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Long before Jeffrey Skoll helped Pierre Omidyar build eBay into a company that made them both billionaires, he wanted to tell stories. He said a yearlong backpacking trip to Pakistan and India after he graduated from college opened his eyes to a world he didn't know. Coming out of Stanford University's business school in 1995, he was hired by Mr. Omidyar as the auction site's first employee. He wrote the business plan the company followed, and when eBay went public in 1998 he was wealthy beyond belief. His estimated net worth is 5.6 billion, according to Wealth X, a financial research firm. "This is where the philanthropy part starts for me," Mr. Skoll said in an interview. "I was tasked with finding a way to share the success of the company with the people who helped make it what it was. I decided to start a company foundation." After that foundation was up and running, he returned to his desire to tell stories, now as someone with the means to fund people and their ideas. "We gravitated to the idea of social entrepreneurs when it was a fairly nascent thing," he said. "We began to build the organization, focused on investing in and celebrating social entrepreneurs. Not long after that, we realized there was another opportunity to help bring them together and tell their stories." Since then, telling stories to bring awareness to issues has been the unifying force of his giving. That includes the Skoll Awards, which recognize social entrepreneurs, and his funding for documentary and feature films like "An Inconvenient Truth," on climate change, and "Spotlight," on the cover up of clergy sexual abuse in Boston, which won two Academy Awards. From the start of the Skoll Awards, in 2004, the aim was to do more "than just giving people a grant," he said. "We felt that a lot of social entrepreneurs do very hard work and they're on the front lines," he explained, "but most of them are not very well known. We felt that part of our mission was to create a ceremony where these folks are given more notoriety." "With the really wealthy, they begin to realize their power and their ability to have impact," said Ann Limberg, head for philanthropic solutions and the family office of U.S. Trust. "They don't want to put a Band Aid on it. They want to create change." An admirable aspiration but not an easy one to fulfill. "For wealthy donors, the greatest challenge they have is finding what causes they care about and where they're going to donate," Ms. Limberg added. U.S. Trust and the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy at Indiana University found in a recent study that two thirds of wealthy donors struggled with this decision. Most people who give to charity start off with donations to their alma mater, their house of worship or a hospital or social service agency that helped them, according to the annual Giving USA report, which found that charitable giving was up 2.7 percent, to 390 billion, in 2016. A separate report commissioned for the biannual Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy of which Mr. Skoll is one of nine recipients this year found that most philanthropists go through a six to seven step process in their evolution as philanthropists. What begins as reactive giving a cause catches their attention, a friend asks for a donation evolves into proactive charity, and for a few, the type of philanthropy and strategic giving that can bring about change. Vartan Gregorian, president of the Carnegie Corporation which announced this year's winners in June and will award the philanthropy medals in October said the recipients were selected for having given consistently through their lives to causes focused on people. The medal serves to shine a spotlight on what they have done. Another of this year's winners, Julian Robertson, the hedge fund pioneer who created Tiger Management, began giving early in his career to his alma maters, the Episcopal High School in Alexandria, Va., and the University of North Carolina. As his wealth grew, he said, he began expanding his giving to areas that could be seen as having a focus on education or research. He is active in funding the creation of charter schools in New York City and has made several large donations to Teach for America. He said he was also proud of the money he had given to cancer research. "You get it right some times on some things," Mr. Robertson said. Philanthropists whose major giving rose out of their careers said it was a natural extension of their work. Kristine McDivitt Tompkins's philanthropy came out of the culture in which she worked. She was an early employee at Patagonia, the outdoor apparel company, where she became chief executive. In the early 1990s, she married Douglas Tompkins, a founder of the North Face, another outdoor apparel company. She gave an example of a person who had been giving to mental health charities for years and wanted to do more but didn't know how. After meeting with several neuroscientists, the donor focused his giving on autism research. "It's about helping people get smarter about how they do it and make them feel like they're evolving," Ms. Limberg said. Mr. Skoll said that in the past 18 years he had made mistakes along the way. But what has kept him focused, he said, was "having a game plan from the start." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Your Money |
WASHINGTON In 2012, Antonio F. Weiss took his 15 year old son, Nico, from the gilded aerie of their Manhattan apartment on Central Park West to Cleveland to canvass for President Obama's re election. Mr. Weiss, 48, was also the co author of a white paper calling for higher taxes on the rich and has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Democratic Party. Yet in his Wall Street provenance, Mr. Weiss, President Obama's nominee to be under secretary of the Treasury for domestic finance, has given the left an unlikely rallying cry to press for a more aggressively liberal economic policy agenda. It is not Mr. Weiss's politics that are in question. It is his resume. "I have voted for people who have extensive Wall Street experience," said Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts. She is rallying the opposition to Mr. Weiss, the head of investment banking at Lazard, a storied but relatively small firm. But, she said, "the Antonio Weiss nomination is a mistake, and that's why I'm fighting back." The formal confirmation process, while not likely to get underway until after the new Congress convenes next year, has become an unexpected proxy war between the liberal and moderate wings of the Democratic Party. Its outcome will say a lot about the party's direction as it regroups for the 2016 presidential campaign, in which Hillary Clinton will be under pressure to discard some of her ties to Wall Street. At Lazard, Mr. Weiss was involved in a number of international mega mergers, including a deal that allowed Burger King to acquire the Canadian fast food chain Tim Hortons in a maneuver that gave the combined company a lower tax liability in the United States. And in doing so, he made a lot of money. Mr. Weiss's assets are worth between 54 million and 203 million, according to his financial disclosure. In addition to his Manhattan apartment, he owns a 200 year old, eight bedroom farmhouse in Connecticut and property in the Dominican Republic valued at up to 1 million. To Ms. Warren and her allies, Mr. Weiss's nomination this month was proof that their anti Wall Street views are still getting no respect within the Obama administration. While they managed to derail Mr. Obama's moves to nominate Lawrence H. Summers, his former Treasury secretary and economic adviser, as chairman of the Federal Reserve, they say Mr. Weiss's confirmation by the Senate would send the wrong signal about whether Democrats can advance the economic prospects of the struggling middle class. "The American people are profoundly disappointed with the fraud they read about every day coming from Wall Street," said Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont who is considering running for president as a Democrat to encourage the party to move to the left. "They are disgusted that instead of investing in the American economy, they are busy trying to avoid paying their fair share of taxes, and the American people want people in the Treasury Department who are prepared to hold Wall Street accountable." Supporters of Mr. Weiss, both inside and outside the Obama administration, see the brewing fight as no less consequential. Wall Street executives lend the Treasury Department real world expertise to understand how policy proposals might be gamed by the banks and investment houses they are aimed at. No deal is causing more trouble for him than Burger King's "inversion" merger with Tim Hortons, which came just as the Treasury was proposing new rules to stop American companies from reincorporating as foreign entities not subject to United States taxes. Lazard itself gave up its United States citizenship in 2005 to reincorporate in Bermuda, using a loophole that the Bush administration later closed to deter copycats. "On the policy on whether or not companies should move overseas to avoid U.S. taxation when there's not a core business reason for the move, that's something we think is wrong," Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew said in an interview. "It's something he thinks is wrong." Mr. Weiss's defenders in the administration say the Burger King deal was not really an inversion, in which a large American company adopts a foreign headquarters in name only. But it still sticks in Democratic craws. Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the Senate's second ranking Democrat, cited his work on such deals when he announced his opposition to Mr. Weiss's confirmation. Beyond Lazard, there is Mr. Weiss himself. To defenders like Ms. Tanden, his years in Europe made him acutely aware of the perils of wage stagnation and the obstacles to upward mobility. He grew up in New York, in a distinctly middle class family. Both of his parents were teachers. He attended Yale and Harvard Business School, while also apprenticing under George Plimpton, the editor of The Paris Review. Where supporters see brio, detractors see a fat cat. Last week, the A.F.L. C.I.O. president Richard L. Trumka sent a letter to Lazard's compensation committee chairman, Philip A. Laskawy, via the company's Bermuda affiliate, questioning his decision to speed the vesting of equity income to ease Mr. Weiss's transition to public service. If he is confirmed as the under secretary, Mr. Weiss will receive 6 million to 30 million in stock that would normally accrue to him in 2017 and 3 million in interest income, according to the Project on Government Oversight. But beyond that is the Warren wing's belief that Democrats must realign their economic policies with the interests of working class voters, particularly white men without college degrees, who have flocked to the Republican Party in recent years. The Democrats' attention should be focused on raising the minimum wage, funding infrastructure investments financed by higher taxes on the rich and, Ms. Warren adds, a new push to divide the big banks from their nonbanking activities. "We have got to be willing to make the government work for America's families," Ms. Warren said. "That's the start of everything we do." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Economy |
The story of how Alice S. Kandell discovered Tibetan Buddhist art sounds like the plot of a fanciful movie. As a Sarah Lawrence College student in the 1960s, she wanted to put Tibet on the itinerary of a class trip, but her parents objected because of unrest related to the Chinese occupation there. A close friend tried, however, and got as far as India. That friend, Hope Cooke, met the crown prince of Sikkim, which borders Tibet. Eventually, "she married him," Ms. Kandell said. "She was becoming the queen and invited me to the coronation." By then, Ms. Kandell was studying psychology. In asking for leave to go to Sikkim (now part of India), she told her professor the tale. "He said, 'When fantasy becomes reality, a member of the Harvard psychology department should be there to witness it,'" she recalled. In the intervening years she established her career as a child psychologist in New York, as well as becoming known as a photographer and the author of several books. These days, her Upper East Side apartment features around 250 objects, largely from Tibet. Many are bronzes depicting the Buddha and other deities. The collection includes household objects like teacups, too, and the bulk of the trove was made between the 17th and 19th centuries, what she called the high water mark of Tibetan art. There's a many armed Yamantaka figure, representing the vanquisher of death, in gilt bronze, that she admires for its detail. "He is a deity who is both creating and destroying at the same time, an important part of the Buddhist philosophy," she said. She also pointed out two female deities in gilt bronze from around the same time, a Tara and a Dharmapala, as favorites for their movement and grace. Most stunning is a dedicated shrine room that is richly layered with at least 100 pieces, including a ceremonial dagger, prayer beads and multiple bronzes, arranged as they might have been in a noble family's home. The room, which is visually striking, is kept cool. "It's cold and dry in Tibet," Ms. Kandell said, gesturing to a series of complex thangka paintings on silk. "I don't want steam heat on these." Ms. Kandell, who has retired and now performs nonsinging parts at the Metropolitan Opera, only buys objects from individuals, and she isn't a fan of auctions. And she is being increasingly philanthropic: In 2011, she donated the contents of another shrine room (some 250 objects) to the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery in Washington, where it is now on view. On the occasion of the release of a new book "Assembly of the Exalted: The Tibetan Shrine Room From the Alice S. Kandell Collection," by Donald S. Lopez Jr. and Rebecca Bloom Ms. Kandell spoke about her 50 year passion. These are edited excerpts from the conversation. In the 1990s a friend took me to the home of a Brooklyn collector and expert who had Tibetan antiques, and I felt a rush: "I'm home." Gradually he helped me collect things. It became so much, we put it in the shape of a shrine room. I did this all after my children were gone, turning over the dining room to it. What have the reactions been? A curator at the Smithsonian came in here, and I was in the other room. She stayed for about five minutes, and she started to cry. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
Despite a partial recovery in the markets on Friday, tumbling stock, bond and commodity prices around the world over the past month are demonstrating just how reliant the global economy has become on the monetary policies of the Federal Reserve. In the weeks since the Fed's chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, first indicated that the central bank might start to pare back its support for the economy, markets in Asia, Europe and Latin America have fallen even more sharply than those in the United States, threatening economic growth in many countries. While leading market measures in the United States have declined 4 percent over the last month, an index of the world's stock markets has slumped more than 6 percent. "The Fed isn't just the U.S.'s central bank. It's the world's central bank," said Mark Frey, the chief strategist at the Cambridge Mercantile Group. The selling picked up in markets around the world on Thursday, a day after Mr. Bernanke's latest comments on the Fed's plan to wind down the stimulus. While the reason for the shift by the Fed is good a strengthening of the recovery in the United States investors are nervous that the global economy may not be ready. On Friday, markets calmed down despite the prospect of slowing economic growth and rising interest rates. Asian stocks were mixed, with the Nikkei 225 index up 1.7 percent at the close of trading, European indexes were mostly higher in afternoon action and Wall Street futures suggested a higher opening in New York's morning. On Thursday, the benchmark Standard Poor's 500 stock index fell 2.5 percent, its steepest one day decline since November 2011. Treasury prices also slumped, driving yields, which move in the opposite direction, to touch their highest levels in nearly two years. Gold, once a favorite of investors, slid to two and a half year lows. Thursday's damage was more pronounced in a wide array of markets outside the United States, like Philippine government bonds and the Norwegian currency. Stock indexes in China, Europe and Mexico fell more than 3 percent. Investors were also rattled by reports that Chinese banks had become reluctant to lend to one another. And Europe's debt woes came into focus again after the International Monetary Fund said it was considering suspending aid to Greece. But traders and investors cited the Fed's changing policies as the main driver behind the big flows of money around the world. "The trigger was clearly what is going on with the Fed," said Ashish Goyal, the investment director at Eastspring Investments in Singapore. The heavy selling was a sharp reversal after years when low interest rates in the United States encouraged investors to put their money into foreign countries. For investors in once attractive foreign markets, the fear was that those markets may be on even less firm economic footing than the United States', and consequently less able to absorb the decline in lending that comes along with rising interest rates. "When the U.S. embarks upon policies that are appropriate for its own domestic circumstances, it can impose policies on the rest of the world that aren't necessarily appropriate to them," said Darren Williams, the senior European economist at AllianceBernstein in London. Interest rates are a vital determinant and indicator of economic activity. To try to encourage borrowing and bolster the economy after the financial crisis, the Fed has pushed rates down by cutting the interest rates it offers banks and by buying more than 2 trillion of bonds. The extent of the intervention has put markets on a hair trigger for any hint of a change from the Fed. Mr. Bernanke has indicated that the Fed will pare its bond purchases only very slowly and may increase them again if there are signs the economy is being hurt. That has some analysts calling this week's market turmoil a panicked overreaction. For the year, the S. P. 500 index is still up 11.4 percent. But there are significant concerns that the Fed may not be able to control the convulsions in the markets that Mr. Bernanke has already set off with his comments. "It's a very significant moment," said Sebastian Galy, a foreign exchange strategist at Societe Generale. "It's the end of an extremely aggressive phase of monetary policy globally." The American economy is probably not immune to these changes. After years of falling interest rates, which have encouraged a recovery in the housing market, banks have recently been asking for higher interest payments from home buyers. There are already signs that this is putting a damper on home sales. All of this helps explain the recent declines in American stocks. But Mr. Bernanke said that the United States economy was on firm enough footing to withstand the rising rates, and he has promised to intervene if that changes. The outlook has not been so bright in much of the rest of the world. China and Brazil are wrestling with lower growth rates. Falling prices for commodities are hurting natural resource rich countries like Australia and Russia. After the financial crisis, many of these markets became attractive to investors seeking higher returns in the face of paltry interest rates. Some 55 percent of the Mexican bond market, for example, is now owned by foreigners, up from 25 percent in 2010, according to Claudio Irigoyen, the Latin American strategist at Bank of America. Hedge funds and other money managers have also been borrowing money on the cheap in the United States and using it to invest in foreign stock and bond markets offering higher returns. Now the prospect of higher interest rates in the United States is causing those investors to quickly unwind those trades. Smaller investors are also retreating, pulling out of mutual funds and exchange traded funds that own the bonds issued by developing countries. During the last week, these funds have had the largest outflow on record 622 million according to Lipper, a fund data company. Such outflows may bring back memories of past periods of global financial tumult, when countries like Russia and Mexico defaulted on their government debt partly because of an exodus of foreign investors. But most developing countries are now on a much firmer financial footing than they were in the past, reducing the chances of a crisis stemming from the turmoil. Still, the current upheaval is already causing pain for many investors. Brevan Howard Assert Management, a powerful hedge fund manager, has seen its emerging market fund drop nearly 12 percent, or 300 million, this year, according to people briefed on the fund's performance. "People are trying to figure out how to get out," Mr. Irigoyen said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Economy |
Last winter, several dozen people who were struggling with suicidal urges and bouts of intense emotion opened their lives to a company called Mindstrong, in what has become a closely watched experiment in Silicon Valley . Mindstrong, a venture co founded by a former director of the National Institute of Mental Health, promised something that no drug or talk therapy can provide: an early warning system that would flag the user when an emotional crisis seemed imminent a personal, digital "fire alarm." For the past year, California state and county mental health officials, along with patient representatives, have met regularly with Mindstrong and another company, 7 Cups, to test smartphone apps for people receiving care through the state's public mental health system. Officials from 13 counties and two cities are involved, and the apps are already available to the public. The new users, most of whom have a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder, receive treatment through the Los Angeles County mental health network , and were among the first test subjects in this collaboration. They allowed Mindstrong to digitally install an alternate keyboard on their smartphones, embedded in the app, and to monitor their moment to moment screen activity. "People with borderline personality disorder have a very difficult time identifying when distress is very high," said Lynn McFarr, director of the cognitive and dialectical behavior therapy clinic at Harbor U.C.L.A. Medical Center, which provides care for people in the Los Angeles County system. "If we can show them, in this biofeedback fashion, that the signals went off the rails yesterday, say, after they got into a fight with a co worker, then they'd be able to anticipate that emotion and target it with the skills they've learned." The potential for digital technology to transform mental health care is enormous, and some 10,000 apps now crowd the market, each promising to soothe one psychological symptom or another. Smartphones allow near continuous monitoring of people with diagnoses such as depression, anxiety and schizophrenia, disorders for which few new treatments are available. But there has been little research to demonstrate whether such digital supports are effective. California's collaboration with Silicon Valley is an attempt to change that : in effect, enlisting some of the state's most privileged residents to help some of its least . California has set aside taxpayer money to pull it off, more than 100 million over five years. If Big Data can help manage persistent mental distress, the path forward is likely to run through the Golden State. But if early signs are any indication, the road will be slow and winding, pitted with questions about effectiveness, privacy and user appeal . At least for now, California's effort to jump start medicine's digital future is running into some of the same issues that have dogged old fashioned drug trials: recruiting problems, questions about informed consent, and the reality that, no matter the treatment, some people won't "tolerate" it well, and quit. "We need to understand both the cool and the creepy of tech," said Keris Myrick, chief of peer services for Los Angeles County, who has been deeply involved in the collaboration. Ideally, she said, the apps could give people personalized tools to manage their distress and take pressure off the mental health system. But using them means sharing personal data with private companies, and any "fire alarm" has the potential to trigger anxiety, as well as blunt it. "We want to make sure people have the information to use the apps safely , that they have some digital literacy, and that their privacy is protected," Ms. Myrick said. The effort began in earnest last summer, when state officials, after a competitive bidding process, selected two companies to participate . One, Mindstrong, was founded by Dr. Paul Dagum, a computer scientist and surgeon; Dr. Rick Klausner; and Dr. Thomas R. Insel , a psychiatrist and neuroscientist who led the mental health team at Verily, a division of Alphabet Inc., the parent company of Google, from 2015 to 2017 , after leaving the N.I.M.H., where he was the director for more than a decade. "It's been a little rough in the beginning, I have to say, and it may take a couple of years," Dr. Insel said. "The program may have to fail at first." Dr. Insel was recently appointed by Gov. Gavin Newsom as special adviser on the state's mental health system an unpaid, informal role without fiscal or regulatory authority. Dr. Insel retains his position as president of Mindstrong. California's other partner company, 7 Cups, was founded by Glen Moriarty, a psychologist, and its original team of therapists included Dr. Insel's daughter (who recently left the team). 7 Cups is a digital mental health network: Clients in distress can chat, by text, with a company trained "listener" who judges the severity of the problem and then, if needed, connects the person to a 7 Cups therapist. The company has signed on nearly 340,000 listeners in 189 countries, providing support in 140 languages. The service has reached 40 million people, the company said, about 0.5 percent of whom have needed referral. The companies gained the opportunity to refine their products and potentially win the endorsement of California, as well as to incorporate a wealth of new patient data. Therapists and app users gained a chance to collaborate with Silicon Valley engineers to develop a valuable product for managing persistent mental distress. Let Us Help You Protect Your Digital Life None With Apple's latest mobile software update, we can decide whether apps monitor and share our activities with others. Here's what to know. A little maintenance on your devices and accounts can go a long way in maintaining your security against outside parties' unwanted attempts to access your data. Here's a guide to the few simple changes you can make to protect yourself and your information online. Ever considered a password manager? You should. There are also many ways to brush away the tracks you leave on the internet. "We're doing something that hasn't been done before, having consumers work directly with app developers," said Kelechi Ubozoh, the peer and community engagement manager at the California Mental Health Services Authority, the state agency that chose the two apps and is coordinating the effort through the counties . "Part of the challenge is that these are different cultures that do not speak the same language all the time. It's a big learning process." The rationale behind the Mindstrong app, in particular, provides a glimpse into how engineers are thinking about leveraging smartphone data to manage mental crises. For most people, phone use tends to be fairly steady from day to day. With a week's worth of data, Mindstrong's algorithms can establish a person's normal, or baseline, activity across a number of measures, including how frequently the phone is used and how quickly the person types, Dr. Insel said. Mindstrong and other tech companies that track phone usage call this average daily data set a "digital phenotype," in a phrase borrowed from genetics. If several measures begin to stray wildly from average, Mindstrong's app triggers a message to the user. It takes the company about 24 hours to register a disrupted routine. The app also summarizes usage in graph form, so users can view trends over days or weeks. "We do see it as like a fire alarm," Dr. Insel said. "We want that alarm to go off when there's a fire, and not when there's only smoke. We're working that out as we go." The app also includes a daily diary function: a digital card that users fill out each day, noting events, work stress, moods and quality of sleep, among other things. "I like the diary card," said Skyy Brewer, 30, a licensed barber in Los Angeles, who has used the diary since December to manage symptoms of depression and anxiety. "At therapy, you can go through the cards for the week and see the good days and bad ones, and figure out why your moods were off." But the 7 Cups program, which started a year ago, has been delayed by the state, because of an internal state financial review and concerns about some of the company's network of listeners. According to California officials, some listeners were having inappropriate text chat conversations with clients, engaging with them and becoming too personal, violating the company's rules; the issue is being addressed, state officials said. "We use a series of techniques and programs to identify, quantify, rehabilitate, block, or ban harmful language and/or harmful individuals," said the company's founder and C.E.O., Glen Moriarty, by email. He added, "We take matters of confidentiality, privacy, safety and all forms of harassment very seriously." As for the Mindstrong app, only Los Angeles County has distributed the technology , to the few dozen people who had keyboards installed last winter. Already, about half of them have stopped using the keyboard function. Some lost interest; others had trouble adapting to the new keyboards (which work better on Android phones than iPhones). A number of users decided they liked the daily diary feature, without the rest. "The counties are spending money on this program , saying, 'Here, this is great, we're giving you a Fitbit,' and we discovered that many of our people didn't quite understand it," said Dawniell A. Zavala, general counsel and associate director of Mental Health America of Northern California, a patient self advocacy group. "And they didn't explain the possible downsides of handing over so much pers onal data." Any app maker is likely to need extensive data on thousands of users to begin to adapt its product to the many permutations and combinations of mental disorders, and to the idiosyncratic ways those are expressed in an individual's daily behavior. And access to patients' medical records has run into resistance in California. "We have said no no access to electronic medical records for Los Angeles County," Ms. Myrick said. It is not clear whether other counties are handing over those records and, if so, whether they have obtained patients' consent. In an age of hacking and data breaches, tech companies that acquire both medical and monitoring data present real risks to patient confidentiality. "If we're excited about the potential of data, we should be equally worried about the risks, and those seem to be evolving faster than the scientific benefit," said Dr. John Torous, director of the division of digital psychiatry at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. "There may be guarantees the companies make about not sharing data, but if the company is sold to another company, that data goes with it," he said. "A lot of apps have that clause buried in 13 pages in mouse print." App developers may yet transform mental health care. But the story so far suggests that they won't be able to program their way out of the hard, incremental work of testing new treatments. "The thing about California, it has a huge number of people in the public system," Dr. Insel said. "At least it's willing to ask: 'Why isn't this working? Why aren't counties working with this amazing tech sector?' And then do something about it." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
SAN CESARIO SUL PANARO, ITALY Don't be fooled by the building's homely exterior of brown tile and glass, or by its location in a nondescript industrial area some 20 miles northwest of Bologna. Inside is the two story workshop of Pagani Automobili, maker of some of the world's most advanced and most expensive cars. To aficionados, the name Pagani is associated with supercars of exceptional performance and a level of craftsmanship achieved by a near maniacal attention to detail. The price tag might seem crazy, too: the latest model, the Huayra, starts at 989,500 euros, or 1.3 million, before taxes and options. Paganis "are not cars," said Alessandro Pasi, deputy director of the Italian edition of Evo, a magazine devoted to high performance cars. "They are objects bought by people who get pleasure from owning something unique, like a Picasso painting. The more unique the object, the happier they are." It is Leonardo da Vinci, not Picasso, whose inspiration is most often cited by the company's founder, Horacio Pagani, an Argentine born designer who turned his childhood passion into his profession. The da Vinci ideal was "that art and science could work hand in hand," Mr. Pagani, 57, said in an interview at the factory here. "Leonardo's brilliance was his humanity, his curiosity that made him constantly doubt what he was doing. That's what's behind our work." The Huayra (pronounced WHY ra) is the embodiment of the Pagani philosophy. It is named for the Incan god of the winds and inspired, Mr. Pagani said, "by the moment when a plane is accelerating, just when it's about to take off." An observer could be forgiven for thinking that the Huayra looks like something that came flying out of the Batcave. The aerodynamic shape helps the Huayra reach a top speed that Car and Driver estimated at 224 miles an hour, and air brake flaps, which mimic those used by airplanes during landing, help it slow from such an extralegal pace. In gushing reviews, writers have reveled in the car's handcrafted details, its carbon titanium chassis and gullwing doors. Praise has been lavished on the 720 horsepower twin turbo V 12 engine, developed for Pagani by the AMG group of Mercedes Benz, and on the 7 speed automated gearbox. There's a titanium exhaust system, which helps keep the car, at a little more than 3,000 pounds, relatively light. Inside is an audio system by the Italian company Sonus Faber; premium leather covers the seat and the six matching pieces of luggage that tuck into various nooks. There is also a special key a miniature model of the Huayra, in aluminum, that costs more than 1,300 each to make. Mr. Pagani was born in Casilda, Argentina, into a family of bakers. He honed his interest in cars as a boy, carving models out of balsa wood that are in a display case in the factory's showroom near his single seater Formula 2 racecar from 30 years ago. As a university student, Mr. Pagani enrolled in industrial design courses and began a mechanical engineering degree before dropping out to start a design business, which spanned objects as diverse as furniture and camping trailers. He moved to Italy in 1983 to pursue his dream of designing exotic cars, carrying a letter of introduction from the Argentine driving champion Juan Manuel Fangio, which eventually got him a job with Lamborghini. There, he worked with composite materials, collaborating with the team that built the Countach Evoluzione, a pioneer of carbon fiber chassis construction. In 1991 he founded Modena Design, which designed and molded components for companies in the automotive, aerospace and military sectors, while he worked on his first supercar. He chose to stay in an area of Italy that is home to what are today some of his chief competitors: Lamborghini, Maserati and Ferrari. "To build a supercar here in Modena was an incredible challenge, like climbing a mountain," Mr. Pagani said. His first car, the Pagani Zonda C12, was introduced at the 1999 Geneva Motor Show under the brand Pagani Automobili, grabbing headlines because it was not simply a prototype for display, but a showroom ready model. The Zonda went through various incarnations, with the most recent and final version, the Revolucion, introduced this year. It took some doing for Pagani to meet the regulatory requirements needed to enter the American market. Riffing off Mr. Pagani's admiration for Leonardo, the comedian Jay Leno a fan of the cars, but not an owner joked on an episode of the "Jay Leno's Garage" TV series that unlike Pagani, da Vinci "never had to design his art around government regulations." The brand is expanding globally. There are now three dealers in the United States in Miami, Los Angeles and San Francisco. "There's been a lot of excitement, because Pagani never sold in the U.S. before," said Francesco Zappacosta, Pagani Automobili's managing director. His family owns the 6.3 percent stake in the company not held by Mr. Pagani's family. Last month, Mr. Pagani was in Japan, opening a dealership. "If we were totally dependent on Europe, it would have been difficult," Mr. Zappacosta said. Pagani produces about 20 Huayras a year, but that is expected to double once a new factory, across the street from the current one, is completed in mid 2014. "We want to optimize production," Mr. Pagani said. Even so, he added, the "request is always several times more than what we can produce, which make the cars all the more exclusive." There are no assembly lines at the factory in San Cesario, just a handful of mechanics working on one car at a time, in a room that is barely larger than a home garage, though probably much cleaner. Every step of production is monitored and logged in an individual binder,where it can be easily found in the future. Each engine is assigned to, and assembled by, one mechanic, and each of the 4,700 pieces in the Huayra is accounted for. "We can track exactly who did what," Mr. Pagani said. More than 240 controls and tests are carried out on each car. He said the tailor made approach would not change even after the move to the new factory. The 18 official Pagani dealers around the world are authorized to service the cars. There is also what he calls a "flying doctor" a mechanic who can be flown to cars with problems, wherever they occur. Some owners prefer to transport their cars directly to the Pagani factory for servicing. "These are people who don't have money problems and can easily fly a car here from Hong Kong," said Luca Venturi, the company's spokesman. The company is discrete about the identities of its clients, but it does say they include American venture capitalists, Arab oil sheiks, Ukrainian oligarchs and Chinese scions along with celebrities that include a former Italian movie star and an American reality TV actress. One client is said to have paid 6.6 million not including taxes for three cars that he intended to use mainly as home decor. "Actually, we make cars for people who have worked hard all their life, and the pleasure of owning a Pagani is a reward for that effort," Mr. Pagani said. "Each car is made to measure, fitted like a suit, so we look at renderings together," adding that he regularly travels to visit prospective clients to get a sense of their lifestyles. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Automobiles |
LONDON A few weeks before her London Fashion Week show, scheduled for Sunday, the prizewinning fashion designer Grace Wales Bonner was wandering around a show of a different kind at the Serpentine Sackler Gallery here. Titled "A Time for New Dreams," it was full of photographs, sculpture, sound, film and even a shrine like meditation space, and had been curated by Ms. Wales Bonner and the gallery staff, conceived as a kind of backdrop to her coming fall collection show. Understand the one, she suggested, and you would have a better understanding of the other. For anyone trying to answer the perennial question of "where in the world did that designer come up with that idea?" the exhibition is effectively a primer on a fashion creative process. "It's important that there is no hierarchy between practices," said the 28 year old , who was wearing a Celine skirt (old Celine) and a shirt of her own design as she walked through the space, explaining how the exhibits by, or about, her literary and artistic heroes inspired her work. According to Ms. Wales Bonner, they provide "an insight into my mind, how I put things together but also the context within which the characters and the collection emerges." So here were two cloth sculptures by Eric N. Mack, a Bronx based textile artist and painter chosen because, Ms. Wales Bonner said, "his work connects to research I did in textiles and how you can integrate rhythm into aesthetic practice." Mr. Mack also created a backdrop installation for the designer's fall 2018 show, and worked with her on a hand painted madras checked shirt for her spring 2019 collection. Nearby were two day beds red oak frames covered in authentic zebra skins by the conceptual artist Rashid Johnson, based in New York. Ms. Wales Bonner said the beds reminded her of simple wooden altars as well as "suggesting an environment that a sophisticated black leisure class would inhabit," while the Persian rugs beneath each "give a sense of grounding and connects to different histories." Elsewhere, a sound installation by Chino Amobi , the Richmond, Va. based musician, artist and co founder of the NON Worldwide record label, worked to "acknowledge where you come from and how you got here and all the people who have sacrificed or created work to give other artists, younger artists freedom," Ms. Wales Bonner said. (One of Mr. Amobi's sound works created last year was called "Ancestors.") And then there were the texts by the Nigerian novelist Ben Okri one of Ms. Wales Bonner's favorite writers, whose 2011 collection of essays, "A Time For New Dreams," gave the exhibition its title scattered across the gallery's white walls. The idea for the exhibition and for the 70 piece collection, Ms. Wales Bonner said, was to stretch her usual focus on black masculinity and sexuality she began as a men's wear designer to explore the life of the black intellectual. And the challenge, she added, was how to communicate cerebral ideas via clothing and organic materials. She said she thought about Howard University, the historic black institution in Washington, D.C., whose chamber choir soundtrack is included in Mr. Amobi's installation. Which led her to collegiate dressing in the 1980s, the era of many of the artistic and literary figures featured in the exhibition. Which led to the actual fashion , including her variations of varsity jackets, Oxford shirts, the Mac raincoat and even a white tuxedo. "I was looking at the ways that you can kind of embed those very American pieces of clothing with a sense of magic or sense of ritual that comes from Africa," Ms. Wales Bonner said. "So embroideries have a sense of magic." In practice that meant that the kind of sequined flags used to evoke spirits in Haitian voodoo ceremonies were embroidered onto a varsity jacket, and the names of literary works and their authors, rather than the usual athletic team insignia, were emblazoned on sports shirts. Styles based on clothing once worn by the artists and writers represented in the exhibition also were integrated into the fall collection, which is titled "Mumbo Jumbo," the same name as the disorienting 1972 voodoo novel by the American writer Ishmael Reed (represented in the exhibition in film and text). | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
When future cultural historians, should there be any, look back on the contemporary stage, I hope they are able to discern, amid the din of jukeboxes and the lumbering of overproduced apes, the real theater of our time. I mean Public Works, that program of passion plays for anxious, left leaning New Yorkers: as emblematic of our fears and hopes as the ones at Oberammergau were for 17th century Bavarians and the Dionysia was for ancient Greeks. Speaking of Greece, did I mention that the series's current offering, running through Sunday, is "Hercules"? And not even the one by Euripides but the one by a committee of Hollywood scriptmongers writing for an audience of tweens? You will recall that most Labor Days since 2013, at the end of its regular season of Shakespeare in the Park, the Public Theater has mounted a huge (and free) show involving a handful of professional actors and many multiples more of amateurs. We have seen streamlined and musicalized new versions of "The Tempest," "Twelfth Night" and even "The Odyssey" offered as models of civic engagement and reminders of the heritage of provocation and healing the theater has offered for centuries to troubled cities. So how does a 1997 Disney cartoon, beloved mostly by late vintage millennials now in young adulthood, come into this exalted lineage? As you might expect, bigly. For one thing, this is the largest Public Works outing yet. I don't mean the size of the ensemble, though there are almost 200 performers involved, including a 10 piece orchestra and the Passaic High School marching band. Most come from community organizations, in all five boroughs, that serve the young and old, veterans and recreational dancers, domestic workers and the formerly incarcerated. Just getting them all onstage seems like a municipal engineering feat as difficult and fundamentally optimistic as building new bridges. But this "Hercules," directed by the Public Works founder Lear deBessonet, is also big in the sense of spectacular, expanding the palette from previous seasons in ways that are both exciting and also mildly worrisome. Stadium sized LED tickers were not previously part of the aesthetic or the agenda. Any one of the five muses who act as narrators here rocks more sequins with each costume than the cast of "The Tempest" put together. Though such changes sometimes distract from the handmade ethos of the event, they are apt for the mostly comic material, adapted by the playwright Kristoffer Diaz from the movie's patchwork screenplay. As is standard for animated Disney musicals, the depths of the story are more fully explored in the artistry of the execution than in the narrative itself. So "Hercules" as a movie was already an expurgated, glossed up product. Mr. Diaz follows most of its contours closely, giving us a Hercules (Jelani Alladin ) who is the son of Zeus and Hera instead of (as in the classical myth) Zeus and a mortal he neglected to marry. When the bumbling minions of the envious Hades (Roger Bart) fail to kill the god baby as instructed, he is raised on earth as a clumsy lunk who wants nothing more than to be a hero so he can return to his rightful place on Olympus. Though many of the Disney animated musicals seem to exist outside of time, "Hercules" has some late 20th century problems that Mr. Diaz as well as the songwriters, Alan Menken and David Zippel had to address in making a 21st century stage version. For one thing, there weren't enough songs: just five, give or take. And Pegasus, the de rigueur flying sidekick dragged in from another myth entirely, clearly had to go. But the bigger problems involved race and gender. Other than the gospel shouting muses, drawn as five black women and given self consciously sassy dialogue, everyone in this story was white. And the character created as Hercules's love interest, the duplicitous but finally good as gold Meg, was conceived as a fetchingly cynical 1940s siren: Barbara Stanwyck in a tunic. Happily, the changes the creative team has instituted to make "Hercules" suitable today are entirely successful; much of the new material is better than the old, and the Public Works format is strong enough to transform even middlebrow mass entertainment into meaningful political theater. Most obviously, a black Hercules (backed by the wonderfully diverse ensemble) completely alters the implications of a story about a man seeking acceptance as "a good person of the Agora" the public marketplace. As he did playing Kristoff in the stage version of Disney's "Frozen," Mr. Alladin makes an unimpeachably earnest hero, here adding unexpected depths of feeling as he considers, in a new song that cuts through the movie's kneejerk sarcasm, what it means "To Be Human." Another new song, "Forget About It," establishes Meg's proud independence, verging on disdain, even as Hercules misreads it as flirtation. "This one's tall/This one's ripped/This one's mouth should stay zipped," she sings. His counterpoint begins: "She rolls her eyes/and I'm filled with butterflies." As Meg, Krysta Rodriguez nails the show's new take, biting into her songs (including a tougher version of the movie's "I Won't Say (I'm in Love)") and a terrific new first date scene that establishes the character as fully modern. It's no accident that unlike anyone else in the production, Meg wears skinny jeans and a leather jacket. And though the bluesy new number for Hades thankfully does nothing to reframe the material or remediate his villainy, "A Cool Day in Hell" does give Mr. Bart, who sang Hercules's songs in the movie and now looks like he woke up on the bad side of a bender, a chance to show off his comic mastery. If the amateur cast is for the most part enthusiastically adequate to its tasks and in some cases you'd be hard pressed to guess whether they are Equity members or not the show wouldn't work without a Hades who knows how to wrap an audience in his palm and squeeze. All this makes "Hercules" something of a one off in the Public Works catalog, and also in Disney's. It is caught between opposing monsters: the commercial and communitarian imperative. I don't know whether Disney is considering a stage future for this adaptation, or whether the Public Works partners and affiliates in nine cities around the country may wish to take it on, but either constituency would find it rather difficult. Even the formidable Mr. Menken and Mr. Zippel did: A couple of the additional songs, despite nifty lyrics, lay eggs. (They'd work in a movie, though.) And the staging of the requisite battle scenes, despite gorgeous puppets by James Ortiz, defeats the logistical efforts of Ms. deBessonet and her team. The resulting confusion was of little import on a gorgeous Labor Day eve in front of an audience primed to hoot at lines like "You've become a celebrity. That is not the same thing as being a hero." And when the citizens of Thebes asked Hercules to prove his strength by helping with affordable housing, the 1,800 or so citizens at the Delacorte lapped it up like ambrosia. But it was ambrosia with an afterkick. The biggest change made in "Hercules" may be the hardest one to make in real life. Public Works has turned it into a much more significant story, one in which everyone, not just the stud in the toga, has to learn to be a hero. Tickets Through Sept. 8 at the Delacorte Theater, Manhattan; 212 539 8500, publictheater.org. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes . | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
Re "Why Did So Many Americans Vote for Trump?," by Will Wilkinson (Op Ed, nytimes.com, Nov. 27): The question posed by Mr. Wilkinson is one I have asked myself many times. The answer I have received from friends who are staunch Trump supporters is that they like his policies but not the man. They agree he is dishonest and a man of flawed character, but defend his policies as being the best for this nation. The policies these friends most favor are smaller government, a bigger military, anti abortion laws and strong enforcement of immigration laws. Emotions run so high in support of President Trump that reasoned debate has become impossible if friendship is to be maintained. The friends of whom I speak are good honest people with strong values. They love their families and country. We must remember this if we are to overcome the division among us. Why? How about an overtly leftist platform, a weak set of presidential candidates culminating in Joe Biden, a divisive leftist as the vice presidential candidate, and down ticket politicians with the mantra of more federal bailouts without regard for the downstream economic effects. And then there was the Democratic Party's cheerleader response to the riots. Isn't all of that enough? | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
Finding Peace of Mind for Your Home Away From Home Geneva Simms and Nathan Lavertue were driving to their country house in Dutchess County one recent weekend when there was yet another spring snowstorm. But when they arrived late that night, their home, which was built around 1780 and was once a Quaker meetinghouse and a stop on the Underground Railroad, wasn't bitterly cold. That is because during his lunch break in Brooklyn, Mr. Lavertue had turned on the heat remotely, using his smartphone. "We have three cameras two exterior and one interior four Nest thermostats, two Echo Dots, one Echo Show, one traditional Echo and 10 smart lights. And also the Nest smoke detector," said Mr. Lavertue, a global experience design director for IBM, who installed the equipment himself. "The cameras are for security, but they provide plenty of entertainment. I have really funny footage of Geneva running after a U.P.S. truck." Like a lot of second home buyers, Mr. Lavertue and Ms. Simms, a personal trainer, corporate wellness coach and founder of Empower to Power, were overwhelmed at first with figuring out how to protect their country house when they weren't there. The married couple, who rent in Brooklyn and had never owned before buying their Stanfordville house last year, researched their options and then turned to do it yourself smart home components. They plan to add another smoke/carbon monoxide detector, several more smart thermostats and a digital front door lock from August to complete their home security system. "Usually, I suggest a two pronged approach," said Jessica Chutka Pelletier, a broker with Douglas Elliman in Chappaqua, who sold Mr. Lavertue and Ms. Simms their home. "For ease of use, I suggest apps and a lot of DIY things, then I give my buyers a list of local people to call." Among the professionals she recommends is her husband, who happens to be a general contractor. Mr. Lavertue and Ms. Simms hired him to do renovation work and a lawn care company to plow their driveway. It was through word of mouth that Justin Brent got his start. Mr. Brent is based in Pound Ridge, in Westchester County, and has worked in the town's maintenance department for more than two decades. He is also chief of the local fire department. And he is the proprietor of Pound Ridge Home Management LLC, which he runs with his wife, overseeing more than a dozen second homes in the area. "I started out doing some landscaping, and word spread from there," said Mr. Brent, who checks on his customers' homes once a week, conducting a 21 point inspection, from the mailbox to the basement, for a fee of 55 an hour. The company also provides ancillary services, or will find third parties to do so, from power washing furniture to changing light bulbs and fixing HVAC and plumbing systems. "These are weekenders, so if they come up on a Friday night and the heat is broken," he said, "it is an emergency and they have to call the heating company to come." Mr. Brent said he addresses any problems that arise during the week, "so that when they come up, they only have to turn the key in the door and turn on the lights and enjoy themselves." Mary Trier has a similar company on the North Fork of Long Island. Her job, particularly during the fall and winter months, centers on coastal erosion and protecting homes from storm damage. "I thrive on the bad weather," she said. "I am fixated with the weather report." Ms. Trier provides a range of services, from securing beachside steps to critter control, and charges a monthly retainer of 120 to 125, which includes weekly property checks. For anything more, she charges an hourly fee of 25 to 30. "I started out with just a few houses and that stayed constant for a while," she said. "But recently business has exploded." "For a long time, the North Fork was somewhat sleepy," said Sheri Winter Clarry, an associate broker at Corcoran in the North Fork, who often refers clients to Ms. Trier. "There was always a summer market, but more people are now coming for the weekends year round, and demand for services like Mary's has grown." For those who want to supplement services like Mr. Brent's or Ms. Trier's with smart home systems, there are a number of options, from traditional firms like ADT to relative newcomers like Nest. Nest, which is owned by Google, makes products that feature modern, sleek designs but are relatively costly. The Nest Secure system starts at about 500, with the option to buy additional products like Nest Hello, a 229 video doorbell, or Nest x Yale lock, a 279 key free deadbolt operated with a passcode. "The system provides peace of mind," said Maxime Veron, director of product strategy at Nest, adding that the majority of the company's customers install the systems themselves. While Nest is largely a la carte, many companies offer comprehensive options, including services like ADT Pulse or SimpliSafe. These systems have a lower upfront cost and offer 24/7 monitoring, although they can also come with lengthy, multiyear contracts and expensive termination fees. Wirecutter, a product review and recommendation site owned by The New York Times, gave SimpliSafe its top score, citing the round the clock monitoring and the fact it does not require long term contracts. PCMag.com also recommended SimpliSafe, giving it four out of five stars, as well as vivint.SmartHome, which it gave four and a half stars. PCMag.com awarded Nest Secure just three stars, citing the high cost and limited voice commands. Of course, some homeowners can't be bothered to deal with installing smart home security systems, or face having to work with management companies. They prefer to have someone on site at all times. That was one reason Joanne Intrieri recently decided to buy a home at the Four Seasons Private Residences Fort Lauderdale. Ms. Intrieri and her husband, who are based in New York City, already own property in Arizona and Pennsylvania. "We know what it's like to have sandstorms and snowstorms, and have to find people to fix things when you aren't there," she said. At the Four Seasons project, owners will have all the conveniences of a hotel, as well as on site managers to cater to most needs. "Having been there and done that," she said, "I don't want to have to lift a finger." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
The five men were all locked in disputes with their onetime employer, the Chinese technology giant Huawei. And they had all joined a group on the social app WeChat to organize. Then, one of them wrote a message to the group that would upend their lives: "I can prove that Huawei sold to Iran." The message, and the brief discussion that followed, touched on an explosive issue for the company. Huawei had just begun fighting allegations by the U.S. government that it had committed fraud to bypass sanctions against Iran. The company's chief financial officer, a daughter of its founder, had been arrested less than two weeks earlier as part of the case. The employees' messages in the chat group included no hard evidence that Huawei's activities in Iran were unlawful. Yet within weeks, the Chinese police had arrested all five men, two of them told The New York Times. The two former employees Li Hongyuan, 42, and Zeng Meng, 39 said officers had questioned them about Iran and asked why they had been in contact with foreign news outlets, both topics they had discussed on WeChat. Mr. Li eventually spent more than eight months in detention. Mr. Zeng spent three. For over a year now, Huawei, the world's largest maker of telecommunications equipment and a leading smartphone brand, has been the target of an intense clampdown by the Trump administration. The Justice Department has charged Huawei with stealing trade secrets and lying about its business in Iran. The company denies wrongdoing. American officials say Huawei answers to the Chinese state, which the company also denies. But even if Huawei is not government controlled, Chinese officials often defend it as if it were a strategically vital state asset. Beijing has vowed to retaliate for the U.S. government's restrictions on Huawei. China's ambassador to Germany threatened consequences if that nation's government excluded the company from its telecom market. State propaganda outlets cast supporting Huawei as a patriotic act. And in the case of the jailed employees, Mr. Li and Mr. Zeng said, the police appear to have arrested them in part to stop them from speaking out about Huawei's activities in Iran. Huawei declined to comment. It referred to an earlier statement saying that Mr. Li's case was not a labor dispute, and that the company had reported suspected illegal conduct to the authorities. Huawei also reiterated that it was committed to complying with the law wherever it operates. The police in the city of Shenzhen, who seized the men, didn't respond to a faxed request for comment. News of Mr. Li's detention set off a wave of anger at Huawei in China last year. Internet users were outraged at what seemed to be a case of a vindictive corporation's punishing an employee who dared to demand the pay he was owed. Censors quickly erased critical comments and articles. But at the time, the police's interest in the employees' discussions about Iran was not reported. Mr. Li, Mr. Zeng and the three others were first detained in December 2018, not long after the world learned that Washington was accusing Huawei of fraud related to its Iranian business. The five men were embroiled in labor disputes with the company, and they chatted and commiserated in a WeChat group. The discussion about Iran took place on Dec. 11, according to screenshots seen by The Times. Days later, Mr. Li was arrested in Shenzhen, where Huawei has its headquarters. Mr. Zeng was arrested shortly thereafter in Thailand, where he was vacationing, and taken back to China. For Huawei, not all sales to Iran would have been illegal. In principle, only those involving U.S. origin goods, technology or services would have fallen afoul of American sanctions. The company has said its sales in Iran were for commercial civilian use and did not violate sanctions. Even so, Mr. Li said, the police asked him about his involvement in Iran, which he had mentioned on WeChat. As a former global manager in Huawei's electrical inverter business, Mr. Li naturally had contact with colleagues in Iran, he told The Times. But he said he had never been there himself. "I only knew so much. Whatever I knew, I told them all of it," Mr. Li said. The police did not say why they were questioning him about Iran, he said. The police also knew that he had been arranging to meet with a reporter for a Hong Kong news outlet that month, Mr. Li said. But he had planned to talk with the reporter about Huawei's labor and tax practices, not Iran, he said. "I said, 'There's nothing illegal about that,'" Mr. Li recalled. Mr. Zeng said the police had explained it clearly to him: By discussing Huawei's Iranian business and communicating with foreign news outlets, the former employees had crossed a line. China and the United States were in a trade war, Mr. Zeng said one officer had told him. At a delicate time, weren't they just making trouble? It was the equivalent, Mr. Zeng said the officer had told him, of supporting Japan after it invaded China in the 1930s. "At the time, the Meng situation was too hot," Mr. Li said, referring to the arrest of Huawei's finance chief, Meng Wanzhou. "They might have been afraid that we were making these noises and would cause problems for Boss Meng." The three other employees who were jailed couldn't be contacted. Mr. Zeng said he had been working as a product manager for Huawei in Morocco when the company began hinting, in 2017, that it was dissatisfied with his performance. In May the next year, he was let go, but his severance package did not include his year end bonus, and he sued. During that time, Mr. Zeng looked for other disgruntled Huawei workers to add to a WeChat group. Word reached Mr. Li, who was suing Huawei for his own bonus after his contract wasn't renewed. The group eventually swelled to more than 60 people. They knew they were probably being monitored. Huawei has a habit of infiltrating unhappy employees' chat groups, Mr. Zeng said. In November 2018, a WeChat group consisting of Mr. Li, Mr. Zeng and a few others split off from the larger one. They discussed how to draw the international news media's attention to Huawei's labor practices. On Dec. 11, the larger WeChat group was discussing Huawei's political troubles when someone in the group brought up Iran, screenshots of the messages show. "I worked on IranCell projects from 2012 to 2014," the person wrote, referring to an Iranian telecom operator. "I went on business trips." "I can also confirm," Mr. Li replied. "Internally, it's an open secret that Huawei sells to Iran." The police arrested Mr. Li on Dec. 16, according to a document from Shenzhen prosecutors. He was initially accused of leaking trade secrets, he said. Mr. Zeng said he was arrested two weeks later on the same accusation. The three other employees were also in the smaller WeChat group, Mr. Zeng said. He said one was the person who had first spoken up about Iran in the larger group. When the police took Mr. Zeng back to his Thai hotel, one officer demanded his phone, he recalled. The officer saw that he had been in contact with international news outlets, including The Times, about his colleagues' arrests. The officer uttered an expletive, Mr. Zeng said. Did he really have to go to the foreign media? the officer asked. Mr. Zeng said his damp cell in Shenzhen had held more than 30 detainees. Only at midday would it get some sunlight, on a patch of wall near the toilet. They would crowd around, basking in the warmth and holding their noses. After Mr. Zeng had spent a few weeks in detention, the police changed the accusation against him to fraud, he said. He denied wrongdoing, and in March 2019, he was released. But he said the police had first made him write a statement promising that he would not publicly go against Huawei's company line on Iran or be manipulated by foreign forces with ulterior motives, a reference to the international news media. The accusation against Mr. Li ended up being extortion. He was freed in August with no charges. "China is still some distance away from having rule of law," he said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
With a robotic owl, above, researchers in Montana are trying to understand the secret language of the forest. MISSOULA, Mont. In the backyard of a woodsy home outside this college town, small birds black capped chickadees, mountain chickadees, red breasted nuthatches flitted to and from the yard's feeder. They were oblivious to a curious stand nearby, topped by a curtain that was painted to resemble bark. Erick Greene, a professor of biology at the University of Montana, stepped away from the stand and stood by the home's backdoor. He pressed the fob of a modified garage door opener. The curtain dropped, unveiling a taxidermied northern pygmy owl. Its robotic head moved from side to side, as if scanning for its next meal. The yard hushed, then erupted in sound. Soon birds arrived from throughout the neighborhood to ornament the branches of a hawthorn above the mobbed owl and call out yank yank and chick a dee. As a recorder captured the ruckus, its instigator grinned with delight. "For birds, this is like a riot," Dr. Greene said afterward, adding that he heard "a whole set of acoustic stuff going on that's just associated with predators." The distinctions are subtle "even good naturalists and birders can miss this stuff," he added. Studies in recent years by many researchers, including Dr. Greene, have shown that animals such as birds, mammals and even fish recognize the alarm signals of other species. Some can even eavesdrop on one another across classes. Red breasted nuthatches listen to chickadees. Dozens of birds listen to tufted titmice, who act like the forest's crossing guards. Squirrels and chipmunks eavesdrop on birds, sometimes adding their own thoughts. In Africa, vervet monkeys recognize predator alarm calls by superb starlings. Dr. Greene says he wants to better understand the nuances of these bird alarms. His hunch is that birds are saying much more than we ever suspected, and that species have evolved to decode and understand the signals. He acknowledged the obvious Dr. Dolittle comparison: "We're trying to understand this sort of 'language' of the forest." At his laboratory on campus, Dr. Greene plugged the recording of the pygmy owl fracas into a computer that he likened to an "acoustic microscope." The calls appeared as a spectrogram essentially musical notation. On the screen, they looked like a densely layered cake fallen on its side. One call lasts only a second or three, but can have up to a dozen syllables. Parsing one of myriad encounters with a pygmy or other roboraptors, even with the help of a computer, will take the researchers hours. Dr. Greene, 57, developed his fascination with birds and sound early on, growing up around Montreal as a "total nature nerd," he said. As a young boy, he listened to classical, jazz and Renaissance music, and then played them. He recalled being "a harpsichord playing, hockey thug, bird nerd." As a teenager, he met Peter and Rosemary Grant, then at McGill University in Montreal, who would gain fame for their study of Darwin's finches in the Galapagos Islands. They offered him a yearlong job as a field assistant. He dropped out of high school and never returned. That experience, however, helped him gain admission to Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia. There he spent much time in Renaissance consorts playing obscure instruments like the crumhorn "which sounds like a pig being slaughtered," he said before attending Princeton for his doctorate in ecology, evolution and behavior. "What I'm doing now is really a natural marriage of those sorts of interests," Dr. Greene said of his interest in animal communication. "It's nature's music, in a way." He met his wife, Anne, before college while they were studying birds 800 miles north of the Arctic Circle. Theirs is a science family: Anne teaches science writing at the university, and the couple has two grown daughters one teaches at a charter school in Brooklyn that has an environmental sciences theme, and the other is working toward a master's degree in aquatic biology. Dr. Greene has spent much of his career at the University of Montana studying the pas de deux of predator and prey. As part of this dance, most animals, including birds, have evolved alarm signals to warn of danger. Dr. Greene's interest in the subtlest bird alarms developed several years ago while studying lazuli buntings. So called "seet" calls, peeps produced by many small songbirds in response to a raptor on the wing, are well known to ornithologists. Conventional wisdom held that the calls dissipated quickly and were produced only for other birds nearby. However, that's not what Dr. Greene noticed: chatter sweeping across the hillside, then birds diving into bushes. Studying the phenomenon, he documented a "distant early warning system" among the birds in which the alarm calls were picked up by other birds and passed through the forest at more than 100 miles per hour. Dr. Greene likened it to a bucket brigade at a fire. The information rippled ahead of a predator minutes before it flew overhead, giving prey time to hide. Moreover, while raptors can hear well at low frequencies, they are not very good at hearing at 6 to 10 kilohertz, the higher frequency at which seet calls are produced. "So it's sort of a private channel," he said. Dr. Greene turned to chickadees, which are highly attuned to threats. When one sees a perched raptor nearby, it will issue its well known "chick a dee" call, a loud, frequent and harsh sound known as a mobbing call because its goal is to attract other birds to harass the predator until it departs. In 2005, Dr. Greene was an author of an article in the journal Science that demonstrated how black capped chickadees embed information about the size of predators into these calls. When faced with a high threat raptor perched nearby, the birds not only call more frequently, they also attach more dee's to their call. Raptors tend to be the biggest threat to birds nearest their own size because they can match the maneuverability of their prey. So a large goshawk might only merit a chick a dee dee from a nimble chickadee, while that little pygmy owl will elicit a chick a dee followed by five or even 10 or 12 additional dee syllables, Dr. Greene said. The researchers next showed that red breasted nuthatches, which are chickadee size and frequently flock with them in the winter, eavesdrop on their alarm language, too. Dr. Greene, working with a student, has also found that "squirrels understand 'bird ese,' and birds understand 'squirrel ese.' " When red squirrels hear a call announcing a dangerous raptor in the air, or they see such a raptor, they will give calls that are acoustically "almost identical" to the birds, Dr. Greene said. (Researchers have found that eastern chipmunks are attuned to mobbing calls by the eastern tufted titmouse, a cousin of the chickadee.) Other researchers study bird calls just as intently. Katie Sieving, a professor of wildlife ecology and conservation at the University of Florida, has found that tufted titmice act like "crossing guards" and that other birds hold back from entering hazardous open areas in a forest if the titmice sound any alarm. Dr. Sieving suspects that the communication in the forest is akin to an early party telephone line, with many animals talking and even more listening in perhaps not always grasping a lot, but often just enough. Dr. Greene says he wants to know not only the nuances of that party line conversation, but also how far it stretches across the landscape and who else is listening. If chickadees indeed issue alarm calls that indicate the size and thus the danger of predators to them, how many other species of birds robins, crows hear and evaluate those alarms based on their own body size? Perhaps a big Steller's jay hears a chickadee's frantic alarm in the face of a little pygmy owl and says, in effect, "'I'm not worried,' " Dr. Greene said. Conversely, does the same jay hear a halfhearted chickadee alarm and suddenly perk up, understanding that this means a threat now lurks nearby for a bigger bird? Birds must make a trade off with their time between eating and being vigilant. Alarm calls help the group share that responsibility. But when birds cannot hear predators or alarms well, each must spend more time listening and less time feeding, or else move to where they feel safer, Dr. Barber said. His related 2013 study also found more than a one quarter decline in bird abundance when the artificial road noise was turned on; some avoided the area almost entirely. Most migratory birds worldwide are in decline today, Dr. Barber said, and noise that hampers their ability to hear information such as warnings and forces them to change their behavior may be one factor. Noise is relevant to his nonmigrating chickadees in cold northern Montana, too, Dr. Greene said. "Generally in the winter, these birds are living on the edge," he added. "If they don't meet their caloric requirements today, they're dead. And it's a trade off: you can feed or you can watch for predators." Dr. Greene says he relishes spending his days in the woods, watching birds and teasing out their messages. Though he has performed experiments in the lab, he would rather do them in the field. "It's more difficult, and it's messier," he said. "But it's glorious nature." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
Bodies break. So can societies. Here's one thing we can pretty much all agree on: The world is in a state of disruption, one that feels more extreme with each passing day. The German choreographer Sasha Waltz, in the United States premiere of her work "Kreatur," reveals the unraveling of a society as its individuals perish in isolation and find their collective power as a group. But first, the body needs protection. The most striking part of this production is not Ms. Waltz's choreography, which has her dancers, time and again, torquing their spines in self conscious agitation, or its electronic score, by the experimental music trio Soundwalk Collective, that features recordings from the inside of factories and buildings, like a former Stasi prison. It's the costumes and the way in which Urs Schonebaum's lighting continually transforms them from soft to hard, from protection to a weapon. For "Kreatur," performed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Howard Gilman Opera House on Friday, the Dutch designer Iris van Herpen has produced an array of sculptural designs that encase the body, beginning with the opening look: Dancers, emerging out of darkness, don fantastical creations constructed from laser cut steel. Semitransparent, they surround the flesh like the downy white threads that sprout on a dandelion after its yellow petals fall away. These dancer phantoms gradually shed their costumes, or skin, in favor of the real thing: Wearing only briefs, they inch across the stage slowly and methodically, melting from one contorted pose to the other. It becomes tiresome fast. They let us see how hard they are working, and that's a distraction even as translucent sheets of mylar are wrapped around the nearly nude dancers, and their magnetized flesh shines through. For a time, there is a prickly quality to the choreography, in which fingers splay and chests contract to lend the sensation that the performers are no longer exactly humans, but and this is a word I like to avoid in describing dancers, yet since it is the name of the show creatures. A montage of scenes come and go. At one point, the dancers climb a white staircase and squeeze together on its platform. Writhing and twisting, they struggle to maintain their footing, but it's inevitable that a couple slip off. "Stop crying!" one dancer tells another, and when she finally does, she follows it up with, "Stop breathing!" When an ominous porcupine figure appears its needles shimmer dangerously the group reacts with fear and then overpowers it. The surprise is that after they remove its prickly head, it is revealed to be a woman and not a man. Eventually this 90 minute work, which has many parts but never becomes whole, winds down as an ode to love. As birds chirp faintly in the distance and the lighting shifts to daybreak, a voice over announces, "My heart is empty but the songs I sing are filled with love for you." The song "Je t'aime ... moi non plus" plays, and select dancers lip sync the lyrics, as sung by Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg. It gets more physical as two men kiss passionately, while other couples slap their bodies into each other chest to chest, hand to thigh. "Kreatur" may begin with covered flesh; by the end, we not only see it, we hear it. The final image, of the dancer Claudia de Serpa Soares wrapped in plastic, leaves behind a message: We all have skin, and we don't need armor to protect us if we rely on one another. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
When I decided to undergo a lumpectomy earlier this month after a diagnosis of D.C.I.S., I learned a new word that makes me grateful for my privileges but also worried about the privations of others. The word is lagniappe, a bonus, like the 13th doughnut in the purchased dozen. As I went through yet another operation, my way was eased by the kindness of friends and relatives. The greatest extravagance came from my daughters who gave me their precious time. The younger flew in from New York City, the older from Boston. They were my lagniappes, in a sense: a bonus beyond the gift of having a potential health crisis averted. At my age, 72, and with my history, eight years of ongoing treatment for advanced ovarian cancer, I knew that their presence would bolster me. At the hospital, I went straight to radiology in order to undergo what is called the Savi Scout procedure. A mammogram machine was used to locate the calcifications that were causing the concern and then a tiny reflective device was shot into that spot. The radiologist used a black marker to ink an X above the spot on my skin. Later, during the operation, a wand placed on the X would activate radarlike waves: Beeping would send my surgeon to the reflector's location. It would be removed, the technician explained, along with the abnormal cells. Then I was taken to a preoperative cubicle where I met with the surgeon and the anesthesiologist. I remember being wheeled toward the operating room, positioning myself on a narrow table, and being informed that I was being given something for sedation. I awoke with the comforting awareness of many gifts: my daughters' company and also the extraordinary expertise of radiologists, surgeons, anesthesiologists and nurses; the astonishing technologies upon which they relied; my excellent insurance that would compensate them; and my ability to afford the extra services I needed to make the outpatient procedure as easy as possible, including a hired car and driver to take us home. During that ride, still logy from drugs, I received an email from a reader concerned that the Trump administration's proposed repeal of the Affordable Care Act would seriously limit the cancer screenings that Planned Parenthood provides. Federal money is already prohibited from being used to pay for abortions, but the proposal would have cut off more than 400 million in federal funding to Planned Parenthood for other services including birth control, cancer screenings and treatment of sexually transmitted diseases. It reminded me of a time, decades ago, when as a graduate student I went to Planned Parenthood for birth control advice. The doctor found a breast cyst and sent me to the hospital for a biopsy that happily proved the growth benign. How many women examined in these sorts of circumstances have been informed of precancerous cells or early stage disease? Currently, Planned Parenthood provides more than 360,000 breast exams and more than 270,000 Pap tests every year. There must be thousands of underinsured or uninsured women who undergo routine testing through Planned Parenthood and discover early signs of cancer that can then be treated and possibly cured. The safeguards needed to protect the well being of this population must not be considered lagniappes. As most people know, prevention and early detection are life or death issues when it comes to cancer. In the case of cervical cancers, as many as 93 percent could be prevented by screening and HPV vaccination, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Stage 1 breast and gynecological cancers can generally be cured, whereas at stages 3 and 4 they tend to metastasize until they kill. An economic argument can also be made for prevention and early detection. Complicated surgeries, prolonged radiation and successive drugs become much more costly with later stage disease. Some half of all Planned Parenthood centers are in rural or medically underserved areas. In these regions of the country, many women cannot find alternative facilities for cancer screenings. In my own case, even with excellent health coverage and the presence of my wonderful daughters, the lumpectomy was no walk in the park. I arrived home in a tube top with a Velcro fastener, pink of course. It took a day for me to unfasten it and look down. My right breast was badly bruised, but it was there. Maybe because the port used to treat my ovarian cancer is implanted on the right side, the area around it felt tender. Yet it astonished me that I did not need post op pain medication, that the scar was less than two inches long, and that I would soon have full use of my arm. The threat that the D.C.I.S. diagnosis posed has been disarmed. My gratitude is permeated by anxiety about women unable to obtain the care I received. Thinking of all the physical, psychological and financial costs my family and I incurred in dealing with this diagnosis, I went onto the American Cancer Society website. When could women stop having mammograms and biopsies? The recommendation lifted my spirits: Women are advised to keep on testing as long as they have a life expectancy of 10 years. With advanced ovarian cancer, I do not have such a life expectancy and now for the first time I realized that I no longer have to follow the instructions of my well meaning physicians. A lagniappe: On the happy day that the legislation to repeal the Affordable Care Act was withdrawn, I determined to stop breast screening and use the amount of money equivalent to what this D.C.I.S. cost my family in medical expenses, airline tickets, a car and driver to make annual donations to Planned Parenthood. Although the effort to repeal Obamacare failed on Friday, by Tuesday Republican leaders were trying again, so Planned Parenthood's funding is by no means secure. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Well |
A. According to Twitter, even if you have your phone's location services feature enabled, the service simply uses any embedded coordinates to suggest places you can use for tagging the image to a particular area. The company says it does not store the EXIF data (embedded information from the camera, which can include GPS coordinates if available) from a photo you add to a Twitter post. It also says EXIF data is not available to people who see the photo attached to your tweet. While Twitter may strip out the EXIF data from any picture you send from your account, you can share your location voluntarily when posting a photo. To do so, just select the map pin icon in the box when composing a post. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
At the International Cacao Collection in Turrialba, Costa Rica, Jose Antonio Alfaro examined pods which hold the seeds that make chocolate treated to resist a devastating fungus. Only a few cacao varieties are widely cultivated, making them susceptible to outbreaks. TURRIALBA, Costa Rica The trees of the International Cacao Collection grow here in an astonishing diversity of forms, bearing skinny cacao pods with scorpion stinger protrusions, spherical green pods that could be mistaken for tomatillos, oblong pods with bumpy skin resembling that of the horned lizard all in colors ranging from deep purple to bright yellow. Within each of these pods are seeds that yield something beloved by billions: chocolate. But despite this diversity, few cacao varieties are widely cultivated, and that's a problem: Like many other crops, cacao is under constant threat from diseases and environmental challenges exacerbated by our tendency to grow only a few varieties with similar or identical genetic traits and defects. "Most varieties produced worldwide belong to a narrow set of clones selected in the forties," said Wilbert Phillips Mora, who oversees this collection of 1,235 types of cacao trees and heads the Cacao Genetic Improvement Program at C.A.T.I.E. (an acronym in Spanish for the Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center). A narrow gene pool means that most commonly cultivated varieties of cacao are susceptible to the same diseases, and these blights can spread quickly. The fungus Moniliophthora roreri, also called monilia or frosty pod rot soon spread around the country, and by 1983 Costa Rican exports of dry cacao beans had declined by 96 percent. The industry here has never recovered. The calypso singer Walter Ferguson even wrote about it. "Monilia, you've come to stay," he sang, "and all you bring is hungry belly/You say you no going away, 'til you bring me down to poverty." Folk songs about fungi may be rare, but the devastation to the region's primary industry was profound. And though the Costa Rican outbreak is history, the fungus continues to spread. "For me, the cacao industry is in permanent risk, because intentionally or unintentionally this disease could be spread in just one flight," said Dr. Phillips Mora. Increasing travel and commerce in the developing world have provided new pathways for infection. He believes the most recent confirmed outbreak in Jamaica in September 2016 may have been the result of marijuana traffickers moving covertly between Costa Rica and Jamaica, unwittingly grabbing infected cacao pods as snacks for the boat ride home. That outbreak was the first confirmed outside of Latin America, and it has demonstrated the fungus' ability to survive more distant travel than previously known. Other cacao producing regions, such as West Africa the source of virtually all the cacao that ends up in mass produced products like Hershey's Kisses and M M's may face similar outbreaks. Even without frosty pod rot, cacao is a problematic crop. Other diseases witches' broom, black pod, cacao swollen shoot virus also afflict the tree. Climate change promises to further exacerbate problems with tropical plant pathogens. These difficulties make cacao ever less appealing to producers; yields and profits are low, and the average cacao farmer is aging. The next generation seems to be abandoning the family business. Yet demand for chocolate is rising, especially as gargantuan markets like China and India indulge a taste for what used to be a treat primarily for American and European consumers. A chocolate shortage may be on the horizon. That is where Dr. Phillips Mora's project comes in. The genetic diversity of cacao, on full display in the International Cacao Collection at C.A.T.I.E., may avert a chocolate crisis. In the early 1980s, Dr. Phillips Mora worked to identify the most naturally tolerant and productive cacao trees, then painstakingly hybridized the candidates to create novel varieties. Breeding hybrid cacao clones is a lengthy process, and experts worldwide have largely failed in this endeavor. But in 2006, Dr. Phillips Mora released his first batch of hybrid cacao varieties. "Our goal is not just to produce cacao," Dr. Phillips Mora said. "It's also to give the basic living conditions to the farmers. Most cacao farmers are very poor, because the system is based on material that doesn't have good yielding capacity." Trees that buck this trend could make the family business look more enticing to the next generation of cacao growers. The C.A.T.I.E. hybrids are now growing in all Central American countries, as well as in Mexico and Brazil. Agricultural yield and disease resistance may benefit farmers, but a cacao crop is worthless if it produces bland or foul tasting chocolate. Chocolate is the epitome of gastronomic hedonism. But unlike nearly every other modern effort to increase crop yields, Dr. Phillips Mora's breeding program incorporates fine flavor as a prerequisite. Cacao varieties that don't impress expert palates are discarded, no matter how well they grow. He estimates that he receives less than 5 percent of the funds necessary for proper upkeep of the collection each year. So although Dr. Phillips Mora retired three years ago, he plans to keep working until the solvency of the collection is ensured. "I will be very happy when I leave this institution to know that the collection will be protected financially," he said. "It's a treasure for everybody, for all the cocoa lovers." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
PARTHENON, Ark. In an Ozark crag in north Arkansas, one of the country's most high maintenance homes a cave tucked into a natural cavern is gussied up and back on the market. Again. The three year, million dollar renovation is the latest in a series of makeovers for the Beckham Creek Cave, which has passed through numerous hands since it was built as a bomb shelter in the early 1980s. The fully furnished cave and its 257 acres can be yours for just 2.75 million. Today, the cave home is a carefully epoxied science fiction bunker of rock walls, smooth concrete surfaces, black steel and stalactites. Still, moisture is a menace, so the newest renovation includes improved waterproofing. Two high capacity geothermal units control the cave's dampness and keep the year round temperature a cool 65 degrees. "We tell people to wear your sweats," said the broker, Rayne Davidson. "You're in a cave." It comes with four bedrooms and four baths, 5,500 square feet of living space, a spring fed pond, rainy season waterfall, a view of bluffs, helicopter pad, and a grand room anchored by a rock waterfall called the Spanish Piano . The back door accesses a "live cave" that extends more than a mile into the earth. This winding, undeveloped portion of the chasm is home to reptiles and rare bats. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
Some time in the 18th century, a young African boy is purchased by a European noblewoman and subjected to a curious form of enslavement. Given the name Angelo, he grows up among aristocrats who treat him not as a servant but as a curio and a symbol of their own benevolence. Angelo's biography feels like both a plausibly factual chronicle and a fantastical allegory. Shot with classical rigor and attention to detail (with room for a few telling anachronisms), the Austrian filmmaker Markus Schleinzer's second feature presents history as a lavish, lucid nightmare from which nobody, Angelo least of all, can hope to awaken. (A.O. Scott) A tale twice told, the ingenious Turkish puzzle "Belonging" opens with an unseen narrator introducing the story and then another voice delivering a just the facts description of a murder. Detailed, largely affectless and sometimes rushed, this recitation accompanies images that initially seem completely unrelated, even random. In time, though, words and images begin syncing up we hear "the security chain was locked" over a shot of a safety chain lock creating a seamless correspondence between what we hear and see. The writer director Burak Cevik then flips the switch and the movie shifts into a more lyrical narrative register, one that fills in all the little nuances, most notably the intimate in between moments that both explain and obscure so much. (Manohla Dargis) Lila Aviles's debut feature never leaves the high rise Mexico City hotel where its title character, Eve (Gabriela Cartol), works long hours cleaning rooms with spectacular views. The effect of is claustrophobic, but also strangely serene, even sublime. The camera follows Eve through daily routines that include awkward encounters with guests, friendly exchanges with co workers and curt meetings with supervisors. Our sense of exploitation and alienation is palpable, but the moments of beauty, tenderness and freedom that punctuate the drudgery provide flickers of humanity that feel almost miraculous. (A.O.S.) Chinonye Chukwu's film, which opens New Directors, is a somber, ethically serious consideration of the death penalty. It's an issue movie that wants to be thought provoking rather than polemical. It is also a showcase for the formidable talents of Alfre Woodard, who plays the warden of a prison where executions are a regular part of life. As the next one approaches (the condemned man is played by Aldis Hodge) the warden struggles with emotions that threaten every aspect of her identity, professional and personal. Woodard enacts this struggle with minimal vanity and abundant grace. (A.O.S.) In 2004, Maria Alche appeared in "The Holy Girl," the Argentine director Lucrecia Martel's haunting second feature. Fifteen years later, Alche's directing debut shows signs of Martel's influence in its blend of oblique narration and subtle psychological insight. But Alche, who is also an accomplished photographer, brings her own arresting visual sensibility to this story of grief, longing and memory. Mercedes Moran plays a middle aged mother of three almost grown children who is thrown off balance by the death of her sister. During her mourning period, nothing much happens, and yet everything happens, as Alche and Moran practice a kind of emotional sonar, picking up signals that lie deep under the dramatic surface. (A.O.S.) The documentary "Honeyland" contains worlds in one beautiful, seemingly simple story. Its focus, Hatidze Muratova, lives in a tiny stone house in remote northern Macedonia with her octogenarian mother, a plucky dog and an irregular number of cats. Her passion and apparent livelihood, though, are the wild bees she tends keeping is too possessive with hand flaps, vocalizations and deep respect. The directors Ljubomir Stefanov and Tamara Kotevska don't overexplain this world, its history or seemingly fragile present, including the origin of the chaotic, sprawling family who soon moves in and begins taking over the bees. The family's at times infuriating disruptions (animal lovers beware) turn this quiet, moving observational documentary into a heart skipping thriller as well as a perfect encapsulation of humanity's catastrophic domination of nature. (M.D.) During the Kosovo war in 1999, against a backdrop of NATO bombardment, a Serbian truck driver (Leon Lucev), transports a mysterious cargo toward Belgrade. He gives a ride to a young man whose reasons for traveling are equally enigmatic, and the two of them make their way across a chilly, drab landscape in this mordant, minimalist road picture, directed by Ognjen Glavonic, who leavens the journey with hints of suspense and glints of absurdist humor. This isn't "The Wages of Fear" so much as the dividends of existential anxiety and political despair. (A.O.S.) If it bleeds, it leads and pays the bills. That's the uneasy truism and slow boiling moral of the gripping documentary "Midnight Family," about a household of ambulance workers. The title isn't metaphoric (or not exactly), but refers to the Ochoas, who operate one of the many private ambulances that race through Mexico City. Fantastically shot by the director Luke Lorentzen, the documentary develops an urgency that suits the life or death stakes onscreen. By turns terrifying and exhilarating, "Midnight Family" unfolds with such velocity that it may take a while for your ethical doubts to catch up to what's happening. When they do, they leave you gasping. (M.D.) The pig's head on a stick, posted in a jungle encampment occupied by a pack of feral children, pays obvious homage to "Lord of the Flies." But Alejandro Landes's "Monos" infuses the themes of that schoolboy parable with a grim, contemporary political perspective and filters them through cinematic influences that include Terrence Malick and Werner Herzog. The kids are members of a guerrilla army in the Colombian countryside. Their mission is to guard an American hostage played by Julianne Nicholson. A lot goes wrong. As the action shifts from mountains to rain forest, Landes makes clever use of drone mounted cameras and trippy sound design to turn the natural world into a hallucination. Unless the human characters are figments dreamed up by the landscape. (A.O.S.) When 16 year old Mandy (an appealing Rhianne Barreto) wakes up on her family's front lawn one dark day, she finds herself with no memory of and a body marred with wounds. The question of what happened as well as why, who and where reverberates through this thoughtful, low key drama which tracks Mandy's anguish and anger as a personal trauma increasingly becomes an exploitative public spectacle. As Mandy fights to recover her memory, she struggles with her fears, family and friends, growing progressively more isolated. Making a fine feature debut, the American Pippa Bianco uses a depressingly familiar story of high school partying gone wrong to explore sometimes uncomfortable questions about gender, agency and collective guilt. (M.D.) Time bends in this sly, often lovely drama, which pivots on a young surveyor whose past catches up with him while he's out in the field. At one point, he walks into a seemingly deserted classroom, initiating an enigmatic journey into the past that keeps bumping into the present. Using splashes of primary color, punctuating zooms, visual echoes and narrative ellipses, the Chinese writer director Qiu Sheng puts a fresh gloss on Faulkner's observation that the past is never dead. It's always here, vibrating in every red scarf, bird song and moment. "Suburban Birds" will open soon, but is so good and delightfully kinked that it's well worth catching now (and watching twice). (M.D.) | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
SAN FRANCISCO Marc Andreessen, a Silicon Valley investor, published a rallying cry last month that quickly ricocheted around the tech industry. In it, he placed the blame for America's dismal response to the coronavirus on "smug complacency, this satisfaction with the status quo and the unwillingness to build." He proposed a solution that fit squarely into Silicon Valley's ethos of ingenuity. It was time to build things, he said, like universities, hospitals, skyscrapers, zero emission nuclear reactors, delivery drones, hyperloops and even Elon Musk's "alien dreadnoughts." "Building is how we reboot the American dream," Mr. Andreessen wrote in his post, which he titled "Time to Build." It was an inspirational call to arms. But one of the first things Mr. Andreessen and other Silicon Valley venture capitalists have since rushed to help build was something else entirely: an app called Clubhouse. Clubhouse is a social media app where venture capitalists have gathered to mingle with one another while they are quarantined in their homes. The app is, for now, invite only, and buzzy: Seemingly everyone who has been allowed to join the early test version, from celebrities like MC Hammer to activists like DeRay Mckesson, has tweeted about it. And it has recently been one of the hottest deals on Sand Hill Road, Silicon Valley's venture capital nexus. Last week, Mr. Andreessen's venture firm, Andreessen Horowitz, won the deal to invest in Clubhouse. Andreessen Horowitz agreed to put in 10 million, plus pay 2 million to buy shares from Clubhouse's existing shareholders, said a person with knowledge of the funding, who declined to be named because the details were confidential. The financing valued Clubhouse, which started this year and has two employees, at nearly 100 million. The deal was reported earlier by Forbes. Andrew Chen, a partner at Andreessen Horowitz, said on Twitter that he interpreted Mr. Andreessen's "Time to Build" as building more of everything, including "new gaming cos, social apps, fitness and more!" Jeremy Liew, an investor at Lightspeed Venture Partners, said his firm, along with "most of Silicon Valley," had spoken to the founders of Clubhouse in recent weeks. The app "got some early traction with V.C.s and entrepreneurs, and no doubt that is why some firms leaned in," he said, adding that Lightspeed did not pursue an investment. "They generalized from their own positive experiences." Andreessen Horowitz declined to comment on Mr. Andreessen's essay and any connection to the Clubhouse investment. Mr. Andreessen, Mr. Chen and their partner, Ben Horowitz, have been frequent faces in the app. Last week, Mr. Horowitz answered questions from Clubhouse's users about his barbecue techniques and favorite dining spots, adding how impressed he was with what the app's founders had built. Paul Davison, who founded Clubhouse with Rohan Seth, a former Google engineer, declined to comment. Mr. Davison is a well known Silicon Valley entrepreneur, having made the social media app Highlight in 2012. That app, which allowed people to share their location with others to create serendipitous in person connections, shut down in 2016. With just a few thousand people using Clubhouse as part of an early test, the app is far from a hit and has not been publicly released. But many of those who have it are already addicted. One woman recently discussed spending more than 40 hours a week on it; others have tweeted similar statistics. Clubhouse works by letting people join pop up audio chat rooms that disappear when they end. Once in the rooms, users are segmented into tiers determined by moderators. Users can join any chat room, see who is speaking or listening, click into a profile page and follow others. Some said Clubhouse had brought back the spontaneity of real life interactions, which vanished with the coronavirus. Gillian Morris, founder of Hitlist, a flight booking app, said logging in to the app felt like bumping into people and striking up a conversation at a coffee shop. "It's like walking into a party where you know people are ready to mingle," said Sonia Baschez, 33, a digital marketing consultant in San Francisco who was invited to use Clubhouse. Since joining the app a week and a half ago, Ms. Baschez said, she has spent three to five hours a day on it. "Sure, you could be talking to people on the phone, but that just seems so weird," she said. "You're not forced to be part of the conversation the entire time on Clubhouse. You can just listen to other people talking about interesting subjects and jump in when you want." Last weekend, the author Shaka Senghor and Mr. Mckesson, the activist, each spent hours on the app discussing prison reform, police brutality and other topics related to their interests. A former FBI hostage negotiator, Chris Voss, recently held an open Q. and A. on Clubhouse. Jared Leto and Ashton Kutcher are users; Kevin Hart also showed up one time. Leo Polovets, an investor at Susa Ventures, a venture capital firm, said Clubhouse sometimes felt like a tech conference, with discussions on tech related topics and appearances from prominent techies. "It's almost like a podcast with audience participation," he said. That's during the day. After hours, Clubhouse is more like a rowdy dive bar. At around 10 nearly every night, 30 to 50 people form a room on the app where everyone is a host, moderator privileges are given freely, microphones are mostly unmuted and users swap their profile pictures in real time to memes and images related to the conversation. They call themselves the "Back of the Bus." Ryan Dawidjan, 28, an account executive at a tech company, holds court and ensures everyone in the room follows the rules: no boring tech talk and no talking about Clubhouse. He playfully boots people from host roles for violating these sacred terms. The format of "Back of the Bus" is fluid. Sometimes there is a tarot card reader critiquing a member's Instagram account; sometimes it is a dating advice show; sometimes bored people sound off about anything that pops into their mind. Clubhouse has already minted its first influencer: Sheel Mohnot, 38, founder of Better Tomorrow Ventures, another venture firm. Mr. Mohnot, a staple in "Back of the Bus," has been a contestant on the Zoom Bachelorette, a pop up online dating event for which fans hosted a live discussion party on Clubhouse. After connecting through the app with Scooter Braun, an entrepreneur and record executive, Mr. Mohnot was featured in a recent Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande music video. Clubhouse is "like a mystery box every night," Mr. Dawidjan said. "You don't know what you're going to get, but it's always good." Hours later, someone impersonated Mr. Musk, the Tesla chief. That led MC Hammer, a Clubhouse user, to publicly call on the company to institute a real name policy. "Real identity !!! Be accountable for your words and opinions," he tweeted. Clubhouse also faces competition. Over the weekend, an app that mimics the Clubhouse interface called Watercooler was released. It even used a photo of Mr. Davison in its promotional images. Erin Griffith reported from San Francisco, and Taylor Lorenz from New York. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
Credit...Kyle Dean Reinford for The New York Times Black and White and Redone all Over This article is part of our November Design special section, which focuses on style, function and form in the workplace. In Nashville, a surging economy has led to a recent construction boom, with cranes dotting the skyline. And the city's built environment has always been subject to such churn. "We've never had that deep stock of old buildings that other cities enjoy," said David Bailey , a partner in Hastings Architecture , one of the city's best known firms. But Mr. Bailey and his colleagues have done their part to retain some of Nashville's history, in an adaptive reuse project that makes preservation seem forward thinking indeed. Hastings took a 1966 modernist structure that was once the Nashville Public Library's main branch and turned it into a striking headquarters for its firm of 75 employees, which specializes in commercial and institutional architecture. The project was finished in June. The two story building, designed by the architect Bruce Crabtree, is clad in white Cherokee marble and defined by long colonnades of arched windows, evoking other landmarks of its era , like Lincoln Center in New York and the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles. Its downtown site is central, close to the Tennessee State Capitol. "This whole project was in keeping with who we are as a business," said Dave Powell, another partner in the firm. "It's all about community." He added, "This building was meaningful to anyone in the city because of its history and its place in the urban fabric." The firm's previous projects include a renovation and expansion of the Ryman Auditorium and the designs of the Thompson Nashville hotel and the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department headquarters. Originally, another of the firm's partners, William Hastings, was talking with a nonprofit about taking over the old library , but the plan fell through. "He said, 'This would be a pretty cool space for us,'" Mr. Powell recalled. "But we thought, that's a long shot, a pipe dream ." "It's on a high point in the city topographically, so it gives amazing views," Mr. Powell said. Hastings purchased the building for 4 million and took a practical approach to divvying up the space. The southern side of the building became a double height, open plan for the firm's studio. Hastings didn't claim all 42,000 square feet for themselves. Their offices occupy 24,000 square feet, with the remainder divided between two tenants on the north side of the building. And in keeping with the theme of community, the firm also carved out a 1,500 square foot room called the Athenaeum, for local nonprofits and other groups to use, free of charge. It seats 100 people. As with many older buildings, there were challenges that could only be found over time. "Shortly after we bought the building, it flooded," Mr. Bailey said. "It had six feet of water and all the electrical equipment was down there." Some 200 of the building's exterior marble panels, about two thirds of the total, had to be replaced, but the firm was able to go back to the original Georgia quarry for more. "We were so excited about buying the building that we didn't see all these issues," Mr. Bailey added, chuckling. During the renovation, everything was done so that "the original structure was the star of the show," Mr. Powell said. Most of the arched windows were replaced with modern, high performance glass. "The one exception was new walnut trim, since some of the original interior had walnut," Mr. Powell said. "Where we could, we left it, but we added some too." Some of the original walnut doors were turned into tabletops and countertops. And the cafe challenged the severe design orthodoxy with black globe shaped lights by the London designer Tom Dixon . "The driver of what we do is telling a story with architecture," Mr. Powell said. "We wanted to tell the story of the library, without being too 'on the nose.'" A subtle touch involved the pendant lights over the main studio area, hung from ceilings that are 21 feet tall. Though placed diagonally in relation to the rows of desks below, their orientation honors the location of the library's original book stacks. The whole project took the better part of two years and cost 15 million, including the purchase. " We knew it was a big investment, but we had to do it the right way," Mr. Bailey said. Part of the payoff from the renovation is its effect on current and prospective clients. "There's a multilayered wow factor here," Mr. Powell said. "People are blown away by the sheer volume." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
Nearly a decade ago, Donald J. Trump had a regular Monday slot on the Fox News morning show "Fox Friends," and it has been a reliably friendly venue for him throughout his presidency. But more recently, the show has been cool to his unsubstantiated claims of widespread vote fraud. On Thursday's episode, the co host Steve Doocy challenged Pam Bondi, a former attorney general of Florida and a Trump supporter, over her comment about "fake ballots that are coming in late." "Pam, did you just say fake ballots?" Mr. Doocy asked. "There could be. That's the problem," Ms. Bondi replied. "Have you heard stories of ballots that are fake?" Mr. Doocy pushed back. "And if so, just tell us what you know." Ms. Bondi did not cite specific examples, instead saying, "We know that ballots have been dumped." The night before on Fox News, the star opinion hosts Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity spoke ominously about the vote results but stopped short of endorsing President Trump's dismissal of the election as "a fraud on the American public." Mr. Hannity expressed his doubts about the vote in a series of questions: "Do you trust what happened in this election? Do you believe these election results are accurate? Do you believe this was a free and fair election? I have a lot of questions." Laura Ingraham, who was in the White House's East Room early on Wednesday when the president called the election "an embarrassment to our country," spoke more pointedly on her 10 p.m. show that day. She claimed that Democrats were trying to "destroy the integrity of our election process with this mail in, day of registration efforts, counting after the election is over, dumping batches of votes a day, two days, maybe even three days after an election." Ms. Ingraham added, at one point, "If they won fair and square, they won fair and square, and that's fine." Outside of Fox News, anchors were blunt in their dismissals of the president's claims. On Thursday morning, CNN's Alisyn Camerota read a thread of Twitter posts in which Mr. Trump said that "we hereby claim the State of Michigan if, in fact, there was a large number of secretly dumped ballots as has been widely reported!" "Fact check," Ms. Camerota said. "There is no evidence of any secretly dumped ballots there or elsewhere." On Wednesday night on CNN, the White House correspondent Jim Acosta said some Republicans were criticizing Mr. Trump's legal attacks "as an ambulance chasing routine." Earlier, Michael Smerconish, a radio host and CNN contributor, said, "You can't just make baseless allegations, and you also can't talk about ballots that really haven't even been counted yet as being fundamentally unfair." On MSNBC, a network popular with liberal viewers, the host Nicolle Wallace said on Wednesday that the channel was not "going to amplify" the president's tweets claiming fraud by showing them on television. "Donald Trump is also tweeting misinformation about alleged fraud lies so flagrant that they're almost difficult to find amid the warnings and flags the social media companies have placed on and around them," Ms. Wallace said. The MSNBC anchor Brian Williams said, "There is no evidence that these are anything but legally cast votes in states that allow them to be legally cast." Not all news coverage sought to debunk the false claims of voter fraud. After Election Day, the conservative cable network One America News posted two videos, together viewed more than 500,000 times, that pre emptively declared victory for Mr. Trump and made unsubstantiated accusations that Democrats were throwing out Republican ballots. YouTube removed ads from both videos and tagged them with a warning note. The videos were left up, said Ivy Choi, a YouTube spokeswoman, because although they contain "demonstrably false" information, they do not violate the platform's guidelines, which prohibit content that misleads or discourages viewers about voting. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
Samantha Marie Ware, left, and Will Connolly in "This Ain't No Disco," a new musical that draws inspiration from the Mudd Club and New York of 1979. On a scorching July day, Peter Yanowitz peered through the entrance of 77 White Street in Manhattan, as if looking for ghosts. The TriBeCa building, the former lair of the scuzzy Mudd Club, which opened on Halloween 40 years ago, now houses condos that go for 3.6 million. "It looks like such a random, rich person's place now," Mr. Yanowitz said. "It's hard to believe so many amazing things went on here." Those things hold such deep fascination for Mr. Yanowitz that he and his writing partner Stephen Trask have spent the last eight years developing a new rock opera set in the New York club scene of 1979. Titled "This Ain't No Disco," after the Talking Heads lyrics that name checks the Mudd Club, the musical toggles between that downtown punk rock dive and the chic Midtown club it's often contrasted with, Studio 54. The production by the Atlantic Theater Company, which opens at its Linda Gross Theater in Manhattan on Tuesday, arrives amid a surge in projects about the night life scene of the "Ford to City: Drop Dead" era. Over the last year, three books illuminating that lost world have been published, including "The Mudd Club," penned by its discriminating doorman, Richard Boch. The Museum of Modern Art recently dedicated a show to Club 57, a zany contemporary of the Mudd Club; and a documentary on Studio 54 and a biopic of Robert Mapplethorpe are on their way to U.S. releases. Mr. Yanowitz, 50, and Mr. Trask, 51, were too young to take part in that scene. Still, Mr. Trask said, "The fantasies of it were formative for me." The men, who co wrote the music, lyrics and book, have ample histories in rock and theater. Mr. Trask created the music and lyrics for the hit "Hedwig and the Angry Inch," while Mr. Yanowitz played drums in productions of that show, after performing in Jakob Dylan's band the Wallflowers and backing artists, including Natalie Merchant and Yoko Ono. Their rock opera, directed by Darko Tresnjak, a Tony winner for "A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder," centers on the friendship between a gay hustler and aspiring graffiti artist (Peter LaPrade) and an African American punk singer (Samantha Marie Ware), whom Mr. Trask described as "a mash up of Patti Smith and Nona Hendryx." Still, the play is hard pressed to beat the creativity and grittiness of the Mudd Club itself. Howie Pyro, of the band D Generation, said it was "like a Velvet Underground song come to life," while Johnny Dynell, a key D.J. at the club, described it as "Caligula's lair." Inspired by the 1963 experimental film "Flaming Creatures," Mr. Mass had originally wanted to create an underground film studio in the space, in the then desolate area of TriBeCa. The club was meant to finance this dream. But "no landlord would rent you space if you said you wanted to open a rock club," Mr. Mass said. "So, I lied and said I was going to open a really cute Parisian cafe." His day job running an ambulance service provided the funds to rent the space for 500 a month from the artist Ross Bleckner and his father, who owned the building. After attending shows at the punk epicenters CBGB and Max's, Mr. Mass found himself thinking, "Who needs all these bands? They're just a distraction from the audience, which is just as interesting." For his club, he focused on the crowd, despite the many artists who performed there. From Studio 54, which had opened 18 months earlier, he swiped the idea of an exclusive door policy, a heretical idea within the egalitarian world of punk. "It enraged people, which generated more interest in the place," Mr. Mass said. Instead of a velvet rope, the club employed an S and M chain. And, in a highly attention getting stunt, Mr. Mass claimed he was going to exclude celebrities. Excluded, in fact, was anyone who asked, "How long do I have to wait?" Also denied were large groups of rowdy straight men, and, according to Mr. Boch, Paul Simon, "because he said the worst thing you could possibly say, which is, 'Do you know who I am?'" To keep things spontaneous, Mr. Mass came up with perverse new door policies. "One night he said, 'No one gets in with a leather jacket," Mr. Boch said. "Of course, everyone on line was wearing one." The opening night featured the Georgia based B 52's, who stayed in the Eighth Street apartment Mr. Mass shared with Brian Eno. Sam Shepard honored the band's song "Rock Lobster" by turning up in the Lobster Man costume from the play he wrote with Ms. Smith, "Cowboy Mouth." "The place was instantly fun and different," said Fred Schneider of the B 52's. "The Mudd Club had a darker edge than any other disco." D. J.s broke the mold by offering an unusually catholic mix of music, from vintage soul to surf rock. Mr. Dynell said that Mr. Mass instructed him to mess with expectations by tossing in a recording by Alvin and the Chipmunks or spinning a record mutilated with a scissor. The bands who appeared, like the Bush Tetras and ESG, advanced new trends in askew punk funk. The club even hosted a series showcasing new minimalist composers from the classical world. "The music, and the tone of the club, went way beyond the cliche of a scowling punk disco," said Tim Lawrence, the author of the book "Love and Death on the New York Dance Floor." Mudd wasn't the first "punk disco" in New York to reintroduce rock fans to dancing. Hurrah, on West 62nd Street, beat it by six months. But that space was slick while the Mudd Club was proudly sleazy; and Hurrah was centered on the bands who performed. "Mudd was more about a social gathering," said Richard Barone, whose band the Bongos played some of their earliest shows there. "It was a place for artists and designers and musicians to merge and trade ideas." And it pioneered gender neutral bathrooms, though Mr. Barone said, "you'd do your best never to go into them." A place of transgressive mirth, Mudd reflected the whims of Mr. Mass and his creative partners, the art curator Diego Cortez and the downtown fixture Anya Phillips. They dreamed up increasingly daft theme nights, like "The Joan Crawford Mother's Day Celebration," an instillation that included an actress handcuffed to a chair; and "The Puberty Ball," headlined by the teenage band the Blessed. "We got to take drugs and go home with other underage people and nobody cared," said Mr. Pyro, who, at 17, was the oldest member of that band at the time. The most elaborate theme night was "The Rock 'n' Roll Funeral Ball." The club took over White Street to create an immersive funeral procession, complete with coffins holding artists who played the corpses of dead rock stars, including Janis Joplin and Sid Vicious. Mr. Mass also littered the club with syringes he got from his earlier ambulance business. "We fed on the idea of making mothers' hair turn gray," he admitted. Beneath the whimsy, serious connections were being made among designers like Anna Sui and Jasper Conran and artists, including Jean Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring, whose works decorated the building's upper floor. And Mudd brought the Bronx hip hop scene downtown when Fred Brathwaite, a.k.a. Fab 5 Freddy, co curated a graffiti related art show there in 1981, titled "Beyond Worlds." The particular mix of art, music, fashion, dancing and drugging at Mudd presaged clubs like Area, Danceteria and the Palladium. Mr. Mass closed Mudd in 1983 because of the competition. "When people saw that an idiot like me had such success," he said, "they flooded the market with new clubs." Today, as his musical prepares to open, Mr. Yanowitz views Mudd's era as "the last moment before the total corporatization of New York started to happen." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
It is an enduring part of baseball strategy: As a batter is at the plate, his teammates carefully watch a catcher's fingers to figure out what pitch is about to be thrown. And it's all fair play as long as teams do not enhance the abilities of the naked eye and clever minds with either cameras or electronic devices that allow teammates to signal the batter whether a fastball or a breaking ball is on the way. But that is exactly what the Houston Astros did during their 2017 championship winning season, clouding that World Series title and causing one of baseball's biggest cheating scandals in years, Major League Baseball officials said on Monday in a scathing report detailing the team's scheme. By the end of the day, Houston General Manager Jeff Luhnow and Manager A.J. Hinch the two men who helped propel the Astros to the top of the sport had been suspended and then fired, while their club was left with severe penalties for deploying a scheme involving cameras and monitors to decode the hand signals of catchers and tip off Houston batters. One of their favorite communication methods was banging on a trash can just outside the dugout. A look at sign stealing and what we know about the Houston Astros' scandal Commissioner Robert D. Manfred of Major League Baseball said in the report, which was written in a first person voice, that the league could not determine whether the Astros had changed the results of any games by cheating. But, he said, "the perception of some that it did causes significant harm to the game." And so M.L.B. acted, issuing one of the heaviest punishments in the history of the sport. Mr. Manfred's report, which concluded an investigation that involved at least 68 interviews and thousands of videos and documents, excoriated the Astros' baseball operations department including how they treated employees, other clubs and the news media as "very problematic." Exploiting technology helped the Astros rise, but also did them in, Tyler Kepner writes The punishments drew mixed reactions from around the baseball world. Many sympathized with the Los Angeles Dodgers, who lost the 2017 World Series to the Astros (led by Mr. Hinch) and the Boston Red Sox (led by the former Astros bench coach Alex Cora) in 2018. "Didn't really expect the punishments to be this harsh. Good for M.L.B. stepping up," David Freese, who played on the 2018 Dodgers team, wrote in a tweet. The commissioner also noted in his report an incident during the 2019 postseason in which the Astros' assistant general manager, Brandon Taubman, loudly celebrated a pitcher who had been suspended from the game for a violation of the M.L.B. domestic violence policy. A group of female reporters were nearby in the team's clubhouse when Mr. Taubman lauded the pitcher. Jim Crane, the Astros' owner and chairman, was largely spared in the report. And at a news conference announcing the firings soon after M.L.B. released its report, he said: "We will not have this happen again on my watch. We need to move forward with a clean slate." The Astros were accused of violating the rules during the 2017 and 2018 seasons, the first of which was when they won their first World Series title and were praised as a paradigm shifting power in the baseball landscape. The team's heavy focus on analytics earned the nickname "Astroball," and Mr. Luhnow's strategies helped transform the team from a perennial loser to a championship winning club. None Everyone Loves Ohtani: The Angels' two way star was a unanimous pick for A.L. M.V.P. and his superfans redefine devotion. Phillie Phavorite: Bryce Harper truly committed to Philadelphia and now he's back on top of baseball, winning the N.L. M.V.P. Cy Young Winners: Milwaukee's Corbin Burnes and Toronto's Robbie Ray had hit rock bottom before they worked their way up to stardom. Baseball Is Stuck in Neutral: The potential of a lockout has a star studded group of free agents waiting for the dust to settle. Free Agency Tracker: Get the latest updates on signings, contract extensions and trades. The dismissal of Mr. Luhnow and Mr. Hinch came shortly after M.L.B. said that they would be suspended for the 2020 season and that the club would be fined 5 million, the maximum penalty allowed under league rules, while also losing first and second round draft picks in 2020 and 2021. "Neither one of them started this, but neither one of them did anything about it," Mr. Crane said of Mr. Luhnow and Mr. Hinch, who were both once acclaimed as progressive strategists in a staid sport but now find themselves barred from the game until the end of the 2020 World Series. Mr. Luhnow, who joined the Astros in 2011 after a stint with the St. Louis Cardinals and a career as an engineer and management consultant that included five years at the consulting firm McKinsey and Company, issued a written statement on Monday apologizing for the "shame and embarrassment this has caused." He added: "I did not know rules were being broken." Mr. Hinch, who was hired by the Astros after the 2014 season, did the same on Monday: "While the evidence consistently showed I didn't endorse or participate in the sign stealing practices, I failed to stop them and I am deeply sorry." Despite the heavy punishment and damning details of the Astros' scheme, their title will not be vacated, though the scandal could have further repercussions as Mr. Cora, the Red Sox manager, was heavily implicated for his role while he was a bench coach for the Astros in 2017. "While it is impossible to determine whether the conduct actually impacted the results on the field, the perception of some that it did causes significant harm to the game," Mr. Manfred wrote. The explosion of technology in the sport and M.L.B.'s expansion of replay review in 2014 have added a new dynamic to the sign stealing practice, allowing some teams to consistently stay one step ahead of the rule. In September 2017, all teams were put on notice by M.L.B. after it found that the Red Sox had been sending information about opposing teams' signs from their replay review room to people in the dugout wearing Apple watches. The Red Sox were fined as were the Yankees, who turned in their rival, for a lesser misuse of the dugout phone and Mr. Manfred sent a memo to teams detailing the potential punishment for managers and general managers for future violations of the rules governing the use of electronic equipment. But the Astros brazenly continued their practice, Mr. Manfred's report said. M.L.B.'s investigation found that the Astros violated those rules through the 2017 playoffs and for at least part of the 2018 season. A more detailed scheme, first detailed in a report by The Athletic in November, began two months into the 2017 season by Mr. Cora and several players, including Carlos Beltran, who was hired this off season as the Mets' manager. Mr. Cora arranged for a monitor displaying the center field camera footage to be installed next to the Astros' dugout. At least one player would decode the opposing team's signs, and when the catcher issued a sign, the upcoming pitch would be relayed to the batter with a sound most often the slamming of a baseball bat on a nearby trash can. Mr. Manfred's report said that most of the non pitching players on the 2017 Astros team had participated in the cheating operation, and that many of those interviewed admitted they knew the scheme was wrong. "Players stated that if Manager A.J. Hinch told them to stop engaging in the conduct, they would have immediately stopped," the report said. Mr. Manfred chose to punish Mr. Luhnow and Mr. Hinch, rather than the players, because of his previous warning in 2017 that senior team officials would be held accountable for electronic sign stealing. "It is difficult because virtually all of the Astros' players had some involvement or knowledge of the scheme, and I am not in a position based on the investigative record to determine with any degree of certainty every player who should be held accountable, or their relative degree of culpability," Mr. Manfred wrote. Mr. Manfred's report said that Mr. Hinch had disapproved of the scheme, and had twice damaged the monitor near the dugout in an attempt to thwart it, but that he did not tell his players or Mr. Cora to stop it. "Although I appreciate Hinch's remorsefulness, I must hold him accountable for the conduct of his team, particularly since he had full knowledge of the conduct," Mr. Manfred wrote. Although Mr. Luhnow denied any knowledge of the schemes, the report cited "documentary and testimonial evidence that indicates Luhnow had some knowledge," including at least two emails, of the sign stealing efforts. "Luhnow failed to take any adequate steps to ensure that his club was in compliance with the rules," Mr. Manfred wrote, then referring to the 2017 Red Sox incident. As far as the "lower level Astros employees" who were aware of and participated in the sign stealing, Mr. Manfred wrote that he would defer decisions about punishment to the Astros, and Mr. Crane said the team was still reviewing that matter. After nearly 80 interviews by M.L.B.'s investigation department during its inquiries into the sign stealing scandal and Mr. Taubman's outburst, Mr. Manfred wrote that while Mr. Luhnow ("one of the most successful baseball executives of his generation") had ushered in the "second 'analytics' revolution in baseball" and capably rebuilt the Astros, the team's culture became "insular," "one that valued and rewarded results over other considerations" and lacked sufficient oversight. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
A real estate investment and management firm has bought this six story 1910 West Village walk up. Under the same ownership for over 60 years, the building offers 37 apartments 20 one bedrooms, 13 two bedrooms and four three bedrooms. Of those 19 are rent stabilized, and four rent controlled and 14 market rate. It sold for 22.7 times the rent roll, with a cap rate of 2.78 percent. 8 West 38th Street (between Fifth Avenue and Avenue of the Americas) F2NYC, a maker of fashion jewelry, has taken a seven year lease for 2,100 square feet on the eighth floor of this 12 story building in the garment district. It expects to move there in September from 366 Fifth Avenue. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
Outside of big cities like New York and Los Angeles, many moviegoers don't have access to great independent films until they reach home video, and even those who can see them in theaters don't always take advantage. Hulu has become a steady destination for films from quality distributors like Neon, Magnolia and Bleecker Street; these are 12 titles the streamer is currently carrying that deserve to find an audience. After getting assaulted in his neighborhood, an ineffectual accountant (Jesse Eisenberg) starts taking karate classes at a strip mall dojo in this dark comedy, which gets darker by the minute as the dojo's violent, alpha male culture starts to reveal itself. The most obvious point of comparison for "The Art of Self Defense" is "Fight Club," another film about a rogue visionary who builds a philosophy around brutal masculinity. The Brad Pitt role here belongs to an inspired Alessandro Nivola, a sensei who teaches his students to listen to death metal music, kick with their fists and commit the occasional crime after hours. Before wowing Sundance earlier this year with the drama "Never Rarely Sometimes Always," the writer and director Eliza Hittman explored the secret desires of a young man in a hypermasculine environment in this insightful and dreamily realized character piece. Harris Dickinson stars as a Brooklyn teenager who has a girlfriend (Madeline Weinstein) but trolls for older male sexual partners online, carefully keeping this information from his friends while telling himself he's neither gay nor bisexual. "Beach Rats" sounds adjacent to "Moonlight," but it has more in common with the specific New York cultural dynamics of "Saturday Night Fever," another film about thrill seekers who run in packs, always looking for an escape from their dead end lives. Wearing its many influences on its sleeve, Jennifer Reeder's candy colored slice of life movie draws from cult favorites like "Repo Man," "Suspiria," "Heathers" and the films of John Hughes. It's something of a feminist twist on "Twin Peaks," spinning out from the disappearance of teenage girl. Reeder does give the audience a glimpse of what happened to her Laura Palmer type, who went missing after denying a jock a sexual favor, but she's equally compelled by what it means to her mother (Marika Engelhardt), a high school choir teacher, and classmates who are embroiled in their own secret lives. "Knives and Skin" doesn't hold together perfectly, but Reeder imagines a Midwest town unlike any other and takes a particularly keen interest in how its girls interact under strange and terrifying circumstances. The North Dakota border town of Nia DaCosta's "Little Woods" is like a working class variation on the rural Ozarks in "Winter's Bone," with more jobs available in construction, perhaps, but a population equally hooked on opioids. Tessa Thompson plays a reformed drug runner who's late in her probation and eyeing an opportunity for legitimate work in Spokane, Wash., but with the family home nearing foreclosure and her sister (Lily Jones) close to destitution, she unearths a bag of 500 pills she buried and starts selling again. DaCosta, who directed the upcoming remake of "Candyman," grounds her hero's predicament in an austere setting where life is difficult under the best of circumstances and people are always on the precipice of disaster. Lighting a long fuse on issues of race, revolution and the legacy of global conflict, Julius Onah's provocative drama stars the gifted Kelvin Harrison Jr. as an accomplished high school athlete, debater and scholar who isn't the uncomplicated success story he appears to be. After his history teacher (Octavia Spencer) assigns the class to write a paper from the perspective of a historical figure, he chooses Frantz Fanon, the political philosopher who believed that colonialism could only be toppled by violent revolt. His parents (Tim Roth and Naomi Watts), who adopted him from war torn Eritrea, don't understand her alarm, but they soon discover that their son hasn't been forthcoming about how he feels and what actions he intends to take. Not many actors get the opportunity to end their careers like Harry Dean Stanton. "Lucky," a drama tailor made for Stanton, was his last film in an onscreen career spanning more than six decades; it was released in theaters less than two weeks after he died at 91. Then again, not many actors are as brilliant as Stanton was or as willing to reveal so much of himself that close to the end. Directed by another character actor, John Carroll Lynch, the film is about a 90 year old Texan who's been cheating death for years but must finally face the inevitable after taking a fall. What might have been a pre fab tribute to Stanton is deepened by his willingness to show fear and vulnerability, as well as the regret of a loner who doesn't have loved ones to say goodbye. There's a for fans only quality to Tim Heidecker's satirical comedy: It's the latest expansion of the "On Cinema at the Cinema" universe, a "Siskel Ebert" style movie review show parody that began life as a podcast before breaking as a web series on Thing X and Adult Swim. But even newcomers who don't get all the in jokes can appreciate "Mister America" as an absurdist commentary on a period in politics when unctuous boors felt they were entitled to public service jobs. Heidecker stars as a no hope independent candidate for district attorney of San Bernardino County, Calif., running mostly to unseat the man who charged him for second degree murder for hawking tainted vape juice at an EDM festival. Crystal Moselle made her directorial debut with 2015's "The Wolfpack," a documentary about home schooled brothers in Manhattan's Lower East Side who learned about the world through movies, which they'd then re enact at home. "Skate Kitchen" is Moselle's graceful transition into features, but she takes a piece of documentaries with her in the film's on the fly naturalism and her continued interest in outcasts banding together. Real life skateboarder Rachelle Vinberg plays a Long Island teenager who befriends a multiracial group of boarders at a New York skate park and stops coming home to her conservative mother. The improvised street scenes in "Skate Kitchen" may recall Larry Clark and Harmony Korine's "Kids," but Moselle has a subtler feel for social dynamics and the stolen pleasures of youth. "Reservoir Dogs" (1992) proved that sticking a bunch of great character actors in a warehouse and turning up the heat was a cheap and efficient formula for tense genre film. To that end, the drum tight thriller "The Standoff at Sparrow Creek" is stocked with recognizable faces that may not come with recognizable names James Badge Dale, Brian Geraghty and Patrick Fischler are the leads but add depth to Henry Dunham's story about militia members hiding out after one of them is accused of shooting up a police funeral. The film's Waco influenced politics are clouded with ambiguity, but the slow burn tension is cleanly rendered, with the inevitable spasm of violence reserved for maximum impact. The spirit of the late Jonathan Demme lives on in Andrew Bujalski's funny and generous slice of Americana, set at a downmarket Hooter's like "breastaurant" called Double Whammies. Regina Hall is wonderful as its general manager, who spends her day dealing with emotionally volatile waitresses, rude customers, a faulty cable TV connection, an attempted robbery of the office safe and the encroaching threat of a new chain about to open up. Through all this hectic action, Bujalski offers rare insight into the humbling challenges of the service industry, where hourly workers scrape together rent money with thin margins for health or child care emergencies. Well known in improv circles and for her turns on the TV series "Orange is the New Black" and "Crashing," the comedian Lauren Lapkus hasn't gotten the breakout roles in film that she deserves, but her daffy performance in Robert Schwartzman's cringe comedy is evidence of her talent. Lapkus and Nick Rutherford star as a long engaged couple who head to Palm Springs, Calif., for her parents' 25th wedding anniversary. In a bid to recharge their own flatlining relationship, the couple spends one spectacularly awkward evening in search of a threesome, but their crippling inhibitions make them a poor fit for swinger culture. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
Until last week, the comedian and television creator Donald Glover was working on an animated series for FX about the Marvel superhero Deadpool, a violent mercenary character known for his wisecracks and toilet humor. By this week, the project had been canceled and Mr. Glover was on Twitter publicly raising more questions about what led to his departure from the show. The project, planned as a 10 episode run for the FXX channel and announced in May, was to have been a collaboration with Mr. Glover's brother Stephen, another pairing of the siblings behind the show "Atlanta," which airs on FX. (FXX is FX's sister channel, and both are owned by 21st Century Fox.) But on Saturday, FX, citing "creative differences," announced that the project had been canceled. Its statement said the Glovers had agreed to part ways with the network and with Marvel television. In an article about the announcement, Variety said the show "may have been a casualty of Donald Glover's packed schedule." Mr. Glover, who also releases music under the name Childish Gambino, disputed that characterization in a tweet thread on Wednesday: "For the record: I wasn't too busy to work on 'Deadpool,'" he said. He then posted pages of a script that used the Deadpool character who is known for speaking to readers or moviegoers directly to think through the cancellation. In the script, which is filled with pop culture references, including several that allude to events from the last few days, Deadpool considers whether racism was a factor in the cancellation and remarks upon specific scripts that may have alienated the Glovers' collaborators. Mr. Glover's tweet thread was a remarkable way to shed a light upon industry drama that does not often reach social media, a public statement in the form of a puzzle in the form of a script that both confounded and intrigued his fans. The actor had recently given an interview to The New Yorker in which he commented extensively on his relationship with FX while working on "Atlanta," a critically acclaimed show that has won two Golden Globes and two Emmys. In it, he suggested that the network did not understand the show's characters and that he had to mislead the network to get his vision on the air. But John Solberg, a network spokesman for FX, said that no one at the network had taken issue with those comments and that the unraveling of the Deadpool project had nothing to do with the interview. He said that the network had supported the brothers''s vision for the show but that Marvel owned the intellectual property rights to the Deadpool character and had decided to go a different way. He also emphasized that there was no acrimony between FX and Marvel, and said that creative differences often led to projects falling apart. The 14 page script Mr. Glover posted to Twitter was labeled if it were the series finale of the canceled show. Halfway through the story, Deadpool, who seems throughout as if he may be speaking for Mr. Glover, addresses the show's cancellation directly. "You know, I'm not mad about this whole 'canceled thing,'" the script reads. "I actually think it's a good thing. I mean, is it even a good time to have a violent, gun loving white man ranting on TV?" There is a brief pause, and the script continues: "Other than the PRESIDENT!" Deadpool then considers the factors that may have led to the show's cancellation. He wonders whether it could have been canceled because of racism. He then begins to mention what may have been specific episodes written by the Glovers, including one about goat yoga (a real thing), another that included the singer Taylor Swift, and a third in which a character makes a rude joke about people who buy Marvel toys. Marvel declined to comment. Mr. Glover did not respond to emails. The script, which says it was written by Mr. Glover, includes several references to recent news events: jokes about the rise of bitcoin and Facebook's recent privacy scandal, as well as digs at Ben Carson and President Trump. It takes mild shots at the rappers Rich the Kid and 6ix9ine. (A recurring gag is that the characters to whom Deadpool is speaking do not understand his references to black culture.) Deadpool also refers to the police killing of Stephon Clark in Sacramento this month and to a GQ magazine article published Monday that related a story about an anonymous female celebrity said to have bitten Beyonce. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
When Assaf Kedem and Erika Woods exchanged messages on the dating app Coffee Meets Bagel in May 2017, which ended with Ms. Woods giving him her number after some cajoling, they were "worlds apart," as she put it. Entering each other's orbit would indeed be difficult for Mr. Kedem, an Israeli American living in Brooklyn, and Ms. Woods, an African American from Birmingham, Ala., living in Manhattan, who was 10 years his junior. There was also a height difference of several inches. "I'm 5 feet 2 inches tall," he said. "Erika is 5 feet 5 inches with a penchant for wearing four inch heels." They also had "no mutual acquaintances," he said. "We were perfect strangers." Despite their cultural and physical disparities, they forged ahead, rising above interracial dating hurdles and delving deeper into each other's lives. Mr. Kedem, 45, a communications strategist, author and adjunct instructor of communications at Columbia, had no problem answering questions about Israel, having lived there for 17 years. He was 9 when his family moved from West Hempstead, N.Y., to Tel Aviv, where he graduated from the Israeli Institute of Technology. He also spent three years in the Israeli Air Force, and was honorably discharged with the rank of staff sergeant. At 26, Mr. Kedem left Tel Aviv for Manhattan for a job offer, leaving behind his parents, Ann and Gideon Kedem, as well as his sister, Rabbi Galit Cohen Kedem. He eventually received a master's degree in strategic communications from Columbia, and at 35, moved to Brooklyn, where he bought an apartment. This year, he became an author with the release of "The Investment Writing Handbook" (Wiley Sons). "By asking me about Israeli politics, Erika was sizing me up, she wanted to see how I expressed myself," Mr. Kedem said. "I guess she was impressed with my answer, because the next day we went on our first date." "As soon as she sat down, she hunched over," he said. "Her body language was one of someone who really wanted to listen and get to know me, which is something that I found lacking in the dating world, so she passed my test with flying colors." They sat and talked for three hours, retracing the steps each had taken along the paths that would connect their worlds. Ms. Woods graduated from Wellesley College, and received an M.B.A. from Stanford. Her father, Dr. Eddie Woods Jr., is a dentist in private practice in Birmingham, where her mother, JeCynthia Woods, works as the office manager. Her sister, Edrian Woods, 25, lives and works in Nashville. "I could tell by Erika's choice of words and nuances that she was a very intelligent woman," Mr. Kedem said. "She was also very sensitive and thoughtful, and had a gentle way about her. She was kind of like the lady version of a mensch." Mr. Kedem told Ms. Woods that his mother was a clinical psychologist at Amcha, a support center in Tel Aviv for Holocaust survivors. His father retired as the director of the department of medical photography at the Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, and was also the former president of the Professional Photographers Association of Israel. Mr. Kedem, who referred to himself as "an R B aficionado," owned a large, all digital classic soul music collection from the 1960s and '70s. "Some people say I was born the wrong color," he said, laughing. "The music I loved was the same music that Erika and her family were brought up on in the South, so that was one of our first huge connections." In June 2017, less than a month into their relationship, Ms. Woods joined Mr. Kedem on a trip to Puerto Rico that both agreed went exceedingly well. "We just seemed to hit on all the right compatible notes," Mr. Kedem said. Two weeks later, Ms. Woods invited Mr. Kedem to join her on a family trip to Birmingham for the Fourth of July. "I called my parents and said 'I just met someone and want to bring him home with me for the holiday," Ms. Woods said. "When I said he was Jewish, my mom said, 'That's fine, but is he going to be O.K. at the family barbecue?'" Ms. Woods had bought her airline tickets months before she met Mr. Kedem, so he was left to book the only other available flight, which would get him to the Birmingham airport four hours ahead of her. "I told Erika I would wait for her at the airport, but she said, 'Absolutely not, there will be no such thing,'" Mr. Kedem said. She arranged for her father to pick him up, a potentially awkward situation that Mr. Kedem took in stride. "If it were anyone else, I probably would have felt uncomfortable," he said. "But in getting to know Erika, I assumed that she came from a very lovely, like minded family, so I wasn't nervous at all." Just before heading to the airport, Mr. Kedem gave Ms. Woods a kiss, then stunned her by blurting out his first "I love you," before shuffling out the door. "I wasn't expecting that," she said. "I just kind of stood there, frozen." When Mr. Kedem arrived in Birmingham, he was well received by Dr. Woods, who was playfully holding up a sign with Mr. Kedem's name on it. "We bonded immediately," said Dr. Woods, who proceeded to take Mr. Kedem home to meet the rest of his family. "The ride was fabulous," Mr. Kedem said. "We had a deep talk about the importance of education, politics and economics." The first thing Mr. Kedem noticed when he entered their home was a small blackboard in the kitchen with the words "Welcome Assaf," scrawled in chalk. "No one pointed it out, I just happened to see it," he said. "It was a reflection of the warmth and kindness I found in Erika." They began chatting about food, music and all things Israel while Ms. Woods, still mid flight, began sending waves of nervous texts to Mr. Kedem. She kept asking, "How are things going?" And he kept responding with thumbs up emojis. That weekend, Ms. Woods took Mr. Kedem to the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute and renowned 16th Street Baptist Church. "When we got home, we had a serious, late night discussion about our future," she said. It began with that kiss and run "I love you" in Brooklyn. "How did you mean that?" Ms. Woods asked. "Was it a mistake or were you being serious?" Roberta Bouer, a childhood friend of Mr. Kedem, said she knew from the start that he found a keeper in Ms. Woods. "I met his other girlfriends, and he would call me and say, 'What do you think,'" Ms. Bouer said. "I would say, lovely girl, but I don't think she's the one. When I met Erika, you could feel the love between them, it was palpable." On Sept. 14, 2017, which happened to be Dr. Woods's birthday, Mr. Kedem called to ask for his oldest daughter's hand in marriage. "It was heavy news for him to absorb," Mr. Kedem said. "He just sort of took a deep breath, and it got a bit emotional." Later that month, Ms. Woods met Mr. Kedem's parents for the first time when they visited for a Rosh Hashana celebration. They brought gifts to her Manhattan apartment and Mr. Kedem's mother wrote what Ms. Woods described as "a beautiful card welcoming me to the family, and thanking me for making her son so happy." Dr. Woods knew much the same about his daughter. "After the Atlanta trip, my dad had a real sense of relief," Ms. Woods said. "He was like, 'Now that I've met his parents, I feel really good about this.'" But not everyone in her circle expressed such confidence. "I have one friend who kept cautioning me, telling me, 'you're moving along too fast, you don't really know this guy,' and that being in an interracial relationship can sometimes be very hard," Ms. Woods said. "I just told her, look, the worst that could happen to me is that I get my heart broken, and if that's the case, I'll get over it." On Sept. 21, Mr. Kedem and Ms. Woods were legally married by Rabbi Barry Altmark in a brief civil ceremony in Birmingham, and later that night they hosted a party for family and friends at the Vulcan Park and Museum. The next day, the couple took part in a symbolic wedding celebration that fused Jewish and African American traditions. The ceremony was led by the groom's sister at the Barn at Shady Lane, an events space on the outskirts of Birmingham, and was followed by a reception there. "It was a wedding inspired by Moses and Martin Luther King, by Miriam the Prophetess and Rosa Parks," Rabbi Cohen Kedem said. The bride, dazzling before some 200 guests in a floor length strapless ball gown in ice blue jacquard, and the groom, dapper in a custom made, fitted blue tuxedo with black lapels, drank from a silver Kiddush cup that Mr. Kedem's parents used at their wedding 48 years ago. Standing beneath a huppah suspended from the rafters and bedecked in blue delphiniums, pink quicksand roses, and white snapdragons, peonies and garden roses, the couple exchanged rings, and glowing words about each other. "I get to marry not one, not two, but three of the most beautiful words in the English language: Erika Bethea Woods," the groom said in part. "Assaf, our love is sacred and makes me feel lifted and closer to God," the bride said. Once perfect strangers, their two worlds had become one. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
In a legal action that will be watched closely in Hollywood, several producers of "The Walking Dead" on Monday sued AMC the cable network that presents the hit TV series seeking a greater share of profits. The lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, claims that AMC has been holding back a significant amount of money that traditionally would have been handed over to top producers once a show has been as successful and on the air as long as "The Walking Dead" has been. The suit lays the groundwork for what should become a remarkably strained relationship between the show's principal producers and AMC executives as "The Walking Dead" approaches its eighth season premiere this year. The suit also involves spinoff series like "Fear the Walking Dead" and "Talking Dead." The move also follows a similar lawsuit filed by Frank Darabont, one of the show's creators, who was fired during the second season of the show. Mr. Darabont is seeking more than 200 million in damages. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
We Work. We Live. We Work Out. Eventually We Die. First, WeWork did offices. Then came a co living offshoot, WeLive, in which people rent furnished apartments for months at a time. Now ... WeSweat? In a dimly lit studio in the bowels of 85 Broad Street, Goldman Sachs's former headquarters in the financial district of New York, Jooin Im sat on a mat before a small class of yogis. Referring to a story she had heard on a "This American Life" podcast, Ms. Im talked about a truck driver who got tired of the grind: the same route, the same street signs, the same paycheck. So he drives off into the sunset (as it were), taking his bus from New York all the way to a moonlit Florida beach. "'What happens when you take a leap?'" Ms. Im asked, quoting from the podcast. Rise is the newest venture from the WeWork company, which has brought foosball infused bro deco co working spaces to 56 cities in 16 countries. The company says it has sold 150,000 memberships that entitle users to work out of the various locations. The goal of "We," as executives refer to the company, is to overtake any conceivable venue for entrepreneurial minded up and comers who are drawn to a clubby sense of community and the turnkey ease (if impersonal feel) of communal spaces. "We" wants to go from owning the place its members go to work to dictating "ultimately where to live, ultimately where to work out, ultimately where to meet their friends for a drink after work," said Michael Gross, the company's vice chairman. (Clearly, next will come WeGotDrunk.) But back to Rise, which the executive team also considered calling WeRun or WeWorkOut. After yoga, WeTook (well?) a tour of the facility, led by Avi Yehiel, WeWork's head of wellness. He was a professional soccer player in Israel and is married to the sister of Adam Neumann, one of WeWork's founders. Mr. Yehiel, in addition to at least a couple of WeWork publicists, helped fill the yoga class, although his real love is Pilates. The lobby is chock full of drinks, snacks and beauty products, many of which are being made or marketed by companies run out of WeWork offices. There is This Granola Is Nuts. Here are Supergoop skin products. "We are always looking for ways to help our members," Mr. Yehiel said. To that end, Rise, many floors beneath 85 Broad's WeWork floors, has a turf covered area with CrossFit like equipment, a large boxing studio that is heavy with heavy bags and a cardio room for boot camp workouts. To extend into WeWork's overall emphasis on communal habitats, both the male and female locker rooms at Rise lead to a large Jerusalem stone tiled area with a coed hot tub and sauna, run by an attendant named Jonathan who gently reminds people taking calls in the sauna that smartphones can melt. "It's a process of educating people," he said. As part of an introductory offer, the cost of joining Rise is 180 per month, although the cost of Rise will rise to 250 per month later in the fall. (Membership entitles those who are not WeWork members to use certain WeWork facilities at designated times.) You can also pop in for four visits a month for 100. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
Credit...Jason Henry for The New York Times Want to Make It Big in Fashion? Think Small, Like Evan Kinori SAN FRANCISCO Is this a good time to talk about "enoughness?" It was in long ago 1973 that the economist E.F. Schumacher first published "Small Is Beautiful," a seminal (and, to the surprise of some, best selling) collection of essays critiquing Western economics. Mr. Schumacher was among the first to champion sustainability, localization, small scale industry and "a humane employment of machinery" to yield a more benevolent form of capitalism, one that utilized human effort and ingenuity for the common good. "Enoughness," was a Schumacher coinage. Plenty of abuse was heaped on him at the time mainly he was attacked as an unprogressive Luddite yet these days his ideas seem prophetic. Maybe it took a worldwide pandemic to remind us that the antidote to too muchness may be enoughness. Small may be beautiful, indeed. Or so it seemed on a recent visit to an airy, whitewashed space in the Hayes Valley neighborhood of San Francisco. Here, on a side street in a once dicey area now chockablock with rambling renovated Victorians, cool retail shops and restaurants, Evan Kinori, 32, operates a one man clothing label. Here or rather in an adjacent garage he creates garments that are manufactured mostly within a one mile radius of his workshop in small hand numbered batches, in patterns and fabrics that change by subtle degrees from one season to the next and that, as GQ recently noted, "sell fast and never reappear." In just five years, Mr. Kinori has attracted the attention of specialty retailers across the country, in Europe and Japan (Dover Street Market in New York, Los Angeles and Tokyo, C'H'C'M' in Manhattan, Atelier Solarshop in Antwerp) and of a growing cult that, while it skews heavily to workers in the tech industry, also includes Bay Area chefs, graphic artists, Hollywood screenwriters and at least one 70 year old Silicon Valley seer. Officially, Mr. Kinori's clothing patch pocket chore coats, zip front jackets of matte waxed cotton, Belgian linen shirts or roomy trousers whose cut falls somewhere between that of classic, early Yohji Yamamoto and something you might spot on a butcher in an August Sander photograph is men's wear. Yet it seems increasingly likely that the relaxation of arbitrary boundaries between genders will turn out to be among the beneficial aftereffects of everyone being forced to work at home in hoodies and sweats. None of this is of particular concern to Mr. Kinori, a sturdy man of brooding good looks with a thick tousle of hair and black painted fingernails that could use a fresh coat of polish. Neither is he much interested in design in the rigidly formal sense. Mr. Kinori does not call himself a tailor or even a designer. Rather, he is a craftsman, somewhat in the tradition of people like the great Bay Area architect Joseph Esherick, who throughout his career concerned himself less with creating branded monuments to himself than with making harmonious, humane spaces. Think of Sea Ranch. "He is a disciplined clothier," said Jon Robin Baitz, the playwright and screenwriter, for whom Mr. Kinori's clothes have become a daily uniform. If most of what Mr. Kinori makes costs a lot (shirts start at 285; pants at 365; and jackets at 525), it is in part because they are produced in such limited quantities. "It's not Supreme, it's not a drop," he said of the deliveries he announces on Instagram and that sell out almost at once. "There's a reason for it," he added. "It's everything I made." The editions are numbered as a form of inventorying and a way of keeping things at a manageable scale. Sales of Mr. Kinori's clothes grossed him just over a half million dollars last year, roughly what some designers pay influencers to shill for them. While he maintains a respectable social media presence, his primary means of exerting influence is the handwritten note. "When you buy his clothes, he sends you a note, not a long one, that he writes himself," Mr. Baitz said. Often Mr. Kinori's one employee, Ryne Burns, follows up with an email to see how the purchases are working out. "It is my small screw you to big companies that can't number their styles," Mr. Kinori said. "It's the by hand part that sticks now," Mr. Baitz explained. What he meant is that, in the era of disposable fast fashion, when the labor required to create things has been effectively erased, when there is always an ugly part of the equation to consider that of consuming disposable stuff made by an underpaid and invisible work force on the other side of the world a wholesome alternative may lie in the traditional personal relationship of consumer to maker. "My design ethos is basically geared toward people not buying stuff all the time," Mr. Kinori said. That seems borne out by clients like Kyle King, 33, a clinical social worker who stumbled upon Mr. Kinori's clothes four years ago at the Reliquary boutique. "There's so much artifice and false narrative in the marketplace," said Mr. King, whose wardrobe consists predominantly of garments thoughtfully selected on two annual visits to Mr. Kinori's shop. "We need to get back to the richness and simplicity of basic, well designed things." Much as the early Bay Area proponents of the Slow Food movement once sought to alert a generation raised on Saltines and Cheez Whiz to the wonders of a locally sourced tomato, Mr. Kinori seems focused on simplifying his chain of supply. When first encountered one foggy afternoon at his shop in Hayes Valley and then again at his new studio across town in lower Pacific Heights, Mr. Kinori talked excitedly about his sources and varied inspirations. Those may equally include a stenciled canvas duffel bag from his father's Israeli boyhood; a tsubo jar by the Japanese ceramist Kazunori Hamana; designs from Rei Kawakubo's famous 1997 "hump" collection or a monumental drawing of a cleft boulder rendered by the artist Afton Love in charcoal and wax. Though there is a tendency to romanticize indie designers working outside the so called fashion system, Mr. Kinori resists the cliche and is quick to say he backed into design as if by default. In his 20s and armed, if that is the word, with a liberal arts education with specialties in philosophy and French, he decided to enroll in the Fashion Institute of Design Merchandising, a local school with a heavy emphasis on the trades. "It was definitely not predicted that I would be a patternmaker," said the designer who, though raised near New Haven, left the East Coast at 18 to attend, for a brief and not notably successful period, San Francisco State University. "It was the first time in my life when I did something that felt completely natural," he said of his stint at FIDM, as the school is known. "I really had no burning aspirations to have a career in design. I was mostly fueled by dissatisfaction with what I wanted and couldn't find." He first made some shirts, and then, when friends of friends asked to buy them, he sewed some more. He added trousers that hang informally, loosely, but with a deceptively architectonic structure and that are Californian only in the sense that West Coast style has tended to emphasize simplicity. "I was so anti California for the longest time," he said. With the profits from his early efforts, Mr. Kinori ventured into jackets, and in less than five years, by word of mouth, he found he had a name and a brand. When backers approached him with plans for scaling up, he demurred. And while it is impossible to predict whether this may change, he is satisfied for now with the steady growth of a loyal customer base that is not so small anymore. "I love clothes, I love making clothes, I love presenting clothes," Mr. Kinori said from behind a protective mask that, while it concealed a characteristically wry smile, emphasized the intensity of his gaze. "Intuition is my home place 100 percent. Building up a story and a spirit with an object is what I'm after. I don't know that there is much more to it. That's kind of enough." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
JERUSALEM Just when Israeli democracy most needed saviors, they materialized. No one saw where they came from. They just appeared amid the thousands of horn blowing, pot banging protesters in Jerusalem: seven caped superheroes in matching pink spandex, striking Superman poses and going through coordinated dance moves as they advanced toward the protest's focal point at the official residence of the man known here as the "crime minister." One superhero with a megaphone led her comrades in a chant about "hope" and "democracy," and everyone cheered, but I couldn't hear much more because of the guy next to me and his accordion. The protests growing since early summer outside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's residence in Jerusalem on Balfour Street, and smaller demonstrations across the country, have given Israel's battered moderate camp an outlet for its political energies and grievances an outlet outside Parliament, that is, where its representatives are hapless, impotent and divided. The trigger was the government's failure to deal with the coronavirus crisis. But if you're on the streets, you know there's a lot more going on. The main protests at Balfour Street happen Saturday nights, but there's also one on Friday afternoons, before Jerusalem shuts down for the Sabbath. When I arrived last Friday, an anti corruption crusader was riling up a few thousand people with a list of grievances: an economy controlled by monopolies and tycoons, ludicrous housing prices, packed classrooms, a leadership so out of touch that the wealthy Mr. Netanyahu just voted himself a personal tax break. The speaker compared the compliant watchdogs of the Israeli government to the horse appointed consul by the mad emperor Caligula. He quoted a Nigerian writer. Things were getting a bit obscure, but the tone was the point, not the content, and the crowd was on board. A key feature of these protests is the signs that people make at home, and my view was momentarily obscured by a woman with a green sock affixed to a piece of cardboard. The sign read, "My sock would do a better job than Bibi and it's clean." Here and there came whiffs of pot. There was only one guy in a Che Guevara shirt. Right wing thugs have threatened violence, but the crowd was relaxed and the police seemed bored. There were a few signs about the occupation of the West Bank and some about the banks. The Israeli left finds it hard to concentrate. But it's creative, and has a good sense of humor. At a recent protest someone had a sign saying, "I'm single." Another sign read, "Sign." On Saturday nights, however, the scene is different than on the easygoing Fridays. There isn't a podium or any kind of program, and it's a pure energy surge of a kind that hasn't been seen on Israeli streets in years. Thousands of people 15,000 or so this past weekend, depending on who is counting just stand and shout themselves hoarse for hours, beginning before sundown and ending when the last demonstrators are forcibly removed by the police after midnight (but only after cleaning up the area with brooms and garbage bags they bring from home). This week's theme was provided by one of the most avid critics of the protests, a recognizable type in the human landscape of 2020 the frustrated young man spending too much time on the internet and tweeting his addled worldview from his parents' basement. Yair Netanyahu is unique mainly for the location of the basement and for his father's job, which is prime minister. After tweeting the private addresses of some of the protest leaders (drawing a court injunction) and a picture of a protester peeing on a car owned by one of the prime minister's neighbors (which turned out to be fake), he told a radio interviewer last week that he likes to show his father photos of the protesting "aliens," as he called them, for the elder Mr. Netanyahu's amusement. The implication was that the protesters were weirdos from outer space and not mainstream Israelis who, unlike the prime minister's son, have real jobs, or did until the economy fell apart. As a result, this week's protests included a sizable contingent in green U.F.O. masks and antenna head bands, including a few with a sign that said, "We Come in Peace." At the center of the throng, three men in green alien suits gyrated on a fountain. The protests are driven by real political and economic fury across many sectors of society, but there's no question that much of what makes them fun is specifically a result of all of our theater people being at loose ends. Eli Ben Ezra, an employee of a high tech company from the suburban settlement of Maale Adumim, outside Jerusalem, held a sign reading, "I'm an alien." He was with his son Yair, 12, whose sign read, "I'm a little alien." "I'm fed up with the damage that Netanyahu is doing to our democracy, the way he's undermining the gatekeepers of the legal system, the lack of unity and statesmanlike behavior, the way he pits us against each other," Mr. Ben Ezra said. He resents being dismissed as an "alien" or an "anarchist" when he, like the vast majority of the protesters, is a patriotic Israeli citizen anxious about the country's future and his own. People from settlements aren't a common sight at the protests, though there was one man with a skullcap and a sign reading, "The right is fed up with Bibi too," which is probably more hopeful than true. Despite the heady eruption of liberal energy on the street, in Parliament, where it counts, the center left is toothless. The Labor Party never recovered from the waves of Arab violence that shattered the peace dreams sold to the Israeli public in the 1990s. Centrist alternatives have come and gone. The centrist party Blue and White, led by the ex general Benny Gantz, split apart this spring at the peak of the coronavirus panic when Mr. Gantz took half of the party and joined Mr. Netanyahu's coalition, which he'd promised not to do. Outmaneuvered at every turn and revealed as a political naif, the general's popularity has since tanked. Mr. Netanyahu's Likud party may have just a quarter of the vote, but right now it's the only substantial political movement in Israel. No vuvuzelas or dancing aliens can change that. Anyone who's been around here for a long time can't help but be struck by the echoes of the last real wave of demonstrations against Mr. Netanyahu, in the summer of 2011. Those were set off by growing social inequality, and enabled by the new tools of Facebook and Twitter. I remember being at the same intersection near Balfour Street with tens of thousands of others, sure that something was going to change. It was the same summer as the Arab Spring uprisings, and the world felt fluid. We all know how the Arab Spring turned out all, apparently, except one guy this weekend whose upbeat sign proclaimed, "The Israeli Spring Has Arrived!" Mr. Netanyahu weathered those protests and delivered a decade of economic growth, relative safety and cynical, hopeless politics. One of the few accomplishments of those demonstrations was to elevate two charismatic young organizers into Parliament as a new generation of liberal leaders. One of them left after a few terms. The second is now a minister in Mr. Netanyahu's government. Matti Friedman ( MattiFriedman) is a contributing Opinion writer and the author, most recently, of "Spies of No Country: Secret Lives at the Birth of Israel." 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 |
Of his reputation for throwing at batters, Bob Gibson tells Kepner: "I wasn't really throwing at them, but I didn't care whether I hit them or not." He adds that it drove him crazy when umpires accused him of trying to hit a batter: "I'm not throwing at him. If I threw at him, I would hit him." Not every quote is that good. Some players ramble unedited; others offer banal reflections. Take King Felix on the changeup: "I tried to throw it because I wanted to take it to the next level. I wanted to be the best I can be." Such boilerplate humble brags veer a little too close to the "I'm just happy to be here. Hope I can help the ball club" cliches parodied in "Bull Durham." Kepner displays some hokeyness himself. The slider pitcher Chief Bender "was, you might say, the chief bender of pitches in his era." In old age, Jim Bouton "can still grip a baseball, and baseball still grips him." After quoting Al Leiter using a common epithet to describe how aggressive the bat breaking cutter can be, Kepner says, sounding rather square, Leiter's "enthusiasm for his craft is so endearing that you look right past the language." I would say the same about Kepner. His love of baseball is so genuine and his work ethic so intense that I ignored the occasional ball in the dirt. The book's appeal to superfans is indisputable. The stats heavier sections will prove as satisfying to those readers as flipping through a stack of baseball cards. But "K" may be an even bigger gift to more casual fans like me. Like Kepner, I was a tween baseball geek in the mid 80s captivated by charismatic Mets like Lenny Dykstra, Mookie Wilson and Keith Hernandez. In ensuing decades of game on in the background, New York Post headline glancing and occasional spring training attendance, I haven't paid much attention to pitching styles. Sure, I picked up on the obvious Mariano Rivera's cutters, Fernando Valenzuela's screwballs, Chad Bradford's submarine delivery. But, lacking behind the plate seats at Shea and now Citi Field, and watching on a less than high def TV at home, I registered little more of pitching technique beyond knowing that you have to do the bunny ears thing with your index and middle fingers to throw a knuckleball. Thanks to "K," when the Mets game was on the other night I knew Edwin Diaz had given up a home run on a hanging slider even before I heard it from Keith Hernandez, now one of the Mets announcers. I have also picked up terms like "slurvy," "pronating," "Mr. Splitty" (Roger Clemens's name for his split finger fastball) and "whippy" (for the arm action the onetime Expo Steve Rogers says is necessary for successfully throwing a sinker). Kepner has enhanced my enjoyment of the game and made me realize how much I was missing before. It does seem like a big unforced error, though, that the book offers no handgrip graphics or ball path diagrams for these pitches. I supplemented with YouTube videos and charts I tracked down online, as I suspect many readers will. "K" is best read while holding a baseball. It's useful for trying out the grips and as a reminder that the game's century plus of drama revolves around something that weighs only about five ounces. It's so small and so simple, and yet so loaded with meaning and potential. As Kepner quotes Tug McGraw: "You know, if somebody called me at 4 in the morning and said, 'Hey, let's go out and play some catch,' I'd do it. I love this little thing." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
In order to really have an economy with the greatest opportunity for all, the kind of economy they seem to champion, the MarketWorlders would have to pay high levels of corporate and personal income tax, offer decent wages to their workers, allow unions, fund public schools (instead of pet charter projects) and support some form of single payer health care and campaign finance reform. One simply can't arrive at a more economically equal reality when the rungs of the ladder are so far apart. At Davos and the other international conclaves where the muckety mucks celebrate the new economic world they have helped create, which has rewarded them so amply, corporate leaders move seamlessly from sessions discussing the risks of climate change, growing inequality and financial instability, to dinners at which they praise tax cuts for billionaires and corporations and applaud proposals for deregulation. They conveniently don't mention the increases in taxes on a majority of those in the middle, the Republican moves to eliminate health insurance for some 13 million in a country where life expectancy is already in decline, the increase in pollution, the risk of another financial crisis, the ever increasing evidence of moral turpitude whether it's Wells Fargo cheating its customers or Volkswagen cheating on its emission tests. Cognitive dissonance is intrinsic to MarketWorld. Giridharadas rightly argues that this misallocation of resources creates a grave opportunity cost. The money and time the MarketWorlders spend fixing the edges of our fraying social order could be used to push for real change. This is especially so in the political battles in which the country is currently engaged, where a majority of the Supreme Court and members of Congress seem hellbent on rewriting the rules of the American economy and political system in ways that will exacerbate economic disparities, increase monopoly power, and decrease access to health care and women's reproductive rights. Moreover, the ideology of the MarketWorlders has spread and just espousing it has come to seem like a solution instead of the distraction that it is. Giridharadas shows how this is done. One category of enabler he describes is the cringeworthy "thought leader," who nudges plutocrats to think more about the poor but never actually challenges them, thus stroking them and allowing them to feel their MarketWorld approaches are acceptable rather than the cop outs they are. Another recent book, the historian Nancy MacLean's "Democracy in Chains," provides a salutary lesson on the dangerous ways a self serving ideology can spread. Giridharadas embedded himself in the world he writes about, much as the journalist David Callahan (who edits the Inside Philanthropy website) did for his recent book, "The Givers: Wealth, Power and Philanthropy in a New Gilded Age." And like Callahan, Giridharadas is careful not to offend. He writes on two levels seemingly tactful and subtle but ultimately he presents a devastating portrait of a whole class, one easier to satirize than to reform. Perhaps recognizing the intractability and complexity of the fix we are in, Giridharadas sidesteps prescriptions by giving the book's last words to a political scientist, Chiara Cordelli. "This right to speak for others," Cordelli says, "is simply illegitimate when exercised by a powerful citizen." Although a more definitive conclusion would have been welcome, Cordelli does point to the real lesson of the book: Democracy and high levels of inequality of the kind that have come to characterize the United States are simply incompatible. Very rich people will always use money to maintain their political and economic power. But now we have another group: the unwitting enablers. Despite believing they are working for a better world, they are at most chipping away at the margins, making slight course corrections, while the system goes on as it is, uninterrupted. The subtitle of the book says it all: "The Elite Charade of Changing the World." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
Norman Platnick was having no luck with millipedes. He was 16, a senior in college (yes, he started at 12) and was interested in a fellow biology student named Nancy, who was "very interested in millipedes," he recalled. It was 1967, and they were taking a class on arthropods and needed specimens. But, he said: "I was a lousy millipede collector. There would be nothing in my jar but spiders." He examined one of the spiders "for a few hours," he said, and was able to identify it as part of the genus Cicurina. "So I said: 'That was kind of fun. Let me try another.' And I just never stopped." Dr. Platnick would become a world authority on spiders and the husband of Nancy Stewart Price. He died on April 8 in a hospital in Philadelphia at 68. The cause was complications from a fall in his home, said his son and only immediate survivor, William Platnick. Dr. Platnick was curator emeritus of the division of invertebrate zoology for the American Museum of Natural History in New York, which holds the world's largest spider collection. He added 158 genera and 2,023 species to the taxonomic database, and helped expand the known world of spiders to 48,000 species. In the press, Dr. Platnick was often referred to as the real "Spider Man," especially when movies featuring the comic book webslinger had their premieres. The museum would hold publicity events to promote its "Spiders Alive!" exhibition, and invite the stars who portrayed Spider Man's alter ego, Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire in 2007 and Andrew Garfield in 2012). Dr. Platnick would gamely play along before throngs of young fans, even placing a tarantula on Mr. Maguire's arm. "He was able to show the kids he wasn't afraid of spiders," Dr. Platnick said. He traveled the world for his research, including going on arachnological expeditions to Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, Cuba, Panama, Australia and New Zealand. The trips could be perilous. During one trip to New Caledonia, Dr. Platnick fell down a mountain and, injured and disoriented, got lost in the forest below. It took the local authorities two days to find him. "We didn't know he was missing," William Platnick said, until someone from the research team called to say, "We found Norm." In his research, Dr. Platnick focused on Oonopidae, a family of tiny arachnids also known as goblin spiders, which generally measure less than two millimeters in length. He was deeply concerned about a loss of biodiversity with the encroachment of human development. He spoke of visiting sites in Chile and returning some years later. "In many cases you go back to the very same spot and you realize there used to be a forest," he said. "It's not there now." Norman Ira Platnick was born on Dec. 30, 1951, in Bluefield, W.Va., to Philip and Ida (Kasczeniewski) Platnick. His father was a Jewish immigrant from Poland. Dr. Platnick was "culturally Jewish," his son said, but nonpracticing; he converted to Christianity later in life. He attended Concord College in Athens, W. Va., after finishing seventh grade. He received his bachelor's degree in biology at 16, a master's in zoology at 18, from Michigan State University, and a Ph.D. in biology from Harvard University in 1973, when he was 21. He joined the American Museum of Natural History later that year, and made important contributions to the field of cladistics, which categorizes species along the lines of shared characteristics to build evolutionary trees. Today, the method is so well established that the museum's dinosaur halls are organized according to evolutionary ties, and the cladistic trees are inlaid in the floor. Dr. Platnick's published research included 330 scientific papers and six books. He was made a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2003. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
ENERGY efficiency will be top of mind not only from the cars in the showroom, but even in the building's air conditioning system when the BMW of Manhattan dealership is upgraded next year. And Wi Fi will be available, next to a pastry and coffee bar, when a new Mercedes Benz dealership opens a short walk down 11th Avenue, at West 54th Street, early next month. Between the BMW and Mercedes stores, an existing dealership has been renovated for Volkswagen and Audi. Showrooms for each brand showcase the latest trends in architectural design. So when Peter Miles, executive vice president for operations at BMW of North America, presented his ideas for a 21st century dealership at a press conference last week, he could have been referring to any of several showrooms and service centers that have appeared along Manhattan's new Automobile Row. "Our innovations and the growth of our business over the next decade are of key importance to us," Mr. Miles said. "And New York City is a center of mobility, technology and innovation just as much as media and finance." Along 11th Avenue, foreign and domestic automakers are expanding, relocating and renovating top dollar properties, even as the economy remains fickle in much of the country. The reason, auto executives and real estate brokers say, has less to do with current economic conditions and more to do with New York City's identity as a global hub the notion that if a company can make it here, it can make it anywhere. Much of the recent real estate activity along 11th Avenue has blossomed from discussions dating back to the peak of the market well before the closing of about 1,900 dealerships across the country since 2009, according to a tally by the National Automobile Dealers Association. Manufacturers see the corridor as a grand stage for innovations, which, if successful, could one day appear in Albuquerque or Chattanooga. "It's important for them to get their newest image or brand out there," said David McArdle, managing director of Cushman Wakefield, who heads the firm's auto practice group in New York. "All the dealers know this is the place to be." Besides BMW of North America, which last week announced plans for an environmentally friendly refurbishing of its showroom at 555 West 57th Street and construction of a stand alone Mini dealership nearby, others are looking to the future. Infiniti of Manhattan is expected to relocate from 608 West 57th Street, and Chrysler wants to expand nearby. Volkswagen and Audi reached a 125 million deal for their new joint operation on 55th Street two years ago. Mercedes Benz intends to open its glass walled 333,000 square foot dealership at 770 11th Avenue in May. The building has a repair shop with 72 service bays, visible from the customer lounge area through floor to ceiling windows. Even in the age of technology, those service areas, experts say, make a difference. "Even if dealerships weren't selling units, the ability to service cars helps the parent company sell," said Michael Laginestra, the vice president at CB Richard Ellis who, with his colleague Michael Geoghegan, worked with Mercedes Benz to secure its new location. But an entirely new facility is not a requirement for doing well. At the Manhattan Automobile Company, a Ford Motor owned dealership at 787 11th Avenue, sales picked up last year after a slump in 2008. David Denby, a senior sales consultant, said that Land Rovers, which can cost more than 85,000, were their top seller since 2010. "Right now, my business is as good as it was in 2007," Mr. Denby said. "It's just amazing. The economy hasn't hurt us on 11th Avenue. It's really a phenomenon here in New York City." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Automobiles |
A transformative piece of technology is supposed to "disrupt" the unwieldy ways that came before it. On Monday evening, an app built to deliver quicker caucus results took the Silicon Valley term of art literally, contributing to massive delays in reporting the results in Iowa. Hours after the caucuses ended, the state Democratic Party, citing inconsistencies in the reporting data, still has not publicly reported any results. It stressed there was no "hack or intrusion." Over the past hours a disheartening game of electoral tech support, conducted by journalists across the internet, has unfolded. And in place of definitive results, an information war has broken out, unleashing reckless speculation, conspiracy theories and deep anxiety. First came the reports trickling in from caucus leaders, precinct captains and observers that the app wasn't working properly. On Monday evening a precinct captain told me by text that their caucus manager was "unable to get the app from the Democratic Party to work" and "had to do the math to figure out delegates 'long hand.'" FiveThirtyEight's Amelia Thomson Deveaux spoke to a frustrated caucus leader who suggested the app itself wouldn't download. "We could not problem solve getting the app onto one of our devices," he told her. NBC News reported some caucus leaders had missed the window to download the app altogether. The Biden campaign issued a letter to Iowa party leaders suggesting the app had failed. Reckless speculation followed about possible security problems with the technology. Stories from late last month raising concerns about the caucus app's vulnerabilities recirculated on Twitter. Among the chief fears: The app was to be downloaded directly to the phones of caucus volunteers, making it difficult to ensure the safety of the devices. Shadow's failure suggests a potentially deadly combination of techno utopianism and laziness. The two fuel each other: The overarching belief that software will fix everything leads to slapdash engineering, procurement and deployment. The result is an obsession with another Silicon Valley term of art, "minimum viable product." The author Eric Ries defined it as "that version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort." Shadow's app seems to fit that definition. Reports suggest that the app was engineered in just the past two months. According to cybersecurity consultants and academics interviewed by the Times, the app was not tested at statewide scale or vetted by the Department of Homeland Security's cybersecurity agency. And even if the app was working just fine, reports suggest the roll out of the tool was bungled, to the point where those tasked with reporting via the app weren't trained to know how to use it. Since the caucus is conducted in public view and with a full paper trail, it seems hard to imagine that the results would be lost. Still, a critical failure like this creates credibility problems for the party and confidence issues for voters, who woke up Tuesday morning to uncertainty. The cryptic nature of the digital firms and tech contractors is also bound to raise questions. Who exactly is responsible for building the apps intended to protect the integrity of the democratic process? Who is funding the companies behind the tech companies? Why didn't the Iowa Democratic Party disclose the app maker? How are procurement decisions made? Where's the transparency? That the name of the company at the center of the fiasco is the literal definition of opacity doesn't help either. Perhaps most concerning is that, on an internet engaged in a constant information war, the Democrats' technology failure created an information vacuum that was quickly seized upon by trolls and political operatives alike to cast doubt on the electoral process and sow division. "Quality control rigged?" Brad Parscale, Mr. Trump's campaign manager, tweeted on Monday night. The message was retweeted and liked a combined 14,000 times. Both Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. questioned whether the results had been "rigged" or fixed, as did the Trump campaign's national press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
BILBAO, Spain Europe's midseason soccer transfer window is open this month. For teams battling relegation, and potential financial ruin, it brings a last, vital chance to strengthen a leaky defense or fortify a goal shy forward line ahead of the second half of the season. Among those teams is Athletic Bilbao, which is in 17th place in La Liga, the 20 team Spanish league, and already on its second manager this season. Financially, Athletic, a century old power on Spain's northern coast, has little in common with the clubs that find themselves in a similarly grim position. The team is flush with cash, with about 200 million euros, or about 228 million, in reserves, and has access to another 90 million euros that if deployed to lure talent from soccer's global marketplace would probably go a long way toward firing it up the league standings and out of danger. But unlike almost every other team in the market, Bilbao cannot spend those millions on just anyone. Athletic is a throwback. Tradition dictates that it can only field players who were born in the Basque Country territory that includes seven provinces that stretch from northern Spain into France or who moved to the region in their youth and learned to play soccer here. That purity has been a point of pride for the 121 year old club. Athletic Bilbao has long celebrated that it has never been relegated from Spain's top league, a feat it shares with only Barcelona and Real Madrid. But it is only one slot away from relegation position in La Liga, and its purity presents obvious difficulties when it comes to recruitment. Lately it has placed the team in a financial vise, transforming it into something of a unicorn in a sport in which nearly every other club is desperate for cash. Bilbao, with its flush coffers and narrowed options, has become soccer's poor little loaded club. "We don't really need the money," Josu Urrutia, a stocky, 50 year old former Bilbao midfielder, said in an interview last month, shortly before he ended a seven year run as Athletic's president. His replacement, Aitor Elizegi, though critical of some of Urrutia's decisions, was quick to confirm that the team's commitment to Basque only players would not be changed. Athletic can in some ways blame its recent success for its current fate. In the last eight years, the team has played six seasons in the second tier Europa League (reaching the final once) and one in the Champions League. In 2012 and again in 2015, it reached the final of the Spanish cup. Athletic, at least under Urrutia, never negotiated, whatever the price. Players would leave only if their buyout clause a fee that would trigger a sale was met, and Athletic's management hoped it never would be. Urrutia, sitting in an austere drawing room full of lacquered furniture on the ground floor of a mansion built in 1900 and bestowed to the club by one of the city's historic trading families, described how the club lost defensive midfielder Javi Martinez to the German giant Bayern Munich a year into his presidency in 2011. This all happened after he tried to ignore Jupp Heynckes, then Bayern's manager, who had coached Urrutia, a tough tackling midfielder during two spells at Athletic, and Bayern's top two officials, Karl Heinz Rummenigge and Uli Hoeness. "Jupp says, 'We consider Javi is a player for the future, and 40 seems a lot; we are ready to pay 22 or 23," Urrutia recalled. "We said: Perfect. So we don't have to worry ourselves about it." In the end, Bayern paid the full 40 million euro buyout fee for Martinez, a sum that broke Germany's transfer record. Since then, the team has lost other players in a similar fashion. Ander Herrera, another defensive midfielder, joined Manchester United in 2014. Defender Aymeric Laporte became Manchester City's costliest acquisition when he joined for 65 million euros. Most recently, Chelsea made Kepa Arrizabalaga the most expensive goalkeeper in the world after paying his full 80 million euro release clause. All those deals, regardless of the fee, frustrated Urrutia. He wished all of Athletic's players shared his values. Urrutia came through the club's youth system and never wore another jersey in a two decade career. The club, he said, tries to instill loyalty from the moment players enter the system. Athletic officials like to play the guilt card and remind players that the Basque only policy was probably the reason they were able to have a professional career in the first place that the club could have picked other, better athletes if it had the option of shopping on the global market. "It's as though you've left the family business started by your granddad," Urrutia said. Urrutia and others explain that if players who came before the current ones had decided to leave, the club might have been forced to change its mission. If that had happened, Basque players might not have gotten their chance. The players should live these values, they said. Money plays a role as well. Athletic now pays some of the highest salaries in Spain, far more than teams of an equivalent standard, Urrutia said. He said the average annual salary of a first team player was four million euros. When faced with replacing a departing player, the club always gives first preference to products formed at its Lezama academy, a world class facility six miles outside Bilbao, the largest city in the Basque region. In each of the last five seasons, at least two academy players have graduated to the first team roster. "We give them opportunities to play for the first team even when they're too young, because we need them," Urrutia said. Some players, so committed to the club's philosophy, like midfielder Iker Muniain, 26, who has had offers to leave, have shunned the opportunity to play elsewhere. Just before Christmas, Muniain, an attacker who has been with the club for more than a decade and scored Monday, signed a new contract and asked that it have no buyout clause. "I'm pleased to do it," he said. "We've had cases in which colleagues have left and people have felt sad and touched. This is a way for me to demonstrate my loyalty to the club." Occasionally, the team does have to turn to the transfer market. The options are limited to players born in the Basque region or those who trained here during their formative years. That allows sellers to take advantage of Athletic's limitations. This season, the team agreed to pay Paris St. Germain a fee that could eventually reach 24 million euros for defender Yuri Berchiche, a defender who joined the French team from Real Sociedad for about eight million euros less just a year earlier. "They know, and they try to squeeze us because they know that there are not so many possibilities for us," Urrutia said. "We don't have so many options in the transfer market." Athletic can afford this because only four teams last season received more money from Spanish television rights, which, for now, is determined by how often a team's matches are shown. But a new distribution model aimed at reducing inequalities between teams is narrowing that gap. In the past, the biggest teams could get as much as 12 times more than others. That ratio is down to about 3.5. Though the change is generally considered to be a positive one, it disproportionately affects Athletic because far smaller teams can now trawl the world for talent they could not afford before, boosting their squads, while Athletic remains committed to its local only policy and other quirks that make it unique. Its headquarters bear little resemblance to those of most teams. No brash logos, no video screens showing loops of historic success, no shop hawking memorabilia. Like the club, it is a throwback. There are small if understated markers, like the modernist painting hanging on a wall inside a ground floor reception room. It depicts a great flood that has overwhelmed an entire city. The only visible structure is an arch resembling one from Athletic's former stadium that was delicately moved to its training ground. It is a symbol, club officials say, that the team's past will always be a part of its present and future, whether it risks relegation or fights for titles. "We know the challenge: It's a solitary challenge," Urrutia said. "This is a voyage full of difficulties. There could be a tsunami, but at the end, we really believe in the strength of our boat and want to keep going." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
"To me, consciousness is the thing that feels like something," said Carl Safina, an ecologist. "We're learning that a lot of animals dogs, elephants, other primates have it. Carl Safina, 64, an ecologist at Stony Brook University on Long Island and a "MacArthur genius" grant winner, has written nine books about the human connection to the animal world. Coming next spring is "Becoming Wild," on the culture of animals, and a young adult version of "Beyond Words," on the capabilities of dogs and wolves. We spoke over lunch in his Long Island garden, surrounded by his three dogs, some wild squirrels and a group of extremely tame hens. An edited and condensed version of our conversation follows. When a writer for the Sierra Club's magazine recently put the words "animal" and "cognition" into Google Scholar, he was directed to almost 200,000 citations published in the past five years. Why the explosion of interest in this scientific area? I think it's happened because in recent years we've come to know much more about the inner activity of nonhuman minds. We have tools today that didn't exist 50 or even 10 years ago. There are researchers putting dogs into M.R.I.'s, and so it's become possible to watch their brains do things. What we're learning is that animals do have felt experiences and thus, I think, consciousness. To me, consciousness is the thing that feels like something. It's the sensation of experiencing the input from your sense organs. We're learning that a lot of animals dogs, elephants, other primates have it. How else has research on animal behavior improved? Well, until the 1950s and the 1960s, the study of animal behavior wasn't seen as real science. Until Jane Goodall, Iain Douglas Hamilton and George Schaller began publishing, there were few studies. They were among the first to watch wild animals for the purpose of describing their behavior. Before, if you wanted to study elephants, you shot them and pulled their molars out to see how old they were. Thanks to these pioneers, we've learned that wild animals do complicated things. Many recognize the individuals around them even solitary animals, like mountain lions. There usually is a male mountain lion with a large territory who visits a few females inhabiting the territory. The females all know each other. The adjacent males know who their neighbors are. Who knew that dolphins could recognize each other after a long separation? Yet, scientists report that there was a dolphin in an aquarium who hadn't seen another captive dolphin in 20 years. When they were reunited, there was immediate recognition. Frans de Waal's latest book, "Mama's Last Hug," chronicles the emotional deathbed reunion of an aged zoo chimpanzee and primatologist Jan van Hooff, who had worked with her for many years. Though Mama is listless, when Dr. van Hooff approaches her after a long separation, she recognizes him and reaches out to touch him. Chimpanzees, dolphins, elephants they've all demonstrated signs of recognizing individuals. Videos show that their recognition is not mechanical, not a chemical match with a stored memory bank. It is often accompanied by shows of emotion, which proves to me that the experience is felt. Has the internet widened our understanding of the animal world? I'd say so. Almost everyone nowadays has a video camera on them all the time, and animal behaviors get recorded that we haven't seen before. The other day, someone sent me a video where someone was backing up their car and a puppy went behind it. Another dog came streaking out at high speed, snatching the puppy away. Thanks to the ubiquity of these videos, we're seeing evidence that the envelope of what animals can do is much bigger than we thought. That leads me to wonder: why, despite increasing evidence, do some people deny that animals have emotions or feel pain? I think it's because it's easier to hurt them if you think of them as dumb brutes. Not long ago, I was on a boat with some nice people who spear swordfish for a living. They sneak up to swordfish sleeping near the surface of the water and harpoon them, and then the fish just go crazy and kind of explode. When I asked, "Do the fish feel pain?," the answer was, "They don't feel anything." Now, it's been proven experimentally that fish feel pain. I think they feel, at least panic. They clearly are not having a good time when they are hooked. But if you think of yourself as a good person, you don't want to believe you're causing suffering. It's easier to believe that there's no pain. As a child, did you have pets? I did. I spent my first 10 years in Brooklyn, where I had the kind of pets you'd buy in a store a parakeet, little turtles. From the time I was 7, I had homing pigeons. I learned about life, with a capital "L," from them. The pigeons figured out who they were going to mate with. They'd be out flying around during the day and they'd come home, feed their babies and go to sleep. Watching them go about their lives, you saw them do a lot of the things that humans do. It was there right in front of your eyes. Then, I went to college and I learned that my childhood observations were not allowed. They were "anthropomorphic." But the more I see of the new neuroscience and neurochemistry, I see a lot of overlap. All of life is literally kin. I first learned that from my Brooklyn pigeons. You live with three dogs. What have you learned from them? Among things, that they are capable of anticipation. For instance, they show much excitement when I simply touch my car keys, which might well signal that they are going to some place interesting, like the beach. That proves that they have imagination and even memory. Another thing and this shouldn't surprise they can be quite emotional. Some years ago, I lived with someone with a dog. Before we broke up, we argued a lot. Once, we took her dog to the beach and we started bickering there. That dog just basically collapsed into a pile of leaves and would not get up. She did not want to be with us! And we weren't even yelling at her. She just did not want to be a part of an unhappy scene. That showed me that they can have a real time valuation of their experiences. They know what they prefer to avoid. The psychologist who puts dogs into M.R.I.'s, Dr. Gregory Berns, wrote a book in 2013 titled "How Dogs Love Us." Do you think your dogs do? That's easy. Yes! And I don't need to scan their brain activity to know this. They show it in their actions and the choices they make. Our dogs sleep on the floor in our bedroom just to be near us. We've never given them any treats in that room. The only thing they get for the effort of climbing the stairs is proximity to us. At dawn, two of the three jump on the bed. Jude, the third, has a knee problem, and he can't. When we wake up, it's always all tongues and tails and, "Oh happy day!" During the day, they roam free in the house and the yard. If I'm writing or working outside, they're never more than a hundred feet from me. That's their choice. My point is that they seek us out just to be near us. And what is love's fundamental emotion? It's the desire to be near loved ones. So yes, dogs can love their humans. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
Mr. Wallace is author of "Greater Gotham: A History of New York City From 1898 to 1919," from which this article is adapted. In 1918, New York went up against an influenza pandemic that ranks among the worst in world history. The way our forebears responded to that crisis might be of interest now as the city deals with the coronavirus onslaught. The virus arrived on Aug. 11, 1918, aboard the Norwegian vessel Bergensfjord. The ship had wired ahead that 10 passengers had taken ill and three had died at sea. The boat was met at the pier by ambulances and health officers, who whisked the sick to Brooklyn's Norwegian Hospital. On Aug. 16 the Nieuw Amsterdam out of Rotterdam made landfall bearing 22 stricken, and on Sept. 4 the French liner Rochambeau brought in 22 more. The city's Department of Health placed the afflicted in isolation at the Willard Parker Hospital on East 16th Street and the French Hospital on West 34th. On Sept. 15 the first death from what was being called the Spanish influenza was recorded. (There was nothing Spanish about the supremely contagious disease; it was rampant among all Europe's combatant armies and countries, but under reported, due to military censorship, except in neutral Spain, where coverage was unchecked). On Sept. 17, Royal S. Copeland, a homeopathic physician who in April had been appointed the city's health commissioner, required doctors to report instances of flu and pneumonia. The number of cases began multiplying rapidly, as did the daily death toll. On Sept. 30 physician reports showed that 48 people had died the previous day. And they were hard deaths, with patients gasping for breath as their lungs filled with bloody, frothy fluid. As often as not, flu victims were finished off by pneumonia, a secondary infection that followed closely upon the flu virus's trail, constituting a lethal one two punch. In October the pandemic struck with full force. On Oct. 4 physicians reported 999 new cases during the previous 24 hours. On Oct. 9 that doubled to 2,000. On Oct. 11 the count rose to 3,100. The next day there were 4,300 new instances. And on Oct. 19 4,875 new cases were tallied. Fatalities followed along. On Oct. 6, 126 died; 297 perished the following day. Over 400 succumbed on Oct. 16, and the daily death count fluctuated between 400 to 500 from Oct. 16 to 26. On Oct. 30 Mayor John Hylan dispatched 75 men to the Calvary Cemetery to help inter bodies that had overflowed the facility's receiving vault. Copeland's Department of Health opted for a two part response to the epidemic: attempting to slow the spread of the disease and treating the infected. The containment strategy redeployed public health measures worked out in New York over previous decades, in the course of dealing with various infectious diseases, notably cholera and tuberculosis. The first line of defense was isolation of the ill. As Copeland explained to The New York Times on Sept. 19: "When cases develop in private houses or apartments they will be kept in strict quarantine there. When they develop in boardinghouses or tenements they will be promptly removed to city hospitals, and held under strict observation and treated there." In practice, home quarantine was voluntary, given the lack of a sufficient number of physicians to oversee compliance. And hospital quarantines may have separated the sick from the general population, but couldn't isolate them from one another. Bellevue patients were laid out on cots jammed together in every nook and cranny; children were packed three to a bed. Other venues were pressed into service armories, gymnasiums and the Municipal Lodging House, which was converted from homeless shelter to sick bay for the duration of the epidemic. Hard hit military installations like Camp Mills, Camp Dix and Camp Upton set up their own facilities. Upton hospitalized over 100 new patients every day between Sept. 15 and Oct. 9 admissions peaked at 483 on Oct. 4 in huge tent wards holding 900 infected; over 500 died at Upton alone. On the slowing the spread front, Copeland also tackled what he considered the biggest and least escapable dangers confronting still healthy New Yorkers the concentration and circulation of residents. Nothing packed bodies together as dangerously as the mass transit system. Subway and elevated cars almost certainly contained infected passengers who couldn't afford to skip work and stay home. The most menacing moments of the day and night came during morning and evening rush hours. To de concentrate the crush, Copeland arranged with businesses to stagger work hours. White collar offices would open at 8:40 a.m. and close at 4:30 p.m.; wholesalers would start their days earlier, non textile manufacturers would start later. Stores selling food and drugs were exempt. Other obvious congestion points were schools and theaters, but where most American cities simply shut both down, Copeland went with a different strategy. Schools, he reasoned, were often more sanitary than housing, particularly in the slums. New York City schools, moreover, boasted a well established system of child health monitoring and care. Copeland, accordingly, kept the schools open. Under the direction of Dr. S. Josephine Baker, head of the Department of Health's Bureau of Child Hygiene, school physicians inspected children each morning and sent sick students home. It worked few children caught the disease and in addition the schools handed out printed material on how to avoid the flu, for passing along to parents. Theaters seemed a more unequivocal danger, but Copeland eschewed total closure. Many modern theaters were, after all, clean and well ventilated, and could be used to exhort audiences, urging them to adopt flu prevention measures. On Oct. 11 Copeland announced that approved venues could stay open if they did not allow patrons to cough, sneeze or smoke. Dirty and stuffy "hole in the walls," as he called them, could be and were closed if they failed to meet sanitary standards. Public health education campaigns, based on the city's experience with mitigating infectious diseases, were another effort to slow the epidemic. By Sept. 24 at least 10,000 posters had been placed around the city in railway stations, elevated train platforms, ferry landings, streetcars, store windows, police precinct houses, hotels and other public places. They explained how the virus was transmitted and instructed the citizenry to cover their coughs and sneezes, and to refrain from spitting. A small army of Boy Scouts was detailed to hand out printed cards to caught in the act spitters, reading "You are in violation of the Sanitary Code." They were backed up by the police, who rounded up New Yorkers caught spitting and brought them before courts in large numbers. On Oct. 4, 134 men were fined one dollar each at the Jefferson Market Court. When it came to treating the infected, the terrible truth was that no effective medical intervention existed; doctors were virtually helpless. But nurses were not. The best that could be done for the afflicted was to provide them with soups, baths, blankets and fresh air, until the disease subsided or the patient died, which could happen within 24 hours of onset. This enormous task was taken on by a large army of women, commanded by the indefatigable Lillian Wald, who had pioneered the visiting nurse service that would now be writ large. Wald mobilized a multitude of nurses' organizations, church groups, municipal bureaucracies, civic entities and social agencies into a Nurses' Emergency Council. The group assembled volunteer nurses (a dangerous commitment in October roughly 20 percent came down with the disease) and enlisted women who could support them by answering phones, accompanying them on home visits, and arranging for and driving automobiles to carry linens, pneumonia jackets and quarts of soup. Responding to Wald's call were the Bureau of Communicable Diseases, the Bureau of Child Welfare, the Red Cross, the Maternity Centers, the Association for the Aid of Crippled Children, the Milk Stations, the New York Diet Kitchen, the Social Service Department of Mt. Sinai, Presbyterian, and Beth Israel Hospitals, the Catholic Nursing sisterhoods, the Salvation Army, the Teachers College Department of Nursing, and virtually every social settlement and social agency in the city. The Department of Health provided additional backup. On Oct. 7, Copeland established more than 150 emergency health centers in neighborhoods around the city, whose chief function was to coordinate the work of nurses making home visits in their district. From Oct. 26 onward, the number of deaths from both influenza and pneumonia first slackened, then swiftly declined. By early November, influenza and pneumonia fatality rates had returned to levels typical of the previous year's. The crisis was over. More New Yorkers had died of disease in the city (roughly 30,000) than had died in World War I (about 7,500). This civilian military fatality ratio actually understated the disparity, because the flu had sickened millions of soldiers, too. Of the 7,500 New York City soldier deaths, more than 2,000 were due to disease. But New York's civilian fatalities added relatively few to the colossal totals that ravaged the United States (675,000), to say nothing of the monstrous estimates of global deaths (at the very least 50 million), which reflected the very different social ecologies of India, China and Russia, among others. "Global Flu" would have been a far more apt name than "Spanish." More pertinent is the fact that New York's death rate per 1,000 residents was 4.7, a figure dramatically lower than that of comparable cities Boston's was 6.5 and Philadelphia's was 7.3. How to account for Gotham's relatively low mortality? Health Commissioner Royal Copeland had his critics then, and he has them now, but it's hard to avoid seeing his work as being a major contributing factor. Not only did he personally rise to the occasion, he was able to mobilize a constituency of distinguished public health activists. When asked in a New York Times post mortem interview to account for the quantitative results, Copeland attributed them to Gotham's long history of public health work, in particular its efforts to alleviate or eradicate epidemics. Beyond that, he was able to draw upon the much bigger network of the city's civil society social workers, labor unions, medical researchers, feminists, housing reformers, progressive activists of all kinds and these, happily, are resources we have with us still. We live in a very different historical moment. We have greatly improved medical and communication and organizational resources available for dealing with such a crisis. But it's worth remembering the alacrity with which the city's civil and political society rallied to grapple with a deadly menace. Mike Wallace is a Pulitzer Prize winning historian and the author of "Greater Gotham: A History of New York City from 1898 to 1919," from which this essay is adapted. The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We'd like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here's our email: letters nytimes.com. Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter ( NYTopinion) and Instagram. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
The biggest name attached to "The Terror," a new series on AMC, is that of the executive producer Ridley Scott. And the show has some Scott trademarks. It's about a dangerous expedition to what might as well be a distant planet (unless you're an Inuit) the Canadian Arctic in the 1840s. And along the way there's a monster that hides in the shadows and picks off the crew in a notably violent and bloody manner. Created by David Kajganich, a screenwriter ("A Bigger Splash") and former wilderness guide, the show does not, unfortunately, display Mr. Scott's ruthless talent for putting the viewer's guts in a knot. "The Terror," which begins its 10 episode run on Monday, is like many polar expeditions: long, educational, full of interesting things to look at and not completely successful. "The Terror" is based on a best selling 2007 novel by Dan Simmons, which was in turn based on the fate of the Franklin expedition of 1845. In one of the great mysteries of the Victorian age, John Franklin's two ships, the Erebus and the Terror, were sent to find the Northwest Passage and vanished along with their 129 men. Over the next half century, search parties found skeletal remains, interviewed Inuit witnesses and pieced together the story: Caught by pack ice and stranded for two straight winters, the survivors set out to walk hundreds of miles to the nearest outpost, but all died far short of the goal. The wilderness of sea, ice and barren land where they spent their last few years was so remote that the wreckage of the ships was not found until 2014 and 2016. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
Lebu Station, on the outskirts of Addis Ababa, marks the western terminus of the new train line.Credit...Marcus Westberg for The New York Times A Remarkable Rail Journey Into the Horn of Africa's Past, and Future Lebu Station, on the outskirts of Addis Ababa, marks the western terminus of the new train line. We were around 30 miles shy of Dire Dawa, Ethiopia, when the train hit a cow, its impact signaled by an abrupt drop in speed and a sharp judder rippling through the couplings. "What's happening?" I asked the carriage attendant, as she hurried along the aisle. "No problem," she replied brightly, without breaking stride. "A technician is dealing with it." It was only later that one of our Ethiopian neighbors told us we'd struck some errant livestock. The passengers my photographer Marcus Westberg and I among them merely shrugged. We'd never kidded ourselves that this trip would be entirely without misadventure. However, for every two steps forward there has been one back. With the economic miracle stalled by drought in 2016, and anti government riots tearing through the Oromia heartlands the same year, Ethiopia remained transitional, ill at ease with the pace of change. Last month's horrifying crash of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, which killed 157 people from 35 countries, couldn't help but recall the trauma of the late twentieth century, when Ethiopia was a place all too synonymous with tragedy. Still, the thing that had brought me back here seemed like a concrete embodiment of progress: Ethiopia now had a state of the art train. In 2011, the government announced that a new electrified railway would be built between Addis Ababa and the tiny neighboring country of Djibouti, aided by Chinese loans and expertise. Five years and 3.4 billion later, the first freight train made the 470 mile journey, revolutionizing landlocked Ethiopia's access to the Red Sea, where Djibouti's Doraleh Port processes 95 percent of its international trade. The day before we intended to depart, we went to buy tickets at Lebu Station. The new line's western terminus was a cavernous mustard colored building topped with twin cupolas, which sat incongruously on Addis's southwest outskirts. In the vacant ticket hall, the man at the counter seemed genuinely shocked when I asked him for two tickets to the city of Dire Dawa. Yet more disconcerting than his reaction was the sheet of paper taped to his window. Blaming recent disruptions on "local villagers," it then issued an explicit deterrent: "Reminder: think twice before purchasing your tickets." And so it was no small relief when, there the next morning, was the train at the platform. Its Chinese provenance was confirmed by the ethnicity of the "Captain" ushering people aboard, and by our salmon colored tickets, the same as those issued by China's National Railway. An hour later, we were enjoying a rare sensation: swift, ceaseless movement through a sub Saharan landscape. The train itself was a sterile beast, but the passengers had brought the atmosphere with them. The carriage full, we shared our row with a convivial family, laughing as their youngest member leaned from her mother's arms to pilfer some of the dozen pounds of fruit we'd stockpiled in paranoid anticipation of a breakdown. It was discombobulating, after the prim modernity of the train, to plunge into Harar Jugol, about 120 acres of tight knit alleyways, encircled by 15 foot walls, which is widely considered to be the fourth holiest site in Islam. We stayed in a "gegar," a traditional Harari home which had been converted into a guesthouse, where we slept in a garret that was formerly a storage room for grain. In the adjacent main room, the owner and her friends drank thick coffee on ornate carpets. It was an oasis that belied the kaleidoscopic bustle outside. Beyond the gegar's wooden door, Old Harar was a treasure house of curious museums and muftis' shrines. But far more enticing were the streets themselves. At times, it felt like a town designed to intoxicate the senses. From the main square, our preferred route into the labyrinth was via Makina Girgir, the tailors' road, so named for the sewing machines that line it, girgir being the onomatopoeic word for the clacking of the needles. In the spice market, drifts of dried chilies elicited sneezes from browsing shoppers, while in the meat market, bemused tourists took cover as black kites circled and dived to snatch shreds of goat from the stall holders' palms. In every street, walls had been enlivened by pink and blue paint to celebrate Eid. By late afternoon, old indigents with hennaed beards filled many of the alleyways, prostrate in nests of discarded twigs. Through our young translator, Emaj, one of them complained that the price of khat was increasing. The crop had become so lucrative, its users so hooked, that the wholesalers were now increasing their prices. Drug dealer economics 101. At nightfall, two men headed out of the city carrying a basket of meat scraps, then crouched in a clearing and called out into a patch of scrubland. We looked on as eight spotted hyenas emerged from the shadows to feed from their hands. Over the years, this nightly ritual has become a draw for tourists, who gather to shoot photos under the beam of car headlights. But Emaj told us it also has a more supernatural purpose: to keep the dogs close, because of the ghosts. The hyenas have their own entrances into the city, where they are said to be the only creature capable of seeing and swallowing Djins, spirits of Harar's past inhabitants, sometimes malevolent, who stalk the alleys under cover of darkness. A stern woman at the entrance, suddenly all smiles once we agreed on a price for entry, donned a conductor's cap and beckoned us in. On the train from Addis, we'd seen remnants of its ancestor running parallel to our course, sections of it buckled in the heat, others occasionally vanishing and re emerging from the dust. Now we had found its magnificent reliquary. Strewn over an acre of rust and rolling stock were jumbles of train components long since corroded, and decommissioned timber carriages moldering on the sidings. A giant tooling shed, musty with dust and oil, brimmed with 50 year old lathes. Behind it we discovered a pair of square bodied locomotives. The conductor said we could clamber aboard, her equanimity only breaking when I succumbed to temptation and pulled a lever on the driver's control panel. The dormant engine exhaled a long depressurizing huff and rocked on its axles. The conductor motioned that perhaps it was time to go. The following day we boarded a truck, with a guide named Abdallah Ali Moussa, and barreled into the western desert. We drove for eight hours, through wastelands of rubble and Martian hills, until we arrived at a desiccated plain. Here, close to the geothermal hot spot of the Afar Triple Junction, where three tectonic plates converge, a forest of pinnacles appeared on the horizon. We had reached Lake Abbe. At least, we had reached what used to be Lake Abbe. All that could be seen of the lake itself was a navy blur far to the north. Abdallah told us that a recent Ethiopian irrigation project on the Awash River had disrupted the lake's inflow. The water level, always subject to seasonal fluctuations, had now retreated drastically, marooning the otherworldly landscape of limestone towers for which Abbe is famed. The scene we'd imagined, with colonies of flamingoes strutting around a topaz shore, was instead a dust bowl, friable and desolate. Though I had to swallow some disappointment to see it, Abbe's fumaroles, built up over millennia by the accretion of calcareous mineral deposits, still presented an astonishing panorama. In the densest areas, they formed canyons of melted wax which made me think of van Eyck's "Last Judgment," a ghastly ars Gothica of wailing faces. Baked from above by the sun and from beneath by geothermal activity, the ground crumbled pastry like under our shoes. Tomorrow, we would visit Lake Assal, Africa's lowest point and the largest salt repository in the world, where I regret to report that I almost blinded myself when an ill advised paddle brought my retinas into contact with water 10 times more saline than the sea. But this evening, watching Abbe's chimneys fade to silhouettes from a simple campsite, felt like the culmination of a pilgrimage. This was the place we'd been most keen to see. We were back on the move the next morning, fishtailing through the sand on our way to Lake Assal, when we stopped at a camp of Afar tribespeople, the nomadic pastoralists who live in the African Horn's eastern badlands. Abdallah's cousin lived there with his wife and seven children, and he welcomed us into his tent, a simple construction of plaited palm fronds draped over a scaffold of sun bleached sticks. When I emerged, blinking into the sun, a group of children had converged at the doorway. With the audience thus arrayed, the oldest one unfolded his fist to reveal some shards of obsidian he had collected. The children on either side of him smiled shyly. They wanted to show me the beautiful stones. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
After 14 months of pitches, meetings and offers of incentives and name changes, Amazon announced on Tuesday that its second headquarters would be on two sites: one in Long Island City, Queens, and another in Arlington, Va. The company is also developing a smaller operations and logistics facility in Nashville. Here are some details you might have missed in all the coverage: Company executives flew to New York just to establish that Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio could put aside their longstanding differences. Although the two have clashed on everything from the subway to handling deer, they were all smiles on Tuesday. "I know him so well, it's just more open and verbal," Mr. Cuomo said. "Whether it's good or bad." The New York deal promises a helipad for Jeff Bezos Amazon's chief executive, Jeff Bezos, will be able to come to work by flying over the East River where kayakers now bob. Office buildings will rise and make room for 25,000 workers. How can this happen so fast? The state and city will bypass City Council, which has the power to block rezoning and land use measures. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
Global modernism is gradually finding a place in the permanent collection galleries of the Museum of Modern Art, notably with the recent installation of work by artists from Iran, Iraq and Sudan in response to President Trump's executive order regarding immigrants. Yet certain international artists may lie too far outside the MoMA approved notion of modernist style to be candidates for inclusion. Among them is a group of South Asian painters who created lyrical, smooth lined paintings that merge European academicism with Indian content. Y. G. Srimati (1926 2007) was one of these artists, as seen in the beautiful and important small show, "An Artist of Her Time: Y. G. Srimati and the Indian Style," at the Met. Born in Mysore and raised in Madras (now Chennai), Ms. Srimati studied several classical South Asian art forms, becoming an expert instrumentalist, vocalist, dancer and painter. Deeply involved in the Gandhi led anti colonialist movement, she repurposed the illustrational naturalism taught in British founded art schools by filtering it through older indigenous styles like those found in the sixth century Buddhist murals at Ajanta and in Rajput miniatures. All these ingredients merge in the handful of watercolors brought together, from the Met's collection and loans, by John Guy, the museum's curator for the arts of South and Southeast Asia. The earliest pictures are impressive formal accomplishments in a difficult medium. And in work spanning 40 years, Ms. Srimati's choreographic take on naturalism makes everyday subjects a woman dressing, a family riding to market look heroic, and images of deities and saints look approachably human. In the end, she's a devotional artist, in the religious or spiritual sense: Her 1947 48 painting of the Hindu goddess Saraswati was originally displayed on her family's home altar. And this is yet another factor likely to keep her from mainstream modernist acceptance. Religious art is still something that MoMA, and other Western centric modern museums, have no idea what to do with, though the time may come when they will. A group show of serial art is a dicey idea. Putting the photos of Roman Opalka, who documented the slow ravages of time with daily close ups of his own face, next to the date paintings of On Kawara, who immortalized many of the days he lived through in sans serif type, risks diminishing the austere grandeur each project has when encountered on its own terms. But works by Kawara, Opalka and two dozen other Conceptual relatives do make an enlightening if somewhat grandiose background to the perennially renewable photographs of August Sander. For Sander, formal repetition wasn't an end in itself but a conveniently stable framework for the slippery individuality of his subjects. Thirty six original prints from his encyclopedic typology "People of the 20th Century," chosen by Sherrie Levine and thoughtfully arranged by Sander's grandson Gerd, include a priest, a member of Parliament, circus performers, and a fatuously solemn Nazi storm trooper. Each is given his or her own moment of eternal attention. Ms. Levine's 2012 reappropriation "After August Sander," for which she rephotographed a selection of this selection, reduces Sander's quasi scientific documents to objectifiable specimens in their own right, complicating their historiography without altering their aesthetic appeal. But it's Robert Kinmont's "Just about the right size," shot in 1970 but printed in 2008, that really updates Sander's method. In each of nine silver gelatin prints, he holds out some mundane object a bouquet of flowers, a carton of milk, or a plank of wood that extends out of frame. It's equally self conscious and self deprecating. Canvases include painted versions of maps, a timeline and a Best Western logo, since a hotel occupies the site where Mr. Diao's family lived; that family included his grandfather, a retired Chinese Nationalist Party general. One diptych features the smiling face of Li Lihua, a film actress who lived in the building next door. But if proximity to a movie star implies a privileged upbringing, two other works titled "I was caned by the Headmaster" (2016) and featuring a cropped photographic image of a schoolmaster flexing a switch in his hands, offer a deft assessment of Hong Kong under the British, from a child's point of view. Mr. Diao has approached his childhood with fondness and honesty. And yet, there is momentum in these works: Hong Kong was always a way station for Mr. Diao's family, which was intent on going West. Hovering between two worlds the news release is printed in English and Chinese the show also connects the past with the present, since there are an estimated 65 million migrants currently on the move. In this sense, Mr. Diao's experience, while particular and interesting, is no longer extraordinary. Daido Moriyama and Nobuyoshi Araki may be the most successful photographers of postwar Japan, but it's the work of the least famous participant of this three man show that ripples with the greatest intensity. He is Kohei Yoshiyuki, and his unsettling 1979 80 series "The Park" documents, with nearly pathological detachment, the sexual encounters he happened upon on late night walks in Tokyo. Many shots recall crime scene photography, thanks to Mr. Yoshiyuki's use of infrared film and a paparazzo's flash: Flowers flare to white and lovers' faces are invisible. In these indiscreet but poignant photos, intimate acts become a public affair. Mr. Moriyama's hip, estranged images of Tokyo are shot in a style known as "are, bure, boke" (grainy, blurry and out of focus). (His radical photography of the 1960s is on view in "Provoke: Photography in Japan between Protest and Performance, 1960 1975," running through April 30 at the Art Institute of Chicago.) A series of 67 photographs includes close ups of breasts, buttocks and stiletto shod feet. If they lack the urgency of his coarser urban photographs, they are persuasive nevertheless because of his usual high contrast and tight cropping. As for Mr. Araki, his photographs of buxom women trussed up in ever more baroque rope bondage are as acquired a taste as Marmite. He's the only one to show women's faces; they appear sovereign and unabashed, despite their sexual submission. Relief comes via interpolated photographs of architecture the Hiroshima Peace Memorial or Kenzo Tange's Tokyo metropolitan government headquarters that inscribe these steamy pictures into the first years of Japan's so called Lost Decade. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
Doctors and hospitals failed to tell the Food and Drug Administration about cases in which cancer was spread around inside women's bodies by a surgical tool used to operate on the uterus, according to a report issued on Wednesday by the Government Accountability Office. Scattering cancer cells worsens the disease and decreases a patient's chances of long term survival. Because information was lacking, the tool, called a power morcellator, was widely used for more than 20 years before the F.D.A. acted to limit it, after being alerted to the problem in 2013 by a patient who was harmed. The device, with a spinning blade that shreds tissue, was by then being used in at least 50,000 women a year in the United States to help remove benign uterine tumors called fibroids, or to remove the entire uterus. It had become a mainstay in minimally invasive surgery, slicing up tissue so it could be removed through tiny incisions. But some women with fibroids have undiagnosed cancers, and morcellation can spray malignant cells around inside the abdomen and pelvis like seeds, "upstaging" the disease to a more advanced and deadly form. Before 2013, the F.D.A. had received no reports of uterine cancers being disseminated by morcellators. But after the 2013 case, which was widely covered by the news media, reports began to pour in, and by September 2016 there were 285. Some of the women have died. The government report points out a major flaw in the system for detecting harm from drugs and devices like morcellators: It is passive, relying on "adverse event" reports to the F.D.A. from doctors, hospitals, drug and equipment manufacturers, and consumers. But doctors and hospital officials told investigators with the accountability office that before November 2014, when the F.D.A. explicitly stated that cancer spread after morcellation was an adverse event that had to be reported, they would not have regarded it that way or reported it. Previously, they had thought adverse events from surgical tools were related mainly to failures of the device itself. And in the cancer cases, the morcellators were doing exactly what they were supposed to do slicing up tissue. "The passive reporting of adverse events is a weak system," Marcia Crosse, the director for health care at the accountability office, said in an interview. In a written statement, the food and drug agency said that it agreed with the report's findings and that "the F.D.A. has noted the shortcomings of the current passive postmarket surveillance system and has been taking steps to establish a better system to evaluate device performance in clinical practice." But the findings have landed just as the Trump administration has suggested that drug and device regulations should be loosened, not tightened. Dr. Crosse said one remedy might be for the F.D.A. to take a more active role in finding cases, by reviewing hospital records for problems that should have been reported but were not, and by mining huge amounts of data for rare conditions that may be warning signs. "But those things are expensive," she said. "They require data systems that are not currently in place. And it's not clear how much faster or how many more problems would be turned up. But right now they are in the position of having to wait for these things to be filed." Morcellators are still available, but their use in fibroid surgery has fallen considerably. In November 2014 the F.D.A. said the devices should no longer be used in "the vast majority" of women having fibroid surgery. Morcellators came onto the market in 1991 via an F.D.A. process known as 510(k), in which devices are cleared for use without going through the usual lengthy approval process, because they are similar to devices that have already been approved. The morcellators for uterine surgery were cleared because the F.D.A. considered them similar to tools used in minimally invasive knee operations and other orthopedic surgery even though the orthopedic equipment had not been used inside the abdomen or pelvis, or for cancer. The F.D.A. knew when it first allowed morcellators for uterine surgery that there was a chance the devices could spew hidden tumors around. But the risk was thought to be small, with one in 500 to one in 10,000 women who had fibroids also having undetected cancer. Subsequent research found the risk was greater, about one in 350. The problem came to light in 2013 when Dr. Amy Reed, then 40, an anesthesiologist and the mother of six children, had her uterus removed because of fibroids at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. A biopsy after the operation found a hidden sarcoma, an aggressive type of cancer. Morcellation had spread the tumor, transforming it to advanced, Stage 4 cancer. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
BOSTON A federal jury on Thursday found the top executives of Insys Therapeutics, a company that sold a fentanyl based painkiller, guilty of racketeering charges in a rare criminal prosecution that blamed corporate officials for contributing to the nation's opioid epidemic. The jury, after deliberating for 15 days, issued guilty verdicts against the company's founder, the onetime billionaire John Kapoor, and four former executives, finding they had conspired to fuel sales of its highly potent drug, Subsys, by not only bribing doctors to prescribe their product but also by misleading insurers about patients' need for the drug. The verdict against Insys executives is a sign of the accelerating effort to hold pharmaceutical and drug distribution companies and their executives and owners accountable in ways commensurate with the devastation wrought by the prescription opioid crisis. More than 200,000 people have overdosed on such drugs in the past two decades. Federal authorities last month for the first time filed felony drug trafficking charges against a major pharmaceutical distributor, Rochester Drug Cooperative, and two former executives, accusing them of shipping tens of millions of oxycodone pills and fentanyl products to pharmacies that were distributing drugs illegally. And the state attorneys general of Massachusetts and New York have recently sued not just Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, but also members of the Sackler family who own the company and who have largely escaped personal legal penalties for the company's role in the epidemic, culpability they deny. Also on Thursday, the state of West Virginia reached a 37 million settlement in a lawsuit against the McKesson Corporation, one of the nation's leading drug distributors, which was accused of shipping nearly 100 million doses of opioids to residents over a six year period. Experts said the Insys verdict could encourage other corporate prosecutions and said it demonstrated that the public was willing to mete out penalties for high level executives at companies profiting from the sales of highly addictive painkillers. "Just as we would street level drug dealers, we will hold pharmaceutical executives responsible for fueling the opioid epidemic by recklessly and illegally distributing these drugs, especially while conspiring to commit racketeering along the way," said Andrew E. Lelling, the United States attorney in Massachusetts who pursued the case. Abbe Gluck, a Yale law professor, said "the case paints a picture of the kind of troubling industry practices that helped fuel the opioid epidemic." And the verdict "shows that a jury is willing to punish for them." "This could be the tip of the iceberg as far as drug company misconduct is concerned," he said. During the 10 week trial, federal prosecutors had detailed Insys's audacious marketing plan which included paying doctors for sham educational talks and luring others with lap dances to spur sales of Subsys, an under the tongue spray approved to treat patients with cancer. Company executives were accused of paying doctors to write prescriptions for a much wider pool of patients than the drug was approved for, and of misleading insurance companies so they would cover the potent and pricey medication. With the drug's sales soaring, Insys became a darling of Wall Street, generating annual sales at one point of more than 300 million. In addition to Mr. Kapoor, the other executives found guilty were Richard M. Simon, the former national director of sales; Sunrise Lee and Joseph A. Rowan, both former regional sales directors; and Michael J. Gurry, former vice president of managed markets. Lawyers for the defendants either did not comment or said they planned to appeal. The former chief executive, Michael L. Babich, had pleaded guilty to conspiracy and mail fraud charges. Beth Wilkinson, a lawyer for Dr. Kapoor, said she and her client were disappointed in the verdict. "Four weeks of jury deliberations confirm that this was far from an open and shut case," she said in a statement. "We will continue the fight to clear Dr. Kapoor's name." Jackie Marcus, a spokeswoman for Insys, said the verdict was not representative of the company's mission, but only reflected the "actions of a select few former employees of the company." One of the few other criminal cases against drug company executives involved another opioid manufacturer, Purdue Pharma, whose executives pleaded guilty in 2007 to criminal charges that they misled regulators, doctors and patients about the addiction potential of the painkiller OxyContin. At the Insys trial, the government suggested that executives at the Arizona based company often operated like drug dealers and that Mr. Kapoor was the ringleader. "The decisions, the money, the strategy came from the top," K. Nathaniel Yeager, a federal prosecutor, said during closing arguments. Details of Insys's strategy from 2012 to 2015 to target doctors and allegedly bribe them have been revealed in lawsuits and news reports for about five years. The trial of Mr. Kapoor and his four co defendants has brought to light the extent to which the schemes permeated the entire company and its national sales team. Former Insys sales representatives, testifying for the prosecution, said their bonuses were tied to the dosages of Subsys prescribed by the doctors they recruited. The higher the dose, the higher the bonus. Evidence presented in court showed that sales representatives had to justify low doses to their boss within 24 hours. Alec Burlakoff, the former vice president of sales at Insys, pleaded guilty to one count of racketeering conspiracy. He wrote in an email read at trial that patients on high doses would be desirable because they "will continuously refill their monthly prescriptions indefinitely." Court filings in a separate case suggest Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, pursued a similar strategy. Two Insys sales representatives made a rap video in 2015 about titration, the technique used to increase a patient's dose. The main lyric: "I love titrations, and it's not a problem. I got new patients, and I got a lot of them." The video, in which the salesmen dance alongside a person in a Subsys dispenser costume, was shown at a national Insys sales staff meeting where Mr. Kapoor was present. Testimony from government witnesses suggested there were few limits to what the Insys sales team was willing to do. Mr. Burlakoff, who testified for the prosecution as part of a plea deal, said the company purposefully targeted doctors with a history of liberally prescribing opioids. "Pill mills, for us, meant dollar signs," he told the jury. "It was not run the other way. It was run to the pill mills." Holly Brown, a former Insys sales representative in the Chicago area, testified that she saw her boss, Ms. Lee, a former exotic dancer, give a doctor a lap dance hoping it would encourage him to prescribe Subsys. After doctors had prescribed Subsys, the company focused on persuading insurance companies to cover the drug, which can cost thousands of dollars a month. Jurors heard recorded calls from the Insys Reimbursement Center in which employees posed as doctors' assistants and invented diagnoses that would smooth the approval process. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
Lisa Munoz, a plant stylist, with some of her work in Brooklyn.Credit...Vincent Tullo for The New York Times You Can Pay People to Style Your Houseplants Lisa Munoz, a plant stylist, with some of her work in Brooklyn. Growing up in California, Orion Tait used to watch his father's weekend housekeeping routine. "Sunday was loud music Neil Young and my dad going around watering the plants," Mr. Tait recalled. "He had a deck of plants growing everywhere. It was a ritual." Mr. Tait, a creative director and partner at Buck, a production company, tried to carry on that tradition as an adult in his Brooklyn home, complete with the loud rock. But he and his wife, Amy Won, were too busy to care for their houseplants. They never got around to repotting them. Fungus gnats colonized. "I was, like, this is New York City," Mr. Tait said. "There's got to be someone we can hire." That someone was Lisa Munoz. For 2,000, Ms. Munoz will come fill your house with plants and make it look beautiful. You can spend more than 2,000, but you cannot spend less; that's the minimum fee charged by her Brooklyn based firm, Leaf and June. If Ms. Munoz, 38, sounds practiced at selling her services, it's because her job title interior plant designer usually requires explanation. It's an emerging career; she has been doing it for six years. Nurseries and flower shops have long provided professional plant care for offices and homes. Most billionaires of Park Avenue, one assumes, don't water their ficus trees. Ms. Munoz offers such maintenance services to her clients, too. But her real role is in performing the job that a fashion stylist or art consultant might to make aesthetic choices and sound investments on someone's behalf. Just ... about plants. The fascination with houseplants has begun to spawn all manner of specialists. After he began posting photos of his Baltimore home to Instagram three years ago, and talking about the 200 plants that fill the lush rooms, Hilton Carter became a bit of a celebrity. He published a book, "Wild at Home: How to Style and Care for Beautiful Plants," and, he says, created a new occupation. "I'm not going to lie to you I believe I was the first person to ever say I was a plant stylist," said Mr. Carter, 40, who worked at an ad agency before dedicating himself to houseplants. "I just ran with it. That's awesome that it's now a job title." These days, Mr. Carter is too busy with his other plant gigs (he has a new book coming out this spring, "Wild Interiors," with a promotional tour to follow) to do much styling, he said. Maryah Greene, who runs the one woman firm Greene Piece, bills herself as New York City's "Plant Doctor Stylist." She is the fiddle leaf fig whisperer for the rest of us: She charges a flat hourly rate of between 125 and 175. Her clients are largely renters who want to introduce a little greenery into their lives but don't know a pothos plant from a bird of paradise, much less how to not kill them. "A lot of what I do I like to think of as confidence boosting," said Ms. Greene, 24, who has plant styled for more than a year and has met with about 50 clients so far. The confidence they crave requires counsel: Will a monstera be happy by the radiator? Can sunshine loving cactuses thrive in a light starved apartment? What's the best pot to show off the pink and white leaves of hoya carnosa? For one Brooklyn homeowner, Ms. Munoz put a schefflera tree in the kids' room, with rich, green foliage that droops like an umbrella. She paired it with a showstopper pot a 1,500 ceramic planter from Bzippy Co. For another Brooklynite whose kitchen is flooded with light, she built a six foot fiberglass window planter and filled it with herbs and leafy greens. That was a special case. Herbs indoors "need a lot of sun," Ms. Munoz said, adding that in New York, "80 percent of the time, the light sucks." Those two clients came to her through Elizabeth Roberts, an architect popular with the brownstone Brooklyn gentry who frequently brings in Ms. Munoz for her projects. Ms. Roberts works with gardeners and landscape architects to design outdoor green spaces. One wonders why a plant stylist is needed in the first place. The library is still free. Yet in the age of the gig economy, where freelancers and consultants exist to fulfill every life need, and hiring out a task can be preferable to learning how to do it yourself, houseplant decisions are just another thing to outsource. The plant stylists say most people's ability to properly choose and care for houseplants is woeful, even as the reported desire to live among them is high. "One of the biggest questions I get from clients is, 'What plant can I get that would be good with no light?'" Ms. Munoz said. "No light? That's actually not possible." John Fraser, a chef, hired Ms. Munoz to rescue his neglected houseplants, which "were on death's door," and to create a potted greenscape on the balcony of his apartment. "I wanted someone who could give me the answers that you probably learn over time," he said. "Because of travel and restaurant stuff, I'm not the best caretaker." In 2013, Ms. Munoz earned her certificate in horticulture from the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and began working part time at plant shops, including the Sill, to further educate herself. Her business was born in 2014. A recent afternoon found Ms. Munoz checking on one of her plant care clients, an office in the Dumbo section of Brooklyn. A 10 foot tall fiddle leaf fig had been placed too close to the radiator over the holiday break, with the shades shut to boot, and was shedding leaves in revolt. Ms. Munoz gave the fiddle leaf a thorough watering and the office manager a gentle reminder that plants need sunlight. When she isn't doing plant triage, Ms. Munoz is in her plant filled studio near the Brooklyn Navy Yard, creating design proposals for clients, including one for the new mega art space in Chelsea opened by Pace Gallery. She also devotes a significant amount of time to seeking out ceramists to source pots from and researching interesting plants. On a shelf above her desk was her latest find: peperomia polybotrya, or peperomia raindrop, a squat houseplant with waxy, raindrop shaped leaves that "stopped me in my tracks," Ms. Munoz said, when she encountered it at a nursery. Ms. Munoz recently installed 115 potted plants in Buck's large, light filled offices overlooking the Brooklyn waterfront, at the behest of Mr. Tait and his partners. Soon after, she said, the company asked for a proposal to add more plants. "I think people are really just wanting things that make them happy. And things that are alive ...," Ms. Munoz said, trailing off. She considered her curious role. "I mean, have you ever heard of plants making people mad?" | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
The publisher Spiegel Grau, a Penguin Random House imprint known for its best selling and groundbreaking nonfiction, has been shut down as part of a continuing effort to streamline Penguin Random House's sprawling operation following the merger between Penguin and Random House in 2013. On Friday, the company announced that the imprint will be shuttered and that its founders, Cindy Spiegel and Julie Grau, will leave. The news came as a shock to some at the company and in the publishing world, as the imprint had just completed one of its most successful years. In 2018, it published multiple New York Times best sellers and other high profile titles, including a book about the Beastie Boys by the band members Michael Diamond and Adam Horovitz, and one about pressing societal concerns by the Israeli historian and philosopher Yuval Harari. The imprint, which was started at Doubleday in 2007 and moved to Random House in 2008, has over the years amassed a stable of prominent authors and award winning books. Spiegel Grau published "Between the World and Me," by Ta Nehisi Coates, a best seller that won a 2015 National Book Award and helped drive conversation about police violence and systemic racism. They also published best sellers like Bryan Stevenson's "Just Mercy," the memoir "Born a Crime," by the "Daily Show" host Trevor Noah, Jay Z's "DECODED," Piper Kerman's prison memoir "Orange Is the New Black" and books by popular self help authors like Suze Orman and Brene Brown. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
Q. I thought you were supposed to be able to cut and paste content between Macs and iPhones, but I can't make it work. A. The Universal Clipboard tool allows people to copy text, images and videos on one Apple device and then paste the content into an app on another Apple device. The feature arrived in 2016 with iOS 10 and macOS Sierra, but you need to meet a few other conditions to use it. (Some apps, like Notes, can sync content between iOS and macOS automatically with iCloud.) You need to be logged into the same iCloud account with the same Apple ID on all of the hardware in the mix. You can check the accounts in the iCloud system preference on the Mac and in the iOS settings on the iPhone; if you have multiple Apple IDs like an old one used for iTunes Store purchases and another you created to set up a new iPad you may be logged in under two different accounts. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
Mr. Salvador directs the Food and Environment program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. Mr. Bittman is a former New York Times columnist. With just one cabinet appointment, President elect Joe Biden could tackle economic inequality, the rural/urban divide, climate change, the growing mistrust of science, systemic racism and even the coronavirus. That appointment is Secretary of Agriculture. Some view the U.S. Department of Agriculture (U.S.D.A.) as a backwater that matters only to the nation's two million farmers. But this perception is at odds with both the department's actual budgetary allocation and its history: Two thirds of the U.S.D.A.'s 146 billion annual outlay goes to programs addressing nutrition and food insecurity, not to agriculture (or forestry, also in the department's domain). And the U.S.D.A. invests hundreds of millions each year in financial and technical assistance for rural communities to improve infrastructure that most urban residents take for granted electrification, broadband access, water and waste disposal, housing, health care and public safety. Yet broad sections of the rural population feel indeed have been left behind. Even with this aid, the U.S.D.A. supports a system that, overall, prioritizes trade and profit at the expense of most farmers, the environment and everyday Americans instead of encouraging a food system that provides a thriving livelihood for farmers and farmworkers, environmental protection and healthy food for all. At best, 7 percent of farmers are able to make a living from farming; food chain workers earn poverty wages; large scale agriculture poisons land, water and air and contributes mightily to climate change; and good food is available only to the relatively wealthy. In normal times, 10.5 percent of U.S. households are food insecure, a number that has nearly doubled during the pandemic. And our junk food diet has made nearly three quarters of us overweight or obese, which in turn causes our notoriously high rates of diabetes, hypertension and cardiac disease, shortening life spans and predisposing many to complications from COVID 19. Enlightened leadership at the U.S.D.A. could begin to change all of this. Rather than seeing its paramount mission as supporting agribusiness, the new secretary could steer the department toward becoming what President Lincoln envisioned when he established it "the people's department," with responsibility to everyone in the nation. When the U.S.D.A. was founded more than 158 years ago, about half of all Americans lived on farms; today just 0.6 percent of the population are farmers, and we devote only 20 percent of agricultural land to produce food we eat. But while the demographics of agriculture have changed, everyone is affected by a farm system that degrades the environment, drives climate change and churns out a junk food diet. That same system has displaced people and extracted wealth from rural communities, driving monopolistic concentration and record profits for Big Food, while almost all farmers must supplement their income with off farm jobs. These dysfunctions began long before the decline of the family farm. The U.S.D.A. has long been accused of discrimination in dispensing its services and resources, and of intentionally driving the commercial success and wealth building of white farmers while causing the failure, bankruptcy and land loss of Black, Hispanic, Native American and women farmers and ranchers. A series of legal actions from the late 1990s, including the Pigford v. Glickman and Keepseagle v. Vilsack lawsuits, resulted in settlement agreements that paid millions to eligible class members to compensate them for their discrimination claims against the department. The U.S.D.A. still reflects the culture of 1862, the year of its creation and of the passage of the Homestead Act, which gave more than 270 million acres of Native American land to white settlers. At the same time, the Morrill Act "distributed" an additional 11 million acres of appropriated Native land to establish a network of state colleges of agriculture and mechanic arts, a network that to this day serves whites preferentially. (A series of underfunded land grant universities was established in 1890 and 1994 in a feeble attempt to paper over this federally sanctioned racism.) The result of this social engineering is aggregate assets of around 2.7 trillion, held disproportionately among today's farmers, 96 percent of whom are white. There's another sense in which the U.S.D.A. is bound to the past. Large scale plantation agriculture, a major reason the South seceded from the Union, was a mercantilist economic system. The production of cotton, sugar, tobacco, rice and other commodities drove a web of global trade that enriched profiteers, corporations and nations at a distance from the enslaved people who labored under brutal conditions to generate that wealth. That same model of agriculture cash crops grown primarily for processing or trade rather than for eating, a brutally exploited work force has become the norm, and has been consistently promoted by recent secretaries of agriculture, most stridently by the incumbent, an agribusiness veteran. That template still benefits mainly the global conglomerates that sell to and buy from farmers, to the great economic detriment of the majority of farmers and their rural communities, and especially to that of the largely immigrant work force that replicates the work of the formerly enslaved, with largely imperceptible improvement in their treatment. Yet the American model of agribusiness profiting from low value commodities combined with through the roof production volume works so badly for farmers that the system is propped up by federal subsidies until recently 15 billion per year that are funneled into the bottom lines of mega corporations. Since 2018, however, an additional 60 billion of taxpayer money has been splurged on this sector, making it one of the most socialized sectors of the economy. The secretary of agriculture should lead the fight against corporations that have created a toxic food environment and support groups building healthful alternatives. The secretary should champion unity among farmers, rural people and urban advocates for racial and economic justice against the common enemy of consolidation and concentration of wealth. And the secretary should use the department's vaunted research and extension capacity to support a food system that can rebuild rural economies, regenerate ecological capital, mitigate climate change and provide nourishing food for all. While we're at it, we might as well change the department's name from its archaic, misleading misnomer to something that reflects the country's needs: a Department of Food and Well Being. Ricardo Salvador is the director of the food and environment program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. Mark Bittman is on the faculty of the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia and a former Times columnist whose book "Animal, Vegetable, Junk" is to be published in February. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
Update: We hosted a Facebook Q A to continue the conversation around eating disorders and the film "To The Bone." You can watch that discussion here: facebook.com/nytimes. When Marti Noxon set out to make "To the Bone," a film about a 20 year old battling an eating disorder, she initially faced the question: Was the topic too niche? The answer came in the form of a rousing premiere in January at the Sundance Film Festival, Netflix's reported 8 million purchase of the film, a trailer that went viral with 54 million views in the first week and arguments over whether it glamorized excessive thinness. The film debuted on Netflix on Friday. The film is loosely based on Ms. Noxon's experience with an eating disorder. She and its star, Lily Collins, are among the 30 million Americans a third of them men who have struggled with one. Ms. Collins plays Ellen, an anorexia patient who enters her fifth eating disorder treatment center, an unorthodox group home run by a doctor played by Keanu Reeves. Many of those reacting to the film's trailer worried that watching it could trigger unhealthy thoughts in viewers who may be prone to eating disorders or already struggling with them. Indeed, some experts said that people who have had eating disorders should consider the state of their health before watching the film. "If you don't feel solid in your recovery, don't watch it right now. It could be triggering at any part of your life if you aren't feeling strong and solid in your recovery," Dr. Dena Cabera, executive clinical director at Rosewood Centers for Eating Disorders said. "It will always be there; you can look it up later." Others say the film may help spur action. Eating disorders have the highest mortality rate of any psychiatric disorder, and can affect individuals across every demographic. "If the film helps raise awareness and more people seek treatment, that would be a success that we can be pleased with," Dr. S. Bryn Austin, a professor at Boston Children's Hospital and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, said. "Eating disorders can be successfully treated, they just need to take the first step in reaching out for care." If you watch the film and recognize that a friend or family member exhibits some of the same behavior as the characters, Dr. Austin recommends approaching the discussion "with care and love, not judgment," and avoiding comments on weight or appearance. Professionals at eating disorder clinics around the United States recommend broaching the topic as soon as you identify concerning patterns. "It's painful for people to reflect on the past and see that they knew people were watching them and knew something was wrong but they were too scared to approach them," said Bonnie Brennan, senior clinical director of adult services at Eating Recovery Center in Denver. "I'd rather the person be mad at me for getting it wrong than to risk not saying anything and they have a life threatening illness," she said. "I would caution parents: You need to watch this film with your child, get educated yourself and be aware that this is one story," Dr. Cabera said, noting the diversity and complexity of different cases of eating disorders. The New York Times asked readers to share their experiences with eating disorders. In less than 48 hours, we received more than 1,200 responses. Some described daily struggles, other celebrated full recoveries, and many spoke of their hopes of helping others by sharing their stories. Here are some of their responses, edited and condensed. Some readers who submitted comments requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject. "She tried to explain how hard it was" As a parent, it was like being thrust back to the infancy stage in so many ways but with a heightened level of fear that you were failing at a parent's primary responsibility to keep your child alive. All the research, therapy, family therapy, doctors' appointments, meal prep, and meal lessons (which was like having a second job) didn't seem to matter. Because in the end, the difference between infancy and her being sick was one crucial factor her own agency ... she had to want to fight, too. Fight with all her will everyday, every hour, every moment for success to happen. It's a bitter lesson as a parent. Ms. Gorove's daughter, Caitlin Piper Gorove Funk, died in 2016 after battling anorexia nervosa for 10 years. "It's an issue of an illness and a voice, it's not a choice. That voice took a while to explain to other people, that Caitlin wasn't doing this because she wanted to, it was that something had taken over. Her mind was consumed by the disease. She tried to explain how hard it was." "I held her and she died in my arms. I told her over and over and over again how much everybody loved her and that she could go. We did not have a funeral, we had a service that was beautiful on many levels. After her service, four people voluntarily went back to treatment." If parents recognize any behaviors portrayed in "To the Bone," Ms. Gorove said: "I would say immediately seek help. Don't stop, don't pass go, go to a doctor who knows eating disorders." There's a notion of 'Men don't have eating disorders, men don't have mental health issues.' I was a skeleton and a zombie but I made boats go fast and the coaches all applauded me. A lot of people think eating disorders or addictions are a choice and they make that assumption and then blame the individual: 'Why don't you go fix yourself?' It's much more complicated than that, it's a disease, and I hope that in five to 10 years from now people will look at mental injuries the same way they look at physical ones. I am gay. I did not want my already awkward 14 year old character to be mired by something as taboo and shameful as homosexuality. And, for all the crushes on girls I could muster up, I cannot control my sexuality. But my weight, well, that is something easily manipulated. Often people associate eating disorders with young women. But it is not unique to females, nor to queer males, like me. When not talked about and societally shamed, one cannot overcome such emotional struggles.. After a summer of being sexually abused and a year of bullying and being isolated by my peers, compounded by years of depression and anxiety, I became fixated on this goal of being the thinnest. I wanted to be so thin that I turned into a little girl again ... I wanted to be so thin I would disappear. Before I could begin to comprehend what was happening, it had grown like a disease I was completely powerless to control or stop. My eating disorder began when I was 13 years old, and was not managed until I was 19. It began with anorexia, and I worked my way through various other eating disorders through high school. It sucked all of the joy out of my life all of the personality out of my body ... But the minute my eating disorder developed, my voice was gone. That's it, that's what they really do; eating disorders steal your voice, steal the space that you occupy. I learned that I was not allowed to take up space, and that the best parts of me were the areas that I did not fill. My eating disorder started at 16, I'm now 27. It was an endless, exhausting pursuit to disappear. I wanted to disperse into thin air ... I eventually spoke less, felt less, physically became less. Almost like a child. I knew I was in trouble, although I was not willing to talk about it. And, even though my parents were concerned enough to take me to two doctors, it went undiagnosed. I began to binge and purge, my way of trying not to starve to death, but not willing or able to get back into healthy eating patterns. What I remember is an intense and overwhelming compulsive mental state, akin to addiction as I would imagine it. This was in the 1970s and it was not recognized as readily as it would be now. My experience with the disorder was confusing, among other things. I grew up in India at a time when there was minimal public awareness or discourse about eating disorders and the myriad ways in which they ravage a person's body and mind ... People around me started discovering my secret years before I got better, but there was no socially acceptable way to get me professional help, so they didn't try. "Recovery is not a matter of willpower" Eating disorders are far from glamorous. You don't walk into a hospital and have Keanu Reeves waiting to console you. You feel like crap, smell like vomit, hide secrets, lose friends, lose hair, lose muscle mass, suffer from severe isolation and basically become a shell of your once happy, hungry self. Recovering both physically and emotionally from my eating disorder took me many years. The worst thing I did was spend years ignoring it and not talking about it, when I could've been reaching out for professional help and personal support. Like many people with eating disorders, I never thought I could recover completely, but I am proud to say that it is possible, and I am proof of that. I want people to know that recovery is not a matter of willpower. And it certainly is not a matter of hearing an impassioned speech from a motivated therapist. As media consumers, we yearn for the redemption narrative the ravaged girl who is jolted out of her self destruction by the right words delivered with enough passion. But the reality is that eating disorders are a complex web that cannot be swept away in one fell swoop. U.S. culture is so messed up around weight and food that recovery from an eating disorder requires almost superhuman resilience. Diet and weight loss are discussed constantly, foods are categorized into "good" or "bad." Employers increasingly have wellness programs that promote this kind of discussion at work. I am frequently complimented on my body and on what I eat by others. The compliments are always about how "healthy" I am. I am not healthy, I am underweight and have an eating disorder. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Well |
There are people who raise you up close, and people who raise you from afar. That's how we build our personal histories: by observing what's happening around us and learning to maneuver with (or around) it, and by allowing ourselves to dream, taking in art and using it as the foundation of imagination. On the pointed, twisty, at times gut punchingly potent "Legacy! Legacy!" Jamila Woods literalizes this tug of war between the hand the world deals and the places one goes in order to envision how things could be different. Each song is a tribute to and celebration of a crucial creative titan: Sun Ra, Eartha Kitt, Octavia Butler, Zora Neale Hurston and more. From each of them, Woods has drawn inspiration and lessons about how to triumph over the challenges of everyday life. Woods, 29, is from Chicago, and first emerged a few years ago in that city's poetry scene and as part of a duo, M O. She began to attract wider notice for her koan like singing collaborations with Chance the Rapper, on "Sunday Candy" (from his album with Donnie Trumpet the Social Experiment), and Macklemore Ryan Lewis, on "White Privilege II." She followed that with her solo debut album of earthy, politically pointed soul, "Heavn," in 2016. "Legacy! Legacy!" is a fully realized follow up, sure footed in its blend of what was, what is and what might be. They intersect most strikingly on "Sonia," a glittery hip hop influenced funk song that's one of this album's most bracing. "My great, great granny was born a slave/she found liberation before the grave/who you tellin how to behave?" Woods sings, in a voice that's so sweet it cuts. The song is about a partner who became a monster, and the strength it took to overcome the trauma he inflicted: On the deceptively soothing "Eartha," Woods stands firm against a system of oppression so casually pervasive it manifests even in the tiny interactions of a romantic relationship. "The curve of your learning that's my labor, my love," she says. "Explaining myself again/I could have run a mile instead, I could have twist my ends instead." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
The Channel Islands, off the coast of Southern California, are a natural laboratory for a particularly adorable experiment in evolution. A unique species called the island fox has lived there for several thousand years, their bodies shrinking over the generations until now each is smaller than a house cat. Adult island foxes weigh as little as 2.35 pounds. Now a team of scientists has discovered another way in which island foxes are extraordinary: Genetically, they are nearly identical to one another. In fact, a fox community on one island has set a record for the least genetic variation in a sexually reproducing species. Oliver A. Ryder, the director of genetics at the San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research, said the new research posed a biological puzzle. It's an axiom of evolutionary biology that low levels of genetic variation put species at risk of extinction. Yet the delicate island foxes are still racing across meadows and bounding up trees. "How can the island foxes get away with it?" Dr. Ryder said. The new study, published on Thursday in Current Biology, was led by Robert K. Wayne, a geneticist at the University of California, Los Angeles. Dr. Wayne has been studying the DNA of island foxes since the early 1990s, hoping to understand their remarkable makeup. "They're like dodos," Dr. Wayne said in an interview. "They have no notion of human fear. You can just put them in your lap." Some scientists suspect that island foxes are fearless because of a long relationship with humans. Native Americans first settled the islands about 13,000 years ago, and they may have brought along gray foxes from the mainland. Previous studies indicate that island foxes share an ancestor with gray foxes that lived 9,200 years ago. It's unlikely the foxes made the trip on their own; the islands are separated from the mainland by 12 to 70 miles of open ocean. Another clue pointing to human help: Native Americans painted foxes on rocks and gave them ceremonial burials. Foxes may have had a spiritual importance to them. However the animals arrived on the Channel Islands, they adapted quickly. The oldest island fox fossils date back 7,000 years and show that they were small even then. The Great Shrinking required less than 2,200 years, it seems. Dr. Wayne has focused on genetic variation among the island foxes. He and his colleagues started off by examining a few genetic markers, finding striking similarities among the animals. But the scientists couldn't be sure just how similar the foxes were until technological advances made it possible to sequence their genomes. There are six subspecies, each living on a separate Channel Island. In their new study, Dr. Wayne sequenced the genome of one fox from each of five subspecies. On the sixth island, San Nicolas, they sequenced two genomes. Like other animals, island foxes carry two copies of each gene, inheriting one copy from each parent. In large populations with a lot of genetic variation, there can be many versions of a given gene. An animal may inherit two varying copies of a gene from its parents. But the scientists discovered virtually no differences in the DNA the foxes had inherited. "We call it genetic flatlining," Dr. Wayne said. While each subspecies has very little diversity, the foxes on San Nicolas are almost like identical twins, a record. Low genetic variation can pose a serious threat to survival. When a new threat appears a new disease, for instance some individuals may have the genes to resist it and others lack them. In a population with low genetic variation, none of the animals may have the right genes to survive. Inbred populations also often share mutations that are bad for health, shortening life spans or reducing the number of offspring. Dr. Wayne and his colleagues found that island foxes have many more harmful mutations than gray foxes on the mainland. On the face of it, the island foxes should have vanished long ago. "But that hasn't happened to them in thousands of years," Dr. Wayne said. "They're an exception to the paradigm." Dr. Wayne speculated that island foxes might enjoy some sort of special protection. It's possible, for example, that as top predators on a small island, they didn't have to face the challenges that other inbred animals do. Or perhaps the people who lived on the islands helped them survive. Or, while the genes of island foxes may be almost entirely identical, maybe they are activated in the animals in varying patterns. Experiences early in life can program genes to switch on and off, a phenomenon called epigenetics. "It might also be some combination of all of the above," Dr. Wayne said. Other researchers suggest that island foxes have been protected in more familiar ways. Newly arrived foxes could have rejuvenated the Channel Island gene pool with some fresh variation. "Their study has not ruled out occasional immigrants reaching the islands," said Richard Frankham, a geneticist at Macquarie University in Australia. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
Mountain Goats on Your Trail? They Like You, and Your Urine A few years ago, employees at Glacier National Park in Montana noticed that mountain goats were hanging out even sleeping far away from cliffs, and spending much of their time near humans. Researchers who investigated this atypical behavior determined that where there were people, there were fewer predators. Also where there were people, there was pee. Combined, these phenomena afford mountain goats two prized essentials: safety and salt. "You can't beat that. It's like vacation for goats," said Wesley Sarmento, who led the study, published in the journal Biological Conservation last month, as a master's student at the University of Montana. The study is part of a growing effort to understand how national parks, though often thought of as pristine havens, can affect local ecology and wildlife, sometimes in harmful ways. First, a bit about mountain goats: They have many foes, but gravity is not one of them. Snowy colored and sure footed, they can scale nearly vertical rock faces, jump 12 feet in one leap and chill out at precipitous elevations of up to 13,000 feet year round. Their skills help them evade less acrobatic predators, like bears, wolves and cougars. Mountain goats also love salt. They are known to travel more than 15 miles to lick natural salt deposits, which provide essential nutrients. But human urine is packed with minerals from our salty diets, and mountain goats will forgo those journeys if there is a lot of urine around. As a result, many a hiker has strayed off trail to tinkle and found mountain goats lurking, eager to lick a rock or eat a plant drenched in fresh, life sustaining urine. Over three years, Mr. Sarmento and his thesis adviser, Joel Berger, a scientist at the Wildlife Conservation Society and a professor at Colorado State University, closely observed mountain goats near and away from tourist heavy areas in Glacier National Park, noting where the goats got their minerals and how cautiously they behaved. One of these sites, Logan Pass, receives about 3,500 visitors a day. At peak hours on a popular hiking trail there, a goat might encounter 400 people an hour. To test how mountain goats reacted to predators, Mr. Sarmento dressed up as a bear and presented himself to goats at both tourist and backcountry sites, noting their responses (yes, this is a credible technique used in ecology research). He also took advantage of a nearby wildfire that led the park to close Logan Pass for a week in 2015, to see what goats did when there were no tourists. The scientists determined that while predators and pee both were at play, predators seemed to be driving goats' behavior. Mountain goats that stuck around humans were generally not as vigilant as their backcountry counterparts. When presented with the bear mimic, backcountry goats fled, on average, 600 feet farther than those near people. During the wildfire closing, goats that usually hung around Logan Pass returned to the cliffs. There was still plenty of urine around goats can lick the same patch for up to 10 days but the researchers' predator cameras picked up more bears at Logan Pass that week than they had over two years, suggesting the promise of salt was not worth the risk. Once people returned, the goats did too. The researchers also noted that goats habituated to people stopped their annual migration to a natural mineral lick. "If mother goats aren't passing that behavior onto their young, they might lose a migration that has accrued for thousands of years," said Mr. Sarmento, who now works for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks. There may also be more instances of aggression if mountain goats get more comfortable around people, Mr. Sarmento added, noting that a mountain goat killed a hiker at Olympic National Park in Washington State in 2010. Studies like this show how national parks must grapple with the conflicting mandates of preserving nature and providing recreation for visitors, said Laura Prugh, an assistant professor of wildlife at the University of Washington who was not involved in the study. One thing visitors can do is minimize their interactions with wildlife in these spaces, she said. "It might make for nice photographs," she said, "but it can really be detrimental in the long term." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
On Sunday, when Lamar Jackson of the Baltimore Ravens or another strong armed N.F.L. quarterback launches a deep pass, take a moment to admire the forces of physics he's unleashed. When the ball leaves his hand, it points upward, in the direction of the throw. As it arcs through the air, spinning along the long axis without any visible wobble, the nose of the football dips, following the trajectory of the throw and pointing downward when it lands in the hands of the receiver. To most fans, this looks perfectly natural, the ball slicing efficiently through the air with less drag. To a physicist like Timothy J. Gay, it was befuddling. That is because what physicists see with their eyes seems to conflict with a fundamental property of motion known as the conservation of angular momentum. It states that the axis of a spinning object, such as the tight spiral of well thrown football, will not change its orientation unless some force acts to twist it. It was not clear what force could be pushing the football's nose down. Worse, the most simplistic analysis would suggest that the onrush of air from below would nudge the nose of the football up, not down, and flip it backward. If that were true, a long beautiful pass would be an impossibility. "That's the paradox," said Dr. Gay, a professor of physics at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, home of the Cornhuskers. "I worked on it for 20 years, and I didn't make much progress till I brought in two smart people to help me and, and we spent three years yelling at each other about it." Dr. Gay, whose main research is in a field known as polarized electron physics, has had a long interest in football, playing on the team at the California Institute of Technology when he was an undergraduate in the 1970s. Twenty years ago, he made a series of videos explaining basic physics concepts like inertia and momentum, which were shown during halftime at University of Nebraska games. 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 the answer to this problem eluded him. So what is pushing the nose of the football down as it flies through the air? The two smart people whom Dr. Gay enlisted were Richard H. Price, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who studies Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity, and C. William C. Moss, who creates high powered computer simulations at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. They, too, were intrigued. "I played football in New York City a long time ago," said Dr. Price; he attended Stuyvesant High School, which, like Caltech, is known for its high achieving academics and not its athletics. "I aspired to be mediocre. Never quite got there." Dr. Moss was a classmate and teammate of Dr. Gay's at Caltech. "I couldn't play anywhere else," Dr. Moss said. "The coach gave me a red helmet and told everyone in the team, 'Don't kill the kid with the red helmet.' True story." Dr. Price said he had not thought about this problem until he and Dr. Gay met at a scientific conference and talked about it. "I went on to apply some pretty simple mathematics and do what physicists do," Dr. Price said. "Which is to try and throw away all of the irrelevant details and get the heart of something. Throw away the bath water, looking very carefully to make sure there are no babies in it." The first thought experiment was to eliminate the atmosphere from the equations. But then the only force acting on the football would be gravity, and that would act equally on all parts of the ball and not exert a twisting torque to push the nose down. "It is always going to point in the same direction, because it's acting as a gyroscope," Dr. Price said. "The tip of the nose will not fall over and go down." Clearly, air resistance, along with gravity, was playing a key role but not the one that the simplistic analysis would suggest. "It's kind of cool, because you have these two effects, both of which would seem to have nothing to do with what we actually see," Dr. Price said. The three scientists were not the first to examine this phenomenon, and others showed through wind tunnel experiments and computer simulations that thrown footballs do not violate the laws of physics. But they say their results, published this summer in the American Journal of Physics, are the first to provide a simple understanding of what is going on. The key is that even a star N.F.L. quarterback cannot throw a perfectly wobble free pass. Also, the interactions between a spinning object and forces such as gravity and air resistance are often counterintuitive. This gets back to the analogy of a spinning football as a gyroscope. In a demonstration often used by physics professors, a gyroscope made of a bicycle wheel on an axle spins at hundreds of revolutions per minute while the axle is held horizontally. One end is placed in the loop of a suspended string. When the other end of the gyroscope is released, it remains almost horizontal, seemingly defying gravity. The unsupported end starts moving in a circle what physicists call precession. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
The decision to buy a handgun for the first time is typically motivated by self protection. But it also raises the purchasers' risk of deliberately shooting themselves by ninefold on average, with the danger most acute in the weeks after purchase, scientists reported on Wednesday. The risk remains elevated for years, they said. The findings are from the largest analysis to date tracking individual, first time gun owners and suicide for more than a decade. The study, posted by The New England Journal of Medicine, does not greatly alter the prevailing understanding of suicide risk linked to gun ownership. Previous research had suggested a similarly increased risk, due largely to the ease of having such a lethal option at hand. But experts said the new evidence was more powerfully persuasive than any research to date. The study tracked nearly 700,000 first time handgun buyers, year by year, and compared them with similar non owners, breaking out risk by gender. Men who bought a gun for the first time were eight times as likely to kill themselves by gunshot in the subsequent 12 years than non owners; women were 35 times as likely to do so. (Male gun owners far outnumbered women owners in the study.) "I find the work extremely compelling," said Amy Street, a research psychologist at the National Center for PTSD, VA Boston Healthcare System and Boston University School of Medicine. Dr. Street did not contribute to the study, which was led by David Studdert, a professor of medicine and law at Stanford. "We know women make more attempts than men, but they use less lethal means," Dr. Street added. "It makes sense: When women start using lethal means, you're going to see this dramatic jump in rates." Historically, public health research on firearms has been limited by privacy issues and political opposition. Most previous studies were retrospective: post mortem analyses of suicides that relied on incomplete information about gun owners and, for comparison, non owners. Dr. Studdert's study, which looked at deaths and gun ownership in California, overcame these obstacles. By California law, all legal gun sales must go through licensed dealers and be reported to the state's Department of Justice. The department archives each transaction and includes more detail on the purchase than most any other state. The research team integrated this information with two other sources: a California log of deaths determined to be suicides, which all states track to some degree; and voter rolls, which include about 60 percent of adults in the state, or 26.3 million adults. By linking gun purchases to the voter registry and suicide data, the team was able to track individuals over time, from October 2004 to December 2016. The researchers checked gun purchases back to 1985 to make sure that individuals in the study were in fact first time buyers. They also reclassified those who later sold their weapons as non owners. This left 676,425 people who bought their first gun during the 12 year period and kept it. The weapons were predominantly handguns, which are the method of choice in about three quarters of suicides by firearm. California did not begin collecting data on rifles and shotguns until 2014. The team tallied the suicides among new owners and non owners, matched by age, gender and other similarities, and tested for a series of alternate possibilities, like whether owners were as likely to kill themselves by other means. They were not. Another possibility was so called reverse causation: that many buyers were bent on suicide before they bought the gun. The findings did provide some evidence of that. In the month immediately after first time owners obtained their weapons (California has a 10 day waiting period), the risk of shooting themselves on purpose was nearly 500 per 100,000, about 100 times higher than similar non owners; after several years it tapered off to about twice the rate. "We sure do see evidence that people went to get the gun because they had planned to take their own lives," Dr. Studdert said. The risk of suicide remained elevated over the entire 12 year duration of the study, and it was in this longer period after the first month that most of the suicides 52 percent occurred. "During this period, the gun acts much more like an ambient risk it's always there," Dr. Studdert said. The majority of people who attempt suicide do not die; attempts outnumber completed acts by about eight to one. Those who do make an attempt are at greater risk of trying again later, compared with those who have not, studies have found. Still, less than 10 percent of those who make an attempt will subsequently go on to complete the act, said Dr. Matthew Miller, a professor of health sciences and epidemiology at Northeastern University and an author on the study. "Many suicide attempts are impulsive, and the crisis that leads to them is fleeting," Dr. Miller said. "The method you use largely determines whether you live or die. And if you use a gun, you are far more likely to die than with other methods, like taking pills. With guns, you usually do not get a second chance." Other authors on the study included scientists at the University of California, Davis; Erasmus University in Rotterdam, in the Netherlands; and the University of Melbourne, in Australia. It was financed by the Fund for a Safer Future and the Joyce Foundation, both of which have supported research on gun ownership, and by Stanford. As rigorous as the findings are, they are not likely to move most gun rights proponents, who emphasize the idea that people need guns for protection. The study did not examine owners' detailed information like medical histories or personal circumstances such as living alone that could have shown they were at greater risk for suicide. But most risk factors for suicide, like persistent mental distress and drug use, tend not to differ much between gun owners and non owners, previous studies have found. Any unseen factor that could account for the findings would have to raise suicide risk by 10 times in owners, compared with non owners, and there were no such candidates, the authors of the new study said. "They really questioned their own results and tested many alternate hypotheses to account for their results," Dr. Street said. "To me, this makes the findings more compelling still." Like the Science Times page on Facebook. Sign up for the Science Times newsletter. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
Her home life she's married to a genial luthier, and her early teens son plays music and hockey seems serene at first, but there are fissures. In one key exchange with her husband, he tells her: "I can't spend all my days having feelings. You told me once that you were the same." As she now needs more in the emotional availability department, she's having an affair with a colleague. Her own musical ambitions, and abilities, are also brought into play as her work with her student approaches a boiling point. Hoss's work is impeccable and illuminating, and the movie's foursquare, frank, brisk approach is salutary. But its final scenes lean into triteness and frustrating evasiveness, which makes the picture a less than entirely satisfying experience. The Audition Not rated. In German and French, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. Watch through virtual cinemas. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
Yves Saint Laurent's statuary vestment for the Virgin of El Rocio, circa 1985, with gold silk brocade and pearls, in "Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination" at the Met.Credit...Vincent Tullo for The New York Times A museum's blockbuster welcomes the Vatican's holy garments to New York and genuflects at the altar of haute couture. 'Heavenly Bodies' Brings the Fabric of Faith to the Met Yves Saint Laurent's statuary vestment for the Virgin of El Rocio, circa 1985, with gold silk brocade and pearls, in "Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination" at the Met. Once there was a man who wore the finest silks in Italy, but traded them all for sackcloth. His father was a wealthy cloth merchant, and in his youth he gamboled about Umbria in colorful, dandyish outfits. But when he had his calling he stripped off his fine clothes, pledged his body to God, and spent the rest of his life in a mendicant's robe. He was Saint Francis of Assisi, and when the archbishop of Buenos Aires was proclaimed pope in 2013, he gave himself a new name, in honor of a man unembroidered. I wonder what both Francises, saint and pontiff, might make of "Heavenly Bodies," the Metropolitan Museum of Art's colossal, hotly debated and richly anointed exhibition on the interweaving of fashion and Roman Catholicism. Years in the making, it includes exceptional loans of vestments from the Vatican some of which have never before left Rome and more than 150 ensembles of secular clothing from the last century. Here is papal regalia of unsurpassed intricacy, but also space age brides, monastic couture, angels in gold lame, and a choir up in the balcony dressed in head to toe Balenciaga. For the 55 designers exhibited here, Catholicism is both a public spectacle and a private conviction, in which beauty has the force of truth and faith is experienced and articulated through the body. Sacrilegious? Heavens, no: The show is deeply respectful of the world's largest Christian denomination, even reverential. But it takes communion at Fellini's church rather than Francis's a surreal congregation whose parishioners express their devotion through enchanted excess. "Heavenly Bodies" is the largest exhibition ever offered by the Met's Costume Institute and was organized by its curator, Andrew Bolton. It runs from its dedicated downstairs hall to the Byzantine and medieval galleries and into the Lehman Wing; it then continues at the Cloisters, the museum's serene home for religious art in Upper Manhattan. Most of the designers here were or are Catholics, including historical figures like Elsa Schiaparelli, Cristobal Balenciaga, Christian Lacroix and Yves Saint Laurent, and active designers like Jean Paul Gaultier, John Galliano, Raf Simons and Maria Grazia Chiuri. Catholic Europe dominates; the United States is represented by Thom Browne (Mr. Bolton's partner) and Kate and Laura Mulleavy of Rodarte; but designers from Latin America, the pope's old stamping ground, are dismayingly absent. After Mr. Bolton's rigorous left brain exercises of the last two years the excellent, tech minded "Manus x Machina" in 2016 and the body questioning retrospective of Rei Kawakubo last year this show is a return, for better and worse, to the high spectacle of "China: Through the Looking Glass." It goes heavy on the Catholic drama, with mannequins posed as angels and novitiates, and there's music throughout. (Playing in the medieval sculpture hall is an intolerable loop of staccato string accompaniment, drawn from a film soundtrack by Michael Nyman, that will make you wish the Costume Institute would take a Cistercian vow of silence.) It also places the clothing amid the Met's superb collection of Byzantine and medieval art ivories, tapestries, reliquaries. This intermarriage of religious art and secular fashion feels refreshing in places, silly in some; either way, it's an event. "Heavenly Bodies" is, to use a formula Catholics will find familiar, both one show and three. You can begin your approach to this trinity of fashion with the showcase of holy vestments in the basement galleries, or you can start upstairs with the grand secular displays inspired by Catholic hierarchy and ceremony (the weakest third). Then conclude at the most contemplative, and strongest, third the gowns evoking orders and sacraments at the Cloisters. The exhibition's presentation of secular clothing begins on either side of the Met's central staircase, in the hallways devoted to Byzantine art. Five evening dresses from a recent collection of Dolce Gabbana feature hand sewn paillettes that cohere into icons of Mary and the saints, based on the mosaics of a Sicilian church. More inspired are Gianni Versace's diaphanous dresses of gold and silver mesh, a signature material that the designer garlanded with crosses. He presented them for fall 1997: a season he never saw, as he was murdered that summer in Miami. Versace drew inspiration from the Met's 1997 blockbuster, "The Glory of Byzantium," and these clingy sheaths set the stage for an encounter between religious art and clothes for the (rich and thin) laity. In a gallery shaped like a Byzantine apse stands a Gothic haute couture gown by Jean Paul Gaultier technically stunning but too gaudy to love that incorporates holographic images of saints and aluminum panels decorated with eyes or hearts, like the ex votos believers place in shrines. A mask of leather straps and cruciform plastic beads by the Belgian duo A.F. Vandevorst offers a rare dose of fetishism, though it is not half as fierce as the Met's rosary from 16th century Germany in the same case, composed of ivory beads half face, half skull. Up here the show's designers, the architects Diller Scofidio Renfro, have opted for a consciously operatic display. Spotlights fall on a low cut gown of red silk, designed by Pierpaolo Piccioli for Valentino this year, flashing more skin than any cardinal would allow. The hall's Spanish iron choir screen frames an eye popping haute couture ensemble by John Galliano for Dior in 2000 1, with a beaded headpiece shaped like a bishop's mitre. The back is embroidered with a crucifix and the inscription "Dieu est mon maitre": God is my master. (A male model wore this gown in Mr. Galliano's presentation, though it was designed for clients of either gender.) Yet those who feared that this exhibition might edge into blasphemy will be relieved to hear that it takes few liberties. Quite the contrary: Mr. Bolton, a Catholic, treats the faith so earnestly that he re sacralizes the medieval art on display. His approach to the "Catholic imagination" treats the visual splendor of the church as more than just a poor man's bible, but as a manifestation of God that inheres in all beauty, including fashion. Holy vestments serve in the transubstantiation of wine and bread into blood and body, and in a similar way these secular garments also turn the Met's medieval collection back into objects of worship. This decision to mimic, rather than analyze, the splendors of the church is highly uncommon for a museum, and bracing in places. One can see why Cardinal Dolan and other ecclesiastical figures have been pleased. The downside is that "Heavenly Bodies" pushes so hard on the senses here that you are forced to leave your art historical tools in the nave. How were these ensembles made? Whom did they influence? Those are questions for tomorrow; for now, let us pray to saints Cristobal, Jean Paul and Raf. Such a carnal approach to Catholicism also comes at the cost of critical engagement with the ironies of fashion above all, with ironies of gender. It seems, almost always, that the transference of the "Catholic imagination" from sacred clothing to secular has to pass through a woman's body. There is almost no men's wear in this exhibition; one rare entry is a wool coat by Mr. Simons, inspired by a priest's soutane. The angels clad in Lanvin and Rodarte inhabiting the final gallery are all women, too. This display may merit a thousand praying hands emoji on Instagram this summer, but you might ask whether these designers have merely perpetuated the gender discordance of the church in a more colorful key. The diplomatic and liturgical coup of "Heavenly Bodies" is in the Anna Wintour Costume Center, which features nearly four dozen articles of clothing and other regalia of recent popes, lent from the Sistine Chapel Sacristy. The church obliged the Met to keep the religious garments separate from the fashion objects, and they wanted a clean display, as the vestments are still in use. Diller Scofidio Renfro delivered with a design of extreme restraint. Chasubles, mantles and tiaras appear in pristine cases, and entire walls are left white. A glorious cope, or outer cloak, painstakingly made between 1845 and 1861 and worn by Pius IX, is laid flat like a grand, wearable semicircular tapestry; in its central gold shield is a dynamic nativity scene in embroidered silks of blue, pink and melon. A vision of Adam and Eve's expulsion sits beneath. Pius IX seems to have been a bit of a clothes hound, and of the many accessories in a smaller gallery mitres, crosiers, rings, and a pectoral cross of gold and amethysts that would suit Cher the most opulent are Pius's three tiaras, festooned with rubies and sapphires. A German made tiara here is ringed by three crowns comprising 19,000 stones, mostly diamonds. These are awe inspiring, though you need not be Martin Luther to look askance at their opulence. In the show's catalog, Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi writes that while "beauty and art have been the inseparable sisters of faith and Christian liturgy for centuries," Catholics ought to recall Jesus's warning, in the Woes of the Pharisees, not to make a show of your dress. No pope has worn a tiara since the Vatican II reforms of the 1960s unless you count Jude Law as the chain smoking, archconservative "Young Pope," who sported one for his terrifying investiture speech. Where the clothing at Fifth Avenue draws on Catholicism's rigid hierarchy and public rites, the Cloisters showcases fashion reflecting the quieter side of faith. It's here you'll find, in the reconstructed Spanish chapel, the show's most famous ensemble: Balenciaga's 1967 wedding gown, made of silk the color of ice milk and topped with an architectonic hood in place of a veil. Erroneously known as the "one seam wedding dress," this extraordinary garment appears to have been immaculately conceived rather than sewn. Here, too, the scenography is hardly subtle; the Balenciaga bride faces the apse as if in prayer, and speakers twitter "Ave Maria." But in general Mr. Bolton's choreographed rendezvous between contemporary clothing and holy art of the past are more rewarding in the Cloisters' tight confines, where one to one encounters come more easily. Precisely arced straw hats by the experimental milliner Philip Treacy appear as a mathematician's response to the wimples of "The Flying Nun," and sit in front of Netherlandish reliquary busts of female saints. A long black dress from 1999 by Olivier Theyskens, its bodice incised with a cruciform gap, stands between painted limestone statues of Saints Margaret and Petronilla. Near the garden is an extraordinary couture dress by Ms. Chiuri and Mr. Piccioli for Valentino; its metal thread embroidery translates Cranach's Adam and Eve, and its flora and fauna, into splendiferous ornament. Mr. Bolton has made the unexpected and rewarding decision to place more than a dozen ensembles outdoors, in colonnades that ring the central cloister. Most outfits draw on monastic dress, including Mr. Piccioli's elegant hooded dress of brown cashmere and Mr. Owens' notorious (and rather stupid) sportswear robes cut out at the crotch. And there are older pieces, including an evening dress made in 1969 by the French designer known as Madame Gres, whose beige pleats are cinched by a brown knotted belt. Its inspiration is unmistakable: the habit of Zurbaran's painting of St. Francis of Assisi, the rough brown cloth evoked through Madame Gres's pilling angora wool. His namesake gave a speech this September that is worth keeping in mind when you see "Heavenly Bodies," in which he insisted that what is holy resides not in beauty alone. "I ask for the Church and for you the grace to find the Lord Jesus in the hungry brother, the thirsty, the stranger," Pope Francis pleaded. And to find it, too, in "the one stripped of clothing and dignity." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
Credit...Sam Hodgson for The New York Times New drugs and methods of altering a patient's own immune cells are helping some cancer patients but not all even when standard treatments fail. Yet for all the promise and excitement, the fact is that so far, immunotherapy has worked in only a minority of patients, and researchers are struggling to find out why. They know they have their hands on an extraordinarily powerful tool, but they cannot fully understand or control it yet. Mr. Cara, an apparel industry executive from Bridgewater, N.J., had non small cell lung cancer, the most common form of the disease. The diagnosis shattered what had been an idyllic life: a happy marriage, sons in college, a successful career, a beautiful home, regular vacations, plenty of golf. In December 2014, he began treatment with two checkpoint inhibitors. They cost about 150,000 a year, but as a study subject he did not have to pay. These medicines work on killer T cells, white blood cells that are often described as the soldiers of the immune system. T cells are so fierce that they have built in brakes the so called checkpoints to shut them down and keep them from attacking normal tissue, which could result in autoimmune disorders like Crohn's disease, lupus or rheumatoid arthritis. One checkpoint stops T cells from multiplying; another weakens them and shortens their life span. As the name suggests, checkpoint inhibitors block the checkpoints, so cancer cannot use them to turn off the immune system. Mr. Cara took drugs to inhibit both types of checkpoints. Every two weeks, he had intravenous infusions of Yervoy and Opdivo, both made by Bristol Myers Squibb. He had no problems at first, just a bit of fatigue the day after the infusion. He rarely missed work. But turning the wrath of the immune system against cancer can be a risky endeavor: Sometimes the patient's own body gets caught in the crossfire. About two months into the treatment, Mr. Cara broke out in a rash all over his arms, back and chest. It became so severe that he had to go off the drugs. A steroid cream cleared it up and he was able to resume treatment but with only one drug, Opdivo. Doctors stopped the other in hopes of minimizing the side effects. One example is anal cancer, a painful disease that carries a stigma because it is often linked to the sexually transmitted human papillomavirus or HPV, which also causes cervical cancer. Lee, 59, who asked that her last name be withheld to protect her privacy, found out in 2014 that she had the disease, and that it had spread to her liver. "I was told I'd be dead in 12 to 18 months with treatment, six months with no treatment," she said. Chemotherapy and radiation at a hospital near Dallas brought a remission that lasted only a few months. The cancer spread to her lungs. Bedridden and in severe pain, she entered an immunotherapy trial at M.D. Anderson. In May 2015 she began receiving Opdivo every two weeks. The tumors in her liver and lungs have shrunk by about 70 percent. She is back at work. While the drugs initially were given only to people with advanced disease, especially those who had little to lose because chemotherapy had stopped working, Dr. Heymach of M.D. Anderson predicted that soon some patients including some with earlier stages of lung cancer will receive checkpoint inhibitors as their first treatment. Immunotherapy is also enabling doctors to help patients in unexpected ways. Until recently, surgeons were reluctant to operate on people with advanced cancer because they knew from experience that it would not lengthen the patient's life. But checkpoint inhibitors are changing that. For instance, some patients have taken checkpoint inhibitors for an advanced cancer that had spread around the body, and wound up with only one stubborn tumor left. They then have had it surgically removed and have gone years without a relapse. "Time has slowed down to the point where you can pay attention to individual tumors, since you're not running to put out the fire of wholesale systemic progression," Dr. Wolchok said. In addition to causing lung inflammation, checkpoint inhibitors can lead to rheumatoid arthritis and colitis, a severe inflammation of the intestine the result of an attack by the revved up immune system that over the counter remedies cannot treat. Patients need steroids like prednisone to quell these attacks. Fortunately and mysteriously, Dr. Wolchok said the steroids can halt the gut trouble without stopping the immune fight against the cancer. But if patients delay telling doctors about diarrhea, Dr. Wolchok warned, "they could die" from colitis. Checkpoint inhibitors can also slow down vital glands pituitary, adrenal or thyroid creating a permanent need for hormone treatment. Mr. Cara, for instance, now needs thyroid medication, almost certainly as a result of his treatment. Doctors have reported that a patient with a kidney transplant rejected it after taking a checkpoint inhibitor to treat cancer, apparently because the drug spurred his immune system to attack the organ. Another of Dr. Hellmann's lung cancer patients, Joanne Sabol, 65, had to quit a checkpoint inhibitor because of severe colitis. But she had taken it for about two years, and it shrank a large abdominal tumor by 78 percent. Patients like her are in uncharted territory, and doctors are trying to decide whether to operate to remove what is left of her tumor. "I have aggressive cancer, but I'm not giving in to it," Ms. Sabol said. "It's going to be a big battle with me." Dr. William B. Coley, an American surgeon born in 1862, is widely considered the father of cancer immunotherapy. But he practiced a crude form of it, without understanding how it worked. Distressed by the painful death of a young woman he had treated for a sarcoma, a bone cancer, in 1891, Dr. Coley began to study the records of other sarcoma patients in New York, according to Dr. David. B. Levine, a medical historian and orthopedic surgeon. One case leapt out at him: a patient who had several unsuccessful operations to remove a huge sarcoma from his face, and wound up with a severe infection, then called erysipelas, caused by Streptococcal bacteria. The patient was not expected to survive, but he did and the cancer disappeared. A bearded, slightly rumpled figure, Dr. Allison plays harmonica with research colleagues in a blues rock band called the Checkpoints. He is good enough to have accompanied Willie Nelson onstage at the Redneck Country Club in Stafford, Tex., this spring, playing, "Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die." Immunology, particularly the study of T cells, has been his life's work. Cancer came later. "I became interested in cancer because I've lost a number of family members to cancer," said Dr. Allison, chairman of the immunology department and executive director of the immunotherapy platform at M.D. Anderson. "My mother and two of her brothers, and my own brother, died of cancer." Around the time of his brother's death from prostate cancer, Dr. Allison learned that he had the same disease himself. He was treated successfully, he said, adding with a laugh that he was more likely to die from inactivity than from cancer. In the 1990s, Dr. Allison, then at the University of California, Berkeley, and Dr. Jeffrey Bluestone of the University of California, San Francisco, independently made a landmark discovery: They proved that a molecule widely believed to activate the immune system actually shut it down. The molecule was a protein on the surface of T cells a crucial checkpoint and it was nature's way of subduing the T cells, apparently to dial back their ferocious activity and prevent them from attacking a person's own tissue. Cancer cells can sometimes lock onto checkpoints, disabling the T cells. Dr. Allison wondered if it might be possible to block the checkpoint and launch the T cells against cancer. He and a graduate student, Matthew Krummel, developed an antibody a molecule made by certain cells of the immune system that would stick to the checkpoint and block it. When the researchers, including Dana Leach, a postdoctoral fellow, gave the antibody to mice with cancer, tumors vanished. Recalling those first tests in mice, Dr. Allison said it was astounding to see the cancers shrink and disappear. Veterinarians thought the mice had contracted an infection or a skin disease. But the sores that worried the vets were actually tumors that were ulcerating and rotting away under assault by T cells. Many drug companies were skeptical about the findings, but one, Medarex, created a human version of the antibody. Medarex was later acquired by Bristol Myers Squibb, and the antibody, given the trade name Yervoy, was approved in 2011 to treat advanced melanoma. David Wight, a retired oil engineer in Anchorage, is a study participant who has been able to take every possible step to save his life. When bladder cancer began to spread in his abdomen, he was given three to 12 months to live. That was four and a half years ago. On a recent Saturday, Mr. Wight, who is 75 but looks younger, refereed a boys' soccer game, racing up and down the field with the players. The following Wednesday he rose at 3 a.m. to fly 3,300 miles to Houston, where he would arrive at about 5 p.m. He has been making that trip every other week for over two years to receive immunotherapy at M.D. Anderson. For about a year and a half, his disease has been in complete remission. Until recently, he paid his own airfare. But a few months ago, Bristol Myers Squibb, the maker of the drug being studied, began picking up the tab, even reimbursing him retroactively about 50,000 so far. He has five children: three in their 40s, a son, 16, and a daughter, 10. The younger two were only 10 and 5 when he learned he was ill, and the thought that he might not have survived to raise them still brings tears to his eyes. Describing the time he has gained to be with his family, he said, "I won a lottery that's bigger than anybody could imagine." His cancer was diagnosed in summer 2010, after a test during a routine physical found cancer cells in his urine. A small tumor had invaded the wall of his bladder. Mr. Wight had his bladder removed at a hospital in Anchorage, and was told he needed no further treatment. A year after the surgery, he and his doctors were horrified to find that a large tumor had wrapped itself around his colon. Only then did the doctors discover that he had a rare, aggressive type of bladder cancer, called plasmacytoid. His doctors consulted with a hospital in Seattle, which devised a treatment plan. "They said one word that told me I was not where I wanted to be: 'palliative,'" Mr. Wight said. He knew palliative treatment was meant to ease symptoms, but not cure the disease. "I said, 'No thank you. We can do better than that,'" he recalled. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
Verizon doesn't sell its mobile phones or wireless plans over Amazon. Nor does it offer Fios, its high speed internet service. But Verizon does advertise on Amazon. On Black Friday last year, when millions of online shoppers took to Amazon in search of deals, a Verizon ad for a Google Pixel 2 phone buy one and get a second one half off could be seen blazing across Amazon's home page. And on July 16, what Amazon calls Prime Day, an event with special deals for its Prime customers, Verizon again ran a variety of ads and special offers for Amazon shoppers, like a mix and match unlimited service plan. Amazon, which has already reshaped and dominated the online retail landscape, is quickly gathering momentum in a new, highly profitable arena: online advertising, where it is rapidly emerging as a major competitor to Google and Facebook. The push by the giant online retailer means consumers even Prime customers, who pay 119 a year for access to free shipping as well as streaming music, video and discounts are likely to be confronted by ads in places where they didn't exist before. In late August, some gamers were angered when Twitch, a video game streaming service acquired by Amazon in 2014, said it would soon no longer be ad free for Prime members unless consumers paid an additional 8.99 a month for a premium service called Twitch Turbo. Amazon derives the bulk of its annual revenue, forecast to be 235 billion this year, from its e commerce business, selling everything from books to lawn furniture. Amazon is also a leader in the cloud computing business, with Amazon Web Services, which accounts for around 11 percent of its revenue but more than half of its operating income. But in the company's most recent financial results, it was a category labeled "other" that caught the attention of many analysts. It mostly consists of revenue from selling banner, display and keyword search driven ads known as "sponsored products." That category surged by about 130 percent to 2.2 billion in the first quarter, compared with the same period in 2017. Those numbers are a pittance for Google and Facebook, which make up more than half of the 88 billion digital ad market. But they come with big and troubling implications for those two giants. Much of online advertising relies on imprecise algorithms that govern where marketing messages appear, and what impact they have on actual sales. Here, Amazon has a big advantage over its competitors. Thanks to its wealth of data and analytics on consumer shopping habits, it can put ads in front of people when they are more likely to be hunting for specific products and to welcome them as suggestions rather than see them as intrusions. "Google and Facebook have been slow to create the standards that advertisers want to see," said Collin Colburn, an analyst at the research and advisory firm Forrester. "They are concerned about what sort of content their ads are going to be placed next to." He added, "Amazon is different because it has a much more controlled environment on its e commerce site where the products are being sold, and Amazon's reach into the rest of the World Wide Web is pretty small." Amazon has sold some forms of advertising for years, including sponsored product listings tied to search keywords on its site, and ads on properties it owns like IMDb and Zappos. The company will also sell advertising spots on the Thursday night National Football League games it live streams to Prime customers this fall. But some analysts who follow the company closely say Amazon is now focusing more on advertising, rapidly hiring and building out its capabilities in a business with high profit margins for Google and Facebook. 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 turn, brands are increasingly recognizing Amazon's vast customer reach, particularly to its more than 100 million Prime subscribers. In a study conducted last summer by Catalyst, the search and social media marketing company, only 15 percent of the 250 brands marketers polled felt they were making the most out of advertising on Amazon's platform, and 63 percent of the companies already advertising there said they planned to increase their budget in the coming year. Many big brands that sell products on Amazon have increased their advertising on the site this year, including General Mills, Hershey and Unilever, according to an analysis of display ads by the research firm Gartner L2. But the bigger surprise is the increase in advertising on Amazon by companies, like Verizon, AT T and the insurer Geico, that don't directly sell any product or service on the site. In the first half of 2018, Geico ran six times as many display ads as it did during the same period last year, according to Oweise Khazi, associate director of Amazon IQ research at Gartner L2. (Geico declined to comment.) Verizon said the reason for its increased advertising spending on Amazon was simple: It's where the shoppers are. "They have people who are in a shopping mind set, so that's valuable for Verizon to be seen as a resource within that mind set," said John Nitti, the chief media officer at Verizon. Thanks to the vast amount of data Amazon collects from its customers, it can target ads not only to basic demographics say, women over the age of 35 but to a more precise segment of customers who are likely to be shopping for cellphones or barbecue grills. Amazon is not just selling ads online. For Verizon, the opportunities to advertise over Amazon may increase as the e commerce giant continues to build its internal media group and opens new advertising spots on various platforms or devices. Verizon, for instance, will soon be running a test: It will put Fios advertisements on Amazon packages being delivered to ZIP codes where Verizon offers the service. Last year, the jeans maker Levi Strauss Company shifted some of its advertising spending away from YouTube to Amazon, where it sharply increased its use of display ads, according to a May report by Gartner L2. In doing so, Levi's increased the brand's visibility in Google searches, driving shoppers to an Amazon page with Levi's merchandise, the research firm said. In an emailed statement, a spokeswoman for Levi's said the company had increased its marketing investment across all channels, including television, traditional digital and newer digital platforms, including Amazon. For some brands, the increased spending is most likely directly linked to increased competition on Amazon's platform from Amazon itself. As Amazon introduces more of its own private label goods, many companies are expanding their advertising spending to raise the visibility of their products. On a recent afternoon, a consumer who typed "cereal" into the search bar of Amazon's browser would first see an ad for JoyBol, followed by similar ads for General Mills' Corn Chex and Cinnamon Toast Crunch. But just below those ads, in a box labeled "Top Rated From Our Brands," a number of cereals from 365 Everyday Value were featured. That is the private label of the grocer Whole Foods, which Amazon acquired in 2017. Kellogg Company, which faces much of the same competition, said it had been generally shifting advertising dollars toward digital platforms. "With Amazon's platform now being a leader in many elements of advertising including, for many categories, search it makes sense for part of those ad dollars to be allocated there," said Monica McGurk, Kellogg's chief revenue and e commerce officer, in an emailed response to questions. But for Kellogg's, what sets advertising on Amazon's platform apart from others, like Google or Twitter, is the online retailer's data. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
What Do Gen Z Shoppers Want? A Cute, Cheap Outfit That Looks Great on Instagram Mia's interest in clothes ramped up about 18 months ago, when she started getting an allowance and attracting followers on her social media accounts. She has more than 1,500 followers on Instagram, gets around 500 views per story on Snapchat and spends three hours per day on her iPhone XR (about five hours on weekends and during vacation). Her favorite going out look is a red dress. She owns 14 of them. I browse every single day at least once on the Pretty Little Thing phone app. It's my favorite, and I don't look anywhere else, except if I see something on an Instagram influencer I like. My current favorite is Molly Mae Hague, a star from the 2019 series of "Love Island." She recently created an exclusive clothing range for PLT, which makes me like the brand even more. Normally I look at shopping apps at the end of the day before bed for about 10 to 15 minutes. But if there is an event coming up that I want a new outfit for, then I could browse for more than an hour. I don't really go to bricks and mortar stores. If I do, I go to Primark. Sometimes H M. Maybe once a month, probably less. What kind of an event needs a new look? It could literally just be a meal. Or a house party, or a friend's birthday. It could also be school, where we have a dress code but not a uniform. Why is Pretty Little Thing your favorite fashion brand? I pay PS8.99 as part of a yearly subscription, which gives me unlimited next day delivery on anything I buy. I know all the delivery people really well now they always know when I have plans on a Friday or Saturday night. I don't buy from places like Boohoo.com or Missguided as I'd have to pay for delivery, which would be a waste of money. I buy something at least once a week, and my basket value can be anywhere from PS5.99 up. Once it was PS230. Last week I bought 11 items and sent back three. Seventy percent of the time I send some ordered items back. What is your favorite piece that you've bought, and how many times have you worn it? The ones I probably wear the most are gray leggings that cost PS2.50. For going out, I bought a silky red dress with a cutout for a house party. It cost PS12.50 from the PLT Shape collection, which is for people like me who have an hourglass figure. I've worn it out three times, which is a lot for me. Normally I just wear a dress once. Because I'll normally be in photos when I'm wearing it that are then posted on social media. I wouldn't really want someone seeing me in a dress more than once. People might think I didn't have style if I wore the same thing over and over. Style is about changing for whatever the situation you are in and for different events. When do clothes become old for you? Well, things like leggings that you just wear in private around the house you can keep for years. Dresses, when you've worn them: twice. Of course. If I'm only going to wear something once or twice, I'm going to want to buy the cheapest possible. What constitutes a more special purchase for you? An Oh Polly! dress. I buy them for about PS20 from Depop, though new they cost about PS40 to PS60. Those dresses I keep I have three of them. Teenagers don't mind buying secondhand clothes like some older people do: You can get good looks at a cheaper price, or directly swap one dress for another online. I tend to sell lots of the clothes I don't want in big batches on Depop. It gives me the money to buy new things. I also sometimes take big bags to consignment stores in town, where they give you a bit of money for your clothes depending on how much you bring in. Do you ever think about where those clothes go once you've given or thrown them away? Do you ever look at where your clothes are made? Yes. I've noticed quite a few are made in England, which shocked me. I thought they'd all be made in countries like China, India and Bangladesh. Also, we have been learning a bit in Sociology about how our clothes are made and the working conditions for people who make them. In some countries I know they don't get very good wages. It's part of globalization. I wouldn't talk about it with my friends casually, but we do talk about it in the classroom. Ms. Vargas guessed she had purchased between 100 and 200 items this year, including shoes and jewelry, and that her wardrobe comprises 500 or 600 total pieces. "I would say the majority of it is shirts," she said. "They have to be graphic tees. I like a little quote on my shirt here and there. I have yet to buy new jeans. I like a lot of ripped jeans. I rarely buy shoes." She doesn't generally check where her clothing is made, and she doesn't feel guilty about how much of it she has. After she's done wearing something, it can have a second life. "My mom is from El Salvador and my dad is from Nicaragua," she said. "They're not wealthy countries, so I like to give back to people who don't have a lot. It's hot there, so I can't send long sleeves, but I try to send shorts that don't fit me, things that are still presentable and wearable." She thinks the right amount of money to spend on clothes is 10 to 15 on tops, and 20 40 on bottoms. For dresses, which are usually for a special occasion, she'll go over 40. She estimates she wears each piece 15 times before ultimately donating it or selling it on Depop but she also doesn't want to be seen wearing the same thing every day on Instagram. On my main Instagram, people wouldn't know I'm funny. Because I just overthink what I post: Will people get it? Are people actually going to laugh at that? Sometimes I'll get a weird feeling where I need to get off social media. I know some people delete their Instagram, like just the app. But that's admitting to yourself that you have a problem. I look for clothes at least once a week usually either for an occasion, or just as something to do either online or in store. I shop 60 percent online, 40 percent in person. But 75 percent of the time, I'll go to the shops, have a look around, and not find one thing because I think everything is the same. I'm not afraid to put on something weird. I'm really big into animal print at the moment. Almost to the point where I'll wear too much of it. I love my snake pants and flares. Flares should never go out. For basics, 100 percent of my wardrobe is from Kookai. They're always rotating really nice, classic things. I get a lot of stuff off Revolve, because there are so many different brands. You've got things there that you're not going to see five people wearing once you're out. From other online brands like Princess Polly, Tiger Mist. Sometimes it's overwhelming how much stuff there is online. I could go on for hours. Often, on Instagram, I'll scroll through the Explore page, and people just tagging outfits. It's so helpful because you just click onto the account, find the item. That's how I find the little niche things. Where were these dresses made? If I feel so amazing in something, I'm probably not going to look too hard into the price. But I don't like investing a lot of money for something you might not wear too much. I like Pretty Little Thing for crazy things for cheap, because they just do interesting little tops or little dresses, clubbing clothes. Do I look at the labels of clothes? Not really. In the back of my head, I assume that I know where the clothes are made: in China. In terms of how much I would spend: average price of a dress, probably about 180 Australian dollars. Jeans, about 150. A good going out top, 50. I do like a nice pair of heels, so I've spent like 200 for a pair. But then again I've got ones for 50. In my wardrobe now, I'd say I have roughly 200 pieces. When I pull it all out and you see a big pile of clothes on your floor, you feel a bit sick. I'm glad that I can send it somewhere and it's helping at least my family. I want to support sustainable brands. But if it doesn't work for me and what I'm doing in my lifestyle, I'm going to go with something else instead. Timing is important. For what I wore to the Listen Out festival yesterday, I ordered on Tuesday morning, it came on Wednesday morning: literally in 24 hours. That means so much to me. I'm the least decisive person and the least patient person. When miniature bags were in, I was obsessed with this one from London. You could get your initials on it. But it said it could take 30 days and I was like, never mind. I got a cute one from Mango. You're pushing it after seven business days. If it's a big order I don't mind waiting for a week. But if it's one thing, it's like: Why? Interviews have been edited for style and clarity. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
The logic seems simple, impeccable even. When children put a smartphone at the top of their wish list, remind them that they don't need any such thing. Talking and texting may be necessary, but roving Internet access is not. So a dumbphone it is, with voice service and unlimited texting just to show you care and are no Scrooge. Throw in a nice Qwerty keyboard as a sign of parental generosity, but no, repeat, no data plan at all. If only it were that easy. Whether parents like it or not, most new phones these days come with the ability to access the Internet. Perhaps not enough mothers and fathers are holding their ground to make a market for manufacturers of stripped down hardware. Or maybe the device makers and service providers want Instagram, Snapchat and the various app stores within every new user's reach. Whatever the reason, parents picking out a child's first phone will need to plan carefully if they want it to be both modest and teach a few money lessons. First, those of you seeking that holy grail of voice plus texting and a full Qwerty keyboard (but no option for Internet service) will find few readily available choices for sale. T Mobile doesn't sell dumbphones at all, in fact. One good hardware option (aside from reactivating an older phone of your own and hoping it will work on today's networks) is the Alcatel Onetouch flip phone. Sprint offers that one (as do prepaid wireless services like Boost Mobile and Virgin Mobile). The phone can text, but it lacks a physical keyboard beyond the numbers. Just to remind you of your stubbornness and to give your children a new name to call you Sprint and Virgin call this device the Retro. Boost refers to its Onetouch as the Fling, which might describe the relationship between an entitled teenager's arm and the nearest wall Christmas morning. One possibility for avoiding long faces is the text and voice only Punkt phone, which is cool enough to have become an object of lust on design blogs this year. The voice only Light Phone that should arrive in 2016 should offer an even more stripped down experience. Parents who are already in the game know that if you're willing to set strict hardware boundaries aside, you can often use the carriers' parental controls to render a smartphone permanently dumb (by blocking all Internet access via a data plan, say), or at least temporarily so (by blocking the Internet at certain times each day or after incidents of wretched behavior). So perhaps you start by agreeing to buy the cheapest smartphone or handing down your old one. Then, you can restrict usage in all sorts of ways, though the carriers will often charge you a small monthly fee for the privilege of reining in your children. Smart Limits from AT T, Mobile Controls from Sprint (Android only), FamilyWhere and Family Allowances from T Mobile, and FamilyBase from Verizon (not available with Android Marshmallow) are the services. The offerings may include alerts when children travel outside certain areas, the ability to turn text and Internet data service off during certain hours of the day or designated sleeping hours, overall monthly limits on usage of various sorts and approved (and disapproved) contacts. But if you're convinced, as I am, that a child's first phone ought to be a financial exercise, too, check out a service called Ting. It does not offer any texting only phones; the company finds that, believe it or not, they now cost more than smartphones, when it can find them at all. What sets Ting apart is its unique gridlike rate sheet. For every set of minutes, messages and megabytes you use, you pay accordingly at the end of the month. It's a classic budgeting task and should cause most teenagers to figure out very quickly the difference between mobile phone wants and actual needs. Parents might start in this context by defining "need" in terms of a reasonable number of calls or texts each month, and then letting their child pay for any overages (and perhaps all of the Internet time that doesn't happen via household Wi Fi). Similar services that offer prepaid wireless plans, like Boost, Virgin and the child centered Kajeet, can teach similar lessons. You'll also want to put in place rules for replacement in case of damaged, lost or stolen phones. Grown ups shouldn't buy mobile phone insurance in most cases. The monthly fee and the deductibles generally make it a bad bet. For children, however, the insurance purchase decision becomes a real lesson in risk and responsibility. Make them liable for losses and let them decide whether to pay for insurance or not, just so they can see how the system works. Speaking of rules, you're the one who sets the etiquette and safety ones, no matter how much of the phone or service your children are paying for. I still like the contract that Janell Burley Hofmann, the author of the book "iRules," wrote when she and her husband declared their 13 year old son phone ready. It went viral, deservedly so. Now that their second child is clamoring for a phone, I was wondering whether she regretted letting the older one start with an iPhone. Was it too much? Too soon? Not the way the family handled it, Ms. Burley Hoffman said. First, it was clear that a phone was a privilege and not a right, and it came with certain levels of required baseline behavior. Then, they allowed ever more use of the phone as if they were erecting a scaffold. Any phone, for instance, can be turned off entirely during the school day and set for only Wi Fi use at home. Perhaps social media doesn't start for a year or more, with in app purchases coming sometime after that. "If we want to teach them to cook, we don't throw a bunch of knives on the table and turn the stove on and say, 'Be careful, that gets hot,' and have them make dinner," she said. The iPhone that son No. 1 got was free from the carrier. When son No. 2 is ready, however, the no cost option won't be available, and for now, the family is wary of having him possess the nicest mobile hardware in the house, no matter who pays for it. But they are not against smartphones by any stretch. "Just because it can fully access the Internet doesn't mean we have to use it that way," she said. "There are controls. There are settings. And it can be as smart or dumb as we want it to be." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Your Money |
LONDON One's public posture gives scant indication of behavior behind closed doors. That truism is illustrated anew to dazzling effect in Nina Raine's "Consent," which has immediately announced itself as an early contender for the most blistering new play of the year. Playing through May 17 in the National Theater's smallest auditorium, the Dorfman, "Consent" seems unlikely to be confined to this address, and let's hope that the director, Roger Michell, can keep the dream ensemble, which includes his wife, the actress Anna Maxwell Martin, wherever the play goes next. For now, it feels as if a single viewing is barely sufficient to clock the various crosscurrents and role reversals of a drama fueled by a rape case and the language of consent, in all the manifold meanings of that loaded word. But what looks at first to be a courtroom drama of sorts becomes instead a merciless inquiry into the stresses troubling two marriages and the individuals caught in their crossfire. The play ends with a plea for forgiveness from a high powered lawyer, Edward (the terrific Ben Chaplin), who isn't used to fighting for his own survival. His emotional surrender is characteristic of the landscape of "Consent," in which by play's end virtually no character has the defenses necessary to withstand the ravages of the human heart. Factor in their efforts to play matchmaker for Tim (Pip Carter), who is the prosecutor in the rape case where Edward is acting for the defense, and you have a dramatic weave in which the characters' cleanly delineated work lives are overtaken by very ugly private passions. The second act offers up as raw a roundelay of desire gone awry, or adrift, as I have come across in any London play since Patrick Marber's "Closer," which opened at the National 20 years ago. Think of "Consent" as the thematically comparable distaff equivalent from a playwright, Ms. Raine, whose best known work, "Tribes," has been produced worldwide. If Ms. Raine sells short any one character, it would be the working class Gayle (Heather Craney), whose rape exists to illustrate the intractability of the very institutions that Tim, Edward and their like navigate with ease. Plaintive as her appeals to common sense may be ("I honestly don't believe the stuff you're coming out with," she lets fly at Edward), Gayle doesn't command the author's attention to the same degree as the professionals in her midst. They, in turn, are hoisted on the petard of hypocrisy or, at the very least, fallibility, in a sequence of face offs that leaves no one in peace. Can it be any wonder that the presence at the play's beginning of an actual baby no prop infants here! prompted discussion first at the intermission and in the theater foyer afterward, but of differing degrees? How still and quiet the baby was, we all marveled after the first act. By the end, the commentary focused instead on the child's preternatural state of grace set against the rivetingly and irrevocably fractured array of adults that Ms. Raine puts on view. The idea of consent takes a decidedly different form in Edward Albee's "The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia?", the Tony winning play from 2002 that has opened at the Theater Royal Haymarket around the corner from the West End revival of the playwright's "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" ("The Goat" runs through June 24.) First seen in London in 2004, when its cast featured a then unknown actor named Eddie Redmayne as the central couple's gay son, "The Goat" joins "Virginia Woolf" as part of a growing London immersion in the American repertoire that includes revivals of Tony Kushner's "Angels in America" and Sam Shepard's "A Lie of the Mind" alongside the local debut of Branden Jacobs Jenkins's Off Broadway hit, "An Octoroon." Having seen both London iterations of "The Goat," I'm beginning to wonder whether anyone can ever again transmit the ineffable innocence that was brought to the play by its wondrous original Broadway leading man, Bill Pullman, in the driving role of a prestigious architect whose life is upended when he falls in love with well, yes a goat. "Oh, Sylvia! Oh, Sylvia!" the feted careerist Martin (played here by Damian Lewis) exults to best friend Ross (Jason Hughes), his rapture the stuff of many a Romantic poem. But things turn messy and unquotable, given the eventual expletives once Martin reveals that his beloved is not a person but a quadruped. Coming from a vaunted playwright who died last year at 88 and who represented close to the last word in literacy, "The Goat" opens itself up to multiple interpretations, not least the fact that the play's parenthetical subtitle "Notes toward a definition of tragedy" tallies with the word's Greek origin, "tragoidia," or goat song. As is the Albee norm, Martin and his progressively enraged wife, Stevie (Sophie Okonedo in the show's standout performance), are as likely to cross swords over the incorrect usage of "who" vs. "whom" as they are to battle over the specifics of Martin's adored and adoring Sylvia. Even in extremis, grammar and language matter: Stevie upbraids Martin for referring to the "top" of a hill, when the preferred word, she argues, should be "crest." Nor is Sylvia's presence the only taboo threatening aspect of a play presented without an intermission, so that its baleful fury can build uninterrupted. Martin and Stevie's anguished son Billy note the choice of name gives into a climactic impulse, not to be revealed here, that shatters an altogether different norm, even as Martin elsewhere reports someone else's disturbing story of dandling a baby on their knee. That reminiscence further tests the limits of tolerance. However one takes the play, "The Goat" poses challenges to a cast that has to mine the deepening furrows of a narrative that clearly isn't meant to be taken literally, however graphic the language at times. Alas, the director Ian Rickson's current reckoning with the emotional swerves of the writing isn't helped by intrusive music (composed by the singer songwriter PJ Harvey) where one might wish for silence and by Mr. Lewis's artificial seeming, nasal delivery, as if this adventurous actor were somehow at odds with the force field of Martin's affections. A dab hand at American accents in the television series "Homeland" and "Billions," Mr. Lewis seems to be struggling here to find the appropriate voice. As does, in his way, the newcomer Archie Madekwe as the teenage son whose own furies don't strike to the quick as they might. Ms. Okonedo, by contrast, brings with her the experience of playing two canonical American plays on Broadway "A Raisin in the Sun," for which she won a Tony in 2014, and "The Crucible," for which she was nominated last year and fields both Albee's acidic wit ("I thought I'd stop by the feed store," Stevie deadpans) and deepening pain. Stalking the shifting perimeters of an exposed brick set from Rae Smith that all but bleats Manhattan chic, this Stevie is a wife in free fall who locates her own definition of tragedy in a final action that makes something at once bestial and beastly of us all. Consent. Directed by Roger Michell. National Theater/Dorfman, through May 17. The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? Directed by Ian Rickson. Theater Royal Haymarket, through June 24. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
Despite its live music and the admirable skills of most of its dancers, "Baroque'd," BalletNext's program at New York Live Arts, is always less than good. It varies from the blandly vague (the first two items) to the amateurishly pseudo experimental (the last). That last dance, "Something Sampled," is sufficiently irksome to be considerably more memorable than the first two. Baroque scores are played well for all three by Liv Heym and Beth Wenstrom (violins), Anneke Schaul Yoder (cello), and Elliot Figg (harpsichord); but this isn't much help. All the dances make rhythmic and structural connections to the music, but superficially; they never help you hear it better or make you feel it gives them life. "Something Sampled" takes its title from Chris Lancaster's music for its long first half, in which the composer plays his own variety of uninteresting sounds with coarseness on an electric acoustic cello; the second half is set to Antonio Vivaldi's familiar "La Follia." That Lancaster opening section is danced as a solo by Jay Donn, who messes around with a few movements, while heavily directing facial expressions of rictus or open mouthed amazement at the audience. This Lancaster Donn partnership wrecks the evening. BalletNext was founded in 2011. The program tells us that it "produces and performs new choreography with world class dancers, set to live music" and that it "encourages risk taking with a focus on the process of creating new work." Sounds admirable but the United States has several ballet companies that also use live music, have at least equally fine dancers, and feature new works that show considerably more evidence of risk taking. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
While other New York City institutions have succumbed to the insatiable appetite of a hungry real estate market, the 128 year old Katz's Delicatessen, with 19.95 pastrami sandwiches and a legion of fans, found a way to hang on. Last year, the family owned deli at 205 East Houston Street sold two neighboring properties and its air rights for about 17 million, paving the way for a developer to build an 11 story condominium next door. The arrangement ensures that, for at least another generation, New Yorkers will be able to get corned beef and brisket at the Lower East Side deli that was immortalized in the 1989 film "When Harry Met Sally." The sale was part of a 75 million acquisition of 12 single story commercial spaces that spared Katz's, but sealed the fates of all of the other mom and pop businesses on East Houston Street between Orchard and Ludlow Streets. They were all displaced to make way for the new condo. Sales are set to start by the end of the month at 196 Orchard, with prices for the 94 apartments starting at 1.075 million for a 551 square foot studio. At a time when beloved destinations are closing at a disorienting pace, the survival of a symbol of Jewish culinary history comes as a relief to many. "So many people in the city have a story and a connection to this place," said Jake Dell, 28, sitting at a table in the back of Katz's, which his family bought in 1988. "To me personally, preserving it was the most important thing." In the more than a century that Katz's has been selling sandwiches and hot dogs on the Lower East Side, the neighborhood ushered in generations of immigrants who took refuge in the area's tenements. In the 1970s and 1980s, like many parts of the city, it suffered through an era of disinvestment, marked by rising crime and drug use. At one point, "This was a place where you came to buy drugs, not pastrami," said Mr. Dell, whose family hosted his bar mitzvah at the deli. Now, paradoxically, small businesses that survived more trying times are succumbing to the era of feverish real estate development, with its influx of wealth. Many longtime Lower East Side residents worry that the deal Katz's made means the deli will survive in a vacuum. With all the other neighboring businesses gone, it could become a mere relic in a neighborhood of walk ups that are rapidly being replaced with glassy condos, expensive boutiques and national chains like Whole Foods. "It's really a loss for the community when the mom and pop businesses disappear, which they really are at a frightening pace," said Richard D. Moses, the president of the Lower East Side Preservation Initiative. "When you lose too many, what you end up with is an environment that doesn't feel urban, doesn't feel local. It feels more generic." On a block where a kebab could once be had at 2 a.m. from Bereket, the 24 hour Turkish restaurant that was forced to close in 2014, there will now be a 30,000 square foot Equinox gym and spa with a lounge and juice bar; condo residents will be able to access the two story gym through a private entrance. Gone too, are places like Ray's Pizza and Empanada Mama. While such spots and the unmemorable single story buildings that once housed them could not claim any historic significance, they were popular haunts that gave the area its character. "A lot of people grew up going to Ray's Pizza on that block, and it's gone now," said James Rodriguez, an organizer for the Good Old Lower East Side, an affordable housing group. "And what's it being replaced with? It's an Equinox. A lot of people aren't going to be able to afford an Equinox." The developers of 196 Orchard insist that the changes have not obliterated the retail that existed in the area, only moved it, since some of the shops are now in new locations, like Karaoke Boho, which reopened nearby. Other businesses, including Bereket, are gone. "I'm sorry they went out of business, but it's part of evolution," said Ben H. Shaoul, the founder and principal of the Magnum Real Estate Group, which is developing 196 Orchard with the Real Estate Equities Corporation. Katz's Delicatessen is known for its hefty pastrami sandwiches. In fact, the condo's ground floor will include 20,000 square feet of retail, with one storefront reserved for a locally owned business, likely a cafe or restaurant. "You call it gentrification, I call it 'cleaning it up,' " said Mr. Shaoul, who has been buying properties on the Lower East Side since 1998. Katz's survival, however, was always part of the plan. "We were adamant in keeping them there," he said, sitting in Dirty French, a restaurant in the 20 story Ludlow Hotel that opened across from Katz's in 2014. "I love pastrami." The condo's marketing materials show a young woman gazing off into the distance, Katz's neon sign behind her. The building, designed by Ismael Leyva Architects, will have a black and bronze brick facade with industrial casement windows and a 4,100 square foot landscaped rooftop. Apartments will feature concrete ceilings, wide plank white oak floors and kitchens with charcoal lacquer cabinets, marble backsplashes and black quartz countertops. One bedrooms start at 1.275 million for 657 square feet; two bedrooms start at 2.285 million for 970 square feet; three bedrooms start at 4.2 million for 1,555 square feet; and four bedrooms start at 4.95 million for 1,770 square feet. Katz's is not the only historic institution cashing in on the Lower East Side's soaring real estate values. Demolition of the Streit's matzo factory could begin by the end of the month. A year ago, the family owned business sold the Rivington Street factory to developers for 30.5 million, bringing 90 years of matzo production there to an end. It will be replaced with a seven story glass condo, 150 Rivington Street, that will house 45 one and two bedroom apartments. Sales begin in May, with one bedrooms starting at around 975,000. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
Yachts the mere word connotes luxury and easy living. They are a symbol of wealth second only to private jets. But a new generation of younger owners is disrupting travel on the high seas. The changes are affecting how yachts are built and chartered, where they go and what crews are expected to do. Sitting on a 150 foot yacht in the Mediterranean is nice, but some think taking a superyacht to the North Pole is more adventurous. At the same time, spending 100 million on a yacht and taking off to parts unknown is not as easy as some newly rich entrepreneurs may believe. Insurance companies might balk. If owners are unaware of the importance of where their boat is registered, the yacht may sail under less stringent maritime requirements that could cause problems later. And if the crew is not properly selected and managed, the owner may wind up with legal and human resources claims. Let's start with some basics on superyachts. They are usually more than 200 feet long and loaded with amenities. The must have feature is a beach club, an opening at the back of the boat where watercraft and toys can be launched, or people can lounge by a pool bar with a view of the water. "As the boats got bigger, people lost a little bit of touch with the water," said Jonathan Beckett, chief executive of Burgess, a yacht management, brokerage and charter firm. As nice as that sounds, a superyacht is usually not practical to own if used just a few weeks a year. To stay sharp, boats need to be run and crews need to work. And annual expenses could be 10 million to 15 million, said Graeme Lord, owner of Fairport Yacht Support. When the boat is refitted, the costs start at 10 million, he added. Chartering is an option instead. Among the most popular superyachts on the market is the Titania, which is 240 feet long and sleeps 12 people in seven cabins. It is owned by John Caudwell, a British businessman who made his billions from mobile phone technology. Mr. Caudwell said he could use his yacht only three or four weeks a year, so instead of letting it sit idle, he worked to make it a top chartering experience. Last year, the Titania was among the most chartered superyachts, spending 20 weeks ferrying paying guests around the world. It costs 495,000 a week, not including an additional 25 percent to 30 percent for food, fuel and tips for the crew. The weekly summer rate climbs to 725,000. "Tips are motivation," Mr. Caudwell said. "If the crew gives exceptional service, they get enormous tips, and it makes it easier to recruit a great crew." But the old way of relaxing on a yacht lounging in the Mediterranean in the summer and the Caribbean in the winter is changing, and that has had several consequences. New owners, and wealthy people looking to charter yachts, are going to areas that are not navigated as often or want to take a long trip, say from Tahiti to the Galapagos Islands. That presents challenges. Adventure trips can take several weeks, and there can be gaps in satellite coverage for navigation, said Peter Grubb, who has been a captain since the 1980s. Captains are expected to be experts in celestial navigation, he said, adding that owners need to be sure that their captains could navigate if the yacht's equipment failed. The North Pole is another adventure destination. Feadship, which makes some of the most sought after yachts, built one specifically to go to the Arctic, said Farouk Nefzi, the Dutch firm's marketing and brand director. "With younger, more progressive clients stepping in, we see a lot more exploration and a greater need to be purposeful about yachting," he said. "The owners wanted to be able to go everywhere, including the Arctic region." Owners must also grapple with insurance, which is changing who can captain a yacht and where it can go. Given the size of losses that can occur, few insurers provide coverage. Premiums are going up, and more conditions are being placed on destinations, said Sean Blue, global head of watercraft at the insurer AIG. A fire in 2018 at the Lurssen shipyard in Bremen, Germany, resulted in the loss of a 700 million yacht and damage to the yard, Mr. Blue said. But most losses are smaller. "There are tens of other losses you might not be aware of, from yachts hitting rocks in the Red Sea or off the coast of Greenland to a lot of pretty significant, larger losses including fires," he said. As a result, the insurance industry has become more selective. "If you're insuring a 100 million boat, you can't collect enough premium to insure it," Mr. Blue said. "You have to pick the right client, clients who have professional yacht managers who are hiring and firing the crew, who are provisioning the boat, who are compliant with regulatory issues and different jurisdictional laws." Those premiums have increased by as much as 35 percent in the past two years, said Mr. Beckett of Burgess. More coverage has also been denied. "If you have a boat built for the Mediterranean and you want to go down to Antarctica, you're not going to get insurance for that," he said. With a more adventurous journey, the crew and the construction of the yacht matter for coverage. Mr. Blue said his firm had denied coverage to yachts going places they were not built to cruise. He added that many claims involved injury to the crew, including mental health problems. Burgess has led an initiative for better mental health at sea. "Owners are not there a lot, but when they are, the crew is working incredibly long hours with no days off," Mr. Beckett said. "That puts a lot of pressure on people." The flag a yacht flies under speaks, among other things, to how the yacht was built, how it is managed and the amount of compliance it is subjected to. Britain and France are on the white list for having top compliance with maritime regulations. "Your captain and crew have to do everything correctly to fly under those flags," Mr. Grubb said. The United States is a step below, on the gray list with Algeria, Iran, Libya and other countries. The black list include countries that are considered a high risk in terms of ensuring that a crew has the correct documents, is well trained and obeys the rules of the sea, including those that apply to pollution. In Florida, where yachting is a multibillion dollar industry, many yacht owners are looking abroad to have their boats serviced and refitted. They are also docking them in other countries to maintain a lower profile. "Some boat owners don't want to have their yachts here," said Phil Purcell, president of the Marine Industries Association of South Florida. "The optics of wealth have changed. You can change that perception by keeping your boat in Europe." Many of the largest yachts are built in European shipyards like those run by Feadship and Lurssen, so taking them back for work makes sense. Feadship builds four to six yachts a year but refits up to 12, Mr. Nefzi said. For some owners, the extra costs are worth the trouble. When Mr. Caudwell uses Titania for himself, he prefers to fill it with friends and family. "I love entertaining," he said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Your Money |
A 50 year old man was attacked by a bear in the wilderness of southwest Montana. Alone and injured, he walked then drove for miles to save himself. The man, Todd Orr, said he was scouting for elk in a mountainous valley on Sept. 30 when he was attacked twice by a female grizzly. Bleeding, stunned and suffering a cracked bone and deep gashes, Mr. Orr said he hiked through the woods for miles to reach his truck. In a gory video that had been viewed more than 37 million times by Thursday, Facebook posts describing the maulings and a new website that allows the public to track his recovery, Mr. Orr, 50, offers insights into the psychology of survival. While few people will encounter an angry bear in their lives, those in the business of first aid and extreme survival said his social media imprints invited general reflection: When someone finds themselves isolated, injured and bleeding, what should he or she do to survive the lonely trek in search of medical help? Dr. R. D. Marks, whose medical staff was the first to treat Mr. Orr, said the injured man came out of the woods on the morning after the attack and went to the Madison Valley Medical Center in the small city of Ennis, Mont., for help. "He just showed up at the door," Dr. Marks said on Thursday. "I think he called ahead and said he was coming. By that time it was like his badge: 'I got bit by a grizzly bear and I got a story to tell.' " Mr. Orr, who builds custom knives for a living, was recovering from multiple surgeries and unable to return telephone messages, according to a statement on his website. But in Facebook posts published last weekend, he said he had been scouting elk in Madison Valley, in the Lee Metcalf Wilderness area. That is bear country, Mr. Orr wrote. He should know; he was raised in the area. Armed with a pistol and repellent spray, he made lots of noise so as not to surprise any bears, which can make them lash out. "I hollered out, 'Hey, bear' about every 30 seconds," he wrote. But suddenly, on the trail ahead, he spotted a grizzly with cubs. She charged. "The force of each bite was like a sledgehammer with teeth," he wrote. "She would stop for a few seconds and then bite again. Over and over." Then the bear ambled away. Stunned and bleeding, Mr. Orr started back down the trail toward his truck, about a three mile trek. He took stock of his injuries: mostly puncture wounds on his arms and shoulder. He did not want to pause to dress the wounds, he wrote, so he half hiked, half jogged toward what he thought was safety. But then, a sound: It was the same bear, charging toward him again. He hit the dirt, covering his neck with his arms and pressing his face to the ground to protect his eyes: the textbook position to take during a bear attack. One bite clamped onto his forearm, and he heard a crunch. He gasped from the pain, but the sound sent the animal into a frenzy, biting his shoulder and upper back even more. So, Mr. Orr said, he played dead, lying motionless and silent as the bear bit his head, even as blood gushed into his eyes and face. "I thought this was the end," he wrote. Finally, the animal stopped. She stood on his back. Without moving, he endured moments of terrifying intimacy as the animal sniffed him. He felt her breath on his neck, her claws digging into his back, smelled her "pungent odor." Then she was gone. Somehow, Mr. Orr got to his feet. His pistol had been knocked out of reach. "But a quick assessment told me I could make it another 45 minutes to the truck without losing too much blood," he wrote. He took off along the trail. At the end of the path, he took photographs and the video. Panting, dry mouthed and with streams of blood crisscrossing his face, Mr. Orr recorded his injuries as he spoke to the camera. "She got my head good," he said. "I don't know what is under my hat. My ear, my arm, pieces of stuff hanging out I don't know what's going on in there," he said, displaying his mangled arm. "And then my shoulder she ripped up; I think my arm's broke. But legs are good. Internal organs are good. Eyes are good," he said. He got into the truck and drove, calling his girlfriend and 911, and asking a rancher along the way to telephone ahead for help. When Mr. Orr arrived at the medical center, Dr. Marks said, it was about 8 in the morning. Mr. Orr had driven six miles to reach a highway, and another 10 to get to the medical center, Dr. Marks estimated. "People are kind of amazing," he said. "We think about how terrible these things are, and some people do freak out, but most people go into survival mode, and you get crystal clear: 'Here is what I gotta do,' and they do it. "You take inventory and find everything is working I am alive," he added. Mr. Orr said he had a five inch gash above his ear and multiple bite marks for which he underwent several surgeries. Dr. Marks said Mr. Orr most likely stanched some of the heavy bleeding from his scalp wound by having his baseball cap pulled down over his head while on the trail. "It kind of pulled the edges together and controlled the bleeding, for the most part," Dr. Marks said. "Kind of like putting a pressure dressing on. I don't know if he thought about it that way." Tod Schimelpfenig, the curriculum director at NOLS Wilderness Medicine, a Wyoming school for wilderness medicine education, said that Mr. Orr was lucky the bear did not bite into an artery, penetrate his chest or skull, or rip off a large hunk of flesh. That would have made the bleeding unmanageable alone (though had he had help, he could have contained it with an expertly placed tourniquet). For people who might find themselves in similar situations, Mr. Schimelpfenig said puncture wounds should be treated by applying direct pressure for up to five minutes. With multiple punctures, you must "figure out the worst one." X rays showed that Mr. Orr had a cracked forearm bone, but on the trail he was apparently unhindered by it. A stabilizing splint could be fashioned with a shirt tail and a safety pin, Mr. Schimelpfenig said. Replenishing fluids is key, because you could lose blood while exerting yourself as Mr. Orr was while walking while injured. Mr. Orr's presence of mind was notable. In the video, he demonstrated behavior common to extreme survivors. He was objective, giving a factual accounting of the parts of his body that still worked. He was accepting admitting what he did not know, like the extent of his other wounds. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
World leaders agreed Wednesday on steps to curb the rapid rise of drug resistance, the first global effort to stop the spread of dangerous superbugs that are fast becoming immune to many of the most critical medicines. Infectious disease doctors have long warned that overuse of antibiotics in people and in animals puts human health at risk by reducing the power of the drugs, some of modern medicine's most prized jewels. The problem is global, because the bugs are mobile. Overuse in pig production in China, for example, has spawned superbugs that have surfaced in the United States and Europe. The numbers are sobering. Jim O'Neil, chairman of the British review on antimicrobial resistance, estimates that 700,000 people a year die from drug resistant infections. In the United States, about two million people fall ill from drug resistant bacteria every year and at least 23,000 die from those infections. The Obama administration has elevated the issue, laying out a strategy for how to bring the problem under control. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
For much of the culture industry, as with society at large, a single pressing issue looms over all others: Join the rush to reopen? Or remain anxiously hunkered down, lest like the fake ending of so many horror movies the seemingly defeated killer suddenly re emerges from his hiding spot. Yet in a growing number of quarters throughout the art world, the very terms of that debate are being questioned. Impassioned essays and teeth gnashing Instagram posts are asking if getting "back to normal" should truly be the final goal. Many of these critiques of business as usual mirror larger socio economic complaints, from the art handlers who quietly keep the entire billion dollar business humming along organizing for better wages and working conditions, to the emerging artists trying to make sense of the disconnect between their own running in place careers and record setting auction results. Where is the art to help us make sense of this moment, or to at least freshly question the way our current contemporary art has been produced, bought, and sold? And what would that alternative art world look like? Here are five recently published books that mine that subject. Few modern artists have been as closely associated with artmaking in a time of plague as David Wojnarowicz (1954 1992), whose work channeled a burning sense of outrage, first for his friends and lovers as they fell to AIDS, and then for his own looming mortality, as public officials seemed either indifferent or openly hostile to the disease's victims simply because so many were gay. Wojnarowicz's diaristic writing took on more complex feelings, as fascinatingly compiled in a handmade catalog he titled "In the Shadow of Forward Motion" to accompany a 1989 solo show. His gallery, New York's P.P.O.W., didn't have the budget then for a slick, professionally printed version, so he simply Xeroxed 50 copies for his show's opening, explaining in its foreword that his samizdat exhibition catalog was simply "rough notes, late night tape recordings, things spoken in sleep and fragmented ideas which at times contradict each other." He grossly undersold it. Now reissued as a paperback by the archival publisher Primary Information, it offers not only a look into Wojnarowicz's process, but also his philosophical musings, by turns wistful and playful yet always with the outside world pressing in. A diagram for how the gallery should hang a wall of his photos is grounded by the notes to self scrawled at the bottom of the page: "Pay Rent" and "Doctor 12:30 Thurs." The Cometbus journal had a similarly modest cut and pasted start in the Berkeley, Calif., bedroom of its 13 year old editor, and a punk rock enthusiast, Aaron Elliott. Nearly 40 years later, Cometbus is still going strong, still self published (albeit now handsomely typeset and bound), and still taking as its mandate all the workings of underground culture. Its 59th issue, released just as the pandemic began closing its sales network of independent bookstores, is appropriately entitled "Post Mortem." Consisting of a single 48,000 word essay written by Mr. Elliott, now based in Brooklyn, it colorfully records his past year crisscrossing the country to conduct revealing interviews with several generations' worth of countercultural figures who built lasting counterinstitutions, from Fantagraphics Books' Gary Groth in Seattle to Interference Archive's Josh MacPhee in Park Slope or who spectacularly failed to do so. The end result memorably splits the difference between memoir and business journalism, and is likely the sole place to find equally probing discussions of freight train hopping and nonprofit incorporation. The painter David Byrd (1926 2013) had the kind of career trajectory most artists dream of a solo show with the pioneering Seattle gallerist Greg Kucera, followed by an equally acclaimed show at New York's White Columns, and then representation by the blue chip Anton Kern Gallery as long as you ignore the seven decades before his being discovered in upstate New York. It's also a cruel iteration that artistic talent often has little to do with timely recognition. During that period, Byrd worked as an orderly on the psychiatric ward of the Montrose Veterans Affairs hospital in Westchester. Montrose VA 1958 1988 is a complete replica of a handmade book Byrd created to document his 30 years there, drawing his patients in various states of despair and confusion, or all too rarely, moments of transcendent peacefulness. To call it a sketchbook doesn't begin to do justice to Byrd's draftsmanship, or to the otherworldly quality he brings to rendering his patients' inner lives on the page. A global health crisis hasn't made Cafe Royal Books break stride. Virtually every Thursday, Craig Atkinson ("Cafe Royal Books is just me") of Southport, England, ushers a new, modestly priced, elegantly straightforward, zine style photography monograph into the world. The goal is simple "publishing, preserving, and making accessible British documentary photography." That means mining the archives of both relatively well known figures like Tish Murtha, whose photos of the 1977 Silver Jubilee honoring Queen Elizabeth capture that national celebratory moment in granular (and often hysterically funny) form, as well as those deserving of more attention, like Simon Pope. His grimy shots of mid 70s London children giddily turning their hollowed out city into an industrial playground make it seem as if the Blitz had just ended. The results, as seen in this monograph, put the focus on her four children, all documented over the subsequent decade with a striking intensity. Her subjects don't just intimately acknowledge the camera, they inhabit it, growing up right in front of Ms. Black's lens. And the outside world never stops intruding, from one child's black eye ("jumped in the street" elliptically notes the photo's caption) to another's suddenly spiky haircut, menacing gaze, and hand painted cutoff T shirt emblazoned with the chorus to an equally aggrieved punk anthem, "We're just a minor threat." As the years unfold, Ms. Black's sumptuous black and white portraiture reveals less a snapshot of cozy domesticity than a series of coping mechanisms, ways of learning how to finally become comfortable in one's own skin. It's a reminder that, whatever the era, and regardless of whether they're artists, most folks are forced to figure out their own path to so called normalcy. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
HONG KONG Daryl Ng was taking a long shower, as he does every morning. And his wife, as she does every morning, scolded him for needlessly using so much water. "How can I justify the amount of time I'm taking?" Mr. Ng recalled thinking to himself. And while looking at the water running down the drain, he got an idea. Why not harness that wasted water running down the drain? With Hong Kong's high concentration of skyscrapers, could gravity generate a considerable amount of electricity? Fortunately, Mr. Ng is the grandson of the founder of Sino Land, a Hong Kong property developer, and one of the company's executive directors. So he set up a prototype system in Olympian City, one of the company's shopping malls in Hong Kong. The system uses excess pressure in the water system to spin a Swiss built turbine, which generates electricity to power the lights in a back room. Mr. Ng is also installing turbines in the company's newest apartment development, The Avenue, in Hong Kong's Wan Chai neighborhood, that should be able to power the lighting in the stairwells, elevator shafts and lobby. There are many reasons the novel idea might not work. Small scale systems cannot easily generate enough power to justify their cost to large developers. The price per kilowatt hour of generating power can be five times as high as simply buying it from the grid. And factors like simple geography will water be flowing far enough down? can derail plans for turbines built into municipal water infrastructure. Nonetheless, the developer has pitched the concept to the governments of Beijing, Hong Kong and Singapore. He said the feedback from Hong Kong in particular had been very positive, with the city's new director of water supplies, Enoch Lam, expressing interest. Hong Kong is one of the most densely populated cities in the world, with about 23,000 people per square mile in its most crowded district. About 40 percent of the city's territory is devoted to parkland, and Hong Kong crowds people into office towers and residential apartment blocks that often top 50 stories. "All these buildings are energy sucking monsters," said Claude Touikan, a Hong Kong based director at the architecture and engineering firm Benoy, which is not involved with Mr. Ng's project. "Of course there is potential." But putting hydroelectric systems into new buildings is expensive. Mr. Ng has hired Arup, the engineering and project management company, to design a "plug and play" turbine system that would be relatively cheap and easy to fit into a building's infrastructure. He has also asked the company to find a way to charge his electric car, a Renault Fluence, using the water in his office building while he is at work. Hong Kong's water services department said it was pleased to see private developers taking the initiative. After five years of work, the department has also installed a turbine generator at the city's water treatment works in the Tuen Mun neighborhood that started operation in July and should generate 1.5 gigawatt hours of electricity per year. That would save 10 percent of the plant's electricity bill and cut carbon dioxide emissions by 2,000 tons per year, the department said. It is working on installing a second generator in the same plant by 2015. The city's drainage services department is also exploring the system. Arup estimates that turbines in the public water system in Hong Kong could power 6,000 households, or a population of about 24,000, which both the company and Mr. Ng concede is a tiny fraction of a city of seven million. While Mr. Ng is developing systems that could serve his buildings, he said he would be willing to turn over the technology "at cost, or potentially for free" to the government as well. "I don't care if people copy this idea if it can help the planet," Mr. Ng said. "We have to think outside the box so we can maintain our modern consumer lifestyle." This type of hydropower is used on a small scale in places like Muhlau, Austria, where the drinking water network provides 34 gigawatt hours of electricity a year. But in building systems are rare. "Today we don't have a product that is commercially available, so someone has to take ownership and understand the product," said Ravi Krishnaswamy, the vice president of the energy and environment practice for Asia at Frost Sullivan, the market research company. "You can power a few light bulbs. The challenge is going to be commercial viability and the scale." Experts say it makes no sense to install generators in pipes if they create more resistance than is offset by the amount of power they create. Arup's engineers said turbines could be installed in water pipes to harness the water falling from reservoirs to water treatment sites for city size systems, as well as in gravity driven wastewater systems. This would regulate pressure and flow as well as generate electricity. In skyscrapers, the water in pipes is put under high pressure to ensure consistent supply throughout the structure. The high pressure on the lower floors is released with valves, providing an opportunity to harness otherwise wasted energy by attaching a generator. For now, the amount of power generated would be nowhere close to the building's total energy consumption. "In buildings, it's quite straightforward as long as it's tall it will be viable," said Vincent Cheng, the director of building sustainability at Arup. In Hong Kong, the biggest advantages come in "our buildings, which are tall." In Beijing, many of the reservoirs are much higher than the city, meaning they have more potential for providing energy, Mr. Cheng added. The main issue is not the technology but the cost. For traditional generating methods, like coal powered electric stations, the cost is around 10 cents per kilowatt hour. Renewable energy sources like wind cost 20 to 40 cents, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency, while small scale hydropower projects cost up to 50 cents per kilowatt hour. That makes in building hydropower less attractive. "If you look seriously on the payback it would be 30 years or even longer with current technology," Mr. Cheng said. "If the question is whether it is commercially viable, people are looking for a payback of less than 10 years." The cost of installing generators in individual buildings is enough to deter most developers, analysts say. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
At the end of the dinosaur age, Tyrannosaurus rex was a behemoth killer animal, up to 40 feet long and weighing several tons the top carnivore in the food chain. The very first tyrannosaurs, which arose about 100 million years earlier, were small, about the size of a person. The evolutionary jump of tyrannosaurs from people and horse size to behemoths has remained a mystery. A recent fossil finding in Uzbekistan is providing paleontologists with a missing link in the lineage: They have discovered a tyrannosaur with many of the giant's characteristics but not its stature or heft. "It has long been thought that tyrannosaurs were such successful predators, in part, because of their large brains and ears well attuned to low frequency sound," said Stephen L. Brusatte, a paleontologist at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and lead author of a paper published Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, describing the new dinosaur. "The new Uzbek tyrannosaur has basically the same brain as T. rex same shape, proportions, etc. just smaller." The finding, he said, is a new indication that tyrannosaurs got smart before they got big. "It is one of the closest cousins of T. rex and tells us that tyrannosaurs evolved sophisticated brains and senses before they became colossal apex predators," Dr. Brusatte said. When the first tyrannosaurs evolved, about 170 million years ago, they lived in the shadows of larger meat eaters like Allosaurus. For tens of millions of years, tyrannosaurs remained small. And because few rocks of the age 100 million years to 80 million years old are now lying exposed or at the surface anywhere in the world, few clues exist to explain how the early tyrannosaurs evolved into large animals like T. rex. "The fossil record just stops," Dr. Brusatte said. "We don't know what goes on in that time." Before the gap, all tyrannosaurs were small. After the gap, none were. Tyrannosaurus rex and its relatives weighed one ton or more. Uzbekistan is one of the few places with geological formations that fall in that 20 million year gap. Beginning in 1997, Hans Dieter Sues, chairman of the paleobiology department at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, and Alexander O. Averianov, a senior scientist at the Russian Academy of Sciences, organized fossil collecting expeditions to the Kyzylkum Desert in northern Uzbekistan. The paleontologists uncovered some scattered bones of what appeared to be tyrannosaurs, but the key finding came in 2004 when they found the part of the skull surrounding the brain. "The braincase proved to be the Rosetta stone for the whole thing," Dr. Sues said. Dr. Brusatte, an expert on tyrannosaurs, was visiting Dr. Averianov a couple of years ago to study some other fossils. "He pulled open a box and pulled out this object about the size of a grapefruit," Dr. Brusatte recalled. "And he handed it to me and said, 'You know, what do you make of this?' " Dr. Brusatte joined an international team of researchers, including Dr. Sues and Dr. Averianov, in the analysis of the new tyrannosaur. Named Timurlengia euotica, the dinosaur lived about 90 million years ago, right in the middle of the fossil gap. (Timurlengia was named after a Central Asian warlord, Timur; euotica roughly means "well eared.") Based on a few scattered bones, the scientists estimated that Timurlengia was about the size of a horse, like earlier tyrannosaurs, weighing about 600 pounds, with long legs and blade like teeth. Lithe and fast, it probably chased down plant eaters like early duck billed dinosaurs also found in the region. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
Rush Limbaugh told millions of his radio listeners to set aside any suggestion that climate change was the culprit for the frightening spate of wildfires ravaging California and the Pacific Northwest. "Man made global warming is not a scientific certainty; it cannot be proven, nor has it ever been," Mr. Limbaugh declared on his Friday show, disregarding the mountains of empirical evidence to the contrary. He then pivoted to a popular right wing talking point: that policies meant to curtail climate change are, in fact, an assault on freedom. "Environmentalist wackos" Mr. Limbaugh's phrase "want man to be responsible for it because they want to control your behavior," the conservative host said on the show. He added that they "want to convince you that your lifestyle choices are the reason why all these fires are firing up out on the Left Coast." Hours later, that message leapt to prime time on Fox News, where the host Tucker Carlson said those who blamed climate change for the fires were merely reciting "a partisan talking point." "In the hands of Democratic politicians, climate change is like systemic racism in the sky," Mr. Carlson told viewers. "You can't see it, but rest assured, it's everywhere, and it's deadly. And like systemic racism, it is your fault." Mr. Limbaugh and Mr. Carlson are two of the most prominent commentators in the right wing media sphere, where a rich history of climate denialism has merged with Trump era cultural warfare to generate a deep skepticism of the notion that climate change is a factor in the fires devastating the West Coast. Like President Trump, conservative media stars dismiss climate change which scientists say is the primary cause of the conflagration and point to the poor management of forestland by local (and, conveniently, Democratic) officials. Fringe right wing websites, like The Gateway Pundit, have blamed left wing arsonists, fueling false rumors that authorities say are impeding rescue efforts. Visiting California on Monday to witness the destruction firsthand, Mr. Trump took Western states to task for failing to manage the forests properly. During a meeting with California officials who pushed him to acknowledge the role of climate change in the wildfires, the president said: "It'll start getting cooler. You just watch." "I wish science agreed with you," Wade Crowfoot, California's secretary for natural resources, replied. The president's comments were likely to resonate with fans of the conservative media personalities who routinely defend his agenda. "This has nothing to do with climate change, it has nothing to do with man made climate change, and it sure as hell would help if these forests in these timber areas were free to be properly managed, but they're not," Mark Levin, another popular right wing radio host, said on his nationally syndicated show on Friday. Like Mr. Carlson, Mr. Levin drew a link between climate advocacy and recent demonstrations for racial justice, suggesting that both causes widely associated with liberals offered a cloak for more sinister intentions. "They want to talk man made climate change because, out of this, they want to control you," Mr. Levin said. "It's just like the race stuff 'systemically racist' well, what do you want to do about it? Control you. Beat you down. You need to change your lifestyle, need to confess to something." 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. Some right wing writers see even darker origins in the outbreak of a lethal blaze. The Gateway Pundit, a conspiracy website with a healthy online following its chief writer, Jim Hoft, was welcomed to the White House by Mr. Trump published posts asserting that left wing anarchists were to blame, not the environment. "Many arsonists have already been arrested in Oregon, Washington and California, but the Democrats continue to blame the wildfires on climate change," a Gateway Pundit story said on Monday, alongside a video purportedly showing a woman in Oregon confronting an arsonist on her property. The site claimed that mainstream news outlets were ignoring this story because "it goes against their global warming and anti gun narrative." A man in Oregon was charged last week with starting the destructive Almeda Fire in a small town that was under orders to evacuate. But the authorities say rising temperatures are a predominant cause of this year's outbreak. For the president's political supporters, the notion that rogue firestarters are causing havoc is an enticing echo of a key message adopted by Mr. Trump and Republican in the presidential race: that regions of the country have been consumed by left wing violence. And Mr. Trump continues to play down environmental factors. Asked on Tuesday's "Fox Friends" about his policy plans for fighting climate change, the president replied: "You have forests all over the world. You don't have fires like you do in California." Californians have been debating how to reduce the risk of deadly blazes, with some officials arguing for more controlled burns. An August news release from the office of Gavin Newsom, the California governor, noted that the state's forests were "highly vulnerable to catastrophic wildfire and in need of active, science based management," in part because of hotter and drier conditions created by climate change. Mr. Newsom has called for the federal government to play a more active role in managing the state's forests. About 58 percent of California forestland is controlled by the federal government; the state owns 3 percent. For environmental advocacy groups, problematic media coverage of the wildfires is not limited to platforms associated with the right. The Environmental Defense Fund, in a scathing post, said many mainstream news outlets had failed to draw a direct link between the widespread destruction and the dangerous consequences of a changing climate. "It is like talking about the increased spread of Covid while ignoring the reason it is spreading," the group wrote. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
Bill Green, who as the ombudsman for The Washington Post in 1981 delivered a blistering verdict on journalistic lapses in response to a Post article about an 8 year old heroin addict that was debunked the day after it won a Pulitzer Prize, died on Monday in Durham, N.C. He was 91. The cause was complications from surgery, his daughter Audrey Green said. Mr. Green, a former small town journalist, was a respected public affairs expert teaching at Duke University when The Post asked him to take a year's sabbatical to be its independent watchdog. He was just weeks into the job on Sept. 28, 1980, when The Post published "Jimmy's World," a profile of a young Washington addict by a 26 year old reporter, Janet Cooke. The article went on to win the 1981 Pulitzer Prize for feature writing. Soon afterward, skepticism about the veracity of the article began to mount. City officials and others questioned whether "Jimmy" actually existed. Ms. Cooke eventually confessed to an editor that "Jimmy" was a fabrication. She had heard rumors about a young heroin addict in Southeast Washington, she said, but had never found him and so concocted a composite of several characters she had met during her reporting. No supervisor had asked her for "Jimmy's" real identity. She also confessed that she had faked her resume. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
Laura Dern of "Marriage Story" and Brad Pitt from "Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood" are almost certain to be contenders. On Monday morning in Los Angeles, the actors John Cho and Issa Rae will read this year's nominees in 24 Oscar categories. How will it all go down? Your Carpetbagger has been weighing industry buzz for months and has a hunch of what the Oscar nominations will deliver. What will make it in, who will be snubbed, and what major controversies may arise? The announcement, at 8:18 a.m. Eastern time, 5:18 Pacific, will be broadcast live on television and livestreamed on Oscar.com and the academy's social media accounts. Before then here are big six awards season questions that will soon be answered. Thanks to a strong showing in all the craft categories, expect "Once Upon a Time" to score nominations for picture, director, actor (Leonardo DiCaprio), supporting actor (Brad Pitt), original screenplay, cinematography, editing, costume design, production design and both sound categories. That's at least 11 nominations, plus another potential two in supporting actress (Margot Robbie) and makeup and hairstyling if Tarantino's late '60s fantasia overperforms. Other films that could earn a double digit nomination total are Martin Scorsese's crime drama "The Irishman" and the Sam Mendes war movie "1917." Will the acting nominations feature people of color? After the British group BAFTA released a list of 20 white acting nominees on Tuesday, fears intensified that we may be in for another round of OscarsSoWhite. The only sure thing best picture contender fronted by performers of color is "Parasite," which earned a best ensemble nomination from the Screen Actors Guild Awards but no mentions for any of its individual stars. "The Farewell" also has an all Asian cast, but Oscar recognition is not assured after the film failed to make the Producers Guild of America lineup on Tuesday, while SAG snubbed its star, Awkwafina, and supporting actress Zhao Shuzhen. Which actors of color have the strongest shot at landing a nomination? In the best actress race, Lupita Nyong'o ("Us") and Cynthia Erivo ("Harriet") could appear, since both picked up SAG nominations. So, too, did supporting contenders Jamie Foxx ("Just Mercy") and Jennifer Lopez ("Hustlers"). Song Kang Ho, one of the patriarchs in "Parasite," represents the film's strongest bid at an acting nomination, but it's a tough category and he hasn't shown up here all season. Speaking of which ... Bong Joon Ho's thriller proved to be 2019's foreign film sensation, and it ought to pick up key nominations for picture, director, original screenplay and editing at the very least. If "Parasite" can muster a really strong showing, nominations are possible for supporting actor (Song Kang Ho), cinematography and even production design, though that branch often prefers films with more settings than the two homes in which "Parasite" mostly takes place. (Still, what homes!) Can '1917' build on its momentum from the Golden Globes? As this World War I film heads into wide release just before the Oscar nominations, it could hardly have hoped for a better liftoff from the Globes, which gave "1917" awards for best director and best drama. Momentum is key when it comes to a best picture race this wide open, and since this Oscar season is unusually short the ceremony is in less than a month "1917" may be peaking at the exact right time. Then again, it's been ages since a movie released so late in the year went on to win best picture, and "1917" was one of the very last films to start screening for voters. It also demands a big screen viewing, and academy members who are under water with DVD screeners may not have gotten around to that yet. If "1917" can pull off around 10 Oscar nominations, including a key nod for its screenplay, we'll know that the film's risky release gambit is working. Is the best director lineup likely to be all male? It was a great year for female directors, but you wouldn't know that by looking at the best director lineup for the major awards this season. The Golden Globes, BAFTA and Directors Guild of America each picked five men in that category: Tarantino, Scorsese, Bong, Mendes and the "Joker" director Todd Phillips were recognized by the first two groups, while the D.G.A. swapped "Jojo Rabbit" director Taika Waititi for Phillips. That fifth slot will be heavily contested, since the other four directors appear to be immovable. Still, it's important to note that the directing branch of the academy loves to throw curveballs, so don't completely count out Greta Gerwig ("Little Women") or Lulu Wang ("The Farewell"). Other worthy female filmmakers like Celine Sciamma ("Portrait of a Lady on Fire") and Lorene Scafaria ("Hustlers") have movies that are likely too far out of the best picture race to help their long shot bids. Many of the Oscar races for acting already appear decided bet against supporting contenders Laura Dern and Brad Pitt at your own peril but the best actor competition is a whole other story. In this year's fiercest competition, nearly a dozen high profile men are vying for a scant five slots. Three of those will almost certainly be occupied by Joaquin Phoenix ("Joker"), Adam Driver ("Marriage Story") and Leonardo DiCaprio ("Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood"), so who gets the last two? The "Rocketman" star Taron Egerton has campaigned the hardest, and so far, it's paid off with a Golden Globe for best actor in a comedy or musical as well as nominations from both SAG and BAFTA. SAG gave its fifth slot to Christian Bale ("Ford v Ferrari") and BAFTA favored Jonathan Pryce ("The Two Popes"), but there are still plenty of men who could surprise here, including the lead actors of two strong best picture contenders (Robert De Niro of "The Irishman" and "1917" star George MacKay), a critics' favorite ("Pain and Glory" lead Antonio Banderas) and two comedians with acclaimed star turns (Adam Sandler of "Uncut Gems" and Eddie Murphy of "Dolemite Is My Name"). It's considered insincere when actors say it was an honor just to be nominated. When the competition is this cutthroat, though, even making it into the category will be a major win. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
Credit...Rachel Bujalski for The New York Times After a 15 year old girl went missing in Florida, her mother found her on Pornhub in 58 sex videos. Sexual assaults on a 14 year old California girl were posted on Pornhub and were reported to the authorities not by the company but by a classmate who saw the videos. In each case, offenders were arrested for the assaults, but Pornhub escaped responsibility for sharing the videos and profiting from them. Pornhub is like YouTube in that it allows members of the public to post their own videos. A great majority of the 6.8 million new videos posted on the site each year probably involve consenting adults, but many depict child abuse and nonconsensual violence. Because it's impossible to be sure whether a youth in a video is 14 or 18, neither Pornhub nor anyone else has a clear idea of how much content is illegal. Unlike YouTube, Pornhub allows these videos to be downloaded directly from its website. So even if a rape video is removed at the request of the authorities, it may already be too late: The video lives on as it is shared with others or uploaded again and again. "Pornhub became my trafficker," a woman named Cali told me. She says she was adopted in the United States from China and then trafficked by her adoptive family and forced to appear in pornographic videos beginning when she was 9. Some videos of her being abused ended up on Pornhub and regularly reappear there, she said. "I'm still getting sold, even though I'm five years out of that life," Cali said. Now 23, she is studying in a university and hoping to become a lawyer but those old videos hang over her. "I may never be able to get away from this," she said. "I may be 40 with eight kids, and people are still masturbating to my photos." "You type 'Young Asian' and you can probably find me," she added. Actually, maybe not. Pornhub recently was offering 26,000 videos in response to that search. That doesn't count videos that show up under "related searches" that Pornhub suggests, including "young tiny teen," "extra small petite teen," "tiny Asian teen" or just "young girl." Nor does it necessarily count videos on a Pornhub channel called "exploited teen Asia." The issue is not pornography but rape. Let's agree that promoting assaults on children or on anyone without consent is unconscionable. The problem with Bill Cosby or Harvey Weinstein or Jeffrey Epstein was not the sex but the lack of consent and so it is with Pornhub. I came across many videos on Pornhub that were recordings of assaults on unconscious women and girls. The rapists would open the eyelids of the victims and touch their eyeballs to show that they were nonresponsive. Pornhub profited this fall from a video of a naked woman being tortured by a gang of men in China. It is monetizing video compilations with titles like "Screaming Teen," "Degraded Teen" and "Extreme Choking." Look at a choking video and it may suggest also searching for "She Can't Breathe." It should be possible to be sex positive and Pornhub negative. Pornhub declined to make executives available on the record, but it provided a statement. "Pornhub is unequivocally committed to combating child sexual abuse material, and has instituted a comprehensive, industry leading trust and safety policy to identify and eradicate illegal material from our community," it said. Pornhub added that any assertion that the company allows child videos on the site "is irresponsible and flagrantly untrue." At 14, Serena K. Fleites was an A student in Bakersfield, Calif., who had never made out with a boy. But in the eighth grade she developed a crush on a boy a year older, and he asked her to take a naked video of herself. She sent it to him, and this changed her life. He asked for another, then another; she was nervous but flattered. "That's when I started getting strange looks in school," she remembered. He had shared the videos with other boys, and someone posted them on Pornhub. Fleites's world imploded. It's tough enough to be 14 without having your classmates entertain themselves by looking at you naked, and then mocking you as a slut. "People were texting me, if I didn't send them a video, they were going to send them to my mom," she said. The boy was suspended, but Fleites began skipping class because she couldn't bear the shame. Her mother persuaded Pornhub to remove the videos, and Fleites switched schools. But rumors reached the new school, and soon the videos were uploaded again to Pornhub and other websites. Fleites quarreled with her mother and began cutting herself. Then one day she went to the medicine cabinet and took every antidepressant pill she could find. Three days later, she woke up in the hospital, frustrated to be still alive. Next she hanged herself in the bathroom; her little sister found her, and medics revived her. As Fleites spiraled downward, a friend introduced her to meth and opioids, and she became addicted to both. She dropped out of school and became homeless. At 16, she advertised on Craigslist and began selling naked photos and videos of herself. It was a way to make a bit of money, and maybe also a way to punish herself. She thought, "I'm not worth anything any more because everybody has already seen my body," she told me. Those videos also ended up on Pornhub. Fleites would ask that they be removed. They usually would be, she says but then would be uploaded again. One naked video of her at 14 had 400,000 views, she says, leaving her afraid to apply for fast food jobs for fear that someone would recognize her. So today Fleites, 19, off drugs for a year but unemployed and traumatized, is living in her car in Bakersfield, along with three dogs that have proved more loyal and loving than the human species. She dreams of becoming a vet technician but isn't sure how to get there. "It's kind of hard to go to school when you're living in a car with dogs," she said. "I was dumb," she acknowledged, noting that she had never imagined that the videos could be shared online. "It was one small thing that a teenager does, and it's crazy how it turns into something so much bigger. "A whole life can be changed because of one little mistake." The problem goes far beyond one company. Indeed, a rival of Pornhub, XVideos, which arguably has even fewer scruples, may attract more visitors. Depictions of child abuse also appear on mainstream sites like Twitter, Reddit and Facebook. And Google supports the business models of companies that thrive on child molestation. Google returns 920 million videos on a search for "young porn." Top hits include a video of a naked "very young teen" engaging in sex acts on XVideo along with a video on Pornhub whose title is unprintable here. I asked the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to compile the number of images, videos and other content related to child sexual exploitation reported to it each year. In 2015, it received reports of 6.5 million videos or other files; in 2017, 20.6 million; and in 2019, 69.2 million. Facebook removed 12.4 million images related to child exploitation in a three month period this year. Twitter closed 264,000 accounts in six months last year for engaging in sexual exploitation of children. By contrast, Pornhub notes that the Internet Watch Foundation, an England based nonprofit that combats child sexual abuse imagery, reported only 118 instances of child sexual abuse imagery on its site over almost three years, seemingly a negligible figure. "Eliminating illegal content is an ongoing battle for every modern content platform, and we are committed to remaining at the forefront," Pornhub said in its statement. The Internet Watch Foundation couldn't explain why its figure for Pornhub is so low. Perhaps it's because people on Pornhub are inured to the material and unlikely to report it. But if you know what to look for, it's possible to find hundreds of apparent child sexual abuse videos on Pornhub in 30 minutes. Pornhub has recently offered playlists with names including "less than 18," "the best collection of young boys" and "under age." Congress and successive presidents have done almost nothing as this problem has grown. The tech world that made it possible has been mostly passive, in a defensive crouch. But pioneering reporting in 2019 by my Times colleagues has prodded Congress to begin debating competing strategies to address child exploitation. Concerns about Pornhub are bubbling up. A petition to shut the site down has received 2.1 million signatures. Senator Ben Sasse, a Nebraska Republican, called on the Justice Department to investigate Pornhub. PayPal cut off services for the company, and credit card companies have been asked to do the same. An organization called Traffickinghub, led by an activist named Laila Mickelwait, documents abuses and calls for the site to be shut down. Twenty members of Canada's Parliament have called on their government to crack down on Pornhub, which is effectively based in Montreal. "They made money off my pain and suffering," an 18 year old woman named Taylor told me. A boyfriend secretly made a video of her performing a sex act when she was 14, and it ended up on Pornhub, the police confirmed. "I went to school the next day and everybody was looking at their phones and me as I walked down the hall," she added, weeping as she spoke. "They were laughing." Taylor said she has twice attempted suicide because of the humiliation and trauma. Like others quoted here, she agreed to tell her story and help document it because she thought it might help other girls avoid suffering as she did. Pornhub is owned by Mindgeek, a private pornography conglomerate with more than 100 websites, production companies and brands. Its sites include Redtube, Youporn, XTube, SpankWire, ExtremeTube, Men.com, My Dirty Hobby, Thumbzilla, PornMD, Brazzers and GayTube. There are other major players in porn outside the Mindgeek umbrella, most notably XHamster and XVideos, but Mindgeek is a porn titan. If it operated in another industry, the Justice Department could be discussing an antitrust case against it. Pornhub and Mindgeek also stand out because of their influence. One study this year by a digital marketing company concluded that Pornhub was the technology company with the third greatest impact on society in the 21st century, after Facebook and Google but ahead of Microsoft, Apple and Amazon. Nominally based in Luxembourg for tax reasons, Mindgeek is a private company run from Montreal. It does not disclose who owns it, but it is led by Feras Antoon and David Tassillo, both Canadians, who declined to be interviewed. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada calls himself a feminist and has been proud of his government's efforts to empower women worldwide. So a question for Trudeau and all Canadians: Why does Canada host a company that inflicts rape videos on the world? Mindgeek's moderators are charged with filtering out videos of children, but its business model profits from sex videos starring young people. "The goal for a content moderator is to let as much content as possible go through," a former Mindgeek employee told me. He said he believed that the top executives weren't evil but were focused above all on maximizing revenue. While Pornhub would not tell me how many moderators it employs, I interviewed one who said that there are about 80 worldwide who work on Mindgeek sites (by comparison, Facebook told me it has 15,000 moderators). With 1.36 million new hours of video uploaded a year to Pornhub, that means that each moderator would have to review hundreds of hours of content each week. The moderators fast forward through videos, but it's often difficult to assess whether a person is 14 or 18, or whether torture is real or fake. Most of the underage content involves teenagers, the moderator I spoke with said, but some comes from spy cams in toilets or changing rooms and shows children only 8 to 12. "The job in itself is soul destroying," the moderator said. Pornhub appears to be increasingly alarmed about civil or criminal liability. Lawyers are circling, and nine women sued the company in federal court after spy cam videos surfaced on Pornhub. The videos were shot in a locker room at Limestone College in South Carolina and showed women showering and changing clothes. Executives of Pornhub appear in the past to have assumed that they enjoyed immunity under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects internet platforms on which members of the public post content. But in 2018 Congress limited Section 230 so that it may not be enough to shield the company, leading Mindgeek to behave better. It has doubled the number of moderators in the last couple of years, the moderator told me, and this year Pornhub began voluntarily reporting illegal material to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. After previously dragging its feet in removing videos of children and nonconsensual content, Pornhub now is responding more rapidly. It has also compiled a list of banned content. I obtained a copy of this list, and it purports to bar videos with terms or themes like "rape," "preteen," "pedophilia" and "bestiality" (it helpfully clarifies that this "includes eels, fish, octopus, insects"). Diapers are OK "if no scatophilia." Mutilation depends on context but "cannot depict severing parts of the body." So while it is now no longer possible to search on Pornhub in English using terms like "underage" or "rape," the company hasn't tried hard to eliminate such videos. A member called "13yoboyteen" is allowed to post videos. A search for "r pe," turns up 1,901 videos. "Girl with braces" turns up 1,913 videos and suggests also trying "exxxtra small teens." A search for "13yo" generates 155,000 videos. To be clear, most aren't of 13 year olds, but the fact that they're promoted with that language seems to reflect an effort to attract pedophiles. Moreover, some videos seem at odds with the list of banned content. "Runaway Girl Gets Ultimatum, Anal or the Streets" is the title of one Pornhub video. Another user posts videos documenting sex with teenage girls as they weep, protest and cry out in pain. While Pornhub is becoming more careful about videos of potentially litigious Americans, it remains cavalier about overseas victims. One Indonesian video is titled "Junior High School Girl After Class" and shows what appears to be a young teenager having sex. A Chinese sex video, just taken down, was labeled: "Beautiful High School Girl Is Tricked by Classmates and Taken to the Top of a Building Where She Is Insulted and Raped." "They're making money off the worst moment in my life, off my body," a Colombian teenager who asked to be called Xela, a nickname, told me. Two American men paid her when she was 16 for a sexual encounter that they filmed and then posted on Pornhub. She was one of several Pornhub survivors who told me they had thought of or attempted suicide. In the last few days as I was completing this article, two new videos of prepubescent girls being assaulted were posted, along with a sex video of a 15 year old girl who was suicidal after it went online. I don't see how good faith moderators could approve any of these videos. "It's always going to be online," Nicole, a British woman who has had naked videos of herself posted and reposted on Pornhub, told me. "That's my big fear of having kids, them seeing this." That's a recurring theme among survivors: An assault eventually ends, but Pornhub renders the suffering interminable. Naked videos of Nicole at 15 were posted on Pornhub. Now 19, she has been trying for two years to get them removed. "Why do videos of me from when I was 15 years old and blackmailed, which is child porn, continuously get uploaded?" Nicole protested plaintively to Pornhub last year, in a message. "You really need a better system. ... I tried to kill myself multiple times after finding myself reuploaded on your website." Nicole's lawyer, Dani Pinter, says there are still at least three naked videos of Nicole at age 15 or 16 on Pornhub that they are trying to get removed. "It's never going to end," Nicole said. "They're getting so much money from our trauma." Pornhub has introduced software that supposedly can "fingerprint" rape videos and prevent them from being uploaded again. But Vice showed how this technology is easily circumvented on Pornhub. One Pornhub scandal involved the Girls Do Porn production company, which recruited young women for clothed modeling gigs and then pushed them to perform in sex videos, claiming that the videos would be sold only as DVDs in other countries and would never go online. Reassured that no one would ever know, some of the women agreed and then were shattered when the footage was aggressively marketed on Pornhub. Girls Do Porn was prosecuted for sex trafficking and shut down. But those videos continue to surface and resurface on Pornhub; last time I checked, videos of six victims of Girls Do Porn were on Pornhub, which continues to profit from them. One of the Girls Do Porn women I saw on Pornhub is now dead. She was murdered at 20, allegedly by an angry ex boyfriend who is about to go on trial. I'm not disclosing her name because she should be remembered as a vibrant college athlete, and not for a sex video that represented her most mortifying moment. I had expected the survivors to want to shut down Pornhub and send its executives to prison. Some did, but others were more nuanced. Lydia, now 20, was trafficked as a child and had many rape videos posted on the site. "My stomach hurts all the time" from the tension, she told me, but she doesn't want to come across as hostile to porn itself. "I don't want people to hear 'No porn!'" Lydia told me. "It's more like, 'Stop hurting kids.'" Susan Padron told me that she had assumed that pornography was consensual, until a boyfriend filmed her in a sex act when she was 15 and posted it on Pornhub. She has struggled since and believes that only people who have confirmed their identities should be allowed to post videos. Jessica Shumway, who was trafficked and had a customer post a sex video on Pornhub, agrees: "They need to figure out who's underage in the videos and that there's consent from everybody in it." I asked Leo, 18, who had videos of himself posted on Pornhub when he was 14, what he suggested. "That's tough," he said. "My solution would be to leave porn to professional production companies," because they require proof of age and consent. Right now, those companies can't compete with mostly free sites like Pornhub and XVideos. "Pornhub has already destroyed the business model for pay sites," said Stoya, an adult film actress and writer. She, too, thinks all platforms from YouTube to Pornhub should require proof of consent to upload videos of private individuals. Columnists are supposed to offer answers, but I struggle with solutions. If Pornhub curated videos more rigorously, the most offensive material might just move to the dark web or to websites in less regulated countries. Yet at least they would then not be normalized on a mainstream site. More pressure and less impunity would help. We're already seeing that limiting Section 230 immunity leads to better self policing. And call me a prude, but I don't see why search engines, banks or credit card companies should bolster a company that monetizes sexual assaults on children or unconscious women. If PayPal can suspend cooperation with Pornhub, so can American Express, Mastercard and Visa. I don't see any neat solution. But aside from limiting immunity so that companies are incentivized to behave better, here are three steps that would help: 1.) Allow only verified users to post videos. 2.) Prohibit downloads. 3.) Increase moderation. These measures wouldn't kill porn or much bother consumers of it; YouTube thrives without downloads. Siri Dahl, a prominent porn star who does business with Pornhub, told me that my three proposals are "insanely reasonable." The world has often been oblivious to child sexual abuse, from the Catholic Church to the Boy Scouts. Too late, we prosecute individuals like Jeffrey Epstein or R. Kelly. But we should also stand up to corporations that systematically exploit children. With Pornhub, we have Jeffrey Epstein times 1,000. If you are having thoughts of suicide, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1 800 273 8255 (TALK). You can find a list of additional resources at SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources. HOLIDAY GIVING UPDATE: Many thanks to my readers, who have donated more than 4.2 million to the three organizations in my annual holiday giving guide column two weeks ago. One of the nonprofits sends girls to school in sub Saharan Africa; another helps low income American students finish high school and begin college; and a third restores sight to people with cataracts in Asia and Africa. More information is at KristofImpact.org. 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. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
JOHN SANDERS lives in a tidy bungalow in this former fishing village north of Clearwater. His home sits on a small hill, on a street lined with cars, trucks and garages now used for storage. The house was built for him in 1978 to accommodate his wheelchair and the other things he would need to live as a quadriplegic. Sergeant Sanders was 23 when he was paralyzed on Dec. 4, 1969, while on patrol in Cu Chi, outside Saigon, when his platoon came under heavy fire. While trying to call in a helicopter airstrike, he was shot in the back. He spent the next year in and out of military hospitals before returning to the Panama Canal Zone, where he was born, to live with his parents. When his parents took early retirement, they all moved to Florida so Mr. Sanders could get better medical care. His life over the last four decades has been a full one. A great wit, he likes to read and talk for hours. He and his aide, Brian Disney, go out every day in his specially equipped van. Mr. Sanders's Dalmatian mix, Savanna, expects and gets a ride around the block at those times when she is to be left behind. His outlook was formed early by a conversation with a paraplegic man at the Cleveland Veterans Administration Hospital after his injury. "I said, this is going to be our fate?" Mr. Sanders recalled. "What are we going to do?" "The best we can," the other man responded. "There's no other option." Despite his positive outlook, Mr. Sanders's financial life has been punctuated by struggles to understand the disability benefits he depends on and to budget, while on a fixed income, for unpredictable and high insurance costs in Florida. Heath Whetsel, a financial adviser at USAA, the financial services company for military families, agreed to look over Mr. Sanders's finances. A disabled veteran of Army service from 1995 to 2000, Mr. Whetsel has his own stories about being denied benefits and getting them only after appealing or working through another bureaucrat. One thing their experiences can teach disabled veterans returning from Afghanistan and Iraq is to never give up if they are turned down for something. Mr. Sanders, now 65, has three primary financial concerns: understanding the labyrinthine benefits process, managing the cash flow from his disability checks and contending with the rising cost of home insurance in Florida. The Veterans Administration, he said, has become more helpful in the last few years, but he is still troubled by previous experiences, and that affects how he approaches current concerns. His worst experience, he said, came in 1997 when he applied for voice recognition software that would allow him to do everything from writing letters to friends to controlling the lights and thermostat in his room. Until that point he had to rely on his mother for everything. One criterion for receiving the software was that it would improve a person's quality of life. After an interview with a counseling psychologist at the local V.A. office, Mr. Sanders received a letter, which he showed to The New York Times, that said: "You are currently independent and the requested equipment is not seen to significantly increase your independence or decrease your dependence within the family and community." "I couldn't believe it," he said, growing angry as he told the story. "How was I independent?" After more than a year of appeals and help from a paraplegic friend who worked for the Paralyzed Veterans of America, he got the software. "Those first six months, it was like, 'I'm back in the game,' " he said. "I wrote letter after letter to everyone. After several months, my brother said, 'Have you ever heard of e mail? " Currently, Mr. Sanders is worried about finding the benefit money to widen his bedroom door. Three years ago, he got his first new bed in 37 years, which the V.A. bought for him. But it does not fit through his door. His sister, who lives with him, said she would not be able to roll him out of the house if there were a fire. Another fund, meant for home improvements and structural alterations, allows veterans to take out smaller amounts over time. Mr. Sanders had used his lifetime limit of 4,100, and when that grant was increased last year to 6,800, the increase applied only to people applying for disability, not for recipients already in the program. "It looks from the history of this thing that Mr. Sanders has gotten every benefit he has ever asked for and gotten them very quickly," said Tom Pamperin, deputy under secretary for disability assistance at the Veterans Benefits Administration. When read Mr. Sanders's rejection letter about the voice recognition software, Mr. Pamperin said: "In a perfect world things like that wouldn't happen. You have people who are trying to do the best job possible, and they make judgment calls about things. I'm sure that seemed like a reasonable assessment to that clinician." In Mr. Sanders's case, he is likely to have to sacrifice the remaining money in the grant from the first program to get his door widened unless he can find something else that needs repair and can be done at the same time. A spokesman for the Department of Veterans Affairs said that it was looking for another solution for Mr. Sanders but that the guidelines for the two programs were set by Congress. Mr. Sanders's other concern is cash flow. He spends almost all of his disability check to pay for his care. Mr. Disney works for him Monday to Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., and Mr. Sanders pays a second aide to work the same hours on Saturday and Sunday. He also has to cover the fuel and any repairs to his van, as well as upkeep on his house and an electricity bill that often tops 350 a month. For the last decade, his sister and brother in law have lived with him to help after his aides leave. They pay no rent; in exchange, one of them is always there to care for him at night. But he is haunted by a costly and difficult year after his mother died in 1998, when he had to hire a live in aide to be with him around the clock. Mr. Sanders has a small amount of savings, and Mr. Whetsel talked to him about putting some portion into higher yielding certificates of deposit or a money market account. Mr. Sanders said the rates were so low it was not worth the trouble to split up his savings. Then there is the guessing game of what his insurance premium will be not to mention who will provide it. Mr. Sanders pays 3,150 for homeowner's insurance, up from 2,980 last year but still below the nearly 3,700 he paid in 2009. This is not a problem unique to Mr. Sanders. Every Florida homeowner in a coastal area has the same concerns. But Mr. Sanders feels pressure, because his disability check has not been adjusted for the last two years. When Mr. Sanders spoke with a USAA insurance representative, he said, he was told the company could not provide insurance for his home because, like many other carriers, it has largely gotten out of the business in Florida. The USAA representative did go through his current policy and found several areas of savings from items that had been listed incorrectly, which could reduce his annual premium by at least 500. Mr. Sanders was dropped by his last carrier, Security First, in 2010, so regardless of the savings, he said he thought he had to remain with Citizens, the state supported insurer, for fear of being dropped again. Regardless of how these financial matters are resolved, Mr. Sanders said he knew he would have to stay on top of the benefits system and his own finances. "I don't see how anyone could do anything else," he said. "There is no other option." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Your Money |
JOJO ABOT at the Sultan Room (June 29, 8 p.m.). The newest addition to the bustling night life scene in Bushwick, Brooklyn, this club tucked behind the Turk's Inn restaurant a tribute to a onetime Wisconsin supper club whose name it shares has had a busy first week of programming. On Saturday, it will host a release party for Abot, a Ghanian born singer, rapper and performance artist whose music is grounded in bold visuals and tinged with Afrofuturism. Her new EP, titled "Power to the God Within" part of a series of multimedia exhibitions ambitiously continues the explorations of oppression, blackness and divinity that drove her 2017 release, "Ngiwunkulunkulu" (which means "I am God" in Zulu). thesultanroom.com DRIVE BY TRUCKERS at Brooklyn Bowl (through June 29, 8 p.m.). Politics and contemporary country music have an uneasy relationship, to say the least artists inclined to speak their conscience often do so at the risk of being ostracized by the genre's radio gatekeepers. This alt country group from Athens, Ga., has long bucked the expectation of apoliticism, but never more willfully than on their most recent album, 2016's "American Band." Its songs, like "What It Means" and "Ever South," address topics such as gun violence and immigration. This weekend, they will close out a six night run at this concert hall in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. 718 963 3369, brooklynbowl.com EMPATH at Pioneer Works (June 28, 7 p.m.). This Philadelphia based quartet makes songs that are as catchy as they are unorthodox. On "Active Listening: Night on Earth" their debut album, released in May on the queer forward punk label Get Better Records the group splices pop hooks with hardcore fervor and New Agey embellishments, to delightful ends. Their appearance at this art space in Red Hook, Brooklyn, is copresented by The Baffler and will kick off Press Play, a two day book and music fair. Empath will be joined by their label mates Control Top, a postpunk trio. pioneerworks.org LIZ PHAIR at Prospect Park Bandshell (June 29, 7 p.m.). In the mid 90s, this renowned singer songwriter became, as she told The New York Times last year, an "accidental feminist spokesperson." That was due to the release of "Exile in Guyville," a collection of scrappy guitar songs noted for what was then considered a brazen expression of sexuality and its condemnation of male apathy, penned in response to the Rolling Stones' "Exile on Main Street." More than a quarter century later, Phair's influence is manifest in young artists like Soccer Mommy and Lindsey Jordan (Snail Mail), who once played in a Phair cover band. In Prospect Park, she appears alongside the punk shape shifter Ted Leo and the wry songwriter Caroline Rose. 718 683 5600, bricartsmedia.org PHONY PPL at Mercury Lounge (June 29 30, 7:30 p.m.). Though all five members of this Brooklyn based group are under 30, they've been playing together for more than a decade. Since forming in 2008, the band has gone through lineup changes and lulls, and several members have explored side projects; still, their chemistry is stronger than ever on "mo'za ik," their sixth album, released in October. The record traverses dreamy R B ("Way Too Far"), playful hip hop ("Before You Get a Boyfriend") and politically charged soul ("on everythinG iii love"). Expect them to play selections from the album during their two night stand at this club on the Lower East Side. Saturday night's performance is sold out, but tickets remain for Sunday. 212 260 4700, mercuryeastpresents.com Read about the events that our other critics have chosen for the week ahead. SCREAMING FEMALES at Industry City (June 28, 8 p.m.). Hailing from nearby New Brunswick, N.J., this experimental rock band has been a commanding presence in alternative music circles. Fourteen years after their founding and long after graduating to bigger stages, they retain the punk ethos of a group that came up through basements and other D.I.Y. hot spots. For this show, presented by City Farm as part of its summer series, they will be joined by Swearin', the band fronted by Allison Crutchfield and Kyle Gilbride. The group split in 2015 but reunited in late 2017 and last year released "Fall Into the Sun," a bright, galloping, guitar driven album on which both singers ponder the passage of time. cityfarmpresents.com OLIVIA HORN STANLEY COWELL at Smoke (June 28 29, 7, 9 and 10:30 p.m.). Cowell can make the piano dance by playing in a jaggy rhythm, or simply by manipulating the tone of his harmonies, or by throwing his right and left hands into a thrashing repartee. This weekend run is billed as a look back at his 60 year career, and there's a lot to celebrate: He came into the jazz consciousness in the 1960s, turning heads with his idiosyncratic style and bold compositional voice; co founded the influential, independent label Strata East; and has continued expanding ever since, composing short pieces and long suites, and sometimes experimenting with electronics. Joining him at Smoke are the trumpeter Freddie Hendrix, the saxophonist and flutist Bruce Williams, the bassist Tom DiCarlo and the drummer Vince Ector. 212 864 6662, smokejazz.com JEROME HARRIS QUARTET at Bar Lunatico (July 1, 9 and 10:30 p.m.). For much of the 1980s and '90s, Harris served as the guitarist in Sonny Rollins's band, while also establishing himself as a mainstay of New York's improvising avant garde. Harris who doubles on bass and has conducted scholarly inquiries into some remote corners of the black music lineage draws no clear lines of demarcation between African song, mainstream jazz and the avant garde. He is most often heard as a side musician, but at Lunatico he'll lead a group featuring Jeremy Udden on alto sax, Dave Baron on bass and Lucianna Padmore on drums, with Harris handling guitar and vocals. 718 513 0339, barlunatico.com SEAN JONES at Dizzy's Club (June 27 29, 7:30 and 9:30 p.m.). You're hard pressed to find a straight ahead jazz trumpeter with a more powerfully satisfying style: Jones plays with a smoky, magnetic grace, born of his boisterous disposition and almost total command. Through Saturday, he will celebrate the life and legacy of Dizzy Gillespie (the trumpeter for whom the club is named) with "Dizzy Spellz," a program he wrote with the dancer and vocalist Brinae Ali that addresses how this bebop pioneer interacted with the cultural and spiritual questions of his time. Jones will be joined by Ali, the turntablist Wendel Patrick, the pianist Zaccai Curtis, the bassist Boris Kozlov and the drummer Obed Calvaire. 212 258 9595, jazz.org/dizzys ANAIS MAVIEL at Roulette (June 28, 8 p.m.). A rising vocalist, movement artist and multi instrumentalist, Maviel is one of two 2019 Van Lier fellows at Roulette. In that capacity she is preparing and performing new works throughout the year, and on Friday she will present "Time Is Due," which she calls an "operatic installation" for an electroacoustic ensemble. It interrogates the concepts of coexistence and interdependence, using music as both an embodied concern and a metaphor. Maviel will take the stage with five other vocalists, all of whom will also be playing keyboards and percussion instruments, some of them custom made by Jonatan Malm. 917 267 0368, roulette.org WILLIAM PARKER'S IN ORDER TO SURVIVE at ShapeShifter Lab (July 1, 7:15 p.m.). The banner carrying bass elder of New York's free jazz community, Parker has been performing and recording prolifically since the 1970s, when he began working with the eminent pianist Cecil Taylor and established himself on the bustling loft jazz scene. For over 25 years, Parker has led In Order to Survive, a quartet of all stars from his avant garde generation currently featuring the alto saxophonist Rob Brown, the pianist Cooper Moore and the drummer Hamid Drake. shapeshifterlab.com WADADA LEO SMITH at the Stone (through June 29, 8:30 p.m.). This inimitable trumpeter is in the midst of an extended late career boom, putting out mind altering material at a rapid clip, in a range of formats. In all his work, what stays constant is the heavy, sighing power of Smith's expression a physical and calming force, speaking of poise and forbearance as well as restless vision. His residency at the Stone this week presents a chance to hear a number of his projects over the span of a few days. On Thursday he performs a tribute to the drummer Ed Blackwell, in duet with Pheeroan akLaff, on Friday he presents his composition "Red Autumn Gold/Silence," joined by two cellists and two pianists, and on Saturday he appears with an eight piece electroacoustic ensemble, playing a piece titled "Ritual Light, a Cosmic Luminous Wave Field." thestonenyc.com GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
The grandest presence onstage at Repertorio Espanol belongs to the smallest creature there: a handsome rooster with luxurious plumage in fiery tones and a strikingly comfortable rapport with his principal scene partner. That would be the human star of the show, the excellent German Jaramillo, who plays the title role in "No One Writes to the Colonel," adapted by Veronica Triana and Jorge Ali Triana from the novella by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. But it is Horatius, a sweater cock, who most commands our attention because animals onstage are never performing in the same sense that people are, and because he seems so remarkably at home. A frightened animal is a misery to watch, but Horatius appears to trust Mr. Jaramillo. This chicken is doing just fine. So is much of the rest of this intimate, transporting production, though the level of Mr. Jaramillo's acting is a rarity. Directed by Mr. Triana, the play is performed in Spanish and handily subtitled in English, if you want, on the seatback in front of you. (The English translation is by Jack Bustos, the subtitling by Edna Lee Figueroa.) At 75, with an ailing wife (Zulema Clares), the colonel is retired and in desperate need of a promised pension from the Colombian government that will not come. The couple's son, recently dead, left behind the rooster, and this is where the colonel places his bet on their future. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
Businesses shuttered. Millions of workers laid off. Trade disrupted. Supply chains cut. The lockdowns imposed to slow the spread of the coronavirus are slamming the brakes on the global economy. China, the first country hit by Covid 19, is only beginning to re emerge from its shutdown. The United States and Europe have weeks to go before a return to normalcy weeks in which the costs of the coronavirus response will pile up. This is no normal recession, caused by a turning of the business cycle or a financial panic. Before the lockdowns, most economic indicators looked rather rosy. Had China succeeded in stopping the virus from spreading beyond its borders, Wuhan may have sneezed, but the global economy would not have caught such a deadly cold. If this isn't a normal economic crisis, what is it? It is a war, say many politicians and commentators, a struggle not against a rival state but a rival species. Yet martial metaphors make little sense in explaining the economics. During wars, countries mobilize their economies to produce more military supplies. Today, we are shutting down our economy so that it produces drastically less. How much less? The U.S. economy will produce 34 percent fewer goods and services from April to June than it did in the comparable period of 2019, Goldman Sachs estimates. This is a nose dive in economic activity that makes the Great Depression seem mild, though we hope that it won't last as long. There are few precedents for this type of deep freeze. Blizzards can cause comparable drops in production, but their effect lasts for days, not months. Epidemics like the 1918 1919 flu led to quarantines, but nothing so expansive as we are seeing now. But maybe there is a useful example of an economy that froze so quickly: In 1990, the Soviet Union had one of the world's largest economies. It was inefficient and poorly run, but analysts at home and abroad generally thought it was stable. The Communist Party was the glue holding together the economy and the 15 republics that constituted the union. But by 1990, the party caught an infection, a crisis of legitimacy that reached epidemic proportions. Its influence waned, powerful regional leaders questioned its authority, and its control over the Soviet economy disappeared almost overnight. Soon anti Communist leaders took power. This had the effect of a hurricane slamming into the Soviet economy and then hovering over the country for a decade. In the absence of Communist Party diktats, industry had no instructions to follow. Steel mills stopped supplying car factories, so auto production plummeted. With no consumer goods on the shelves, consumption of everything but basic foodstuffs ground to a halt. The Soviet Union fell apart, with 15 countries springing up where there had previously been one. Leaders of these newly independent countries threw up trade barriers. Labor flows and transport links were disrupted. The unified Soviet ruble was split into 15 different currencies. A "globalized" socialist economy split into pieces. There are many differences between the Soviet Union's dissolution and our own coronavirus induced freeze. But there are obvious similarities, too. Trade links have been torn apart by the economic downturn. Transport has been obstructed by the cancellation of flights and shipping. Companies such as Apple, which has been a leader in establishing cross border supply chains, are rethinking reliance on manufacturing in China. If companies don't change their globalized way of doing business, governments may force them to. Many countries are limiting exports of masks and other medical supplies. Sometime in the next year or so, the world will likely acquire its first vaccine against the virus. It is easy to imagine whatever country that creates the vaccine prohibiting exports until its citizens have been vaccinated first. Indeed, President Trump is not the only person questioning the wisdom of international trade. Ideas about national self sufficiency championed by his advisers, like the trade skeptic Peter Navarro, are beginning to look more mainstream. The European Union has seen debates about whether medical goods can be exported beyond the bloc or even to other countries within it. China hypes its supplying of medical equipment to countries in need, but it kicked off the trend of hoarding masks. Almost everywhere that the coronavirus has spread, it has brought not only lockdowns, but trade restrictions, too. When the Soviet Union's economy splintered, catastrophe resulted. As businesses closed and workers lost jobs, the Russian economy shrank by 14 percent in 1992 a staggering decline that the United States and Europe may well replicate this year. (By comparison, in 2008, in the depths of the financial crisis, America's G.D.P. declined by only 3 percent.) For Soviet citizens, the human costs of the crash were severe, with life expectancy falling so fast that it appeared that a new disease was ravaging the population. Today, we have no alternative to lockdowns if we want to survive. Still, countries like Russia that experienced double digit declines in G.D.P. have found that the results weren't healthy. Terrible recessions come with human costs. In the United States, 6.6 million people filed for unemployment claims in just one week. Throwing up barriers to trade and to business is tough medicine not a cure all. Chris Miller ( crmiller1) is an assistant professor at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and the author of "Putinomics: Power and Money in Resurgent Russia." The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We'd like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here's our email: letters nytimes.com. Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter ( NYTopinion) and Instagram. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
The bride and groom were once the main attraction at a wedding. Then came the band. Couples spent months listening to tapes yes tapes or they booked a talented D.J. to coerce attendees onto the dance floor. Now the guests are enveloped in performances: from ballerinas to belly dancers; fire eaters to flash mobs; harpists to harpoonists. "Couples want to give their guests full sensory and experiential moments that will be unforgettable," said Amy Shey Jacobs, owner of Chandelier Events, an event planning and production firm in Manhattan. "Artistic performances are an added emotional layer that's being incorporated into weddings as surprise elements to entertain everyone. "There's been a big rise to these out of the box performances and a push toward offering people something fun and breathtaking. These are goose bump moments from seeing something new. At the same time, there's a subculture of performance artists who are finding weddings as a platform for their art in a broader, mainstream way." Hotels present performances that align with local traditions: for instance, a mariachi band or hula dancers. Couples hire entertainers who speak to who they are: opera singers for the highbrows; poetry pontificators for the romantics; or street and subway acts for the urbanites. Event planners, too, have a bag of tricks filled with techno dancers, synchronized swimmers, stomp troops and aerialists hanging on 40 foot rigs. Fire and Knife, Not Fire and Ice Those who think "fire, good" may consider illuming their guests' experience with a three minute fire knife dance. The Hilton Waikoloa Village's Lagoon Lanai gives newly wedded couples three Hawaiian performers for an indigenous island offering. How It Works After the cake cutting or to commence the dancing, the blowing of a conch shell is heard to make sure everyone's attention is drawn to the fire knife dancer, who greets the crowd with a loud "Aloha!" Fast throbbing from one (about 700) or two drummers (about 915) happens simultaneously as the fire knife dancer begins. Why Couples Choose This Those who want oohs and aahs from their guests paired with an immersive, authentic element find big allures in acts such as these. Sit back, relax, mill about, because these folks perform for up to seven hours. That is a long time to be in a bubble. Held at the Hotel Metropole Monte Carlo in its Odyssey, an outdoor concept designed by Karl Lagerfeld in 2013, the space is part alfresco, part pool, part garden, part art mural. How It Works Like Cirque du Soleil, entertainers perform minishows, which happen throughout the evening. Expect to see clowns on stilts do aerial acrobatics; electronic violinists play Top 40 hits and Vivaldi; futuristic characters a la "Mad Max" and "Back to the Future" enter on hoverboards while juggling; a floating bubble acrobatic act; and a Disney like magical laser and light show, all while a British radio presenter plays M.C. Also expect to pay more than 20,000 for the show. Why the Couple Chose This "We wanted something that would provide an 'on the edge of your seat' experience one would get when watching an action movie," said Florrie Tseng, 35, who married Jason Ling on July 11, 2015. "The whole show was designed to be an unforgettable experience. We wanted everyone who was flying across the world from Zimbabwe, Australia, Taiwan, Malaysia, London, China and Hong Kong, to feel it was worth it." Memorable Moment "The aerial acrobatic part left guests, and the service staff, in awe," Ms. Ling said. Want the voice without the music? Turn to the harmonious vocal musings of the Virginia Gentlemen, an a cappella group from the University of Virginia. Dressed in navy sport coats, orange and blue bow ties for the university, crisp white button downs and khaki pants, the group retains a visually pleasing and classic style of an era gone by. How It Works For this specific wedding, 10 singers entered the ceremony during the presentation of the gifts and sang "Amazing Grace." Booked for the entire wedding, they performed at the reception as well. The group's performance will cost you 350 for three songs and 50 a song thereafter, plus travel expenses. Why the Couple Chose This Organized by the bride's mother, the group was a gift, and a surprise. "The guys took our breath away as they gathered in the center aisle of the church," said Courtney Bishop, 29, who married Ian O'Connor, 30, on Oct. 9, 2016, at the Holy Comforter Catholic Church, in Charlottesville, Va. "I turned to my husband to ask what was going on because I thought they were performing at the wrong wedding." Memorable Moment When the men performed the bride's deceased father's favorite songs: "Brown Eyed Girl" and "Sweet Caroline." How It Works Most shows take place on the dance floor during the last hour of the wedding reception and feature two to three performers who interact with guests. They hand out feather boas, sunglasses, hats, light sticks or whistles. The Hora Loca at Conrad Miami with the LED robots and dancers is about 900 to 1,000 for 45 minutes to an hour. Why Couples Choose This "Having this energized performance during weddings has become a tradition in Latin culture," said Ashley Gorden, the catering manager at the Conrad Miami Hotel. "The bigger and flashier the show is, the more fun guests have." Last year the hotel did 15 Hora Locas for the 20 weddings they hosted, an increase of 35 percent from 2014. "It also makes for colorful photos," she said. Memorable Moment At the conclusion, thousands of cracker size colored squares of confetti are shot out of a cannon. Those who would rather shake their belly than their booty can hire Moroccan belly dancers to perform an authentic Arabian dance. How It Works Right after appetizers have been consumed, but main courses have yet to be served, a small swarm of festively clothed dancers perform for 20 minutes. The first song is done solo, but by the second, they have moved to different tables and are wooing unsuspecting attendees to join in. The bride is the first to stand, then other guests follow. A couple can expect to pay about 100 a dancer. Why Couples Choose This "I honestly couldn't imagine having a wedding in Morocco and not having belly dancers," said Jane Lerman, 30, who married Shane Fonner, 37, on April 16, 2016, at a private villa in the Palmeraie area of Marrakesh. "I stood pretty firmly on this since Day 1. I loved that the dancers interacted with our guests. Everyone let go of their inhibitions. It was a great bonding experience for everyone." Memorable Moment "Seeing my mother trying to belly dance was really fun," she said. "Dancing with them, and listening to their entire body shake and jingle from the metal bangles that were attached to their bras and skirts was surreal and extraordinary." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
In an effort to fight off fraudulent or misleading online ads, Google will require that all advertisers across its sprawling network prove who they are and where they operate, the company said in a blog post on Thursday. The names of the companies or people behind ads, as well as their countries of origin, will begin appearing on Google ads this summer, starting with several thousand advertisers a month in the United States before expanding worldwide. The measure, which could take years to implement, is designed as a defense against businesses and individuals who misrepresent themselves in paid online promotions, Google said. The move comes as Google tries to tamp down misinformation and scams related to the coronavirus pandemic. It expands a 2018 verification policy focused on political advertisers serving election ads. Broadening the policy will "help support the health of the digital advertising ecosystem by detecting bad actors and limiting their attempts to misrepresent themselves," wrote John Canfield, who handles ad integrity for Google, in the blog post. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
Francois Henri Pinault and Salma Hayek, his wife, at an event last fall in Los Angeles. On Friday, Mr. Pinault plans to announce the details of a climate focused fashion agreement. The French luxury billionaire Francois Henri Pinault will unveil a new Fashion Pact to the G7 leaders in coming days. But does it go far enough? PARIS On Friday, Francois Henri Pinault, the chief executive of Kering, plans to unveil details of a Fashion Pact that he is to present to world leaders at the Group of 7 summit this weekend. The agreement outlines group commitments focused on climate, biodiversity and oceans. It defines itself as "a set of guidelines" and will not be legally binding. The 32 signatories, which include high end brands like Chanel, Prada and Hermes; athletic apparel names like Nike and Adidas; as well as fast fashion retailers like the H M Group and Inditex, the parent company of Zara, say they will implement proposed changes to their own operations. No punitive measures will be imposed should they fall short of targets. "The global challenges we are facing are complex," Mr. Pinault wrote in an email on Thursday. "They know no borders. Only coalitions can overcome them, bringing together governments, businesses and civil societies." He went on: "This Fashion Pact is about saying: We have acknowledged the 21st century's environmental issues, and we are taking our responsibility through collective action and common objectives." Scrutiny of the fashion industry's impact on the global climate crisis has hit new heights in recent months, driven by consumer pressure to tackle its carbon footprint, and has prompted a flurry of brands to publish updated public sustainability commitments. Globally, the fashion industry is responsible for about 10 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions, according to the United Nations, 20 percent of all wastewater, and consumes more energy than the international aviation and shipping industries combined. But confusion around the data related to fashion and sustainability has compounded issues for companies grappling with challenges for the sector. The expected growth of the worldwide apparel and footwear market, pegged by Euromonitor analysts at roughly 5 percent through 2030, will risk "exerting an unprecedented strain on planetary resources," a recent Euromonitor report said. According to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, a British organization dedicated to building a circular economy, textile production emissions will rise more than 60 percent by 2030 if the industry stays on its current trajectory. "Meaningful change will start here, given the volume and breadth of companies that have agreed to be part of this pact, and that is extremely exciting," said Marie Claire Daveu, the chief sustainability officer of Kering. Representatives of the participating fashion houses are to join Mr. Pinault on Friday at the Elysee Palace for the announcement, as President Emmanuel Macron of France had asked the Kering executive to take on the task of rallying brands. A follow up meeting confirming more in depth pledges will be held in October, Ms. Daveu said. For now, details on specific targets remain vague. Progress is to be voluntarily reported annually by the companies themselves. To combat the climate crisis, the signatories commit to implementing "science based targets" that could contribute to achieving zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. These may include sustainable sourcing of key raw materials, and 100 percent use of renewable energy within supply chains by 2030. 1. Time for action is running out. The major agreement struck by diplomats established a clear consensus that all nations need to do much more, immediately, to prevent a catastrophic rise in global temperatures. 2. How much each nation needs to cut remains unresolved. Rich countries are disproportionately responsible for global warming, but some leaders have insisted that it's the poorer nations who need to accelerate their shift away from fossil fuels. 3. The call for disaster aid increased. One of the biggest fights at the summit revolved around whether and how the world's wealthiest nations should compensate poorer nations for the damage caused by rising temperatures. 4. A surprising emissions cutting agreement. Among the other notable deals to come out of the summit was a U.S. China agreement to do more to cut emissions this decade, and China committed for the first time to develop a plan to reduce methane. 5. There was a clear gender and generation gap. Those with the power to make decisions about how much the world warms were mostly old and male. Those who were most fiercely protesting the pace of action were mostly young and female. Ms. Daveu defended the fact that there will be no punitive measures for signatories that fail to meet their targets. "This is not about regulation," she said. "We cannot punish groups directly. But by committing to improved and collective transparency, there is an incentive for those in this pact to stick to targets and not fall behind." Several fashion executives made public statements about the pact. "We know that one company cannot solve the environmental challenges facing our planet alone, and we believe in the power of collaboration to drive real change," Marco Gobbetti, the chief executive of Burberry, said in a news release. "The objectives of the Fashion Pact strongly align with our own work in this area, and we are looking forward to working with the other signatories to help transform our industry." Some big names, like LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton, the world's largest luxury group by sales, were conspicuous in their absence from the lineup. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
As state governments struggle with the fiscal damage caused by the recession, an income tax increase has become a rarely used remedy. Governor after governor has publicly forsworn the prospect of raising income taxes, preferring to talk layoffs and cuts in programs and public union benefits. To cite prominent examples, Democrat Andrew M. Cuomo of New York and Republican Chris Christie of New Jersey have ruled out income tax increases. Still, cracks have appeared in the no tax increase facade. In Illinois, Gov. Pat Quinn signed a law that temporarily raises the income tax rate to 5 percent, from 3 percent. New governors Mark Dayton of Minnesota and Jerry Brown of California have talked of enacting or extending tax increases. Set aside for a moment the ever charged argument about whether income tax increases spook the wealthy and consider this question: What would an increase in the personal income tax of a size similar to that of Illinois do for other fiscally troubled states? The New York Times examined this question in three embattled places, New York, California and New Jersey. In New York, an increase of two percentage points in the state income tax could raise about 9 billion and perhaps tip the state into surplus. In California, a similar action could raise more than 13 billion, which would cover just a portion of that state's yawning 25 billion deficit. In New Jersey, a jump of two percentage points in each of its income brackets could raise nearly 5 billion, which would probably leave the state with a 4 billion to 7 billion deficit. Under these assumptions, a household with the median income would pay at least 1,000 more a year in each of these states; a family making 200,000 would pay 4,000 more. That an income tax increase of such a size could not close budget gaps in California and New Jersey underlines the vast challenge confronting these states. In California, Mr. Brown has proposed a deep, billion dollar cut in higher education and 4 billion worth of cuts in services for the poor and unemployed. Even a substantial increase in its state income tax already much higher than in Illinois would only soften the harshest blows. In Illinois, too, the income tax increase will not cover all the accumulated ills, from a multibillion dollar deficit to a backlog of unpaid bills to its huge pension problems. For other states, though, such a tax increase would go much further in addressing at least the short term problems. In Arizona, for instance, legislators during the last 17 years repeatedly cut income taxes, opening an annual hole of nearly 2 billion. That sum, according to Mark Muro, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, approximates the size of the state's annual deficit without taking into account the recession driven drop in revenue. Matthew N. Murray, a professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, who has studied state fiscal problems for the Brookings Institution, said: "In Illinois, the stark reality of the cataclysmic nature of their budget reality drove this income tax increase. But we're going to see more states raising taxes over the course of the next few years largely because there's only so much cutting you can do. From top, Jerry Brown of California talked about an income tax increase; and Chris Christie of New Jersey and Andrew Cuomo of New York said no. From top, ; Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images; Rich Pedroncelli/Associated Press, Doug Benz for The New York Times "It's getting to be a cold winter out there." The Tax Foundation, no friend of tax increases, noted recently that many states face gaping revenue shortfalls and forecast that "2011 may be a year of dramatic tax increases." Many caveats attend this back of the envelope exercise, not the least of which is that a comparison of California, New Jersey, New York and Illinois is inherently difficult. Illinois has a flat income tax rate (that is, residents regardless of income are taxed at the same 5 percent rate), while the other three have tax rates graduated by income, which is to say that a well to do couple pays taxes at a higher rate than does a working class couple. Illinois legislators, too, had the advantage of starting from a low base. The state's 3 percent income tax rate was among the lowest in the nation. And the decision of the governor and legislature to raise taxes still leaves Illinois on par with or slightly below most neighboring states. The new Republican governor of Wisconsin has lampooned Illinois for raising taxes, and he has invited its businesses and residents to move north. But Wisconsin's income tax rate is higher over all than that of Illinois. Income tax rates in Wisconsin range from 4.6 percent to 7.75 percent, and someone earning 10,000 or more gets taxed at least as much as a resident of Illinois. Note also that Illinois cannot balance its budget with the personal tax increase alone; the state has also raised its corporate income tax and capped how much spending can grow. Another caveat is that an increase of two percentage points in the rate brackets would leave California with the highest upper income tax rate in the nation. And New York and New Jersey would not be far behind. The talk of such income tax increases, it should be emphasized again, is a thought exercise. It arises from an intriguing fact, however, that tends to set this recent recession apart from earlier downturns. In the recessions of 2001, 1990 91 and most forcefully after the deep dive of 1980 82, state and local governments cut deeply and made layoffs. Then a number of states and cities enacted income tax increases to repair the damage as the economy slowly turned upward. Not so in this recession. "In a typical recession, you'd look for tax increases this year, as states already have cut a lot," said Donald J. Boyd, a senior fellow at the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government at the State University of New York in Albany. "But we're in quite an extraordinary antipublic union, antitax climate right now." A number of states, in fact, including Maryland, New Jersey and North Carolina, let taxes on high income residents expire this year. Oregon was one of the few to buck that trend. Last January, voters approved a temporary increase in taxes for individuals making more than 125,000 a year and on couples whose income exceeded 250,000. An editorial in The Wall Street Journal later stated that these rates caused thousands of upper income residents to flee the state, but studies revealed that a large majority simply made less money, and so fell beneath the income cutoff for the higher rates. What's clear is that almost everywhere the fiscal crisis of states has grown more acute. Rainy day funds are drained, cities and towns have laid off more than 200,000 people, and Arizona even has leased out its state office building. Tax revenue has rebounded a touch as the economy recovers, but for now that is more than offset by the expiration of federal stimulus aid. "It's the time of the once unthinkable, although it's difficult to imagine other states following in Illinois's footsteps with such a large increase," noted Lori Grange, deputy director of the Pew Center on the States. "Whether there are tax increases or dramatic cuts to education and vital services, the crisis is bad, and there's a bit of denial about how much government can provide and what it takes." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Economy |
The first pages, however, comfort us with the familiarity of a fairy tale. A nameless woman wanders from home to pick berries, only to lose her way in the forest. She sees a little man she calls a "first folk." She misplaces a bonnet that was a gift from her dead mother. Night comes. With the universal tone of "once upon a time," Hunt conjures the stories we heard as children, and we know the land his characters inhabit could be anywhere, at any time. But there are hints a journey across an ocean, Puritan beliefs to set us in colonial New England. Those who have read Hunt's other recent novels will note similarities a historical American backdrop, intriguing female main characters, a colloquial first person voice with a distinctive cadence and poetic cleverness. In "Neverhome" a seed is even planted for this newest novel, when a mother tells distorted fairy tales so that "Hansel and Gretel" ends as "Rumpelstiltskin." "In the House in the Dark of the Woods," however, is something different. It is more horror fantasy than historical fiction, and where "Neverhome" and "The Evening Road" are grounded, if at times meandering, this one takes off at a full gallop and never looks back. In just over 200 pages, Hunt evokes countless stories embedded in the American consciousness, from Grimms' fairy tales to Washington Irving's creepy stories of the early 1800s. And while there are no outright references to the witch trials, he seems to pay homage to Salem with the names of his characters, Eliza and Goody. But there is also Captain Jane, a menacing Granny Someone and the sense that other cultural influences are at play. When Goody climbs into Captain Jane's ship made of human bones and skin, and they fly into the clouds, Hayao Miyazaki's animated films leap to mind. People turn into pigs, a blob at the bottom of a well morphs into a scream, and in order to survive you have to learn the rules of the game. It is tempting to seek a moral in the end. Maybe, don't talk to strangers. Or, goodness prevails over evil. Or is this just a recasting of an old tale with modern sensibilities? But Hunt isn't that predictable or didactic. Instead he has fashioned an edge of the seat experience more akin to watching a horror movie. Don't go in the cellar! Don't eat that pig meat! Darkness is everywhere. And never assume you can trust the narrator. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
A trophy from the first Ironman race, in 1978.Credit...Michelle Mishina Kunz for The New York Times HAIKU, Hawaii On an October night in 1979, a Navy man named John Collins rode his Triumph motorcycle over to the offices of a Honolulu health club. He brought nothing but a box of paperwork. Collins, credited with starting a quirky competition called the Hawaiian Iron Man Triathlon, had just been reassigned to the mainland. He desperately needed someone to run the third edition of the event. The first two had 15 competitors each. He handed the box to Hank Grundman and his wife, Valerie Silk. Inside that box was what now might be considered a billion dollar idea. "No money changed hands," Judy Collins, John's wife, said in a recent email exchange. "No papers were signed. John handed our box of triathlon paperwork to Grundman." Dunbar is a main character in Ironman's origin story, a bit of a legendary figure. He led the first race, in 1978, until a couple of cold beers near the end did him in. He finished second the next year, too, in a pivotal contest as epic as the first, nudging Ironman toward fame and fortune. Dunbar believes Ironman belongs to him and 14 others who competed in the first race, including Collins. He has made the argument for decades, even after the courts told him it was too late, even after other original competitors who stood beside him, including the original champion, Gordon Haller, shrugged and gave up on claiming a part of what they still think should be theirs. "Maybe Wanda Corp. will say, 'Let's make this right,'" Dunbar said. He laughed. "I'm dreaming, huh?" Now 65, Dunbar remains lean and tan. His face has the strong bone structure of Clint Eastwood but none of the intimidation. His eyes are deep blue. His hair is full and graying. He still swims in the ocean and rides bikes on the roads, but he climbs and hikes more than he runs. He had a hip replaced 12 years ago. Dunbar was absent, as usual. He does not get invited to the Ironman these days. As with most stories, it helps to go back to the beginning. Ironman's website explains it this way: "During an awards banquet for the Waikiki Swim Club, John Collins, a Naval Officer stationed in Hawaii, and his fellow athletes began debating which athletes were the fittest: swimmers, bikers or runners. Later, he and his wife, Judy, who had both participated in new competitions known as triathlons in San Diego, decided to combine three of the toughest existing endurance races on the island. On Feb. 18, 1978, 15 competitors, including Collins, came to the shores of Waikiki to take on the first ever 'Hawaiian Iron Man Triathlon.'" More colorful versions of the story were passed through the decades, often by John Collins himself and through articles, books and Ironman's own marketing materials. They usually included military men, bravado and beer. Today, John and Judy Collins want to recraft the tale, largely to secure Judy's role as co creator. In a series of email exchanges with the couple, Judy Collins said they came up with the idea privately many months before the awards banquet of Ironman lore. "We never told the entrants how and why we came up with our idea," Judy Collins wrote. "Maybe that is why a few of the original 1978 finishers have an incorrect version of Ironman origins. That includes John Dunbar." McDermott described Dunbar as "a blond, open faced fellow who is very good natured and shy around strangers. He ran in a women's race last year wearing a T shirt that read TOKEN. But there is a serious side to Dunbar, and he had seethed ever since his 1978 defeat. When people mime his hardened competitive spirit, they clench their fists and make chomping, biting gestures, evidently comparing him with an implacable snapping turtle." The story was Ironman's spark. "ABC's Wide World of Sports" signed up for the third event, along with 108 competitors, in January 1980. By then, though, John and Judy Collins were gone to the mainland. They were relieved to know that the event, now in the hands of a couple who ran a couple of Nautilus fitness centers, would survive, at least for one more year. Dunbar is among those who still contend that it was not the Collinses' race to give away that it belonged to the collective group of original competitors, only one of whom was John Collins. "I have respect for John and his wife," Dunbar said. "But it hits me here" he tapped his chest "as a fellow Navy man, that he didn't consider the team." Valerie Silk was 29 at the time. She was not an athlete and had no interest in endurance sports. "After the first event, I could see that it needed a race director, and it was something I wanted to try my hand at," Silk, now 68, said in a recent interview from her home in St. Petersburg, Fla. "So I stepped away from the clubs, turned those over to my husband, and I took on the race. And he was happy for me to do it." The couple divorced in 1981, but not before signing an article of incorporation with the state, creating a business called Hawaiian Triathlon Corporation. John and Judy Collins, the characters in the Ironman story who might have reason for harboring the biggest regrets, were there for the 40th anniversary in October, too. They were feted as the founders and said they were thrilled with Ironman's continued success. "We will always feel lucky and grateful that Ironman fell into Silk's hands," Judy Collins said in an email. "It was good fortune. Not only did Silk keep our long distance triathlon going, she nurtured Ironman triathlon around the globe." On a perfect day last fall, Dunbar waited for his next guests. They rent rooms, either in his old house or in the new building with the wide view over the trees, all the way across the Hana Highway to the famous surf of Maui's North Shore. The place has none of the manicured gloss of the resorts down in Kaanapali or Wailea. It is two acres of grass and banana trees, a bit wild and untamed, which kind of describes Dunbar, too. In person, Dunbar comes across as a thoughtful man seeking only fairness and practicality. His bookshelf includes works by Aristotle, Socrates and Descartes, books by Thomas Sowell ("The Quest for Cosmic Justice") and Saul D. Alinsky ("Rules for Radicals)," plus survival books and old National Geographics. But he is a litigious sort, his name all over legal filings, and persistently aggrieved. With little provocation you will hear stories about his battles with the Maui police, Airbnb, neighbors, a farmers' market and his own family. To him, they are the unreasonable ones. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
Credit...Geordie Wood The architect Elizabeth Diller typically works with pen on paper, bringing sketches to her West 26th Street studio, where she and her team at Diller Scofidio Renfro puzzle over how best to realize those plans. Since that kind of in person brainstorming is no longer possible, Ms. Diller and the firm she leads with her husband, Ricardo Scofidio, Charles Renfro and Ben Gilmartin is taking a crash course in what it means to practice architecture in a pandemic, without being able to communicate or collaborate in the presence of colleagues. "Usually we work, we draw, we look in each other's eyes, we argue, we throw things around the room, we make models and break them apart, and somehow stuff gets made," said Ms. Diller, who has been working from the couple's weekend home in upstate New York. Like every profession, architecture is trying to find its way in the quarantined world. The pandemic has forced clients to delay some projects and jettison others. While certain types of construction have been deemed essential, other ventures are frozen. Demand for design services in April saw its steepest month to month decline on record, according to a the index from the American Institute of Architects. "I hope that our discipline is still vital at the end of this," Ms. Diller said. "I think it will be." The Diller operation is in a stronger position than many, having solidified its reputation as one of the go to architecture firms in the world. Ever since designing its widely acclaimed Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston in 2006 and the redevelopment of Lincoln Center in New York, completed in 2012, Diller Scofidio Renfro has been tapped for major commissions like the High Line park on the West Side of Manhattan (2009 2019) and the Broad Museum in Los Angeles (2015). Ms. Diller herself has been named one of Time's "100 Most Influential People," and she won a MacArthur genius grant with her husband. Two years ago, she created, directed and produced "The Mile Long Opera," a large scale choral work staged on the High Line. So this moment should have been a victory lap a chance to celebrate the one year anniversary of the Shed, the new arts center Ms. Diller not only designed but also helped conceive, and to welcome crowds to the studio's redesign of the Museum of Modern Art, which reopened in October 2019. Instead, both are temporarily closed. And "Deep Blue Sea" at the Park Avenue Armory, a new work by Bill T. Jones for which Ms. Diller and Peter Nigrini designed the visual environment, was canceled before its premiere. In working on the V A project which involves putting on view thousands of objects now in storage Ms. Diller immersed herself in the museum's holdings. "She is as much a curator as she is an architect; she gets really excited by the collection," said Tim Reeve, the deputy director and chief operating officer of the V A. "She is very laid back, but at the same time very passionate about what she's doing and uncompromising." Though Ms. Diller, 65, comes across as calm and low key, her propulsive career speaks to her ambition and tenacity. It isn't easy for women to advance in the field of architecture and few have managed to achieve a position of power. Although she shares top billing with her partners and started as her husband's student Ms. Diller is the face of her firm. Mr. Scofidio, 85, said he defers to Ms. Diller's ability "to clearly articulate what we should be doing and why we should be doing it," adding, "I'm more the silent partner." While known for her intellectual rigor she has long taught architecture at Princeton Ms. Diller is also clearly adept at navigating the internal politics that often accompany major public projects. She has managed the egos and temperaments of demanding and sometimes difficult clients like the philanthropist Eli Broad; the MoMA board; and the constituent groups that comprise Lincoln Center. Glenn D. Lowry, MoMA's director, said Ms. Diller pushed the museum to take risks in creating new spaces for artists and the public, like a soaring projects room with a second floor overlook. "She does not give up," he said. If there was any proof of Ms. Diller's mental toughness, it was in the way she weathered the attacks brought on by her settling on a design for the MoMA expansion that called for demolishing the American Folk Art Museum, designed by the architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien (damaging their longtime friendship). The sense that Ms. Diller betrayed her compatriots still lingers among some architects. (Robert A.M. Stern, then dean of Yale's School of Architecture, pronounced himself "very disappointed.") And the resulting new MoMA has not been uniformly well received (Michael Kimmelman, architecture critic for The New York Times, called it "smart, surgical, sprawling and slightly soulless.") "In the profession of architecture you have to have thick skin," said Mr. Gilmartin, who joined the firm in 2004 and became a partner in 2015. "She needs to be able to stand up and be a voice that's heard and can command consensus in a room full of men who are generally inclined to be skeptical." Ms. Diller's intensity permeates her practice. Sit next to the architect (dressed in her signature black) while she presents a project if you can get time on her jammed calendar and it's as if she were talking about one of her kids. Perhaps because Ms. Diller and Mr. Scofidio do not have children, boundaries between office and home don't seem to exist. Ms. Diller travels constantly and works at all hours (she emailed her response to one question for this article at 4:10 a.m.). She brought that singular focus to her epic opera on the High Line, seeking to present "a creative contemplation on gentrification." She was turned down by several performing arts institutions that deemed the project too big, expensive and risky, particularly since Ms. Diller is not an opera producer or director. So she independently raised the money, produced and co directed the work (composed by David Lang with lyrics by Anne Carson and Claudia Rankine), which ultimately included 1,000 singers from various choirs, and 250 professional singers. "It was a logistical nightmare and one of the hardest things I've ever done," Ms. Diller said, "but it was one of the most satisfying things I've ever done, seeing thousands of New Yorkers every night for seven nights, promenading through the park at their chosen pace, leaning in to hear the words of hundreds of individual voices in unusually intimate proximity between strangers, almost unthinkable since Covid 19." The pandemic is a challenge of another order. Among the projects Ms. Diller hopes will stay on track are the University of Chicago's David M. Rubenstein Forum for intellectual exchange, with occupancy scheduled for September, and a new home for the Columbia Business School in Upper Manhattan, where construction work has been deemed essential. Universities "are fairly well endowed," Ms. Diller said. "The cultural projects are the ones that are the most fragile." Juilliard is still planning to welcome the first class to its new campus in Tianjian, China, in September. Although the firm is currently barred from China because of quarantine restrictions, the architects are trying to find a way to return. "I give them credit," said Joseph W. Polisi, Juilliard's chief China officer. "They're going back into the fight." Perhaps most essentially, the firm is having to change the creative process itself. "Our studio is quite intimate," Ms. Diller said. "Of course something is lost. It's the grimace on someone's face, it's the eye popping out of someone's head, it's the nuance and the gesture." Ms. Diller has also grown more keenly aware of the generational divide. Working on the computer comes naturally to younger staff members, whereas she and her fellow partners "are used to thinking through drawing," Ms. Diller said. "That's the direct route from an idea in your brain to a spatial proposition." Nevertheless, she is now learning online formats, like Apple Pencil, though she finds the process less efficient. "We're getting printers and scanners and lots and lots of paper," she said, "and figuring out how to supplement the digital means so we can still easily draw." "I'd love to see the end of this and things getting back to normal," Ms. Diller said, adding of this moment's larger sense of the unknown, "We're in the dark together." At the same time, the strain of this period has not made her question a bedrock faith in the importance of the built environment and the power of design. "Nothing changes my belief in elevating architecture to the status of an art form," Ms. Diller said. "Nothing has changed about that." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
'Policing the Police' When to watch: Now, on the PBS website and YouTube, or Monday at 10 p.m., on PBS (check local listings). This Frontline documentary first aired in 2016, and PBS is re aring it in some areas now. It examines some of the inner workings of the Newark Police Department whose practices were cited as unconstitutional in a 2014 report from the Justice Department and follows Jelani Cobb, a journalist for The New Yorker, as he interviews police officers, politicians and local residents. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
If you've ever used a microwave oven in your life, you probably know this already: Do not microwave an egg. Of course, a quick search on YouTube will show that numerous individuals, perhaps with more curiosity than good sense, have gone ahead and done it anyway. In one video, a man heats a peeled hard boiled egg in the microwave. Removing it gingerly, he stations himself several feet away and reaches out with a fork. As the tines pierce it, the egg explodes like a tiny, protein rich grenade. His friends shake with silent laughter as a dog moves in to lap up the quivering fragments. Exploding eggs aren't all fun and games, however if one detonated in your mouth, you might not be laughing. In fact, a recent investigation into exactly how microwaved eggs go off, and the volume of the resulting boom, was set off by a lawsuit. A report on the research was presented at the Acoustical Society of America meeting in New Orleans on Wednesday. A diner at a restaurant claimed that in addition to burns, his hearing had been damaged when he bit into a reheated, hard boiled egg. Anthony Nash and Lauren von Blohn, acoustics experts at Charles M. Salter Associates, were engaged to look into whether the sound could be damaging. And so began a long campaign of microwaving eggs, setting them under a microphone and giving them a prod. Nearly 100 eggs were sacrificed for the cause, and while most did nothing but lie there, about a third exploded gratifyingly (some also burst inside the microwave before getting to the microphone). Mr. Nash, who presented the research, said that at first they microwaved the eggs in a water bath, as the restaurant did, but very quickly realized they needed to change their method. "After cleaning the microwave twice," he said, "we decided to use an acoustically transparent container for the egg," a nylon stocking that kept the egg from covering the microwave or the carpet with yolky shrapnel. It soon became clear that the sound of the eggs going off, while loud, wasn't particularly dangerous at a distance of one foot, ranging from 86 to 133 decibels. The exploding eggs were quieter, for instance, than a shotgun blast of 160 decibels, which is not considered harmful. But the pair found something else. When they took the temperatures of the water bath and the egg yolk just after it exploded, there was a very large difference, averaging 22 degrees Fahrenheit. The yolk was hotter than 212 degrees Fahrenheit in other words, hot enough to boil water. This suggested a potential explanation for this tendency to explode. As an egg is cooked, the proteins inside the yolk clump together. Tiny pockets of water form as well, scattered throughout the matrix. These are harmless if you eat the egg after it cools. But if the egg is reheated and the yolk proteins rise above 212 degrees Fahrenheit, they could heat the water up to that temperature as well. Still under pressure within the egg, the water might not boil. But if the egg was penetrated or otherwise disturbed, that could all change swiftly, with the water instantly erupting into steam and provoking an explosion. The lawsuit has since been completed, and thus the research into what is happening within the yolk of an exploding egg is unlikely to progress further in his hands, Mr. Nash said. But if the past is anything to go by, the empirical work by scores of amateurs with a smartphone, a microwave and a desire for excitement will probably continue regardless of safety warnings. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
Lucia Bose, an Italian actress in neorealist films of the 1950s who walked away from her career to marry the Spanish bullfighter Luis Miguel Dominguin, only to return to acting after they separated, died on Monday in Segovia, Spain. She was 89. Her death was announced on social media by her son, the singer and actor Miguel Bose. Roberto Liberatori, who wrote a 2019 autobiography of Ms. Bose, said the cause was pneumonia. After she won the Miss Italy beauty pageant in 1947, Ms. Bose traveled to Rome and drew the attention of the directors Michelangelo Antonioni and Giuseppe De Santis. In 1950 she appeared in De Santis's "Under the Olive Tree" and Antonioni's first feature film, "Story of a Love Affair." One of her most prominent parts was as Clara, a would be actress who marries a film producer played by Gino Cervi in Antonioni's "The Lady Without Camelias" (1953). The producer's jealousy drives Clara into a film that ultimately bombs. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
Production on the final season of "House of Cards" was suspended Tuesday, two days after its star, Kevin Spacey, was accused of having made an unwanted sexual advance toward a 14 year old boy in the 1980s. In a statement, Netflix and Media Rights Capital, the studio behind the show, said production was being halted "to give us time to review the current situation and to address any concerns of our cast and crew." On Monday, executives from both companies spoke to the cast and crew of "House of Cards" in Baltimore, where production of its sixth season had recently gotten underway. The streaming service announced on Monday that the season would be the show's last. A spokeswoman for Netflix said that decision had been reached months ago, long before the allegation against Mr. Spacey. On Sunday, BuzzFeed reported an allegation by the actor Anthony Rapp that Mr. Spacey had made an unwanted sexual advance toward him in the 1980s, when he was 14 and Mr. Spacey was in his mid 20s. Mr. Spacey released a statement shortly after the article was published in which he said that he did not recall the episode but attributed it to "deeply inappropriate drunken behavior." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
"A big part of my reservation was the traditional model of like bride and groom like they're on a pedestal: 'Look at them, they're perfect.' And it's just like, I don't want to be that person. I'm not that person. We're not that couple." "Now I'm going to ask you to grab a blessing cord. Find a partner, and tie it three times around their left wrist." "And so I think having the strings, having people standing in sort of that semi circle shape, having people tie strings with strangers if they didn't know who they were immediately next to, it just sort of brought everyone into and present for the ceremony." "Do you, the family and friends of Adam and Mitchell, promise to support this ceremony and this union for the good of Adam and Mitchell?" "We do." "So we were like, O.K., what is a gay wedding? Well, it's two men. And then, O.K., well, if it's two men, then who gets to wear a wedding dress? Someone should wear a wedding dress. What if the DJ is a drag queen who wears a wedding dress? We tried to create a party that could be like a wild dance party, but also very easy to dip out early without anyone noticing." "Being queer, not having a template for how a wedding is supposed to be ended up being the best thing for this situation because it really allowed us to create our own structure for how it should go. And the greatest compliment that I got from a couple of people was like, 'I never thought I wanted to get married until this wedding.'" | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
Up for Auction: Snapshots of Jackie Kennedy in India and Pakistan When Jacqueline Kennedy and her younger sister, Lee Radziwill , began a tour of India and Pakistan in March 1962, the first lady was described in Life magazine as "arguably the most famous woman in the world." In India, crowds gathered to see Mrs. Kennedy in Jaipur, New Delhi and Fatehpur Sikri. In Pakistan, she was welcomed by people lining the streets of Lahore, Karachi and the Khyber Pass. The sisters spent two weeks in the countries, and were photographed riding camels and elephants, on a boat ride along the Ganges, at a horse and cattle show and at black tie dinners with politicians, diplomats and other dignitaries. Beginning on Friday, Mrs. Radziwill's personal photo albums of the trip will be on display at Christie's New York, a week ahead of an auction of jewelry, fine art, books, decorative arts and other memorabilia (including the albums) from her home in New York City. Mrs. Radziwill died of natural causes in her home on Feb. 16. She was 85. Mrs. Radziwill became a princess when she married a Polish emigre nobleman, Prince Stanislas Radziwill in 1959. "It's interesting to see how Princess Radziwill's way of life the way in which she lived, the interiors of the apartments reflected her travels," said Jonathan Rendell, a deputy chairman at Christie's who is working on the auction. Despite having a complicated relationship, the sisters often traveled together; they even wrote a book about their first trip to Europe. The fact that the first lady brought her sister on the trip to India and Pakistan signaled that they were on good terms. "There was no need for Mrs. Kennedy to take her sister, but she wanted to," Mr. Rendell said. "You can see that they're enjoying being in each other's company." India and Pakistan had been divided for 15 years when the women arrived. The Sino Indian War would begin later that year. "The moment of the sisters going there is very pivotal there's a slow moving timebomb between the struggle of Kashmir, what's happening with India and China, and Pakistan and Afghanistan," said Manan Ahmed, a historian at Columbia University. On March 12, after taking a chartered Air India flight from Rome, the sisters arrived to a red carpet rolled out on the runway at Palam Airport in New Delhi. They were accompanied by John Kenneth Galbraith, the United States ambassador to India, and his wife, Kitty. The sisters were greeted by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and his daughter, Indira Gandhi. In a blue album with a golden inscription "Visit of Mrs. John F. Kennedy to India (March 1962)" are color and monochrome photos of Mrs. Kennedy alone in front of the Taj Mahal in a green dress and white gloves, and of both sisters at a black tie dinner attended by Braj Kumar Nehru, the Indian Ambassador to the United States, along with Mr. Nehru and his daughter. The album has 89 photographs. In the 1960s, Mr. Rendell said, first ladies did not typically play roles in American relations elsewhere in the world. Mrs. Radziwill's photographs, however, show Mrs. Kennedy and her sister with Prime Minister Nehru and others in semi official situations. "This type of diplomacy has almost disappeared," he said. "I think it's a pity, because they projected a certain version of American culture." After eight days in India, Mrs. Kennedy and Mrs. Radziwill made their way to Pakistan, where they were welcomed by crowds with flowers and gifts. Clint Hill, a Secret Service agent on the trip, later told Radio Free Europe that a "whole damn bouquet" of flowers would occasionally be flung at Mrs. Kennedy as she was driven through the streets . "I'd have to rise out of my seat to fend it off so it didn't knock her in the head," he said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
For Londoners in the know, the must do culture activity last summer wasn't a major exhibition or a West End show. No, it was an art installation commissioned by the arts organization Bold Tendencies a stairwell of an old car park in Peckham, South East London, painted a bubble gum pink by the London artist Simon Whybray. The pink space was the cultural hit of the year and drew crowds from all over England. "I had no idea it would be this popular," said Hannah Barry, founder of Bold Tendencies and owner of the gallery, about the installation. The staircase leads to the top of Frank's Campari bar, one of the city's most fashionable drinking spots for London's cool kids and bankers alike. Among the Caribbean grocery stalls selling mango and plantain, pawnbroker shops and acrylic nail salons of Peckham, beats the heart of London's most dynamic art scene. Far f rom fringe, the neighborhood is on the circuit of art world bigwigs such as the Tate Modern director Frances Morris, for its combination of art with 1 million price tags and a creative scene that includes craft makers, food and drink. Peckham is now the place Britons go to for counterculture art, with artists, makers and galleries lured to the area by cheap rents and a recently established East London commuter train line connecting the neighborhood to the center of the city. With the recent arrival of the arts space Peckham Levels that puts a premium on creativity within the community by encouraging local artists who were born and raised in South East London to have their studios at this newly opened center, Peckham is set to boom. "Peckham has always been an area where things happened art schools, squats, parties," said Rozsa Farkas, director of Arcadia Missa gallery, located under the railway arches in the center of the neighborhood, "but it's only in recent years that it's been known for this." Farkas's gallery is typical of the area and of its commitment to exhibiting avant garde art such as the current exhibition Mouth, a video installation that explores gender binaries by New York based artist Maja Cule as well as exhibitions about marginalized communities, like last summer's show We Lost Them at Midnight, about lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender culture in London. "There's a spirit to Peckham that you won't find anywhere else in London," said Luds van de Belt, site director of the newly launched Peckham Levels, a 10 story car park that's been transformed into a studio block for artists. The enterprise, off the neighborhood's main street, Rye Lane, offers some of the least expensive artists studio in the area a 12 square feet studio space rents from PS260 to PS290 (about 340 to 380) per month. Yearly, 10 studios are offered for monthly rents of just PS90 to artists with the lowest incomes. The artist and craft maker Anastasya Martynova, who has a studio at Peckham Levels, sees the area as an integral part of her creative process. "I think art as a whole has a tremendous power to unite people and encourage positivity," she said, "and Peckham is the creative center of South East London. There is a real feeling of optimism for the future, and lots of raw, creative talent." The requirements for Peckham Levels membership reflect the neighborhood's deeply rooted sense of community. You have to be local and 10 percent of membership fees will go back into neighborhood initiatives. Members also have to commit at least one hour a week to volunteering in local projects. "Growing up in Peckham as a teenager around 2008 I remember it having such a bad reputation," the painter Sani Sani said. "Friends that lived in other areas were genuinely scared to come around. There were art galleries like the South London Gallery then, but it seemed exclusive and nonaccessible to the locals. I think that the arts scene in Peckham has the power to completely change the perception and the narrative of what Peckham is." In an expensive city like London, it's getting harder for creative types and artists to find the space and support they need. But arts spaces in Peckham have all managed to survive through an agreement with Southwark Council, the borough authority Peckham is in, that keeps their rents at about half the market rate. For artists like Mr. Sani, who warily eyes the influx of bankers and high earners in the neighborhood, a cap on rents can only be a good thing. "If we can make it so locals like me can create our art here and be able to afford it," he said, "maybe Peckham does have a hopeful future ahead." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
When the young Israeli in " Synonyms " rushes through Paris, he keeps his head down. Intense and wary, he views beauty as a bribe that the city pays strangers to keep them from its heart. So he walks and talks, trying to find it , head bowed while he practices his French. It's a habit that feels like a mania and looks like a defense. As he circles the city he's building a wall, each French word a rebuke to the Hebrew he refuses to speak. Furious, brilliant, exhausting, "Synonyms" is the story of a man in self imposed exile. Physically coiled and linguistically expansive, Yoav (Tom Mercier, charismatic and expressively stoic), has arrived in Paris with little more than his clothes. He has come to the city "to flee Israel" each step, scene and recited noun shows how far he has to go but soon loses his clothing along with his other few possessions , leaving him as naked as a newborn and ready for rebirth. The director Nadav Lapid isn't afraid of obvious situations, bold gestures and didactic metaphors, all of which he deploys in a coming into consciousness tale of violence and memory, being and belonging . "Synonyms" is the latest full length feature from Lapid, whose exploration of Israeli identity in his movie s is politically diagnostic rather than didactic. In his electric feature debut, "Policeman," he presents an unsparing vision of Israel by setting an Israeli counterterrorism unit against Jewish class warriors turned terrorists. His last movie, "The Kindergarten Teacher," also takes place in Israel and focuses on a woman who becomes obsessed with a virtuosic boy poet, a squirmy fixation that opens up into a critique of Israeli militarism and machismo in a battle between barbarism and culture. (The American remake shares the original's title but lacks its political edge.) Identity also drives "Synonyms," which opens with Yoav racing along gray Paris streets, the hand held camera violently lurching behind him, struggling to keep up. He rapidly and somewhat mysteriously enters a grand, sprawling but vacant apartment, a resonant harbinger of his emerging relationship with France. The flat's anonymous benefactor remains as enigmatic as the thief who soon robs Yoav of his clothing and scant belongings . But like a fairy tale princess, he is just as quickly rescued by Emile (Quentin Dolmaire) and Caroline (Louise Chevillotte), indolent beauties with sensuous mouths and impassive gazes that, lizardlike, flicker to life on seeing Yoav. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
The 10 year labor agreement between the N.F.L. and players union that was ratified on March 15 is filled with dozens of incremental changes, most notably the one percentage point increase in the share of league revenue that the players will receive. One of the biggest overhauls in the agreement, though, was a change the league had long resisted: loosening the rules governing players' use of marijuana. Under the new collective bargaining agreement, players who test positive for marijuana will no longer be suspended. Testing will be limited to the first two weeks of training camp instead of from April to August, and the threshold for the amount of 9 delta tetrahydrocannabinol or THC, the psychoactive compound in marijuana needed to trigger a positive test will be raised fourfold. In adopting the changes, the N.F.L., a league not known for its liberal views, caught up to and in some ways leapfrogged Major League Baseball, the N.B.A. and other leagues that had already eased their rules as acceptance of marijuana became more common in many parts of the country. "There is a generalized sense that the fans don't care about the issue, so it's possible to appear progressive," said Paul Haagen, co director of the Center for Sports Law and Policy at Duke University. the N.F.L.'s laxer standards are a big departure from the past. But while players will not be suspended for positive tests, they can be fined several weeks' salary, depending on the number of positive tests. First time positive tests will, as before, mean diversion into a league mandated treatment program. Players who refuse to take part in testing or clinical care can be suspended for three games after a fourth violation, with escalating penalties for further violations. Current and former players have long pushed for looser restrictions on marijuana, which they claim is a less addictive pain reliever than prescription medication, and a growing number of N.F.L. owners saw the rules as a hindrance because resulting suspensions kept some of their best players off the field. Over the years, the N.F.L. had resisted loosening its marijuana rules to avoid conflicting with federal and state laws. But as more states have approved the use of marijuana for medical or recreational purposes, the league found itself enforcing a policy that, in some instances, was more punitive than local laws. In 11 states, including seven with N.F.L. franchises, the drug is legal for any use. Thirty one states allow use for medical reasons. The Green Bay Packers and the Tennessee Titans play in states where marijuana remains entirely illegal. Some former players warn that the looser rules could lead to a spike in drug abuse. Randy Grimes, who played 10 seasons for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and now works as a substance abuse counselor after a long battle with opioid addiction, said that the N.F.L. must do more to address the mental health problems that drugs both mask and amplify. "The marijuana now is incredibly engineered and potent, and it's trouble waiting to happen," he said. "I'm in the industry that sees the danger of mood altering substances, and that's what marijuana is." The trend in professional sports, though, is to reduce penalties. In December, Major League Baseball removed marijuana from its list of banned substances and now treats it the same way as alcohol: Players are not randomly tested unless they are in a treatment program. The National Hockey League still tests for marijuana, but there is no punishment for a positive result. Players with "a dangerously high level" of THC in their system are referred to the player assistance program for evaluation. N.B.A. players must take four random tests for marijuana during the regular season. After a first positive test, a player must enter a drug program. A second positive test will result in a 25,000 fine, and a third will lead to a five game suspension. While the N.F.L. Players Association hailed the looser standards as a victory, they were also a win for the owners. In the making of this new labor deal, the relaxation of the testing rules may have been one of the easiest points to negotiate. The owners prioritized economic issues, like the split in revenue and the addition of extra games, over rules governing the workplace. Players sought to gain ground on those issues, demanding things like less taxing training camps and limits on the number of full contact practices. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
With all the debate over immigration in the United States and Europe, one group of immigrants is getting a red carpet welcome around the world: millionaires. Last year, a record 82,000 millionaires moved to another country, according to a new study. While their numbers are a small fraction of the world's migratory population, and of the world's millionaires, wealthy people are being courted and cosseted by host countries like never before. The growing contrast between migrants who are poor and those who are wealthy reveals a less noticed form of global inequality, as well as an acceleration of a new culture of the rootless, borderless rich. "The wealthy today don't have a country," said Reaz H. Jafri, a New York based partner at Withers Worldwide, a law firm that helps wealthy clients move and relocate around the world. "They don't view their success as being related or dependent on a single country, but on their own business strategies. It's amazing to me how many of the very wealthy are going totally mobile." The rich have always been a restless class, of course, moving with the seasons or the social circuit. But the current wave of millionaire migrations seems to have reached a new level, with wealthy families changing citizenship, sending their children overseas or moving permanently to the nation of their choice. Rather than fleeing economic ruin or conflict, millionaire migrants are shopping the world for the best schools, financial safety and lifestyle. Technology, coupled with the rise of global markets and global investors, has given rise to multinational millionaires who increasingly have no nation. According to New World Wealth, a market research firm based in Johannesburg, South Africa, the number of millionaires moving to another country jumped 28 percent in 2016 from the previous year, reaching the highest level the firm has found in its four years of measuring. Millionaire migration has grown 60 percent since 2013, the firm's findings show, and there are no signs that it is slowing. Andrew Amoils, head of research at New World Wealth, said he expected the ranks of millionaires on the move to top 100,000 within the next two to three years. That's still a small slice of the estimated 13.6 million millionaires around the world, defined as those having at least 1 million in assets (minus liabilities), not including their primary residence. New World Wealth's data includes only millionaires who have physically moved to a country for a period of at least six months. It uses surveys, real estate data and research with relocation firms and other specialists for its estimates. Add to those numbers the wealthy who have changed or added citizenships, those who spend part of their time in various countries or own homes in multiple nations, and the numbers grow much larger. "We looked at the people who truly moved," Mr. Amoils said. "But the universe of multinational wealth is obviously much larger." The map of migration is also changing rapidly. Australia is now the world's top destination for millionaires, beating the United States for the second straight year, according to New World Wealth. An estimated 11,000 millionaires moved to Australia in 2016, compared with the 10,000 who moved to the United States. Canada ranked third, with 8,000, followed by the United Arab Emirates and New Zealand. As for countries that millionaires are fleeing, France tops the list, with 12,000 moving out during 2016. China ranked second, with 9,000, followed by Brazil, India and Turkey. Mr. Amoils said Australia was especially attractive to Chinese millionaires, given its relative proximity, its wide choice of private schools, its clean environment and its political and economic stability. Australia, like many countries, has also created money for visa programs to make it easier for rich immigrants to move in and become citizens. In 2012, the country introduced a "golden ticket" investor visa program that fast tracks and eases the residency requirement for a permanent visa. Millionaires need to invest 5 million Australian dollars (about 3.8 million) to qualify for the program, officially called the Special Investor Visa. Since its creation, more than 1,300 foreigners, nearly 90 percent of them from China, have used the program, according to government statistics. The government also has an investor visa program that allows people to invest 1 million Australian dollars (about 770,000). That option comes with more restrictions, and it takes longer to get a permanent visa. The other two top destinations, Canada and the United States, also have generous visa programs for the wealthy. America's EB 5 program requires a 500,000 investment, although there are proposals in Congress to raise that figure which hasn't changed in 27 years to over 1 million. Canada scrapped one of its main investor visa programs in 2014, but there are other programs available for wealthy foreigners. The number of 10 year visas issued to Chinese citizens more than quadrupled between 2012 and 2015, to 337,000. Mr. Amoils said the main reason millionaires are leaving China is to educate their children in Western or Australian schools that will give them a better education and connections for their careers. Of course, living in a country where billionaires literally disappear amid the government's crackdown on corruption also drives the rich and their fortunes overseas. A 2014 report from Hurun, a research firm in Shanghai that tracks the wealthy, found that 64 percent of Chinese millionaires were considering or were in the process of moving, with education topping the list of reasons. Mr. Jafri of Withers Worldwide said that personal safety goes hand in hand with education for many of the world's millionaires when considering a move. Many of his clients are Latin Americans seeking a haven from kidnapping and crime. "My clients say, 'In New York, I can walk my daughter to Brearley, while in Buenos Aires we have to get into an armored car,' " Mr. Jafri said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Your Money |
When the actress Kate Hudson needed a sofa, she headed to Wyeth in SoHo for a vintage blue Dunbar by Edward Wormley. When the designer Tomas Maier needed a coffee table, he went there, too, and plunked down his credit card for a safety glass and stainless steel coffee table from Joe D'Urso. And when the Hollywood agent Bryan Lourd was in search of a new lounge chair, he picked out a black leather Papa Bear by Hans Wegner, also from Wyeth. With its sky high prices and enormous selection of Danish modernist pieces, the store is arguably the premiere midcentury modern emporium in the United States. Its owner, John Birch, is also one of the most elusive, and talked about, dealers on the high end furniture scene: a Larry Gagosian for the interior decorator set, with strong taste that did not just mirror the market but helped set it. Mr. Birch a trim, square jawed 53 year old with blue green eyes and salt and pepper spackled hair hobnobs with the Olsen twins (who featured an assortment of his furniture at the most recent presentation of their line, the Row), introduced Helmut Lang to his assortment of Wegner furniture and has recently been giving Jimmy Fallon advice on his Gramercy Park home. Sleek bamboo dining tables designed by Mr. Birch have become status objects owned by the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow and the entertainment manager turned real estate mogul Sandy Gallin. Mr. Birch's girlfriend, Tiffany Vassilakis, is an accomplished interior designer who has worked with Carey Lowell and Richard Gere. Next Tuesday, Mr. Birch is expanding his footprint with a Sotheby's auction of rare midcentury finds that could fetch upward of 1.8 million. Later this month, he's opening a 10,000 square foot showroom on the ground floor of 533 Canal Street that's a triumph of Wyethesque minimalism: exposed white brick walls, perfectly sanded cement floors, light fixtures from O.C. White and Isamu Noguchi, and a floating raw steel staircase its 23 steps fabricated by hand and welded on site by Mr. Birch. Yet as movers came in and out on a recent afternoon, and a team from Sotheby's prepared to photograph pieces for the catalog, Mr. Birch looked less like a furniture mogul than a boy whose toys were being taken away from him. "I don't understand the empty tables," he said, peering around the room. "Nothing's ever empty at Wyeth." A bulb in one of Noguchi ceiling lanterns had gone out and was becoming a source of real irritation. "I'm glad I have employees who realize the bulb has been blown out for two weeks," he said sarcastically, climbing on top of a Hans Wegner desk so he could replace it himself. As can be surmised, Mr. Birch is a glass half empty sort of guy. He's not mean, although he says so little and charges so much for things that people often presume he must be. But he is painstaking, meticulous and so focused on achieving a kind of aesthetic perfection that he can drive himself (and everyone around him) crazy. And in recent months, it's not just neurosis keeping him up at night. The wealthy Brazilians who used to stream through his doors are largely gone, as their economy implodes and their president, Dilma Rousseff, awaits an impeachment trial. Gone, too, are the Brunello Cucinelli wearing hedge funders, who, as the art market shows evidence of a possible correction, are clearly less inclined to pay 50,000 for a pair of Finn Juhl's chieftain chairs. And then there's 1stdibs. Once exclusive, the online site featuring modern and antique furniture, jewelry, fine art and other collectibles, has been ferociously signing up dealers who, as he puts it, "work out of storage lockers" in places like suburban Illinois with low rents, and don't bother with the painstaking restoration for which Wyeth is known. The site is also increasingly aggressive about collecting commissions on the online sales, a practice Mr. Birch sees as double dipping. Many of his Manhattan colleagues are already downsizing or folding up shop. Todd Merrill packed up his mirrored Paul Evans pieces and left Bleecker Street this winter for a location in the slightly more affordable financial district. In the fall, Alan Moss, the Art Deco purveyor, will close his Lafayette Street store and go online only. "It's a last stand," Mr. Birch said, reflecting on the current state of the high end furniture market. "Retail is a terrible business." In fact, he sees his new showroom as a way of weaning himself away from 1stdibs. "I don't want anything to do with them anymore," he said. But how did it come to this, that one of the country's leading purveyors of midcentury modern design should find himself in retrenchment, just as the market finds a wider audience thanks to sites like 1stdibs, not to mention knockoff manufacturers that hawk cheap imitations? John Birch (no relation to the Baptist minister who has a right wing group named after him) was born in Brigham City, Utah, the oldest boy in a Mormon family of nine children. "With only one mother!" joked his younger brother Paul, who as Wyeth's principal woodworker builds many of the original pieces and oversees restoration of vintage finds. "He had an incredible eye and very defined taste," said Gabriella Forte, who was his boss at Armani before becoming president at Calvin Klein and then chief executive of David Yurman. "He positions things with real talent. It's pure simplicity. Is it minimalism? I don't know if that's how I'd describe it. It was just perfection." By 1994, Mr. Birch had had enough. So he leased a 3,500 square foot space on Franklin Street in TriBeCa, named it for his then 3 year old son, Wyeth, and filled it with his favorite things. (Wyeth graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design last year and now works for the family business. Mr. Birch and Wyeth's mother, Daphne, separated over a decade ago, though they never divorced. "It's cordial," Mr. Birch said.) Back then, TriBeCa was still in its infancy. Nobu had just opened and the majority of big antiques dealers had fairly narrow specialties like Biedermeier and Art Deco, which befit an earlier, fussier era. The novelty of Wyeth, said Robin Standefer, half of the design team Roman and Williams, was how Mr. Birch mixed things up, placing postwar Danish chairs with turn of the century gas light fixtures and industrial chic coffee tables from the '80s. "He would take objects that were somehow considered less valuable, that didn't necessarily have pedigree, and reassemble them in unexpected ways," Ms. Standefer said. "He certainly educated American consumers to a kind of Danish design. But what I found most interesting is what he paired those things with. That's what was different. That's what was unusual." Soon, word spread about the midcentury loving Mormon who talked little to his customers and charged a fortune for the coolest stuff in town. Many of his famous customers did not even get discounts or a friendly smile. "He was not a pleasure to buy from," Diane von Furstenberg said. "He really wasn't." But instead of walking away, she (like many others) became a repeat customer, part of an elite circle that kept coming back even as they complained about the store's outrageous prices and the way its owner barely seemed to grunt in their direction. As with most myths, the legend may not have been totally in sync with reality. Mr. Birch, it turns out, is actually shy, the sort of person who is more comfortable with beautiful things than beautiful people. And those that did try negotiating often got a bargain, particularly when he sensed a fellow design worshiper. Still, his untraditional approach to salesmanship had a reverse playback among a subset of people used to being doted upon: His lack of solicitousness made customers desperate to buy from him. "Part of his mystique was that he was elusive," said Wendy Goodman, the design editor of New York Magazine. "When you went in and had an audience with him, it was a big thing. Because it was a question: 'Were you worth it?'" That's more or less how Jessica Seinfeld, another person who came to Wyeth over the years, described the experience of shopping there. "Their taste is impeccable," she said. "Every piece in their shop is 'important' in one way or another, so I respect their consistency, even their condescension. I find myself charmed by their lack of interest in human contact." Wyeth did go through rough patches, which often coincided with its expansion. It moved out of Franklin Street and into its current 10,000 square foot home on Spring Street around the September 2001 attacks. And it opened a space in Sagaponack, N.Y., in 2008, just after the financial crisis hit. Casual customers presumed that Mr. Birch cared only about selling things at the highest price, but as Wyeth's trove grew and grew, a different theory emerged among those who knew him best. Mr. Birch, they said, could not bear to be separated from his favorite things, so he began pricing them as high as possible so they wouldn't sell. "He's putting together a continuum of a design aesthetic, and to do that, he needs to own these things, touch them and feel them," said Richard Barrett, his friend and landlord at 533 Canal. "Some might say he's a hoarder." "It's one of the few sales I've conducted in my career where I wanted to buy half the things in it," said Jodi Pollack, the auction house's head of 20th century design. Perhaps predictably, Mr. Birch worked all the way to the wire, fussing over every imaginable detail; the last furniture shipments arrived at the Canal Street showroom mere minutes before a party there on May 17 celebrating its opening and the coming Sotheby's sale. Well dressed aficionados and fellow dealers began arriving around 7 p.m., streaming into a room of Kjaerholm tables, Finn Juhl chairs and new biomorphic, brass accented mirrors by Mr. Birch. Longtime customers remarked on the high auction prices (including two Wegner easy chairs expected to fetch 60,000 to 80,000 each), while tattooed staffers told stories about the poor Sotheby's photographer tasked with getting Mr. Birch's portrait (he wouldn't sit still, kept rearranging the furniture and smoked the entire time). True to form, Mr. Birch was hard to find. Wearing a pair of RRL jeans, a charcoal Comme des Garcons sweater and a dark Jil Sander blazer, he huddled in the back with the Olsen twins. They made a fitting trio, this reclusive furniture world character and two women whose public personas have been built largely upon doing lots and saying little. But it was impossible to know what they were talking about because Mary Kate Olsen quickly shut a reporter down. "Sorry," she said. "We're not giving any interviews." "In my family, we don't often express our appreciation for each other," Wyeth said. "I don't know how to put it because right now, I'm exhausted. But this is the first time in my adult life we've celebrated Wyeth. It's tough love with my dad." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
Some 230 million years ago, in the forests of what humans would eventually call Brazil, a small bipedal dinosaur zipped after its prey. It had a slender head, a long tail and sharp teeth, and it was about the size of a basset hound. Buriolestes schultzi, as paleontologists have named the creature, is one of the earliest known relatives of more famous dinosaurs that emerged 100 million years later: the lumbering brachiosaurus, up to 80 feet long and weighing up to 80 metric tons, the likewise massive diplodocus, as well as other sauropod dinosaurs. By the time the Jurassic period rolled around and the time of Buriolestes had passed, these quadrupedal cousins had reached tremendous size. They also had tiny brains around the size of a tennis ball. Buriolestes's brain was markedly different, scientists who built a 3 D reconstruction of the inside of its skull report in a paper published Tuesday in the Journal of Anatomy. The brain was larger relative to its body size, and it had structures that were much more like those of predatory animals. The findings suggest that the enormous herbivores of later eras, whose ancestors probably looked a lot like Buriolestes, lost these features as they transitioned to their ponderous new lifestyle. It's also a rare glimpse into dinosaurs' neural anatomy at a very early moment in their evolution. In 2009, Rodrigo Muller of the Universidade Federal de Santa Maria and colleagues discovered the first partial Buriolestes fossil in southern Brazil. In 2015, they uncovered another Buriolestes nearby and this time, to their excitement, the dinosaur's skull was nearly all there. They used computed tomography scanning to get a peek inside, drawing inferences about the brain from the contours of the cavity left behind. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
WASHINGTON In his State of the Union address, President Obama called for a wide ranging package of policies to help create American manufacturing jobs, including trade enforcement measures, business tax breaks and worker training programs. In many ways, the proposal is surprising, as few economists now consider manufacturing a potent engine for job growth in the United States. Manufacturers have added about 330,000 jobs in the country in the last two years. But the growth followed three decades of decline, during which companies like automakers and textile companies slashed payrolls by about 7.5 million. That has led many economists to say the recent turnaround might be nothing more than a correction from the depths of the recession. But the administration argues that big trends like rising wages in developing countries, falling wages in America and a weaker dollar have made moving work to or keeping work in the United States a much more viable option. And they say that manufacturers will continue to add jobs domestically, especially with a little help from Washington. "We have a huge opportunity, at this moment, to bring manufacturing back," Mr. Obama said in his address to Congress. "But we have to seize it. Tonight, my message to business leaders is simple: Ask yourselves what you can do to bring jobs back to your country, and your country will do everything we can to help you succeed." The proposal stems from a belief that after "a long period where people felt the wind was in our face, the wind is with us," said Gene Sperling, director of the White House National Economic Council. "It's not fighting against the trends. It's actually working with them." Workers might command relatively high wages in the United States, but wages are climbing rapidly in countries like China and Brazil. High energy prices have increased shipping costs. And manufacturers argue that American workers frequently produce higher quality goods and that American factories are closer to the markets for more sophisticated goods. Those trends have led some companies to repatriate manufacturing jobs in the last few years, a development called on shoring. General Electric has decided to move production of a water heater to Louisville, Ky., from China, for instance. NCR, a maker of self service kiosks and automated teller machines, has shifted jobs to Columbus, Ga. It is difficult to determine how many jobs American manufacturers are sending overseas or bringing back. But in a November survey by MFG.com, a site that connects manufacturers with suppliers, one in five North American manufacturers said they had brought production back from a "low cost" country, up from about one in 10 manufacturers in early 2010. Economists said that the administration could help sustain the trend. But they warned that the administration's proposal seemed unlikely to lead to major job growth, and said that many businesses would still hire lower cost workers overseas. "We're not going to get very labor intensive, relatively low skilled jobs in America, and I don't think we want them," said A. Michael Spence, a professor at New York University and Nobel laureate in economics. "But sometimes it makes sense to have a little help developing technologies that will make us competitive. And sometimes public support for upgrading workers' skills makes sense." "The best we could possibly get is continued modest growth in manufacturing jobs," said C. Fred Bergsten, director of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a research group in Washington. Mr. Bergsten noted that manufacturing continued to become more efficient, meaning companies needed fewer and fewer workers. American manufacturers produced roughly the same amount of goods in 2010 as they did a decade before, but they did so with six million fewer employees on their payrolls. Mr. Bergsten also argued that sending jobs to other countries continued to make sense for many global firms. "You're trying to buck two major trends," he said. Some economists also questioned whether Washington should be giving manufacturing a hand at all. "It's totally implausible to think that there's going to be a surge in manufacturing jobs," said Lawrence F. Katz, an economist at Harvard. Broader measures to improve American infrastructure and education, he said, would be more effective in creating middle class jobs. But the White House says that manufacturing offers significant potential for new jobs jobs that require more skills and offer better pay than the assembly lines 30 or 40 years ago. And it says that even modest incentives might make a difference. To that end, the administration has put together a far ranging set of proposals: cutting taxes for manufacturers that produce goods in the United States, taking away tax breaks for businesses that move jobs offshore, doubling a tax deduction for makers of high tech goods, providing support to businesses investing in areas where factories are closing, expanding worker training programs and creating a new task force to better enforce trade rules and intellectual property rights. Closing a loophole that allows companies to shift profits abroad would pay for the tax credits, the White House says. It all adds up to what economists might call an industrial policy, the out of favor practice of using tariffs, taxes and other measures to help a particular industry. The White House avoids the term because it implies that the government is picking winners and losers. It argues that its proposals are a moderate plan to aid businesses deciding whether to move jobs overseas. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Economy |
The area of lower Broadway south of Canal Street in Manhattan has long been characterized by nondescript discount stores and lunchtime counters packed with city workers. It has been mostly ignored by the wave of gentrification to the west that has flooded TriBeCa over the last decade, bringing with it baby carriages, designer boutiques and restaurants. "Along Broadway has always been the funkier part of TriBeCa where you can still find artists," said Erik Torkells, the editor of the Tribeca Citizen, a neighborhood Web site. "People call it Chibeca because of its proximity to Chinatown." This may be about to change. The burst in activity is largely because of a booming condominium market and insatiable demand for downtown luxury apartments that is rapidly encroaching on commercial spaces and transforming old office towers. In the second quarter this year, the average condominium price in TriBeCa reached 1,583 a square foot, nearly 17 percent higher than the 1,354 a square foot posted last year during the similar period, according to data from the appraisal firm Miller Samuel. The median sales price in the neighborhood was 2.75 million in the second quarter, a significant premium over the 1.25 million for all of Manhattan, according to the firm. Land prices for development sites have followed, averaging as much as 500 a buildable square foot in TriBeCa, up from just 300 a buildable square foot two years ago, brokers said. "With prices approaching 2,000 a square foot or better in TriBeCa, it is encouraging the expansion of the core of the neighborhood to adjacent areas like Broadway," said Daniel Fasulo, a managing director at Real Capital Analytics, a research firm. "The amount of deal making in the neighborhood is astounding." By the start of winter, the first buyers will move in to 93 Worth Street, a 92 unit condominium that features a dog washing station and a roof deck terrace. The 18 story building has had swift demand from buyers, with just nine apartments remaining, including four penthouses that are yet to be put on the market. The average sale price is 1,700 a square foot, according to Eldad Blaustein, the chief executive of IGI USA, the building's developer. "This is a brand new Broadway corridor," said Doron Zwickel, an associate real estate broker at Core, which is marketing the building. "Historically, this hasn't been prime TriBeCa, but it is becoming more desirable." One draw has actually been that the building is outside the core of the neighborhood, and not in the flood zone that saw so much damage during Hurricane Sandy last year. "After the storm, we got a lot of interest from people close to the water who wanted to be in the neighborhood but didn't want to have the risks," Mr. Zwickel said. On Leonard Street one block to the south, two buildings are rising: 350 Broadway, a 12 story former office tower, is being converted into a 66 unit condominium. Bizzi Partners Development, which built the Setai Fifth Avenue in Midtown, began sales in July, and the building, called 101 Leonard, is more than 60 percent sold. At 346 Broadway, the Miami based developer Don Peebles is planning a 350 million renovation to convert the building, which was used by the New York City Criminal Court, into roughly 200 condominium units and a hotel. It acquired the 13 story building in March from the City of New York for 160 million. At Broadway and Franklin Street, the developer El Ad is planning the Franklin, a 53 unit condo complex with amenities like a children's playroom and a rooftop pool. The building has gone through a number of failed conversion plans, perhaps most notoriously in 2006, when the Dutch architect Ben van Berkel designed a 20 story apartment building, with glass elevators and a facade of black metal bands. Those plans fell apart during the recession, and El Ad eventually acquired the site. The Franklin "is the fastest selling building I've ever had," said Richard Cantor, a principal at the brokerage firm Cantor Pecorella, which is overseeing the marketing. Since sales began in May, 48 of the 53 apartments are in contract. Originally, the units were priced at 1,350 a square foot, but they were later raised to 1,550 and then 1,650. "Now, by the time we sell out, the prices will be closer to 1,800 a foot; we just sold the largest penthouse for 10 million, or just under 2,700 a foot," Mr. Cantor said. There are also a number of small boutique buildings in the works. The Keystone Group acquired 391 Broadway, a commercial building, eight months ago and is converting it into four residential floor through lofts with retail space on the ground floor. "With TriBeCa the way it is, there is not enough product for all of the demand, so the neighborhood keeps being pushed eastward," said Daniel Martin, a managing director at Keystone Group. It hopes to complete the project by May. At 372 Broadway, which is being renamed 6 Cortlandt Alley for the street it abuts, developers are getting approvals to build a five unit condominium, with sales beginning in the spring. At 361 Broadway, the Japanese architect Shigeru Ban is designing 13 condominium units, including a set of glass duplex penthouses that will be affixed atop the six story cast iron building. The plans were approved last year, and construction is set to begin as early as next month, said Dean Maltz, the building's executive architect based in New York. Another possible development could come at 360 Broadway, where the real estate investor Waterbridge Capital recently acquired the building for 23 million. Calls to the chief executive, Joel Schreiber, were not returned. "I've done a number of sales on the SoHo side of Broadway, and it seems to me a very natural progression to develop the area below Canal Street," said Susan Wires, a broker at the brokerage firm Stribling Associates, which is marketing 6 Cortlandt Alley with her partner, Leila Yusuf. "So many of the buildings that are coming to this area are large scale, but ours will be really intimate and boutique, something that is missing in the marketplace right now." With such a strong condominium market, the land prices for development sites have also skyrocketed. "If you compare where prices are today from 2010, it has gone way up," said Nick Petkoff, the director of sales at the brokerage firm Massey Knakal Realty Services. When Mr. Blaustein acquired 93 Worth Street in 2010, for example, he paid roughly 300 a buildable square foot. "Now, if you are buying buildings to convert, they are costing 500 to 550 a square foot," he said. "We would love to buy more buildings in the neighborhood, but the competition has become fierce." The demand for development sites is a key reason that the owners of 396 Broadway have put the vacant building on the market for 37 million, rather then push ahead with plans to convert it into a 50 unit rental building. "We have approved plans for a residential conversion, and an alternative plan for a hotel," said Gene Kaufman, the project's architect. "But the owners right now see that the property is a lot more valuable than it once was, and so it is reasonable that they pause and rethink it, given that the circumstances have improved for the better." But while there has been many residential developments, retail activity in the neighborhood remains lackluster. "Retail hasn't happened yet, it is all very embryonic," said Roger E. Eulau, an executive managing director at the Lansco Corporation, a retail brokerage firm. Rents are around 100 to 150 a square foot, compared with as much as 1,000 a square foot on Broadway in SoHo, he said. Still, "we feel that Broadway is going to be a natural gateway that links the Fulton Street Transit hub and the World Trade Center to SoHo, it is a natural thoroughfare for retail," said Mr. Martin of the Keystone Group. "We are very bullish about this neighborhood's future." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
I started touring in 1966. We were an all girl troop. We booked the tour and arranged accommodations, living in sponsors' basements. We set up the folding chairs for the performances and we did the press. We did it all because it was worth it for us to challenge ourselves as dancers and to learn how audiences were reading the work we did. We were building a career, and we were also in control of our lives. Except when we weren't. (Who can forget the time the train to Stuttgart split in two and half went north with one of our dancers, Margie Jenkins, and the other half went south with Sara Rudner and me?) But once I began a company a few years later, there was a more institutionalized structure and that sense of dancers controlling their destiny eroded. The us/them (management/dancers) split materialized, and that is no fun. This time round, while I am a good bit older than I was in 1966, I wanted to return to a group with a stronger sense of unity. For the dancers, this means they can be heard directly, and many problems that might emerge how to schedule tech time for example can be resolved democratically. As for me, asking myself to keep up with the dancers, offstage at least, is good for the anti aging factor. It is also a time for doing business. Working with dancers in the studio, creating new work, there is a line I do not cross. I try to know them only by what we all can see outside the studio is their affair. But there is very little privacy on a tour bus. I ride up front and try to maintain a forcefield of care. Who these dancers are is none of my business; how they are is. I meet with them individually while we travel to learn how they are doing physically beyond what I see. I am particularly concerned with the pacing of their shows. Having given this much thought I want to be kept abreast of how their stamina is being maintained, how the wear and tear of travel is affecting their morale, if there is any way to improve our regimen. It's our fourth week on the road, a Thursday. Having bused from Davis back to Sacramento, we catch an 11 a.m. flight to LAX, where we get on a bus for the two hour ride to Santa Barbara. Our driver opts for the scenic route, and we are taking Highway 1 north along the coast. I am particularly cranky because getting to Davis from Los Angeles earlier in the week had been arduous, and I am still working to recover three days later. I had stayed behind in Los Angeles to do a talk show, and afterward the driver got lost on the freeway in a driving Southern California rain (believe it), the flight was two hours late and I did not eat all day. I arrived at the Davis hotel around midnight; Brady had dry chicken waiting. Next day breakfast at Hyatt was trans fat piled on trans fat; gym: scary, dirty, small, air recycled. Windows in room did not open. Light popped on when you used the bathroom no way to silence it. Loud glare. I did not cry. I am the leader of the group. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
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