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Gail Collins: Bret, let's get right to it. How do you want to see New Hampshire vote? Give me your ideal Democratic finish. Bret Stephens: Gail, my affections wobble, but my antipathies remain the same. Amy Klobuchar put in her best performance yet on the debate stage Friday night by turns mature, nuanced, empathetic and unquestionably presidential. If I were a New Hampshire voter, I'd vote for her, not only because I like her but also because I'm starting to think she'd have a very decent shot at bringing down President Trump. After that, Pete Buttigieg runs a strong second, hampered mainly by my fears that too many Americans will think he's too young, that his resume is too thin, and that he's skipping too many steps on the ladder to the presidency. Next up, Joe Biden, because, while I may worry about his well being, he wouldn't make me fear for our country. Still, as I said the other night right after the debate, I found myself watching his performance the way I might watch a high school play: grading on a curve and just happy that nobody forgot their lines. Bret: I won't count Andrew Yang and Tom Steyer, since everyone knows they are auditioning for some job that isn't the presidency secretary of commerce, I'd guess. That said, I found Steyer particularly irksome: If you're going to buy your way onto the debate stage you may as well have something interesting to say. Finally, at the bottom: Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, for reasons we've discussed so often. That said, I don't think Warren did well enough in the debate to recover from her weak finish in Iowa, while Sanders has a confident stage presence and a well honed delivery that never disappoints his fans and makes him the likely front runner in the Granite State. Gail: My personal favorite is Elizabeth Warren, and if she suddenly won in New Hampshire it would mean my great concern about her electability was unfounded. Mark Penn and Andrew Stein write that "only a broader course correction to the center will give Democrats a fighting chance in 2022" and beyond. Tory Gavito and Adam Jentleson write that the Virgina loss should "shock Democrats into confronting the powerful role that racially coded attacks play in American politics." Ezra Klein speaks to David Shor, who discusses his fear that Democrats face electoral catastrophe unless they shift their messaging. Ross Douthat writes that the outcome of the Virginia gubernatorial race shows Democrats need a "new way to talk about progressive ideology and education." Bret: If Warren were an alcoholic beverage, she'd be merlot. If she were a fruit, she'd be durian. If she were cheese, she'd be Limburger. If she were a rock star, she'd be Pat Benatar. Point is: She elicits strong and opposite reactions. Sorry, go on. Gail: I like to think of her as a fine cabernet. Or maybe a tawny port. O.K., enough. Warren Wins Big is my dream headline, but I readily admit it's very unlikely. Bret: Don't rule it out. Nothing in this nomination season has gone as any of us would have predicted six months ago. Gail: Pete Buttigieg is looking pretty strong in New Hampshire. If Warren and Klobuchar fade out, I guess he'd be my guy. I think we agree on Joe Biden. His campaign has had no energy whatsoever. Bret: I'm not sure energy is his core problem. The problem is that the whole case for Biden seems to rest on the increasingly dubious proposition that all the other candidates will fade out, that he has the best chance of beating Trump and that a Biden administration will be anything other than an extension of the Obama administration, minus Obama. That would just be a near rerun of the Democrats' Walter Mondale fiasco in 1984. Gail: I would be perfectly happy to live under a Sanders administration. But to win, the Democratic candidate will have to convince the country that he or she is a calm, reasonable person who would end the high drama traumas we're undergoing now. Bernie has a yelling guy affect I fear would be a problem. Bret: I have the opposite reaction to Sanders. His policies absolutely terrify me, and the so called Bernie Bro phenomenon is a mirror image of a lot of the ugliness we see among Trump's unhinged supporters. Still, I see the appeal of his avuncular, kooky idealistic, authentic persona. He reminds me of a friend of mine, a loquacious rabbi, who consistently defeats my best attempts to hate him. Gail: Pretty soon we'll be welcoming a new candidate in the race. Why do I suspect you'd be happy to go with Michael Bloomberg? Bret: For the same reasons I was happy to vote for him as mayor of New York: He surrounds himself with excellent people, takes thoughtful decisions, measures results, changes his mind when necessary, has an ethical core and doesn't let ideology get in the way of pragmatism. And in this season of nonstop harping on the rich, he's a reminder that starting great businesses is good for America, that great wealth can also do great good, and that you should never judge the moral worth of a person by the size of his or her bank account, no matter how small or large. Gail: My only question is how he'll be as a national candidate. We'll get some hints soon. Another debate coming up! Bret: Let's change the subject to more unpleasant topics, Gail. Donald Trump acquitted is Donald Trump unleashed. He had Alexander Vindman, the courageous colonel who testified against him, practically marched out of the White House. Gordon Sondland, the ambassador to the European Union and another Ukraine witness, is also out. Winston Churchill said, "In victory, magnanimity," but Trump's motto is, "In victory, vindictiveness." Do you think it might come to haunt him? Gail: I want everything to haunt him. Back to his first bankruptcy. His first bad marriage. That racehorse he ruined by making it run while it was sick. All the women whose privates he grabbed. The students who paid tuition at Trump University. The fact that he's gotten away with so many godawful things any one of which would take down a normal politician makes me lose confidence that he'll ever have to pay for his sins. But no. As Martin Luther King Jr. famously said, the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. I sure hope Donald Trump gets it in the arc. Bret: Oh my God: I didn't know about the racehorse. My fear is that the arc won't be bending any time before November. The latest jobs numbers are strong, and even with all the caveats and cavils about the true state of the economy, or about who really deserves the credit, they will help Trump in November. What worries me more are some of the more stupid and self defeating moves by Democrats, not the least of which was Nancy Pelosi meticulously tearing up the pages of the president's State of the Union address. I can already see the G.O.P. attack ad: Trump hails heroic Tuskegee airman and centenarian; then the shot cuts to Pelosi ripping up some pages. Trump salutes the woman and child who lost a husband and father to an Iranian I.E.D.; Pelosi lets rip again. Trump hails an African American man who has surmounted a drug addiction; more tearing. And so on. Gail: In retrospect I can appreciate your argument about the page ripping. But I must admit I yelped with appreciation when it happened. Bret: Trump is not going to be defeated with feckless snark, or smug jokes, or hyperbolic depictions of America as a fascist hellscape. Something else is required, though I can't decide whether it will be the fierce moral passion of Sanders or the sober intelligence and dry wit of Buttigieg or Klobuchar. Gail: Well, if New Hampshire and Nevada and South Carolina don't show us who the winner's likely to be, there's Super Tuesday! After all the drama over Iowa I think voters are more bitter than usual about giving just a handful of small to medium size states power to pick the nominee. Soon a whole lot of us will get a chance to be heard. Or at least those of us who can vote in a Democratic primary. Sorry, Bret. But I'll be checking up on your thoughts all along the way. 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 |
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Parents of children with RCDP, a very rare, terminal form of dwarfism, hope a potential new drug originally developed to treat Alzheimer's will help their kids, too. LEESBURG, Ala. Once a year, Crystal and Jonathan Bedford drive 1,000 miles from their home in Texas to rural Alabama, their three children in tow. Beside a wooded lake, they huddle with other families whose children have the same extremely rare genetic disorder that their 5 year old daughter, Marley, has. The disease, rhizomelic chondrodysplasia punctata, is a painful form of dwarfism, usually accompanied by severe intellectual disability and respiratory problems. There is no cure, and children with RCDP, as it is known, rarely survive into adolescence. The families come for advice on how to care for their fragile children, and for any scrap of information about promising research. Most years they leave with little more than warm support. But this year was different. "You don't want to get your hopes up because what if? What if it doesn't happen? What if it doesn't work out?" said Hannah Peters, whose 16 month old son, Jude, has the disease. "But it was the only bit of hope that we had received since Jude was born." Such is life for parents whose children have rare diseases. They struggle to understand and manage their child's condition or even to find doctors who can and can face steep expenses, even with insurance. And while the pharmaceutical industry has become far more interested than it used to be in identifying and testing potential treatments for minute patient populations, many remain neglected. RCDP is among the rarest of rare diseases; experts guess there are perhaps 100 cases worldwide. But for this support group, there had been a fortunate confluence of circumstances. A dedicated scientist in Montreal, Dr. Nancy Braverman, who had spent decades studying the disorder, had persuaded the Canadian biotech company's president to take an interest in RCDP, and to meet the families in Alabama. The company, Phenomenome Discoveries, had developed a set of compounds that might restore a crucial missing ingredient in the bodies of children with RCDP: plasmalogens, a type of fatty acid found in cell membranes. The company had become interested in plasmalogen levels because some evidence suggested they were also low in people with Alzheimer's disease. No one was depicting the compounds developed by Phenomenome Discoveries, synthetic plasmalogen precursors, as a cure for RCDP. But if they could raise plasmalogen levels in the blood and lungs of children with the disorder, as they had in laboratory mice, Dr. Braverman believed they might at least improve the children's respiratory function, possibly extending their lives. "For us, getting another month with your child or another year or another five years that's kind of everything," Ms. Bedford said. Answers were still a long way off, and a number of hurdles remained before a clinical trial could begin. Still, as the parents prepared to meet with Dayan Goodenowe, the president and chief executive of Phenomenome Discoveries, they overflowed with questions. What if the trial could not recruit enough subjects, considering how few and far between children with RCDP were? What if the company could not raise enough money to conduct it? And worst of all, what if the experimental treatment did not work? To the families who gathered in Alabama in June, Dr. Braverman was something between a beloved aunt and a rock star. She identified the gene mutation that causes RCDP almost two decades ago, and has devoted her career to studying the disease and related disorders. As a physician, she also gets out of her lab to see patients and family support groups. About five years ago, Dr. Goodenowe contacted her after learning she had engineered mice to be plasmalogen deficient. They started collaborating, and when Dr. Goodenowe's plasmalogen precursors raised plasmalogen levels in the blood and lungs of Dr. Braverman's lab mice, they started discussing a clinical trial for RCDP. Dr. Goodenowe had never heard of RCDP before connecting with Dr. Braverman. "We didn't even know these people existed," he said. "Now that we have something, you have to find a way to make it available to them." The drug a combination of three synthetic plasmalogen precursors is in the final stages of preclinical testing, Dr. Goodenowe said. The company plans to file an Investigational New Drug Application with the Food and Drug Administration next year, outlining how it would test the drug on the children and what outcomes it would seek. It is also seeking approval to test one of the plasmalogen precursors on Alzheimer's disease patients. Dr. Goodenowe believes that the RCDP trial will be relatively inexpensive, perhaps 5 million, and that the money is within reach. If the Food and Drug Administration allows the trial to move forward, he hopes to work with a larger company with expertise in drugs for rare medical conditions, which would bring the drug to market if the trial succeeded. But the vast majority of experimental drugs never make it through the trial phase, proving either unsafe or ineffective. A law known as the Orphan Drug Act provides financial incentives for pharmaceutical companies to develop drugs for rare diseases, including tax breaks and market exclusivity for seven years. About 500 such drugs have gone to market since the law's passage in 1983, compared with fewer than 10 developed by the industry in the preceding decade. "Unfortunately there are many more wastes of time than there are drugs that make it," said Peter L. Saltonstall, the president and chief executive of the National Organization for Rare Disorders, a nonprofit advocacy group. If the Food and Drug Administration approves the 18 month trial, Dr. Goodenowe said, participants will get the drug in liquid form, perhaps two or three times a day, starting next summer. Every six months, they will have to travel to the Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children in Wilmington, Del., where Dr. Michael Bober, a pediatric geneticist who also attends the annual meeting, will look for any changes not only in lung function, but in mobility, growth, neurological function and more. Dr. Bober "the buzzkill," as Ms. Bedford affectionately calls him is seeking to temper expectations. Calling the preliminary results from the mouse studies "encouraging," he offered a caveat. "We don't want to get too excited about the potential, without sort of watching the rubber hit the road." And whether a drug is having an effect "can be really difficult to tease out if your working population is 10 or 20 patients," Dr. Bober added. "It's not like we can give this drug to 20,000 people and see what happens." The families had found one another through RhizoKids International, an advocacy group started by two mothers whose babies had been born with RCDP at the same hospital in Birmingham in 2007. Both children had since died, but their mothers, Tracey Thomas and Mary Ellis, still led the group, raising between 50,000 and 70,000 a year for the annual conference and for research. At the time, Ms. Thomas and Ms. Ellis scanned the Internet for information about RCDP and could find only a few scholarly articles, most written by Dr. Braverman, an associate professor of human genetics and pediatrics at McGill University. They emailed her, and she offered to travel to Alabama with two research assistants to examine their babies. That was how the annual meeting was started in 2008, and Dr. Braverman has come every year since, joining a growing number of families at a modest resort near Ms. Ellis's home. "Most times, researchers don't get that one on one time," Ms. Thomas said. "They are studying cells. They're not holding a child." There were 16 families at this year's meeting, from as far away as Brisbane, Australia. Many of the younger children were as small and light as babies, even though they were well into toddler stage. The oldest, a brother and sister from Ohio, were 9 and 13, and their longevity was a source of cautious joy. But Jude was at the opposite end of the spectrum from Marley a classic case with very low plasmalogen levels and severe respiratory and gastrointestinal problems. He had been hospitalized five times since his birth in April 2014, and his mother had cried when Ms. Bedford called her to tell her about the potential treatment. Jude and other children with RCDP need lots of therapy for their rigid joints and muscles. They ride in specially designed strollers lined with foam or towels to minimize discomfort. They have to be held a particular way, to avoid fractures or discomfort, and the yearly meeting is one of the only places their parents have no qualms handing them to others. "It lightens the dullness of it and gives you someone to relate to," Melinda Holladay of Alcolu, S.C., whose 8 year old son, Ethan, has RCDP, said of the gathering. 'Talk to Us, Reach for Us' Over the three day meeting, Dr. Bober and Dr. Braverman examined every child, lying them on a table in a lakeside cottage and collecting measurements and other information for a patient registry financed by the RhizoKids Foundation. The registry had yielded another new development to share at the conference: a growth chart to help parents and doctors understand how much weight children should be gaining to prevent them from being overfed. During Jude's exam, he stared at the lights overhead as the doctors puzzled over two brief seizures he had suffered earlier in the day. Wrapping up, Dr. Bober asked about the clinical trial: What kind of improvement would the parents most like to see in Jude? Ms. Peters did not know where to begin. Stronger respiratory and immune systems, she replied. The ability to "talk to us, reach for us, hug us." Later, Dr. Goodenowe, his dress shirt and pants contrasting with the families' shorts and T shirts, asked each a similar question. One of the biggest challenges, he told them, would be figuring out "end points": ways to evaluate whether the drug was providing any benefit. "Knowing why she's in pain," answered Mark Loyd of Vilonia, Ark., the father of 2 year old Makenna. "Not having to troubleshoot everything." "To even think he could communicate with us, or reach for things," Ms. Holladay said of Ethan. For Ms. Bedford, the most important improvements would be in Marley's respiratory function and in her vision, because she is going blind. "If you could fix her attitude, that would be fantastic," she added, a teasing reference to Marley's stubbornness. Everyone laughed. She had released a pressure valve. Dr. Goodenowe told the families that he was hoping for 30 participants for the trial. There were 24 children on the RCDP patient registry, "but some of those are kids that have passed away," Ms. Bedford pointed out quietly. Dr. Goodenowe said a smaller group would work, as long as they could figure out how to objectively measure the drug's effects. "Bringing your plasmalogen levels up, and then seeing your function change accordingly that's the bridge we have to cross," he said. "If you do not show a functional benefit, nobody's going to listen to you." On the night before they returned to their separate lives, the families completed an annual ritual, releasing a flurry of balloons with tiny LED lights inside. They rose like spirits over the lake, a glowing memorial to the dead and a hypnotic diversion from the realities back on the ground. For Jude's family, those realities reared up again shortly after the return home from Alabama. His bowels froze and became blocked, and he was hospitalized for a week. New tests showed almost constant epileptic activity in his brain, and he is now on two seizure medications. Ms. Peters said she took comfort in the possibility of the trial, even though it made her nervous. "After meeting those people and spending time with them and hearing from them, I have gained a trust for them," she said. "They want to see these children saved." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
E cigarette maker Juul, which has vowed to make cigarettes obsolete, is near to inking a deal to become business partners with Altria, one of the world's largest tobacco companies. The union which would create an alliance between one of public health's greatest villains and the start up that would upend it entails cigarette giant Altria investing 12.8 billion for a 35 percent stake in Juul, at a 38 billion valuation, according to two people briefed on the negotiations. The boards of the two companies each plan to meet this afternoon to consider the deal, according to one of the people. The deal would give Juul access to Altria's prized shelf space in convenience stores and its marketing prowess, and the possibility of putting a mention of its products and coupons into Marlboro cigarette packages. Juul is under intense scrutiny from public health officials and the Food and Drug Administration for an explosion in the number of teenagers vaping with its sleek products following a youth oriented marketing campaign. The San Francisco based company has contended that teenage use was an unintended byproduct of its efforts to create an alternative to cigarettes. Juul officials have said that they remain committed to their core values and had initially turned away the deal, whose details were first reported in The Wall Street Journal. But company officials became convinced when Altria agreed to several major concessions, including allowing Juul to have some access to Altria's customer data. Juul contends that the most important thing it can do for public health is to get its product into the hands of smokers so they can experience a satisfying alternative. Once that happens, Juul believes, people will switch to vaping. Here's what we know about the basic health effects of e cigarettes. Vaping e cigarettes is widely considered less harmful than smoking traditional cigarettes. Smoking rates have fallen sharply in recent years, particularly owing to intensive public health campaigns and regulations, and companies like Altria have looked for other business to provide new profit centers. Public health authorities said the deal between the two companies would undercut Juul's ability to play the cigarette spoiler and show that that start up's own fealty is to profit, not public health. "This shows that Juul is all about maximizing sales and profit," said Eric N. Lindblom, director for tobacco control and food and drug law at the O'Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University. "You don't team up with a company that has an incredible vested interest in customers' smoking and in maintaining that market share as long as they can." Public health officials also say they worry that Altria could use its investment to learn how Juul operates and to strengthen the startup's growing lobbying efforts: Altria, itself still a potent lobbying force in Washington, could also dampen the role Juul might have played in pushing for regulatory measures to promote e cigarettes over their deadlier combustible cousins. Dr. Scott Gottlieb, the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, has floated a proposal to reduce the nicotine levels in cigarettes to make e cigarettes a more compelling alternative to smokers. But Altria has been involved in a plan to discourage Dr. Gottlieb's nicotine cutting proposal. Publicly, Altria says it supports an eventual reduction in nicotine levels, but it has quietly engineered a campaign to kill the effort by having thousands of form letters sent to the F.D.A. in protest. "If you combine the resources of Juul and Altria, together you create one of the wealthiest, most powerful corporations we have seen one whose interests are directly linked to preventing or delaying legislative or regulatory action which discourages use of their products," said Matthew Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids. "Juul's behavior has already called into question its credibility as a company that cares about the health of the public," he said, adding that the deal would "dramatically alter the perception that this was a company whose goal was to reduce, if not eliminate, the use of cigarettes. In an effort to staunch the soaring rates of vaping among teenagers, the F.D.A. has been cracking down on Juul and other companies, demanding that they not sell most flavored products in retail outlets where they could be accessible to youths. Previously, Altria purchased United States Tobacco, which sold a competing chewing tobacco product that some research suggests is less harmful than combustible smoking. David Sweanor, chairman of the advisory board at the Centre for Health Law, Policy Ethics at the University of Ottawa, said Altria tried to dampen UST's role as an alternative to cigarettes and he feared Altria could try to do the same with Juul. That said, Mr. Sweanor said he found Altria's investment dumbfounding. "It's an incredibly high valuation on a company that if it's successful is a big threat to the whole cigarette business," he said. "If it isn't, they're paying an awful lot of money for it." There is, he argued, a silver lining to the purchase price: it could encourage other entrepreneurs to develop e cigarettes because there is clearly money to be made. "It sends a message to everyone who wants to be a billionaire that they could try to replace the cigarette market." Altria is also still waiting for the F.D.A.'s decision on IQOS, an electronic nicotine delivery device that heats but does not burn tobacco. Although the product is made by the Philip Morris International, Altria is intended to be the distributor in the United States. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
Now is the season for management companies to begin assembling next year's budget for their co op and condo clients. And guess what, folks: your maintenance is going up. How could it be otherwise, what with real estate taxes climbing 5 to 12 percent annually, sometimes more, with fuel costs forever on the rise, and with the contract for building service staff workers up for renegotiation in 2014 and their pension fund needing to be fed? Obviously, there are two legitimate ways to burnish a balance sheet: cut costs or create another revenue stream. Under the circumstances, cutting costs is a tough proposition. "Some unsophisticated people will say, 'Let's not have fresh flowers in the lobby, let's not iron the doorman's uniform so much, let's cut the Christmas party,' " said Aaron Shmulewitz, who heads the co op and condo practice at the law firm Belkin Burden Wenig Goldman. "So maybe maintenance will go up only 4 1/2 percent instead of 5 percent." (More about snipping expenses later.) But some co op and condo boards, intent on stabilizing monthly maintenance or minimizing annual increases, are scrutinizing their buildings and brainstorming about ways to monetize untapped terrain. "We're seeing an ever increasing effort on the part of co ops and condominiums to make sure every part of a building is making a contribution to the building as a whole," said Eva Talel, a partner at Stroock Stroock Lavan. This includes even the stairways. Until five or six years ago, 49 West 72nd Street, a prewar co op, had three. Without breaching the fire code, it was possible to offer the landings of the superfluous third flight of steps to shareholders whose apartments were situated to take advantage of the bounty approximately 50 square feet. Some have used the space to create an admittedly diminutive home office, others a bedroom. "To me it was a no brainer," said Ronni Meltzer, who at the time owned a 270 square foot studio on the third floor, and who shelled out 25,000 for the space. "It got me a cute little alcove, and I could put a full size bed in there. It was perfect, and I'm sure it was good for the building, too." Ms. Meltzer, the director of human resources at a law firm, would have been content to remain in her enlarged studio. "But my next door neighbor who had a one bedroom moved," she said, "and I bought her apartment." Other locales for "found" real estate: space at the end of a common hall that can be repurposed to expand an apartment; a slice of a rooftop that can be added to a penthouse; and square footage in equipment rooms, partially vacated because many new mechanicals are more compact than their ancestors. "Depending on the building," she added, "the additional revenue is used for capital and cosmetic improvements, or in an effort to keep maintenance down, which is generally considered to be a positive value on apartments." A co op at 205 East 69th Street has been doing a brisk business in "slop sink" rooms: spaces with sinks and plumbing that were once used to store equipment for mopping corridors. The 17 square foot space goes for 9,762, according to Rose Tallis, an associate broker at Halstead Property. Originally there were 10 on offer; 4 have been sold. The co op, Ms. Tallis added, has also sold slices of common hallways for prices ranging from 34,000 to 52,000, enabling shareholders to enlarge bathrooms or otherwise increase the size of their apartments. Peter Pollack, a resident of the building, had a Classic 6 when he bought slop sink space more than a dozen years ago. In 2003 he bought a contiguous one bedroom apartment, and in 2004 he undertook a renovation that incorporated all of his purchases. The plumbing from the slop sink room became the basis for a long desired powder room. "We were finally able to have a bathroom just for guests," said Mr. Pollack, a partner in a business center company. "It helped us make a very nice apartment. And it helped increase our reserve fund." In 2010 Isabelle Aussourd and her husband, Jobic de Calan, bought a one bedroom at 205 East 69th as well as an adjacent studio and a 42 square foot landing (like 49 West 72nd, the building had a superfluous flight of stairs). "The person we bought from was planning to combine the spaces and hadn't done so," said Ms. Aussourd, a banker, who paid 935,000 for the entire parcel, "but she had a floor plan. "Having the hallway space, we were able to have a really nice bathroom with a double sink, a bathtub and a separate shower," she added. "The hallway had an industrial size window, so we have two windows in the bathroom. Everyone who comes to visit wants to go look at it." "We're going to have an architectural firm survey all our buildings to identify unutilized or underutilized spaces so we can monetize them or convert them into amenities," said Steven R. Wagner, the president of Southgate's board. There has been talk, he said, of adding a gym with a membership fee, and of building storage bins and charging rent for their use. Five years ago, when Steven Sladkus joined the board of his Upper East Side co op, he learned that the basement was a warren of different size closets and an area that shareholders had appropriated as free storage space. "We have no other revenue stream aside from maintenance," said Mr. Sladkus, a real estate lawyer. "So we cleaned them up, painted them, added doors and locks, and devised a lottery system for shareholders who were interested in renting them." Not everyone was pleased. "We had some pushback from people who thought that when they bought an apartment they got a storage closet," he said. "And I had to very politely explain that it wasn't the case." Depending on size, the 12 or so lockers go for 50 to 150 per month. "It's very good supplemental income," Mr. Sladkus said, "but relatively inconsequential in terms of the whole budget." That is often the case, according to Norman Prisand, the managing partner at Prisand, Mellina, Unterlack Company, an accounting firm whose clients include 250 co ops and condos in and around New York City. "I applaud any way of cutting costs or raising funds. But I don't believe that charging for bike racks and storage units would be enough to offset expenses like real estate taxes and built in increases from union contracts." To cut costs in a more substantial way, some buildings have focused their energy on energy efficiency. Gordon Iaconetti, a retired consultant, was thinking much bigger than bins and bike racks when, three years ago, he joined the board of Sutton View, a Midtown condominium, and volunteered his services as director of operations. When he took the reins, residents were dealing with common charge increases every six months. "Friends had convinced me to run for the board," Mr. Iaconetti said, "and when I was elected, I started looking at the building as a business, and I freaked out at what I saw. There was waste at every level. I focused on energy, because those costs were through the roof." The building has also instituted a 1 percent transfer fee, as well as move in/move out fees of 500. In 2011 the common charged dropped 12.5 percent, and there have been no increases since. Meanwhile, in the last two years, according to Mr. Iaconetti, the average price per square foot of an apartment in the building has doubled, to 1,632 from 813. To become more green, some building boards have determined that it might be worth spending some green. For example, Chelsea Mercantile, at 252 Seventh Avenue, is installing a cogeneration unit, a system that will provide virtually 100 percent of the condominium's heat and 20 percent of its power, according to James Wilbur, the board treasurer. Even better, the state subsidized half of the unit's 1 million cost. "When it's been running for about a year," he said, "we'll save about 100,000 on our electric bill alone." Other buildings are converting manually operated elevators to automatic ones, an annual savings of about 75,000 on an operator's salary. Reviewing management policies and comparison shopping for major expenditures can also keep the budget down. When Josh Fox, the condo board president at Gramercy Starck, at 340 East 23rd Street, learned four months ago that the management company planned to recommend an 8 percent increase in the common charge for 2014, he decided to take action. Mr. Fox, the chief executive of Bottom Line Concepts, a consulting firm, said that through his business contacts, he had been able to negotiate a three year energy contract with a supplier in Texas at a considerably lower rate than before. The building also installed LED bulbs in all the common areas and found a new financial institution to handle the reserve fund. In addition, the condominium has switched supply companies, solicited competitive bids for jobs like window cleaning, and even taken a careful look at the money expended for messenger services and express mail. "We got very granular 1,000 here, 10,000 here, 5,000 there," he said. The result is a projected 12 percent reduction in the 2 million operating budget. "That means we won't have to have an increase in the common charge," he said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
They come in search of economy class seats, bottles of cocktail syrup, silverware, slippers and casserole dishes bearing the distinctive triangle like shape of the fourth letter in the Greek alphabet, the inspiration behind the logo for Delta Air Lines. Every month on the second Friday, the line forms outside a modest support building next to the Delta Flight Museum, near Hartsfield Jackson Atlanta International Airport in Atlanta. It's filled with buyers looking to stock up on items decommissioned by Delta, the world's second largest airline in terms of passengers carried, which has its headquarters here. Given all the pain points that make up plane travel from delayed flights to cramped seats to what seems like an endless parade of new fees it may be hard to believe that there are still customers passionate enough about an airline to want to eat off plates bearing its logo, or display its memorabilia around their homes. At December's sale, Mark Caldwell was one of the earliest to arrive. Mr. Caldwell, a retired entrepreneur, flies so often on Delta that he has achieved two million miler status, a level of loyalty that confers special benefits and recognition, like free upgrades and the occasional shout out over the flight intercom. Even when he's not flying, he can sit in first class seats he bought at an earlier sale that now live in his barn. "Chances are I sat in them when they were on the plane," he said. Delta's primary hub is Atlanta, and most repeat customers live nearby and are frequent fliers with the airline. For some, supporting a hometown company becomes like cheering on a local sports team, including getting decked out in its gear. Many of the shoppers have an even closer connection to the airline, which was founded in 1924 as a crop dusting company to fight the boll weevil infestation of cotton crops in the Mississippi Delta: They are current employees. Brandon Gilbert, who has worked in technical operations for two and half years, was among the first in line. His basket held a coffee cup, hard hat, shirt all Delta branded to some extent and a book called "Exploring Transportation." An aviation aficionado, he comes most months and also attends airline trade shows and expos. He said his favorite items are galley carts he bought to use at home, a good conversation starter at parties. Perry De Vlugt, a Delta flight attendant based in Salt Lake City, has a basement full of Delta memorabilia; his collection was profiled in The Salt Lake Tribune, and he has a website dedicated to his hobby. He doesn't know how many items he has, but he's out of room in the 1,000 square foot space dedicated to his collection. "There are times where I wish I lived in Atlanta to take better advantage of the sales," Mr. De Vlugt said. "But then I'd probably have a whole aircraft in my house." Over the years, the sale has expanded to include decommissioned plane parts, service items and promotional material. Pieces as varied as pre 9/11 steak knives, coasters, an aircraft lavatory, old menus and timetables have been snapped up by collectors. The priciest item sold has been a 500 pressurized door from a DC 9 plane, and the sales contribute between 70,000 and 100,00 to the flight museum each year. When Delta updates its branding, changes technology or over orders or retires parts, those items are offered up to the sale. No other U.S. based airline holds similar regular sales, but there are various industry collectible shows like Airliners International. Other airlines occasionally do one off sales, as in 2017, when United put parts from a retiring fleet of Boeing 747s on eBay for purchase exclusively with frequent flier miles. TWA fans will be able to stay in the company's former terminal at Kennedy Airport, which is being converted into a hotel featuring TWA red carpet in the halls and logoed notepads and pencils in each room. The Delta sale starts at 9 a.m., as volunteers hand out wicker baskets and a price list (noting that the baskets are also available for 2 apiece). Half the space in the support building is devoted to the event, with shelves and racks filled with new items and a few things that didn't sell the previous month. On sale were small flashing airplane magnets, four for 1. Glass carafes, martini shakers and aprons designed for service on Asia bound flights were priced at 5 each. Dessert stands and packs of 24 napkins were 2. Earbuds were two for 1. A general purpose oscilloscope was 25. Mr. Caldwell was at the December sale with April Gilbert, who'd accompanied him from Woodstock, Ga., an Atlanta suburb. Ms. Gilbert (no relation to Brandon Gilbert) was on the hunt for office decorations for her employer, Black Airplane, a web design company. She didn't buy anything this trip, but previously had purchased things like posters and galley carts. Tate Coghlan, who lives almost two hours outside Atlanta and travels weekly on Delta for his job as a sales and marketing executive, tries to plan his trips so he gets home in time to browse the inventory. His biggest purchase, made a couple of years ago, was an unused crew rest quarters, a small room with bunk beds made for long haul planes. He's building a house that will include the crew quarters, which had to be lowered into place by crane. At the December sale, he ended up with 1,300 plates that have discreet branding on the bottom, which he said are perfect for his events. Buyers streamed in throughout the day, with a bump at lunchtime. Fifteen minutes before closing at 2 p.m., a few still lingered, looking over nearly barren shelves. The first class seats sold for 300 for a set of two, but economy and economy comfort seats were still available at 250 and 200. Half of the dozen galley carts sold, too. The day brought in almost 8,000 for the museum. And many of the same shoppers will be back in future months. "It's never the same sale twice," Ms. Bean said. Follow NY Times Travel on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Get weekly updates from our Travel Dispatch newsletter, with tips on traveling smarter, destination coverage and photos from all over the world. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
Re "Trump Takes Aim at Middle, Using Tools of Office" (front page, Aug. 26): If a bell rang every time a lie was told or an important fact was omitted by a speaker at the Republican National Convention on Tuesday, or every time President Trump inappropriately used the convention to perform an official presidential function, I wonder how much of the proceedings we actually would have heard. I hope Americans will examine objective fact checking that occurred during the convention; there were so many obvious and blatant lies. In addition, we must remember that the White House is a national symbol. It is the "People's House," paid for by all Americans; it does not belong to political candidate Donald Trump. Moreover, a convention is a partisan event and thus not the place to use presidential powers to pardon someone or preside over a naturalization ceremony. Worse yet, it is inappropriate, shameful and unprecedented for Mike Pompeo, in his role as secretary of state doing official U.S. business, to deliver a partisan speech from Israel about Mr. Trump's foreign policy successes. Regardless of your political preferences or whether you thought the Republican convention has been well produced, this was and will remain a shameful moment for America one that historians will rebuke for yours. Great and admired Republican and Democratic presidents are rolling over in their graves. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
England's Tommy Fleetwood said he was hesitant to leave his family behind to rejoin the PGA Tour in the United States. England's top player, Tommy Fleetwood, was the world No. 10, one spot ahead of Tiger Woods, when the PGA Tour suspended its schedule in March. With four top 3 finishes in his seven worldwide starts before the coronavirus halted the season, Fleetwood had momentum on his side. But when tour play resumed last week, he was on the wrong side of the Atlantic. In its haste to return, the tour, whose playing membership spans the globe, set up the stakes so that any player not based in the United States was effectively out of bounds. From Fleetwood's perch in northwest England, the hazards were many, including a two way quarantine, the possibility of catching the virus from a fellow passenger on a trans Atlantic flight, and a months long separation from his wife, Clare; their two year old son, Franklin; and his stepsons Oscar, 13, and Mo, 12. "If I was living in America," Fleetwood said, "I'd be playing right now." But he doesn't, and so he is not. Golf is not the only sport that has forged ahead without the full support of its competitive membership. This week's decision by the United States Tennis Association to hold its marquee event, the United States Open, later in the summer in New York, one of the cities hardest hit by the virus, drew a sharp rebuke from the Australian player Nick Kyrgios. On Twitter, Kyrgios described the move as "selfish" and wrote, "People that live in the U.S. of course are pushing the Open to go ahead." He added, "I'll get my hazmat suit ready for when I travel from Australia and then have to quarantine for two weeks on my return." Kyrgios's countryman Adam Scott, a former major winner, was the only player in men's golf based outside the United States other than Fleetwood in the top 10 when the season was suspended. He also struggled with the idea of a restart, and some of his concerns were validated on Friday when Nick Watney, an American player, withdrew before the second round of the RBC Heritage in South Carolina after testing positive for the coronavirus. Watney had tested negative at the start of the week as a condition of entering the tour's so called bubble and playing this week. In an interview last month with an Australian news service, Scott, who is married with young children, expressed reservations about the tour's testing protocols. He worried about contracting the virus from an asymptomatic player, and of triggering the nightmarish for him possibility of having to ride out the illness in self isolation in a strange city, far from his family. Scott, 39, said that he is not likely to return to the tour until late July, at the World Golf Championships event in Memphis. That is one week earlier than the Italian star Francesco Molinari, who was in the process of relocating his family from London to the United States when the lockdown began. The closure of most government offices prevented him from completing the embassy paperwork he needed to finalize the move. Molinari, 37, now fully recovered from a back injury that kept him from defending his title at the Arnold Palmer Invitational in March, expects his next tour start to be the year's first contested major, the PGA Championship in San Francisco. Fleetwood, who has been in regular contact with Molinari over the past three months, also decided to sit out the restart. Instead, he will turn his PGA Tour return next month into an extended family summer vacation. With his wife and sons in tow, Fleetwood will travel to New York in mid July, and after a two week quarantine, rejoin the tour for the World Golf Championships. He plans to stay in the United States through the end of September. Fleetwood said he initially questioned the ethics of athletes' jumping to the front of the line for coronavirus testing, leapfrogging essential workers. As testing has expanded, though, that concern has subsided, but the health and well being of his family remains a primary concern. His stepson Oscar has Type 1 diabetes, putting him at more risk if he were to be infected with the coronavirus. Fleetwood said he could not imagine a situation in which he would leave his family behind for three months to fend for itself while the pandemic has not run its course. ""There are no easy answers when you live outside the United States," said Fleetwood. He said he was mildly frustrated that the official world rankings, which were frozen in mid March, were unlocked when the PGA Tour restarted, especially while other tours whose players are represented in the rankings remain suspended. Fleetwood stands to lose money in sponsors' performance bonuses as his world ranking falls, but he said that would not alter his decisions. "My ranking drop doesn't affect me as much as someone who's trying to stay in the top 50 or top 100," he said. "Golf is more than the PGA Tour, and the players on the other tours are the ones who are really affected." Lee Westwood, a former world No. 1, had dropped outside the top 70 last July, then soared to No. 30 on the strength of a victory in Abu Dhabi in January. Because he still has reservations about leaving his home in Britain to rejoin the tour, Westwood, 47, is backsliding in the rankings, which play a role in filling the tournament fields in the most prestigious events. "I'm not very keen on flying at the moment, especially to the States, where they seem to have adopted a more relaxed approach to tackling the virus," Westwood said in an interview with the daily golf newsletter Morning Read. "Our rules over here seem far tighter." Not every player is concerned about the consequences of caution, however. Rory McIlroy, the Florida based world No. 1 from Northern Ireland, expressed little sympathy for his fellow Europeans who are being displaced as part of the pandemic's tectonic shifts. "If you really care about your career and care about moving forward, you should be here," McIlroy said Wednesday during a virtual news conference from this week's Tour stop, the RBC Heritage. But what about his fellow Europeans with young children, whose paths are not as straightforward? "I get there's variables, families involved," McIlroy said. "We all have the means to rent a very nice house in a gated community in Florida and it's not a hardship for two weeks to come over and quarantine." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
It was a little after noon on March 26, and Naomi Campbell was working out in her living room in New York City. Disco music on blast, she crushed a set of squats, guided by her personal trainer, Joe Holder, who had tailored the 40 minute workout. As she started a grueling set of flutter kicks, Campbell stopped and glared at her trainer. "Oh my God," she said. He couldn't help but laugh. Holder was not in the room, however. He was monitoring her on camera as she cycled through the circuit. Thousands of other people on Instagram Live were watching too and participating in what is normally a private workout between the supermodel and her trainer. As America hunkers down during the coronavirus pandemic, free fitness workouts, many of them delightfully low tech, are multiplying on social media platforms. They are being delivered by trainers and yogis and retired athletes. Holder calls these people the "player coaches for the real world." Home workout posts on Instagram feeds and stories in the United States increased over fivefold on March 18 compared with a few days prior, a Facebook company spokeswoman said, which was around the time governors in some states began imploring people to stay home. (California was the first to order all residents to stay home, effective March 19.) Facebook Live has thousands of options, as well. Nike has made its premium content free through mid June, and Chris Hemsworth, the actor, recently made his Centr app free for six weeks, and as a result, views of workouts, articles and recipes have nearly quadrupled. Even lesser known trainers and studios are going live and finding an audience. Nic Knerr, 36, and Scott Forrester, 29, teach high intensity interval training classes at Circuit Works in Santa Monica, Calif., where they've cultivated a devoted client base thanks to their James Harden beards, goofy humor and upbeat attitudes. That same flavor is now available, live, six days a week, on their new joint Instagram feed ( homewerkbnc). They are averaging 10 to 15 students per class. Tilita Lutterloh ( iamtilita), 39, coaches a handful of students through group workouts from her living room in Leimert Park in Los Angeles. Lutterloh was hoping to qualify for the Olympics in the triple jump and makes her living as a fitness coach and nutritionist. With the Olympics postponed, she offers classes three times a week, attended by a half dozen students. A triathlete, ultradistance runner and longtime yoga instructor, Ted McDonald ( teddymcdonald), 49, teaches dozens of yoga students on Instagram and Facebook Live. Video fitness instruction is nothing new, but often what makes this current content so appealing are the low production values and an intimate feeling of being in the instructor's living room or backyard. The equipment can be just as DIY. On a recent morning, Knerr and Forrester had students doing triceps dips off the end of a chair. Lutterloh demonstrated toe taps on an ottoman, and Holder picked up a vase of flowers to demonstrate cross body chops and presses to Campbell and her followers. Although much of the content is free, most fitness trainers, the heart and soul of a nearly 100 billion global fitness industry, are self employed and could face hard times with an extended stay at home period. Gin Dietz, a personal trainer based in Silicon Valley, estimates that she has lost 80 percent of her income. Like Dietz, Pixie Acia ( purposefulpixie), a SoulCycle instructor in Southern California, is used to relying on multiple streams of income, but the pandemic has cut them off. "In one second you go from crushing it," Acia said, "to having all the rugs pulled from underneath you." It's too soon to assess the impact on the industry, but ClassPass, an app that allows users to book classes at over 30,000 gyms and studios in 30 countries, lost 96 percent of its revenue in two weeks. Among the two dozen fitness and yoga instructors and gym and studio owners interviewed for this article, only three were well positioned to deal with an extended loss of income. (ClassPass is offering video classes on its app, too, by the way.) "It's definitely scary times," Forrester said. He has a wedding to pay for this summer, if that's not canceled, too. Knerr signed up for unemployment immediately after the stay at home order was issued in Los Angeles County, though it won't be enough to cover his rent. By the time Forrester attempted to sign up, California's online unemployment enrollment system had crashed from intense demand. He eventually enrolled, and although his landlord has signaled a willingness to delay rent payments, he has student loans and credit card debt. "If this lasts a month, I feel we will be fine," he said. "But if it lasts longer than that, it's like, how do we survive?" Yet despite, or perhaps because of, the challenges they face, fitness professionals are adapting. Many are using video social media for the first time to reach existing clients and a new audience, and some ask for donations at the beginning and end of the classes they offer. "Just because everything is canceled doesn't mean your life is canceled," Lutterloh said. "It's not about looking for the out, it's about looking for what works." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
A second person has died from a severe lung illness after vaping, according to a lead investigator on the case in Oregon. The investigator said that the person had apparently become sick after vaping T.H.C. from a product purchased at a recreational marijuana shop in the state. The investigator, Dr. Ann Thomas, a pediatrician and public health physician who is leading Oregon's incident management team, said the person died in July after being hospitalized and put on a ventilator. Dr. Thomas declined to identify the person or disclose the age or gender, but said the patient was "otherwise healthy and quickly became very ill." Dr. Thomas said that the doctor who treated the patient recognized several weeks later that the patient's lung infection was consistent with a syndrome thought to be connected to vaping that has affected more than 200 people around the country this summer, according to federal health officials. So far, one other patient is known to have died, an adult in Illinois, and this second death more than a thousand miles away underscores what public health authorities say is a serious and deeply puzzling surge in vaping related illnesses. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
A decade ago, Matt and Mary Vetro moved from Long Beach, N.Y., to Massapequa Park, on the South Shore of Long Island, where they paid 390,000 for a 1,500 square foot Cape Cod style house, with four bedrooms and two bathrooms, on a 60 by 100 foot lot. "It was a perfect starter house for us," said Mr. Vetro, now 39, who works in information technology sales. He and Ms. Vetro, 40, a high school teacher, both grew up in Merrick, N.Y., about five miles west, and they were determined to stay on the South Shore. They looked at homes from Merrick to Massapequa. Ultimately, lower taxes in Massapequa Park, a village of 17,000 in the town of Oyster Bay, clinched the deal. "Quite honestly, we love it here," Mr. Vetro said. The neighborhood and McKenna Elementary School, which two of their children attend, "made it hard to leave." In December, the Vetros went into contract on a fully renovated, 3,000 square foot colonial house, with five bedrooms and three bathrooms, less than half a mile away, for about 800,000. Then they listed their Cape Cod for 489,000, and were in contract for 479,000 within three weeks. "The town is perfect, a great socioeconomic community for my socioeconomic status," Mr. Vetro said, though he lamented the lack of diversity. "There are a ton of parks, which make it very appealing." The Vetros' new house is a block from the Massapequa Preserve, a 432 acre park with walking, running and biking trails, and Mansfield Park, where there are trails, soccer fields and baseball diamonds. In Massapequa Park, Mr. Vetro said, sports from Little League to the Police Activity League and Massapequa Mustangs youth football are taken "very seriously." "There really is a 'village' feel, a real community," said Dina Santorelli, a 20 year resident, who raised three children in Massapequa Park with her husband, Thomas Rhein, a former captain with Rescue Company 3 of the Massapequa Fire District. "From the Turkey Trot around Thanksgiving to the Christmas tree lighting to the annual fireworks at Walker Park every Fourth of July, there really is that old time, best of Long Island days gone by sense here. Friendly people, good neighbors." Driving around the village, "it's not uncommon to see people renovating their homes, putting on extensions, new roofs, new siding and new fences," said Ms. Santorelli, 50, a novelist whose "Baby Grand" trilogy includes a scene in Brady Park, which has a tournament grade Little League field, a trio of picnic areas overlooking a trout stocked lake and a community center. Patricia Birney, 61, downsized from a five bedroom house in neighboring Massapequa, which she sold for 565,000, to a three bedroom home in the village that she bought for 505,000 last summer. The upkeep is less expensive and the taxes are lower, but also, "in this neighborhood there are kids playing all the time," said Ms. Birney, whose children are grown and out of the house. "It's like a small town. It was a good move." The village of Massapequa Park is 2.2 square miles, on the southeastern edge of Nassau County. Bordered by the Southern State Parkway to the north and South Oyster Bay to the south, the village cuts a rectangular swath through the unincorporated areas of the Massapequas. Sunrise Highway plows a four lane, east west path through the village, bracketed on the north by the elevated Long Island Rail Road tracks and commercial ventures to the south. 6 SKYLARK ROAD A five bedroom, three and a half bathroom house, built in 1968 on a 0.23 acre waterfront lot, listed for 1.199 million. 516 795 3456 The village center runs north from the train station along Park Boulevard, with a pocket size village square and a stretch of blocks lined with shops and restaurants. Village Hall is around the corner on Front Street. Merrick Road, the other main east west artery, is home to Massapequa High School's main campus, the Southgate shopping center, churches, stores, restaurants and the 52 acre John J. Burns Park, with its tennis courts, playing fields and summer concert series. A branch of the Massapequa library is at the corner of Harbor Lane. Across the road are the Southgate condominiums, one of the village's few condo complexes. Homes between the two thoroughfares include Cape Cods, ranch houses, English Tudors, colonials and craftsman style dwellings with porches, most on 60 by 100 foot lots. There are also "dozens of knockdowns," said Elaine Patterson, an associate broker with Douglas Elliman Real Estate, many of them replaced by two story houses in the last six years. Builders have targeted the area because homes there aren't subject to the restrictions that were placed on property below Merrick Road after Hurricane Sandy, Ms. Patterson said. 58 WHITE COVE WALK A five bedroom, three bathroom split level house, built in 1956 on a 0.25 acre lot, listed for 839,990. 516 546 6300 South of Merrick Road, in Bar Harbor, waterfront homes sit high on quarter acre lots with direct views of South Oyster Bay. Some have docks; others have canals with bulkheads running along the edge of their backyards, where boats are kept. At the end of Whitewood Drive, Colleran Park, a quiet green space with a playground, also overlooks the bay. As of Jan. 24, there were 52 houses on the market, from a three bedroom, two bathroom 1961 ranch house for 339,900 to a renovated 2004 house with five bedrooms, four full and two half bathrooms, and a dock on South Oyster Bay, for 2.499 million. Starter homes expanded Capes priced from 450,000 to 600,000 "fly off the shelf," Ms. Patterson said, with multiple bids on homes up to 700,000. North of Merrick Road, new homes replacing knockdowns can fetch over 800,000. 402 VIOLET STREET A three bedroom, one and a half bathroom house, built in 1960 on a 0.16 acre lot, listed for 450,000. 516 678 1510 About a quarter of buyers are downsizing; the rest are first time homeowners or locals who want larger homes or to be on the water, she said. Last year, 185 properties sold, at an average price of 534,517; the average time on the market was 59 days. Sales prices increased 21 percent from 2017 to 2018, said John Succoso, manager of the Douglas Elliman office in Massapequa. Jeffrey Bigay, an associate broker at Signature Premier Properties, said buyers have a wide range of options, from pricey waterfront homes in the Bar Harbor enclave to more moderately priced Cameo townhouses near the Southern State Parkway. "If someone is not looking to spend 830,000, they can spend 450,00 to 500,000," Mr. Bigay said, adding that there is a "nice diversity" among the residents. "They could be police officers, they could work on Wall Street." Along Park Boulevard, in the heart of the village, residents can visit the dry cleaners, the post office, the hardware store, nail salons, the Bestever Bakery and doctors in the medical building, stopping for lunch at the Good Life, an English style pub, or Umberto's pizza. On weekdays, locals savor cinnamon bun French toast for breakfast at Jam; Brie blueberry thyme pancakes and champagne also entice weekend brunchers. For dinner, they walk to Bacaro for Italian fare, and the Tap Room or Johnny McGorey's Pub for food and musical entertainment. "They really revitalized that area," said Rebecca Berna, a 15 year resident. "You can hang out at night. You don't need to leave Massapequa if you don't want to." Around the corner on Front Street, near the train station, Massapequa Perk is a popular coffee spot. Come warmer weather, the line for Ralph's Italian Ices stretches out the door, with children perched on benches or their bikes. About 7,400 students are enrolled in the Massapequa Union Free School District. Six elementary schools Unqua, McKenna, Lockhart, Fairfield, East Lake and Birch Lane serve students in kindergarten through fifth grade. McKenna serves students in sixth grade as well. Berner Middle School covers sixth, seventh and eighth grades. Massapequa High School's main campus has about 1,700 students in grades 10 through 12. About 575 ninth graders study at Massapequa High School's Ames campus. In the 1920s, real estate developers Michael J. Brady, Peter F. Colleran and Frank Cryan bought land in Massapequa, expecting Robert Moses to build a road to a beach on a barrier island off Long Island. When the stock market crash nixed those plans, they began to build, using Sears kit houses, said William Colfer, first vice president of the Historical Society of the Massapequas. "For the most part, they advertised English Tudor homes," he said, but they also built colonials, Capes and ranches. In 1931, to keep local control of building lots and zoning laws, the village of Massapequa Park was incorporated. Mr. Colleran became the first mayor; Mr. Cryan and Mr. Brady were the first two judges. For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: nytrealestate. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
LONDON "Message: 'Hey girls, hey. I want to start this chat just to get to know all of you. Girls who stick together are pretty girls.' Emoji heart. ..." Alana Duval, 25, from Brownsville, Tex., begins a group chat with three of her seven fellow contestants. They are sitting in separate apartments, never meet in person, and they bond and back stab only through online profiles and a voice activated social media platform. It may not immediately strike you as a killer television format. But the drama had already begun. "How old is Alana again?" wondered another contestant, Samantha Cimarelli. "Because she's acting like she's in high school." When "The Circle" debuted in Britain in 2018, cultural commentators were skeptical, to say the least. The Guardian predicted "fame hungry nitwits sitting alone in their pants spewing small talk online," and asked if the concept heralded "the coming of the apocalypse." But the series, a reality competition show in which "anyone can be anyone," soon became a cult hit. Within a month, that same newspaper was hailing it as "one of the standout TV shows this year," and Netflix snapped up the global rights. A 12 episode American version debuts on Netflix Jan. 1, and Brazilian and French versions are in the pipeline. Contestants craft their online profiles with the focus and precision of a brain surgeon. While some opt for full frontal honesty, others exploit the artifice of social media to experiment with their identities or purely to help win the 100,000 prize. Past impostors, known as catfish in social media parlance, have switched gender or sexual orientation, pretended to be their sons or girlfriends, and even invented babies and dead pets. But how did producers turn this flurry of emojis and hashtags into binge worthy entertainment? (Ultimately, the show is mostly scenes of solitary people talking to themselves and their screens.) Is it an ennobling social experiment, as its producers and many of its contestants suggest? Or is it a descent into the worst inanities of contemporary online discourse? In 2020, does it matter? "We're in a social media era that's how we're going to be defined 1,000 years from now," said Shubham Goel, a virtual reality designer from Danville, Calif., who is a contestant on the American version. "I think the show really encapsulates the world more than any other thing at this time." Producers clearly hope they have distilled the essence of our times. Ratings for the British "Circle" have been modest (1.2 million viewers on average), but the series has been catnip among 16 to 34 year olds: The first season was Channel 4's "youngest profiling" show in six years, according to the British TV industry magazine Broadcast, drawing half its viewers from that sought after demographic. "The starting point I'd had is: What would a reality show look like where people never met face to face?" said Tim Harcourt, the creative director of Studio Lambert, which produces the original British series and the international versions for Netflix. "At the same time, I had also been toying with a 'Rear Window' style documentary where you could visually see all these people in their apartments, living out their lives, but they were atomized." The two strands came together when Harcourt heard that Channel 4 was searching for a reality show format centered on social media. "Quite quickly I realized I had a much more simple game of communication and of masks," he said. Sometimes those masks can help a contestant's efforts; other times, not so much. In the British version, James Doran, a 26 year old recruitment consultant, morphed into Sammie, a single mother with an angelic baby the guise he felt would be most likely to prevent his competitors from voting him out. He reached the final. Busayo Twins, meanwhile, a 24 year old black woman, became Josh, a trust fund kid "with a white savior complex" pictured on his snowboarding holidays. She said she had wanted to subvert "the stereotypes attached to black confident women that they may be angry or aggressive." After a cake she decorated appeared to show the imprint of long fingernails, she was suspected of being a catfish and "blocked." Other players' experiences complicate the very idea of authenticity. Duval, a white, blonde model with more than 80,000 Instagram followers, used her real identity in her profile, which featured a professional looking portrait and declared, "Tacos all day every day." Her status was immediately in jeopardy. One of the series's hallmarks is its diversity, and not only in demographic terms not every player is as practiced as Duval in social media. Goel, 23, described by Harcourt as "probably one of my favorite all time reality characters in any show," is an earnest Indian American techie who described social media as "our modern day bubonic plague." But "The Circle" eventually won him over. "I brought a Shakespeare book, and I was playing a lot of Ping Pong against the wall," he said in a phone interview. "As the game went along, I kept losing my hobbies because I was so enrapt in my connections with these people." He said he still communicates with his fellow contestants on a private Instagram group. (Their season completed filming earlier this year in Manchester, England, where every version is filmed.) Amid the naked gamesmanship engendered by "The Circle," beautiful human stories emerge. In the second British season, Georgina Elliott, 22, uploaded a photo of herself wearing a bikini and an ileostomy bag to raise awareness of Crohn's disease. It helped cement a friendship with Paddy Smyth, 31, who had started by uploading only pictures of himself without his crutches. (He calls them "glam sticks.") He had wanted to hide his cerebral palsy. "It's not that I'm ashamed or scared," he later told Elliott by dictating to his TV screen. "It's that I wanted to feel what it would be like for once to just be me and not be that disabled guy." Elliott responded with the hashtag ProudOfYouProudGayDisabledMan. Both ended the virtual conversation in real tears, and Smyth soon opened up about his disability to the rest of the group. Not everyone is quite so smitten. Helen Piper, a professor of television and film studies at the University of Bristol, believes that the "obligation to perform," which has been at the heart of reality TV for decades, has been "turbocharged" by the pretense encouraged by social media. "I think the whole moral, touchy feely thing that they're talking about is a bit of a facade," she said. "It's substituting for a kind of more robust moral framework, in which people could really be themselves. They can't just be a single parent, they have to be a single parent who's 'struggled', who has to narrativize that process." The fact that a catfish won the first British season, she added, shows how hollow all the talk of "authenticity" is. "But we're all spinning narratives of ourselves now, that's the world we're in," she said. "The personality is everything. The performance is all." Few have been as central to TV's transformation in that regard as Peter Bazalgette, who as a British TV executive at the turn of the millennium helped take the Dutch reality series "Big Brother" global. At the time, he received no shortage of easy criticism, but he believes reality TV has played a part in fostering open mindedness, citing winners of "Big Brother" who were gay, transgender, or had Tourette's syndrome. Eventually, that format ensures that all players, regardless of strategy, must confront such tricky questions unfiltered: When a contestant is voted out, he or she is allowed to meet one other player in person. Those exits can be complicated, but the five contestants interviewed for this article expressed overwhelmingly positive feelings about their time on the show. Karyn Blanco was one of them. After a straight male contestant is eliminated from the American version early, Blanco must reveal her true identity to him. She had posed as a willowy 27 year old named Mercedeze, who is intentionally vague about her sexuality, using photos donated by a stranger. In reality, she is a 37 year old lesbian from the Bronx. In an unguarded moment, she confessed: "I did a catfish because all my life I've been judged. I'm not ugly, but I'm not feminine. So it's really the fact of just showing the world you can't judge a book by its cover." Still, the acceptance she received after unveiling her true self "pretty much revived my faith in humanity," she said in a phone interview. "I feel as though it made me just look a little bit differently towards men as far as why they're so protective of their ego when it comes to me being around," she said. "I just learned a little bit more about myself and the power of perception." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
In 2008, John Lithgow unveiled a one man show at Lincoln Center, playing 11 characters in what The New York Times described as a "tour de force." After nine years of refining and tinkering, Mr. Lithgow will bring a revised, extended version of that show, entitled "John Lithgow: Stories by Heart," to Broadway. The show, produced by the Roundabout Theater Company, is a tribute to his parents and grandmother, and the stories they told him when he was a child. Mr. Lithgow centered his 2008 run around a retelling of P. G. Wodehouse's "Uncle Fred Flits By," complete with an impersonation of a battle ax. The coming Broadway version will include that story as well as Ring Lardner's "The Haircut" and other ruminations on family and mortality. "It's a meditation on storytelling," Mr. Lithgow told The Times in a 2008 interview. "It's very personal to me, but it ends up a great flamboyant performance." Previews will begin on Dec. 21 at the American Airlines Theater, with the official opening on Jan. 11. Daniel Sullivan will direct; he directed "The Little Foxes" this year and in 2018 will direct a Broadway production of George Bernard Shaw's "Saint Joan." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
Quentin Tarantino's "Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood" marked the 50th anniversary of the grisly Manson murders with considerable panache. But it's the other Manson movie released this year, the less ballyhooed independent "Charlie Says," that feels timelier. Directed by Mary Harron from a script by Guinevere Turner, "Charlie Says" surpasses "Once Upon a Time" in evoking the New Age fantasies and apocalyptic mentality of the late 1960s, partly because it plumbs the mind set of Manson's female followers. Like Harron's first feature, "I Shot Andy Warhol" (1996), a movie about Warhol's would be assassin Valerie Solanas, "Charlie Says" is a scrupulous work of pop scholarship resurrecting a larger than life character from the lunatic fringe of the '60s counterculture, along with an era defining celebrity crime. As she did with her Warhol film, Harron starts "Charlie Says" with the aftermath of a sensational attack. Leslie Van Houten (Hannah Murray), renamed Lulu by Manson, who routinely rechristened his acolytes, is introduced showering off the blood of a couple she had just met and helped to kill. Her three other accomplices from the so called Manson family, meanwhile, scarf down food in the kitchen of the murdered couple, Leno and Rosemary LaBianca. Ditching their bloodstained clothes, they hitch a ride back to the family hide out at the Spahn Movie Ranch, a sometime film set in outer Los Angeles. In a conversation about music with a hippie who picks them up, Lulu declares that "everything is a put on." She may be defending the eccentric performer Tiny Tim, but her retort articulates the disassociation that Manson espoused. "Nothing is real," as the Beatles put it. "Nothing to get hung about." Fast forward three years: Lulu, Sadie (Marianne Rendon) and Katie (Sosie Bacon) serenade one another with Charlie's songs in the maximum security prison where they occupy a separate wing. Blissfully brainwashed, they quote Manson's words at every opportunity. Karlene Faith (Merritt Wever), a grad student who teaches at the prison, is assigned to work with them. (The movie is drawn partly from her book "The Long Prison Journey of Leslie Van Houten.") She begins by giving them copies of the 1970 feminist anthology "Sisterhood Is Powerful" only to discover that Manson forbade his "girls" to read anything other than the Bible. Shuttling back and forth between prison and the ranch, "Charlie Says" is a battle of rival worldviews Manson's indoctrination of the young women he recruited is juxtaposed with Faith's dogged attempt to "give them back themselves." Matt Smith's Charlie "isn't especially attractive and doesn't read as remotely charismatic," Manohla Dargis noted in her New York Times review. Yet, there's a rainbow over the ranch when Leslie (not yet named Lulu) first arrives, as if to suggest that charisma is in the eye of the beholder. Manson's songs may have been doggerel, but he was a master of manipulative hippie jargon. (Charlie says ...) If his cult was less organized than Jim Jones's Peoples Temple, his megalomania was no less seductive the ego obliteration that Manson promoted went down just as easily as Jones's cyanide laced Kool Aid. Because Manson's appeal is presented as a manifestation of his followers' insecurities, "Charlie Says" feels as relevant as any American movie released this year. Depicting the spell Manson cast over his followers, Harron and Turner have much to say about the MeToo movement, white nationalism, the power of denial, and the ability of a gifted con man to exploit the vulnerable. "Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood" has a blatantly counterfactual finale the right people die! "Charlie Says," too, has a counterfactual ending. But unlike Tarantino's film, Harron's makes clear that there is no escaping history. Faith, the prison therapist, knows that should she succeed in freeing Lulu, Sadie and Katie from their illusions, they will be left with the horror of what they did. Harron began her professional career writing for the fanzine Punk. All but one of her films have journalistic hooks, most lend themselves to cult appreciation, and while she does not identify as a feminist, her movies all raise feminist issues. "I Shot Andy Warhol," which concerns a murderous man hater, is an obvious example. "American Psycho" (2000), adapted from Bret Easton Ellis's openly misogynist best seller, turns the book on its head, transforming the notion of a status obsessed yuppie serial sex killer into the anti masculinist satire Ellis claims it always was. (The movie was controversial; Harron defended its violence in a Times essay.) Lighter in tone, although not without its dark side, "The Notorious Bettie Page" (2006) portrays the enigmatic 1950s pinup and bondage queen as sweet natured and God fearing, and impervious to exploitation. The most conventional of Harron's movies, "The Moth Diaries" (2011), a young adult story set in a girls' boarding school, enriches vampire lore by integrating teen suicide, self cutting and anorexia. In her Times review, Jeannette Catsoulis called the movie a "Gothic stew of satisfying kinkiness if unsatisfying resolution." What's even more unsatisfying is the reality that a filmmaker as thoughtful, lively and talented as Harron has made only five features in 23 years. "Charlie Says" currently streams on Amazon Prime, Vudu and iTunes. "American Psycho," "The Notorious Bettie Page" and "The Moth Diaries" on these sites and more; "I Shot Andy Warhol" unfortunately not at all. "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" will be widely available on Nov. 26. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
So I'm the latest columnist to be joining the rotation of colonists over it opinion and it's obviously a really peculiar time to join. OK And I used to be a daily book critic. I appear. Now, every Monday. I've written. I wrote a column today because it's my day. Even though we lose track in quarantine and I wrote one last Monday to when I was here. And I'm going to be here to discuss them both. Thank you, everybody, for putting up for what was a really unbearable clumsily low tech snafu on my part. This is my second time using Periscope, and I'm at age appropriately dreadful at it anyway. So again, my name is Jennifer Senior let me. Let's get right into it because I wrote two columns today that I'm eager to write two columns. This past week that I'm eager to discuss the first. So the one that came out, it, I ended up getting a lot of responses to it. And I have a lot to say in response to those responses. But let's start with this. I am absolutely 100% preoccupied with the idea that Donald J Trump fits perfectly like heat maps perfectly onto the personality traits of someone with narcissistic personality disorder. And it would be one thing if it were a margin call or if from the menu of 10 things that one could choose to look at. You know he fed only three of the four. I'm sorry he's not. I'm sorry seven of the 10 or 5 of the 10. He hits all of them and psychologists have been talking about this for a while. It was a controversial opinion initially to even come out and say, this because psychiatrist I have a rule that you shouldn't actually diagnose someone that you haven't personally evaluated. The trouble with that is that people who have narcissistic personality when you're face to face with them. It's not that they present all that differently. They don't have any capacity herself. You know reflection or introspection. So my theory is that in a, if you saw Trump in a one on one clinical setting you're just going to get more Trump. He's basically just a Patricia doll of nesting hollow Trump sees the same person. And I think over the years, this taboo has kind of gone away. I think more and more psychiatrists are perfectly willing to say that he every personality trait he has is sort of consistent with narcissistic Melissa also been writing it for a while most notably George Conway Kellyanne Conway's husband. He is a never Trumper her and a lawyer and he writes for The Atlantic and he was sort of the definitive decisive piece last October talking about the fact, it looks this is what this man has. Let's call it what it is. And you. Let's if it walks like a duck let's do the definitive what's it walks like a duck piece. And he did. So what I wrote about today was all right. Well, we've sent somebody with a narcissistic personality to the White House and now he's running a crisis. So what does that look like. Ana's is this camp capable really of actually managing a crisis. And here are the obstacles, I think I mean, there. And by the way, just as an aside, this is something that didn't make it into my column. But I wish I'd had space for it celebrities already are as you might imagine inclined toward narcissism. They tend to be more narcissistic just as a rule. It makes sense. They think that attention functions as a narcotic so many of them. It is also people who crave attention obviously enjoy being famous. But there was a study done in 2006 that showed that the kinds of celebrities who were the most narcissistic were not surprisingly reality TV celebrities make sense. So OK, here we have like a perfect storm. We've got Donald Trump. He was a reality television star. And he has been sent to the White House and narcissists are not very well equipped to handle crises. This is, in fact, the problem right. So here is, I think, a few of the reasons why. First of all, they are highly delusional about their own capabilities and what that means is that they are very threatened by expertise. They're not they're highly disinclined to trust anyone who may indeed know more about the problem at hand. The crisis that they're facing. So what it means is that if you think about it, right now, Donald Trump could assemble the finest minds in America, the most imaginative minds in America we're facing an enormous economic crisis. It's looming it's already upon us. 6.6 million unemployment claims just filed right. This is going to be formidable formidable and scary. He could enlist anyone he had to call Larry Summers or Bob Rubin who ran the Treasury Department during two previous recessions. Right they have a lot of experience. Does he do this. No disaster preparedness. You could speak to virtually anyone who's handled any kind of natural disaster before in the past. And who does he farm out most of the disaster preparedness responsibilities too. Jared Kushner I mean Jared Kushner doesn't hold any portfolio for anything. So I think my point is that he hands it. He is doling out responsibility to people who don't threaten him. What tends to happen to narcissists is they surround themselves with a gallery of sycophants that's they surround themselves with people who wouldn't dare contradict them. And this is dangerous when what you need right now are the smartest people in the room not the people who are afraid and who are there to mollify a president. So what you have is this very awkward situation where you have a few experts who are kind of you've got Dr. g you've that Dr. Burke. Yes, I know. I need to brush my hair just to all the trolls out there. I just want to say, you know what a lot of us are going to emerge without or without perfect hair without perfect highlights anyway. And he is a narcissist and a sadist combined. Yes unfortunately, I think that there is a great deal. And there is an element of sadism in what he does anyhow. And I wouldn't focus on people's looks. It's a bad look, whoever you are, you know, this is not a time to care. Ignore trolls. Yes Always true. One should anyhow. I might give myself, my own haircut. And dye my hair pink because why not. Who's going to see my kid can do it. That would be lovely. Right you get probably gratified about to cut my hair anyway. So I think the point is what you really want is lock them and their sex. Love the love. I'm getting back you. They're all women of course, we're saying. Who cares about your hair. So I think let's go back to what's important, which is that right now, Trump needs to be listening to experts. They are the most important people to be listening to. He's got two on hand. We know incontrovertibly that Anthony she knows a lot. Thank you for loving my hair. It looks nice usually. Anyway thank you. Anthony she is exactly who you want in this crisis and it's interesting about him. This is fascinating. He knows that you're doing great. Please keep going. Thank you so Anthony 4G as he is. It's an interesting exercise in minefield walking right when you were managing a narcissist. The paradox here that all of us are all reckoning with all of us are reckoning with is that Trump's advisors are trying to and all the governors right who are managing this crisis they are all trying to create a safe space for the president when he needs to create a safe nation for all of us. Right So you've got somebody like Anthony valjean who knows very well, what the data looks like and he actually understand something about infectious diseases and contagion right. He's an infectious disease expert and he understands the way that you know kind of the vectors and paths that all of these things take. So have any power to be president. I mean, at this moment why. Why ever not. You know I mean, certainly he should be answering the questions at the press conferences. I think that is definitely true. And I always choke a little when he starts to speak. And then President Trump cuts him off because the productive thinking and the only useful information we can really get from the epidemiologists and the doctors. So what's interesting about Fortune's approach to Trump in my view, is that the way that he actually still manages to disseminate informal information, which is critical. We all need to hear it is not by humiliating Trump because that's the best strategy you never want to humiliate a narcissist because narcissists secretly don't actually have skyscraper only high self esteem the way we think of it narcissists secretly are. They live in fear of being exposed. They are very anxious about people realizing what they don't know. Their egos are kind of frail as foam. They're very easy to burst. So what do they do. They Yeah, no, I vote Democrat. It's true. I absolutely. What are the chances the chances are good. It is absolutely true. However, I would never say any of this. I would point out about George w bush who was conscientious after September 11 in the immediate aftermath I didn't think he should we should I I don't understand the Iraq war is another story. But I do believe that his public handling of September 11 was actually quite conscientious and responsible. Giuliani was extremely responsible in the aftermath of September 11. There are all sorts of Republican governors right now who are stepping up in beautiful and marvelous ways and Republican local officials. This is not a partisan point of view. This is all about how you manage giving truthful information. So to go back to the Fantasy what I think is fascinating about him is rather than correct Donald Trump, which he wouldn't respond well to what fat he does is he says the fact. That's it. That's it. And in sticking with this just the facts, ma'am kind of approach every time Trump says something, and it's exaggerated. He exaggerates the potential for new therapies. He says that there are more tests available than in fact, are. What that does is he jumps in and he starts to speak. And he just he doesn't say, no, you're wrong. He just says, well, here's what we know so far about these therapies. They're still untested. We're looking we're waiting. We hope he comes out and says, well, the tests they're enroute we can't do them in bulk in the way that we'd like. But they're another positive development. Whenever Trump says that he thinks that the fact that the coronavirus will kind of evaporate that there'll be some kind of seasonal cure that he jumps in and says, I wish that were the case too. But I don't think so. So I think that he is providing a national model for how you handle misinformation and wishful thinking coming from the Oval Office right. Because that's what we're getting right now is a lot of wishful thinking and misinformation can narcissist feel empathy. The short answer is no. The whole world is a reflecting pool. That's the problem with narcissists. Right And it makes it hard because of what your job is to be is in part to disseminate information that is in part to kind of shore up that to mollify the nerves of an anxious public. Theoretically Cuomo is very good at this right, Andrew Cuomo does a very good job of kind of coming out and saying, look, I suffer too. My brother is suffering. He's covered positive lots leaders net you know all over the globe. We're very good at doing this. The queen did a marvelous job of this yesterday. Angela Merkel did a marvelous job of it yesterday. Why is it wrong to hope that these drugs are working when other countries other countries are not necessarily having great success. There's a lot. We have to wait for a real body of data to know whether these drugs are working. Actually, that's not true yet the efficacy of these drugs is not yet proven. It's anecdotal and that's what's upsetting. So what you don't want is people touting these drugs and giving everyone false hope. You don't want people hoarding them. And let's see what personality types are these leaders. So thank you. It is my second time in Periscope. I'm being told welcome by people young. It's probably obvious that I'm a newbie anyway. So I think that what we have to just be careful about when you've got somebody because here's the other thing narcissists are quite prone to exaggeration. Right So they're going to be speaking with great invalidity and great enthusiasm about the things that they've done and the things that await without actually restraining themselves and hewing strictly to the facts. And that, of course, is everything. It matters a huge a great deal. So these are some things that I think that we ought to be highly mindful of anyway. OK So if you're just joining us, I'm Jennifer Senior. I am one of the newest I am I think the newest kind of columnist at The New York Times to be thrown into the rotation at an awfully peculiar time I appear on Monday's also now just sort of look at some of the lost my comments. I'm going to look at some people had some wonderful kind of responses and some heartbreaking responses to the last column that I did not. This Monday. But the previous one that talked about something that's very near and dear to my heart called moral injury. I just want to speak to something somebody is saying this. And I know that they're being kind of troll ish but I think this is actually a matter of public importance saying that the media is trying to sow panic. We're not. I think you should listen to the doctors on this. I think the doctors are the ones who have the real answers and we are listening to the doctors. And we took what Deborah parks are following the data the projections is right now is that if we behave ourselves as a nation 100,000 people in the United States will die, which rivals you know cancer rates and cancer fatality rates. And it's not good. It will make coronavirus one of the leading killers in the United States. That's if we behave ourselves and lots of states were not behaving themselves. They were behaving poorly. And what's happening in New York is a harbinger. It's not an exception. This is going to for better or for worse sweep across the country. And it's going to happen at different rates at different times. Hopefully we will be prepared or medical professionals will be prepared. We'll have more masks. We'll have more ventilators because this is happening in kind of you know in this syncopated way. It's not happening. It's happening kind of in waves and a sine curve across the country. But I don't think to accuse us of spreading this information. I think is itself. It's grotesquely irresponsible. And I wish that people would stop. I wish they would desist to call this a hoax. I mean, I think that in the aftermath when historians are watching Fox newsreels of people saying that this is now worse than the flu, it's a nothing doctor, you know, Trump saying that this is just going to go away. There's going to be a real archival there's going to be a real of people saying things that are just so kind of flat flawed Lee incorrect. So I don't think that any of us are sowing panic and we are trying to report how many are recovered instead of only deaths. The problem is that the deaths are actually still imminent and the recovery rates right now are deeply unimpressive. You know the coronavirus actually lingers for a while. And also, if we have better data out there. If we had had more aggressive testing and more tests in place we'd have a much better sense of who's had the virus and for how long, and how many have recovered. But we were very, very far behind on this question. So unfortunately, it's hard to know we're rates. It's hard to even know penetration rates. We can't actually know how how widespread coronavirus is at the moment. So we are actually doing the best. I think reporting on the data that's available to us and believe it or not, the doctors are in the same position they are as hungry for data, especially about the United States as we are. If you want to hear more damage about the. We want to hear more about the damage that a narcissistic leader can cause. Well, I think that the tools are many. Misinformation is a big one. I think turning the conversation toward himself is another one when really the car everybody wants to hear that the world is going to return to normal and be OK. What he does is talk about how he's number one on Facebook and isn't that fantastic. And he gives himself a 10 out of 10 for handling this crisis. And isn't that wonderful. And those are, I think the last thing that people want to hear during a crisis. I think people are sort of alarmed when they hear leaders talk about themselves and not about the citizenry in general life. That's their job. So anyway now I just want to go back and talk about the column that I did last week, which I'm very invested in. And that's about the mental health of our health care professionals. They're already in a lot of physical danger. Thank you. Who is ever giving me the shout out of love. Oh my goodness. Thank you. And how can reporters address his mental health in the context of a Presser. That's a great question. All right. I'll go back and answer that. The answer is we shouldn't carry them live narcissists aren't inclined to give the truth. They're inclined to exaggerate they're inclined to give falsehoods they are inclined to speak in temporarily and to pick fights they sow division. He picks fights with the press corps and he picks fights with governors. So one of the things that we can do strategically is just robbed him of his oxygen supply, which is attention. There's definitely one way to do this. And then you send people into the room to cover it. But they come away and they just summarize what the main news points are which will be given by foul be given by Burke's be given possibly by the Veterans Affairs director or the head of the Department of Veterans Affairs. I mean, there are people who can actually give you materially useful goods. You just don't need to carry it live because what you're essentially getting is an infomercial that's filled with spotty information anyway. And I don't know where the times broadcast them lives. It's a great question. I don't know. That's the newsrooms. It's a call from the newsroom. And I'm befuddled diet myself, I understand why c span doesn't because they've got kind of a historical and archival obligation. I don't know why the networks doesn't do it. I don't know why the networks do it. And I'm not sure why we do. Going back to. So again, Jennifer Senior net latest columnist I just got to tell you the story that I did that. I'm invested in, which is the health care the mental health of our health care professionals. Let's start with the fact that they are inhaling a greater viral load. So doctors are going to get sicker at a faster rate than the rest of us because it turns out there is a direct relationship to how much of this disease, you are exposed to and how sick you get. And a lot of these doctors and EMTs a nurses a lot of first responders are on are overwhelmed by virus in spite of even if they've got the best PPE in the world. If you're intimidating someone they are just obviously coughing up a huge amount of virus. So I fear no one for their physical safety. I fear it. So much. And they're short on supply. So they are often wearing the same goggles. The same face shields the same N95 masks all day long. They are already marching into a battle without sufficient ammunition. So the equivalent of dropping our show soldiers on Utah Beach without bullets. I mean, it's really frightening stuff. What's going on right now. And so here is you know what I fear next. It's not just their physical health. I mean, in Italy. We've already got some data about how like this. You know doctors are something like 14% of the infected. What I'm nervous about next is our mental health because if indeed, we do face this ventilator shortage, which everyone is anticipating the New England Journal of Medicine just had a piece talking about this, that it's inevitable basically by their estimate. Best case scenario, we have 1.4 ventilators per person who needs them. Worst case scenario, we have 31 people per one ventilator. So sorry. Sorry we have 1.4 people per ventilator. Worst case scenario. 31 people per ventilator. Those are numbers that I just they're goose pimples only awful. They are terrible numbers. And they were I think trying to work out in this particular piece, which I found so transfixing they were trying to figure out a protocol. OK So who gets them. Right if you've got to be in the position of rationing ventilators and then what do you do. Wait I'm sorry. Somebody just had a very interesting was a retired firefighter, you spoke to. Tell me about that. Oh, and that the firefighters aren't going to get any PPE. That's such an amazing point because they're being called to all of these. See you're right. And I think that a lot of people. I mean bus drivers are getting them. I mean, they should have more protection. They're performing a valuable service. And they're utterly exposed. It's terrifying. Anyway, so there was this very moving kind of testimony from a bus driver that I'm sure you saw that went viral in Detroit who you know got sick anyway. And then subsequently passed away. So it's true. There are shortages everywhere. It's very complicated. We don't have. And because Donald Trump has been very reluctant to make full, robust use of the Defense Production Act. We're not getting it out to the people who really want it. I'm sorry to the people who really require it. We're not making it at the speed that we need it. You know I mean, Trump could be much more bullish about insisting that private companies manufacture this stuff. And he's not he's not being insistent about them making ventilators. I mean, it's. And you know not enough are making masks. It's very, very complicated. And it's not being distributed through kind of rational distribution trains. Anyway I'm going to go back to what I wrote about last week. All of our first responders are already putting themselves in harm's way. They are already feeling they're already getting sicker. But my next fear for them is that they're going to have to make really tough rationing decisions. And these are decisions that state with you forever in the military. There is a term was coined actually by a psychiatrist who was looking at Vietnam soldiers and he called this moral injury. It is when you do something that you never ever would consider right. It violates your every impulse your every instinct your religious training your religious beliefs your everything. And I think that doctors and nurses when they are asked to form triage committees when they are asked to be disconnecting ventilators even from patients with whom they have made even the weakest most tenuous connections. But they've met their families they've interacted with their families. This is going to be heartbreaking stuff. And in ordinary circumstances. These are people who they could have saved because in normal times, you can keep people on ventilators in perpetuity. There are enough of them to go around. But that's not what's going on at this moment. And I think that the kind of trauma that comes from having to make this decision about who gets a ventilator and who doesn't get a ventilator is going to live with all of us all of our mental health. I'm sorry. All of our health professionals for a long time to come. It's the kind of choice that they shouldn't ever have to make. It's a devil's kit of options. There's no good options here. And so I think that I'm just very deeply moved by that. And I was going to read some of the comments that I got in response to that from people who just said some beautiful things about oh in fact, here. Let me just find. There is one who is married. Here we are. This was a beautiful comment I got in response to this years ago, I opened the door to a stockroom in the hospital. I worked in and I found a weeping nurse. Her patient's bone marrow transplant had failed and the woman was going to die. Never underestimate how much these people care they may hide their tears in closets because they don't want patients to see their fear and their distress, but most choose this work because lives matter. People's lives matter to them. And they know death. But every preventable death is a knife to the heart. I mean, I can barely read that without wanting to cry. I mean, I think this is the point. Under ordinary circumstances. These are preventable deaths. Right and right now these men and women are facing a plague of what would have been preventable deaths and what awaits them. I fear our decisions about who gets to live. I mean, who on earth should have to make that choice. And there are all sorts of extremely delicate ethical questions that go that go into this ethical calculations. So here's another beautiful sign a beautiful note that I got. I think my son needs to go. This is clarinets life with a zoom group. I'm going to read one more thing. And then I'm going to sign off because my son needs to use the computer. Here is just this is it. This gave me the chills but this was a response to something that I got in response to my Jennifer Senior from the New York Times. I'm the latest columnist to join. Thank you. And for those who are accusing me of it. It's very interesting the dedicated army out there and people who want to see them spreading fake tears. I hope that's right. I hope I'm wrong about everything. Let me just say that I hope everything I say today is 100% wrong. I hope the dad is wrong. I hope the doctors are wrong. I hope the epidemiologists are wrong. I hope every bit of health data I've been looking at is dead is wrong. That's all I can say. From your mouth to God's ears may I be wrong. May I be spreading falsehoods in saying that I think too many are going to die needlessly anyway. So here is the note that I got. I live alone. And I have a big sign posted on my door. Do not call an ambulance. No ventilator no code blue to not resuscitate. Just let me die. I have an advance directive. I am sorry. I have an advanced care directive a will and a notebook with instructions. My doctor is now six. So I don't know who I will end up being my doctor anyway, if I am found and still alive. I want to make sure that I do not get into a situation of being trapped in a hospital alone and unable to make my wishes known. Let someone else who needs and wants a ventilator to have it. I've lived a long enough life. And I'm willing to let go. Of course, I'd rather not die right now. But if I get sick. I don't want the medical care when other people want it and need it more, especially when the doctors and nurses would be putting their own lives at risk. I love this person. He just goes by initials s.f. to a happy day on our website. I want to leave it at that. Anyway thanks so much. Be safe stay home be responsible. My thanks to all of you who've been sending me these really beautiful notes of support that are what I'll ever do about my hair. Here and I'm going to let my kid use the computer now tell everyone. It's nice to meet. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
Primary care physicians, to whom many anxious patients turn first when their health declines, can't always provide tests or answers about where to get them. In recent months, Dr. Denise Hooks Anderson has grown accustomed to saying "no." That's the answer she always gives when her patients in Richmond Heights, Mo., ask whether she can test them for the coronavirus. "At our practice, we've never been able to do testing," said Dr. Hooks Anderson, a family medicine doctor whose patients are largely African American, a group disproportionately burdened by the coronavirus. In her office and many others, there simply is not enough protective equipment, like masks and gloves, to keep staff members safe while they collect potentially infectious samples. Dr. Hooks Anderson worries about her patients, whom she encourages to look elsewhere for a test if they suspect an infection. Still, the dangers are too great for her practice to become directly involved, she said: "Are we willing to take that risk? To essentially take out the entire staff if someone were to get infected? In the midst of a pandemic, that becomes a big issue." Back in March, after President Trump declared the coronavirus a national emergency, doctors felt ill equipped to diagnose their patients or counsel them on treatment and prevention. Three months later, testing numbers are up. But primary care physicians the doctors that many turn to first when their health declines are not always equipped to check their patients for the pathogen. And community testing sites have not been evenly distributed, snubbing some populations most vulnerable to the ill effects of the virus. Many Americans hoping to get tested are not even sure where to start looking. Physicians like Dr. Hooks Anderson are concerned that these issues will not be any closer to being resolved in the coming weeks and months, even while demand increases as states reopen, employees resume in person work and parents seek care and schooling for their children. The situation may grow especially dire by autumn, when health officials expect to see a rise in infections, above and beyond the ongoing outbreaks that will likely last through the summer. "Things are going to get ugly in the fall," said Dr. Gabriela Maradiaga Panayotti, a pediatrician at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N. C. "I don't know if anybody knows how that's going to be handled." Since the virus made landfall in the United States, more than 30 million diagnostic tests have been administered to patients across the country, according to the Covid Tracking Project. These tests, which hunt for bits of coronavirus genetic material, can help a person figure out if they are currently infected, even in the absence of symptoms. (Antibody tests, on the other hand, indicate whether someone had the virus in the past.) But testing rates still fall short of where experts say they should be. And because the coronavirus can infect and spread from individuals who don't show signs of illness, the strength of its grip on the nation remains unknown. Concerns surrounding the nation's stock of coronavirus tests aren't new. Sputtering supply chains have been an ongoing problem, caused by delays in F.D.A. approvals and flaws in an early C.D.C. test. The result was a lost month during which the virus spread undetected. Even after independent manufacturers were finally allowed into the fray, they struggled to keep pace. In the months since, the government has granted emergency use authorization to dozens of diagnostic tests, which are now widely available in many locations, including community health centers, urgent care centers and pharmacies like CVS and Walgreens. But "we're still catching up," said Dr. Alexander McAdam, director of the Infectious Diseases Diagnostic Laboratory at Boston Children's Hospital. That means a significant proportion of Americans who want a test still cannot get one. Who should get a booster shot? It depends, Dr. Scott Gottlieb says. Virginia's new lieutenant governor elect says she won't force vaccines. Eligibility and convenience vary widely between sites, even within neighborhoods. Some sites have only enough capacity to swab people with symptoms and who are at highest risk of falling ill; others won't swab patients before they have been screened by a doctor. Logistical hiccups at the laboratories that process the samples can also keep test results out of patients' hands for days. A few of these hurdles could be cleared by ramping up production of point of care tests that do not need to be sent away to a laboratory. Patients could be tested and counseled by the same provider, perhaps without even leaving the room. Such tests could even be distributed to common points of congregation, including schools and workplaces. "A point of care test would be a game changer," Dr. Maradiaga Panayotti said. But only a small handful of the diagnostic tests that have been given the F.D.A. green light meet point of care criteria, and their manufacturers already strain to churn them out at maximum speed. Even health networks that have developed their own coronavirus tests, like Nebraska Medicine, cannot offer assessments to all of their own patients, said Dr. Nada Fadul, who directs the network's H.I.V. clinic in Omaha. "Many researchers are advocating for testing contacts" of people with confirmed infections, Dr. Fadul said. "We're still at the point where we're just barely able to test the symptomatic patients." Tests are also especially scarce among primary care physicians. Many smaller doctors' offices are not set up to grapple with the logistics of collecting samples of a highly contagious and dangerous pathogen. "We don't have the luxury of space to do separate sick areas or swabbing areas," said Dr. Hai Cao, a pediatrician at South Slope Pediatrics in Brooklyn. "It would be nice if we did. But in our limited space, I don't see that as being a prudent move." To complicate matters further, not all Americans have a doctor to consult, said Dr. Utibe Essien, a physician and health services researcher at the University of Pittsburgh's School of Medicine. Coronavirus testing is covered under insurance in the United States, but about 28 million people in the country remain uninsured. The federal government has set aside money to foot the bill for these patients, but some could still be saddled with unanticipated costs. Fear of an enormous medical bill can be enough to drive someone away from a testing site altogether, said Dr. Maradiaga Panayotti. On the whole, testing still is not reaching some communities that need it most. Dr. Brittani James, a family medicine doctor at Mile Square Health Center in Chicago, said the testing center in the parking lot outside her practice is not even close to testing at capacity. In her community, where many residents are African American, rates of employment and housing security are low; people often cannot afford the car or bus fare that would ferry them to a testing site. Some of Dr. James's patients, disillusioned by decades of institutional racism, are also hesitant to visit testing sites with ties to the government, she said. The barriers to getting a test are so high that "we can't even get to the point of, 'Are there enough tests?'" Dr. James said. Existing disparities may only be exacerbated by the approach of the fall season, when other respiratory illnesses that share symptoms with Covid 19, such as the flu, reappear, and schools invite students back to campus. While coronavirus case numbers continue to balloon, many American cities are reopening among them, St. Louis, where Dr. Hooks Anderson is dreading what's to come. "I think it's only going to get worse," she said. "I would love to be wrong." Like the Science Times page on Facebook. Sign up for the Science Times newsletter. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
Mr. Trump did find a few African Americans willing to safely sing his praises from an isolated lectern in an empty hall. They included the former N.F.L. player Herschel Walker, who claimed that our divider in chief is not a racist, but a believer in social justice. Yes, and neo Nazis marching in Charlottesville included "very fine people." Why would the Republicans skip the process of writing an election platform? Was the G.O.P. too disorganized to pull it off? That is certainly possible. More likely, though, the party has no need for a platform. The only thing it stands for is whatever President Trump decides he wants to do on any given day. Heading into an election without a platform means that Republicans openly acknowledge they operate in a policy free zone. This is no longer the G.O.P.; it is now the P.O.T. (Party of Trump). Whenever an incumbent president seeks a second term, it is always appropriate to ask two key questions: Am I better off than I was four years ago? Is our country better off than it was four years ago? In his campaign four years ago, Donald Trump gave us a green light to ask these questions now by promising that he would "make America great again." We now can grade his performance by using that slogan. During four years in the White House, has he made America great again? Has he made a significant start on it? | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
Cat Bordhi, who found joyful rebellion in thinking up new techniques for knitting socks, cowls and other clothing, and whose books encouraged others to question the orthodoxy of that age old practice, died on Sept. 19 at her home in Friday Harbor, Wash. She was 69. Her daughter, Jenny Low, said the cause was cancer. Ms. Bordhi (pronounced BOARD ee), who learned to knit from her grandmother, had a revelation one day in 2000 when she picked up her needles to make a pair of socks and was confounded by the complicated methods that instruction manuals dictated. There had to be an easier way, she thought. She came up with a simpler technique using circular needles two needles connected at the bottom by a cord. Her process started at the heel, rather than conventionally, at the toe or the cuff. She then decided to share the news of her discovery: In 2001 she self published a book called "Socks Soar on Two Circular Needles." "If you love learning new skills, delight in knitting architecture, love to knit socks or just have cold feet," she wrote, "I welcome you to the world that lies within these pages." In its first decade, Ms. Low said, "Socks Soar" sold more than 100,000 copies. She published five more knitting books in print with titles for both devotees ("New Pathways for Sock Knitters," 2007) and the merely knit curious ("Personal Footprints for Insouciant Sock Knitters," 2009) in addition to five e books and numerous patterns. In her first book, "Socks Soar on Two Circular Needles" (2001), Ms. Bordhi shared her discovery of an easier way to knit socks. With those patterns, whether provided in books, online or in tutorials on YouTube, she was as creative with language as she was with fiber arts. In 2013, she published a book dedicated to woolen slippers and bootees called "The Art of Felfs," a word she used to describe "felted elfin footwear." Ms. Bordhi's best known knitting design is for a moebius cowl, a contiguous neck wrap that twists. Before 2005, manuals taught knitters to construct moebiuses by making a scarf, twisting it and then sewing together the ends. But Ms. Bordhi woke one night with an idea for a different method: a circular needle moebius "cast on" a term used for the process of getting the initial loops of yarn onto needles that would allow the moebius to be made in a circle without end. Ms. Bordhi published this method, free of charge, on her website, along with an instructional YouTube video that has been viewed more than a million times. "The moebius has no beginning, no end, no top, no bottom, no inside, no outside," said Jan Hamby, an owner of Fair Winds Farm, a sheep farm in Quarryville, Pa., where wool is harvested. "It is an infinite thread and the very essence of who Cat was." Ms. Hamby met Ms. Bordhi while attending a workshop led by Ms. Bordhi on forensic knitting, in which students deepen their understanding of knitting by deconstructing pieces. Ms. Bordhi spent much of the last two decades hosting fiber arts retreats in Friday Harbor, on San Juan Island in the archipelago north of Seattle. They quickly sold out. She also organized group knitting excursions to Peru, Mexico, Scotland and Iceland that were so popular, participants would sometimes book three years in advance. "We would walk around small villages and happen upon a plaza where we would stop to knit," Jim Petkiewicz, who organized the excursions with Ms. Bordhi, said in an interview. Locals occasionally gathered and joined in. "I learned from Cat what a tool knitting could be for breaking down barriers," Mr. Petkiewicz said. In February, Ms. Bordhi hosted a knitting retreat in Friday Harbor called "Let the River Carry You," a reference to one of her designs for a cable knit cowl. She encouraged students there to let their creative instincts flow. Kathryn Anne Elizabeth Gardiner was born on March 2, 1951, in San Francisco. Her mother, Jackie Gardiner, a nurse, died of breast cancer on Kathryn's sixth birthday. Three days later, her father, Dr. Wally Gardiner, a physician, committed suicide. Kathryn and her siblings Tom and Diana were adopted by family friends, Dr. Glen Haydon, a physician, and Helen (Goodwin) Haydon, a homemaker. After graduating from the University of Santa Barbara in California with a degree in Russian literature and language, she worked as a seamstress and moved between Menlo Park, Calif., and the San Juan Islands in Washington before settling in Woodside, Calif., where she married Louis Bordi in 1981. Their daughter, Jenny, was born in 1983. The marriage ended in divorce in 1985. Ms. Bordhi changed the spelling of her name to Catherine and then settled on "Cat." She added an "h" to Bordi to assert her own identity as she became more focused on her publishing career. To support her family, she made teddy bears with movable joints. She sold 5,500 "Chocolate Bears" for about 200 apiece, her daughter said, before she developed back pain from hunching over a sewing machine. She eventually moved to San Juan Island with her daughter. A marriage to Michael Schifsky in 1988 also ended in divorce, three years later. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
"I assume that my struggles and joys are not unique," said Louise Gluck, who received this year's Nobel Prize in Literature. "I'm not interested in making the spotlight fall on myself and my particular life, but instead on the struggles and joys of humans, who are born and then forced to exit." "I'm a very sociable person. The fact that I dislike interviews doesn't mean I'm a recluse," the poet Louise Gluck said early on in our interview. Gluck had been put in an uncomfortable spot. On Thursday morning, she won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Journalists were lining the street outside her home in Cambridge, Mass. Her phone hadn't stopped ringing since 7 a.m., an onslaught of attention she described as "nightmarish." By now, Gluck should be accustomed to acclaim. In a career that has lasted more than five decades, she has published a dozen volumes of poetry and received virtually every prestigious literary prize: The National Book Award, the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award and the National Humanities Medal, among others. She's revered by literary critics and her peers for her spare, direct and confessional verses. "Her work is like an inner conversation. Maybe she's talking to herself, maybe she's talking to us. There's a kind of irony to it," said her longtime friend and editor, Jonathan Galassi, the president of Farrar, Straus Giroux. "One thing that's very constant in her work is that inner voice. She's always evaluating experience against some ideal that it never matches." The past few months have been trying for Gluck, who is divorced and lives alone, and was accustomed to dining out with friends six nights a week before the pandemic. For several months in the spring, she struggled to write. Then, late this summer, she started writing poems again, and finished a new collection, titled "Winter Recipes From the Collective," which FSG plans to release next year. "The hope is that if you live through it, there will be art on the other side," she said. Gluck spoke to The Times a few hours after the news of her Nobel Prize broke. Below are edited excerpts from the conversation. 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. How did you first hear the news? This morning I got a phone call at something like quarter to seven. I was just awake. A man who introduced himself as the secretary of the Swedish Academy, he said, "I'm calling to tell you you've won the Nobel Prize." I can't remember what I said, but it had some suspicion in it. How did you feel once you absorbed that it was real? Completely flabbergasted that they would choose a white American lyric poet. It doesn't make sense. Now my street is covered with journalists. People keep telling me how humble I am. I'm not humble. But I thought, I come from a country that is not thought fondly of now, and I'm white, and we've had all the prizes. So it seemed to be extremely unlikely that I would ever have this particular event to deal with in my life. What has your life been like during these intense and isolating months during the pandemic? Have you been able to write? I write very erratically anyway, so it's not a steady discipline. I've been working on a book for about four years that tormented me. Then in late July and August, I unexpectedly wrote some new poems, and suddenly saw how I could shape this manuscript and finish it. It was a miracle. The usual feelings of euphoria and relief were compromised by Covid, because I had to do battle with my daily terror and the necessary limitations on my daily life. What is the new collection about? Falling apart. There's a lot of mourning in the book. There's also a lot of comedy in the book, and the poems are very surreal. I've written about death since I could write. Literally when I was 10, I was writing about death. Yeah, well, I was a lively girl. Aging is more complicated. It isn't simply the fact that you're drawn closer to your death, it's that faculties that you counted on physical grace and strength and mental agility these things are being compromised or threatened. It's been very interesting to think about and write about. A lot of your work draws on classical mythology and weaves together mythic archetypes with more intimate contemporary verses about family bonds and relationships. What draws you to those mythic figures, and how do those stories enhance what you are trying to explore and communicate through your poetry? Everybody who writes draws sustenance and fuel from earliest memories, and the things that changed you or touched you or thrilled you in your childhood. I was read the Greek myths by my visionary parents, and when I could read on my own, I continued to read them. The figures of the gods and heroes were more vivid to me than the other little children on the block in Long Island. It wasn't as though I was drawing on something acquired late in life to give my work some kind of varnish of learning. These were my bedtime stories. And certain stories particularly resonated with me, especially Persephone, and I've been writing about her on and off for 50 years. And I think I was as much caught up in a struggle with my mother, as ambitious girls often are. I think that particular myth gave a new aspect to those struggles. I don't mean it was useful in my daily life. When I wrote, instead of complaining about my mother, I could complain about Demeter. Some have compared your work to Sylvia Plath and described your verses as confessional and intimate. To what extent have you drawn on your own experience in your work, and to what extent are you exploring universal human themes? You always draw on your own experience because it's the material of your life, starting with your childhood. But I look for archetypal experience, and I assume that my struggles and joys are not unique. They feel unique as you experience them, but I'm not interested in making the spotlight fall on myself and my particular life, but instead on the struggles and joys of humans, who are born and then forced to exit. I think I write about mortality because it was a terrible shock to me to discover in childhood that you don't get this forever. You've experimented with different poetic forms in the course of your career, though your voice has remained distinct. Has that been a deliberate, conscious effort to push yourself by trying different forms? Yes, all the time. You're writing to be an adventurer. I want to be taken somewhere I know nothing about. I want to be a stranger to a territory. One of the few good things to say about old age is that you have a new experience. Diminishment is not everybody's most anticipated joy, but there is news in this situation. And that, for a poet or writer, is invaluable. I think you have always to be surprised and to be, in a way, a beginner again, otherwise I would bore myself to tears. And there have been times when I have, when I've thought, you know, you wrote that poem. It's a very nice poem, but you already wrote it. In what ways do you feel aging has led you to explore new territory as a poet? You find yourself losing a noun here and there, and your sentences develop these vast lacunae in the middle, and you either have to restructure the sentence or abandon it. But the point is, you see this, and it has never happened before. And though it's grim and unpleasant and bodes ill, it's still, from the point of view of the artist, exciting and new. Your style has often been described as spare and pared down. Is that the voice that comes to you naturally when you write, or is it something that you've developed and polished? Pared down sometimes, yeah. Sometimes I write conversationally. You don't work on a voice. The sentence finds a way to speak itself. This sounds so Delphic. It's a hard thing to discuss, a voice. I think I am fascinated by syntax and always felt its power, and the poems that moved me most greatly were not the most verbally opulent. They were the poets like Blake and Milton, whose syntax was astonishing, the way emphasis would be deployed. You teach at Yale and have spoken about how teaching has helped you through difficulties you've confronted in your own writing. How has teaching shaped you as a writer? | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
An exhibit featuring works by the tormented Italian painter Amedeo Modigliani closed three days ahead of schedule after Italian prosecutors alleged that 21 of the 60 or so works on exhibit were possible fakes. Three people are under investigation including the curator of the show, which opened at the Palazzo Ducale, one of the main exhibition spaces in Genoa, Italy, in March. The investigation began on the instigation of Carlo Pepi, an art collector and Modigliani connoisseur, who saw one of the images from the exhibit online and asserted that it was a "shameless fake, created 20 years ago." An examination of the catalog suggested that the exhibit was "full of fakes," he said in a telephone interview. He approached Italy's carabinieri art theft and fraud squad, as well as journalists with a national news agency, and eventually prosecutors picked up the case. Mr. Pepi did not see the Genoa exhibit. "I would never go to see such eyesores," he said. An independent Modigliani expert engaged by the Italian art investigators backed up Mr. Pepi's evaluation, and a second expert employed by the prosecutors is now examining the contested works. Investigators declined to comment on the case because it was ongoing. Rudy Chiappini, the curator of the show, who is under investigation on several counts including fraud, defended his actions, noting that all the paintings and sketches on exhibit had been "accepted until now without reservations by the international scientific community," he said in a statement. The works, he noted, were all well known and documented. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
BEACH SESSIONS DANCE SERIES at Rockaway Beach (Aug. 25, 5 9 p.m.; Aug. 26, 2 5 p.m.). This season's installment of Beach Sessions, organized by the dance collective Aunts, proposes a roving experience, in which audience members wander from one performance site to the next. "Aunts Rockaway" takes place at three locations: the beach, the boardwalk and at the Castle Rockaway. On Saturday, the performance begins with Biba Bell's "Hustle on the Sand" at Beach 110th Street and concludes with Aunts the Castle and a dance party; on Sunday, the location order changes for the aptly named "Flip It and Reverse It." The Aunts group for Beach Sessions features a number of contemporary dancers, including Stephanie Acosta, Chris Braz, Tess Dworman, Karl Scholz and Tatyana Tenenbaum. beachsessionsdanceseries.com | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
This obituary is part of a series about people who have died in the coronavirus pandemic. Read about others here. Dr. John Murray, an internationally recognized expert in pulmonology, helped the medical world understand a deadly condition known as acute respiratory distress syndrome. On March 24, the condition he helped define led to his death. He was 92. The University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine, where Dr. Murray was a professor emeritus, said the cause of death, "sadly and ironically," was respiratory failure resulting from acute respiratory distress syndrome caused by the novel coronavirus. He lived in Paris for much of the year with his wife, the novelist Diane Johnson. Dr. Murray served as chief of pulmonary and critical care from 1966 to 1989 at the institution now known as Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center. After retiring in 1994, he continued to work as an attending physician in the intensive care unit and to teach. The medical school's statement credited him with leaving "indelible marks on the clinical practice of pulmonary medicine, the process of selecting and training fellows in pulmonary disease, and on lung disease research." When Dr. Murray began his career, pulmonology was largely focused on tuberculosis. His research and promotion of specialty training expanded the field to encompass a much wider range of diseases throughout the body and their effects on the lungs, said Dr. Philip Hopewell, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. That made Dr. Murray a "bridging figure between the old breed of chest physicians and the new, modern breed," he said. Much of Dr. Murray's best known research focused on pulmonary disease and AIDS, which he encountered at San Francisco General in 1981, and on defining acute respiratory distress syndrome. "He played an outsized role in forming this new branch of medicine, which is now carrying the brunt of the outbreak," said Dr. Courtney Broaddus, a colleague and past chief of San Francisco General's pulmonary division, referring to the coronavirus pandemic. Dr. Broaddus edited the current edition of one of Dr. Murray's best known works within the profession, "Murray Nadel's Textbook of Respiratory Medicine." When Dr. Broaddus was about to begin her position as an attending physician in the intensive care unit, she said, she went to Dr. Murray for advice. "He got up from his desk and took me to meet someone," she said in an email. "I expected it would be a respiratory therapist, someone to show me details of the mechanical ventilators. To my surprise, he wanted me to meet the social worker." Social workers tracked down the identities of patients who came in without identification, found their families and helped coordinate care. "This story captures for me how John led the team," she said. "Everyone was valued." Dr. Robert M. Wachter, head of the department of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, said that as a resident he had noticed Dr. Murray's distinguished appearance he always wore bow ties in an environment in which "other faculty wore Hawaiian print shirts." Dr. Murray's son, Douglas, explained: "He didn't want his ties to droop onto the patients when he was bending over them." John Frederic Murray was born on June 8, 1927, in Mineola, N.Y., on Long Island, to Frederic S. and Dorothy (Hanna) Murray. His ancestors on his father's side had owned an estate on the East Side of Manhattan in the section now known as Murray Hill. His father, a cartoonist, moved the family to Los Angeles, where he became best known for a Hollywood focused syndicated comic strip, "Seein' Stars," which he produced under the name Feg Murray. Dorothy Murray was a homemaker. Dr. Murray graduated from Stanford University in 1949 with a bachelor of arts degree and from Stanford's medical school in 1953 He married Sarah Sherman in 1949. They divorced in 1967. He married Ms. Johnson in 1969. Along with Ms. Johnson, his survivors include two children from his first marriage, Douglas and Elizabeth Murray; his stepsons Kevin and Simon Johnson; his stepdaughters Darcy Tell and Amanda Johnson; and 14 grandchildren. Another son from the first marriage, James, died in 2018. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
Hi Hi Good Morning Hi I Love You It's Me LONDON I remember exactly when the messages began in earnest. In January 2017, on a visit back to Guyana, the former British colony where I was born, I casually revealed to my distant cousins that I was on WhatsApp. I had spent years away, going to college and navigating adulthood in New York. We promised to stay in touch. We were family, bonded. No separations could break that. Soon after I returned home to New York, the first message landed with a "PING!" at full volume, a few hours after I had drifted off, exhausted from a hectic night in the newsroom. At first I was startled. I was in a different time zone and worked weird hours. No one had contacted me from the 592 country code that late before via text. I snatched the glowing phone off a chair beside the bed and tapped out a reply. I stared at my phone almost cockeyed for a good long while, waiting for the true purpose of the message to reveal itself. But that was it: "Gm." The messages came at odd times. They landed in someone's morning, but never in mine. At first, they set off a rush of anxiety. I had been primed to expect nothing good when the phone jangles, rings or pings. After I moved away from my mother's home in Brooklyn, picking up the phone meant being rocked by news of death, accidents, floods and other calamities. In Guyana, the sun is so hot it bites at your skin, the food is so good it puts you in a carb coma and people can leave this earth in dramatic fashion. Sometimes while riding without a helmet on a moped or on the back of a donkey cart. Sometimes as a passenger in an S.U.V. facing an oncoming minibus crammed with people and careening madly down the wrong side of the road (the right lane) and trying to switch to the right side (the left) at the last minute. It makes for memorable funerals where men drink XM or El Dorado rum, slamming dominoes and sharing stories about what a bastard the deceased was. Where women wail and toss their bodies into the hole at the cemetery, or faint with flair on the coffin. But such losses are devastatingly final. I learned of my mother's death from a call to Miami that struck me dumb for five hours trauma that was strangely similar to the time a sleeping dog bit me over the eye and I went blind for a day. I learned my maternal grandmother would never wake up again when my sister sobbed hysterically at me over the phone she was alone with the body in Brooklyn. New technology doesn't dull the shocking thud of bad news; it just speeds it through a slick new medium. But now, I got: The only obvious solution to the tyranny of "Gm" was to change the alert sound to a gentler "swoosh." When I moved to London, I flagged the five hour time difference to my cousins. Didn't matter. The messages popped up on Facebook. Sometimes rarely our schedules aligned and we communed via a phone call. Tell me something good, I'd say. If not, tell me something almost worthy of the encryption: Whose house burned to the ground. Who failed O level exams. What skulduggery is leaking from City Hall. We've always had powerful stories to tell. My grandmother entranced the children with tales of Brer Anansi, the clever spider from African folklore. My grandfather read aloud newspaper stories rife with intrigue and horror. An opposition politician's head was found in a car trunk. A woman tried to pour hot oil down the ear of her cheating husband while he slept. The Rev. Jim Jones sent more than 900 souls to the Promised Land with poisoned Flavor Aid. But now, the family vine says: By calling, I had raised the stakes. A flood of missed calls began appearing on my muted phone at work. Late last year, I returned for a visit and reconnected with a cousin who had jousted on WhatsApp. I tried to talk cricket, Messi, Bae. But the smart aleck who had a riposte for every comment online plopped down on a sofa and disappeared into her phone. I peered at her sideways, and it dawned on me: We are different species. I'm a former letter writer whose handwriting admittedly now looks as if someone had dipped a beetle into ink and let it loose on the page. She prefers texting someone in the same room. I left discombobulated. But soon after I returned home, the patter resumed and lo something approaching a conversation unfolded: At some point, my number made its way to relatives so distant I would not recognize them if they passed me on the street. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. A federal jury on Monday ordered Rolling Stone and one of its writers to pay 3 million in damages to a University of Virginia administrator over a discredited article two years ago about a supposed gang rape at the university. The jury in Charlottesville, Va., had already decided on Friday, after a two week trial, that Rolling Stone; Wenner Media, its parent company; and Sabrina Rubin Erdely, the author of the article, were all liable for defamation in a case that centered on faulty reporting and a failure to apply basic fail safes in editing. After deliberating for less than two hours on Monday, the jury of eight women and two men decided that Ms. Erdely was liable for 2 million of the total, and Rolling Stone and Wenner Media for 1 million. In her suit, filed in May 2015, the administrator, Nicole P. Eramo, had asked for 7.5 million in damages. The jury found that assertions made in the story, as well as public statements made after publication by Ms. Erdely and Rolling Stone, were made with "actual malice," the legal standard for libel against public figures. To meet that standard, a publisher must be found to have known that the information it published was false, or to have had reckless disregard for the truth. Rolling Stone has not said whether it would appeal the verdict. Scott Sexton, a lawyer for Rolling Stone, said on Monday that according to its agreement with Ms. Erdely, the company was obligated to cover "all liability arising out of the article." Ms. Erdely and her legal team declined to answer questions after the decision was read. In its decision, the jury made no distinctions about what portion of the damages was tied to the article and what was tied to other comments made by Ms. Erdely and Rolling Stone after publication. Outside the courtroom on Monday night, Deborah J. Parmelee, a teacher who was the jury forewoman, read a brief statement from the jury that said, in part: "With careful consideration of the facts in evidence for determining damages, the jury made its determination. We were proud to execute our civic duty." Nicole P. Eramo, former associate dean of students at the University of Virginia, filed the lawsuit. Ms. Parmelee declined to answer any further questions about the case. The article, "A Rape on Campus," was published in November 2014 and intensified national attention on sexual assault of college students. But the article was soon called into question for its reliance on a single source, identified only as Jackie, in describing a brutal gang rape at a fraternity party near the grounds of the university, which was founded by Thomas Jefferson in 1819 and is steeped in tradition. After a report by the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism reprimanded Rolling Stone for failing to take fundamental steps to verify Jackie's account, and after the Charlottesville police said they had found no evidence that an episode like the one described had occurred, the magazine retracted the article and removed it from its website. What happened on Day 2 of Elizabeth Holmes's testimony. Kevin Spacey was ordered to pay 31 million to the 'House of Cards' studio after sexual harassment allegations. Ms. Eramo, the former associate dean of students, sued for defamation, saying that she had been made out to be the "chief villain" in the article, which portrayed the university administration as being indifferent to the threat of sexual assault on campus. In one of the story's most scalding passages, Jackie said that Ms. Eramo had told her, "Nobody wants to send their daughter to the rape school." Testifying on Monday in the damages hearing, Ms. Eramo wept repeatedly as she recounted personal and professional difficulties after the article was published. She spoke of a loss of self confidence and a change of her job at the university. Some members of the jury could be seen dabbing tears during Ms. Eramo's testimony. Rolling Stone's lawyers pointed out that since the article was published, Ms. Eramo has gotten two raises, and her salary is now set at 113,000 a year. They also noted that a report from the United States Department of Education backed up the magazine's general findings by criticizing how the University of Virginia handled sexual assault cases. David Paxton, a lawyer for Rolling Stone, also stressed how much the article had already damaged the magazine's reputation. "This has been a badge of shame," he said, "for Rolling Stone and Ms. Erdely." "It took two years and all this to get an apology," Ms. Eramo said, gesturing around the courtroom. "And I still don't believe it is a real apology. The regret I see is that they're in the position they're in today." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
After a while, Gareth Bale almost seemed to relish it: the confrontation, the controversy, the opprobrium. It was as if he had stopped trying to fight it, wasting his energy correcting misunderstandings or railing at willful misinterpretations, and instead invited them to come crashing down on him. The flag, Bale felt, was just a bit of a joke. He had seen it the Welsh dragon, festooned with the slogan "Wales, Golf, Madrid, In That Order," a reference to a chant that had been doing the rounds among the fans of his national team a few weeks before, and he found it funny enough to demur when his teammates suggested they might like to show it off. But then came the images of Bale in the games of the socially distanced era, sitting in the stands as he watched Real Madrid play yet another game without his participation, his mind clearly wandering: rolling up a piece of cardboard as a telescope, covering his eyes with his face mask or pretending to drop off to sleep. Bale, deep down, probably had. He knew, by then, that he was not going to play, and that even if he did play, he would not start the next game, or the game after that. Real Madrid's manager, Zinedine Zidane, had made it abundantly clear he did not have a place in his plans, much less on his team. Real Madrid's fans though absent from the stands had long since let Bale know that he was no longer welcome. The team's allies in the Spanish news media had let slip, time and again, that the club's hierarchy felt the same way. Someone, somewhere had been briefing reporters, over and over, that Bale had long been a distant, detached figure, that he had never bothered learning Spanish, that he preferred to play golf. Bale knew he was not wanted. He was no longer prepared to go along with the charade. He has actively won those trophies, too: he has not just been along for the ride. He scored in the final in 2014 the goal that put Real Madrid ahead in extra time and finally broke Atletico Madrid's resolve and, as a substitute, two more in the victory over Liverpool in 2018. The first was, perhaps, the finest goal ever scored in a European Cup final. And yet, now, there is little to no querying of why, exactly, Zidane has no time for a player who has enjoyed such success, and who has, at times, delivered for him. Blame is apportioned not to the coach who has ostracized him, but to the player, for either not justifying his vast salary or foregoing it entirely simply to escape. The idea that Real Madrid might be so desperate to shed him from its books, meanwhile, that it was willing to allow him to return to his former club, Tottenham Hotspur, on loan for no fee, and with Spurs covering only half his wages is seen, if anything, not as madness on the part of Real Madrid but as a risk for Tottenham. Zidane's record, of course, helps with all of that, as it is difficult to question too intensely the judgment of a coach who has won three Champions League titles in five attempts. So, too, do those images, the ones that make Bale look reckless and feckless in equal measure, the ones that lend credence to the accusations that he does not mind not playing, as long as he is getting paid, the ones that suggest he is either playing to the gallery or trolling his critics. And so, without question, does the propaganda campaign that seems to have been waged against Bale again, so as not to lose sight of how odd this is, a Real Madrid employee by the club itself. Bale is, by almost any measure, the most successful player Britain has ever exported: only another Welsh star, John Charles, can really lay claim to coming close. But so successfully and so relentlessly has Bale been depicted as a mercenary, happy just to pick up his paycheck and go and play golf, that even in Britain he is not afforded the reverence that his career warrants. Wales remains fiercely loyal, of course, but to that great, borderless constituency of Premier League fans, Bale will be returning from Spain with his tail between his legs. As Bale joins Spurs he and the team confirmed his move on Saturday he will be seen not as a coup but as either an indulgence a little reverie on memory lane for Daniel Levy, the Spurs chairman or a luxury. Manchester United considered him, but decided Jadon Sancho was a far better bet. Most fans, of most clubs aside from Tottenham, would agree. That offers a glimpse not only of the power of the news media to shape perceptions, even when refracted by the interpretation of a second media bloc what is written in Spanish papers eventually bleeds into their British equivalents but of just how fickle the business Bale finds himself in can be. English soccer perhaps European soccer has, in a sense, moved on from Bale. He is no longer new and exciting and fresh. The fact that he is, instead, tried and tested and proven is either deemed irrelevant or actively counts against him. Since he left, others have risen to take his place. He is a short term signing. He is a gamble. He is a busted flush. He is not for us. He is best left to Spurs. He is a player from the past. And yet, when he returns to the Premier League, he will do so as possibly the most decorated player ever to arrive on these shores. Age and injury may have dimmed his star a little, but memories should not be so short as to forget the force of nature that he once was, and that he might yet even occasionally still be. Common sense should dictate that, after seven years at Real Madrid, he might be something more than pace and power. None of that should be overlooked, and none of it should be forgotten. All that Bale has achieved should not be obscured by the machinations of the Real Madrid machine, or by his succumbing to it. All that he was all that he might still be, in the right time and the right place should not be consigned quite so easily to yesterday. Soccer never stops moving; that is what makes it so compelling, so competitive. There are times, though, when it moves just a little too fast for its own good. Only time will tell whether, in this instance, the best was saved for last. All we can say for certain, for now, is that English soccer's great sweep of American playing talent built to a dazzling crescendo. Sam Mewis and Rose Lavelle joined Manchester City. Tobin Heath and Christen Press signed for Manchester United. And then, after a fitting pause for dramatic effect, Alex Morgan agreed to a deal to move to Tottenham Hotspur. In one sense, Morgan's signing will be the least successful of the five transfers Spurs is not likely to be a title contender but it may be the most impactful: Morgan is the sort of player you can build a franchise, to use that heretical word, around. In England, the initial excitement at seeing this squadron of World Cup winners land on our shores has given way, now, to a more traditional, niggling anxiety: the stockpiling of superstars at a handful of clubs in the Women's Super League has already brought about several troublingly one sided scorelines that do the division's competitive balance no favors. Several emails arrived this week, all of them asking roughly the same question. I think I've mentioned before that one of the great pleasures of working for The Times as well as the chance to refer to "The Daily" host Michael Barbaro as "my colleague" is that we have a far broader audience than most, and that gives me the chance to interrogate some of the ideas that I might otherwise assume just exist. This is one of those chances. The questions came from several readers who it is probably fair to assume have come to soccer slightly later in life, and boiled down to this: "How does the transfer system work? Who pays what to whom? And how is it related to a player's salary?" My initial response, of course, was that this is easy. Club A has a player let's call him Ian Midfielder that Club B wants to buy. Club B contacts Club A and asks how much Ian Midfielder costs; the clubs then negotiate until they reach a price that is acceptable to both. At that point, Club B has permission to speak to Ian Midfielder's agent, and they work out a salary and a signing on fee that might be acceptable to both. Once that is done, someone from Club B's social media team takes a photo of Ian Midfielder holding a pen, and lots of people on Twitter who have never seen Ian Midfielder play declare him to be the greatest talent in the game, and lots of other people on social media say he is a complete fraud. (And increasingly, a third group of people say: Right, that's Ian Midfielder done. Now announce Juan Miguel Striker.) But it is not that simple, is it? Because the amount of money Club A asks for is not rooted in anything. It is not a reflection, for example, of how much money that club still owes Ian Midfielder on his contract (though generally players with longer contracts do cost more money to buy). The price can be high, if the club wants to keep him, or it can be low, if they have decided they want to sign someone else, or are distressed sellers. It is, essentially, a random number that an executive plucks from thin air on the grounds that they think they can get it. Even in Spain, where all players have release clauses set fees at which they can leave their current clubs, famous names like Equipo A and Sociedad B. Those numbers are almost entirely arbitrary, too. Most clubs now have valuation models, a slightly more scientific way of determining a player's worth, but they are flawed, too, because the market context that is built into their algorithms is based on more than a century of numbers plucked from thin air. And that is before we get into the nonsense of agents who are paid to negotiate a deal for the player, but also sometimes to act on behalf of the club, despite the fact that all of the clubs have people who are specifically employed to do these things. Or those cases where clubs sell their rights to a transfer fee to a third party, or take out a loan mortgaged against future transfer income. All of which makes you wonder, deep down, whether the transfer system upon which so much of the soccer economy depends really works, and whether it is actually right that we talk so openly and liberally about what is an actual trade in human beings, and why it is that soccer is not like any other job, where you can kind of just work where you want to work. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
CARMEN SANDIEGO Stream on Netflix. Her enemies may not know where to find Carmen Sandiego, but starting Tuesday, viewers will. Coming back for its second season, "Carmen Sandiego" (voiced by Gina Rodriguez of "Jane the Virgin") is continuing her mission to steal from the criminal organization V.I.L.E. and give back to its victims. While the authorities may see her as a master criminal because of her elaborate heists, Carmen, with the help of Player (Finn Wolfhard of "Stranger Things"), stays true to her mission to right the wrongs in the world. HALLOWEEN BAKING CHAMPIONSHIP Stream on Hulu. It's officially October, which means Halloween season is upon us. The first three seasons of Food Network's themed baking competitions are available on Hulu. Each episode features two rounds where the bakers have to prove their creativity and talent to a panel of judges, the chefs Carla Hall, Zac Young and Katie Lee . The show is hosted by John Henson and the prize is 25,000. Get inspired to make spooky treats like brain cakes, zombie fingers and candy stuffed cookies. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
Let's make one thing clear: McLaren, the British maker of racecars and supercars like the new P1 is not the same company as Maclaren, the British manufacturer of premium baby strollers, known for its 1965 innovation of the folding umbrella model. But there is an automotive connection at Maclaren: its new BMW Buggy model, developed jointly with the German carmaker, even bears small windows in the shape of a BMW kidney grille on the canopy the hood, if you will. Baby strollers and carriages carrying the brand names of automakers are new territory for some of the companies that market to nameplate conscious parents. Even the most famous baby of the moment may ride one soon: Silver Cross, long a supplier of strollers to the royal family, is producing an Aston Martin model that may be just the thing for Prince George, the new royal infant. (Black and white film of the young Prince Charles shows him in a Silver Cross stroller.) The brand marks on the Maclaren BMW model, under license from the automaker, are tasteful and discreet: there are BMW roundels on the hub caps of the auto style wheels and one on the buckle for the seat belt. The BMW stroller is part of a series of strollers called Objects of Design that have included models branded Burberry, Juicy Couture and Lacoste. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Automobiles |
A noted collection of more than 150 Native American artifacts, including wampum belts and finely beaded ceremonial garb, will stay for now where it has been housed for almost 70 years, at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Mass., officials announced Thursday. The collection is owned by the Andover Newton Theological School, the country's oldest seminary, but has long been housed at the museum. The Native American items in question, mostly gathered in the 19th century by Christian missionaries, are part of a larger art collection numbering over 1,100 items that the seminary is now giving to the museum. The other items include 19th century photographs and embroidery from China The school has been cited by federal regulators for failing to adequately follow a law designed to ensure the return of sacred and other special artifacts to Native American tribes. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
In 1951, "The Cage" shocked the world. Prickly and intense, this Jerome Robbins ballet concerns a female dominated world where acts of violence are everyday occurrences. A Novice is born into an insect tribe, led by a Queen. Instinctively, the Novice knows what to do when a male intruder enters: She crushes his neck between her knees. She falls in love with a second intruder, but in the end, kills him, too. Her backup is a 12 strong corps de ballet whose killer instincts and hair so teased that it stands on end give the ballet a spooky, feral pulse. Some nights, Robbins must have known, you just don't feel like watching another swan. Set to Stravinsky's Concerto in D for String Orchestra, "The Cage" remains a favorite of the dancers at New York City Ballet, for which Robbins created it. On March 19, the Bolshoi Ballet will perform it for the first time, but you don't have to go to Moscow to see it. That premiere performance, part of the Bolshoi Ballet in Cinema broadcasts, will be screened in movie theaters worldwide. The program, "A Contemporary Evening," also features another City Ballet creation, Alexei Ratmansky's glorious "Russian Seasons." Jean Pierre Frohlich and Glenn Keenan, ballet masters from City Ballet, staged the Robbins ballet. This is the first time Mr. Frohlich, who worked closely with Robbins for many years, has mounted a work at the Bolshoi. Overseeing the Robbins repertory is a huge responsibility, but Mr. Frohlich said that he doesn't feel pressure. What can be difficult is that there are so many versions around and so many opinionated dancers who danced them. Speaking by phone from Moscow, Mr. Frohlich said he once asked Robbins, "Jerry, which version do you want me to teach?" Robbins replied: "You know me. You know what I've done for other companies. Do what's best for them." And so, Mr. Frohlich said, "That's what I do." What follows are edited excerpts from a recent conversation. Did it feel different to teach "The Cage" to Bolshoi dancers? It took them a little bit longer. "The Cage" is really one of the most stylized ballets Jerry ever choreographed. Your hands are in a particular position. You're a creature. You're not really a ballet dancer in the form of classical ballet, even though you're on pointe shoes and you do classical steps. What else has been challenging? Coordination. With "The Cage," it takes a long time to coordinate when you open your mouth, when you don't, where the positions of the arms are, when your hips are forward. They had to get the movement down before they could actually know what they were doing. Why was "The Cage" so shocking at first? It was the whole movement quality of the hips forward and the mouth open. I think the brutality of putting the intruders' heads between the legs and snapping their necks is kind of shocking. So what do you look for in a Novice? She can be small, she can be medium, just as long as she has long, articulate muscles. She also needs an imagination. Jerry would say, "Forget being a ballet dancer." When she goes on all fours and she's stretching her back and creating this arch with her buttocks out, she's realizing she has a spine. It's almost like a horse being born. How they stand and can't find their balance and the strength in their feet and they collapse down again and again. And what do those long, articulate muscles create? It has more of an expression. A lot of this ballet is your body language. It's in how you stand and how you stare into space. At one point, she bends her knees and grabs her ankles she's finding out that she has ankles. She's finding what she is. And then she falls in love with the second intruder, but she knows she has to kill him. It's really "Giselle." What is it like to work with dancers whose training is so different? I find it fascinating. You want to give them a sense of what the choreographer wanted. So you don't want to change their schooling, but you want to change their attack. I try to emphasize dynamics in their dancing more. Balanchine used to say to me, "Jean Pierre, you're young move big, big." And he's right. Otherwise, you look like you're dancing on a postage stamp. At City Ballet, the women are so excited to dance this ballet. Is that true at the Bolshoi? I don't know! I can't tell. At New York City Ballet, the girls love it. They love the hair. They love the whole idea of it. They feel like they have their ballet. Laughs I'm just hoping I get this here. It's hard for them. I always say: "Don't worry about looking pretty. The stranger you look, the better." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
WASHINGTON A new study offers some of the strongest evidence yet of the connection between the marketing of opioids to doctors and the nation's addiction epidemic. It found that counties where opioid manufacturers offered a large number of gifts and payments to doctors had more overdose deaths involving the drugs than counties where direct to physician marketing was less aggressive. The study, published Friday in JAMA Network Open, said the industry spent about 40 million promoting opioid medications to nearly 68,000 doctors from 2013 through 2015, including by paying for meals , trips and consulting fees. And it found that for every three additional payments that companies made to doctors per 100,000 people in a county, overdose deaths involving prescription opioids there a year later were 18 percent higher. Even as the opioid epidemic was killing more and more Americans, such marketing practices remained widespread. From 2013 through 2015, roughly 1 in 12 doctors received opioid related marketing, according to the study, including 1 in 5 family practice doctors. The authors, from Boston Medical Center and New York University School of Medicine, found that counties where doctors received more industry marketing subsequently saw an increase in both the number of opioids prescribed and opioid related overdose deaths. In response to the study, Dr. John Cullen, president of the American Academy of Family Physicians, said, "A limitation of the study, as acknowledged by the authors, is the many unknown variables that prevent drawing a direct causal link between pharmaceutical marketing and opioid related deaths." He added, "We're very much aware of the critical and devastating impact of the opioid epidemic and work every day, with every patient interaction, to fight it. At the same time, we must protect the physician's ability to provide adequate pain management." The authors acknowledged several caveats in the study, including that it could not differentiate between overdose deaths involving painkillers that are prescribed versus illicitly acquired. "We acknowledge that our work describes only one part of the very complex opioid overdose crisis in this country," said the lead author, Dr. Scott Hadland, a pediatrician and researcher at Boston Medical Center's Grayken Center for Addiction. "Even still, prescription opioids remain involved in one third of all opioid overdose deaths, and are commonly the first medications that people encounter before transitioning to heroin or fentanyl. It is critical that we take measures now to prevent marketing from unnecessarily exposing new people to opioids they may not need." The study found that opioid related spending on doctors was most highly concentrated in counties in the Northeast; the Midwest had the lowest concentration. Areas with large numbers of payments and high overdose rates included four cities in Virginia Salem, Fredericksburg, Winchester and Norton as well as Cabell County, W.Va., which has one of the highest overdose death rates in the nation. Lackawanna County, Penn., which includes Scranton, also ranked high in both measures, as did Erie County, Ohio. The authors said they were particularly struck by the fact that the number of marketing interactions with doctors such as frequent free meals was more strongly associated with overdose deaths than the amount spent. "Each meal seems to be associated with more and more prescriptions," Dr. Hadland said. He added that while pharmaceutical company payments to doctors seem to have started dropping, the practice of companies buying meals for doctors "remains alive and well." The study noted that while some states have sought to limit the total amount drug companies spend promoting their products to doctors New Jersey, for example, recently adopted a new regulation limiting such spending to 10,000 per doctor, per year what may matter more is for states or health systems to limit the number of interactions. "I think what seems to be less important is the amount of money spent," Dr. Hadland said, "compared with the number of interactions." Like the Science Times page on Facebook. Sign up for the Science Times newsletter. The study linked information from 2013 to 2016 across three national databases: the Open Payments database, which includes all payments made by pharmaceutical companies to physicians, which companies are required to report under a section of the Affordable Care Act; drug overdose data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; and C.D.C. data on opioid prescriptions dispensed at pharmacies. It measured opioid marketing in three ways: the total dollar value of marketing received by doctors; the number of payments made by the pharmaceutical industry; and the number of physicians receiving any marketing. The study builds on another that Dr. Hadland and his co author, Dr. Magdalena Cerda, an associate professor of population health at the NYU School of Medicine, published earlier this year. It found that for every meal a doctor received related to an opioid drug in 2014, there was an increase in opioid claims by that doctor for Medicare patients the following year. As the opioid epidemic reached crisis proportions over the past few years, more than 30 states have responded by passing laws that restrict opioid prescribing. Critics say these policies are misguided because most overdose deaths now are from illicit opioids like synthetic fentanyl, and because the restrictions hurt patients with chronic pain. But the policies may be having an impact, as opioid prescribing rates overall have been falling. Still, Dr. Hadland pointed out, prescribing rates remain uneven, with some regions still seeing widespread prescribing of opioids. One company, Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, announced last year that it would stop marketing its painkillers to doctors, including by no longer sending salespeople to medical offices to talk about the drugs. According to a newly public filing in a lawsuit brought by Massachusetts against Purdue, a member of the Sackler family, which owns the company, had boasted in 1996 that "the launch of OxyContin tablets will be followed by a blizzard of prescriptions that will bury the competition." An analysis last year by ProPublica found that payments to doctors related to opioid drugs dropped significantly in 2016 a sign that public pressure on the companies in the wake of the opioid epidemic had begun having an effect. ProPublica found that in 2016, drug makers spent 15.8 million on doctors in the form of speaking and consulting fees, meals and travel related to opioid drugs. That was 33 percent less than in 2015, when they spent 23.7 million, and 21 percent less in 2014, when they spent 19.9 million. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
Take one look at a ghost shark and you may say, "What's up with that weird looking fish?" Over the past few decades, scientists learned that these cartilaginous fishes, also known as ratfish or Chimaeras, have been around for hundreds of millions of years, and that they have venomous spines in front of their dorsal fins and "fly" through the water by flapping their pectoral fins. They even learned that most male ghost sharks have a retractable sex organ on their foreheads that resembles a medieval mace. However, much remains to be learned about these strange creatures. Basic biological information, like how long they live and how often they reproduce, is lacking for most of the 52 known species. The absence of this key information makes it difficult for scientists to manage and monitor ghost shark populations, even as evidence mounts that some species may be at risk of extinction. Scientists from the Shark Specialist Group, a division of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, recently assessed the extinction risk of all confirmed ghost shark species and determined that 16 percent are "threatened" or "near threatened." The assessment, which was published this month in the journal Fish and Fisheries, also found that 15 percent of ghost shark species are so understudied that their extinction risk cannot be determined. Now experts are concerned that certain ghost shark species might go extinct before scientists have a chance to study them. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
Our columnist, Sebastian Modak, is visiting each destination on our 52 Places to Go in 2019 list. Before the Falklands, he took an arduous journey to Costalegre, Mexico. For an archipelago just 350 miles off the southeastern coast of Argentina, the Falkland Islands, also known as Las Islas Malvinas, are maddeningly difficult to get to. There's just one commercial flight a week from Santiago, via Punta Arenas, Chile, along with a twice weekly, 18 hour trip on a British Royal Air Force plane from an air base outside Oxford. In the winter months, when I visited, the islands' position on the southern edge of the Atlantic Ocean, only 850 miles from the Antarctic Circle, adds more problems: dense fog, low clouds and turbulence inducing rotor winds that shut down the airport at Mount Pleasant, a British military base, for days at a time. Because of one missed flight connection in Brazil, it took me two weeks to get to the Falklands and two extra days of successive cancellations to get out. A short walk from where the helicopter landed, I came face to face with the largest king penguin colony on the islands. More than a thousand breeding pairs huddled together near a white sand beach, occasionally lifting their beaks in the air to let off rapid fire calls. With jet black heads decorated with apostrophe shaped shocks of orange, the three foot tall birds give off an air of majesty that kicked the air out of my lungs. But if the parents are all regal dignity, the offspring are the embodiment of awkward. The fluffy brown balls, two feet high, alternated between cuddling up to their parents and running in circles with the energy of 4 year olds right after a bowl of sugar bombed breakfast cereal. They sang while flapping their wings, as if still unconvinced that they can't fly. All rules of engagement with wildlife keep your distance, don't interact went out the window as the 7 month old chicks cautiously approached me and the three other human visitors. One pecked at a glove our pilot had momentarily put on the cold ground. Another made eye contact with me, waddling up until it was a foot away. Then it abruptly turned around, cried out and barreled into a friend before steadying itself and running back to its parents. I was told that during the summer months, this area sometimes has to be roped off because of the number of tourists. But we could wander the perimeter of the colony freely, watching as parents fed their young, and at least one pair seemed to be chastising their cheeky kid for getting too close to those other strange upright creatures. To fully grasp the remoteness of the Falklands, it's best to see them from a few hundred feet up. That's why I also spent a morning in the co pilot seat of a Britten Norman Islander plane, one among the handful of light aircraft that make up the fleet of the Falkland Islands Government Air Service. F.I.G.A.S. offers an indispensable service to Falklanders, connecting Stanley, where the vast majority of people live, with "camp," what locals call the rest of the mostly undeveloped land. Visitors can book a "Round Robin" flight with F.I.G.A.S., accompanying the pilot on an island hopping trip to deliver people, mail and supplies to remote settlements. "All you really need for an airfield is a wind sock and a shack," explained my pilot, Tom Chater, who also flew the helicopter out to Volunteer Point. Between each landing were huge swathes of treeless wilderness. Empty plains abutted rocky mountains that seemed to be dragging thick clouds toward them. Stone runs, eroded boulders cascading down valleys, looked like the work of angry giants. We flew over white sand beaches and turquoise water that would not be out of place in the Caribbean, the kelp forests offshore looking, from above, like coral reefs. Flying low over narrow straits, we saw sei and southern right whales, shooting plumes of ocean spray into the sky. Only occasionally did we fly over any sign of human life: farms, surrounded by miles and miles of open plains; narrow mud tracks made over the course of decades by the passage of Land Rovers; shearing sheds near the water, dating from a time when the ocean was the only way to transport wool between islands. When I explored East Falkland overland, the impression was similar. I traveled out to settlements like Darwin, 60 miles from Stanley, where the official population is seven although one of the residents told me it's actually more like five. I walked across the Bodie Bridge, the southernmost suspension bridge in the world, a title that isn't going to last. Connecting nothing with nothing, it's been long abandoned, and wind and salt have taken their toll. Rust covered broken segments of metal, and the bridge creaked ominously with each step. For big city people like myself there's a fascination that comes with places like the Falklands. It's not just the sense of space there's so much of it but the way of life that feels so foreign. Being there in winter allowed me to pretend I was living the same, slow day to day as the islands' residents. When sideways rain and biting wind made long walks impossible, I spent hours in the cozy pubs of Stanley, where music from the 1980s blared over the speakers. I eavesdropped on conversations about how the Falklands were faring in the global sheepshearing competition that was taking place in France, town gossip about who had left for the winter and who had come into town, predictions about the weather. No one looked at their phones. As an outsider experiencing the Falklands' emptiness, it was hard to fathom that almost 1,000 people lost their lives in a war over the islands' ownership. In 1982, acting on a long held territorial claim, the Argentine government ruled by a military junta at the time sent troops to the islands. The British responded by calling in a task force, and over the course of 74 days, the pristine islands erupted in violence. The war ended with Argentina's surrender, but the South American country still claims sovereignty over the islands, which it calls Las Islas Malvinas. The British government and, according to a 2013 referendum, 99.7 percent of Falklanders, consider the islands an overseas territory of Britain. Almost every conversation I had with a local came back to the war at some point. Those who lived through it bookmark events with "before," "during" and "after" the war. Those who didn't still talk about it with nationalistic passion. Some of the people I spoke to felt strongly about their relationship with Britain self governing but still very close to it others were cautiously optimistic about a future where the dispute could be laid to rest, but what I didn't find was indifference. Leona Roberts, 47, a member of the Falklands' Legislative Assembly, said, "Argentina looks at the Falklands as a piece of their soul that's been ripped out so it's very emotive and very difficult to reconcile that with what we see as the reality: that we've always been the resident population and have built this place from scratch." Wondering if there could be a generational gap in opinion, I also spoke to Ms. Roberts's son, Nick, a 24 year old who recently returned to the islands after spending eight years in Britain. "Being someone from a country so small, I definitely feel like I have a responsibility to put a certain message out there sometimes," Mr. Roberts said. "But it's not like I'm worried that '82 will happen again I think we've moved past that and can have a better future together." When asked if he identified more as a Falklander or a Brit, Mr. Roberts's answer was unequivocal: "Both." Reminders of the war are everywhere. A memorial to the British soldiers who lost their lives stands in Stanley, in front of a bust of Margaret Thatcher, the prime minister at the time. Far away from the capital, in the middle of an empty field, is a cemetery for Argentine soldiers, white crosses decorated with flowers and wreaths. Many of those soldiers still haven't been identified; their graves are inscribed with the words, "Soldado Argentino solo conocido por Dios" ("Argentine soldier only known by God"). At least one wreck of an Argentine helicopter lies by the side of the road, untouched; craters from mortar shells pock the otherwise untouched landscape; and minefields are cordoned off by barbed wire. For a Falklander, it would be impossible to forget even if they wanted to. There's no doubt that tourism is on the up in the Falkland Islands. Another weekly flight, this one from Sao Paulo, Brazil, is set to begin in November, making trips for those not on cruises more feasible. There's no chance of it ever being a major destination though it's far too out of the way. You feel it on the journey over but also once you're on the ground. The internet is terrible and bandwidth is as valuable as gold; bananas in the supermarket go for a dollar a piece. Despite being just an hour ahead of New York City, it was the farthest I've felt from home so far on this trip. The day I was supposed to leave, the weather took a nasty turn and my flight was canceled and then canceled again the following day. A tribe of stranded travelers began to form as we awaited news about the flight. Among them were a group of Uruguayans in town for shipping related business, a British aviation physician and David Greene, co host of NPR's Morning Edition and one of the three other tourists on the islands. We waited for the weather to clear. David and I went on a Stanley pub crawl as in we visited all four of them on a Saturday, when the bars become packed and afterparties continue until the early morning. Some of us resorted to going to daily screenings at the new and only movie theater in town (I saw "Rocketman" and "Avengers: Endgame"). I planned my days slowly; errands like buying a T shirt or mailing postcards became landmark events. I made new friends. Consumed by a sense of total isolation, I leaned into the rare feeling of being off the map, stuck somewhere and part of a small community of travelers. Despite the frustrations of all the cancellations and delays that surrounded my trip to the Falklands, I don't think I'd have it any other way. It's comforting to know that there are still places that take a serious effort to get to and to leave. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
A. D.C.I.S. stands for ductal carcinoma in situ. It is a small pileup of abnormal cells in the lining of the milk duct. You cannot feel it because there is nothing to be felt; there is no lump. But the cells can be seen in a mammogram, and when a pathologist examines them, they can look like cancer cells. The cells have not broken free of the milk duct or invaded the breast. And they may never break free. The lesion might go away on its own or it might invade the breast or spread throughout the body. That raises questions about what, if anything, to do about it. A. It is often called Stage 0 cancer, but researchers say their view of cancer is changing. They used to think cancers began as clusters of abnormal cells, and unless they were destroyed the cells would inevitably grow and spread and kill. Now they know that many some say most or all cancers can behave in a variety of ways. Clusters of abnormal cells like D.C.I.S. can sometimes disappear, stop growing or simply remain in place and never cause a problem. The suspicion is that the abnormal cells may be harmless and may not require treatment. But no one has done a rigorous study comparing outcomes for women who get treatment to those who get no treatment. "The development of D.C.I.S. treatments and its handling over the past 40 years is an example of something we in medicine could have done better," said Dr. Otis Brawley, chief medical officer for the American Cancer Society. Q. How many women get a D.C.I.S. diagnosis each year? A. About 60,000 in the United States as compared with several hundred annually before 1983, when mammography was less widespread. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
You can count the games each N.B.A. team has played so far on a single hand. But since when has a small sample size ever stopped fans, especially Knicks fans, from being excited? The Knicks, coming off seven consecutive losing seasons, have started this one 2 2 after defeating the Cleveland Cavaliers, 95 86, on Tuesday night. Before the season started, New York was widely considered one of the weakest teams in the league, if not the weakest. While no one is talking playoffs yet, there is plenty of early excitement, especially because of Julius Randle. A 6 foot 8 power forward, Randle had a triple double against the Cavaliers, his first since 2018. And it wasn't an outlier. Randle ranks in the top 20 in the league in points, rebounds and assists per game (14th, 12th and 10th). The only other player to do so is Nikola Jokic of the Denver Nuggets. Only one player did it last season, Luka Doncic of the Dallas Mavericks, a leading candidate to be this season's most valuable player. Randle is also ranking in the top 20 in a host of other categories, but two of those do give pause. He ranks third in turnovers with 20, including an ugly nine against the Cavaliers on Tuesday. And he ranks third in 3 point percentage at .692. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week's most notable new songs and videos. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at theplaylist nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once a week blast of our pop music coverage. Though SZA is one of those artists who works at her own pace, plenty of fans have been clamoring over the past few years for a follow up to her beloved 2017 debut, "Ctrl." "Hit Different," her new song with Ty Dolla Sign, suggests that she's been cooking something up in secret. The Neptunes produced "Hit Different" is certainly a promising return: Ty anchors the song with a catchy, rhythmic hook, freeing SZA up to unfurl mixed emotions and signature cool throughout the rest of the track: "All that I know is mirrors inside me/They recognize you, please don't deny me" she croons. The stylish, SZA directed video, too, is striking: Prepare to never look at a pommel horse the same way again. LINDSAY ZOLADZ Tricky shaped Bristol trip hop in the 1980s and 1990s, and "I'm in the Doorway," from his new album, "Fall to Pieces," remains true in some ways to his bleakly austere aesthetic. It's sparse and deliberate, deploying little more than a drumbeat, a synthesizer bass line, a few piano notes and a handful of other sounds around the voice of the Danish songwriter Oh Land: "I'll bring you greetings/And hidden meanings," she sings. But with implied major harmonies and a little more pop symmetry than usual, Tricky trades his long honed ominousness for tentative only tentative glimmers of anticipation. PARELES "What They'll Say About Us" begins calmly and reassuringly, a piano lullaby that promises, "You're tired now, lay down/I'll be waiting to give you the good news" and urges, "Don't you give up." But as a beat and other instruments arrive and the soundstage grows huge and hazy, mortality begins to haunt the song, all the way to a devastating last line. PARELES Regret, jealousy, resentment and bitter realism mix in Jazmine Sullivan's "Lost One," a message to an ex delivered in spectral, hollow eyed low fi, accompanied only by a loop of distant guitar picking and here and gone vocal harmonies. She knows her ex is about to have affairs on the rebound; she claims, "If it's too late I understand"; she admits, "I know I've been nothing short of a disaster." But she still makes a last ditch plea: "Try not to love no one." PARELES "I travel, I sing, I notice when people notice things." That's the unmistakable, oaken voice of Bill Callahan, offering up a simple but subtly poetic description of the songwriter's life on "As I Wander," the closing track on his fine new album "Gold Record." Like last year's "Shepherd in a Sheepskin Vest," Callahan's latest offers folk meditations on the quiet joys of domestic life: "When you are married," he sings on the opener "Pigeons," advising a couple of newlyweds in the back seat of his car, "you are married to the whole wide world." "As I Wander" closes the loop by finding this same kind of openhearted interconnectedness in the process of songwriting. Atop a gentle babble of fingerpicked chords, he surveys the landscape and concludes his voice almost cracking with emotion "It's just that I am all of these things." ZOLADZ In October, the British synth pop group Hot Chip will release its own installment of the artist curated mix series "Late Night Tales," featuring handpicked tunes alongside several previously unreleased Hot Chip songs. The first is a straightforward but thoroughly hypnotic cover of the Velvet Underground classic "Candy Says." Alexis Taylor captures the plaintive sweetness of Lou Reed's indelible melody, while in the background whirring synthesizers gradually gather the strength to take over the track and deliver, in the final minute of the song, the kind of beautiful transfiguration the singer is longing for. ZOLADZ Johari Noelle and her songwriting collaborator, the guitarist Jeoffrey Arrington, capture the warped, elongated, suspended pace of pandemic life in "Time," musing, "We've got time, time/And what do we do with it?" She coos at first over a lone guitar, but that isolation gives way to plushly layered vocals and a band that drifts through the song alongside her, even though it was convened virtually. PARELES Afel Bocoum grew up along the Niger River in the same village as the renowned musician Ali Farka Toure, who became his mentor. Now in his mid 60s, Bocoum has amassed a catalog of impressive recordings under his own name, carrying forward the tradition established by Toure (who died in 2006) of mixing Malian desert grooves with influences from abroad. On "Sambu Kamba" from Bocoum's new album, "Linde," which was co executive produced by Damon Albarn he plays the guitar in twist ties of melody, wrapping them around the steadier patterns of a second guitarist. Both are tugged along by the gentle swing of the percussionists, as Bocoum and his backing vocalists engage in an unhurried call and response. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
Most weeks, the top of the Billboard album chart is a story of hip hop, more hip hop and maybe a pop star. This week it also features Bob Dylan, the 79 year old songwriter and cultural chameleon who four years ago won the Nobel Prize in Literature. While the chart's No. 1 spot is held this week by the rapper Lil Baby's "My Turn" for a third time in a row and a fourth overall Dylan opens at No. 2 with "Rough and Rowdy Ways," his 39th studio album, which is his 23rd time in the Top 10. "Rough and Rowdy Ways," Dylan's first album of new songs in eight years his last three have been collections of traditional pop standards sold 51,000 copies in the United States, according to Nielsen Music. Factoring in its three million streams, the LP was credited with the equivalent of 53,000 sales, according to the formula that Nielsen and Billboard now use to reconcile the different ways that fans consume music. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
Serena Williams, the U.S. Open, and the Sexist Rules of Fashion and Tennis None Before the explosive women's singles final of the U.S. Open, which saw Serena Williams pitted against an umpire she described as sexist as well as the winner Naomi Osaka, tennis was already in an uproar. The previous brouhaha, of course, was a recent tempest in a tennis racket over the catsuit Serena Williams wore to the French Open, which apparently didn't sufficiently "respect the game" for Bernard Giudicelli, the president of the French Tennis Federation. Cue a social media spike of outrage and eloquence over the "policing of women's bodies," as Billie Jean King tweeted. The situation was expertly deflected by Ms. Williams herself, who knows a thing or two about spin. But I can't help but wonder if we are all missing the forest for the tree. Because pondering the catsuit hoo ha has raised another, broader question. Why, in 2018, when performance garments are practically a science unto themselves, sneakers a designer staple and gender fluid clothes a reality, are female tennis players still going through the motions of wearing a little flap of fabric around the hips in order to suggest a dress? Just consider the Nike looks on Simona Halep (who lost in the first round) and on the returning champion Sloane Stephens. Both "dresses" had draped skirts slit to the waist, which played peekaboo with the patterned compression shorts underneath. When the women are in motion, as they most often are on the court, the slit has the effect of turning the "dress" into something that most resembles what the outside world might call a peplum top. Or a long shirt. Simona Halep at the U.S. Open, her slit skirt playing peekaboo with her patterned compression shorts. Ben Solomon for The New York Times "We had fun with the skirt," Abby Swancutt, the design director of Nike Court, explained in an email. "It's designed to open up at the left hip to give athletes maximum range of motion, and this silhouette also highlights the beautiful pleating construction of the skirt, and shows off the tie dyed ball short. A slightly shorter length really helps for maximum range of motion." Yet, at this point, "slightly shorter" has become so abbreviated that the resulting garments would never qualify as dresses to anyone in the outside world. And it's not just Nike, but also Adidas's color blocked Stella McCartney styles and Fila's star spangled heritage looks, to name a few other U.S. Open fashion debuts. They barely even qualify as tunics. There are exceptions, of course. Ms. Williams's Virgil Abloh for Nike asymmetric tulle tutu, which looks like the sort of thing a "Swan Lake" cygnet might wear if she suddenly developed a yen for breathable fabrics, and Maria Sharapova's LBD with strategic back cutouts, were cut into recognizable cocktail silhouettes. But the general effect is of a notional dress. Which is to say, a garment that once had a purpose cloaking the female athlete in the socially acceptable markings of her gender so her power was somehow less threatening but serves it no longer. Maria Sharapova at the 2017 U.S. Open in an outfit resembling a LBD. This is only underscored by the Adidas satin shorts and tank worn by Garbine Muguruza at the Open. The shorts, which have a bit of a flip at the side, don't look that different from the skirts over shorts worn by her fellow competitors. So why bother with the extra fabric in the first place? It can't enhance performance. After all, female players don't have to wear dresses or skirts. There is nothing in the Grand Slam rule book that forbids simply wearing, say, shorts. It requires only "clean and customarily acceptable tennis attire," as "determined by each respective Grand Slam Tournament." Which is the hitch. What is customarily acceptable tennis attire? Depends on the viewer, presumably. As the Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart once said of pornography, "I know it when I see it." At least it seems that shorts increasingly qualify. Maria Sharapova wore a white shorts tuxedo look at Wimbledon in 2008. Victoria Azarenka has been a fan of shorts off and on since 2012. Demi Schuurs, a dominant Dutch doubles player, wears men's shorts. Ms. Williams herself wore a shorts unitard at the U.S. Open in 2002. Garbine Muguruza's shorts at the US Open bear little resemblance to the traditional tennis skirt. Most women players practice in shorts. And they all wear them under their skirts and dresses when they compete, as opposed to the frilly underpants of yesteryear. The dresses or dress gestures may be a nod to history, and to the women who came before and what they wore (long lawn skirts!). They may be, as Ms. Swancutt of Nike said, a symbol to the athlete of the difference between a Slam and a practice session, and thus a psychological tool. They may enhance the feeling of readiness by dint of style. But they also seem like shadows of older stereotypes. And such goals can also be achieved by other decorative means and materials, as Nike itself has shown with Ms. Williams's catsuit, and as fashion has long known. It's time we served those up. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
Arturo Castro clowns around during his private mixology class at Please Don't Tell, a speakeasy in the East Village of Manhattan. " I love speakeasies," said Arturo Castro. "All around New York, I love finding the most hidden spots." Which is why, one June afternoon, he was at Please Don't Tell, the East Village cocktail lounge tucked behind a hot dog joint on St. Marks Place. Despite the heat and humidity, he wore a dark long sleeve shirt, black jeans and boots, topped off with a green fedora. He was there for a mixology lesson from A K Hada, the head bartender, hoping to glean a few tricks for entertaining at home. In the spring, he had hosted "Game of Thrones" viewing parties at his apartment in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. "I make cocktails, but not as elaborately as they make them here," he said. "And I'm a raging alcoholic," he added, jokingly. Mr. Castro, 33, stepped behind the bar as Ms. Hada prepared the ingredients for a Mezcal Mule, a riff on the classic drink traditionally made with vodka. "The most important thing about cocktails is balance," she said, holding two double sided measuring jiggers. "You want to still taste the spirit but then get all the other flavors." To start things off, she asked Mr. Castro to muddle some cucumber with a masher, which he did violently, cursing the gourd with an expletive as he asserted his dominance over it. Mr. Castro will be familiar to fans of "Broad City," the Comedy Central show in which he played the hysteric gay roommate Jaime (pronounced HI may). In real life, the actor is far mellower than Jaime, though he is every bit as quick witted. He now stars on his own sketch comedy show, "Alternatino" he is also one of its writers and executive producers which takes a humorous look at being a Latino today. It finds laughs in cultural cliches and stereotypes, and even in the fun house mirror horrors of Trump era politics. One sketch, for example, addresses the immigration crisis at the border. Playing a blond immigration agent named Bryce J. Korn, Mr. Castro extols the conditions under which children are being held after being separated from their families. They're not in cages, he explains, but "free range." In the background, detained children wander a field fenced in with electrified barbed wire. "I'm not a very politically motivated person, but that changed when they started caging kids," Mr. Castro said, his cherubic face turning suddenly serious. "Having a platform, it would be irresponsible not to say stuff like that. This is a Latino show, that's my angle. And if the comedy pushes buttons, well, that's the point." Ms. Hada had Mr. Castro measure out a half ounce of agave syrup, explaining that it's best to build a drink starting with the least expensive ingredients first. "That way if you mess up, you don't have to pour out all the mezcal," she said. Next was lime juice, then passion fruit puree and ginger beer. Mr. Castro was born in Guatemala and caught the acting bug when he was 12, after performing in local theater productions. After hosting a TV show there called "Conexion," he moved to New York, where he made professional inroads by acting in commercials and performing in plays. Landing the role of Jaime in "Broad City," which ended its five season run this year, was his big break. "Being an actor, you just wait around for a phone call to change your life," he said. "It's a high low that drives people nuts. That's part of what inspired me to create my own show. Instead of waiting by the phone for someone who's written something that's right for me, I should just write it, and, hopefully, someone will make it." It was time for the star ingredient: mezcal. "So we're balancing the sugar, the acid and the booze," Ms. Hada said. The shaker was filled with ice, the drink poured and given a vigorous up and down shake by Mr. Castro. The gyration made its way from his arms to his shoulders to his hips, and soon he was doing a salsa style dance. Then the singing started. "Dessssss pa cito," he crooned. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
I was hauling my wheelie toward the boarding gate for a New York bound flight when an alert popped up on my iPhone. Its message was terse: "Don't forget, you're going to die." I had, after all, signed on for this sobering reminder, parting with 99 cents for WeCroak, a jaunty little app devised to notify users like me, five times a day at seemingly random intervals, that try as we may to ignore it, there will be no dodging The End. That message is chilling, for sure. But for me, at the outset at least, it was bracing, an invitation more compelling than any raft of resolutions to seize the moment and run with it. WeCroak, Mr. Bergwall said, was born of Bhutanese folklore saying that to be happy, one ought to contemplate death five times a day. For the more than 9,000 users of WeCroak, most in their 20s and 30s, he said, there is no time like the moment to get a grip on life by embracing mortality. Hovering near the top of the App Store's paid health and fitness chart, the app, which I first read about in The Atlantic, is an exhortation to mindfulness. "Meditation urges you to focus on your breath," Mr. Bergwall said. "It's the same thing with remembering that you're mortal. You forget, so you need something strong, someone telling you straight out, being blunt about it." That very bluntness is a provocation. Death until recently was often a conversational taboo, dark fodder for goth sites, maybe, but otherwise invoked discreetly, if at all, in spirit soothing euphemisms. The app, on iOS and Android, could not be simpler. Ad free, it is there strictly to remind you that the end is near, its message accompanied by alternately somber and uplifting homilies: "The grave has no sunny corners" or, more motivating, "Begin again the story of your life." The words come from a variety of sources, including work by Emily Dickinson, Pablo Neruda, Henry David Thoreau, Charles Bukowksi, Pablo Neruda, Lao Tzu and Margaret Atwood. A decade ago, Ms. Ebenstein started a blog about death and bereavement called Morbid Anatomy. Sensing that the subject, long hushed, might put off her readers and her employers at Scholastic magazine, where she worked at the time she was reluctant to sign her posts, using only her initials. "Now people are responding," said Ms. Ebenstein, who is also the founder of the Morbid Anatomy Museum in Brooklyn (now defunct). "They think the discussion is cool, part of a cultural movement to explore the shadow side." This is especially true, she noted, among young people trying to connect with their spiritual selves. An older generation may well be resistant to the outing of death. Boomers especially are attached to the notion that they are their own entrepreneurs, running their bodies like corporations. "Their idea is to give death the slip, " said Tracy Morgan, a psychoanalyst in New York. "Things may be spinning out of control, but it's, 'I'm eating well, I'm exercising, I'm so damned virtuous, I can do things to my face, I can control my fertility. I'll survive.'" "If you're the master of death, you're the ultimate entrepreneur," said Ms. Morgan, who recently downloaded WeCroak herself. "It seems to me that the apocalyptic sensibility of the late 1990s going into the 2000s has continued," said Lucio Benedetto, a historian who teaches philosophy at the Hockaday School, a private school for girls in Dallas. "There is this great fear of things coming to an end, a fear of what some people consider to be the demise of traditional American values," supplanted, he said, by developments like the rise of the alt right and a perceptible thinning of the blue collar class. "In television dramas like 'The Walking Dead,' dystopia seems to be this constant theme," Mr. Benedetto said. "It's like you're not just reading a Philip K. Dick novel but actually living it." When Mr. Benedetto asked his students to download the app, he got little resistance. Some were just curious, while others found it useful to assimilate the concept of finality into their thinking. "Few of these students seemed aware that people are dying around them," he said. "Most of them don't even know we're at war." For users like me, WeCroak alerts have become routine enough to ignore, at worst a gnat like irritant. "I wanted it to scare me more, to jolt me into sort of tripping the light fantastic," Ms. Morgan said. "That's not happening." Her complaint is in line with those of users requesting more somber or harrowing quotations to accompany the central message. Mr. Thomas, who wrote code for the app, finds himself fielding requests for bleaker, grittier messages. "So far, the quotes are rather tame and contemplative," one user complained. "I thought they'd be more hard hitting." Yet confronting even a sweet talking reaper can foster a kind of self mastery. Karen Rosenberg, 50, a corporate recruiter in Miami, finds WeCroak's daily alerts liberating. "I think, 'Oh my gosh, I can wash dishes with a smile. I can talk on the phone,' knowing all the while that this life is not a dress rehearsal," she said. "It helps me enjoy the moment." Simon Arizpe, a 27 year old artist in Brooklyn who makes pop up books, had his first brush with death in a fire that raced through his office. "Being so close to mortality in such a surprising way was a rude awakening," he said, one that was reinforced in a positive way by the app. "It helped me suddenly realize that, oh, nothing is precious. In a way, that's kind of relaxing." When he downloaded the app, Mr. Arizpe got blowback from his friends. "Some of them were kind of disgusted," he recalled. "They asked, 'Why would you want to do that?'" Challenged, he dug in his heels. "With so many stimuli coming at you, it's nice to have something in your pocket that slows you down, lets you look at the big picture," he said. "Besides, what could be more alluring than to break a taboo." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. revealed on Tuesday that for his next act, he would be leading a new initiative at the University of Pennsylvania called the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement. But before digging into his new job, Mr. Biden headed to a fashion party, where he turned out be the star guest. The occasion: the unveiling of a collection of hoodies designed by his daughter, Ashley Biden, the executive director of the Delaware Center for Justice, together with the e tailer Gilt. Proceeds from sales of the organic cotton, made in America hoodies (sold on Gilt.com for 79 to 99) will go to Livelihood, an organization Ms. Biden started along with the line to aid economic development in Wilmington, Del., and Anacostia, a neighborhood in Washington. "Social justice doesn't come from national movements or Washington politics; it comes from people making changes in their communities, in their day to day lives," Mr. Biden said in an email. "It comes from people demanding change and creating change, every single day." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
Historically, vineyard visits rank high on the eye roll list for children. But California's Napa Valley is trying hard these days to attract families, aiming to entertain visitors of all ages with hiking, biking, camps and non snooty farm to table experiences. Even some vineyards are getting into the game, offering lawn games and grape juice tastings. According to Linsey Gallagher, president and chief executive for Visit Napa Valley, the effort seems to be working. In a 2018 study, nearly 20 percent of visitors to Napa Valley had children (18 years or under) in their travel party, compared to around 12 percent in 2016. On a recent trip with my 13 year old daughter, Brette, we certainly had fun there. I kept the itinerary simple: recreation spliced days with foodie interludes to keep energy high and complaints low. Wine would be but a detail in an active mom and daughter getaway. Here's some of our highlights worth sharing: We kicked off the trip at Skyline Wilderness Park, hiking through wildflower and chaparral speckled woodland where clusters of butterflies and hummingbirds made frequent cameos. Then, we zipped over to Clif Family Winery (of Clif Bar fame), which was of no interest to Brette until I mentioned their food truck. Over chive dusted bruschetta and arancini balls, I had three sips (I was driving) of a perky Viognier that elevated the carbs to heavenly heights. If hiking brings your family together, other options include the Bothe Napa Valley State Park, where you can walk through towering redwoods and then cool off in the park's swimming pool, and the Robert Louis Stevenson State Park, where the evergreen forests lead to the summit of Mt. Saint Helena. Calistoga is famous for geothermal hot springs and I was thrilled when the no frills Dr. Wilkinson Hot Springs Resort greenlit Brette to join me for a treatment. We showered in summer camp like stalls, hopped into concrete mud tubs (secret ingredient: nutrient rich volcanic ash) and finished with a 30 minute massage. ( Minimum age for mud treatments, which start at 105, is 13 years old.) One morning, Dave Brazell of Adventures in Cycling crafted a child centric wine tasting itinerary that included a picnic lunch. Instead of driving to tasting rooms, we cycled through scenic backcountry roads, past the Old Faithful geyser (yes, there is also one here), where we paused to dip our fingers in steaming puddles. Sterling Vineyards was fun, especially the aerial tram trip that transports visitors to the hilltop tasting room. Our favorite was wisteria draped Bennett Lane, where I sampled juicy cabernets while Brette learned to identify bouquet. During the cellar tour, just enough technical verbiage was dispensed ("bung hole" was a favorite term) along with cool correlations between winemaking and math. Outside, children can also pick blackberries and play corn hole. Tamber Bay and Raymond Vineyards are among the other child friendly wineries in Napa, as is Castello di Amorosa, which modeled after a medieval castle has a drawbridge, a dungeon cell and secret passageways. Activities you can expect at these sites include playing horseshoes and interacting with farm animals. Another way to experience the spectacular landscape is by horseback. We signed on with Napa Valley Trail Rides for a 30 minute mosey through the rolling vineyards of Shadybrook Estate at Rapp Ranch (where there is also a tasting room). Our guides were hipster cowgirls and Brette got to visit the stables after the ride. If you'd rather bike, the Napa Valley Vine Trail now offers 12 car free miles, from downtown Napa to Yountville. It's important to teach children the origins of food. And, Napa, with its celebration of local purveyors (highlighted on practically every menu) is the perfect setting to do so. Breakfast all day excites every child. Gillwoods Cafe in St. Helena serves up classics like whipped cream topped French toast, strawberry pancakes and hearty omelets. Gott's Roadside, also in St. Helena, is filled with families for a reason, as its burgers, tacos, sandwiches and milk shakes make for an ideal lunch or dinner. In downtown Napa, the artisan food hall Oxbow Public Market is a crowd pleaser for pizza, barbecue, charcuterie and baked goods. Brette proclaimed Farmstead at Long Meadow Ranch, which operates an organic farm, livestock ranches and vineyards, as "the best restaurant ever." The food was glorious, but the storytelling and passion for farming is what resonated. With each dish caramelized beets, garlic confit kissed burrata, burgers our 20 something server explained how soil, climate and coastal air (plus minimal corporate intervention) impacted flavor. Even the wine tasted better with the back story: As Brette tapped into her newfound sensory skills, I swigged my way from bubbly and Sauvignon Blanc to Pinot Noir. Tucked within a canyon under a canopy of ancient pine and oak trees, our cedar shingled room at Calistoga Ranch, felt like a luxe treehouse. Besides the pool, hands on farm experiences make this property a paradise for the pint sized. Children can gather eggs from the chicken coop, pluck vegetables from the garden, collect honey from bee hives and take in a performance from resident goats, Olive and Pepper. They will dance for food. It's paradise for parents too who can partake in wine tastings, winemaker dinners and a variety of hikes on property. (Rooms start at 695.) The Vista Collina, a 145 room hotel about ten minutes from downtown Napa, offers a condensed Napa experience on its grounds, with a swimming pool, nine on site tasting rooms, a culinary center offering Mommy and Me teas and cooking classes, and an upscale market with local products and prepared foods. A16,000 square foot lawn offers rotating activities (barbecues, green markets, live music) and games (corn hole, giant Jenga, ring toss) to occupy the children while parents sample wine. (Select rooms come with kitchens and rates begin at 309 a night.) Another option is The Westin Verasa Napa in downtown Napa, where families can kayak on the nearby Napa River and many restaurants and parks are walking distance. (Suites start at 359 a night.) | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
Annick Chenard, 38, has seen Celine Dion in concert 21 times and also has a large tattoo of Ms. Dion's face and flowing hair on her right shoulder. She recently spent a whole day out on a Montreal street with a fold up chair and a poncho, waiting for a slim chance to meet her queen. Was Ms. Chenard O.K. waiting this long? "What do you mean, wait this long?" Ms. Chenard said, exasperated. "I saw her over 20 times and never met her!" Ms. Chenard was among more than a thousand people camped out for Ms. Dion's appearance for the debut of her handbag and accessories line, the Celine Dion Collection and it worried Ms. Dion. She was concerned they hadn't eaten, that there were children there, that they had been up for so many, many hours all, ostensibly, for a purse! Ms. Dion looked toward the front of the store; fans peered in the windows. "People love me beyond what I do," she said. "They get married with my song. They lose people with my song. They remarry with another one. They sing a lullaby with their kid with my song." "It's not them," said her brother, Michel, part of her management team, looking at his sister. "It's her." Meet and greets are usually reserved for performers early in their career, or for those trying to hold on to one. This is not the way Ms. Dion works. She gives all of herself. She doesn't want to sound pretentious. She doesn't want to sound like Mother Teresa. "But they tell me, 'Don't talk too much,' because I'll make myself sick," she said. This is difficult for her, to hold back. If you've ever seen her perform, if you've seen her speak publicly, or if you watched Ms. Dion furiously wipe tears from her cheeks as she spoke about Hurricane Katrina (that video is now making the rounds again because of the Houston flooding), you know this to be true. Some of this intense connection, she believes, is because she's an open book. Her fans knew about her struggle to get pregnant, and her fertility treatments. They knew when her husband was sick, and they knew when he died, and when her brother died two days later, and then when her brother in law died in August. "Life is also happening to us," Ms. Dion said. "At my show, when the curtains open and I didn't even say anything yet," she said, her face growing more serious, "they stand up. And they all cry." One man showed her photos in his phone. They were of Ms. Dion when she was 12 years old. A woman lifted her sleeve to reveal Ms. Dion's lyrics tattooed on her forearm. Another woman drove five hours with her granddaughter. You were my grandpa's favorite singer, one person said. Ms. Dion doesn't take this lightly, and she never did. She'll go home exhausted. "I want them to love me for the rest of my life," she said. Last year, Ms. Dion's husband, Rene Angelil, died from cancer at 73. He was her manager since she was 12, and they were married for 21 years. Mr. Angelil's funeral was televised across Canada like that of a monarch's. For eight hours, Ms. Dion stood, black veil covering her face, accepting condolences no V.I.P. access, no special tickets. If you were a fan, you got in line. "When she was hurting the most, she decided to also share her grief with her fans," said Elaine Lui, the Canadian gossip queen. "She doesn't need the money, she's so rich. She certainly doesn't need to do that to make people love her." "All she has to do is, like, sing. Or sing talk. And we're happy," Ms. Lui said. At 49, Ms. Dion is a single mother. Her 16 year old, Rene Charles, is driving now. He's very good at checking in. He writes notes to his mother and slips them under her door, like Ms. Dion's late husband did. "I rarely put red on because I have small lips," Ms. Dion said. "But I put red on and I kiss him and he says, 'Now it doesn't come off!'" She smirked, leaned forward and pointed her index finger to the sky. "One day you'll remember my lipstick!" There are also her 6 year old twins, Nelson and Eddy. One of the boys asked her the other day, "Do children die?" and then, "Is Grandma going to die next?" So they worry, too. When Mr. Angelil became ill, Ms. Dion wanted to take a year off. This wasn't something he wanted to hear. "He was freaking out," she said. She told him: "You're going to do your living will. I'm going to do my will too. I'm going to be by your side. I'm going to take a year off." And that was good for a little while. "But at the end he really wanted me to sing and show me how to live again," she said. "It was hard for me to leave him, and go back on stage and shake my" she pointed to her bottom "every day and every night." "This is what he loved the most," she would tell herself, when it hurt. "I'm his favorite singer." Just before the 2016 Billboard Music Awards, where Ms. Dion masterfully dominated a cover of Queen's "The Show Must Go On," she contacted the stylist Law Roach, who works with the 21 year old Disney star Zendaya. Ms. Dion had seen Zendaya's show with the kids. "Everybody's so obsessed with millennials, and we tend to kind of push older women aside," Mr. Roach said. "Celine has been sitting in this classroom with these 20 year olds and these younger girls, and she raised her hand and said, 'Here, listen. I'm here too.'" Their partnership was sealed when, during the 2016 Paris Couture Week, Mr. Roach dressed Ms. Dion in a 885 Vetements sweatshirt that carried a photo of Jack, Rose and the Titanic in all of its sinking glory. The sweatshirt was about much more than just showing off the street wear brand of the moment. It was also a brilliant callback to almost 20 years ago, when "My Heart Will Go On" seemed to stream from every screen and speaker, most notably at the 1998 Academy Awards, when Ms. Dion pounded her chest so hard that she nearly smacked a 171 carat sapphire heart shaped necklace from its chain. "I know for a fact this girl, this fashion girl, this outrageous, no fear girl, was there when I met her," Mr. Roach said. Most of the bags, which will be sold at Nordstrom in the United States, are priced from 149 to 299, though there are some for under 100, like a crossbody bag. A few exclusive collections made in Italy will cost 600 to 1,500. This summer, in Paris, Ms. Dion, while staying at the Royal Monceau hotel during her sold out European tour, made a regular spectacle by exiting through the front entrance as if were a one woman fashion show. One day she wore a Ralph Russo Bianca Jagger inspired white pantsuit, cape and hat. Another day she dressed in leather Givenchy overalls and Kanye West designed pearl studded heels for Giuseppe Zanotti. "I'm about to turn 50, and I've always had a kind of person to help me out," Ms. Dion said. "Things are different now." When she finally departed the hotel after a two month stay, staff lined up to say goodbye. She and her twins were drowned in an explosion of silver confetti as a farewell gesture. "Me, my change is that I was going to be strong for myself. And if I show strength, my kids will be strong," she said. "Because you don't choose always what you want. Life imposes things on you sometimes." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
MIAMI The door of Carlota's room is ajar, so I peek inside to see what she's doing. She's sitting upright at her desk with her laptop in front of her. On the screen are a dozen of her schoolmates, all of them, like Carlota, participating in a virtual class. I can tell that their teacher is leading the lesson from her home I'm pretty sure they're discussing fractions and decimals but Carlota and her friends are following closely along as if she were talking to them in person. Everything seems normal. And yet nothing is. I live in the same house as Carlota, a wonderful, loving and brilliant 9 year old girl, and the daughter of Chiquinquira Delgado, my partner. Carlota brought happiness into my life from the moment I met her, just a few months after her birth, and I couldn't imagine this house without her in it. "Good morning everyone!" she shouts from her bedroom when she wakes up. Her tireless energy she loves to create dance moves and curiosity has made the tedium of quarantine a bit easier to endure. Carlota like the roughly half of the world's population living in coronavirus induced lockdown has been stuck at home for several weeks now, and there are times when her sadness and frustration rise to the surface. Like when she wonders, with tears in her eyes, if we'll still be able to throw her a birthday party in May. Or when she wants to get together with her friends and doesn't quite understand why they can't come over. One of our biggest achievements as parents during the crisis was taking Carlota on a short bike ride with one of her friends. The kids enjoyed it, but saying goodbye without touching was really hard for them. The truth, however, is that Carlota's generation there are an estimated 74 million children under 17 in the United States is much better prepared than ours to face months of isolation. These young people have been unintentionally training for this moment all their lives. From a very young age, they've been communicating with one another using devices that never existed in my time. So when we told them they couldn't leave the house, all they did was enter "virtual mode." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
"Being Called a Cult Is One Thing, Being Blamed for an Epidemic Is Quite Another," by Raphael Rashid (Op Ed, nytimes.com, March 9), which describes the Shincheonji Church of Jesus as being scapegoated in South Korea for political purposes, is misleading. From an early stage, the Korean government has set key principles to combat Covid 19: Be quick, transparent and pre emptive. Unlike other countries where only patients showing symptoms have been tested, we chose to test everyone who has been in close contact with confirmed cases. Rather than waiting for patients to come in, we pursued and tracked down possible patients to prevent spread within the community. During this process, our health authorities found a rapid community transmission taking place among members of the Shincheonji Church. This is a result of exhaustive epidemiological analysis and has nothing to do with prejudice or politics. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
Predictions of doomsday have come and gone repeatedly without coming true. But the latest prophecy, tethered to the Mayan calendar and forecasting that the world will self destruct on Friday, has prompted many rumors of violence, with a particular focus on school shootings or bomb threats. With students and parents already jittery after the shootings in Newtown, Conn., last week, rampant posts on Facebook and Twitter have fed the hysteria, and police departments across the country have been inundated with calls. Overwhelmed with the task of responding to threats and unconfirmed reports, districts in Bend, Ore., Stafford County, Va., Wake County, N.C., and Oak Creek, Wis., have sent out letters to parents trying to tamp down the panic. In three counties in Michigan, Genesee, Lapeer and Sanilac, administrators were spending so much time dealing with reports of planned violence that the superintendents decided to send 80,000 students on their winter holiday break two days early. "We hate canceling school more than anything," said Matt Wandrie, the superintendent of the Lapeer Community Schools, north of Detroit. "We're not doing this because we think there's an imminent threat to our students. We're doing this because we've been doing nothing but policing." Mr. Wandrie said that students and parents were passing on rumors they had picked up online "It was like 'my niece's neighbor's daughter says there's going to be gun violence at school on Friday,' " he said and added that students were overheard in the hallways saying things like "Let's go out with a bang on Friday." "If you've got students who are disenfranchised or unstable or members of a community who really believe this end of the world stuff," he said, "whether I think it's credible or not, as a fairly logical person and human being, I'm not going to take that risk." Similar rumors prompted about 50 parents to call the police department in Oak Creek, the town in Wisconsin where a gunman shot and killed six people at a Sikh temple in August. Chief John Edwards said his department investigated every call but found that they seemed to be repeating a version of the same rumor that had gone viral online. He said that there was "no credible evidence" of a real threat. On Wednesday morning, Chief Edwards visited Oak Creek High School to talk to faculty and students over the public address system, advising them that police officers stationed on campus would practice a "zero tolerance" policy for anyone making a threat. "So if anyone makes comments about violence, you will be arrested," he said. "There will be no warnings." Randy Bridges, the superintendent of the Stafford County Public Schools in Virginia, posted a letter to parents on the district's Web site telling parents that the rumors of violence accompanying the end of the world were "reportedly unfounded and national in scope." "I ask that each of you help stop the rumors spreading throughout our community by refusing to share these rumors with others," Mr. Bridges wrote. He offered links to a source on "How to Talk to Kids about the World Ending in 2012 Rumors" and NASA's Web site, which promises that Friday "won't be the end of the world as we know." Officials said that previous prognostications of the end of the world, including a prediction of what was called the rapture in May 2011, have not generated the same kind of frenzy in schools. "I've been an officer 19 years, and never have I seen the climate in our area the way it is right now," said Sgt. Scott Theede of the Grand Blanc Township Police Department in Michigan. "I believe students and parents and everybody are a little bit more on edge as a direct result of what happened last week." Contributing to the worry in Grand Blanc was an incident on Wednesday, when a 15 year old high school student sent a text message to his mother that he had heard shots at school and was hiding in a closet. After the mother called 911, the police responded and found that the boy was playing what he called "a joke." The police are considering pressing criminal charges against the boy. But Chief Steven Solomon said that what most surprised him after the police had investigated the call on Wednesday was that students seemed more occupied with their cellphones than with their lessons. "Twitter was lit up," he said, "and there were so many texts flowing freely among parents, friends and family members during the school day." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Education |
HOUSTON A Lim Kim ran into trouble after she birdied the final three holes for a three under 67 that catapulted her to victory on Monday in the 75th United States Women's Open. As Kim sat in front of a large screen TV in the Champions Club players' dining area watching the competitors with a chance to catch her finish, she fumbled her phone, which was vibrating with messages from family members and friends back home in South Korea who had stayed up all night to watch her round. The phone fell to the bottom of her golf bag and Kim removed all her clubs to retrieve it while, one after the other, her challengers fell by the wayside. Hinako Shibuno of Japan, the 54 hole leader, couldn't catch Kim. Shibuno had held a one stroke lead after Sunday's final round was postponed by inclement weather, but bogeyed the penultimate hole Monday and finished fourth at one under with a closing 74. Kim's compatriots, Inbee Park and Jin Young Ko, the women's world No. 1, both carded the second lowest score of the day, a 68. Ko's round included birdies on two of the last three holes, to come up one stroke short of Kim at two under 282. The American Amy Olson, who took the solo lead on the back nine in her bid to gain both her first L.P.G.A. victory and major win, tied for second with Ko. Her title hopes were dashed with a bogey on the par 3 16th, the same hole she had aced in the first round. Olson, 28, playing after the sudden death Saturday night of her father in law from a heart attack, closed with a birdie for a one over 72. Olson sang bars from Josh Groban's song "You Raise Me Up" to mask her grief. Kim, 25, meantime, provided a perhaps fitting portrait of a champion of a tournament that was delayed six months because of the coronavirus pandemic. She won wearing a face covering on and off the golf course while establishing herself as the class of a field in which only four players bettered par. Because it took place so late in the year, the U.S. Women's Open had the rare chance to showcase its players in America without sharing the stage with a 72 hole PGA Tour event or other U.S. based events in a schedule that is usually packed during its normal late spring date. The United States Golf Association embraced the hashtag WomenWorthWatching and a few players from the PGA Tour followed suit, much to the bemusement of the current generation of Asian L.P.G.A. stars who have never lacked for attention at home. That Monday's final round was televised live in South Korea in the middle of the night says a lot about the popularity of women's golf in a country where the best female golfers are more popular than the men who play on the PGA Tour. "Yeah, in Korea we get definitely a lot of attention and maybe we don't need that phrase," said Park, 32, a former world No. 1 whose final round 68 vaulted her into a three way tie for sixth at two over 286. Park, who has 20 L.P.G.A. titles, including seven majors, said she gets recognized walking the streets in South Korea or paying the operator at a tollbooth while driving. In Thailand, Moriya Jutanugarn, 26, and her younger sister, Ariya, also command attention, since Ariya was the subject last year of a biopic that also included Moriya. On Monday, Moriya closed with a 74 to finish tied for sixth, one stroke ahead of Ariya, a former world No. 1. In Japan, Shibuno saw her life change rapidly after she won last year's Women's British Open in her first professional tournament outside her homeland. "I turned from a normal person to a celebrity overnight," Shibuno said through an interpreter. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
Fun in the trees was once reserved for the likes of Tarzan, but aerial rope courses now offer the thrill for everyone. These treetop attractions, originally developed in Europe in the late 1990s, involve trails of increasing difficulty and height, some as high as 50 feet. Challenges can include zip lines, swinging logs and even large fisherman's nets that have to be conquered while crossing from one tree to another. According to the Professional Ropes Course Association, an industry organization, there are now more than 100 aerial parks in the United States. The company Outdoor Ventures has opened Adventure Parks in Wheatley Heights, N.Y., on Long Island; Virginia Beach, Va.; Sandwich, Mass.; and West Bloomfield Township, Mich. High Gravity Adventures is a course in Blowing Rock, N.C., and Wild Blue Ropes is in Charleston, S.C. Ski resorts like Heavenly in South Lake Tahoe, Calif., and Jiminy Peak in Hancock, Mass., also have aerial courses. "In comparison to Europe, where there are now thousands of them, this is a new market," said Paul Cummings, owner of Strategic Adventures, an adventure industry consulting firm. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
No matter how much free time you have this weekend, we have TV recommendations for you. Come back every Friday for new suggestions on what to watch. This Weekend I Have ... a Half Hour, and I Like Action Sunday's episode of "Barry" is an outlier and potentially divisive but I love it. Barry (Bill Hader) has been sent to kill another unsuspecting dude, but Barry is off his game this season, and again things don't go according to plan: Brutal, bone breaking fight sequences ensue that tilt back and forth between heightened cartoonishness and grim human agony. It's some of the best fight choreography I've ever seen on TV, not because it's so sophisticated, per se, but because it's so character driven. "Barry" is a dark, dark show, but it's never more curious about violence than it is curious about the consequences of violence. This episode has brutal moments and legitimate shocks, and much in the way the acting class is an externalization of Barry's own social performance, these fights are a physicalization of Barry's turmoil, his self loathing, his ostensible desire to change and his deep fear that he can't. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
PITTSBURGH Last year, The Pittsburgh Post Gazette chose Martin Luther King's Birthday as the publication date for an editorial headlined "Reason as Racism." On Monday, a little more than a year after that piece drew national criticism, The Post Gazette named its editorial page director, Keith C. Burris, as its newsroom leader. Mr. Burris was appointed executive editor at a stormy time at the Pittsburgh daily. Relations between its workers' union, the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh, and the paper's owner, Block Communications, have been tense. Things came to a head on the night of Feb. 9, when John R. Block, the publisher, subjected staff members to a tirade in the newsroom. According to several journalists who were present, Mr. Block threatened employees' jobs as his young daughter, whom he had brought with him, sobbed and begged him to stop. Block Communications has disputed the journalists' version of events. Mr. Burris, who wrote the "Reason as Racism" editorial, according to Mr. Block, was in charge of the editorial pages at The Post Gazette and its sibling paper, The Toledo Blade in Ohio, at the time of his appointment. He will continue to serve as editorial page editor of both publications even as he assumes the new role. In an email to employees on Monday, Mr. Burris asked for the support of the staff. "I ask you to recognize my pledge and I beseech you to work with me WORK WITH ME to uphold the hallowed legacy of The Post Gazette and to march forward into a future worthy of its past," he wrote. "It will not be easy. These are perilous times for journalism, in so many ways, and we owe the Block family a tremendous debt for sustaining us and believing in our mission." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
"This is just a rough draft," the choreographer Twyla Tharp said on a sunny afternoon in her apartment on Central Park West. "We must be nervous if we're a writer." But truthfully, she didn't seem that anxious as she read material for an upcoming talk in Chicago called "Minimalism and Me." No, she was in full on performance mode. "I began my career with a right angle," she said with a flourish. In 1965, Ms. Tharp unveiled her first work, "Tank Dive": With straight legs, she bent her body forward with a flat back, in reference to the Egyptian goddess Nut. To her, Nut was simply a horizontal and a vertical figure, without spiritual connotations. "This might not seem much of a toehold," she continued from her notes about "Tank Dive," "but to me it was indeed a universe." This fall, Ms. Tharp, 76, will provide three opportunities for viewers to explore her complex choreographic universe, which has its roots in modern dance but soon grew to include ballet, as well as movies and Broadway. Even if you've never watched one of her dances live, you've likely felt her influence. Ms. Tharp's season begins at the Joyce Theater (Sept. 19 Oct. 8). In November comes a premiere at the Royal Ballet in London; and the next month Ms. Tharp travels to the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago for "Minimalism and Me," the lecture performance, focusing on her dances created from 1965 to 1970. It's a lot. There is, however, a common thread: Ms. Tharp is diving into her past to fuel her present. "This is her life," Linda Shelton, the Joyce's executive director, said about all the activity. "I think it's in her DNA, and she doesn't seem to be slowing down. She's in the studio all the time. Maybe this is a new chapter. She certainly still has that drive and ambition." At the Joyce, along with a new work, "Dylan Love Songs" it is set to music by Bob Dylan, but that's all it shares with her short lived 2006 Broadway show, "The Times They Are A Changin' " Ms. Tharp will also mount two classics. One, "The Fugue," her 1970 masterpiece performed by three dancers on an amplified stage, takes inspiration from Bach's "The Musical Offering." "The Fugue" is based on a 20 count theme that is developed into 20 variations a marvel of reversals, inversions and repetitions. The other, "The Raggedy Dances," is less known. This playful dance from 1972 evokes silent movie comedy don't blink or you'll miss 'em moments include a robbery scene and a charley horse episode, in which a dancer's leg cramps up. At an August rehearsal in the Catskills, where Ms. Tharp's group was in residence, she called the piece "an enterprise in naturalness." Featuring music by Scott Joplin, William Bolcom and Mozart, "The Raggedy Dances" was revived with the help of Sara Rudner and Rose Marie Wright, two of its original cast members. "Part of the adventure is do you have a classic here or don't you?" Ms. Tharp said. "If you don't, then you try to update it; if you do, you leave it be and you live with it. So that's the test for an old piece like this. We went as close to the original as we possibly could." At the Royal Ballet, she's fusing the old and the new. "The Illustrated Farewell" expands her acclaimed "As Time Goes By" by adding a prequel. The original work, set to the third and fourth movements of Haydn's "Farewell Symphony," was created for the Joffrey Ballet in 1973. At the time, she didn't feel ready to tackle the complete score. "I knew I couldn't do the first two," movements she said. "No way did I know enough to carry that entire symphony." For the extended version at the Royal Ballet, Ms. Tharp will complete the first two movements, which feature only two dancers, Sarah Lamb and Steven McRae. "I built the entire first two movements, which is 14 some plus odd minutes on them." There are moments in which one or the other leaves the stage, but those, she said, would be brief. (As an act of stamina, it's as intense as it is heroic.) "As Time Goes By" will then be performed intact, but with one addition: Ms. Lamb and Mr. McRae will return midway through the finale. Ms. Tharp said she considered "As Time Goes By" her first grown up ballet. "It was made for ballet dancers with no thought about what modern dance was," she said. "It was certainly about expanding the classical vocabulary starting with the classical vocabulary, not with a contemporary movement vocabulary. It was not in the vernacular. I happened to speak both vocabularies." In Chicago, Ms. Tharp will return to modern dance, fleshing out her early days. After graduating from Barnard College in 1963, she moved to a loft on Franklin Street; in downtown Manhattan, she found herself surrounded by artists including Frank Stella, Ellsworth Kelly and Agnes Martin. Rehearsal spaces were found by poring over lists of condemned buildings. In one, it was necessary to step over the missing floorboards of a staircase leading to an abandoned gymnasium, she says, and blood from a knife fight on the running track above had dripped into the dancers' area. But having the freedom to create made all the difference for Ms. Tharp; during this time, she started to figure out what it meant to be an artist. "Minimalism and Me" will spotlight seven early works created before "The Fugue." Yolanda Cesta Cursach, the museum's curator of performance, was particularly interested in the period of Ms. Tharp's career when she worked in nontraditional spaces like museums and parks. "She was not necessarily interested in engaging completely," Ms. Cursach said. "She created a body of work that was so distinctive in that period. I've always wanted to have a platform where it could be experienced and understood in its own terms." Of those early works, Ms. Tharp said: "They were never intended as dances. They were intended as experiences for us to learn about what movement is, how it can hold a space, how it occupies time, how you engage people all of these things that I thought were components of what a good dance was." They set her up to create "The Fugue," which she referred to as Opus 1. "Up until that time, all of this was adventure, but never considered a dance for posterity," she said. " 'The Fugue' is." The museum presentation includes "Tank Dive," "Re Moves," "Disperse," "Generation" and "Medley"; she'll illustrate the works with photographs, films and performance, as well as with her meticulous drawings and notations that recorded steps and directions for each dance and dancer. Works of art unto themselves, the drawings began to be a part of her process when she choreographed "Generation," a 1968 piece for five dancers performing simultaneous solos. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
Credit...Jennifer S. Altman for The New York Times They were a cheerful, if slightly dazed, group last Thursday evening at Voz, a store on Elizabeth Street that sells ethical fashion made by indigenous people one man and seven women gathered around a garment rack and cinched to its uprights with lengths of wool. They wore back strap looms, which look sort of like belts, and they were being led in a postelection "weaving therapy" workshop by Cynthia Alberto, a master weaver and textile designer. Weaving, she explained, has long been used as occupational therapy. Its rhythms are meditative and soothing, and the tradition of a weaving circle foments community and creativity. "It opens up a safe space to talk about our anxiety and what happened," she said. And there was wine. Jeannette Figg, 29, and Rachel Tishler, 30, both corporate lawyers, had left work early to attend. "It seemed like a fitting thing to do tonight," Ms. Figg said. "The expectation yesterday at work was that we were just supposed to keep going, and it was hard because I was so traumatized." There was free acupuncture on Nov. 9 at Olo Acupuncture, a community clinic on West 23rd Street. Yuka Hagiwara, Olo's co founder and clinical director, saw a steady stream of patients whom she treated mostly with a protocol, she said, that had been developed for soldiers with post traumatic stress disorders. "We ended up seeing about 20 people," she said. "And we varied the treatment depending on what they were presenting with. Some were numb, some were panicky, some were just totally despondent and sobbing. It ran the gamut. We did this a few months ago after the bombing; it was a really lovely way to build community." (Olo is on the same block in Chelsea where a bomb exploded in September, injuring 31 people.) Before the election, Manpreet Katari, a clinical associate biology professor at N.Y.U., had organized a yoga and smoothie event for his students at Shaktibarre, a yoga studio in Brooklyn. But after hearing their postelection fears about President elect Donald J. Trump, who had threatened or insulted immigrants, Muslims, Mexicans, African Americans, women and the disabled, Professor Katari recast the Sunday afternoon class as a bolstering interlude. One student had a cousin who was worried about being deported; others in the L.G.B.T. community felt betrayed by parents who said they supported them and also voted for Mr. Trump. Many worried about how to talk to family members and friends at home over Thanksgiving. "People feel beaten up," he said, "especially women and minorities. My daughter, who is in middle school, was very upset. I've been advocating the yoga class as an event to regain composure and gather strength. We need to continue this kind of group support." It wasn't trauma that sent Joy Wyatt, 58, into Rutgers Presbyterian Church on West 73rd Street on the evening of Nov. 9, it was shock, she said. "And I was feeling angry because I couldn't believe so many people would endorse principles that were so completely contrary to what I thought we had some sort of agreement on, an agreement about how we treat each other," she said. Describing herself as an irregular church attendee, Ms. Wyatt said that nonetheless she "needed a quiet place to sit and think: 'What am I going to do to wake up tomorrow and not feel this way? What action can I take?'" The church had opened its doors for prayer and contemplation in the aftermath of the election, said the Rev. Andrew Stehlik, the church pastor, in response to his parishioners, many of whom he said were phoning him in tears. "We are sponsoring a Syrian family, and they were really frightened," he said. "We wanted to offer a safe space to be together, partly to grieve but also to recommit to our values and look forward." That afternoon, the Auburn Seminary, a multifaith leadership organization, held an event in Washington Square Park called "Songs for the Soul." The organizers had expected 60 people, but 300 or so showed up to sing "Bridge Over Troubled Water," "We Shall Overcome" and other restorative hymns. Isaac Luria, 33, who is a faith activist, said, "We'd planned it a week before the election, because we knew people were going to be experiencing a lot of intense emotion because of the nature of the race." He was stunned, however, by the event's attendance, noting that his group was joined by the N.Y.U. community. "This is hitting people in different ways depending on what race you are and what identity you hold," he added. "As a Jewish person, I'm feeling particularly scared of the anti Semitic supporters of Trump, but we have to stand up for the people they're going to come for first, like the immigrant population. How do you create a healing space that allows us to move on but also to fight for our friends?" On a lighter note, Facebook was flooded with puppy videos as an antidote to all the rancor. The Huffington Post posted clips of Bob Ross's "The Joy of Painting," the anesthetizing how to paint program, as a soothing balm. On "Wait Wait ... Don't Tell Me!," NPR's weekly news quiz program, the writers substituted a quiz on rainbows and kittens for the show's "Not My Job" segment. "We thought everybody could use a little adorable distraction," said Peter Sagal, the host. Distraction was on the mind of Andi Pettis, the director of horticulture at the High Line, who took to Twitter the day after the election to offer the park as a healing space. So did the directors of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden in an email to its members. Over the weekend, Gathering Ground, a group connected with Prospect Park, led two hour nature walks there as a "postelection nature connection for sanity and self care." "If you need respite or solace or fortification, please come and walk or sit here," Ms. Pettis tweeted last week. She said later: "It's what I needed to do. To just be in nature, out on the western rail yards, a place in New York City that I love so much. It's so important for people to have access to these healing resources, and I wanted to remind people that the High Line is there for them. We got some really warm feedback on social media." People did the best they could, with the resources they had. The Koneko Cat Cafe on the Lower East Side offered guided meditation ... with cats. The Radicle Herb Shop, a source for affordable herbal medicine and education in Brooklyn, said David Alper, an owner, handed out free Palo Santo sticks, which are like smudge sticks but made from trees that grow in the Andes. "It was something people could take home and metaphorically and literally light a fire and cleanse a path towards healing from the ground up," he said, adding that 50 people had already done so. Lidewij Edelkoort, a trend forecaster who is also the dean of hybrid design studies at Parsons, opened her West Village townhouse for tea and conversation on Nov. 9. "We had appointments that day, and our clients were really shaken on all levels," she said. "So we felt it was appropriate to send out a message of love and compassion and to say, 'Come be with us.'" She offered tea and a roaring fire, and she said many took her up on the offer. "It was very cozy," she said. "We had nice tea. And my fantastic butcher ran out of roast chickens before 5 p.m." That same afternoon, Mr. Chavez, who goes by the name Levee and has been performing as the Subway Therapist for the last six months, setting out two chairs and a card table and letting people unload, tried something different. "I thought I'd make it more loose," he said. "I figured people had a lot of things to get off their chest." So Mr. Chavez bought Post its, pens and some tape, and parked himself in a subway tunnel between Seventh Avenue and Avenue of the Americas, inviting passers by to share their thoughts. Within hours, the wall had become an enormous message board clocking the emotions of New Yorkers expressed in thousands of candy colored squares. He sent a friend out to buy more Post its. Another friend brought more. By the end of the night, there were 2,000 notes on the wall. A young woman in tears said to Mr. Chavez, "Thank you for doing this." In the crowd that night was Cody Tarantini, 21, a student at Wagner College on Staten Island who works as a waitress. She wore a cardboard sign around her neck that read, "If you need a hug, just ask." Underneath was a strip of black tape that said, "Love Trumps Hate." At school that day, she had been wearing it over her mouth. "It made one of my professors cry," she said, adding: "I've hugged 17 people on the Staten Island Ferry and at school. I've gotten a lot more smiles. I think people are afraid to touch strangers." Mr. Chavez surveyed the crush in the tunnel. "I have a passion for people," he said. "But this has turned into something more than I expected." Mr. Chavez was still at it Monday evening. And there have been copycat Post it operations in other parts of the subway, as well as in Seattle, San Francisco and Boston. Reporters from local and international television news programs have gone to the tunnel. That night, over 12,000 Post its stretched from one end of the tunnel to the other, presenting a formidable task for Mr. Chavez. He has been carefully removing each note each night when he goes home in order, he said, to not impose upon the M.T.A. crews who might have to clean up after him, but also to refresh the message and keep it alive with new thoughts. "Each day expresses a more hopeful and inclusive message," he said the next morning, still groggy from a late night in the subway. "It's been a stressful couple of days. But I think things are going to be O.K." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
"Virus Worsens Suffering of Gulf's Migrant Labor" (news article, April 14) doesn't convey the unequivocal differences in Qatar's response to coronavirus compared with that of some of its neighbors. Qatar's priority is the health and safety of all citizens and residents. We have focused on four critical areas: free testing and medical treatment for all; financial support to businesses through an 824 million fund so that salaries continue to be paid on time; safe living and working conditions for all; and public awareness campaigns on prevention and control measures. Protecting workers, especially those living in the quarantine area, is central to the response. In sectors that continue to operate, employers are required to introduce safe distancing, limit the number of workers at sites and on buses, and conduct regular health briefings. In a recent week, nearly 1,500 unannounced work site inspections took place to ensure that measures were being observed. Companies found in violation were charged. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
The questionnaire arrives in the mail a few days after a patient's discharge from the hospital. Did doctors treat you respectfully? Was your bathroom kept clean? Most of the queries seem mundane, but a backlash has been growing against one: Did staff members do everything they could for your pain? Like countless other businesses, hospitals use customer surveys to improve their reputations, target areas for improvement and provide measures for determining employees' promotions and raises. But as the country struggles to control the epidemic of overdoses and deaths from prescription opioids, many medical professionals and policy makers are challenging the wisdom of asking patients to rate how hospital employees manage pain. Doing so, they argue, creates a dangerous incentive for doctors to prescribe powerful and potentially addictive painkillers. Dr. Jerome M. Adams, the Indiana health commissioner, said that in conversations around the state, doctors frequently told him, "I'm scared to not give out those opioids because my patient satisfaction scores will come back poorly." Under the Affordable Care Act, patient ratings grew even more important: In 2013, scores on an inpatient survey required by the federal government became tied to hospitals' Medicare reimbursement. But after waves of angry petitions and proposed bills to cut the pain questions, the Obama administration said last month that it would remove them, at least temporarily, from the reimbursement formula. The debate is unlikely to end, however. The pain questions will remain on the survey. Alternative approaches are being field tested, and the new set may be included in future reimbursement formulas, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services said. The spokesman, Kevin Griffis, said that no evidence had been found linking survey scores to injudicious prescribing. But, he said, the government is revising its wording to ensure that it does not "exert any unintended, negative influence over prescribing practices." Doctors and other providers say part of the problem is that because pain is highly individualized and difficult to measure objectively, a survey question is a poor instrument for judging medical competence. Moreover, many experts add, patients have unrealistic expectations: They equate good treatment with the complete eradication of pain and assume they will be handed a prescription for fast relief. In a culture increasingly influenced by consumer ratings, many doctors say such questions pressure them to substitute what a patient wants for their judgment about what the patient needs. "Part of my paycheck comes from satisfaction scores," said Dr. Thomas E. Benzoni, an emergency medicine physician at three hospitals in Des Moines. "So if doctors are being measured on whether the patient wants pain relief," he added, that is what they may be inclined to provide. But when Dr. Benzoni refuses patients' requests for narcotics, patients tend not to complain about it bluntly on a survey. Instead, he said, "they will pick something I said, take it out of context and write in the comments section, 'The doctor was arrogant and didn't explain things.'" "So I pay for not giving narcotics with a smaller paycheck," he added. The few studies on the topic show no relation between patient satisfaction scores and the prescription of pain medication. "Overprescribing of opioids is egregious and it is a national problem, but it is not caused by patients' being asked some questions about their experience with medical care," said Dr. Paul Cleary, the dean of Yale's School of Public Health, who helped develop the template for such surveys in the 1990s. The patient survey required by the federal government is among a constellation of questionnaires that the health care industry uses to rank everything from doctors to departments. It is sent to patients who have stayed overnight in a hospital, and is the only survey that can endanger Medicare reimbursement. The government is considering requiring a separate survey for emergency room patients, but it would not tie the scores to hospitals' reimbursement. Many emergency departments already send out their own surveys and use the results to promote their business. Doctors say the surveys exert great psychological pressure on emergency room staff members, who regularly see patients experiencing acute pain (such as from fractures, kidney stones or burns) and flare ups of chronic pain, as well as the occasional drug seeker. "I've been swung at, spit on; I've been yelled at, all because I haven't given a patient what they came in demanding," said Dr. S. Michael Keller, medical director of the emergency department at Marion General Hospital in Indiana. He said he was keenly aware that in making decisions to limit or deny opioids, he risked a patient's wrath on satisfaction scores. And that is exactly what happened to Dr. Keller and his colleagues at Marion General. Two years ago, the small rural hospital issued tough opioid prescription guidelines, and over the next 18 months, its emergency room doctors cut opioid prescriptions nearly in half. The hospital believes that patients retaliated through the survey. Pain satisfaction scores dropped the Marion emergency room from the 58th percentile to the 14th among 1,100 emergency rooms nationwide that send out the same survey. In overall satisfaction, the department fell to the 30th percentile from the 61st. "Our patient satisfaction scores tanked because we did the right thing," said Ann Vermilion, an administrative director at Marion General. The hospital has found itself in the awkward position of having to explain its scores to potential employees and to organizations that have given the hospital excellent ratings across many measures of care, Ms. Vermilion said. Sustaining morale among emergency department staff, she added, has been a challenge. Press Ganey, the largest administrator of these surveys, said that its research did not support interpretations such as those from Marion General. Dr. Thomas Lee, the company's chief medical officer, said Press Ganey had found no relationship between pain management questions and overall hospital satisfaction scores. Moreover, he said, patients with drug seeking behavior typically do not complete surveys. The concept of gauging patient satisfaction goes back to the 1980s, part of a seismic shift toward patients' becoming more involved in health care decision making, and away from the doctor is always right paternalism. Patients turned into "health care consumers," and physicians were rebranded as "providers." Almost concurrently, pain was becoming an area of scrutiny, increasingly recognized as being vastly undertreated. Patient advocates, medical professionals and the pharmaceutical industry sought to redress the situation. And as patients began rating health care, the inclusion of survey questions about pain treatment seemed important. By 2007, the federal government required hospitals that took Medicare funds to administer the survey. And by 2013, patient satisfaction scores (along with other measures, such as whether a patient got an infection from a catheter or was readmitted to a hospital soon after being discharged) mattered more than ever: They became linked to actual Medicare reimbursement. That jolted hospitals; Medicare payments are often their single biggest source of income. Hospitals are required to get satisfaction responses only from several hundred patients who have stayed in the hospital, but with the industry's sharp turn toward pleasing the patient, many hospitals gather far more. The Cleveland Clinic, which has an Office of Patient Experience, said it surveyed about 60 percent of patients in its Ohio hospitals. Hospitals, jockeying for business in a world of shrinking reimbursements, have focused intently on the scores, and doctors say they feel it. Dr. Samuel Samuel, a pain management doctor in Ohio, said his quarterly review included his scores and a comparison with others in his department. "I call it the humiliation report, not the evaluation report," he said. Many experts, including physicians and patient advocates, agree that patients' views should carry weight. But if surveys are to address pain management, other questions might be more useful in reinforcing good medical practice, they say. Dr. Adams, Indiana's health commissioner and an anesthesiologist, said questions about pain should ask whether staff members discussed the risks linked to painkillers such as opioids. Such exchanges, he said, could help temper a patient's assumption that pain can be eliminated. His suggestion: "Did staff set reasonable expectations for what your pain should be?" | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
LOS ANGELES Confronting a fierce protest over a second straight year of all white Oscar acting nominations, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences said on Friday that it would make radical changes to its voting requirements, recruiting process and governing structure, with an aim toward increasing the diversity of its membership. The changes were approved at an unusual special meeting of the group's 51 member governing board Thursday night. The session ended with a unanimous vote to endorse the new processes, but action on possible changes to Oscar balloting was deferred for later consideration. The board said its goal was to double the number of female and minority members by 2020. "The academy is going to lead and not wait for the industry to catch up," the academy's president, Cheryl Boone Isaacs, said in a statement. Ms. Isaacs referred to an often repeated complaint that the academy, in its lack of diversity, reflects the demographics of a film industry that for years has been primarily white and male. The most striking of the changes is a requirement that the voting status of both new and current members be reviewed every 10 years. Voting status may be revoked for those who have not been active in the film business in a decade. But members who have had three 10 year terms will have lifetime voting rights, as will those who have won or been nominated for an Academy Award. The academy's membership is made up of roughly 6,200 movie professionals around the world, and it was not immediately clear how many would be purged from the voting rolls by the new rule. The changes, and possible balloting adjustments, will not affect this year's awards, which will be presented on Feb. 28. In the short term, the new rules and processes may tamp down some of the criticism that resulted when no film focusing primarily on minority characters was among this year's eight best picture nominees, and all 20 acting nominees were white. Ava DuVernay, who was not nominated last year for her direction of the best picture nominee "Selma," declined to comment on the changes, but tweeted the academy's letter, and added, "One good step in a long, complicated journey for people of color women artists." But the moves by the academy, which aims to replace older members with a younger, more diverse group, are certain to be met with some criticism, and perhaps resistance. Academy voting rights rank among Hollywood's more coveted marks of status, not least because of the screening invitations and flattering attention that come with them. "I'm squarely in what I would call the mentorship phase of my life," said Sam Weisman, a member of the academy's directors' branch since 1998. While working steadily in television, he has not had a feature directing credit since "Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star" in 2003. "I judge the Nicholl fellowships and the Student Academy Awards, but am I not qualified to vote?" asked Mr. Weisman, referring to academy mentorship programs in which he has been involved. The academy will also expand its governing board by adding three new seats. Those are to be filled by the group's president with an eye toward increasing the number of women and minorities on the board. Currently, about a third of the board members are women and Ms. Isaacs is its only African American. In a parallel move, the academy will add new members from diverse backgrounds to its various committees. 15 minimum wage for federal contractors will take effect Jan. 30. Jeff Bezos gives 100 million to the Obama Foundation. Stephanie Allain, a producer of "Beyond the Lights" (2014) and "Hustle Flow" (2005) and a member of the academy, said she was elated, especially with the addition of three members to Board of Governors who, she assumed, would be women or people of color. Many in the industry say that especially in the studio world, opportunities have been slower to come to female filmmakers, an imbalance that the academy's proposed expansion is unlikely to fix. "The academy is the endgame," Ms. Allain said. "But the beginning of the game is the industry responding to the curated talent that comes through programs like Film Independent, the folks that go through the Sundance Film Festival and the LA Film Festival. They just need jobs. That's how we're really going to solve the problem not by more programs or committees, but by jobs." Without providing details, the academy's statement also said it would "supplement the traditional process" by which members are recruited an invitation process meant to focus on achievement with "an ambitious, global campaign to identify and recruit qualified new members who represent greater diversity." One person briefed on the changes, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of confidentiality strictures, said the supplemental recruiting would be a year round process, and would be heavily influenced by staff and officers rather than traditional membership committees. While Will Smith, who was overlooked as a nominee for his role in "Concussion," has said he will not attend this year's ceremony, Charlotte Rampling, who was nominated for best actress for "45 Years," condemned much of the protest on Friday as being "racist against whites." "One can never really know, but perhaps the black actors did not deserve to make the final list," Ms. Rampling said in an interview with the French radio network Europe 1 that was done before the academy made its announcement. Still far from certain is whether the voting changes, and further possible tweaks to the Oscar ballot for instance a return to the 10 film field of best picture nominees used in 2010 and 2011 will restore the more diverse set of nominations that prevailed in the decade leading to the choice of "12 Years a Slave" as best picture in 2014. In those 10 years, 24 of the 200 acting nominees were black, approximately matching the proportion of blacks in the North American movie audience and population, according to statistics compiled by the Motion Picture Association of America. Black actors who won Oscars during that period included Octavia Spencer for "The Help," Mo'Nique for "Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire," Jennifer Hudson for "Dreamgirls" and Jamie Foxx for "Ray." When Mr. Foxx won, in 2005, he was also nominated for best supporting actor for his role in "Collateral." In 2014, Lupita Nyong'o was named best supporting actress for her role in "12 Years a Slave," John Ridley won an Oscar for writing its adapted screenplay, and Steve McQueen, who is also black, was nominated as the film's director, but lost to Alfonso Cuaron, who is Mexican. Last year's best director, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, is also Mexican. Last year, however, along with Ms. DuVernay being left out, David Oyelowo was not nominated for his critically acclaimed role as Martin Luther King Jr. in "Selma." This year's shutout of minority actors caused particular outrage among those who had believed Mr. Smith might be nominated, or perhaps Michael B. Jordan for his role in "Creed" or Idris Elba as a supporting actor for "Beasts of No Nation." The director of "Creed," Ryan Coogler, who is black, was also overlooked. "Straight Outta Compton" faced a tougher climb in the acting categories, because its young cast was an ensemble, with no obvious leads. But the film has been nominated for a Screen Actors Guild ensemble award, and for a best film award from the Producers Guild of America. "I think it's completely ridiculous to bring in ethnicity to the evaluation of creative performances and filmmaking and acting," said Kieth Merrilll, 75, who won an Oscar in 1974 for his documentary "The Great American Cowboy" and was nominated in 1998 for best documentary short. He also noted that he had an adopted black daughter and four black grandchildren. "We're supposed to be evaluating talent in categories, and one of the categories is 'What is their ethnicity?' To make it one of the categories is ridiculous." The speed and breadth of the board's Thursday night action surprised even some academy insiders, who at midweek were predicting no action until a regularly scheduled board meeting on Tuesday, and who were strongly playing down any steps to trim the voting rights of older members. How the academy deals with the intricacies of "activity" in the film business may raise complex questions, said Mr. Weisman, the director. If, like Mr. Weisman, a director has had development deals that did not result in a film, will he be ruled inactive? Will writers who have generated scripts that were not bought, or made, likewise lose privileges? Might a cagey executive put a dormant publicist on low cost retainer during Oscar season, protecting and perhaps influencing that member's vote? In its statement on Friday, the academy said those members who are moved to emeritus status because they have not met the new activity criteria would not pay dues, but would continue to enjoy the privileges of membership other than voting. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
WASHINGTON Federal Reserve officials are expected to cut interest rates for a second time on Wednesday, a move that could prove divisive among Fed officials and aggravate President Trump's anger toward the central bank. The Fed's rate decision, which will be announced at 2 p.m. in Washington, will be accompanied by a fresh set of quarterly economic projections and followed by a news conference at 2:30 p.m. with the chair Jerome H. Powell. That means markets will have plenty of information to digest as they try to game out what comes next for the Fed, which lowered its policy interest rate by a quarter point for the first time in more than a decade in July as officials tried to protect the economy against uncertainty created by Mr. Trump's trade war and a global economic slowdown. The Fed will release an updated version of its postmeeting statement Wednesday, and economists are looking for any changes to the language that could provide clues about whether officials are becoming more or less concerned with the economic outlook. Perhaps more crucially, the Fed's 17 participants will publish new economic projections at this meeting, giving an updated snapshot of where the group believes growth is headed and whether officials believe the Fed might need to provide additional support. "The most important question" coming out of this meeting, according to Goldman Sachs economists, "is how many participants will project additional rate cuts." The last set of Fed funds rate projections commonly referred to as the "dot plot" because it depicts rate expectations as blue dots on a graph paper background showed that as of June, not one policymaker expected more than two rate cuts by the end of 2019. Perhaps the biggest wild card at this meeting is Mr. Powell's news conference. The Fed chair roiled markets after the July meeting because investors interpreted his statement that the Fed's rate cut was a "mid cycle adjustment" as a sign that the central bank did not plan to aggressively cut borrowing costs. Mr. Powell has little to gain by making definitive promises: Trade policies are one of the major risks on the horizon, and they have the potential to change quickly. The Fed could face very different conditions by its Oct. 29 30 meeting, which comes after United States and Chinese officials are scheduled to meet. "We think Powell will steer clear from the phrase mid cycle adjustment that caused waves in July, favoring instead an open minded recalibration of rates," economists at Evercore ISI wrote in a research note previewing the meeting. Whatever Mr. Powell says seems likely to draw a reaction from the White House. While Mr. Trump has no ability to directly influence Fed policy the central bank is insulated from politics and answers to Congress, not the White House he has made a habit of weighing in on its decisions. Mr. Trump has ramped up his attacks on Twitter in recent months, figuratively calling Mr. Powell a bad golfer, labeling him an enemy and saying that he and his colleagues are "boneheads." He has even suggested that the Fed should adopt negative rates, a policy intact in the eurozone and Japan, which have very low inflation and more fragile economies. You might also hear the phrase "standing repo facility" bandied about around 2 p.m. A little background: There has been some turmoil in the money markets this week as a corporate tax due date and Treasury bond issuance combined to fuel a cash shortage. That creates problems for the Fed it makes it harder for it to keep its policy rate under control, and risks tightening financial conditions in ways that slow down borrowing and spending. As a result, some economists believe the Fed will discuss ways to keep those markets chugging along smoothly while also steadying the Fed funds rate at their meeting. Analysts think options might include a technical tweak to the Fed's rate setting tool, a resumption of bond buying that will keep the Fed's balance sheet growing alongside the economy to guard against future cash crunches in money markets, and a standing repo facility. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Economy |
TOKYO The biggest Internet takeover to date in China has already sharpened a rivalry among the country's digital powerhouses, but the deal could also bring more order to China's messy world of mobile apps. Baidu, the leading search engine in China, signed a deal last week to buy an operator of mobile application stores called 91 Wireless for 1.9 billion from an online video game company, NetDragon. The move should help Baidu regain ground against two other Chinese Internet giants, Alibaba and Tencent, which were quicker to add mobile capabilities. The deal may also advance the fight against digital piracy of mobile apps, which remains widespread in China. In the rest of the world, most mobile applications are distributed through official outlets like Google Play or Apple's App Store. But in China, dozens of so called alternative app stores are the dominant distributors. Many of the applications available for download through the alternative stores are unauthorized knockoffs. Baidu will get two of the alternative stores, HiMarket and 91 Assistant, as part of its deal with 91 Wireless. And analysts say Baidu could be motivated to crack down on unauthorized copies, which would alter the landscape of China's app market. "It's fair to say that it has not been a priority among Chinese app stores to police the content," said Carl Johan Skoeld, director of Stenvall Skoeld Company, a consulting firm in Shanghai that works with app developers. Two years ago, Baidu reached a landmark agreement with major record companies to distribute licensed online music after it had been labeled a conduit for piracy by the Office of the United States Trade Representative. In addition, Baidu's stock is listed on the Nasdaq, potentially exposing the company to litigation from software developers whose applications had been copied and offered through 91 Wireless, legal experts said. "It's unlikely that app stores would be protected by safe harbor," a provision of Chinese law that gives Internet companies legal protection, in certain cases, if they act to take down pirated material, said You Yunting, an intellectual property lawyer at DeBund Law Offices in Shanghai. "If I were Baidu, I would put aside 10 to 30 percent of the purchase price as a copyright infringement fund and pay it out a year or two later, conditional on 91 stopping piracy," he said. Analysts say 91 Wireless has already been more active in fighting piracy than some other app stores in China, taking down infringing applications when notified. But developers complain that they should not be responsible for patrolling the stores for violations; given the number of stores and the frequency of updates, the task is practically impossible. Alternatives like Qihoo 360, Wandoujia, 91 Assistant and HiMarket have filled the gap. Many of the Android apps on these sites are legitimate; because there is no Chinese Google Play, the developers instead license their apps to the alternative markets. But it is another matter for alternative apps compatible with Apple's iOS operating system. Apple integrates its hardware and software, so iPhones are configured to download applications only from the company's official app store. Open or closed on Thanksgiving? Here are stores' plans for Thursday and Friday. Apple did not introduce a Chinese language version of the online shop until 2010, and did not permit credit card transactions in the local currency until a year later. As a result, many Chinese iPhone owners decided to "jailbreak" their phones hacking them to accept applications from outside sources. Most of the apps are unauthorized copies. Alternative stores also cater to Chinese smartphone users' preference for free apps. While paid for apps are common in the United States and other Western countries, Chinese smartphone users are reluctant to pay upfront. Instead, the app developers make money from advertising and by selling premium features, like special powers in a video game. A percentage of the revenue is shared with the app store. The fragmentation of the Chinese app market makes links among app stores, online services, smartphone makers and network operators more important. Baidu, for example, has a partnership with Apple, under which Apple features the search engine in Chinese versions of its mobile operating system. Baidu, in turn, provides Apple with a share of search advertising revenue. Tencent has a hugely popular messaging service, WeChat. Alibaba recently bought a stake in the Chinese version of Twitter, Sina Weibo. Because of the importance of the relationship with Apple, Baidu might decide it makes more sense to shut down 91's alternative iOS market, which accounts for a small part of the company's business. Apple declined to comment. The company has not been immune from copyright complaints in China. Last year a court in Beijing fined the company 520,000 renminbi, or 84,360, finding that applications for sale in the Apple App Store contained information that had been copied from encyclopedias without authorization. Apple has appealed, saying it was not responsible for the content of the apps, which were created by outside developers. There are signs that Chinese smartphone users are becoming more aware of copyright issues. A few years ago, more than half of iPhones in China were jailbroken, analysts say, but now the proportion has fallen to as little as a third. While jailbreaking is not illegal, Apple discourages it, warning users that doing so could subject their phones to malicious software and other unwanted downloads. For Baidu and other operators of alternative app stores, a clear public stance against piracy could make sense from a marketing standpoint, analysts say. "The market remains chaotic," said Bryan Wang, an analyst at Forrester Research. "There are few trusted, neutral parties giving independent information to the consumer. That creates an opportunity for someone to grow their market share by differentiating themselves with a clean and legal offering." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Global Business |
Seventeen notable New York City hotels have committed to getting greener. Marquee properties like the Waldorf Astoria New York, Grand Hyatt New York, Loews Regency New York and the Peninsula New York recently joined the NYC Carbon Challenge, a program Michael R. Bloomberg started as mayor in 2007 with the city's universities to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. Hospitals, commercial office buildings and multifamily residences were eventually added, and in late December, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that the initiative would expand to include hotels. This initial group of properties accounting for more than 11,000 guest rooms has pledged to cut greenhouse gas emissions from their buildings by 30 percent or more in the next 10 years, a move that could reduce emissions by more than 32,000 metric tons and save 25 million of energy operating costs. Buildings account for around 75 percent of greenhouse emissions in New York City, and getting the hospitality industry on board will significantly help to cut down on the city's overall emissions, said Nilda Mesa, the director of the Mayor's Office of Sustainability. "Hotels are definitely a cause of emissions, and their involvement can have a big impact in achieving the goals of the NYC Carbon Challenge and the mayor's overall sustainability goals," she said. That broader vision, set forth by Mr. de Blasio in September 2014, is to reduce citywide greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent by 2050. The Office of Sustainability worked with the Hotel Association of New York City, a trade group that represents 275 hotels in the city, to get the first group of properties to make a commitment. Though 17 is a small number relative to the hotel association's members, its chairman, Vijay Dandapani, says that his group will continue to encourage more hotels to join the program. "For the hotels who need it, we can connect them with environmental consultants and give them our best practices handout on going green," he said. "We hope that our help and the visibility of the hotels that have agreed so far gives others the push they need to sign up for the Challenge." In the interim, many of the properties that have committed to the project are already on their way to meeting its goals, and the changes they are making, for the most part, involve minor construction and are unlikely to affect their guests. The Grand Hyatt New York, a 1,306 room hotel next to Grand Central Terminal, for example, is spending 160,000 to install exhaust controls in its four kitchens by the end of January that expend minimal energy when stoves and ovens aren't in use; the current exhausts, in contrast, operate constantly. Also, the hotel is spending 150,000 on 16,000 LED bulbs for its guest rooms and public areas, a project that is expected to be completed by the end of March. But the biggest undertaking is the 2.3 million expenditure on a new building management system that controls air conditioning and heat. "It will operate on demand based ventilation that doesn't burn excess energy," said Ron McGill, the hotel's director of engineering. All told, he said, the three changes will reduce Grand Hyatt's carbon emissions by 2,400 metric tons annually. Similar to the Grand Hyatt, other NYC Carbon Challenge hotels may have to financially invest in energy conserving upgrades, but their leadership realizes that they will save money in the long run. The Peninsula New York is spending around 250,000 to install LED lighting in the entire hotel, including the 235 guest rooms, by the end of 2017 and another 1.1 million in 2018 on eight new elevators that run with less energy. The money for both projects is worth it, said its general manager, Jonathan Crook. "It's a hefty sum up front, but it will save us money in the long run," he said. The 1,415 room Waldorf Astoria New York, however, won't substantially reduce its carbon emissions so soon after joining the program until it has undergone a restoration, scheduled to begin in 18 to 24 months. "We'll replace our windows to make them more energy efficient and try to make any aspect of the property more sustainable where it's possible," said Michael Hoffmann, the managing director. But while a major overhaul is still down the line, he said that the hotel has cut down its emissions by 20 percent since 2005 through a series of changes, such as switching to biodegradable packaging materials. Like the Waldorf, tackling the issue of greenhouse gas emissions was already a priority for several of the properties before becoming a part of the NYC Carbon Challenge, but now they're intensifying their efforts. The Westin New York at Times Square, for example, completed a three year renovation late last year that prioritized energy conservation the 873 guest rooms were retrofitted with low flow showerheads, and energy efficient boilers and coolers replaced older units. Since joining the Challenge, however, the entire building will be retrofitted with close to 9,000 LED bulbs, and all guest room bathrooms will have sensors that switch off lights after 30 minutes of inactivity. "We were already reducing our carbon footprint, but the Challenge is a reason to do more," said Sean Verney, the general manager. And 1 Hotel Central Park, part of 1 Hotels, the sustainability driven brand created by the Starwood Capital Group chairman and chief executive Barry Sternlicht, is using the goals of the Carbon Challenge as leverage to accomplish its own. Although LED lights, an energy conserving air conditioning system, recycled materials and a fleet of electric house cars from Tesla are hallmarks at the hotel, the company's director of impact, Michael Laas, said that powering the boiler with natural gas instead of diesel fuel will reduce the hotel's emissions a significant 27 percent. "We have been working with the city to get that change to happen and hope that being a part of the Carbon Challenge gets us there faster," he said. But while these moves from 1 Hotel Central Park and other NYC Carbon Challenge properties will most certainly be a factor in helping to meet the project's goals, they are not necessarily visible to hotel guests, who usually have the option of participating in their property's eco conscious efforts with actions such as reusing their bath towels. No matter, said Adam Weissenberg, the head of the travel, hospitality and leisure sector at Deloitte Touche, because travelers, especially millennials, want the hotels they stay at to be helping the environment even if that help isn't tangible. "These changes may not be in their faces, but the guests who care will educate themselves about how their hotels are trying to be greener," he said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
In a common pattern of the last few years, the American economy, after a dismal start to 2015, regained its footing in the spring and looked set to continue a modest advance for the rest of the year. But the lackluster data last quarter and a slight downward revision of the estimated growth rate over the last three years underscored the challenges that still lie ahead for an economy that doesn't seem to be able to move ahead at more than a slow jog. The rebound in April, May and June was largely expected, but the 2.3 percent annualized rate, adjusted for inflation, that the Commerce Department reported on Thursday in its initial estimate was a bit below what economists on Wall Street predicted before the release. Investors were not impressed, and major stock market averages moved little. "I think it's an O.K. performance," said Nariman Behravesh, chief economist at IHS, a research firm based in Lexington, Mass. "Underlying growth is stable but not spectacular. The economy is plodding along." While hardly exceptional by the standards of the late 1990s or even compared with the 5 percent burst of growth in the summer of 2014, the pace of expansion is largely in line with the trajectory of the recovery, which began almost exactly six years ago. In annual revisions that were also part of the Commerce Department report on Thursday, government statisticians lowered their assessment of the economy's performance over the last several years. The initial estimate of 2.3 percent growth for 2011 through 2014 was lowered to 2 percent, a level that reflects the slow healing of the job market and helps explain why wages and prices have gained so little ground. The pace was below that of most past recoveries. The rate of expansion in the first quarter of 2015 was revised up to 0.6 percent, reversing earlier estimates that showed a minor contraction. "The environment has been even more challenging than we thought before," Mr. Behravesh said. "The primary reason is that the U.S. economy had to go through a period of deleveraging, with debt reduction primarily by households and banks." As for the last quarter, much of the improvement in the economy came from a better trade balance, especially in terms of exports. Mr. Behravesh said he expected growth in the second half of the year to rise to just under 3 percent as the drag from lower energy industry spending diminishes. In a separate report on Thursday, the Labor Department reported that initial unemployment claims last week at the state level increased by 12,000, to 267,000. Despite that slight rise, new jobless claims remain close to a 32 year low, and the more reliable four week moving average suggests that the labor market continues to improve despite the less than impressive overall growth rate. If output continues to expand and hiring advances at a healthy pace, the Federal Reserve is likely to begin its long awaited move to raise interest rates from historic lows by year end, perhaps as early as mid September. In a note to investors, Oxford said it saw "sweet upward revisions to residential activity and solid Q2 consumer spending momentum, but a sour taste from reduced household outlays on services and lower equipment spending." Net exports added 0.13 percentage point to overall growth last quarter, a big turnabout after being a significant drag in late 2014 and early 2015. Hammered by a one two punch from a stronger dollar and then a labor slowdown at West Coast ports, net exports reduced growth by one percentage point in the fourth quarter of 2014 and nearly two full percentage points in the first quarter of 2015. That was the worst two quarter trade performance since 1998, according to a report by Morgan Stanley, but as the ports began functioning normally again this spring and the dollar has stabilized, the drag from trade has faded, at least for now. In addition to the impact on the headline growth numbers, the trade balance will also be watched by experts who want to gauge the degree by which economic distress overseas is affecting American exporters and importers. In contrast with the turmoil overseas, the American economy has been an island of relative stability recently. Consumer spending in the second quarter rose 2.9 percent, compared with a 1.8 percent gain in the first quarter. Investment in residential real estate rose 6.6 percent, compared with 10.1 percent over January, February and March. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Economy |
In "Black Panther," the audience first gets to know King T'Challa's mother, Ramonda, played by Angela Bassett, when her hair is covered in a series of headdresses, the height and stateliness of which are befitting to a queen mother. After the film's climax, in a moment of both existential and emotional vulnerability, the queen's hair emerges. It is downy, white and in dreadlocks. Taupe and brown hair accent the ends. "That was intentional," said Camille Friend, the head of the "Black Panther" hair department. "In her day to day, Ramonda was regal." And Ryan Coogler, the film's director, she said, "really wanted to show a transition. He wanted her to be more regular looking to show that they were going through a hard time." Much of "Black Panther" occurs in the fictional, incomprehensibly wealthy and technologically advanced African nation of Wakanda. That world is animated by visual references to African cultures, combined to sumptuous effect. The hair, in particular, punctuates character and plot. T'Challa, played by Chadwick Boseman, wears an understated mini Afro that stands in contrast to the semi shaved head of M'Baku, one of his fiercest rivals, played by Winston Duke. Princess Shuri, T'Challa's young sister and the genius tech master of Wakanda, has microbraids, but in some scenes she has them up in two buns, a girlish look. "The girl is on the brink of womanhood," Ms. Friend said. "She's supersmart, but with her brother she acts kind of bratty. That personality translates to her hair. Her clothes were really high end and stylish, but her hair keeps that innocence." Inspiration came from books, like the collection of black hairstyles shot by the Nigerian photographer J. D. 'Okhai Ojeikere and the images of tribal cultures compiled in "Before They Pass Away," by the photographer Jimmy Nelson. The film used a crew of 25 hairstylists and a rotating team of braiders from Atlanta, where much of the movie was filmed. "We'd start our days at 5 a.m. and work on our first wave of actors," Ms. Friend said. "People come in, get breakfast and talk 'trailer talk,' which is just like salon talk. We're discussing what's happening in People magazine." Actors weighed in on their characters' hair, especially in defining moments. Okoye, played by Danai Gurira, is the head of the Dora Milaje, the elite all female Wakandan special forces that protect King T'Challa. The Dora are bald, with their heads sometimes painted in geometric designs. When Okoye goes incognito on a mission, she must, to her disgust, cover her head with a straight haired bob wig. "Danai had a lot to say about this," Ms. Friend said. "We were trying to figure out if we were going to do something more Afrocentric for her. And she goes, 'No, it should be something that Okoye would not wear.' That's when we started looking for straight hair. When Danai said that of her character, I totally got it." The moment lasts only a few seconds in the film, but it is striking and lasting in its message. Straight hair isn't bad, of course, but the notion that it is somehow preferable to kinks or curls or a bald head is. Okoye's wig moment rejects that idea, nonchalantly. "We did a totally Afrocentric, natural hair movie," Ms. Friend said. "There was not a pressing comb or relaxer on set. That wasn't happening. We're in a moment when people are feeling empowered about being black. And that's one thing you see when you watch 'Black Panther.' The hair helps communicate that." On Wakanda knots "People are calling the Lupita character's signature hairstyle Bantu knots, but they're not. The difference is the Bantu knot is raised. We're basically starting with a flat knot. Meaning, we're taking the hair by sections and twisting it upon itself, twisting it down to what I call a flatter, cinnamon roll shape. We let the hair dry, then lift it slightly at the roots, so it's off the scalp, but keeps that round shape." The hands down best moisturizing products "Leonor Greyl is one of my favorite lines. My favorite is to mix the Leonor Greyl Serum de Soie Sublimateur styling serum and their L'Huile Secret de Beaute. Sometimes when you put just an oil on the hair, it sits on top. With this combination, the cream helps deliver the oil into the hair. I use it on everybody." How to be free from razor bumps and ingrown hairs "We had a three step process for shaving the Doras' heads. First, we just got the hair down with the Wahl Balding Clipper. Then we'd apply a powder stick, the Remington FaceSaver, that lifts the hair up off the scalp. We cut the hair down further with Andis T Outliner T Blade Trimmers, going in a circular motion with the hair growth pattern. The third and final cut was with a Wahl Professional Finale Shaver to get the head bald. To finish, we'd apply a steam towel, ingrown hair treatment solution and, finally, a natural oil like almond or jojoba." On great braids "I think the reason Shuri's braids looked as great as they did was first the size, but also the color. I chose shades of dark brown, medium brown, golden red and honey blond that looked great with her skin tone. I'm a longtime braid wearer, and it's important to pick tones that complement the skin." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
The Fed Delivered 80.2 Billion in Profits to the Treasury in 2017 WASHINGTON The Federal Reserve's economic stimulus campaign continued to generate large profits in 2017, helping to reduce the federal deficit, but the windfall is showing signs of tapering. The Fed, which remits its profits to the Treasury Department, disclosed on Wednesday that its payments last year totaled 80.2 billion about 12 percent less than the 91.5 billion in 2016. The decline in profits reflects the Fed's efforts, as the economy gains strength, to conclude the economic stimulus campaign it waged in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. The Fed has gradually increased its benchmark interest rate amid an improving economic picture and those higher rates increase what the Fed must pay on deposits that banks keep stashed at the Fed. The Fed also began last year to gradually reduce the portfolio of Treasuries and mortgage bonds it acquired after the 2008 crisis, reducing the amount of revenue the Fed gets from interest payments on those securities. Those holdings are the source of most of the Fed's revenues. The Fed's contribution to the government's coffers still remains well above pre crisis levels. The Fed made an average annual contribution to the Treasury Department of 23 billion during the five years preceding the crisis. Since 2010, the average contribution has been 86 billion. The Fed's bond holdings comprise federal debt and securities issued by the government owned mortgage finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. By diving into the marketplace, the Fed created more competition, forcing investors to accept lower interest rates and thus reducing the borrowing costs paid by businesses and consumers, as well as the federal government. 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 interest that the Fed collects on its investments is paid by the federal government, and then returned to the government. But this wash cycle still saves money because those interest payments would otherwise be made to the outside investors who would have purchased the bonds. "It's interest that the Treasury didn't have to pay to the Chinese," Ben S. Bernanke, then the Fed's chairman, told Congress back in 2011, when the annual windfalls were still new and surprising. Since the 2008 crisis, the Fed's earnings have saved the government more than 700 billion. The Fed earns outsized profits on its investment holdings because it does not face financing costs. It buys bonds with money that it creates. But the Fed does have expenses, and they are rising. The largest expense is a byproduct of the bond purchases. The Fed's buying spree flooded the banking system with reserves the Fed bought bonds from the banks, and paid them with reserves. Before the crisis, the Fed raised rates by selling bonds to reduce the availability of reserves, which banks are required to hold in proportion to their holdings of customer deposits. But banks now hold plenty of excess reserves. Rather than reversing its bond purchases completely to drain those reserves, the Fed instead decided to raise rates by paying banks to leave reserves untouched. Last year the Fed spent 25.9 billion on those interest payments, more than double the amount that it spent in 2016 and the cost will continue to rise as the Fed continues to raise interest rates. Some members of Congress have said the Fed is rewarding banks unnecessarily, and questions about the payments have become a staple feature of Congressional hearings with Fed leaders. Janet L. Yellen, the Fed's outgoing chairwoman, has defended the payments as the best way to end the Fed's stimulus campaign and the best way to manage interest rates going forward. Some experts also note that the payments are offset by costs that banks face to hold the reserves. The numbers published Wednesday are preliminary. The final numbers are due later this year. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Economy |
Jacqueline Green, who joined the Ailey company in 2011, has had a standout season in works like Donald Byrd's "Greenwood" and Alvin Ailey's "Memoria." Jacqueline Green was a shy 13 year old when her mother, considering possible schools in Baltimore, observed two qualities that her daughter possessed. "You're the artsy child," Ms. Green recalled her saying. "You're flexible." Soon after, Ms. Green found herself at a dance audition for Baltimore School for the Arts. It was not only her first audition, it was also her first ballet class. "I had on Payless tights and shoes, and I don't know where we found a leotard," Ms. Green said. "I had my hair slicked back in this bun and I thought: 'People actually do this? Holding your arms out is tiring.'" But then there was the flexibility test. As she put it, "I was like, oh, I've got this I watch TV in this position." During the company's annual City Center season, Ms. Green has intensified that pull with a new level of confidence, blossoming in new and classic works. Playing a witness figure, she was a standout in Donald Byrd's "Greenwood," a premiere about the Tulsa massacre of 1921. "I loved her in 'Greenwood,'" said Judith Jamison, Ailey's artistic director emerita. "That she held that stage that long?" "She was like a bulwark," Ms. Jamison added. "She was like the ship." It has also been revealing to see Ms. Green in older works like "Memoria," which Ailey choreographed after the death of a friend. Moving from a place of sorrow to one of joy, Ms. Green was almost a spirit ethereal and stately as she floated inside Keith Jarrett's shimmering score. "She really seems to be in command of her instrument in a way that she hit another level," Robert Battle, the company's artistic director, said. "It's like when someone plays a wind instrument and takes it to a place where there's just enough air to be in hearing range without shouting each note." Ms. Green, who turns 30 the day after Christmas, was part of a group of nine dancers who Mr. Battle hired when he became artistic director in 2011. At the time she was a member of the second company, Ailey II. "Everything around that audition was intense," she said. "I felt excited, but New York can be a big distraction and be a bit overwhelming, and there was everyone saying, 'Oh, you could get the job, you're going to do this, I can so see you there.' I'm an introvert in an extrovert world, and I just need quiet." So she decamped for a few days to Chicago, where her best friend, Preston Miller now her fiance lived. "I was like, 'O.K. It's calmer there, I'll be around family,'" she said. "So I just went, took class, relaxed. I ate. I did what I needed to do." When she returned to New York, she was ready for the audition and, of course, got in. But Mr. Battle said he knew he wanted her for the main company even before she auditioned. She had impressed him in an Ailey II performance of "Shards," another work by Mr. Byrd. "To me, she represents what survives our ancestors," he said. "She has that goddess, queenly quality just in her cheekbones. There's something about her that feels like something from the past like the strength and the survival of so many strong black women that came before." Ms. Green was introduced to the company while still at Baltimore School for the Arts; Linda Denise Fisher Harrell, then an Ailey dancer and a ravishing one at that had also trained there and took a class with the students. "I still remember exactly what she did," Ms. Green said. It was an exercise at the barre in which the extended leg folded until the foot reached the knee. Ms. Green was blown away by Ms. Fisher Harrell's beauty, and remembers thinking: "Oh, my God, this is what they're trying to get us to do. And she looks like me. She was a black woman and she was from Baltimore and she sounded like me, and I was like, wait she gets paid to travel and dance and who does she work for?" With Ms. Fisher Harrell's encouragement, Ms. Green made her way to the company, first through the Ailey/Fordham B.F.A. program and then at Ailey II. Ms. Jamison said Ms. Green is "one of my absolutely favorite favorite dancers, and sometimes I don't know if she even knows how gorgeous she is." Her earliest impression of Ms. Green? "All legs and arms and with a future," Ms. Jamison said. "It wasn't all coordinated yet, but it was still stunning and memorable when you saw her come onstage. All the parts have to come together, and it takes time." When Ms. Green joined the main company, the new dancers had two weeks to learn material for a 12 week tour. "I remember going to the locker room and sitting down at the end of the day and thinking, 'What did I get myself into?' I'm really overwhelmed. I'm really sad because I feel overwhelmed. You have those moments where you feel like, am I even a good dancer? Why did they hire me?" It got better. She learned how to rehearse and how the company works. "The scheduling and the rules and the contracts it's really like you need a course," she said. "There was a period of time when there was a whole bunch of police targeting black people and we still had to come in and perform," she said. "One day, it was like the fifth person in two weeks and everybody was crying. People had on sunglasses trying to cover it up. I knew I still had to do my job, but my heart wasn't connected to it because I was torn as a person. I saw people that looked like me. It was like it had happened to me." And it felt close to home. Sandra Bland, arrested on a traffic violation in Texas and later found hanging in her cell, was a childhood friend of Ms. Green's fiance. Mr. Roberts's "Ode" is more than just a dance. "It's beyond steps," Ms. Green said, "which all dance should be. I feel like I might be crying by the end. We have to let out years of our frustrations. That's what this dance calls for." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
Even With a New President, Sports at the White House Won't Be the Same Awe and tension filled the air on that sunny afternoon in the Rose Garden four years ago this week. I could feel it, and so could everyone else on hand: The sense of celebration mixed with a gnawing worry for the future. There stood LeBron James, regal in his double breasted suit but forcing a smile, surrounded by the rest of his team, the N.B.A. champion Cleveland Cavaliers. In front of them, President Barack Obama held court, bestowing kudos and lightening the mood by cracking wise. "Give it up to the world champion Cleveland Cavaliers," Obama said, nodding to the fact that the Cavaliers' win over the Golden State Warriors that spring was the first major sports championship for the city of Cleveland since 1964. "That's right, I said 'world champion' and 'Cleveland' in the same sentence. That's what we're talking about when we talk about hope and change." It was Nov. 10, 2016. I'll never forget it. Two days earlier, Donald J. Trump had defeated Hillary Clinton to win the presidency. I'd been following the Cavaliers closely then, city to city, game to game, working on a story about Cleveland's then head coach, Tyronn Lue. That's how I found myself in the Rose Garden, on hand to witness a scene woven into the fabric of American sporting life: the honoring of a championship team by the nation's chief executive. Everything about that day felt surreal. In the morning, Obama had welcomed Trump to the White House for a short briefing. To watch Obama put aside the seriousness of that moment and then commune with James and the Cavaliers was to watch a president bathe in a sort of healing balm. That was not a surprise. Obama's bond with athletes, particularly with Black athletes like the ones who made up the bulk of the Cavaliers' roster, was a hallmark of his presidency. None Week 11 Predictions: Here are our picks against the spread. N.F.L. Tightens Covid Protocols: As cases rise and Thanksgiving approaches, the league is requiring masks inside team facilities and increasing testing. The Packers' Defense Is Their M.V.P.: Green Bay's oft overlooked defense has kept the team from falling out of the Super Bowl chase. The Long Path to the Super Bowl: With 18 weeks in the regular season and fewer teams earning byes in the playoffs, the Super Bowl is still a long way off. Playoff Simulator: Explore every team's path to the postseason, updated live. But it was more than that. The connection between presidents and athletes had long been cozy, defined by a sort of low stakes ease. Nothing captured that relationship like Rose Garden ceremonies, which came to regularly honor teams from a wide variety of sports. True, they were publicity stunts. But they also held meaning. For decades, such ceremonies had provided a chance for people of all political persuasions to set aside differences and bond over the succor of success and the history and power of the presidency. But by 2016 the ease of such visits had become complicated, even for Obama. More, Trump was on the horizon. He had already started picking fights with athletes, leaning into the backlash against Colin Kaepernick, then the San Francisco 49ers quarterback who had just started his protests against police brutality and the mistreatment of Black people by kneeling during the national anthem. As I watched Obama and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. say goodbye to the Cavaliers, I remember being struck by the sense that the easy communion between athletes and the presidency was about to change in a way that might prove unalterable. That communion has a deep history. Sports teams first visited the White House in 1865, when President Andrew Johnson welcomed baseball's Washington Nationals and Brooklyn Atlantics. Still, it wasn't until Ronald Reagan took office in 1981 that hosting sports champions at the Rose Garden became routine. Reagan reveled in the joy of such moments. He hammed it up with the national champion Georgetown men's basketball team, threw a pass to a wide receiver for Washington's Super Bowl winning football team and received a popcorn drenching from the New York Giants' Harry Carson. But as time passed and new presidents continued the tradition, the nation's growing political divide crept in. The golfer Tom Lehman turned down an invitation from Bill Clinton, whom Lehman called a "draft dodging baby killer." In 2012, Baltimore Ravens offensive lineman Matt Birk, an opponent of abortion rights, refused to accompany his Super Bowl winning team to visit Obama. That same year, Boston Bruins goalie Tim Thomas, an avid backer of the conservative Tea Party, declined to accompany his Stanley Cup winning teammates for their Rose Garden visit. But whole teams turning down the White House? Sure enough, angered by his policies and rhetoric, emboldened by the evolution in athlete activism, not a single N.B.A. championship winner visited Trump these last four years. In 2017, after the Warriors won the title and the league and the White House were discussing a visit, Stephen Curry said he would not attend prompting the president to bark back over Twitter: "Going to the White House is considered a great honor for a championship team. Stephen Curry is hesitating. Invitation is withdrawn." Soon, James shot back with a tweet in Curry's defense. He called the president a "bum," and added: "Going to the White House was a great honor until you showed up!" Some teams did visit. But others skipped it, were not invited or had invitations rescinded when it became clear few players would attend. Since 2016, none of the W.N.B.A. champions have gone to the White House. Same for North Carolina's men's N.C.A.A. championship basketball team, South Carolina's title winning women's basketball team and the 2018 Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles. I could go on. Trump was left with narrowing opportunities to play host. He feted the Alabama and Clemson football teams, and a few champions from mostly white, conservative leaning sports like baseball and hockey. For a while, he could count on the New England Patriots, whose owner, Robert K. Kraft, and coach, Bill Belichick, are Trump supporters. After winning the Super Bowl at the end of the 2016 season, however, nearly half of the players steered clear of the White House. And when New England was victorious again two years later, the team didn't visit at all. So much for the days of easy communion. It has been four hard years since that day of awe and tension in the White House. Will James, now having led the Los Angeles Lakers to the 2020 title, return with his new team to visit President Biden? Bank on it. Expect the W.N.B.A.'s Seattle Storm, who conquered their league title this year and endorsed Biden, to do the same, along with teams that didn't back a candidate but focused instead on boosting voter registration and turnout. But with large swaths of the country arguing, without evidence, that last week's election was stolen, will conservative champions or players begin turning down visits to the Biden White House? That's not hard to imagine. It is impossible to say what will happen in future presidencies, with future generations of athletes. But for now, sadly, we can assume that the Rose Garden celebration of champions, once a chance to cast aside differences and revel together in greatness, will limp forward, scarred and fractured, same as America. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
Can we add Michael Sheen and David Tennant to the list of defining double acts of our time? That's one response to the giddy pleasures of "Staged," a delicious comedy series made for the BBC that owes its existence to the theatrical desolation of the coronavirus pandemic. Had this theater season gone as normal, the director Simon Evans would have been engaged at the Chichester Festival Theater south of London, reviving Tom Stoppard's play "The Real Thing." Instead, Evans has written and directed a six episode TV sitcom, with Sheen and Tennant as the often fractious co stars of a revival of the Pirandello play "Six Characters in Search of an Author" that's been postponed. The result gives new meaning to making a virtue of necessity. Available on BBC iPlayer for the next 11 months, "Staged" represents a quick witted response to our bereft theatrical scene. It's a win for all involved. Throw in cameos from Samuel L. Jackson and a hilariously bossy Judi Dench and you have a comic essay in contrasts: Tennant, the lank haired Scotsman, plays opposite the shaggy Welshman that is Sheen in lockdown. They are joined by their real life partners, Georgia Tennant and Anna Lundberg, in a sequence of short episodes that play with reality in a way that Pirandello himself might recognize. ("It's like something out of the damn play," Sheen remarks.) And though the impetus of "Staged" is the one upmanship of its male leads, the impact of Covid 19 is felt, too, in shots of a weirdly still London and a subplot about an elderly neighbor of Sheen's who falls ill. (Visual tributes to Britain's National Health Service are in evidence as well.) At such moments, unstoppable comic energy gives way to contemplation as we recognize our strange times even as the artists lift our spirits. If "Staged" represents rambunctious entertainment of an unusually high order, "Talking Heads" lets us savor the transfixing power of the solo voice. Also available on BBC iPlayer, this remake of a series of vaunted television monologues by Alan Bennett, along with two new ones, owes its existence as well to the absence of live theater. In a virus free world, the director Nicholas Hytner, a two time Tony winner, would have been shepherding "The Southbury Child," a play by Stephen Beresford that was due to open at Hytner's Bridge Theater in southeast London in April. Instead, the BBC approached him in March about overseeing a fresh take on these revelatory solo works from Bennett, the 86 year old English playwright and a close friend and colleague. And though filmed for TV as before, "Talking Heads" suggests a further life in the theater. Not only is the work's scale ideal for social distancing (there's a lot less to worry about with a cast of one), but many of the previous "Talking Heads" titles later came to London and New York stages in various groupings. Bennett's writings must look like an even more attractive option nowadays in an industry encouraged by the pandemic to think small. (Their West End iteration won two Olivier Awards, London's equivalent of the Tonys, in 1992.) The first time, Bennett's contained studies in self deception and desolation attracted major names, among them Patricia Routledge, Eileen Atkins and, in one of her finest performances, Maggie Smith. So it comes as no surprise to find in the current lineup a female heavy roster, including the stage and screen veterans Lesley Manville and Kristin Scott Thomas and younger faces like Jodie Comer from "Killing Eve." Scott Thomas is in peak form in "The Hand of God," in which she plays Celia, a gently snobbish antique dealer who, to her lasting discredit, fails to clock the importance of a sketch that slips into the possession of a very lucky buyer. Her sparkling eyes dimming as the extent of her folly is made clear, Celia as is so often the case with Bennett's characters finishes her half hour tale in a wounded, aggrieved state at some remove from her initial good cheer. Forever tugging at her sleeves, Scott Thomas captures this deluded woman's gathering discomfort, and she is abetted by her director, Jonathan Kent, a prominent name who has also been brought into Bennett's orbit. Surprises of a different sort await two other Bennett heroines. In "The Shrine," the 2019 Olivier Award winner Monica Dolan ("All About Eve") unravels as her character, the newly bereaved Lorna, realizes that her deceased biker husband, Clifford, had a whole separate life. One of two new titles the other is "An Ordinary Woman," with Sarah Lancashire "The Shrine" proceeds to a teary finish that is unusual for Bennett, whose characters don't normally betray their emotions so freely. Hytner directs as a master conductor would work through a new score from a favorite composer: Every beat counts. And no praise is too high for another stage stalwart, Harriet Walter, in "Soldiering On." Walter brings microscopic attention to her portrait of the poshly spoken, sad eyed Muriel, a widow whose comfortable life has largely disintegrated by the time we arrive at the final frame. Her downward spiral was directed by the ever observant Marianne Elliott, who was herself due on Broadway this season as director of the musical revival "Company." First performed over three decades ago by Stephanie Cole, "Soldiering On" is vintage Bennett in its mixture of rueful comedy (Muriel ponders the mourning habits of elephants) and growing despair. Things may be "not all gloom," or so Muriel insists to the camera even as her late husband's toxic legacy is laid bare. But a last look at Walter reveals otherwise. The loneliness and loss are there for all to see even if Muriel, bless her, soldiers on. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
Nearly all of the iconic wooden escalators still clack up and down at the flagship Macy's store in Manhattan, but customers entering the store during its 400 million makeover will find little else familiar especially in the street level's grand hall, studded with gleaming luxury goods showcases, high ceilings and shiny white marble floors. Perhaps best known outside New York as the setting for the movie "Miracle on 34th Street" and the Thanksgiving Day Parade, the department store is sprucing up its 111 year old facade, opening bricked up windows, laying 47,000 square feet of new marble and adding 300 dressing rooms. A major upgrade and a strategy for Macy's as it tries, like other retailers, to capture a larger piece of the thriving luxury goods market is the expansive great hall beckoning shoppers inward from Broadway, with a full wraparound mezzanine above the luxury handbag and cosmetics counters. All in all, once the four year renovation is completed in 2015, Macy's will have added 100,000 square feet of retail space, for a total of 1.2 million square feet. Macy's executives acknowledged that one major goal of the renovation was to try to generate sales growth in expanded areas. It is a critical time for big department stores nationally, as competition from online retailers and a sluggish economic recovery have crimped sales growth. Macy's Inc., which also owns Bloomingdale's, is expected to report earnings next week, after a disappointing second quarter. Then it reported earning 281 million, or 72 cents a share, short of the 78 cents a share that Wall Street had expected; it was the first time in more than six years that the company had missed analysts' expectations. The company's plans to renovate the store in 2009 were scrapped, Mr. Lundgren said. "I traveled around the world, to Galeries Lafayette in Paris, Harrods and Selfridges in London and Takashimaya in Japan," he said. "I knew there was more that we could do we needed to elevate the architecture, the beauty and the efficiencies." Macy's declined to provide a breakdown of how it was spending the 400 million meant for renovating its 11 sales floors. But, said Paul Swinand, an equity analyst who covers Macy's for Morningstar Investment Services, "they are expanding by 100,000 feet in prime Manhattan, so if you think about it, they are getting a pretty good deal." "Right now there isn't a lot of space anywhere, and these city center stores are typically in very grand buildings; anything you can do to enhance the brand and productivity is a positive for the company," he said, adding, "certainly you don't want to spend 400 million and then have a drop in sales." The entire main floor has been updated with shimmering new showcases and sections displaying top designer goods. Macy's is "a tourist place," Mr. Lundgren said, with roughly six million tourists a year making up 30 percent of its customers. Louis Vuitton continues to anchor the ground level, with a renovated and expanded three level shop. Macy's has also struck deals with luxury brands like La Mer cosmetics, Jo Malone perfumes, Longchamps handbags and Burberry. Coach has opened a shop designed by the architect Rem Koolhaas. "We are taking a grand old building that was a little dusty and that had been modified sometimes a bit insensitively over the years, and we did our homework, polished it off and have brought back the luster," added Tom Herndon, Macy's senior vice president for store design. Not to be outdone by other major retailers like Saks, which has widely expanded its shoe collections, Macy's not only claims that it continues to have the world's largest shoe department with 250,000 pairs but also that it stocks pairs priced as high as 1,200, although the bulk of its footwear still sells for under 100. To sate the appetites of a richer, global clientele, Macy's has added its first fine dining restaurant, Stella 34 Trattoria, on the sixth floor. It features the executive chef Jarett Appell, who worked at Union Square Cafe, Craft and Donatella. None Testing the Limits: Only three of New York's 25 tallest residential buildings have completed safety tasks required by the city. The Downside to Life in a Supertall: 432 Park faces some significant design problems, and other luxury high rises may share its fate. Luxury Developers' Loophole: Soaring towers are able to push high into the sky because of a loophole in the city's labyrinthine zoning laws. An Evolving Skyline: The high rise building boom has transformed the city's skyline in recent years. Its impact will echo for years to come. Hidden Feats: Our critic looks at some supertall N.Y.C. buildings and how the ingenuity of engineers helped build landmarks. There are now 23 restaurants, including a champagne, wine and chocolate bar. Stella 34, the 10,000 square foot restaurant located in a former stockroom, has 12 foot high windows that stretch along Broadway from West 35th Street to West 34th Street, with views of the Empire State Building. The quality of the light at Stella 34 "is the best that you can find anywhere in the store," said Jeff Fontana, the vice president of the Herald Square renovation project. The restaurant, which is open late in the evening after the store is shut, "brings back destination dining; this is not just for tourists, but an amenity that is lacking in the neighborhood." Among other upgrades was the replacement of more than a million feet of electrical wire, the addition of 250 tons of steel framing and a cleaning of the historic facade. The Broadway building was built in 1902, and the Seventh Avenue addition was completed in 1931. Despite Macy's rich history and its inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places, the department store does not have landmark status, so it can be changed at will. Still, Macy's has made a concerted effort to maintain much of the historical detailing. The original entrance along West 34th Street, known as the Memorial Door, has been reopened. A stockroom for the past decade, it has 21 foot high ceilings, a two story granite arch and two brass plaques one commemorating the deaths of the longtime Macy's owners Ida and Isidor Straus on the Titanic in 1912, and a second honoring employees who died in World War I. While Mr. Lundgren celebrated aspects of the building's character that have been protected or rediscovered, a few preservationists say they are unhappy with the changes. In particular, the columns that pepper the ground floor have the same curved shape as before but have lost their detailed tops, known as capitals, and the bronze and marble cladding that dates back to the 1930s, according to Theodore Grunewald, an architect and landmark advocate. The inlaid marble flooring and grand chandeliers, added in the 1970s, have also been removed. And decorative details in the ceiling have been replaced. "The interior is now largely featureless," Mr. Grunewald said. "It is very unfortunate that New York's last Art Deco department store interior has now vanished." Still, others say the new design, which is mostly bright white and clean, allows the focus to remain on the merchandise. "I rather like the way they made the structures fade away the columns are there, but the way they are lit made them lighthouses, or beacons," said Rick Bell, the executive director of the American Institute of Architects New York. "The design allows the store to seem unified, yet still enables the brands to be demarcated from one another." As for Macy's, the renovation is a key strategy for the company to embrace its history while positioning itself to succeed in a competitive global market. "We are very protective of our history, and very proud," Mr. Lundgren said. "This store is the global symbol of Macy's, and we want to make sure that we create something unsurpassed." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
Social media platforms were flooded this week with concerns about an alarming headline purporting that the Pfizer BioNTech coronavirus vaccine, which is expected to be cleared for emergency use this week, could cause infertility in women. But experts say these claims are baseless. "It's a myth, it's inaccurate there's no evidence to support their perception," said Saad Omer, a vaccine expert at Yale University. Expert agencies that oversee the clearance of vaccines for use in people, he added, "have a rigorous process" to weed out products that might cause such disastrous effects. "And when things happens, action is taken," Dr. Omer said. This week, the Food and Drug Administration reiterated its confidence in data showing that the vaccine can protect people against developing Covid 19 without causing serious side effects. Pfizer's vaccine has been given green lights in Britain and Canada. The rumors about infertility were fueled by an article published by a blog called Health and Money News, which falsely claimed that Pfizer's vaccine contained ingredients capable of "training the female body to attack" a protein that plays a crucial role in the development of the placenta. The unfounded claims were drawn from a petition co written by Dr. Michael Yeadon, a retired British doctor and former Pfizer employee who has previously been criticized for his misleading views on the coronavirus. Dr. Yeadon has downplayed the severity of the pandemic in Britain and publicly aired his grievances about the futility of investing in vaccines. But experts say there is no evidence to back up the infertility claim. The key ingredient in Pfizer's vaccine (as well as a similar vaccine made by Moderna that is also rapidly on its way to emergency clearance) is genetic material that instructs human cells to make a coronavirus protein called spike. The production of this protein teaches the body to fight off the coronavirus. There are no placental proteins, or genetic material that instructs the manufacture of placental proteins, in Pfizer's vaccine, said a company spokeswoman, Jerica Pitts. The misleading blog piece drew a comparison between coronavirus spike and a type of placental protein. The similarities were strong enough, it contended, that a vaccine could dupe the immune system into confusing the two proteins and attacking the placenta. But Stephanie Langel, an immunologist and expert in maternal and neonatal immunity at Duke University, pointed out that coronavirus spike and the placental protein in question have almost nothing in common, making the vaccine highly unlikely to trigger a reaction to these delicate tissues. The two proteins share only a minuscule stretch of material; mixing them up would be akin to mistaking a rhinoceros for a jaguar because they are wearing the same collar. Dr. Langel also pointed out that the human body has evolved to quash immune reactions that might harm its own tissues. "If we didn't have that, we wouldn't even make it past Day 1 of life," she said. Pfizer pointed to a recent study that found the coronavirus did not seem to raise the risk for pregnancy related problems. "There are no data to suggest that the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine candidate causes infertility," the company said in an emailed statement. Dr. Langel and Dr. Omer both noted that researchers would continue to monitor the well being of vaccinated people as Pfizer's products and others are rolled out around the world. There remains a dearth of data in people who are pregnant, Dr. Langel said. But baseless discussions about how vaccines could cause infertility, she added, were "particularly damaging" to the scientifically backed efforts to protect people with vaccines. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
"The time to honor the slave owning founders of our imperfect union is past. The ground, which should have moved long ago, has at last shifted beneath us," Lucian K. Truscott IV writes in his recent Opinion essay, "I'm a Direct Descendant of Thomas Jefferson. Take Down His Memorial." The question of who or what should be memorialized in stone, on street signs or as a national monument has been fervently discussed in recent weeks by both our writers and our readers. Many have identified monuments they think should be torn down. So we asked readers: What should stand in their place? In more than a thousand responses they suggested an array of historical figures as well as new ways to remember our past. A collection of their responses is below. They have been edited for length and clarity. 'Put them in their rightful place and context' I think the answer is that you keep the Jefferson Memorial and then also build a new statue in honor of Tubman. How hard is that? History next to history. The good and the bad. Rachel Phillips, South Carolina Putting a statue of Harriet Tubman in the place of Thomas Jefferson in the Washington memorial that now bears his name is a meaningful idea. Yes, let Monticello stand. We should not bury the past, as we might if we just "disappear" Confederate monuments. But let's put them in their rightful place and context icons of our nation's painful wrongs that we should attempt to address today. Diane Lade, Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Remove Jefferson from that pedestal and carve out that spot make it deep. Then, in bronze, place the 200 slaves he owned. When the visitor looks down they see a guilt ridden Jefferson looking up, with a sheaf of papers and on them only half written "all men are created ... " James Harrison, Portland, Ore. 'On whose backs the nation was built' There is room for one more memorial, right in the middle of the national mall between the Washington Monument and the Capitol, to slaves and their descendants on whose backs the nation was built and the whip was cracked, to Native Americans who endured and died under horrible repression and to all others who suffered the agonies of racism. Donald G. Wogaman, Springfield, Va. 'Everyday heroes whose sacrifices have laid bare the stubborn injustices of our society' Memorials and monuments commemorating the four girls Addie Mae Collins (age 14, born April 18, 1949), Carol Denise McNair (age 11, born Nov. 17, 1951), Carole Robertson (age 14, born April 24, 1949) and Cynthia Wesley (age 14, born April 30, 1949) killed in the domestic terrorist attack and bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church, so that we may never forget what racist hate has wasted. Che Baraka, Brooklyn, N.Y. It is horrifying that I can track the course of my adult life in increments of time marked by the high profile murders of Black people by cops. States who are serious about ending injustice in our society should replace those dusty old white men in the Capitol House Chamber, many of whom were also avowed racists, with those of people who unwillingly gave their lives, and in doing so brought injustice to light. People like Freddie Gray, Philando Castile, Michael Brown and George Floyd. Isn't it time to acknowledge those unfortunate everyday heroes whose sacrifices have laid bare the stubborn injustices of our society? Arnold Martin, Pasadena, Calif. 'Native Americans deserve recognition in the history of our land' Tecumseh, Sacagawea, Sitting Bull, Pocahontas, Squanto, Geronimo, and Apache and Pueblo leaders of the 1680 revolt against Spanish settlers in Santa Fe. Native Americans deserve recognition in the history of our land since Jamestown. Katharine Grant Galaitsis, Lexington, Mass. Wilma Mankiller, the first woman principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, who led her people into the modern era, nearly 135 years after their forced removal from their original homelands in Georgia. Her leadership to move toward nationhood and her defense of tribal sovereignty continues to have ripple effects. Suzette Brewer, United States I would like to see a very large monument, featuring hundreds, if not thousands, of statues to represent all of the Native and African Americans who died as a result of the colonization of the Western Hemisphere. This monument would commemorate the loss of millions of people from disease, violence, neglect, starvation and the other ways in which Indigenous Americans died as a result of both the deliberate and unintended consequences of colonization. Greg Kasarik, Melbourne, Australia Those who made 'the promise of America true for all women' I would like to see a park for suffragists with two monuments in D.C. One would be for Susan B. Anthony, Jane Addams, Sophonisba Breckinridge, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Alice Paul, Matilda Joslyn Gage and other suffragists who fought for the ratification of the 19th Amendment that granted white women the right to vote. Alongside that monument, a monument to Black suffragists Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Mary Church Terrell, Ida B. Wells, Mary McLeod Bethune and the Black women without whose work the Voting Rights Act of 1965 would not have been passed. Any monument to women's suffrage has to unequivocally and equally acknowledge the fight of Black women to make the promise of America true for all women, not just white women. Caroline Dunbar, Northampton, Mass. I am sick to death of statues of men, sick of their faces on all our currency, their deeds recounted in all our textbooks and many other examples too numerous to mention. Given that women are more than 50 percent of the population, it sure would be nice to have equal representation in the public sphere. Marilyn Gillis, Vermont The workers, from our homes to our factories A collective monument to working people, encompassing all colors, classes and, most important, types of work. From domestic workers and care workers to factory workers and construction workers and service workers, all had a hand in building this country. Thomas Lonergan, Minneapolis The pandemic has really shown us how much we depend on farm workers and how little respect they earn for the arduous work they do. Many are immigrants with few rights and protections. Cesar Chavez worked hard to organize and give some power to this group whom we now finally recognize as essential workers. Donna Oglio Goldoff, Brooklyn, N.Y. America really needs to hold up and acknowledge people from the union movement. Why are the captains of industry held up as such brilliant heroes when their efforts generally led to the economic and social degradation of those who worked to translate their ideas into reality? Timothy Olmstead, Newberg, Ore. A monument/memorial to the peaceful American protester. They, better than most, have continually asked the question, "Why is our government behaving unjustly?" They cry, "Stop it!" The protester is the strongest humanized force keeping America on its promised path. The protester is a true moral compass and honest reflection of the power of the free expression of humankind. The protester is the conscience of America. Robert L. Briggs, Tulsa, Okla. I have envisioned for decades a West Coast version of the Statue of Liberty called the Statue of Responsibility, to acknowledge our whole history. Perhaps the figure of a man with his hand raised like a basketball player acknowledging a foul, located on Alcatraz Island. We cannot be an adult nation until we are willing to take responsibility for our mistakes and stop pretending it was our little sister who did it. Tim Holmes, Helena, Mont. 'Look for a different way to remember the past' Monuments that honor a specific person should not be erected. If they are, they should be erected with the understanding that they can be removed. Is any person so pure of heart and motive to deserve immortalization? A museum would help society understand the brilliance and hypocrisy of Thomas Jefferson far better than a statue and a plaque ever could. Greg Puckett, Nebraska History can be shaped by great men as many of us were taught in school but much more than that, it is shaped by movements and mobs and long processes that are invisible to us where we stand with our feet in the present day. I suggest that we, as a culture, sit down and search our souls and look for a different way to remember the past. One that reminds rather than reveres, commemorates rather than commends and takes fully into account the good and the bad in all of our actors. Maeve McIver Sheridan, Seattle 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 |
President Trump and Fox News have a complicated relationship. Election Day did not help. The cable news channel that kick started Donald J. Trump's political career was suddenly in the position of signaling its potential end. The network's early call of Arizona on Tuesday night for Joseph R. Biden Jr. infuriated Mr. Trump and his aides, who reached out publicly and behind the scenes to Fox News executives about the call. The network held firm even as two of its biggest stars, Laura Ingraham and Jeanine Pirro, attended Mr. Trump's defiant early morning speech in the East Room of the White House. The election night split screen underscored the fine line that Fox News's anchors and opinion hosts have walked in the past 24 hours. By Wednesday night, Fox News was the closest of any major network to calling the presidential race for Mr. Biden not the outcome that many fans of its pro Trump programming may have wanted. Fox News was also the only major cable network to carry a news conference on Wednesday held by the president's lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, who was making baseless claims of election fraud. But the channel promptly cut away to announce a major development: It projected a win in Michigan for Mr. Biden, placing him at the doorstep of the presidency, according to Fox's projections. And shortly after Bret Baier, the network's chief political anchor, emphasized to viewers on Wednesday that Mr. Trump's threatened litigation could throw the race into doubt even if Mr. Biden was projected to win 270 electoral votes Fox News's politics editor, Chris Stirewalt, threw cold water on some of the Trump campaign's baseless claims. "Lawsuits, schmawsuits," Mr. Stirewalt said. "We haven't seen any evidence yet that there's anything wrong." Fox News has long occupied an unusual position in the Trump orbit. The network is home to some of the president's most vociferous defenders, including Sean Hannity, Ms. Ingraham, and the hosts of "Fox Friends." But Mr. Trump frequently takes potshots at its news division and polling operation. "Fox has changed a lot," Mr. Trump said Tuesday morning on "Fox Friends." "Somebody said, 'What's the biggest difference between this and four years ago?' I say, 'Fox.'" The president is a vociferous viewer and constant critic, praising preferred hosts by first name at rallies ("Jeanine!" "Tucker!") and dialing up the network's chief executive, Suzanne Scott, to complain about coverage. He has hired (and fired) former network personnel; belittled its hosts while also agreeing to interviews; and relied on Mr. Hannity's political advice while bashing news anchors like Chris Wallace and Shepard Smith, who left the network for CNBC. In the wake of Tuesday's Arizona call, a mixed view of Fox News had spread to some of Mr. Trump's allies. Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, a Republican who rose to fame on the strength of Fox News guest appearances, bashed the network for what he deemed an insufficiently swift projection of a Trump win in his home state. "For Fox to be so resistant to calling Florida and yet jumping the gun on Arizona, I just thought was inexplicable," Mr. DeSantis told reporters in Tallahassee on Wednesday. "I don't think that that was done without some type of motive, whether it's ratings, whether it's something else." Ford and Rivian no longer plan to work jointly on electric vehicles. Elizabeth Holmes took the stand in her trial. Follow along with our reporters. Ken Griffin, head of Citadel, bid highest for a copy of the Constitution. In fact, members of Fox News's decision desk said repeatedly that the network's polling team which reports to the news division and is sequestered on election night was merely adhering to a rigorous analysis. The network's data team, led by Arnon Mishkin, relies on a proprietary model that draws on data from The Associated Press. Still, some Fox News personalities speculated whether Arizona would remain in Mr. Biden's column. "There may be some tightening there," Mr. Baier said on Wednesday, summarizing arguments from the Trump campaign, while Bill Hemmer used an interactive map to conjure ways Mr. Trump could eke out a win in Pennsylvania. But when Mr. Hemmer asked if the network might consider reversing the Arizona call, Mr. Stirewalt laughed. "Not that I see," he said. Mr. Wallace also offered a grim prognosis for the president. "It's real simple math now," he said, shortly after Fox News projected that Mr. Biden would win Wisconsin. Pointing to Mr. Biden's advantages in Nevada and Michigan, he said: "If he just holds on to his lead in those two states, he's the 46th president of the United States." (Fox News would call Michigan just over an hour later.) Mr. Hannity did not appear on Fox News on election night, but he returned on Wednesday evening, echoing some of the president's talking points about the integrity of the vote count. He stopped short, though, of Mr. Trump's baseless claim of outright "fraud." "Do you trust what happened in this election?" Mr. Hannity asked viewers. "Do you believe these election results are accurate? Do you believe this was a free and fair election? I have a lot of questions." Mr. Hannity had few specific arguments, tossing in a reference to "dead people," and at times his monologue sounded like a regular episode of his program, not a postelection special. His lead in, Tucker Carlson, also spoke ominously about the vote results while avoiding an outright embrace of Mr. Trump's baseless claims about winning states that had yet to be called. "Many Americans will never again accept the results of a presidential election," Mr. Carlson said at one point. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
LONDON At last, "Company" has a human pulse and a proper dramatic core. And for that to happen, it took a woman. The Stephen Sondheim George Furth musical from 1970 long ago entered the canon with its tale of a commitment phobic Manhattan bachelor named Bobby who ricochets among multiple couples while searching for a soul mate of his own. Now enter the twice Tony winning English director Marianne Elliott, who has replaced Bobby with a female equivalent called what else? Bobbie. (I sense a trend afoot: The forthcoming film of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical "Cats" will feature Judi Dench cast in the male role of Old Deuteronomy.) The result is entirely transformative: This production is the commercial theatrical event of the year to date. And the Gielgud Theater where the show and its resplendent leading lady, Rosalie Craig, are on view through March 30 is not likely to be its final resting place. (It's just one measure of the intense interest in the show that it has already doubled the length of its run, originally announced through Dec. 22.) I have long understood "Company" as a play with limitations. No matter how admirable the Bobby on view, the birthday boy always seemed a strangely absent guest at his own surprise party a cipher whose inability to connect with a woman for keeps didn't really matter, given the ebullient company he kept and the ceaseless riches of Mr. Sondheim's music and lyrics. The show boasts at least a half dozen of the 88 year old composer's defining numbers, not least its climactic solo showstoppers, "The Ladies Who Lunch" and "Being Alive." But those reservations no longer apply. We still find out surprisingly little about the newly female Bobbie: No mention is ever made of her family, nor is it ever clear what she does for work. But we know that, because she's a woman, her body clock is surely ticking. And if she wants to have children, she'll need to settle on a man to do it with. That feeling of anatomical countdown lends an unexpected meaning to "Tick Tock," a dance number that is here accompanied by a nightmare sequence where Bobbie imagines a domestic life morning sickness and all that is far from bliss. The gender flip involves more than simply putting the central character in a red dress, however much Bobbie's sartorial choice contrasts with the many impersonal interiors of Bunny Christie's agile set, which uses doors as the central visual metaphor: Bobbie, it's clear, needs to unlock something in herself to move forward in love and life. Whereas Bobby before had a slew of girlfriends, lending him the air of a diffident playboy, this Bobbie is on the rebound from a range of boyfriends, none of whom are quite right (or likely father material). Ms. Elliott's keen eye is especially acute in the duologues where Bobbie faces off against these men in sequence. Each encounter feels like a fully achieved playlet, with Matthew Seadon Young, in particular, especially touching as the kind but out of place Theo, who wants nothing more than to abandon Manhattan for Cape Cod. Putting a female in the driver's seat works wonders, too, for the great comic duet "Barcelona," which presents our sexually rapacious heroine with a sweet, smiling flight attendant, Andy, as dim as he is hunky. Performing the bulk of the scene in his underpants, Richard Fleeshman is a revelation in the part. So is Jonathan Bailey, in syllable perfect form as the reluctant wedding partner to Paul (a memorably gentle Alex Gaumond). A jittery trip to the heterosexual altar has been refashioned to accommodate gay marriage, as befits a story updated to the present and to couplings of all kinds. The corresponding song, "Getting Married Today," raises the roof afresh. Women matter to this production onstage and off, starting with Ms. Christie, whose occasional Lewis Carroll esque visuals suggest Bobbie plunging down a rabbit hole of her own fearful imagination, and Ms. Elliott, whose previous reclamation of another iconic New York title, "Angels in America," didn't hint at her success here. Broadway's top drawer star Patti LuPone is in roaring voice as the astringent if solicitous Joanne, who pushes Bobbie to open her heart. In a recent interview with The Sunday Times of London, Ms. LuPone said with some astonishment that she had never before in her storied career been directed in a musical by a woman: Well, it was worth the wait. As a tremulous, moist eyed Ms. Craig takes center stage at the climax to sing "Being Alive," it's as if a realm of possibility has been revealed like some sort of newly acquired vision, which, come to think of it, is exactly what this "Company" possesses: clarity and insight and the ability to make a time tested musical feel brand new. Ms. Elliott's achievement equals the much acclaimed London revival of Mr. Sondheim's "Follies," which will return to the National Theater here in February. Then, audiences will be in the fortunate position of being able to see these shows, as the lyric from "Company" puts it, "Side by Side." A more immediate companion piece to "Company" can be found in the writer director Nina Raine's new play, "Stories," running through Nov. 28 at the National, which also hosted the premiere of her last play, "Consent," in 2017. (That one transferred to the West End.) Echoing themes from Ms. Elliott's "Company," Ms. Raine posits an unattached 39 year old Londoner, Anna (the always sympathetic Claudie Blakley), who is driven nearly to psychic ruin by her desire to have a child. So desperate is the state of affairs that Anna's mother (Margot Leicester) refers to her daughter's life as "a tragedy." Anna meets with an array of possible sperm donors, all of whom are played with accent shifting finesse by the protean Sam Troughton. If the play nonetheless feels like a case study wrenched from Ms. Raine's own experience her actual baby featured in the opening scene of "Consent" last year that may be because of the challenge inherent in transmuting personal experience into art. This latest play has the quality of a necessary birth that was probably more cathartic to write than it is to watch. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
Romeo was made for love, as all animals are. But for years he couldn't find it . It's not like there was anything wrong with Romeo. Sure he's shy, eats worms, lacks eyelashes and is 10 years old, at least . But he's aged well, and he's kind of a special guy. Romeo is a Sehuencas water frog, once thought to be the last one on the planet. He lives alone in a tank at the Museo de Historia Natural Alcide d'Orbigny in Bolivia. A deadly fungal disease threatens his species and other frogs in the cloud forest where he was found a decade ago. When researchers brought him to the museum's conservation breeding center, they expected to find another frog he could mate with and save the species from extinction. But they searched stream after stream, and nothing. Romeo, called the "World's Loneliest Frog," started sharing his feelings on Twitter. Things got desperate. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
Joichi Ito, the director of the M.I.T. Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a member of The New York Times Company's board, apologized Thursday for his ties to Jeffrey Epstein, the financier whom federal prosecutors in New York charged with sex trafficking before his apparent suicide in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan last week. Mr. Ito, who is also a professor at M.I.T., said in a statement posted on the M.I.T. Media Lab website that he had met Mr. Epstein in 2013 through a "trusted business friend" and had allowed him to donate to the lab through foundations he controlled and invest in several of Mr. Ito's outside funds that back start ups. "In my fund raising efforts for M.I.T. Media Lab, I invited him to the lab and visited several of his residences," Mr. Ito said in the statement. "I want you to know that in all of my interactions with Epstein, I was never involved in, never heard him talk about and never saw any evidence of the horrific acts that he was accused of." Mr. Epstein, who was long dogged by accusations that he had sexually abused girls, pleaded guilty in 2008 to state charges of solicitation of prostitution from a minor, five years before he and Mr. Ito met. The plea was part of a deal that is now under scrutiny. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
Homework? First I Need to Get to the Bottom of This Comey Story ST. LOUIS It's 7:32 on a recent Wednesday morning, and Gabe Fleisher is racing to put the finishing touches on his daily newsletter, Wake Up to Politics. It's been a busy 24 hour news cycle. "Another day, another bombshell," the newsletter begins. Late on Tuesday afternoon, reports emerged that James Comey, the fired F.B.I. director, had written an internal memo suggesting that, in a private meeting with President Trump, the president had asked him to end the agency's investigation into his former national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn. "I hope you can let this go," Mr. Trump reportedly said to Mr. Comey. In the wake of this disclosure, the newsletter recounts, some Democrats in Congress were using the words "obstruction of justice" and even "impeachment." Meanwhile, the big story from the day before that Mr. Trump may have shared classified information with Russian officials during a White House visit continues to roil Washington. It's a lot to digest and cogently explain. But a deadline is quickly approaching, and it's not just the one concerning the more than 2,000 subscribers who expect their Wake Up briefing to appear in their email inboxes just after 8 a.m. each weekday. More urgent is that, in about 13 minutes, Gabe's ride to school will show up. For Gabe Fleisher is not a Washington pundit or a producer for CNN, but a 15 year old freshman at a St. Louis high school. The free newsletter, which he has been writing in some form since he was 8, is a surprisingly sophisticated, well researched summary of the day's political news. It counts among its subscribers Gene B. Sperling, contributing editor at The Atlantic; the MSNBC anchor Steve Kornacki; Major Garrett, chief White House correspondent for CBS News; the "Daily Show" correspondent Roy Wood Jr. (who on Twitter called Wake Up "one of the best political newsletters to hit my inbox"); the "Game Change" co author Mark Halperin; and Jim VandeHei, the founder of Axios and a founder of Politico as well as reporters for The New York Times, The Washington Post and USA Today, many of whom are among Gabe's nearly 5,000 Twitter followers. (Twitter's chief executive, Jack Dorsey, is also a follower.) In some ways, Wake Up is the anti Skimm. It doesn't dumb down the daily political news for its audience and it occasionally highlights events that could challenge the interest of even the most obsessive political fans. (A recent edition included the news that the Senate had scheduled for that day a "cloture vote on the nomination of John Sullivan to be deputy secretary of state.") But this young journalist makes it an accessible, and even engaging, door opener for readers, particularly young people, who want to know what is going on and why everyone is suddenly talking about some guy named Flynn. "I feel a sense of responsibility," Gabe said. "Not everyone reads it every day, and it's obviously not the only thing people read. But some people tell me that it is. And that's a responsibility that I take seriously." Dressed in a baggy T shirt and dark gray sweatpants, his sleep tousled hair falling to just above his shoulders, Gabe is sitting up in bed, hunched over his Lenovo laptop, typing away. Within reach are his alarm clock, which went off as usual at 5:55 a.m., a recent copy of Time magazine, his iPhone (which he picks up occasionally to check his Twitter feed) and a stack of books he has been reading: "Personal History," by Katharine Graham; "A Memoir," by Barbara Bush; "Front Row at the White House," by Helen Thomas; and "Shattered," by Amie Parnes and Jonathan Allen, a detailed post mortem of Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign for president in 2016. ("I loved their first book, 'HRC,' but I don't think this one is as good," Gabe said.) On the walls of his second floor, 10 by 12 room ("smaller than my sister's," he pointed out) are framed articles from Politico ("Missouri Sixth Grader May Be Next Mike Allen") and The St. Louis Post Dispatch ("Fourth Grader Is Political Junkie"). Also, copies of the Declaration of Independence and the first page of the Constitution, a photo of Barack Obama and Representative Lacy Clay, Democrat of Missouri, and an eclectic mix of bumper stickers from the 2016 campaign for Carly Fiorina, Ben Carson and even the fictional Frank Underwood among them. ("I'm going for a complete collection," Gabe said.) Elsewhere are small busts of several presidents; Gabe's passport to the presidential libraries (so far his has visited all but two of the official ones, Reagan's and Nixon's); a miniature replica of the White House; photos of Gabe, his father and his sister, Zoey, at the 2009 Obama inauguration; and one of a 12 year old Gabe with the historian Doris Kearns Goodwin after a speech she gave in Chicago that Gabe's grandparents took him to. And everywhere you look, there are books, books and more books in a free standing bookcase, on shelves, on the windowsill and even the floor, all about politics or history, from the four volume biography of Abraham Lincoln by Carl Sandburg to "The Audacity to Win" by the former Obama campaign strategist David Plouffe ("a great book," Gabe said). In fact, it was Mr. Obama's election as president that set off Gabe's interest in politics. At age 7, he and Zoey were taken by their father on a last minute road trip to the inauguration. (Gabe's mother, Amy, the sales director for Caleres, a St. Louis shoe company, stayed home. "I don't like to drive," Mrs. Fleisher explained.) "He is this bundle of energy," Mrs. Fleisher, 51, said over a recent pizza dinner with Gabe and his father. (Zoey, 18, a high school senior entering nearby Webster University in the fall and planning to major in vocal music education, was home with a cold.) "And he's always talking about all the stuff that's going on, and I can't absorb it all. I still can't. I'm like, 'Comey, what?' So he would come to me in the morning, and he was just starting to read the news, and would want to share stuff with me, and I would say: 'You know what, Gabe, I can't get all this. Why don't you email me, so I have a chance to think about it and I can ask you questions and we can talk about it?' So he started emailing me, and then it began to take on more of a newsletterlike format." "She was my first subscriber," her son chimed in. Soon she was sharing it with family and friends, and someone they knew told a reporter for The Post Dispatch about it. At age 10, on Super Tuesday, Gabe landed on the front page of the newspaper. "That was when people started reaching out to me, people I had no connections to, like professors and even some St. Louis politicians," Gabe said. As the audience grew, so did his ambitions. He attended more political events with his parents and realized that he liked being part of the mix. In 2010, Gabe and his parents went to hear Mr. Plouffe speak about his experience on the 2008 Obama campaign and the book he had just written about it. Mrs. Fleisher: "At the end, people lined up to ask questions and Gabe said to me, 'Mom, can I ask question?'" A few years later, after her book "Bully Pulpit" came out, he saw her again in Chicago. "I went up to get it signed, but she did not remember me," Gabe said. Then, in 2014, Ms. Goodwin came to St. Louis for a sold out speaking engagement. The audience was told they could write questions and submit them. "I don't even remember what question I asked," Gabe said, "but I wrote that I was a 13 year old journalist, and she said: 'Gabe? Is Gabe Fleisher in the audience?'" She now follows him on Twitter. The breakthrough for both Gabe and Wake Up to Politics came in the most recent presidential campaign, when Gabe was able to get press credentials for two of the primary debates held in Des Moines the Democratic one in November 2015 and the Republican one in January 2016 and where he was able to sit with reporters and meet some he had admired from afar. One, Dan Balz of The Washington Post, even took a shine to Gabe and helped him wrangle his way into the post debate spin room. "No one says no to Dan Balz," another reporter told Gabe when the youngster expressed surprise that he had been allowed inside. There, he made the acquaintance of Sean Spicer, then a relatively little known spokesman for the Republican National Committee. As they chatted, Mr. Spicer said to Gabe, "If you want to see a real debate, come to the Republican one here in January," and then gave him his email address. Gabe followed up and Mr. Spicer got him credentials. "He couldn't have been nicer," Gabe said. (Unfortunately, Gabe has so far been unable to get back in touch with Mr. Spicer, now the White House press secretary, about trying to score one of the "Skype seats" allotted to out of town journalists at the daily press briefings.) At the Democratic debate, Gabe also met some executives from Twitter, which was one of the sponsors. A few weeks later, WakeUp2Politics was verified. "That was a big day," his mother said. And that initial shyness about asking questions has given way to an unchecked confidence that has led him to direct message a reporter at USA Today about how to get on the White House press list and being part of the press scrum quizzing politicians after a debate. "Being a kid reporter, I have to be a little more pushy," Gabe said at that dinner with his parents, sharing a cheese pizza with his mother and sipping on his second Coke. "It's just a fact of life, because when I am trying to get an interview, the first response is always skepticism." He added: "Jeff Sessions came to St. Louis a few weeks ago, and I got credentials pretty easily, and I get there, and I have everything I need, and I was on the list and I had my ID, but for a long time they just wouldn't let me in. I get that. It's the attorney general and there is going to be security, but they had the dogs check me out, which happened to none of the other reporters, and I just had to keep pushing and say, 'I'm supposed to be here.'" It's precisely 7:45, and after a quick change into his usual school uniform of baggy T shirt and cargo shorts and a fast brushing of his teeth, Gabe is down the stairs, into his slip on Nike sneakers, out the door and on his way to school. This is his second year at John Burroughs, a progressive private high school in the St. Louis suburb of Ladue founded in 1923. Gabe arrived with his reputation preceding him. "I had heard of him when he was assigned to me as his adviser, when he entered as an eighth grader last year," said Mark Smith, a history teacher. "I knew that he was this seventh grader who did this newsletter thing and you didn't quite know what to expect. But I found him to be personable, funny and deeply intelligent." His parents say Gabe has managed to have a relatively normal life, one with friendships and outside interests and a keen awareness that his schoolwork can't suffer. "I remember really clearly," his father said. "Gabe had a teacher, I'm not sure what grade, and his comment on the report card was Gabe was able to be socially at ease and also very passionate about government, politics and history. That was very affirming to me. It's all about balance. I'm less concerned about the grades themselves than if this became all consuming, to the exclusion of everything else in his life." As Gabe explained: "There are times when I am up really late, studying for a test, and I tell myself I have to get some sleep. But I wouldn't keep doing it if I didn't love it." (Though he will take a break this coming week for finals.) Kate Ward, his biology teacher at Burroughs, said he was not a total anomaly in his peer group when it came to a keen interest in public affairs. "In this political climate, there is a lot to talk about," she said, "and we are certainly talking about things like climate change and what's going with the E.P.A. in this class." Gabe, she added, "doesn't start those conversations, necessarily, but the other students often look to him to answer questions about what's going on." Gabe said: "Most of my friends are politically aware. I don't think I'm an outlier in terms of being interested in politics; most of my friends and even most of my classmates are. But maybe not all of them are on Twitter at 6:30 every morning." But, yes, there are times when the newsletter takes a back seat to real life, most notably when Gabe goes off to the wilds of Minnesota, totally off the grid, for 12 weeks every summer. He has been going to a summer camp there for years, as did his father before him, and nothing disrupts that schedule, not even the Democratic and Republican conventions last summer. "Not knowing the V.P. picks, when they came out, that was tough," Gabe said with a wry laugh. More recently, he was on a wilderness retreat in the Ozarks organized by his school, with no access to a computer or his cellphone for several days, just as the Comey story was taking its wild twists and turns. "I came back," Gabe said, "and I was on the bus, and my phone kept saying, 'No cell service, no cell service' and then suddenly it came back on, and I got a notification saying 'Schumer responds to Comey firing' and I was like, 'What?!?'" How long will the Wake Up to Politics newsletter last, especially as high school becomes more difficult and college looms? His parents seem a little surprised that it has lasted this long, and Mr. Smith, Gabe's academic adviser, thought "as he entered high school, the newsletter might go away." But it hasn't, and Gabe continues to balance the demands of school, home life and the newsletter with an almost unnerving casualness. "He's figured out how to be a relatively normal teenager who goes through the messes and problems that most normal teenager goes through," Mr. Smith said. While the adults in his orbit seem amazed by his ability to pull it all off the word "juggling" comes up a lot Gabe himself has a pretty simple explanation why it all seems so manageable. "I don't need a lot of sleep," he said, "and I type really fast." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
A Centaur second stage rocket at NASA's Lewis Research Center (now the John H. Glenn Research Center) in Ohio in the 1960s. Centaur, paired with the Atlas booster rocket, launched with the Surveyor moon missions. Dec. 2: This article has been updated with information about additional observations completed by astronomers after it was published. It was after midnight on Sept. 19 and Paul Chodas, the manager of the Center for Near Earth Object Studies at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., was working late, studying an object called 2020 SO that other astronomers had spotted in the night skies just the day before. Something about its orbit was peculiar. The computer program he was working with showed that 2020 SO followed a nearly circular path just slightly outside our planet's orbit. And the plane of the object's orbit was just barely tilted relative to Earth's. "I was suspicious immediately," he said. Out of curiosity, Dr. Chodas ran his simulation in reverse. With time dialing backward, he watched 2020 SO pass very near Earth in September 1966. "Close enough that it could have originated from the Earth," he said. At 1:12 a.m., Dr. Chodas acted on his hunch, and sent an email to fellow astronomers with a subject line of "2020 SO Surveyor 2 Centaur r/b?" In the months that followed, amateur skywatchers and professional astronomers alike have been tracking this specter with their telescopes, following what many now believe is a rocket booster that flew toward the moon more than 50 years ago during a failed NASA mission. On Tuesday, the object, now temporarily orbiting Earth, made its closest pass. Scientists around the world took advantage of that alignment, and the new observations have revealed conclusive evidence that the dot on their monitors really is a ghost of the Cold War moon race. Hopes were high when Surveyor 2 lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Fla. (then known as Cape Kennedy), on Sept. 20, 1966. NASA designed the roughly one ton lunar lander to collect images of the moon in preparation for the Apollo missions. It was following close on the heels of its successful predecessor, Surveyor 1, launched just a few months earlier, which had landed on the moon and returned over 11,000 images. Surveyor 1 performed flawlessly, said Mike Dinn, then the deputy station director of Australia's Tidbinbilla Tracking Station, where giant radio antennas communicated with the spacecraft during its journey. "We fully expected Surveyor 2 to be a complete success." But it wasn't the spacecraft crashed into the moon. Its death knell came roughly 16 hours after launch, when one of the three small engines attached to the spacecraft's legs failed to fire. The imbalanced thrust sent Surveyor 2 into a spin, and after 38 unsuccessful attempts to revive the engine it became clear that the mission could not be salvaged. Mr. Dinn and his colleagues at Tidbinbilla were the last people to communicate with the spacecraft. Fast forward 54 years. On Sept. 17, one of the Pan STARRS telescopes near the summit of Haleakala on Maui, which search for asteroids and other objects that may pose a risk to Earth, recorded something moving across the sky. It traced out a small arc, which caught the attention of astronomers reviewing the data the next morning. "Whenever you see an object that moves in a slightly curved path in the sky, it has to be close," said Richard Wainscoat, an astronomer at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and a Pan STARRS team member. Dr. Wainscoat and his colleagues reported their discovery to the Minor Planet Center, a clearinghouse for observations of asteroids, comets and other small bodies. On Sept. 18, the Minor Planet Center issued an announcement about the new object, naming it 2020 SO. Within a few hours, Dr. Chodas was studying the object, and eventually poring over records of space launches in 1966 that aligned with the orbital path his computer program had mapped out. He quickly found Surveyor 2. Although the robotic spacecraft was destroyed when it hit the moon, the second stage of the Atlas Centaur rocket that carried it to space had been jettisoned a few minutes after launch. After flying by the moon, the roughly 25 foot long cylindrical booster had disappeared into space. In the email he sent to colleagues, Dr. Chodas explained his conclusion that 2020 SO was very likely the Centaur rocket booster from Surveyor 2. Since September, scientists around the world have been investigating 2020 SO. Vishnu Reddy, a planetary scientist at the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, and Adam Battle, a graduate student there, compared observations of 2020 SO with a known Centaur rocket booster orbiting just a few hundred miles above Earth. The optical colors matched, Dr. Reddy said, but sealing the deal would require infrared observations of 2020 SO. At those wavelengths, it's a "slam dunk" to compare objects' compositions. "There's very little ambiguity in the infrared," Dr. Reddy said. The orbit of 2020 SO is also ever so slightly anomalous, deviating from what is expected based on gravity alone, said Davide Farnocchia, an asteroid dynamicist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. That may shed light on its identity. The cause of that irregularity is most likely the pressure exerted by solar radiation. Particles of sunlight photons have energy, and they exert a force when they collide with something, Dr. Farnocchia said. "They cause a gentle push away from the sun." The fact that 2020 SO is being shoved around by sunlight suggests that it's something relatively large and low mass, like an empty rocket booster, as opposed to something small and massive, like a rocky asteroid. Dr. Farnocchia compared the phenomenon with the wind. "If you have an empty soda can, you're going to move it much farther," he said. "If you have a solid rock, it's much harder to push it away." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
Scientists float a provocative and unproven idea: that masks expose the wearer to just enough of the virus to spark a protective immune response. As the world awaits the arrival of a safe and effective coronavirus vaccine, a team of researchers has come forward with a provocative new theory: that masks might help to crudely immunize some people against the virus. The unproven idea, described in a commentary published Tuesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, is inspired by the age old concept of variolation, the deliberate exposure to a pathogen to generate a protective immune response. First tried against smallpox, the risky practice eventually fell out of favor, but paved the way for the rise of modern vaccines. Masked exposures are no substitute for a bona fide vaccine. But data from animals infected with the coronavirus, as well as insights gleaned from other diseases, suggest that masks, by cutting down on the number of viruses that encounter a person's airway, might reduce the wearer's chances of getting sick. And if a small number of pathogens still slip through, the researchers argue, these might prompt the body to produce immune cells that can remember the virus and stick around to fight it off again. "You can have this virus but be asymptomatic," said Dr. Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease physician at the University of California, San Francisco, and one of the commentary's authors. "So if you can drive up rates of asymptomatic infection with masks, maybe that becomes a way to variolate the population." That does not mean people should don a mask to intentionally inoculate themselves with the virus. "This is not the recommendation at all," Dr. Gandhi said. "Neither are pox parties," she added, referring to social gatherings that mingle the healthy and the sick. The theory cannot be directly proven without clinical trials that compare the outcomes of people who are masked in the presence of the coronavirus with those who are unmasked an unethical experimental setup. And while outside experts were intrigued by the theory, they were reluctant to embrace it without more data, and advised careful interpretation. "It seems like a leap," said Saskia Popescu, an infectious disease epidemiologist based in Arizona who was not involved in the commentary. "We don't have a lot to support it." Taken the wrong way, the idea could lull the masked into a false sense of complacency, potentially putting them at higher risk than before, or perhaps even bolster the incorrect notion that face coverings are entirely useless against the coronavirus, since they cannot render the wearer impervious to infection. "We still want people to follow all the other prevention strategies," Dr. Popescu said. That means staying vigilant about avoiding crowds, physical distancing and hand hygiene behaviors that overlap in their effects, but can't replace one another. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
THE POWER OF INTIMIDATION : The Charger SRT8 wears a permanent scowl to go along with its 470 horsepower V 8. WHAT IS IT? The already imposing Charger made even more intimidating in looks and performance. HOW MUCH? 47,620 base, including a 1,000 gas guzzler tax, 49,310 as tested. WHAT MAKES IT RUN? A 6.4 liter Hemi V 8 and a 5 speed automatic transmission; rear wheel drive. IS IT THIRSTY? Is the pope German? The Charger is rated at just 14 m.p.g. city, 23 m.p.g. highway. MY father was a Dodge guy. All of his work trucks were Dodges, as were our family cars. I remember a Monaco, a Polara and a Coronet. When he helped me buy my first car, my father kept it in the Mopar family, steering me into a used 1966 Plymouth Belvedere. His cars were practical, and it wasn't until I sorted through his papers after he died in 2001 that I had my own Biff Loman moment: I discovered my father's secret desire. He had saved a well thumbed Dodge dealer magazine from 1970 that bragged about the brand's success in motorsports, featuring stats and tire smoking photos of muscular Challengers and Chargers. The Charger of my father's dreams produced 375 horsepower. It makes me wonder what he'd make of the 2012 Charger SRT8, a Dodge equipped with a 470 horsepower Hemi because the 425 horses of the previous version weren't quite enough. After a week with the car on a family trip to Virginia, I was close to tucking away a brochure for my own children to find. The SRT8 is the latest addition to the muscle car rebirth that has produced updated Camaros, Challengers and more versions of the Mustang than might seem possible. In fact, during my week with the SRT8, I became a muscle car speed bump as many of the Charger's brethren slowed down to gawk at my test car. "They're looking at me," my wife, Christine, said after another Mustang full of guys swooped in for a closer look. Of course. The Charger has had a checkered history, from the performance cars that tempted my father to forgettable coupes from the mid 1970s. This new SRT8 has taken the award (from the previous version of the Chrysler 300) as the most evil looking car on the road. When Jalopnik.com asked readers what car looked most intimidating in the rear view mirror, the answer was the Charger. With its open mouth grille and squat stance on 20 inch tires, the SRT8 can indeed look frightening. Dress it in black for the full effect. The car lives up to its Halloween looks. All that torque helps to rocket the SRT8 from 0 to 60 miles per hour in 4.6 seconds, according to Car and Driver magazine, impressive for a four door sedan that weighs 4,365 pounds. It also has much better visibility than most other revived muscle cars, in which you have to twirl your head around like Linda Blair to check the blind spots. And although it can be scary throwing all that bulk into a corner at speed, the SRT8 never lost its grip. The interior is functional with an 8.4 inch Uconnect touch screen that is easy to use. The Charger seats five, but don't tell that to my teenager. He rode in the very uncomfortable middle position of the back seat down the New Jersey Turnpike until we switched middle seat victims at the Molly Pitcher rest stop. The Charger is a five passenger car for only about an hour a day. But while the SRT8 has plenty of yippee, the shouting stops at the first shift. It comes only with a 5 speed automatic, which can be shifted with paddles behind the steering wheel. I found the shifts harsh and ill timed; switching to Sport mode is an improvement if you can find the button. No, it's not in the on screen Performance display where you can track the car's g forces and addictively time your 0 to 60 and quarter mile runs but oddly hidden in Options along with the heated seats. (Dan Reid, the spokesman for the SRT division, told me that he had heard that complaint before and that the company might relocate the button.) While Chrysler offers an 8 speed transmission on other versions of the Charger, the lack of higher gears on the SRT8 contributes to the car's lackluster fuel economy, despite a system that shuts down half the cylinders when they aren't needed. Mr. Reid wouldn't say if the new transmission was destined for the SRT8. A back to basics version of the SRT8, the Super Bee, goes on sale this quarter. While it costs 5,000 less, the Super Bee omits some upscale features like leather seats while subjecting its owner to cartoonish graphics, including bold stripes, a rear deck spoiler and "a 3 D helmeted bee mascot" in the grille. But you still get the 5 speed automatic. Repeat after me: Wait for the 8. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Automobiles |
JOE BATAAN at Union Pool (July 7, 2 p.m.). Over four plus decades in the music industry, this singer, born in East Harlem, has become a seminal voice of Latin music in the United States. Inspired by doo wop and the Afro Latin sounds of his neighborhood, Bataan, a self taught pianist, recorded his best known song, "Gypsy Woman," in 1967. From there, his story is one of eclectic pursuits: He helped create a celebrated disco label, Salsoul, and recorded one of the first ever rap songs, "Rap O, Clap O." On Sunday, Bataan appears at this bar in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, as part of its free, season long Summer Thunder series. union pool.com CHVRCHES at Radio City Music Hall (July 11, 8 p.m.). When the first single from this Glaswegian group a pulsing synth pop gem called "Lies" unexpectedly took off back in 2012, they were so nervous about performing live that they booked their first couple of shows under a pseudonym. The trio, fronted by Lauren Mayberry, has come a long way since then and, on Tuesday, will play one of Manhattan's most famous stages. Across three albums, Chvrches have churned out sharp, hooky songs noted for their role in the advent of "poptimism"; at Radio City, expect to hear their biggest hits, like "The Mother We Share" and "Leave a Trace." 212 465 6000, radiocity.com EARTH, WIND FIRE at the Beacon Theater (July 9 10, 8 p.m.). As this legacy act nears the half century mark, the members continue to make the rounds minus the band's founder and creative center, Maurice White, who died in 2016. After wrapping up a Las Vegas residency in March, the group, responsible for fusing gospel, jazz and disco into some of the most boisterous hits of the 1970s, including "September" and "Shining Star," have just started a summer tour. This week, the remaining original lineup of Philip Bailey, Verdine White and Ralph Johnson, with some new additions, will bring their enduring message of peace and unity to the Beacon. 212 465 6000, beacontheatre.com GABRIEL GARZON MONTANO at Industry City (July 11, 8 p.m.). This Brooklyn born singer was introduced to many by Drake, who sampled Garzon Montano's song "6 8" on the 2015 track "Jungle," and then again on 2017's "Glow." The prominent sample spotlights the soulful croon that the singer deploys on his debut album, "Jardin," which bears the influence of his musical hero Prince and the cumbia of his dad's native Colombia. For this performance in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, Garzon Montano will be joined by Madison McFerrin, an innovative a cappella singer who creates lush, jazz inflected pop songs using just her voice and a looping station. cityfarmpresents.com MAL DEVISA at Sunnyvale (July 7, 7:30 p.m.). This singer songwriter from western Massachusetts, whose real name is Deja Carr, is a critically acclaimed enigma. After the 2016 release of "Kiid," a gritty, thoughtful album of blues and rap that has since disappeared from Bandcamp, Carr fell ill and canceled all her shows. She returned late last year with no further explanation but a plethora of new music: A full length album and two EPs dropped within the span of a week. Carr does not perform regularly and is aloof on social media; her appearance at this club in East Williamsburg, Brooklyn, is a relatively rare opportunity to see her in action. 347 529 6440, sunnyvalebk.com Read about the events that our other critics have chosen for the week ahead. PALEHOUND at Elsewhere (July 10, 6 p.m.). Ellen Kempner, who fronts this indie rock trio from Boston, titled her latest record after an infamous American holiday, and on it, she addresses the sort of self worth deficit exacerbated by rampant consumerism. "Black Friday" speaks to the feeling of being uncomfortable in one's own body; it contains moments of venom ("Killer" rails against a sexual predator) and tenderness ("Aaron" is a statement of unconditional support for Kempner's trans partner), all delivered in the singer's signature melodic rasp. At the rooftop bar of this club in Bushwick, Brooklyn, the band will perform alongside the avant pop act Arthur Moon. elsewherebrooklyn.com OLIVIA HORN DIRTY DOZEN BRASS BAND at the Blue Note (through July 7, 8 and 10:30 p.m.). Dirty Dozen was founded more than 40 years ago in New Orleans as the marching band for one of the city's social aid and pleasure clubs (the longstanding community action groups that originated the second line tradition). With five horn players, a guitarist and a drummer, the group grafts a strutting, heavy bottomed sense of swing marching music, without a doubt onto an ever expanding repertoire of Crescent City classics, original tunes and covers of modern day pop. 212 475 8592, bluenote.net BILLY HARPER QUINTET at Smoke (July 4 6, 7, 9 and 10:30 p.m.). Harper plays the tenor saxophone in spirally, darting movements, with a pearly hot intensity and steady focus. A luminary figure in post bop, he emerged in the 1960s and '70s playing music that leapt from the core of the jazz tradition with titles like "Black Saint" and "Knowledge of Self" and bespoke a mind set of restive, contemporary vision. At Smoke, he appears with Freddie Hendrix on trumpet, Francesca Tanksley on piano (on Thursday, George Cables will be behind the keys), Hwansu Kang on bass and Aaron Scott on drums. 212 864 6662, smokejazz.com QUIANA LYNELL at Dizzy's Club (July 11, 7:30 and 9:30 p.m.). In 2017, Lynell won the Sarah Vaughan International Jazz Competition, a prestigious contest for jazz vocalists; earlier this year she released her first full length album, "A Little Love." On it she puts her effortless cool and sweeping agility to work with a broad repertoire, reaching back across the past 100 years to retrieve compositions by George and Ira Gershwin, Irma Thomas, Donny Hathaway and various others. At Dizzy's she appears with the guitarist Alex Wintz, the pianist Willerm Delisfort, the bassist Noah Jackson and the drummer Joe Dyson. 212 258 9595, jazz.org/dizzys ULYSSES OWENS JR. at Jazz Standard (July 10, 7:30 and 9:30 p.m.). A drummer in his mid 30s, Owens is a first call side musician for some of jazz's most prominent performers (Christian McBride, Kurt Elling and Joey Alexander, among others), but as a bandleader he focuses on creating ambitious, message driven suites sometimes featuring original music, sometimes working from within a canon of his own making. His fifth album, released in January, is "Songs of Freedom," devoted to the liberation poetry embedded in the music of Nina Simone, Abbey Lincoln and Joni Mitchell. But at the Standard, he presents a new project, "Generation Y," featuring Alexa Tarantino on saxophone, Drew Anderson on trumpet, Luther Allison on piano and Philip Norris on bass. 212 576 2232, jazzstandard.com MATTHEW SHIPP at Happylucky No. 1 (July 5 6, 8 p.m.). Sometimes slashing, sometimes springy, this eminent free improviser has an utterly personal relationship to the piano referent to the caustic brilliance of Cecil Taylor and the worried beauty of Don Pullen, but ultimately its own thing. He performs on Friday with the saxophonist Ivo Perelman and on Saturday with the bassist Michael Bisio. He's recorded prolifically with both of them (to the tune of about a dozen discs each), but, as usual, these will be spontaneously composed performances; don't expect anything familiar. happyluckyno1.com VERONICA SWIFT WITH THE EMMET COHEN TRIO at Birdland (through July 6, 8:30 and 11 p.m.). Swift is a 25 year old vocalist of nimble grace and forceful disclosure, as if Annie Ross had gotten more of Sarah Vaughan's influence. She will perform here with backing from Cohen, a prodigious young straight ahead pianist, and his trio. (His group will start things off on Thursday and Saturday with a set of its own at 5:30 p.m.) 212 581 3080, birdlandjazz.com GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
Tourism in Mexico City is booming. Among the many cultural attractions is the Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporaneo.Credit...Danielle Villasana for The New York Times Tourism in Mexico City is booming. Among the many cultural attractions is the Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporaneo. In the hourlong traffic jam from Mexico City International Airport, on a road clogged with cars, buses and trucks, I keep glancing out the window, looking for familiar signposts, streets, neighborhoods, name places, threads of childhood memories. This is the city where I learned to read and write, where I first went to school, where I first visited a museum, the Palacio de Bellas Artes, and first saw the murals of Diego Rivera, Jose Orozco, David Alfaro Siqueiros. This is where I learned to roller skate, on the tiled courtyard of our colonial era apartment building on Calle Genova in the Zona Rosa, and where I learned to ride a bicycle, at Chapultepec Park, and crawled up the pyramids of the Sun and the Moon in Teotihuacan and floated in gondolas down the flowering canals of Xochimilco. I remember getting lost at the circus; walking to school, my mother holding my hand; the smell of corn on the cob grilled over coals at roadside stands. Now, a lifetime later, I am returning to this place. Just minutes after checking into a hotel in Colonia Roma, an eclectic bohemian neighborhood of cafes, galleries and plazas, I head out into this confounding city, to see it on foot, from the ground, to touch it and smell it. The doorman warns me that a storm is coming, but I set off anyway down the tree canopied streets and busy, crisscrossing avenues. Though it had been decades since my last visit to Mexico City, I am sure I will find my way around, even in the evening, even in the rain. I have a destination, a mezcal dive called La Clandestina. I want to celebrate my arrival in Mexico with my first taste of mezcal, and I had been told that La Clandestina is the coolest mezcaleria in town. I stroll up and down streets. Vendors and policemen, waiters and bartenders offer directions, pointing in every direction, sending me around in circles. The rain is now coming down. Sidewalks and gutters flood, outdoor cafes and storefronts empty. I am soaked when I come upon a fellow in dreadlocks leaning in the doorway of a dark storefront. La Clandestina? I ask. He grins, obviously expecting the question. Mexico City comes at you fast, in multitudes, on streets lined with funky bars, glass towers, rundown houses, taco stands, cantinas, designer shops, fancy restaurants, artsy hotels. Life is lived out on the streets, in plazas and parks, in the mercados and commercial strips, in the elite colonias and poor barrios that spread far into the mountains. Few places are as maddening, as beautiful and mysterious, as mystical. Today, against all odds drug cartels, kidnappings, killings, corruption Mexico City is a world class luxury getaway, bursting with fine cuisine and hotels, salons and exclusive nightspots, the playgrounds of tourists, celebrities and the sons and daughters of the country's richest families. Tourism is booming in this megalopolis of 22 million people, which this section called the No. 1 Place to Go in 2016. The most progressive city in Latin America, it had 6.3 million foreign visitors in 2015, a jump from 4.9 million in 2012, and is home to 700,000 American expatriates, retirees, writers, artists, executives. Often set against a grim image of poverty and violence, Mexico City vies with Sao Paulo, Brazil, for the title of richest city in Latin America. With a per capita income of 18,000 a year, higher than that of many Latin American cities, the city has an expanding middle class and claims the 30th largest world economy. It should have been little surprise that the tourist's Mexico City largely overlapped with my own, since tourism has subsumed the city in some ways. As I wandered around the historic Centro on a bristling Saturday this summer, I pushed my way through crowds of families, couples and tourists, herds trampling down streets encircling the Zocalo, the city's epicenter, a large stone square built by the Spaniards over the ruins of the ancient Aztec city Tenochtitlan. Here, on weekdays, the business of the federal and local governments goes on inside magnificent Spanish era palaces. But on weekends it turns into tourist central, local and foreign visitors snapping photos, posting selfies, standing in line at the entrance to the baroque Metropolitan Cathedral and the National Palace. Sports bars on the side streets of the Zocalo were packed that day with soccer fans howling at a Germany France match on television screens. Shoppers shuffled along the Avenida Madero, massing around ice cream stands and taco dives, streaming in and out of discount clothing shops and the Gandhi bookstore. A few blocks away, at the Palacio de Bellas Artes, a short line of visitors waited at the ticket booth (60 pesos a person, no United States dollars or credit cards accepted), young mothers with toddlers slogged up the steep marble staircase to reach the great murals. Cutting across several streets, I reached the Mercado de San Juan, so famous it's listed in travel guides. Dozens of pollerias, open air poultry stands stacked with freshly killed chickens, lined blocks around the mercado. Inside, I walked by boxes showcasing glossy fruit (those cherries!), spotless vegetables from everywhere in the world, and rare delicacies, like 15 varieties of Japanese mushrooms. After I made a few rounds, recalling the dusty, fly covered street mercados of my childhood, I saw why the airy, clean halls of Mercado de San Juan draws chefs and foodies. On the way back to the hotel in Colonia Roma, I took a detour to Zona Rosa, where I lived as a child. We had come to Mexico City from Puerto Rico so my father could study medicine at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico. While he spent hours in school, my mother, a lawyer, did the household chores. After three years in Mexico, we returned to Puerto Rico she to resume her career and he to finish training and start his own practice. Now our apartment building on Calle Genova is gone. I couldn't find my old school, the Van Dyke Academy, a cloister of bespectacled nuns and high gates. The neighborhood is now a hive of gay night life, clubs and shops. Those markers of my childhood were erased from the real world and exist now only in my mind. I made my way back to Roma. There, La Cerveceria de Barrio was gearing up for the evening weekend crowd. I grabbed a stool with a view of the Fuente de Cibeles, a replica of the Fuente de Cibeles in Madrid. It's the neighborhood's plaza, a traffic circle furnished with crayon color folding chairs and umbrellas, tables. Bars, cafes and small shops encircle it. Neighborhood regulars, runners and bikers gather around the plaza, a scene common to the city's moneyed colonias like Roma and its neighbor La Condesa, a quiet and more exclusive enclave of boutique hotels, Art Deco and California architecture and tree lined esplanades along historic Calle Amsterdam and Parque Mexico. Colonias Roma, Condesa and Polanco form the city's fanciest triangle. If Roma and Condesa recall the Marais in Paris, Polanco channels Beverly Hills. Great cities usually define themselves through literature and art, fashion, theater, music, diversity. Mexico City has plenty of all that. Now in this millennial city, where the median age is only 27, a new generation of chefs is leading a cultural surge, creating a gastronomic movement and giving the city a new cachet. Though it was suggested by local residents, it's safe to say that Pujol's reputation is baked in by now. It is the darling of local foodies and international critics and chefs. The restaurant, 16 years old, had its breakthrough in 2010, when Rene Redzepi, the chef of one of the world's top restaurants, Noma, in Copenhagen, visited Pujol and went away raving to the world. The gastro scene in Mexico City exploded. "There was lots of combustion," Mr. Olvera told me in July over coffee at his popular New York City restaurant, Cosme (he is to open a second restaurant in Manhattan this year). The food revolution in Mexico "surprised everyone but I knew it would happen," he said. "I dreamed about this when I was younger," he continued. "I knew that we had the potential to create a new cuisine." So I went to see it for myself. On a leafy street in Colonia Polanco, Pujol announces itself quietly. The staff speaks in whispers and steps softly around an intimate space of dark gray walls, delicate artwork and candlelight shadows. It has the elegance of a jewel box and the solemnity of a church. The menu arrives in a sealed parchmentlike envelope, like a royal edict. Couples, small groups of friends and society beauties fill the room. Dishes come and go, more than I can count, more than I can properly appreciate, all exquisitely presented. The evening proceeds slowly, at a choreographed pace. The noise level never rises. I am in awe. Nothing like this existed in Mexico City when I was a child, and though I later grew up going to elegant restaurants, Pujol stands in a class of its own even today. "I think Mexico has had an inaccurate and bad rap until recently," said Trisha Ziff, a British documentarian and filmmaker who has lived in Mexico City for 12 years. We were at lunch at Maximo, where an Olvera protege, Eduardo Garcia, is turning out some of the town's best French accented Mexican food. "Being the recipient of endless attacks creates a strange kind of freedom, a creative anarchy," she said. "We take risks because we have nothing to lose. This culture takes risks. That's why it's so vibrant. It's the same with food, with music, with fashion. It's the youth and energy which gives the city its dynamism." The city's tourism and cultural boom did not happen overnight. It reached critical mass in the past year or so. "It's the young generation," said Patricia Mercado, an economist who helps run the city government from an office overlooking the Zocalo. Breaking away for a few minutes from government business, she listed the influences that shaped the city's rise: liberal policies, human rights and education, legal abortion and same sex marriage, and a powerful feminist movement in which she is a major voice. The city's secretary of culture, Eduardo Vazquez Marin, put it this way: "This is a city of refugees, a city of immigrants, a city of great cultural diversity." We met at the cavernous Museo de la Ciudad, and he was saying that the city's refusal, in 2006, to join the federal government's all out military style war on the drug cartels helped explain how the capital has remained relatively secure in a country where 100,000 people have died in drug violence in 10 years. The memory of the students is much alive in Mexico City. A large red sculpture in the shape of the number 43 stands in the main boulevard, Paseo de la Reforma. Looking back decades, Mr. Vazquez traces the turning points and intersecting factors leading to his city's resurgence. He goes back to the devastating 1985 earthquake, which galvanized the capital and created a lasting spirit of unity. Then, in 1997, the city elected a liberal government that promoted social and economic reforms. Abortion was legalized in 2007 and same sex marriage in 2010, defying Mexican traditions and the Catholic Church, pulling the city into the 21st century. "The city is the locomotive," he says. "It's the future of the country." After six days at Hotel La Casona in Roma, I check into Las Alcobas in Polanco, on Masaryk Avenue, the city's Rodeo Drive. Las Alcobas is not far from Ricardo Legorreta's 1968 masterwork, the Camino Real hotel, a dazzling apparition washed in brilliant yellows and pinks. The facade of Las Alcobas pales by comparison, but the concierges greet you like royalty and the compact lobby, centered on a rosewood spiral staircase, reflects the hotel's luxurious and comfortable design. With no schedule to follow, I take a long walk along the Paseo de la Reforma through Chapultepec Park. The park had been a favorite place growing up, where I learned to bike and ride donkeys. Under the cover of giant trees I meander, taking in a sidewalk photography exhibit and a display of giant soccer balls designed by Mexican artists. Orange and blue pedal boats dot the placid lakes. Long lines stand at the boat rental gates and at the taquerias and food carts. It's a weekday but it feels like the Sundays in the park I remember. A few hours later, on my last evening in Mexico, I am coddled on a red velvet banquette at one of the city's most talked about restaurants, Dulce Patria. The room evokes the dazzling colors, architecture and art of Mexico. Frida Kahlo inevitably comes to mind. The chef, Martha Ortiz, is one of very few female top chefs in Mexico, and, at 49, is older than most of the new celebrated chefs. Her restaurant provokes extreme reactions. Some people I know hate it, others love it. My entree, a pork loin prepared with rare Mexican plants and vegetables, arrives on a plate decorated with sweeps of color brush strokes. The plate alone is worth framing. At dinner's end, Chef Martha stops at my table. She is tall, thin, with dark hair combed off her angular face. She leans down and extends a thin hand. Then, just as suddenly, she is gone. I stroll back to Las Alcobas, thinking about the swirling colors on the plates and the scarlet and ruby shades, the emerald greens and indigo blues of Dulce Patria. So Mexico. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
For the American premiere of "The Low Road," a satire of unbounded self interest and pitiless capitalism, the playwright Bruce Norris realized he needed to change the last name of his scurrilous 18th century protagonist, Jim Trumpett. What would sound like a heavy handed jab at the businessman turned president from a leftist playwright actually wasn't. Mr. Norris wrote his sprawling comic fable half a dozen years earlier, before few predicted that Donald J. Trump would one day occupy the White House. "It's not a play about him in any way," Mr. Norris said. Indeed, to describe Trumpett's contemporary descendant, the bumptious head of TrumpettBank Global, the 2013 stage directions said: "think Mitt Romney," the moderate Republican and former presidential nominee who is now running for an open Senate seat in Utah. "I don't think I would be writing it now," Mr. Norris said of "The Low Road," which is scheduled to officially open March 7 at the Public Theater in New York. "It's really hard to respond to this moment dramatically because it's so melodramatic." The national dialogue is too fraught, he said, and his own fears of the Trump presidency too overwhelming. "It's not a mistake it was written in the Obama administration, which for those of us on the Left, was a period of relative calm," he said. It's not that "The Low Road" is divorced from contemporary events. The 2007 global financial crisis was the inspiration. But the specifics are only fleetingly referenced by the play's 48 characters (played by 17 actors) who skip across time. And Mr. Norris, a Texas born, Pulitzer Prize winner who was originally commissioned by the Royal Court Theater in London, wrote the script in the recession's chastened aftermath. By the time it opened, financial regulation and consumer protections were expanding, and a second term progressive president was labeling income inequality the "defining challenge of our time." "The Low Road" is primarily set in Colonial America and recounts the picaresque adventures of Jim Trewitt (formerly Trumpett), a foundling left on the doorstep of a Massachusetts brothel, and John Blanke, a slave whom he buys. Narrating the action is the Scottish philosopher Adam Smith, the patron saint of laissez faire capitalists, who argued that each person's self interested pursuit would automatically maximize the public good. A chance encounter with a Tweet size excerpt about this beneficent "invisible hand" supplies Jim with sufficient justification for his cutthroat immorality. "The ideology serves as a suit of armor," Mr. Norris said, conveniently vindicating Jim's selfishness but never challenging his privilege. Mr. Norris took a sip of tea. Sitting next to him at a conference table on the Public's second floor was the play's director, Michael Greif, who can count "Dear Evan Hansen" and "Rent" among his credits. With previews, they still have time to experiment and fine tune the action. During the play's 2 hours and 30 minutes, free market watchwords not to mention, religious piety, racism, judicial corruption and well intentioned liberals all come in for a drubbing. But the central theme is one that runs through all the playwright's work: humanity's irredeemable flaws. "I probably write the way I do because I'm disappointed," Mr. Norris said. "I was a very optimistic child and I had a very close relationship with my mother who promised me good things, and then, as I said in another play, she smoked herself to death. So that was a mixed message." "Clybourne Park," which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2011, the Olivier Award, and later the Tony, picks up where Lorraine Hansberry ended her seminal 1959 play, "A Raisin in the Sun." Its subject is inescapable racism, class bias and anxiety. Similarly, "The Low Road" trains its sights on the species' inherent failings. The conclusion is that our greed, hypocrisy and ruthlessness will ultimately bring doom even if there are a few laughs to be had along the way. Human nature is both noble and ugly. Mr. Norris said his mother was intensely devoted to him and thus "was very excusing of all faults in me and very much encouraging me to cheat other children." Any misbehavior could be explained away. "Whenever I would do badly in school, she would tell me the teacher's angry because I won't date her daughter," Mr. Norris said. "She did that out of her love for me. And we all do that to each other." Mrs. Trewitt, the brothel madam who adopts the abandoned baby Jim on her doorstep, has the same instincts. "Twas never my mother's wish I should be the equal of others," Jim says when he's grown, "but that I should exceed them." As Mr. Greif points out, Mrs. Trewitt's defense, when challenged, is: "I only wanted what was best for the boy." When it comes to playwriting, Mr. Norris prefers to focus on principles over particulars. Of the moment references can quickly become outdated, while complicated, technical details delivered from a stage are easily forgotten. "I don't really think that's how the information from dramatic narratives penetrate," Mr. Norris said. In rehearsal, when Chris Perfetti, who plays Jim Trewitt, asked for an explanation of his character's financial shenanigans, Mr. Norris called over Chukwudi Iwuji, a one time economics major at Yale who portrays John Blanke, to explain. But all the audience really needs to know, Mr. Norris said, is there's a con. The point is that lurking somewhere behind every fortune is a theft or an injustice. To underscore the message, the play opens with the killing of a Native American scout by a European settler. For all the focus on timeless themes, a play that features a modern Davos like gathering of billionaires, paeans to wealth and competition, and pointed criticisms of taxation and public assistance resonates differently today than five years ago. Stock market exuberance and windfall tax cuts are buoying the nation's biggest moneymakers. The political leadership in Washington has vowed to roll back regulations that hinder the free market and has revived the idea that social assistance harms the poor by perpetuating dependency. For this production, events seem to have caught up to the play. Oskar Eustis, the artistic director of the Public, said he was interested in "The Low Road" from the beginning. When he organized the first reading about three and a half years ago, though, Mr. Eustis was troubled by a key scene in the second act. Mr. Norris, who can be counted on to start an argument at a party, wrote two acrimonious dinner table debates into his play, one to anchor each of the acts. For Mr. Eustis, the second strayed too far from the work's central theme, and instead reveled in elbowing the likely audience of liberal theatergoers. "I felt Bruce was changing the subject when he got to the second act," Mr. Eustis said. "It skewered liberal pretensions, and Bruce loves to do that, but that just wasn't the subject of his play." As it turned out, Mr. Norris, too, was dissatisfied with that sequence though he was insulted to discover Mr. Eustis agreed with him. He rewrote the scene anyway, emphasizing the play's theme of inequality, he said, rather than the question of slavery. It was an "extraordinary change," the director Mr. Greif said. "It becomes about replacing one form of slavery with an economic kind of slavery, which again is the most current conversation that we're having." For the scene depicting a present day economic forum, Mr. Norris updated references, mentioning Brexit and protectionist policies, but saw no need to fiddle with the punch lines. Now 10 years after teetering on the brink of financial catastrophe, Sir Edward, a retired financier, still complains of empty rhetoric and worries about the inevitable casualties of a single minded focus on profits. And Jim Trewitt's wealthy descendant still scoffs at the notion. "I'm saying we've crashed the car once," Sir Edward replies. "Do we really want to hand the keys back to the same drunken driver? | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
A prototype vaccine has protected monkeys from the coronavirus, researchers reported on Wednesday, a finding that offers new hope for effective human vaccines. Scientists are already testing coronavirus vaccines in people, but the initial trials are designed to determine safety, not how well a vaccine works. The research published Wednesday offers insight into what a vaccine must do to be effective and how to measure that. "To me, this is convincing that a vaccine is possible," said Dr. Nelson Michael, the director of the Center for Infectious Diseases Research at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research. Scientists are engaged in a worldwide scramble to create a vaccine against the new coronavirus. Over a hundred research projects have been launched; early safety trials in humans have been started or completed in nine of them. Next to come are larger trials to determine whether these candidate vaccines are not just safe, but effective. But those results won't arrive for months. In the meantime, Dr. Dan Barouch, a virologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, and his colleagues have started a series of experiments on monkeys to get a broader look at how coronaviruses affect monkeys and whether vaccines might fight the pathogens. Their report was published in Science. Dr. Barouch is working in a partnership with Johnson Johnson, which is developing a coronavirus vaccine that uses a specially modified virus, called Ad26, that he developed. The new research in monkeys "lays the scientific foundations" for those efforts, Dr. Barouch said. In March, the federal government awarded 450 million to Janssen Pharmaceuticals, a division of Johnson Johnson, to develop a coronavirus vaccine. The scientists started by studying whether the monkeys become immune to the virus after getting sick. The team infected nine unvaccinated rhesus macaques with the new coronavirus. The monkeys developed symptoms that resembled a moderate case of Covid 19, including inflammation in their lungs that led to pneumonia. The monkeys recovered after a few days, and Dr. Barouch and his colleagues found that the animals had begun making antibodies to the coronavirus. Some of them turned out to be so called neutralizing antibodies, meaning that they stopped the virus from entering cells and reproducing. Thirty five days after inoculating the monkeys, the researchers carried out a "re challenge," spraying a second dose of the coronavirus into the noses of the animals. The monkeys produced a surge of protective neutralizing antibodies. The coronavirus briefly managed to establish a small infection in the monkey's noses but was soon wiped out. In a separate experiment, Dr. Barouch and his colleagues tested prototype vaccines on rhesus macaques. Each monkey received pieces of DNA, which their cells turned into viral proteins designed to train the immune system to recognize the virus. Virginia's new lieutenant governor elect says she won't force vaccines. Both macaques and humans make neutralizing antibodies against coronaviruses that target one part in particular: a protein that covers the virus's surface, called the spike protein. Most coronavirus vaccines are intended to coax the immune system to make antibodies that latch onto the spike protein and destroy the virus. Dr. Barouch and his colleagues tried out six variations. The researchers gave each vaccine to four or five monkeys. They let the monkeys develop an immune response for three weeks, and then sprayed viruses in their noses. Some of the vaccines provided only partial protection. The virus wasn't entirely eliminated from the animals' lungs or noses, although levels were lower than in unvaccinated monkeys. But other vaccines worked better. The one that worked best trained the immune system to recognize and attack the entire spike protein of the coronavirus. In eight monkeys, the researchers couldn't detect the virus at all. "I think that overall this will be seen as very good news for the vaccine effort," said Dr. Barouch. "This increases our optimism that a vaccine for Covid 19 will be possible." Florian Krammer, a virologist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York who was not involved in the study, said that the levels of antibodies seen in the monkeys were promising. "This is something that would protect you from disease," he said. "It's not perfect, but you certainly see protection." Two vaccine teams one at the University of Oxford and one at the China based company Sinovac have tested vaccines on rhesus macaques. This month they reported that their vaccines also offered the animals protection. The new study provides a deeper look at how vaccines protect monkeys, and perhaps one day humans. Along with neutralizing antibodies, the immune system has a huge arsenal of weapons it can deploy against pathogens. Some immune cells can recognize infected cells and destroy them, for example. Dr. Barouch and his colleagues found a strong connection between neutralizing antibodies and how well a vaccine worked: The vaccines that gave monkeys stronger protection produced more neutralizing antibodies. Pamela Bjorkman, a structural biologist at Caltech who was not involved in the study, said that this correlation gave her more confidence in Dr. Barouch's findings. "I think that's really reassuring," she said. Dr. Michael said that link could help scientists running safety trials in humans. They may be able to get some early clues about whether the vaccines are effective. When a new vaccine goes into testing, the first round of trials are designed to see if it's safe. Only then do researchers move forward with bigger trials to determine if the vaccine actually protects against a disease. Vaccine designers often try different doses in a safety trial, looking for the lowest dose that provides the greatest protection. Dr. Barouch's study suggests that measuring neutralizing antibodies can give an indication if a dose will be potent enough to give protection. Malcolm Martin, a virologist at the National Institutes of Health who was not involved in the study, cautioned that monkeys are different from humans in important ways. The unvaccinated monkeys in this study didn't develop any of the severe symptoms that some people get following a coronavirus infection. "It looks like they got a cold," Dr. Martin said. Lisa Tostanoski, a postdoctoral fellow working with Dr. Barouch and co author of the new study, noted that the study only offers a glimpse at how the vaccine works three weeks after injection. It's possible that the vaccines may defend the monkeys for many years to come, she noted or the protection may fade much sooner. How long immunity to the coronavirus lasts may determine whether people will need just one shot of a vaccine or more. People may need boosters from time to time to rev up their defenses again and keep the pandemic at bay. "Every three years is thinkable," Dr. Krammer said. "That doesn't mean a vaccine doesn't work." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
Q. Why does the iPhone battery drain so much? I have an iPhone 6 and consider myself a "normal" user of the iPhone. I have gone to Apple's website and done everything suggested to slow the drain, but sometimes by 6 p.m. I'm down below 50 percent. What else can I do? A. Battery drain can be caused by a number of factors, including the age of the battery itself. The iPhone 6 was released in 2014, and if you purchased the device around that time and have been using it regularly for three years, the battery may be losing its ability to hold a charge. Having an authorized service provider replace the battery or investing in an external battery are two options for a failing power cell. If you purchased the iPhone 6 more recently and have been regularly upgrading its operating system as Apple produces fresh versions each year your phone's hardware may not be able to use the latest iOS releases as effectively as the faster processors in newer iPhones. Complaints about lousy battery life often dog new iOS versions, which in turn lead to incremental updates from Apple that are intended to provide "bug fixes and improvements." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
LONDON Last Monday, Adrian Vinken, the chief executive of the Theater Royal in Plymouth, England, steeled himself, then loaded up Zoom. Around 240 of the theater's staff members were waiting online, he recalled in a telephone interview. Those included "people who'd worked for us 30 years and given us everything," he said, as well as young workers who had only recently nabbed a job at the three stage venue, one of the Britain's largest outside London. Mr. Vinken then told the employees that almost a third of their jobs were at risk, and many would soon be laid off. With the theater closed because of the coronavirus pandemic, it had lost more than 90 percent of its income. For weeks, prominent British actors including Phoebe Waller Bridge and Judi Dench had been warning the government that the country's cultural venues were at risk of collapse unless it threw them a lifeline. On Thursday, it seemed like help might come. That evening, Oliver Dowden, Britain's culture secretary, announced a road map to reopen performing arts venues. The plan set out five stages, eventually including indoor shows with limited audiences, then, later, larger crowds. But disappointment soon set in when Mr. Dowden gave no target dates, or commitments of financial assistance. Within moments of the announcement, it was being mocked on social media. "It was an entirely pointless exercise," Mr. Vinken said. Britain's cultural sector increasingly stands alone in Europe. It has been the slowest to reopen after lockdown, for a start. Museums in England can reopen from July 4, although most will come back gradually over the next few months; some theatrical performances and concerts have also been announced for the summer, but only as drive in events. ("Six," the hit West End musical, announced a six week parking lot tour on Monday.) On the continent, museums have been open for weeks (in some cases, months), orchestras are performing again and theaters are announcing their coming seasons, albeit in venues with social distancing. In France, Germany, Italy or Belgium, where the arts are heavily subsidized by the state, performing companies and museums can survive with reduced ticket sales. But in Britain, where government funding is much lower and organizations rely on commercial income, most are unprepared for a future in which they can only admit a fraction of their usual audience. As in many European countries, workers in Britain's culture sector are covered by economy wide job protection programs. But, so far, the government here has yet to announce a specific rescue package for the arts. In May, President Emmanuel Macron of France announced that all cultural workers who lost their jobs or couldn't find work would be covered by a national unemployment plan until August 2021. In June, Germany's culture minister, Monika Grutters, announced a 1 billion euro fund to get the country's culture sector back up and running, on top of generous support already provided by Germany's regions. For months, Britain's cultural stars from the conductor Simon Rattle to the organizers of the Glastonbury music festival have been arguing and, at times, almost begging for action from the government. Acting in a coordinated media campaign, actors and theaters have called for the government's job retention program, in which it pays about 80 percent of furloughed workers' wages, to be extended until venues can reopen without social distancing. As a backup, they are calling for a huge government loan program to help them stage work in half empty halls. A statement on June 19 from some of the most prominent British names in classical music, including Mr. Rattle, said, "We really, really do not want to be left behind here, and have our world class industry fall by the wayside whilst European cultural institutions are being protected." Ed Vaizey, a former culture secretary and member of the governing Conservative party, said in a telephone interview that comparing Britain to France or Germany was "slightly invidious": Those countries have always given more to the arts. But, he added, "at least in France and Germany, politicians are not embarrassed about the arts. They support them and understand their importance." A spokeswoman for Britain's culture ministry said, "We are working with the sector to get it fully back up and running as soon as possible." She declined to answer a list of questions. The British director Katie Mitchell is preparing for confirmed productions in France, Germany and Switzerland, but one British show has been canceled and another is in doubt, she said. Katie Mitchell, the British theater and opera director who works extensively on the continent, said in a telephone interview that the differences between Britain and its neighbors were stark. "As soon as the pandemic hit, I thought, 'Well, it's going to be really hard to earn a living here for at least two years,'" she said. "Whereas I was certain that I would be able to work in mainland Europe soon, because I felt that the sector would be very, very protected." "That has proved to be the case," she added. She is working on confirmed productions at theaters in Berlin; Hamburg, Germany; Lausanne, Switzerland; and Paris, she said; there had been no talk of layoffs at any of those playhouses, she added, although they had asked her to stay "strictly in budget." In contrast, a play Ms. Mitchell was going to direct at the National Theater in London in October "Outline. Transit. Kudos.," based on novels by Rachel Cusk has been canceled. She was uncertain about the future of a planned opera at the Royal Opera House, she said. Both venues were expecting to lay off staff members, she added. In interviews with the leaders of more than a dozen British arts organizations for this article, all said the government had reacted well at the beginning of the pandemic by offering the furlough program. Arts Council England, a major funding body, also reacted quickly, many administrators said. In March, it announced it would award 160 million pounds (about 200 million) in emergency grants to keep venues afloat until the fall. Another body, the Heritage Lottery Fund, had announced PS50 million, about 62 million, to help others, including museums. Those snap actions reassured arts leaders in the short term, but as the lockdown dragged on many felt the government had become more focused on developing guidelines for reopening than dealing with the financial gloom ahead. In May, Mr. Dowden formed a nine person "Cultural Renewal Task Force," made up of industry leaders from sports, the arts and entertainment, to "develop creative solutions" for organizations to get back to work. "We're great in the U.K. at setting up a committee, but what we need is action," Cindy Sughrue, the director of the Charles Dickens Museum in London, said in a telephone interview. "I've been surveyed to death," she added. What institutions need now is money to prevent "catastrophic" layoffs, said Tamara Rojo, the artistic director of the English National Ballet and a member of the Cultural Renewal Task Force, in a telephone interview. But the committee had not been discussing financial support she said; that was not its remit. Mr. Dowden has repeatedly promised that a rescue package is coming. "I am not going to stand by and see our world leading position in arts and culture destroyed," he said in an interview with the Evening Standard newspaper on June 8. "Of course I want to get the money flowing," he added. But how much the government allocates is out of his hands: It will depend on Britain's Treasury, led by Rishi Sunak known as a "Star Wars" fan, but not an art aficionado and, ultimately, Prime Minister Boris Johnson. On June 24, The Financial Times reported that the prime minister's office was working on a rescue package, but quoted unnamed sources who said it was "not imminent," and "likely to be on a significantly smaller scale" than arts leaders requested. But many remain hopeful something will emerge. "Although it's taken much longer than it's taken in Germany," said Nicholas Hytner, a former artistic director of the National Theater, in an email, "I believe that there will be a big rescue package here, and I believe it will happen soon." The government understood that Britain's culture institutions are an economic success story, he added, generating more in taxes than they take, and drawing tourists to the country. Mr. Vinken, the director of the Plymouth theater, said extra funding was needed as soon as possible to prevent further layoffs. Without additional government intervention, he would have to make more in October, he said, and would have to consider mothballing the theater not long after that. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
Josephus Melchior Thimister, the Dutch designer who died of suicide last week at age 57, was, the couturier Ralph Rucci said, "the greatest designer of his generation." Anne Chapelle, the Belgian businesswoman who once backed him, called him "a master." He had run the house of Balenciaga for five years, started his own couture and ready to wear collections, had his home on the cover of The World of Interiors, and been crowned by Vogue as one of the new century's "fashion stars." And yet, at the time of his death, aside from a small group of fashion insiders with long memories, most people did not know his name. A talent who was able to balance on the knife edge between poetry and a grungy kind of power, who was fond of tattered romance, a sweeping Byronic trench and the perfect line, Mr. Thimister was also a casualty of fashion's transition from creative hothouse of individuality to global industry. It's a tale that has been told before, with varying degrees of tragedy and of designers with varying degrees of fame. It was there with Alexander McQueen, who also died by suicide. There with John Galliano, whose well documented addictions and public implosion were seen as responses to the pressure he felt and led to the end of his career at Dior, before a comeback at Margiela. And with Christophe Decarnin, the man who put Balmain on the map before a reported nervous breakdown took him off it. If it is true that, as fashion dictates, three of anything is a trend, then four, perhaps, should be a stop sign. (Mr. Thimister also had depression.) And if we don't continue to pay attention to these stories, we are doomed to repeat them. "I never understood and still don't how such an acclaimed talent could be at the same time forgotten by the fashion world," said Luis Placido de Abreu, who worked with Mr. Thimister for several years in the second half of his career. The outlines of that career are familiar enough: a rise through the ranks of couture houses, the creation of a namesake brand, a scramble to pay the bills with side stints as the creative director of a more established (less cool) line, financial instability, closure, return, closure. The content is more complicated. I first stumbled by mistake into a Thimister presentation not long after the designer had left Balenciaga and started his own label. It was 1997 or 1998, and the show was held in a gallery on the rue des Beaux Arts in Paris, with the clothes hung on the walls. I remember being struck by the Tolstoy meets Oasis mood of the clothes. One dress in particular stuck in my head: a white slip with a giant Greek marble profile silk screened on the body under a scrim of black tulle that had been tacked into pleats on one side, like a piece of portable chiaroscuro. I didn't know much about fashion at the time I think it was my first season in Paris but I knew enough to understand there was something ineffably elegant and also slightly twisted about the dress. It was hard to forget. It became the first piece of fashion I ever bought (I still have it), and with the purchase, I got to know its designer, who was flamboyant and given to scarf flinging and self mythology. Born in Maastricht, the Netherlands, Mr. Thimister attended the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp. He worked as an assistant for Karl Lagerfeld, as well as the house of Patou, before becoming creative director of Balenciaga at the age of 30. His first couture show was entirely black and white and is often cited as the moment high fashion returned to the label. "He's why we started paying attention to Balenciaga again," said Julie Gilhart, then the fashion director of Barneys New York. Mr. Thimister lived in a monochrome apartment that had once belonged to Hubert de Givenchy (he said) on one of the streets that borders the Invalides, with black floors, black and white walls and a taxidermied polar bear and baby elephant. His living room was peppered with black plush velvet and silk pillows atop a black rug. Sebastian Suhl, his first business partner, remembered dinner parties called "picnics" with everyone lying on the floor. Jean Delmas, who, with his partner, Heidi Yang , owns the showroom Red Velvet and were Mr. Thimister's agents in America after he restarted his label, remembered Mr. Thimister pouring glass after glass of Champagne "until the carpet was completely soaked." He told Mr. Delmas that a skeletal torso hanging from a window belonged to his Russian grandmother (he had an obsession with his Russian roots and the concept of decaying aristocracy) and that as a child he had toured Harlem with said grandmother while toting a cape and cane. His favorite place in Paris was the Cafe Flore. It would be comforting to think that talent conquers all, but it would also be a fairy tale. That in itself was not the problem. Expectations change, as do job descriptions. That is the normal course of the world. The problem is that there was no allowance for the transition, or the dissonance it created. Instead, a gulf opened up between now and then, and a host of designers, including Mr. Thimister, fell in. The paradox is, looking back at the clothes he made, the quality that most comes to mind is timeless. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
If you're unsure about whether you can run in a park, check the site's website, or contact the park and ask a park ranger. Some might be too small and not have a place to exercise; other trails might look like they're good for running like Angels Landing in Zion National Park in Utah but may be too crowded when you want to go, especially if you're planning to hit them on Labor Day weekend. Runners should also respect guidelines and warnings about wildlife, Ms. Kupper said. The most common injury at the Grand Canyon, for example, is not trips and falls but squirrel bites from people trying to feed the animals when they're not supposed to, she said. Many parks have organized races, like the Valley Forge Revolutionary Five Mile Run in Valley Forge National Historical Park in Pennsylvania in April; the Towpath Marathon, Half Marathon and 10K in Cuyahoga Valley National Park in Ohio in October; the Spa Running Festival in Hot Springs National Park in Arkansas in November; and the Death Valley Marathon, Half Marathon and 10K in Death Valley National Park in California in December. And if you've ever run the New York City Marathon, you may not have realized you were in a National Park site: It starts in the Gateway National Recreation Area. My two favorite National Park units for running are Valley Forge National Historical Park, which has 28 miles of both paved and unpaved trails, and Acadia National Park in Maine, which has 45 miles of gravel carriage roads as part of its more than 120 mile trail network. Do you have a favorite National Park unit for running? Let me know I'm on Twitter byjenamiller. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Well |
A pileup of cliches in service to technological whiz bangery, "Alita" is one more story of the not quite human brought to life with hubris and bleeding edge science. It takes place in the 23rd century after a global cataclysm called the Fall. The movie's story, inspirations and allusions (Hitchcock!), though, more rightly announce it as a 20th century artifact, one that begins when Alita's head and shoulders are found and refurbished by a paternalistic doctor, Ido (an atypically uneasy Christoph Waltz). Theirs is a post apocalyptic meet cute that morphs from yet another riff on Frankenstein's monster into a sitcom y father and daughter duet, plus brawling and exposition. The story proceeds by fits and starts with a narrative line Alita's journey of self awareness that is embellished with a dreary old fashioned romance and regularly interrupted by chaotic action scenes. Some of this crash boom stuff takes place during a game called Motorball, one of those survivalist contests that have been a genre staple since at least the 1975 film "Death Race 2000." The contestants have something to do with Vector (a wasted Mahershala Ali), a regulation villain who takes fashion cues from "The Matrix." This being a very small world, he lives with Ido's ex, Chiren (Jennifer Connelly), who when not selling her soul lounges in garters and stockings. Everything here tends to remind you of something else, including Alita, who was created with performance capture. This involves monitoring and recording a performer's movements using sensors attached to her face and body, information that becomes the foundation for a character that's digitally fleshed out. Cameron used a version of this technology to greater effect in "Avatar," a reminder that whatever his limitations as a filmmaker he's a great visual storyteller who's invariably easier on the eyes than ears he is a technological wiz. Salazar's performance, alas, is consistently bland, but then she was drawn and directed that way, like Jessica Rabbit. It's easy to imagine that both Salazar and Rodriguez would have fared better if her face had been left alone rather than rendered into a stylized manga cartoon, complete with a heart shape and eyes even bigger than Emma Stone's. It's vaguely diverting to stare at Alita's face, at least at first, to ponder its shape, texture and pale color, and the way that her brow furrows when she's being emphatic. Mostly, though, what's interesting about it is that it lacks the conviction, the spark, which turns truly wonderful animated creations Disney's Pinocchio, Hayao Miyazaki's Ponyo into characters you laugh with and weep for. This is a matter of style, inspiration and imagination, or their absence. There's so little at stake in "Alita: Battle Angel" that it blurs into uninvolving spasms of visual and aural noise as it lurches to the cliffhanger ending, a setup for promised sequels. If you stick around for the end credits, you will read that "the making and authorized distribution of this film supported over 15,000 jobs and involved hundreds of thousands of work hours." In other words, piracy threatens the American movie industry, even if a chunk of the jobs here seem to have originated outside the United States. It's still a worthy wag of the finger, although it's difficult not to wish that more of those hours had been spent telling a really good story instead of tweaking tech and shiny breasts. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
The incongruity of dancing in the financial district is something to which many New Yorkers have grown accustomed. Over the years, dancers have performed in many of the spaces there. At 1 p.m. on Monday, Michael Ingle and Silas Riener, modern dancers of distinction, performed a 30 minute duet by the choreographer Tere O'Connor on a lawn at the Elevated Acre on Water Street. Spatially, it's perfect for dance: a lawn framed by tall buildings on two sides but with direct sunlight and an opening toward the East River. Aurally, it abounds with city noise not least that of helicopters. On Monday there was also plenty of just what you would expect: the nonstop conversation of city workers enjoying their lunch breaks. It's the first time I've watched dance while different people near me kept up loud, nonstop conversations about taking on new employees, the irritations of the office and where to go on vacation. (Though you hear this in opera houses too, of course, it's mainly at intermissions.) Mr. O'Connor's duet had no music other than this urban soundscape. But the two men began by clapping in the rapid metric units of flamenco dancers a device to which they returned toward the duet's end. They covered a range of idioms: running, walking, jumping, partnering, gestures. Images of drama occurred, but intermittently. The most powerful incident occurred early on. With one foot on the ground and the other leg raised in a split, and leaning on Mr. Ingle's chest, Mr. Riener (holding Mr. Ingle with both hands) arched his torso forcefully back, then up, then repeated the back up back up sequence. In a heterosexual ballet pas de deux, this would often be an image of sexuality: the open groin, the heaving torso, the pressure on the partner. Here, although a sexual reading was perfectly possible, the sequence became more like an exercise. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
I couldn't sleep on the night of March 12. New York City public schools were still open, and many of my peers were choosing to pull their children out. I couldn't decide whether to keep mine in class. My friends in Hong Kong had been home with their kids for months, but the schools never closed in Singapore. Even though I was speaking to infectious disease pediatricians every day as part of my reporting, there wasn't consensus among them about how parents should proceed. The local mom message boards were lit up with shaming and countershaming: You're hysterical for pulling them out! No, you're crazy for keeping them in! I was relieved when the city announced schools were shuttering on March 15, so I didn't have to decide. Since that night, the other decisions I have made as a mother came rushing back the ones I have been judged for getting wrong, either overtly or through brightly exclaimed, passive aggressive jabs like, "Well, whatever works for you!" These are the kinds of choices that as a well resourced white woman living in a big city, I am supposed to agonize over: Does that chicken really need to be organic? Do all these toys really need to be wooden, even though my toddler likes to use them to bludgeon her sister? And then there are the more universal choices: Can I send my son to day care if he has a runny nose but no fever, knowing that keeping him home means I have to miss work? How much screen time is too much when there's no other way to keep my kids calm while I put dinner together? Even after a massive governmental failure like the water crisis in Flint, Mich., mothers blamed themselves. When LeeAnne Walters, a mom of four turned activist, found out that all of her children had been exposed to lead and that one of her children, whose immune system was compromised, had lead poisoning, her instinct was to castigate herself. "I was hysterical," Ms. Walters told Mother Jones in 2016. "At first, it was self blame. And then there's that anger: How are they letting them do this?" The coronavirus pandemic reminds us that mothers have been unfairly blamed for their children's illnesses, even in the face of public health crises, for decades. Mothers are held responsible for every detail large and small of their children's well being. That didn't happen overnight. Women's diaries from the pre Civil War era, when raising children was a much more collective endeavor, tell a different story. Women did not write very much about child care and they did not blame themselves when children got sick, even though epidemics of diphtheria, smallpox, scarlet fever, measles, whooping cough and many other infectious diseases swept through communities without warning. (Almost all the diaries and letters we have from this time are from literate upper class white women.) The historians Nancy Schrom Dye and Daniel Blake Smith, in a paper published in 1986 and called "Mother Love and Infant Death, 1750 1920," pointed out that the household structure in early America was "permeable" neighbors, friends and relatives all helped with caretaking. Watching over children was not seen as an individual mother's job. And though the child mortality rate was high, mothers did not feel a sense of personal responsibility for their children's deaths. They felt it was God's hand. Of course, they grieved for their children deeply, sometimes permanently. But these women also accepted death as part of life, as something ultimately beyond their control. "It may with truth be said the ways of Providence are dark and mysterious far beyond our comprehension," wrote one Louisiana mother, whose fourth child died after a brief illness in 1836. But sometime in the middle of the 19th century, there was a marked change, Ms. Dye and Mr. Smith wrote. "Individual mothers slowly came to replace God as the most important guarantors of their children's welfare." This was part of a larger shift in the conception of gender responsibilities in the 1800s, according to Stephanie Coontz, the author of "The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap." As economic production moved outside homes and into cities and factories, middle and upper class women's sphere of influence became entirely domestic. "Women began to be responsible for making the home a sanctuary," Ms. Coontz told me. "Morally, emotionally and yes, physically." Though much of the American population was still deeply religious, mothers began to blame themselves when their children got sick. One woman, whose toddler died after a short illness thought to be brought on by teething in 1848, was forever "haunted by thoughts of what might have been avoided, the most pitiless of all." There was nothing that mother could have done with the knowledge she had at the time. And yet she tortured herself for years after her child's death. In the early 1900s, mothers and activists banded together to pressure doctors, the federal government and public health officials to take action on infant deaths. They were relatively successful: In the 20th century, it became culturally accepted that the state had a role in keeping children healthy. But American society, Dr. Dye and Dr. Smith wrote, "has continued to define mothering almost entirely as an individual, private experience and to assign to individual mothers the primary responsibility for their children's care and welfare." So what can we do? Some things are obvious. Children should be loved, have enough food to eat, clean water to drink and places to play outside; they should be vaccinated, and get enough sleep. Parents should heed public health recommendations about staying inside. If nothing else, the pandemic teaches those privileged enough to worry about the little things the truth: We never had complete control in the first place. We have no way of knowing which of the tiny choices we're making every day about what kinds of greens to buy and whether the kids watched an hour too much "Paw Patrol" yesterday mean anything in the long run. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
Hi, I'm Henry Joost. And I'm Ariel Schulman. And we are the directors of Project Power. MUSIC PLAYING All right. So this is almost 10 minutes into the movie, and it's Jamie Foxx's introductory scene. You don't know anything about this character. You don't know his name. He hasn't spoken a word. So he's sort of like a man with no name. And instead of running in on a horse, he rode in on an old landscaper's pickup truck. DOOR OPENS And he's looking for this dude, Newt. Newt is played by Colson Baker, a.k.a. Machine Gun Kelly, and this is actually his third movie with us. We asked him if he wanted to do this, and he agreed right away before finding out that he would have to endure five hours of prosthetic makeup every day in order to prepare for this role. "Everything's slow. If you want, you can call Simon. He'll verify who I am. Tell them " So here's Jamie trying to get inside this guy's house. And I think, maybe even in the script, he pulls out a shotgun and just blasts through the door, which no disrespect to the script, but that's kind of what happens often. And I think Henry just started Googling cool ways to pick a lock and saw a video of some kid throwing this shoe string over a door, and pulling it around the chain, and getting in that way. And we gave that little move to Jamie, who practiced it a bunch. And it turned out to be a really great character moment to show that he is really aware of his surroundings and very clever. We really wanted to flesh out the ecosystem of power and of this world where the movie takes place. So we wanted to understand who this character is. Where does he live? What kind of place is it? What are his neighbors like? We found this amazing abandoned apartment complex in New Orleans that has been turned into kind of a beautiful graffiti art project. And our production designer, Naomi Shohan, designed this apartment complex as if people had been living there without any electricity and without any running water for some time. You'll notice, in his apartment, there's a lot of heat lamps. And all of the stove tops are on. And he's creating sort of a hot moisture within his own ecoclimate. And the idea was that, if your power was to spontaneously combust, the repercussions the symptoms would be the opposite. You'd start losing your ability to thermoregulate. We had this amazing VFX supervisor, Ivan Moran. And we told him, we want to make the most realistic looking man on fire we've ever seen. How do we do that? And he said, the key to it all is interactive light. And a lot of the reason why CG fire looks fake is because the fire itself is not lighting the set or lighting the skin of the person who's supposed to be on fire. So our approach to this was all about figuring out, how do we add interactive light to the set and to the actor? So we had Mike Marino, who's this unbelievable special effects makeup guy, come in with his team. And he built Machine Gun Kelly, basically, a second skin. And then every time we would shoot a scene with him on fire, we would run it through once with MGK, pull him off the set, bring in a stunt man named Tim. He would put on a fully fire retardant suit, get lit on fire. We'd do the same shot with Tim so the VFX artists had a perfect reference for what the fire would do and, more importantly, how it would light the rest of the set. And then we would move on to the next scene. MUSIC PLAYING | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
Everyone who grows up in Cleveland is familiar with the sight of the orange flame that burns over the steel mill in the industrial valley along the Cuyahoga River. In "Rust: A Memoir of Steel and Grit," Eliese Colette Goldbach describes working under that flame the "flare stack" beginning with the day in the spring of 2016 when she pulls into the parking lot and becomes Utility Worker No. 6691. The mill is a vast dystopian landscape, "a grisly amusement park," with chimneys jutting up at freakish angles, crumbling concrete, stairways to nowhere, gantry cranes, catwalks and everything, even the workers in their jumpsuits and hard hats, is covered in dust. The noise is thunderous, and the place stinks, too. But the pay is good, and the new recruits are made to feel as if they'd won the lottery. "Rust" has elements of Tara Westover's "Educated," but Goldbach's background is not as extreme. She went to Catholic schools and asked the Blessed Virgin Mary for a sign that she should become a nun. Her father was a conservative and a gun owner but not a fanatic. He ran a pawnshop, and one of the items in the pawnshop that pleased young Eliese most was a toilet seat made of pennies. All this rings true to my own experience, two generations earlier, growing up Catholic on the West Side of Cleveland except the toilet seat. My idea of art was a holographic image of Christ, in a drugstore window, that flickered back and forth between the Crucifixion and the Resurrection. There were times, while reading "Rust," when I wanted to shout at the author, like a kid at a horror movie, "No! Don't open that door!" The first time was at her decision to go to graduate school in English, which left her painting houses and living in a dump. It was the struggle to pay off her student loans that prompted her to apply for a job at the steel mill. Goldbach is interested in the chemistry of steelmaking, but she swiftly comes to understand that "most steelworkers didn't know how steel was made. ... Everyone knew the few steps they were personally responsible for." In the breakrooms, the "shanties, booths, and pulpits" in the mill where the employees could go to warm up or cool off, she listens as the old timers exchange stories, often about people who were crushed when a coil flipped (finished sheets of steel are rolled into coils) or a forklift toppled. At one point, Goldbach trains in the Hot Dip Galvanizing Line, skimming dross off a vat of molten zinc. If you had the misfortune to fall in and it had happened it could "cook you alive." I also flinched at her original choice of college: the Franciscan University of Steubenville, Ohio. Many memoirs have at their heart a trauma that must be approached obliquely and transformed into a turning point. During her first semester away, Goldbach, drunk and possibly drugged at a party, was raped by two upstanding young men, and everything she did in the aftermath confide in a friend, confess to a priest, report to the institutional authorities had the worst possible outcome. She tells us at the outset that she has a genetic and biological propensity for bipolar disorder, and it is in Steubenville that it emerges. Unhinged, she returns to Cleveland. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
Deep in the Amazon, the rain forest once covered ancient secrets. Spread across hundreds of thousands of acres are massive, geometric earthworks. The carvings stretch out in circles and squares that can be as big as a city block, with trenches up to 12 yards wide and 13 feet deep. They appear to have been built up to 2,000 years ago. Were the broken ceramics found near the entrances used for ritual sacrifices? Why were they here? The answer remains a mystery. For centuries, the enigmatic structures remained hidden to all but a few archaeologists. Then in the 1980s, ranchers cleared land to raise cattle, uncovering the true extent of the earthworks in the process. More than 450 of these geoglyphs are concentrated within Acre State in Brazil. Since the discovery, archaeological study of the earthworks and other evidence has challenged the notion that the rain forests of the Amazon were untouched by human hands before the arrival of European explorers in the 15th century. And while the true purpose of the geoglyphs remains unknown, a study published on Monday in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences offers new insight into the lives of the ancient people who lived in the Amazon. Thousands of years before the earthworks were built, humans were managing the forests, using what appear to be sustainable agricultural practices. "Our study was looking at the environmental impact that the geoglyph builders had on the landscape," said Jennifer Watling, an archaeologist at the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil, who conducted the research while a student at the University of Exeter in Britain. "A lot of people have the idea that the Amazon forests are pristine forests, never touched by humans, and that's obviously not the case." Dr. Watling and her team reconstructed a 6,000 year old environmental history of two geoglyph sites in the Amazon rain forest. To do this, they searched for clues in soil samples in and around the sites. Microscopic plant fossils called phytoliths told them about ancient vegetation. Bits of charcoal revealed evidence of burnings. And a kind of carbon dating gave them a sense of how open the vegetation had been in the past. About 4,000 years ago, people started burning the forest, which was mostly bamboo, just enough to make small openings. They may have planted maize or squash, weeded out some underbrush, and transported seeds or saplings to create a partly curated forest of useful tree products that Dr. Watling calls a "prehistoric supermarket." After that, they started building the geoglyphs. The presence of just a few artifacts, and the layout of the earthworks, suggest they weren't used as ancient villages or for military defenses. They were likely built for rituals, some archaeologists suspect. Dr. Watling and her colleagues found that in contrast with the large scale deforestation we see today which threatens about 20 percent of the largest rain forest in the world ancient indigenous people of the Amazon practiced something more akin to what we now call agroforestry. They restricted burns to site locations and maintained the surrounding landscape, creating small, temporary clearings in the bamboo and promoting the growth of plants like palm, cedar and Brazil nut that were, and still are, useful commodities. Today, indigenous groups around the world continue these sustainable practices in forests. "Indigenous communities have actually transformed the ecosystem over a very long time," said Dr. Watling. "The modern forest owes its biodiversity to the agroforestry practices that were happening during the time of the geoglyph builders." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
This eight bedroom Victorian mansion, called Kilteelagh House, sits on the southeast shore of Lough Derg, a 32,000 acre lake in County Tipperary, about 100 miles southwest of Dublin, Ireland. Built circa 1863 with the exposed stonework and hipped polychrome slate roof of the High Victorian Gothic style, the 10,904 square foot house features five reception rooms, soaring ceilings, a finished basement level and an attached courtyard building with an artist's studio and rec rooms. The secluded 25 acre property also includes a barn, garage, equestrian facilities and a substantial boathouse that was once the home of the Lough Derg Yacht Club, which is now based in a neighboring bay, said David Ashmore, a managing director with Ireland Sotheby's International Realty, which has the listing. The interconnected drawing room and study have wood burning fireplaces with marble chimney pieces, and the drawing room has a raised seating area with lake views. The dining room has a marble fireplace, plaster ceiling rose and chandelier, while the open plan kitchen, expanded from what had been three separate rooms, has an island, granite countertops and a cast iron fireplace. A separate dining area has a solid fuel stove. Beyond the kitchen is a family room with a stove, along with a bedroom and bathroom. The ground floor extends to the courtyard building, which has an artist's studio with double height ceilings and other rooms. The first floor stair hall has a large Venetian style window and ornately carved timber staircase that ascends to a second floor landing accessing five bedrooms and three bathrooms. The master bedroom has large bay windows overlooking the lake, a coved ceiling, cast iron fireplace and a dressing room. The finished basement level has several rooms, including two bedrooms, two bathrooms, an office, living room, laundry, boot room and wine cellar. Outside, a terrace with a barbecue pit is surrounded by Victorian style gardens with seating areas among mature shrubs and trees. The boat house has a harbor and includes two timber pontoons. Ireland's housing market enjoyed a robust recovery in the years following the global recession of 2008, with prices rising by 82.6 percent from their nadir in early 2013 to April 2020. However, the ascent tapered off considerably in 2019, slowed by stricter lending rules, increasing supply and the uncertainty surrounding Brexit. The national residential property price index rose by 0.93 percent from October 2018 to October 2019, down from the previous year's rise of 8.34 percent, according to Ireland's Central Statistics Office. "The housing market pre Covid was performing well," said Guy Craigie, director of residential Ireland for the Knight Frank brokerage. "House prices have stabilized over the last year, having shot up for five years after the crash over a decade ago." Buyers paid a mean of 296,606 euros ( 330,000) for a dwelling in the 12 months before April 2020, according to data from the statistics office still about 18.1 percent below the peak in 2007. "The market was becoming more balanced," said James Butler, head of country agency Dublin for the Savills brokerage. "New supply had finally begun to catch up with the pent up demand and, as a result, we were seeing more orderly and moderate rates of price and rental growth." Restrictions imposed to fight the global pandemic "effectively froze the housing market over the last three months," Mr. Craigie said. But with many of those restrictions lifted as of June 8, "we are beginning to witness a strong rebound in activity," he said. Currently, the average house price in Ireland is 304,000 euros ( 340,000). In Dublin, the capital, the average is 587,000 euros ( 656,000), Mr. Butler said, while "average farmland values have been very consistent in recent years at around 9,000 euros ( 10,100) per acre." While the International Monetary Fund expects Ireland's economy to contract by 6.8 percent, and the country is seeing a pandemic adjusted unemployment rate as high as 26.1 percent, according to the statistics office, brokers were generally optimistic about a market recovery. "We believe we'll see a shortage of supply over the coming months, partially due to the cocooned cohort not wanting to sell, which will act as a break on price declines," Mr. Craigie said. "Most of our clients don't have to sell and won't do so until they both feel safe and that they are getting a fair price." Country estates, like Kilteelagh House in Tipperary County, may be viewed even more favorably by prospective buyers who were confined in tight urban dwellings during the lockdown, Mr. Ashmore said. Travelers entering Ireland are still required to quarantine for 14 days upon arrival, which may slow the recovery in housing sectors popular with foreign buyers, brokers said. However, Mr. Ashmore said, "anticipating a relaxation of this requirement or the availability of testing on entry, many are making tentative travel arrangements in anticipation of being able to travel." Mr. Craigie said he didn't believe the quarantine was hurting the market, as many prospective buyers are viewing listings remotely, particularly for newly built properties. Foreign buyers seeking larger estates often send a locally based representative, such as a family member, for initial viewings, Mr. Butler said, adding, "We expect to see more of this in the forthcoming months." Historically, foreign buyers many of them returning Irish expatriates accounted for about half of the sales of country estates in Ireland. But the past decade, that's grown to two thirds, Mr. Ashmore said. "The U.S. has been the strongest source of foreign buyers in recent years, overtaking the U.K.," he said. However, "the emergence of European based buyers was the big news of 2019, and this trend seems set to become a key factor of our market." Buyers from Asian countries, such as China and Singapore, also are a growing force in the Irish property market, Mr. Craigie said. "We expect this trend to continue to gain strength over the coming 12 months, bringing with it considerable buying power to the middle and upper ends of the residential market, with a special focus on Dublin," he said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
When the administration of Mayor Bill de Blasio announced last year that a new project, She Built NYC, would commission monuments and memorials for undersung female leaders, the Roman Catholic nun who is considered the patron saint of immigrants was not on the shortlist, upsetting her many Italian American and Catholic fans, especially because in a public poll, she received the most votes. But after a bureaucratic tussle between the city and state about the issue, on Monday, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo unveiled a monument to Francesca Xavier Cabrini in Battery Park City during the state's Columbus Day celebrations on Monday. While the pandemic prevented the traditional parade, there was plenty of fanfare in Battery Park City, where a red cloak was removed to reveal the bronze statue after the governor spoke. Quoting Mother Cabrini, he said, "The world is poisoned with erroneous theories and needs to be taught sane doctrines. But it is difficult to strengthen what has become crooked." Earlier this year, a commission that included public officials and Italian Americans selected the artist couple Jill and Giancarlo Biagi to design the sculpture, budgeted at 750,000. The monument stands against a backdrop of Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty, depicting Mother Cabrini on a paper boat. The artists said the two children aboard are sailing to the New World from Europe. The girl holds onto the boat, symbolizing her steadfastness while the boy grips his luggage, ready to face the future. A mosaic beneath the sculpture was created, with help from the Cabrini Museum in Italy, with riverbed stones from Mother Cabrini's birthplace. When she was a little girl in the Lombardy region of Europe, which would later become part of Italy, Francesca would fill paper boats with violets, calling them her missionaries, and send them down a stream, Jill Biagi explained. "By putting her in the boat, it symbolizes her ability to withstand all the adversities of life in search of realizing her dream," she said. "Her dream was to help the needy." And Cabrini did become a missionary. Born in 1850, she emigrated to the United States and settled in New York by 1889. She went on to found more than 60 schools, hospitals, and orphanages. And 30 years after her death in 1917, Mother Cabrini became the first American to be canonized by the Roman Catholic Church. Last year, the list the city initiated for She Built NYC, a program led by Chirlane McCray, the first lady, was criticized over the exclusion of Mother Cabrini. The disagreement culminated in the actor Chazz Palminteri's calling Ms. McCray a "racist" during a WNYC radio show. (He later apologized.) At the time, Mayor de Blasio described the uproar as "a manufactured controversy," promising that Mother Cabrini would eventually get her due. But the mayor never got his chance; days later, the governor announced the state commission to join the Diocese of Brooklyn and other supporters to find financing and a spot for the monument. With the advent of the pandemic, the de Blasio administration indefinitely delayed its own program to honor women. The sculptor Vinnie Bagwell said the state had been much more efficient than the city with its administration of public art projects in recent months. Her work on a state project, a Sojourner Truth monument in Highland, N.Y., to commemorate the 100th anniversary of women's suffrage, got the necessary approvals to be completed on time. On the other hand, nearly a year after winning a city commission to design an artwork to replace a controversial Central Park statue, Ms. Bagwell said she hasn't received a contract to begin her work. "We are all sitting here, studying the horizon," Ms. Bagwell said. "I'm disappointed in New York City. I expected more expedience, more professionalism and more communication." She's not alone in her frustration. Four years after winning a city competition to memorialize the musician Tito Puente in East Harlem, the artist Ogundipe Fayomi withdrew from the project this summer, citing "the overly long process" as the main reason for his departure. In response to the criticism, Mitch Schwartz, a spokesman for the mayor's office, said, "This work takes time." He added, "We're going to do it thoughtfully and with robust community and artistic engagement. New York City is absolutely committed to seeing these projects through and giving our heroes the beautiful, meaningful and appropriate monuments they deserve." The mayor did not attend Mother Cabrini's unveiling. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
President Trump claimed again on Friday that anyone who needed a coronavirus test "gets a test." But from Washington State to Florida to New York, doctors and patients are clamoring for tests that they say are in woefully short supply, and their frustration is mounting alongside the growing number of cases around the country. In California, where thousands are being monitored for the virus, only 516 tests had been conducted by the state as of Thursday. Washington health officials have more cases than they can currently process. And in New York, where cases have quadrupled this week, a New York City official pleaded for more test kits from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "The slow federal action on this matter has impeded our ability to beat back this epidemic," the official said in a letter Friday. More than 300 cases have been confirmed, at least 17 have died, and thousands are in self quarantine. Public health officials are warning that no one knows how deeply the virus will spread, in part because the federal government's flawed rollout of tests three weeks ago has snowballed into an embarrassing fiasco of national proportions. The latest two deaths were announced late Friday night in Florida, marking the first time fatal cases were not on the West Coast. In the last week, Mr. Trump and his top officials repeatedly promised that 1 million to 1.5 million tests would be sent around the country, even though labs government and private ones alike have struggled to get the tests running amid a growing number of infections and rising demand for tests. Despite an order Wednesday by the C.D.C. to greatly expand criteria for who can be tested, many hospitals and state health authorities continued to limit tests to those at the highest risk for infection, adding to the confusion and frustration, especially in hot spots like California and Washington. In California, Cindy Homen, 58, followed the advice she had heard from public health officials this week and emailed her primary care doctor about getting tested, at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Santa Rosa, Calif., when she started to come down with coughing fits and a sore throat. She received a reply Thursday telling her she did not need to get tested, that most people exposed to the virus recover after experiencing mild symptoms. She was advised to wash her hands and stay home. "At this point, testing is very limited," her doctor wrote. "This whole thing is just a big joke," Ms. Homen said. "How do they track the coronavirus if there aren't enough test kits and they don't even want you to come in?" Over the past few days, Vice President Mike Pence has been moderating expectations about how quickly the tests would be widely available. On Friday, Mr. Pence said it would be a "matter of weeks" before Americans could get easy access to a coronavirus test. And on Thursday, he seemed to acknowledge that the administration's estimates were high. Speaking at a 3M plant in Minnesota where another item in short supply respirator masks are made, he said, "We don't have enough tests today to meet what we anticipate will be the demand going forward." Mr. Pence added: "For those who we believe have been exposed, for those who are showing symptoms, we've been able to provide the testing." On Friday, Alex M. Azar II, the secretary of health and human services, was prompted to speak by the president at the White House signing of the 8.3 billion emergency spending bill for the coronavirus. Mr. Azar told reporters: "I just want to make it clear that in terms of tests, we have provided all the tests to the state of Washington and the state of California that they've asked for. The production and shipping of tests that we've talked about all week is completely on schedule." Mr. Azar said the C.D.C. had shipped out materials capable of testing 75,000 people to state and local government labs. In addition, he said, Integrated DNA Technologies, the private contractor working with the C.D.C. to ship to the private sector and hospitals, has already distributed enough materials for 700,000 tests. At a short news conference during the president's visit to the C.D.C. lab in Atlanta on Friday, Dr. Robert R. Redfield, the director of the C.D.C., said the agency had never denied a request by local public health officials. "All of our state labs now have the ability to test for this virus," he said. Mr. Trump interjected at one point, as administration officials explained the timetable for rolling out tests to the states. "Anybody right now and yesterday, anybody that needs a test gets a test," the president said. "They're there. They have the tests and the tests are beautiful." After weeks of delays by the C.D.C. because of a "manufacturing problem" in one component of its test, and the Food and Drug Administration's refusal to lift testing restrictions for large academic centers or private companies until Feb. 29, many laboratories have begun to process tests only in the last few days. There still is no central reporting system to track the number of tests conducted or the number of patients who have been tested. Read about the latest developments in the coronavirus epidemic here. It is nearly impossible to know precisely how many people in the United States have been tested for the coronavirus. The C.D.C. reported Thursday that it had tested 1,583 patients since the beginning of the outbreak, but it is not making public how many tests are being done at state and local public health laboratories, despite publishing similar data on the seasonal flu. Many local labs are just beginning to receive long delayed test kits and, even at full capacity, will be able to run only about 100 tests per day. Virginia's new lieutenant governor elect says she won't force vaccines. A total of 71 public laboratories in 47 states and the District of Columbia had the capacity to test for the coronavirus as of Friday afternoon, according to the Association of Public Health Laboratories, which represents government laboratories around the country. That's up from just eight labs able to process tests last Thursday. "We've seen major progress with essentially the lights coming on across the country," said Scott Becker, the association's chief executive. But the delays mean that "we're absolutely a few weeks behind where we should be," he said, adding, "There is no way you can sugarcoat that." Maine said it was still bringing its state laboratory online. Pennsylvania officials said they would have the capacity to test 150 specimens a day at the state laboratory beginning this weekend. Arkansas can process eight to 10 tests daily, and has so far tested six patients. Large, private laboratories are also ramping up. LabCorp, a major diagnostics company, began offering a coronavirus test Thursday evening. Another firm, Quest Diagnostics, said it would launch a similar product on Monday. "The reason that's important, the reason that meets future demand is because the enormous capacity of these commercial laboratories and others in the country are precisely how we will make coronavirus tests available for your local doctor, available to your pharmacy and broadly available to the American public," Mr. Pence said at the White House coronavirus task force briefing Friday. But Wendy Bost, a Quest spokeswoman, sounded a more cautious tone. "While we believe we have capacity to accommodate initial demand, this is an evolving situation and we anticipate building additional capacity over time," she said in a statement. Meanwhile, the state laboratories in Washington have more cases than they can currently process. "We have a small backlog that we hope to be through very soon," said Danielle Koenig, a spokeswoman for that state's health department. The agency had tested 91 patients as of Wednesday, and attributed the backlog to both a lack of staffing and physical capacity. Their facilities can currently handle 200 samples per day, with each patient requiring between one and three tests. In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis cautioned that the state had not yet received enough testing kits. "I know they have tens of thousands that will eventually be en route," he said. "We'd like to get them, obviously, as soon as possible." So far, the state is conducting tests at three public health labs in Miami, Tampa and Jacksonville. The C.D.C.'s decision to remove most criteria for testing took some state officials and large health systems off guard. "Everyone under the sun who is going to develop a cough is going to want to get a test for coronavirus," Dr. Mark Levine, the commissioner of Vermont's health department, said on the day the changes were announced. On Friday, Vermont health officials said they had run eight tests in the state. Many states reported on Friday that they had run only a handful of tests. In several states, health officials have been sending out guidance to physicians encouraging them to first test for other likely causes, such as the flu, before sending samples to state laboratories. Dr. John Strayer, an emergency doctor at EvergreenHealth in Kirkland, Wash., where some of the patients infected with the virus had been admitted, said the loosened criteria have "added to my work." He said he now has to triage patients based on whether they were sick enough to need a test urgently. Most people are sent back home and told to quarantine until they get better. Dr. Strayer said the new policy had certainly created "lots of very angry patients." Kate Mannle, 37, of Seattle spent a week trying to get tested. Ms. Mannle returned Saturday from an overseas trip that included a layover in South Korea, which is experiencing an outbreak of the new virus. On Sunday, she developed a fever and a cough, but was told by her doctor and hospitals that she was not sick enough to get tested. Ms. Mannle, the director of training programs for a conservation nonprofit, quarantined herself inside her one bedroom apartment in Seattle, where she spent the week sleeping, doing a little yoga and trying to recover from her 101 degree fever and respiratory infection. She plans to stay inside until 24 to 48 hours after her cough goes away. She suspects she did indeed contract the virus, but she will probably never know for sure. "They've put up so many barriers," she said. "I'm tired of it and I'm ready to move on." She added: "But what about the next one? What if this had been Ebola?" Reporting was contributed by Jack Healy, Patricia Mazzei, Knvul Sheikh, Sheila Kaplan, Farah Stockman, Reed Abelson, Denise Grady and Timothy Williams. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
"Back of my hand. Back of my hand ..." The young T.S.A. agent's tone is matter of fact yet soothing, particularly as she struggles to get a blue gloved finger between my waistband and my waist, a space we both agree is confoundingly snug. I have arrived at the Austin airport with only a temporary, wholly insufficient paper copy of a recently renewed driver's license, and thus my journey to Las Vegas begins, appropriately enough, with a thorough pat down. Emily, my already reluctant traveling companion, looks on with dismay. It's an inauspicious beginning to our in depth investigation into the phenomenon known as Las Vegas pool culture, a project to which we, avowed Texas river rats, have affixed the label Fear and Bathing in Las Vegas. Little did we know. Over three days we would abase ourselves before khaki clad, earpiece wearing room key inspectors (those we didn't sneak past, that is), run in inadequately soled sandals down sidewalks baked by 111 degree heat (slightly preferable to navigating the air conditioned but endless Kubrickian resort casino corridors of the Strip), pay handsomely for the privilege of having our belongings searched and our bodies wanded, and espy more butt cheek than we ever thought possible. You know those insufferable inspirational messages plastered across Instagram photos and tote bags, the "Oh Hey Vacay"s and "Not all who wander ..."s? I saw one that really resonated with me in Vegas: "Travel leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller." I'm not sure about that last part, but the first is right on the mark. Saturday, June 23, 11:30 a.m., Encore Beach Club, Encore: Our first stop, after a buffet breakfast of smoked salmon, mac and cheese, liquid courage and other unnatural pairings, is Encore Beach Club, 40,000 square feet of capital P pool party. We are throwing ourselves in the deep end, so to speak. Except there is no deep end, of course, nor diving boards or anything else that might not mix well with a Jeroboam of Ace of Spades rose ( 25,000). No mere hotel pool, EBC is one of the heavy hitters of Vegas day clubs, which, if you're not familiar, are pretty much exactly like Vegas nightclubs, except with sunshine and water and less clothing. The emergence of the Vegas day club is largely attributed to the Hard Rock Hotel, whose execs apparently figured that access to an Ibiza style pool party brimming with babes and bros and booze was the kind of thing people already living it up in the land of no limits would pay for. The appropriately named Rehab, the "party that started it all," was launched one Sunday in 2004, and it was off to the races. The Vegas pool has long been part of the package of temptations, together with gambling and drinking and various other hedonistic activities, conjured up to lure fun seekers to this strange patch of desert. Early iterations were typically come one, come all affairs, many of which were strategically situated right up against Highway 91 to tempt road weary travelers. "If you wish to keep cool, take a swim in the pool," proclaimed a postcard advertising El Rancho Vegas, which opened in 1941. Over time, as the Strip became ever more elaborate and attention grabbing, the pools came to have less and less to do with simple recreation. Scalloped edges (the Flamingo, 1946) and unusual shapes (a Figure 8 at the Desert Inn, 1950) morphed into glass pools with portholes (the Mirage Motel, 1952) and pools with airtight underwater chambers for those who wanted to enjoy a cocktail fully clothed (New Frontier, 1955). The resorts have been upping the ante ever since, which is how floating craps tables and underwater Muzak gave way, for better or worse, to live sharks and stripper poles. You can forget about a comfortable seat (or a towel) if you haven't paid for the privilege. At Encore, prices can range from 5,000 ish for a daybed to 10,000 for a "water couch," a 10 person table sofa lounge combo situated in a shallow part of the pool, the easier to roll right off into the water. The real estate at day clubs is parceled out like V.I.P. areas in a nightclub; the price for a full day's rental, which includes bottle service and its corresponding "minimum spend" agreement, is based on a variety of factors, like day of the week and the location of your couch or cabana. But the biggest determinant of cost is the talent, which in most cases is the D.J. Resorts compete fiercely to sign contracts with big names (an unusual number of which end in o Diplo, Marshmello, Tiesto, Alesso). Earlier this year Calvin Harris, the highest paid D.J. in the world according to Forbes, renewed his contract through 2020 with Hakkasan Group, an international purveyor of luxury "night life and day life," for a reported cool 280 million. So with Emily in her tunic and I in my swim skirt, we settle into our shade patch with a woman from Singapore, who graciously gives us some of her sunscreen; we've come in empty handed, intimidated by the long list of prohibited items, an odd assortment no doubt begot from hard won experience (the usual suspects, like drugs and weapons, but also nasal sprays, vitamins, breath strips). The three of us proceed to gape, open mouthed, at the spectacle, which at this point involves a lot of dancing and drinking and flirting. Most of the men wear standard pool attire; the women appear to have shopped from the Boudoir Resort collection 2019. Fake eyelashes and blown out hairdos top four inch strappy heels and ankle length robes in sheer fabric, the better to showcase the ubiquitous cheeky bikini bottom. We slip into the blessedly cold water and note the diversity of this pool bodies of all shapes and sizes speaking all kinds of languages, and families with children, something that feels like a plus at this juncture. A cluster of boisterous Irish women keeps us entertained for a good bit, as do two Caesars employed dancers with faux Greco Roman goddess style braids and metallic gold bikinis swaying to the music atop their pedestals. We pass a couple of hours this way, unable to wrench ourselves from our liquid blue cocoon, until the lifeguard blows his whistle at me for the second time, for daring to sit on the half submerged steps leading to the giant rotunda that houses a towering golden Caesar (Augustus? Julius?), and we decide to call it a day. Sunday, June 24, 10:44 a.m., Daylight Beach Club, Mandalay Bay: "Anyone here rock stars?" Emily and I are getting better at this; we've left breakfast at the hotel with a mini bottle of sparkling wine and two large OJs to go, and so I've had just enough to laugh and wave my hand obnoxiously at the official looking woman scanning the small group of us huddling in the shade of a spindly tree, waiting for the gates to open. Turns out she's looking for folks who have signed up for a "party bus" tour of the Strip and V.I.P. access to select clubs (" V.I.P . access can make you feel like a member of society's elite, like throwing away your toothbrush after a single use," says a Groupon ad for one such company), and she doesn't think I'm funny. We have just been denied access to Mandalay's "world famous aquatic playground" ("2,700 tons of real sand!" "1.6 million gallon wave pool!") but have managed to score two "ladies get in free" passes to Daylight. Clearly, spending a few hours at a day club is a fairly attainable goal, depending on capacity, what you're willing to pay and some abstruse concept called gender mix (hence the free passes). Getting into a hotel's complex of "regular" pools or even finding them is more of a crapshoot. Almost always hidden in the back forty, they are mostly the unassailable domains of registered guests, with a few confusing exceptions. Some are open to the public, some are aggressively locked down and some let you in on certain days for certain fees. Appearance matters, unfortunately, as does time of day. Later, at another pool, I'll ask for a float and the attendant will first look at his watch and then tell me it will cost 20. I can only surmise that hot air captured in PVC plastic gets more economical as the day wears on. Daylight is not yet bumping, because once again, we're early. Though it's terribly hot and the still clear pool beckons with colorful gratis tubes shaped like cross sections of lemons and limes, we sit on the pool's edge, our feet in the water, and drink expensive cheap wine from plastic glasses. That gets old fast, and we move on. 12:27, Grand Pool Complex, MGM Grand: We'd hoped to talk our way onto the lazy river but are not terribly disappointed when we don't succeed, as the river is downright inert, packed with colorful tubes barely conveying rambunctious children and enervated adults. So off we go down a winding path to the day club, Wet Republic. But we can hear MGM's "ultra pool" before we even lay eyes on it, and we turn on our heels and skedaddle back down the Strip to our hotel. You've seen one day club, you've seen them all (Calvin Harris plays on Sept. 15, if you're interested in finding out just how "ultra" the pool gets). 4:30 ish, Marquee, the Cosmopolitan: Well, maybe not. After lying on the bed and staring at the ceiling for a while, we have concluded that we'd be remiss if we didn't visit our own hotel's day club, Marquee, another high roller in the pool party scene. So we descend to the entrance, on Level 2, where an attendant takes us on a disorienting trip down a long hall, down (up?) a floor (two?) in an elevator, and through a dark, cavernous space that hosts the nightclub, all of which gives us plenty of time to gird our loins for our debut. We walk onto the pool deck just in time to witness a bronzed dude doing the "hang loose" sign as he scoots across the path of a barrel bellied middle aged man in an American flag swim brief emerging from the pool to dance with three young women. "I've got the power!" rings out in a deafening fashion from the D.J. booth as we bypass the purple lounges and matching umbrellas to find a narrow edge of a planter to perch on. Ogling the impossibly perfect bodies and the extravagant display of assets, what becomes crystal clear (unlike the pool) is that none of this is about the pool. Writing in "Perfect Wave: More Essays on Art and Democracy," the critic Dave Hickey, a onetime Vegas resident and gimlet eyed champion of the city, likens the inauthenticity of the Strip (and all of Nevada, at that) to "a theatrical setting, an adaptable backdrop before which the theater of human folly is acted out." That seems particularly apt here, as I watch the poolside players, redolent of coconut and pheromones, signal from behind mirrored sunglasses. I'm reminded of nature's delightful courtship rituals, like that of the bird of paradise, who clears a little spot of forest floor, fluffs his bright colored feathers and busts a jaunty little move for the ladies. Silver streamers and seizure inducing music washing over us, we gamely order a giant frozen something to share, in a pitiful attempt at enthusiasm. For about half an hour, we watch folks frolic and dance and toss small inflatable balls overhead. Our judginess rising in inverse proportion to our self esteem as we balance on our sliver of concrete, we are just about ready to exit when a pool attendant approaches us, leans in close, and asks, "How many of you are there?" Seemingly relieved to hear we are not part of a larger posse, he informs us that we have been invited by Larry and Joe, of Philadelphia and Miami, to their Marquee Grand Cabana, a shaded refuge complete with comfortable lounge seating, a bikini clad hostess and a private pool of clear, cold, circulating water. We hesitate and then take the plunge. Monday, June 25, 12:41 p.m., Cypress Premier Lounge, Bellagio Hotel Casino: We have surrendered. Earlier in the morning, exhausted and nigh well overcome by sensory overload, we'd nonetheless decided to come sniffing around the verdant acreage that cradles the Bellagio's five pools. Delighted that we had gone unnoticed by the room key police and captivated by the "azure waters," the peaceful setting, the adult contemporary playlist, we made a solemn pledge that we would return, books and hats and sunscreen in a bag no one would search, and pay for the privilege. And so here we are, having put down 85 each which seems to us a bargain, relatively speaking for a few hours in a reserved chaise longue. "People actually enjoy this?" one of our cabdrivers had asked, as we'd regaled him with our day club adventures. It would appear that they do. The pools are selling what all of Vegas is selling: escape on an epic scale, the opportunity to mingle with the young and attractive, to brush against what feels like celebrity, to gain entree however fleeting and expensive to velvet roped exclusivity. And if that moment in the sun means a multi thousand dollar credit card bill showing up a few weeks later, well, so be it. It's hard to ignore the gratuitous excess, the worrisome superficiality, the aqueous extravagance. But it's also hard not to be seduced. Who, in these uncertain times, can resist, as a '50s era brochure for the Stardust put it, a "gay rendezvous where everyone is young at heart"? Right now the water is crystal clear and almost uncomfortably cold, alive with splashing fountains. We recline in our umbrella shaded daybed, with plush towels near at hand and our own tastefully dressed Personal Cypress Host, who graciously brings us all the iced down bottles of wine we are willing to pay for. Sade's "Smooth Operator" plays over the sound system ("Diamond life ..."), and I spy a sign advertising poolside chilled eye treatments and foot exfoliating. "Relax," it says. "You've earned this." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
A meteorologist who was asked by a co worker to cover up her sleeveless dress during a live broadcast wants enraged observers to know that she wasn't a victim of workplace sexism. The meteorologist, Liberte Chan, said in a blog post that she had been playing along with a joke during the broadcast on KTLA in Los Angeles on Saturday. Ms. Chan said she changed into a sparkly tank dress after her first choice, a patterned, black and white sheath, turned parts of her body transparent against a green screen. Ms. Chan was in the middle of her report when a male co worker reached into the live shot, holding a gray cardigan sweater. "What's going on?" Ms. Chan asked. "You want me to put this on? Why? Because it's cold?" "We're getting a lot of emails," the co worker said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
In early July, after spring planted peas are pulled, space becomes available alongside a row of potatoes hilled up with straw in my garden an opportunity for one of many possible successions from bush beans to various greens or root crops. You've planted the vegetable garden; the beds are increasingly full. But before you check that task off the list, take a closer look. The cilantro and lettuce are trying to tell you something: Once is almost never enough. There will soon be vacancies, as some crops those that are quick to mature or don't tolerate heat well, or both pass their prime. Tomatoes, eggplants and peppers are generally planted just once. But other crops need sowing again and again to keep producing. Are you ready with more seeds or better still, a homegrown supply of fresh transplants selected for summer right through fall harvest to plug into every precious bit of available real estate? This is succession sowing, an advanced level of vegetable garden math. The introductory lesson simply required calculating when it was safe to sow or transplant certain crops outdoors. Once you've mastered that, you need to learn which crops lend themselves to resowing, and how often, to ensure a steady supply of vegetables over the longest possible season. You'll also need to estimate how much available space there will be and figure out how to assign various plants to those empty spaces in an ongoing planting plan. The Goal Is the Same Everywhere Getting the most out of the space is your goal, no matter where you're gardening. But dates and plant choices vary in regions with shorter or longer frost free seasons, or with extreme summer heat, which might be inhospitable for something that works farther north. In the Hudson Valley, I sow successions of bush beans from mid May until late July. If I were in North Carolina, I could sow from mid March until mid June, and then again from August until mid October. Calendars and other guidance, with an emphasis on the latest possible season extending plantings in climates as varied as Maine and Florida, are rounded up here. Note what is likely to vacate space also, how much space and when. Write it down, bed by bed. List your wished for crops, matching choices to any found spaces. What can be planted in succession? In my Northeast garden, the possibilities, even well into summer, might include arugula, basil, bush beans, beets, braising greens (mustard, kale, collards, Asian greens), broccoli rabe, carrots, chard, chicory, bush cucumber, collards, dill, kale, lettuce, radishes, peas, scallions, spinach, bush summer squash and turnips. Broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower that I started in flats in May could be transplanted at about a month old. Many annual flowers can also be succession sown for late summer and fall display or bouquets. Compare your wish list to seeds you already have or place another order quickly. It's unlikely that local garden centers will have transplants in stock, but they may have seed packets and seed starting mix. The best possible succession system uses various tactics. The most straightforward way to produce more cilantro, chard, bush beans, arugula or lettuce, among other possibilities, is by repeatedly sowing a small amount in a dedicated area. In spring, I set aside space that could accommodate a few successions, but sow just the first, in a portion of that row. Two (or, for the beans, three) weeks later, I sow the second stretch. By the time I sow the third, I'll probably be harvesting or even pulling the first, and could reuse the first space for a fourth sowing or for planting something else. In other spots, I follow one crop that's ready to be pulled with a different one. So my plan would call for growing early spring spinach to harvest before the tomatoes are transplanted there, and planting garlic in that space in October after pulling the tomatoes. Here's a sort of hybrid of the first scenario: Sow two or more varieties of the same vegetable at the same time, choosing ones with a different number of days to maturity listed in their descriptions for instance, baby carrots (about 50 days) alongside a larger carrot (around 75 days). I do this with peas, giving part of a 20 foot row to Sugar Ann, which produces about 10 days earlier than the taller snap peas that get the rest of the row, then yield longer. I repeat the planting in July for fall harvest. But even a single variety can do multiple duty. That pea planting, for instance, could be extended to include a section of seeds sown more thickly, intended for harvest at four or five inches high as pea shoots, for salads or stir fries, with the left rest to mature to pods. A portion of a row of kale could be harvested as baby leaf for salads, and the same with lettuce, with that section resown for more of the extra fast young version of the crop. When you're seed shopping, make sure to scan the descriptions for mentions of heat and cold tolerance and match the variety to the season you plan to grow it. Some spinach varieties were bred for improved summer performance, and Batavia or summer crisp lettuces generally stand up well compared to others. With cilantro, there is actually a variety named Slow Bolt that resists the urge. For later sowings, choose faster maturing varieties and adjust the expected time to harvest for the shorter day length. Days will be gradually decreasing as the latest sown crops mature, meaning slower growth and longer time to harvest. My identical row of spring sown peas will probably mature faster than the one I sow in July for fall picking. I calculate when to sow them by adding about two weeks to the expected days to maturity listed on the packet, hoping not to bump into fall frosts. Some varieties won't work; I wouldn't choose a big 70 day radish up north as my latest sowing, but rather a small one that matures in half that time or less. A note about days to maturity: Nobody interprets this exactly the same way, so it's solid guidance, but not a guarantee. With some crops, it's an estimate starting from germination after direct sowing in the garden; with others, from outdoor transplant time of a seedling that you may already have invested four or more weeks in. It's helpful for identifying fast maturing varieties over slower ones, and as an approximation of how much time to figure each garden space will be occupied by a particular crop. Take into account the direction the sun moves: Avoid planting on the shady side of tall plants like tomatoes or a trellis of pole beans, unless it's a strategic move meant to give heat haters like lettuce a bit of afternoon shade in the hottest months. For the most efficient use of space, start seedlings in flats. Because their infancy doesn't take up precious square footage, transplants are in the garden a shorter time than direct sown plants and are more space efficient. Plus, sowing seeds in hot, dry garden soil can be challenging. With those you plan to sow directly, like radishes, beets and carrots (because root crops generally don't transplant well), have a piece of burlap at hand to keep the moistened seedbed from baking before germination. Keep at It Keep picking, keep watering, keep weeding. No matter how genius your schedule, neglected, stressed out plants will never perform optimally. Pea, bean, cucumber and summer squash plants will yield over the longest period if they are picked regularly. Planting crops in succession can sometimes outsmart vegetable pests and diseases. With any crop vulnerable to common garden pests like cucumber beetles or squash bugs, I always make two sowings a few weeks apart, and not right next to each other. One or the other planting will hopefully miss the peak moment in the insects' feeding cycle, especially if I remove the eggs they lay (usually underneath leaves) every morning, and also get rid of any adults that manage to find the plants. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
"Hindsight is my gift," Hannah Gadsby announces halfway through "Douglas," her startling new stand up show and unlikely follow up to the groundbreaking "Nanette." In context, the claim is a nugget of self deprecation; she has been talking about her autism, which often leaves her feeling confused in present tense social situations, like the "only sober person in a room full of drunks." But it's also a boast, a motto, a banner: She has spectacular rearview vision. There's a lot for her to look back on in "Douglas," which opened on Thursday at the Daryl Roth Theater. Though Ms. Gadsby became famous in the United States only last year, when "Nanette" was picked up by Netflix, she lived on earth for several decades before that, mostly in Australia, without our consent or acknowledgment. "That's a thing you don't know," she says of Americans. "Other cultures reference themselves without consulting you first." Who makes the rules and defines the categories in which others must struggle for love and dignity is the overarching theme of "Douglas" even though, in a typical red herring, it is named for one of her dogs. "Nanette" was likewise named for a character who had little to do with the story. Like the earlier piece, too, "Douglas" is angry even furious and draws its comic energy from the effort to master and direct that anger into sharp insight and its byproduct, laughter. Revenge would not be too strong a word for the show's huge scope and dark aims. If it has a fault, the scale would be it: There are so many enemies to be shot down and re educated that they eventually threaten to blur into one undifferentiated mass of awfulness. But perhaps that's actually Ms. Gadsby's point. Most of them, in any case, are men. There's the doctor who tried to put her on the Pill because he didn't appreciate her emotions; there's another doctor, a few centuries earlier, who "discovered" an obscure part of women's reproductive anatomy and put his name (also "Douglas") on it. "It's amazing how little men have to do to be remembered," she says. More recently there are the men and yes, she says, they are always men who feel the need, after "Nanette," to troll and disparage her. Sometimes they offer inanely paradoxical insults like "I've never heard of you" and sometimes they pile on to that show's story of the violent hate crime Ms. Gadsby suffered with verbal violence of their own. Even among non troglodytes, "Nanette" was polarizing. A kind of self canceling stand up, it questioned the capacity of comedy to encompass traumas like the very one it was built on. Some critics thus doubted it was comedy at all, calling it theater or monologue or lecture, none of those words meant as praise. In "Douglas," Ms. Gadsby says she doesn't care what terminology you use; that fight is a waste of time, giving too much power to those who make the categories and not enough to those who make the art. Nor will she let others define her as a failure because she's a woman, a lesbian, "heavy of the hoof" or a person with autism. "I no longer believe that I am falling short of expectations," she says. "I believe it is those expectations that are falling short of my humanity." The unusual brilliance of "Douglas" is in its long game strategy to prove this. Making expectations both her subject and method, Ms. Gadsby begins by telling us everything she will be doing in the 95 minute set and exactly what effects she intends to achieve. When she later collects double on the gambit scoring for both her laughs and her prediction of them you are struck by the daring that went into setting such a high bar. And you believe, as she suggests, that her ability to think through and execute such a plan is proof of a mind that is beautiful, not defective. The specific content is largely successful too. Some of it, as she has promised, is relatively ordinary (though still funny) comic material built on easy targets (golfers, anti vaxxers) and formulaic punch lines and puns. "The word 'arugula' sounds like a clown car horn." "Waldo should have to find himself like the rest of us do." But those are palate cleansers, lowering the audience's defenses before the main course arrives. Acknowledging that the success of "Nanette" is "why everyone's here including myself," she at first insists she's "fresh out" of trauma to turn into material. "Had I known, I might have budgeted mine better, gotten at least a trilogy out of it." Even so, it wouldn't be for us: "My grief is not your train. Get off." Meanwhile she has carefully been stoking another train, one whose freight is the much larger trauma we all share, thanks to centuries of misogyny. Surely it's no accident that Ms. Gadsby brings to this material the full range of comic invention she has previously been parceling out so carefully. As she approaches the show's climax we feel the temperature change, much in the way we do when fireworks or symphonies ramp up toward their final cadences. The big guns come out. So in answer to those men who derided "Nanette" as a mere monologue she offers another, unanswerable one. And to those who called it a lecture, not comedy, she responds with one of the funniest lectures ever, on the High Renaissance, complete with slides. (Her bachelor's degree is in art history and curatorship.) In it, she locates the supposedly universal ideals of female beauty in the merely pervy obsessions of privileged male painters. And she convincingly explains why Titian isn't a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle but ought to be. If the mixture of ingredients does not seem as if it should cohere, the result absolutely does. American self regard conspires with male privilege (and, in one devastating story, a form of female collaboration) to make such an overwhelming antagonist that all of Ms. Gadsby's modes of attack wind up aimed in the same direction. Everyone is implicated, from Leonardo to Louis C.K. Since only animals (though not turtles) are unsullied, perhaps the title is not so random. And as for whether Ms. Gadsby's art is theater or stand up or lecture or monologue, who cares? There's enough trauma to go around. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
Q. How do I find English language content with English language subtitles? I am hard of hearing and lots of content, principally movies, will have subtitles in every language under the sun, except English. A. Some video providers may be putting those subtitles in the settings for closed captions, which may be why you do not see English in the list of available languages for English language content. Even though they may be grouped together by some companies, subtitles and closed captions are technically different features. Subtitles serve to translate dialogue from one language to another. Closed captions designed to aid the deaf and hearing impaired are transcriptions of spoken dialogue, and can also include written descriptions of other sounds in the scene, like a car honking or a baby crying. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
PARIS If there was any constant to a Chanel runway show, where the set replicates a vast autumnal forest one season and a hulking cruise ship the next, it was the man behind the curtain: Karl Lagerfeld, Chanel's designer and mastermind since 1983, who died this week at the age of 85 (although his age was disputed.) In January, Virginie Viard, the creative studio director at Chanel, took the bow at the end of the haute couture collection when Mr. Lagerfeld was, according to a statement from the house, "feeling tired" and did not appear himself. Ms. Viard was at Mr. Lagerfeld's side for the finale of several previous shows, including the resort collection in Paris last May and the extravaganza at the Temple of Dendur in New York in December. Naturally, speculation ensued: Was this a sign of the house's imminent succession plan? It was. Ms. Viard has been in place for years. "Karl is the locomotive, and Virginie is the rails of Chanel," said Loic Prigent, the documentary filmmaker who shoots the atelier's craftsmanship before each show. Who is she? Ms. Viard, who is in her 50s, grew up in Lyon, France, the eldest of five siblings. Her father is a ski champion turned surgeon; her maternal grandparents were silk manufacturers. In a profile in Grazia, Ms. Viard credited her notions of fashion to her mother and aunts; growing up, she thought Chanel was "old." She lives in Paris with her partner, Jean Marc Fyot, a composer and music producer, and they have a son, Robinson Fyot, who is in his early 20s. (He walked the runway of the Chanel 2014 show in Singapore, wearing a lace blazer.) How she got into fashion: Ms. Viard studied at Le Cours Georges , a fashion school in Lyon, where she specialized in film and theatrical costume. She spent a year in London at the peak of punk. Later, after a stint at a boutique in Lyon, she became the assistant to the costume designer Dominique Borg in Paris. Ms. Viard was recommended to Mr. Lagerfeld for an internship by Prince Rainier of Monaco's head of protocol, who was a family friend. She joined the designer at Chanel in 1987 and, not long after, was put in charge of embroidery. Next came a five year entr'acte at Chloe, still under Mr. Lagerfeld's wing. In 1997, she was named the studio director of Chanel. Her current job: Mr. Lagerfeld referred to Ms. Viard as both his right and left hand. As soon as he completed a sketch, her work began. She oversaw six collections a year and also served as a translator of Mr. Lagerfeld's vision. She spent time with suppliers and the heads of seven ateliers and assessed what new or archival techniques best corresponded to Mr. Lagerfeld's ideas. Her involvement extended to approving the model casting and inspecting each detail backstage. "I always see her concentrated and smiling," said Mr. Prigent, who added that she seemed "absolutely loyal to Karl." And, he said, "I have never heard her complain about the crazy pace of the collections at Chanel." Her rapport with Mr. Lagerfeld: Ms. Viard has said that Mr. Lagerfeld was the only person she addressed with the formal French "vous," and that she enjoyed doing so. In the Grazia profile, she said: "My role with him consists of making sure he feels good. Over the years, there have been tiring moments, things unspoken; but overall, always, respect and kindness. We communicate each morning by text." But she was never his yes person. "When I have something to say, I tell him," she told Madame Figaro in 2011. Her style: Ms. Viard's signature is her fringe: a shelf of 1960s era bangs that graze her smoky eyes and balance her shoulder length slept on waves. She is often in a Lagerfeld like uniform of rocker chic black jackets, skinny black jeans and vintage T shirts. Think Coco Chanel crossed with Patti Smith. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
Democrats have largely led big and midsize cities for much of the past half century. Yet the gaps in socioeconomic outcomes between white people and people of color are by several measures at their worst in the richest, bluest cities of the United States. How could this be? Because high profile cultural conservatives ask this question so disingenuously, white liberals have generally brushed aside this reality rather than grappled with its urgency. There's now a danger that this sidestepping will continue, even after a national evaluation of racism since the brutal police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. As the mayor of Minneapolis from 2014 to 2018, as a Minneapolis City Council member from 2006 until 2014 and as a white Democrat, I can say this: White liberals, despite believing we are saying and doing the right things, have resisted the systemic changes our cities have needed for decades. We have mostly settled for illusions of change, like testing pilot programs and funding volunteer opportunities. These efforts make us feel better about racism, but fundamentally change little for the communities of color whose disadvantages often come from the hoarding of advantage by mostly white neighborhoods. In Minneapolis, the white liberals I represented as a Council member and mayor were very supportive of summer jobs programs that benefited young people of color. I also saw them fight every proposal to fundamentally change how we provide education to those same young people. They applauded restoring funding for the rental assistance hotline. They also signed petitions and brought lawsuits against sweeping reform to zoning laws that would promote housing affordability and integration. Nowhere is this dynamic of preserving white comfort at the expense of others more visible than in policing. Whether we know it or not, white liberal people in blue cities implicitly ask police officers to politely stand guard in predominantly white parts of town (where the downside of bad policing is usually inconvenience) and to aggressively patrol the parts of town where people of color live where the consequences of bad policing are fear, violent abuse, mass incarceration and, far too often, death. Underlying these requests are the flawed beliefs that aggressive patrolling of Black communities provides a wall of protection around white people and our property. Police officers understand the dynamic well. We give them lethal tools and a lot of leeway to keep our parts of town safe (a mandate implicitly understood to be "safe from people of color.") That leeway attracts people who want to misuse it. On Nov. 15, 2015, during my term as mayor, two Minneapolis police officers shot and killed Jamar Clark, an unarmed Black man. An 18 day encampment set up by protesters surrounding the grounds of the Fourth Police Precinct house followed. But instead of greatly increasing police presence and needlessly arresting people for blocking the street or for having tents on public property, I decided to let the protests and encampment continue while we negotiated with protesters toward a more peaceful conclusion. Minneapolis police officers, who were worried about the precinct house's being taken over and burned down (as the Third Precinct station was during last month's uprising), guarded the building and found themselves frustrated by what they saw as conflicting orders. "They've got fires in the street!" "They're out there smoking weed. We can smell it in here." Acts that they would have arrested people for under normal circumstances. I heard complaints like this at every shift change I attended, shepherded inside by a security vehicle. Before long, I knew that if I didn't explain to the officers what exactly I was asking of them, we had little hope of safely and effectively saving the city from widespread unrest. "Look," I told them. "You know what will happen if I let you go out there and just arrest people. There will be riots." I told them I wanted them to get home safely at the end of their shifts and to give us time to find a peaceful resolution. I remember clearly one officer, a middle aged white man, who is now a sergeant with the department, looking me dead in the eye and cursing me out in front of the entire room. I needed to take a walk in their shoes, he said, peppering his insults with profanity, so that I could "know what that's like." He complained of protesters' "calling us names, getting in our faces" and throwing objects at officers. And "you're letting them," he said. The not fully said bottom line of his message was clear: White liberals like me ask the police to do our dirty work dealing with the racial and economic inequities our policies create. Normally, we turn a blind eye to the harsh methods that many of them use to achieve our goal of order, pretend that isn't what we've done and then act surprised when their tough guy behavior goes viral and gets renewed scrutiny. Whatever else you want to say about police officers, they know whether they articulate it neatly or not that we are asking them to step into a breach left by our bad policies. The creation of more just systems won't guarantee the prevention of atrocities. But the status quo in cities, created by white liberals, invites brutal policing. Last month, a veto proof majority of the Minneapolis City Council voted to alter the city's charter to disband the Police Department. The Council has since heard calls from residents, including many Black residents, to have "broad community input and a deliberate process before the charter change is put to voters." Whatever the result, a sustainable transformation of policing will require that white people of means disinvest in the comfort of our status quo. It will require support of policy changes that cities led by white liberals are currently using the blunt instrument of policing to address. It will mean organizing for structural changes that wealthy and middle class whites have long feared like creating school systems that truly give all children a chance, providing health care for everyone that isn't tied to employment, reconfiguring police unions and instituting public safety protocols that don't simply prioritize protecting white property and lives. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
Most Fridays this semester, Sydney Greenberg, 19, would rush to her sorority house on the Tallahassee campus of Florida State University to arrive in time for lunch. The menu theme was "Fried Friday," and Ms. Greenberg wanted to get at the massive bin of mozzarella sticks before any of her Delta Gamma sisters did. The goal: to get a perfect photograph of the fried cheese. "Mozzarella sticks and mac and cheese are big winners for us," she said. Photographs of melted cheese (on pizza, noodles, chili fries) tend to be very popular on Freshmen15, the Instagram feed that Ms. Greenberg started about a year and a half ago with her five best friends from high school. A slice of pizza may rack up 12,000 likes. Cheese smothered garlic bread gets 10,000. A photograph of a vat of the cheese sticks at Ms. Greenberg's sorority house, posted with the caption, "I mozz a really start my spring break diet freshmen15 EEEEEATS" garnered more than 6,700 likes. Freshmen15 has more than 130,000 followers, packing on more at a rate of about 1,000 a week. Instagram accounts like Freshmen15 (tagline: "We gain weight for a reason") focus on the joys of un self conscious indulgence. "My friends and I try to embrace women's bodies for what they are," said Nikki Seligsohn, 20, who attends the University of Pennsylvania. "We love going out to eat, we go for late night pizza, we all love food." The six women decided to start the Instagram account on a lark, while they were still home in Boca Raton, Fla., before moving to different towns and cities. The idea was to stay in regular contact while sharing with one another the delicacies of college life. What they didn't expect was the way that strangers would gravitate toward their snaps of cookie dough covered birthday cake and baked macaroni and cheese. The women have become fattening food aggregators of sorts, choosing photos to post (often about five a day) from food they come across themselves, other pictures they see on Instagram and images that are submitted to them. All six friends have access to the account and can post photographs they decide are worthy. On occasion, there is a dispute over an image. For instance, Joelie Fetterman, a 19 year old at the University of Arizona, posted a photograph of a partly eaten ice cream cone submitted to her by a friend, but Ms. Greenberg deleted the picture from the Instagram feed. "Joelie said, 'You deleted a picture that came from my big!'" Ms. Greenberg said (translation: a "big" is a sorority member's mentor, or "big sister"). "I said, 'If your big wants the ice cream to be featured on our page, she should have taken a picture before she started eating,'" Ms. Greenberg said. The feed has made the young women particularly popular among their college pals, with many of them submitting photos in the hope of being included. But photo quality trumps friendship. "I try to be nice about it, but it can be awkward when you have to say to them, 'Sorry, but the cheese isn't melted enough,'" said Christina Aquilina, a 20 year old who attends the University of Central Florida in Orlando. (Only Myar Taha, who attends Boston University, refrains from frequent posting. "I'm pre med, so I don't have a lot of free time," she said.) There are perks. Ms. Ganz sometimes gets invited by restaurants to sample their menu free, and this winter she and a friend, Maggie Carlson, sat over prodigious plates of prosciutto and heaping bowls of mozzarella at La Panineria Italiana in Greenwich Village as they snapped photos, tasted sandwiches and talked feminism and body image. Ms. Ganz has struggled with eating disorders, and she believes the Instagram feed has been essential to her recovery. The very idea of broadcasting the fact that she is eating fattening food, via Instagram, seemed almost revolutionary. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
The opioid crisis remains one of America's deadliest public health disasters. Victims demand answers about how it happened and who was responsible. The House Committee on Oversight and Reform seemed poised to address a facet of the crisis with a hearing this coming Tuesday on the role of Purdue Pharma and its owners, the Sackler family, "in fueling the opioid epidemic." The committee invited Purdue's president and chief executive, Craig Landau, and four members of the Sackler family who were longtime company directors and were, according to the committee, "closely involved in Purdue's efforts to grow the market share for OxyContin and other opioids." Now, we have learned that the committee, pressured by the Sackler legal team, has postponed the hearing to January. But January may be too late. By waiting, the House Oversight Committee may miss the opportunity to weigh in before advances in Purdue's bankruptcy case possibly allow the Sacklers one of America's richest families, who took in billions in revenue from sales of OxyContin to escape with little public scrutiny or accountability. By then, a bankruptcy plan to reorganize Purdue will probably have been proposed. If, as expected, the plan seeks to release the Sacklers from liability, it will become practically impossible to uncover the full truth about the Sacklers' role in the opioid crisis. Purdue pleaded guilty on Nov. 24 to felony counts that included defrauding the federal government and paying illegal kickbacks to physicians to bolster dispensing of OxyContin. As part of that plea, Purdue agreed to pay 8 billion to the United States. The Sacklers, who served on the board of directors and were characterized as Purdue's "de facto C.E.O." by a company executive, agreed to pay 225 million in civil penalties, estimated to be about 2 percent of their wealth. Before the settlement with the Justice Department, the Sacklers had offered to pay 3 billion to creditors in exchange for comprehensive liability releases. Creditors were split on this, and it was unclear if a majority would eventually support complete immunity for the Sacklers. But although the Purdue settlement with the Justice Department, approved by the Bankruptcy Court in November, does not require that the Sacklers be released from liability, that may be its practical effect. This is because the settlement contains a largely overlooked poison pill provision: If the Justice Department is unsatisfied with any reorganization plan proposed for Purdue, it can walk away from the settlement. That could more than double its claims to 18 billion, and allow it to use its civil forfeiture powers to seize Purdue's assets. Nothing might then be left for opioid victims and other creditors. The poison pill has made the Sacklers' offer one creditors cannot refuse. Is 3 billion enough? Do the Sacklers even deserve to be released from liability? Without timely House Oversight Committee hearings, those seemingly fundamental questions may not be answered in Purdue's bankruptcy reorganization. If the poison pill results in a plan that releases the Sacklers, then it also means that the case will probably be resolved without an independent investigation and a thorough public report about the many serious allegations against the Sacklers that have attracted the interest of the oversight committee. Although reorganization plans include disclosures about a corporate debtor, Purdue Pharma, not the Sacklers, is the debtor. While Purdue has committed to releasing its documents after bankruptcy, the Sacklers have not. Nevertheless, the Bankruptcy Court has given the Sacklers broad protection, including an injunction shielding them from lawsuits that would produce evidence of their guilt or innocence. A plan approved in this case would thus make their protection permanent. Such an outcome would be disastrous not only for victims, who demand transparency and accountability, but also for the bankruptcy system itself. The plan that creditors would have to accept would reinforce a widely held perception that if a party has enough money to manipulate the legal system, it is possible to purchase silence and immunity for even the most egregious misconduct. It would also set a dangerous precedent in bankruptcy: Purdue's may be the only major bankruptcy involving allegations of serious criminal misconduct in which the principals were not charged. The chief executives of Enron, WorldCom and Refco as well as the opioid maker Insys all served (or will be serving) time in prison. There are, however, two potential antidotes. First, creditors should ask the Bankruptcy Court to immediately appoint an independent examiner. The creditors' committee is conducting its own investigation, but it is facing resistance from the Sacklers. Moreover, with the support of the Justice Department, that investigation is proceeding in complete secrecy. Examiners, who can be appointed in cases where the debtor owes over 5 million, performed a vital public function by investigating and reporting on high profile bankruptcies such as those of Enron, WorldCom and Lehman Brothers. The presiding judge in the Purdue bankruptcy case, Robert D. Drain, may resist appointing an independent examiner, perhaps for fear that it could scare away the Sacklers and their 3 billion offer. Before the Justice Department's deal, creditors could do little about that. Although all the parties knew Purdue's debts were huge, the exact amount was uncertain. By putting a number ( 8 billion) on what the company owes, the statutory debt threshold is now satisfied. Judge Drain may still refuse to appoint an examiner, but an appellate court may see things differently. Some creditors may also worry that an examiner would scare the Sacklers away. Because an examiner is not a creditor, however, he or she would not be intimidated by the poison pill. The Sacklers might fend off an examiner by offering more money and being more transparent, a better outcome for creditors and the public interest. A second possible remedy is a criminal prosecution of some of the Sacklers, since the Justice Department settlement does not release family members from such liability. Unless the Sacklers or their lawyers commit under oath to the oversight committee that they will be much more transparent about their finances and their role in contributing to the opioid crisis, the committee should consider passing a nonbinding resolution asking the incoming Biden administration's Justice Department to explore charges. But time is short. Once Purdue Pharma proposes a reorganization plan that implements the Sacklers' offer which seems imminent the pressure for creditors to approve it will be strong, spurred by the poison pill. If, as seems likely, the plan is approved later this winter, it will then be impossible to appoint an examiner and politically infeasible for the Justice Department to scuttle a deal by charging the Sacklers with crimes. Judge Drain understands this. At the close of the Nov. 17 hearing in which he approved the Justice Purdue deal, he urged the parties to agree to a reorganization plan as quickly as possible. "You can do it," he implored. "You need to do it." For many victims of the opioid crisis, and the legitimacy of the bankruptcy system itself, the "it" here a plan that exonerates the Sacklers without any meaningful disclosure or accountability may be Purdue's most poisonous pill. Jonathan C. Lipson ( Jonathan Lipson) is Harold E. Kohn Chair and is a Professor of Law at Temple University Beasley School of Law. Gerald Posner ( geraldposner) is an investigative journalist and author of "PHARMA." 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 |
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