text stringlengths 1 39.7k | label int64 0 0 | original_task stringclasses 8 values | original_label stringclasses 35 values |
|---|---|---|---|
Madonna has a new album. Madonna has a big tour. Madonna's album goes to No. 1. That pattern the result of bundling album sales and concert tickets repeated yet again this week on the Billboard chart. Madonna's album, "Madame X" (Interscope), is her ninth No. 1 on the Billboard 200, giving her more chart topping LPs than any female artist except Barbra Streisand, who has 11 . "Madame X" opened with the equivalent of 95,000 sales in the United States, according to Nielsen. A bundle deal offered free copies of it to fans who bought concert tickets or merchandise from her online store. Such deals have come under fire for their potential to distort the charts. So was "Madame X" the most popular album of the week? Or just the most popular ticket? Billboard and Nielsen, its data partner, do not break out which sales came through the ticket deal, but it likely was a substantial portion. The album's 95,000 equivalent sales includes 90,000 copies sold as a full album as well as just 5.4 million streams the lowest number of streams for any No. 1 album this year. Madonna's tour of theaters opens in September with 17 shows at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
Like many older Americans, Shazzi Felstein recently found herself in an unexpected financial bind. About a year ago, she noticed that her savings had dwindled. To her horror, she realized that her monthly Social Security check would not cover her rent stabilized one bedroom apartment in Chelsea and monthly expenses like utilities and food for much longer. A former computer systems analyst, Ms. Felstein, 73, had always saved as much as she could and had enjoyed relatively stable finances. That changed in 2011, she said, when she lost about 80,000 in retirement savings after investing in a company that turned out to be guilty of fraud. The owners of the Massachusetts based Inofin Inc., a subprime auto loan company, swindled hundreds of investors, and the company entered into involuntary bankruptcy. Ms. Felstein has been unable to recoup her money, although the company's founders pleaded guilty to fraud and were sentenced to jail. "I felt very lost," said Ms. Felstein, a former nationally ranked table tennis and Scrabble champion. "I have always paid my rent on time, and I knew if I didn't do something, I wouldn't be able to live here anymore." She thought about moving in with her sister in Florida, but knew it would put a strain on their relationship. A native New Yorker, Ms. Felstein has lived in the same apartment for almost 40 years and had no desire to move. So she did what many others do to keep costs down in an expensive city: She found a roommate. Instead of placing an ad online, however, Ms. Felstein turned to the New York Foundation for Senior Citizens, a Manhattan based nonprofit. The group has been operating a home sharing service since 1981, matching people who have space in their homes with those in need of affordable housing. It is one of a number of similar programs that have emerged across the country as the population of older Americans grows, as a way to help people stay in their homes. The concept of pairing older people with younger ones, particularly those who are not family members, is not a new one: It was popularized by Maggie Kuhn, an elder rights activist who opened up her Philadelphia home to others for more than 20 years before she died in 1995. Today's home sharing, however, is as likely to be between those of the same age as it is to be intergenerational. The crucial thing is that it involves two or more people sharing an apartment or a house to their mutual benefit. And finances often play a big role. For those who are still working age, it's getting harder to pay the rent: According to a StreetEasy survey, rents in the city rose twice as fast as wages between 2010 and 2017. The lowest rents (those up to 2,300) rose 4.9 percent annually since 2010, which means someone who paid 1,500 a month in 2010 likely paid nearly 600 more for the same place in 2017. For baby boomers entering retirement, financial security is also increasingly hard to come by. Many Americans may think they have plenty of savings, but about half have not saved enough to maintain their pre retirement living standards, according to a recent estimate by the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. The rising cost of health care, increased life expectancy and lower interest rates only exacerbate the situation. In addition, a Fannie Mae survey found that baby boomers are more likely to be carrying mortgage debt into their retirement years than previous generations were. And she was asked to describe what she considered the ideal roommate. Her response: someone who wasn't home much. "I knew it would be a long shot," she said, "but I thought I should be honest." She found her match in Yukari Honda, a 27 year old graduate student in interior design at the New School. Ms. Honda, who is from Tokyo, is often at school from morning until past midnight. A year ago, Ms. Felstein moved out of her old bedroom to make room for Ms. Honda. She replaced the living room sofa with a bed, turning the living room into a bedroom for herself. Fortunately, there is a separate kitchen and common room where Ms. Honda studies and Ms. Felstein keeps reams of fabric for her quilting. The two split the utilities and the 1,145 rent equally. They rarely share meals or do things together, but have found that they seek each other out in other ways. "Shazzi is so patient, she has helped me for hours with my schoolwork," Ms. Honda said. Ms. Felstein, an avid quilter, said she has been thrilled to talk about design and assist Ms. Honda with her assignments. In return, Ms. Honda has been helping out more with the housework. "Getting a roommate at my age certainly required some mental adjustment," Ms. Felstein said. "But it has been wonderful in so many ways." Susan Bendes, the shared housing coordinator at the Women's Rights Information Center, in Englewood, N.J., said the nonprofit, which has found affordable housing for Bergen County residents since the 1970s, believes there is an urgent need for public policymakers to promote home sharing to seniors to prevent homelessness. "I have seniors who call and ask me all kinds of questions because they're in dire need of financial assistance to stay in their homes, but they tend to be gun shy when it's time to actually bring in a tenant," Ms. Bendes said. "There needs to be more dialogue on how and why home sharing should be a normal thing in our society." Statistics show that the number of older Americans who are homeless is growing. In 2007, homeless people 62 and older who sought shelter accounted for 2.9 percent of the country's homeless population. By 2016, the percentage had risen to 4.7, according to estimates from the National Alliance to End Homelessness, a Washington, D.C., advocacy group. "People were doing O.K. until the recession," said Nan Roman, president of the alliance. "But as people lost their jobs and struggled to get rehired, some lost their assets over time." "I really think the 'Golden Girls' were early trendsetters," she said, referring to the popular TV sitcom from the late '80s and early '90s, in which four older women lived under the same roof in Miami. "Why wouldn't you want to share your home with others, whether it's for financial reasons or for companionship?" Although placing an ad and setting up a profile is free, Silvernest charges those who have rooms to rent about 30 to use the messaging service to communicate with potential roommates. Those seeking rooms pay the same amount, which covers a background check and gives them access to the listings. More than 70 percent of those who have placed an ad since the company was started in 2015 were motivated by financial reasons, Ms. Burkhardt said, noting that while most of the company's clients are in the West, the service is available nationally. The real estate listings site Trulia estimates that there are 3.6 million unoccupied rooms that can be rented out in the country's largest housing markets and there may be more than 17,700 spare rooms that can be rented out for about 868 a month in the New York area alone. Sarah Oswald, a relationship coach who lives in Boulder, Colo., said she messaged numerous people through Silvernest to find her father, John Oswald, a roommate. Mr. Oswald, 69, lives in a one bedroom rent stabilized apartment in the West Village and has no pension to rely on, he said, because he worked in the nonprofit world for years. Health issues stemming from his service in the Vietnam War also took a toll on his finances, because numerous surgeries on his legs prevented him from working at times. Ms. Oswald said she tried using Craigslist and university housing boards, but they were difficult to navigate from afar. With Silvernest, she said, she was able to carefully read all the profiles, which made choosing whom to message and to introduce to her father much simpler. "The vetting the firm does for you helps," she said. Other start ups are following suit. Nesterly, an online portal that matches intergenerational roommates, will start offering services in New York this year after being introduced in Boston last fall. "We'd like to help create new units of affordable housing at a time when there's a dire need for it," said Noelle Marcus, a founder. Elizabeth Rosania, 86, learned a painful lesson when she found boarders through the classifieds in the local paper. After her husband passed away in 2013, a year of living alone in her four bedroom, three bathroom house on a four acre estate in Lebanon, N.J., left Ms. Rosania lonely and seeking company. She had worked as a nurse her entire life, she said, and she wanted to continue helping people in another capacity. Her first few tenants, however, were too much for her to handle. One female tenant in her seventies was addicted to OxyContin. Another tenant, a struggling alcoholic in her fifties, stole a nine foot satellite dish, jewelry and appliances, Ms. Rosania said. But last year, she found John Costanzo, 61, with help from social workers at HomeSharing Inc., a nonprofit in Bridgewater, N.J., and the two became fast friends. They now watch TV, run errands and eat most meals together. For Mr. Costanzo, a former Marine who owned a crane rigging business and is on disability after several back surgeries, affordable housing was essential. He pays 600 for his room, a monthly fee that includes utilities and cable. He is not allowed overnight guests, alcohol and drugs are prohibited in the house, and he must keep the bathroom clean at all times. "I think my blood pressure is lower and I've lost 43 pounds since I moved in," he said. Home sharing, of course, is not just for those who need the money. Taking in a tenant for little or no rent in exchange for household work suits many who have extra space, like Thelma Chesney, a Brooklyn Heights resident. Ms. Chesney, 91, started living with a new roommate last month. In exchange for light household work taking out the garbage, cleaning the house, shopping Grace Linderholm, 23, an artist who recently graduated from New York University, gets to live on the top floor of Ms. Chesney's house for free. A former associate professor at the New York University Silver School of Social Work, Ms. Chesney said the four story brownstone became "a lot of room for one person" after her three children moved out and her husband passed away in 2008. She finds all her lodgers through word of mouth, and also rents out the ground floor at a reduced rate, in exchange for handyman work done on the brownstone. But more important than the work her tenants do, she said, is having her home lived in, especially when she is on vacation or visiting her children. She recalled previous boarders, including one who practiced the cello for hours on end and another who helped her sew buttons on her clothing. "I've been able to coexist with everyone quite well," she said. "Having someone fetch you milk in bad weather is quite convenient." Melissa McHam Green, a licensed social worker and eldercare manager in Brooklyn, has helped some of her clients find roommates and agree on mutually beneficial guidelines. She advises those interested in home sharing not to go about it on their own: Go through a nonprofit service, she said, or ask a trusted eldercare professional, friends or family to help properly vet the prospective roommates. And before you sign a lease with a boarder, make sure to do a background check. "You need a huge amount of trust and to be very clear with your expectations," she said. "But if you have the help you need to stay in your home and the tenant gains affordable housing in exchange I think there's much to gain socially and spiritually when young and old live together." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
A delegation of five N.B.A. players and officials from the players association met privately with Pope Francis at the Vatican on Monday to discuss their efforts toward addressing social justice and economic inequality. The visit came after the Vatican extended an invitation to the players' union, saying the pope wanted to learn more about their activities. Michele Roberts, the executive director of the National Basketball Players Association, joined Kyle Korver, Sterling Brown, Anthony Tolliver, Marco Belinelli and Jonathan Isaac, players who are all active in the union, at the meeting. "I thought it was a fraud email that I got," Korver, who plays for the Milwaukee Bucks, said. "I called Michele right away. I was like, 'Is this for real?' She said, 'Yes, it is and would you like to come in like two days?' This came together really quick." After the 30 minute meeting, the players and officials still appeared stunned as they talked about it on video calls with reporters. "I'm still not even sure if this really happened," Roberts said. The players took turns addressing the pope and offered him a book documenting many of their community and social initiatives in the last few months as well as jerseys and a Black Lives Matter T shirt. "He said sport is such an opportunity to unify, and he compared it to a team, where you have a common goal and you're working together, but you all use your own personalities," Korver said. For the players, the meeting provided an opportunity to expand global awareness of the efforts to promote social justice after the deaths of several Black Americans at the hands of the police, including George Floyd in Minnesota, and the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Wisconsin. Brown and Korver were members of the Bucks team that initiated a work stoppage throughout sports in August. Confined inside the N.B.A.'s so called bubble environment near Orlando, Fla., Bucks players refused to take part in a scheduled playoff game after the shooting of Blake in Kenosha, Wis. Their protest quickly spread to other teams and other sports, forcing the postponement of games in the W.N.B.A., Major League Baseball and Major League Soccer. Most N.B.A. players during the season wore league authorized messages on the back of their jerseys, while the courts featured Black Lives Matter wording. The majority of players and coaches knelt during the national anthem before games. Isaac, a member of the Orlando Magic and an ordained minister, elected to stand. "My heart is, I believe, that it's in a place of love," Isaac said of what he shared with the pope. In June, Pope Francis said he had watched the social unrest enveloping the United States with "great concern." After 35 years of deeply conservative pontificates who focused on doctrine and social issues such as abortion, Pope Francis, a Jesuit, has sought since his election in 2013 to shift the emphasis of the church toward addressing issues of social justice, such as poverty, migration and equality. In his October encyclical, titled "Brothers All," a reflection on fraternity and social friendship, the pope wrote that "a readiness to discard others finds expression in vicious attitudes that we thought long past, such as racism, which retreats underground only to keep re emerging. Instances of racism continue to shame us, for they show that our supposed social progress is not as real or definitive as we think." He added, "Racism is a virus that quickly mutates and, instead of disappearing, goes into hiding, and lurks in waiting." Brown recently settled a civil rights lawsuit against the city of Milwaukee and its police department for 750,000, citing police brutality during a 2018 incident over a parking violation. The agreement included an admission of a constitutional violation by the city and commitment to procedural changes by the police department. Brown said he wished the meeting with Pope Francis had lasted longer. He spoke about the Bucks' protest and Blake's shooting more than his personal experience with police brutality. "Nobody gets to do this from where I'm from, barely get to do it from the United States," Brown said. "For me to be one of them, I can definitely take this and hold this and let people know I'm out here doing this to make a change, to actually get things put on other people's minds that have influence, to a degree." Belinelli, a member of the San Antonio Spurs, was the only player able to speak in Italian to the pope. More players had expressed interest in making the trip but could not because of the complications of travel in the pandemic and the holiday week. Free agency is also continuing. Training camps begin next week. "If we had more time, I would have 50 guys," Roberts said. The traveling party underwent a diagnostic test for the new coronavirus within 72 hours of leaving for Rome. The players had also been tested frequently in their home markets and, other than Belinelli, who was in Italy, traveled on a chartered flight. All will be retested once back in the United States. Pictures of the meeting showed the group and Francis without masks; the pontiff, who sat at a distance, has been known to forgo them in indoor meetings. The players had masks on by the time they were taking video calls. The players who attended described the decision to meet the pope as an easy one. "You say pope and being able to fly to Rome, this is a once in a lifetime experience, so why not take it?" said Isaac, who paused his rehabilitation from a torn A.C.L. to take part, while Brown agreed to a free agent deal with the Houston Rockets only a few hours before departing. "This visit is the kind of thing that gives you, I believe, the sense of confirmation that the work that you're doing is making a difference," Roberts said. "The confirmation comes from someone whose life is spent giving of himself to others, saying what you're doing is exactly what you should be doing and I encourage you to keep doing it." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
American teenagers receive 16.9 percent of their calories from fast food, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported last week. It made no difference whether the teenager was a boy or a girl, rich or poor, overweight or not. But there were some differences by race and ethnicity. Non Hispanic white teenagers received 17.8 percent of their calories from hamburgers, French fries and pizza, and non Hispanic blacks 18.8 percent. But energy intake from junk food was just 14.9 percent among Hispanic teenagers, and 11.9 percent among Asian adolescents. Children ages 2 to 11 consumed about 9 percent of their calories from junk food. Two thirds of them take in at least 25 percent of their calories from these meals. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
Last year, Kaitlin and Ben Fund decided to give up their rental near Penn Station and look for an apartment several blocks south of the commuter tumult. It was a perfectly understandable decision, but the couple worried about how the move would affect their golden retriever, Hobie. Three year old Hobie had been a regular at the New York Dog Spa and Hotel on West 25th Street since puppyhood, "and we all really liked it," said Ms. Fund, 27, who works at a public relations firm. "When we bought Hobie," she continued, "we promised ourselves that because he's a big dog we would send him to day care so he wouldn't be cooped up at home with nothing to do." Hobie's hangout was a very manageable six blocks away from the Funds' old apartment; it opened early and closed late, an important consideration for the couple, who work long hours. "And the facilities weren't that nice. They were sort of smelly," Ms. Fund said. Finally, they lucked into a rental a mere block and a half from Hobie's old day care. "It worked out incredibly well," said Ms. Fund, who sees nothing strange about her priorities. "Hobie is a huge part of our lives, and he goes with us just about everywhere." Apartment hunting New Yorkers have their wish lists a view, a formal dining room, a roof deck and their roster of must haves a doorman, a gym, a storage bin, a bedroom that can hold more than a cot. But for a certain breed of pet owners, Fido's needs take precedence over their silly human desires. As a consequence, these people give a wide berth to apartments and neighborhoods they themselves might prefer, buy or rent larger apartments than they might otherwise require, and, in a few instances, take a big financial hit for a change of address. "Many people who don't have children view their pets as their children, and they consider their pets' needs in the same way others would consider how the schools or playgrounds are in a particular neighborhood," said Arlene Kagle, a psychologist who recently moved from New York to Richmond, Va., with her husband, Jerry Lerner, and their dog, Lucy. For the record, Lucy had no say in her owners' housing decisions. That group might well include the couple whose elderly dog had a pet peeve about being stuck in New York traffic. "They had a weekend house and they wanted their primary residence to be close to the F.D.R. so they could get out of town quickly for the sake of the dog, because otherwise he would get very stressed," said Barbara J. Dervan, an associate broker at Fox Residential Group. The solution: an apartment on East End Avenue. "Not all clients who have pets are intense," Ms. Dervan added. "But over the last five to eight years, even people who don't have pets have shied away from buildings with a no pet policy. It takes away the option of buyers to change their mind about pet ownership in the future. And when they go to resell their apartment there are fewer people willing to look at it." Some newly developed condos and rentals have been responding to the pet possessed with far more than a pet friendly policy. There are on site day care and dog walking services and grooming stations. Such amenities were partly what inspired Bert Saville to rent at MiMA, a mixed use high rise in Hell's Kitchen. Three years ago, when Mr. Saville, 39, a marketing manager at Pernod Ricard U.S.A., the wine and spirits company, moved to New York from Miami, he knew what he wanted: a walk up, preferably in a brownstone; failing that, an apartment on a high floor with a grand view of the city. Dreams, dreams, idle dreams. None of this was going to work for Wesley, Mr. Saville's harlequin Great Dane. Climbing stairs would have been tough on Wesley's legs, so an elevator building was a must. But an apartment high in the sky, Mr. Saville's preference, wouldn't have served Wesley's needs, either. "I wouldn't say I'm ruled by my dog, but I have to give up a certain number of things because of him," Mr. Saville said. Despite his own preferences for an eyeful of cityscape and sky, he looked for a vacancy on the lowest floor available. "Elevators can stop at every floor and when there's an emergency and Wesley's got to go, being able to get out of the building quickly was important." Also important: a bedroom large enough to accommodate a California king bed another Wesley driven necessity, because the dog bunks down with Mr. Saville. Oh, and the apartment had to have a washer and dryer. It seems that Wesley sheds. MiMA offered another advantage: location, location, location. Mr. Saville's office is near Grand Central; he can hop on the 7 train at lunch and get home in short order to spend some quality midday time with Wesley. "I consider him my child," Mr. Saville said. That's exactly how Kristen Ruby feels about Caicos, her 11 month old white teacup Pomeranian. And parents make sacrifices for their children, which is why Ms. Ruby, 29, the head of a public relations company, is staying put in Lower Manhattan even though she'd rather move back to Greenwich, Conn., where she lived for three years and where most of her clients are based. "I think the No. 1 thing is proximity to the dog walker you've established a relationship with," Ms. Ruby said. "I think it would be mean to Caicos if I packed him up and left and introduced him to a new dog walker. He has play dates with the dog walker. The dog walker takes him to the vet. Not everyone understands how important that is when you're thinking about where to live." And, almost certainly, a move out of the city would put Caicos in social jeopardy. The people who came to his six month birthday bash, a celebration that included party hats, "wouldn't go all the way to Greenwich for his next party," Ms. Ruby said. Dogs, of course, are not the only animals that can bend New Yorkers to their will. If it weren't for Justin, a very assertive eclectus parrot, and to a lesser extent, Tammy, a conure, Geri Mazur could live in a co op and not a condo, a more expensive option. "But," she said, "it's very unlikely that a co op would approve me with a squawking parrot." And if it weren't for Justin, whose full name is Justin Case, Ms. Mazur, 56, a marketing consultant, would not need two bedrooms. "But I work from home," she said. "I'd have my desk in the living room, but he's so jealous he screams when I'm on the phone and it's very disruptive. I have to go into another room and close the door. If you think about it, he's costing me an extra 300,000." When Joanne Floyd, an anesthesiologist, and Jeffrey Bilotta, a gastroenterologist, moved from New York to Terre Haute, Ind., 25 years ago, "it was self inflicted exile," said Dr. Floyd, 60. "We'd always planned to come back when we retired, which we did last year." With them came Mick, a 15 year old English cocker spaniel. Here is all you need to know about the family dynamic: "If the dog isn't happy, we're miserable," Dr. Floyd said. The couple thought about living downtown, but "there are so many people on the sidewalks we thought it would be terrible to walk a dog down there," Dr. Floyd said. She and Dr. Bilotta, 65, ultimately settled on the Upper East Side, partly because of the wide, relatively unpopulated sidewalks, partly because of the proximity to Central Park and partly because it was a straight shot to the Animal Medical Center on East 62nd Street. "We did consider the location of our vet, because Mick had been ill at one time and we had to drive several hours in Indiana to get him treatment," Dr. Floyd said. "We talk about what we would do differently if we were dog free, and one of the things we would do is have a smaller place in New York and travel more," Dr. Floyd said. "It's bigger because of Mick. We wanted to have more room for him to roam." And after all, Mick does have six inner tube size beds scattered throughout the apartment: two in the master bedroom, two in the den and two in the living room. Michelle Mahoney, a 20 year resident of Manhattan, gave Westport, Conn., a try for a few years. As part of the experiment in suburban living, she and her husband, Fred Salkind, 54, the executive creative director of a design agency, acquired two canines, Ravello, now 3, a Bernese mountain dog, and Stevie, also 3, a mixed breed rescue dog. A year or so ago, when the commute became onerous, the couple decided to return to the city, and bought a loft in Dumbo, Brooklyn, "because with the waterfront we thought it might feel like Connecticut, even though our preference was to live on the Upper West Side," said Ms. Mahoney, 45, a freelance television producer. But almost immediately, Ravello became terrified of the bridges near her new home, and all the attendant noise. "She would lie in the lobby of our building trying to work up the courage to go outside," Ms. Mahoney said. "The other residents didn't appreciate it and the building threatened legal action." She makes little of the assault on the family bank account "we were willing to do what we did at whatever cost so our dogs could be safe" and makes no apologies for the decisions she and her husband made for the sake of their pets. "Some people think I'm crazy, but if you're a dog person, you totally get it," Ms. Mahoney said. "When I got Ravello and Stevie, I promised to protect them, and if it means selling an apartment, that's O.K." Ms. Mazur, seeking a change, recently sold her apartment in Park Slope. She is in contract to buy another condo, in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn. But she worries that the living room in her new place will be too small for Justin and Tammy. "It's a real estate issue," she said. Her living room must accommodate the sofa, the entertainment console, the dining table and the two bird cages, one of which is the size of a refrigerator. "Because of Justin, I'm constrained about where I can live and what kind of apartment I can live in, but I won't give him up," Ms. Mazur added. "He has a great vocabulary and he understands context. He's an amazing creature." This amazing creature calls Ms. Mazur "Mommy." "If I don't answer, he says 'Are you sleeping?' " she said. "You make a lot of accommodations for a pet like that. It shows he loves me, and I don't have to pay for college." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
Culture and commerce have long been easy bedfellows in the complicated relationship between the United States and China, so it's unsurprising that two first novels by young American authors, "Number One Chinese Restaurant," by , and "The Emperor of Shoes," by Spencer Wise, should feature a Chinese American restaurant and an American owned Chinese shoe factory, respectively, as the hubs in which lives, loves, languages and histories intersect. Li's novel revolves around the tangled inner workings of the family owned Beijing Duck House, in Rockville, Md., and the multigenerational enmities and aspirations of its owners and workers. The middle aged Jimmy Han, who inherited the restaurant (along with its tired menu and timeworn decor) from his late father, hopes to open his own pan Asian fusion restaurant in modish Georgetown. However, in order to realize his plan, he must rely on the financial clout of Uncle Pang, a shady, nine fingered fixer, and obtain the consent of the family matriarch, Feng Fei. For the elder, Chinese born family members and workers, the Beijing Duck House has displaced Beijing itself as "the heart center of the universe." But among their largely directionless American born offspring including Annie, Jimmy's niece, and Pat, the son of a manager named Nan the attachment is more casual. Nan is in a bicoastal marriage (her husband owns a restaurant in California), which doesn't stop her from developing a relationship with a fellow restaurant employee named Ah Jack, a man a generation older and still married to his terminally ill wife. Goaded by Uncle Pang, Pat, along with an unwitting Annie, starts a fire that eventually guts the restaurant, forcing these long simmering relationships and rivalries into sharp relief as priorities and allegiances are tested and reassessed. Although Li's prose can be uninspired ("the trouble with life was that life needed trouble"), more often it engrosses, especially when she allows the external world into the virtually airtight space of the restaurant, as she does when describing Jimmy's camaraderie with the multiethnic cohort of kitchen cooks outside working hours, or Ah Jack's affecting relationship with Nan. For the most part, though, Li's fictional America is suggestively insubstantial, her characters seemingly unable to step outside "the shadow of the Duck House," itself a metaphor for their "Chineseness" in the United States whether perceived or self imposed. Questions of family and identity also figure prominently in Wise's first novel. Alex Cohen, a 26 year old Jewish Bostonian and partner in his father's shoe factory in southern China, falls in love with a factory worker cum clandestine union organizer named Ivy. Soon he's acting on a newfound commitment to workers' rights, which appears incompatible with his father's bottom line and the vigilant gaze of local Communist Party officials. Garrulous, jocular and culturally insensitive, Alex's father, Fedor, is wedded to the status quo outdated shoe designs and the bribes to party officials necessary to ensure his factory's smooth operation. Wise has also endowed Fedor's character with an exaggerated Jewish American identity, one marked by Yiddishisms and shtick and often verging on caricature. ("Vey iz mir!" Fedor says in a typical passage. "We're shoe men, Alex, artists! Have I slaughtered a bull lately? Have you?") Throughout his time in China, Alex is haunted by the question of belonging: He is not strictly American, by virtue of his expatriate status, but nor is he Chinese. (Locals refer to him as gweilo, or "ghost man," in Cantonese.) His sense of purpose and identity gradually emerge through his involvement with Ivy, a veteran of the 1989 protests in Tiananmen Square, and her (fictional) Democratic Revolutionary Party, which he allows to organize a workers' strike at his father's factory. Despite nods to recent Chinese history, Wise's novel stands on shaky ideological ground. Only through a relationship with a disadvantaged Chinese factory worker does his privileged American protagonist come to affirm what are understood to be Western values of equality and human rights, a plotline that risks reducing China and its problems to mere cultural props in a Western man's coming of age story. With Chinese novels increasingly available in English translations, readers wishing to avoid such Western centrism might consider provocative alternatives like Lu Nei's "Young Babylon," and Sheng Keyi's "Northern Girls." ("Factory Girls," a nonfiction account by Leslie T. Chang, and "Iron Moon," an anthology of poetry by Chinese workers, also provide illuminating depictions of factory life.) Nevertheless, both "Number One Chinese Restaurant" and "The Emperor of Shoes" underscore the extent to which the promise of economic opportunity still moves people across great distances on our planet. The Greek root of the word "planet" planetes means a wanderer or traveler, and in the sense that we are increasingly global citizens, we are all wanderers. After all, to travel is to experience the volatility of identity and the uncertainty of home. "So we're the bridge," Alex says to an American born friend in Wise's novel. To which his friend replies: "Right. The middle step. We ain't Chinese, but we ain't American. We live here, from there. Inbetweeners." In our current climate of exclusionary politics based on privileged citizenships, how much more empathetic it would be to acknowledge the shared "in between" moments of our existence. As Alex reflects at one point, "I pictured myself at peace, in a place where I stood out so goddamn bad that I finally fit in." In this respect, both Li and Wise have written novels of our times. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
Fox News, which for more than a year has dealt with the fallout from an embarrassing sexual harassment scandal, was sued on Monday by the political commentator Scottie Nell Hughes, who claimed that she had been raped by the longtime anchor Charles Payne and was then retaliated against by the network after she came forward with her allegation. Mr. Payne, the host of "Making Money" on Fox Business, returned to the air this month after the network suspended him in July pending an investigation into his conduct. Upon his return, the network said that it had completed the investigation, which began after Ms. Hughes took her allegations to the network in late June. Mr. Payne's lawyer, Jonathan N. Halpern, said in a statement on Monday that his client "vehemently denies any wrongdoing and will defend himself vigorously against this baseless complaint." "We are confident that when the evidence is presented in this case," he continued, "Mr. Payne will be fully vindicated and these outrageous accusations against him will be confirmed as completely false." In her lawsuit, Ms. Hughes said that Mr. Payne had "pressured" his way into her hotel room in July 2013 and coerced her to have sexual intercourse with him, even though she had refused his advances by telling him "no" and "stop." According to the suit, Ms. Hughes was "shocked and ashamed" and did not immediately report the episode. She said that over the next two years she was forced to engage in a sexual relationship with Mr. Payne. In exchange, she said, she received career opportunities, including increased appearances on Fox News and Fox Business and the promise that Mr. Payne would help her land a contributor contract, a job that can pay several hundred thousand dollars a year. Ms. Hughes never became a paid contributor at either channel. Ms. Hughes, a regular guest on Fox News and Fox Business from 2013 through 2016, asserted that after she ended the relationship with Mr. Payne, the network blacklisted her. After she reported her allegations against him, she said, the network leaked a story to the news media about a romantic affair between Ms. Hughes and Mr. Payne. "In July of 2013, I was raped by Charles Payne," Ms. Hughes said in an interview, referring to the allegations in her lawsuit. "In July of 2017, I was raped again by Fox News. Since then, I have been living an absolute hell." The suit also names Dianne Brandi, the executive vice president of legal and business affairs at Fox News, and Irena Briganti, the network's executive vice president of corporate communications. In the suit, Ms. Hughes says that Ms. Brandi and Ms. Briganti "knowingly and maliciously aided and abetted the unlawful employment practices, discrimination and retaliation" against her. The lawsuit claims that Ms. Brandi and Ms. Briganti "issued a false narrative to The National Enquirer that Ms. Hughes was a participant in an affair with Payne" and "revealed Ms. Hughes's identity to The National Enquirer." Jeff Bezos gives 100 million to the Obama Foundation. Stocks rise after President Biden says Jerome Powell will stay atop the Fed. Fox News said the lawsuit was "bogus" and "downright shameful." "We will vigorously defend this," the network said in a statement. Fox News also said that the case was a "publicity stunt of a lawsuit" by Ms. Hughes's lawyer, Douglas H. Wigdor. Mr. Wigdor, who is representing several current and former Fox News employees in harassment and discrimination cases against the network, said Fox was victim blaming. "Fox cannot spin its way out of this crisis especially when only Fox is to blame for what happened," he said in a statement. The charges in Ms. Hughes's lawsuit echo accusations made by several other current and former Fox News employees after the sexual harassment scandal at the network burst into public view last year, exposing a culture where women said they had faced harassment and feared reporting inappropriate behavior. The initial scandal led to the resignation of the network's chairman, Roger Ailes, and subsequent allegations prompted the network to force out its most popular figure, Bill O'Reilly, among other personalities. Fox News's parent company, 21st Century Fox, has attempted to clean up its workplace and move past the crisis, yet new allegations and litigation have continued to roil the network in recent months. Ms. Hughes, 37, has been a familiar face on cable news in recent years. A vocal Trump supporter, she worked as a paid contributor at CNN during the 2016 presidential election. Her contract with CNN ended this past January. According to the lawsuit, Ms. Hughes experienced a sudden decline in bookings across cable news networks in early 2017 and was told by a booking agent that Fox had blacklisted her because she "had an affair with someone at Fox." As a result, Ms. Hughes said, she was taken out of consideration for positions in the Trump administration. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
We recently wrote about some of the special events happening in the San Francisco Bay Area for Super Bowl 50, with tips from The Times's Benjamin Hoffman, who will be covering his seventh Super Bowl this week and who knows the area better than most. Whether you are traveling to the Bay Area for Super Bowl activities, or already live there and are curious about what is happening this week, here are nine things to keep in mind. 1. Super Bowl City. The Super Bowl 50 Host Committee's "free to the public fan village " will be set up at the base of Market Street, near the waterfront, and will run through Feb. 7. The centerpiece is the Fan Energy Zone, which will include the 40 foot tall Fan Dome, which allows those interested to play interactive games as digital avatars displayed on giant screens. 2. Dinner on the pier. Finding good food in San Francisco will not be difficult, but consider Hard Water, a New Orleans inspired whiskey bar and restaurant that opened on Pier 3, or the Spanish cuisine of Coqueta on Pier 5, as recommended by Bonnie Tsui in our recent 36 Hours feature on the city. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
Eddie Chacon's roller coaster music career took him from obscurity to brief stardom. Now he's coming back with a new spin on his old sound.Credit...Clifford Prince King for The New York Times Eddie Chacon's roller coaster music career took him from obscurity to brief stardom. Now he's coming back with a new spin on his old sound. The year was 1992, and a longhaired Eddie Chacon, in suspenders and big hoop earrings, grinned and posed alongside Charles Pettigrew in the video for "Would I Lie to You?" The duo took turns singing in silky falsetto the pop soul song's memorable chorus is "Look into my eyes, can't you see they're open wide?/Would I lie to you, baby, would I lie to you?" and occasionally Chacon let out a triumphant, soaring "Hoo!" The track was a hit, but Charles Eddie's fame was fleeting. Chacon ended up walking away from the music industry for three decades. "I used to tell my wife, 'If I ever make a record again, I want to make a record you'd have to be my age to make,'" Chacon said on a Zoom call from his home in Los Angeles. Now 56, his dark hair cut short and turned salt and pepper, he returns this week with "Pleasure, Joy and Happiness," an album produced with John Carroll Kirby, a jack of all trades songwriter and musician who has worked with a new generation of musicians drawing on soul: Frank Ocean, Solange, Blood Orange and Harry Styles. Chacon's years away from music were filled with other creative pursuits, but songwriting has been a part of his life since he was 12, a Latino playing rock with two other teenage boys in his Castro Valley neighborhood in Northern California. His bandmates, Mike Bordin and Cliff Burton, went on to form Faith No More and Metallica. By 20, Chacon was working as a songwriter for CBS Songs, but he struck out cutting his own music. An album for Columbia was shelved and one for Luther Campbell of 2 Live Crew fell through the cracks. Demos made with the production duo the Dust Brothers in demand thanks to successes with Tone Loc, Young M.C. and the Beastie Boys didn't see release. Josh Deutsch, a music executive who was then a young A R rep at Capitol, recalled Chacon's talents. "Eddie's full voice and falsetto had an Al Green thing," he said in an email interview. "And with jet black hair down to the middle of his back, he presented like a total star." On the strength of the Dust Brothers demo, he signed Chacon to a deal in 1990. Then came an only in New York twist of fate: One day, Chacon encountered Pettigrew, a singer from Philadelphia, on the C train. One of them was carrying a vinyl copy of Marvin Gaye's 1972 soundtrack "Trouble Man," though Chacon can't recall who. Both of them were signed to Deutsch, but they didn't know it yet. And a musical partnership was born from that chance meeting; they even wrote a song about it, "N.Y.C. (Can You Believe This City)?" "We started writing songs at lightning speed in the back of taxi cabs, laying on the floor in apartments, in bars on napkins," Chacon said. Their debut, "Duophonic," was released in 1992 at a time when artists like Lenny Kravitz, Terence Trent D'Arby and the Brand New Heavies were wedding soul music to hip hop, rock and New Jack swing a sound that would later be labeled "neo soul." They struck gold immediately with "Would I Lie to You?," an uplifting track powered by crisp snares, crunchy guitars and their own honeyed harmonies. It didn't break the Top 10 in the United States, but went to No. 1 on the British chart, and in 17 other countries. Follow up singles scraped the bottom of the Top 40, but Charles Eddie were one hit wonders. (The song still has fans three decades on, with over 40 million YouTube plays. The EDM D.J. David Guetta rerecorded it in 2016.) By 1997, the label stopped taking the duo's calls, and it split amicably. Pettigrew toured with Tom Tom Club before succumbing to cancer in 2001. In the months before his death, "we were back on the phone talking daily," Chacon said. "We had even decided to make another record. He never told me he had cancer." In the wake of their breakup, "I was pretty lost," he added. "I had a real identity crisis after it was over. I questioned my own validity as an artist." Chacon turned his attention to work as a photographer and creative director: "I left my recording studio one day and didn't turn it on for 10 years." Kirby, the producer, said he "pictured Eddie as this guy looking down from his Spanish casita in Los Feliz, waiting for the right time to come back and make his statement." A common friend suggested the two meet in 2018, and there was an immediate rapport. "It's a very L.A. thing to sit in peoples' cars," Kirby said in a phone interview from Los Angeles. "The first day we met, we just sat in his car for two hours listening to music and talking ideas." "Pleasure, Joy and Happiness" blends Kirby's interest in hushed, contemplative music with Chacon's classic soul style. The album avoids the trappings of a throwback or revival of a bygone era, instead exploring the rarely glimpsed side of that genre's themes of passion and heartbreak, sung by a bruised but wiser man. "Eddie was game to really reflect on his life instead of making fun sexy music to put on at a party," Kirby said. "He was past it all. He had done it all. He's been screwed over, but he's really Zen about it. Eddie's strengths came from an authentic and honest way." Chacon said he was interested in giving listeners an escape. "It was a time where I felt sensory overload from social media and the news," he said. "I wanted to make a record that was fresh and cool and very meditative. A record that people would listen to, and it would recharge peoples' batteries." Kirby sees a connection between current R B stars like Ocean and Solange and an elder statesman like Chacon. "All three of those artists are very good with not having too many rules," he said. He had Chacon record vocals the way he said Solange did on "By the Time I Get Home": "On a Shure SM58 in the room, no booth, no headphones, just right there," Kirby explained. "It adds a bit more immediacy." For Chacon, it was the chance to put some of his hard earned wisdom down on record. The single "My Mind Is Out of Its Mind" turns the well worn theme of an anguished mind into an exploration of modern neuroses. On the hazy ballad "Hurt," he revisited a chorus that had stuck with him for well over a decade: "You were hurting yourself." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
WASHINGTON As President Obama gathers world leaders in Washington this week for his last Nuclear Security Summit, tons of materials that terrorists could use to make small nuclear devices or dirty bombs remain deeply vulnerable to theft. Still, Mr. Obama's six year effort to rid the world of loose nuclear material has succeeded in pulling bomb grade fuel out of countries from Ukraine to Chile, and has firmly put nuclear security on the global agenda. But despite the progress, several countries are balking at safeguards promoted by the United States or are building new stockpiles. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, where some of the largest stockpiles of civilian nuclear material remain, has decided to boycott the summit meeting, which begins Thursday night. Mr. Putin has made it clear he will not engage in nuclear cleanup efforts dominated by the United States. In addition, Pakistan's embrace of a new generation of small, tactical nuclear weapons, which the Obama administration considers highly vulnerable to theft or misuse, has changed the way the administration talks about Pakistani nuclear security. While Mr. Obama declared early in his presidency that the United States believed Pakistan's nuclear assets were secure, administration officials will no longer repeat that line. Instead, when the subject comes up, they note the modest progress Pakistan has made in training its guards and investing in sensors to detect break ins. They refuse to discuss secret talks to persuade the Pakistanis not to deploy their new weapons. Pakistan, China, India and Japan are all planning new factories to obtain plutonium that will add to the world's stockpiles of bomb fuel. And Belgium, where a nuclear facility was sabotaged in 2014 and where nuclear plant workers with inside access went off to fight for the Islamic State militant group, has emerged as a central worry. The country is so divided and disorganized that many fear it is vulnerable to an attack far more sophisticated than the bombings in the Brussels airport and subway system last week. For the first time, the Nuclear Security Summit will include a special session on responding to urban terrorist attacks and a simulation of how to handle the threat of imminent nuclear terrorism. "The key question for this summit," said Matthew Bunn, a nuclear expert at Harvard and a former White House science adviser, "is whether they'll agree on approaches to keep the improvements coming." The nuclear initiative has been a signature issue for Mr. Obama: It is among the goals he campaigned on in 2008 and part of the reason he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize barely a year into his presidency. Benjamin J. Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser, told reporters on Tuesday that the administration's overall efforts had made it "harder than ever before for terrorists and bad actors to acquire nuclear material." But the administration's budget for aiding global nuclear cleanups has been cut by half; some officials argue that less funding is needed with fewer nations willing to give up nuclear materials. A report Mr. Bunn helped write noted, "The administration is now projecting lower spending year after year for years to come, postponing or canceling a wide range of nuclear security activities that had been included in previous plans." In a recent report, the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a private advocacy group in Washington that tracks nuclear weapons and materials, warned that many radioactive sources were "poorly secured and vulnerable to theft." The report called the probability of a terrorist's detonating a dirty bomb "much higher than that of an improvised nuclear device." Ingredients for so called dirty bombs, which use conventional explosives to spew radioactive material, are still scattered around the globe at thousands of hospitals and other sites that use the highly radioactive substances for industrial imaging and medical treatments. Less than half of the countries that attended the last nuclear summit in 2014 pledged to secure such materials, and they in turn represent less than 15 percent of the 168 nations belonging to the International Atomic Energy Agency. And while the administration succeeded in getting more than a dozen countries to give up their civilian stockpiles of highly enriched uranium, a main fuel of atomic bombs, the Nuclear Threat Initiative said in another report that some 25 nations still had such materials enough for thousands of nuclear weapons. The report called highly enriched uranium "one of the most dangerous materials on the planet," warning that an amount small enough to fit in a five pound sugar bag could be used to build a nuclear device "with the potential to kill hundreds of thousands of people." Still, that does not mean Mr. Obama's efforts have failed altogether. He is expected to announce a major achievement soon: the removal of roughly 40 bombs' worth of highly enriched uranium and separated plutonium from Japan. Some of the uranium was fabricated in pieces the size of squares of chocolate that could be easily slipped into a pocket, a terrorist's dream. And Ukraine was the site of a success that, in retrospect, looks even bigger than it did four years ago. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, who is boycotting a nuclear meeting. On a bitterly cold day in Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, in March 2012, two years before Ukraine descended into crisis, a team of Americans and Ukrainians packed the last shipment of highly enriched uranium into railway cars, ridding the country of more than 500 pounds of nuclear fuel. It would have been enough to build eight or more nuclear bombs, depending on the skill and destructive ambitions of the bomb maker. "We had vodka," recalled Andrew J. Bieniawski, then a United States Energy Department official central to the elimination. "It was amazing." Yet there are signs that what began as a global effort to prevent terrorists from obtaining the world's deadliest weapons is fracturing. In fact, there is a case to be made that even as vulnerable stockpiles have shrunk, the risk of nuclear terrorism has not. Matthew Bunn of Harvard notes that the American budget for nuclear cleanups has fallen. There is evidence that groups like the Islamic State are more interested than ever in nuclear plants, materials and personnel especially in Belgium, where the attacks last week killed more than 30 people. The Belgian police discovered last year that Islamic State operatives had taken hours of surveillance video at the home of a senior official at a large nuclear site in Mol, Belgium. The plant in Mol, a northern resort area, holds large stocks of highly enriched uranium. Laura Holgate, Mr. Obama's top adviser on nuclear terrorism, noted on Tuesday that the United States had worked with Belgium to "reduce the amount of nuclear material" at one key site. Asked about the Islamic State's interest in obtaining nuclear fuel from Belgium, she said, "We don't have any information that a broader plot exists." Ms. Holgate told reporters that this week's meeting would address the question: "How do you sustain the momentum to the summit after the summit ends?" The results of previous summit meetings have ranged from treaty ratifications to the establishment of more than a dozen training centers around the globe where guards, scientists, managers and regulators sharpen their skills at preventing atomic terrorism. Near Beijing, one of the largest training centers opened this month. "It's in our national interest" to help foreigners secure their atomic materials, said Nick Winowich, an engineer at Sandia National Laboratories, one of the American nuclear labs that helped in the center's development. The biggest wins have been the removal of all highly enriched uranium from 12 countries, including Austria, Chile, Hungary, Libya, Mexico, Turkey and Vietnam. The material was mostly reactor fuel. But officials said terrorists could have turned it into least 130 nuclear weapons. Critics of the summit process point to vague communiques that seem to have done little to drive hard decisions. A sense of summit fatigue now seems to prevail, the critics add, noting that Russia's withdrawal evades some of the biggest security problems. The Obama administration has also presided over a steady drop in American spending on international nuclear security. Budgets fell from over 800 million in 2012 to just over 500 million in 2016. For 2017, the White House has proposed less than 400 million half the spending of the high point. The administration has defended the cuts, saying they reflect the completion of some programs and upgrades and the suspension of cooperative work with Russia after its invasion of the Crimean Peninsula. "The summit process has achieved some very important objectives," said Kenneth N. Luongo, president of the Partnership for Global Security, a private group that advocates new nuclear safeguards. "But it needed to aim higher. The world is not becoming any easier to deal with. There's still a responsibility to think big." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
WITH this year's addition of an EcoBoost V 6 engine option to its F 150 pickups, Ford took a long proven strategy the use of turbocharging to wring more power from a smaller engine and applied it in a new way, aiming at the mass market for full size, light duty trucks. The EcoBoost concept the boost coming from its intake air being blown into the cylinders by the turbos is not unique to the F 150. It is the name Ford has given to a family of turbocharged gasoline engines, of varying sizes and cylinder counts, that are finding their way under the hoods of various models. In the case of the F 150, the 3.5 liter EcoBoost V 6 translates to a truck that has more power, hauls more weight and has a higher towing capacity than the standard 3.7 liter V 6 (302 horsepower) or even the optional 5 liter V 8 (360). Meanwhile, there is virtually no loss in fuel economy. But there is a cost in dollars. If you start with the base 3.7 liter V 6, the EcoBoost is 1,750 additional (or 750 more than buying the same vehicle the optional 5 liter V 8). But choosing the EcoBoost engine can be even more costly, because of "mandatory options" that must be purchased. Consider the base XL with a regular cab, two wheel drive, the 3.7 liter nonturbo V 6 and an 8 foot bed. Ordering the EcoBoost adds 4,095 to the base price of 24,090. The EcoBoost is 1,750 of that, and the rest is other required equipment, like the heavy duty payload and maximum trailer towing packages. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Automobiles |
A coalition of leading public health experts urged the Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday night to conduct full safety and efficacy reviews of potential coronavirus vaccines before making the products widely available to the public. In a letter signed by nearly 400 experts in infectious diseases, vaccines and other medical specialties, the group called on Dr. Stephen Hahn, the F.D.A. commissioner, to be forthcoming about the agency's deliberations over whether to approve any new vaccine, in order to gain the public's trust. "We must be able to explain to the public what we know and what we don't know about these vaccines," noted the letter, which was organized by the nonprofit Center for Science in the Public Interest. "For that to happen, we must be able to witness a transparent and rigorous F.D.A. approval process that is devoid of political considerations." More than 30 experimental coronavirus vaccines are in clinical trials, with several companies racing to have the first product in the United States ready by the end of the year. The federal government has promised more than 9 billion to companies for these efforts to date. But many people are highly skeptical of these new vaccines, and might refuse to get them. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
Senator Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, writes: "One thing above all else will restore order to our streets: an overwhelming show of force to disperse, detain and ultimately deter lawbreakers. But local law enforcement in some cities desperately needs backup, while delusional politicians in other cities refuse to do what's necessary to uphold the rule of law." I strongly disagree with Mr. Cotton's suggestion to use U.S. troops to suppress the protests occurring throughout the country. I disagree even more strongly with The New York Times's giving Mr. Cotton a platform to express his views. His extremist rhetoric only serves to fan the flames of division and suppression. Not only was the decision to print his words wrong, the decision to do so on the eve of the 31st anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing is beyond comprehension. Shame on you! Shame on you! As a white woman who marched with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. when I was a teenager, I feel strongly that black lives matter, and that Senator Tom Cotton's Op Ed needed to be seen in The Times so he and others like him see the reactions it engenders. Unfortunately, Senator Cotton is not alone in his views. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
New York City Ballet presented the second of its Arts Nights series last Friday, and in honor of the occasion the principal dancer Adrian Danchig Waring spoke a few words. His talk had nothing to do with the repertory, even though that surely would have been helpful to the youngish crowd, drawn to the David H. Koch Theater for a peek at the current promenade installation by the artist JR. It was awkward watching someone trying to act breezy. But worse was how anemic the program was: Angelin Preljocaj's long winded "La Stravaganza," a City Ballet commission from 1997; Christopher Wheeldon's minor pas de deux "A Place for Us"; and Peter Martins's sluggish tango ballet, "Todo Buenos Aires." Mr. Preljocaj's ballet introduces a peculiar world in which two groups of six, seemingly different in every way, find themselves on the same dimly lit stage, where Vivaldi gives way to bursts of electronic music. The more fluid first group, dressed in short, simple dresses for the women and khakis and white T shirts for the men, weave in and out of unison patterns with a nod to classicism. All the while, quick shoulder rolls and hip swirls are slipped in with mercuric speed. When a black scrim is raised, revealing a reddish orange backdrop, another set of characters, in costumes reminiscent of a 17th century Dutch painting, are revealed. Robotic and stiff, these dancers come to life when the sound switches to electronic music. Gretchen Smith, in the first group, crosses over she's attracted to Sean Suozzi but their pas de deux ends in violence. Even so, "La Stravaganza" is more silly than sinister. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
In the essay film "Los Angeles Plays Itself," the filmmaker and academic Thom Andersen argues that as much as Hollywood loves to photograph Los Angeles, mainstream movies have erased the history and texture of the city. As an antidote, he favors lower budget productions, reserving special affection for a group of independent directors who attended film school at the University of California, Los Angeles, and became collectively known as the L.A. Rebellion. As U.C.L.A.'s own book on the movement explains, these directors who included Charles Burnett, Billy Woodberry, Julie Dash and Haile Gerima "created a watershed body of work that strives to perform the revolutionary act of humanizing Black people on screen." While the book cautions against grouping the filmmakers together each has a distinct perspective, and they don't all subscribe to the L.A. Rebellion label, which wasn't their idea they did work on one another's movies in the 1970s and early '80s. The links between Burnett's "Killer of Sheep" (1978) and Woodberry's "Bless Their Little Hearts" (1984), which Burnett wrote and photographed, make them a natural pair. They're stylistically different: "Killer of Sheep" unfolds in fragmented vignettes; "Bless Their Little Hearts" has a straightforward narrative. But the movies share a star (Kaycee Moore), a setting (the Watts neighborhood), black and white cinematography and central questions about work, manhood and what it means to provide for a family. "Killer of Sheep": Rent or buy it at milestonefilms.com. "Bless Their Little Hearts": Stream it on the Criterion Channel; rent or buy it at milestonefilms.com. Despite years of being hailed as a landmark, "Killer of Sheep" was difficult to see until 2007, when a restoration from Milestone Films resolved longstanding issues with the music rights. When I interviewed Burnett at the time, he expressed surprise at how far the movie had reached, saying it was made for discussion and schools. He wanted to put questions to viewers: How would they improve the life of the protagonist, Stan (Henry G. Sanders), a slaughterhouse worker? And what could be done for the community, where Burnett grew up? Such pragmatic goals belie the movie's obvious poetry: a skyward shot of children leaping from roof to roof as if defying gravity; the incongruously upbeat counterpoint of William Grant Still's "Afro American" Symphony as Stan cleans the floor of the slaughterhouse; a preoccupied Stan and his wife (Moore) slowly swaying in the shadows to Dinah Washington. The movie opens with a boy (unidentified, though probably young Stan) being admonished by his father for standing by while his sibling was embroiled in a fight: "If anything was to happen to me or your mother, you ain't got nobody except your brother." Devotion to family and home life is an ethic that the older Stan, introduced repairing a floor, has clearly taken to heart. On the surface, "Killer of Sheep" can look so spontaneous that Burnett appears almost to have happened upon it. (Early on, as the boys throw rocks at each other in a rubble filled lot, it's initially difficult to tell whether they're fighting or playing.) But the verite veneer disguises the movie's pointed use of place and space. There is not much room in Stan's home: His wife, who is never given a name, is wearing a bathrobe when she walks in on him and a friend. Later, when the couple have an intimate conversation about his increasingly morose mood ("You never smile anymore. I used to think you was just tired"), their daughter fusses at the refrigerator in the background. The smallest distances become challenging to navigate: Stan cashes a check at a liquor store to get 15 for a replacement motor. After the purchase, he and a friend carry the heavy motor down a tight stairway, then place it in a truck a truck that is, regrettably, parked on a hill. And the one time "Killer of Sheep" exits the neighborhood the characters pile into a car for an excursion a flat tire thwarts the effort. The grind has worn Stan down, yet he keeps going, with an attitude somewhere between acceptance and resignation. Early in "Killer of Sheep," Stan says he "can't get no sleep at night, no peace of mind." A friend jokes that he is always awake counting sheep. If "Killer of Sheep" concerns the exhaustion of getting by, "Bless Their Little Hearts" is its counterpart a movie about the consequences of unemployment. Slumber is again a motif: The first words we hear from the protagonist, Charlie (Nate Hardman), are, "You asleep?" "Bless Their Little Hearts" opens with Charlie in an unemployment office, where he spots a sign: "Are you interested in a casual labor job?" Casual is underlined twice, and the offer specifies that the jobs will last up to three days. The precise origins of Charlie's unemployment are never specified, but in "Los Angeles Plays Itself," Andersen notes a moment when Charlie rides by a "reverse landmark, one of the closed industrial plants that had once provided jobs for the black working class." Over the course of "Bless Their Little Hearts," Charlie takes brief gigs painting over gang tags or clearing brush, but permanent work eludes him. A friend suggests turning to robbery. "If I didn't have a family that might be all right," Charlie replies. And as in "Killer of Sheep," the family is a crowd. There's a long wait for the lone bathroom. When Charlie's daughter walks in on him shaving, he sends her out; when she gets her turn, the faucet knobs are shut so tight that, in a moment of levity, she fetches an industrial size wrench to tap them loose. Though it is not freely acknowledged until the end, when Charlie allows himself to cry in his wife's arms, joblessness clearly poses a challenge to his manhood, a deficit he takes out on his son, chiding his hygiene: "Little boys don't run around with their fingernails long. Little girls run around with their fingernails long," he tells him. (It's hard not to hear echoes of the father warning young Stan about his brother in "Killer of Sheep.") Charlie and his wife, Andais (Moore), don't even seem to keep the same hours. He is often awake while she is asleep. He lounges on a car hood or, after a hard day of labor, snores in the bathtub. Late in the film, a barber suggests that the key to success is being able to wake up early. As for Andais, she is shown in contrasting scenes riding the bus: in one, she nods off from fatigue; later, having discovered that Charlie is having an affair, she is wide awake. When the two finally fight about the fling, the scene, staged in a single take, feels utterly extemporaneous. Like "Killer of Sheep," this is a movie so real, so personal, it appears drawn completely from life. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
FRANKFURT Philipp M. Hildebrand, head of the Swiss central bank, said Thursday that he regretted currency trades that have threatened his international reputation as an advocate for tougher bank regulation, but he maintained that he had violated no laws or regulations and would not resign. "I am not aware of any legal transgressions," Mr. Hildebrand said at a news conference in Zurich. "But I understand that the public also poses the moral question." The 48 year old head of the Swiss National Bank, who played a high profile role in formulation of new global standards designed to limit risky behavior by bankers, was by turns contrite and angry during the one hour appearance, which was broadcast on the Internet. While expressing regrets, Mr. Hildebrand portrayed the accusation of insider trading as the work of his enemies on the Swiss political right, and said he was considering taking legal action against those who used information stolen from a personal account at Bank Sarasin, a Swiss private bank. "The personal attacks against me have reached the point where I had to defend myself," Mr. Hildebrand said. An information technology worker at Bank Sarasin faces a criminal investigation for allegedly giving the information to the Swiss People's Party, whose most visible leader, Christoph Blocher, has been a bitter critic of Mr. Hildebrand. Appearing on a Swiss television program Thursday, Mr. Blocher confirmed that he had passed on information about the transactions and called Mr. Hildebrand "no longer tolerable." But Mr. Hildebrand also faces a storm of criticism across the political spectrum, with members of Parliament and commentators questioning whether he has damaged the credibility of the Swiss National Bank and Switzerland's image abroad. Mr. Hildebrand is vice president of the Financial Stability Board, a group of central bankers and regulators that plays a leading role in recommending bank regulations to the leaders of the Group of 20 nations. Mr. Hildebrand vowed to "continue to apply all of my energy to my job as president" of the Swiss central bank. During the news conference, Mr. Hildebrand denied a key assertion by Weltwoche, a right leaning Swiss magazine that first reported many details of the accusations. The publication said it had evidence that Mr. Hildebrand, and not his wife, had personally made a large investment in dollars just days before the Swiss National Bank stepped up its intervention in currency markets. The central bank was then engaged in an intense effort to stem the rise of the franc and protect Swiss exporters. Mr. Hildebrand said that his wife, Kashya Hildebrand, had legal power to use the account and bought dollars because she considered them very cheap. He described her as an economist and "strong personality" who takes a keen interest in finance. When he learned of the transaction the next morning, Mr. Hildebrand said, he immediately called his adviser at Bank Sarasin and told him not to make any more trades without his approval, and reported the transaction to S.N.B. compliance officials. Mr. Hildebrand said he now regretted that he did not undo the transaction. Auditors from PricewaterhouseCoopers, hired by the council that oversees the Swiss National Bank, agreed with Mr. Hildebrand's version of events. But Mr. Hildebrand also said the case showed the need for more disclosure by top officials in the central bank. In the future, he said, he and other members of the S.N.B. directorate should make public all transactions worth more than 20,000 Swiss francs, or 21,000, and get clearance from the bank's compliance department. Mr. Hildebrand said he had donated 75,000 francs to an organization that promotes preservation of Swiss mountain regions. That is the sum that Weltwoche, the magazine, said that Mr. Hildebrand earned on the trades. But it is unclear how much profit Mr. Hildebrand actually made from the trades. In August, Mrs. Hildebrand spent 400,000 francs to buy 504,000, the auditors said, two days before the S.N.B. stepped up its intervention in currency markets. In October, Mr. Hildebrand sold about the same amount of dollars at a more favorable exchange rate, earning about 64,000 francs. But in March, after the sale of a vacation home, Mr. Hildebrand had purchased nearly 1.2 million when the exchange rate was much less favorable. So at least on paper that investment was a money loser. Any profit would not be a large sum for the Hildebrands, whose personal wealth was evident Thursday in the size of their real estate assets. One reason that Mr. Hildebrand bought dollars in March, he said, was that the family's Alpine vacation home had just sold for 3.3 million francs and he wanted to diversify his currency holdings. The accusations put huge political pressure on Mr. Hildebrand, but it appears unlikely that he will face criminal charges. Switzerland's insider trading law does not apply to currency transactions, said Andreas Brunner, head of a prosecutor's unit in Zurich that focuses on economic crimes. Mr. Brunner's office said Thursday that it would pursue a criminal investigation of a 39 year old former employee of Bank Sarasin for possible violations of the country's bank secrecy law. The man, who was not identified, is suspected of leaking records of Mr. Hildebrand's currency transactions. The employee was able to call up Mr. Hildebrand's records on a bank computer but not print them out. Mr. Hildebrand asserted that the employee used a mobile phone or digital camera to photograph the computer screen. Bank Sarasin said Tuesday that it had fired the employee, who had turned himself in to the police in Zurich. The charges carry a maximum sentence of three years in prison. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Global Business |
As soon as the Tony winning "All the Way" closed on Broadway , the playwright, Robert Schenkkan, turned his attention to the sequel. Five years, endless rewrites and several productions later, that new play, "The Great Society," is coming to Broadway. The producer Jeffrey Richards announced on Thursday that he would present a 12 week run of the play, starting Sept. 6, at the Vivian Beaumont Theater (which, although located at Lincoln Center, is considered a Broadway house). The play will star Brian Cox ("Succession") as President Johnson, and the production will be directed by Bill Rauch, who also directed "All the Way." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
Paula Vogel, a Pulitzer Prize winning playwright whose Broadway drama "Indecent" is a best play Tony Award nominee, will conduct a free playwriting workshop at the Vineyard Theater on May 22. Ms. Vogel has been hosting these workshops, which she calls boot camps, for students since 1984, and has also held sessions with veterans and prison inmates and in countries around the world. This one will be open to the first 30 people who RSVP to indecentbootcamp gmail.com starting at noon on Tuesday. According to Ms. Vogel, this will be her first workshop aimed at the general public in 13 years. She will lead a discussion and writing exercises, with the aim of each participant writing a short play by the end of the day. During her years as head of playwriting programs at Brown and Yale, Ms. Vogel has taught the Pulitzer winners Lynn Nottage and Nilo Cruz, as well as the Pulitzer finalists Sarah Ruhl and Sarah DeLappe. "I came to realize that I can be far more useful to the field of playwriting, and to people who dream of writing, if I have more time to talk and think about the actual work," Ms. Vogel said in an interview after one of her boot camps in 2012. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
A raw, full floor penthouse at 737 Park Avenue, an Art Deco brick and limestone building acquired by Macklowe Properties and the CIM Group in 2011 and converted from 104 rental apartments into 56 luxury condominiums by Handel Architects, sold for 32,658,763.13 and was the most expensive closed sale of the week, according to city records. The monthly carrying charges for the sponsor unit on the 21st floor, which had an original asking price last year of 39.5 million, are 12,965. The apartment was sold as a "white box," without interior walls or finishes, though it does include a wood burning fireplace, an 8 by 34 foot skylight and ceiling heights of around 11 feet within its 6,003 square feet of space. There is also generous outdoor space: a 2,271 square foot wraparound terrace and a 3,757 square foot roof deck that provides panoramic views of Central Park, Park Avenue and virtually the entire Upper East Side. The amenities and public space in the 1940s building, located near 71st Street, were designed by MdeAS Architects. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
Five years ago, when their first child was a baby, Daniel and Megan Parker rented a two bedroom on the Upper West Side. Now they have three children. The Parkers, who love the outdoors, were drawn to the idea of a second home in the country, which would offset the strictly urban upbringing of Lucas, now 6; Annie, 4; and Clara, almost 2. A trip to the Berkshires two summers ago was the catalyst. Having exhausted family activities over a long weekend, they drove back early to the city. Their map showed a large body of water in western Connecticut called Candlewood Lake. It was the first they had heard of it, so they decided to take a look. Their first thought was to rent a house for the following summer. So they contacted agents in the area, including Denise Kavovit, a saleswoman at Advanced Waterfront in Newtown, Conn. "The properties around the lake are unique," Ms. Kavovit said. "Every property is so different from every other." But the Parkers did not find a house they liked enough. Besides, if they rented, "at the end of the summer, all we would have are memories," said Mr. Parker, 37, who works in commercial real estate. "I would rather own something if we are going to part with that much money." The idea of buying near Candlewood Lake grew on them. The drive from Manhattan, 70 to 90 minutes, had little traffic, except occasionally on Friday evenings. They thought ahead to their children's teenage years, when they would want to spend weekends with city friends rather than at a remote house. A nearby lake, with water activities, would take care of that. The Parkers researched Candlewood Lake, which is surrounded by five towns that include more than 50 individual communities. Their aim was a house from 500,000 to 700,000 in a community with activities for the kids. The layout had to allow for extended family gatherings a tough task in their Manhattan apartment. The first house they saw, listed for 675,000, was on Great Plain Road in Danbury, with a steep grade to the lake that felt more like "mountain goat living" than lakefront living, Mr. Parker said. "With small children you kind of tense up when they run down to the lake on steep stairs," he said. And this one was not part of a homeowners' association with amenities. It ended up selling for 610,000. Safety was also an issue at a house on Candlewood Lake Road South in New Milford, for 700,000. The lake was across the road, which had a 40 mile an hour speed limit. The Parkers passed it by. That one sold for 662,500. Both houses had three bedrooms and seemed too small for family gatherings. Though some houses flew off the market, others seemed to be priced high. The Parkers watched prices drop over many months. "Generally, they didn't seem to be in a rush to sell," Mr. Parker said. They had never visited the very first house, the one they had used for navigation purposes. It was originally listed for 799,000, but had since dropped to 699,000. Annual taxes were around 9,000. The Parkers loved the layout, with four bedrooms and four bathrooms, plus a large basement. It was new, which they believed would mean few maintenance issues. It was not directly on the water, and its homeowners' association had plenty of family friendly activities. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
LOS ANGELES When Trevor Pryce retired as a pro football player in 2011, it would have been very easy for him to sit around in his boxer shorts all day, every day: Don't disturb me, I'm watching "Judge Judy." He had millions of dollars in the bank after spending 14 years as a defensive end for the Denver Broncos, Baltimore Ravens and New York Jets. He had nothing more to prove, having made two winning trips to the Super Bowl. He was also selected four times to the Pro Bowl. As Mr. Pryce said on Monday, "After working so hard on the field, it might make sense to get very busy doing absolutely nothing." He did a bit of that. But then he set out to remake himself as nothing less than ... a movie mogul. Mark his words: He was going to be "the next George Lucas." Mr. Pryce figured that his football fame would provide a running start, and he already had a little Hollywood experience. In 2008 he sold a movie idea to Sony Pictures about a guy who is struck by lighting and becomes a walking encyclopedia. (The studio ultimately dropped it.) While pursuing a side career as a musician in 2005, he licensed a song to 20th Century Fox to use in "Big Momma's House 2." "I got the movie bug the day I got to go to that 'Big Momma' premiere party," he said. "I thought, 'I am on my way.'" None Week 11 Takeaways: Here is what we learned this week. N.F.L. Tightens Covid Protocols: As cases rise and Thanksgiving approaches, the league is requiring masks inside team facilities and increasing testing. The Jets Lose Again: Falling to the Miami Dolphins, the Jets receiver Elijah Moore offered consolation. What Will the Giants Do With Daniel Jones? The team must evaluate the quarterback ahead of a contract decision. Playoff Simulator: Explore every team's path to the postseason, updated live. You know where this yarn is headed: Film bigwigs stereotyping him as a dumb jock. "Don't call us, we'll call you." Snickers about a football related brain injury. But the last laugh may belong to Mr. Pryce. With persistence and unusual self assurance (and a good portion of his savings), the plain spoken father of three has clawed his way to the verge of show business. Starting on Sept. 2, Netflix will begin showing "Kulipari: An Army of Frogs," an animated series that Mr. Pryce created, produced and cofinanced. Thirteen 28 minute episodes follow a young croaker named Darel who goes to war against frog eating scorpions. ("Fat and juicy!") Arriving in connection with the cartoon is a comic book series and a "Kulipari" themed clothing line from Under Armour. Mr. Pryce and the animators he hired "If I didn't pay for this myself, nobody else was going to," he said adapted "Kulipari" from a trilogy of young adult novels he co wrote after his plans for a frog war film went nowhere. ("Nobody would buy my script, so I thought, 'Well, let's try a book deal," he said.) Published in consecutive years starting in 2013 by Abrams Books, the series now has nearly 100,000 copies in print, according to the publisher. The response was strong enough for Mr. Pryce to begin shopping "Kulipari" anew in Hollywood, teaming up with Splash Entertainment and Netflix. "You've got to believe in yourself," he said. "I remember looking at one studio guy who wasn't taking me seriously and saying, 'Hey, man, I'm actually smarter than you.'" (The "Kulipari" stories, Mr. Pryce said, were inspired by the "creepy" frogs that appeared near his boyhood home in Florida during rainstorms.) Mr. Pryce, 41, is not the first National Football League star to try to make a name for himself in the entertainment industry (Michael Strahan, soon headed to "Good Morning America," comes to mind), and he certainly won't be the last. In fact, there are other National Football League players pursuing cartoons as a second career. Martellus Bennett, a tight end for the New England Patriots, has been working with a California animation company called Stoopid Buddy Stoodios to develop a show. At the same time, Mr. Pryce offers a stirring example of old fashioned gumption. Most retired N.F.L. players, if they go on to second careers at all, stick with what they know: coaching or sports broadcasting. Very few have enough drive left to strike out in a new direction, something that requires enormous energy and focus and carries a lot of reputational risk. "It's true that a lot of guys don't want to keep burning the candle at both ends," Mr. Pryce said. Speaking by phone from Maryland, where he lives with his wife, Sonya, and three teenage children, he added: "To me, at least, there would be nothing worse than doing nothing. My whole life, up until retirement, was regimented with football, and I needed to maintain some kind of discipline. You can't just sit around watching 'Judge Judy' all day." (Speak for yourself, Trevor.) He said that Hollywood has definitely not been the "sexy good time" he envisioned, although he added that some movie and television executives have gone out of their way to help him. One was Doug Belgrad, the former president of Sony's Motion Picture Group, who bought the lightning bolt idea as a possible Adam Sandler vehicle. Mr. Pryce still gets upset at rejection, as recently happened when he pitched video game executives on a "Kulipari" related concept. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
Roberta Bayley was a 19 year old freshman at San Francisco State University when she bought a bubble gum pink jersey tank minidress for just over PS2 (about 5 at the time) from the catalog of Biba, the London emporium that trafficked in 1930s glamour. When Ms. Bayley moved to New York City in 1975, the Biba dress came too. She found an apartment on St. Marks Place (rent, 125) and began working the door at CBGB, where her boyfriend, Richard Hell, played Sunday nights with his band, Television. Blondie, then a fledgling band, played there as well, and the band's manager, Peter Leeds, offered Ms. Bayley a job in his office as an assistant. "I could see there was a lot of things happening," said Ms. Bayley, who had been an English literature major before dropping out of college, "so I bought a camera." Ms. Bayley would go on to document the burgeoning music scene around her, contributing to the punk canon with images like the Ramones' first album cover and thousands of photos of Blondie, which she collected in a 2007 book, "Blondie: Unseen 1976 1980." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
THE X FILES 8 p.m. on Fox. Barring yet another surprise, it sure seems like this will be the last episode of this stunningly resilient show, which has transitioned into the new millennium with grace. Mulder (David Duchovny) and Scully (Gillian Anderson) contemplate aging and their tenuous relationship as they rush to find an on the run William; the Cigarette Smoking Man pushes forward with his ultimate plan. O BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU? (2000) 8 p.m. on CMT. In 1999, George Clooney hung up his "ER" scrubs; in 2001, he donned his nattiest suit for "Ocean's Eleven." In between, he played one of his strangest and scrappiest roles, as an ex convict wandering the dusty roads of Depression era Mississippi. He and his companions flee from a cyclops, sirens and the Ku Klux Klan, making some great music along the way. The Coen brothers wrote and directed the film, in which their "whiz kid inventiveness" reaches "new heights of whimsy," A. O. Scott wrote in his review in The New York Times. T he cinematography is courtesy of Roger Deakins, who finally won his first Oscar this month on his 14th try. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
Since last November, a growing number of state attorneys general have been pointing their fingers at Exxon Mobil, investigating whether the energy company's research about climate change conflicted directly with its public statements on the issue. But now the accusers are being accused, with a battle being waged over principles of free speech, government overreach and collaboration with activist organizations. Representative Lamar Smith, Republican of Texas, sent a letter on Wednesday to the New York attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, demanding all communications since 2012 between his office and climate change activist organizations. The attorneys general, Mr. Smith said, are doing the bidding of environmental activists who set out to make pariahs of Exxon Mobil and its industry in pursuit of policies to limit climate change. Those activists and the attorneys general, Mr. Smith said in the letter, have secretly collaborated in the years since a two day workshop in 2012 "to act under the color of law to persuade attorneys general to use their prosecutorial powers to stifle scientific discourse, intimidate private entities and individuals, and deprive them of their First Amendment rights and freedoms." The 2012 workshop among climate activists was held in the San Diego community of La Jolla, and its report can be found online. Those attending included representatives the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Climate Accountability Institute and the Massachusetts based Global Warming Legal Action Project. Over time, discussions of legal action involved the Rockefeller family philanthropies, the environmental campaigner Bill McKibben's 350.org, the Al Gore founded Climate Reality Project, Greenpeace, and eventually, representatives of Mr. Schneiderman's office. The state officials have countered that there was nothing nefarious or even unusual about prosecutors consulting with outside experts, including scientists and their counterparts in other states, when gathering facts for an investigation. Eric Soufer, a spokesman for Mr. Schneiderman, said, "It is remarkable that a do nothing Congress that has refused to take any action on climate change is now attempting to disrupt this important investigation into potential corporate malfeasance." The office did not take part in the 2012 meeting, he said. He added, "speaking with outside experts is a routine part of the investigative process, and we make decisions based on the merits, period." He also noted that Mr. Smith, the chairman of the House Science Committee, is in the midst of a contentious investigation of federal climate scientists and has demanded private correspondence as part of the inquiry. "The irony of this letter is breathtaking," Mr. Soufer said. "Its signatories appear to be part of a multipronged media campaign funded by the fossil fuel industry aimed at suppressing the free exchange of ideas among scientists, academics and responsible law enforcement." He added, "Anyone who thinks that Attorney General Schneiderman will be intimidated by this effort has no idea who they're dealing with." Mr. Schneiderman, a Democrat, announced his investigation of Exxon in November, and by March had been joined by at least four other attorneys general. The Democratic presidential candidates, Hillary Clinton and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, have each called for a federal investigation of Exxon's actions. But Mr. Schneiderman has said, "The First Amendment, ladies and gentlemen, doesn't give you the right to commit fraud." Alan Jeffers, a spokesman for Exxon Mobil, said he had no comment on the letter from Mr. Smith. When several attorneys general announced at a news conference in March that they were joining Mr. Schneiderman's investigation, the company called the accusations "politically motivated, and based on discredited reporting by activist organizations." The company also said that it "recognizes the risks posed by climate change," and the accusations are based on the "preposterous" claim that the company "reached definitive conclusions about anthropogenic climate change before the world's experts" and withheld it. The company shared its findings in peer reviewed publications, it said. In the weeks after the March news conference, Exxon Mobil sued Claude E. Walker, the attorney general of the Virgin Islands, as well as a private law firm working with him on his investigation of the energy company. Mr. Walker has gone beyond New York's efforts by including subpoenas to private organizations like the free market oriented Competitive Enterprise Institute, looking for evidence that the company funded such groups to spread its message to oppose regulation and sow doubt about climate science. Noting that the company has no "physical presence" in the Virgin Islands, Exxon Mobil called Mr. Walker's actions a "flagrant misuse of law enforcement power." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
"I would like to understand what is happening," Miguel Gutierrez said during his show at the Chocolate Factory Theater on Wednesday, looking comically lost and stressed out. He was speaking in rapid Spanish, with English translations projected on the walls beside him, as a baffled character in his own live, absurdist telenovela. At this particular moment, with dialogue flying among him and his fellow cast members, the audience might have wondered the same: What was happening? One joy of "This Bridge Called My Ass" a dense, audacious and wickedly funny work that had its premiere as part of the American Realness festival is the way that question evades any simple, stable answer. Mr. Gutierrez has long been a master of keeping an environment in flux, while somehow holding it all together. "This Bridge" contains multitudes and unflinchingly bears their weight. Read about the making of "This Bridge" Borrowing its title (in part) from the 1981 feminist anthology "This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color," the work itself is as tangled as the questions propelling it. Collaborating with five stellar performers and the dramaturg Stephanie Acosta, all of Latin American heritage, Mr. Gutierrez set out to explore a perception pervasive in his artistic circles, one that links artists of color with identity politics and white artists with investigations of pure form (as if such a thing exists, as if whiteness were not an identity). At first, "This Bridge" reads like a sendup of a so called formalist dance. As audience members take their seats, the performers are already engaged in matter of fact tasks, dryly reciting trabalenguas (Spanish tongue twisters) and rearranging objects strewn across the space: ladders, stools, laptops, power strips, swaths of pastel and fluorescent fabric. Stuff for stuff's sake. Mr. Gutierrez fastidiously lays a pair of red mesh underwear next to a plastic fan. Evelyn Sanchez Narvaez bundles pink fabric draped from the rafters, as if drawing curtains. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
The beverage giants Coca Cola and PepsiCo have given millions of dollars to nearly 100 prominent health groups in recent years, while simultaneously spending millions to defeat public health legislation that would reduce Americans' soda intake, according to public health researchers. The findings, published on Monday in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, document the beverage industry's deep financial ties to the health community over the past five years, as part of a strategy to silence health critics and gain unlikely allies against soda regulations. The study's authors, Michael Siegel, a professor at the Boston University school of public health, and Daniel Aaron, a student at Boston University's medical school, scoured public records including news releases, newspaper databases, lobbying reports, the medical literature and information released by the beverage giants themselves. While some of the incidents cited in the study already have been reported by news organizations, the medical journal report is the first to take a comprehensive look at the industry's strategy of donating to health organizations while at the same time lobbying against public health measures. The study tracked industry donations and lobbying spending from 2011 through 2015, at a time when many cities were mulling soda taxes or other regulations to combat obesity. "We wanted to look at what these companies really stand for," said Mr. Aaron, the study's co author. "And it looks like they are not helping public health at all in fact they're opposing it almost across the board, which calls these sponsorships into question." Mr. Aaron said that the industry donations created "clear cut conflicts of interest" for the health groups that accepted them. The report found a number of instances in which influential health groups accepted beverage industry donations and then backed away from supporting soda taxes or remained noticeably silent about the initiatives. In one instance cited in the study, the nonprofit group Save the Children, which had actively supported soda tax campaigns in several states, did an about face and withdrew its support in 2010. The group had accepted a 5 million grant from Pepsi and was seeking a major grant from Coke to help pay for its health and education programs for children. Responding to the new research, Save the Children said, in a statement, that the group in 2010 had decided to focus on early childhood education, and that its decision to stop supporting soda taxes "was unrelated to any corporate support that Save the Children received." When New York proposed a ban on extra large sodas in 2012, the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics cited "conflicting research" and didn't support the effort. The academy accepted 525,000 in donations from Coke in 2012. The following year it took a 350,000 donation from the company. The academy said it no longer has a sponsorship relationship with the beverage firms. The N.A.A.C.P. and the Hispanic Federation have publicly opposed anti soda initiatives despite disproportionately high rates of obesity in black and Hispanic communities. Coke made more than 1 million in donations to the N.A.A.C.P. between 2010 and 2015, and more than 600,000 to the Hispanic Federation between 2012 and 2015. The groups did not respond to requests for comment. "The beverage industry is using corporate philanthropy to undermine public health measures," said Kelly D. Brownell, dean of the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke, who was not involved in the new research. The American Diabetes Association accepted 140,000 from the company between 2012 and 2014. The American Heart Association received more than 400,000 from Coke between 2010 and 2015. And the National Institutes of Health received nearly 2 million from Coke between 2010 and 2014. In a statement, the heart association said the group is "leading efforts to reduce consumption of sugary drinks," and the group has advocated for increased taxes on sugary drinks. "To achieve our goals, we must engage a wide variety of food and beverage companies to be part of the solution," the statement said. The soda sponsorship does not have " any influence on our science and the public policy positions we advocate for." Coke referred questions about the study to their trade group, the American Beverage Association. "We believe our actions in communities and the marketplace are contributing to addressing the complex challenge of obesity," the beverage association said. "We stand strongly for our need, and right, to partner with organizations that strengthen our communities." The beverage association said it disagreed with public health advocates "on discriminatory and regressive taxes and policies on our products." In a statement PepsiCo said it is "incorrectly painted as a 'soda company,' when only a quarter of our global revenue comes from carbonated soft drinks." "We believe that obesity is a complex, multifaceted issue and that our company has an important role to play in addressing it which includes engaging with public health organizations and responding to consumers' demand for healthier products," the statement said. The New York Times last year reported that Coke had paid for scientific research that downplayed the link between sugary drinks and obesity. After that article was published, the beverage giant released a database showing that since 2010 it had spent more than 120 million on academic research and partnerships with health organizations involved in curbing obesity. From 2011 to 2015, Coke spent on average more than 6 million per year lobbying against public health measures aimed at curbing soda consumption, according to data from the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. Pepsi spent about 3 million per year during that period, and the American Beverage Association spent more than 1 million each year, the study found. In 2009 alone, when the government proposed a federal soda tax to curb obesity that would help finance health care reform, Coke, Pepsi and the American Beverage Association spent a combined 38 million lobbying against the measure, which ultimately failed. When the mayor of Philadelphia proposed a soda tax in 2010, the beverage industry offered 10 million to the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia if the tax proposal was dropped. The City Council voted down the measure, and the beverage association later made the donation. Philadelphia did ultimately impose a soda tax this year. The beverage industry filed a lawsuit in September, calling the tax illegal. The industry also is spending millions on advertising campaigns against soda taxes that are on the ballot in at least four cities this November three in Northern California, and one in Boulder, Colo. Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University, said the paper shows that soda companies "want to have it both ways appear as socially responsible corporate citizens and lobby against public health measures every chance they get." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Well |
CONAN DOYLE FOR THE DEFENSE The True Story of a Sensational British Murder, a Quest for Justice, and the World's Most Famous Detective Writer By Margalit Fox Illustrated. 319 pp. Random House. 27. In 1890, one of fiction's first, and certainly greatest, "consulting detectives" proclaimed his place in the world: "I am," Sherlock Holmes announced, "the last and highest court of appeal in detection." When the police are out of their depths, Holmes declared, "the matter is laid before me. I examine the data, as an expert, and pronounce a specialist's opinion." And twice in the following decades, Holmes's creator, Arthur Conan Doyle, was to put himself in the same position in the real world, harrying the police, examining data and giving a specialist's opinion to correct what he saw as travesties of justice. Margalit Fox, a recently retired obituaries writer for The New York Times, is adept at disinterring the bones of long buried bodies, and in "Conan Doyle for the Defense" she sets out to follow him in righting wrongs. The murder took place around Christmas 1908, and was both brutal and tawdry. On the last night of Marion Gilchrist's life, the elderly woman was left alone when her maid went to fetch the evening newspaper; on her return, the maid met a neighbor, alerted by noise overhead and the sight of a man rushing past on the stairs. Inside, they found a battered and dying Miss Gilchrist. A doctor identified a chair leg as the murder weapon; money lying in plain sight was untouched, as was Miss Gilchrist's substantial jewelry collection, save for a single diamond brooch. The crime seemed impulsive, and not for gain. Want to keep up with the latest and greatest in books? This is a good place to start. None Learn what you should be reading this fall: Our collection of reviews on books coming out this season includes biographies, novels, memoirs and more. See what's new in October: Among this month's new titles are novels by Jonathan Franzen, a history of Black cinema and a biography by Katie Couric. Nominate a book: The New York Times Book Review has just turned 125. That got us wondering: What is the best book that was published during that time? Listen to our podcast: Featuring conversations with leading figures in the literary world, from Colson Whitehead to Leila Slimani, the Book Review Podcast helps you delve deeper into your favorite books. Or was it? It was the missing brooch that doomed Oscar Slater. Slater was 36, a cheery rolling stone who had previously lived in New York, Paris, Brussels and in Glasgow at least twice before. On one of those stays he had married an alcoholic Glaswegian, and now, to avoid her demands for money, he had taken an assumed name. The police thought he was a pimp, in part because his music hall entertainer girlfriend was said, shockingly, to entertain men at home in his absence. They rented a flat not far from Gilchrist, and Slater bought some tools to fix it up, pawning a brooch to keep himself liquid. This lack of income, or the financial demands of his wife, might be why Slater had already booked himself a ticket to America. Searching for the stolen diamond brooch, the police heard of a man attempting to sell a pawn ticket for exactly that, and they thought they had hit the jackpot. Why, the man was even living under a fake name and was planning to leave the country all the evidence they needed to conclude he was a criminal ready to flee. When the pawnbroker was located, however, Gilchrist's maid was firm: The brooch he held was not the one belonging to her mistress. Not remotely daunted, the police, as Fox so neatly summarizes, followed the (il)logical syllogism: "All murders are committed by undesirables; Oscar Slater is an undesirable; therefore, Oscar Slater committed the Gilchrist murder." And so in 1909, after a brief and farcically prejudiced trial, Slater was convicted. It would be about another two years before Conan Doyle's interest in the case was piqued, and he published "The Case of Oscar Slater," detailing some of its more egregious elements: the lack of any evidence that Slater knew of Gilchrist and her jewels; the police's assertion that the murder weapon was the hammer Slater had bought to make repairs to his flat, yet without any evidence that this bloody tool had stained his clothes when he carried it away again; the claim that the reason the jewels were untouched was that Slater, a stranger, did not know where they were. (Conan Doyle dryly pointed out that this was the case for "practically every man in Scotland.") It was to be another three years before police files revealed that the man on the stairs, who had suspiciously vanished from all testimony, had early on been identified as both a member of Gilchrist's family and someone with considerable connections to those in power. Instead of Slater being exonerated, the policeman who brought this to light was hounded out of his job, and the Establishment went to work once more on what it did best, covering up. All of this is developed with brio by Fox. She is excellent in linking the 19th century creation of policing and detection with the development of both detective fiction and the science of forensics ballistics, fingerprints, toxicology and serology as well as the quasi science of "criminal anthropology" as espoused by the Italian criminologist Cesare Lombroso. She also illuminates the development of what she calls the "reconstructive" sciences at which the Victorians excelled, fields like geology, archaeology, paleontology and evolutionary biology, where gathered evidence is used to create "a narrative of things past ... through the close reading, painstaking analysis and rigorous chronological ordering of what could be discerned in the present." This is of course what detectives in theory, and Sherlock Holmes in fiction, did so well. The problem is the sheer ordinariness of the crime. It was nasty and brutal, but it wasn't, in and of itself, interesting. Fox, seemingly to forestall this harsh truth, several times suggests a comparison to the cover up in the Dreyfus case; she also cites a former police inspector who said Gilchrist's murder was "without parallel in criminal history." This overstatement does more harm than would a quiet acknowledgment that Conan Doyle's involvement was the only thing preventing Gilchrist's murder from falling into a pit of oblivion. Similar, too, is a generalizing tendency, where Fox's historical knowledge skates on thin ice. "Crime rates rose," the reader is told. Certainly politicians said crime rates rose, but in the absence of any established method at the time to record crime, it was, and is, impossible to know if that was indeed the case. Likewise, phrases like the vague "industrialization had urbanized Glasgow" are simply filler. (Glasgow had been a major port city for at least two centuries before the Slater case.) A more rounded perhaps even more jaundiced picture of Conan Doyle would also have been welcome. In Fox's telling he was a paragon of virtue as his first wife lay dying and his second wife waited modestly in the wings. This overlooks many less salubrious elements of that relationship. After Conan Doyle's second marriage, his daughter by his first wife was dumped at a school in Germany and barely allowed home; at his death, she was all but disinherited. These are small matters, however, against a bigger picture of a world on the cusp of modernity, with Conan Doyle standing Janus faced, looking forward and back between scientific method and spiritualism; between liberalism and tradition. The murder, too, looks forward and back, on one side Gilchrist, native born and Victorian; on the other Slater, the epitome of the new century's ostracized wanderer. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
Health is paramount, of course, and not the usual kind of health we talk about with the Mets. Two members of their traveling party tested positive for the coronavirus on Thursday one player and one staff member and Major League Baseball has paused their season in an effort to prevent the spread. Instead of hosting the Yankees this weekend for the first game of their annual interleague series, the Mets reported to Citi Field for testing on Friday morning. They are off until Monday at the earliest. Contact tracing, additional testing, waiting anxiously for results all have joined pitching, hitting and fielding as essential parts of the game. It was probably only a matter of time before in season positive tests would penetrate one of the New York teams. Teams in Miami, St. Louis, Cincinnati and beyond already have grappled with the new reality. It stands to reason that, before long, the virus will crash the boundaries of the Western division teams, too. Shoving 30 teams with sprawling rosters into a regular season bubble was never realistic for Major League Baseball, which settled for a 60 game schedule with teams playing only within their geographic regions. That arrangement helped last week in the Central, when the Cardinals returned to play after two weeks off and traveled from St. Louis to Chicago in a caravan of 41 socially distanced rental cars. For the Mets this week, there was no such luck. They were in Miami when they learned of the positive tests, so they flew home Thursday night, leaving behind the two people who tested positive and others who may have been exposed to the virus. The Mets and the league determined that flying home would be safer than checking into another Miami hotel, and that the risk of further exposure in Florida would be greater than in New York. 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. Those on the flight were presumed to be at low risk of having the virus, based on contact tracing, and nobody was permitted to eat or drink on the plane. But the team was tested at Citi Field anyway after landing on Thursday night, then tested again on Friday, before the league's formal announcement at noon that the Saturday and Sunday games were off, too. The Mets and the Yankees are both off on Monday, so they could play a doubleheader then. The teams are also scheduled for a three game series in the Bronx next weekend, and they have two common off days in September. The Mets also must make up Thursday's game with the Marlins Miami is scheduled to visit Citi Field next week for its final games with the Mets this season. However the schedule plays out, that's a lot of baseball in a compressed time frame, although the 2020 scheduling wrinkle of seven inning games in doubleheaders will help. (By the way, let's hope that innovation stays. A platter of two mini games in one sitting is an ideal portion for a fan; the action takes on extra urgency, without dragging, and it's safer for the players, too.) From a competitive standpoint, sitting out a weekend might help both teams. The Yankees were just swept by the Tampa Bay Rays, with their ever nimble roster of useful position players and little known power arms in the bullpen. And while the Yankees are troubled by their annual injury plague, the Rays also have two starters (Charlie Morton and Yonny Chirinos) and a very good reliever (Jose Alvarado) on the injured list. The Mets had just won three games from the Marlins, who are slumping but still in second place in the mediocre National League East. The Atlanta Braves are in first, but their rotation is in shambles and their dynamic young stars, second baseman Ozzie Albies and outfielder Ronald Acuna Jr., are out with wrist injuries. The Mets could use a starter like Zack Wheeler, who fled New York last December for a five year, 118 million contract with the Phillies. Wheeler has thrived in Philadelphia he is 3 0 with a 2.81 earned run average but his new team is squandering its luck as the healthiest roster in the division. Through Thursday, the Phillies had led by at least two runs in each of their last six losses, undone by a bullpen whose 8.07 earned run average was by far the worst in the majors. The Phillies relievers make the Mets' bullpen (4.56 E.R.A.) look like the 1990 Nasty Boys, who led the Cincinnati Reds to a title. The point is that the Mets, who are 12 14, have a chance, even without two players they were counting on designated hitter Yoenis Cespedes and starter Marcus Stroman who opted out of the shortened season. Their hitters have the best on base percentage in the majors, at .356, but they have mostly wasted those opportunities, ranking last in the majors in batting average with runners in scoring position, at .214. Jacob deGrom has been dazzling as usual, with a 1.93 E.R.A. in five starts, though he has not yet worked past the sixth inning. Seth Lugo is poised for his spot in the patchwork rotation, making Edwin Diaz the closer again. Predictably, Diaz blew a save on Wednesday, but he preserved a victory by striking out the side in the ninth. He has faced 47 batters and struck out 24, and deserves this latest chance to be the lockdown closer of the Mets' dreams. In any case, it is comforting to worry about on field matters after four months without baseball. Local and national television ratings are up across the sport even with rare late summer competition from the N.B.A. and the N.H.L. and the Mets are compelling to follow; their broadcast teams are among the best in the game, and the roster is talented and likable. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
Well, maybe he tried? But if so, he doesn't appear to have succeeded. We didn't see whether he made a direct connection with any of the living or dead dragons, or whether he was able to alter their flight plans. It also isn't clear that he in any way helped when they were fighting low visibility. So ... probably not. Bran Used the Weirwood Net to Look Up Things Possible. Usually, Bran has to touch the weirwood tree to do this, but perhaps he doesn't need to touch it anymore so long as he has proximity. He could have been scrolling through visions of the past, present or future. Or maybe he was following the battle from multiple vantage points, as a form of omni reconnaissance. (Although if so, who did he report it to?) Maybe he was recording it for posterity. Or perhaps he was entirely checked out and contemplating a leaked trailer for Episode 4. Bran Used the Weirwood Net to Change the Past Theoretically possible, but not likely. Bran learned his lesson with Hodor, and he was heartbroken. Granted, he doesn't exhibit as much human emotion now, but he doesn't seem that interested in meddling anymore. He doesn't volunteer information very often, and he treats most people Jaime, Theon as if he were so far beyond whatever they did to hurt him that it doesn't even register anymore. What past does he care enough to change if he doesn't care about his own? Bran Plugged In to Help Lure the Night King Ah ... likely! Time and time again, in these latter seasons of "Game of Thrones," the old Occam's razor proposition comes into play: The simplest explanation is the most likely to be correct. All the conspiracy theories so beloved by fans usually turns out to be off base. Remember the theory that Arya was really the Waif? Or that Littlefinger wasn't actually dead? Or that Bran, himself, was the Night King? The books encouraged fans to play detective and deduce clues from the story, which, after all, could support many readings. But the series showrunners haven't demonstrated much interest in playing this game. The simplest, most likely explanation is that Bran is easier to track when he's in his psychic space, and so he was trying to serve as bait; he stopped when the Night King rolled up. This would not be an explanation likely to satisfy the most conspiracy minded fans, but they probably shouldn't be expecting the show to enlarge its mysteries as it tries to close shop. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
Overwhelmed by demand for an experimental treatment for coronavirus, the drug maker Gilead abruptly shut down its emergency access program, leaving doctors and families scrambling for answers. The company said it was setting up a broader access program that could try to help more people, but some said the transition is delaying remedies for very ill patients who have few options. "We have heard zero. We know nothing," said Genny Allard, the mother of Jack Allard, a 25 year old New Jersey resident who is in a medically induced coma and on a ventilator at Hackensack Meridian Health JFK Medical Center in Edison, N.J. "I'm just, like, apoplectic at this point. I have a kid who is sick and the doctor wants to give him the next medicine that is supposed to help." The drug, remdesivir, is being studied in several large scale clinical trials around the world, including a huge trial announced last week by the World Health Organization. But the results have not been reported yet, and it is still unclear whether the drug works against the coronavirus. It was studied to treat Ebola, but did not work well enough against that virus. There is no known treatment against the coronavirus. Over the last week, President Trump has repeatedly referred to remdesivir and other drugs, like two long used malaria drugs, as potential game changers, despite pushback by top health officials like Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Dr. Fauci has corrected Mr. Trump in blunt ways during the daily White House briefings, saying that there is not enough scientific evidence to prove the drugs will work against the virus. Critics of the president have complained that he is instilling false hope in a desperate public, as the disease spreads rapidly around the United States and elsewhere. Highly publicized talk of prospective cures has fueled demand for these potential treatments threatening the longstanding supply of some of these drugs that are relied on regularly by people with lupus and other conditions. As the virus spread to Europe and the United States, Gilead said emergency requests had "flooded an emergency treatment access system that was set up for very limited access to investigational medicines and never intended for use in response to a pandemic." Remdesivir has been given on a case by case basis to patients in China, Japan, Europe and the United States where it was administered to the first coronavirus patient in the country, who was treated in Washington State in late January. Gilead said it was switching to a broader program because it could not handle individual requests. "Due to overwhelming demand over the last several days, during this transition period we are unable to accept new individual compassionate use requests," the company said on Sunday, with the exception of pregnant women and children under 18. "This approach will both accelerate access to remdesivir for severely ill patients and enable the collection of data from all participating patients," the company said. Gilead said it was processing "previously approved" requests but did not say what the status was of requests like Mr. Allard's that had been submitted but not approved. Drug makers have long run so called "compassionate use" programs that allow patients to take unapproved, experimental drugs if they have no other options. The switch to what's known as an "expanded access program" would allow the approvals to apply to larger groups instead of one individual at a time. These programs are often run as loose clinical trials, in which patients who did not qualify for the more stringent requirements of the trial can enroll. In addition to giving more patients access to the drug, it also allows the companies to collect data, including what dose was used, how sick the patient was and the extent that it worked. In compassionate use programs, this type of information is usually not shared. The U.S. Army secretary to National Guard members who resist the vaccines: Prepare for discipline. Greece, like some other E.U. nations facing case surges, adds restrictions for the unvaccinated. "You are trying to save somebody, rescue somebody. It's a last ditch throwing the kitchen sink at them, and you rarely get information back," said Dr. Art Caplan, head of the division of medical ethics at the New York University Grossman School of Medicine. He said that he was giving unpaid advice to some companies pursuing treatments for coronavirus. The shift to a broader program will allow Gilead to learn about the drug. Without it, "you don't learn what's going on, so you're sort of stuck." A Gilead spokeswoman said the company did not expect the transition to a new program would result in delays in treatment compared with how long patients were already waiting for the drug under the company's now ended compassionate use program. Gilead would not provide details about the average turnaround time, but the spokeswoman said the company has been inundated with requests over the past week. The company has said that it has a limited supply of remdesivir, but that it is increasing production. It is also drawing on a stockpile Gilead created for use in future pandemics after Ebola outbreaks in West Africa. Mr. Allard, who lives in Metuchen, N.J. and is an associate at Bank of America in Manhattan, was admitted to the hospital on the night of March 16 after he had a high fever, back pain and was throwing up, his mother said. She described Mr. Allard, a former All American lacrosse player at Bates College, as healthy and with no underlying conditions. In New Jersey, officials announced 935 new positive cases on Monday, bringing the total to 2,844, including 27 deaths. Mr. Allard was tested Tuesday for the coronavirus, but the sample was sent to Quest Diagnostics, and his mother said the hospital never received the results. As the week went on, Mr. Allard's condition rapidly declined, Ms. Allard said. He was placed in a medically induced coma and put on a ventilator. Ms. Allard said his doctors wanted to try remdesivir, but they needed to have a confirmed positive test showing he had the illness caused by the virus before they could seek the drug from Gilead. Finally, after the family made a flurry of calls to elected officials and others, the hospital tested him again on Saturday and received the results from another laboratory in less than six hours. His results came back positive and that night around 10:30 the doctor submitted her request to Gilead. By the next morning, Ms. Allard said, she was hearing that Gilead was shifting to a new system, and news stories later on Sunday confirmed her fears. His doctor has submitted another request under the new system, but Ms. Allard now fears his treatment will be delayed. Ms. Allard said the doctor had previously treated another patient with remdesivir and the turnaround time for approval had been 48 hours. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
Although many tourists flock to Florida for its glorious palette of white beaches, blue gray waters and yellow sun, the state is also home to lush and exotic gardens in every shade of green. Some were the dream of horticulturists obsessed with collecting plants from around the world that would flourish in their new home. Others were established by immigrants grateful for the opportunities the United States had afforded them and eager to leave a legacy in their adopted country. Still more gardens were the creations of wealthy transplants who, while wintering in Florida, sought to recreate the gardens they loved elsewhere. With enormous resources they hired some of the nation's landscape architects to design gardens that are as dazzling as any in the country. Here are six of Florida's most enticing green oases. An orchid lover's delight: bucket orchids, sabralia orchids and miniature orchids, a rainbow of colors in their petals. The 15 acre garden, on Sarasota Bay, was established in 1971 as the only botanical garden in the world focused solely on the study of epiphytes, which include many orchid species. (There are 25,000 known types of orchids in the world of which the vast majority are epiphytes: plants that grow on other plants rather than in the soil so that they are closer to the sun.) This garden was once the property of Marie and William Selby (he made his fortune with the Selby Oil and Gas Company, which merged with Texaco in 1948). After Marie Selby died in 1971, leaving the property to the city, a board of directors consulted with experts from New York Botanical Garden and the University of Florida and chose to make the garden distinctive by focusing on epiphytes. Beyond the profusion of yellow, purple, orange and white orchids, the garden offers a collection of bromeliads from pineapples to Spanish moss; a stunning collection of palm trees, from the Puerto Rican Hat Palm to the Haitian Zombie Palm; and a mangrove walkway that borders Sarasota Bay. A bromeliad display at Marie Selby Botanical Gardens, inspired by the art of Andy Warhol. Selby, taking a page from the New York Botanical Garden, has begun mounting an annual exhibition of art inspired by flowers. Last year it was Marc Chagall's work that led Selby to replant parts of its gardens with salvia and date palms, evocative of the south of France where the artist did some of his loveliest work. This month , four of Andy Warhol's silk screens of flowers will form the centerpiece of the Selby exhibit "Warhol: Flowers in the Factory." 900 South Palm Avenue, Sarasota, Fla., selby.org. Open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day except Christmas. In Mr. Kurisu's words, which are featured on the park's website, the intention is for visitors "to lay aside the chaos of a troubled world." He has accomplished that with the use of small lakes and paths that wind among pine forests, bamboo groves and rock arrangements throughout the gardens. The gardens at Morikami are informed as much by religion as by plant life. With its two landscaped islands joined by a bridge, Morikami's Shinden Garden was inspired by the gardens that were adapted for the estates of Japanese nobles from Chinese garden design. The Shinden style was popular from the 9th to the 12th century. The park's Paradise Garden has paths for strolling the perimeters of its two small lakes in a style that recalls gardens that appealed to the new Samurai class of the 13th century. In Morikami's Early Rock Garden, rocks are set vertically and spaced to suggest a waterfall an arrangement that reflects the rise of Zen and its asceticism. Karesansui Late Garden features rocks that are artfully placed on expanses of gravel. That style karesansui means dry landscape was meant to serve as an aid to meditation from within a temple. 400 Morikami Park Road, Delray Beach, Fla., morikami.org. Open Tuesday through Sunday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Closed on major holidays. Next to the cool, elegant Lea Asian Garden with a replica of a Javanese temple ruin is the rollicking Kapnick Brazilian Garden: Mr. Jungles's tribute to his mentor, the celebrated Brazilian landscape architect Roberto Burle Marx, who died in 1994. (Marx was honored during the closing ceremony at the Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro in 2016.) The centerpiece of the Brazilian garden is a mosaic by Marx; bromeliads in pink, purple, yellow and orange mirror his colors. The Caribbean Kapnick Garden, designed by Bob Truskowski, has a laid back vibe: Among the lush mango and banana trees are hammocks, a cottage and a bocce court that help transport you to island time. The Scott Florida Garden is notable for its bougainvillea and a date palm with a triple trunk. Last year the Naples Botanical Gardens, which opened in 2009, became the youngest to win the Garden of Excellence award from the American Public Gardens Association. 4820 Bayshore Drive, Naples, Fla., naplesgarden.org. Open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day except Tuesday, when it opens at 8 a.m. A Dutch immigrant proud of his success in the United States as publisher of Ladies' Home Journal and 1921 Pulitzer Prize winning author of "The Americanization of Edward Bok," Mr. Bok's American Foundation bought roughly 53 acres in the early 1920s to create a bird sanctuary, then added a carillon tower and gardens. Over the years the property, which opened in 1929, has grown to 300 acres. Its 205 foot high neo Gothic Singing Tower dominates the park. Made partially from local stone, the tower houses a 60 bell carillon that is played twice daily. Mr. Bok's passion for color is evident in the 50 Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. designed acres that are the core of Bok Tower Gardens. Filled with azaleas, camellias and magnolia, they are particularly lovely in February and March when they are in bloom. Because Bok is farther north than the gardens around Miami and Sarasota, it is cool enough at night for these plants to survive. As a result, the look and feel of Bok is far less tropical than many other gardens in Florida. But these are not the only pleasures of Bok. There also are the Hammock Hollow Children's Garden and the Edible Garden and Outdoor Kitchen for cooking demonstrations. The Edible Garden is surrounded by peach trees, pomegranate shrubs, fig trees, passion fruit vines and banana trees. The gardens also include acres of palms, oaks and wildflowers that give a visitor a sense of the diversity of Florida's plant life. To ensure that suburban development does not mar the vistas from Bok, the park has been purchasing adjacent land in recent years. 1151 Tower Boulevard, Lake Wales, Fla., boktowergardens.org. Open 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. all year. Vizcaya's grounds were the brainchild of Diego Suarez, the landscape architect who began his career in the early 1900s collaborating with Arthur Acton, the English expatriate and art collector, to help restore La Pietra, the Acton villa near Florence. Suarez became enamored of the elaborate stone work, statuary, fountains with soaring sprays and rills that gave Italian gardens of the 18th century both elegance and fantastical whimsy. Vizcaya's grounds were built on fill that had once been a mangrove swamp, now held back by a retaining wall. On level land Suarez created French style parterres: formal gardens of neatly trimmed plant beds that are laid out in symmetrical patterns with paths for walking. The Fountain Garden includes a plaza with a fountain from the Italian town of Sutri, which once provided water for its residents. Amid the strangler figs and oaks dripping with Spanish moss, Suarez added a two story "Secret Garden," as it is now known, where succulents and cactus flowers bloom in pots built into the stucco walls. 3251 South Miami Avenue, Miami. vizcaya.org. Open 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. every day except Tuesday. Closed on Thanksgiving and Christmas. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
ATLANTA In 2000, Antowain Smith, a running back who had been the Buffalo Bills' first round draft pick three years earlier, was unceremoniously cut by the team. Smith had been buried on the Bills' bench. The next season, Smith landed in the training camp of the New England Patriots, even though some of his friends wondered why he wanted to play for a team coming off a 5 11 season and for a head coach, Bill Belichick, who seemed on his way to getting fired by a second N.F.L. team. The Patriots already had two, young homegrown running backs, so what kind of chance would they give a veteran discarded by the second rate Bills? Smith became the first conspicuous castoff to end up playing a prominent role in a Patriots championship. In New England's first Super Bowl victory in 2002, it was Smith not the St. Louis Rams star Marshall Faulk who became the game's leading rusher, with 92 yards. "I turned out to be the perfect fit that they needed," Smith recalled in a telephone interview Thursday. "Belichick told me when I got there: 'Do what you're told and you'll have a role.' He spoke the truth." Such surprises have become a staple of the Belichick era: The Patriots win a Super Bowl when someone they found languishing on the waiver wire or ignored until the bottom of the draft ends up taking a star turn on pro football's biggest stage. It does not happen by accident, former Patriots say. "There were always younger guys that maybe got overlooked because there was a piece of their game that hadn't been fully realized, but Bill sees the potential," said Matt Light, a former Patriots offensive tackle. Light was not one of the lesser known players, but he saw many of them suddenly appear in the locker room. "Bill can wait on them, and then he can insert them into roles clearly defined," Light continued. "Their role is always very well communicated, and they can go out and experience some success. And it's amazing what success will do for a guy off the street." How beloved is Tom Brady in New England? Smith wasn't the only unexpected hero of the 2002 Super Bowl. David Patten, a former Arena Football League player who spent four mostly mediocre seasons with two other N.F.L. teams before joining New England, scored the team's only offensive touchdown in the game when he faked and slipped behind a defender for an 8 yard reception in the end zone that put the Patriots ahead by 11 points. None Week 11 Takeaways: Here is what we learned this week. N.F.L. Tightens Covid Protocols: As cases rise and Thanksgiving approaches, the league is requiring masks inside team facilities and increasing testing. The Jets Lose Again: Falling to the Miami Dolphins, the Jets' receiver Elijah Moore offered consolation. 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. Patten made 165 catches for the Patriots over four seasons, and 15 more in the playoffs. Fast forward to the next Patriots Super Bowl victory, in 2004. Wide receiver David Givens was not a reject from another N.F.L. team; he came to the Patriots as the 253rd overall pick of the 2002 draft, taken in the seventh round. He played very little in his first two seasons, catching just 43 passes. But in the 2004 Super Bowl against the Carolina Panthers, Givens emerged from the shadows to make a 5 yard touchdown reception that gave New England a 14 7 lead just before halftime. Givens had five catches for 69 yards in the game, none more important than an 18 yard reception on third and 9 that put his team 3 yards from the end zone. It set up the Patriots' final touchdown, with less than three minutes left. The litany of Patriots who were shrewdly lured from other teams and then became Super Bowl heroes includes Corey Dillon, who was one of the best running backs in the N.F.L. for six years, until his production for the Cincinnati Bengals dropped precipitously in 2003. Dillon's career seemed in jeopardy as he approached his 30th birthday, and then the Patriots traded for him before the 2004 season. Dillon had the best season of his career and led all rushers in the 2005 Super Bowl. He scored a touchdown and ran for 9 key yards in the Patriots' final scoring drive in a 24 21 victory over the Philadelphia Eagles. In 2015, the surprise performer was Malcolm Butler, an undrafted, reserve rookie cornerback whose goal line interception averted certain defeat against the Seattle Seahawks. In the Super Bowl that season, Hogan made a pivotal, 16 yard, third down catch that led to the tying touchdown against Atlanta late in the fourth quarter. Then in overtime, Hogan had an 18 yard reception that helped vault New England to its fifth Super Bowl victory. "I think the Patriots have shown an ability to see guys for what they can ultimately be, and then they tailor the coaching to see if they can make it happen," Hogan said here in Atlanta on Thursday. "The idea is to make you better at what you already do well." Matt Chatham, who played linebacker on three Patriots championship teams from 2002 to 2005, came to New England after he was cut by St. Louis in his rookie year. He had a slightly different take on how the Patriots continually find and polish diamonds in the rough. "They're not going to put you out in some sort of uncomfortable situation where athletically you wouldn't be able to do it," Chatham said. "That said, they may find the things that you do better than anyone else that another scheme doesn't highlight." Smith, who got in nearly on the ground floor of the Belichick regime, said he thought it came down to Belichick's renowned fastidiousness and punitive nature. "People call Belichick a defensive coach, but if you think he's not paying attention to everything the offense and special teams are doing, then just try making a mistake in practice on one of those plays," Smith said. "You'll be in his doghouse real quick. And he'll tell you that you're in the doghouse and then he'll let you sit on the bench and think about it for a while. "When you get another chance, or your only other chance, it doesn't matter who you are, you're ready to make something of it." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
Those, and a few chairs, are just about the only props you'll find in Mr. Cummings's production. As the artistic director of Transport Group, he is known for minimalist, or essentialist, stagings, like an endearing unisex version of "I Remember Mama" in 2014. Doing more with less is also the house style of Classic Stage under John Doyle, who has revived musicals as different as "Sweeney Todd" and "The Color Purple" by depriving them of distracting stagecraft. But this "Summer and Smoke" has been scraped too close to the bone. Dane Laffrey's big white shoe box, or coffin, of a set conveys all too well Alma's empty prospects but offers nothing to suggest either the suffocating trap of her Victorian circumstances or the richness and romance of her imagination. Her statue of Eternity is not even stone; it's a framed photograph. Williams specified minimalism no doors or windows but he meant something more poetic by it. In his production notes he refers to de Chirico and Renaissance paintings as a way of suggesting the natural world Alma must finally embrace. Which is not to say "Summer and Smoke" is hopeful; Alma and John convert each other too late, ending up, once again, on opposite sides of love. But it mustn't play out its bleakness too soon or there's nothing to lose, and thus no drama. Ms. Ireland's imagination is so well calibrated that she manages, almost single handedly, to correct for that distortion. If this "Summer and Smoke" were performed silently you could still understand the story from her physicalization of Alma's character. More than that, her manic laughter, gulping breaths and drooping shocks are carried off with such authenticity that they reframe hysteria as a natural, even brave, response to deprivation and constant insult. But of course a silent performance would not be Williams, and if much of the dialogue has a high butterfat content, Ms. Ireland delivers it naturally. Mr. Darrow, properly dashing and tortured as John, hasn't quite achieved that facility; his emphasis on the character's self loathing and cynicism sometimes makes him seem hollow instead of harrowed. Williams is partly to blame. John's feelings for Alma aren't as clear as hers are for him, and he often hovers, like the rest of the residents of Glorious Hill especially the stereotypically "passionate" Mexican family that runs the local casino on the verge of caricature. Williams tried to solve these problems with massive rewriting; the result was "The Eccentricities of a Nightingale," which puts the main characters in a rather different framework. "Eccentricities" is an improvement, but "Summer and Smoke" is nevertheless Williams, with veins of rich pathos to be mined from its melodrama. Surely its central question remains profound: Why do we fall in love with a person's struggle instead of with the person himself? If this revival doesn't address that question convincingly except in its central performance, I don't blame the cast, which also features Tina Johnson as the local busybody, Ryan Spahn as a traveling salesman and Hannah Elless as a pupil of Alma's who turns out to be a rival. No, it's the parsimony of the production that's at fault, offering little that's lovely except Michael John LaChiusa's original music, in an apt neoclassical mode. Perhaps it's fitting that music should be the one element that gives you a taste of what this "Summer and Smoke" might have been with such an eloquent Alma if it hadn't, like her, spent so much energy stifling its passion. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
No, not Dat Boi. This one: Boi Salt, of Barcelona, the title character in the Spanish language import "Boi," from Netflix. Poor guy, to be saddled with a name so freighted with stale internet meme baggage. And that's the least of his worries. He just bailed (temporarily) on his pregnant girlfriend (Miranda Gas) and is obsessing about her; he is living with an aunt suffering from a condition that mysteriously compels her to throw open all the doors and windows; and he has a new job as a chauffeur. Oh, and he's late to retrieve a couple of Singapore Chinese (apparently) businessmen (maybe) from the airport. Boi (played by Bernat Quintana ) tugs at our empathy as he fast pedals and multitasks to try to keep on top of his responsibilities. We're fearful he won't wiggle out of the scrapes he gets into, but we're rooting for him. When Boi stops to catch his breath, he reads a letter from a publisher rejecting his novel, "Reasonable Blood." It seems to be the last reply from a bunch of hopeful queries he sent out, although the English subtitles are a little fuzzy on this point. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
LONDON "Flights," a philosophical rumination on modern day travel by the Polish author Olga Tokarczuk, won the Man Booker International Prize for works of translated fiction on Tuesday night. Ms. Tokarczuk shared the prize of 50,000 British pounds, around 67,000, with the book's English language translator, Jennifer Croft. The Man Booker International Prize is awarded by the same organization that gives the Man Booker Prize for fiction. It is for a single work of fiction that has been translated into English and published in the United Kingdom in the last year. Ms. Tokarczuk, 56, was born in Poland. In 2008 she won the Nike Award, Poland's highest literary accolade, for "Flights." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
Children in class at a Ndlovu Care Group facility. With aid from the Pepfar program, organizations like Ndlovu and Right to Care have been critical to the reduction of AIDS in South Africa. VERENA, South Africa A fading roadside ad for Selala Funeral Service here captures what was, until recently, the essence of South Africa's AIDS epidemic: "Tombstones Are Available," it reads. "Buy One, Get One Free." Not long ago, even places like Verena, a blip on the roadside northeast of Pretoria, supported several funeral parlors. But in the last few years, "we've managed a miracle," said Dr. Salim Abdool Karim, one of the country's leading AIDS researchers. "Undertaking is not a business you want to go into anymore." As recently as 2008, the AIDS epidemic in South Africa was out of control, hampered by the indifference of President Thabo Mbeki, Nelson Mandela's successor. Death was everywhere. South Africa has 2.4 million people on antiretroviral drugs, far more than any other country, and adds 100,000 each month. Five years ago, 490 clinics gave out those drugs; now 3,540 do. Only 250 nurses were trained to prescribe them then; now 23,000 are. (The figures, from the end of 2013, are the most recent available.) Mother to child transmissions have dropped by 90 percent, new infections have dropped by a third, and life expectancy has increased by almost 10 years. "South Africa takes this very seriously and has made major, major progress," said Michel Sidibe, the executive director of Unaids, the United Nations agency fighting the disease. But experts say much of that progress is now in jeopardy. Though few Americans or even South Africans realize it, the nation owes much of its success to a single United States program, the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or Pepfar, started in 2003 under President George W. Bush. It has poured more than 3 billion into South Africa, largely for training doctors, building clinics and laboratories, and buying drugs. Now that aid pipeline is drying up as the program shifts its limited budget to poorer countries, so the South African government must find hundreds of millions of dollars, even as its national caseload grows rapidly. The country has six million infected and 370,000 new infections a year. That is seven times as many new infections as in the United States, which has six times the population. Condom use is dropping, according to a new survey, and teenage girls are becoming infected at alarming rates. Still, Dr. Aaron Motsoaledi, the national health minister, says he is confident South Africa will find the money and the political will to fight on. "It's a logistical problem," he said. "Any country in the world would be shaken by putting 2.4 million people on treatment quickly. But it's not as if we have any choice. If we don't, they fill up the hospital beds and I.C.U.'s. It's becoming easier for Treasury to give me what I ask." Dr. Ian Sanne's "Right to Care" chain of clinics, which treats 203,000 patients in five provinces, is an example of the fruits of American largess. "We opened in 2004, with 100 percent Pepfar money," Dr. Sanne said. Right to Care, like many other AIDS treatment programs here, owes its existence to a decision that year by Pepfar to help South Africa quietly, almost clandestinely, while the Mbeki administration was still in power. In poor countries with broken health care systems, Pepfar paid American medical schools to run its programs. South Africa, by contrast, had excellent doctors and hospitals, but Mr. Mbeki's health minister, who claimed garlic, beetroot and lemons could cure AIDS, forbade public hospitals to give out AIDS drugs. Mr. Mbeki was finally ousted in an internal African National Congress power struggle in 2008; by that time, Harvard researchers calculated, his policies had cost 365,000 lives. In the interim, Pepfar had supported private practitioners like Dr. Sanne, Dr. Hugo Tempelman of the Ndlovu Care Group and Dr. Helen Rees of the Wits Reproductive Health Institute in Johannesburg. Because South Africans are sensitive about needing any foreign help, the aid is still given with little fanfare. Many clinics have only one sign of their roots: a modest brass plaque with Pepfar's globe and red ribbon logo. "I've had visiting congressional delegations upset that America gets no recognition for saving lives while China gets visibility for building an airport in Mozambique," Dr. Rees said. The country received 350 million from Pepfar last year, according to Dr. Eric Goosby, who ran the program until last November. That figure will shrink to 250 million by 2016. "We need to move on to places like Burundi and Cameroon," Dr. Goosby said. While very poor countries rely almost entirely on donors, South Africa now pays 83 percent of its own costs. But it struggles to do so. Patients overwhelm understaffed public clinics. And as evidence mounts that it is best to put patients on drugs as soon as they test positive rather than waiting until their immune systems falter, the national caseload will triple. Dr. Sanne complained bitterly about cutbacks, Dr. Goosby said, and got "bridge money" to prevent layoffs from his well trained staff. Closing private clinics can have dangerous consequences. When one Durban hospital abruptly went bankrupt after its Pepfar grant expired, its 4,000 H.I.V. patients were told to report to public clinics near their homes places that many H.I.V. patients avoid for fear of being spotted and shunned by their neighbors. A Harvard sponsored survey found that nearly 20 percent of those 4,000 patients did not renew their prescriptions at their local clinics. In theory, because Pepfar pays for the care of about a million South African patients, a similar dropout rate nationally would mean that 200,000 patients were not in care and were at risk of developing drug resistant strains, said Matthew M. Kavanagh, the author of a study of South Africa for Health GAP, an American medical advocacy group. Dr. Motsoaledi, South Africa's health minister since 2009, has won high praise from AIDS experts and even from advocacy groups that are often at odds with him. Asked if there was any chance that the United States, having received little credit for helping from 2004 on, would now be vilified for pulling out, he said: "No, I personally will never allow that. Because this would never have happened without America." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
Anton Rubinstein's "Demon," a once popular opera that has sunk into obscurity, is being staged as part of the Bard SummerScape festival this year. ANNANDALE ON HUDSON, N.Y. Anton Rubinstein's "Demon," a nearly forgotten Russian opera from 1871, was one of the most popular works of its day. And a crucial seduction scene in Act III suggests why. During this episode, the title character a fallen angel visits Tamara, the lovely daughter of a prince, in a convent where she has sought peace after her intended husband is killed. The demon, smitten, implores Tamara to love him (to save him, really). Unimaginable delights await, he says, if she will join him for eternity. You might think this dramatic conflict calls for music charged with demonic undercurrents and exotic Russian fervor. Instead, Rubinstein's score has a 19th century Romantic character that owes much to Schumann and Mendelssohn. In a way, this ardent, rhapsodically lyrical and daringly long scene poignantly humanizes the demon and his beloved mortal. It hooked me on Sunday here at the Sosnoff Theater at the 2018 Bard SummerScape festival, which is offering a rare production of an opera that has sunk into obscurity. "Demon," colorfully directed by Thaddeus Strassberger and running through Aug. 5, is the latest rescue operation by the conductor Leon Botstein, who has made it a mission to bring attention to unjustly forgotten works. With this, he has a winner. Rubinstein (1829 94) a virtuoso pianist, noted conductor and the founder of the St. Petersburg Conservatory looked to Western Europe for models of composition and music education. Still, the generation of composers that followed, which included Nicholai Rimsky Korsakov (the focus of this summer's Bard Music Festival), considered Rubinstein too conventional. They set out to invent, as they saw it, a truer Russian style, with exotic scales and folk tunes. But heard in the larger European context of its time, "Demon" holds up very well, especially in the surging, rich performance Mr. Botstein drew from the American Symphony Orchestra and the the Bard Festival Chorale. The opera begins with an ominous prologue that takes place in a realm between heaven and hell. As a furious storm drenches the landscape below, the demon (the baritone Efim Zavalny) vents his disdain for the weakness of human life and its scant resistance to his power. An Angel (the mezzo soprano Nadezhda Babintseva) tells him that human love could restore him to heaven. The demon, rejecting God as a "tyrant" who demands obedience, not power, seeks freedom and knowledge. Based on a poem by Mikhail Lermontov, the opera may seem like a familiar tale of supernatural intervention in human life. But Rubinstein's music explores the everyday humanity of the story. The demon, a Mephistophelian figure, emerges as a flawed, suffering Romantic hero. And Mr. Strassberger emphasizes this in a production that frames the plot as Tamara's flashback and mingles its various settings through abstract stage imagery, with extensive use of videos. True to this production's sensitive reading of the opera, the soprano Olga Tolkmit presents Tamara as a young woman fraught with confusion. When the demon appears, only she can hear and see him. The man she has been pledged to is a dashing prince but it is an arranged marriage. When the demon promises to make her princess of the universe, Ms. Tolkmit's Tamara, teeming with sexual desire and fear of her unknown married future, cannot help being intrigued. Her voice penetrating and bright, with a slight metallic tinge that lends it intensity, she brings out Tamara's confusions and yearnings compellingly. Mr. Zavalny's demon is a handsome, feral presence, stalking about in a loose, long coat. His dark hair is gleaming; his gaze, intent. He certainly looked and acted the part, and his dusky voice suits the role, even though he was sometimes strained in his upper range and had occasional pitch troubles on Sunday. The tenor Alexander Nesterenko's virile voice and noble bearing were ideal for the well meaning Prince Sinodal. During a scene in which the prince and his men rest at a camp en route to the wedding, he has an erotic dream about his bride to be. In this bold staging, Tamara appears and actually straddles the prince, who then awakens, horrified at his own thoughts which were implanted in his mind by the demon, who soon arranges for the prince and his men to be ambushed by infidels. There are strands of the music that abound in what we think of today as Russian style, characteristic of Glinka and Borodin, especially during a rousing dance scene as guests gather for a wedding that never happens. The Pesvebi Georgian Dancers, an impressive Brooklyn based ensemble of acrobatic men and twirling women, were riveting during these animated episodes. Other standouts in the cast included the earthy bass Andrei Valentii, as Tamara's father, and the rich voiced mezzo soprano Ekaterina Egorova, as Tamara's nanny. In the end, Tamara does allow herself to be kissed by the demon. She dies, but is forgiven and ushered into heaven; the demon is again condemned to solitude. For me, "Demon" might be compared favorably to Gounod's "Faust," one of the more overrated staples in the repertory. American opera companies that rely on works like "Faust" should take a chance on "Demon," which offers a fresh, rich alternative: a Mephistophelian story with a spiritual twist. I could imagine a production with a strong cast being a hit at the Metropolitan Opera. For now, we have Mr. Botstein to thank for this inspiring rescue job. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
Marcelo Gomes will perform alongside Diana Vishneva on Friday night in "Sleeping Beauty Dreams" at the Beacon Theater. On Saturday, Nick Palmquist will take over his role. ALVIN AILEY AMERICAN DANCE THEATER at New York City Center (through Dec. 30). This troupe continues its run at City Center with its "Three Visionaries" program, opening on Friday. It spotlights dances created by the artistic directors who have presided over the company since its formation in 1958: Alvin Ailey, Judith Jamison and Robert Battle. From Jamison, the artistic director emerita, are excerpts from "Divining" and "Forgotten Time." Battle, its current artistic director, offers "Mass" and "Ella," and from Ailey, its founder, there are the classics "Cry" and "Revelations." Another program pick is "Timeless Ailey" (on Saturday), a presentation of rarely seen Ailey dances, including "Pas de Duke" and "The Lark Ascending." Both are gems. 212 581 1212, nycitycenter.org THE BANG GROUP at the Flea Theater (Dec. 20, 7 p.m.; through Dec. 22). In "Nut/Cracked," dancers deliver a sonic holiday extravaganza as they tap out snappy rhythms with the help of point shoes and Bubble Wrap. In his rendition of "The Nutcracker," the choreographer David Parker explores Tchaikovsky's score, as well as versions by Duke Ellington and Glenn Miller. The cast is large and features students from the Dalton School, Frank Sinatra High School for the Performing Arts and e.g. dance. 212 226 0051, theflea.org BROOKLYN BALLET at Kings Theater (Dec. 14, 7 p.m.). This company, led by its artistic director, Lynn Parkerson, offers its take on the holiday classic with "The Brooklyn Nutcracker," which blends ballet and hip hop while celebrating the multiculturalism of the borough. There are some distinct touches in that regard: The Hot Chocolate divertissement will be performed by Aliesha Bryan, a flamenco dancer, while Margaret Yuen's Red Silk Dancers will do Chinese Tea. Other guests include the Native American hoop dance champion Nakotah LaRance. 718 826 7854, kingstheatre.com EAST VILLAGE DANCE PROJECT at the Ellen Stewart Theater (Dec. 20, 7 p.m.; through Dec. 23). "Nutcracker" alternatives abound these days, and this one recommended for families veers sharply from tradition. In "The Shell Shocked Nut," a wandering child and a war veteran suffering from post traumatic stress disorder experience a magical voyage through the East Village, where they visit Tompkins Square Park, Economy Candy and St. Marks Place. The theme? Loss and recovery. The show is conceived and directed by Martha Tornay and co directed by Victoria Roberts Wierzbowski. 212 352 3101, lamama.org 'GEORGE BALANCHINE'S THE NUTCRACKER' at the David H. Koch Theater (through Dec. 30). There are dozens of reasons to see New York City Ballet's treasured production of the holiday classic, and here's one more: On Sunday at 1 p.m., Sebastian Villarini Velez, a newly appointed soloist, makes his debut, dancing opposite Sara Adams, as the Cavalier. In this production, the effects are bewitching especially the one ton tree that grows from 12 feet to 41 feet but nothing beats the choreography. It's the magic glue. 212 496 0600, nycballet.com MARK MORRIS DANCE GROUP at the BAM Howard Gilman Opera House (Dec. 14 and 20, 7:30 p.m.; Dec. 15, 2 and 7:30 p.m.; Dec. 16, 3 p.m.; through Dec. 23). Morris's "The Hard Nut" is not only the best "Nutcracker" alternative, it's one of the best versions period. The choreographer adheres to Tchaikovsky's complete original score, performed by the 53 piece Mark Morris Dance Group Music Ensemble, and sets his production, both witty and luminous, in the swinging 1970s. Among the dozens of memorable moments throughout this dance? The pure delight of the Waltz of the Snowflakes, in which the dancers throw snow while leaping into the air. 718 636 4100, bam.org NEW GRAHAM at Martha Graham Studio Theater (Dec. 18 19, 7 p.m.). The Martha Graham Dance Company hosts an intimate look at the creative process of a forthcoming collaboration by the choreographers Maxine Doyle and Bobbi Jene Smith. The work in progress showing of "Deo" will be followed by a conversation with the artists. Set to a score by the electronic musician Lesley Flanigan, the dance explores death and the underworld its point of departure is the myth of Demeter and Persephone specifically the role that women play in mortality. "Deo" will have its official premiere at the Joyce Theater in April. 212 229 9200, marthagraham.org/studioseries 'SLEEPING BEAUTY DREAMS' at the Beacon Theater (Dec. 14 15, 8 p.m.). Have you ever wondered what Princess Aurora was dreaming about after she pricked herself on a spindle and fell into the sleep of all sleeps? This new show, starring Diana Vishneva, with Marcelo Gomes on Friday and Nick Palmquist on Saturday as well as virtual avatars takes a stab at telling such a tale. The artist Tobias Gremmler and the creative lab Fuse have invented virtual characters that will interact with the dancers in real time. Masterminded by the producer and director Rem Hass, the production features choreography by Edward Clug, music by Thijs de Vlieger of the Dutch electronic music trio Noisia and costumes by Bart Hess. sbdart.com ZVIDANCE at New York Live Arts (Dec. 19 20, 7:30 p.m.; through Dec. 22). Zvi Gotheiner presents two premieres: "Bears Ears," inspired by the controversy surrounding the Bears Ears National Monument in Utah, and "Detour," a more abstract reflection on what it means to take the longer route. Gotheiner, a popular ballet teacher in New York, is known for his lush movement and expressive dancers; in this production, he collaborates with the composer Scott Killian, the media designer Joshua Higgason and the lighting designer Mark London. 212 691 6500, newyorklivearts.org | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
Luciano Pavarotti and Aprile Millo in Verdi's "Un Ballo in Maschera," which will be streamed by the Metropolitan Opera. As the live performing arts still reel from the coronavirus pandemic, here are 10 highlights from the flood of online music content coming in January. (Times listed are Eastern.) Available now until Jan. 22; operavision.eu and on YouTube. This winter, Katharine Merhling was scheduled to reprise her Eliza Doolittle in "My Fair Lady" at the Komische Oper in Berlin. The pandemic got in the way, but the company's devoted audience need not spend the season without this singer's gifts. This performance (first streamed live late in December) offers a fresh look at Kurt Weill, focusing on that composer's years in Paris and New York. Devotees know many of these songs. But Ms. Mehrling's energy aided by Barrie Kosky, the Komische Oper's artistic director, on piano gives a saucy charge to a medley from the rarely staged "Lady in the Dark." SETH COLTER WALLS Jan. 2 at 7:30 p.m.; metopera.org; available until Jan. 3 at 6:30 p.m. In case you missed it in August, this 1991 Metropolitan Opera performance of Verdi's dark tale of love, betrayal, friendship and regicide returns to the company's series of nightly streams from its archives. "Ballo" is part of a week centered on Luciano Pavarotti, Met star supreme, but is also a showcase for the passionate artistry of the soprano Aprile Millo, whose career burned bright in the 1980s and '90s, a throwback to divas of yore. James Levine conducts a cast that also includes Leo Nucci, Florence Quivar and Harolyn Blackwell. ZACHARY WOOLFE Jan. 14 at 10 p.m.; calperformances.org; available until April 14. Kurt Weill isn't just coming from the Komische Oper. One of our most luminous singers has four Weill numbers of her own to offer in a recital for Cal Performances that swings, in characteristic Bullock style, from the classical canon to contemporary work by way of golden age musical theater. Pieces by William Grant Still and Margaret Bonds are at the core of a program that also includes songs by Wolf and Schumann (selections from "Dichterliebe"), a set from "The Sound of Music," and material from John Adams's recent opera "Girls of the Golden West," composed with Ms. Bullock in mind. Laura Poe is the pianist. ZACHARY WOOLFE Jan. 16 at 5 p.m.; rcmusic.com; available until Jan. 23. This Canadian pianist, who specializes in contemporary music, will perform the premiere of her Seven Studies for Augmented Piano. This is a series of works she created for a Yamaha Disklavier an acoustic piano with a computer interface, coupled with software that allows her "to augment and extend the sonic range of the piano," as she writes in a program note. The program, part of the 21C Music Festival presented by the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto, includes a short video exploring Ms. Egoyan's creative process. ANTHONY TOMMASINI Jan. 17 at 9:58 a.m.; patreon.com/wildup; available indefinitely. Artists from the Wild Up collective, including its conductor and artistic director, Christopher Rountree, are familiar to Los Angeles audiences. But for the group's coming monthlong project, "Darkness Sounding," listeners around the world are invited. Some concerts will be available as livestreams, then archived, through Wild Up's Patreon page. At five dollars for the month, you can access shows like this one on Jan. 17, "simple lines/quiet music/silent songs," featuring the pianist Richard Valitutto. A daylong "house concert," it's organized around largely soft, contemplative works by the likes of Ann Southam and Alvin Curran. SETH COLTER WALLS Jan. 22 at 8 p.m.; operaphila.org; available until May 31. David T. Little's "Soldier Songs," for baritone and small ensemble, was born of the American invasion of Iraq. But, based on interviews with veterans of five wars, it speaks to conflict more generally and abstractly. And like the most satisfying politically minded art, it's rife with complication not just in the score's uninhibited blending of genres, but also in the treatment of its subject, defying stereotypes and hagiographies. "Soldier Songs" puts you off as it draws you in, and it will haunt audiences anew in a virtual production presented by Opera Philadelphia, directed by and starring the baritone Johnathan McCullough. JOSHUA BARONE Jan. 27 at 2:30 p.m.; wigmore hall.org.uk; available until Feb. 26. As concerts have moved online during the pandemic, many have also gotten shorter. Thus "Schwanengesang," the shattering collection of Schubert's final songs, can more easily stand alone on a program as it does in this Wigmore Hall stream from the baritone Christian Gerhaher and the pianist Gerold Huber, one of the great musical partnerships of our time. The duo also appear earlier in Wigmore's richly scheduled January, presenting works by Schumann and Debussy (Jan. 25). Other hall highlights include the soprano Lise Davidsen, singing Grieg, Sibelius and more (Jan. 17), and the pianist Igor Levit, playing Hindemith, Schoenberg and Busoni (Jan. 29). JOSHUA BARONE Jan. 27 at 8 p.m.; offstage.bsomusic.org; available until June 30. This ensemble has been offering a series of documentary style, hourlong discussion and performance programs called BSO Sessions. "Twelve" looks at composers who have bridged contemporary classical music and pop. There will be performances of a suite by Jonny Greenwood, of Radiohead, from his score for the film "There Will Be Blood"; Bryce Dessner's "Lachrimae"; and Caroline Shaw's "Entr'acte." Steve Hackman, a composer and arranger skilled at this crossover, discusses the music and the stylistic overlaps with musicians from the orchestra. Nicholas Hersh conducts. ANTHONY TOMMASINI | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
So what is left when the striving and the building and the fighting are done? What is the life that continues when human life is over? Such questions tend to surface whenever we're confronted with the fact of our mortality, whether in specific or collective terms. And if you, like many people I know these days, have been thinking along such lines, you may well want to seek out the company of Richard Maxwell. Or rather his avatars, who have colonized the ground floor space of the Greene Naftali gallery in Chelsea, where Mr. Maxwell's paradoxically bleak and buoyant "Paradiso" runs through Feb. 10. (The production is free, though reservations are necessary.) There, a select assortment of beings, human and otherwise, are considering the end of us all in deeply affecting terms. "Welcome to the play, by the way," one of them says in the opening moments of this hourlong production. The nice thing about a play is "it makes a place wherever we gather," somewhere "to put ideas that otherwise would just float in space." The real Mr. Maxwell, one of the great experimental theater artists of his generation, is still very much with us at the age of 50. Yet this do it yourself robot which signs off its monologue with the initials "R.M." would appear to be speaking the words of a dead man, from a beautiful but barren landscape that is devoid of animate life. As for those of us assembled on the semicircular benches in this blank white space, we are presumably part of the now extinct species of Homo sapiens subspecies americanus that reflexively destroyed its chances of survival. Throughout his 20 some years as a creator of sui generis theater, Mr. Maxwell has practiced an art of extreme purification. He burns away the histrionic excesses of traditional acting and stage design, placing often nonprofessional performers in empty environments to speak everyday dialogue in neutral voices. His characters have usually felt all the more affecting for their affectlessness. Much of Mr. Maxwell's work has been coolly observational, with the Olympian calm of a playwright with a god's eye view. In recent years, though, he has been introducing directly autobiographical elements into his scripts. His beautiful "The Evening" (2015) included a first person account (read by an actress) of his father's death, before continuing into a classically cryptic Richard Maxwell play. The death of Mr. Maxwell's mother figures in "Paradiso," in the first of three extended soliloquies that follow the robot's prologue. The performer here is Elaine Davis, a middle aged woman of clean scrubbed eloquence and an almost accusatory air of detachment. She begins with a philosophical abstractedness that shades into a very particular account of the last days of a woman's life, as witnessed by her son. Its poignancy becomes even more pronounced when the speaker shifts to a consideration of how a domestic landscape changes when the person at the center of it is gone. And from there, it seems natural to progress into a greater vision of life without lives. That shifting scale among past, present and future; between the personal and the pan historical is essential to "Paradiso." Another soliloquy, delivered by Jessica Gallucci, transforms a view from the window of a train into an eloquent summing up of 600 years of American history. Ms. Gallucci traces the evolution of a people who crossed the water and then the desert, and "beat back nature," who were "tolerant so long as we felt we could do what we needed to do." Another monologue, performed by Charles Reina, is addressed to a God his character describes in increasingly anthropomorphic terms. Such are the reach and limits of our imagination. Though Mr. Maxwell is cherished by avant garde European audiences, his work has always been quintessentially American, and never more so than with "Paradiso." His human ensemble members, rounded out by Carina Goebelbecker, arrive in the gallery in a gleaming white truck, like the cast of a television ad that associates driving in open spaces with a frontier spirit of independence. The production is punctuated by wordless interludes in which the four performers go through ritualized movements that suggest a classic nuclear family working together and breaking apart, comforting and confronting. The ambivalence of belonging to a clan and by extension, to a race of beings is pervasive. That is true even of that early description of Mr. Maxwell's relationship with his mother, and scenes that would seem to portray a mother and father dealing with a seriously ill daughter. People are never portrayed as entirely noble here; purity of intention and action doesn't exist. That doesn't mean that love, a word that crops up frequently in "Paradiso," is merely a fiction. Mr. Maxwell would appear to be as fixed on the idea of love as he is on the concept of our extinction. And though it may be a mechanical being that is left to tell the stories of what we once felt and thought we knew, "Paradiso" is steeped in what could be described as a ruthless sentimentality. Maybe nothing human remains when humans themselves are gone. Yet you are likely to leave this starkly poetic show with an inexplicable glow of hope. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
The last two generations of Cadillac's CTS have come close to running with the best Germany has to offer. G.M.'s third try confidently drives to the front of the pack. When Cadillac set out to revive its arthritic cars and unfashionable image, beginning with the original CTS sedan of 2003, the brand seemed as retirement ready as many of its customers. But with billions of dollars from its parent, General Motors, and German competitors to inspire it, Cadillac is becoming the mobile version of a gentrified neighborhood. The old timers have begun to move out, replaced by younger buyers who appreciate startling makeovers and unexpected twists on tradition. Cadillac still has a ways to go to match the cachet of German luxury brands. But the third generation CTS puts Cadillac firmly in the conversation. That conversation may seem muddled for luxury shoppers, because the 2014 CTS speaks in many tongues, with three available engines, rear or all wheel drive and sticker prices that are likely to shock many Cadillac shoppers. So at the risk of oversimplification, let's simplify: The new CTS lineup includes one respectable luxury car and one truly exceptional car. That special car, the CTS Vsport, with a new 420 horsepower twin turbo V6, is one of the most thrilling, focused sport sedans around good enough, in fact, to trump most rivals from Japan or Germany. Strangely, the Vsport can actually cost less than the merely good basic CTS versions with less powerful 4 or 6 cylinder engines. The harbinger of these new Cadillacs, the original 2003 CTS, was a shovel nosed attention getter, like an ex jock broadcaster wearing a loud jacket. As Cadillac's confidence has grown, its designs have matured. While the brand's signature sharp creases have softened, its cars remain instantly recognizable and distinctly American. The interiors are remarkably improved, including leather and fabric trim that has been cut and stitched by hand. Setting aside G.M.'s old, isolationist ways, Cadillac has mimicked the Germans with rigorous engineering development at the Nurburgring track. And like the Germans, Cadillac has enthusiastically melded sport, luxury and technology. The CTS's new brother, the compact ATS, has ably accepted its mission as a BMW 3 Series fighter. That frees the CTS, which shares the ATS's chassis, to move upmarket. Stretched 4.5 inches from the last version, the CTS is now a true midsize contender, a direct challenger to the Audi A6, BMW 5 Series, Lexus GS and Mercedes E Class. With a leaner body and lower roofline, the CTS balances flash and subtlety in appealing fashion. The mostly graceful interior offers a handsome, reconfigurable digital driver's display and a choice of eight types of trim, including wood, aluminum and carbon fiber. But for all the gains in visuals or features, what makes this a legitimate luxury sport sedan is the painstaking engineering beneath the skin. Once notorious for corpulent cars, Cadillac subjected every component to a gram by gram weight saving strategy. Aluminum is used for the hood, doors and instrument panel frame, magnesium for the engine mounts and cradle. The result is a rippled athlete that, in the guise of the 2.0T Luxury version, weighs just 3,649 pounds. That's 160 less than the benchmark BMW 528i, and about 360 less than a Mercedes E350. For once, the toned American can poke at the surplus strudel tucked around the Europeans' midsections. The engines start with the 2 liter turbo 4 borrowed from the ATS, with 272 horsepower, move on to Caddy's familiar 3.6 liter V 6 with 321 horsepower and top out with the Vsport's twin turbo 3.6 V6 with 420 bit champing horses. Four cylinder and V6 all wheel drive versions get a 6 speed automatic transmission; there is a new paddle shifted 8 speed Aisin automatic for rear drive V6s. German baiting performance comes at a price, and that's one area that gives pause: The most basic 4 cylinder CTS starts at 46,025, a 6,000 jump over last year's starter model (although that car came with a lackluster 3 liter V6, now discontinued). One of the two 2014 models I tested, a loaded 2.0T Premium, started at 62,725 and reached 66,420 with options. Let's come right out and say it: That's an awful lot of money for a 4 cylinder Cadillac. I suspect that many buyers could forgo the Premium version's plethora of driver aids, including blind spot, lane departure and collision warnings and a system that automatically parallel parks the car. Yes, BMW is also peddling a 4 cylinder turbo in the basic, comparably priced 528i. But BMW's 240 horse TwinPower engine is stronger, smoother and at least 15 percent more fuel efficient (though the 4 cylinder Caddy manages a respectable rating of 23 m.p.g. city, 30 m.p.g. highway). A more sensible 2.0T Luxury model starts at 51,925, and the V6 3.6L Luxury at 54,625. But honestly, since the Caddy sails so blithely toward the 60,000 seas, fans might as well ante up for the version that can smack German rivals into the weeds: The Vsport offers Fourth of July fireworks for 59,995, well equipped thousands less than a loaded 4 cylinder version. For 2014, Cadillac continues to sell carried over versions of the last generation CTS coupe, wagon and 556 horse CTS V. There are some demerits. Cadillac claims a 13.7 cubic foot trunk, but in practical terms, it may be the smallest trunk in the class. As usual, Cadillac's front seats the bottom cushions are notably, excruciatingly short aren't nearly as comfortable or adjustable as the Germans'. Then there's the CUE infotainment system. For a screen based system predicated on touch, the touch controls are awful, especially the often unresponsive flush mounted switches set on a dated looking piano black finish. But the rest is first rate, even in the 4 cylinder version, from a sporty chassis that BMW could be proud of, to the optional magnetic suspension and track worthy Brembo brakes. Cadillac has squeezed more torque from this version of the 2 liter 4 cylinder, at 295 pound feet (compared with 260 in the ATS). This overachieving engine sends the CTS from a standstill to 60 m.p.h. in about six seconds. Even on rain lashed country roads in the Hudson Valley, the CTS's sophisticated setup allowed it to cruise in comfort or attack the road, depending on the driver's whim. As with the ATS, if you couldn't see the Cadillac crest you'd swear you were driving a slick European car. For underdog car brands, executives often say that all they can do is put out good products, one after another. Do that, they insist, and eventually recognition and sales will come. Now Cadillac, having spent the last few decades of its 112 year history wandering without direction, is delivering just those kinds of cars. In so doing and in contrast to its longtime crosstown rival, Lincoln, which still seems lost Cadillac has found a path to redemption and respect. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Automobiles |
Advocacy organizations seeking to ban a pesticide linked to developmental disorders in children asked the courts Wednesday to intervene and order the Environmental Protection Agency to ban the pesticide from food within 30 days and from all uses within 60 days if it cannot prove it is safe. The head of the E.P.A., Scott Pruitt, last week denied the petition to outlaw chlorpyrifos, a pesticide often used on apples, oranges and other crops, even though the agency's own safety experts concluded that the chemical should be outlawed. Mr. Pruitt did not present any new evidence that it is safe, and said the agency could not be forced to complete a review of chlorpyrifos until 2022, when there is a deadline for re evaluating it. The E.P.A. had been under a court order to respond by the end of March to a 10 year old petition to ban the chemical, originally filed in 2007 by the Natural Resources Defense Council and Pesticide Action Network. The most recent E.P.A. analysis concluded that children were being exposed to up to 140 times the safe levels of the pesticide through food alone. An earlier report said drinking water can also be contaminated. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Well |
I have the same dream as anyone else: For an erudite woman with chunky jewelry to rock me to my core with casual but tremendous truths. In the new Showtime series "Couples Therapy," my dream has come true. The show, premiering Friday at 10 p.m., is a documentary that follows four couples' sessions with Dr. Orna Guralnik over the course of several months. After 40 seconds, I was positive every couple featured on the show should break up. After all nine half hour episodes, I'm less sure. "You have to really want the relationship and love your partner in a way that moves you to transcend yourself," Guralnik tells one husband and wife pair. They're both deflated on her couch, positively wrung out by their endless routine of secret keeping and resentment, of pushing each other away and then being hurt anew by the distance. While Guralnik delicately avoids answering the husband's question directly Do you think we should give up? her response deflates them further. They both weaken before our eyes, and it's one of the most intense, complex moments I've ever seen on TV, two people realizing simultaneously "I don't think I love you enough." Scripted shows have of course given us plenty of insightful, probing therapists and complex, resistant to change patients. The power here is the reality of it all, the rawness and ridiculousness of the human condition. On the first episode, one exasperated man proudly proclaims, "I am the easiest person to deal with." "What I want is to have zero responsibility and to have all the sex I want without any, any work on my part, of any kind," he says. "Zero work, zero thinking about it, and it has to be both spectacular and enthusiastic, and genuine." See? Easy! "Couples Therapy" gives viewers a little serving of therapy without having to engage in their own past or processes. "People do better with the truth than without it," Guralnik says. Maybe that's not immediately applicable to whatever you're facing, but it probably is. I was immediately sucked in to "Couples Therapy" because it completes a personal current trifecta of fascinating therapy material: There's also the podcast "Where Should We Begin?," which is one time sessions between couples and the psychotherapist Esther Perel, and the recent memoir "Maybe You Should Talk To Someone," in which the psychotherapist Lori Gottlieb describes six of her patients, her own therapy and her unusual career path. (The book is also being adapted as a scripted TV series.) In her memoir, "Maybe You Should Talk to Someone," Lori Gottlieb discusses her patients' and her own experiences in therapy. Each of these provides its own set of wisdom and guidance, whether it's Perel's frequent refrain of "Where did you learn that?" or Gottlieb's assessment that "We marry our unfinished business." I don't know that the show or the podcast or the book will cure you of anything, but they definitely can't hurt. These ideas go beyond romance or marriage, landing more in the "human beings, how do they work?" category. Gottlieb's book is barely about romantic love at all, focused instead on how people relate to themselves, how grief and trauma and the ordinary knocks of childhood shape perception and impose patterns. It's more elegant, but it's also more composed: The patients in the book are anonymized and sometimes composites, so it's Gottlieb's prose that leads to big "aha!" moments. On "Where Should We Begin?," though, listeners have firsthand access to the defensiveness in someone's voice, the exhaustion in a sigh. My favorite moment on "Couples Therapy" comes in the sixth episode, when Guralnik is talking with Dr. Virginia Goldner, her clinical adviser. Guralnik is wondering about a patient's state of mind, and Goldner redirects her. He's not confused, Goldner says. "He's reporting the vicious facts of life as lived by him." It's the best line I've heard on TV this year, and one that instantly tattooed itself on my brain forever. Don't argue with someone about their experience; they're reporting the vicious facts of life as lived by them. There's tremendous beauty and power in these therapy adjacent works, but there is of course also an almost lurid sense of voyeurism. True reality is rare on television. Candor and honesty are rare in life. And thus there are moments on "Couples Therapy" that are frankly uncomfortable because even though I know that a patient recounting her worst experiences to her therapist isn't being done for my entertainment ... it kind of is. Tell me all of your terrible secrets, folks, and start with the sex ones. I identify with some of the patients' issues and sometimes with the therapists' frustrations, but more often I'm a gossip greedy monster gobbling down people's sorrows. I'm Lucy with the runaway conveyor belt, only this one is bringing me remote, articulate suffering. I can't help it, though. People are too interesting. Show me the seething irritation of having done more than your fair share of housework, and please bring up a slight from a long ago party, a seemingly tiny incident that, in retrospect, was the first time you thought "You know what, we could also break up." Tell me about the text messages, the suspicious phone calls. I want to know the petty cruelties endured to maintain the prized title of "wife." Tell me about when you looked at her phone, or when his business partner didn't know about the trip, or the time you went to the thing by yourself because it was just easier. If you blogged about your wedding, you should have to blog about your divorce an equal amount not as a punishment, but as a declaration that sadness and disappointment and hurt are as welcome in the public sphere as happy news. One thing I learned from watching and listening to other people's therapy sessions is that we're all pretty bad at understanding pain, maybe because we so rarely talk about it and thus have so little practice hearing about it. And also: Do it because I am curious. I am so, so curious. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
A 3/4 inch long fossilized tooth of a Rhamphorhynchus, a pterosaur that failed, one day 150 million years ago, to capture and eat an ancient squid. About 150 million years ago, a pterosaur experienced an embarrassing mealtime mishap. Attempting to catch and eat a seafood snack, the flying reptile came away one tooth short. At least, that is the chain of events suggested by a fossil described earlier this week in Scientific Reports: a preserved cephalopod with a pterosaur tooth embedded inside of it. This "fossilized action snapshot" is the first evidence scientists have that these winged contemporaries of dinosaurs ate prehistoric squid, or at least tried, said Jean Paul Billon Bruyat, an expert in prehistoric reptiles who was not involved in the research. The fossil also joins a small group of records that hint at the ecological relationships between ancient creatures. The specimen, which was found in Germany's Solnhofen fossil beds, is an 11 inch long coleoid cephalopod, a precursor to today's squids, octopuses and cuttlefish. It is preserved well enough that its ink sac and fins are readily visible, as is the very sharp looking tooth stuck just below its head. Rene Hoffmann, an author of the paper and a postdoctoral researcher at Ruhr Universitat Bochum in Germany and an expert in prehistoric cephalopods, came across a photo of the fossil last year and was immediately intrigued. "Two fossils together could give us an idea of predator prey relationships," he said. Based on the tooth's shape, size and texture, along with the fossil's location and age, the tooth probably belonged to Rhamphorhynchus muensteri. The species had a five foot wingspan, said Jordan Bestwick, a paleobiologist at the University of Leicester in England who specializes in pterosaur diets and was an author of the paper. It is also the only record of "a failed predation attempt" made by any pterosaur. (Sorry, bud.) The researchers also used ultraviolet light which can differentiate between sediment and formerly living tissue to determine if the tooth was stuck inside the cephalopod when both were fossilized, not merely lying on top. Overlap between the mantle tissue and the tip of the tooth showed that the tooth was embedded least half an inch deep. Once that was settled, the researchers imagined the scenario. Reconstructing ancient encounters is always "highly speculative," said Dr. Hoffmann. But he pictured the pterosaur flying over the water when its shadow scared a group of cephalopods, which began jumping out of the water. "Then the pterosaur grabbed one, but not perfectly," said Dr. Hoffmann. The cephalopod thrashed around. It managed to get away and took the reptile's tooth with it. For the sea creature, a daring escape. For the pterosaur, a calamari calamity. But one that led to some scientific insight, at least. "It is very difficult to demonstrate a fossilized predator prey relationship," said Dr. Billon Bruyat. Paleontologists sometimes find preserved prey within a predator's stomach or throat, or inside fossilized feces, called coprolites. Occasionally, more creative interspecies encounters are preserved. Last year, Dr. Billon Bruyat was part of a team that studied the shell of an ancient sea turtle that had apparently been stepped on by a sauropod. And the tables may have been turned on some pterosaurs. They have been found often enough next to a fossilized large prehistoric fish called Aspidorhynchus that some researchers think the flying reptiles were frequently seized by the fish. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
It almost looks like a new extreme sport. Mule deer rodeo coming to reality TV soon. But it's not. This is science. Wildlife biology. University of Wyoming researchers are catching these deer to learn about them and their migrations. Some of these deer migrate as much as 150 miles. New housing or gas drilling could block their path. To protect these routes scientists need to know more about them in detail exactly where the deer go, what they eat, and how healthy they are. That's why a team of scientists and volunteers have gathered in Wyoming's Red Desert. Kevin Monteith, a wildlife biologist, briefs the crew, who work in teams of four. To the deer it may seem like being abducted by aliens. But every bit of information is crucial. GPS records for movement. Blood samples for metabolism Fecal samples for diet Whiskers for genetics Ultrasound for size and body fat. And an anesthetic before pulling a tooth to test for age. It's painless dentistry for deer. This deer has no clue what just happened. But all that data may be what protects its future. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
The highest residence in New York City is now officially off the market. A full floor penthouse at the pinnacle of 432 Park Avenue, with vertiginous views of the city and beyond something most people might get to see only from a helicopter was bought last month by the Saudi retail magnate Fawaz Alhokair. At 87,660,898, it was the most expensive closed transaction in September (and so far this year), according to property records. It is also the city's fourth priciest single residence and No. 16 in the country. Eight other big purchases closed in the past month at 432 Park, which is the tallest residential building in the Western Hemisphere, topping out at 1,396 feet, or more than a quarter mile. (Burj Khalifa in Dubai is taller, at 2,717 feet, though in addition to 900 apartments, it has offices and hotel rooms.) One of those recent sales involved an unknown buyer who bought two units on the 82nd floor for a total of 61.9 million. And a burst of activity was also recorded at the new Norman Foster designed 551 West 21st Street, which overlooks the Hudson River in West Chelsea. Six apartments closed at prices ranging from nearly 11 million to 17 million. One, a four bedroom four and a half bath unit on the 11th floor, was purchased for 14.56 million by Paolo Zapparoli, who heads a private equity firm in Milan, and Elif Bilgi Zapparoli, an investment banker. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
Art sales during Asia Week New York reached new heights this year, the organizers said on Tuesday, thanks in large part to one stunningly exuberant evening of sales at Christie's. A 13th century handscroll, Chen Rong's "Six Dragons," with a low estimate of 1.2 million, sold at the Christie's auction for 49 million, including buyer's premium, on March 15. A bronze wine vessel from the late Shang dynasty with a low estimate of 6 million brought in a winning bid of 37.2 million. All told, the 29 items sold at the Christie's auction, of "Important Chinese Art From the Fujita Museum" brought in about 263 million, or roughly 10 times more than the low presale estimate forecast by the house's experts. "What just happened?" asked Evan Beard, National Art Services Executive at U.S. Trust. "A fairly minor de accession sale becomes one of the most successful auctions of the last few years." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
Michael Bliss, a distinguished Canadian historian whose unraveling of the story behind the discovery of insulin overturned the widely accepted telling of it and brought international attention to his work, died on May 18 in Toronto. He was 76. His daughter Sally Bliss said the cause was complications of vasculitis, an inflammatory blood vessel disease. Professor Bliss was already well established as a historian of Canadian business and politics when he turned his attention to the discovery of insulin, the hormone that transformed diabetes from an effective death sentence into a manageable condition. He called the discovery "something like salvation," particularly for children with diabetes. The discovery was made in 1921 by a somewhat improbable research team at the University of Toronto, against a backdrop of internal feuding that only intensified after the Nobel Prize was awarded two years later to just two of the four principal researchers. Professor Bliss, who taught at the university from 1968 to 2006, published "The Discovery of Insulin" in 1982. His account upset the commonly held wisdom that the discovery had mainly been the work of two inexperienced researchers from the countryside: Dr. Frederick Banting, a surgeon, and Charles Best, a recent college graduate who had yet to enter medical school. The Nobel was awarded only to Dr. Banting and J. J. R. Macleod, the head of the university's physiology department. Most earlier accounts viewed Dr. Macleod as undeserving of the honor, placing him on an overseas holiday while Dr. Banting and Mr. Best labored away. But using newly released documents including lab notes and contemporaneous papers that the university had long suppressed to avoid embarrassing the researchers Professor Bliss detailed a far more complex, if no less acrimonious, story, revealing that the discovery was indeed a team effort by the three and, to varying degrees, others. While chronicling the infighting among the researchers, "The Discovery of Insulin" also illuminated the science of endocrinology. Shelley McKellar, a professor of medical history at Western University in London, Ontario, who studied under Professor Bliss, said the book, like all of his work, was written in clear, nonacademic prose that made the subject accessible to the general public. "Deep down he was a writer," said Professor McKellar. "He always tried to disseminate his research to the widest possible audience." She noted that he would speak not only to medical conferences but also to women's social clubs in church basements. In an essay he wrote in 2004, Professor Bliss said his shift to medical history had been due in part to his family his father was a small town doctor on the shore of Lake Erie in southwestern Ontario as well as "a kind of midlife change of pace." He chose the development of insulin as a subject partly because earlier accounts, he found, were inadequate. He was also inspired, he said, by his reading on Arctic exploration. That "raised for me a methodological interest in the possibility of very detailed, day to day recreation of past discrete events," he wrote, adding, "If you could virtually retrace the footsteps of Arctic explorers could you virtually redo the insulin experiments?" John William Michael Bliss was born in Leamington, Ontario, on Jan. 18, 1941, to Dr. Quartus Bliss and the former Anne Crowe. He grew up in Kingsville, a farming and fishing town just to the west. In early childhood, Michael, as he was known, would join his father when he was called out to perform his duties as the local coroner. For a while, he considered following his father into medicine. But that thought was dispelled one weekend when the police came by their house with a drunk who been in a brawl and needed stitches. The man was ushered into his father's home office. "As I sat and watched on that Sunday afternoon in his consulting room," Professor Bliss wrote, "with blood and alcohol fumes everywhere, reflecting on my own complete disinterest in and lack of all manual skills, I decided that this was not what I wanted to do in life." He met his future wife, Elizabeth Haslam, at a high school dance in Harrow, Ontario, another farm town. They married in 1963, and both studied at the University of Toronto. Mrs. Bliss, a retired teacher, survives him. Besides their daughter Sally, he is also survived by two other children, Jamie and Laura Bliss; a brother, Robert, and four grandchildren. Robert Bothwell, another historian at the University of Toronto, said that Professor Bliss had favored writing his books 14 in all as expansively as possible. "A Canadian Millionaire" (1978), for example, is nominally a biography of Joseph Flavelle, a Toronto businessman who built his fortune starting in the meatpacking business. But the book is also a tour of the meatpacking trade and Toronto politics in the early 20th century, a portrait of a clique of Methodists who dominated business in Toronto, and a discussion of Canada's role in World War I. Professor Bliss had a sometimes uncomfortable relationship with other historians who studied Canada. Unlike some of their works, his business histories, while revealing flaws in both the character and practices of his subjects, were generally sympathetic toward them and business in general. And while he maintained that he was suspicious of all ideologies, his politics were decidedly conservative, if not in a partisan sense, during a time when Canadian history was more commonly viewed from the left. Professor Bliss was among a small minority of Canadian intellectuals who favored the talks that led to a free trade agreement between the United States and Canada in 1988, a forerunner of the North American Free Trade Agreement, signed in 1993. Until his retirement, he wrote often provocative opinion articles for newspapers and appeared frequently on radio and television, in addition to publishing books. Last year, in a video interview recorded for his induction into the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame, Professor Bliss said that by the end of his career he had considered himself almost entirely a medical historian, and that he believed that his medical books were his most important works. Among them are "Banting: A Biography" (1984); "William Osler: A Life in Medicine" (1999), about the renowned Canadian internist who helped found Johns Hopkins Hospital; and "Harvey Cushing: A Life in Surgery" (2005), about the pioneering American neurosurgeon and writer (whose own biography of Osler won a Pulitzer Prize). "Medicine," Professor Bliss said, "is a wonder that takes you from small town Canada to the Nobel Archives." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
The Kansas City Chiefs said on Friday that they had begun an inquiry into their star receiver Tyreek Hill in response to news reports that said the police were investigating his involvement in a battery on a juvenile. "The club is aware of the investigation involving Tyreek Hill," the Chiefs said in a statement. "We're in the process of gathering information and have been in contact with the league and local authorities. We'll have no further comment at this time." The Kansas City Star reported on Friday that it had obtained a police report that was filed on Thursday after officers responded to a report of a battery on a juvenile at Hill's home in Overland Park, Kan., a Kansas City suburb. The report does not give details. KCTV said Hill, 25, was involved in two incidents, one on March 5 and another on March 14, according to copies of the police reports that it published. The first report names Hill and his fiancee, Crystal Espinal, and cites "child abuse/neglect." The case was closed three days later when the police declined to file charges. The second report lists "battery" as the type of incident, but does not indicate what the disposition was. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
In the classical South Indian dance form of Bharatanatyam, the body is material an interlocking puzzle of pieces assembled to create otherworldly grace. The fingers splay and stretch apart, the heels flex as a dancer hops from side to side, and the eyes flicker with lively vitality. Aparna Ramaswamy, an artistic director (with her mother, Ranee) of the much respected Ragamala Dance Company in Minneapolis, is a vision of sculptural lucidity whose dancing brings a full bodied awareness to complex rhythms and shifts of dynamics. All the while, the strength of her purity is second nature both explicit and seemingly casual. Ms. Ramaswamy will make her Joyce Theater debut in "They Rose at Dawn," an evening length solo that honors the wisdom of women, who are seen as the carriers of reverence and imagination. Settle back as Ms. Ramaswamy, accompanied by a Carnatic musical ensemble, unlocks mysteries of feminine mystique. (7:30 p.m., Tuesday and Wednesday, Oct. 6 and 7; 8 p.m., Thursday, Oct. 8, Joyce Theater, joyce.org.) | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
MOSCOW Before the Internet, a Russian dissident might have hoped to reach dozens of sympathetic readers with a mimeographed samizdat publication of forbidden material. But in today's Russia, Aleksei N. Navalny has managed to attract a vast audience with his Web site for investors, Navalny.ru, even as he takes on big state owned energy companies in his crusade against graft, kickbacks and bribery. A 34 year old real estate lawyer by training, Mr. Navalny can reach as many as a million unique visitors in a day with his digital samizdat, as happened last fall with his scoop about embezzlement at Transneft, a state run pipeline company. That scheme, presented as a cautionary tale for those tempted to invest in Russian energy stocks, described executives' setting up a series of shell companies to pose as contractors for Transneft's project to build a 3,000 mile pipeline to China. One shell, for example, was registered in the name of a Siberian man who had lost his passport, according to the Navalny report. The post included an audit indicating that the contracting fraud had cost Transneft 4 billion. Both Transneft and the government accounting office, whose documents Mr. Navalny said he leaked on his site, have denied the corruption claim. But Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin took the posting seriously enough to ask for an investigation, which is still pending. Mr. Navalny, whose fame and unabashed political ambitions are surely helped by his blue eyed good looks and acidic sense of humor, has clearly touched a nerve in Russian society. His blog appeals to Russians who wonder: if the country's vast oil wealth is not trickling down to the public, where is it going? "I do this because I hate these people," Mr. Navalny said gleefully of his Web postings, which take aim at those he describes as the self dealing managers in the oil and natural gas business. Within Russia, Mr. Navalny's celebrity "is growing almost as quickly as that of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange," Nikolai Petrov, a fellow at the Carnegie Moscow Center, a political affairs research group, wrote in December. Mr. Petrov wrote that Mr. Navalny "represents a new generation of political activists, one who sees the system's vulnerabilities and targets his blows accordingly." A former activist in a liberal political party, Yabloko, Mr. Navalny says he will eventually run for public office. He now calls himself an advocate of the rights of members of the Russian middle class people who have invested in the stock market and who he says are losing money to corruption and mismanagement. Stock ownership here is tiny by the standards of the United States. Russians have opened 726,000 brokerage accounts, representing about 0.5 percent of the population. But that number, and Mr. Navalny's likely audience, is growing about 12 percent a month, according to Troika Dialog, a Moscow investment bank. Just as Americans seethed at wealthy bankers after the housing bubble burst, he said, Russians have started chafing at state company mismanagement during the oil boom. "They see that Gazprom does not pay a dividend," he said, "but the company parking lot is full of Mercedes Benz cars." Nothing has followed from these charges so far. Mr. Navalny, though, became so unnerved that he gave his wife a list of phone numbers to call if he disappeared other lawyers, journalists and opposition politicians. "They could arrest me at any moment," Mr. Navalny explained. Indeed, after the Transneft documents were published, the government opened a criminal investigation against Mr. Navalny. It nominally has nothing to do with his Transneft disclosures. Instead, it involves his supposedly giving bad investment advice to a regional government several years ago, when he worked as an adviser to a local governor. That investigation, too, is still pending. After the pipeline audit leak, men who identified themselves as security agents contacted clients of Mr. Navalny's law practice, warning them against doing business with him, Mr. Navalny said. Mr. Navalny has held down his day job as a real estate lawyer alongside his prolific online writing. He got his start in 2007 by suing Russian companies to force disclosure of accounting documents, using his standing as a minority stockholder owning a few shares. He would then publish the disclosures on a LiveJournal blog, eventually building up a following. He started Navalny.ru last year. He has fans among Moscow financial analysts and bankers, in particular. "I've been very successful, and I'm grateful," said one Moscow banker, who asked to be identified only by his first name, Vladimir, given the controversy around Mr. Navalny. "Now I'd like to make this country a better place." The banker said he discreetly volunteered to help Mr. Navalny analyze financial documents. The Transneft controversy has only heightened interest in Mr. Navalny's blog. He has since branched out from shareholder activism, creating RosPil.info, a new Web site about corruption in the government procurement process. It posts documents about state tenders and asks for public input on matters like the fairness of the prices or the deadlines. It is a pioneering experiment in crowd sourcing what had traditionally been investigative journalism, in a country where that type of journalism is repressed. The site is financed with online donations, using a Russian analogue to PayPal. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Global Business |
The iconic illustrator and artist, whose books never shied away from introducing children to the darker sides of life, died earlier this month at 87. Our children's books editor, Maria Russo, writes: "There's nothing out there like Ungerer's books any more. Maybe that's because no one else is willing to pull the mask back on the grown ups their wars, their lies, their needless aggressions with quite as much gleeful honesty." "For me literature is most effective when it's sort of plain," the fashion designer and author Isaac Mizrahi says in this week's By the Book. "Style is suspicious to me in general. I think that's true about my taste in everything. Food. Decor. Clothes." An excellent new history of the Troubles in Ireland and more In "Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland," the journalist Patrick Radden Keefe uses the 1972 abduction of a Belfast mother of 10 to tell the story of the Troubles. The Times's critic Jennifer Szalai calls the book "resolutely humane" and "meticulously reported." The Irish novelist Roddy Doyle says that Keefe's book "has lots of the qualities of good fiction." Dwight Garner reviews the former F.B.I. deputy director Andrew McCabe's memoir, "The Threat: How the F.B.I. Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump." McCabe was fired last year. He may have been "driven out of Dodge," Garner writes, but he has "returned with a memoir that's better than any book typed this quickly has a right to be." Parul Sehgal considers "Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments," by Saidiya Hartman, an "exhilarating social history" about young black women in the early 20th century who tossed out the narrow scripts about intimacy they had been given. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
Through a government program, Brian Byrne, director of an event planning business in Ireland, was able to keep his employees on the payroll after the pandemic hit. "It oddly hasn't been a stressful time," he said. LONDON In the southeast corner of Ireland, Brian Byrne's event planning business was confronting a calamity. It was the middle of March, and the coronavirus pandemic was nearing peak lethality. As the government barred gatherings like music festivals, his revenue disappeared, forcing him to consider laying off his four full time workers. But a swiftly arranged government program spared their jobs. It provided 70 to 85 percent of their wages, enabling Mr. Byrne to keep them employed. "It oddly hasn't been a stressful time," he said. "I can keep the team together, keep them motivated. We're basically doing everything we can to be ready for when the restrictions are eased." Across the Atlantic in New York, the pandemic cost Salvador Dominguez his job selling Manhattan real estate. He eventually qualified for an emergency expansion of federal unemployment benefits, but not before 72 agonizing days of waiting. He borrowed from friends and family members to pay his rent, and he harvested food from the trash at a high end grocery store. "How can I describe it?" said Mr. Dominguez, 39, taking a breath. "It was very tough." He added, "I didn't feel alone, because I knew a lot of people like me were doing it." The pandemic has ravaged Europeans and Americans alike, but the economic pain has played out in starkly different fashion. The United States has relied on a significant expansion of unemployment insurance, cushioning the blow for tens of millions of people who have lost their jobs, with the assumption that they will be swiftly rehired once normality returns. European countries among them Denmark, Ireland, Britain, France, the Netherlands, Spain and Austria have prevented joblessness by effectively nationalizing payrolls, heavily subsidizing wages and enabling paychecks to continue uninterrupted. Some have argued that the differing approaches are functionally equivalent. European taxpayers are writing checks to employers who wind up paying workers. American taxpayers are furnishing relief through unemployment payments. "I think it's a real open question," said Jason Furman, an economic adviser to President Barack Obama, "which of those will be better in the long term. They might be more similar than everyone thinks." He was speaking during a recent discussion with Stephanie Flanders of Bloomberg. But conversations with recipients of government relief in Europe and the United States reveal one substantial difference: In many European countries, wage subsidies have enabled paychecks to continue without a hitch, sparing people the anxiety of managing bills while awaiting relief. For Americans, hellish tangles with bureaucracy have become legion as tens of millions of people have deluged the unemployment system, crashing websites, tying up phone systems and standing in parking lots for hours outside benefits offices. Jobless data reveals how the pandemic has assailed American workers with exceptional force. The unemployment rate in the United States has soared nearly eight percentage points since February it registered 11.1 percent in June while France, Germany, Ireland and the Netherlands have all limited increases in the jobless rate to less than one percentage point. "By and large, the European social model has proved quite adept and robust for this kind of crisis," said Jacob F. Kirkegaard, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington. None of this offers guarantees about the future. In many countries, the United States included, pandemic aid programs are set to expire in coming months. Given persistent fears about the virus, an abrupt elimination of relief would be damaging. In Britain, nine million workers have officially been furloughed while continuing to draw paychecks under a government program. But as many as a fourth are at risk of being fired when the government reduces the subsidy in September, according to Bloomberg. In the United States, extra jobless benefits expire at the end of July, prompting worries that the removal of this aid will spell a loss of spending, further damaging businesses and producing another spike in unemployment. Prosecutors rest their case in the trial of Theranos's Elizabeth Holmes. For Americans, the risks are heightened by the fact that the nation lacks a national medical system a feature taken as a given in Europe leaving most people reliant on their jobs for access to health care. For now, European programs are insulating workers from the consequences. In Spain, the terrifying spread of the virus prompted the government to order a halt to nonessential services in mid March. That threatened the livelihood of Ana Ascaso, a mother of three who works as a waitress at a popular bar in the center of Zaragoza, a city of 700,000 people in the northeast of the country. Her husband had been out of work for more than a year. Within hours of announcing the state of alarm, the Spanish government also approved an "act of God" wage subsidy program. Ms. Ascaso and the other eight employees at the bar would technically be furloughed their jobs awaiting their return while the government paid 70 percent of their wages. "It was very sad seeing the rising death rate, but I felt lucky that the only thing I had to worry about was my health and the health of my loved ones," she said. The bar where Ms. Ascaso works reopened late last month. The tables are set farther apart than before. She wears a mask as she serves drinks and tapas. "For me, the wage subsidy was a gift," she said. Isabel Santander, who has long worked in a Zaragoza factory that makes automobile dashboards, endured a two month delay for her government furnished wage subsidy. But her bank advanced the money while she waited. "I was able to feel relaxed at home," she said. She spent time with her two daughters. Her company plans to resume production in early July, bringing back all 200 employees. In Ireland, the wage subsidy approach has not merely prevented workers from falling into arrears. It has also maintained their sense of cohesion. Ian Redmond operates several nightclubs and bars in Dublin, employing over 100 people. He opened a tiki bar in January, right before the pandemic, assembling a team skilled in the art of cocktails. The wage subsidy program has spared him from having to start over. "The government has been very proactive," he said. As Mr. Byrne, who runs the events, looks ahead to a new era of music performances and comedy shows with smaller crowds and social distancing, his employees have been able to carry on with their lives. One of his workers had been in the process of buying a house. "If she was unemployed, she would have had a lot of difficulty getting a mortgage," Mr. Byrne said. She was approved, and the sale is going ahead presumably setting up future business for carpenters, electricians and a range of other services sustained by homeowners drawing paychecks. He signed up for distribution at a food pantry. Then, a friend tipped him off to what passed for a gold mine in such times: Citarella, a famously expensive purveyor of fresh seafood and other gustatory treasure, tossed out expired food daily. He began stopping by the store after closing time, rooting through the trash for nourishing discards. More than 10 weeks after he applied for unemployment benefits, Mr. Dominguez received word that he had qualified. He was still awaiting his first check 170 in state benefits, plus the 600 in expanded federal relief. And the money was effectively spent: He had to pay back what he had borrowed. Peter S. Goodman reported from London, Patricia Cohen from New York, and Rachel Chaundler from Zaragoza, Spain. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Economy |
These soon to be marathoners agreed to visit the university's lab, completing health and fitness tests and a sophisticated scan of their aorta, designed to measure its flexibility. None of the group showed signs of heart disease or other serious health problems. Each runner then began his or her preferred marathon training program, with most jogging a few times a week. This training continued for six months, although some developed injuries or other concerns and dropped out. Ultimately, 136 men and women completed the race, in an average finishing time of 4.5 hours for the men and 5.5 hours for the women. A week or two later, they returned to the lab to repeat the tests. Their aortas proved to be more flexible now. In fact, their arteries seemed to have shed the equivalent of about four years, in functional terms. The aorta of a 60 year old marathoner in the study now expanded and contracted about as lithely as that of a 56 year old participant did at the study's start, and the 56 year old's arteries worked like those of a pre race 52 year old, and so on. These improvements were most marked in older male runners and those whose finishing times had been slowest. They did not depend on changes in runners' fitness or weight, which, in most cases, had been negligible. All that had mattered was that people had kept up with their training and raced. These findings gratified the researchers, says Dr. Charlotte Manisty, a consulting cardiologist at University College London and the Barts Heart Center, who oversaw the new study. "We had not really known" whether the arteries of sedentary people "could or would benefit" from exercise training, she says, especially if the people were older or notably out of shape. "We just didn't know how much plasticity their arteries still had." The answer seems to have been plenty, however, she says. "Almost everyone benefited," she says, "and those people whose arteries needed the most help benefited the most." But these results do not consider the large number of would be marathon racers in the study who did not make it to the start line. It is also unknown whether the rejuvenation of runners' aortas is likely to last or if the benefits will be lost if they do not continue to run. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Well |
Oct. 23, 2020, 9 a.m., with 10 days before the election, Fox New releases a poll showing President Trump trailing Joe Biden by eight percentage points. Oct. 23, 2020, 3 p.m., at a hastily convened news conference, President Trump announces that the Food and Drug Administration has just issued an Emergency Use Authorization for a coronavirus vaccine. Mr. Trump declares victory over Covid 19, demands that all businesses reopen immediately and predicts a rapid economic recovery. Given how this president has behaved, this incredibly dangerous scenario is not far fetched. In a desperate search for a political boost, he could release a coronavirus vaccine before it had been thoroughly tested and shown to be safe and effective. There are 123 candidate Covid 19 vaccines in development, and 10 are in human trials. Many have not even been tested, or only perfunctorily tested, in animals. In July, the National Institutes of Health is planning to begin randomized phase III trials to test whether some of the 10 vaccines prevent infection with coronavirus. Some pharmaceutical companies are planning to start their own trials at about the same time. Astra Zeneca has already mentioned it plans to begin delivery of its vaccine in October. Pfizer is planning to give its vaccine to approximately 8,000 patients. The N.I.H. is planning to enroll 30,000 participants 20,000 getting a candidate vaccine and 10,000 research controls. Questions surrounding the Covid 19 vaccine and its rollout. If Covid 19 isn't going away, how do we live with it? Katherine Eban writes that a clear eyed view is required to organize long term against an endemic virus. Why should we vaccinate kids against Covid 19? The president of the American Academy of Pediatrics explains how vaccinating kids will protect them (and everyone else). Jessica Grose spoke with experts to find out what an off ramp to masking in schools might look like. Who are the unvaccinated? Zeynep Tufekci writes that many preconceptions about unvaccinated people may be wrong, and that could be a good thing. By comparison, the Phase III effectiveness trial for one rotavirus vaccine, RotaTeq, to prevent diarrhea involved about 70,000 infants from 2001 to 2004 and another rotavirus vaccine trial, Rotarix, involved 63,000 infants, from 2003 to 2006. Researchers are expecting that it will be likely to take at least another eight to 12 months to determine whether these coronavirus vaccines are effective. Scientists have to wait until a sufficient number of patients are exposed to coronavirus to see if the vaccine really reduces the infection rate, as well as how many people develop uncommon side effects. For comparison, the effectiveness trial for the rotavirus vaccines took about four years and the human papillomavirus vaccine studies to prevent cervical cancer took seven years. So could Mr. Trump really pull an "October Surprise" with a vaccine less than five months from today? One highly unlikely possibility is that recruitment of volunteers in a coronavirus "hot spot" would be so rapid that it would allow for an adequate assessment of the vaccine's safety and effectiveness very quickly. There is another scenario that is far more ominous: Three months after the N.I.H. trials begin in July so, mid October studies reveal many patients are developing high levels of antibodies to the coronavirus without severe side effects. As the White House did with its relentless promotion of hydroxychloroquine as a cure, it would badger the F.D.A. to permit use of the vaccine. More pressure would come from drug companies, some of whom may spend up to 1 billion on research and are intensely competing for prestige and glory. They are planning to begin manufacturing their vaccine candidates at risk that is, before completed studies showing their vaccine is actually effective. Cognizant of the fate of Rick Bright the head of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, who was summarily demoted when he resisted the president's wishes to ramp up purchase of hydroxychloroquine the F.D.A. could issue an Emergency Use Authorization for one or more vaccines. These authorizations only require that the F.D.A. finds it "reasonable to believe" that a vaccine "may be effective" in preventing a life threatening disease for it to be put on the market, without being formally licensed. An emergency authorization would allow Mr. Trump to hold his news conference and declare victory. But like President George W. Bush's "Mission Accomplished" proclamation, it has the potential to be a travesty. Millions of vaccines could be distributed without proof that the vaccine can prevent disease or transmission. No vaccine since the 1950s has been approved and licensed without completing large, prospective, placebo controlled studies of safety and effectiveness. Even if a vaccine generates antibodies, it does not prove that the vaccine is effective at preventing infection; it only makes it more likely that the vaccine would be effective. Indeed, about half of the vaccines for other diseases that work and are on the market actually lack clear immunological correlates for protection, meaning they are effective but patients' antibodies, immune cells or other markers do not identify whether a patient is protected. Even with the initial trials, we are likely to have scant data on whether older people will mount an immune reaction and be protected. Giving people a false sense of being protected will most likely lead to serious outbreaks of the disease as people reduce their compliance with physical distancing and other public health measures. If only 20,000 participants receive the vaccine, serious but rare side effects might be missed. If such harms eventually arise, it could further erode a fragile vaccine confidence and threaten the ability to get enough people vaccinated to establish herd immunity. That would be a disaster. We were once in a situation very similar to the current one. Like Covid 19 today, polio in the 1950s was a horrific disease feared by every parent. Each summer 1,500 children died and as many as 30,000 became paralyzed for the rest of their lives. Jonas Salk produced his vaccine and tested it on 700 children in the Pittsburgh area. It was safe and produced antibodies. But proof that it was effective at preventing polio was demanded. A randomized, controlled trial was required before the vaccine would be licensed and distributed. More than 400,000 children got the vaccine and 200,000 got placebo. Only after this effectiveness trial was completed was the Salk vaccine licensed and all children finally protected from the dreaded disease. The F.D.A. must require more than the production of antibodies to approve a vaccine, even for an emergency authorization, much less licensing. Only when the independent data safety and monitoring board composed of physicians, researchers and biostatisticians reviews the accumulated trial data to assess the safety and effectiveness of the vaccines, should the F.D.A. be allowed to decide on approval. Thousands of Americans have already died as Donald Trump has perpetually postponed effective public health interventions and made poor therapeutic recommendations. We must be on alert to prevent him from corrupting the rigorous assessment of safety and effectiveness of Covid 19 vaccines in order to pull an October vaccine surprise to try to win re election. Ezekiel Emanuel, ZekeEmanuel, is professor of medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania, a member of Joe Biden's coronavirus task force, and author of the forthcoming book "Which Country has the World's Best Health Care?" Paul Offit is professor of pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania, co inventor of the rotavirus vaccine and author of "Overkill: When Modern Medicine Goes Too Far." 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 |
With its acquisition of Time Warner last year, AT T was on its way toward creating a streaming service that will one day be the exclusive online home for "Game of Thrones" and the blockbuster film franchises centered on Wonder Woman, Batman and Harry Potter. The 80 billion deal gave the phone giant ownership of the Time Warner networks CNN, HBO, Turner Broadcasting, as well as the Warner Bros. film and television library enough content to allow the company to stake out a two front strategy of competing against traditional rivals like Verizon and T Mobile while also challenging Netflix and Hulu. But AT T's ambitions for its streaming service, set for an early 2020 debut, have hit a snag on a small but important detail: How much should it cost for subscribers? The source of the problem is HBO, which has seven million online customers. The premium cable network costs 15 a month a price that's practically locked in because of contracts with distributors like Comcast and Dish. That price is higher than the amounts charged by any of AT T's future streaming rivals, which has frustrated executives as they try to set a competitive price, according to three people familiar with the company's digital strategy. Netflix's standard plan costs 13, Hulu's commercial free version goes for 12, and Amazon offers video with its Prime subscription at 119 a year, or just under 10 a month. Apple has considered making its streaming product, scheduled for a fall rollout, free to Apple customers. And the Walt Disney Company will charge 7, with a discount for customers paying a year in advance. "HBO at 15 looks unreasonable compared with Disney, which has a stronger content lineup," said Craig Moffett, a co founder of the research firm MoffettNathanson, referring to Disney's ownership of Marvel, Pixar and Lucasfilm, studios that have dominated the box office. The job of getting the AT T service up and running has fallen to John Stankey, a veteran of the phone company who now runs WarnerMedia, the AT T division that includes the old Time Warner companies. Mr. Stankey appointed a council led by Robert Greenblatt, the former head of entertainment at NBC and current chairman of entertainment at WarnerMedia. Also part of the crew are Kevin Reilly, the Turner head who is in charge of programming for the service; and Jeremy Legg, a longtime Turner executive who is leading technology. Last week two new members joined the group: Tony Goncalves, the chief executive of AT T's Otter Media division, and Andy Forssell, a former head of Hulu. Mr. Forssell took the place of Brad Bentley, an AT T executive who had clashed with Mr. Reilly and others, the people said. While the WarnerMedia executives look to set a price for the service, they are aware that any move to offer HBO more cheaply could upset their cable partners, threatening the revenue they receive from these agreements. Adding to the conundrum: WarnerMedia, which declined to comment for this article, wants streaming content with mass appeal, the better to please AT T's 148 million phone customers. But HBO, the property with the best head start in streaming, thanks to its HBO Go and HBO Now services, tends to attract a select audience. 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. Occasionally, the network has landed critical successes that also enter the mainstream, like "The Sopranos" and "Game of Thrones," but it's not easy to find mass market hits that suit the HBO brand. A coming "Game of Thrones" prequel series has a chance to recreate the magic, but Hollywood is littered with forgettable follow ups. WarnerMedia plans to offer several streaming tiers, including one with ads, but the main offering is likely to include HBO fare along with films and TV shows from Warner Bros. (everything from "Casablanca" to "The West Wing") under a new brand name. Matthew Ball, the former head of strategy for Amazon Studios, said HBO made sense as the anchor of the planned service "Not even Disney is as well positioned, as it's starting from zero," he said but the pricing problem may be hard to overcome. The company could end up charging those who already pay for HBO online as little as nothing to subscribe to the streaming service or it could include it as a throw in for any new HBO subscription, the people said. WarnerMedia also has the option of lowering HBO's retail price everywhere it's sold (including on cable), but that would mean less revenue, which could hurt at a time when Netflix and Amazon are spending freely on content. But the network was already working under a plan put in place under HBO's former chief executive Richard Plepler that would increase its original content by 50 percent, to 150 hours this year. And AT T has largely stayed out of programming decisions, the people said, quelling concerns that the Dallas based telecommunications company would apply its spreadsheet approach to Hollywood. Details such as which shows to keep exclusive to the service and whether some original series produced for WarnerMedia's cable channels, such as "Snowpiercer," should be streamed before appearing on television has touched off debates, the people added. WarnerMedia has a valuable property in its back pocket the unusually durable sitcom "Friends," which has proved seemingly unkillable even 15 years after it aired its finale on NBC. It was the second most watched program on Netflix last year, according to an analysis by Nielsen. That explains why Netflix was willing to pay around 100 million to be the show's exclusive streaming home through the end of the year. As a streamed show, "Friends" is likely, after much debate, to end up exclusive to the WarnerMedia service, the people said. That would come at a cost. The sitcom would bring in some 75 million a year, if the company allowed Netflix to continue streaming it. WarnerMedia has a separate television production arm that will still create shows for other networks and streamers, as well as for its own service. Mr. Reilly has also cut deals with other TV companies to create originals to be streamed by WarnerMedia, such as "Love Life," a 10 episode comedy starring Anna Kendrick, which Lionsgate TV will produce. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
The radiant, probing young soprano Julia Bullock, who has anchored some of the most innovative performances of recent years, will be the artist in residence with the Metropolitan Museum of Art's performance series next season, the museum announced Wednesday. Ms. Bullock, who has sung performances of Josephine Baker songs in new arrangements by the composer Tyshawn Sorey and the premiere of John Adams's "Girls of the Golden West," has helped organize five programs at the museum that promise to combine her artistry and social conscience. Her residency will begin with the premiere of "History's Persistent Voice" on Sept. 15; the recital features traditional slave songs and texts by Thornton Dial and other black American artists in settings by female composers, including Tania Leon, Courtney Bryan, Jessie Montgomery and Allison Loggins Hull. Just before Christmas, Ms. Bullock will appear in a chamber version of Mr. Adams's Nativity oratorio "El Nino," which will be performed at the Cloisters with the countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo. Earlier that month, she will be joined by other artists, including the New York Philharmonic clarinetist Anthony McGill, in a program of Langston Hughes poems set to music by Ricky Ian Gordon, John Musto and Chad Cannon. She will bring her Baker program, "Perle Noire: Meditations for Josephine," to the steps of the Met's Great Hall on Jan. 16 and 17. And in May she will present though not appear in a rare revival by the American Modern Opera Company of Hans Werner Henze's "El Cimarron" ("The Runaway Slave") for baritone and small ensemble, based on the story of an Afro Cuban slave who escaped, survived in the jungle, fought for Cuban independence from Spain, and died at 113. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
Yasmin is asleep outdoors, bathed in the orange glow of her space heater, when a man sneaks up to steal her source of warmth. A young woman alone, she appears defenseless to this stranger, an easy target until she snaps to alertness and springs on him with a violence that's almost feral. They tussle. She stabs him and wins. Then she offers to suture the wound. If, that is, he has five euros to pay her for it. Classic meet cute, right? In Sylvia Khoury's insidiously sharp new play "Power Strip," on Lincoln Center Theater's LCT3 stage, Yasmin and the would be thief, Khaled, do get together. Just don't expect a rom com resolution. Set on the outskirts of a chaotically overcrowded refugee camp on the Greek island Lesbos, where Yasmin and Khaled are part of the exodus from Syria's brutal civil war, "Power Strip" is about displacement, desperation and dreams of acculturation. But for all the timeliness of Tyne Rafaeli's production, arriving as the eight year old conflict is making fresh headlines in the United States, "Power Strip" isn't the sort of theatrical experience like "The Jungle," say, or "Flight" in which the audience feels, viscerally, the urgency of refugee life. A certain stiffness, in the performance and the script, keeps it at a regrettable remove. If "Power Strip" is more striking intellectually and politically than dramatically, though, it is striking nonetheless. At 20, Yasmin (Dina Shihabi) has only recently awakened to the forces that have shaped her life men fighting over land, men making pawns of girls and women, men deciding what makes a woman a treasure and what makes her trash. Back in Damascus , before the war rendered life there untenable, Yasmin dutifully saved herself for marriage to her fiance, Peter (Ali Lopez Sohaili), who seems like an arrogant jerk, even in her gauzy memories. Now she is saving herself in a different, more heroic sense . Like Darja, the tenacious Polish immigrant in Martyna Majok's "Ironbound," Yasmin is on a gritty, grueling quest for survival. She will allow nothing to get in the way of her self rescue. Up on her bleak little patch of rocky hillside, just outside the walls of the rat infested camp, she has rigged up a power strip where she can plug in her space heater and charge her phone. (The set is by Arnulfo Maldonado, the mistily moody lighting by Jen Schriever.) Yasmin arrived at the camp with her father, a once joyful man now drunken and depressed, and she looks out for him, to a point. Her plans for the future don't include him. Munich is where she sees herself, and so she practices her German and squirrels away all the money she can to pay a fixer to take her there. When Khaled (Darius Homayoun) asks if she knows where he might buy a space heater a decent guy, he wants it for his ailing mother the unsentimental Yasmin charges him for the answer. "Two euros and I'll tell you where to get one," she says. She and Khaled are soon hanging out anyway, helping each other endure and navigate the limbo of their present while dreaming of a future that, just maybe, it's possible for them to share. Yet the past has a hold on them both and while she's trying to slough it off like an old skin, he values it: not just the Islamic traditions they grew up with, but also famous stories from English history and Greek mythology. To us, this may be touching proof of his affinity for Western culture even as Europe pulls up the drawbridge against refugees like him. To Yasmin, it has a different resonance. "I guess I like the idea of a world," Khaled says, "where there are gods sitting around on Mount Olympus making sense of things." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
From left, "Sea Anemones" floor lamps by Pia Maria Raeder, "L'infini Chair" by Gildas Berthelot and "Dynamic Landscape" by Francois Mascarello at Galerie BSL, at the Armory. The Museum of Modern Art's Department of Architecture and Design has given the lasting impression that the Bauhaus, with its skeletal steel chairs and practical teakettles, owned Modernism for much of the last century. But 56 well stocked booths at the Salon Art Design fair at the Park Avenue Armory, which opened Thursday and runs through Monday, offer an alternative story. Consider the evidence: a fluffy armchair upholstered with white tails of mohair from Rome's Giustini/Stagetti gallery; a bronze bench sculpted as a grinning lynx from Philadelphia's Wexler Gallery; two concave dish mirrors shaped like a pair of gigantic contact lenses, hanging at the Maison Rapin. And then at Adrian Sassoon, there's a thick, erect, 7 foot high, ceramic vase shaped like a column and painted with fig leaves. It's enough to make any man jealous. You smile your way through the fair. There's wit, spirit and cheek. The sass of a slipper chair by the Indian designer Satyendra Pakhale in Ammann gallery in Cologne leads with a pair of breasts, like an ancient Greek sphinx, and it's just as insolent today as it was when designed over a decade ago. In this year's Salon, instead of Bauhaus ideology delivered with strict Euclidean geometry, there's a high delight quotient. This branch of bespoke modernism played out in ateliers rather than in factories: Artists produced limited art editions rather than toasters and coffee pots stamped out by the thousands. The artists didn't heed rules of industrial efficiency. They gorged on their imagination, and sometimes on their libido. Don't expect Ikea prices, of course. But compared with the sticker shock of serious art these days, modern and contemporary designs are accessible collectibles. And, in an era of digital living, twisting Mobius strip chairs and kidney shaped coffee tables seem more relevant than veneered antiques. Somehow, Federico Munari's boomerang couch, circa 1950, at the Maison Rapin works better than Biedermeier when streaming Hannah Gadsby or "Game of Thrones." But the show does not tell its Modernism story in a straight line, and it doesn't even start with Modernism. In New York's Phoenix Ancient Art gallery, the abstract, smoothly contoured marble Neolithic mother goddess is as modern and abstract as a Brancusi, and the bronze, fourth century B.C. Greek warrior's helmet, designed to deflect the slings and arrows of battle, already embodies Modernism's maxim, form follows function (otherwise you're dead). Though many exhibitors hail from the United States, most are European, and British, French, Danish and Italian galleries came with evidence of their own local modernism. Galleria Rossella Colombari in Milan exhibited a spectacular double wooden desk of cascading shelves attributed to the Venetian architect Carlo Scarpa, and another Milanese gallery, Nilufar, brought rare leather stools, almost like campaign chairs, designed in the 1930s by the father of modern Italian design, Gio Ponti. Surrealism influenced many pieces, whether it was the grandfather clock tied up in a knot by the British sculptor Alex Chinneck, or a bronze bench dripping dew drops by Reinier Bosch in the Priveekollektie stall. Of course there were classics in crafted wood, like a monumental George Nakashima table and bed at Philadelphia's Moderne Gallery, and across the aisle, Danish modern design at Copenhagen's principal design gallery, Dansk Mobelkunst. A 1935 table by Mogens Koch exemplified Denmark's tradition of no nonsense simplicity, and it stood next to an updated take on Danish modernism, a crisply cut Minimalist table by the London designer Michael Anastassiades. By contrast, in the Sarah Myerscough Gallery, British artists with a rarefied sensibility using exotic techniques reinterpreted woods that craftsmen have worked for centuries. Eleanor Lakelin bleached, sandblasted and hand turned horse chestnut burr into amphoras that reveal the fibrous chaos beneath its bark. But no show of modernism today would be contemporary without the handiwork of the computer. In Galerie Maria Wettergren, a Danish born, London based designer Mathias Bengtsson created a protoplasmic maple tabletop set on skeletal legs that grew organically from a natural algorithm that he scripted into software. Another piece, the undulating "L'Infini Chair " in Galerie BSL, looks digital, but a Canadian visual artist, Gildas Berthelot, actually carved the curvilinear lounge chair out of bleached maple. Sitting on "L'Infini" delivers the thrill of surfing a lunging wave. Most galleries built environments so that their objects could be understood as livable pieces in an immersive homelike setting, but some installations took the idea well beyond domestic comfort. Cape Town's Southern Guild showed artists rooted in South African culture. The improbably named Porky Hefer, a former ad man, created a suspended nest made of natural grasses and cane into which a person could retreat for a little solitude. Rich Mnisi designed a sprawling leather chaise (Nwa Mulamula) comfortable enough for several people. He shaped an accompanying side table as an eye that hovers over a pool of tears to honor his great grandmother and generations of black women who shed their tears of work and sorrow across generations. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
CANTON, Mass. An army of lawyers marched into the courthouse in this quiet New England town Tuesday morning, facing off for the first time in a high stakes legal battle over the competency of the media mogul Sumner M. Redstone and the future of his 40 billion empire. After a hearing that lasted two and a half hours and included the appearance of 22 lawyers for all sides in the tangled dispute, Judge George F. Phelan of Norfolk County Probate Court said he had "a lot to digest" before ruling on whether to expedite proceedings in a case that could determine the fortunes of the Redstone family and the fates of Viacom and CBS, two of the world's largest entertainment companies. The case centers on the abrupt dismissal of two of Mr. Redstone's longtime confidants from the trust that will control his companies after he dies or is declared incompetent. Judge Phelan heard starkly different views of Mr. Redstone's mental and physical well being. He listened to the contrasting perspectives of lawyers for Mr. Redstone, his daughter, his five grandchildren and his longtime business associates at Viacom. He was presented with the trust agreement itself, which he said he would read confidentially. "I grew up in a housing project where I was happy to have a quarter in my pocket," Judge Phelan said. "I'm trying to grasp the idea of billions with a B." Billions, indeed, hang in the balance. Mr. Redstone, who is 93 and in poor health, controls 80 percent of the voting stock in Viacom and CBS through National Amusements, the private theater chain company whose headquarters are in Norwood, Mass., less than two miles from the courthouse. Controversy erupted in recent weeks after Mr. Redstone suddenly ousted Mr. Dauman and Mr. Abrams from the trust and the board of National Amusements. Many in the industry viewed the development as a harbinger to the firing of Mr. Dauman as chairman and chief executive of Viacom. (Mr. Abrams is a Viacom director.) Judge Phelan said Tuesday that he "may or may not" decide on a request by Mr. Dauman and Mr. Abrams to expedite legal proceedings before a hearing on a motion from Mr. Redstone's lawyers to dismiss the case outright, expected this month. Lawyers for Mr. Dauman and Mr. Abrams urged Judge Phelan to take immediate action, including ordering an immediate medical evaluation of Mr. Redstone as part of a request to expedite the process of gathering evidence and a trial. Netflix buys a visual effects company in a move to support its global ambitions. 15 minimum wage for federal contractors will take effect Jan. 30. "Today, Sumner Redstone is 93 years old, and he is very sick," said Leslie Fagen, a lawyer for Mr. Dauman and Mr. Abrams. "This poor man is holding onto life by a thread." Lawyers for Mr. Redstone and his daughter urged the judge not only to reject the motion for an expedited hearing but also consider a new motion to dismiss the case outright, planned in the coming weeks. "There is no imminent risk to his health," said Robert N. Klieger, a lawyer for Mr. Redstone. He cited recent doctor exams that showed "significant improvement" in recent weeks and stated that Mr. Redstone exercises daily. The jurisdiction for the dispute is also in question. While Mr. Dauman and Mr. Abrams filed suit in Massachusetts where the trust was established, lawyers for Mr. Redstone have filed a petition to validate the changes made to dismiss the two men in Los Angeles, where Mr. Redstone has lived for about 10 years. Judge Phelan said he wondered why someone with Mr. Redstone's "business acumen" would not amend the trust to reflect his California residence rather than his Massachusetts roots. As the lawyers made their case, Judge Phelan interrupted arguments with a series of questions. He asked Mr. Fagen whether his clients had heard from Mr. Redstone about his dissatisfaction with Viacom over the last several months. Mr. Fagen said no. The judge delved into Mr. Redstone's stormy relationship with his daughter, asking whether they had only recently reconciled. "There has always been healthy disagreement," said Peter Biagetti, a lawyer for Ms. Redstone. "But the bond of family, of connection to one another and most importantly of trust has endured." Multiple times, Judge Phelan asked whether a finding of undue influence should invalidate the dismissals from the trust, and cited a section of Massachusetts trust code on the matter. Mr. Fagen said yes. Mr. Klieger said the decision should not apply. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
The Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Mass., is known especially for its extraordinary collection of French Impressionism and 19th century paintings, Renaissance masterpieces, and decorative arts. So, why did the Clark just hire Robert Wiesenberger, 33, to be its first full time curator of contemporary projects? "If we keep our focus only on the past, we will not be able to connect with the current public," said Olivier Meslay, the museum's director. Since the 1970s, the Clark has shown work by contemporary artists, including Helen Frankenthaler, Leonard Baskin, El Anatsui, Juan Munoz, Ellsworth Kelly and, most recently, Jennifer Steinkamp, who works with video and new media. The hiring of Mr. Wiesenberger, who since 2013 has been an adjunct faculty member of the Yale School of Art, will "address, on a more permanent basis, this aspect of the Clark," Mr. Meslay said. The collection, which also includes 300 paintings, drawings, and prints by Gainsborough, Constable, Turner and other artists from the Manton Collection of British Art only goes so far with younger people, "and we do not want to disconnect ourselves from current creativity," said Mr. Meslay. Mr. Wiesenberger said he plans to expand the focus of exhibitions to include design: his principal course at Yale was the history and theory of graphic design. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
You were lucky and didn't get caught like I did. It was a brutal (beat up and no food) seven days in Cong San prison. Unfortunately others died in the ocean; their engines died, ran out of fuel and they lacked food and fresh water. Or by Cong San or Thai pirates. However, we are lucky and made it. I was aboard U.S.S. Coral Sea my very first time at sea covering the evacuation as a 19 year old seaman. It was a very depressing time for us as we all felt like we were running out on our friends. It is amazing that the author's parents survived. The North routinely sent assassination squads into each community as they took it. Any intelligentsia, anyone perceived as having ties to the government of the South or any prostitutes were taken to the edge of town, shot and dumped in a ditch. Many died that way in the immediate aftermath. Many others were sent to re education camps. Very little about that war was happy. Glad that the author and his family were able to find each other and find peace. Hopefully in decades ahead we will read similar stories of Syrian families finding safe haven in America. Great article for Europeans to read to understand what it means to be a war refugee, in the context of our refugee crisis. I am personally not attracted to go and visit Vietnam as a tourist because of the memory of that war. I read an essay like this and realize how very lucky I am. True, America is not a perfect country. True these are perilous times. I have lived as an expat for eight years. I have been impressed by other countries, especially in Northern Europe. But this is my home and I am grateful for it. Grateful to have done my time in uniform so I can feel I have worked off the debt I owe to those who made a place for me. Grateful I do not have to escape and live in fear of a return home. Grateful for a small, simple life without dread. I do not know that I would want to sustain the author's pain. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
The co stars "Richard Schiff, Michael O'Neill and of course Aldis Hodge, who does really heroic work as the death row inmate we're not personality characters or celebrity actors. When Chinonye said, 'I'm interested in the life; we're not going to cut around,' and we let the camera roll well, that would scare some people away. But these were people who were unafraid because we understand that life happens between the lines. We knew we were going to work on a different level, and everybody delivered. It was spiritually satisfying." As Bernadine oversees the execution of an inmate who insists he is innocent, tears begin to stream down her nearly expressionless face. "Just those circumstances are enough. It makes you weep as a person if you have any empathy and compassion. I had to control myself not to sob, because that is who I am: I cry other people's tears. I experience other people's joy. That's the calling. But knowing that Bernadine could not do that, as the actress you just keep breathing. It's like sustaining a note. You keep breathing because Bernadine doesn't get to not be Bernadine in a moment." "I could feel that my nose was starting to run and Alfre would probably go sniffs . But the point is, that was the end of the line for her. Her life as she knew it stopped when Hodge's character stopped. She was paralyzed. That also meant I'm gone. I've crossed over because even when people are mad and crying, they're wiping their mouth. She had to experience the bottom." "You don't use your own life because it's a dishonor to your life to use your personal emotions. And they don't carry the same way. I want to be able to smell my character. I want to know, as I'm doing it, how that person stays in their skin." "I left the stage. I had to get out. And I went to my trailer and sobbed because I can sob. That's the thing: This protocol, it asks of us as actors what we absolutely don't trade in as human beings. And so you have to purge your character , purge it, purge it, purge it. Then you take your clothes off, wash your face and go home, and you're yourself. I'm so grateful I always have had strong and deep love around me, and joy. I think that's why I'm able to regenerate. I heal quickly." "It was easier to shoot the film than the next month after that, where I was in my charmed life of support and love. I would just burst into tears at the farmers' market. I would weep for about two minutes. Nothing was sad on my mind when I realized I'm weeping for the men we talked to." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
6ix9ine described "Gummo" as an "instant sensation" its YouTube video, marked as "inappropriate for some users," has now been viewed more than 350 million times that would strengthen his relationship with Nine Trey as his star rose. The success of the song led to another track, "Kooda," soon after, he said. Q. After the release of "Gummo," did you have any other conversations with either Seqo or Shotti about filming another video? A. Yeah. So so, when I released "Gummo," I was in Los Angeles. I wasn't authorized to release the video with the label, so I just put it out anyway. I just threw it up on YouTube and just said whatever happens, happens. When I uploaded the video and there was such like, a lot of people were showing attention to it, Shotti actually called Seqo and said, quote: This little nigga knows what he's doing. I thought all that rainbow hair expletive was you know, he was bugging for that but he know what he's doing. Tell him to stay in touch. A. I stayed in touch. ... Well, after after after we shot "Gummo," I knew I had a formula. I knew the formula was to repeat it. You know what I'm saying? A. To repeat the gang how what's the word for it? The gang image, I would say, like promote it. You know what I'm trying to say? That's what people like, so it was like it was just a formula, a blueprint that I found that worked. So, I told Shotti I wanted to at this time, after "Gummo" came out, not to skip over a lot of stuff, we became really close. So, I would hang out at 370 Madison a lot, hang out with him, and I asked him to if it was a good idea to film "Kooda," and and we started filming "Kooda." After "Kooda," 6ix9ine said, his status in Nine Trey was solidified: Q. Let me ask you a better question. With respect to Nine Trey, what happened after you released "Kooda"? A. After I released "Kooda," I was officially a Nine Trey member. They made me a Nine Trey member. ... I guess jokingly jokingly I was sent text messages like, yo, let me shoot my 31, let me shoot my 31. And Seqo then started sending me the greetings of Nine Trey. Never sent me an oath or nothing, but just sent me like the greetings and how you greet other members and stuff like that. That's what happened. Q. Were you initiated into the gang? Q. Did you have an understanding based on your conversations with some of the other members whether or not there was an initiation process into Nine Trey? A. I acknowledged there is initiation in the gang, period, but I understood from being a member of Nine Trey you would have to shoot your 31. Q. What does shoot your 31 mean? A. From my understanding, like fight for 31 seconds. A. Another Nine Trey member or multiple. Q. Were there other ways that one could be initiated into Nine Trey? A. Yeah. Commit another crime, like in furtherance, put in work for the gang. Asked specifically what each side got out of the arrangement, 6ix9ine described an ever present dynamic in the music industry: some people provide capital and others provide something less tangible. Throughout his testimony, 6ix9ine also invoked other rappers known to be affiliated with the Bloods, including Jim Jones. But 6ix9ine denied that he borrowed the blueprint for success via gang affiliation from Cardi B, who has also spoken in the past about her ties to the group. By summer of 2018, 6ix9ine said he had started giving gang members large amounts of cash from his music earnings, which he understood would be put toward buying firearms and taking care of other members. "Feed the wolves," he was told. 6ix9ine said that as his profile rose, and his ties with Nine Trey got deeper, everyone was expected to protect one another's honor in both street and rap beefs. Establishing himself as an internet troll "antagonizing, mocking" rivals 6ix9ine said he enlisted members of Nine Trey to attack his adversaries, including the rappers Trippie Redd, Casanova and Chief Keef, along with associates of the storied Texas label Rap A Lot. Q. Mr. Hernandez, the first line, "N word runnin' out they mouth but they never pop out," what does that refer to? A. Well, the whole the whole paragraph, it speaks about well, the first line actually, it's about, I wanted to address all the controversy that was going on after "Gummo" was released. A lot of people really didn't understand it. A. They didn't understand how, I guess, a kid with rainbow hair could be affiliated with Nine Trey Bloods, and it just didn't mix. So, the first line is "N word runnin' out they mouth but they never pop out," just in generally speaking, people if you replace the N word with people, people runnin' out they mouth but they never pop out. So, that's what I meant by it. Q. Again, what was the genesis of "Kooda"? Why did you make "Kooda"? Was it in response to anything? A. Yeah, it was in response to everything, all the backlash from the public to, you know just the Trippie Redd stuff going on, everything, other rappers talking, you know. ... Q. Did those disputes ever extend beyond words and internet insults? Q. Directing your attention to November 2017, did there come a time when there was an altercation between members of Nine Trey and Trippie Redd? A. We attacked him in his hotel, assaulted him. 6ix9ine testified that his dispute with Rap A lot stemmed from a disregard by his associates for the gang tradition of "checking in" when visiting another city. A. When you fly into somebody else's city, their community, their hood. Not every city does it, but usually like other artists will check in with other, you know, gang members there or someone who holds authority there. Usually if you're gang affiliated and you're a member of the Bloods, say, you would check in with someone who is Blood in that city. It could be another gang, you know what I'm saying. The term checking in is whether paying your respects, paying some money doing a feature with an artist there or, you know yeah. Q. As an example, if you were to go from New York say to Los Angeles to perform, would you have to check in? A. We didn't check in, no. Yeah, yeah. Generally speaking, yeah. If you're gang affiliated, they expect you to check in. Even if you're not gang affiliated, they expect you to check in. After Rap A Lot affiliates prevented 6ix9ine from performing a concert in Texas, members of Nine Trey sought revenge by robbing its rivals in New York. 6ix9ine also described offering 20,000 to an associate the namesake of the song "Kooda" to shoot at the Chicago rapper Chief Keef, with whom he had exchanged words online and by phone. A. I was in California at the time, and I gave orders to my friend Kooda to shoot at him. Q. And how did that come about? A. I was in California in a hotel room. I was on the phone with Kooda. He said, I got eyes on like, I'm going to have eyes on him. I said make sure I have 20 Benz on him. A. Benz is a thousand so 20 Benz is 20,000. Q. And Kooda told you he had eyes on it? A. He said he going to have eyes on it, know where he at. A. Around 4 a.m., I want to say not to put a time on it, but around the morning, very morning hours, I was on the phone with Kooda. Kooda said, I got eyes on him. I was like: All right. You got eyes. Kooda fired a shot in the air, and that was that, and the very next morning, after that happened, it made it was publicized I mocked Chief Keef. Q. Did there come a time when you met up with Kooda B after the shooting? A. I gave him only 10,000 instead of 20,000. Q. How did it come about that you gave him less money than what you talked about? A. Shotti told me not to give him no 20,000, that Kooda fired one shot in the air. Because of gang infighting and disputes over 6ix9ine's earnings, members of Nine Trey were at odds by the summer of 2018, the rapper said. He testified that his former bodyguard was one of two men who kidnapped 6ix9ine that July, stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars in jewelry and setting the group on a path to ruin. 6ix9ine also explained how the incident affected his public profile. Q. Now, Mr. Hernandez, in the days that followed the robbery, did you give interviews concerning the robbery? Q. Were you truthful in those interviews? Q. Were there parts that were not truthful? A. Humiliated that I constantly bragged that nobody could touch me, and I was untouchable, and I was the king of New York. ... I was bragging a lot on Instagram that I was untouchable, nobody could touch me, I'm the king of my city, which was New York. And it was just humiliating at the time; so, yeah. At the time, he said, he did not report his assailants because he was still following the code of the Bloods. He also said he offered 50,000 for someone to rob or shoot at his captor. A few months later, 6ix9ine would be arrested alongside his former associates on gang related charges. Within 24 hours, he said, the rapper had agreed to plead guilty and testify against the others, in hopes of leniency in his own sentencing. 6ix9ine, who may yet testify again in additional trials, faces up to life in prison and a mandatory minimum of 47 years, though his role as a witness could result in a lower sentence. What happens next witness protection? an attempted return to rap? remains to be seen, though 6ix9ine may face an uphill battle in restoring his credibility after being labeled a "snitch," a predicament alluded to near the end of his testimony. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
Every October when the weather turns crisp, thousands around the country tune in to watch a high stakes tournament play out between fierce competitors, with one eventually crowned champion. But we're talking about bears, not baseball. It is, after all, Fat Bear Week. At Katmai National Park in southern Alaska, brown bears are winding down a stretch of nonstop eating, in which they gain hundreds of pounds to prepare for hibernation. They cavort and dive in Brooks Falls, feasting on migrating sockeye salmon and gaining up to four pounds a day. The National Park Service has capitalized on the increasingly rotund population by live streaming the hungry bears and creating an online bracket in which 12 of the park's paunchiest are pitted against one another. Fans vote for their favorite bear in head to head matchups until the title of Fattest Bear is bestowed, this year on Tuesday. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
SAN FRANCISCO Under intensifying scrutiny from federal investigators and the public, Facebook said on Sunday that it planned to turn over more than 3,000 Russian linked advertisements to congressional investigators on Monday. The decision, which comes after a week of scathing calls from Congress for details about Facebook's advertising system, is the latest attempt by a major technology company to disclose the scope of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Last week, Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Facebook, vowed to work with investigators and other technology companies in an attempt to snuff out the spread of false news stories and bogus accounts across their sites. It is a growing threat that Facebook and similar companies have begun to come to terms with only in recent months. "It is a new challenge for internet communities to deal with nation states attempting to subvert elections," Mr. Zuckerberg said in a live video address on Facebook last week. "But if that's what we must do, we are committed to rising to the occasion." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
John Akomfrah's extraordinary survey at the New Museum, "Signs of Empire," should be required viewing for those who consider themselves activists, artists, critics or leaders or people who simply want to expand their worldview. His four video installations, which take up the museum's entire second floor, explore postcolonial history, nature and migration. And several films, including his best known work, "The Last Angel of History" (1995), serving as an investigation into the origins of Afrofuturism how culture from Africa and the African diaspora intersects with technology are screening on Wednesdays in the museum's basement. Mr. Akomfrah, a Ghanaian born, British artist who is receiving his first museum survey exhibition in the United States, emerged as an artist with the Black Audio Film Collective, a group formed in England in 1982 after the racially charged Brixton riots of 1981. Together they created the earliest work here, "Expeditions One: Signs of Empire" (1983). Its title comes from the Roland Barthes book "Empire of Signs" (1970), which used semiotics to explore Japanese culture. But this video suggests that the African diaspora lacks a similar, cohesive system of cultural codes. (The sly inversion of Barthes's title suggests how colonialism erased these ties.) In the absence of written archives or histories particularly with displaced peoples these codes might be conjured or created through film and video. What's most notable about this show beyond the weight of history and the creation of new cultural vocabularies, or the identifying of overlooked ones is Mr. Akomfrah's facility in working with moving images on multiple screens. This method of presentation allows him to create works whose nonlinear development echoes newly evolving ideas about history and culture in philosophy and postmodern and postcolonial theory. "The Unfinished Conversation" (2012) is a brilliant example of this, a three channel work that takes as its subject the Jamaican born intellectual Stuart Hall, who says in the film that "identities are formed at the unstable point where personal lives meet the narrative of history," adding, "Identity is an ever unfinished conversation." Mr. Hall, who died in 2014, felt like an outsider in his family, because he had a darker complexion than his other relatives, was at Oxford University in the 1950s and was the husband of a white woman in postwar Britain. In addition to contributing fresh approaches to the study of British culture and helping to invent the academic field of cultural studies, Mr. Hall describes feeling grounded in jazz, which not only permeates the film but also feels like a guiding framework for Mr. Akomfrah. Postcolonial history is central to "Transfigured Night" (2013/2018), a two screen installation that juxtaposes footage of leaders from newly independent African countries visiting Washington in the early 1960s with texts by the philosophers Frantz Fanon and Friedrich Nietzsche, both narrated and appearing as written text in the film, and music by Arnold Schoenberg (whose string sextet gives the movie its title) and West African folk singers. The most recent film, "Vertigo Sea" (2015), which debuted at the 2015 Venice Biennale, is a tour de force of images, text and music that depicts the ocean as both beautiful and deadly, particularly for migrants, enslaved people and mammals hunted by humans, like whales and polar bears. Borrowing from Herman Melville's "Moby Dick" and Caspar David Friedrich's Romantic paintings of Europeans contemplating the sea, this immersive three screen work slyly rethreads these ocean tales through the narrative of Olaudah Equiano (c.1745 1797), an enslaved man who bought his own freedom and sailed the world, which he later wrote about in his autobiography. Mr. Akomfrah's video work might be compared to that of Isaac Julien or Arthur Jafa, who also explore imagery related to the African diaspora, or experimental filmmakers who caught his attention as a young man: Santiago Alvarez, Yvonne Rainer, Chantal Akerman, Victor Burgin or Alexander Kluge. What sets Mr. Akomfrah apart from some of them, though, is his practical use of everything from BBC nature and cultural footage to music. In "Unfinished Conversation," Mr. Hall says that jazz feels like "modern life." Mr. Akomfrah has a similar understanding of how images choreographed across different screens and paired with music can be composed rhythmically and dynamically into a new way of storytelling that grabs your attention and doesn't let go. He makes film and history feel vital, pairing images and canonical and obscure texts in a way that emphasizes, as Mr. Hall says, that "we're in a phase of permanent revolution." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
WASHINGTON The hedge fund magnates Daniel S. Loeb, Louis Moore Bacon and Steven A. Cohen have much in common. They have managed billions of dollars in capital, earning vast fortunes. They have invested large sums in art and millions more in political candidates. Moreover, each has exploited an esoteric tax loophole that saved them millions in taxes. The trick? Route the money to Bermuda and back. With inequality at its highest levels in nearly a century and public debate rising over whether the government should respond to it through higher taxes on the wealthy, the very richest Americans have financed a sophisticated and astonishingly effective apparatus for shielding their fortunes. Some call it the "income defense industry," consisting of a high priced phalanx of lawyers, estate planners, lobbyists and anti tax activists who exploit and defend a dizzying array of tax maneuvers, virtually none of them available to taxpayers of more modest means. In recent years, this apparatus has become one of the most powerful avenues of influence for wealthy Americans of all political stripes, including Mr. Loeb and Mr. Cohen, who give heavily to Republicans, and the liberal billionaire George Soros, who has called for higher levies on the rich while at the same time using tax loopholes to bolster his own fortune. All are among a small group providing much of the early cash for the 2016 presidential campaign. Operating largely out of public view in tax court, through arcane legislative provisions and in private negotiations with the Internal Revenue Service the wealthy have used their influence to steadily whittle away at the government's ability to tax them. The effect has been to create a kind of private tax system, catering to only several thousand Americans. The impact on their own fortunes has been stark. Two decades ago, when Bill Clinton was elected president, the 400 highest earning taxpayers in America paid nearly 27 percent of their income in federal taxes, according to I.R.S. data. By 2012, when President Obama was re elected, that figure had fallen to less than 17 percent, which is just slightly more than the typical family making 100,000 annually, when payroll taxes are included for both groups. The ultra wealthy "literally pay millions of dollars for these services," said Jeffrey A. Winters, a political scientist at Northwestern University who studies economic elites, "and save in the tens or hundreds of millions in taxes." Some of the biggest current tax battles are being waged by some of the most generous supporters of 2016 candidates. They include the families of the hedge fund investors Robert Mercer, who gives to Republicans, and James Simons, who gives to Democrats; as well as the options trader Jeffrey Yass, a libertarian leaning donor to Republicans. In the heat of the presidential race, the influence of wealthy donors is being tested. At stake is the Obama administration's 2013 tax increase on high earners the first substantial increase in two decades and an I.R.S. initiative to ensure that, in effect, the higher rates stick by cracking down on tax avoidance by the wealthy. While Democrats like Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton have pledged to raise taxes on these voters, virtually every Republican has advanced policies that would vastly reduce their tax bills, sometimes to as little as 10 percent of their income. At the same time, most Republican candidates favor eliminating the inheritance tax, a move that would allow the new rich, and the old, to bequeath their fortunes intact, solidifying the wealth gap far into the future. And several have proposed a substantial reduction or even elimination in the already deeply discounted tax rates on investment gains, a foundation of the most lucrative tax strategies. "There's this notion that the wealthy use their money to buy politicians; more accurately, it's that they can buy policy, and specifically, tax policy," said Jared Bernstein, a senior fellow at the left leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities who served as chief economic adviser to Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. "That's why these egregious loopholes exist, and why it's so hard to close them." Each of the top 400 earners took home, on average, about 336 million in 2012, the latest year for which data is available. If the bulk of that money had been paid out as salary or wages, as it is for the typical American, the tax obligations of those wealthy taxpayers could have more than doubled. Instead, much of their income came from convoluted partnerships and high end investment funds. Other earnings accrued in opaque family trusts and foreign shell corporations, beyond the reach of the tax authorities. The well paid technicians who devise these arrangements toil away at white shoe law firms and elite investment banks, as well as a variety of obscure boutiques. But at the fulcrum of the strategizing over how to minimize taxes are so called family offices, the customized wealth management departments of Americans with hundreds of millions or billions of dollars in assets. Family offices have existed since the late 19th century, when the Rockefellers pioneered the institution, and gained popularity in the 1980s. But they have proliferated rapidly over the last decade, as the ranks of the super rich, and the size of their fortunes, swelled to record proportions. "We have so much wealth being created, significant wealth, that it creates a need for the family office structure now," said Sree Arimilli, an industry recruiting consultant. Family offices, many of which are dedicated to managing and protecting the wealth of a single family, oversee everything from investment strategy to philanthropy. But tax planning is a core function. While the specific techniques these advisers employ to minimize taxes can be mind numbingly complex, they generally follow a few simple principles, like converting one type of income into another type that's taxed at a lower rate. Mr. Loeb, for example, has invested in a Bermuda based reinsurer an insurer to insurance companies that turns around and invests the money in his hedge fund. That maneuver transforms his profits from short term bets in the market, which the government taxes at roughly 40 percent, into long term profits, known as capital gains, which are taxed at roughly half that rate. It has had the added advantage of letting Mr. Loeb defer taxes on this income indefinitely, allowing his wealth to compound and grow more quickly. The Bermuda insurer Mr. Loeb helped set up went public in 2013 and is active in the insurance business, not merely a tax dodge. Mr. Cohen and Mr. Bacon abandoned similar insurance based strategies in recent years. "Our investment in Max Re was not a tax driven scheme, but rather a sound investment response to investor interest in a more dynamically managed portfolio akin to Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway," said Mr. Bacon, who leads Moore Capital Management. "Hedge funds were a minority of the investment portfolio, and Moore Capital's products a much smaller subset of this alternative portfolio." Mr. Loeb and Mr. Cohen declined to comment. Organizing one's business as a partnership can be lucrative in its own right. Some of the partnerships from which the wealthy derive their income are allowed to sell shares to the public, making it easy to cash out a chunk of the business while retaining control. But unlike publicly traded corporations, they pay no corporate income tax; the partners pay taxes as individuals. And the income taxes are often reduced by large deductions, such as for depreciation. For large private partnerships, meanwhile, the I.R.S. often struggles "to determine whether a tax shelter exists, an abusive tax transaction is being used," according to a recent report by the Government Accountability Office. The agency is not allowed to collect underpaid taxes directly from these partnerships, even those with several hundred partners. Instead, it must collect from each individual partner, requiring the agency to commit significant time and manpower. The wealthy can also avail themselves of a range of esoteric and customized tax deductions that go far beyond writing off a home office or dinner with a client. One aggressive strategy is to place income in a type of charitable trust, generating a deduction that offsets the income tax. The trust then purchases what's known as a private placement life insurance policy, which invests the money on a tax free basis, frequently in a number of hedge funds. The person's heirs can inherit, also tax free, whatever money is left after the trust pays out a percentage each year to charity, often a considerable sum. Many of these maneuvers are well established, and wealthy taxpayers say they are well within their rights to exploit them. Others exist in a legal gray area, its boundaries defined by the willingness of taxpayers to defend their strategies against the I.R.S. Almost all are outside the price range of the average taxpayer. Elizabeth Holmes Hones Her Defense in Day 2 of Testimony Kevin Spacey was ordered to pay 31 million to the 'House of Cards' studio after sexual harassment allegations. Among tax lawyers and accountants, "the best and brightest get a high from figuring out how to do tricky little deals," said Karen L. Hawkins, who until recently headed the I.R.S. office that oversees tax practitioners. "Frankly, it is almost beyond the intellectual and resource capacity of the Internal Revenue Service to catch." The combination of cost and complexity has had a profound effect, tax experts said. Whatever tax rates Congress sets, the actual rates paid by the ultra wealthy tend to fall over time as they exploit their numerous advantages. From Mr. Obama's inauguration through the end of 2012, federal income tax rates on individuals did not change (excluding payroll taxes). But the highest earning one thousandth of Americans went from paying an average of 20.9 percent to 17.6 percent. By contrast, the top 1 percent, excluding the very wealthy, went from paying just under 24 percent on average to just over that level. "We do have two different tax systems, one for normal wage earners and another for those who can afford sophisticated tax advice," said Victor Fleischer, a law professor at the University of San Diego who studies the intersection of tax policy and inequality. "At the very top of the income distribution, the effective rate of tax goes down, contrary to the principles of a progressive income tax system." Having helped foster an alternative tax system, wealthy Americans have been aggressive in defending it. Trade groups representing the Bermuda based insurance company Mr. Loeb helped set up, for example, have spent the last several months pleading with the I.R.S. that its proposed rules tightening the hedge fund insurance loophole are too onerous. The major industry group representing private equity funds spends hundreds of thousands of dollars each year lobbying on such issues as "carried interest," the granddaddy of Wall Street tax loopholes, which makes it possible for fund managers to pay the capital gains rate rather than the higher standard tax rate on a substantial share of their income for running the fund. The budget deal that Congress approved in October allows the I.R.S. to collect underpaid taxes from large partnerships at the firm level for the first time which is far easier for the agency thanks to a provision that lawmakers slipped into the deal at the last minute, before many lobbyists could mobilize. But the new rules are relatively weak firms can still choose to have partners pay the taxes and don't take effect until 2018, giving the wealthy plenty of time to weaken them further. Shortly after the provision passed, the Managed Funds Association, an industry group that represents prominent hedge funds like D. E. Shaw, Renaissance Technologies, Tiger Management and Third Point, began meeting with members of Congress to discuss a wish list of adjustments. The founders of these funds have all donated at least 500,000 to 2016 presidential candidates. During the Obama presidency, the association itself has risen to become one of the most powerful trade groups in Washington, spending over 4 million a year on lobbying. And while the lobbying clout of the wealthy is most often deployed through industry trade associations and lawyers, some rich families have locked arms to advance their interests more directly. The inheritance tax has been a primary target. In the early 1990s, a California family office executive named Patricia Soldano began lobbying on behalf of wealthy families to repeal the tax, which would not only save them money, but also make it easier to preserve their business empires from one generation to the next. The idea struck many hardened operatives as unrealistic at the time, given that the tax affected only the wealthiest Americans. But Ms. Soldano's efforts funded in part by the Mars and Koch families laid the groundwork for a one year elimination in 2010. The tax has been restored, but currently applies only to couples leaving roughly 11 million or more to their heirs, up from those leaving more than 1.2 million when Ms. Soldano started her campaign. It affected fewer than 5,200 families last year. "If anyone would have told me we'd be where we are today, I would never have guessed it," Ms. Soldano said in an interview. Some of the most profound victories are barely known outside the insular world of the wealthy and their financial managers. In 2009, Congress set out to require that investment partnerships like hedge funds register with the Securities and Exchange Commission, partly so that regulators would have a better grasp on the risks they posed to the financial system. The early legislative language would have required single family offices to register as well, exposing the highly secretive institutions to scrutiny that their clients were eager to avoid. Some of the I.R.S.'s cases against the wealthy originate with tips from the S.E.C., which is often better positioned to spot tax evasion. By the summer of 2009, several family office executives had formed a lobbying group called the Private Investor Coalition to push back against the proposal. The coalition won an exemption in the 2010 Dodd Frank financial reform bill, then spent much of the next year persuading the S.E.C. to largely adopt its preferred definition of "family office." So expansive was the resulting loophole that Mr. Soros's 24.5 billion hedge fund took advantage of it, converting to a family office after returning capital to its remaining outside investors. The hedge fund manager Stanley Druckenmiller, a former business partner of Mr. Soros, took the same step. The Soros family, which generally supports Democrats, has committed at least 1 million to the 2016 presidential campaign; Mr. Druckenmiller, who favors Republicans, has put slightly more than 300,000 behind three different G.O.P. presidential candidates. A slide presentation from the Private Investor Coalition's 2013 annual meeting credited the success to multiple meetings with members of the Senate Banking Committee, the House Financial Services Committee, congressional staff and S.E.C. staff. "All with a low profile," the document noted. "We got most of what we wanted AND a few extras we didn't request." After all the loopholes and all the lobbying, what remains of the government's ability to collect taxes from the wealthy runs up against one final hurdle: the crisis facing the I.R.S. President Obama has made fighting tax evasion by the rich a priority. In 2010, he signed legislation making it easier to identify Americans who squirreled away assets in Swiss bank accounts and Cayman Islands shelters. His I.R.S. convened a Global High Wealth Industry Group, known colloquially as "the wealth squad," to scrutinize the returns of Americans with incomes of at least 10 million a year. In 2014, the Club for Growth Action fund raised more than 9 million and spent much of it helping candidates critical of the I.R.S. Roughly 60 percent of the money raised by the fund came from just 12 donors, including Mr. Mercer, who has given the group 2 million in the last five years. Mr. Mercer and his immediate family have also donated more than 11 million to several super PACs supporting Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, an outspoken I.R.S. critic and a presidential candidate. Another prominent donor is Mr. Yass, who helps run a trading firm called the Susquehanna International Group. He donated 100,000 to the Club for Growth Action fund in September. Mr. Yass serves on the board of the libertarian Cato Institute and, like Mr. Mercer, appears to subscribe to limited government views that partly motivate his political spending. But he may also have more than a passing interest in creating a political environment that undermines the I.R.S. Susquehanna is currently challenging a proposed I.R.S. determination that an affiliate of the firm effectively repatriated more than 375 million in income from subsidiaries located in Ireland and the Cayman Islands in 2007, creating a large tax liability. (The affiliate brought the money back to the United States in later years and paid dividend taxes on it; the I.R.S. asserts that it should have paid the ordinary income tax rate, at a cost of tens of millions of dollars more.) In June, Mr. Yass donated more than 2 million to three super PACs aligned with Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, who has called for taxing all income at a flat rate of 14.5 percent. That change in itself would save wealthy supporters like Mr. Yass millions of dollars. Mr. Paul, also a presidential candididate, has suggested going even further, calling the I.R.S. a "rogue agency" and circulating a petition in 2013 calling for the tax equivalent of regime change. "Be it now therefore resolved," the petition reads, "that we, the undersigned, demand the immediate abolishment of the Internal Revenue Service." But even if that campaign is a long shot, the richest taxpayers will continue to enjoy advantages over everyone else. For the ultra wealthy, "our tax code is like a leaky barrel," said J. Todd Metcalf, the Democrats' chief tax counsel on the Senate Finance Committee. "Unless you plug every hole or get a new barrel, it's going to leak out." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Economy |
In the last 20 years, the rusty patched bumblebee population declined by 87 percent because of habitat loss, use of pesticides and disease. This fuzzy bee, native to the continental United States, gets its name from the rusty patch on its back. These bumblebees pollinate fruits and vegetables we eat, unlike the Gulf Coast solitary bee, which gathers pollen from only one plant the Coastal Plain honeycomb head, a member of the aster family. You could say they're specialists, whereas, rusty patched bumblebees and honeybees are generalists. Honeybees a European import to the Americas and their colony collapse problems get a lot of attention, but native bees that have their own ecological role are facing similar and perhaps additional threats. The decline among native bees is a known problem, and there are a variety of efforts to save them; however, the full extent of the problem is not well understood. "While regional studies have tracked the decline of native bees," said S. Hollis Woodard, an entomologist at the University of California, Riverside, "there hasn't been a coordinated nationwide effort to monitor these pollinators." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
This summer, scientists crisscrossed two oceans, braved wind and cold and deployed two dozen telescopes all for five blinks of starlight that lasted a second or less. For the team working with NASA's New Horizons spacecraft, which made a spectacular flyby of Pluto two years ago, those smidgens of data provide intriguing hints about the spacecraft's next destination, a distant frozen world that is believed to be a pristine, undisturbed fragment from the earliest days of the solar system. New Horizons will fly past it on Jan. 1, 2019. But the object is so far away a billion miles beyond Pluto and so small no more than 20 miles wide that almost nothing was known about it. From the five blinks, obtained with exhausting effort, scientists now know that it has an odd shape. Instead of round like a ball it appears to be more like a long, skinny potato or maybe two objects in close orbit around each other, possibly even touching. "It's like, wow, this is going to be really cool," said Marc W. Buie, an astronomer at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo., who led the observations. "We don't know what we're going to find." While Pluto is the biggest object in the ring of icy debris beyond Neptune known as the Kuiper belt, this object with the designation 2014 MU69 is among the smallest. It orbits more than four billion miles from the sun, and it is like a time capsule, promising clues about how the planets formed. Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope first spied it three years ago as they searched for somewhere for New Horizons to visit after Pluto. All Hubble could see was a slowly moving speck of light enough to calculate an orbit and determine that New Horizons could reach it. But almost everything else about MU69 was a mystery or a guess. Not even the largest, most powerful telescopes on Earth can see it at all. The New Horizons scientists could, however, learn more about it during a few chance moments when a star in the night sky momentarily vanished because MU69 passed in front of it. From the distance to MU69, its speed and how long the star winks out, astronomers can calculate the width of the object. It turned out that a bonanza of three such events, which are known as occultations, were expected to occur within a two month period this year, on June 3, July 10 and July 17, as MU69 passed in front of three different stars. "That's just crazy," Dr. Buie said. "That's just how the dice rolled on this one." But they did not have the data sufficiently precise star locations to know exactly where to set up telescopes to observe the events. "We say it's hard, and it is," Dr. Buie said. "If you're not in the shadow, you don't see it. Even a year ago, this would have been categorically impossible." But they were lucky again because a European Space Agency mission called Gaia was methodically mapping more than a billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy. New Horizons scientists got an early look at the catalog in late April. The telescopes took more than 100,000 images of the star, waiting for MU69 to pass in front of it. But the star never vanished. The scientists had completely missed the shadow. "I was physically and emotionally exhausted, psychically damaged," Dr. Buie said. In late June and early July, Hubble made additional observations of MU69 that refined the orbit. The July 10 occultation track mostly passed over the southern Pacific. This time, the New Horizons scientists took off from Christchurch, New Zealand, in Sofia, a NASA 747 equipped with an 8.2 foot diameter telescope. They headed north, toward Fiji, to intercept the shadow and returned 10 hours later. Again, the star never disappeared. They had missed the opportunity again. They immediately headed back to Argentina for one more try. S. Alan Stern, the principal investigator of New Horizons, said he was confident, with the additional Hubble measurements, that they would capture the vanishing of a star this time. But mission managers also always worry about the so called unknown unknowns. Perhaps something unanticipated in the Hubble data was deceiving them about MU69's position. The July 17 shadow was predicted to pass over Comodoro Rivadavia, a city along the Atlantic coast of South America. Comodoro's nickname is "the capital of wind." In the middle of winter, the weather was also cold. "It was a pretty intense event," Dr. Stern said. "Your telescopes were shaking." At several observing sites, tractor trailer trucks served as windbreaks, as did contraptions made of poles and canvas. A highway was shut for a couple of hours so that the headlights of cars and trucks would not spoil the observations. The skies were clear, and the time of the shadow, 12:50 a.m., passed. A few hours later, Amanda M. Zangari, one of the Southwest Research Institute scientists on the New Horizons team, was staring blearily at her laptop analyzing the data from one of the telescopes. In her exhaustion, the data was not making sense to her. Then it hit her. "I realized it didn't make any sense, because the occultation star was missing," she said. Mission managers can still tweak the flyby time of the New Horizons spacecraft by a couple of hours. Ideally, they want to view the broad side of MU69 and optimize geometry of tracking stations on Earth during the flyby. "We're working through all those mathematical issues," Dr. Stern said. Another occultation is possible in August next year. The scientists have not decided whether they will chase the shadow one more time. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
When Heidi Zak was getting dressed for work one foggy March morning in 2012, she peered into the drawer that housed her undergarments and sighed sadly. "I pulled out my bras and realized they were so stretched out, and then the dread set in," Ms. Zak said. "It's the dread of having to go out and buy new bras." At the time, Ms. Zak was a product marketing manager at Google in San Francisco, but she had always toyed with the idea of building a brand. That morning she figured out what it would be. With her new business, Ms. Zak would seek to solve the plight of bra shopping, which often involves fluorescent lighting, three way mirrors and a mess of straps and hangers. "Bras should have been the first item to go online," she said. "You don't do it with friends, women don't like the in store experience, and the market is filled with old school brands run by middle aged men who think they're targeting women." She says the line has had 20 percent growth month over month since its introduction. ThirdLove joins a growing number of lingerie lines that are reinvigorating an otherwise staid market. Through sleek websites, hip campaign imagery, savvy fit options and compelling social media feeds, companies like Lively, Lonely and Adore Me are making it easier than ever for the online set to shop innerwear. Moreover, the new lines are changing the message behind lingerie from one of oversexualized fantasy to empowerment, confidence and comfort. This vision marks a contrast with Victoria's Secret, the bubble gum pink retailer that, according to the research company IBISWorld, encompasses 62 percent of the 9 billion lingerie market in the United States. That means that a majority of women are buying their most intimate apparel next to life size photos of supermodels, whose come hither looks and propped up underpinnings embody a male fantasy. Emerging lingerie brands are determined to change that association and bring the focus back to women. Like ThirdLove, Lively is a bra and underwear label that prides itself on being made for women by women. Its founder, Michelle Cordeiro Grant, a former senior merchant for bras at Victoria's Secret, introduced Lively in April to bridge the worlds of athletic wear and innerwear. She coined the term "leisuree" (a cross, of sorts, between "athleisure" and lingerie) to describe 11 styles of bralettes, push ups and T shirt bras offered in a mix of neutrals and bold prints. "I admire Victoria's Secret as a business, but I stopped relating to the fantasy and the push ups and the armor, it was too much for me," Ms. Grant said. "I wanted to create something more authentic for the modern woman, where she doesn't have to choose between style and comfort. Victoria's Secret is the mind set of 'How do I feel when a man looks at me?' versus 'How do I look when I'm feeling confident, comfortable and ready to take on the day?'" In February, before the site went live, Lively ran a referral program offering redeemable points in exchange for email addresses. Within 48 hours, its flash page had 280,000 unique visits. Ms. Grant declined to comment on sales, but said the company had seen month over month growth and had received 5.5 million in funding. Lively uses Instagram to communicate with consumers on matters of fit, design and packaging, then turns the feedback into content. When a shopper tweets needthis about a specific bra, the hashtag becomes an email headline. And while it celebrates famous fans like Khloe Kardashian and Gigi Hadid, it scours its social feeds to find ambassadors who are everyday women living regular lives. Much like ThirdLove's fit models, who deliberately look down at themselves instead of posing sensually for the camera, Lively's fit guide features real customers in sizes ranging from 32A to 38DD. "The intimate apparel business has been sluggish in keeping up with consumers," said Marshal Cohen, the chief industry analyst at NPD Group. "It's already a product that's difficult to fit, so if you can find a way to make it a more appealing shopping experience, it's a home run every time. We're seeing these emerging brands reach consumers on an emotional level, and now stores are going to have to play catch up." This emerging market is also capturing the Hollywood audience. In August, Lena Dunham and Jemima Kirke posed for a photo shoot in Lonely, a lingerie and ready to wear label based in Auckland, New Zealand. The actresses joined what Helene Morris, a founder of the line, calls the "Lonely Girls Project," an artistic photo series of real women wearing the label in a range of places, from their bedrooms to the beach. "We're trying to show women as they are and not trying to change them," Ms. Morris said. "We want to celebrate our flaws and see the beauty in our differences. It's so important and empowering for women to celebrate their shape." Once the images of Ms. Dunham and Ms. Kirke surfaced, the Lonely site received more than 600,000 views and temporarily lagged. The company also photographed the artist Petra Collins, who set off an online reaction after posing with body hair. "We are challenging people and offering a wider viewpoint, which can only be a good thing," Ms. Morris said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
Finding your seat at "o' death" requires some groping in the dark. Perhaps audience members, fumbling in the faint glow of an usher's flashlight, are meant to identify with the dancer who eventually comes into view, scrambling on the floor of the nearly lightless room. That would be Marit Sandsmark, the lone performer in this postapocalyptic work by the Norwegian company Findlay//Sandsmark, which had its United States premiere at Ideal Glass Gallery in the East Village on Tuesday. (Ms. Sandsmark choreographed the show; Iver Findlay, her husband and a Wooster Group alum, directed and designed it.) The scene is strikingly bleak, as if we had come to watch civilization take its last icy gasps a sometimes transfixing, sometimes tedious experience. Dead branches and leaves, affixed to wires crisscrossing the gallery, mechanically rustle and twitch, often in time with Ms. Sandsmark's agitated movement. Ornate foam towers, like petrified church spires or imploded rockets, rise from the floor and hover from the ceiling. An igloo of sorts houses a warm glow, some promise of safety, but when Ms. Sandsmark wriggles into its shelter, it collapses. Her heavy breathing and the foam's creaking, as she crawls out of the rubble, mingle with the gale force winds in Pal Asle Pettersen's enveloping score. Sometimes the sound drops out and Ms. Sandsmark just sits, doing nothing at the edge of nothingness. When you start at the end, on the brink of oblivion, where is there to go? According to its creators in publicity materials, "o' death," a production of PS 122's Coil festival, "impossibly and playfully attempts to prove that death does not exist," an apt description for a piece that flirts with destruction but pivots unexpectedly toward creation. Just when ruin seems imminent explosions are sounding; the towers, illuminated from within, are menacingly flickering Ms. Sandsmark exits and returns with even more of those imposing structures, building up what seemed perfectly poised to come down. The company cites the 1920s pastor and blues singer J. M. Gates as an inspiration, titling the work after his song "O' Death, Where Is Thy Sting?" The only clear indication of his influence comes at the end, when a distant recording of the song signals that the show is over. But something of a preacher's forbidding fire infuses other parts of the production, if not the movement itself, which registers only vaguely despite Ms. Sandsmark's dogged performance. The best dancing in "o' death" is that of sound and light. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
LONDON Delays in the construction of the Norman Foster designed Zayed National Museum in Abu Dhabi means that an agreement with British Museum which was to help curate exhibitions and lend the new institution around 500 valuable artifacts is unlikely to be realized. Although a report in The Art Newspaper on Saturday said that the British Museum and the Zayed National Museum had terminated their 10 year deal, signed in 2009, a spokeswoman from the British Museum said that the agreement had not ended, and that the contract would run until 2019. But since construction has not yet begun on the Zayed museum, the loan is unlikely to take place within the framework of the existing contact, the spokeswoman, Hannah Boulton, said. As the Zayed Museum focuses on building up its own collection over the next several years, she added, the British Museum "does not anticipate lending objects within the current contract period, but loans could be discussed at a later date." The Zayed Museum, originally scheduled to open in 2013, is part of the Saadiyat island development that includes outposts of the Louvre and the Guggenheim. Under the original partnership agreement, the British Museum was to receive fees for the long term loan of some of its holdings, which had not yet been formally specified. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
It is played or performed at funerals and memorials large and small, and pushes people to tears in nearly any setting, from bars to supermarket aisles. Singalongs, often pressed through sobs, are unavoidable. "Eternal love," the most well known part of the lyrics say, in Spanish. "Unforgettable." For millions of Mexican Americans, Mexicans, and anyone familiar with Mexico's golden age of pop music (the 1980s) , the song "Amor Eterno" is the de facto theme of farewell. But this week, in the aftermath of the Aug. 3 mass shooting at Walmart in El Paso, the anthem took on a more potent meaning. Instances of people singing "Amor Eterno" at vigils and impromptu memorials are dotting social media. On Sunday, a day after the shooting, a youthful mariachi group known as Puesta del Sol performed the song at an interfaith vigil held at Ponder Park in El Paso. At the site of the shooting that same evening, a Univision journalist captured the moment when a young woman broke out into the familiar lyrics, shakily and for no listener in particular, before wiping away tears. Written by Juan Gabriel, a pop superstar and a border native from Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, "Amor Eterno" is a strumming mariachi ballad that was popularized by Juan Gabriel's longtime vocal muse, the singer Rocio Durcal. The lyrics can be translated as: "How I wish that you still lived, that your precious eyes had never closed, so that I could see them now ... Eternal love, unforgettable." Mexican culture is imbued with music at times of mourning, a feature of the national identity that translates to U.S. born Mexican Americans even after they might assimilate or become English dominant, said Ernesto Chavez, a professor of history at the University of Texas at El Paso. "My parents are from Juarez, and although I'm not a big fan of Juan Gabriel, he's always invoked," said Dr. Chavez, who was born in Los Angeles. "The only time I hear 'Amor Eterno' is at funerals ." "It was played at my aunt's funeral," he said. "My sister in law just got up and started singing it with the mariachis." A nine story mural of Juan Gabriel greets visitors from El Paso a few blocks after crossing south into Juarez from the Del Norte bridge, Dr. Chavez noted. Juan Gabriel was born in 1950 in southern Mexico and raised in Juarez, where he is a considered a native son. He died in August 2016 in Santa Monica, Calif., at 66. For El Pasoans, and Americans of Mexican descent more broadly, the sense of loss this week is intensified by the realization that the victims in El Paso were targeted for their ethnic and national background. Eight of the 22 victims in El Paso have been confirmed as Mexican nationals. Their lives were cut short while visiting the U.S. for back to school shopping . The tragedy in El Paso was one of two mass shootings in the United States that occurred hours apart in Texas and Dayton, Ohio, taking the lives of 31 people in total. Days earlier, on July 28, a gunman killed three and injured thirteen more in Gilroy, Calif., at a garlic festival. "Amor Eterno" was sung at a San Jose, Calif., vigil held for 13 year old Keyla Salazar, who was killed in Gilroy, according to a report in The Salinas Californian. The shootings in El Paso and Gilroy are being investigated as acts of domestic terrorism. According to federal investigators, in all three shooting cases, the gunmen expressed, or were said to be exploring, violent ideologies. As the identities of more victims are released, and El Paso and Juarez prepare to send off their loved ones at funerals, "Amor Eterno" is likely to be heard more in the coming days, Mr. Chavez said. "People are just trying to find ways to grieve, and I think that song has become that, basically," he said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
Where and How to See the Total Eclipse This Summer in the U.S. Coast to coast solar eclipses are an exceedingly rare occurrence: The last one in North America occurred on June 8, 1918, and after this summer's Eclipse Across America, there will not be another one like it until 2045. For about two minutes on Aug. 21, the sun will disappear behind the moon across a narrow band called a "path of totality" from the Oregon coast to South Carolina. NASA has set up a site for the eclipse (eclipse2017.nasa.gov), which lists the group's official viewing locations around the country. And a host of communities in the center of the band, including some that rarely host large numbers of tourists, are staking their claims as the best place to watch the eclipse. A number of other communities in the path, including Columbia, S.C.; Nashville; St. Joseph, Mo.; Casper, Wyo; and Carbondale, Ill., which will have the longest duration of "totality" at 1:21 p.m. for 2 minutes 41 seconds, are preparing for big crowds. Fred Espenak, a retired NASA astrophysicist known as Mr. Eclipse, has watched and photographed 27 solar eclipses on all continents, and says that they are singular experiences everyone should enjoy at least once. He emphasizes that clear weather is key, and that, in this regard, the communities west of the Mississippi River have the best odds. Mr. Espenak will probably be in Casper, where he has a speaking engagement, but he and other eclipse chasers will be watching the weather forecasts, prepared to change plans at the last minute. Alex Young, the coordinator for NASA's education and outreach programs, agrees with Mr. Espenak that sites west of the Mississippi have the best odds for good weather, but cautions that travelers need to plan ahead, consult weather forecasts before the eclipse and have a backup plan. He added that prime viewing spots that are easiest to reach could experience problems with congestion and other logistical challenges. "Roughly 100 million people live within a day's drive of the path of totality, so we're really in uncharted territory trying to estimate how many people are going to try to watch this event," said Mr. Young, who plans to be in Carbondale for the eclipse. One backup plan may be an aerial view: Alaska Airlines is giving away two free tickets on an invite only eclipse charter off the coast of Oregon. Also, NASA will be filming the eclipse at a number of sites across the country and will have multiple streams on its website. But if you want to see the real thing from the earth, here is a list of eight places that have planned celebrations. Madras, Ore. It is a largely agricultural community of 6,000 people in central Oregon that is attracting a huge amount of attention from eclipse chasers, given its reliably clear summer weather and position in the center of the path of totality. Hotels in Madras have been sold out for years. The Days Inn, in nearby Bend, Ore., was advertising standard rooms at 1,600 a night as of May 1. But officials in Madras say there are still plenty of campsites, and visitors will have a chance to take in live music, check out a superb aviation museum, hike at Smith Rock State Park, and sample brews at dozens of brew pubs in Bend. Casper, Wyo. The community is putting on the Wyoming Eclipse Festival, a five day celebration culminating on Aug. 21. The festival has more than 40 events throughout the city, including races, music concerts and space related exhibits. Also, on Sunday, Aug. 20, Ira Flatow, the host of the public radio show "Science Friday," will give a speech at Casper College's Wheeler Concert Hall titled "Science Is Sexy." On eclipse day, when totality is expected at 11:42 a.m. for 2 minutes 26 seconds, the city will have several viewing events such as Solabration on the Circle, at Bart Rea Learning Circle along the North Platte River, which includes guided yoga, children's activities, breakfast and viewing glasses. The cost is 110 a person plus 33 per car for parking. But it will be tough to find a place to stay. All public campgrounds in the area are sold out, and most hotels are also full. "We're encouraging travelers to consider alternatives such as private land camping or home rentals through sites such as Airbnb," said Anna Wilcox, the executive director of the Wyoming Eclipse Festival. Columbia, S.C. The Total Eclipse Weekend lists more than 50 eclipse events taking place in Columbia from Aug. 18 to 21. One example: Solar 17 at Lake Murray, the city's largest viewing area, will have tents set up, and guests can receive free water and viewing glasses. Totality is expected at 2:41 p.m. for 2 minutes 36 seconds. Charleston, S.C.: Of the more than 100 eclipse events listed on Go Dark Charleston, one of the largest is expected to be Eclipse on a Warship, which takes place on the aircraft carrier and warship museum U.S.S. Yorktown. Visitors will be able to catch the eclipse from the boat's flight deck, where Dr. Christian Iliadis, chairman of the department of physics and astronomy at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, will give a presentation on the eclipse and answer questions. Totality is expected at 2:48 p.m. for between 90 seconds to two and half minutes. A full listing of hotels is available on the city's Convention and Visitors Bureau site. Campsites: Nearly all the hotels in eclipse viewing destinations are sold out the weekend before the eclipse, but some campgrounds still have spots for tents and offer budget friendly accommodations. According to Hipcamp, an online campground booking site, there are more than a 1,000 campsites in the path of totality with availability; most charge 100 or less a night, and many charge less than 50 a night. For a complete list, visit hipcamp.com/discover/eclipse 2017 | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
On the surface, Chelsea's victory against Rennes in the Champions League a few weeks ago was just another of those disposable, check box exercises that litter the group stages of the competition. Chelsea, the heavy favorite the team with superior financial firepower, a deeper squad and broader ambitions cruised to a win. Beyond the score, there seemed little to remember it by. And yet that game, like Tuesday's return match in France, was a rarity not only in the Champions League, but in elite European soccer as a whole. Startlingly, troublingly, these may be the only two games in the Champions League this season in which both teams played a Black goalkeeper: Edouard Mendy, the 28 year old acquired by Chelsea in September, and Alfred Gomis, the man who replaced him at Rennes. Few sports are quite the level playing fields they believe themselves to be. Black quarterbacks were once as rare in the N.F.L. as Black entrants were at tennis championships and golf majors. Soccer, like so many other sports, still struggles for Black representation in leadership roles: There are few Black managers, and even fewer Black executives. Andre Onana, the Ajax goalkeeper, has a story about the time an Italian club informed him that its fans simply would not accept a move to sign a Black goalkeeper. There is another one about a former Premier League manager who, when presented with two potential new recruits, outright dismissed the one who was not white. He did not need to see him play, he said. For most of his career in England, the former goalkeeper Shaka Hislop was aware of the unspoken stereotype that shadowed him, and he still remembers those occasions when it was given voice. Like the day he and his teammates for Trinidad and Tobago were waiting in a New York airport and an immigration officer not quite realizing who he was explained to him, at length, why Black players did not make good goalkeepers. Quite how deep rooted the problem remains, though, is borne out by the figures. Of Europe's five major leagues, France's 20 team Ligue 1 where nine Black goalkeepers featured last season, and eight have already received playing time this year is very much an outlier. The numbers elsewhere are stark. Before last week's international break, 77 goalkeepers had appeared for at least a minute across the Bundesliga, Serie A and La Liga. None of them were Black. Last year, appearances by Black goalkeepers were similarly rare: only two of the 92 men who played goal in Italy and Spain, and only two of the 36 who featured in Germany. The figures in England are almost as striking. While Mendy has quickly established himself at Chelsea, the five other Black goalkeepers currently registered to Premier League squads, including the United States international Zack Steffen at Manchester City, have yet to play in the league. The contrast between the paltry amount of Black goalkeepers and the number of Black outfield players across all of Europe's elite leagues is such that it is hard to write it off as coincidence or the illusion of a momentary snapshot. Black goalkeepers are chronically underrepresented in European soccer. African ones are even more uncommon. Every year, for example, the traditional powerhouse nations of West Africa have dozens of players on rosters in Europe's major leagues. But the first choice goalkeepers of Nigeria, Ivory Coast and Ghana all still play in Africa. And while no African country has produced quite so many elite goalkeepers as Cameroon, which once sent Jacques Songo'o and Thomas N'Kono to play in Spain and Joseph Antoine Bell off to a long career in France, that nation's current No. 1 goalkeeper, Fabrice Ondoa, has not yet left Belgium's top division for one of Europe's marquee leagues. Ondoa's cousin and national teammate Onana does, at least, play in the Champions League for Ajax. But only Senegal, with two goalkeepers Mendy and Gomis playing in the world's biggest club competition, can say with confidence it has two goalkeepers competing at professional soccer's highest level. "There used to be a stigma attached to the idea of a Black quarterback in the N.F.L.," said Tim Howard, the former Everton and United States goalkeeper. "There was this idea that they were not as cerebral." Howard sees an echo of that in the dearth of Black goalkeepers. Soccer has long considered itself a meritocracy at least on the field that has moved beyond old, damaging stereotypes. Dig a little deeper, though, and their pernicious influence remains. Black players are still statistically less likely to play in central or attacking midfield, for example, and are far more likely to be praised by commentators for physical attributes like pace and power than about more intangible qualities like "intelligence" and "leadership." And very rarely, it seems, are they given a chance at the elite European level to play in goal. Mendy accepts that it falls to him to help overturn the stereotype. All he can do, he said, is "show I can really perform at this level, and perhaps change people's mentalities on these things." To those who have had to endure the same prejudices, though, who spent their careers hoping to be an agent of change, that is part of the problem. Hislop, now a commentator for ESPN, zooms in on the case of Jordan Pickford, the current first choice goalkeeper for both Everton and England's national team. Pickford has come under scrutiny in the last few years both for perceived technical flaws in his game and for a tendency toward rashness. "Everyone comes under the spotlight once in a while," Hislop said. The difference is that, whenever Pickford makes a mistake, "nobody uses his performances to proclaim that white players don't make good goalkeepers," Hislop said. If Pickford errs, the only reputation that suffers is his own. He sees a parallel with Black representation in other areas of the sport, too. Hislop cites Les Ferdinand, the director of football at Queens Park Rangers, currently in England's second tier Championship. As soon as he was appointed, Hislop said, Ferdinand knew there was more than just his reputation riding on his performance. "If 80 percent of the white male directors of football in the league are abject failures, that will not stop anyone appointing the next white guy," Hislop said. "But Les had to be outstanding for other Black players to be given a shot." The same applies to goalkeepers, in Hislop's eyes, and creates a self fulfilling cycle. Carlos Kameni, a former Cameroon international who spent the bulk of his career at Espanyol in Spain, said he was confident that the dearth of Black goalkeepers was not "a form of racism." If a goalkeeper is good enough, Kameni said, one of Europe's major clubs will sign him, and he uses Mendy's arrival at Chelsea as supporting evidence. To Kameni, the problem is much simpler. "There are not enough Black goalkeepers who are good enough," he said over a series of WhatsApp messages. Those two things, though, are not unconnected. The problem, Hislop said, is not only that coaches are less likely to give aspiring Black goalkeepers a chance to showcase their talents, but that Black players have fewer role models offering proof that they can succeed. "They do not have an example to follow," he said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
The title character of "My Name Is Lucy Barton," Rona Munro's crystalline stage adaptation of Elizabeth Strout's 2016 novel, is hardly a woman of mystery. On the contrary, as embodied with middle American forthrightness by a perfectly cast Laura Linney, in the production that opened Wednesday at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater, Lucy may be the most translucent figure now on a New York stage. Feelings seem to register on her face before her thoughts have a chance to catch up with them, so that we know when she's hurting or happy almost before she does. A New York writer who grew up in rural Illinois, Lucy Barton is surely someone we can trust to speak plain. What a relief to be in the company, for once, of a thoroughly reliable narrator. And yet mystery truly unfathomable and utterly ordinary is at the center of this deceptively modest Manhattan Theater Club production, which originated in London and is directed with quiet care by Richard Eyre. I'm not referring to the classic suspense making withholding of information that is usually a requisite of entertaining storytelling. But Lucy also knows that full transparency does not equal full knowledge. This is true even when your primary sources are your own heart and mind. "I still am not sure it's a true memory," Lucy says, after describing the sadistic public humiliation of her brother by her father on the streets of a small town. "Except I do know it, I think. I mean: It is true ..." That final affirmation rings slightly hollow. Because of course we can't know the full truth of any person, including our own self. That's part of what makes life so sad; it is an even larger part of what makes life so wondrously fascinating. Every breath of Linney's performance acknowledges this contradiction. Plays adapted as monologues from memoirs and close first person fiction are seldom satisfying onstage. The magic that pulses in a book can disintegrate when these same words are interpreted by a performer who isn't, as it were, on the same page. (When the great actress Vanessa Redgrave performed the great writer Joan Didion's memoir "The Year of Magical Thinking" on Broadway, the result wasn't a doubled greatness, but a dilution of the singular strengths of each.) Linney and Strout, in contrast, are almost seamlessly well matched. Other actresses have beautifully portrayed Strout characters onscreen, notably Frances McDormand in "Olive Kitteridge." But what Linney is being asked to do here is to embody not only a fictional person but also the literary voice that shaped that person. And using the artfully shaded directness she has shown both on film ("You Can Count on Me") and stage ("Sight Unseen," "The Little Foxes"), Linney indeed acts the way that Strout writes. As a storyteller, Strout's Lucy is almost apologetic in her humility. But she is also possessed of an underlying strength that knows that she has had what it takes to not only endure but prevail. The setting of the play is largely a hospital room, evoked in Bob Crowley's set by little more than an institutional chair and bed, with transformative lighting by Peter Mumford. (Video design by Luke Halls, which turns the hospital window into an aperture onto a hazy past, is fine, though I could have done without the intrusive melancholy music.) This is where many years ago, a younger Lucy spent nearly nine weeks of her existence, with a life threatening infection that is never fully identified. Her hospitalization reunites her with the mother she hasn't seen in years. In the scenes that follow, Lucy often becomes her mother or rather Linney becomes Lucy becoming her mother. This is an important distinction to make, since Linney is not trying to create another, autonomous character here. When Lucy speaks as her mother, it's with a sort of descriptive physical shorthand, conjuring sharp edges and a nasal twang. The caricature in the imitation underscores the distance between what Lucy came from and what she has become. But now, in extremis, all Lucy wants is mommy, and she wants mommy to tell her stories. And though she begins reluctantly, Lucy's mother turns out to be a corn country Scheherazade, with successive stories of local women who aspired above their station and usually came to bad ends. They are familiar tales and yet utterly distinctive from one another, with startling details that suggest the perversity of flailing souls who misread their own intentions. "People," Lucy says, wonderingly, after her mother finishes an anecdote about a runaway wife. Her mother echoes, "People." It's a gorgeous moment of fleeting complicity between mother and daughter. As for subjects closer to their Amgash, Ill., home, especially Lucy's tormented father, her mother sidesteps those with discomfort and disapproval. It is for her daughter to fill in those gaps for us, with accounts of the kind of numbing, oppressive and outright abusive existence that so many people accept as a life sentence. Lucy did not, though. Why? Her trajectory from childhood to college, to marriage and motherhood, and ultimately to a career as a successful fiction writer, is fairly conventional in summary. It sounds like one of those inspirational survivor stories, of success against the odds, which are regularly packaged for mass consumption. But Lucy conveys an abiding air of surprise that all this happened to her. Linney's presence here is deferential, almost shy. From the moment she enters, walking quickly and talking briskly, you sense that it requires conscious, self preaching will power for her to tell us all this. But when Lucy says she has become ruthless as those who first knew she wanted to be a writer advised her she would have to be we believe her. This means that the truths she is telling hurt us and her. And they of course aren't the whole truth. But aren't we grateful for the alchemical, unquantifiable mix of factors that allows this woman embodied by this actress, at this moment, in this place to share with us so raptly what she knows, or even thinks she knows? When Lucy says, with a satisfaction that's bigger than happiness, that "all life amazes me," we feel exactly what she means. Tickets Through Feb. 29 at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater; manhattantheatreclub.com. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
WASHINGTON On Jan. 16, 15,000 country music label executives, talent managers, radio D.J.s and fans received an email newsletter announcing that Lee Greenwood, known for his song "God Bless the U.S.A.," would perform at an inaugural celebration. A few weeks later, subscribers to the newsletter, called The Morning Hangover Tipsheet, awoke to an alert that the Grammy Awards will go "country with performances from Little Big Town, Sturgill Simpson, Keith Urban with Carrie Underwood and Maren Morris with Alicia Keys." Several days later readers learned that Kenny Chesney had been sitting with Robert Kraft, the New England Patriots owner, during the Super Bowl. Created in October 2015 by Kurt Bardella, a public relations consultant whose clients have included Breitbart News, The Morning Hangover Tipsheet is an upbeat catchall of country music news: highlights from singers' appearances on talk shows, handmade iPhone videos snapped by Mr. Bardella at concerts, birthday shout outs, upcoming gigs and an occasional piece of self promotion for its creator. Mr. Bardella's name is already familiar to many in this city after his stretch as an aide to Representative Darrell Issa, Republican of California. (It was during that job that Mr. Bardella shared confidential emails related to congressional matters apparently in at bid to burnish his own image, an episode captured in a 2013 article in The New York Times Magazine.) He is also known by those who have seen and heard him as a frequent commentator on CNN, Fox News and NPR, where he speaks as a former Republican insider critical of the Trump administration. He recently appeared on CNN from the network's studio in Nashville, which he travels to a few times a month. But Mr. Bardella, 33, now spends most of his time trying to build the business of The Morning Hangover, hoping his insight into Republican politics and voters will translate into an understanding of the country music industry and its fans. "Nashville and Washington have a lot in common," he said from behind his desk in Washington, citing the backstage handlers and elements of performance. "They are both one company towns." He said he wanted to bring Americans together the music fans, at least and if marketers follow, so much the better. "When you look at what's going on right now in our country, all of the turmoil, conflict and negativity," he said, "I think now more than ever there is a need to build platforms that can unite large groups of people from all walks of life and any geography, around something positive." Though he did not comment for the Times Magazine article, its framed cover hangs on one of his office walls, next to an illustration that accompanied the article, depicting Mr. Bardella juggling phones, BlackBerries and newspapers. Next to it was another frame containing mementos of an Eric Church concert at Madison Square Garden. Mr. Bardella saw his first big country concert in summer 2011, when Mr. Church performed on a bill with Jason Aldean. "I'll never forget that show as long as I live," he said. "They just killed it." In summer 2015, he and his girlfriend (now wife), Miroslava Korenha, traveled to Nashville to see the Rolling Stones perform. Mr. Bardella posted a video of Brad Paisley, the opening act, on YouTube. The clip ended up with 20,000 views, and Mr. Bardella had a new business idea. He poked around LinkedIn to find the names of the big players at most of the major country music labels, management companies and talent agencies in Nashville, adding the big shots to The Hangover's email subscription list. "If your boss is reading something, you probably will too," Mr. Bardella reasoned. Greg Oswald was one of Mr. Bardella's targets. He and his partner, Rob Beckham, run William Morris Endeavor's country music business out of the talent agency's Nashville office, dealing with the careers of dozens of country artists including Mr. Aldean, Garth Brooks and Chris Stapleton. Mr. Oswald is a busy guy ("so damn busy," as he puts it in his Southern drawl). This is why he was surprised last winter when nearly every day he found himself opening The Morning Hangover, which he had never signed up for, written by a guy he had never heard of. "It's quick snippets of news about clients and the Nashville landscape, current stuff that happened last night, television appearances and people's birthday's," Mr. Oswald said. "It's quick and easy and they're making my life a little easier." William Morris Endeavor has since become an occasional paid sponsor of the newsletter. Because Mr. Bardella is seeing shows in the Washington area where The Morning Hangover and the two local country radio stations (WMZQ and WPOC) are the only interested media outlets, he gets special treatment. "I get an hour with them, I get to go on the bus with them, they play me new stuff, I get a level of access and quality of time I would never get in Nashville," he said. And country singers and managers who read his newsletter can trust that Mr. Bardella is going to reward that trust with friendly coverage. "His spin on things, it's such a useful and beneficial thing because he doesn't do the divorce rumors, he doesn't do the slapping someone story," said Mr. Paisley, the country star. He texts Mr. Bardella when he sees him on TV and invites him to hang out at his house in Nashville to talk politics. "Kurt captures the heart of what Nashville is about better than so many people who live and work there." By pulling together country celebrity news for dawn delivery, Mr. Bardella is also helping morning radio programmers and D.J.s to fill their airtime. "Kurt is giving country radio what it needs," Mr. Paisley added, "and radio is the lifeblood of country music." Mr. Bardella has kept his political life mostly separate from his country music one so far. But he and his business partners Scott Tranter and Brian Stobie, who headed the data operation for the presidential campaign of Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida know they are learning more about a voting demographic by noting which song, which singer, which Opry appearance compels a subscriber to click a link. (Next, they are considering newsletters to cover other leisure interests that are popular among those who lean Republican, like CrossFit and Nascar.) It makes perfect sense to Mr. Bardella, who voted for Hillary Clinton, that President Trump connected so ably with this demographic, speaking to them in their language. "You can see why 'Make America Great Again' resonated," he said. "It's basically a lyric in a country song." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
As with all things related to college football at the moment, The Associated Press preseason All America team, which was revealed on Tuesday, might look good only on paper. It included Oregon tackle Penei Sewell, Penn State linebacker Micah Parsons and Pittsburgh defensive tackle Jaylen Twyman along with eight others who won't play football this fall, because either they or their university presidents did not believe it was safe. The announcement became another in the persistent drip of reminders about how tenuous this truncated, diminished college football season remains less than two weeks before it is scheduled to kick off into the teeth of a pandemic. Soon after the All America list was released, Texas Tech announced that it had 21 active coronavirus cases in its football program, and Oklahoma Coach Lincoln Riley told reporters that an entire position group save one player had to stop practicing because of positive tests. And the preseason list came out one day after North Carolina State, which has moved classes online, said it would pause all sports activities after three clusters of cases broke out on campus, including one in athletics. A telling moment about the reckoning that college football is facing came Monday in Tuscaloosa, Ala., where University of Alabama officials reported that they had recorded more than 500 cases since Aug. 19. Clearly, not even public service announcements by Coach Nick Saban about wearing masks in public a protocol he has followed in practice, quipping, "I look like Jesse James robbing a bank" have worked. (Alabama's nearby rival, Auburn, checked in with just over 200 cases in its first week of classes.) The outbreaks in Tuscaloosa prompted Mayor Walt Maddox to shut down bars for 14 days, a two week deprivation of Yellowhammer cocktails that is either the price to be paid for past partying or a sobering reminder that college football really, truly is in jeopardy if college kids don't stop doing college kid things. Many people in town find it "unthinkable not to have football in the fall," Maddox said in an interview on Tuesday. But they had best starting thinking about it. "There's fatigue followed by frustration followed by fear, and we are in the middle of that," Maddox said. "And it's going to be incredibly difficult until there's a vaccine for us to fully escape the shadows of Covid 19." Similar concerns surfaced several hundred miles to the west on Tuesday, as students were returning to class at Louisiana State while Hurricane Laura took aim at the Gulf Coast. Earlier this summer, there was a virus outbreak among L.S.U. football players who visited a Baton Rouge bar when they returned to campus for voluntary workouts. Coach Ed Orgeron said on a Zoom call Tuesday that his players would be prohibited from going to bars during the season and that he had discouraged them from going to parties when they are off from practice on Friday and Saturday night. "Get their girlfriend and go on a date, do what you need to do, take care of your business and go home," Orgeron said. When the Southeastern Conference reconfigured its football schedule this summer, the start date was pushed back to Sept. 26, creating more time for its schools to get a better grasp on the virus but leaving the conference with only one open week to make up games that might be postponed. The Big 12 will also begin conference play on Sept. 26, but the Atlantic Coast Conference will start games on Sept. 10 to give its teams flexibility. Those bye weeks may come in handy at North Carolina State, where administrators, coaches and trainers are grappling with a slippery question: If practice is shut down for, say, another week or so, will there be enough time for the players to get into proper physical condition to play their scheduled opener on Sept. 12 at Virginia Tech? (Texas Tech, which is continuing to practice despite its outbreak, is scheduled to open its season on Sept. 12 against Houston Baptist University.) Since the N.B.A. and M.L.B. returned from long layoffs, there has been a spike in injuries particularly in baseball, where pitchers have blamed a limited ramp up to their delayed season. Though the shutdowns of college football practices have not been nearly as long, the physical demands of the sport are generally more stringent. Also, uncertainties remain about residual effects of the coronavirus particularly myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart that contributed to the Big Ten and Pac 12 conferences' decisions not to play football this fall. A cardiologist at Ohio State is nearing publication of a study in which nearly 15 percent of athletes who contracted the virus showed signs of myocarditis when tested with a cardiac M.R.I. One athlete coming to terms with those consequences is Mikele Colasurdo, a 19 year old freshman quarterback at Georgia State, who is sitting out this season because doctors discovered his heart had become inflamed after he contracted the virus. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
For years, Hudson Yards seemed unlikely to live up to its own hype. Rapturously heralded as New York's soon to be coolest new neighborhood, it changed only slowly starting in 2005, when its industrial far West Side location was rezoned to encourage a different kind of development. Its 45 square blocks continued to look much the way they had for decades: a mishmash of rail yards, tunnel ramps and parking lots. "When we started, it was like, 'Will anything ever happen here?' " said Michael Meola, a real estate consultant who helped City Hall shape the desired look and feel of Hudson Yards in the very beginning, serving from 2006 to 2008 as vice president for development of the Hudson Yards Development Corporation, the entity overseeing the project. Now, as the recession fades and squabbles about how to proceed are resolved, In the last few months, warehouses have been cleared for buildings and parks. Workers are finishing a subway station. The third and last leg of the High Line, looping from West 30th to West 34th Street, will be just one of many green spaces in the neighborhood. And in a place that has long been home to a suburban style McDonald's drive through window, a market will open to sell grass fed sirloin and other delicacies to an upscale clientele. The biggest change is on the residential side, as the city's largest developers undertake major apartment projects, some of which have been waiting to get off the ground for years. The roll call includes the Extell Development Company, the Related Companies, Glenwood Management, Silverstein Properties, Brookfield Office Properties and the Moinian Group. From 2005 to 2011, about 6,000 apartments were built in what is considered the Hudson Yards zone, roughly running from 8th to 12th Avenue and from 30th to 42nd Street. But most of the new buildings avoided the neighborhood's heart in favor of its eastern fringes. Since 2012, another 3,500 units in the thick of the neighborhood have opened or begun construction, or are about to, according to developers, brokers and city officials. Those 10,000 or so new and planned units put the area halfway to the 20,000 mark, the number that officials say it can support. But given both the sizzling rental market and the oversaturated commercial market, there could yet be even more housing: a movement is afoot to tweak the zoning rules in that direction. For some, the glittering high rises and carefully designed green spaces have come at a price. Ann Warren owns the Cupcake Cafe on Ninth Avenue and 40th Street, which has been in business since 1988. She was forced out of her apartment, on 35th Street near 11th Avenue, when the city used eminent domain to take her building for a new park in Hudson Yards. "I could see somebody thinking of this area as underutilized," said Ms. Warren, who moved with the city's help to a walk up on 10th Avenue, "but I certainly liked seeing the blue sky." Still, she acknowledged, at a time when no area seems to go undiscovered for too long, "I guess all this was inevitable." Despite its status as the city's most ambitious effort since Battery Park City, most people at the moment could not locate Hudson Yards on a map. But as it continues its transition past the concept stages into reality, there is at last a sense it is coming into its own. "Hudson Yards was a long range plan when nobody believed in long range plans," Mr. Meola said. "But we're finally reaching a critical mass." Developers are not only coming on strong, they're thinking as big as the rezoning will allow. Extell, like some of its competitors, controls several parcels in the area. Its first apartment building will be 555 10th Avenue, a 50 story rental at West 41st Street with 600 units, a pair of swimming pools and a two lane bowling alley, said Gary Barnett, Extell's chief executive. Foundations were poured in March; 2016 is the expected completion date. Units will rent for around 100 a square foot, which is on par with 42nd Street properties like MiMA, from the Related Companies, Mr. Barnett said. Extell is also planning apartments on a block through site between 9th and 10th Avenues on 37th Street. Possibly to include rentals and condos, it probably won't start construction for another year. "It's like a chicken and egg situation," Mr. Barnett said. "You've got to get the tenants to build the neighborhood, and you've got to build the neighborhood to get the tenants." Since the fall, Brookfield Office Properties has been building at 425 West 31st Street, the first leg of Manhattan West, a 5.4 million square foot mixed use project on a two block site on Ninth Avenue between 31st and 33rd Streets. In addition to office space, Manhattan West will have a 57 story tower with 900 rental units, though Brookfield has configured the building with two elevator banks in case it decides to spin some of those units off as condos, said Philip Wharton, the company's senior vice president for development. Condos are also envisioned for 3 Hudson Boulevard, a 72 story office tower by the Moinian Group at 11th Avenue and 34th Street. In an unusual combination for New York (allowed by the area's zoning), the 150 condos will be under the same roof as offices; an anchor office tenant is still wanting. "I'm keeping this flexible," said Joseph Moinian, the firm's chief executive. Moinian has revived a dormant project at 605 West 42nd Street, a rental that is to have 1,191 units, including studios and apartments with one, two and three bedrooms. Foundations were poured in February for the 500 million project, which is expected to open in 2015, said Mr. Moinian, who also built the Atelier Condos next door. So eager are some developers to tap the Hudson Yards housing market that they are pressing City Hall to amend zoning to allow more apartments. Silverstein Properties, owner of a 90,000 square foot site on 11th Avenue and 41st Street that once contained a Mercedes dealership, wants to build more housing there than is now permitted, according to industry sources. And that's not even counting the Related Companies, which along with Oxford Properties Group controls the 26 acres of the old rail yards, a six block site that in many ways has become a symbol of the area. In 2005, a proposal to build a football stadium for the Jets on a platform over the yard was defeated. Related and Oxford will spend 15 billion for the mixed use project, to rise mostly over the rail yards, which runs from 10th to 12th Avenue between 30th and 33rd Streets. Much of the early focus will be on commercial development. The first piece will be a 46 story tower; tenants are to include Coach, L'Oreal USA and SAP, the software company. Related's residential goal, 5,000 apartments across eight buildings, will mostly be on the site's western half, which won't be fully developed for years. But Related and Oxford are supposed to break ground in 2014 on their first residence, a 75 story tower at 500 West 31st Street. Designed by the architecture firm Diller, Scofidio Renfro, it will be half condo and half rental, according to Related, which in 2008 was selected to develop the site by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. At 10th Avenue, Related will also soon complete 500 West 30th Street, a 386 unit rental designed by Robert A. M. Stern. Technically just outside the neighborhood, it will still be a notable presence. In 2014, construction will start on another of Related's 10th Avenue rentals, at 530 West 30th Street; it is to have 225 apartments. Many of the residential buildings already populating Hudson Yards are on and around 42nd Street, or clustered on the eastern side, on dense blocks that overlap the garment district. Midmarket hotels have sprung up between Eighth and Ninth Avenues, especially on 40th Street. So have large rental buildings, like the 568 unit Emerald Green, at 320 West 38th Street, and the 199 unit Crystal Green, at 330 West 39th Street, both Glenwood Management properties. But, he added, a possible sign of increased interest in Hudson Yards is the sale of three of the building's eight remaining condos since June 2012. Though new buildings consume much of the attention, the city is hoping that Hudson Yards will also become known for its parks. The third leg of the High Line will traverse the neighborhood from 30th to 34th Street, curving around the rail yards site and extending a short spur across 10th Avenue. Another major addition will be Hudson Park and Boulevard, a midblock strip of green between 10th and 11th Avenues that will connect 33rd and 39th Streets. The city has razed dozens of buildings to make way for it. Brookfield is also including a 1.5 acre plaza as part of its Manhattan West property. Built atop train tracks and Dyer Avenue, it will essentially function as a reconstituted leg of West 32nd Street, for pedestrians only. The T shaped space will also align with New York's main post office, for which a conversion to a train terminal called Moynihan Station has long been planned. "We're kind of the front door of the project," Mr. Wharton said. He described future shops as lining the plaza and also being squeezed into the truck bays that stud the base of the adjacent 450 West 33rd Street, a slope walled building owned by Brookfield. A block away, at the eastern half of the Related site, a much larger green space of six acres will fan out. Designed by Nelson Byrd Woltz, it will have trees encircling a soaring sculpture, according to renderings, though the layout is a work in progress. That site will adjoin another called the "culture shed," a 170,000 square foot indoor outdoor space for exhibitions, film festivals and fashion shows, which will also have an outdoor cafe. The shed, to abut the first Related apartment tower, is to have a roof that rolls out, like a trundle bed, to accommodate larger events although this aspect of the project has not yet received city approval. Some residents worry that when the building extends, it will swallow up parkland. In all, 14 acres of plazas and parks including the section of the High Line that crosses the site are planned for the old rail yard. Though stores will be scattered across the Related site, most will be found on three floors of an eight story structure along 10th Avenue, between the Coach tower and another office building. In look and feel, at least according to the renderings, the retail hub, to open in 2018, will resemble Related's Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle. Additionally, the spur of the High Line jutting over 10th Avenue will connect to the second floor of a 240,000 square foot hotel condo to be developed by Sherwood Equities at 360 10th Avenue, at 30th Street. Sherwood, whose holdings include One and Two Times Square, owns several other large sites in the neighborhood. It doesn't have plans to build on them yet, although a second condo hotel, 12 stories going up at 515 Ninth Avenue and 39th Street, is to be completed by fall, according to New Line Structures, its builder. At the moment, the neighborhood in spots is starved for restaurants. Most offerings, especially west of Ninth Avenue, are of the fast food variety. Which is why Brooklyn Fare, a restaurant opening next month, has generated so much buzz. At 431 West 37th Street, in the Mantena, a year old apartment house, it will be a larger outpost of a Downtown Brooklyn restaurant known for its seafood a dining room accommodating 60 patrons instead of 18. As in Brooklyn, it will be paired with a market that will sell organic beef as well as cheese, bread and produce. Early movers to this area where rush hour can bring blaring traffic jams and the air sometimes smells like hay from the local carriage horse stables have often found it a tough slog. In 2005, James Reardon opened the Hudson Yards Cafe at 450 10th Avenue. He hoped to lure green shirted Jets fans on game days, but when the stadium plan was scrapped, he instead found himself playing host to customers wearing a different type of uniform: that of parking lot attendant. "I will probably end up in an urn on somebody's mantel before Hudson Yards is developed," he joked. And yet, as of a few months ago, he can see clear across to the Javits Center on 11th Avenue from the plate glass windows of his restaurant a good sign, since it means that work on the new neighborhood has begun in earnest. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
The Environmental Protection Agency will indefinitely postpone bans on certain uses of three toxic chemicals found in consumer products, according to an update of the Trump administration's regulatory plans. Critics said the reversal demonstrated the agency's increasing reluctance to use enforcement powers granted to it last year by Congress under the Toxic Substances Control Act. E.P.A. Administrator Scott Pruitt is "blatantly ignoring Congress's clear directive to the agency to better protect the health and safety of millions of Americans by more effectively regulating some of the most dangerous chemicals known to man," said Senator Tom Carper, Democrat of Delaware and the ranking minority member on the Senate Environment and Public Works committee. The E.P.A. declined to comment. In a news release earlier this month, the agency wrote that its "commonsense, balanced approach carefully protects both public health and the environment while curbing unnecessary regulatory burdens that stifle economic growth for communities across the country." Agency officials dropped prohibitions against certain uses of two chemicals from the administration's Unified Agenda of Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions, which details short and long term plans of the federal agencies. The third ban was dropped in the spring edition of that report. The proposed bans targeted methylene chloride and N methylpyrrolidone (NMP), ingredients in paint strippers, and trichloroethylene (TCE), used as a spot cleaner in dry cleaning and as a degreasing agent. Under an overhaul of the Toxic Substances Control Act last year, the E.P.A. initially is reviewing the risks of ten chemicals, including other uses of these three. The updated law is known as the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act, named after the late New Jersey senator who had long championed an overhaul of the loophole ridden toxic substances law. The revised law had strong bipartisan support. The Senate passed the measure on a voice vote; the House approved it 403 to 12. The intention was to give the E.P.A. the authority necessary to require new testing and regulation of thousands of chemicals used in everyday products, from laundry detergents to hardware supplies. Public health experts had been pushing for faster review of methylene chloride based paint strippers after several deaths from inhalation, among them a 21 year old who died recently after stripping a bathtub. It has been several years since the E.P.A. first declared these applications of the three chemicals to be dangerous. The agency itself has found TCE "carcinogenic to humans by all routes of exposure" and has reported that it causes developmental and reproductive damage. "Potential health concerns from exposure to trichloroethylene, based on limited epidemiological data and evidence from animal studies, include decreased fetal growth and birth defects, particularly cardiac birth defects," agency officials noted in 2013. Methylene chloride is toxic to the brain and liver, and NMP can harm the reproductive system. Michael Dourson, President Trump's nominee to oversee the E.P.A.'s chemical safety branch, in 2010 represented the Halogenated Solvents Industry Alliance before the E.P.A., which was considering restrictions on TCE. Mr. Dourson, who withdrew his name from consideration last week, had been working as an E.P.A. adviser while awaiting confirmation. The agency did not respond to a query about whether Mr. Dourson had been involved in the evaluation of TCE. The E.P.A. now describes the enforcement actions regarding TCE, methylene chloride and NMP as "long term actions'' without a set deadline. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
Dr. Lawrence L. Weed, who introduced a system for organizing patient data in the 1950s that is now used in hospitals all over the world, and who led the way in developing a computerized method for aiding in the diagnosis and treatment of diseases, died on June 3 at his home in Underhill, Vt. He was 93. In the early 1950s, Dr. Weed was a professor of medicine and pharmacology at Yale, where he spent most of his time doing research on microbial genetics. On occasion, though, he would accompany students on their hospital rounds and watch as they struggled to interpret the often chaotic patient notes left by doctors. It was a sobering experience. "I realized then and it was very upsetting that they weren't getting any of the discipline of scientific training on those wards," Dr. Weed told The Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association in 2014. "When I pick up a chart that is a bunch of scribbles, I say: 'That's not art. It certainly isn't science. Now, God knows what it is.'" He responded by creating the problem oriented medical record, or POMR, a way of recording and monitoring patient information. Two of its features have become nearly universal in health care: the compiling of problem lists and the SOAP system for writing out notes in a patient chart. SOAP stands for subjective, objective, assessment and plan, reflecting the steps that doctors and other health care providers should follow as they move from an initial patient encounter to tests, diagnosis and treatment. Dr. Weed presented his new method in a two part article in The New England Journal of Medicine, "Medical Records That Guide and Teach." Published in 1968, it is one of the most frequently cited articles in the field of medical informatics. "Saying that POMR was revolutionary almost understates it," Dr. Charles Safran, the chief of the division of clinical informatics at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School, told The Economist in 2005. "There's probably no one who has more fundamentally affected the way we organize our work than Larry Weed. He fundamentally changed American medicine." With a grant from the Department of Health Education and Welfare (now Health and Human Services), Dr. Weed developed a computerized version of POMR that came to be known as Promis the Problem Oriented Medical Information System. This led him, in the 1980s, to another innovation: "knowledge coupling" software linked to a database of medical knowledge derived from thousands of journal articles. Doctors could input the information gathered in the POMR process and then receive a list of possible diagnoses and treatment options, with arguments for and against each option. Many doctors took a dim view of Dr. Weed's innovation, regarding it as a challenge to their professional expertise. Dr. Weed saw it as a solution to an intractable problem the unrealistic expectation that one brain, no matter how well trained, can store and apply the medical knowledge required to make proper decisions. Lawrence Leonard Weed was born on Dec. 26, 1923, in Troy, N.Y. His father, Ralph, was a salesman. His mother, the former Bertha Krause, was a homemaker. Lawrence, known as Larry, was a gifted pianist with a fine baritone voice, but an interest in science led him to earn a chemistry degree from Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y., in 1945. After receiving a medical degree from Columbia University in 1947, he took mixed internships in medicine, chest medicine, surgery and clinical pathology at University Hospital in Cleveland and Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan. Before completing a residency at Johns Hopkins University, he did basic research in biochemistry and microbial genetics at Duke University, the University of Pennsylvania and Walter Reed Army Medical Center (now the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center) in Washington. He then accepted a double appointment at Yale in pharmacology and medicine. In 1952 he married Laura Brooks, a fellow intern in Cleveland with a medical degree from Yale. She died in 1997. In addition to his son Lincoln, he is survived by two other sons, Christopher and Jonathan; two daughters, Dinny Adamson and Becky Weed; a sister, Nancy Weed; two granddaughters; and two stepgranddaughters. Dr. Weed's eagerness to bring scientific rigor to medical record keeping led him in 1956 from Yale to Bangor, Me., where he accepted an offer to direct the new medical internship and residency program at Eastern Maine General Hospital. There he worked out the concepts of POMR. After four years he became an assistant professor of microbiology at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, where, beginning in 1964, he also directed the outpatient clinic of Cleveland Metropolitan General Hospital. In his spare time, he sang with the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus under Robert Shaw. It was in Cleveland that he began working with computers to develop the Promis system, which he took to the University of Vermont in 1969, where he became professor of community medicine. In the early 1980s he left to start the Problem Knowledge Coupler Corporation, which developed knowledge coupling software as well as a PC based version of the POMR. He left the company in 2006. It was acquired in 2012 by the Atlanta based company Sharecare, whose AskMD app uses Dr. Weed's coupling software. Dr. Weed could be a prickly ambassador for his ideas. He was not shy about criticizing American medical education he proposed that traditional medical schools be radically restructured and went a few steps beyond tough love in telling doctors about their limitations. At one medical conference, as he argued for the superiority of his computer programs over traditional medical expertise, an unhappy surgeon rose to protest. Surely, the surgeon said, experience and intuition counted for something. Dr. Weed met him halfway. "Well, I'm not saying you don't have intuitive feelings," he recalled answering in The Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association. "What I'm suggesting is that they may be worthless." Dr. Weed was the author of "Medical Records, Medical Education, and Patient Care: The Problem Oriented Record as a Basic Tool" (1969); "Your Health Care and How to Manage It: Your Health, Your Problems, Your Plans, Your Progress" (1975); "Knowledge Coupling: New Premises and New Tools for Medical Care and Education" (1991); and "Managing Medicine" (1993). | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
Hospitals around the country are scrambling to stockpile vials of a critical drug even postponing operations or putting off chemotherapy treatments because the country's only two suppliers have run out. Sodium bicarbonate is the simplest of drugs its base ingredient, after all, is found in most kitchen cabinets but it is vitally important for all kinds of patients whose blood has become too acidic. It is found on emergency crash carts and is used in open heart surgery and as an antidote to certain poisons. Patients whose organs are failing are given the drug, and it is used in some types of chemotherapy. A little sodium bicarbonate can even take the sting out of getting stitches. "As I talk to colleagues around the country, this is really a problem we're all struggling with right now," said Mark Sullivan, the head of pharmacy operations at Vanderbilt University Hospital and Clinics in Nashville. Hospitals have been struggling with a dwindling supply of the medicine for months one of the suppliers, Pfizer, has said that it had a problem with an outside supplier but that the situation worsened a few weeks ago. Pfizer and the other manufacturer, Amphastar, have said they don't know precisely when the problem will be fixed, but it will not be before June for some forms of the drug, and in August or later for other formulations. The shortage of sodium bicarbonate solution is only the latest example of an inexpensive hospital staple's supply dwindling to a critical level. In recent years, hundreds of generic injectable drugs have become scarce, vexing hospital administrators and government officials, who have called on the manufacturers to give better notice when they are about to run short. Without an abundant supply of sodium bicarbonate, some hospitals are postponing elective procedures or making difficult decisions about which patients merit the drug. At Providence Hospital in Mobile, Ala., supplies ran so low a few weeks ago that Gino Agnelly, the head pharmacist, embarked on a desperate scavenger hunt, culling vials from the 50 crash carts that were stowed around the hospital. Mr. Agnelly said he had been getting by with a supply of about 175 vials when a patient with a heart problem suddenly needed 35 of them. He called a meeting of doctors and administrators, and they came to a difficult conclusion: They would need to postpone the seven open heart operations that were scheduled for the next week. One critically ill patient was sent to a hospital across town because his surgery could not be delayed, Mr. Agnelly said. Pfizer sent an emergency shipment a few days later, but the continuing shortage has forced Mr. Agnelly to make hard choices. "Does the immediate need of a patient outweigh the expected need of a patient?" he asked. "It's a medical and ethical question that goes beyond anything I've had to experience before." Erin Fox, a drug shortage expert at the University of Utah, said unexpected shortfalls of critical medicines had become routine. In 2014, a shortage of saline solution salt water sent hospitals into a similar panic. This is not even the first time that the supply of sodium bicarbonate has run out. The last shortage occurred in 2012. "It is unbelievably frustrating," Ms. Fox said. "It makes me so mad that we are out of these really basic lifesaving medications." Mr. Sullivan, of Vanderbilt, said the shortages typically occurred with cheaper, "bread and butter" hospital drugs, leading him to question whether manufacturers were investing enough in the production process needed to make a reliable supply. "The specialty, high dollar medicines I don't ever seem to see them experiencing shortages with those products," he said. Kuldip Patel, the associate chief pharmacy officer at Duke University Hospital in North Carolina, said he had become accustomed to the juggling act required when an old standby was suddenly unavailable. "It's not like we haven't been here before," he said. Mr. Patel said the problem had worsened just after Pfizer went from shipping its generic injectable products from five regional warehouses to one national distribution center, part of a reorganization after its acquisition of the drugmaker Hospira. "That's when it all derailed," he said. A spokesman for Pfizer said the shortage of sodium bicarbonate was not related to the change in distribution, but was due to a manufacturing delay caused by an outside supplier. The spokesman, Thomas Biegi, said the delay had not been caused by a problem with the supplier of the raw ingredient, sodium bicarbonate, but he added that he could not divulge further details, citing confidentiality agreements. Regardless of the reason, Mr. Patel said, drug companies should do a better job of creating contingency plans for keeping vital drugs in supply, especially during transitions. "In situations like this, where a major manufacturer is buying out another major manufacturer of critically needed drugs, there has to be a detailed backup plan in case things don't go smoothly," Mr. Patel said. Mr. Biegi said Pfizer was working hard to fix the problem. "Pfizer has a dedicated team focused on working with suppliers to address this and have already taken several steps to expedite supply recovery of this drug," he said. Andrea Fischer, a spokeswoman for the Food and Drug Administration, said companies were asked to notify the agency of problems, but "there are no requirements that firms keep emergency supplies or that they stock up prior to any changes they make." She said the agency was in close contact with the companies and "exploring all possible solutions to this critical shortage, including temporary importation, to help with this shortage until it's resolved." Ms. Fischer said the agency had recently made progress in preventing supply problems. In 2011, it tracked 251 new shortages, an all time high. But by 2016, she said, there were only 23 new shortages. Currently, more than 50 drugs are classified as being in shortage on the F.D.A. website. "Unfortunately," she said, "not all shortages can be prevented." The shortage problem has been traced to a confluence of factors, ranging from problems with suppliers of the raw ingredients to trouble at the aging facilities where many of the most inexpensive generics are made. Consolidation in the industry has also reduced the number of companies producing certain drugs, so that when one company has a problem, the other quickly runs out as well. Ms. Fischer said the F.D.A. gave the approval process a priority status when a company wanted to enter a market that was in short supply. Some large hospitals, such as Duke, house so called compounding pharmacies, which can make custom batches of generics like sodium bicarbonate. Mr. Patel said that Duke was in the process of doing just that, but that setting up the process took time. The solution must be pure and sterile because it is injected into the bloodstream. At Providence Hospital in Mobile, Mr. Agnelly said he was so desperate that he had done an internet search to investigate if he could safely mix his own batch with some baking soda and water. The hospital does not have a compounding pharmacy. He discovered just one research paper, dating to 1947, when doctors did exactly that during World War II. "This is not new technology. These are not expensive materials," Mr. Agnelly said, adding that he quickly abandoned the idea. "It's not what you would expect in the First World." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
The legacies of the horse in New York include the stable street, where the well to do isolated their private stables to avoid the smells and noise, inflicting them instead on their lesser neighbors. Although the mansions they served are in most cases gone, a few of these stable streets survive, and one of the most significant is 69th Street, from Lexington to Third Avenues. If there was a formal mechanism by which streets devoted to stables were established, it has yet to be discovered. It seems that mansion owners found a vulnerable spot, where the land was vacant, or the adjacent owners seemed powerless to oppose them. Sometimes the mansioneer underestimated the reaction, as with John Jacob Astor, who proposed building a stable at Madison and 65th Street, next door to Temple B'Nai Jeshurun. But there the congregation made such a stink that even the Astor millions had to pull back. In 1880, Heber Bishop, a banker, found no particular opposition when he bought a plot of land on the north side of 69th, just east of Lexington, a half vacant block with a few middling brownstones. Bishop lived on Fifth near 70th Street, so this was an agreeable distance from his house, and he built a three story stable at 147 East 69th. As for the neighbors on the south side of the street, they were not likely to protest: That was the Foundling Asylum run by the Sisters of Charity, which accepted infants, no questions asked as to parentage. And the Sisters did not have clean hands equine wise; they had already built a stable on the Third Avenue corner. Within just a few years, others followed Bishop, like John Sloane, a member of the department store family, who built 159 East 69th, and Adolph Kuttroff, a coal dealer, who built his little two story stable at Nos. 153 157, now the Urasenke Chanoyu Center. Sloane lived on Fifth near 70th, Kuttroff at Madison and 69th. Both are rich red brick with brownstone and neat little touches, like the intricate ironwork on the circular windows. Another stable on the block, at 161 East 69th Street, was built in the 1880s for an unidentified owner and since remodeled. The New York Times carried an ad in 1891 for a "handsome, stylish pair bright bay carriage horses; 15 hands; can be driven double or single" to be seen at that address. In 1896 came the most remarkable stable on the Upper East Side, when the streetcar millionaire Charles T. Yerkes, whose large house was at 69th and Fifth, had the otherwise little known Frank Drischler design a three story high stable with a broad, double height arch, gabled front at No. 149. After 1900 automobile use grew phenomenally; the Bishop stable was remodeled into a garage in 1912. But it had been in use for automobiles before that: just in advance of the renovation, The New York Evening Telegram carried an ad for "an Isotta Fraschini Car with Rothschild limousine body for sale by private party; very reasonable" at that address. The new generation of purpose built garages were not nearly as picturesque as those that housed animals. The first of these came in 1909, built at No. 167 by George Heye, the American Indian collector who established what is now the National Museum of the American Indian at the U.S. Custom House. The 1910 census marks the end of the horse drawn era. There were grooms, coachmen, a stable manager but also a few chauffeurs, like Gustav A. Swenson, 25, who arrived from Sweden in 1902 and lived in the Hoe family garage at No. 163. Although the stable hands ranged in age up to their 40s, none of the chauffeurs were more than 25. In 1946, Arthur and Sidney Diamond began assembling stables on the block, for which they finally filed plans for a 12 story apartment house in 1961 although they did not build. By that time most garages had been converted to dwellings and studios, like Mark Rothko's at No. 157, where he died by his own hand in 1970. A walker in the city has to pause on 69th Street to puzzle out what gives it its unusual character. Yes, there are the stables themselves, a picturesque streetscape of Georgian style cornices, Victorian red brick and Romanesque arches. And the big white brick Imperial House of the 1950s is set back on the south side of the block behind a leafy screen. But there is still something else. Most of the stables have preserved their curb cuts, even ones that no longer keep vehicles. This presents drivers with a de facto no parking strip, and the parking lane is usually half empty. Greeted by signs on the stables like "Don't Even Think of Parking Here," cars only make short stops, and so they have a transitory air. This varies from most other side streets, and breaks the usual steel barrier of parked cars, which tightly girdle almost all other blocks in New York. Indeed, permission to store cars on the street was granted in the 1950s and early photographs show the open look, which was the character of New York before cars took over, and is another legacy of this stable street. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
LONDON "Where is your passport? I want your documentation now," demanded a thickset uniformed soldier with a heavy German accent, sitting on a velvet pouf in a shadowy subterranean nightclub. On the left, a pack of scowling punks in leathers leaned against a graffitied concrete wall. To the right, hordes of beautiful women in glitter and shoulder pads lounged, sipping cups of Champagne. "Your passport, Fraulein," the Stasi soldier said again. Getting into parties during fashion week is often tough, but this took the experience to new extremes. Presumably, that was the point, at least as envisioned by Love magazine editors and Marc Jacobs, the party hosts who chose 1989 Berlin just before the wall came down as the theme for London Fashion Week's biggest bash, held Monday night at Loulou's, a members only club in Mayfair. After navigating the crowds of paparazzi outside, guests descended a rickety staircase before being sent either east or west of a giant model Berlin Wall that divided the cavernous dance floor in two. On one side, a clutch of starry attendees including Bella Hadid and Winnie Harlow, the makeup artist Charlotte Tilbury, the photographer Mert Alas and Mr. Jacobs, alongside the party co hosts Katie Grand and Poppy Delevingne, nibbled on halibut, red cabbage and potato salad behind velvet ropes. On the other, hordes of models, designers and industry hangers on sipped Moscow Mules whipped up by red waistcoated, handlebar mustachioed waiters at a Checkpoint Charlie bar (only if you had the right papers, of course). The club was heaving. The music was deafening. People were letting very loose. "It's just blowing my mind this level of insanity is exactly what a fashion week should be," said the young British designer Matty Bovan, fresh from his well received catwalk show on Saturday, who later took to the DJ decks with a friend and fellow designer, Charles Jeffrey. Mr. Bovan was clad in his signature New Romantic wares, squished between the photographer Ellen von Unwerth and his mother. "I owe everything to her, she has been so endlessly supportive of me, of course I was going to bring her along," he said. Mr. Bovan was not the only one to have a parent as a party accessory. Anna Cleveland, the model daughter of the model superstar Pat Cleveland, had brought along her father, Paul van Ravenstein. Frances Bean Cobain spoke intensely with her mother, the singer Courtney Love (both wearing Marc Jacobs). Then the neon lights flashed and the music was replaced by scratchy recordings of speeches, culminating in the one in 1987 in which President Reagan demanded that Mikhail Gorbachev, leader of the then Soviet Union, "tear down this wall." The 21st century party gods heard, and down came the wall, opening up the dance floor. Cara Delevingne and Clara Paget, fresh from the Burberry show, huddled in one corner with Amber Heard, Johnny Depp's ex wife. Kate Moss, framed by her sister, Lottie, and her beau, Count Nikolai von Bismarck, sat in another. And Princess Beatrice, who was to host a breakfast for the fashion industry at Buckingham Palace bright and early Tuesday morning, held court in a third. There was no sign of Madonna, the latest Love cover star. But her 16 year old son, Rocco Ritchie, was there, only to be bundled out of the club at 11 p.m. It was a school night, after all. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
The leather tour from Elesta Travel is an opportunity to learn about Italy's long history of producing artisan leather goods. The two and a half hour guided excursion begins at the Bagatti Valsecchi Museum, which has a notable collection of handmade Italian leather goods from the 15th and 16th centuries. Also included is a visit to a shoe atelier where artisans continue to maintain the centuries old tradition of hand stitching footwear; there is an option to visit an additional atelier specializing in precious leathers like ostrich. Information at info elestatravel.it; 350 euros, or 400, for up to eight people. Fashion fans may appreciate the Altagamma Ermenegildo Zegna experience, offered in partnership with the Altagamma Foundation, a group that promotes Italian brands. The excursion is at the Ermenegildo Zegna flagship store in the center of Milan. Guests will meet the director of retail, Vittorio Proietti, who will relay the history of the fashion house, which is more than a century old. Then, in the store's couture room, they will see a private fashion show highlighting the latest Zegna men's and women's collections. Similar Altagamma tours are available in Milan for six other brands including the fashion house Gucci and the housewares company Alessi. Prices from 1,200 euros. Book by emailing info altagammaitalianexperiences.com. Milan has a growing microbrewery scene, and with the Milan Beers and Bites Walking Tour, offered by Viator, travelers head to the city's Navigli district to learn about, and try, Italian microbrews. A guide takes them to four bars along and near the Naviglio Grande canal for tastes of lagers, IPAs, wheat beers and more. Samples of fried fish and local cheese are included. The price is 64 a person; book by calling 855 275 5071. Children between 5 and 14 are the focus of Perfetto Traveler's Milanese History Lesson for Kids tour. Highlights include a scavenger hunt at Sforza Castle, which has frescoed ceilings by da Vinci; a soccer game at Parco Sempione, where locals gather to unwind; a visit to "The Last Supper," where a guide will tell a story about how the painting was created; a trip to a popular bakery to sample local desserts; and a blind taste test of gelatos. The tour can be tailored to the ages of the participating children. From 630 euros for two people. Book by emailing info perfettotraveler.com or by calling 212 340 0306. Hotels in Milan are also offering new tours, although most are just for overnight guests. The Mandarin Oriental, Milan, has an excursion to the Pinacoteca di Brera art museum on Mondays, when the museum is closed to the public; the tour is led by one of Pinacoteca's educators or curators, who tailor the visit according to the interests of guests. Tickets are 250 euros a person (the Mandarin donates the fee to the museum). In addition, for guests staying in a suite, the hotel is offering a private tour with one of the museum's restorers, who will relay the process of restoring the Pinacoteca's masterpieces like the oil painting "Lo Sposalizio Della Vergine" by Raphael. Tickets, 600 euros a person; nightly rates from 590 euros. Reserve by emailing momln reservations mohg.com. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
Kara Young stood out in the ensemble of Stephen Adly Guirgis's "Halfway Bitches Go Straight To Heaven." "She is a mighty force," the playwright said. In the summer of 2008, Kara Young spent a month studying Thai classical theater in Thailand. "Little did I know what the expletive I was getting myself into," the actress said in a recent Zoom conversation. "It was like a freaking boot camp! A week into it, they go 'We're going to stretch you proper.' I was the first person: 'I volunteer! Stretch me!' " Up and moving, she started to vividly re enact the experience. The Zoom window was too small, too square to contain her. "A guy put his feet into my thighs," she continued, "he takes my fingers and puts them all the way back and then I do a split and my legs are against the wall. I was like, 'Mom and Dad, come and get me!' " Such vitality will be familiar to those who have seen Young Off Broadway, whether as an aspiring poet in Stephen Adly Guirgis's "Halfway Bitches Go Straight to Heaven," a white gay couple's troubled daughter in Jeff Augustin's "The New Englanders" or a lesbian teen crushing on a certain screen star in C.A. Johnson's "All the Natalie Portmans." Describing that last performance in The New York Times, Alexis Soloski wondered how Young could "fit what feels like a mountain of blood, heart, sinew and febrile emotional response into a frame that can't stretch past five feet." That her charisma translates online is fortuitous since the actress' next project is the title role in a reading of Eisa Davis's "Bulrusher" on Sept. 17 at 7 p.m. The lyrical coming of age tale, a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2007, also stars Andre Holland and Corey Stoll; it is part of the playwright Paula Vogel's Bard at the Gate project, which aims to bring attention to undersung scripts. Over the phone, Davis recalled seeing Young in "Halfway Bitches." "I was just like, 'What?'" she said, laughing. "She's just such a live wire in that." "I was surprised to see her take this new tack on it," said Davis, who also directed the reading. "She played her as this very bizarre, very feral " She interrupted herself. "Of course, whenever you're talking about Black people, and you start talking about animals, there's this racist shadow that looms. But what I see when I talk about feral is something quite related to where Bulrusher comes from as a person: She's really been raised by this land." Young, on the other hand, has been raised by New York City. The first generation daughter of Belizean immigrants her father a captain at the Rainbow Room, her mother a hospital administrator she was speaking from her apartment in Harlem, three blocks from where she was born. After a semester long stint at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania, she high tailed it home and spent a year at the City College of New York before moving on to the New York Conservatory for Dramatic Arts. Just as important was pounding the pavement. At one of her many subsistence jobs, she worked the wedding of Kara Young, a model who dated Donald J. Trump in the 1990s. "I went up to her mother, and I was like, 'Yo, we've got the same name!' " Young said. "She introduced me this tiny cater waiter of a person, hair slicked back in a ponytail, with the little bow tie to the whole family. What a world." Perhaps due to her petite frame and the wide set eyes that open up her face, Young has played many characters younger sometimes much younger than she is. (She declined to give her age. "I call myself the Harlem fairy," she said. "I'm like the Black Tinker Bell.") "I'm small statured, I've always been told I'm a physical actor, and young people have a different connection to the world," Young said when asked about playing teenagers. "When you're coming into yourself, so many things are changing. Your body is changing, your voice is changing, people are looking at you differently, they're responding to you differently. On top of that, being a Black woman, a Black person, a Black human there's so many other layers." A key encounter was with Patricia Ione Lloyd ("Eve's Song"), who cast her in her short piece "The Reoccurring Resurrection of Sweet Latisha Jesus Brown" in 2012. Young played a tween. That same year, she began her association with the Labyrinth Theater Company by participating in one of its workshops. She joined the ensemble in 2017, and two years later appeared in "Halfway Bitches" (a coproduction between Labyrinth and the Atlantic Theater Company. ) Even in a powerhouse cast, Young made an indelible, heart wrenching impression as Little Melba Diaz, a young girl trying to use her art to survive on the streets of New York. "Kara really took what was on the page, plus our conversations about her character that didn't get on the page, and she just flew with it," Guirgis wrote in an email. "She is a mighty force." This empathic connection can be painful, but it can also have a liberating side. During our conversation, Young often returned to how much she loves getting to know the people she portrays. "I love rehearsal it's my favorite thing in the world," she said. "It's an actual playground for me: I'm available to play with people. You don't call it that, but it's magic." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
When Eduardo Vilaro took the job of the artistic director of Ballet Hispanico in 2009, he left the company he had founded in Chicago, the Luna Negra Dance Theater, in the hands of the Spanish choreographer Gustavo Ramirez Sansano. Five years later, with Luna Negra having folded, Mr. Vilaro and Mr. Sansano have crossed paths again. On Tuesday at the Joyce Theater, Ballet Hispanico unveiled its first commission for Mr. Sansano, "El Beso," which was also his New York debut as a choreographer. The Chicago press often praised Mr. Sansano for his audacious work, and justifiably so, if this propulsive piece is a representative sample. "El Beso," which toys with variations on the kiss romantic, platonic, relished, relinquished, dodged has its share of cute, gimmicky fun. But it is also full of bold, astute, unexpected choices, from the absurdity of its bombastic music (a medley of circa 1900 Spanish composers, including Amadeo Vives and Tomas Breton) to the velocity, variety and intricacy of Mr. Sansano's movement. Even when you can see the punch line coming, the delivery makes it worth waiting for. "El Beso" begins in darkness with an orchestral swell portending something big. Alas, the lights come up on no one but a dazed Johan Rivera Mendez, looking small in shorts, socks and a tank top beneath Luis Crespo's hovering circular tapestry. (More fanciful costumes are to come: pleated and cutaway creations that move gorgeously with the dancers, billowing around their sinewy frames, by the Venezuelan designer Angel Sanchez.) Once he sputters into motion, like an engine revving up the piece, motion never ceases until the end, when he finds himself alone again. In the intervening episodes, other dancers burst onto the scene, in couples or small groupings or en masse. At one point a kind of organismal cluster shuffles its way across the stage limbs reaching out to touch other limbs as if trying to keep itself from flying apart. Every manner of kiss cheek, air, French inserts itself into Mr. Sansano's choreography, with its crooked lines and jittery gaits and calligraphic flourishes. Joshua Preston's lighting cuts in and out at curious times as the victorious music keeps on going. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
Colorectal cancer is typically considered a disease of aging most new cases are diagnosed in people over age 50. But even as the rates decrease in older adults, scientists have documented a worrisome trend in the opposite direction among patients in their 20s and 30s. Now, data from national cancer registries in Canada add to the evidence that colorectal cancer rates are rising in younger adults. The increases may even be accelerating. "We thought that this trend would slow down or level off after people first noticed it a few years ago," said Darren Brenner, a molecular cancer epidemiologist at the University of Calgary and lead author of the new study, published on Wednesday in the journal JAMA Network Open. "But every year we keep seeing the increase in colorectal cancer among young people, and it is very alarming." Between 2006 and 2015, the last year for which figures are available, colorectal cancer rates increased by 3.47 percent among Canadian men under age 50, Dr. Brenner and his colleagues found. And from 2010 to 2015, rates increased by 4.45 percent among women under age 50. Yet colon and rectal cancers have been steadily decreasing among older adults in Canada because of increased awareness of the disease and widespread use of screening tests like colonoscopies, which can identify and remove colon polyps before cancer develops. Like the Science Times page on Facebook. Sign up for the Science Times newsletter. The pattern is quite similar to that observed by researchers in the United States. Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin reported last week that the proportion of newly diagnosed colorectal patients under age 50 rose from 10 percent in 2004 to 12.2 percent in 2015. Younger patients were also likely to have advanced cases more often than older patients. Over all, the risk of colorectal cancer is still much lower in younger adults than in older ones. But the continuing uptick means that millennials will most likely carry an elevated risk as they get older. "They'll carry that risk with them, so that they have a much higher risk than their parents when they reach their 50s and 60s," said Rebecca Siegel, an epidemiologist at the American Cancer Society. Recent lifestyle changes may be partly to blame. Obesity and sedentary lifestyles, for example, are linked to colorectal cancer, as are poor diets low in fiber. Patients with chronic inflammation or Type 2 diabetes have also been found to be at increased risk for the disease. But experts are not entirely convinced these are the only factors at work. Trends in obesity among people of different ethnic and racial backgrounds don't always correspond to an increase in colorectal cancer, according to Ms. Siegel. Some studies have found that obesity brings increased risk of colon cancer, while others, including the new JAMA research, have found a greater increase in cancers of the rectum. Until there is more research into what is causing the increase in colorectal cancers, Ms. Siegel encourages younger people to be more proactive about identifying signs early on. Persistent constipation, cramps, bloating, blood in stool, unexplained weight loss and fatigue can all be symptoms. Younger people and their doctors often overlook the warning signs because "cancer is not on their radar," Ms. Siegel said. The American Cancer Society now recommends screening average risk individuals for colorectal cancer starting at age 45. Researchers in Canada also are considering changes to screening recommendations. But these revisions are unlikely to help prevent cancers among patients who are even younger. "We need to understand why this trend is occurring in young people in order to prevent it," Dr. Brenner said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
Over the vast plains of the open ocean, where wave lines may be the only markers, seabirds, including albatrosses, manage to find food. They feed on swarms of krill tiny crustaceans that swirl near the surface of the ocean and their relatives. But over the last 50 years, they also feed on a bounty of plastic from trash, usually broken up into small pieces by exposure to waves, ultraviolet radiation and other factors, often called microplastics. Many theories about why these birds and other marine animals eat plastic have been raised. Some people have speculated that they mistake it for food because of its appearance. To two scientists from the University of California, Davis, that explanation didn't fully account for what they knew about birds. And in a study released Wednesday in Science Advances, their suspicions were confirmed. Matthew S. Savoca, a graduate student at the university and the paper's lead author, said, "People say it's because the animals don't know any better, or they're stupid, or it looks like other food they eat," he said. "But that really doesn't take into account that these animals have been honed evolutionarily over hundreds of thousands of years to find little patches of food in the open ocean." Gabrielle A. Nevitt, a professor of life sciences who specializes in animal behavior and sensory biology and an author of the paper, has been studying these types of seabirds for decades. In her previous research, she found that these types of birds (which the paper describes as "procellariiform species") have a strong sense of smell, and respond to a certain chemical, dimethyl sulfide, as a cue to find their prey. Dimethyl sulfide is released by phytoplankton as it gets eaten by a predator or breaks down in the ocean or on shore, signaling to these birds and others to come eat the phytoplankton's predators (like krill). Dr. Nevitt and Mr. Savoca found that the chemical is also released when tiny pieces of plastic are present in the ocean, often a result of "biofouling," which describes the process when algae colonizes pieces of plastic, and then die or are eaten by other organisms. In this study, the scientists used plastic beads of the type used in bottles, bags, textiles and hundreds of applications, ranging from four to six millimeters in diameter. After the microplastics had been in the ocean for about three weeks, dimethyl sulfide was found in the water and air around them in concentrations high enough that these types of birds may be able to smell, the scientists found, using tools that are otherwise meant for measuring sulfur in beer or wine. The study suggests that the odor of dimethyl sulfide on or around marine plastic debris is "maladaptive foraging behavior" that the birds are using their evolutionary traits to forage for food in ways that might be bad for them, causing problems like chemical toxicity or obstruction. According to the study, a recent projection model concluded that more than 99 percent of all seabird species will have eaten plastic debris by 2050. Dr. Nevitt said that the study could have implications for other marine animals. Those that eat similar species to these birds like baleen whales or those that may also be attracted to dimethyl sulfide like sea turtles could be at risk. The researchers hope the study will help determine strategies for how to fight this growing environmental problem, as plastic pollution increases in the ocean. "Fifty or 60 years ago, there was no plastic in the ocean," Mr. Savoca said. Now, estimates hover in the hundreds of millions of tons. "We're changing the world so rapidly that these animals can't evolve rapidly enough to keep up." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
FOSSE/VERDON 10 p.m. on FX. This eight part series stars Sam Rockwell and Michelle Williams as the dance world's most famous power couple: the choreographer director Bob Fosse and the actress dancer Gwen Verdon. Based on Sam Wasson's biography of Fosse, and told over a period of five decades, it charts their ability to bring out the best and worst in each other, paying particular attention to Fosse's affairs and Verdon's decision to put his career before hers. We get a glimpse of the creative process and whirlwind of emotions that fueled famous works like "Sweet Charity" and "Cabaret." "This series tap dances as fast as it can, often stunningly," James Poniewozik wrote in his New York Times review. "But look past its sleek moves and what you're mostly left with, in a MeToo era, is another HimAgain? story." THE BOLD TYPE 8 p.m. on Freeform. Season 3 is here, and with it comes plenty of changes. The last time we saw our three best friends they were in Paris wrestling with big life decisions. Now they are back in New York moving onward and upward. Jane (Katie Stevens) picks her new beau, Kat (Aisha Dee) tries her best to get over her breakup and Sutton (Meghann Fahy) considers moving in with Richard (Sam Page). Back at Scarlet Magazine, Jane is furious because a man has been hired to take over the digital division, relegating Jacqueline (Melora Hardin) to print editor. But Jacqueline isn't sweating it; she may have upset the board by running Jane's piece on Safford's health care policies, but at least it brought about change. THE CODE 9 p.m. on CBS. This new drama series revolves around professionals who often work behind the scenes: prosecutors, defense lawyers and investigators tasked with managing legal challenges for the United States Marine Corps. The show opens with John Abraham (Luke Mitchell) and Maya Dobbins (Anna Wood) handling a case about a commanding officer who was murdered by a soldier in Afghanistan. RECONSTRUCTION: AMERICA AFTER THE CIVIL WAR 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). Henry Louis Gates Jr. hosts this four hour documentary about the aftermath of the Civil War, chronicling the accomplishments of black leaders and activists and the setbacks they faced. The first half airs tonight; the second half airs next Tuesday. DESTROYER (2018) Stream on Hulu. Nicole Kidman, transformed by makeup nearly beyond recognition, delivers a powerful performance in this gruesome crime thriller. We first meet her in the present as Erin, a boozing mother and tormented detective with the Los Angeles Police Department whose red rimmed eyes and sunken cheeks scream trauma. When she visits a murder scene with connections to her past, she's pulled back into a dangerous world she'd worked hard to escape. Flashbacks introduce us to younger Erin, an officer working undercover for the F.B.I. who became involved with her partner (Sebastian Stan) and chose a darker path. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
PHILADELPHIA Angel Corella knows a thing or two about "Don Quixote," a ballet in which he had few rivals during his reign as a star dancer with American Ballet Theater. So at a recent rehearsal of his new production at the Pennsylvania Ballet, where he is artistic director, he had some practical advice to offer. And it was not just about how to execute the dazzling leaps and turns that the ballet's grand pas de deux is famous for. The main thing he stressed to Etienne Diaz, a young member of the corps getting a star turn in a role Mr. Corella once owned, was how to draw the audience in before becoming airborne. "When you come in, there should be a moment when you stop, so we can actually see your eyes connect with us and then go," Mr. Corella said, demonstrating with a flourish. "It's like you're talking to us: 'Hello everyone. Here we go. You're having a good time? You're going to have a better one.'" Mr. Corella, 40, seems to be having a very good time these days as he works to reinvent the Pennsylvania Ballet, where he has made top to bottom changes since becoming artistic director in 2014. He has brought on new artistic staff, new administrative leadership, new dancers from all over the world and a new approach to programming. This month, he will return to New York, the site of his triumphs with Ballet Theater, to show off his revamped troupe at a run at the Joyce Theater (March 29 through April 3) featuring works made for its dancers. "It feels like a whole new company," Mr. Corella said the other day in his office here, which he explained had no desk because he still likes to do most of his work in the studio. Mr. Corella came to Philadelphia after the collapse of a different kind of quixotic quest: trying to establish a dance company in his native Spain, first called the Corella Ballet Castilla y Leon and then Barcelona Ballet, during the country's deep financial crisis. The Pennsylvania Ballet was looking hard at what life after 50 should look like: At the end of its 2013 14 season, its 50th anniversary, its longtime artistic director, Roy Kaiser, stepped down. Mr. Corella signed on, and soon after his arrival he dismissed top artistic staff members who had decades of experience with the company and replaced them with his own team. Now, Mr. Corella is throwing himself into all aspects of his new company, from leading company class twice a week to hiring dancers to bringing more contemporary choreographers on board to creating the new "Don Quixote," which had its world premiere at the Academy of Music here on March 3. Mr. Corella's hiring and his mandate for change are part of a conscious effort to reinvigorate the company. Like other performing arts organizations nationally and locally, including the Philadelphia Orchestra, which emerged from bankruptcy protection in 2012, the ballet had been facing serious fund raising challenges and flat ticket revenues. In 2013, the company hired Michael M. Kaiser, the director of the DeVos Institute of Arts Management, to draft a master plan and he urged the troupe to think big. "The Pennsylvania Ballet is a great company, but it was quiet," Mr. Kaiser recalled in a telephone interview. "The dancers were wonderful, it was doing some excellent work, but it had a very small family of donors, and it was relatively quiet on the ballet scene." The hiring of Mr. Corella made a splash, as has his "Don Quixote," which the company had never performed. In her review in The Philadelphia Inquirer, Ellen Dunkel praised "the energy coming off the stage" and wrote that the performance showed "how far the Pennsylvania Ballet has come in the last few years." David Gray, the company's new executive director, who grew a pointy Don Quixote beard in honor of the new production, said that box office revenue through March had already surpassed all of the previous season's. The company is showing spunkiness in other ways, too. In December, it took to Facebook to rebut an online commenter who had complained that the Philadelphia Eagles had "played like they were wearing tutus." The ballet company pointed out that its tutu clad dancers had just performed 27 "Nutcrackers" in 21 days through sickness and injury, and suggested that if the Eagles had really played as if they were wearing tutus "we'd all be looking forward to the playoffs." The post was shared more than 18,000 times. But big changes carry risks. The choice to do "Don Quixote," a crowd pleaser, raises questions about the identity of the company, which was founded in 1963 by Barbara Weisberger, a protegee of George Balanchine, and which is still known for dancing Balanchine. Mr. Corella said he hoped to expand the company's repertory in two directions, reaching back with classic story ballets and forward by adding more contemporary works, while continuing to dance the repertory that is so central to its history. "I'm bringing in some new choreography, some new choreographers, and keeping the Balanchine tradition," he said. "But looking into the future with open eyes and open arms, because unfortunately Balanchine is not among us to do any more new works." Next season will feature three story ballets Mr. Corella's new adaptation of "Le Corsaire," a revival of Ben Stevenson's "Cinderella," and, as always, George Balanchine's "The Nutcracker." There will also be world premieres of works by Brian Sanders; Nicolo Fonte; and the company's choreographer in residence, Matthew Neenan, as well as company premieres of works by David Dawson, Nacho Duato and Christopher Wheeldon. Each mixed bill will feature some Balanchine. Mr. Corella's new artistic team includes Charles Askegard, who danced at both Ballet Theater and New York City Ballet, as ballet master; and Kyra Nichols, who danced for Balanchine at City Ballet and who is married to Mr. Gray, as ballet mistress. Mr. Corella has begun to hire new dancers, several of whom are from Cuba, and is expected to make more changes to the roster after the expiration of a contractual grace period that protects dancers after a change in artistic directors. Mr. Corella said the program at the Joyce "Keep" by Mr. Neenan, "The Accidental" by Trey McIntyre and "Grace Action" by Mr. Fonte was chosen to give a wider audience a sense of where the company stands. His urge for the company to proclaim itself informed one of the first things he did after his arrival, when he had trouble finding its new, but still unfinished, complex of studios on North Broad Street: He asked for a big sign saying "Pennsylvania Ballet." "It creates an identity," he said, "for everyone to recognize." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
In the Moria refugee camp in Greece, one tap is shared among 1,300 people. Social distancing is difficult to do. Refugee communities from Kenya to Bangladesh, Lebanon and Syria are vulnerable to the spread of the coronavirus. The answer to stopping the virus is not increased surveillance through new technology or preventing access into the camps for medical personnel. Instead, we need to redistribute resources and ensure access to health care for all people, regardless of their immigration status. Coronavirus cases have already been reported on the Greek Island of Lesbos, a camp that was built for 3,000 people but now is the home of over 20,000, as well as the Ritsona site north of Athens. People seeking asylum are kept on crowded transport ships, children are detained even after testing positive for the coronavirus, and families are sent to far flung locations away from urban centers. Doctors Without Borders has called for an evacuation of the overcrowded Greek refugee camps while densely populated besieged enclaves like Gaza remain areas of concern for doctors for their lack of equipment and medical care. Active conflict zones with internally displaced people are even worse. Syria, for example, appears to be downplaying the spread of the coronavirus, denying reports by doctors and claiming that there are no cases. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
Juice WRLD, the Chicago rapper who shot to fame last year with a song sampling Sting, now has his first No. 1 album on the Billboard chart, with "Death Race for Love." "Death Race" (Grade A/Interscope) had the equivalent of 165,000 album sales in the United States last week, including 176 million streams and 43,000 copies sold as a full album, according to Nielsen. Last year, Juice WRLD reached the Top 5 twice: first with "Goodbye Good Riddance," which went to No. 4, and then with "Wrld on Drugs," a mixtape released with the rapper Future, which peaked at No. 2. The song "Lucid Dreams," from "Goodbye," made Juice WRLD a star of so called emo rap, and drew particular interest for using a piece of Sting's 1993 track "Shape of My Heart." (Sting later remarked that the royalties he earns from "Lucid Dreams" will "put my grandkids through college.") Also this week, Maren Morris's new album "Girl" opened at No. 4. Ariana Grande's "Thank U, Next" holds at No. 2, and Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper's soundtrack to "A Star Is Born" remains in third place. Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" is No. 5. Last week's chart topper, Hozier's "Wasteland, Baby!," fell to No. 25. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
It's been an especially busy few months for Brian Chesky, 36, the co founder and chief executive of the home rental company Airbnb: in late September, he traveled from San Francisco, where he lives, to New York City to launch Experiences in the city, a service that allows travelers to book activities with Airbnb hosts in 40 destinations worldwide. A few days earlier, he introduced a partnership with the restaurant reservation app Resy, through which diners can reserve restaurants directly on Airbnb's site. In August and September, in the wake of hurricanes Harvey and Irma, Mr. Chesky activated the company's disaster relief program, which provides free lodging to those displaced by natural disasters like hurricanes and forest fires; since the program started in 2012, with Hurricane Sandy, Airbnb has responded to 90 disasters. And in early August, the company took a stance against white supremacists in Charlottesville, Va., by refusing to rent them accommodations in the city. Mr. Chesky talked about recent developments at Airbnb when he visited The New York Times during his trip to New York (he stayed at an Airbnb apartment in Greenwich Village while he was in town). Below are edited excerpts from the interview: Q: With Experiences and the collaboration with Resy, Airbnb is branching out into different segments of the travel market. Why? A: We started as a home sharing website, but people travel to have experiences and take trips. We want to make sure your trips are amazing on Airbnb, and to be able to do that, we have to make travel easy. Easy means that you don't have to spend dozens of hours using 10 different websites or apps to plan your trip. A few years ago, we decided that we wanted to be in the business of end to end trips. Last year, we added experiences and now we have restaurants. In your goal to make Airbnb a one stop shop for travel, air is missing, but it is something you have teased in past interviews. Where do you stand with air today? We are looking at aviation, but it is an industry that's not really differentiated. We've been thinking about whether we can do something that can redefine the industry, maybe not completely but in a small way, and if we can't do that, we should be careful about participating in it. So we're thinking about air, but there's nothing to announce yet. Perhaps in a bid to compete with Airbnb, the hotel industry is recognizing that travelers want accommodations with a more local feel and are trying to offer this to their guests. What are your thoughts on this? I don't think that it's a bad thing if hotels are trying to be more local. I visited Arne Sorenson the chief executive of Marriott International a few years ago in his offices, and he showed me how they were designing rooms which looked like homes and apartments. The war with Airbnb and hotels that's been described in the media is inconsistent with the relationship we have with the industry. For example, there's about five or six major hotel C.E.O.'s, and we're pretty friendly with them and share notes. Airbnb has started advising its home hosts to adhere to some hospitality standards. Why? On one hand, we don't want to be prescriptive. On the other hand, if you never know what you're going to get, then that product will never become mainstream, and people will never love it. There are some basic hospitality standards we're trying to impose everything should be clean, for example but beyond that, we don't want to impose decor or things that would affect the local feel. Your brand has gotten to the point where it is now seen as a responsible corporate citizen responding to disasters and not renting to white supremacists in Charlottesville. How do you balance being a company that is driven by individuals and local culture with trying to be a force for good? It's tricky. You're always going to have your own values, but at the root of Airbnb is this idea of acceptance, and anyone who doesn't make people feel accepted, in particular because of the country or culture they're from, what they look like, what their orientations are and who they worship, are things that we can't stand for. Last year, we introduced our community commitment where we made 200 million people attest that they won't discriminate. We're generally not taking political positions except when it violates this commitment, and we felt that white nationalism definitely qualified. With disasters, we thought about what asset we had that could help the world, and we happen to have four million homes. The people that provide those homes are generally kind and generous. We started with Hurricane Sandy when a host contacted us and said that she wanted to host people impacted by the storm for free . Since then, our community has donated 11,000 nights for people who have been displaced by disasters. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
Has the way you watched movies changed significantly over the last 10 years? With the movies I want to watch, sometimes the only way to watch them is through streaming which is quite positive in some ways, and in some ways unfortunate. What are the pros and cons of that kind of development? The cons are that the form of media that we work in is designed to be seen in very big spaces as a communal experience. Like a lot of culture right now, things have gone from being consumed in a crowd to being consumed in isolation. In the same way that social media approximates the experience of being in a community, I think the way we now watch these things whether on our flat screens or our laptops or our phones is also an approximation of what the original foundations of this medium always were. It's bittersweet. Five years ago, you couldn't just get on your laptop and find Claire Denis films. Now you can, which is a really awesome thing and better for the world, for sure. But there's a trade off. You're pretty plugged into a young generation of film fans on Twitter. What do you find striking about the way they watch movies? They don't care where they watch a thing, they just want to watch that thing. I think the tricky thing is that the financial dynamics of making these things has not shifted in the same way. Has that sort of reaction made you less precious about the way your films are seen? I don't become less precious; I have no choice but to accept it. You have to evolve with the times. For me, though, I'm always trying to make a film as though it's going to show on the biggest screen, as loud as possible, in front of a lot of people. That's just where my roots are. Now, the beauty of that is that these people don't have to be in New York, L.A., Chicago, Miami or D.C. they can be anywhere and still see it. I remember after "Moonlight," going to this tiny town in Mexico and finding bootleg DVDs of the movie, and it was kind of shocking because the quality of the bootleg was really good! I bought it. But then someone told me the reason the DVDs were there is because that place had the largest concentration of transgender teenagers in all of Mexico, and so the person who delivered the DVDs had brought "Moonlight" there. That kind of shifted my ego. Was it a 35 millimeter print? No, but there you go. I remember when "Bird Box" came out, it was such a hit on Twitter, and people were asking where Trevante Rhodes had come from. He had just starred in your movie, a best picture winner, but when those people were told to go watch "Moonlight," they'd reply, "Is it on Netflix?" I saw that too on Twitter. There's something quite humbling about that conversation. A sea change is happening, but the problem is that making films is as expensive as it's ever been. There's no big budget, department store, 1.99 white T shirt version of making films every film is some version of a really fancy 300 T shirt from Calvin Klein. That's just how much this kind of art takes to make! You can make an album for 5,000 and it can have the same quality as Frank Ocean's "Blonde," but it just takes so much damn money to make a film. I don't know how you offset that cost, and that's why there's so much tension between theatrical and digital distribution. For 25 years, DVD and VHS were a major revenue stream. We've got to figure out what another version of that revenue stream is, and how it can be applied to something like Lucrecia Martel's "Zama," where an American version of a film like that can have a reasonable expectation of breaking even. Do you think that in 10 years, there will still be specialty theaters to play a film like "Zama"? Look, I go to a few theaters in Los Angeles to see movies not even specialized theaters, like Tarantino's theater and there are always, always audiences there. Who are these people? There will always be people who prioritize the experience in a cinema, who treat it as fine arts in a certain way, and they'll make it their prerogative to keep these theaters open. Will there be as many theaters? I can't say, but I'm an optimist, and I think there will be. The Angelika is always going to be there, right? Maybe! Who can say? We always think buildings are permanent, and they never are. But then you have something like the Metrograph popping up. Or even a company like the Arclight. Now look, I haven't gotten too deep into the Arclight's business plan or funding or any of that, I just know that a couple months ago, I went to see "Burning" there and decided I wanted to see "Border" right before. I bought my ticket and expected to be in this really tiny theater, but it was on a massive screen and the sound was amazing. So I think there are always going to be companies like the Arclight or Laemmle that are going to prioritize the cinematic moviegoing experience. What excites you about these ongoing changes in the industry? What Netflix is doing right now is radical as hell. It's not conforming to any one way of thinking about how movies are made and distributed. That's a good thing, ultimately. I do think there are going to be younger, more diverse filmmakers telling stories we've never seen before. That's got to be the mandate. We're having a conversation about theaters and screens and distribution, but if there aren't interesting stories to fill those screens, the conversation is moot. Do you think we're heading to a place where theatrical distribution no longer becomes mandatory for an Oscar eligible film? Whoo! That's a hot question. I think we have to find ways to protect some of these traditions, and the movies are larger than life. So I do think that screening in a theater will always be a qualification for the Academy Awards, I truly do. I think part of that is going to be to ensure that we always share a communal experience watching movies in a theater. But hey, maybe I'm a dinosaur. We get to see movies on great screens in ideal settings lot of would be moviegoers live in places with limited access to theaters. Let me ask you then, do you think that's a reason for day and date distributing a movie in theaters and in homes the same day ? It's interesting, because all these other art forms are moving faster, too. The fact that musicians drop mixtapes for free can you ever imagine a filmmaker dropping a mixtape film for free? Hiro Murai and Donald Glover just did something like that with "Guava Island": a surprise drop, not quite the length of a feature, and it initially debuted on Amazon for free. True, true. Other than that, we haven't really found a way to do that sort of thing in our medium, and because of that, we're not as diverse in our breadth of expression as we see in music right now, where you have all these artists who can just pop off: "I was curious, I made this thing, here it is." Let me ask you a question. I'm going to go back to "Bird Box," because there's a world where "Moonlight" doesn't get a theatrical release, or doesn't win the Oscar. Let's say it instead goes to festivals like Telluride, Toronto, and then it gets put on some platform. Do you think there's a world where as many or even more people would experience it, or was the best thing for the film to go down that traditional theatrical path? I mean Trevante was part of this thing that was one of the loudest moments in pop culture, and yet people were still like, "Who's that guy?" One of the arguments a streaming platform can make is that they have the ability to reach people who wouldn't see certain movies or even know about them in the first place. Yeah, we're in transition. I'm going to think about this talk because I'm trying to find the answer and at this point, clearly, I don't have it. I've changed my mind three times on this call! But let me tell you about something, you'll love this. We had a screening of "Beale Street" in Washington, D.C., at the National Museum of African American History and Culture, and a fire broke out. So, irony of ironies, we had to go across the street to the Air and Space Museum, where there's an Imax theater. To see Regina King as a black mom trying to save her family on that larger than life screen, in the Air and Space Museum where, when you walk out, all you see are images of white men going into space I thought, "O.K., this is what it was like when people sat in a movie chair and thought a train was coming towards them." I can't get that feeling on my flat screen at home, so we've got to figure something out. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
The New York City alley, in all its grittiness, has long been a Hollywood favorite. Yet, in reality, New York has only a handful of them, as the designers of the city's grid left little room for such passageways. Now one of the remaining few, The alley will be repaved with Belgian block and enclosed with a Corten steel and mesh gate at Great Jones Street, replacing a simple wrought iron gate and transforming a sliver of concrete into a private walkway and driveway for residents of 1 Great Jones Alley and their guests. The two neighboring buildings that back the alley will still have access to it, as part of a 19th century easement agreement. Not considered a city street, the alley is not under the jurisdiction of the Department of Transportation. It is private property owned by the developer of the condo, Madison Realty Capital. Great Jones Alley begins north of Great Jones Street and extends south of Bond Street, before heading east and crossing Lafayette Street. But when it was laid in 1806 as part of a country road called Cross Lane, it began around where Bleecker and Mott Streets are today, and continued in a zigzag to just short of what is now East Fourth Street, according to Gerard Koeppel, the author of "City on a Grid: How New York Became New York" (Da Capo, 2015). The street was never city owned, as few streets were before the city adopted the grid plan of 1811, but would have been publicly used, Mr. Koeppel said. As the city grew up around it, and new, wider roads like Lafayette Street were laid, Cross Lane retreated, too narrow to be used as a modern thoroughfare. By the turn of the last century, the northernmost segment was gated, according to Dan Cobleigh, a managing director of Madison Capital Realty. Great Jones Alley "has been disappearing in bits for generations," Mr. Koeppel said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
I'm a single father. What can I watch with my teenage daughter that is complex enough to hold her interest but won't have us both cringing at overt sex scenes? We've outgrown "Doctor Who" and got tired of "Gilmore Girls." We both liked "Lady Bird" separately but wouldn't have felt comfortable watching it together. We loved "Pushing Daisies," "Poldark," "Call the Midwife," "The Crown," and "Everwood." "Monty Python's the Life of Brian" and "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" went on her top five list, as did "Anna and the Apocalypse." We like quirky, complex and sweet. Zane Comedy wise, your next moves are "Futurama" and "The Good Place." They are indeed quirky, complex and sweet! It sounds like she likes a combination of highbrow and lowbrow, and "Futurama" especially scratches that exact itch. "The Good Place" is more earnest, but it's not above sight gags and comical vats of chili. For dramas, I think you'll like "The Fosters," one of the better teen shows of the past decade. It has the wonderful schmaltz of "Everwood" let's cry at every episode! but with a firmer dramatic grounding. It's less pat, and it's more upfront with its traumas. The show follows Callie, a teenager newly out of juvie who gets placed with a foster family, conveniently named the Fosters. The mothers, Stef and Lena, are already parents to Stef's biological son, Brandon, and the adopted twins Jesus and Mariana, and they wind up welcoming Callie and her brother Jude into the fold. While the show is extremely heartwarming, it's also not afraid of tough topics: sex abuse, addiction, violence, injustice. It sounds like your daughter is mature I mean, she liked "The Crown" but just F.Y.I. My two favorite shows are "30 Rock" and Seasons 1 3 of "Arrested Development." I need some similar half hour episodes as I drift off to sleep. Any suggestions? Dan I need a new comfort show after the second go round of "The Office." I watched "Parks and Rec" a while back but nah. Tried "Brooklyn 99," not working. "Russian Doll" nah. My old tried and true is "Frasier," but I could really use some help to stay inside with the air conditioner! Toni You should both watch "Schitt's Creek." It has the exasperated rants and clever one liners of "30 Rock," the out of touch matriarch of "Arrested Development," the ensemble chemistry of "The Office," the occasional farce of "Frasier," and above all, it's happy and silly and easy to love. I think the first season is a little shout y, though your mileage may vary; feel free to start with Season 2. (It's all on Netflix, and Season 6 returns to Pop next year.) I started watching "One Day at a Time" per your suggestion and loved it. I was wondering if you know shows similar to that comedy with background laughs that's as recent as possible. Cherian First the good news: "One Day at a Time" has been rescued and will air new episodes in 2020 on Pop. Yay! In the meantime, it sounds like you're seeking a comedy with an appetite for serious problems. "ODAAT" is still a sitcom, and it uses a sitcom style for everything, but sure, let's talk about PTSD and homophobia and ignorance and divorce and addiction. So in that vein, I think you'll like "Mom," which is recent enough that it is in fact still airing. (Season 6 just finished on CBS, and previous seasons are available on Hulu.) Allison Janney and Anna Farris star as a mother and daughter who were long estranged, and both battled some pretty serious addiction issues; when they reunite, they're sober, and they attend A.A. meetings together on most episodes. The show has changed a lot over its run, so if you're not digging the first season, jump ahead to Season 3. If you're fine with losing the live studio audience and want more of the loving family that still has some real issues angle, you might also like "Kim's Convenience," a Canadian series (available on Netflix) about parents who run a convenience store and their two adult children. Help me! I can't stop watching "Parks and Recreation." I love it so much but my children are so over it they don't even want to be in the house with me anymore. "Parks and Recreation" is my macaroni and cheese. Leslie is my rocky road ice cream. It just feels so good. Any suggestions? Amie I'm not just saying this because you included foodstuffs in your letter, I swear: You should watch a few of the web series from Bon Appetit, namely "Gourmet Makes," in which Claire Saffitz tries to make fancy versions of junk food; "It's Alive with Brad," in which Brad Leone teaches viewers fermenting techniques and sometimes travels; and any of the " Person Makes Recipe " videos that don't seem to have a collective title, in which, you guessed it, people make recipes. (My favorite is "Chris Makes Lobster Rolls," which I've watched no fewer than 10 times.) The videos are deeply informative, but they're even more entertaining, and because they're edited to include lots of what would otherwise be outtakes, they have a sort of mockumentary energy. It's like the show and the making of the show in one. There's ample goofiness, real sincerity, differing skill sets and meaningful affection, admiration, and frustration among all the chefs. It's an ensemble comedy! Are you looking for your next great TV love? (Or reckoning with your latest show divorce?) Send in your questions to watching nytimes.com. Questions are edited for length and clarity. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
Each week, technology reporters and columnists from The New York Times review the week's news, offering analysis and maybe a joke or two about the most important developments in the tech industry. Want this newsletter in your inbox? Sign up here. If I did not need Facebook to do my job, I would be deleting it right now. While everyone was riveted by the drama over Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh's potential confirmation to the Supreme Court, Facebook dropped a bombshell: Hackers had broken into at least 50 million of its accounts. The company's chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, and his deputy, Sheryl Sandberg, were among the victims, according to my colleagues Mike Isaac and Sheera Frenkel. For the past year, I have been covering technology in India, which has more Facebook users than any other country. Before that, I was a reporter in our San Francisco bureau, where, among other things, I wrote a lot about both Facebook and security breaches, including two separate heists of Yahoo data that left all three billion of its accounts compromised. In this breach, I was one of the 90 million people who were suddenly logged out of their accounts by Facebook the company's far too subtle way of letting me know that my account might have been compromised. (Facebook, you could at least have sent me a message along with all the spammy ads you send me on Messenger.) This breach is more troubling than the typical hack. The stolen Facebook login information essentially a master key could have been used to impersonate the victims at hundreds of other sites and apps that allow people to sign in using their Facebook credentials. Although Facebook says it has invalidated those keys, known as tokens, no one knows what damage has already been done. And the breach occurred for the most trivial of reasons: Facebook introduced one of the security flaws as part of an effort to make it easier to post "happy birthday" videos. All this comes during a year when Facebook has been constantly apologizing for its failures for sharing user information with Cambridge Analytica without permission, for allowing foreign entities to manipulate the service to influence elections and for the murder by mob of more than two dozen people in India due to the false information that runs rampant on its WhatsApp service. It has even apologized for the decision by one of its top executives, Joel Kaplan, to publicly support Judge Kavanaugh by sitting behind him at his recent Senate hearing. My colleague Farhad Manjoo wrote in a column during the week that he no longer trusts Facebook enough to use it to log in to other sites. I wonder whether to still trust Facebook at all. (Sheera goes even further: she trusts no one and expects that she will be hacked no matter what she does.) Here in India, Facebook is a far more essential part of the internet than it is in the United States. Many companies and organizations have no websites, just a Facebook page. Small businesses sell their wares on the social network as well as the company's Instagram photo site and WhatsApp. To deletefacebook as WhatsApp's co founder Brian Acton recently recommended would be to cut yourself off from much of the digital life of this country. There is no real substitute. Indians are generally less concerned about privacy than Americans, blithely disclosing birth dates, their mother's maiden name and their cellphone numbers. Late last month, the country's Supreme Court limited the government's efforts to enroll Indians in a digital ID program that captured their fingerprints, iris scans and photographs and used them as a key to unlock government benefits. The program had sparked stiff challenges from privacy advocates. But most Indians had already signed up, and their biggest complaint was that the ID system failed to work as intended, not that it asked for too much information. Here is some other tech news of the week that you might have missed amid the barrage of Kavanaugh developments and the Times's blockbuster investigation into President Trump's finances: Elon Musk, the head of Tesla, settled securities fraud charges over tweets he made claiming that he had lined up financing for a buyout of the company. He agreed to pay a 20 million fine and step down as chairman of the company. But another mystery emerged: Why are hundreds of Tesla's Model 3 electric cars parked in industrial lots instead of going to customers? The newest Apple Watch collects a vast amount of personal health information. As Apple talks to insurance companies and others about sharing the information, the device could become "the handmaiden to another data hungry industry," John Hermann wrote in a column for the Sunday magazine. Or perhaps the smartwatch will become a witness to crimes. Police in San Jose, Calif., charged a 90 year old man with killing his stepdaughter, in part based on evidence from her Fitbit fitness tracker. Amazon decided to raise the minimum wage it pays its 250,000 workers, including warehouse staff and Whole Foods clerks, to 15 an hour. "We listened to our critics, thought hard about what we wanted to do and decided we want to lead," said Amazon's chief executive, Jeff Bezos, whose 165 billion fortune makes him the richest person in the world. Another billionaire, the venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, lost a long battle to bar the public from using an access road to a California beach that passes through property he owns. The Supreme Court declined to hear his appeal, which argued that the state law forcing him to offer access violated his property rights. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
Glenn Close does not read her reviews. So the jumbo excerpt on the marquee where she is reprising her Tony Award winning role in "Sunset Boulevard" ("One of the great stage performances of this century"), surrounded by flashing lights, may be a spoiler. "You still have to go out the next night no matter what they write," she said. Still, the actress, 69, who has won three Tony Awards and three Emmy Awards, and has been nominated for six Academy Awards for her work in films such as "Fatal Attraction," "Dangerous Liaisons" and "Albert Nobbs," would seem to have little to fear. "But you work so tightly with people in theater," she said. "Even if they say wonderful things about me, but something unkind about my incredible collaborators, that would be just as upsetting." "When you are emotionally connected to your peers in recovery," he said, "you stand the best chance of being protected from the compulsion to use and do things that get you into trouble with your illness." Mr. Kennedy, 49, has publicly acknowledged his bipolar illness and addiction to alcohol and other drugs. He is the youngest child of Senator Edward M. Kennedy, who died in 2009, and is a nephew of President John F. Kennedy. His best selling memoir, "A Common Struggle," was published in 2015. Over lunch at the Dutch in SoHo (burrata and pumpkin ravioli for Ms. Close, black sea bass for Mr. Kennedy), the pair discussed their work, especially their advocacy for mental illness awareness and treatment; their families, in which such illness flourished in silence; and the healing that comes with bringing truth to light. Philip Galanes I saw your new "Sunset Boulevard." Is it me and 22 years of life kicking my butt or is this Norma more heartbreaking than your first one? But my mentor in the district this old school, 87 year old restaurateur I was terrified that I'd let him down, but he managed to coalesce the community around me. The only thing worse than being an addict, I guess, is a rat who outs an addict. So I survived the next campaign. PG Later, in 2006, you were in a car crash at the Capitol, and you came clean about being intoxicated when you had a chance to skate away. But you did so against the advice of your dad. He wanted you to play it off as a fender bender. Is that our generational edge: that we can admit our problems and not be destroyed by them? GC Was your dad circling the wagons? Did he think that coming out would hurt you or the family? PK That was his generational M.O. To shut down, not talk about it. But I knew that the accident was not a one day story. The media was tracking my whereabouts for the previous week. I wanted to make it all public at once. I knew that would be better than the drip, drip, drip of slow reveals. PG Is that when you came out as bipolar? PK No, I only came out about my addiction to opiates and that I'd been to the Mayo Clinic a few months before. But I refused to go to the mental health ward there. I thought: "That's where the crazy people go. I can't afford to have people find out that I'm suffering from the same illnesses that I'm advocating for in Congress." That's how deranged my thinking was. PG I'd never thought about your dad and PTSD before ... PK He watched his brothers violently murdered. Listen, my dad was the most important person in my world. I've spent my whole life trying to figure out how to protect him and love him. He suffered a lot. He was exposed as somebody who acted inappropriately; he was castigated for his behavior. But I always knew that bad behavior was the last thing my dad would choose. Like I knew that drinking was the last thing my mother would choose. It was their compulsion. PG How would he feel about your book? PK I think part of him would be happy for me that I'm coming into my own and getting the help I need. But there was a large part of him that was molded by my grandfather and that generation, which said: If it's bad for the family, keep it under wraps. PG You were estranged from your father, late in his life, when you and your siblings went to speak with him about his drinking. Did it get resolved between you? PK Well, it's like what Glenn was saying about survivors: We got through it. It was never resolved. We compartmentalized it, put it over there, and we all moved on. GC I've always felt that they never got to my core. I was a child of huge imagination. And even though I was a little foot soldier in that army because as a child you want to please whoever the parent or authority figure is there came a time when I felt disillusioned by it. GC It was too painful: mouthing the same things, wearing the same things. They became the singing group Up With People. It's not easy to talk about because it was such a profound experience. I'd been involved, in some iteration, since I was 7. I felt ignorant. PG But you retained the intelligence to get out. GC A lot of kids had their parents come and forcibly take them away. But of course, my parents were involved. Let me say: I have long forgiven my parents for any of this. They had their reasons for doing what they did, and I understand them. It had terrible effects on their kids, but that's the way it is. We all try to survive, right? And I think what actually saved me more than anything was my desire to be an actress. PG Did it make you a better actress? GC It made me decide not to trust any of my instincts. PG So, you had to learn to trust them all over again? There is a federal law to end discrimination in the treatment and coverage of mental illness and addiction. But too few people are willing to come out of the shadows and say: "I was denied my rights for equal coverage." So I started the Parity Registry to get people to tell their stories. Until we push back against the insurance industry, this discrimination will never end. Frederick Douglass said: Power concedes nothing without demand. Never has, never will. GC The thing that kills me is that one in four people are affected by this issue. Why isn't everyone talking about it? Republicans, Democrats, it has nothing to do with that. It's affecting our families, our friends, everyone. PK President Trump lost his brother to alcoholism. And his voters represent the demographic that has the highest overdose and suicide rate in America: middle age white men. GC As far as I'm concerned, this is the last great frontier in civil rights. PK No question. In President Kennedy's address on civil rights, he said: Who among us would be content to trade the color of their skin and be content with those who counsel patience and delay? It's the same with mental illness and addiction. Who would be content to take a "go slow" approach if mental illness affected them and their family? We've had two surgeons general come out and say that addiction is an illness, but we still treat addicts like pariahs. It's incomprehensible. GC We act like it's their fault. PK The answer is making everyone feel it's their issue. And I think veterans are going to be the key. Most veterans who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan were civilian soldiers, guard reservists. And about 30 percent of them came back with PTSD and other invisible wounds of war. When those men and women go back to their employer sponsored health care and learn that it doesn't adequately cover mental illness like it does other health conditions, that's going to be our jailbreak. When we put actual American heroes in front of insurance companies, and they deny them mental health coverage, I think we can see this situation change overnight. PG You both seem so energized by this work. GC Honestly, I wish I could do it 24/7. I have so many ideas. But the crazy thing is that no one would listen to me if I stopped acting. PK I feel the same way. This cause is part of what keeps me ticking. It's a great purpose in life, and I know I can make a difference. I've seen the difference in myself. When I left Congress, I felt demoralized and burned to the ground. I couldn't imagine what I have going for me now: four kids, a beautiful wife. We all love each other. My 4 year old fell asleep on my chest last night as I was reading him "Captain Underpants," which he loved. And all because I went out and got the help I needed. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.