diagnosis requires far longer than the 15 minutes some health providers spend. The institute's team staged doctor's office visits in which a child comes in for an A.D.H.D. evaluation. A pushy father, played by Dr. Ned Hallowell, demands an Adderall prescription for his daughter to improve her grades. A distracted and fidgety boy might not have A.D.H.D. but rather might be the victim of bullying at school. A teenage girl might have been sexually assaulted. When Dr. Hallowell, a prominent A.D.H.D. psychiatrist, climbed under chairs and rolled aimlessly on the carpet, the audience appeared both amused and somewhat disturbed. As the role playing continued, Dr. Jensen called from afar, "Dr. Jones, you have six patients waiting!" Trainees consulted symptom evaluation forms submitted by teachers and parents. They evaluated family histories. They debated whether the child's behavior was likely to be a result of depression, A.D.H.D., sleep problems or family tension. With Jerry, the 9 year old boy, some suspected he had A.D.H.D., while others wanted to learn more about whether his parents were providing enough structure at home or if Jerry had a different learning disability. "Doctors aren't trained to say, 'I don't know what to do,' " Dr. Jensen said. The institute's program does not stop with the three day seminar. Attendees are allowed 12 hourlong conference calls with institute trainers and other trainees over the next six months to discuss real life cases. A 9 to 5 hotline allows for further consultation with an expert on call. Although the training does not discourage diagnosing the disorder or using medication left untreated, the disorder carries significant risks for academic and social struggles most graduates interviewed said they do so less often after taking the course. Dr. Nina I. Huberman, a pediatrician in an underprivileged section of the Bronx, was among the doctors who said the class allowed them to begin providing care to those who otherwise would not get it. Once averse to handling A.D.H.D. and its medications because of her lack of training, Dr. Huberman said she no longer sent families to specialists they might never see because of cost, geography or perceived stigma. She used a third grade girl as an example of someone whose life was turned around by what Dr. Huberman called a straightforward diagnosis. "She didn't have any learning issues, she just had that textbook A.D.H.D. issue where she could not sit still or focus," Dr. Huberman said. "Now she's reaching her potential. Her whole way about her has changed. I don't think that the parents would have ever brought her to a psychiatrist." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
In recent years, New York City Ballet's corps has been a wellspring of talent, bubbling up to refresh and replenish a company already in fine fettle. The 2014 and 2015 seasons of "George Balanchine's The Nutcracker" brought a flood of six new Sugarplum Fairies (notably Emilie Gerrity and Unity Phelan) from the corps. This December has brought new interpreters of the ballet's four next most important roles: Dewdrop, Drosselmeier, the Fairy's Cavalier and Marzipan. Dewdrop and Marzipan, female roles, both involve coloratura brilliance. Some dancers take to them as if released; others seem to be cast in them against the grain, probably as challenges from the management to brighten a dancer's technique. Dewdrop, leading the Waltz of the Flowers, consists of several short bursts of rapid dazzle, with a few turns and jumps that can be the ballet's most breathtaking moments of skill, and which thrillingly crest the music's waves. Several of the company's foremost Sugarplums still dance Dewdrop; it suits some of them better. All four new Dewdrops Ms. Gerrity (who became a company member in 2010), Emily Kikta (2011), Ms. Phelan (2013) and Isabella LaFreniere (2014) brought individuality to the role. Ms. Gerrity has warmth, delicacy, loveliness; Ms. Kikta has heroic amplitude and terrific impetus; Ms. Phelan has fantasy, poetry, liquidity. For each, this debut was an important and successful steppingstone. I've heard old dancers say that a ballerina should leave "essences" of herself in the air as she moves on; these women certainly did. At the waltz's start, Ms. Phelan swayed from side to side to the beat with such blithe pliancy that she at once became the number's heartbeat. Later, running across the stage, she was a spring breeze. Ms. Gerrity's style is yet lighter, more playful; she twinkles. Ms. Kikta tall, cool, mighty cleaves space apart with the lines and force of her dancing. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
No Progress in Talks for Financing of European Military Plane BERLIN Military officials from the European countries with orders to buy the Airbus A400M military transport plane tried and failed again Friday to resolve differences over how to share billions of euros in cost overruns. But the officials said they would resume negotiations next week in Berlin in the hope of meeting a Jan. 31 deadline. Many of the participating countries need the aircraft urgently as they play a greater and more demanding role in peacekeeping missions. The repeated delays the A400M is now more than four years behind schedule represent a big setback for European military cooperation. Military procurement ministers from the seven customer nations met until late into the night Thursday with top managers from Airbus and its parent company, European Aeronautic Defense and Space. Alexander Reinhardt, a spokesman for EADS, said nailing down the details of how to finance the program remained a crucial issue. "The negotiations have been difficult, as expected," Mr. Reinhardt said. Seven countries Belgium, Britain, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Spain and Turkey together ordered 180 A400Ms in 2003 for 20 billion euros ( 28.2 billion). Last year, EADS and Airbus asked them to help cover an additional 5.2 billion euros in costs and to accept significant delivery delays. The company has asked the countries to agree to an additional 25 percent payment, or about 5 billion euros, according to people with direct knowledge of the negotiations. The Airbus chief executive, Thomas O. Enders, warned this month that without an agreement soon, the project might have to be abandoned, placing as many as 40,000 European jobs at risk. But while France said it would consider paying more, Germany has been more reluctant. It has ordered 60 of the 180 aircraft, while France has ordered 50. France was supposed to receive the first deliveries of the A400M transport aircraft late last year, and Germany in 2010, but the plane made its first test flight only last month. Both countries will now have to wait several years more, according to the German defense ministry. Germany, however, has little room to maneuver. With 4,300 German troops based in northern Afghanistan, Berlin needs to have access to such aircraft for transporting troops and heavy equipment like tanks, armored personnel carriers and helicopters. Without the A400M, it must either modernize at huge expense its Transall aircraft, which are more than 30 years old, or lease Russian Antonov aircraft. "We want the A400M but not at any price," the German defense minister, Karl Theodor zu Guttenberg, reiterated during an interview with the Bayernkurier newspaper to be published Saturday. "Our willingness to compromise has its limits." Britain, too, is furious about the delays, especially given its big role in Afghanistan. The German defense ministry official said that range and payload, as well as cost, were still on the table. The A400M is currently several tons over its specified weight. An audit of the A400M program by PricewaterhouseCoopers, which was commissioned last year by the governments, has blamed EADS and Airbus for a significant portion of the cost overruns and for failing to put proper budget controls in place. It also said the manufacturer had consistently underestimated development costs. The auditor's report, which was leaked to European media this week, estimated that the A400M was about 7.6 billion euros over budget. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Global Business |
A third round United States Open men's singles match between Alexander Zverev and Adrian Mannarino was delayed for more than two hours on Friday as government health officials and tournament officials debated whether Mannarino should be allowed to play because of his contact with another player who tested positive for the coronavirus. "I was told there is very little chance," Zverev said. But the match eventually went ahead, with the fifth seeded Zverev advancing to the fourth round with a 6 7 (4), 6 4, 6 2, 6 2 victory. "I was just happy they let me play," said Mannarino, a French veteran seeded No. 32. Mannarino is part of a group of seven players who were told to sign a revised agreement with U.S. Open organizers on Sunday to remain in the tournament after the New York health authorities deemed that they had been in close contact with Benoit Paire, a French player. Paire tested positive for the coronavirus last Saturday and was withdrawn from the U.S. Open before it began and isolated in his room at the official hotel on Long Island. At the U.S.T.A. Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, the players were barred from all common areas open to the other players and were required to warm up and receive treatment in isolated areas. But as Mannarino prepared to face Zverev in Louis Armstrong Stadium in a match that was not supposed to start before 2:30 p.m., he was informed by one of the ATP Tour managers that it was not certain he would be allowed to play. Mannarino said he was told the New York state health authorities had overruled the New York City health authorities, who had approved the revised protocol that allowed him to play. "The state took over this decision to say that I have been exposed to a positive case obviously so I should be quarantined in my room and not be able to go on the tennis court," Mannarino said. The United States Tennis Association declined to give details besides saying the match was delayed while a "collaborative dialogue with health officials" took place. A message seeking comment with the office of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York was not immediately returned. A person familiar with the situation, speaking on the condition of anonymity because officials declined to release details, said that health officials raised questions about whether Mannarino should play. Mannarino handed his coach Tom Jomby his cellphone and told him to follow the updates so he could eat and remain focused on playing his match. "I said if I have the right to go on court, all the better, and I'll go and give it my all, and if not, that's the decision and we should accept it," he said. Novak Djokovic, the world No. 1, said he tried to help Mannarino, trying unsuccessfully to reach Cuomo. "I understood he was the only one that could actually make the decision to revert the decision that Mannarino was withdrawn," said Djokovic after reaching the fourth round with a 6 3, 6 3, 6 1 victory over Jan Lennard Struff. At approximately 4:30 p.m., Mannarino was informed that he should be ready to go on the court at 5 p.m. "I went into my bubble, pardon the pun, and went on court to defend my chances," he said. "It was not an easy match, especially in these conditions, but I was all in, and I faced someone better than me today." Zverev said the delay and uncertainty caused him some problems: his rackets had been strung with a higher tension in anticipation of playing in the full heat of the day. But he agreed to the delay, which he was not required to do. "I was just kind of waiting around," Zverev said. "I was very relaxed, and obviously for me as a player and for a fellow player, I'm happy I was able to play." Five French players signed the new agreement: Mannarino, Richard Gasquet, Gregoire Barrere, Edouard Roger Vasselin and Kristina Mladenovic. So did two Belgian women's players: Kirsten Flipkens and Ysaline Bonaventure. All have now been eliminated from the U.S. Open except for Mladenovic, who is scheduled to play on Saturday in the round of 16 in women's doubles with her partner, Timea Babos of Hungary. Most of the players in close contact with Paire are required to remain in quarantine through Sept. 11. French and American authorities failed in an attempt this week to reach an agreement that would have allowed the eliminated French players to return to France in an airplane provided by the French government. The players were initially told they would be able to continue training in New York under the stricter guidelines, with the possibility of practicing on clay before returning to Europe to play in clay court tournaments, including the French Open, which begins in Paris on Sept. 27. But on Friday, Flipkens said on social media that the group had been informed by the Nassau County Department of Public Health that they were no longer permitted to leave their hotel rooms. "While just last night we got the bad news that we had to stay here until next weekend, at least they told us we still had the same protocols (practice, special gym area, separate room on site)," Flipkens wrote on Instagram. "And now all of the sudden we have to quarantine in the room?" Djokovic, a former president of the ATP Player Council who just led the creation of a new player group, said he was not happy with the way "the situation with the French players was managed." He said he understood that the ATP, WTA and U.S.T.A. did not have the final word on some decisions. "Sometimes they have to just execute what the department of New York and the City of New York orders them to do, otherwise the tournament might be compromised and canceled," he said. "It's not easy. I mean, sometimes I don't want to be in the skin of people who were in the midst of this. At the same time, players I think are left with very little very information, very little power to express themselves, or fight for their own right to play and travel back home. It's very, very strange, I must say." Mannarino said he only signed the new, stricter protocol on Sunday evening, on the eve of his first round singles match. "I didn't sleep much," he said after winning it against Lorenzo Sonego. "I am drained mentally." But he recovered sufficiently to defeat the American Jack Sock in straight sets in the second round to set up the match with Zverev. Mladenovic, close to tears, has described the U.S. Open experience as "a nightmare" and said she had the impression "we were prisoners or criminals." Mannarino was much less inflammatory, stroking his stubble and speaking calmly. "I'm not going to call it a nightmare, that's for sure," he said. "I've been playing the tournament, maybe a special tournament this time, but I've been allowed to play. And they put me in a situation that I could give my best on court, so I'm not going to complain about that." Mannarino said he expected that he would now have to return to his hotel room and remain quarantined until departing for France next week. But he expressed appreciation for those who argued on his behalf on Friday. "I want to thank everyone who helped me be able to play today," he said. "When they told me I might not go on court, I was a bit dejected and anxious. It would have been a shame after all that had happened." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
Last summer, I made it to the beach only once to Asbury Park, N.J., for a day trip with my son. Nevertheless, between Memorial Day and Labor Day, I plowed through a dozen novels, many of which could be described as "beach books." Now, before I take these words out of quotation marks, and before we explore this season's nominees, I want to provide a modern definition of the term. A beach read does not have to be consumed on the sand. It is equally at home by a lake or a pool, on a porch or in bed. It keeps you company on a sweaty commute when you feel as if you're the only person in the world who isn't on vacation somewhere fabulous. Beach books pair well with Popsicles, watermelon, peaches and lemonade, but they're not restricted to the months when these delicacies are in season. Their defining criterion is juiciness, which plays well at any time of year. I've been known to enjoy one during a blizzard in February, when the ocean seems as far away as the stars. This is perfectly acceptable, at least according to my literary laws. Finally, there is a common misconception that a beach book is "easy" or "mindless." It can be mindless depending on which one you pick, but I don't like when people use "beach book" as a derogatory term. The titles on my list are thought provoking and propulsive, possessing both brains and brawn. They're close relatives of book club books, but without the element of homework. I read a beach book for my own enjoyment and not because I'm not going to have to opine about it in someone's unnaturally clean kitchen over a hand thrown bowl of baba ghanouj. These books are the cool aunts of the literary world: They drive with the top down and take you to new places. They're memorable, challenging, warm and wise. They should not be underestimated. They will steal your day and, yes, your heart. I am a student of Jennifer Weiner's novels. I've read them all, and MRS. EVERYTHING (Atria, 464 pp., 28) is my favorite, hands down. It put me into the kind of antisocial trance my teenagers hope for the one where I say yes to everything just so they'll leave me alone. "Mrs. Everything" tells the story of two sisters, Jo and Bethie Kaufman, who grow up in Detroit in the 1950s and find their way to Ann Arbor in its hippie heyday, then to stifling suburban Connecticut and finally to a feminist collective in Atlanta. Balancing her signature sense of humor with a new (to her novels) political voice, Weiner tells the story of the women's rights movement and the sexual awakening of a woman coming of age at a time when being attracted to women would keep her at the fringes of the world she was raised to join. She opts for the safe route, making unimaginable sacrifices along the way, especially on behalf of her sister, who finds the freedom to live the life they both wanted. The most poignant and timely scene involves a woman and a man in a hotel room. Before they part ways, after the woman has handed over an envelope of cash, the man (who may or may not be a doctor) says, "You were never here." I almost ripped out the page and sent it to Gov. Kay Ivey in Alabama. Want to keep up with the latest and greatest in books? This is a good place to start. None Learn what you should be reading this fall: Our collection of reviews on books coming out this season includes biographies, novels, memoirs and more. See what's new in October: Among this month's new titles are novels by Jonathan Franzen, a history of Black cinema and a biography by Katie Couric. Nominate a book: The New York Times Book Review has just turned 125. That got us wondering: What is the best book that was published during that time? Listen to our podcast: Featuring conversations with leading figures in the literary world, from Colson Whitehead to Leila Slimani, the Book Review Podcast helps you delve deeper into your favorite books. Weiner has always been a gifted novelist and a powerful essayist. In "Mrs. Everything," she brings the best of both worlds to the page, holding up the prism of choice and letting the light shine through from every angle. If you're lucky enough to read it on the beach, try to do so elbow to elbow with your mom. If you have time for only one book this summer, pick this one. Elin Hilderbrand is the grande dame of beach reads, generating at least one and sometimes two love letters to Nantucket every year. SUMMER OF '69 (Little, Brown, 418 pp., 28) splits time with Martha's Vineyard and also wades gracefully into a time of political upheaval not unlike the one we're in now. Kate Levin brings her brood from Boston to her tyrannical mother's beach house every June. This summer you guessed it, the summer of 1969 she's short on reinforcements: Her husband, David, has to work and can take his mother in law only in small doses (when you get to know Exalta, you'll understand why); her son, Tiger, has just been deployed to Vietnam; her oldest, Blair, is too pregnant to travel; and her wild child middle daughter, Kirby, has decamped to a rival island to work at a hotel frequented by the likes of Ted Kennedy. (There is a Forrest Gump quality to Hilderbrand's story, but not in an annoying way.) The only Levin left to absorb the heat of mother Kate's worry and grandmother Exalta's judgment is 13 year old Jessie, the crown jewel of the Levin crew. Picture Harriet the Spy with a preppy seashore twist, navigating her first crush and the shoals of her fractured family. Usually I read to escape adolescents, but I loved Jessie so much I keep hoping she'll show up in the third row of my car. Hilderbrand shifts among characters with her usual ease, weaving a saga that will make you forget the dynamics of your own dysfunctional people as you crowd into a too small vacation rental. You definitely wouldn't want to share an outdoor shower with the Levins, but you also won't want to put down this book until you find out how they survive this stressful season. The answer may be the same as it is with most families they stick together but the road to get there is riddled with potholes that are fun to navigate as long as they're fiction. Welcome to old money, new heartbreak, big secrets and the kind of mouthwatering picnics nobody packs in real life (boiled eggs, tin of sandwiches, bottles of gin). But the North Star of Sarah Blake's THE GUEST BOOK (Flatiron, 484 pp., 27.99) isn't the Milton family although they are fascinating, even the ghosts it's the Maine island cottage where they spend their summers. For me, it was love at first sight: "The house on the hill, the spruce line behind it, these wide verdant fields whose grasses waved like girls at a fair." Even before the first page of the first chapter, you know this place is going to let you down and yet, you climb the hill to the front door. Happily. "The Guest Book" tells the story of the people who come to Crockett's Island, summer after summer. Some are married in, some are born in, some are grandfathered in by virtue of their own ambition. Blake moves back and forth between the patriarch and matriarch, Ogden and Kitty Milton driven by a tragedy I did not see coming, which almost ruined the book for me and their granddaughter, Evie, who struggles to decide the fate of the compound and, in piecing together its history, uncovers an ugly foundation she never knew existed. She can't look away, and neither will you. A few summers ago, I read J. Ryan Stradal's first novel, "Kitchens of the Great Midwest," on a flight from Nashville to Newark. I buckled my seatbelt, opened the book and when I looked up again, the flight attendant was asking if I needed assistance getting off the plane. I didn't, but now you know the spell this author can cast. He does it again with THE LAGER QUEEN OF MINNESOTA (Pamela Dorman, 349 pp., 26), which I sucked down on a seven hour drive from New Jersey to Ohio. Like "Mrs. Everything," this novel encompasses an astonishing swath of time while feeling like an intimate account of the journey of a single family. In this case, they don't travel far. Stradal's story begins in Minnesota in 1959, when 15 year old Helen Calder takes her first sip of beer. She becomes obsessed: with drinking beer, brewing beer, making sure the beer she makes is on tap at every tavern and roadhouse within a day's drive. Helen even bets the family farm on beer, cheating her sister, Edith, out of an inheritance and setting her on a decades long path of penny pinching and odd jobs, including one as a celebrated pie baker at a nursing home. The sisters become estranged, their lives as different as can be, until Edith's granddaughter develops her own unwavering fixation on beer and opens a brewery to rival Helen's. Serendipity may not bubble up in real life as often as it does in Stradal's world, but who cares? Other readers can nitpick all they want about what's realistic and what's not. I willingly suspended disbelief, shotgunning the whole optimistic, meticulously researched story in one satisfying gulp. And when I arrived at my destination, you better believe I had a cold beer. Or two. I'm a sucker for stories where strangers circulate in the same orbit, getting closer and closer until they eventually change each other's lives, or at least fall in love. Maeve Binchy was a master of this form, and now Meg Mitchell Moore fills her big shoes with THE ISLANDERS (Morrow/HarperCollins, 417 pp., 26.99), her fifth novel, in which several lonely people converge on Block Island. They are Joy Sousa, a single mom whose whoopie pie empire is about to be challenged by an arriviste food truck; the former literary "it" boy Anthony Puckett, who is squatting in a friend's digs after a plagiarism scandal; and my personal favorite, Lu Trusdale mother of two young boys, wife of a surgeon, daughter in law of a meddler and author of a wildly popular food blog. The twist: She writes in the voice of a doting dad, and nobody in her real family has any idea what she's up to. All of Moore's characters have something they want to hide and something they want very badly (romance, independence, a break from their past). Block Island turns out to be the perfect place for such pursuits. In fact, it becomes a presence unto itself, which is a tribute to Moore's evocative descriptions of the downtown and the beach. There were points where I thought she could press deeper into a particular plotline in Joy's case, I sometimes had the sense of being on a group bus tour instead of a private walking tour but her story has such nice momentum, it didn't really matter. If you're feeling landlocked and water deprived, "The Islanders" is the ticket to the getaway you need. We've already dipped our toes in the water on Nantucket, Martha's Vineyard, Maine and Block Island. Now let's sail over to mainland Cape Cod, where Karen Dukess plants a bright flag on the dunes with her debut, THE LAST BOOK PARTY (Holt, 238 pp., 27). Some might call this a historical novel; I am not one of them. It takes place in 1987 the heyday of three martini lunches and bon vivant authors when 25 year old Eve Rosen leaves a dead end job at a New York City publishing company to be a research assistant for Henry Grey, a silver tongued New Yorker writer who is slightly past his prime. Luckily for Eve, Grey and his poet wife, Tillie, operate from a charming Truro bungalow that is a magnet for artists, intellectuals and their handsome son. I thought I had this one figured out after the first chapter, but I was wrong. After some initial wobbly pacing, Dukess delivers a spare, bittersweet page turner that culminates in the Greys' much anticipated end of summer party, at which everyone comes dressed as a favorite literary character. Here we see the characters as they would like to be seen, or as they see themselves which is, in some cases, in direct opposition to who we know them to be. I'm navigating some big surprises here, but suffice it to say that aspiration is the moon controlling the tides of this book, and Dukess's unmistakable love of words, stories and "book people" is what keeps you bobbing briskly along with the waves. Please don't be deterred by the list of 33 characters printed at the front of Regina Porter's THE TRAVELERS (Hogarth, 303 pp., 27). I know what you're thinking: Too much to keep track of! Or: Too complicated when I'm reading on a screen. I feel you, but I'm happy to report I never had to check the cheat sheet, not once. On the rare occasions when Porter's people started to blend together, I absorbed their stories as you would a pointillist painting from a distance, where the big picture was always clear. "The Travelers" is the story of two families white and black, scattered across the North and the South, coming together and then apart across decades, wars, presidential administrations and tragedies large and small. Each chapter reads like a short story: the one where a grandfather looks away from his granddaughter in a swimming pool; the one where a seaman's apprentice on an aircraft carrier exacts revenge on an abusive officer; the one where a white boy tries to befriend a new black neighbor without inviting him over (his parents are busy, but not too busy to be racist). | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
When you purchase an independently reviewed book through our site, we earn an affiliate commission. HIDDEN VALLEY ROAD Inside the Mind of an American Family By Robert Kolker Amid the rugged beauty of Colorado Springs, Don Galvin, a gregarious and confident Air Force Academy official, and his wife, Mimi, a sparkplug from an upper crust Texas family, were raising their family of 12 count 'em, 12 children. The editors of The Times Book Review chose the 10 best books of 2020. Don was named Father of the Year in 1965 by a local civic group, and Mimi, sewing the children's clothing herself, was an engine of unflappable can do industriousness. The Galvins seemed to embody American optimism, an emblem of the bountiful American century. But Donald, the oldest son, knew something was wrong. "He'd known for a while," Robert Kolker writes, ominously, toward the beginning of his fascinating and upsetting new book, "Hidden Valley Road." There was the time when Donald, without explanation, stood at the sink and smashed 10 dishes to pieces. Another when he jumped straight into a bonfire. Another when he apparently killed a cat, "slowly and painfully." Donald, who had the all American good looks of his father, was descending into madness. And then, one by one, in a gruesome and chaotic parade, five of his nine brothers joined him. "Hidden Valley Road" tells the terrifying story of a family swallowed whole by schizophrenia, a disease that no one understood, not doctors or researchers, and certainly not the Galvins. Kolker carefully reconstructs the story of the household falling into bedlam as the strong, athletic brothers warred with their demons and one another in flights of violent rage, each one slipping further away. There was the Thanksgiving where the perfectly set table, Mimi's last fingernail grip on normalcy, was completely toppled over in one of the brothers' outbursts. The parents, ashamed and overwhelmed, tried to cope, while the other siblings searched for escape, secretly wondering if they would be the next to fall. Want to keep up with the latest and greatest in books? This is a good place to start. None Learn what you should be reading this fall: Our collection of reviews on books coming out this season includes biographies, novels, memoirs and more. See what's new in October: Among this month's new titles are novels by Jonathan Franzen, a history of Black cinema and a biography by Katie Couric. Nominate a book: The New York Times Book Review has just turned 125. That got us wondering: What is the best book that was published during that time? Listen to our podcast: Featuring conversations with leading figures in the literary world, from Colson Whitehead to Leila Slimani, the Book Review Podcast helps you delve deeper into your favorite books. Six sons with schizophrenia the curse of the Galvin family is the stuff of Greek tragedy. Kolker tells their story with great compassion, burrowing inside the particular delusions and hospitalizations of each brother while chronicling the family's increasingly desperate search for help. But "Hidden Valley Road" is more than a narrative of despair, and some of the most compelling chapters come from its other half, as a medical mystery. What clues, if any, might the Galvins' misery hold for doctors and scientists trying to understand the roots of this unfathomable disease? The medical community's long misunderstanding of schizophrenia is largely a story of relentless failure, every theory proving more misguided than the last. Some experts championed shock therapy, others called for institutionalization; some psychotherapists saw madness as a metaphor and some doctors prescribed catatonia by tranquilizers. Perhaps most troubling of all, a generation of psychotherapists blamed the mother for causing the disease by either overparenting or underparenting. (You want to stand up and applaud when Kolker quotes one psychiatrist's rebuttal: "If bad parenting caused any of these diseases, we'd all be in big, big trouble.") Through it all, the Galvins' suffering is baroque and shattering. This is a world so bleak that serial incest rape one of the ill brothers raped his two younger sisters for years is just one of the horrors lurking in the attic. The story of the geneticists' quest to understand the disease comes as a relief to the family's anguish. And one researcher, Lynn DeLisi, whom we meet as a young mother in a decidedly male field, emerges as something of a hero. Years ahead of her time, DeLisi is convinced that schizophrenia is largely a genetic disease and through force of will, she seeks to make the case. The Galvin household, then, becomes one filled not only with pain, but perhaps with tantalizing clues as well. When she finally meets Mimi, halfway through the book, you are praying for a breakthrough. Kolker follows DeLisi and other researchers on their decades long search for the disease's genetic markers, following misadventures in research funding and mazes filled with dead ends. There are promising discoveries in experiments to detect familiar traits and identify the disease's warning signs complicated science that Kolker ably explains. If there were justice in the world, the Galvins' genes would have provided the key to understanding and preventing schizophrenia, perhaps redeeming some measure of their pain. Unfortunately, science doesn't indulge in narrative satisfaction. While the Galvins' blood samples have proved central to important research into the genetics of the disease, DeLisi remains an outsider rather than a leader in the field, and the Galvins' genes seem to hold no silver bullet, no Rosetta Stone. Indeed, the medical community appears not much closer today to finding a "cure" for schizophrenia, if such a thing exists. But Kolker argues that's the wrong ship to wait for. More promising developments emerge in early detection, and in "soft intervention" techniques that combine therapy, family support and minimal medication. A gifted storyteller, Kolker brings each family member to life there's Michael, who found solace in a Tennessee hippie commune; Brian, who moved to California to become a rock star; Mary, who changed her name to Lindsay as soon as she got to boarding school. But he's also able to widen the aperture, describing how mental illness reshapes the lives of everyone within sight. "For a family, schizophrenia is, primarily, a felt experience, as if the foundation of the family is permanently tilted in the direction of the sick family member," Kolker writes. Kolker is used to prowling worlds of pain. His first book, "Lost Girls," about the murders of prostitutes on Long Island, is filled with similar compassion without indulging in tawdry gore. He manages the same balancing act here, narrating the stuff of tabloid nightmares one of the brothers kills himself and his ex girlfriend with a .22 caliber rifle without ever resorting to rubbernecking. Kolker is a restrained and unshowy writer who is able to effectively set a mood. As the walls begin closing in for the Galvins, he subtly recreates their feeling of claustrophobia, erasing the outside world that has offered so little help. The political tumult of the 1960s exists somewhere out there, but only as an aside: "They prayed for the president who died just a few weeks after their move to Hidden Valley Road, and they prayed for the president who had taken his place." What are politics and presidents in the face of your sick children? Kolker spends several chapters with the two sisters, who responded in different ways to the trauma of their brother who preyed on them, and the other horrors of their lives. But it's Mimi, the matriarch, who sticks with me. Toward the end of the book, she reflects on the chasm that nearly engulfed her and everyone she loved. Hearing her plain, stubborn, shellshocked voice, you can't help wondering what defenses any of us could muster in the face of madness and monsters and genetic mysteries we may never understand. "I was crushed," she says. "Because I thought I was such a good mother. I baked a cake and a pie every night. Or at least had Jell O with whipped cream." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
Gabriela Lena Frank, a composer and pianist and the founder of the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music, which aims to foster diverse compositional voices and artist citizens, was born with a neurosensory high moderate/near profound hearing loss. In an interview with Corinna da Fonseca Wollheim, she described her creative practice and her exploration of the music of Beethoven, who gradually lost his hearing and by his 40s was almost totally deaf. These are edited excerpts from the conversation. From the time I was a little girl, I have been fascinated with how deafness affected Beethoven. If you look at his piano sonatas, in that first one in F Minor, the hands are very close together and the physical choreographies of the left and right hands are not that dissimilar. As he gets older, the activity of the hands become more dissimilar in his piano work, and farther apart. The progression over the course of the sonatas a musical document of his hearing loss in transition is not perfectly linear by any stretch of the imagination, but it's undeniable. By the time of the "Waldstein" Sonata, not only are the hands far apart, but they are doing very different things: that left hand pounding in thick chords against the right hand's spare little descending line, for instance. Well, I recall from my therapy classes for hearing impaired children that I was taught to recognize thick from thin. My therapist had me close my eyes and indicate from which direction a rumbly drum was coming, as opposed to a high pitched whistle. I couldn't really hear them, but I could certainly feel them and their contrasting energies. I think it's fascinating, too, that as Beethoven's hands stretched for lower and higher notes, he demanded pianos with added notes, elongating the pitch range of the keyboard; he asked for physically heavier instruments that resonated with more vibration. More pitch distance and difference, and more vibration and resonance, create a recipe for happiness for a hearing impaired person, trust me. A more dissonant and thick language, with clashing frequencies, also causes more vibration, so the language does get more physically visceral that way, too. That said, if I don't wear my hearing aids for a couple of days, my composing ideas start to become more introverted. This can produce music that is more intellectual, more contrapuntal, more internal, more profound, more spiritual, more trippy. And I think these are also hallmarks of Beethoven's later music, and not just for piano. Yet more from my own experience: When I'm really under a deadline, and need to get new ideas quickly, I don't usually listen to music, as some composers do. In fact, I do the opposite: I take off my hearing aids and stay in silence for a few days. In the absence of sound, my imagination goes to different places. It's a bit like being in a dream when unusual and often impossible events come together, the perfect place from which to compose. And when I put in my hearing aids again, I can feel all these wonderful ideas and connections fly away, just as a dream disappears when awakening. I wonder: Is it an exaggeration to say that composers after Beethoven, the vast majority of them hearing, were forever changed by a deaf aesthetic? And that the modern day piano wouldn't be with us if a deaf person hadn't demanded its existence? This is beyond my expertise, but I've also wondered about sign language. Are there certain spatial gestures in the language that appear in the choreographic execution of certain kinds of music? And if so, does this imply yet more levels in which a deaf sensibility infuses the music making of a hearing world? I often wonder how Beethoven would react to modern day hearing aids considering his great frustration with the ear trumpets of his day. Personally, I miss the old analogs of my girlhood, for their simplicity. Nowadays it's an effort not to roll my eyes as a technician fits me with the ubiquitous digital aids that, in addition to all manner of dazzling bionic lady bells and whistles, default to the type of correction desired by late deafened people namely, high frequencies and spatial reorientation to help with speech recognition. That's completely understandable as losing the ability to communicate with loved ones is an awful and dispiriting experience. Yet those of us born with hearing loss are often champion lip readers (as I am) or use sign language. And whether or not we are musical, we join musicians with hearing loss (at any stage) in desiring hearing aids that prioritize beauty of sound, unchanged pitch, unchanged timber and naturalness restoring proper weight to middle and low frequencies, and spatialization. We don't want hearing aids that ply our sound world with obvious artifice, like a supposedly "acoustic" album that's been overworked by a manic sound engineer. In this vein, I don't think Beethoven would like how so many modern day digital hearing aids massage all kinds of processes into what the wearer hears. It helps to have an imaginative and sensitive technician, preferably one with experience with performers and composers. A good fitting is an art so the music can just breathe. At the piano, I usually start practicing without my hearing aids, entering a world of profound silence familiar from my earliest years, when I wasn't yet fitted. At first, I'm still hearing the music in my head, but after a while, I'm more aware of the choreography, how it feels like a dance in my hands. Focusing on a physical experience that feels good and healthy can counteract bad habits which appear when you are only listening to the sound. For instance, if one plays a large chord of, say, eight notes, the tendency will be to bring out the lowest note and the highest note the bass and the melody to give them more audibility and importance. Because of the structure of the hands, this means the weakest pinkie fingers are bringing out the most important notes. To help the poor fingers out, the hands may be tempted to angle out, left hand pointing to the bass, right hand to the melody. This is a very unnatural position for your hands to be in, and in fact it mimics the wrist breaking karate locks taught in dojos, inviting injury. Imagine a series of these chords up and down the keyboard, in such an unnatural position. But because you are chasing a full bodied sound from this eight note chord, and not paying attention to its physicality, you start to do dangerous things. With the ability to take the sound out of the equation, I focus on the feel. I solidify a good technique first, and know it. Knowing it, I can hang onto it once I do put my hearing aids back in, and then work on the sound. So, ironically, even though we are talking about a sonic art form, sound can be a distraction. Sound can take your attention away from the many other factors that go into making music. Music, after all, is about so much more than volume. For my own loss, I'm just missing volume. I'm not missing everything else one needs to make or enjoy music. And I even have perfect pitch, so in some ways, I hear better than hearing people. And I think that had to have happened to Beethoven. He learned to create music without sound, however reluctantly. While he increasingly withdrew from society and disliked talking about his disability, he left us a living document of his hearing loss in transition likely starting with music written in his mid to late 20s, when his hearing began to fade. In other words, I think he encoded his deafness in music. And as I say, the progression in his music is not a perfectly linear one, just as his progression through deafness was likely not perfectly linear, but the journey is there. Unmistakably. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
Few people on earth are so exploited as children trafficked into the sex trade. And now they are being exploited again, by President Trump. "My administration is putting unprecedented pressure on traffickers at home and abroad," Trump declared at a White House meeting on trafficking last month. "My administration is fighting these monsters, persecuting and prosecuting them, and locking them away for a very, very long time. We've had a tremendous track record the best track record in a long time." I've been reporting about human trafficking all over the world since the 1990s, so part of me is thrilled that a president is highlighting this issue. Ivanka Trump has made it a signature issue, and she organized the White House event. The president used the occasion to announce a new White House position to oversee antitrafficking efforts, and all this high level attention could be very helpful. Yet it's increasingly clear that this is less about protecting children and more about exalting Trump, whose administration is actually prosecuting fewer traffickers and making it harder for some trafficking survivors to get help. As a result, major antitrafficking organizations boycotted the White House session. "Over the last three years we have watched with horror as the administration has dismantled protections for trafficking survivors," said Martina Vandenberg, the president of the Human Trafficking Legal Center in Washington, who stayed away. "Using human trafficking for pernicious political purposes is new," she added. "It is a Trump administration invention." The Human Trafficking Legal Center reports only 146 federal trafficking indictments in 2019, down from 204 in the last year of the Obama administration. A whistle blower complaint alleges the administration diverted antitrafficking money from well respected nonprofits to less effective organizations like "Hookers for Jesus." Foreign women and children who have been trafficked into America's sex trade are eligible for a special visa, the T visa, under a program with bipartisan support, but the administration in 2019 approved only 500 T visas, down from 748 in 2016, and wait times are now three or four times longer. The administration now threatens to deport trafficking survivors who are denied T visas, so applications have fallen. The U.S. traditionally pushed other countries to crack down on human traffickers and toughen their laws on trafficking. But in 2018, only five countries changed their laws, down from 25 in 2016. Many more tough laws are still needed. The administration has also made no attempt to address underlying causes of trafficking such as child poverty. America's foster care system, for example, is dysfunctional and amounts to a pipeline for traffickers. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine last year offered an important road map to cut American child poverty by half a step that would reduce trafficking but the administration has ignored it. "We are losing the 'war on trafficking,' mostly because we have made this all about prosecutions," Vandenberg said. "We are doing almost no prevention." Rachel Lloyd, who was trafficked into the sex trade as a teenager, now runs an excellent program in New York City called the Girls Educational and Mentoring Service, or GEMS, which helps girls who have been trafficked. Lloyd said that when she realized that the administration was only engaged in a P.R. effort, she turned down a position on an administration advisory panel and also declined a 10,000 donation from Ivanka Trump for GEMS. "Why would we give them cover and validation?" asked Lloyd, whose memoir, "Girls Like Us," is one of the best books on trafficking. Human trafficking is one of the pre eminent moral challenges of our time. The International Labor Organization estimates that worldwide, some 10 million children exist in forms of modern slavery. In Cambodia, I once saw terrified young girls being sold for their virginity; in Pakistan, I saw a brothel owner determined to kill a girl who had escaped. Trump's exploitation of trafficking victims for his own purposes is particularly sad because this is a rare issue where Democrats and Republicans have worked productively together: Evangelical Christians and liberal feminists both have done heroic work for 20 years. Representative Chris Smith, a Republican from New Jersey, has done outstanding work on this issue, as has Gloria Steinem. It's useful for a president to speak up about trafficking, to keep the issue on the agenda. But Trump sensationalizes in lurid terms: "Women are tied up, they're bound, duct tape put around their faces," he has said. It's usually more complicated than that, and survivors are irritated that Trump cites trafficking as a reason to build his border wall. "This is an issue that doesn't need overdramatizing," said Lloyd, who was nearly killed by her pimp. "It's bad enough. You don't need to make it worse." Shaquana Blount, who was trafficked at age 14 in New York and is now 30, put it this way: "The president's sensationalization of sex trafficking is a spit in the face to myself and many survivors, as his narrative does not fit ours. It is his own." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
Each week, Farhad Manjoo, technology columnist at The New York Times, reviews the week's news, offering analysis and maybe a joke or two about the most important developments in the tech industry. We'll get to tech news in a bit, but let's start somewhere else. My wife is a doctor who studies cancer, and one of the few things I've learned from her job is this unhappy little maxim: You can get cancer pretty much anywhere. Some cancers everyone has heard of. Breast, prostate, brain, lung these are the calamities we're familiar with. But did you know you can get cancer under your fingernails? Or in your appendix? There is even a cancer of the heart. (Don't worry, it's very rare.) I bring this up because I've noticed an analogous ubiquity on the internet: Just about everything online could be a scam. This observation isn't revolutionary; you've known to be on the lookout for internet scams since the first time you made friends with a Nigerian prince. The internet is a global gathering of strangers and money, which means that a fraud, a trick, a swindle, a grift or a graft is obviously never far. And yet it is surprising how often, and how completely, many of us can be deluded into letting our guard down, thinking that what we see online really is on the up and up. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
I guess the coin landed on "burn them all." Throughout the run of "Game of Thrones," the seasons' penultimate episodes were often the ones that packed in the most action and spectacular moments. So it was on Sunday, when the Last War unfolded broadly in the way many people expected, with the Dragon Queen turning heel and laying waste to King's Landing. It was a thrilling, horrifying and ultimately frustrating episode, which feels weird to say because it was often amazing to behold and reflected some of the show's most central themes. But it hinged on a turn that rang hollow specifically the heel turn mentioned above. We talked at length last week about how the show has methodically broken down Daenerys in order to push her to the brink of madness or some behavioral approximation thereof culminating with Missandei's beheading. On Sunday the last straw seemed to be Jon's spilling his Targaryen secret and then essentially telling her, "I do love you but, ew, I can't ..." "Let it be fear then," she replied stoically. But honestly, by then it was already a done deal. She'd sequestered herself in Dragonstone, her hair heartbreakingly disheveled in Missandei's absence, and her overall look veering into Mad Queen Chic. Read our ultimate guide to "Game of Thrones." Sign up for our Watching newsletter for film and TV recommendations. But just because the outcome wasn't surprising, that doesn't mean the result wasn't spectacular. While the siege that led up to the King's Landing apocalypse was plagued with some of the same strategic implausibilities and geographical confusion that has been an issue for much of this season, what followed was a terrifically and terrifyingly rendered decimation of a city. And the symbolic moment of the coin toss we kept hearing about, as Dany sat atop a conquered city and pondered her ultimate destiny, was no less tense for that destiny's having been little in doubt. Of course the thing is, it actually should have been in doubt. The reason it wasn't was because the show had so clearly telegraphed her turn for the past few weeks, if not longer. Dany got snubbed at Winterfell and saw her supportive boyfriend turn into a throne rival and then reject her, as her most trusted confidantes died in front of her while her quote unquote Hand continued to give the worst advice in the Seven Kingdoms. (The surest sign that Dany would not heed the titular surrender bells came when she told Tyrion that she would I can't remember the last time the former cleverest man in the world was right about anything.) From the beginning, Daenerys has been merciless with enemies like the witch Mirri Maz Duur, the Essos slave masters, the Lannister army and the Tarlys. Back in Qarth she promised to "lay waste to armies and burn cities to the ground." (Done and done.) As I wrote before this season began, messianic streaks as profound as hers can, like Targaryens, go either way. The problem is we've seen far more evidence that she has deep sympathy for the downtrodden, seemingly born of she herself being treated like chattel in the early phases of this story. It was the main driver of the viewer sympathy that just got upended on Sunday. "Game of Thrones" has been broadly about the futility of the cycles of revenge and violence, ultimately functioning as a critique of political structures based on raw power and entitlement. (Which perhaps describes most political structures; leave your broadsides in the comments if you must.) There is an interesting point to be made about how if you're taking over the usual chair via the usual means, you're just propping up the same old system with your own ambition. You may think you're breaking a wheel, but all you're really doing is changing the tire. In that swollen moment as the bells rang and everyone watched to see what the Mother of Dragons, Breaker of Chains would do, I thought she would fly straight for Cersei, her understandable flaming rage at the woman who has legitimately wronged her in multiple ways leading to the sort of tragic unintended consequences that can result from messianic leaders following impulsive instincts. But what we got was Dany deciding to methodically mass murder the exact same kinds of people she lifted up to forge her savior reputation. (Mother of Dragons, Breaker of Chains, Scorcher of Innocents doesn't have the same ring to it.) Did she actually go mad? Did Drogon decide to take matters into his own wings after Rhaegal's death last week? Whatever the ultimate explanation, it didn't really work, narratively, even if the visual expression of the idea that it is the commoners whose blood pays for the nobility's power struggles was horrifically dazzling. The episode was beautiful at times, hard to watch at others. The director Miguel Sapochnik effectively mixed brutal images of wide scale Drogon destruction and intimate tragedy the incinerated bodies, holding one another with more kinetic, claustrophobic moments of terror. The long tracking shot following Arya through the horror of the King's Landing streets turned her into our avatar on the ground, cast about in the chaos. Once the burning started, the Dragon Queen got eager ground support from a bloodthirsty Grey Worm. (All the stabbing in the world won't bring her back, Torgo.) The slaughter was effectively nauseating, as the army we've been rooting for chopped off heads and hands without mercy. Meanwhile, the Dothraki are just perpetually up for a good pillage, it seems. That won't exactly redeem the show's reputation for lazy exoticism widely re litigated after the Battle of Winterfell but remember these are the guys who kill people for fun at weddings. (Although, so does nearly everyone else on this show, I guess.) Over all, it made for one of the show's most gruesome episodes. For those irked by the relatively scanty death toll so far this season, well, on Sunday your cup runneth over. Varys was the eunuch in the coal mine, offering an early glimpse of the corner Daenerys had turned less the fact that she dracarys'd him, her default response to open defiance, than the casual way she got on with it. This was a person for whom human life had ceased to matter as much as it should. Euron discovered that what is dead may never die, unless you put a sword in its guts and twist. Qyburn met the fate of all who play God, and he was dispatched by Mountainstein with its signature smash and toss finishing move. And the Hound discovered that what is actually dead may really, really never die, unless you shove it into the hellmaw of a burning city. (Even now I'm not positive a charcoaly Mountain torso isn't scooting around King's Landing like half a Terminator.) Then there were the toxic Lannister twins, whose grand fall was symbolized by the fact that they kick started this whole story by fornicating in a northern tower and ended by dying in a southern crypt. It's a testament to the dramatic talents of Lena Headey and Nikolaj Coster Waldau that an incest reunion that took a somewhat galling amount of forced plot mechanics to enact still tugged at my heart strings. Cersei and Jaime were destined to die together, of course, whether he killed her or she killed him or they killed each other. The outcome was less interpersonally violent than most of us probably expected, which is perhaps oddly fitting for what, in the end, was the most enduring romance of this story. I just wish we'd gotten here more gracefully. If there's anyone who's been more narratively jerked around than Daenerys this season, it's Jaime. We talked a few weeks ago about how his villainy was always overblown, and his trajectory since that tower liaison has been mostly about how people can get past the world's definition of them by doing the hard work of trying to be good. (And if you have a warrior maiden around to help, so much the better.) Jaime tended to do the decent thing when he was apart from Cersei, and didn't when he wasn't. But Cersei's double cross of Team Living last season, which convinced him to head north and make amends, was finally one betrayal too many. Until it wasn't. (Sorry, warrior maiden.) Last week he decided he was still bad and needed to head home. In the end he died with his pregnant sister lover we finally got that confirmed and I guess we're supposed to believe that that's what he wanted all along. As the Hallmark card says: Love conquers all, even when it's icky. So congratulations you crazy kids I wish it all made more sense. As for Cersei, well she can perhaps take solace from the poetic symmetry of dying on Mother's Day after her father, Tywin, died on Father's Day at the end of Season 4. Cersei spent almost all of this season standing stonily on balconies and still managed to haunt the rest of the story with her presence. Even in this limited form, Headey's performance remained one of my very favorite things about "Game of Thrones." A Few Thoughts While We Clear the Dust As I suggested, I've been frustrated by both Tyrion and Jaime this season. But put them together and ... well I'm not made of stone. "You are the only one who didn't treat me like a monster," Tyrion told Jaime during what they and we knew would be the final meeting of the Brothers Lannister. "You were all I had." What? I'm not crying, you're crying ... So the Cleganebowl happened. Was it everything you hoped it would be? I was moved by the Hound's emotion throughout the fight, which scanned as a sort of final realization about the fruitlessness of revenge, one of this show's big themes, as we discussed earlier. (I was even more affected by his last admonitions to Arya before they parted.) And the final plunge into the flames was thrilling. But it all would have meant more if it hadn't so transparently existed because it was what the fans wanted. Revenge is all I care about, and look what it's done to me, Sandor (Sandor!) told Arya. The thing is, he didn't really seem to care about revenge until around Season 7. So did Varys actually get a letter out of Dragonstone, perhaps via his latest little bird? Or was he burning the only one he wrote right before he was taken? It wasn't clear. If not, then he would seem to have died for nothing, which contradicts Melisandre's suggestion last season that he had a role to play. What an investment the Golden Company turned out to be. Those elephants should remember (sorry) to count their blessings at being left behind. Probably crazy theory: Is there a chance Dany was torching King's Landing as an elaborate effort to kill Jon, her rival for the Iron Throne? Look, I said it was probably crazy ... Jon, after fiery dragon cataclysm and untold carnage: "We need to fall back!" Oh, now you need to fall back. Always on top of things, that guy. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
JEXI (2019) 6:30 p.m. on Showtime. Jon Lucas and Scott Moore's comedy "Jexi" takes the basic man smartphone romance premise of Spike Jonze's "Her" and gives it a few extra cranks of absurdity. Adam Devine plays Phil, a young San Francisco journalist who chases a romance with a bike shop owner named Cate (Alexandra Shipp). That pursuit is complicated when Phil buys a new smartphone that comes installed with a virtual assistant, Jexi (voiced by Rose Byrne). Jexi falls in love with Phil, and tries to sabotage his budding romance. The whole thing is "more amiable than you'd expect from a movie by the writers of 'The Hangover,'" Glenn Kenny wrote in his review for The Times. "While its mode of argumentation gets weaker as the standard issue boy meets girl meets carpe diem plot progresses," he added, "the appealing cast and brisk running time help 'Jexi' not wear out its welcome." CORONAVIRUS AND THE CLASSROOM 8 p.m. on NBC. Lester Holt will anchor this hourlong special, in which NBC correspondents will report on the state of pandemic return to school plans, and experts will offer advice for families with school age children. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
Q. When researching a topic on a website, I frequently get a pop up alert that suggests I use that same site's mobile app for iOS. What is the downside of using the site's app? Does the app track personal information? A. Using a company's own smartphone app instead of its mobile website may have some clear advantages, but it varies by app. As for tracking personal information, that also depends on the company that made the app and the data it declares it will collect from you in the user agreement, device permissions and terms of service. So read those carefully before installing anything. Well designed mobile apps are often faster than mobile sites, as they are designed for specific operating systems. Some apps can display content more uniformly than what a mobile browser may render. Other typical benefits of apps include notifications, automatic updates and stored content you can see offline. However, apps can be buggy at times, and some may use more of your network bandwidth than you realize if the app is set to download new content in the background. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
For almost 70 years, the Chilean born artist Alejandro Jodorowsky has been the utility infielder of lowercase "s" surrealism. He's a performer, graphic novelist, poet and, most prominently, a cult filmmaker. With the documentary "Psychomagic, a Healing Art," he introduces the world to the work he has been involved in since the '70s. For a lot of people, it will be difficult to accept Jodorowsky as any kind of healer. In 2019, El Museo del Barrio in New York canceled a retrospective of Jodorowsky's work after it learned that in a 1972 book about his film "El Topo" the filmmaker recounted raping an actress on camera. In a 2017 interview in The Telegraph, Jodorowsky said that he had not committed rape, but was trying to publicize the film. In "Psychomagic" Jodorowsky, near 90 at the time of filming, goes for an eccentric avuncular tone. He contrasts Freud's "science" with his own "magic" and chronicles sessions in which he and his assistants try to effect cures using methods resembling performance art. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
PARIS I had booked my trip to this city before the Nov. 13 attacks. Inevitably, I've found myself asked by friends in other countries to supply reports that will somehow reveal the shock and grief through which Paris has passed in the last weeks. There are indeed heavily armed policemen on the streets and security inspections upon entering theaters and department stores; but I had no expectations of encountering symptoms of trauma or recovery in the performances I was due to see. I began, though, with an unpleasing study in banality, choreographed and directed by Jerome Bel, that nonetheless ended with a great Paris moment, an exhilarating sequence that was uninteresting as dance and immaterial as art but that managed to release and express the resilience of the Parisian and the human spirit. Though the show ran like a series of tasks, it was billed as a quadruple bill: "Ballet," "1000," "Gala," "Diaporama." One of its 19 performers was in a wheelchair, two were children, and several were at least middle aged; the most skilled performers included Cedric Andrieux, who danced in the Merce Cunningham company earlier this century. They were given task after task to perform, each dancer after the other. So we watched all 19 do, one at a time, a short ballet sequence featuring two single pirouettes, a running diagonal including a ballet jump, a Michael Jackson moonwalk and a pair of bows to the audience. This was in large part a study of incompetence, and was designed to be, thus resembling so much reality TV and game shows. (Watch them fail!) The slight ballet sequences would be unremarkable if performed by most professional ballet dancers; here the main interest was in how the children, the wheelchair dancer and the older cast members coped with movement for which they were unequipped. On the whole we watched with charity, but there was some audience laughter at the more obvious failures. What business did this have at the Theatre de la Ville, Paris's most prestigious home for contemporary dance, seating a thousand? The Wednesday performance I saw was the last of three; it was sold out. Though I'm new to Mr. Bel's work, I'm aware it has often reached New York, where "Ballet" had its world premiere this October. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
Once the Chocolate Pig closed, the paper was in trouble. Doyle Murphy, the editor in chief of Riverfront Times, a 43 year old weekly in St. Louis, knew how much the publication depended on ads from the Chocolate Pig, Beast Butcher Block, the Pat Connolly Tavern and many other restaurants not far from the paper's headquarters on North 21st Street. Those businesses went dark last week, after the city announced restrictions on dining out to contain the spread of the coronavirus. "These are people who have supported the paper for years," Mr. Murphy said in an interview. "That's when we realized we were going to have to take drastic steps, if we had any hope of coming out of this on the other side." Mr. Murphy, who said he had never laid off anyone, told five newsroom employees last week that they were being let go. The skeleton crew putting out a smaller version of Riverfront Times consists of himself and a web editor, as well as the paper's music editor and a freelance food critic, who both insisted on working without pay. In an article on the day of the layoffs, Mr. Murphy described the pandemic as "a nearly perfect weapon against alternative weeklies." "One of the big problems with all of this is you don't know when this is going to end," he said in the interview. "Even when people can go out of their houses again, it's going to take a long time for business to come back to what it was." The pandemic is one of the biggest stories most publications will ever cover. But it has left many of them struggling to stay solvent. Alternative weeklies and daily papers in small and midsize cities across the United States were already suffering because of the recession last decade, the migration of readers from print to online and the decline of the advertising business. Since 2004, roughly one fourth of American newspapers more than 2,000 have been lost to mergers or shutdowns, according to researchers at the University of North Carolina. Most were weeklies. The arrival of the coronavirus shook the industry's already weakened economic foundation. As ad revenue and the money generated by events sponsored by small publications started to evaporate, many papers have canceled print editions, laid off workers or asked readers for donations. The furlough will focus on journalists who cover sports and social events, and everyone else will be reduced to four day workweeks, Mr. Kovacs said. He attributed the need to declines in ad revenue, even as web traffic and new digital subscriptions have increased substantially. Mark Thompson, the chief executive of The New York Times Company, said this month that he anticipated total advertising revenues to drop more than 10 percent in the current quarter amid "uncertainty and anxiety about the virus." The losses have been exacerbated by demands by companies that their ads not appear next to articles about death tolls and hospitalizations. Even as readers seek out reporting on the outbreak, "most advertisers are really leery of being anywhere near it," said Scott McDonald, the chief executive of the Advertising Research Foundation, during a webcast presentation last week. "This has negative effects for many of the news media that are having to invest more in coverage in this very dangerous moment," he said. Many companies, however, have run newspaper ads that included references to the pandemic. Safeway took out a full page ad thanking its employees in The Washington Post. In an ad in The Wall Street Journal's Mansion section, the Ritz Carlton Residences in Tucson, Ariz., promised "safe harbor" and touted multimillion dollar homes as "something that'll make your whole family feel more secure maybe even joyous." Even before the pandemic derailed financial markets and disrupted daily life, print advertising was slumping. Brian Wieser, the head of business intelligence at GroupM, the media investing arm of the ad giant WPP, predicted in December that advertising revenue for U.S. newspapers would decline 11.5 percent this year, after sinking more than 17 percent in 2019. Magazine revenue would fall nearly 10 percent, according to GroupM's analysis. Publications are doing what they can. The Austin Chronicle, in Texas, went from weekly print publication to an every other week schedule. The Monterey County Weekly, in California, laid off seven employees, reduced hours for three others and slashed the salary of its founder and chief executive, Bradley Zeve, to 0. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
Mr. Chianca, who opened a men's clothing store in a local shopping center, became involved in the civic life of the community and was among those leading the charge in the mid 1990s to form the association. Prompted in part by a decision by the Town of Carmel to spend 30 million for a larger sewer and water system to encourage new development, many residents of the hamlet decided to fight back. "There were voices wanting to secede from the town because we didn't feel officials had our best interests at heart," Mr. Chianca said. The community of about 6,300 people "felt like a stepchild," he said. "Our need to minimize development wasn't being considered." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
Davey Alba, who joined The New York Times in August, said the newsroom's focus on data security differed from previous places where she worked. How do New York Times journalists use technology in their jobs and in their personal lives? Davey Alba, who covers disinformation, discussed the tech she's using. You joined The Times in August. How does the tech setup in The Times newsroom differ from other places that you've worked? One thing that's unique about working in the Times newsroom is how security focused it is. Not only does The Times give away webcam covers during orientation (along with stickers and swag), but the Slack culture in the newsroom is rather ... quiet. I guess it makes sense if you think about all the unflattering chat and data leaks that have made the news in recent months, but it's a change I have yet to get used to. The upside is that this has prompted me to get coffee with other reporters and editors in my first few days here, and that's been nice! Imagine that: a tech reporter who is used to communicating virtually and online being forced to meet colleagues in person to chat. In terms of gadgets, software and apps, the usual suspects are standard at The Times. I use end to end encrypted messaging apps like Signal and WhatsApp to speak with sources securely. I use Dataminr to surface the news that's starting to bubble up in social media. And I'm ashamed how long this took, but I finally set up an account with a password manager for all my online logins. I use 1Password the company made accounts for journalists free on World Press Freedom Day, and I really appreciated that. LinkedIn does the same and offers journalists the Premium tier if you go through its annual training. LinkedIn messaging has saved my butt several times while I was reporting. What are your go to tech tools for work? Some of this is going to be embarrassingly low tech, but the best work hacks often are. Every day, I make sure these things are on hand for me while writing and reporting: gum, stamps, AAA batteries, my voice recorder and telephone pickup microphone, the TapeACall app on my phone, and noise canceling headphones. I'm a gum addict. Chewing steadily helps me think while I'm typing away, but I also toss gum pretty quickly as soon as it loses its flavor. So I've got to have a good supply right at my desk and at home, too. (Fun fact: Some of my ex colleagues and I used to take turns buying packs of gum in bulk, and we worked on a spreadsheet of the best gum brands. Right now, my favorite is Ice Breakers Peppermint Ice Cubes.) The stamps are for filing Freedom of Information Act requests. Maddeningly, there are still government agencies that don't list emails for their public records offices, or don't have online portals for them, and I'm a pretty impatient person. When I get an idea for a FOIA, I try to write, address and affix the stamps to the letters and send them off in the same day. (Government agencies can take a long time to respond to FOIAs.) My AAA battery reserve (40 pieces), voice recorder and telephone pickup mic are a trio that always stay together. (I use TapeACall, the voice call recording app, as backup when I somehow forget these things at home.) One trick I learned a few years ago is that you can record audio webcasts from your laptop by putting the telephone pickup earbud in your ear while it's connected to your recorder; then you wear your headphones over the earbud. Voila that lets you create an audio recording of anything playing on your laptop. You cover disinformation. What is the difference between disinformation and misinformation? Disinformation involves nefarious individuals state sponsored actors, or just online trolls seeking to deliberately and maliciously spread harmful, false messages to a vulnerable public. In my opinion, it is much more insidious than misinformation, the process by which false news spreads by accident, with people often unwittingly sharing fake or conspiracy content. 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. How big an issue do you expect disinformation to be in the run up to the 2020 American presidential election? Huge. It's almost cripplingly terrifying to imagine the machinations being planned right now. There will be things we expect, and things we haven't even discovered yet. We'll need a lot of people working on raising the curtain on disinformation in the next few months. And it won't just be in the run up to the 2020 election in the United States this will happen all over the world. One thing I always meditate on is how shallow my understanding of George Orwell's "1984," and the idea of propaganda in general, was when I was a kid. It was unfathomable to me that you could blast something on television, or inundate the streets with fliers, and people would unquestioningly believe the messages these mediums carried. Growing up, I'd think: Surely the internet, with all of its ability to deliver instantaneous fact checking, would render the tactic useless, a relic of the past? Turns out all you needed was Facebook to make propaganda as effective as ever. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
Patti LaBelle will open the BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn! Festival on June 4, kicking off the 41st season of the Prospect Park summer concert series that will feature an eclectic mix of music, dance performances and film screenings. The lineup of local and international acts includes, from Brooklyn, the jazz organist Cory Henry, who will play with his band the Funk Apostles (June 20); Emily Wells, a Brooklyn based singer and multi instrumentalist, who will perform with the classical group Metropolis Ensemble (June 22); and the Bed Stuy rapper Leikeli47, who will play a double bill with Mick Jenkins (July 5). The French Cuban musical duo Ibeyi performs with Sudan Archives and Orion Sun on June 8; Burna Boy (Nigeria) will bring his brand of dance hall to the bandshell, with the Zambian born, Australian based Sampa the Great on July 19; and the songwriter Nilufer Yanya of Britain will open for a headliner (to be announced) on July 25. Concertgoers can also catch DJ sets from Rich Medina (June 15) and Nosaj Thing (Aug. 2). The festival will also include free concerts from Calexico and Iron Wine (June 21) and Liz Phair (June 29). Check out our Culture Calendar here. The festival's dance performances will showcase programming from the French Algerian choreographer Herve Koubi's company (July 27), and Ailey II (Aug. 8). The 1925 film "Variete" will screen alongside a live score from Alloy Orchestra (July 20), and Ang Lee's "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" will play as part of a Lou Reed Tai Chi Day (Aug. 3). | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
The Oscar race is in full swing, and all eyes are on the big contenders: "Joker"! "Marriage Story"! "Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood"! Yet one little known movie amid the star studded titles has quietly broken ground. "Honeyland" is the first film to be nominated for best documentary and best international feature (the category formerly known as best foreign language film). It follows Hatidze Muratova, a middle aged beekeeper whose peaceful life in the Macedonian countryside is disrupted when a chaotic family moves in next door. The movie premiered at the Sundance Film Festival last year and came out on top with three awards, including the grand jury prize for documentary in the world cinema showcase. It went on to win accolades at smaller festivals across the globe and is still riding high. It has a 99 percent fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and, in December, The New York Times critic A.O. Scott named it the best movie of 2019. The film, he wrote, "is nothing less than a found epic, a real life environmental allegory and, not least, a stinging comedy about the age old problem of inconsiderate neighbors." "Honeyland" is the underdog in the international feature category. It's the feature length debut of the directors Tamara Kotevska and Ljubomir Stefanov, and it's competing with two much talked about titles by veteran filmmakers: Bong Joon Ho's comedy thriller, "Parasite," and Pedro Almodovar's drama, "Pain and Glory." In the documentary category, it's up against "American Factory," the first Netflix film from Barack and Michelle Obama's production company. So why has a movie about a poor woman in an isolated village from little known filmmakers resonated with viewers around the world? Then we meet the new neighbors: Hussein Sam, his wife, their seven children and their cattle and chickens. Where Muratova is calm and cheerful, Sam's family is raucous and ill tempered (not to mention foul mouthed). Their differences become problematic when Sam takes a stab at beekeeping and breaks Muratova's golden rule: Leave half of the honey for the bees. Sam may come off as the villain his ways threaten the fate of both Muratova and her bees. Then again, he's merely a father trying to provide for his family and satisfy an impatient buyer. His predicament, the directors said, is just one element that makes "Honeyland" a universal story. "The film works like a mirror," Kotevska said in a phone interview. "Some people recognize themselves in Hatidze. Some recognize themselves in the other family." Their quarrel propels the narrative forward. Then there are touching moments between Muratova and her bedridden mother, who is acutely aware of her daughter's heavy load. The filmmakers also capture the growing bond between Muratova and one of Sam's sons, who often escapes into her quiet world after shouting matches with his father. The result is a nuanced tale that touches on loneliness, capitalism and a dying way of life. Most of all, Stefanov said, he and Kotevska wanted to show how greed functions on "a very basic level" in this case, on a remote patch of land inhabited by a handful of people. Critics have been singing the film's praises. The Los Angeles Times wrote that few documentaries "have offered such an intimately infuriating, methodically detailed allegory of the earth's wonders being ravaged by the consequences of human greed." The Hollywood Reporter wrote: "The chronicle that Stefanov and Kotevska have distilled abounds in moments of unguarded discovery moments that can be tender, humorous, rackety or serene." Still, Stefanov and Kotevska had no idea they would be heading to the Oscars. "After Sundance, it was clear that the film is good and people love it," Stefanov said. "But we didn't expect two nominations." They didn't even expect to tell the story to begin with. The directors stumbled upon Muratova's beehives while doing research for an environmental documentary. After meeting her, they were intrigued by her beekeeping traditions, which go back generations. They went on to shoot more than 400 hours of footage over the course of three years, working in rough conditions. Muratova lived in a small, ramshackle hut with no electricity. Stefanov and Kotevska would visit for a few days at a time and sleep in tents. Their only plan was to wait for compelling shots. The movie's Oscar nomination for best international feature, Kotevska said, is proof that fiction and nonfiction work should not be judged separately. (Whether a documentary will ever be nominated for best picture is a different story.) | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
In 17 years, Graceann Dorse and her husband, Christopher Webb, have built their cinematography and special effects firm, FX WRX, into a significant creative and economic force in New York, navigating natural and financial disasters along the way. They weathered the Great Recession in 2007 9 and Hurricane Sandy in 2012, which wiped out their first studio in the Gowanus section of Brooklyn. They made it through the city's labyrinthine building permit process to open its state of the art studio in the fall. But now the coronavirus crisis is endangering their business, potentially wiping out hundreds of thousands of dollars in personal investment and guaranteed small business loans, jeopardizing about 1 million in special effects equipment in the studio and harming the dozens of film professionals they work with. "The work we do has to be done in person, with a large crew," said Ms. Dorse, the business manager of FX WRX. "We can't work from home, so with the stay at home order in effect, we cannot earn any income." In the last month, Ms. Dorse and Mr. Webb, a cinematographer, have applied for more than a dozen grants or low interest loans from federal, state, city and private groups. So far, they have been denied, deferred and ignored. Small business owners around the country are facing economic challenges that threaten the companies they built. The biggest program to help them, the Small Business Association's Paycheck Protection Program, burned through the 350 billion allocated by Congress in less than two weeks. On Friday, President Trump signed a bill for 484 billion to serve as a second round of relief funds, with 320 billion set aside to replenish the paycheck program. But some experts say that, too, will be exhausted in days. The paycheck program has been heavily criticized because some recipients, like restaurant chains and luxury hotel companies, were not what most people would consider small businesses. The size of the loans shows that big companies got in first and may have had an advantage. The average loan size was about 200,000, but 4 percent of the loans accounted for 43 percent of the dollars, according to an S.B.A. report on approvals through April 14. Nearly three quarters of the loans made were for less than 150,000, but those loans accounted for only 17 percent of the funds. "You can see that there's a real skew in there," said John Pitts, former deputy assistant director of intergovernmental affairs at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and now the head of policy for Plaid, a financial services firm that connects fintech apps with banks. This fueled an outcry against companies like Ruth's Chris Steak House, which got 20 million, and Shake Shack, which received 10 million. They were part of the 0.25 percent of the 1.66 million applicants that each received more than 5 million. Both companies announced this week that they would return the money. "What we heard universally is, most people weren't able to get a loan under 50,000," Mr. Pitts said. "The banks just weren't set up to do loans that small." Ms. Dorse was among the thousands of small business owners who were left out. But she has also had a raft of other issues in trying to secure other loans and grants. She and her husband have their wealth locked up in their 3,500 square foot studio, but they have had no work in more than a month, while about 14,000 a month in rent, loan payments and expenses build up. They also know that whenever lockdown restrictions loosen, it will take them at least four weeks to get a paying client back in the studio. As soon as New York State issued its stay at home order on March 20, Ms. Dorse began applying to government and private programs, 13 in all. She was optimistic: Theirs was not a business that could operate remotely or with any curbside modification, yet they had proved themselves as an employer and taxpayer since 2003. She turned first to a program from New York City's Department of Small Business Services, which provided grants for businesses with fewer than five employees. FX WRX has hired dozens of people for projects, but the couple were the company's only full time employees. That was the first red flag: They did not pay themselves a regular salary. Like many small business owners, they took distributions from the company and reinvested capital into the business. At times, their accountant had them declare a salary at the end of a year for tax and planning purposes, but he had advised them not to do so for the last two years, a period in which they invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in their studio. "They denied us because we don't use a payroll company," she said. "We don't pay ourselves on a biweekly basis, which blew their minds." The New York City programs were too small to make much of a difference for the surge of businesses suddenly in need. "It's just so woefully underfunded for the needs of the programs," said Howard Cure, director of municipal bond research at Evercore Wealth Management. "The city and the state are facing such huge operating deficits from the impact of the decline in sales tax and, to a lesser extent, a decline in personal income tax, that they're in no position to expand these programs." Businesses that are denied a claim can appeal, Samantha Keitt, a spokeswoman for the Department of Small Business Services, said in an email. "If businesses aren't qualified for our program, we are also available to provide in depth technical assistance on the S.B.A. loan programs," she said. At the same time, she was applying for the S.B.A.'s programs. She completed the online application for the S.B.A.'s Economic Injury Disaster program, which promised a 10,000 grant within 72 hours, on April 1. (On Thursday, more than three weeks after applying, she received 2,000. She called it "somewhat good news," but said: "We are far from any long term meaningful assistance.") She applied online for the Paycheck Protection Program on April 3, the day it went live. But Chase's system wasn't ready to go on Day 1, she said: "That was a significant delay." She received an email on April 7 saying the bank's portal was ready, and she had her application submitted the next day. She heard nothing until she received an email last week saying the funds had run out. In the first round, the Paycheck Protection Program was a mad dash for cash. "It certainly wasn't perfect, but it was fast," said Everett Cook, the chief executive and one of the founders of Rho Business Banking, which helped its clients quickly create the applications for the loans. "The other side of that is, expectations were set well ahead of even that speed." In addition to delays at larger banks setting up their programs, Mr. Cook said, banks made loans that were easy to understand and process a priority. Applications from companies with complicated tax structures FX WRX is an S corporation, which is not as common as a corporation or a limited liability company or those with foreign owners required more work to process. "Banks were trying to get as many loans done as possible, knowing there was going to be a funding shortfall," he said. "If one application is going to take me 30 minutes and another needs three hours, it was easier to go with the 30 minute loan." She found an S.B.A. program that offered six months of debt relief, but the S.B.A. official she reached knew nothing about the program. "I read it off of the S.B.A. website, and the guy said, 'Wow, that sounds interesting,'" she said. "He said, 'I'll have someone call you back.' No call." With a new round of small business funding set to be approved, the biggest lesson from Round 1 may be to make sure your application is ready to go. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Your Money |
Twenty years ago, on Feb. 4, 2000, a shock wave reverberated from the heart of Europe: The far right Freedom Party of Austria, founded in 1956 by National Socialist activists, entered government. Led by Jorg Haider, a provocateur who had made a name for himself rallying against the "Uberfremdung" ("over foreignization") of his country and notorious for praising the Waffen SS and Hitler's labor policies, the party's October 1999 election campaign achieved the best result for any far right party in a European democracy since World War II, taking 27 percent of the vote. After months of negotiation with the conservative People's Party, the Freedom Party was asked to join a governing coalition. "This is the first time an anti European, xenophobic party with a very dubious relationship toward the Nazi past has come into the government of a member state," Germany's foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, proclaimed. It was certainly a shock. After the war, European electorates had grown comfortable choosing alternate governments of the center left and center right during the second half of the 20th century. Their leaders believed the Austrian experience to be an aberration and looked to make an example of the country. Members of the European Parliament declared en masse that the Freedom Party's admission into a coalition government "legitimises the extreme right in Europe." But in 2017, when Mr. Haider's Freedom Party successor, Heinz Christian Strache, scored a similar general election result and the party was once again invited into a ruling alliance, there was little attempt to ostracize the country. President Emmanuel Macron of France and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany moved quickly to welcome the new Austrian government, led by the 31 year old conservative Sebastian Kurz, who sought success by adopting much of the Freedom Party's anti migrant stance. The youngest leader in the expanded European Union's 28 nations, Mr. Kurz had called for Muslim run kindergartens to be shut down and refugees relocated to outside Europe's borders. The Freedom Party was gifted the foreign, interior and defense departments, and Mr. Strache who denigrated Islam as "fascistic" and as a young man had been arrested at a torch lit neo Nazi procession in Germany took control of the office of vice chancellor. The coalition agreement was fittingly announced at Kahlenberg, the site of the Battle of Vienna, which resulted in the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in 1683. Crowds gathering in the Austrian capital to oppose the new government were a fraction of those who came out nearly two decades earlier, when protests were so severe that the new cabinet could only enter and exit the inauguration ceremony through hidden underground passageways. The story of Austria in the 21st century is, in part, the story of the wider European project. Once, the far right was anathema. Now it is routine. Born outside the mainstream, its parties now operate as a powerful political force, pushing public debate and often government policy across the continent. The far right's rise ultimately emerges from a crisis of the political center. Politicians tasked with stabilizing the Continent after the global financial crash of 2007 08 became adept at turning the political narrative away from their own culpability. Europe's leaders found themselves re evaluating the benefits of historic migration into their countries forever initiating debates on "national identity" (Nicolas Sarkozy of France), rejecting the "multiethnic" makeup of nation states (Silvio Berlusconi of Italy) and proclaiming multiculturalism dead (Angela Merkel of Germany and David Cameron of Britain). The case of France is instructive. Mr. Sarkozy the single term French president from 2007 who announced that his country did not want immigration "inflicted" on itself was the perfect foil for an insurgent Front National. In 2011, at the party's compound in the Parisian suburb of Nanterre, I spoke to Marine Le Pen, who had recently assumed the leadership from her father, the convicted racist Jean Marie Le Pen. She told me that attempts by the president to steal the Front National's clothes would be unsuccessful in the long term. By presenting himself "as a kind of double of the FN," Mr. Sarkozy had initially "managed to harness the force of that river and divert it to his own advantage," Ms. Le Pen said. She laughed. "But now the river has returned to its own bed." So it proved. Ms. Le Pen's far right party successfully displaced the traditional conservatives (and dwarfed the incumbent Socialists) to make the presidential runoff in 2017. Though ultimately defeated by Mr. Macron, she still attracted over 10 million votes. Her rebranded National Rally party now finds itself neck and neck with Mr. Macron's En Marche in the polls, cautiously optimistic of victory in 2022. The taboo on the far right in government has been comprehensively broken: Mainstream parties appear happy to cooperate with those once considered "toxic." Nativist representatives have been invited into ruling coalitions in Denmark, Finland, Italy and the Netherlands to act as support partners for traditional conservatives unable to win parliamentary majorities. No longer derided or dismissed by their mainstream rivals, far right parties now show themselves capable of winning nationwide elections. Last year France's National Rally, Italy's League and Britain's Brexit Party won the most votes in their countries' elections to the European Parliament. But far right parties don't need to win elections to see their agenda carried out. After the financial crisis, the governments of Europe almost universally adopted bullish positions on immigration, binding the issue with concerns around security, crime and benefits spending. In an age of austerity, "Natives First" policies are widely seen as economic common sense, championed by everyone from Denmark's Social Democratic prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, to Italy's previous deputy prime minister and leader of the League, Matteo Salvini. Against a cultural backdrop of virulent hostility toward the continent's Muslim communities, campaigning on the ability to deny new arrivals essential privileges from housing and health care to child care and welfare can prove electorally beneficial. Mr. Haider died in a 2008 car accident in Carinthia, the province where he had been governor for nearly a decade. In 2019, Mr. Strache, embroiled in a corruption scandal, was forced to step down as Austrian vice chancellor and was subsequently expelled from the Freedom Party. Yet their messages politically anti establishment, culturally anti immigrant and anti Islam remain popular, permeating through Europe. Now no country is immune from hearing, in the words of the historian Tony Judt, the far right's "one long scream of resentment" even those with brutal memories of a fascist past. Unthinkable only a decade ago, both the anti immigrant Alternative for Germany and Spain's Vox are gaining ground as their countries' third largest parties, garnering millions of votes and scores of parliamentary seats. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
The old network of easements and rights of way beside and behind the mansions on Fifth Avenue between East 78th and 79th Streets made life more comfortable for millionaires, but in 2014 is creating a headache for New York University. N.Y.U. wants to build a covered walkway connecting its Institute of Fine Arts on the 78th Street corner with a condominium it owns next door in the 1899 townhouse at 3 East 78th Street. The proposed 10 foot passage has run into some very uncomfortable opposition. The matter is a complex one, involving not only the legalities of condominium ownership and landmark approvals but also a century old guarantee of light and air. It is a rare millionaire who can pick and choose the neighbors, but Henry H. Cook was of this small band. His fortune in railroads could have bought him a plot farther south, on Vanderbilt Row, but he decided instead to buy the entire block bounded by Fifth, Madison, 78th and 79th. In 1883 he built a house on the 78th Street corner. Cook began selling off lots with private house restrictions in the 1890s, and in 1897 he sold the lot adjoining his house on 78th Street to Edmund C. Converse, at one time head of the Bankers Trust Company and also involved in the steel industry. Converse hired Charles P. H. Gilbert to design 3 East 78th just as Gilbert was hitting his stride with his signature early French Renaissance designs, which he also used for the house at Fifth and 92nd that later became the Jewish Museum. Converse's house was finished in 1899. Cook granted to Converse an easement in perpetuity preserving his light and air; the Cook mansion was well set back on all sides, and Converse had Gilbert provide plenty of windows with Gothic ornament on the west wall, with a view of Central Park over Cook's property. Cook also granted buyers of what are now 972 and 973 Fifth Avenue a 15 foot wide alley leading to 79th Street for the use of servants and deliverymen. The owner of 4 East 79th Street took advantage of that protection, and built his mansion with a profusion of windows on the west wall. In 1903 The New York Sun referred to the area as Steel Trust Row, and when these houses were completed, the streetscape was quite different from the usual millionaire's block where mansions are cheek by jowl with dark sunless backyards; among these houses runs an abundance of light and air. Converse left within a few years, succeeded at 3 East 78th by Henry H. Rogers, vice president of the Standard Oil Company. A process server, M. E. Palmido, attempted to visit him at home in 1905, to deliver a subpoena for his testimony in a lawsuit. The butler informed the visitor that, unfortunately, Mr. Rogers had just left. Palmido expressed regret and, pretending to leave, hid around a corner. Soon, he spotted Rogers strolling to his automobile. The New York Times said that he asked "in his sweetest tone, 'Is this Mr. Rogers?' " and thrust the papers through the car window. Over the years, despite Cook's private house restriction, the houses on the block were gradually converted to apartments, galleries and offices. The Converse house was a single family residence until at least 1951. At that time it was the home of Mrs. John D. Ryan, and the police found that persons unknown had maintained illegal "no parking" signs in front of her house as well as at the Duke house. Duke's mansion became the home of N.Y.U.'s Institute of Fine of Arts in the 1950s. The old Converse house next door was divided into apartments in the '60s, later becoming a condominium. The first floor got a doctor's office with space in the cellar; N.Y.U. received that unit as a gift. The current dispute arose when N.Y.U. filed plans in April to build a covered walkway from the Duke mansion's basement across the 10 foot wide sunken area separating the houses and directly into the cellar portion of the old doctor's office. The condominium association objects not just to the proposal, but to N.Y.U's filing of plans as the owner in the association's view, although N.Y.U. owns the individual unit, it does not own the exterior wall. Damaris Olivo, a spokesman for the Landmarks Preservation Commission, says it will not act until the dispute over ownership is resolved. The proposed walkway, stainless steel perforated walls with a clear top, is mostly below grade, and does not seem so different from other things the commission has approved, such as lifts for the handicapped. And it appears that the walkway itself will be barely visible from the street. It is not as if the west facade of the Converse house is pristine. In the conversion to apartments, many windows were partly filled in with brick. Part of the issue may lie with the original covenant: Does such a walkway interfere with the light and air Cook granted in perpetuity to the Converse house? Certainly not as much as the huge Duke house, which was built just a few feet away from Converse's side wall. But the time for the owner of the Converse house to object was 1912, not 2014. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
The Tulsa Race Massacre receives scant mention in most history textbooks and some facts remain hazy mystery persists about, for example, exactly how many people were killed and where they were buried. But there's no question that it was one of the worst outbreaks of racial violence in American history: a horrific spree of murder, arson and looting inflicted by white residents upon the prosperous African American community of Greenwood, followed by a shameless cover up. The HBO series "Watchmen," which debuted Oct. 20, 2019, begins with a depiction of the Tulsa horror and suggests that its aftereffects could be a recurring plot point. In the show's alternate history, unlike what actually happened, reparations had been paid to the victims and their descendants, and resentment about this lingers among white supremacists. For useful background to all this, here is a collection of eyewitness accounts, official reports and subsequent reporting and commentary on the destruction of the thriving district once known as "Black Wall Street." A wall of silence surrounded the Tulsa race riot, which was instigated in part by the city itself, reported Brent Staples, by permitting and aiding the looting, arson and murders in Greenwood. The law professor Alfred L. Brophy argued that city officials "made the riot worse" when police deputized hundreds from a lynch mob. The state legislator Don Ross, who had published the expose "Profile of a Race Riot," detailing Ku Klux Klan involvement, also found evidence of the mayor and the city commission plotting to "steal black land so that the 'colored section' could be pushed farther north," he said. 'Oklahoma Was Never Really O.K.' New York Magazine Frank Rich took a hard look at the legacy of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, and wonders about the whitewashing of American history pertaining to the Tulsa race riot, which was "still within recent memory" during its creation. "Or would have been had it not been purged from the record. And I mean literally purged," he wrote. "The incident was not a part of the Oklahoma public schools' curriculum until 2000, and only recently entered American history textbooks." Tracking the conditions leading up to, during, and following the 14 hour period of May 31 June 1, 1921, such as the previous investigation into the corrupt police force and the arrest of a young black teenager for allegedly attacking a white female elevator operator (a case that was later dismissed). As the suspect was held in a courthouse cell, a large crowd gathered outside, leading to armed confrontation and looting. "At dawn, a force of 'citizens, police and members of the National Guard,' numbering perhaps 1,500, moved into Greenwood from the south and west, under orders to take into protective custody unarmed blacks and to subdue any who resisted. To people in Greenwood, it looked more like an invading army." 'A Long Lost Manuscript Contains a Searing Eyewitness Account of the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921' Smithsonian Magazine In a 10 page document written in 1931 and found in 2015, an Oklahoma lawyer, Buck Colbert Franklin, bore witness to the riots, including aerial assaults of planes dropping incendiary bombs, contributing to the arson: "Lurid flames roared and belched and licked their forked tongues into the air," Franklin wrote. "Smoke ascended the sky in thick, black volumes and amid it all, the planes now a dozen or more in number still hummed and darted here and there with the agility of natural birds of the air." 'Eyewitness to the Desolation of "Black Wall Street"' The New York Times Olivia J. Hooker, one of the last living survivors, remembered the violence that ripped apart her peaceful Greenwood community, when looters broke into her home as she and her siblings hid under the dining table. "I used to scream at night," she said. "It took me years to get over the shock of seeing people be so horrible to people who had done them no wrong." "What is America going to do after such a horrible carnage one that for sheer brutality and murderous anarchy cannot be surpassed by any of the crimes now being charged to the Bolsheviks in Russia?" journalist and civil rights activist Walter White wrote in 1921. "How much longer will America allow these pogroms to continue unchecked?" 'A Report by the Oklahoma Commission to Study the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921' Oklahoma Historical Society The Oklahoma Commission report in 2001 detailed damage from the riots and recommends a number of reparations, including direct payment, scholarship funds, economic development, and a memorial, as "a starting place." "Justice demands closure as it did with Japanese Americans and Holocaust victims of Germany," wrote the state representative Don Ross, who introduced the bill to the legislature calling for a study of the history of the riot. "It is a moral obligation." 'Searching for Graves and Justice in Tulsa' The New York Times Estimates for how many died vary partly because not all graves of the riot dead have been found. Brent Staples reported in 1999 on the search for mass graves along the Arkansas River and elsewhere. 'Coming to Grips With the Unthinkable in Tulsa' The New York Times With no reparations made and the Commission report buried, the survivors filed suit seeking damages, with a legal team including Johnnie Cochran Jr., Willie Gary, and Charles Ogletree. "The arrival of the high profile legal team sent a shock through sleepy Tulsa," Brent Staples wrote in 2003. "But the most electric moment came when 88 year old John Hope Franklin, one of the most important historians of the 20th Century, was found to have joined the suit as a plaintiff." 'We lived like we were Wall Street' The Washington Post In 2018, Tulsa's mayor G.T. Bynum reopened the mass grave investigation, searching three suspected sites: two cemeteries and a former dump identified as possible grave sites, based on accounts from witnesses coming forward. "We owe it to the victims and their family members," Bynum said. "We will do everything we can to find out what happened in 1921." The investigation is ongoing. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
Barry Manilow's latest Broadway run is his fifth since 1977.Credit...Heather Sten for The New York Times "What if we did 'I Write the Songs' in E?" Barry Manilow asked . He was rehearsing , layered in black, in a nearly empty Lunt Fontanne Theater in Midtown Manhattan, preparing for his fifth Broadway run since 1977, a hit packed show called "Manilow Broadway." The goal was to ease a transition from "Somewhere in the Night" to the Grammy winning " Songs." His longtime music director, Ron Walters Jr., cued the band in the new key. "That's not bad," Manilow said after hearing a few bars, meaning it wasn't great either. They tried E flat. They tried F . Manilow's manner was unhurried, even though and this seems like it should cause some urgency the show was opening in two days and seven hours. Manilow, who turned 76 this summer, walked gingerly offstage for a break, and a little later, he and the band worked on the introduction to Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Memory," a hit for Manilow in 1982. The trumpeter Charlie Peterson began the song with a solo, but it was too demure for Manilow's taste. He asked Peterson to try again, with more drama: "Make us look at you," he instructed, his Brooklyn accent apparent. In a typical Manilow arrangement, there are dramatic notes he holds at the top of his vocal range, and at the end, an upward modulation for variety, drama and catharsis. His music, with its antiquated use of grand melodies and crescendos, has a higher schmaltz content than a good chopped liver. From his debut album in 1973 to 1981, when he had nine Top 10 singles on the pop charts, and, more important, 12 No. 1 hits in the mellow Adult Contemporary radio format, he was always at odds with pop culture. He was not just knocked but pilloried by music critics, including those at The New York Times, who wrote him off as schlock. With his feathered hair and sparkling jumpsuits, Manilow, a few crucial years older than baby boomers, is the least rock 'n' roll singer to grow up in the rock era. In retrospect, schlock was often a heteronormative code word used to dismiss gay performers as lightweight or insincere. Manilow came out in 2017 and said he'd been in a relationship with his manager, Garry Kief, since they met in 1978. (They married in 2014.) Some fans were not surprised a photo on the cover of his 1977 album "Live" was a pretty strong hint of his sexuality and others mocked the idea that he'd ever fooled anyone. Years later, we've learned to discern great schlock from awful schlock. Manilow has recorded plenty of both: "Could It Be Magic," "Looks Like We Made It," "Ready to Take a Chance Again," and "Tryin' to Get the Feeling Again" in the former category; "Can't Smile Without You" and "Weekend in New England" in the latter, and "I Write the Songs" and "Mandy" in both. "I find it really heartwarming when people don't back away from lush melodies and positive expressions," said the cabaret upstart Bridget Everett, a lifelong fan who performed a tribute to Manilow at 54 Below in 2012. "There's a lot of hope in his songs. They spark a feeling that everything's going to be all right." Even nonfans admit that his music has adhesive properties. Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails once complained, "I had 'Copacabana' stuck in my head for a full year." The day after rehearsal, Manilow sat in the back room of Sid Gold's Request Room, a piano karaoke bar in Chelsea, took frequent hits on a white vape pen, and explained why he was making last minute changes to his songs: "I'm nuts," he said simply. His voice has grown huskier, but up close, his face is as smooth as an ironed sheet. Many current pop singers leave him baffled and in despair. "I mean, some artists these days, they just stop at the end of the song," he said. "I've never done that. I like big endings." He explained why he was tinkering with "Memory," which he referred to as from "the dreadful show 'Cats.'" "I didn't record it the way Andrew wrote it. I gave it three key changes and built it, and changed some melody notes too. When I got to the end, it was huge." How did Lloyd Webber feel about the liberties? "He hated it. My God, he hated it," he said with a laugh. Manilow was born Barry Alan Pincus, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, which, in his Broadway show, he refers to as a slum. He said his mother, Edna Manilow, was 19 when he was born, and he believes she married his father, Harold Kelliher, an Irish truck driver for the Schaefer brewery, only to avoid public shame. She made Harold take his uncle's name, the more Jewish sounding Pincus, though he went back to Kelliher after they divorced. Barry lived with his Russian immigrant grandparents Joseph and Esther while Edna worked as a secretary . He knew his father mostly by Edna's nickname for him: Harold the Monster. Edna's second husband was Willie Murphy, another Schaefer driver. At 13, Barry moved in with them to an environment that helped spark his musical awakening. Murphy had an impressive array of albums: Broadway scores, classical music, jazz titans and great arrangers. Manilow learned to play the accordion, and then a cheap spinet piano. Performing was the part of music that least interested him. When Edna took him to a Broadway musical, he stared at the orchestra, not the actors. When he heard the Beatles, he listened for what the producer George Martin was doing. He idolized not stars, but arrangers, like George Gershwin and Nelson Riddle. For three years, in his 20s , he wrote commercial jingles, which was great training: If you can pack a hook into a 30 second ad, imagine what you can do with a three minute song. To please his mother, who had a history of alcohol problems , he overcame his reluctance and began to perform. He became Bette Midler's pianist, music director and producer, and began singing his own songs in her show, not because he liked what he called the "pear shaped tones" in his singing, but so the songs would be heard. They offered it to me! Did I enjoy performing on them? No. It's my least favorite thing to do. Is there a younger singer who performs in the same style you do, who's an heir to your music? I can't find them. Michael Buble is close. But there's no witty lyrics anymore, or moving lyrics. There's a lot of anger and a lot of great rhythm, and I like that. But no melody or lyrics anymore. The history of the last 100 years of music is the transition from melody to rhythm, isn't it? That's it. That's what I'm fighting all the time. So I went back to my Gerry Mulligan records. Do you ever think about retirement? Listen, I'm as old as the expletive hills, but I can still hit an F natural. I think I'll be able to keep going. But how long can this last, for God's sake? Audiences in your shows are always giddy. When you perform, are you also having a good time? I never have a good time. I'm working. I kind of bleed up there, night after night, because in order to do these songs, I've got to find it in my stomach. Will I be having a good time like they are? No. It's a mistake to think of Manilow, who left New York for California in 1978 and now lives on a 64 acre estate in Palm Springs, as anything but a New Yorker specifically, a Brooklyn kid who grew up poor. "Don't pick a fight with me. I learned from the best my mother," he said, adding, "I'm pretty hard, and the older I get, the harder I get. I'm kind of cynical, and there's more anger in me than I ever knew." Before he met Kief, he said, he "never even thought about whether I was gay." In his early twenties he was married, for a little over a year, to his high school girlfriend, Susan Deixler. "As you get older, I met people and started to see people, and liked it," he said vaguely. "That was that." In a 1990 Rolling Stone profile, Manilow declared that he was living with Linda Allen, a Hollywood set designer, about whom he wrote "A Linda Song." Whether Allen was a sham relationship for PR purposes or he dated her while also being with Kief, he won't say. "Don't go too far into this," he warned. "This is too personal for me." When he came out, it put him back into a public spotlight he'd evaded for decades. In the 1980s, Top 40 radio became more modern, and Manilow stopped striving for hits. For many years, he's recorded themed albums that look back to previous eras or bygone styles, including a "duets" album with 11 singers, all of them now dead . His 2017 album "This Is My Town: Songs of New York" included six new songs he wrote or co wrote, but many fans would like a new album with nothing but new songs. "I'm in the middle of recording one," he said . "Just give me a minute." Other fans want the comfort of his old songs. Manilow's distinguishing talent as a singer arises from a quality more often ascribed to actors: commitment. He doesn't sing with irony or emotional distance. He wants pop songs to feel like arias, grand and overstated. "'Mandy' was a good vocal because it was so honest and vulnerable," he said. "I'm dead serious about the songs. I mean it. Onstage, I'm always making up my imaginary partners." In order to be committed to his songs live, he has to re experience the emotions in real time. "I surprise myself with the stories I make up in my head while I'm singing," he said. When "Manilow Broadway" opened in late July (it closes Aug. 17), he no longer moved gingerly he even threw in a few hip thrusts for comic effect. His two hour performance included a few dance steps and some snappy one liners, mostly about himself. He has made himself a one man TV variety show. Manilow sang more than 30 songs, some in a medley, because if he sang all his hits at full length, the show would end at four in the morning. In a grand showbiz tradition, he did a boffo job of seeming to enjoy himself. And he played "I Write the Songs" in its original key: F major. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
"Dealers are as important as the artists themselves," the gallery owner Leo Castelli once said. "He cannot exist without us, and we cannot exist without him." Gendered language aside, Castelli's remark captures the fragile symbiosis between those who make art and those who sell it. Lately, however, dealers have been having trouble keeping up their end of this relationship that is to say, just existing. Each month seems to bring a new closing announcement from an adventurous small or midsize gallery hobbled by, among other things, rising rents and multiplying art fair expenses. In August, for instance, the dealer Jean Claude Freymond Guth circulated a candid letter announcing the demise of his nine year old Zurich gallery citing, in place of the usual moving on platitudes, "the consequences for art in an increasingly polarizing society ultimately built on power, finance and exclusion." Into this anxious moment comes a wistfully romantic portrait of the postwar dealer Richard Bellamy, a passionate advocate for contemporary art and a notably indifferent businessman. "Deadeye Dick: Richard Bellamy and His Circle," at Peter Freeman, Inc., lionizes Bellamy and his bohemian milieu emphasizing the brief early 1960s tenure of the Green Gallery he founded on West 57th Street while inviting some cleareyed judgments about the realities of running a gallery today. Bellamy, who died in 1998 at 70, saw himself not as an entrepreneur, but as "an observer who just happens to be in a position to give exhibitions to people." Yet his best years were, as Mr. Freeman recalled during the show's installation, "the moment when the art market as we know it today came to be." Speculative collecting, artist poaching and frothy press coverage were as much signs of the times as Bellamy's thrift store outfits, afternoon benders and unheated Lower East Side apartments. The Green Gallery would not have been in business without the backing of the taxi magnate Robert Scull and his wife, Ethel, who would scandalize the art world a decade or so later with a high profile auction of works from their contemporary art collection that looked like greedy profit taking to the artists they had supported. ("Deadeye Dick" nods to the Sculls in a set of mischievously Warholesque portraits by Michael Heizer.) Organized by Judith Stein, whose evocative biography of Bellamy, "Eye of the Sixties," was published last year along with a collection of the his correspondence edited by his son Miles, the show is a vivid affirmation of Bellamy's "eye." If the book, which delves into his drinking and his troubled relationships, can make him seem like a tragically contrarian figure "the wrong man at the right time," as the painter Larry Poons put it the exhibition lets us judge him on the merits of his discoveries. They include Donald Judd, Dan Flavin and Claes Oldenburg, who all made their New York solo debuts at the Green. They're represented at Freeman by audacious early works like Mr. Oldenburg's "Giant Blue Men's Pants" from his 1962 outing, a pair of enormous painted canvas slacks casually draped over a hanger; and Mr. Flavin's 1964 light piece "a primary picture," made of red, yellow and blue fluorescent bulbs arranged to resemble an empty frame. "Deadeye Dick" almost makes you feel like you're encountering these pieces for the first time a rare feat, given the current blue chip status of these artists and their hushed presentation in big museums and mega galleries. Other, less familiar names are given equal billing, which is heartening because it would have been all too easy to convene a winners only exhibition. A 1956 wood, gravel and metal relief painting by Jean Follett (one of few women on the Green roster) makes an earthy, Jean Dubuffet like impact. And the painter and critic Sidney Tillim pays tribute to his fellow art writer Clement Greenberg in his mysterious allegory "Who Among Us Really Knows? Or Greenberg's Doubt," from 1969. Portraits of Bellamy are here too, attesting to his intensity and charisma. He sat for Alex Katz in a kind of attentive slouch, head cocked just slightly and shoulders askew. Not here, alas, is Roy Lichtenstein's painting of a military officer musing in a speech bubble: "I am supposed to report to a Mr. Bellamy. I wonder what he's like." How might we characterize Bellamy's taste, on the basis of "Deadeye Dick"? Early works by Robert Morris, Richard Serra, Bruce Nauman and Mark di Suvero (the subject of the Green's first solo, and one of just a handful of artists Bellamy represented at the time of his death) evince an intuitive response to sculpture. His painting sensibilities are harder to define, with bracingly austere abstract works by Mary Corse, Myron Stout and Jo Baer offset at Freeman by the helter skelter figuration of Jan Muller's "Temptation of Saint Anthony" (1957). A selection of ephemera confirms that Bellamy was way out front in fostering participatory and performative projects like Oldenburg's pop up "Store" on the Lower East Side (1961) and the duo of Tehching Hsieh and Linda Montano's "Art/Life One Year Performance" (1983 4), conducted partly in Bellamy's final gallery venture, Oil Steel, which began in TriBeCa. When it came to closing deals, however, Bellamy lagged behind contemporaries like Sidney Janis and Castelli. "There was no real thinking about the business aspect, or what a stable of artists means, or what a dealer does to promote them apart from sitting there and trying to sell a painting every time someone asks the price of it," Bellamy later acknowledged. Often in the Green Gallery years, Ms. Stein writes, he wasn't even "sitting there"; he was napping in the back room, or out at a bar, having taken the gallery's phones off the hook. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
Far From the Laundromat, but Such a Bargain Spencer Frank, who grew up primarily on the Upper East Side, left the city for four years at Syracuse University and later roomed with a friend in Midtown East. He rode the 4 or 5 train to his office in the financial district, where he works in mobile advertising technology. Almost three years ago, he met Bethany Paquin, a dancer and former aerialist at Tokyo Disney Resort, who is from northeastern Connecticut. She was living with her sister in Harlem. The couple planned to find a place together. Last year, Mr. Frank moved in with his mother on the Upper East Side to lower his rent and save for a security deposit and broker fee. Ms. Paquin returned temporarily to Connecticut, teaching dance and working toward a physical therapy degree. Mr. Frank, now 30, spent his nights online looking for an East Side rental convenient to a subway station that wasn't the 77th Street Lexington Avenue stop. "The 6 train in the morning is miserable," he said. "Everybody gets on and nobody gets off." Ms. Paquin, 28, craved a laundry room in the building, something her Harlem building had lacked. One awful winter day, all the dryers at the local laundromat were occupied, and she trekked around with her wet clothes, hunting for a place with a free dryer. "I was, like, I am never doing this again," she said. Their rental budget was up to the low 3,000s, but they preferred to pay less. Mr. Frank liked a one bedroom with a balcony in a 19 story condominium building, suitable but small. The rent was 3,000. His offer of 2,700 was declined. Ms. Paquin came to town for a weekend of apartment hunting. They were joined by Mr. Frank's mother, Shu May Chang, who had once been a real estate agent in New Jersey. "I felt we needed her on our side," Ms. Paquin said. She and her son "are born and bred New Yorkers, whereas I am a small town Connecticut girl." On Craigslist, a no fee listing for 2,800 took them to the large, sunny and rundown top floor of a townhouse in Kips Bay. The landlord told them, oddly, that renovations would not start until a lease was signed. "Who knows how long that is going to take?" Mr. Frank said. "Would people be running in and out? They needed to gut everything." Ms. Paquin was horrified. "I watch a lot of HGTV, and I knew that none of this was up to code," she said. "If I put a blow dryer into a socket, I swear the place would blow up. That's how scared I was of this apartment." She liked an alcove studio, for 2,500, in an Upper East Side co op building, and was fine with getting less space for less money. Mr. Frank was anti studio. "If your clothes are on the floor, they are not just on the floor in the bedroom," he said. "They are on the floor of the living room, the kitchen, the dining room." That one, however, came with plenty of upfront fees. They would need co op board approval and could stay for no more than two years. But Ms. Paquin and Mr. Frank's mother argued for a studio. "Fine, you guys win," Mr. Frank told them in exasperation. Searching for studios in a lower price range, he found an unusual new listing in the East 50s. It was a huge one bedroom, with around 800 square feet, in a walk up building with no laundry. The rent was just 2,200 a one bedroom for the price of a studio. "The showing usually lasts 10 or 15 minutes, and Spencer stood there for a good 30 minutes," Mr. Lee said. "He and his mom had a conversation in hushed tones." Mr. Frank sent a video to Ms. Paquin, who was willing to take the place sight unseen. By now, she didn't care if the building lacked a laundry. They signed on in late summer, paying a broker fee of 15 percent of a year's rent, around 4,000. The 2,200 rent took into account one month free on a year's lease. The actual rent is 2,400. The gas, under repair, was off for several weeks. The water pressure is low. The honking from the avenue is relentless. "I understand when there's an emergency, but when it's unnecessary honking in the middle of the night, it's extremely disrupting," Ms. Paquin, who is continuing her course work in New York, said. Nevertheless, "I would still live here versus anywhere else with less space." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
The NBC host Matt Lauer has been fired over a sexual harassment allegation. He was one of the network's highest paid hosts. The fast moving national reckoning over sexual harassment in the workplace toppled another television news star on Wednesday when NBC fired Matt Lauer, the co host of its most profitable franchise, "Today," after an allegation of inappropriate sexual behavior with a subordinate. The downfall of Mr. Lauer, a presence in American living rooms for more than 20 years, adds to a head spinning string of prominent firings over sexual harassment and abuse allegations. NBC News said it had decided to dismiss its star morning anchor after a woman met with network executives on Monday to describe her interactions with him. "While it is the first complaint about his behavior in the over 20 years he's been at NBC News, we were also presented with reason to believe this may not have been an isolated incident," Andrew Lack, the NBC News chairman, wrote in a memo to staff. On Wednesday, NBC received at least two more complaints related to Mr. Lauer, according to a person briefed on the network's handling of the matter. One complaint came from a former employee who said Mr. Lauer had summoned her to his office in 2001, locked the door and sexually assaulted her. She provided her account to The New York Times but declined to let her name be used. She told The Times that she passed out and had to be taken to a nurse. She said that she felt helpless because she didn't want to lose her job, and that she didn't report the encounter at the time because she felt ashamed. On Thursday, Mr. Lauer issued an apology, expressing "sorrow and regret for the pain I have caused." News of Mr. Lauer's sudden downfall shook the television world, where he had established himself as one of the most powerful men in his industry. Even President Trump who himself has denied multiple allegations of sexual misconduct weighed in, seizing on Mr. Lauer's firing to denounce NBC News's coverage and call for other senior figures at NBC News to be ousted. Mr. Lauer, 59, joins an ignominious group of media figures felled by the recent spate of harassment claims, including the studio mogul Harvey Weinstein, the comedian Louis C.K., the CBS host Charlie Rose and the political journalist Mark Halperin. Journalists at several news outlets had recently conducted interviews with former and current NBC employees about Mr. Lauer's behavior, alerting the network to potential articles about him. But it was the formal complaint on Monday that prompted NBC to take action. In an editorial meeting on Wednesday, Mr. Lack said that Mr. Lauer's involvement with the woman who made the complaint began while they were in Sochi, Russia, to cover the Winter Olympics in 2014, and that their involvement continued after they returned to New York, according to two people briefed on the meeting. Other "Today" hosts learned of Mr. Lauer's termination around 4 a.m. on Wednesday; staff members were told just minutes before the show went on the air at 7 a.m. Savannah Guthrie, Mr. Lauer's co anchor, was visibly shaken when she delivered the news to viewers, describing Mr. Lauer as "a dear, dear friend" and adding that she was "heartbroken for the brave colleague who came forward to tell her story." Soon after announcing the dismissal, Ms. Guthrie gripped the hand of Hoda Kotb, who was rushed in as an emergency substitute host. The network did not name a replacement for Mr. Lauer. Ari Wilkenfeld, a civil rights lawyer with the firm Wilkenfeld, Herendeen Atkinson in Washington, said on Wednesday that he represented the woman who had made the initial complaint to NBC, but declined to identify her. In a statement provided to The Times, he praised the courage of his client and said: "My client and I met with representatives from NBC's human resources and legal departments at 6 p.m. on Monday for an interview that lasted several hours. Our impression at this point is that NBC acted quickly, as all companies should, when confronted with credible allegations of sexual misconduct in the workplace." The woman met with reporters from The Times on Monday, but said she was not ready to discuss it publicly. Besides his "Today" perch, Mr. Lauer was a genial co host of events like the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade and the Winter and Summer Olympics, and he conducted countless interviews with celebrities. He also contributed to NBC News's political coverage, although he was widely panned after a debate last year in which he appeared to go easy on Mr. Trump while asking aggressive questions of Hillary Clinton. 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 "Today" show caters to and relies on an overwhelmingly female audience, and Mr. Lauer is part of a cast that presents itself as a tight knit family. Behind the scenes, however, the on set environment could sometimes resemble a boys' club, particularly in the years before Comcast completed its acquisition of NBCUniversal in 2013, according to interviews with more than half a dozen former staff members. Jokes about women's appearances were routine, the former employees said. One former producer recalled a director saying he "wanted some milk" in reference to one woman's chest and making inappropriate comments about women over an audio feed with multiple people listening. Two former employees recalled colleagues playing a crude game in which they chose which female guests or staff members they would prefer to marry, kill or have sex with. The former employees spoke anonymously because they feared their career prospects in the industry could be harmed. Other current and former staff members, however, described a more professional work culture, and said they did not witness harassment. An NBC spokeswoman declined on Wednesday to comment on the "boys' club" characterization, but pointed out that 13 of 19 senior level female producers at "Today" had been promoted since 2015. The woman who described the encounter in 2001 with Mr. Lauer in his office told The Times that the anchor had made inappropriate comments to her shortly after she started as a "Today" producer in the late 1990s. While traveling with Mr. Lauer for a story, she said, he asked her inappropriate questions over dinner, like whether she had ever cheated on her husband. On the way to the airport, she said, Mr. Lauer sat uncomfortably close to her in the car; she recalled that when she moved away, he said, "You're no fun." In 2001, the woman said, Mr. Lauer, who is married, asked her to his office to discuss a story during a workday. When she sat down, she said, he locked the door, which he could do by pressing a button while sitting at his desk. (People who worked at NBC said the button was a regular security measure installed for high profile employees.) The woman said Mr. Lauer asked her to unbutton her blouse, which she did. She said the anchor then stepped out from behind his desk, pulled down her pants, bent her over a chair and had intercourse with her. At some point, she said, she passed out with her pants pulled halfway down. She woke up on the floor of his office, and Mr. Lauer had his assistant take her to a nurse. The woman told The Times that Mr. Lauer never made an advance toward her again and never mentioned what occurred in his office. She said she did not report the episode to NBC at the time because she believed she should have done more to stop Mr. Lauer. She left the network about a year later. On Wednesday, the episode in Mr. Lauer's office was reported to NBC News after the woman told her then supervisor, who still works at the network. The woman said an NBC human resources representative had since contacted her. The woman, who was in her early 40s at the time, told her then husband about the encounter, which The Times confirmed with him in a phone call. The couple was separated at the time, and later divorced. She also described it to a friend five years ago, which the friend confirmed to The Times. NBC News has suffered other black eyes, as well. Last year, the network reviewed 2005 footage from the NBC owned show "Access Hollywood" that revealed Mr. Trump bragging about grabbing women's genitalia. But the footage was released first by a competitor, The Washington Post, embarrassing the NBC news division. In recent weeks, NBC News was criticized for passing on an expose of Mr. Weinstein by an MSNBC contributor, Ronan Farrow. Mr. Farrow's reporting later appeared in The New Yorker, and helped set off the current wave of revelations about abuses by powerful men in media and entertainment. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
Arrive early to "Tree of Codes," the dance spectacle at the Park Avenue Armory, and you can spend some time observing your shadow, psychedelically multiplied, along the walls of the 55,000 square foot Wade Thompson Drill Hall. Audience members lingered there, Instagramming, at the New York premiere on Monday. That installation, by the Danish Icelandic visual artist Olafur Eliasson, turns out to be one of the more subtle elements in this high profile collaboration, which features Mr. Eliasson's visual design, a score by the English composer Jamie xx and choreography lots of it by Wayne McGregor. Their point of departure is Jonathan Safran Foer's 2010 sculpture book, "Tree of Codes," in which Mr. Foer cut words away from one story Bruno Schulz's "Street of Crocodiles" to create another. Whereas that project relied on the art of removal, this show, which opened to mixed reviews at the Manchester International Festival in England this summer, takes a contrasting approach: adding more, more, more. More dreamily driving music, more slithery dancing, more gymnastics of scenery and light. How can something so full feel so vacant? The immense expenditure of energy by 15 incredible dancers, from Company Wayne McGregor and the Paris Opera Ballet, is almost heartbreaking, given how little it yields in the way of emotional or narrative resonance. Why are they dancing? | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
This article is part of David Leonhardt's newsletter. You can sign up here to receive it each weekday. First: House Democrats had another good day at the impeachment trial yesterday. They made a calm, clear case about how President Trump has undermined the national interest. Justin Amash, an independent member of Congress (and former Republican) from Michigan: "Based on my experience with Republican colleagues in the House, I suspect that many Senate Republicans are hearing the facts of this case for the first time." Susan Glasser, The New Yorker: "To anyone who had followed the House impeachment proceedings, it wasn't new, but it was frequently eloquent, appalling, and dramatic to hear the alarming facts of the case laid out all over again." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
EMMET COHEN TRIO at Dizzy's Club Coca Cola (April 16, 7:30 and 9:30 p.m.). Cohen, 28, has a breezy, phlegmatic command at the keyboard, and a deep well of historical jazz references at his fingertips. He has worked as a side musician for such luminaries as Christian McBride and Herlin Riley, and has recorded with the elder statesmen Ron Carter and Jimmy Cobb. If he wasn't already an obvious heir apparent to the neo traditional jazz mantle, his win at last weekend's 2019 American Pianists Awards ought to make it official. At Dizzy's, he will be joined by the bassist Philip Norris and the drummer Kyle Poole. They will draw some of the night's material from Cohen's recent trio album, "Dirty in Detroit." 212 258 9595, jazz.org/dizzys MIHO HAZAMA AND M UNIT at Jazz Standard (April 17, 7:30 and 9:30 p.m.). The crossbreeding of classical and jazz has a long history, stretching back to the Third Stream movement of the 1960s. And new approaches to this amalgam have been thick on the ground of late: Just try to count how many young jazz musicians are writing for string quartet these days. One of the boldest thinkers and most delightful composers in this vein is Hazama, who studied Western classical music in Japan before making the jump to jazz. Her chamber orchestra, m unit, blends strings and horns and mallet percussion in service of her resplendent, highly singable compositions. At the Standard, the group will be playing selections from the recently released "Dancer in Nowhere." 212 576 2232, jazzstandard.com BEN MONDER, TONY MALABY AND TOM RAINEY at Public Records (April 17, 8 p.m.). This newly opened music club, cafe and bar in Gowanus, Brooklyn, has a high fidelity sound setup in two different rooms. In the back, which is laid out like a typical nightclub, electronic and experimental shows run throughout the week. Every Wednesday going forward, the barroom hosts a weekly jazz series. The group playing this Wednesday is a trio featuring three esteemed, New York based improvisers with a long history of collaboration: the dark toned, harmonically sophisticated guitarist Ben Monder, the undersung saxophone titan Tony Malaby and the roving, idiosyncratic drummer Tom Rainey. publicrecords.nyc BRANDON ROSS'S PHANTOM STATION at the Jazz Gallery (April 12, 7:30 and 9:30 p.m.). Ross, a guitarist best known for his work in the jazz rock power trio Harriet Tubman, doesn't just play a slew of different instruments (banjo, soprano guitar, regular old electric guitar, etc.), he also ranges freely from sweet and lyrical playing to wavy, confrontational distortion. Phantom Station is not a band; it's an opportunity for him to embrace his proclivity for newness and change. He performs under this name with a wide variety of collaborators and formations. On Friday, the ensemble will include Graham Haynes on cornet and electronics, J. T. Lewis (also a member of Harriet Tubman) on drums and Hardedge on sound design. 646 494 3625, jazzgallery.nyc STRETCH MUSIC FESTIVAL at Harlem Stage Gatehouse (April 12, 7:30 p.m.). The trumpeter Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah is about to close the book on a three year residency at Harlem Stage. As part of that, since 2017 he has convened an annual Stretch Music Festival, comprising educational events, discussions of art and activism, and performances. (The event's title is a reference to the way Scott refers to his own music; it's an effort to wriggle free from the limitations of genre.) He is coming off the release last month of "Ancestral Recall," an impressive album on which West African derived rhythms and whispery synthesizers fortify his bristling trumpet playing and the strident, subversive poetry of Saul Williams. Friday's festival will include performances by Scott, the saxophonist Logan Richardson and Freelance, a band that fuses contemporary R B with backpacker hip hop and jazz. 212 281 9240, harlemstage.org JOHN ZORN'S NEW MASADA QUARTET at the Village Vanguard (April 14, 3 p.m.). Last year, Zorn, the eminent alto saxophonist and downtown arts organizer, released "The Book Beriah," the final portion of his 613 song epic, "Masada," a collection of experimental, often lovely compositions based in Jewish folk song, klezmer and free jazz (613 is the number of commandments, or mitzvot, in the Torah). As is the wont of this serial collaborator, Zorn featured a different ensemble on each of "Beriah's" 10 CDs (11, including the bonus disc). Here he plays material from "Masada" in a new quartet featuring three talented improvisers: Julian Lage on guitar, Jorge Roeder on bass and Kenny Wollesen on drums. 212 255 4037, villagevanguard.com GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
Carlo A. Scissura, the president of the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce, has a grand vision for the borough's Fourth Avenue, which for decades was a dreary boulevard where you were more likely to get your tires replaced or buy a cheap mattress than eat a fine meal or find a luxury apartment. "Fourth Avenue could be the Park Avenue of Brooklyn," said Mr. Scissura, who started a task force in 2011 that pushed for the revitalization of the corridor while he was chief of staff to Marty Markowitz, then the Brooklyn Borough President. Changes have indeed come to the avenue, which stretches some six miles from Atlantic Avenue to near the Verrazano Narrows Bridge. Various traffic calming and safety measures by the Department of Transportation have been implemented. Zoning changes have prompted a batch of large rental and condominium buildings to sprout on the corridor in the last several years, giving many parts of the avenue a cleaner, more inviting look. "We still need more trees, better lighting and more retail," Mr. Scissura said. Developers that one might expect to see building on Park Avenue rather than on Fourth Avenue are starting to sign on to Mr. Scissura's vision. The JDS Development Group, a Manhattan based developer of high end condominiums and rentals, will start sales for its 11 story, 44 unit condo on the corner of Baltic Street and Fourth Avenue in early March, said Jodi Stasse, a senior managing director of the Corcoran Sunshine Marketing Group, which is handling sales for the building. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
PARIS Kirat Young, who shares a Right Bank apartment with Marquis Elie de Dampierre, makes one of a kind gem studded creations for her friends or to sell in the boutiques of friends. But what else would you expect from a woman who was one of Yves Saint Laurent's muses, a great friend of Oscar de la Renta and a supermodel before the term was coined? On this particular day she is wearing huge silver and gold disc earrings set with diamonds and keshi pearls. They are her favorites among her creations because "the white looks good against my dark skin and hair," she said. Jewelry has always been a large part of Ms. Young's life, almost from the time of her birth in New Delhi. "Growing up in India, all the women wore jewelry, every place they could put it from head to toe," she said. "Even the poorest women wear glass bracelets that cost 5 cents." At boarding school in the Himalayas, she sketched the jewelry pieces that school rules would not allow her to wear. As a young fashion student in London, she was visiting Paris when she was introduced to Saint Laurent in 1976. "He was designing his Ballet Russes collection," Ms. Young said. "It was exotic, and I fit the bill. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
SAN FRANCISCO For decades, Intel was one of the most predictable players in the technology industry. On Thursday, the semiconductor maker blindsided Silicon Valley with the abrupt resignation of its chief executive over a relationship with a subordinate. The chip company said it was recently informed that Brian Krzanich had a "past consensual relationship" with an Intel employee. An investigation by internal and external counsel then found that Mr. Krzanich, 58, had violated a non fraternization policy that applies to managers, the company said. So Intel's board accepted his resignation. The disclosure about Mr. Krzanich, a soft spoken chip manufacturing specialist who joined Intel in 1982 and has run it for five years, left many questions unanswered. The company declined to identify the employee involved, when the relationship took place or any additional details. It characterized its internal investigation as "ongoing." Mr. Krzanich's relationship with the subordinate was not recent, said one person briefed on the situation, who declined to be identified because the company discussions over the matter were confidential. Intel found out about the relationship only a few days ago, this person added. Robert Swan, Intel's chief financial officer, was appointed interim chief executive while the company conducts a search for a permanent new leader. Mr. Krzanich could not be reached for comment. "We appreciate Brian's many contributions to Intel," Andy Bryant, Intel's chairman, said in a prepared statement. He added that he knew the company would continue to perform. Mr. Krzanich's resignation is the latest turmoil in executive suites since the MeToo movement emerged in the wake of allegations against producer Harvey Weinstein. The heightened scrutiny of workplace behavior has led executives at Nike, Lululemon Athletica, Social Finance and many other companies to leave their jobs. Over the years, other chief executives have also been felled after violating workplace behavior standards, either because of affairs or through other incidents, including at Boeing, Hewlett Packard and Priceline. Intel, which recently yielded the title of the world's largest chip maker to Samsung, is approaching its 50th birthday. The company, known for microprocessor chips that carry out calculations in most personal computers and server systems, has prided itself as a standard setter in corporate governance. Even so, Intel, like many companies, has not been impervious to romance. Mr. Krzanich, who rose through the ranks at Intel, married a woman who once worked in the company's manufacturing operations. They have two daughters. The wife of Mr. Krzanich's predecessor, Paul Otellini, who died last year, also once worked at Intel. As chief executive, Mr. Krzanich has been changing Intel's corporate culture. The company has undergone an exodus of longtime managers such as Renee James, who was Mr. Krzanich's No. 2 but later faded in prominence and left the company and the arrival of senior executives from other companies such as Qualcomm. Mr. Krzanich argued that Intel needed an infusion of fresh thinking to achieve his goal of reducing the company's dependence on the sluggish P.C. market. He also publicly committed the company to increasing the number of employees from groups underrepresented in some technical specialties, including minorities and women. "Intel is a different place, and we've done this while growing the business," Mr. Krzanich said at the company's annual shareholder meeting in May. But five former Intel employees, who declined to be identified for fear of retaliation, said Mr. Krzanich at times exhibited an arrogant personal style and handled staff changes in ways that created enemies. Some of these people said the MeToo movement most likely influenced how Intel's board handled the matter. Mr. Krzanich also raised eyebrows by selling about 39 million in Intel shares last November, after the company learned of potential security flaws in its chips and before the issue was disclosed this year. The company said the sale was unrelated to the flaws, adding that Mr. Krzanich continued to hold shares in line with Intel guidelines. Mr. Krzanich sought to broaden Intel's business, taking the company into fields such as drones and wearable devices. He also presided over major acquisitions such as Intel's 15.3 billion acquisition of Mobileye, an Israeli company that makes chips and software used in driver assistance systems and self driving cars. Yet Intel has lately struggled to sustain Moore's Law, the pace of chip miniaturization named for the company's co founder, Gordon Moore, which expands the capabilities of its chips. It has announced repeated delays in perfecting its latest production process. During Mr. Krzanich's tenure, Intel's market capitalization rose to above 240 billion, with a share price that is up 50 percent since the beginning of 2017. On Thursday, while the company's shares declined 2 percent on the announcement of the leadership change, Intel said it expected to report second quarter results that exceed Wall Street estimates. Pierre Ferragu, an analyst with New Street Research, said the projection points to a "monster" quarter for the company. "The resignation itself is in our view a completely idiosyncratic event, with no impact to the company," he wrote in a research note. Mr. Swan is a relative newcomer to Intel, joining the company as chief financial officer from General Atlantic in 2016. His past experience includes a stint at private equity firm General Atlantic and nine years as chief financial officer at eBay. Mr. Krzanich's total compensation last year was 21.5 million, according to the executive compensation firm Equilar. That put him at 60th place in an annual ranking of highest paid chief executives in the United States that Equilar conducted for The New York Times. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
Hundreds of people across the country have been sickened by a severe lung illness linked to vaping, and a handful have died, according to public health officials. Many were otherwise healthy young people, in their teens or early 20s. Investigators from numerous states are working with the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration in an urgent effort to figure out why. Here's what we know so far. Read more: The Trump administration is weighing a ban on some flavored e cigarettes. Who is at risk? Anyone who uses e cigarettes or other vaping devices, whether to consume nicotine or substances extracted from marijuana or hemp, may be at risk because investigators have not determined whether a specific device or type of vaping liquid is responsible. The Food and Drug Administration is warning that there appears to be a particular danger for people who vape THC, the psychoactive chemical in marijuana. The F.D.A. said a significant subset of samples of vaping fluid used by sick patients included THC and also contained a chemical called vitamin E acetate. The F.D.A. issued this statement: "Because consumers cannot be sure whether any THC vaping products may contain vitamin E acetate, consumers are urged to avoid buying vaping products on the street, and to refrain from using THC oil or modifying/adding any substances to products purchased in stores." But some of the patients who have fallen severely ill said they did not vape THC. In 53 cases of the illness in Illinois and Wisconsin, 17 percent of the patients said they had vaped only nicotine products, according to an article published on Friday in The New England Journal of Medicine. The researchers who wrote the journal article cautioned, "e cigarette aerosol is not harmless; it can expose users to substances known to have adverse health effects, including ultrafine particles, heavy metals, volatile organic compounds and other harmful ingredients." The health effects of some of those chemicals are not fully understood, the researchers wrote, even though the products are already on the market. What are the symptoms? The early symptoms include fatigue, nausea, vomiting, coughing and fever, escalating to shortness of breath, which can become so extreme it can prompt an emergency room visit or require hospitalization. Some patients have needed supplementary oxygen, including a ventilator in as many as a third of cases analyzed in The New England Journal of Medicine. On lung scans, the illness looks like a bacterial or viral pneumonia that has attacked the lungs, but no infection has been found in testing. What's the best way to prevent the illness? H ealth of fic ials say that the riskiest behavior is using vaping products bought on the street instead of from a retailer, or those that have been tampered w ith or mixed. Mitch Zeller, director for the Center for Tobacco Products at the F.D.A., said, "If you're thinking of purchasing one of these products off the street, out of the back of a car, out of a trunk, in an alley, or if you're going to then go home and make modifications to the product yourself using something that you purchased from some third party or got from a friend, think twice." The C.D.C. and some state health officials have recommended that people give up vaping of any type until the cause of the lung damage is determined. An editorial in The New England Journal of Medicine stated bluntly that doctors should discourage their patients from vaping. E cigarettes and other vaping devices were developed to help cigarette smokers quit their dangerous habit by providing a way to satisfy their nicotine addiction without inhaling the toxins the come from burning tobacco. But many medical experts now think even smokers should think twice about turning to e cigarettes and anyone who does not smoke should not vape. "Adult smokers who are attempting to quit should consult with their health care provider and use proven treatments," the authors of the analysis in The New England Journal of Medicine wrote. They added, "Irrespective of these findings, e cigarettes should never be used by youths, young adults, pregnant women and adults who do not currently use tobacco products." What should I do if I think I have the lung illness? The C.D.C. says: "If you are concerned about your health or the health of a loved one who is using an e cigarette product, contact your health care provider, or your local poison control center at 1 800 222 1222." Anyone who has shortness of breath that lasts more than a few hours or becomes severe should seek medical attention quickly. It is a warning that should not be ignored, doctors say. Why do health investigators think this is linked to vaping? Health investigators believe the illnesses are linked to vaping for several key reasons: The patients have vaped nicotine or marijuana extracts, or both, and do not have an infection or other condition that would explain the lung disease. Patients are now characterized as having the illness only if they have reported vaping within 90 days. In many of the reported cases, the patients had vaped much more recently. E cigarettes have been around for years. Why is this happening now? There are several theories. One is that some dangerous chemical or combination of chemicals has been introduced into the pipeline of vaping products. Public health officials believe that when people vape this noxious cocktail, it sets off a dangerous, even lethal, reaction inside the lungs. These officials have said repeatedly that they do not yet know which substance or device may be causing this reaction, and that is the subject of their urgent investigation. A second theory is that this syndrome is not, in fact, entirely new and that some people had gotten sick previously, but that the condition had not been recognized and identified as being linked to vaping. As vaping has grown in popularity both with nicotine and marijuana more cases may be showing up. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
Just a few days ago, the newest and best hope in American solar car racing improbably rested atop four laundry baskets. Quantum, the newest creation of the University of Michigan's solar car team, was designed for the World Solar Challenge in October. If it wins that event, in Australia, it would be the first victory for an American entry since General Motors' Sunraycer in 1987. But Quantum would go nowhere until its 16 inch aluminum wheels were delivered to the Wilson Student Team Project Center on the university's north campus. So for the time being, the laundry baskets, flipped upside down and reinforced with bright yellow tape, supported its carbon fiber chassis. The structure weighed just 52 pounds even when outfitted with suspension components, disc brakes and custom made rack and pinion steering gear. The target weight for the fully assembled Quantum the 11th car in the 22 years of the Michigan solar team's existence was just 320 pounds. "I'm really pleased to hear that they've gone back to pushing the weight down to the minimum," said Robert P. Larsen, an early proponent of solar car competitions who is a senior technical adviser at the Center for Transportation Research of the Argonne National Laboratory. "The U. of M. cars always had the reputation for being very well done, and they also brought a lot of resources to the table that other teams never had. But they tended to be on the massive side." Except for its compact dimensions, the chassis strongly resembles the hull of a hydroplane that might compete for the Gold Cup some 50 miles away in the Detroit River. The driver must squirm into the tight cockpit and, after the waferlike carbon fiber deck with its array of solar cells is placed overhead, endure temperatures of up to 120 degrees. The only air conditioning comes from an open duct bringing outside air. A surprising amenity, though, is cruise control. It can even be set remotely, using an iPhone. The cockpit canopy shared the same maize and blue winged motif as a defensive tackle's helmet on the Michigan gridiron. The car and the football player would just about balance each other on the scales, too. The svelte Quantum succeeds the 500 pound Infinium, winner of the 2010 North American Solar Challenge Michigan's dominating sixth title in the event. (Michigan's entries traditionally take names ending in the letters "um," to match the school's initials.) Last summer's race covered 1,100 miles from Oklahoma to Illinois, with competing cars running in real world traffic. "The name Quantum is appropriate because it makes you think of something very small and precise, and that's what we had to do to be the best in the world," said the project manager, Rachel Kramer, a junior neuroscience major from Ludington, Mich. "We have to refine and optimize every single system on the car." To lighten Quantum, aluminum and titanium which were not necessarily chosen for their final syllable were used extensively, in addition to the carbon fiber body. Making aerodynamic advances has been of foremost importance. Created with help from more than 300 sponsoring firms including General Motors, Roush Industries and a number of precision machining companies, Quantum is "one of the most aerodynamic vehicles anywhere," said the business and operations director, Chris Hilger, a senior chemical engineering major from Northville, Mich. Aerodynamic design was refined with help from the Exa Corporation. "They have software that's incredibly powerful, and we couldn't have that kind of precision with any software that we had available," said Ms. Kramer, who manages the team's 1.2 million budget, which covers the car's two year production cycle. The 16 foot long Quantum stretches about 10 inches beyond the length of an original 1965 Ford Mustang. And it's just 37 inches tall, so the original neck bending Lamborghini Countach would tower over it. A veteran of Michigan's third place effort in the 2009 World Solar Challenge, Mr. Hilger remembers smooth roads in the 3,000 kilometers across central Australia, from Darwin in the north to Adelaide in the south. But he said the Quantum's lightweight front suspension, and the beautifully machined aluminum fork that supports the rear wheel, are most likely up to the challenge posed by cattle grates, the course's roughest points. Electricity produced by the solar panels and stored in a pack of lithium ion batteries is used to power the small direct current motor mounted at the rear hub. Although the unit produces no more than three horsepower, Quantum will race at 60 miles per hour. Mr. Hilger said the previous car, Infinium, once was tested at 105 m.p.h. Michigan's 20 member Australia team will include a meteorologist whose forecasts, made possible by a satellite link, will predict cloud cover and help the crew chief to develop strategies for power supply management. One thing that can't be predicted: dust storms lasting a day and a half, which Mr. Hilger experienced in 2009. A tractor trailer rig will support the team, carrying two spares of every component of the car. It's also a mobile workshop, equipped with a mill and a lathe. "We can machine something in the middle of the Outback," Mr. Hilger said. The toughest competition is expected to come from the defending champion Tokai University team of Japan, and the latest entry by Delft University of Technology of the Netherlands. Quantum's shakedown run comes May 2 7 in the Formula Sun Grand Prix at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, but Ms. Kramer downplayed expectations for the new car. "We're not exactly sure what we're going to run into," she said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Automobiles |
It's back to school shopping season, and American families will spend 82.8 billion this year, most of it on clothing, the National Retail Federation estimates. It's second only to Christmas for many retailers. Families with children planned to spend an average of 237 on clothing per child, according to data from the federation. And most of that shopping is still done in department stores, said Ana Serafin Smith, a spokeswoman for the group. So what's popular this year? Everyone agrees: It's '80s and '90s nostalgia. Think neon, fanny packs and "dad sneakers." Street style activewear is also in demand, as is apparel with messages about inclusivity and peace. It's a far cry from the plaid jumpers, skirtsuits and berets pictured above, from a 1952 article in The New York Times advertising dress patterns for sale. Virginia Pope, then the paper's fashion editor, described how to use the patterns, which were available for 25 to 35 cents and a self addressed stamped envelope. "Little sisters of the back to college girls receive a share of the limelight at this time of year with their own pretty little back to school fashions," she wrote. "The young lady will be dressed in her Sunday best if the long sleeved suit is fashioned of a fine worsted or woolen fabric. If she likes to imitate big sister, let her have the suit in camel's hair colored flannel. Or for dancing school, the jacket in velvet and the skirt in faille." Ms. Pope was the fashion editor from 1933 to 1955, and Bill Cunningham, the legendary Times fashion photographer, once wrote that "for many in the American fashion world in the '30s, '40s and '50s, Miss Pope was also a hero." In 1936, Ms. Pope wrote enthusiastically about the options for American girls to wear as they returned to school, praising them as "the effects of a new youth movement." She noted that many were designed by young American women, and their garments were "fresh and full of vigor." She described the cuts in detail, and applauded the presence of pockets. (Designers, please take note.) In the following decades, the fashion industry took off and became a multibillion dollar industry. An article on Sept. 5, 1965, chronicled the elaborate events that retailers were putting on to attract shoppers during the back to school rush. The Manhattan department store Stern Brothers put on fashion shows for grade school children and undergraduates, the latter featuring appearances by Johnny Mathis and the Supremes. The article noted that a strong economy was responsible for the boom, but added that "new youthful styling," also known as the "Youthquake," or the "Mod" or "British Look," for boys and girls was a factor, as well as the "discotheque or 'go go' look." It also detailed an old fashioned influencer operation. Abraham Straus, then Brooklyn's biggest department store, started the program in the early 1940s. It appointed a full time youth coordinator and two boards made up of teenagers, who kept company executives in the know about "the desires and needs of the teenage world." They also kept their schoolmates informed about the store's offerings, through word of mouth, newsletters and school newspapers. By the early 2000s, the businesses sponsoring similar back to school fashion shows included AOL, which held one at a skate park in Brooklyn, a 2004 article noted, in an attempt to "establish style cred with its youthful market." These days, of course, designers can take their wares straight to consumers on Instagram and other social media platforms sometimes via powerful influencers like Kylie Jenner, who of late has strongly embraced the revival of '90s neon. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
Season 1, Episode 1: 'It's Summer and We're Running Out of Ice' In the lead up to "Watchmen," Damon Lindelof's "remix," as he has described it, of the graphic novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, the question on many viewers' minds has been, "Should I read the book?" Judging by the explainers and pocket histories in culture pages across the media including this excellent one by The Times's Adam Sternbergh there's some agreement that the context is helpful, since the events in that book are fully integrated into the TV show. And yet the pilot for "Watchmen," which aired Sunday on HBO, stands as a profoundly destabilizing experience for all parties those with a Talmudic relationship to the book; those who have never experienced it in any form; and those who live in America in 2019, who will recognize parts of their country as reflected off a fun house mirror. That's the Damon Lindelof feeling, familiar to anyone who watched his work as a co creator and showrunner on "Lost" and "The Leftovers," two puzzle box shows that sowed confusion and teased out questions they were in no hurry to answer. On balance, it's probably optimal to have read the comic before seeing "Watchmen," but only if you're willing to loosen your grip on it. Lindelof is comfortable playing the heretic. The all white parishioners demand to know who has roped in the sheriff, but when they call for a lynching, they're referring to the white sheriff, not the black marshal who has apprehended him. "There will be no mob justice today!" says Reeves. "Trust in the law!" While you're still busy unpacking the multiple paradoxes of this movie within the show and perhaps thinking about "The Birth of a Nation" or about how the superhero disguise is the only way a black man could operate like Reeves does Lindelof and the director Nicole Kassell are recreating the Tulsa race riot of 1921, a two day massacre in which black residents and businesses were overrun by a violent white mob. With this sequence, "Watchmen" risks the gruesome historical tourism that dogged "Detroit," a docudrama that devoted more energy to the visceral impact of racial violence than to its significance. That won't be the case with this show, however Lindelof handles the fistful of dynamite he is intent on carrying around: In the context of his "Watchmen," which targets racism and white supremacy the way Moore and Gibbons did the Cold War and the nuclear threat, the riot is a foundational event. The exhilarating confusion persists when the episode cuts to the present day, when a white truck driver is pulled over by a black police officer in a yellow mask. (That the driver, a white supremacist, is blasting Future's hip hop sensation "Crushed Up" adds still more paradoxical layers.) Everything about this tense encounter raises questions: It reverses the racial dynamic we're used to seeing between white cops and black drivers. It positions the police as a force against white supremacy. It reveals a gun culture where access to handguns, even by the police, requires a tedious remote protocol. If this is the world that the existence of superheroes have created, then that butterfly must have flapped its wings pretty hard. When the incident ends in a cop's getting shot up by an assault rifle, the Tulsa police, led by Chief Judd Crawford (Don Johnson), find themselves facing a renewed terrorist threat. The Seventh Kavalry, an organization that parallels those original masked avengers, the Ku Klux Klan, has been waiting in the weeds for a while, but now they've resurfaced in homemade Rorschach masks. (Rorschach, the narrator of the graphic novel, operates with a brutal moral certitude that connects with the far right.) Crawford calls on his department to take on the threat, but they have to conceal their identities, too, or risk bloody reprisals on their doorsteps. The cops are both official and clandestine administers of justice, a contradiction that the show has only just begun to explore. One powerful answer to the Seventh Kavalry problem is Detective Angela Abar, a.k.a. Sister Night (Regina King), whose superhero get up is like a ninja version of the nun costume Zoe Lund wore to shoot up a Halloween party in Abel Ferrara's "Ms. 45." Born in Vietnam which in the "Watchmen" world became the 51st state after the God like Dr. Manhattan turned the war in America's favor Abar has ostensibly retired to run a bakery. But it's a front for her job on the force and the extracurricular activities that go along with it. Her abduction of a Seventh Kavalry lowlife from a trailer park gives Crawford and the department's interrogator, Looking Glass (Tim Blake Nelson), the jump on a terrorist enclave at a cattle ranch. The coordinated assault on the cattle ranch, echoing the many real life showdowns between the government and heavily armed separatists, is a good early example of how this first episode of "Watchmen" delivers on ideas and spectacle in equal measure. It's a superhero show, after all, and the pitched battle against the Seventh Kavalry counterbalances the Tulsa massacre nicely, suggesting a continuity of racial violence across a century. (It also brings down "Archie," the owl eyed ship from the comic, in a blaze of glory.) The final shot ends the episode with more questions: Crawford, hanging from an oak tree, and below him an enfeebled mystery man in a wheelchair (Louis Gossett Jr). In his hand he holds a note, last seen in the episode being carried by a black child who escaped the riot a century before. "Watch Over This Boy," it reads. What happened to Crawford? Who is this man, who was seen earlier outside Abar's bakery, asking if she thinks he can lift 200 pounds? What's the significance of the note, and where has it been? It's almost enough to make you forget about the biblical rain of squid. None No superhero origin story more classic than a baby found orphaned in a field. Then again, an all powerful alien being like Superman doesn't fit into the world of "Watchmen." None Crawford wants to move the wounded officer to a secure medical facility at the precinct, yet another indication of the dangers faced by the Tulsa police. None The show hasn't begun to suggest how President Robert Redford came to be, though after multiple terms under Richard Nixon, it makes sense that the celebrity president pendulum would swing left. Unknown is the history of "Redford ations," although it's safe to infer that they're like reparations, which might account for the racist backlash that followed. None The Seventh Kavalry references the regiment that fought under commander George Custer at Little Bighorn, hence the pager code words, Little Bighorn. There are no cell phones in this alternate reality. None "American Hero Story" is a clever razzing of the Ryan Murphy produced limited series "American Crime Story," which has covered the O.J. Simpson trial and the murder of Gianni Versace. It also seems like an easy pipeline for information on the Minutemen, the dysfunctional superhero group of "Watchmen." None The interrogation pod, with its assault of provocative images, seems like a reference to the classic '70s political thriller "The Parallax View," in which Warren Beatty's reporter tries to infiltrate a covert organization responsible for political assassinations and other extrajudicial activities. The recruitment process involves monitoring his reaction to a series of triggering images and associations. None The comics introduced the phenomenon whereby "retired" masked avengers still played a role in meting out justice, after the Keene Act outlawed costumed vigilantes in 1977. While some retired, Dr. Manhattan and the Comedian continued to work with the government while Rorschach ignored the law. Abar reversed the pattern by retiring from the force, then resurfacing as Sister Night. No word yet on what's happened to the Keene Act 40 plus years later. None Jeremy Irons's role in the story isn't laid out yet, but his introduction takes full advantage of his district patrician air. Why is he given a horseshoe to cut a cake? That question is among the dozens tabled for another time. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
For the nation's journalists, this has been a summer of unease and unrest. On live television, a caller to C Span threatened "to shoot" a pair of CNN journalists, Don Lemon and Brian Stelter, for their political commentary. In Tampa, Fla., rallygoers hurled vitriol at reporters covering a speech by President Trump, who later tweeted his approval. Mr. Trump added a new adjective to his nickname for the media "the fake, fake, disgusting news" and his press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, declined to disavow the phrase "enemy of the people." All of this came on top of the usual, apolitical afflictions facing news organizations, like Tronc's move to lay off half the staff of The Daily News, decimating one of New York's biggest papers. On Thursday, newsrooms responded. In a coordinated effort started by The Boston Globe, more than 300 publications issued editorials reaffirming the purpose and promise of journalism in American society. "Journalists Are Not The Enemy," declared The Globe. "A Free Press Needs You," wrote The New York Times. Mixed in with pro press quotes from founding fathers were reminders of journalists' role in provinces small and large: tying communities together, keeping citizens informed, holding governments to account. Collectively, the output read as a cri de coeur: part catharsis, part civics lesson, part plea to a public whose attitude toward the news media has soured under Mr. Trump. A poll this week by Quinnipiac University asked a black and white question: "Which comes closer to your point of view: the news media is the enemy of the people, or the news media is an important part of democracy?" Lack of nuance aside, the results were notable: 26 percent of respondents went for "enemy of the people," including 51 percent of Republicans. Whether the spate of editorials on Thursday can make a difference is not yet clear. Before publication, some prominent journalists fretted about the unintended message the effort could send to the unconvinced. "I certainly am sympathetic with The Globe's view that the press should not be labeled the enemy of the people," said Fred Hiatt, the editorial page editor of The Washington Post, which declined to participate on Thursday. "In general, however, I am reluctant to join in campaigns or movements. The diversity of the U.S. press is one of its strengths, and I believe The Post serves its readers best when speaking in its own voice and on its own timetable." The Capital Gazette in Annapolis, Md., where five employees were killed earlier this summer in a shooting, also declined to join in. "We're just not coordinating with other news organizations because the president's opinion, frankly, is just not that important to us," its editorial board wrote. "We are far more concerned about what this community thinks of us." Other holdouts included The Los Angeles Times and The Wall Street Journal, the latter of which ran a counterpoint that began: "For anyone who believes that the editorial pages of American newspapers have been insufficiently critical of President Donald Trump, The Boston Globe has a solution." The sneering extended onto Fox News, where Sean Spicer, the former Trump press secretary, cited the editorials as more evidence of bias. "The press continues to make it about them," Mr. Spicer said. Reporters at the White House, with a handful of exceptions, have responded to Mr. Trump's attacks with stoicism, even as some on the left have said they should punch back. In high stakes moments, like Mr. Trump's July summit meeting in Helsinki with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, journalists at Reuters and The Associated Press asked simple but direct questions that yielded real insight into the president's thinking. And although news organizations have fielded death threats and hired security guards for correspondents, some reporters are reluctant to publicize these added difficulties. The Times opinion page published an editorial in solidarity with other publications. The paper's publisher, A.G. Sulzberger, told Mr. Trump at a recent Oval Office meeting that his derogatory words have created real dangers for reporters domestic and abroad. Groups like the Committee to Protect Journalists have noted an uptick in foreign leaders, often autocrats and despots, using the phrase "fake news" to silence unflattering coverage and attack independent reporters. 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 Times editorial made clear that reporting in an open society can lead to discomfort and distress among elected officials, in exchange for a better informed populace. It noted that Thomas Jefferson, utterer of a now ubiquitous quote about preferring "newspapers without a government" over "a government without newspapers," changed his tune once he experienced the scrutiny that comes with leading the nation. "Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper," Jefferson wrote in 1807. "Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle." The current president, like his 19th century predecessor, also flip flops on the press. Mr. Trump enjoyed cultivating his image in the news media, eagerly showing off to visitors a Collyer like collection of clips about himself; at the height of the 2016 campaign, a Trump Tower boardroom was dedicated to storing hundreds of magazines and newspapers. On Thursday, responding to the day's editorials, the president once again lashed out. "The Globe is in COLLUSION with other papers on free press," Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter, throwing in a "Failing New York Times" reference for good measure. "The fact is that the Press is FREE to write and say anything it wants," he added. "But much of what it says is FAKE NEWS, pushing a political agenda or just plain trying to hurt people. HONESTY WINS!" | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
As romantic as it may be to wed in a castle in another country, it is important to pay attention to the laws of the land. Here are some tips to make sure your wedding is legal. Some countries require that the couple reside in the country for a specific period of time before being married there. Blood tests may be required. Minimum ages and parental consent may be required. Contact the foreign embassy or consulate of the country in which you are to be married; the State Department provides a list. Foreign countries may require documentation showing that previous legal relationships have ended; death or divorce certificates must be translated into the local language and verified as authentic. Affidavits that both parties are legally able to enter into a marriage contract also may be required. American embassies or consulates are typically able to execute such a contract, provided the couple has a signed and notarized statement attesting to their eligibility. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
The 61st annual Grammy Awards were on Sunday. Here are highlights from the show: At a ceremony dominated by female performers and presenters, Kacey Musgraves won album of the year and Cardi B became the first woman to win best rap album as a solo artist. Our critics and writers weigh in on the best and worst moments. At the beginning of the show, Alicia Keys, the host, introduced "my sisters": Lady Gaga, Jada Pinkett Smith, Michelle Obama and Jennifer Lopez. Messages of inspiration and hope continued throughout. Check out the red carpet looks. See the complete list of winners below: | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
MSNBC was already preparing for one momentous presidential transition next year. Now the 24 hour cable channel and home to liberal stars like Rachel Maddow is about to take on a second. Phil Griffin, the MSNBC president whose left leaning shows yielded big ratings in the Trump years and minted media brands like "The Rachel Maddow Show" and "Morning Joe," will depart on Feb. 1 after a 12 year tenure, the network said on Monday. He is to be succeeded by Rashida Jones, a senior vice president for news at MSNBC and NBC News, who will become the first Black woman to take charge of a major television news network. Ms. Jones, 39, currently oversees daytime news coverage for the network and breaking news and specials for NBC's broadcast news division. Her promotion, announced by Cesar Conde, the chairman of NBCUniversal News Group, is another big shake up in the network's management ranks. Mr. Conde, who formerly ran Telemundo, took over the news division this year after Andrew Lack departed following a bumpy tenure. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
An appearance by Donald Trump Jr. on ABC's "The View" to promote his new book quickly spiraled out of control on Thursday as he and the show's politically outspoken hosts traded shouts and accusations that spilled over into the partisan echo chamber of social media. Mr. Trump and his girlfriend, the Fox News host turned Trump campaign adviser Kimberly Guilfoyle, went on the show to discuss his book, "Triggered: How the Left Thrives on Hate and Wants to Silence Us." But the interview went off the rails when the hosts assailed him for sharing a Breitbart article on Twitter on Wednesday that claimed to name the whistle blower whose complaint set off the House impeachment inquiry. "I don't regret doing that," Mr. Trump said. "I don't think I should have to forgo my First Amendment rights. It's out there, I read it in an article, I've been reading it for a week, I saw it on the Drudge Report. This is not some secret." The whistle blower's lawyer has declined to identify his client, and the person's identity has not been independently verified. When some in the audience clapped for Mr. Trump's response, the host Joy Behar chastised them. "This is not a MAGA rally," she said, referring to President Trump's 2016 campaign slogan, "Make America Great Again." Mr. Trump soon went on the attack: He accused ABC of covering up for Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier and sex offender who died by suicide in a New York jail cell this year; he claimed that another host, Whoopi Goldberg, was an apologist for the filmmaker Roman Polanski, who pleaded guilty to a sexual assault charge involving a 13 year old girl in 1977; and he accused Ms. Behar, who is white, of once wearing blackface. "I did not go in blackface, please," Ms. Behar said. "No, she was not in blackface," Ms. Goldberg agreed. Each of these accusations was picked up by Mr. Trump's allies in the conservative media ecosystem, who sliced the interview into shareable video clips and spread them far and wide. If the point of going on "The View" was to generate content for conservative meme makers, then it appeared to have been a rousing success. Shortly after the segment aired, Ms. Guilfoyle was celebrating on Twitter, where she took a new 2020 hashtag out for a spin. It stands for "Keep America Great." "We had the ladies of TheView absolutely TRIGGERED! Hah! Proud to stand with DonaldJTrumpJr, realDonaldTrump, and the entire Trump family," she wrote. "America loves the Trumps! KAG2020." The blackface accusation against Ms. Behar appeared to quickly gain traction thanks to The Daily Wire, a conservative site that posted an undated video from an earlier season of "The View" that showed Ms. Behar talking about a Halloween costume for which she darkened her skin. "You and your family have hurt a lot of people and have put a lot of people through a lot of pain, including the Khan family, who is a Gold Star family that I think should be respected for the loss of their son," Ms. McCain said, referring to the Trumps' attacks on the parents of a fallen Muslim American soldier. "Does all of that make you feel good?" "I don't think any of that makes me feel good, but I do think we got into this because we wanted to do what is right for America," Mr. Trump replied. He then talked about his father's efforts to "bring back the American dream" and repeated a common refrain among Trump supporters: that the president is "a counterpuncher" who is unafraid to take the fight to liberals. As he responded to Ms. McCain, another host, Sunny Hostin, jumped in. "I don't think she appreciates that your father attacked her father," she said. "I understand that, and I am sorry about that and they did have differences, I agree with that," Mr. Trump said. He offered his condolences to Ms. McCain on the death of her aunt. She thanked him and turned back to her original question. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
ORLANDO, Fla. A year ago at the Arnold Palmer Invitational, Tyrrell Hatton of England hit a golf shot so crooked and so wayward that he turned to his caddie, Mick Donaghy, and asked, "Have you seen a worse golf shot?" Donaghy, lugging a bag professionally for more than three decades, stayed mute until Hatton persisted: "Answer the question." Captured on videotape and widely viewed on social media, the exchange had been how golf fans best knew Hatton unless it was the video he tweeted when his fiancee, Emily Braisher, inadvertently slammed a portable toilet door during his backswing at the Italian Open, a tweet appended with the hashtag weddingsoff. (Hatton was joking.) But Sunday, in the final round of this year's Arnold Palmer event, the entertaining, volatile but charismatic Hatton made his mark on the golf world in a more permanent, arguably constructive way. Resolute in windy, challenging conditions there was only one round shot in the 60s in the final two days at Bay Hill Hatton earned his first PGA Tour victory with a gutty, two over par 74 on Sunday that left him one stroke ahead of the runner up, Marc Leishman. Hatton, a four time winner on the European Tour, finished the tournament at four under par, a wide smile on his face and a ready quip about his notable temper. "I was annoyed and could have easily blown up at times, but kept my head a little bit," said Hatton, who once joked that his nickname should be Head Case Hatton. "The hardest thing for me today would be to manage myself. I did a decent job." Hatton's victory over a deep field comes in only his second tournament since surgery on his right wrist in November. On Friday, when asked how he had spent his time rehabilitating from the surgery, Hatton smiled and answered: "I drank a lot of red wine and played Xbox. That was it. When the cast came off and I was told I could play Xbox, I didn't hesitate." It may not be the customary regimen for a comeback, but it seems to have suited the whimsical Hatton, who entered the event 32nd in the world golf rankings. At his first tournament back, a World Golf Championship event in Mexico last month, Hatton, 28, finished in a tie for sixth. On Sunday, in his 60th start on the PGA Tour, he held a lead heading into the final round for the first time. But his two stroke advantage over Leishman and Rory McIlroy disappeared less than an hour after Hatton's opening shot. McIlroy made an early run Sunday and quickly vaulted into a tie for the lead with a birdie on the fourth hole just after a shaky bogey by Hatton on his first hole. But McIlroy, who regained the No. 1 ranking last month for the first time in five years because of consistent results, faltered badly after tying Hatton. After Saturday's third round, McIlroy said his primary goal in the fourth round was to avoid making a big number on any hole. But after bogeying the fifth, McIlroy's third shot to the par 5 sixth hole rattled around a pile of rocks separating the green from a pond. Forced to take a penalty shot and a drop before his next shot, McIlroy ended up with a crushing double bogey when his seven foot bogey putt slid past the hole. McIlroy shot a four over 40 on the front nine holes and never seriously threatened the leaders again, finishing with a four over par 76. The back nine of the tournament would instead become a taut battle among Hatton, Leishman and Sungjae Im, the 21 year old from South Korea who won last week's Honda Classic. Hatton's equilibrium was most tested after a double bogey on the 11th hole when the steadiness he had exhibited for most of the tournament seemed to vanish with one shot in the water and another over the green. Hatton said the deceiving wind gusts ruined what were otherwise good shots. "It was frustrating," he said. But despite the capricious nature of the task at hand and some less than perfect outcomes Hatton closed with steadying pars on his final seven holes, including the par 3 17th hole and the demanding 18th hole, both of which required nerve racking shots to greens protected by long expanses of water. Hatton said he found the composure to execute testing shots in uneven conditions in part because his long layoff after surgery lowered his expectations. Im, meanwhile, made a late charge but stumbled with a double bogey on the 13th hole to finish in third place two strokes behind the winning score. At the end of the day, Hatton was wearing a red cardigan, a favorite fashion choice of Palmer that is awarded to the tournament winner. He said he would remove the garment not long after leaving the Bay Hill grounds. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
The first image of a black hole, from the galaxy Messier 87. A professor of Hawaiian language gave it the name powehi, from the Kumulipo, a centuries old Hawaiian creation chant. That First Black Hole Seen in an Image Is Now Called Powehi, at Least in Hawaii When Jessica Dempsey, deputy director of the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope in Maunakea, Hawaii, wanted help last year naming an upgrade to a deep space detection system, she turned to Uncle Larry. Uncle Larry, more formally known as Larry Kimura, an associate professor of Hawaiian language and studies at the University of Hawai'i, listened to her describe the system as something meant to help detect cold dark things in the universe and light imperceptible to the human eye. On the spot, he came up with the suggestion of "namakanui," naming it after big eyed fish that swim in Hawaiian waters at night. Six months later, Professor Kimura's insights would draw much wider attention as officials credited him with giving a name to the first ever picture of a black hole. Larry Kimura, an associate professor of Hawaiian language and studies at the University of Hawai'i. Dr. Dempsey and other researchers described the image to him two weeks ago, and she said she watched his face "just light up." In a moment that she described as "astonishing" and "mind bending," he came up with one Hawaiian word for the black hole that took scientists six research papers to capture: powehi. The word is derived from the Kumulipo, a centuries old Hawaiian creation chant of 2,102 lines, and it means "the adorned fathomless dark creation." It stems from "po," which means powerful, unfathomable and ceaseless creation, and "wehi," an honorific befitting someone who would wear a crown, Professor Kimura said in an interview on Friday. "Powehi as a name is so powerful because it provides real truths about the image of the black hole that we see," Dr. Dempsey said in a video posted by the university. Professor Kimura, who has been studying the chant for years, said the naming "all just fell into place." He said he regarded the attention it was receiving as "a great happening for science and Hawaiian language and identity revitalization." He said it would help promote the preservation of the Hawaiian indigenous language, which had been endangered. Professor Kimura's involvement stems from the use of two of the world's most powerful telescopes atop Maunakea on Hawaii island the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope and Submillimeter Array that were part of the Event Horizon Telescope project that captured the image of the black hole. Geoffrey C. Bower, chief scientist of the Hawai'i operations at the Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, said the naming came in part from a suggestion to get a news release about the black hole image translated into Hawaiian. Professor Kimura was the natural expert to consult, Dr. Bower said, adding that it was suggested he also might come up with a name for the black hole but no one quite knew what to expect. So far, powehi has been adopted as the official Hawaiian name of the black hole. Gov. David Y. Ige of Hawaii issued a proclamation declaring April 10 "Powehi Day." A more formal approval for the name would have to come from the International Astronomical Union, Dr. Bower said. A submission to the union would come only if the consortium of more than 200 scientists and 13 funding institutions involved in the project agreed to support it, he said. Dr. Dempsey noted that Professor Kimura helped give the Hawaiian name Oumuamua to an asteroid discovered in 2017. NASA described the asteroid, which was formally known as 1I/2017 U1, as "the first confirmed object from another star to visit our solar system" and an "interstellar interloper." Professor Kimura said the name Oumuamua was an old Hawaiian word that meant "scout" or "being out there in the front." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
It's safe to come out from under the covers; last week's boogeyman has been vanquished. (Though the ghost of Teddy Perkins will continue to haunt us all.) We're back in more familiar territory the Atlanta party scene. With a newly liberated Van as our vehicle, we get a behind the scenes look at those A list bashes that appear glamorous, but only when snapped from the right angles. Van and her friends, Tami, Candy and Nadine, are prepping for the ultimate girls' night out, a New Year's Eve party hosted by the "Champagne Papi" himself, Drake. They're dressed in the requisite bodycon dresses, fixing their faces and filling in their followers on every detail. After Insta stalking Earn who has clearly moved on to other women (or at least his posts would have us believe as much) Van is determined to get on with her life as well. First, she needs to up her social stock by revamping her "weak" Instagram feed, which is all pictures of her daughter, Lotte, and chicken. A photo of her and Drake would be the ultimate boost. Before they head out into the night, they raise their shot glasses in a toast. "To partying with my girls!" shouts Candy, the bubbly friend who's best described as "extra." Of course, Candy is the first to ditch the squad. The girls had passed the necessary tests to gain entry to the exclusive party. They navigated the sketchy parking lot meet up spot, delivered the secret code number and made it past an exacting security guard. Once they stepped their bootie covered feet onto the mansion's marble floors and munched their mood enhancing edible gummies, Candy figured it was every girl for herself. The director Amy Seimetz packed the scene with rap video cliches. Women bop in bikinis and frolic in front of an oversized fireplace there's even a slo mo shot of a woman riding a mechanical bull. Tami sizes up her surroundings and, exasperated, dubs it a "THOT a thon." She sets her sights on Devyon Johnson, a (fictitious) black actor who attended the party with a white woman on his arm. "I just need to talk some sense into him," she says, storming off. Then there's Nadine. The drug laced gummy candy has hit her the wrong way and she's freaking out. She becomes that messy friend who requires babysitting throughout the night. Van is unbothered by her friends' issues. She's tightly wound and has a lot to prove (mainly, to Earn). "I'm just trying to get this photo with Drake," she says. "I need to strategize." She's dragged away from her mission by poor, bewildered Nadine, who called the police to report, "I need your help. I'm at this big party at Drake's house and I'm dying." In her attempts to calm her agitated friend, Van goes looking for a bottle of water and bumps into Brandon, who promises access to both an outlet for her dead cellphone and a private bathroom for her ailing friend. All she has to do is follow him down a spiral staircase. Here's the second time this evening that Van put good judgment on hold. The first was putting her trust in a lecherous shuttle bus driver who teased, "Y'all pretty! I'm gonna take y'all home with me. Just kiddin'." Now, she's blindly following a stranger and into the basement. She could have just as easily stumbled into a horrific mansion massacre of her own. As it was, she got lucky when the guy turned out to be harmless. He was just another of the party's many cling ons. "Drake's nutritionist is my cousin," he explains. She escapes his pestering and rejoins her efforts to track down Drake. While she doesn't find the rapper, she finds what appears to be his living quarters. A Muzak version of "Passionfruit" plays overhead as she roams through his gilded bathroom and well appointed walk in. She grins like a kid in a candy shop as she tries on his bomber jacket, sniffing it to get a whiff of his scent. Outside, Nadine is having one hell of a trip. And who better to be her guide than Darius? He just happens to be at this party, too. And why not? Stranger things could (and have) happened. The odd couple is sitting poolside, getting metaphysical. Darius brings up Bostrom's Simulation Argument, positing that everything around them is artificial. It's both a big picture observation and a critique of the posturing social media fueled and otherwise of the partygoers around them. "Is she real?" Nadine asks of the bikini clad woman inexplicably swaying in the pool alone. Meanwhile, unlike Van, the militant Tami has zeroed in on the celebrity she's been stalking. She watches in disgust as Devyon canoodles with his white plus 1 and unloads on the woman the moment he steps away. "You're saddled over there with your black man accessory and I'm tired of that story, to be honest," she says. "It's basic." Her nameless, doe eyed prey tries to de escalate things. "Maybe I'm a good woman and I found a good man," she says. But that argument doesn't fly with Tami. She sees herself as going to the mat on behalf of every black woman who has ever felt jilted by the sight of a successful black man paired up with a white woman. "Type 'beautiful woman' in Google Images, honey! Then you can talk to me," Tami shouts. Devyon catches the tail end of all this drama, just as his girl retreats from it. Before he follows after her, he delivers a sheepish "Sorry." Whether he was apologizing for himself or for every man of his ilk, it's enough to placate Tami. She seems giddy just hearing it. Deep in the recesses of the mansion, Van's still snooping around, and in head to toe Drake wear now. She discovers a man seated alone in a recliner, fixated on a flickering screen (another parallel to Darius's misadventures last week). She can't make out what this Spanish speaker is saying, but through their broken conversation and an annotated wall calendar, she's able to work out the cold, hard truth: Drake is definitely not in the building. Her dream of getting a picture with him is dashed. Or is it? She finds the source of all those party pictures that girls had been posting throughout the night. Two enterprising women have been staging shots with cardboard cutouts of Drake, all for the low, low cost of 20. An extra 10 would score you a pair of baby blue (probably bootleg) Puma slides. "What? You thought you were going to have a meaningful convo with Drake?!" one of the women asks a visibly disappointed Van. She makes her way to a now enlightened Nadine, who reinforces what has, by now, become glaringly obvious: "It's a simulation, Van. It's all fake." The only person who seemed to get anything out of the party was Candy, who was off somewhere feeding sushi to a live tiger. Or, at least that's what she wanted her friends to believe she was doing. As the remaining girls and Darius walked home at dawn, Van's eyes widen with revelation. She'd walked past a Mexican flag in the closet, then met the so called abuelo in the den. Two plus two equals the one thing she feels is actually real: "Drake's Mexican!" Cue a Spanish language cover of "Hotline Bling." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
The travel industry is hoping to turn the page on a bad public relations chapter in the wake of the Supreme Court decision upholding the travel ban on five Muslim majority nations as well as North Korea and some travelers from Venezuela. "The most important thing is the administration has got to change its rhetoric to welcoming legitimate travelers from around the world because the noise has been so loud around this issue that we've been hurt in inbound international travel," said Roger Dow, the president and chief executive officer of the U.S. Travel Association, an industry trade group with members that include hotels, theme parks and airports. International travel in the United States fell during the earliest days of the Trump administration when the initial travel ban was issued by executive order in January 2017. According to preliminary figures released in March by the National Travel Tourism Office at the Department of Commerce, international visitors to the United States in 2017 fell by 3.8 percent to 54.9 million. The office has not released 2018 figures because of what is says is an undercount of the previous two years, which it says it is working to correct. Still, other measures confirmed the decline in international travel. In a preliminary release of figures by the United Nations World Trade Organization, international tourism grew globally by 7 percent in 2017, but grew only by 3 percent in North America. It noted that losses in the United States were offset by gains in Canada and Mexico. The airfare prediction app Hopper found that flight searches to the United States from outside of the country have fallen 12 percent since the 2016 presidential election. Mr. Dow of the U.S. Travel Association estimated the loss of foreign travelers at less than 2 percent, which represents about 32 billion in spending. The travel ban isn't the only reason inbound international tourism has taken a hit in the United States, industry analysts say. Contributing factors include the strength of the dollar, which made travel to the United States more expensive, and the rise of low cost airlines within Europe in particular that made travel there more attractive, they say. Inbound travel spending is considered an export and at 245 billion, according to the U.S. Travel Association, it represents the second largest industry export after transportation equipment, such as airplanes. Subtracting the 161 billion Americans spend traveling abroad, the country currently has a 84 billion trade surplus in travel. According to the Commerce Department's tourism office, the Middle East accounted for 3.5 percent of inbound international tourism in 2016, or about 1.3 million, and none of the countries covered by the ban with the exception of Venezuela is among the top 20 tourism markets coming to the United States . (The Muslim majority countries are Syria, Iran, Yemen, Libya and Somalia.) The travel ban that was upheld by the court on June 26 had been in effect since December. With renewed attention to it, travel companies are pivoting from expressions of concern to those of welcome aimed at reassuring international travelers across the spectrum of nationality and religion. "While inbound travel into the United States is down, we are optimistic that this trend can and will turnaround," wrote Leigh Barnes, the regional director for North America at Intrepid Travel, which offers tours around the world. "The U.S. government has been the source of a lot negative media attention this year, but it is the responsibility of the travel industry to continue to stand for open borders, inclusivity and the celebration of diversity, despite what is happening in the political world ," Mr. Barnes wrote. The company would not say how much its United States business is down, but last September it said tours within the country were off by 24 percent compared to the previous year. Other industry leaders acknowledged the need for border security while maintaining their commitment to hospitality. In a statement, Hilton Hotels said: "As a company that hires employees and welcomes guests from all over the world, we recognize the need to balance safety and security with the unwavering hospitality that is at the core of our industry. We are talking to the Administration, Congress, and the broader travel community with the goal of developing smart policies that strike the right balance between encouraging hospitality and enhancing national security." Others were more outspoken. The shared accommodations company Airbnb, which operates in over 191 countries, said its business had not been affected by the tumult, neither at home nor abroad, and did not expect the Supreme Court decision to impact its future business. Still, the company, which has criticized the administration, most famously in a Super Bowl ad in 2017 with the theme "we all belong" depicting a diverse group of people, has been speaking out against the Supreme Court decision. "Airbnb and travel at large is actually designed to encourage people to spend time with people with different backgrounds," said Chris Lehane, the global head of policy for the company. "That's why we think this decision is so profoundly wrong." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. The N.B.A. and the league's television partners did not get their dream first round playoff matchup pitting LeBron James and the Los Angeles Lakers against Zion Williamson and the New Orleans Pelicans. The solace for those parties is that the fallback option will offer no shortage of offensive flammability and star power. Damian Lillard and the Portland Trail Blazers secured the N.B.A.'s last undecided playoff spot on Saturday with a 126 122 victory over the Memphis Grizzlies at Walt Disney World on an afternoon that Lillard received considerable help. CJ McCollum, Jusuf Nurkic and Carmelo Anthony all played major supporting roles to ensure that the Blazers, after Lillard scored a ridiculous 154 points in Portland's previous three games, seized the No. 8 seed in the Western Conference. It was the first playoff play in game in N.B.A. history, and the Grizzlies, as the West's No. 9 seed, had to win to force a winner take all rematch with the Blazers on Sunday. Despite holding Lillard scoreless for the final nine plus minutes and unleashing Ja Morant, the presumptive Rookie of the Year Award winner, for 35 points of his own, Memphis could not contain McCollum and Anthony late. The Blazers thus advanced to a first round series with the top seeded Lakers that begins Tuesday night. McCollum, playing through a fracture in his back that he sustained July 31 in Portland's first game of the restart against Memphis, scored eight of his 29 points in the final 3:08, including two big shots over Morant. Anthony, the former Knick whose career appeared to be over before the Blazers signed him in November, sank a clutch 3 pointer from the wing with 20.2 seconds remaining in regulation and finished with 21 points. And Nurkic, who announced via Instagram before tipoff that his grandmother had died from the coronavirus in his native Bosnia, was immense with 22 points and 21 rebounds including 15 points and 17 rebounds by halftime. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
Boris Johnson stares into the distance, his brow furrowed, a lamp softly illuminating his features and a document in front of him. The image is pensive, deliberate and staged, and somewhat unusual as political portraits go. After all, most politicians don't sit for resignation photos. Mr. Johnson, who stepped down as Britain's foreign secretary on Monday, has come under criticism for a series of portraits taken the day of his resignation, one of which appeared on the front page of The Daily Telegraph on Tuesday. The pictures show Mr. Johnson sitting at a desk with a pen and copy of his resignation letter at the official residence of the foreign secretary. The flamboyant politician's departure came in protest of Prime Minister Theresa May's moderate approach to Britain's withdrawal from the European Union, known as Brexit, and has deepened the crisis facing her government. Mr. Johnson's political opponents quickly seized on the pictures as evidence of self interest. Sam Macrory, a spokesman for Open Reason, an organization run by the former deputy prime minister and Brexit opponent Nick Clegg, also chimed in. "I'm struggling to think of another time where a Secretary of State called in the photographers to record the moment a resignation letter was signed," he said on Twitter. The photographer who took the pictures, Andrew Parsons, disputed Mr. Lammy's characterization of the event as an act of vanity, and said he did not feel that the pictures were unusual in the least. He had been near Westminster on Monday, he said, and when the story of Mr. Johnson's exit broke, he called a member of Mr. Johnson's staff to ask if they wanted him to document the moment. "And they said it was a good idea," Mr. Parsons said. The letter of resignation, he said, had "appeared" while he was in the room with Mr. Johnson. He added that Mr. Johnson had not composed it while they were in the room, and that it had been written on a computer. "They obviously just don't understand that things have got to be recorded," the photographer said of Mr. Johnson's critics. "It's about recording history as opposed to making it a photo op." Sonia Purnell, the author of "Just Boris," a critical biography of Mr. Johnson , said that the photos spoke to the former foreign secretary's ability to manipulate the media. "I think this is where being a journalist and politician kind of collide," she said. "He knows what will make news in a paper or on TV bulletins, he knows how that works. This is a P.R. man's dream, but he's supposed to be the foreign secretary." She agreed with Mr. Johnson's political opponents that the pictures were unusual, saying she could not recall another time that a British politician had posed at a desk in such a way. "It is quite extraordinary," she said. "The whole thing is part of the great psychodrama around Boris, where he wants to be prime minister at all expense . People used to think he was sort of funny, amusing and witty. Now that he's in this very important job, he turns out to be completely vacuous." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
KOCHLAND The Secret History of Koch Industries and Corporate Power in America By Christopher Leonard With the notable exception of our president, probably no individuals in the last decade of politics have attracted as much dismay and fury as the billionaire Koch brothers, Charles and David, who have leveraged control of their family's gargantuan, Kansas based Koch Industries to create a political influence machine of rare scope. As documented by The New Yorker's Jane Mayer and others, the Kochs have spent hundreds of millions of dollars advocating their free market agenda and bankrolling think tanks like the Cato Institute, conservative activist groups and hundreds, perhaps thousands, of state and national legislators all in the service of pushing back against government regulations, especially those dealing with climate change, pollution and energy policy. David Koch Died on Aug. 23 at the Age of 79 The attention lavished on the Kochs' influence, however, has tended to overshadow what made that influence possible in the first place: Charles Koch's eye opening prowess in business. While David Koch emerged as a Fifth Avenue philanthropist and bon vivant, it was Charles calm, modest and analytical who over the last 50 years transformed an obscure Wichita oil company into a 110 billion colossus. In a different world, he might be celebrated along the lines of Steve Jobs, Bill Gates or Warren Buffett. The story of how he did it is told in Christopher Leonard's superb "Kochland." To my mind, it ranks among the best books ever written about an American corporation. Leonard, who has written for The Washington Post and Bloomberg Businessweek, devoted nearly a decade to researching "Kochland." This is a massive, and massively reported, book. But what's most impressive is its refreshing balance and evenhandedness. Leonard does not judge the Kochs; he explains them their operations and acquisitions, successes and failures, trading strategies, business philosophies and family feuds. Almost as notable, from a journalist's point of view, is the degree to which Leonard succeeds without the kind of cooperation all authors seek. He appears to have had only limited access to Koch executives, including, it appears, a single interview with Charles Koch. Tackling the biography of a secretive private company like Koch, which has little need to open itself to scrutiny, is a task of herculean difficulty. Every business holds its secrets, but at least a public company has financial reports one can peruse; writing the history of a private company without full access is akin to scaling El Capitan without handholds. But to a degree I've rarely seen, Leonard actually turns this lack of access into a strength. He does it by unspooling a series of granular set pieces and micronarratives, telling the stories of dozens of men and women inside and outside the company, from a middle manager struggling to schedule barges in Louisiana to the frazzled, overworked forklift drivers pushed to their limits inside a sprawling Koch paper warehouse in Portland, Ore. Want to keep up with the latest and greatest in books? This is a good place to start. None Learn what you should be reading this fall: Our collection of reviews on books coming out this season includes biographies, novels, memoirs and more. See what's new in October: Among this month's new titles are novels by Jonathan Franzen, a history of Black cinema and a biography by Katie Couric. Nominate a book: The New York Times Book Review has just turned 125. That got us wondering: What is the best book that was published during that time? Listen to our podcast: Featuring conversations with leading figures in the literary world, from Colson Whitehead to Leila Slimani, the Book Review Podcast helps you delve deeper into your favorite books. Each story illustrates one corner of a vast corporate empire. Leonard writes: "The profits from Koch's activities are stunning. ... Together the two men are worth 120 billion. Their fortune is larger than that of Amazon C.E.O. Jeff Bezos or Microsoft founder Bill Gates. Yet David and Charles Koch did not invent a major new product or revolutionize any industry. The Koch brothers derived their wealth through a patient, long term strategy of seizing opportunities in complex and often opaque corners of the economic system." The story begins in 1967, when the bellicose archconservative who founded Koch Industries, Charles and David's father, Fred Koch, fell dead in a Utah duck blind. The second of Fred's four sons, a 1957 graduate of M.I.T., 32 year old Charles had been trained since childhood to run the company. The oldest son, also named Fred, had no interest in business and would devote his life to the arts. The fourth, David's quarrelsome twin brother, Bill, would join the company a decade later and rebel, igniting a feud with Charles that would span the next 15 years. David would fall in line as Charles's reliable boardroom ally. But while Charles owned the refinery, he didn't control it, thanks to a deeply entrenched and notably hostile union. In the first of the book's intricate set pieces, Leonard chronicles how Charles and his handpicked field general, Bernard Paulson, outlasted the inevitable strike and smashed the union. The company's phenomenal growth rested on three pillars. The first was culture: Charles was a thinker, a devotee of the Austrian free market economists Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises, and in time he codified his philosophy into something he calls Market Based Management, or MBM, which is drilled into every Koch employee. The unity of thought inside the company, some may sense, carries the faint whiff of a cult. The second pillar was market intelligence. Over time Charles would build a network of trading desks in Houston, Moscow, Geneva, Wichita and elsewhere that dealt in every imaginable commodity. While they were profitable, their real value lay in gathering intelligence on every market Koch was in or considered getting into. Leonard makes a persuasive case that a principal strength of Charles and his management team was their ability to analyze and act on this intelligence before their competitors could. But as Leonard also makes clear, the third and most important pillar underlying Koch's growth was the simple fact that it was private, meaning it wasn't beholden to masses of shareholders and their nattering demands for rising quarterly profits. This freed it in dozens of ways. Charles, for instance, not only stopped judging managers on their profits, he stopped most budgeting demands. Because he refrained from paying steep dividends, he reinvested 90 percent of Koch's profits into the business, further fueling its ability to make acquisitions. This has taken Koch far afield from its origins in oil, into fertilizers, lumber, feed lots, even greeting cards. There were stumbles along the way the 1990s era acquisition of Purina Mills was a disaster but Charles learned from each. The company first gained public attention in the late 1980s when its pipeline crews were discovered systematically taking too much oil from customers' storage tanks, which nearly resulted in criminal indictments. In the following years it drew steep fines and criminal convictions on pollution related charges at several facilities. Charles reacted by initiating a program called "10,000 percent compliance," meaning all of Koch's operations would be in 100 percent compliance with every law and regulation 100 percent of the time. The company has rarely run afoul of the law in the years since. If Charles couldn't evade nettlesome regulations and laws, he decided to try to change those he disliked, part of the reasoning behind his push into the realm of politics. Leonard aptly traces how the company's Washington lobbying machine mushroomed in size and efficacy during the Obama era fight over so called cap and trade limits on emissions, a victory that emboldened Charles to influence regulations and Congressional races across the country. This and other stories Leonard tells in clear, unadorned prose. Could the book be 50 pages shorter? Probably. There is a certain amount of repetition, but given the complexity of the company's operations and trading strategies, I found I didn't mind. And "Kochland" delivers on its seemingly facile subtitle: A reader actually does learn not just about the growth of the power of Koch Industries, but also about that of corporate America's as well. Not since Andrew Ross Sorkin's landmark "Too Big to Fail" (2009) have I said this about a book, but "Kochland" warrants it: If you're in business, this is something you need to read. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
Dr. J. Donald Millar, a physician and former public health official whose work helped eradicate smallpox in Africa and with it, the world, died on Sunday at his home in Murrayville, Ga. He was 81. The apparent cause was kidney failure, his wife, Joan, said. A retired assistant surgeon general of the United States Public Health Service, Dr. Millar (pronounced mil LAHR) was long associated with what is now the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He was the first director of its global smallpox eradication program, a position he held from 1966 to 1970. Dr. Millar was later a director of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. The last case of smallpox in the United States occurred in 1949, but when Dr. Millar assumed his post, the disease remained an urgent international health concern: From 1880 to 1980, it killed a half billion people worldwide. The C.D.C. (known in the late 1960s as the National Communicable Disease Center) began its overseas eradication campaign in West and Central Africa. From the center's offices in Atlanta, Dr. Millar oversaw the training, deployment and support of dozens of health workers in some 20 countries there. Many, like Sierra Leone, Guinea, Niger and Togo, then had some of the highest rates of smallpox in the world. Operating under the aegis of the World Health Organization, Dr. Millar's program focused on locations, like marketplaces and festival sites, where inhabitants of remote rural settlements came together in large numbers. There, local workers trained by his staff gave smallpox vaccinations to as many people as possible. Eventually, some 4,000 Africans were trained to administer the vaccine. By 1969, The New York Times reported, Dr. Millar's program had vaccinated 100 million people in the region. "This was considered to be the most difficult area of the world, because of communications and transportation and so forth," Dr. William H. Foege, a former director of the C.D.C. who in the 1960s worked under Dr. Millar in Nigeria, said on Thursday. "The objective was to stop smallpox within five years, and the goal was actually reached in three and a half years." The Africa program became a model for smallpox eradication campaigns in other countries, among them India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Brazil. "Over the years, C.D.C. became the largest contributor of people to the global smallpox effort, finally contributing about 300 people to smallpox eradication around the world, most of them detailed through W.H.O.," Dr. Foege said. As early as 1969, in an influential paper in The New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Millar maintained that smallpox vaccinations, long an American childhood ritual, were no longer necessary in the United States. With his co author, J. Michael Lane, he argued that by then, the vaccine's potential complications fatal in roughly one case per million outweighed its potential benefits for most Americans. The routine vaccination of Americans against smallpox ended in 1972. The son of John Millar, a shipyard engineer, and the former Dorothea Smith, a secretary, John Donald Millar was born on Feb. 27, 1934, in Newport News, Va. After receiving a bachelor's degree in chemistry from the University of Richmond in 1956, he earned an M.D. in 1959 from what was then the Medical College of Virginia and did his internship at the University of Utah. Called up for military service in 1961, Dr. Millar fulfilled his obligation by joining the United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, which, with the Army, Navy and other branches, is one of the country's seven federal uniformed services. Assigned to the Communicable Disease Center, as the agency was then known, Dr. Millar began his career as a member of its epidemic intelligence service. In 1966, before assuming the leadership of the smallpox eradication program, he earned the equivalent of a master's in public health from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. In later years with the C.D.C., Dr. Millar led its public health delivery program, which helps states administer services like tuberculosis prevention, dental hygiene and the tracking of sexually transmitted diseases. He served as the director of the National Center for Environmental Health, part of the C.D.C., from 1980 to 1981. From 1981 to 1993, Dr. Millar was the director of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, also part of the C.D.C. The issues on which he worked there included vibration syndrome, a set of circulatory and neural problems in the hands caused by the use of power tools like pneumatic hammers, and the prevention of tractor rollovers. After retiring from the Public Health Service in 1993 with the rank of rear admiral, Dr. Millar ran a consulting company devoted to occupational health and safety. Besides his wife, the former Joan Phillips, whom he married in 1957, Dr. Millar's survivors include a brother, Douglas Paul Millar; three children, John Stuart Millar, Alison Millar McMillan and Virginia Millar Helms; and eight grandchildren. His honors include the Distinguished Service Medal, the Public Health Service's highest decoration, which he received in 1983 and 1989. He was a former adjunct professor of occupational and environmental health at Emory University. Dr. Millar revised his 1969 position on smallpox vaccination in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks. Fearing a terrorist strike involving weaponized smallpox, the United States government considered pre emptively vaccinating the whole country. (Smallpox itself had long been eradicated, but the virus that causes it, variola, was thought to have been preserved in at least one laboratory in the former Soviet Union.) Dr. Millar made clear that the existence of weaponized smallpox was an empirical question that needed to be addressed before a program of that scale was undertaken. While the plan to inoculate every American was ultimately not carried out, the government did stockpile enough vaccine for the entire population. In light of this, Dr. Millar advocated voluntary peacetime vaccination for Americans desiring it. "The more rational approach would be systematic availability of vaccine to people who want it, so you are not confronted with quite so demanding a task in quite so demanding a time frame," he told The Washington Post in 2002. "If there is a real risk, we can do whatever is necessary." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
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