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In a study published last year in the journal Emotion, Dr. Beilock and four co authors found that with students anxious about math, the more stress hormone they produced, the worse they did on a test; students with low math anxiety did better the more cortisol they produced. "The first group," she said, "felt the rising anxiety in their bodies and reacted by thinking, 'I'm really nervous about this test. I'm afraid I'll fail.' " They choked. "The second group told themselves something like, 'I'm really psyched up for this test! I'm ready to go!' " Dr. Beilock recommends consciously adopting positive self talk. Remind yourself that damp palms and a pounding heart accompany all kinds of enjoyable experiences: riding a roller coaster, winning a sports match, talking to someone you have a crush on. A second approach involves a simple exercise just before a test. For 10 minutes, write about your feelings regarding the exam to clear your mind of test related concerns, freeing working memory that can be applied to the exam. In a study published last year in the journal Science, Dr. Beilock and her co author, Gerardo Ramirez, said the technique worked both in the lab and in classrooms. Used by a group of ninth graders facing a biology final, the expressive writing task effectively eliminated the relationship between test anxiety and poor test performance: even highly anxious students performed just as well as non anxious classmates. Cognitive scientists have not yet settled on how to expand working memory, but there are ways to make it more efficient. We can hold only about four facts or ideas at a time in working memory, but we can pack more information into those four slots by engaging in chunking, linking multiple pieces of information into a few meaningful groups. Phone numbers are a common example of chunking: 3 9 8 1 2 3 4 is easier to retain as two chunks, 398 1234. More room can also be created in working memory by making mental operations automatic. Practicing a necessary skill until it's second nature say, memorizing a set of basic equations relieves the working memory of the need to perform yet one more task during testing. You may know this as studying. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Education |
A legal dispute has revealed that a painting thought to be the world's most expensive artwork is not the most expensive one after all. The New York Times and other news outlets reported in 2015 that the painting had been sold by Rudolf Staechelin, a retired Sotheby's executive, to a Qatari buyer for close to 300 million. If true, that would have been the highest known price for a painting. Prices in private sales of artwork are often closely guarded secrets, particularly when they reach astronomical levels. On Wednesday, however, a trial began in the High Court in London that revealed the ins and outs of this particular high stakes art deal, which took nearly two years of negotiations to complete. In September 2014, Mr. Staechelin sold the painting to a limited liability company run by the British art dealer Guy Bennett on behalf of the emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al Thani, according to documents submitted to the court by lawyers for the Swiss auctioneer Simon de Pury, who was involved in the dealings. Mr. de Pury's lawyer wrote that he originally put the buyer and seller in touch. Mr. de Pury, along with his wife, Michaela de Pury, and their limited partnership, have sued Mr. Staechelin and his trust, claiming that Mr. de Pury is owed a 10 million commission on the sale. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
Even in the bubbling melting pot that constituted the East Village art scene of the early 1980s, Nicolas Moufarrege stood out. Broodingly handsome, he was born in 1947 in Alexandria, Egypt, to Lebanese Christian parents, and lived in Beirut and Paris before moving to New York in 1981. More exceptional than his background was his art form: embroidery. Although sewing had been adopted by some feminist artists, it was an unusual male pursuit. As a gay man who openly embraced his sexual identity, Moufarrege happily took up needlepoint after discovering its potential, he said, when repairing an old pair of jeans. He stitched his own patch because he couldn't find one that met his standards. Moufarrege was in the vanguard in a sadder way, too. Among a close knit group of East Village artists (including Peter Hujar, David Wojnarowicz, Martin Wong and Keith Haring), he was one of the first to succumb to the AIDS epidemic that would ravage the gay community. In 1985, a few months after falling ill, he died at the age of 38. For the past few months, Moufarrege has been the subject of a retrospective, "Nicolas Moufarrege: Recognize My Sign," at the Queens Museum through Feb. 23 that richly rewards a visit. It was organized by Dean Daderko, a curator at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, where it was first seen, and coordinated at the Queens Museum by the curator Larissa Harris. In revealing this artist's impressive range, the exhibition progresses from the small tapestries Moufarrege made with a lap loom as a young man in Beirut to the scroll like horizontal panels of his final years in New York, which combine Spider Man, Santa Claus, and figures from Japanese prints and Picasso paintings. He was a critic as well as an artist, well versed in art history, as demonstrated by one of the most mysteriously moving pieces in the show, "The Fifth Day" (1980). The title probably alludes, in the Book of Genesis, to the day on which God filled the sky with birds and the sea with fishes. A black bird is flying through a glimmering heaven that Moufarrege graced with effulgent clouds, using silk, cotton and wool threads to dazzling effect. The bird is perhaps a phoenix, the subject of an embroidery that he produced five years earlier. The picture is bordered on the right and left by grids of colored squares, reminiscent of Ellsworth Kelly's 1951 painting "Colors for a Large Wall." At the bottom left is an Islamic geometric design that Moufarrege outlined in black thread and stained delicately with watered down paint. A pediment at the top is enigmatically marked with two numbers, "37" and "12." What dominates the picture, though, is a nude male figure, throwing a discus and viewed from behind. A black snake, both erotically phallic and creepily sinister, is slithering through a hole in the disc. A tall flowering papyrus is standing erect nearby. The nude is appropriated from the "Battle of Cascina," a cartoon that Michelangelo made for a painting, never completed, of naked Florentine soldiers surprised by their Pisan foes while bathing in a river. Michelangelo's loving depiction of the muscular bodies was widely disseminated through engravings, including one by Marcantonio Raimondi, an image Moufarrege owned. (It is included in the exhibition.) But the heroic nude in Moufarrege's embroidery is not under attack. He is throwing his discus over what appears to be a river of blood, toward a green meadow and a blue sky. The sanguinary stream in the tapestry may refer to the strife that drove Moufarrege's family from both Alexandria and Beirut, as the papyrus and the tile pattern would suggest. The phoenix could connote his rebirth. What he would not have known when he stitched this scene is that behind the vision of the promised land, further tragedy awaited. Through Feb. 23 at the Queens Museum, Flushing Meadows Corona Park; 718 592 9700, queensmuseum.org. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
Q. My computer's hard drive is overloaded, largely because of my huge iTunes library, which is scattered all over. Instead of paying for cloud storage, I would like to move all the multimedia files to an external drive so I can delete them from my PC. What's the best way to proceed? A. Before you move your media collection, start by backing up your computer in its current state to your regular backup drive as a safety precaution. After you complete the backup, make sure everything listed in iTunes is actually in your iTunes media library. To do that, open the iTunes program on your PC, and display the menu bar if it isn't already displayed. Press the Alt key (or the Control and B keys) to reveal it. Go in the File menu to Library and on the submenu, choose Organize Library. A box appears on screen with a "Consolidate files" option. When you select "Consolidate files" and click the O.K. button, the program scans your hard drive for any songs or videos in your collection that are not stored within the iTunes folder. It then makes a copy for the iTunes Media folder and leaves the original file where it was. Once you have consolidated your collection into one place (and have backed it up), you can move it to the new drive. Quit the iTunes program and go to the place on your hard drive where your iTunes folder lives. Drag the folder called iTunes to your external drive to copy it over. This may take some time, especially if you have a large library. You may have to enter an administrator password. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
When she was 14, as a ballet student in Wenatchee, Wash., Clare Barron was unexpectedly promoted to a senior role in "The Nutcracker." It wasn't because of her strengths as a dancer as she recalled in a Skype interview, laughing so hard she seemed to be verging on tears but because a group of older students at her ballet school had suddenly quit. That left Ms. Barron's less promising cohort, what she called "the black sheep of the studio," to fill their shoes. "We were truly out of our element," she said. "I remember people in the audience suppressing laughter, because they all knew how it was supposed to go. I didn't last much longer after that experience." There's no scene quite like that in Ms. Barron's play "Dance Nation," which has been enjoying critical acclaim and a sold out run at Playwrights Horizons. (It has been extended through July 1.) But in this comedy about a dance team of 13 year olds striving to compete in nationals and learning about themselves in the process not all goes smoothly onstage or in the studio. Jealousy, injury and menstruation complicate their journeys of self discovery and sexual awakening. So does the pressure imposed by their hard to please instructor, Dance Teacher Pat, to heal the world through dance in a lyrical number inspired by Gandhi. It would be easy to rehash stereotypes about competitive dance as purely cutthroat and female adolescence (there's just one boy on the team) as purely harrowing. But Ms. Barron exaggerates and undercuts those notions, revealing their gray areas. While acknowledging the stress of participating in competitive dance at a formative age, "Dance Nation" also highlights the surreal and exploratory dynamics of teen girlhood, as they play out in dressing rooms and daydreams. Though Ms. Barron was never a competition dancer, her older sister was, and she encountered others through her obsession with the reality TV show "Dance Moms." She talked about how that show, along with her study of ballet (she quit at 15), informed her writing of "Dance Nation." Below are edited excerpts from the conversation. How does your dance background show up in the play? The biggest thing for me is the friendships between the girls. I became such intimate friends with the girls I danced with, much more intimate than my friends at middle school. They were very loyal and loving. And it was also a real physical intimacy. We'd be naked together in the dressing room, so all these questions about puberty and sex that came up around that time. They were my source of wisdom about that. That definitely comes through in the locker room scenes. The other thing is this feeling you have as a young student of dance that you're doing something really important, that there's this paragon of excellence you're trying to hit, and if you hit it, you will reach the sublime. In the play, when they're trying to do this dance for Gandhi that can change the world, I think there's a similar sense of something very earnest and pure and also very rigorous and demanding. Watching the play, I was thinking about how the pressures of dance training can intensify what teenage girls are going through already, especially related to body image. Was that your experience growing up? I saw two sides of that. There was really brutal stuff about your body and weight and whether or not you had a ballet body. There was this sense of people's bodies changing in a way that hurt their dance prospects, which is just a terrible toxic mentality. To be going through puberty and feeling like, "My body is changing in a way that will not let me be a dancer or be the best dancer." With my friendships and the dressing room vibe, I felt I had a space that was a little bit safe. I grew up in a community that was pretty conservative and Christian, and all of a sudden I had this space where I could be naked, talk about sex, not feel ashamed about my nudity. There was something body affirming in that for me. Did you go to dance competitions as research for the play? No. I'm a huge fan of "Dance Moms." That was the reason I started writing this play. I quit watching because I felt like Abby Lee Miller, the teacher, was literally destroying children. But that's where I got the sense of that whole world: the type of dances they do, the lingo, the ferocity of wanting to win and the despair of not being the best and being in competition with your friends. Why did you like "Dance Moms"? I think it was the pathos of the girls. They were so little when the show started, 8 to 11, and so sweet. There was something so heartbreaking and also so watchable about these girls really pushing themselves, the amount of heart they put into their dancing. There are all these clips online of them being onstage and forgetting their dances. This makes me sound like a monster, but watching them freeze onstage, it's like watching a car crash. It's so horrible. They get so upset, and you totally understand, but it's just it's gripping. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
The September album "Cristal" by Los Guachos, his multinational 11 piece big band, takes on tunes by the tango star Carlos Gardel , as well as Mr. Klein's own compositions. Against the odds, Guillermo Klein has held together Los Guachos, his multinational 11 piece big band, for almost a quarter of a century . In those years, this Argentine born pianist and composer has moved across continents four times, and most of Los Guachos' members have ascended to prestigious careers of their own. But the ensemble has remained intact, allowing Mr. Klein to compile a songbook unlike any other in contemporary music: a travelogue as much as a repertoire, influenced by old and new tango, American jazz, modernism and indie rock. Mr. Klein's home country courses through everything he writes for Los Guachos, but he resists letting his music be pinned to a single influence or nationality. So his Sept. 27 album, "Cristal" his sixth with Los Guachos and his 12th overall is as explicit an engagement with Argentina as he is likely to make: Three of the disc's nine tunes are based on pieces from the songbook of the tango star Carlos Gardel, a national hero from the early 20th century. "The tunes I chose are extremely popular in Argentina," Mr. Klein, who will turn 50 in December, said in a recent interview. "They're songs that are in your subconsciousness." He added, "It's not even the music of your country it's the music of your life." Still, in Mr. Klein's hands, even these ubiquitous tunes sound like his. On his arrangement of Gardel's "Melodia de Arrabal," which opens "Cristal," the horns' smeared, languorous phrasing of the melody reflects Gardel's delivery on the original. And Los Guachos' five piece rhythm section gets in on it, too, with a groove that's elastic and unsteady. On Mr. Klein's own "A Orillas Del Rin," a melodic thread hangs over a mysterious five beat pattern, with a chord progression that never sits down and rests; it's as if Gardel were crossed with Carla Bley. In his originals, Mr. Klein aims for melodies and rhythms that feel utterly clear like something Gardel might have crooned but that also tangle, weave and interfere with one another, like a fugue or a hocketing chorus. Rarely does any single phrase stick around long enough for you to get comfortable. And he uses rhythm in complex, assertive ways, too. Mr. Klein seems equally enamored of Duke Ellington's later work when Ellington's orchestra was moving from the dance hall into the concert hall, without sacrificing its thunderbolt percussive power and the tangos of Gardel and Astor Piazzolla, whose music didn't use heavy percussion but bloomed with persuasive rhythm anyway. "The song is always shining through in his music; the melodies of the songs draw you in," said the alto saxophonist and MacArthur fellow Miguel Zenon, who became fascinated by Los Guachos after hearing them in New York in the late '90s, and soon joined the group. He remembered being impressed to hear "a lot of songs with lyrics" which Mr. Klein often sang himself, in a dusty, disarming voice and the band's "visceral sound." When he joined Los Guachos (the name roughly means "the B astards " in Argentine Spanish), Mr. Zenon took note of how much faith Mr. Klein put in his musicians; Mr. Klein sometimes brought in a bare bones chart, or even just a melody, and allowed the band members to figure out their own parts together on the spot. Mr. Klein arrived in New York City in 1994 from Buenos Aires, by way of Berklee College of Music in Boston. In 2000, shortly after the release of an arresting album, "Guachos II," Mr. Klein left behind weekly engagements at two of the city's finest clubs to return to Argentina. When that country's economy fell to pieces, he went through a series of moves to Barcelona and back to Buenos Aires before landing back in the New York area in 2014. When he first left, Mr. Klein figured that Los Guachos were finished. The careers of many members like those of Mr. Zenon, the guitarist Ben Monder and the drummer Jeff Ballard were picking up, and holding the group together became hard. "I was thinking, O.K., this is over," he said. But in 2002, two clubs where the band had played Smalls and the Jazz Gallery contacted Mr. Klein for a reunion show, and the group started reconvening in New York to play. In more recent years, Los Guachos have enjoyed a more or less annual engagement at the Village Vanguard. As if by its own stubborn insistence, the band has remained Mr. Klein's most consistent vessel. "Every time I play with them, I think it's the last," he said. "It makes it really beautiful." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
CLEVELAND Just minutes after the patient's name was placed on the waiting list for a transplant, details about a matching donor popped up. "I was shocked," said Dr. Andreas G. Tzakis, the director of solid organ transplantation at the Cleveland Clinic's hospital in Weston, Fla. "I really considered it an act of God." Less than 24 hours later, on Feb. 24, the patient, a 26 year old woman from Texas, became the first in the United States to receive a uterus transplant, in a nine hour operation here at the Cleveland Clinic. Born without a uterus, she hopes the transplant will enable her to become pregnant and give birth. "I have prayed that God would allow me the opportunity to experience pregnancy, and here we are at the beginning of that journey," she said on Monday at a news conference, where doctors revealed details of her operation. She gave only her first name, Lindsey, to protect her family's privacy. She and her husband, Blake, also 26, have three adopted sons. The New York Times interviewed Lindsey in November as a candidate for an experimental uterus transplant, but it was not clear then whether she would be selected. At that time she did not want even her first name to be mentioned. Uterus transplant surgery, still experimental, is meant to help women who want to become pregnant but cannot because they were born without a uterus, suffered damage to it or had to have it removed. Between 3 percent and 5 percent of women of childbearing age worldwide are estimated to be infertile for these reasons, and about 50,000 women in the United States are thought to be potential transplant candidates. Dr. Andreas G. Tzakis from the Cleveland Clinic confirmed that the first uterus transplant performed in the United States was a success and that the patient was doing very well. (SOUNDBITE) (English) DOCTOR ANDREAS TZAKIS FROM THE MEDICAL TEAM AT CLEVELAND CLINIC SAYING: "The surgery on the donor and the recipient, used techniques that have been well established through transplantation of the other solid organs. They're a little bit more complex for this particular transplant because the uterus lies deep inside the pelvis and is difficult to access and the vessels are all deep inside the pelvis as well. So it's a little bit more difficult that way. Our first uterine transplant took place on February 24th lasted approximately nine hours and I'm pleased to report to you that our patient is doing very well." (SOUNDBITE) (English) LINDSEY, FIRST UTERUS TRANSPLANT PATIENT IN U.S., SAYING: "First and foremost I would like to take a moment to express the immense gratitude I feel towards my donor's family. They have provided me with the gifts that I will never be able to pay and I am beyond thankful for them. However the reason I chose to speak today is that I want to be open and honest and to share my story and that when I was 16 and was told I would never have children. And from that moment on I have prayed that God would allow me the opportunity to experience pregnancy and here we are today at the beginning of that journey. I am so thankful to this amazing team of doctors and all the nurses and staff who worked around the clock to ensure my safety and I feel like I found a new family in all of them. I am a mother already to three beautiful little boys that Blake and I have adopted through the foster care system. Because of that I would ask that you would all please respect our privacy and we will give updates as we can." Dr. Andreas G. Tzakis from the Cleveland Clinic confirmed that the first uterus transplant performed in the United States was a success and that the patient was doing very well. Dustin Franz for The New York Times The Cleveland Clinic's ethics panel has given the hospital permission to perform 10 uterine transplants in women ages 21 to 39, as an experiment. Officials will then decide whether to continue. Another patient is on the waiting list, and the clinic is still screening possible candidates. So far, 250 women have been evaluated. Two other medical centers in the United States Baylor University Medical Center at Dallas and Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston have announced similar pilot programs, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing, which vets transplant programs and oversees the nationwide distribution of organs from deceased donors. If the first transplants succeed, the procedure could come into widespread use, said Dr. David K. Klassen, chief medical officer of the organ sharing network. At the news briefing in Cleveland, Lindsey expressed "immense gratitude" to the family of the deceased donor. The uterus is an organ not usually removed for transplantation, and donor families must be asked for special consent. The donor, healthy and in her 30s, had several children, and had died suddenly, said Dr. Tzakis, who did not give the cause. Dr. Tzakis said the call about Lindsey's donor had come in the middle of the night, and he and a gynecologic surgeon, Dr. Tommaso Falcone, had immediately flown to another city to remove the uterus. As soon as they determined that the organ was healthy, they notified surgeons back in Cleveland to begin preparing Lindsey, who had flown there with her husband. The transplant surgery took nine hours, longer than the doctors had expected, even though they had practiced on animals and cadavers. Medically, uterus transplants are a new frontier. Ethically, they reflect an increasing acceptance that transplants are justified not only to save lives, but also to improve the quality of life. That belief has already led to hand and face transplants for people with horrific injuries. Penis transplants may be next: Doctors at Johns Hopkins University plan to perform them for men wounded in combat. The transplant is not without risk: Patients face the usual surgical hazards of bleeding and infection, and the increased odds of infection and possibly even cancer, from the anti rejection drugs, which suppress the immune system. But the drug risks will be relatively short lived, as will the transplants themselves. After the woman has had one or two babies, the uterus will be removed so that she can stop taking anti rejection drugs. A woman who wants two babies would probably keep the transplanted uterus for about five years, doctors said. The program in Cleveland has been about 10 years in the making. Dr. Tzakis, who led the team, spent time in Sweden to learn from doctors at the University of Gothenburg, who are the only ones in the world to have performed successful uterine transplants. They have operated on nine women so far taking the uterus from a living donor, often the recipient's mother and five have given birth. The babies have been premature but healthy, according to Dr. Mats Brannstrom, the leader of the program. The Cleveland team is using dead donors, to avoid putting live ones at risk, but Dr. Falcone said the team might consider living donors in the future. Lindsey found out that she had been born without a uterus after a series of medical tests were performed to find out why, at 16, she still had not had menstrual periods. The news was devastating: She had always hoped to have a large family. Even though she has three adopted children, she said she still craved the experience of pregnancy and childbirth. If the procedure succeeds, the soonest Lindsey can give birth is about two years from now. She will have to wait a year before trying to become pregnant, to heal from the surgery and let doctors adjust the medications she will need to prevent her immune system from rejecting the transplant. To become pregnant, she will need in vitro fertilization. The surgeons did not connect fallopian tubes, so it is not possible for her to conceive naturally. Before the transplant, Lindsey had eggs removed surgically, fertilized with her husband's sperm, and frozen. The team required six to 10 embryos; otherwise, it would not have performed the transplant. In about a year, the embryos will be thawed and transferred into Lindsey's uterus, one at a time, until she gets pregnant. If she does, the baby would be delivered by cesarean section; the strain of labor and vaginal delivery may be too much for a transplanted uterus, the doctors said. The Swedish patients have all given birth by cesarean. When a uterus is transplanted, blood vessels are connected, but nerves are not. As a result, patients do not feel sensations from the uterus itself, like menstrual cramps or contractions, according to Dr. Brannstrom. But when pregnant, the women do feel the fetus move, probably through sensations from the abdominal wall, he said. Transplant patients and the families of deceased donors normally do not find out each other's identity unless both sides agree to allow it. Lindsey has not been told who the donor was, a clinic spokeswoman said. But if the donor's relatives see Lindsey speaking out, they will realize that she received her transplant from their loved one. They will know because the death occurred just before Lindsey's surgery date, and she is the only recipient so far. Lindsey said she realized that the donor's family members would know who she was, and it did not trouble her. She said she thought of them every day, knowing that her opportunity had come from their loss. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
No matter how much free time you have this weekend, we have TV recommendations for you. Come back every week for new suggestions on what to watch. This Weekend I Have ... an Hour, and I Love 'Call the Midwife' When to watch: Now, on MHz Choice. This Danish series (in Danish, with English subtitles) is set in 1952, when Erik ( Morten Hee Andersen ), a soldier, decides to enroll in nursing school during a nursing shortage. Not everyone is down with male nurses, of course, so Erik and his allies face down nonsense gender essentialism and a polio outbreak. A lot of period medical dramas veer bleak, but this is definitely in the more hopeful, sweeter vein. The first two episodes are available now; Episode 3 comes out Dec. 3, and the final two episodes will be available starting Dec. 10. ... Two and a Half Hours, and I Like Emotions | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
WASHINGTON Federal regulators and major telecommunications companies pushed back on Monday against a proposal circulating in the White House that would put the government in control of a next generation mobile broadband network to address economic and security concerns related to China. The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Ajit Pai, said he opposed the idea. He argued that the federal government taking control of developing 5G networks, as the mobile technology is called, could hurt the private sector and the economy. "The market, not the government, is best positioned to drive innovation and investment," Mr. Pai, a Republican, said in a statement. "Any federal effort to construct a nationalized 5G network would be a costly and counterproductive distraction from the policies we need to help the United States win the 5G future." USTelecom, the trade group that represents telecommunications and cable broadband providers, said any government run plan would set back the industry. The strong reaction was in response to reports that the Trump administration, on a recommendation from the National Security Council, was contemplating using federal money for a 5G network. The proposal was first reported by Axios, the online news organization, on Sunday. The White House said the idea was very preliminary. The administration has thrown its support behind the development of more secure wireless networks using 5G technology, according to two administration officials who would speak only on the condition of anonymity because the discussions were at an early stage. Some White House officials have pushed for greater federal involvement in the private sector's efforts, but the administration doesn't prefer the idea of the government building a network on its own with public funding, the people said. Discussions on the government's involvement in 5G networks are likely to take at least six months before reaching the president for consideration. In a news conference on Monday, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, said any discussion was at its "earliest stages." The Trump administration is becoming increasingly concerned about the economic and security threats posed by China's development of mobile technology and 5G networks. Among the concerns is the ability of the Chinese government to spy on American citizens and businesses. The American government has long been suspicious of Huawei, a giant Chinese technology company that is behind much of the 5G network development in that country. This month, AT T dropped its plan to carry a new phone model from Huawei. The company has declined to comment on its reasons for dropping the deal, although government officials have expressed concerns over security on those phones. The introduction of 5G, or fifth generation wireless technology, is expected to make browsing and streaming over mobile phones much faster. It is also expected to promote the adoption of what is known as the internet of things, where all sorts of machines and appliances such as refrigerators, cars and health monitors connect to the internet with nearly zero lag time. Wireless companies said that they had already started building their 5G networks and that any government run network would be disruptive. "Industry standards have been set, trials have been underway since 2016, and later this year AT T is set to be the first to launch mobile 5G service in 12 U.S. locations," AT T said in a statement. Any nationalization project could be a difficult sell politically, since the Trump administration and other Republicans have strongly criticized big government projects. But it lays bare the differences between two camps in the administration that have been present since Mr. Trump's inauguration: economic nationalists and China hawks. Among those officials aggressively pushing the 5G network are two China hard liners: Gen. Robert S. Spalding II, the senior director for strategic planning at the National Security Council, and Peter Navarro, the director of the White House national trade council. On trade issues, Mr. Navarro has faced off against officials who favor a more free market approach, like Gary D. Cohn, the president's chief trade adviser. The national security adviser, Gen. H. R. McMaster, has also opposed aggressive trade moves against China, in part because the administration needs China's support to rein in North Korea. White House officials said the debate over a 5G network had not yet developed enough to pit the two camps against each other. But one official said that if the telecommunications industry was not able to agree on plans to rapidly develop a network, it could yet lead to such a split. Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump's former chief strategist, is among those concerned about China and the development of 5G technology. When he was still in the White House, Mr. Bannon met with American telecommunications executives about what would be needed to develop a robust 5G network. He has told associates that he fears China could dominate the technology. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
The British filmmaker Alan Parker, who died on Friday at 76, was not easy to pin down. Many of his contemporaries, particularly in the hyper commercialized world of 1980s studio moviemaking, settled on a particular style or specialty, and drilled down into it. Parker was closer to the journeymen directors of the old Hollywood studio system, who would take on (and excel at) just about any story or genre they were assigned. Over the course of his 27 year career, Parker made thrillers, dramas, comedies and (especially) musicals, and though many bore little resemblance to one another, they were bound by two common elements: the intelligence of Parker's approach, and the professionalism of his craft. Here are a few of his must see works: Parker was never one for timidity, and his feature directorial debut was admirably audacious: a classic '30s style gangster picture, enacted entirely by a cast of children. What could have been a lark (or a disaster) becomes a sly commentary on the conventions of the genre, as well as the high stakes play of childhood: When these kids imagine themselves as cowboys or superheroes or, yes, gangsters, it's real in their heads. So why shouldn't it be real in front of our eyes? Scott Baio got his juiciest big screen role as the title character, but Jodie Foster steals the show as the obligatory "hard boiled dame." Rent or buy on Amazon, Apple, YouTube, Vudu, and Google Play. Parker's next picture was a good deal sunnier, following a handful of talented students through their four year stint at the High School of Performing Arts in New York City. The song and dance sequences are electrifying particularly the title number, which begins in a school cafeteria and spills into the city streets, an explosion of pent up energy, scholastic impatience and raging hormones. But "Fame" is much more a character drama than traditional musical, focusing on the difficulties of coming of age, finding a home and making your way through the minefields of a career in the arts. Stream on HBO Max. Rent or buy on Amazon, Apple, YouTube, Vudu, and Google Play. Parker's astonishing versatility is perhaps best encapsulated by the calendar year 1982, in which he released both the dark rock musical "Pink Floyd The Wall" (sadly, it's not currently streaming) and this razor sharp drama of a family reeling from a contentious divorce. Albert Finney and Diane Keaton are a couple who have drifted apart and now seem determined to hurt not only each other, but also their four daughters. Parker directs with exceptional sensitivity and sympathy, recognizing both the considerable flaws and quiet virtues of these complex characters, while Finney and Keaton do some of their finest screen work in those roles (which is no small achievement). Nicolas Cage and Matthew Modine were still up and comers when Parker cast them in the leading roles of this adaptation of William Wharton's novel. It's one of Parker's trickiest films, telling the story of two childhood friends who both serve in Vietnam and try to help each other heal back home. That sounds like a million other movies, but "Birdy" is uniquely itself, burrowing into the world of gonzo fantasy and unexpected beauty these two friends create to escape their considerable trauma. It's a film that could've gone wrong in a million ways too mawkish, too sentimental, too silly and Parker never takes a false step. Rent or buy on Amazon, Apple, YouTube, Vudu, and Google Play. Most of the ink generated by this unnerving thriller centered on the presence of Lisa Bonet, then known only for the squeaky clean "Cosby Show," shaking up her image with a supporting turn as a sensuous voodoo priestess. But there's much more to "Angel Heart" than that in fact, true to its Creole setting, it's a rich gumbo of Gothic horror, neo noir and the supernatural, with a charismatic Mickey Rourke as a '50s gumshoe sent into the bayou underworld by a mysterious client (Robert De Niro). Parker seems to revel in the swampy atmosphere and period trappings, crafting one of his moodiest and most menacing films. Stream on Amazon Prime Video. Rent or buy on Apple and Vudu. Though it netted several Oscar nominations (including Parker's second and final one for best director), this procedural drama inspired by the 1964 murders of the civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner proved one of Parker's most controversial and contentious films. The criticisms were valid: its protagonists are F.B.I. agents, and Hoover's F.B.I. was not exactly a friend of the movement. But Parker nails the insidiousness of small town racism (and the violence it engenders), while Gene Hackman and Frances McDormand are beautifully understated in a pair of Oscar nominated performances. Rent or buy on Amazon, Apple, YouTube, Vudu, and Google Play. After spending the '80s making progressively higher profile prestige dramas, Parker went back to basics (and back to Europe) for this spirited adaptation of Roddy Doyle's raucous novel. It was a stripped down production with a cast of mostly unknowns, the better to tell the story of a group of working class kids in the Northside of Dublin who form a makeshift pub band, inspired by American soul music. Parker seems to see the picture as a party to keep in motion and he does, filling each frame with memorable characters, charming interactions and, most of all, rousing musical performances. Rent or buy on Amazon, Apple, Vudu, and Google Play. Parker took one more run at the movie musical, and it was his most traditional in theory: a big screen adaptation of a giant, long running Broadway extravaganza. But the filmmaker didn't have it in him to merely hit someone else's marks. He rewrote the script himself, fleshing out the history and subtext of Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical depiction of the life of Eva Peron, and finds inventive ways to sell this theatrical pageant onscreen. Madonna is magnificent in the title role, while Antonio Banderas is endlessly entertaining as a mixture of antagonist, Greek chorus and audience go between. Stream on Amazon Prime Video. Rent or buy on Amazon, YouTube, Vudu, and Google Play. Parker was taking on a next to impossible task when he adapted Frank McCourt's memoir to the screen; it was a publishing sensation, one of the most beloved books of its era, and, as such, had already been "seen" in the minds of most of his audience. But Parker was never one to shrink from a challenge, and he gives this story of ceaseless poverty and familial misery a sense of lived in naturalism. And once again, his skill with actors is exceptional Emily Watson is pitch perfect as the mother who'll get this family through whatever hell is thrown at her, Robert Carlyle is both heartbreaking and horrifying as the father who throws much of it, and Joe Breen, Ciaran Owens and Michael Legge play Frank (at various ages) with grit and determination. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
The Supreme Court's ruling that the Constitution guarantees a right to same sex marriage means married gay couples can gain all the financial and legal rights and responsibilities of being married, regardless of which state they call home. The highest court's landmark decision in 2013, United States v. Windsor, already established that married same sex couples were entitled to federal benefits. But two major federal agencies, Social Security and Veterans Affairs, look to the states to determine marital status, so couples living in nonrecognition states were generally cut off from receiving those benefits. Same sex couples were not entitled to many state conferred benefits either. With Friday's ruling, however, all of that changes. Same sex couples will now be on even ground with the rest of the married population in several significant ways: Married same sex couples will be able to file joint returns at both the federal and state levels. These couples are already required to file joint returns at the federal level, but now, couples living in states that did not recognize their unions no longer have to prepare two sets of tax returns: a joint one for the federal government and individual ones for states. Same sex married people living in nonrecognition states will gain rights to administer a spouse's estate, bring wrongful death actions and prevent other relatives from contesting wills, according to Ron Meyers, an estate planning lawyer in New York. Individuals will also be able to inherit property from a spouse without paying any state estate or inheritance taxes. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Your Money |
President Trump's criticism on Sunday of "Saturday Night Live" was not the first time he's groused about the show's depiction of him, but it did represent an escalation. Look, I can relate to President Trump's feelings about "Saturday Night Live." I too have wished that someone would "look into" the show's content. The whole time Adam Sandler was playing Opera Man, for instance. How could this be allowed! American presidents, however, have generally recognized that being mocked is part of the job a mark of status, even. That's one more norm Mr. Trump has dispensed with. After Alec Baldwin opened this week's show with a sendup of his rambling national emergency declaration on Friday, the president responded bright and early Sunday morning on Twitter: It turns out "a man you can bait with a tweet," in Hillary Clinton's formulation, is also a man you can bait with a skit. This isn't the first time Mr. Trump has groused about the show, which he's called "unwatchable" and a "Democrat spin machine" while contending, somehow, "I don't watch." But it's an escalation, even if he's thus far been all talk. At minimum, perhaps he's fantasizing about joining the ranks of autocratic leaders like Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose government prosecuted people for sharing memes of him as Gollum, and China's Xi Jinping, who cracked down on comparisons of him to Winnie the Pooh. It may be that this is all just blowing off steam, the virtual equivalent of Elvis shooting his TV. Maybe it's a combination of authoritarian role play and wounded celebrity ego. Maybe the federal authorities can't or won't act on the president's yearning for "retribution." But that doesn't mean no one else is listening. Last fall, explosives were mailed to prominent political critics of Mr. Trump, the offices of CNN and the actor Robert De Niro, who assailed Mr. Trump in a speech at the Tony Awards. Mr. Baldwin said that Mr. Trump's Sunday tweet echoing his labeling of the press as the "enemy of the people" could be "a threat to my safety." Mr. Trump's complaint is also an oddly sensitive reaction for a man who not only ran for president as a tough guy but spent decades being satirized as a media figure. Then again, that may be exactly why it stings him so deeply now. Mr. Trump is used to dealing with "S.N.L." as a celebrity, someone who might be mocked but would be in on the joke. He's been a recurring character on the show going back to the 1980s, when Phil Hartman played him in a holiday sketch that embellished his brand by rendering his name in gold lettering. He hosted the show in 2004 while he starred in NBC's "The Apprentice," then again while running for president in 2015. That last time "S.N.L." like much of the news media made the mistake of treating Mr. Trump as a celebrity, not a politician, a curiosity who, LOL, was never going to be president, so why not ride the train, have some laughs and make a buck? Maybe the president believed on some level that, once he was elected, it would stay that way. He was now the star of the American drama. You have to keep the star happy. So Hollywood and the news media would want to be on the side of a winner and ingratiate themselves to his supporters, for business reasons if nothing else. That's a puzzling expectation for anyone who spends as much time watching the news as Mr. Trump does. But it's a natural assumption for a celebrity whose image TV massaged for the better part of four decades. The irony is that, much as it hit on the Russia investigation and Mr. Trump's penchant for spitballing his own statistics, Mr. Baldwin's skit was kind to him at least in one way. Mr. Trump's actual appearance was an odd, hour plus ramble that wandered from rehashing meetings with world leaders to touting the stock market to bashing the previous administration's economic policies, all en route to declaring the "emergency," which, he added, "I didn't need to do." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
My mother liked a loud (and, given our family, distinctly off key) rendition of the hymn "We Gather Together" to kick off Thanksgiving dinner. The internet tells me it's a Dutch Calvinist hymn of thanks for victory (in 1597) over Catholic Spain, so I'm not absolutely sure what it meant to my mother, who grew up in an Orthodox Jewish family in Brooklyn in the 1930s. Still, she taught us the one verse she knew, and we all obliged. Then one year a decade ago or so, she turned up with sheet music and passed around copies, so now, in her memory, we sing all three verses, complete with the unreconstructed lyric, "We all do extol Thee, Thou Leader in battle." In newer versions of the hymn, that's been changed to "Thou leader triumphant," but we are rigorously loyal to our militant adopted version. According to those who assign generational categories, traditionalists were born between 19 27 and 1946 , putting many of them in their 80s these days. My mother, who tended to make her own traditions, was of that generation. But the truth is, children, including those in Generation X and Generation Z and generation millennial, not to mention all the little ones who have yet to grow up and be assigned to some popular sociology classification, can sometimes be extreme traditionalists, even, at times, as they are doing their developmental duty and trying hard to rebel. When our oldest child was born, we announced that we would no longer be traveling for Thanksgiving and, as the possessors of what was then the One and Only Grandchild, we quickly established dominion over that particular holiday. We lived in Cambridge (with the One and Only Grandchild), and every year parents and siblings came up from New York and New Jersey, and we made the dinner. We meant to be at least a little creative and a little nontraditional in our menu, but somehow the experiments, over time, have been ever more strictly codified. Laurie Colwin, whose food writing and recipes contribute heavily to my family Thanksgiving traditions as to those of so many other families, wrote brilliantly about how angry people get when you change the stuffing even people who complain about the stuffing. For that reason, I have never gotten to make her cornbread prosciutto stuffing on Thanksgiving, though we religiously begin the evening by eating her spiced rosemary walnuts with our martinis, and the meal would be incomplete without her iconic creamed spinach with jalapeno peppers. So this year I will make my two stuffings, one with chestnuts and herbs that comes from a Thanksgiving dinner in a very long ago issue of Gourmet magazine (I am cooking from a photocopy of a photocopy) which also taught me how to make the apple cider gravy. And then, in further memory of my mother, there will be curried butternut squash or pumpkin; my parents spent a year living in an East Indian village in Trinidad, where they both developed a strong taste for Indian foods, and then we spent a year in India when I was 5. That will sit alongside the candied sweet potatoes with marshmallows on top that my mother in law brings every year. In further memory of my mother, and in one very particular pot, which I took when she died, I make a dish with the evocative ethnic name of "shells and cabbage," which involves cooking pasta shells together with (surprise) cabbage, and a lot of salt and pepper the pasta overcooks, as does the cabbage, making me suspect that dish does in fact go back to my mother's childhood (my grandmother was big on overcooking), and it tastes great. So the Thanksgiving lineup thus encompasses Mama's childhood (cabbage, long cooking, no spices other than salt and pepper) and also her adulthood (travel, Indian spices). There will be mashed potatoes, of course; how can you have Thanksgiving without mashed potatoes? Ours are adapted from a 1992 recipe in the great Italian cookbook "The Splendid Table," by Lynne Rossetto Kasper. These particular mashed potatoes are rather labor intensive, since they involve caramelized onions, garlic, basil and grated Parmesan cheese, and my children generally make them, out of some sense that I don't know how to do it right. As you would expect, there will also be Zubin Mehta's Indian lasagna how can you have Thanksgiving without Indian lasagna? I can date this to 1991, the year the article on Maestro Mehta and his recipes appeared. This needs to be made the day before, since it involves preparing a keema style meat sauce with a lot of hot chilies and fresh cilantro in it and then grating a great deal of Gruyere cheese, and assembling the lasagnas; family battles have been known to break out around wiping last bits of sauce out of the pan with fragments of torn noodle. But nothing says Thanksgiving like chopping fresh chilies until everyone in the kitchen is either coughing or crying. It kind of makes sense that in the early '90s, when we were cooking those first Thanksgiving dinners (and the One and Only Grandchild was young), we would have been experimenting, and there were dishes that came and went. (Was there a brief flirtation with a lamb tagine with prunes in it? Wasn't there a period of Italian sweet and sour pumpkin? Was there maybe a year or two of chili as a side dish? And what about those curried chickpeas I really liked?) But once the OOG was joined by other children, and they all got old enough to express their opinions, it became clear that their opinions were pretty uniform: You have to make what you always make. Sometimes I think they are more vigilant about demanding their less favorite dishes, just to keep us on our toes. I am not the baker, but it is impossible to leave out either the chocolate pecan pie or the apple cream cheese pie or the pumpkin pie, which my husband makes from his mother's recipe, steaming and storing the pumpkin earlier in the month, and which is served warm, and which is by far the best pumpkin pie in the world. His mother brings the rugelach, which are, similarly, the best in the world. My children have loud and strong pie allegiances but no one is willing to countenance the elimination of a less favored pie. The turkey and one of the stuffings come out of that long ago Gourmet magazine set piece dinner, everything themed together (November 1993 the early 90s again). I don't really understand the appeal of a unified, organized, even themed Thanksgiving, maybe because I don't have a unified, organized, themed life and I suspect most people don't. So my children are strict about traditions, but like many families, we got to make up our own traditions, from yellowed clippings to appropriated hymns. What I'm really thankful for, I guess, are the many scraps and pieces that don't necessarily belong together and of course, for the traditionalist children who demand the repetition and the ritual. Though I am thinking of adding back those chickpeas. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Well |
LOS ANGELES If it keeps this up, "Black Panther" could be the newest member of moviedom's 1 billion club. Having had a week to absorb its record setting arrival, Hollywood is now sizing up the staying power of Marvel's latest superhero movie. In its second weekend, "Black Panther" demonstrated an astounding hold on audiences in the United States and Canada, collecting about 108 million and pushing its global total after only 12 days of release to roughly 704 million, according to comScore. As a point of context, Marvel's "Guardians of the Galaxy" collected 773 million in 2014 over its entire five month run. Imax, which is playing "Black Panther" in more than 60 countries, said people are paying to see the film more than once, a quality that the biggest of the big movies share. "This movie has very strong word of mouth and a deeply loyal core fan base, which are both necessary criteria for repeat business," said Greg Foster, Imax's entertainment chief. And the euphorically reviewed film has yet to arrive in China and Japan, two of Hollywood's biggest markets. Strong results in other Asian countries, including South Korea, bode well. For the weekend in North America, three new movies arrived in wide release, and each struggled to get noticed as "Black Panther" dominated. "Game Night" (Warner Bros.) did the best, taking second place with an estimated 16.6 million. New Line, a division of Warner, spent about 35 million to make the R rated comedy, which received very strong reviews and stars Rachel McAdams and Jason Bateman. The holdover "Peter Rabbit" (Sony) chugged away in third place, selling about 12.5 million in tickets, for a three week total of 71.3 million. That left the expensive "Annihilation" in fourth place, with 11 million in estimated ticket sales. An R rated science fiction drama directed by Alex Garland ("Ex Machina") and starring Natalie Portman as a biologist, "Annihilation" cost Paramount Pictures and David Ellison's Skydance at least 40 million to make. Most critics loved "Annihilation," but multiplex ticket buyers gave it a C grade in CinemaScore exit polls. Had it cost less to produce, Mr. Garland's movie possibly could have succeeded as an art house film. But Paramount, which has struggled badly of late, wants to compete in the wide release business. "Annihilation" was a holdover from a previous management team at the studio, where a large number of senior executives have quit or been fired over the last year as the studio attempts a turnaround. New managers sold off overseas rights for "Annihilation" to Netflix. The weekend's remaining new wide release film was "Every Day," a microbudgeted teenage fantasy romance that took in about 3.1 million and was marketed mostly online. The movie was the first from a rebooted Orion Pictures, which is owned by Metro Goldwyn Mayer. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
If you work in the tech industry, it's a good bet you know who Ben Horowitz is: Venture capitalist. Entrepreneur. Netscape veteran. Serious fan of hip hop music. What you may not know is that his father is David Horowitz, the left wing intellectual and friend of the Black Panthers who turned into a right wing intellectual who some would argue has provided the philosophical underpinnings of the Trump administration. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
HELENA, Mont. The battle to save the so called gray ghosts the only herd of caribou in the lower 48 states has been lost. A recent aerial survey shows that this international herd of southern mountain caribou, which spends part of its year in the Selkirk Mountains of northern Idaho and Washington near the Canadian border, has dwindled to just three animals and should be considered "functionally extinct," experts say. The Selkirk herd had been disappearing for the last several years. In 2009, the herd, the southernmost in North America, had about 50 animals and was declining. Wildlife officials in Canada began a last ditch effort to protect them by killing wolves, which occasionally preyed on the few caribou that remained. But the root cause of the extirpation of this herd and the decline of others in Canada is extensive industrial development in British Columbia, experts say. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
WASHINGTON Question for the day posed by a timely exhibition: Would someone who lived in a so called inner city picture it differently than an outsider would? "Down These Mean Streets: Community and Place in Urban Photography," at the Smithsonian American Art Museum here, an exhibition organized by E. Carmen Ramos, the museum's deputy chief curator and curator of Latino art, presents 93 photos by 10 Latino photographers, all well established but many not as widely known as they should be. Nine men and one woman train their cameras on Latino enclaves from Spanish Harlem to East Los Angeles, from the 1950s when many cities were in crisis and governments tried to put out the (sometimes literal) fires to the present. Some 55 million Latinos constitute the largest minority in America. How do they regard the places they call home? Answers vary. Clues are on the wall. Inner cities inevitably declined, yet at least in this show images of neglect don't quite dominate as they frequently do in "outsider" photos. Not that they are avoided: Mr. Vargas pictured destroyed housing in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn in 1972. Ms. de Leon was more sardonic; she photographed a girl in an enormous field of pulverized stone in the South Bronx in 1977. The title? "My Playground." Still, evidence of resilience and community keeps cropping up among the rubble. Children play continually. Mr. Vargas paired adult protest and childhood dauntlessness within a single image in Washington Heights in 1970: a girl sits on a step smiling full force at us, while graffiti behind her says "Free the panther" and "The streets belong to the people." In 1980, Ms. de Leon photographed a bleak lot in the South Bronx bristling with pebbles and harboring a small building constructed by neighbors for community use. Mr. Castillo took a color photograph in the early 1970s of two small, partly dismembered buildings, both with murals in praise of the Virgin of Guadalupe, amid the remains of a destroyed housing project in East Los Angeles. These painted houses were so cherished that the community saved and relocated them. The photographers knew this; most of us only find out through the wall texts. The photographers' shared insider culture and likely sympathy undoubtedly made access easier. On the other hand, certain facts of urban minority life are, and look, the same through almost anyone's viewfinder. The open hydrants in more than one photo on display are not very different from "outsider" pictures of open hydrants. Children would draw chalk pictures on the street no matter who was photographing them. Bruce Davidson's East 100th Street picture of a child in East Harlem standing in a field of shattered stones and weeds is a cousin to Ms. de Leon's "My Playground." But Mr. Acevedo has a visionary view of hope that is surely more permissible to a Latino than to anyone who has not lived the story: In 1998 he drew an enormous bird cage over a photograph of a Newark street corner. The cage is open at the top, so a bird can rise toward heaven. Although these mean streets have more potholes than pavement, aspirations, achievements and a sense of community also find themselves at home. The Smithsonian American Art Museum long ago made a commitment to Latino culture, establishing a Latino art collection in the 1980s. The Smithsonian Latino Center was created in 1997 to ensure "that the contributions of the Latino community in the arts, history, national culture and scientific achievement are explored, presented, celebrated and preserved" a capital recognition of the nation's majority minority. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
Want more basketball in your inbox? Sign up for Marc Stein's weekly N.B.A. newsletter here. The N.B.A. draft will take place on Nov. 18, nearly five months later than scheduled. An abbreviated free agency period will likely be stuffed into Thanksgiving week afterward. The off season, like the 2019 20 season that preceded it, resembles nothing teams are accustomed to except for the chatter about potential trades, hires and the like. That talk never stops. Let's tap into the grapevine for the latest around the league buzz, starting with a superstar's uncertain future in Houston: James Harden's happiness in Houston must be closely monitored. Mike D'Antoni walked away from the Rockets as head coach less than 48 hours after their season ended, with no promise of a new job, and will be a Nets assistant coach next season under Steve Nash. Daryl Morey then fled Clutch City, in the midst of a coaching search, to take over the Philadelphia 76ers' front office. And Houston didn't hire either of the candidates Harden endorsed the strongest to replace D'Antoni: Tyronn Lue and John Lucas. Rival teams are thus already wondering: a.) how perturbed Harden is, and b.) how long before the Tilman Fertitta owned Rockets seriously entertain trading him? The Rockets are adamant that Harden will not be shopped. They have the N.B.A.'s longest active playoff streak, at eight seasons in a row and counting, which began after Morey traded for Harden in October 2012. Fertitta insisted during a recent CNBC appearance that the Rockets are "not blowing up anything" and "plan on contending." He has owned the team long enough to know that just keeping Harden should keep the Rockets in 50 win territory. Houston's resolve, though, is about to be tested, unless Harden warms to the change all around him. Rafael Stone, Houston's new general manager, made a sensible choice in difficult circumstances by hiring Stephen Silas to succeed D'Antoni. Fertitta had strong interest in ESPN's Jeff Van Gundy, despite considerable reported reluctance from both Harden and Russell Westbrook, while Stone has been Lucas's biggest backer in the organization. But the coach Houston ultimately chose got strong reviews for his work in each of his previous stops (Cleveland, Golden State, two stints with Charlotte and Dallas) and is known for his offensive acumen. Silas has always been well liked, too, as evidenced by the praise his hiring drew on social media from the likes of Luka Doncic and Jamal Crawford. The relationship he builds with Harden figures to be the most important of his career, but it's certainly promising for the Rockets that he has always been able to click with stars, going back to his early days in Cleveland and Golden State when Silas could often be found before games preparing LeBron James and Stephen Curry. Give the Philadelphia 76ers this much: No team is spending more on organizational upgrades. More than two years after The New York Times revealed the Sixers' first attempt to lure Daryl Morey away from Houston, Philadelphia has hired him to a monster five year deal. And that's after Philadelphia awarded a five year, top dollar contract to its new coach, Doc Rivers; committed to a contract extension with the holdover general manager Elton Brand; and hired two executives (Indiana's Peter Dinwiddie and Orlando's Prosper Karangwa) under Brand. Industry insiders estimate that Morey received a salary in excess of 10 million annually. Specific figures were not announced, but some insist that the deal tops the five year, 60 million contract that Phil Jackson reportedly received when he was named team president by the Knicks. The Sixers, citing team policy, declined to discuss the contract specifics when asked this week. One immediate plus for the Sixers in finally landing their man: Morey, as we know from the nearly 80 trades he swung in Houston from 2007 through last season, has the gumption to break up the tandem of Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons by trading one of them if Rivers is unable to get them functioning better together. One immediate concern: Morey, Rivers and Brand are all accustomed to having varying degrees of shot calling power. So they will also have to prove, just like Philadelphia's franchise duo, that they can mesh. Morey joins Toronto's Masai Ujiri and Boston's Danny Ainge as high profile executives in the Atlantic Division, where the Knicks' new team president, Leon Rose, received his own lucrative deal in the spring. Rose's annual salary, I'm told, is in the 8 million range after he became the latest player agent to make the leap to the front office. The last of the league's nine coaching vacancies is in Oklahoma City. Will Hardy, an assistant coach with the San Antonio Spurs, Charles Lee from the Milwaukee Bucks' staff and Mark Daigneault, an assistant coach with the Thunder, are among the candidates who have received strong consideration for the post. Other outlets have mentioned the Thunder assistant coach Brian Keefe and the former Nets assistant Will Weaver, who is coaching the Sydney Kings in Australia, as contenders. But I've also braced myself, from the moment Billy Donovan and the Thunder parted ways on Sept. 8, for Oklahoma City General Manager Sam Presti to hire someone whose name had never been connected to the job. That would be the Prestian outcome. Hardy has emerged as a key member of Gregg Popovich's San Antonio staff and also worked under Popovich as part of the U.S.A. Basketball staff in 2019 when the United States cratered to a seventh place finish in the FIBA World Cup. Lee has spent the past two seasons on Mike Budenholzer's staff in Milwaukee after starting his N.B.A. coaching career in Atlanta. Daigneault has been in the N.B.A. for only one season, but he coached Oklahoma City's N.B.A. G League team for five seasons before that after a collegiate stint under Donovan at Florida. I was late to "Cobra Kai" on Netflix and can't get enough of it now, and "Ted Lasso" on Apple TV has been another godsend during this very short N.B.A. off season, but I miss "Game of Zones" badly. You ask; I answer. Every week in this space, I'll field three questions posed via email at marcstein newsletter nytimes.com. (Please include your first and last name, as well as the city you're writing in from, and make sure "Corner Three" is in the subject line.) Q: Take all the players ever and ask this question: Who would you draft first? You would pick Kareem Abdul Jabbar. That's how you settle the GOAT debate. In fact, you'd pick several centers before you got to Michael Jordan or LeBron James. But Kareem as the No. 1 overall pick is unassailable. You can't teach height, as the old saying goes, and Abdul Jabbar is the most skilled player to play basketball's most important position. Mark Calahan Stein: Kudos for keeping the GOAT debate alive in this newsletter, no matter how hard we try to move on from it, with a previously unsubmitted argument. But we have to ask: When is this theoretical draft taking place? In which N.B.A. era, in other words, would the mythical team we select be playing? If we were drafting for today's N.B.A., given how modern front offices think, I don't see Abdul Jabbar as an unassailable No. 1 pick. Not at all. Not when teams are prioritizing creators with the ball and versatile wing players who have the size and mobility to defend multiple positions. Although it is gratifying to see such staunch support for Abdul Jabbar, since he rarely receives that sort of GOAT backing, I suspect several general managers in your theoretical draft would be looking at noncenters if they had to build a team for the way the game is played in 2020. M.J., LeBron and Magic Johnson would all be contenders for the No. 1 overall pick as well as a couple of Kareem's predecessors, Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain, who possessed elite mobility and athleticism. Russell didn't have Anthony Davis's all around game offensively, but you can certainly imagine him causing the same sort of defensive havoc and guarding all sorts of scorers on switches. The real issue here is that there have been way too many greats in this sport to describe anyone as an "unassailable" No. 1 pick in the draft you're proposing. It's hard enough to get basketball people to agree on four names for the sport's conceptual Mount Rushmore. Where we agree is the notion that great big men will always be able to tilt the court. I've never bought into the "big man is dead" talk that increasingly circulates; some of that aforementioned focus on guards and wings stems from what's available. Rest assured that prime Shaquille O'Neal would find a way to flourish now, just as Denver's Nikola Jokic and Philadelphia's Joel Embiid do. It's just harder than ever to find a Shaq. Or a Wilt. Q: Tyronn Lue worked as an assistant coach for the Clippers before being named as their new head coach. Has any other championship winning head coach subsequently worked as an assistant coach? Jeff Pucillo (Hastings on Hudson, N.Y.) Stein: My research turned up three predecessors to Lue, who won a title with the Cleveland Cavaliers in his first season as a head coach in 2015 16 and was a Clippers assistant last season. Paul Westhead, who has a new book out ("The Speed Game") about his life in the sport, was an assistant coach with three franchises (Golden State, Orlando and Seattle/Oklahoma City) after winning a ring with the Los Angeles Lakers in 1979 80. K.C. Jones coached the Boston Celtics to two championships in the 1980s and worked as an assistant with the Detroit Pistons in 1994 95. Al Attles coached Golden State to its first championship in 1974 75 and, in the same season that Jones worked in Detroit (1994 95), Attles served as an assistant coach with the Warriors. Q: Was Kentavious Caldwell Pope the worst third best player on a championship team? Colin Walsh (Brooklyn) Stein: This one, cold as it sounds, was posed frequently during the N.B.A. finals. Kyle Kuzma's underwhelming season opened the door to a debate, and I would argue, in response, that Caldwell Pope was not the only nominee for No. 3 status. For the eight teams that were excluded from the N.B.A. restart at Walt Disney World near Orlando, Fla., 286 days will have elapsed between the N.B.A.'s last night of pre pandemic games on March 11 and Dec. 22. Stephen Silas had been an assistant coach for the 19 N.B.A. seasons before the Houston Rockets finally gave him his first head coaching shot. As noted last week on Twitter by the former New York Times scribe Howard Beck, Silas thus became the fourth active N.B.A. coach whose father held the same post, joining Cleveland's J.B. Bickerstaff (Bernie Bickerstaff), Denver's Mike Malone (Brendan Malone) and Minnesota's Ryan Saunders (Flip Saunders). The Rockets posted a winning percentage of .500 or better in each of Daryl Morey's 14 seasons with the team. Morey, who abruptly stepped down as Rockets general manager on Oct. 15, was the lead decision maker in Houston's front office for the last 13 of those seasons. No other team in the league posted a .500 or better record over the same span. Leave it to my trusty historian pal ToddSpehr35 to have it in his files that Portland's Bob Gross received two votes for N.B.A. finals Most Valuable Player Award in 1976 77. The Trail Blazers' Bill Walton won the award with six votes and Philadelphia's Julius Erving received three despite playing for the losing team. It was Erving's first season in the N.B.A. after starring for the Virginia Squires and the New York Nets in the A.B.A. Hit me up anytime on Twitter ( TheSteinLine) or Facebook ( MarcSteinNBA) or Instagram ( thesteinline). Send any other feedback to marcstein newsletter nytimes.com. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
A firepit is more than just a place to roast marshmallows. Choose carefully and it can be a sculptural feature in the yard even when it is not in use, as well as an open invitation to family and friends. "It's a focal point, and the node to a gathering space or a conversation area," said Stephen Eich, the urban studio director at Hollander Design Landscape Architects, in New York. "They're naturally things that draw people out into the landscape." A circular firepit is ideal for intimate gatherings, surrounded by seating for four to six people, Mr. Eich said, while a long, linear one could anchor a larger seating area with an outdoor sofa. And firepits with a wide lip, he added, provide a place to set a drink down or put your feet up. And best of all, a firepit helps maximize the time you spend in the garden. By providing heat on cooler days, "it extends the season," Mr. Eich said. "It provides the flexibility to work in the fringe seasons: the late fall and early spring." None What type of fuel should you use? Firepits can be designed to burn wood, natural gas, propane or ethanol, and each type has pros and cons. None What material is best? "We tend to stick with things that are a little more natural," Mr. Eich said, like "cut stone and raw metals like Cor Ten steel and zinc." None How far from the house does it need to be? A firepit should be at least 15 feet from any combustible surface, Mr. Eich said, including plants and decking. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
The Southern Ocean around Antarctica was once warmer. Then about 30 million years ago, the temperature dropped. Few fish could survive temperatures that were just above seawater's freezing point, and they either migrated to warmer waters or went extinct. One bottom dweller held on. Through the power of natural selection, its descendants developed traits that let them survive these unlikely conditions. Today, the Antarctic blackfin icefish, or Chaenocephalus aceratus, thrives in these frigid waters with no scales, blood as clear as water and bones so thin , you can see its brain through its skull. Like the Science Times page on Facebook. Sign up for the Science Times newsletter. How this creature no longer a bottom dweller can live in such a hostile environment has long fascinated scientists, who have mapped its genome and continued exploring its unusual traits. In a paper published Monday in Nature Ecology and Evolution, a team of scientists compared the genome of the Antarctic blackfin icefish to those of its close relatives. They found that, across these genomic maps, and tens of millions of years of evolution, gene families had shrunken or expanded, giving rise to some of the icefish's most unusual features. In addition to revealing how the icefish managed to adapt to extreme Antarctic conditions, the team's findings provide a new way to look at the genetics behind human diseases such as anemia and osteoporosis. "A trait that's maladaptive in one environment can be adaptive in another," said H. William Detrich, a marine scientist at Northeastern University who has been studying icefish for decades and helped lead the study. He added that, "we can learn a lot about human physiology and medicine by studying these evolutionary outliers." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
When forward Jeremiah Robinson Earl, a freshman at Villanova, announced last week that he would pull out of the N.B.A. draft and return for his sophomore season, he kept alive a streak that has been running for nearly 25 years. Villanova has not had a one and done player under Coach Jay Wright, and the program will not have one this year, either. In fact, the program's last one was Tim Thomas, who was taken seventh in 1997, and that was even before the N.B.A.'s so called one and done rule went into effect, in 2006. It required players to be 19 and at least one year removed from their graduating high school class to enter the draft. That led to a wave of players spending one year in college before entering the N.B.A. but none of them were from Villanova. It is one of a couple of programs to have eight or more players currently in the N.B.A. without a single one and done. Virginia is another. Robinson Earl, a 6 foot 9 prospect from the Kansas City area, "definitely would have gotten drafted," Wright said. But because of the coronavirus pandemic, he was one of several players from high profile programs who either withdrew from the draft or did not enter it. He said the reason was the "uncertainty" of what the N.B.A. was "going to do and just kind of the timeline of that." "I didn't want to worry a lot about that throughout the times that we're going through right now," he said. "I just want to keep focusing on getting better and going back to Villanova and keep my mind set set on that." The N.B.A.'s early entry eligibility deadline, when underclassmen have to declare for the draft, is Sunday at 11:59 p.m., Eastern time. The deadline to withdraw is June 15 at 5 p.m., Eastern time. The draft is scheduled for June 25 at Barclays Center in Brooklyn. The N.B.A. has not announced any changes to those dates, or to the draft combine, which is scheduled for May 21 to 24 in Chicago but it is widely expected that the draft will be postponed to August or September. It most likely depends on if the 2019 20 N.B.A. season resumes and when it ends if it does. The N.B.A. suspended its season on March 11. The league is considering a plan in which it plays the remainder of the regular season and playoffs in Las Vegas. Major League Baseball is mulling a similar plan, where all 30 teams would play in Arizona. Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, recently said professional sports could return if two conditions were met: No fans were in the stands and players were sequestered in hotels with regular Covid 19 testing. "There's a way of doing that," Dr. Fauci told Peter Hamby on "Good Luck America," an original series by Snapchat. "Nobody comes to the stadium. Put them in big hotels, wherever you want to play, keep them very well surveilled." He added, "Have them tested, like every week, and make sure they don't wind up infecting each other or their family, and just let them play the season out." The uncertainty of the N.B.A.'s plans has had an impact on other college players considering the draft. Bill Self, the coach at Kansas, said "probably one or two" of his players would have entered the draft had it been a normal year. Two players from Florida, Scottie Lewis and Keyontae Johnson, opted to return to college, citing the coronavirus. Lewis, a freshman, expressed a desire to compete in the N.C.A.A. tournament next year after this year's was canceled as many conference tournaments were underway. Darris Nichols, an assistant coach at Florida, said he advised his players that it might make more sense to skip the draft process this year. In a normal year, some undergraduates would "test the waters" by meeting with and working out for N.B.A. teams. A group of 60 or 70 players would be invited to work out in front of every team at the combine in May. Each undergraduate would then be evaluated by the undergraduate advisory committee, which provides feedback on where they might be drafted. Depending on the feedback, players could return to campus if they withdrew from the draft before the deadline. "That's not happening this year, so I don't know what waters there are to test," Nichols said. Because of restrictions on access to gyms, players are limited in what they can do. "I've been doing a lot of ball handling, just kind of in the garage,'' Robinson Earl said. "Just really safe ways of just getting in the gym just making sure there's very minimal people going in and out. There have been times when I found a gym but there were too many people and I didn't want to risk doing that. I can even work on technique outside on the driveway." John Calipari, the coach at Kentucky, has had five underclassmen declare for the draft this spring. None have pulled out. He said he was worried about what kind of shape college players would be in when they had to work out for N.B.A. teams. "If they spend two months and don't do anything and then try to go work out for an N.B.A. team, it isn't going to work out for them," Calipari said. "There are no gyms, no health clubs, unless they have a gym in their house, none of them do. Unless they have a workout area in their home, none of them do, how are we doing this?" Calipari also said that any player considering entering the draft should get more time to make their decision. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
When a used car salesman says, "I will be honest," it's a sure sign he won't be. Same with a card huckster. For him, "I will be honest" means "Don't look at my hands." Other tells may include "You saw for yourself that this deck was legitimately shuffled." (It wasn't.) Or "I want this to be as fair as possible." (Watch your wallet.) All of these are part of Helder Guimaraes's patter in "The Future," a Zoom magic show from the Geffen Playhouse trying very hard to be more but only partly succeeding. Oddly, it's the magic part that most disappoints, at least as theater. The "more" part, a stretch toward greater meaning, is engaging even as you wonder if it too is a deception. That stretch comes between card tricks, as Guimaraes offers glimpses of his life's journey from fanboy to sorcerer's apprentice to fast hand for hire. The tension between entertainment and crookery that's built into the business eventually grows into a full blown dilemma when he meets his childhood idol in Marseille. The idol, a British cardsharp named Kevin who presents himself as a reformed gambler, at first fulfills Guimaraes's teenage fantasies. Kevin seems to be the kind of man who would ply his trade in purple rooms with velour curtains and Venetian landscapes on the wall. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
The "Daily Show" correspondent Jaboukie Young White suggested Trump could improve his numbers by trying to get in good with black Twitter ("the only gated community he isn't allowed into"). But first, Young White said, the president would have to stop tweeting about "Fox Friends." "Tweet about shows people actually watch, you know? Like that show with the black baby or whatever that gets kidnapped by Mandy Moore, but then it turns out being a good thing." JABOUKIE YOUNG WHITE, describing "This Is Us" Fallon had a few thoughts on Beto O'Rourke's presidential campaign mainly, that the Texan should "cool it with the blue shirts, bro." "There's too many of them. It's insane. You look exactly the same every day. It's like one of the Brooks brothers got stuck inside 'Groundhog Day.' You're campaigning for president of the United States, not trying to sell OxiClean." JIMMY FALLON Fallon also suggested that O'Rourke stop campaigning from the top of his minivan: "You can't become president if you're standing on a van down by the river." He said O'Rourke needed to step up his game with Pete Buttigieg threatening to eclipse him as the cool, young white guy in the race. "Beto, do some interviews, do a town hall. Because Mayor Pete's coming in hot. And right now, you're just a dude who supports legal marijuana, wears the same shirt every day and rides around in a van. You're Shaggy from 'Scooby Doo.'" JIMMY FALLON "I bet this is going to inspire more people to run for office. People are going to be on stage like, 'I'm running for president so that I can ask Jeff Bezos what happened to my tube socks! Which were supposed to be here by Wednesday!'" TREVOR NOAH "It got awkward when Jack realized pressing the mute button doesn't work on people in real life." JIMMY FALLON "Out of habit, he met with the C.E.O. of Twitter at 3 a.m. while sitting on the toilet." CONAN O'BRIEN "Poor Jack Dorsey. He has to explain to a president that some of his followers were deleted because they were bots and spam accounts. It's like breaking the news to a child that Santa isn't real. It's like, 'Sir, you're 72 now, so I think you're old enough to know the truth: MIKHAIL 62875 isn't a real person.'" TREVOR NOAH Watching other people play games can be boring, unless it's Brie Larson playing a virtual reality game called "Beat Saber" in a suit and no shoes. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
The patch became a reality, and shortly after that, an editor at The Times approached Alice Paul Tapper to see if she might want to write an Op Ed on the subject. "I'm 10. And I Want Girls to Raise Their Hands," was published on Oct. 31, 2017, and led to a book deal with Penguin. Alice is now 11, and "Raise Your Hand," which came out March 19, debuts at No. 2 on the picture book list. As she wrote in her Op Ed, "On their first date, when my mom found out that my dad's middle name was Paul, she instantly knew that if she married my dad and had a baby girl she would call me Alice Paul. Alice Paul was one of the women who led the movement for women to have the right to vote. Having Alice Paul's name makes me feel special. For women to be equal to men, we have to fight for it." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
KNUTSFORD, England That day, Raheem Sterling looked up, and tuned in. Ordinarily when he is on the field, he loses himself so completely in the game that the noise of the crowd becomes an indistinct murmur, each voice lost in the hum of tens of thousands. But as Sterling approached the touchline to collect the ball for a corner kick in Manchester City's Premier League game at Chelsea on Dec. 8, something forced him to switch his focus. He remembers making eye contact with a handful of fans in the front row of the Matthew Harding Stand at Stamford Bridge. Like all players, and as one of his country's best players, he is used to hostility, particularly away from home. But what he could see was different. It looked, to him, like hatred. "The way they were looking at me, I had to see where all this anger was coming from," he said. "I was listening in to hear what they were saying." What he picked up, he said, he dismissed immediately: "Nah, that can't be what I heard." It was neither Sterling's first racist encounter as a teenager, he once was head butted by a stranger on a Liverpool street nor the first time he had experienced racism in an English stadium. In his first match at Everton's Goodison Park after joining Manchester City, he said, he was walking toward the tunnel when a boy with his father called him a "black something." As he left Stamford Bridge that evening in December, though, Sterling, 24, kept churning over what he had heard, what had happened. By the time he returned to Manchester, he decided that it was "too much now." He wanted to say something. He spent all night thinking of the best way to do it. He did some research, got his thoughts in order. The next morning, as he sat in the back seat of a car on the 30 minute drive from his home to Manchester City's training facility, he composed a 207 word message to accompany his thoughts. It focused not just on what had happened at Stamford Bridge, but why. Sterling posted it, with two images, to his Instagram account. A few weeks ago, Sterling returned to visit friends near Wembley, the part of northwest London where he grew up. He remains intimately connected to the place: He said he was in discussions with the local council to find an appropriate site for a sporting and educational institute, somewhere to provide opportunities for children (and their parents) from backgrounds similar to his. It is a personal and, until now, a private thing, something he says is less his responsibility as a professional athlete and more an innate desire to "show light" to a new generation. He wants his story to give others like him hope. "Not just to be a footballer," Sterling said, "but to do whatever they want to do." It is not hard to find inspiration in Sterling's rise. His story has long been crowbarred into the narrative often expected of athletes: the deprived upbringing, the triumph over adversity, that comforting fairy tale told of so many athletes in which greatness flowers best in soil left untended. His father was shot dead in Jamaica when he was 2. His mother moved to England in the hope of giving her children a better life. Sterling remembers her "fight to get jobs," the long hours she put in, the days he and his sister would help her clean hotel rooms before school. Sterling has always been keen not to allow exaggerations to flourish, to correct any poetic license taken by those telling his story. In 2016, he told The Mail on Sunday that his childhood home was not in a "rough, rough" area; in a piece for The Players' Tribune last year, he said that while his family never had much money, his mother always made sure he and his sister had what they needed. He knows well enough where he came from. He could see Wembley Stadium from his garden, but there were plenty of other places where the horizon was far more oppressive. The last time he went back, he said in an interview last week, he looked at those streets not far from where he had grown up, those high rises, and saw "a prison, with no way out." His meteoric rise to being one of the finest English players of his generation should, then, be a cause for celebration for England. At 15, Liverpool beat back competition from Arsenal and Manchester United to sign Sterling from Queens Park Rangers. By the time he was 17, he had made his debut for England. Before he was 20, he had been selected for a World Cup. In 2015, Manchester City made him, for a time, the most expensive English player in history, paying 49 million pounds, or about 63.7 million, to pry him from Anfield at the express recommendation of Pep Guardiola. Guardiola would not arrive in England to become City's manager for another year, but he knew that he wanted to work with Sterling. The collaboration has proved enormously successful. Sterling has won a Premier League title with another in his grasp this season and he played a key role in England's run to the World Cup semifinals last summer. City rewarded him with a new contract a few months ago, at least partly to ward off interest from Real Madrid. He has more than lived up to his promise. Guardiola described him as "incredible." Few, though, would suggest England has cherished Sterling. A frosty reception at Anfield may be unavoidable since his departure, but he attracts opprobrium elsewhere, too. He has been jeered by his own fans while playing for England and was attacked and racially abused by a Manchester United supporter on the doorstep of City's training facility. One newspaper, after England's elimination from Euro 2016 by Iceland, called Sterling a "footie idiot." It was not an epithet attached to any other player on that squad. Sterling has no doubt why such hostility has taken root. "From the very start of my career, there has been a perception of a flashy kid from London: loves cars, loves the flashy lifestyle," he said. "I'm not saying I'm a saint or anything, but that is the complete opposite of who I am. "These people do not know me. They will define me by what they read about me; that is how they will treat me. When people are making the public believe you are a character you aren't, that is hurtful, and it is degrading." Nor has he any doubt why that picture has been built up: The way he is covered, the way he is presented by the news media, is rooted in the fact that he is black. "One million percent," he said. It is that conviction that led him to take the risk, and to speak up, to become part of the global conversation led by the likes of Colin Kaepernick and LeBron James about equality. The example that sticks with Sterling is the one about his cars. In 2016, a handful of Britain's tabloids ran articles that claimed he was "looking for a seventh car so that he has one for each day of the week." None of them quoted Sterling on that particular ambition. Each ran a set of pictures of the forward behind the wheel of various vehicles. "These were cars that I had had between the ages of 17 and 23," he said. "But they made it that Raheem has one for Monday, one for Tuesday, and so on. All these cars are gone, sold. But what do you do when you sell a car? You buy a new one. But they have a picture of me in each car, so the story is that I drive a car each day. People see that and think that's what he's up to buying cars, living the best life." For the record, Sterling said, he currently has one car, and his partner, Paige Milian, has another. He is, he said, "in the process of selling mine, to get a more subtle one." It is not just the cars, though. Sterling has made headlines for, variously: flying on a budget airline; eating at Greggs, a British sandwich chain; and shopping at Poundland, a discount shop. Whenever one of these articles emerges, his friends send him a link accompanied by a host of laughing emojis on their group chat. Sometimes Sterling laughs, too. "There is a lot more going on in this world than me going to Greggs," he said. The endlessness of it, though, wears him down. "What is the need for it?" he said. "What is the need for this story? Sometimes you ask what the motive is." More pernicious than the content of the articles, in his mind, is the way they are framed: the little asides, the giddy, superfluous mentions of his weekly wage and, in particular, the dog whistle words the hints that this young, successful, high profile black footballer is not spending the money he has earned correctly, or that he has not earned it at all. "It is not just me," he said. "Whenever you see a report on a black player or a black entertainer it has to end up with money, or bling, or cars, or something flashy. With a successful white person, it is nice, short, sweet, what a lovable person. Name me one white player who is thought of as 'blingy.'" Cristiano Ronaldo's name is offered. "If he is showing you his car, showing he is on top of the world, if that is what he puts out, then call him flashy. But I'm not showing you that, so why are you calling me that? "It is a stereotype of black people: chains and jewelry, bling and money. These are words that are associated with black people. If I was showing 10 cars on my driveway, if I was on Instagram biting my gold chain, or with two Rolexes on, you can call me flashy. But you can't label me as that if I am not portraying that." "The people that read it take it in and judge straightaway who the person is. That is where I was coming from. I was not saying they are racist. But they are fueling it for the people reading it. It is constant, and I don't think it is fair, but who am I?" It is an apposite question, the answer to which changed, fundamentally, that day in December. Footballer and father are the first two that come to Sterling's mind, but it is the broader scope of who he is, and who he can be, that most engages him. He takes inspiration from Jay Z, someone who "made money, and then looked for the next generation, put everything in place to find someone to follow him." He continued: "If I don't do it, if the one after me doesn't do it, it will just keep going. When football is finished, will I live off what I did on the field? No. I want to be able to help people be the best they can be." What he has realized, though, is that for him for anyone to have any effect, the playing field has to be level. Black success should not come with a caveat or an asterisk. That is what made him write that post. It is what made him speak up. "I just wanted people to pause and think," he said. He wanted to challenge the news media to "do better." Just as he did, he wanted those who create these images, who perpetuate the stereotypes, to look up, and to tune in. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
Members of the press at Hillary Clinton's election night event at the Jacob Javits Center in New York City on Tuesday. "I don't know one poll that suggested that Donald Trump was going to have this kind of night," said Jake Tapper on CNN. "He is still in this," said Chris Wallace of Fox News a few minutes after 9 p.m., adding, "and I'm not sure a lot of us thought he would be at this hour." As Americans watched the presidential race turn on Tuesday from what had been predicted to be a Hillary Clinton victory into a late night nail biter, television news anchors seemed as stunned as viewers at home. "I was wrong: This is a tight race," said Nicolle Wallace, a Republican strategist and MSNBC analyst. On ABC News, the correspondent Terry Moran spoke of Britain's vote to exit the European Union and said, "I've got a bad sense of deja vu." John King, CNN's slicer and dicer of voting returns, declared, "We're having a conversation now that was impossible to have two weeks ago." If Mr. Trump wins, said Megyn Kelly of Fox News, "the pollsters were dead wrong. Their predictions were not worth the paper they were printed on." She asked her colleagues, "You tell me if the polling industry is effectively done?" Brian Williams, on MSNBC, offered a meta meditation about the elite world he and his fellow television journalists occupy: the bubble that, he surmised, had hidden a surge in Trump support. "Margaret Mead journalism," Mr. Williams said, evoking the famed anthropologist, is "when New York and Washington based journalists either accidentally take the wrong turn on GPS and drive into America, drive through America to visit a relative, come back, and report, 'The place is covered with Trump signs!' They're just amazed to find this." The air of uncertainty and, in some cases, dumbfoundedness, was a stark contrast to the earlier part of the evening, when the major news networks some of which had been broadcasting at full tilt for hours already seemed prepared for an unusually early night. Anchors and producers received midafternoon exit polls before voting ended on Tuesday afternoon, and those numbers showed Mrs. Clinton with a small advantage, particularly in key states. On Fox News, even as the anchors made clear the race was far from finished, there was room for some easy banter. "We don't want to hear anything about this election extending beyond this evening," joked Ms. Kelly, when a guest raised the specter of a recount. Within a few hours, gentle humor had fallen away. "It is a white knuckle kind of night," Norah O'Donnell said on CBS News. "You're either opening a second bottle of wine or you're brewing a new pot of coffee." A memorable moment occurred when Bill O'Reilly, the Fox News commentator who had been mostly absent from his channel's coverage on Tuesday, beamed into the set, tieless, through a camera set up in his Long Island home. At the time, Florida appeared to be trending toward Mrs. Clinton, but Mr. O'Reilly was not having it. What happened on Day 2 of Elizabeth Holmes's testimony. Kevin Spacey was ordered to pay 31 million to the 'House of Cards' studio after sexual harassment allegations. "It's pretty much a dead heat," he said, jousting with Charles Krauthammer, a Fox News analyst who said he believed Mrs. Clinton still had the advantage. The exchange was an intriguing departure from what had been a mostly strait laced evening on Fox News. While the network remains popular with conservative audiences, its new executive chairman, Rupert Murdoch, has pledged an emphasis on straight news reporting since he took over from Roger Ailes, the chairman who was forced out this summer. Wolf Blitzer, the network's stalwart lead anchor, seemed like he had been downing espressos since morning, speaking so rapidly that Mr. King had to occasionally struggle to get a word in. Midway through the evening, BuzzFeed News published "16 Tweets About How Wolf Blitzer is Driving America Crazy." (For example: "How does Wolf Blitzer speak for long periods of time without taking a breath?") CNN is known for its giant panels of talking heads; at one point, the anchor Anderson Cooper convened a panel that was, he told viewers, "frankly too big to even introduce everybody." But as the evening went on, the channel narrowed its coverage to the substance that mattered: returns in razor edge states like Florida and Virginia. Mr. King, with his so called "magic wall," won praise for zooming into individual precincts to give viewers a granular sense of the vote count and what districts had yet to be counted. For network executives, Tuesday night was seen as more or less the last bonanza of a year that brought record ratings and advertising revenues, the final turn in a wild presidential campaign with a made for television contender, Mr. Trump. The general expectation, in line with public polling, was that Mr. Trump would be defeated, leaving television news with falling audiences at a time when many viewers are moving to digital competitors and other outlets. But as Tuesday turned into Wednesday, it appeared likely that political news would not lose its allure to viewers, even if the returns suggested the need for review of network polling standards and practices. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
Q. Are there any inexpensive Android apps that let you take a picture of a document and convert the photo to a Microsoft Word compatible file that can be edited and printed? A. Optical character recognition (O.C.R.) apps are designed to convert images of letters in documents or other printed sources into text files you can edit in Microsoft Word or another word processing program. O.C.R. apps for Android are available in the Google Play store, just as similar programs for iOS, Windows 10 Mobile and desktop systems can be found in the respective app stores. Some apps can even translate photographed text into different languages. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
KAY LARMOR, 71, was in and out of conventional nursing homes. Then she found Green House homes at Porter Hills, in Grand Rapids, Mich., which is helping to remake long term care. Each home houses only 10 elderly people, and each person has a bedroom and bathroom. Ms. Larmor has private space, is able to order breakfast when she wants it and enjoys home style cooking, including some of her favorites, like goulash and spaghetti with meatballs. Residents can gather around a fireplace in the common room, and Ms. Larmor enjoys chatting with aides in the open kitchen. "This is my home," said Ms. Larmor, a retired addiction counselor. "And I feel cared for." For greater warmth and nurturing, seniors are turning to small residences like Green House, which is part of a complex of senior housing and care options, and privately owned care homes that are often unmarked in residential neighborhoods. They are usually newer, sometimes cheaper, and generally offer more customized care than most nursing homes. Nursing homes have, of course, gotten plenty of criticism over the years. They are regulated by states and the federal government, but quality varies widely. And even the best ones are typically modeled after hospitals, so aides often wear scrubs and hallways can feel antiseptic. The ratio of residents to aides can be high too, creating more isolation for residents. "Many nursing homes don't have enough staff," said Lori Smetanka, director of the National Long Term Care Ombudsman Resource Center. "This is one of the biggest complaints." Dr. Bill Thomas, a Harvard educated geriatrician, saw that loneliness and isolation were big problems in elder care. So he helped found the Green House project in 2003, which Porter Hills uses as a model that is now spreading around the country. To ensure quality, Green House homes are trademarked and built to strict certifications. Nurturing values and a more active life are encouraged. An aide, called shahbaz a Persian word that means a royal falcon that oversees the kingdom functions as a leader, not just a servant. "Green homes were developed from a blank sheet of paper," said Scott Brown, director of outreach at the Green House Project. The results, he said, have been encouraging. Studies show that residents have higher quality lives and significantly fewer hospital readmissions. Best of all, Ms. Smetanka said, is that "residents like the coziness." Green House homes are still hard to find. Currently 180 Green House projects operate in 28 states; an additional 150 are in development. That compares with about 15,700 nursing homes in the United States housing 1.4 million people. At Porter Hills, the costs are comparable to a good nursing home, elder care specialists said. A 30 day stay costs 10,230. After having difficulty getting attention at a nursing home, Josephine DeLillo, 93, moved to one of the four Green House homes at Green Hill retirement community in West Orange, N.J. She likes that she can now get up at 10 each morning and eat her favorite breakfast, oatmeal. "One of the aides is like my daughter," said Ms. DeLillo, a former eyeglass polisher. "She washes and dresses me. If I want something to eat during the day, it will be made for me." Ms. DeLillo also plays bingo at the home, and can sit in a rocking chair on the porch or eat on the backyard patio. No Green House projects operate in Manhattan yet. Jewish Home Lifecare wants to open the first one in an urban center in 2019. Rather than cottages, the building will consist of 22 stacked homes, which Dr. Thomas helped design. A unit for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender elders with specially trained staff is planned. A 4,000 square foot roof garden, where residents can plant vegetables and herbs, will be enclosed with glass. "This is the way that elders want to be cared for," said Audrey Weiner, chief executive of Jewish Home Lifecare. "This is a concept where the commune meets the kibbutz." Another alternative to big box nursing homes is residential care, also known as adult foster care, which typically costs about half of what a nursing home charges, according to A Place for Mom, a referral for senior care. Residential care homes are often simply single family homes adapted for elder care. Peggy Miller breathed a sigh of relief when she put her husband, Carl, who is in the last stages of Alzheimer's disease, in one of Our Family Home's residential care homes that specializes in memory care in Dublin, Ohio. "He was in assisted living for 12 days, and it was a total disaster," Ms. Miller said. Twenty two patients had only two caregivers, "So they couldn't handle him," she said. Now, Mr. Miller lives at a ranch house next to a park. Two aides care for five residents, Ms. Miller said. Dinner is served at a dining table. And Mr. Miller, a former executive at Kroger, the supermarket chain, can even put his Ohio State memorabilia in his private room. A warm, compassionate environment was what Evan DuBro said he was aiming for when he founded Our Family Home in 2007. Mr. DuBro's grandparents had Alzheimer's, and they were in nursing homes that were sterile and institutional, he said. After learning about Green House projects and other small home alternatives, Mr. DuBro said he knew there was a better way than nursing homes. "Family homes could deinstitutionalize long term care," said Mr. DuBro, who is now an advocate for people with Alzheimer's. "Anyway, what will baby boomers want as they age?" Mr. DuBro owns nine residential care homes in Ohio. He buys houses in residential neighborhoods, guts them and renovates them. His mother lived in one of his homes after her Alzheimer's was diagnosed. "I've been through three journeys of this pain," Mr. DuBro, 43, said. "Alzheimer's care is expensive, lasts a long time and is devastating for families." But not all residential care homes are equal; quality varies widely. The homes are licensed and regulated by the states. Ms. Smetanka said that families needed to be careful and ask a lot of questions. Is there a staff person on site 24 hours a day? What types of services are included in the price? What is extra? | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Your Money |
The Popcast is hosted by Jon Caramanica, a pop music critic for The New York Times. It covers the latest in pop music criticism, trends and news. Guns N' Roses recently released a boxed set focused on its late 80s years, "Appetite for Destruction: Locked N' Loaded Edition," that is extremely ambitious four CDs, one Blu ray, seven 12 inch LPs, seven 7 inch LPs, a hardcover book and a haul of ephemera and also a tiny bit disingenuous. The song "One in a Million," which appeared on the group's 1988 album "G N' R Lies" and includes offensive and bigoted language, has been removed, a stain wiped clean from the band's historical record. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
COMPAGNIE CNDC ANGERS at the Joyce Theater (April 4 5, 7:30 p.m.; April 6 7, 8 p.m., April 8, 2 and 8 p.m.; April 9, 2 p.m.). When the Merce Cunningham Dance Company closed in 2012, its most senior member, Robert Swinston, moved to France to direct this ensemble. A longtime assistant to Cunningham, Mr. Swinston transformed the group into a living archive of his dances. For its return to the Joyce, the troupe offers "Place" (1966), set to a Gordon Mumma score; "How to Pass, Kick, Fall and Run" (1965), danced to stories by John Cage; and "Inlets 2" (1983), in which the sequence of movements is determined by chance each night. 212 242 0800, joyce.org LILY GOLD at St. Mark's Church in the Bowery (April 6 8, 8 p.m.). Devotees of contemporary dance may know Ms. Gold from her performances with Andrea Geyer at the Whitney Museum of American Art and with Vicky Shick at Danspace Project. A potent presence in their work, she's also been developing her own choreographic voice. Her first evening length dance, "Good Mud," presented by Danspace, explores the relationship between the body and time with the help of a large paper tapestry, which suggests an array of environments and generates possibilities. Ms. Gold's excellent cast includes Asli Bulbul, Eleanor Hullihan, Madison Krekel and Alice MacDonald. 866 811 4111, danspaceproject.org OVERTURNING EXPECTATIONS: DANCE AND DISABILITY at the 92nd Street Y (March 31, 12 p.m.). As part of the Y's Fridays at Noon series, the choreographers Alice Sheppard and Jerron Herman pose and process questions about disability, race and dance, through performances of their work and conversation with the audience. The program also features a screening of Karina Epperlein's award winning "Phoenix Dance," a short documentary about the dancer Homer Avila, who returned to the stage after losing a leg to cancer. "Soliloquy," a film by the choreographer Heidi Latsky, who works with dancers with and without disabilities, will be screened in the Harkness Dance Center lobby at 11 a.m. 212 415 5500, 92y.org RHYTHM IN MOTION at the Duke on 42nd Street (March 31, 7 p.m.; April 1, 2 and 7 p.m.; April 2, 2 p.m.). The American Tap Dance Foundation presents this annual showcase of tap choreographers pushing the medium in new directions. Past editions have included tap capoeira fusions, statements of political protest and digital experiments with sound. The first of the two programs (Friday) includes pieces by Susan Hebach, Kazu Kumagai, Max Pollak, Caleb Teicher, Lisa La Touche and Joseph Monroe Webb. Program B (Saturday and Sunday) features Brinae Ali, Chloe Arnold, Felipe Galganni, Ana Rokafella Garcia, Leonardo Sandoval and Gabe Winns. 646 223 3010, dukeon42.org | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
Keith Jarrett's left side is still partially paralyzed by a pair of strokes in 2018. "I don't feel right now like I'm a pianist," he said. The last time Keith Jarrett performed in public, his relationship with the piano was the least of his concerns. This was at Carnegie Hall in 2017, several weeks into the administration of a divisive new American president. Mr. Jarrett one of the most heralded pianists alive, a galvanizing jazz artist who has also recorded a wealth of classical music opened with an indignant speech on the political situation, and unspooled a relentless commentary throughout the concert. He ended by thanking the audience for bringing him to tears. He had been scheduled to return to Carnegie the following March for another of the solo recitals that have done the most to create his legend like the one captured on the recording "Budapest Concert," to be released on Oct. 30. But that Carnegie performance was abruptly canceled, along with the rest of his concert calendar. At the time, Mr. Jarrett's longtime record label, ECM, cited unspecified health issues. There has been no official update in the two years since. But this month Mr. Jarrett, 75, broke the silence, plainly stating what happened to him: a stroke in late February 2018, followed by another one that May. It is unlikely he will ever perform in public again. "I was paralyzed," he told The New York Times, speaking by phone from his home in northwest New Jersey. "My left side is still partially paralyzed. I'm able to try to walk with a cane, but it took a long time for that, took a year or more. And I'm not getting around this house at all, really." Mr. Jarrett didn't initially realize how serious his first stroke had been. "It definitely snuck up on me," he said. But after more symptoms emerged, he was taken to a hospital, where he gradually recovered enough to be discharged. His second stroke happened at home, and he was admitted to a nursing facility. During his time there, from July 2018 until this past May, he made sporadic use of its piano room, playing some right handed counterpoint. "I was trying to pretend that I was Bach with one hand," he said. "But that was just toying with something." When he tried to play some familiar bebop tunes in his home studio recently, he discovered he had forgotten them. Mr. Jarrett's voice is softer and thinner now. But over two roughly hourlong conversations, he was lucid and legible, aside from occasional lapses in memory. He often punctuated a heavy or awkward statement with a laugh like a faint rhythmic exhalation: Ah ha ha ha. "I don't know what my future is supposed to be," he added. "I don't feel right now like I'm a pianist. That's all I can say about that." After a pause, he reconsidered. "But when I hear two handed piano music, it's very frustrating, in a physical way. If I even hear Schubert, or something played softly, that's enough for me. Because I know that I couldn't do that. And I'm not expected to recover that. The most I'm expected to recover in my left hand is possibly the ability to hold a cup in it. So it's not a 'shoot the piano player' thing. It's: I already got shot. Ah ha ha ha." IF THE PROSPECT of a Keith Jarrett who no longer considers himself a pianist is dumbfounding, it might be because there has scarcely been a time he didn't. Growing up in Allentown, Pa., he was a prodigy. According to family lore, he was 3 when an aunt indicated a nearby stream and told him to turn its burbling into music his first piano improvisation. Broad public awareness caught up with him in the late 1960s, when he was in a zeitgeist capturing group led by Charles Lloyd, a saxophonist and flutist. The brilliant drummer in that quartet, Jack DeJohnette, then helped Miles Davis push into rock and funk. Mr. Jarrett followed suit, joining an incandescent edition of Davis's band; in live recordings, his interludes on electric piano cast a spell. Mr. Jarrett soon hit on something analogous in his own concerts, allowing improvised passages to become the main event. He was a few years into this approach in 1975, when he performed what would become "The Koln Concert" a sonorous, mesmerizing landmark that still stands as one of the best selling solo piano albums ever made. It has also been hailed as an object lesson in triumph over adversity, including Mr. Jarrett's physical pain and exhaustion at the time, and his frustration over an inferior piano. That sense of overcoming intransigent obstacles is an enduring feature of Mr. Jarrett's myth. At times over the years, it could even seem that he set up his own roadblocks: turning concerts into trials of herculean intensity, and famously interrupting them to admonish his audience for taking pictures, or for excessive coughing. A New York Times Magazine profile in 1997 bore a wry headline: "The Jazz Martyr." The following year, Mr. Jarrett announced that he'd been struggling with the consuming and mysterious ailment known as chronic fatigue syndrome. Loss has shrouded Mr. Jarrett's musical circle of late. Mr. Peacock died last month, at 85. Jon Christensen, the drummer in Mr. Jarrett's influential European quartet of the 1970s, died earlier this year. Mr. Jarrett also led a groundbreaking American quartet in the '70s, and its other members the saxophonist Dewey Redman, the bassist Charlie Haden, the drummer Paul Motian, all major figures in modern jazz have passed on, too. Faced with these and other difficult truths, Mr. Jarrett hasn't exactly found solace in music, as he once would have. But he derives satisfaction from some recordings of his final European solo tour. He directed ECM to release the tour's closing concert last year, as "Munich 2016." He's even more enthusiastic about the tour opener, "Budapest Concert," which he briefly considered calling "The Gold Standard." AS HE BEGINS to come to terms with his body of work as a settled fact, Mr. Jarrett doesn't hesitate to plant a flag. "I feel like I'm the John Coltrane of piano players," he said, citing the saxophonist who transformed the language and spirit of jazz in the 1960s. "Everybody that played the horn after he did was showing how much they owed to him. But it wasn't their music. It was just an imitative thing." Of course, imitation even of oneself is anathema to the pure, blank slate invention Mr. Jarrett still claims as his method. "I don't have an idea of what I'm going to play, any time before a concert," he said. "If I have a musical idea, I say no to it." (Describing this process, he still favors the present tense.) The embrace of folkloric music by Bartok and other Hungarian composers further nudged Mr. Jarrett toward a dark quality "a kind of existential sadness, let's say, a deepness" powerfully present in the concert's first half. The second half, as admirers of "The Koln Concert" will appreciate, features a few of Mr. Jarrett's most ravishing on the spot compositions. Those ballads, like "Part V" and "Part VII," spark against briskly atonal or boppish pieces, gradually building the case for a mature expression that might not have been possible earlier in his career. Part of that evolution has to do with the structure of Mr. Jarrett's solo concerts, which used to unfold in long, unbroken arcs but now involve a collection of discrete pieces, with breaks for applause. Often the overarching form of these more recent concerts is only apparent after the fact. But Budapest was an exception. "I saw this one while I was in it, which is why I chose that as the best concert on that entire tour," Mr. Jarrett said. "I mean, I knew it. I knew something was happening." The crucial factor, he acknowledged, was an uncommonly receptive audience. "Some audiences seem to applaud more when there's something crazy going on," he said. "I don't know why, but I wasn't looking at that in Budapest." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
This article contains spoilers for Season 8, Episode 5 of "Game of Thrones." Cersei made a curious comment during Sunday's episode of "Game of Thrones," explaining why she lingered so long at her perch in the Red Keep to observe the coming siege. But Cersei should know better. Her reign as queen began in part because the Red Keep did fall long ago, thanks in part to her father. It is only fitting that Queen Cersei begins and ends, in a way, with a sack of King's Landing. History repeats itself, and Westerosi history is no different. In that earlier siege, Ned Stark took command of the rebel army that surrounded and then entered King's Landing during Robert's Rebellion. (His adopted son, Jon Snow, led the vanguard this time, offering another historical reverberation.) Tywin Lannister's forces some 12,000 men joined them. In preparation, King Aerys II Daenerys's dad hid wildfire around the city. Some of the green blasts seen going off during this most recent sack could have been old hidden caches from the Mad King's day or new barrels that Cersei placed in strategic locations, perhaps a defensive strategy to fight dragon fire with wildfire. Several people tried to reason with King Aerys regarding his plan to burn innocent people alive as Tyrion tried to reason with King Aerys's daughter by urging her to accept a surrender. But when King Aerys disagreed with his advisers, he burned them alive. Dany's burning of Varys is a little more justified; he did commit treason, and she had warned him in Season 7 that death by fire was the penalty. Still, there are echoes of her father's actions here, as well as echoes of Tyrion's father, Tywin. In both sacks, a Targaryen monarch is betrayed by a Lannister who disagrees with Varys as to the correct course of action. Read our ultimate guide to "Game of Thrones." Sign up for our Watching newsletter for film and TV recommendations. The previous go round, Tywin pretended to be King Aerys's friend and ally, despite a previous falling out. He came to the city gates with his forces and requested entrance. Varys tried to counsel King Aerys to keep the gates closed to Tywin, but Grand Maester Pycelle, always a Lannister stooge, advised King Aerys to open the gates, and his advice won out. Varys, in both sacks, tried to reason with Targaryen monarchs who wouldn't listen to his advice and who didn't share his concern about protecting the people. The result was that Tywin Lannister's forces began killing the men, women and children of King's Landing, and raping the women. It was precisely that needless rape and slaughter that prompted Jorah Mormont to advise Dany to use the Unsullied as her armed forces. "I was in King's Landing after the Sack, Khaleesi," he told her. "You know what I saw? Butchery. Babies, children, old men. More women raped than you can count. There's a beast in every man, and it stirs when you put a sword in his hand. But the Unsullied are not men. They do not rape. They do not put cities to the sword unless they're ordered to do so." At least that used to be the case. King Aerys had stayed inside the Red Keep, as Cersei did. He sent his pregnant wife, Queen Rhaella, and their son Viserys to Dragonstone for safety but refused to allow Prince Rhaegar's wife, Elia Martell, and their two children to go to Dragonstone as well, keeping them as hostages in Maegor's Holdfast, where Qyburn advises Cersei to hide. Maegor's Holdfast, however, provided little refuge for Elia and her two children. That's where Tywin's men, including Gregor Clegane, did their dirty work, killing the little prince and princess, smashing the head of the littlest one against a wall before raping and killing their mother. Squashing heads became Gregor's signature move, which he repeated on Sunday with Qyburn. Jaime Lannister rushed to Aerys's side, an act that earned him the lifelong nickname Kingslayer. He was there again Sunday when another reigning monarch died to comfort this time, not to kill. Cersei's marriage to King Robert was meant to seal the Lannister rebel alliance and help hold the realm together after the sack. But it's going to take a lot more than marriage to repair the damage after this one. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
"The Repair From Occident to Extra Occidental Cultures" by Kader Attia, at the Hayward Gallery in London. We Need to Talk About Colonialism, This Artist Says PARIS Late one Sunday afternoon in February, the French Algerian artist Kader Attia welcomed several dozen visitors to a talk in the skylighted foyer of La Colonie, a cultural center and cafe that he opened in 2016 in a former textile factory in Paris. Guests sitting on old sofas and folding chairs listened as Mr. Attia moderated a debate between two French philosophers on the politics of race in postcolonial times. Colonialism and its aftermath are a frequent talking point at La Colonie, and they are a longstanding preoccupation of Mr. Attia, as his new exhibition "The Museum of Emotion," running through May 6 at the Hayward Gallery in London, attests. The subject has become particularly timely with President Emmanuel Macron of France's recent pledge to give back some of the 90,000 objects from sub Saharan Africa that are in France's national collections, mostly in the Quai Branly Museum in Paris. "What strikes me, and anyone else with origins that link them to these objects, is that when you visit Quai Branly, or the British Museum, or the Metropolitan Museum, you see objects that have been decontextualized," he said in an interview at La Colonie. "It's as if you amputated a human being, showed his arm, and said: 'Here is the human being,' " he added. Rather than dwelling on the need to give the objects back, Mr. Rugoff added, "It's more like, 'Let's get rid of the concepts that make us take, and also reject, some of these artifacts, to put them in a hierarchy.' " Mr. Attia, 48, grew up in the Paris suburb of Garges les Gonesse, one of seven children of an Algerian construction worker father and an Algerian mother who was prevented from learning to read and write by the uncle who raised her. The exhibition opens with a video, taken with a drone, of a suburban housing project or "open air jailhouse," as the artist put it like the one where he grew up alongside many other descendants of France's former colonial subjects. From his childhood through his teens, Mr. Kader spent months at a time in Algeria. Barely two decades had passed since the country's liberation from French rule in 1962, so "there were still very strong traces of the war of independence," he said. "You were basically living in a history book." Everywhere, he said, the architectural leftovers of colonialism were repurposed. A Modernist church, for example, was turned into a mosque. "These colonized people felt like they were taking back what belonged to them," he said. "That's when I developed a profound interest in the notion of reappropriation, and later, of repair." By the 1990s, Mr. Attia, then in his 20s, had earned degrees in applied arts and philosophy. He then spent nearly three years in the Republic of Congo doing alternative civilian service (a substitute for France's compulsory military service). Part of a team preparing for the opening of the country's first national museum, in the capital, Brazzaville, he came across objects that would be on show: masks, talismans, jewelry, shields. He became aware of the spiritual dimension of these objects, he said, of the belief that they had sacred or magical powers. When he returned to France and went looking for African artifacts in museums, he found them displayed in a building that was the precursor to the Quai Branly. Important treasures that had been blessed by healers and sorcerers and used in rituals were, he said, "orphans here, because the bodies and communities that celebrated them were no longer around." At the same time, he started exploring his own French Algerian and Muslim identity. In the early 2000s, he photographed transgender Algerian prostitutes who had fled civil war and persecution; images from that series are at the Hayward. A few years later, he produced a series of works inspired by the Kaaba, the shrine in Mecca in whose direction Muslims turn when they pray. One of the paintings, "Black Cube II," a work from 2005 that was exhibited in the British Museum's "Hajj" show in 2012, shows the Kaaba as a quivering, dripping object. Mr. Attia then started highlighting instances where North and sub Saharan African culture had influenced Western culture without being fully acknowledged. In 2009, he produced "Untitled (Ghardaia)," a scale model made of cooked couscous of the ancient Algerian city of Ghardaia, whose geometric architecture influenced the architect Le Corbusier a little known fact. ("Untitled (Ghardaia)" is owned by the Tate galleries in Britain.) That same year, he denounced a multivenue exhibition in Paris, "Picasso and the Masters," for leaving out the African masks that had so profoundly influenced the Spanish artist. La Colonie, near the Gare du Nord in the French capital, is a forum where issues related to colonialism can be debated by intellectuals and academics, but also by ordinary citizens. (The space pays for itself by turning into a bar on weekends.) Mr. Attia, who lives and works in Berlin and Paris, is no stranger to the debate about restitution. He organized a symposium on the subject at La Colonie in September, with speakers including Felwine Sarr, one of the two academics appointed by Mr. Macron to make recommendations on the subject. The report's co author, Benedicte Savoy, said in an interview that Mr. Attia had "the ability, through a few gestures or objects, to give form to the philosophical questions of our time." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
"Before you judge Trump, he is technically correct there is nobody who matches his wisdom. He is correct! I mean, no other person no other person had the wisdom to stare directly into a solar eclipse, huh?" TREVOR NOAH "Wow, he's gone full god emperor. Imitating Trump 'It is I, Donald the Great, of unmatched wisdom and infinite wives, destroyer of casinos, conqueror of 10 piece McNuggets, scourge of Chrissy Teigen, defeated only once in battle by my eternal nemesis: umbrella.'" STEPHEN COLBERT "And people were very quick to point out that this made Trump sound like the wizard from 'The Wizard of Oz.' If only we could pay no attention to the man behind the curtain." JAMES CORDEN "That would be reassuring if you ever considered anything off limits. You had sex with a porn star, you partied with Jeffrey Epstein, and you drive your golf cart on the green. The only way you'll stop Turkey is if they try to get your tax returns." SETH MEYERS "That's right one step out of line, he will run Turkey into the ground like it was one of his casinos in Atlantic City." JIMMY KIMMEL | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
But the orchestra had grown accustomed to the larger than life presence of Ms. Borda. And while Mr. Woods was credited with raising the Seattle Symphony's artistic profile among other things, that orchestra presented the premiere of John Luther Adams's "Become Ocean," which went on to win a Pulitzer Prize and prioritizing outreach, that was a much smaller operation: The Los Angeles Philharmonic's annual budget, approximately 125 million, is nearly four times that of Seattle. Another possible challenge: Mr. Woods also inherited the respected senior leadership team that Ms. Borda had assembled, some of whom had been considered as possible successors to her. Gail Samuel, the executive director, who served as acting president during the search, let it be known she was interested in the job. Chad Smith, the chief operating officer, who oversees the orchestra's adventurous programming, said then that he was happy in his current post. The current contract of the orchestra's star music and artistic director, Gustavo Dudamel, runs through mid 2022. The orchestra, which announced that its board chairman, Jay Rasulo, and chairman designate, Thomas L. Beckmen, would serve as interim leaders, declined to elaborate on the reasons for Mr. Woods's departure. Ms. Borda said in an interview that each artistic institution has its own ecosystem and that "a leader who works brilliantly in one setting may simply not be the right fit in another." It was, in a sense, history repeating itself. After another strong willed executive, Ernest Fleischmann, retired from the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 1997 after nearly three decades, his successor, Willem Wijnbergen, lasted less than two years in the post. When Mr. Rasulo was asked about that earlier bungled transition during a 2017 interview with The New York Times, as the search for a new chief got underway, he said that he hoped to find someone who could stand the test of time. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
Who wouldn't like to spend the winter holidays with good friends at a lavishly decorated palace in the kingdom of Montenaro, where glittering cascades of snow shower the beautiful people almost every time they step outside? There's not a surgical mask or pair of rubber gloves in sight, and royals and commoners alike are hugging (ahh, hugging) and air kissing almost frantically, as if they might soon be forbidden to make physical contact at all. For months. Like us. Which is why this imaginary kingdom, artificial though it might be, is appealing right now. Yes, "The Princess Switch: Switched Again" is syrupy, and no, beyond its central gimmick, there is little substance to be found. But the same could be said for many a beloved romance film or holiday movie. Even its predecessor, "The Princess Switch," generated enough loyalty to inspire this sequel. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
Gillette Stadium, in Foxborough, Mass., the home of the New England Patriots. The New England Patriots are 19 3 in playoff games in this century in Foxborough, Mass. or is it Foxboro? their out of the way, small town home since 1971. FOXBOROUGH, Mass. In the N.F.L. community, one word might be feared more than any other: Foxborough. It is where the rosy Super Bowl dreams of visiting teams die a frosty death each January. It is where the New England Patriots, before a raucous southeastern Massachusetts home crowd, rarely lose a playoff game (this century's postseason record there is 19 3). It is where N.F.L. road teams are not only defeated, but rejected under peculiar circumstances. See: Deflategate, Tom Brady and the tuck rule. How did out of the way, small town Foxborough, of all places, come to be synonymous with heartache in N.F.L. cities from coast to coast while blossoming into a shrine to comprehensive Patriots glory? The Patriots, after all, came to Foxborough in 1971 only because no one else wanted them. It helped that the stadium land, 30 miles south of Boston, was free . Foxborough (population: 17,000) remains firmly rooted in its pre Patriots past, with dairy cows visible from the top of Gillette Stadium. More than that, Foxborough is the oddest place to bear witness to recurring N.F.L. history, simply because no one here can agree on how to spell the town's name. Since 1778, by decree, in all authorized documents and on all town buildings, it has been spelled Foxborough. But almost immediately after that became official, many institutions in the town banks, businesses, even the local newspaper decided it was easier to go by Foxboro. In a quintessential example of New England persistence, the argument has endured for centuries: There are now signs with both spellings throughout the village. However the name is spelled, Foxborough residents know their little municipality is renowned far and wide. "I've done training across the country," Tom Buckley, the town's deputy fire chief, said. "When I'm asked where I live, I never mention the Patriots. I just say Foxborough. And instantly, everyone starts talking to me about the Patriots and how they always win there. 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. "Does that happen with any other N.F.L. team? I mean, I don't know where the Miami Dolphins play, even though I know it's not Miami." The Patriots, unbeaten in their last eight home playoff games, will put that streak on the line Sunday afternoon against the Los Angeles Chargers in an A.F.C. divisional playoff game. The Patriots, who have won five Super Bowls since the 2001 season, have had, for them, an uneven season, losing five of eight away games. But they were the only N.F.L. team to be 8 0 at home, a substantial source of pride in Foxborough. "In the town, we feel like we bring a different type of energy at those home games," David Tynan, a longtime Foxborough resident, said on Wednesday outside the town's primary grocery store. "Game days are like holidays. By kickoff, the streets are quiet you're either at the stadium or inside watching the game." Because there are few hills, trees or other buildings near Gillette Stadium, the landscape is windswept in January and bracing, with temperatures typically in the 20s. The Patriots intentionally built their practice facility adjacent to the stadium, and they almost always practice outside, acclimating to the elements in a way that their playoff opponents from mostly warmer regions cannot. The atmosphere in Gillette Stadium is also especially hostile to visiting teams, as Patriots home crowds are considered among the most vociferous in the N.F.L. Rich Noonan, a lieutenant in the Police Department and a fifth generation native of Foxborough, recalled the town's blue collar origins and said area fans "were protecting their home turf." The Patriots won their first game at the stadium in 1971, although thousands of ticket holders never saw a single play because they were stuck for the entirety of the game in gridlock traffic that crammed Route 1, the only access road to the stadium. Shortly after the first game, the local health board closed Schaefer Stadium because of malfunctioning toilets. Various solutions were tried, including an exercise that enlisted hundreds of volunteers to flush all of the stadium toilets simultaneously a tactic referred to as Super Flush in the local news media. Fans came up with another name for the site: the Toilet Bowl. "It was a nightmare at times," Jack Authelet, the Foxborough town historian, said. "The stadium would be closed, it would get a reprieve for one game, and then there would be another closing. Another last minute reprieve would allow a game to be played, then it would close again. This went on week after week." Foxborough, with a pastoral common at its center, was wondering what it had gotten itself into. But over time, and with some prudent strategizing, the traffic problems diminished. Restrictions on events were imposed to make them safer and calmer. The Sullivan family lost control of the team, and the stadium was renamed Foxboro Stadium not Foxborough and by 1994, the businessman Robert K. Kraft had bought the team. Kraft knew he needed a modern stadium, and in 1998 seriously flirted with taking the Patriots to Hartford. Eventually, a deal was struck to build what is now Gillette Stadium, next to the site of the old stadium. The Patriots won their first Super Bowl in an upset months before Gillette Stadium opened in 2002. The last game at Foxboro Stadium was a controversial, come from behind, overtime playoff victory known as the Tuck Rule Game, in which an apparent New England fumble became an incomplete pass and saved the day for the Patriots. The home Foxborough magic was born. "All of a sudden, we had the Super Bowl champions and a real professional stadium," said Mike Kelleher, a lifelong Foxborough resident and the town's incoming fire chief. "That's when everything changed around here. Before a 1 o'clock game, we would see every parking lot totally full with tailgaters by 10 a.m." The vibe was transformed. The home victories became a badge of honor for the locals. "Now you hear it all the time: This is Foxborough; the Patriots don't lose here," said Waylon Krueger, who moved from Buffalo three years ago. "It's a given. Look, I'm a Bills fan. I wish we had that." Hosting the Patriots has also been enormously helpful for the town's municipal budget, even though the stadium site is just a sliver of Foxborough along commercially dense Route 1, where Kraft's holding company constructed a mall next to the stadium. Foxborough receives a portion of each ticket sold to events at Gillette Stadium, which amounts to 2.5 million to 3 million annually, according to the town manager, William Keegan. That total is at least doubled by other taxes generated by the Patriots' presence in town. In addition, the Patriots make six figure charitable donations annually to Foxborough. In the last 10 to 15 years, the town's demographic makeup has been altered. Foxborough has had an influx of home buyers with corporate jobs who commute to Boston and Providence, R.I., which is a little more than 20 miles to the south. Larger homes have sprouted on tree lined streets, some of them aimed at housing millionaire football players employed nearby. More than half the Patriots' roster lives in Foxborough, and many other players live in surrounding towns. "I'm impressed with the intensity of the fan support in Foxborough; it's almost like a college football town," said Patriots center David Andrews, who lives in town. "And people make us feel welcome. They invite us to their homes for the holidays." The dispute may not rise to the level of bar fights, but there are strong opinions. "You spell it long or you spell it wrong," said Buckley, whose firefighter's uniform has a Foxborough patch. Authelet, the town historian, supports the longer spelling as well. But the license plate on his car reads: FOXBRO. Massachusetts allows personalized plates to have no more than six letters, so he did the best he could. A few years ago, Authelet was waiting in his car at a stoplight in Philadelphia when another car pulled alongside. The driver honked his horn and held up a sign. "The guy had written on a piece of paper: Cheaters," Authelet said, well aware of the rules controversies christened Spygate and Deflategate that have dogged Coach Bill Belichick's team through the years. "That kind of reaction happens; it's a fact," Authelet said with a smile. "But most people tell me that I live in a sports lover's paradise where the home team almost always wins. "A lot of towns would like to trade places." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
What are you missing if you're not watching international television? A significant slice of the peak TV pie, far beyond the few shows most recently "Babylon Berlin" from Germany and "The End of the World" from Britain that break out. In preparation for this highly selective roundup, I compiled a list of non American scripted shows that have had new seasons available in the United States, on traditional TV or streaming, so far in 2018. It came to a dizzying 108. That's almost a show and a half a day, and it understates the true total, because it doesn't cover myriad specialty sites. So forget about keeping up. If you'd like to sample, here are six recent (or coming) series from major streaming services that are worth checking out. The American version of this benchmark Nordic noir crime series has come and gone, but the Danish Swedish original keeps chugging along, offering a new season every two or three years. The show famously opened with two half corpses discovered on the Oresund Bridge, straddling the Denmark Sweden border, and Season 4 (reportedly the last), available on Hulu, keeps up the tradition of theatrically gruesome murder this time the mystery starts with a woman stoned to death underneath the bridge. The focus is still on multiple strands of elaborately, sometimes confusingly plotted detection (with more red herrings than necessary). But the body count has come down, and an improbable, oddly moving love story between the emotionally damaged Swedish detective Saga (Sofia Helin) and her new Danish partner (Thure Lindhardt) has become central to the show. The true constant is Ms. Helin's tightly controlled performance without any showboating, she continues to find both heartbreak and humor in a difficult character. This Swedish series uses the house style of Nordic noir subdued but highly charged, like a dream always on the verge of a nightmare but it crosses a typical conspiracy minded crime story with a spooky eco horror fable. The resulting hybrid, a police procedural with elements of contagion thriller and vampire tale, is handled so adroitly that it requires surprisingly little suspension of disbelief. That credibility flows from the trio of characters at the show's center: Eva (Moa Gammel), the detective who in Season 1 becomes infected with the parasite that slowly turns humans into forest creatures; Wass (Goran Ragnerstam), the federal cop who secretly works for the alternately benign and threatening forces of nature; and Tom (Richard Forsgren), the stouthearted and hopelessly square local cop who pines for Eva. All three return, and are again excellent, in Season 2, now available on the horror streaming site Shudder. This Web series, named after the real life Organized Crime and Triad Bureau of the Hong Kong police, was such a faithful evocation of 1990s vintage Hong Kong police dramas that its 30 episodes reportedly drew 1.3 billion views on the Chinese video service Youku and that was before Netflix picked it up for streaming in the rest of the world. The story about an undercover cop who gets pulled back into the game one last time, posing as a rising gang boss is set in the years before the British handover of Hong Kong in 1997. The sprawling series's time capsule quality is accentuated by an enormous cast full of performers familiar to Hong Kong action aficionados, including Carrie Ng, Frankie Ng Chi Hung Ng, Philip Chan and Ng Man Tat. Jordan Chan, who played Chicken Chiu in Andrew Lau's "Young and Dangerous" movies in the '90s, stars here as another bird the detective's mob boss name is Phoenix. The Brazilian filmmaker Jose Padilha, who directed the first two episodes of Netflix's popular drug kingpin series "Narcos," is the creator of this new crime saga, which arrives on Netflix on March 23. It opens with a policeman's declaration that crime in Brazil is not just about shootouts with drug dealers, which sounds like a reference both to "Narcos" and to Mr. Padilha's bloody "Elite Squad" feature films. "The Mechanism" ("O Mecanismo," if you choose to watch the subtitled version) is instead a long game examination of a tortuous investigation of money laundering and bribery at the top levels of Brazilian business and government, based on the real life scandal that has embroiled the former presidents Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff. Starting with an idealistic cop's laborious reconstruction of shredded financial documents, it aspires to some of the quotidian procedural force of "The Wire," but Mr. Padilha's moralistic and melodramatic instincts quickly assert themselves. The timing may be right, though, for his rabble rousing, populist style. One brother gets his shot at the big leagues, the other falls back into menial jobs and petty crime. Dad insists on negotiating with the team himself rather than hiring a professional agent. The established star resents and hazes the new arrival. All the story lines we've seen in baseball, basketball and football stories work just as well in this Belgian soccer series, originally titled "Spitsbroers" or striker brothers, streaming on Walter Presents. Joren Seldeslachts plays Alan, the older of two soccer playing siblings, who's incensed when his brother, Dennis (Oscar Willems), gets the tryout with a first division club that he thought was his. "The Score" is no "Friday Night Lights," but it succeeds on its own more prosaic terms as a credible and warmhearted but spiky family drama. This lightweight, old fashioned, feel good school and family dramedy perched between sitcom and soap opera streaming on AcornTV has a likable cast and an engaging premise: Two British schools, one predominantly white and one predominantly South Asian, are consolidated for financial reasons. Stock situations on the rugby pitch, in the classroom and on the playground lead to predictable lessons, but they unfold in ways just unfamiliar enough to hold your interest. (When the priggish mean girls turn in unison to stare down an undesirable, their sneering faces are framed by hijabs.) Poppy Lee Friar and Amy Leigh Hickman star as white and Asian best friends; Liz White and Sunetra Sarker play the two cool moms, a compassionate teacher and a no nonsense pragmatist who sports neon blue pants with her shalwar kameez while working on the cafeteria line at the school. The real mark that "Ackley Bridge" is not an American show: When one teacher loses his cool and punches an extremely irritating student, and another has a heavy flirtation with one of her female students, the consequences are addressed but moralizing is withheld. (Judgment is reserved for the wealthy Muslim businessman who has an affair with the head teacher.) | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
SAN FRANCISCO Mark Hurd, who was known for both success and scandal at Hewlett Packard and most recently served as co chief executive of the software company Oracle, died on Friday. He was 62. Larry Ellison, Oracle's chairman and chief technology officer, announced the death but did not give a cause or say where Mr. Hurd died. Mr. Hurd, who lived in the Bay Area, had taken a medical leave of absence in September. "Oracle has lost a brilliant and beloved leader who personally touched the lives of so many of us during his decade at Oracle," Mr. Ellison wrote. Mr. Hurd spent 25 years at the business technology company N.C.R., where he became chief executive and developed a reputation for cutting costs and improving the company's stock price. In 2005, he became the surprise selection to lead Hewlett Packard, a Silicon Valley pioneer known for computers and printer technology. He arrived at Hewlett Packard during a time of tumult. His predecessor, Carly Fiorina, had won a bruising proxy battle with the heirs of the company's co founders over her plan to buy Compaq Computer a few years earlier. But divisions and business problems at Hewlett Packard ran deep; Ms. Fiorina was fired in February 2005 and Mr. Hurd was hired the next month. Where Ms. Fiorina was known for bold technology strategies and polished public presentations, Mr. Hurd excelled at operations. He set about cutting costs, including by laying off about 15,000 employees. People who know him say he was fond of mottos like "vision without execution is hallucination." Mr. Hurd would stand before a whiteboard and recite copious statistics about operations, said Philip E. Meza, co author of "Becoming Hewlett Packard." That attention to detail served Mr. Hurd well, as the company's earnings and stock price improved. "He had an incredibly high sense of urgency," said Antonio Neri, chief executive of Hewlett Packard Enterprise, one of two companies created in the 2015 breakup of Hewlett Packard. "He was really focused working and making things leaner and more efficient." Mr. Hurd joined Hewlett Packard as its board was mounting a kind of spying operation aimed at discovering how leaks about the company were reaching journalists. Disclosure of the company's tactics later caused a firestorm of criticism, culminating in Mr. Hurd's being called before Congress to explain what had happened. He said he had approved the operation without adequate consideration. "There is no excuse for this aberration," he testified. "It happened, and it will never happen again." Mr. Hurd helped restore Hewlett Packard's personal computer business to a No. 1 position, Mr. Neri said. But Mr. Meza added that Mr. Hurd had never forged a long term strategy for the company. His stint there ended in 2010 with an equally surprising scandal: the disclosure that Mr. Hurd had had a relationship with a female consultant to the company and had fudged some related expense reports. He was swiftly hired by Oracle, a pioneer of the database software market. Mr. Ellison had long spoken glowingly of Mr. Hurd's prowess in operations. Mr. Hurd helped lead Oracle with Mr. Ellison and Safra Catz, who was also given a co chief executive title, which she still holds. At Oracle, in Redwood City, Calif., Mr. Hurd was closely associated with the company's shift to offering online versions of its software, a business imperative compelled by the rise of potent competitors like Salesforce.com. "Mark was my close and irreplaceable friend, and trusted colleague," Mr. Ellison wrote in the announcement on Friday. "All of us will miss Mark's keen mind and rare ability to analyze, simplify and solve problems quickly." Mark Vincent Hurd was born on Jan. 1, 1957, in Manhattan, the son of Ralph Steiner Hurd, a wealthy financier, and Teresa (Fanoni) Hurd. He grew up on the Upper East Side. According to Oracle, he attended the all boys Browning School in Manhattan until moving to Miami for high school. Tennis was a major interest; he received a tennis scholarship to Baylor University in Waco, Tex., and graduated in 1979 with a bachelor's degree in business. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
Michelle Dockery and Douglas Henshall in "Network," at the National Theater in London. The costume designer An D'Huys said she dressed the actress in bright colors to show that her character is "not a team player." LONDON In 1977 Sidney Lumet's film "Network," about the struggles of a fictional television group, won four Academy Awards, including a best actress Oscar for Faye Dunaway's portrayal of a producer, Diana Christensen. Morally bankrupt and of "psychopathic ambition," as Vincent Canby said in his review in The New York Times, Ms. Christensen was also perfectly attired in pussy bow blouses, pencil skirts, knee high boots and heavy camel coats. Her style helped herald the advent of "power dressing." Now, 40 years later, Ms. Christensen and her wardrobe are getting a makeover. The look of the female executive has been redefined on the stage of the National Theater in London, where the Tony Award winner Ivo van Hove is directing Michelle Dockery ("Downton Abbey") as Ms. Christensen in the first stage adaptation, a "Network" for the 21st century. The key ingredients this time around, according to the Belgian costume designer An D'Huys, 53, whose 30 year fashion career has spanned television, movies, opera, dance and theater along with 11 years working with the Antwerp designer Ann Demeulemeester Bright, clashing colors, strong lines and pants. "The colors show that Diana is not working with the rest of the people and not a team player," Ms. D'Huys said. "It's not a choice of everyone; it's her own choice. And a signal that 'I can wear what I want even if the colors aren't matching together.' " "I put Diana in pants, oversized blouses and men's coats," she said. "The most important thing is how a man's cut can be very feminine and very powerful. The silhouette is more modern, closer fitting." Prada's recent collections, with their pops of orange, green, red and other bright colors, were an inspiration, according to Ms. Huys, who said Miuccia Prada herself was among the women who served as a model of sorts: "the kind of woman, like Diana, who is personally powerful and rich, not just a business woman." It took Ms. D'Huys nine weeks to settle on Ms. Dockery's final looks; of the 20 costumes initially selected and worn during rehearsal, six outfits made the first preview. They created "the strongest images of Diana," said Ms. D'Huys, who found many of the pieces in vintage shops, including the hip Retro Woman in the Notting Hill area of London, and in the National's own costume stores to keep the look within budget and believability. That whittling process helped Ms. Dockery create her character. "I've never done a play before where are you in costumes from the very first day," the actress wrote in an email, "so I was in character from the start." Thus platform peep toe heels were swapped for simple black leather round toe court shoes from Selfridges, because the first style hurt Ms. Dockery's feet and "it's important to be comfortable to show strength," Ms. D'Huys said. Ms. Dockery agreed, adding that the physical demands of playing an executive in today's media world mean that lower heels are the modern power shoes. "You can immediately see what works and what doesn't," Ms D'Huys said, adding that a Chloe minidress was too girly (army inspired though it was). The only scene in which Ms. Dockery does wear a dress a low cut, black Diane von Furstenberg wrap with layered satin frills is in a steamy restaurant moment with her former colleague and soon to be lover, Max Schumacher (played by Douglas Henshall). It made sense, Ms. D'Huys said, because "it is easy to pull up and with one popper easy to open." Along with the flares came assorted silk shirts, including one McQ tie neck bib front style that Ms. D'Huys dyed a vivid orange (originally made in cream, the color was too washed out for Ms. Dockery's complexion), and a bright purple from Diane von Furstenberg. Military style coats play a significant role, including a belted beige trench with capelike shoulders, and a double breasted Burberry wool with epaulets and leather detailing on the sleeves. "Everything is loose fitting and not too styled, so Diana is relaxed," wrote Ms. Dockery, noting that not trying too hard was the essence of her character's look. As Ms. Christensen's power fluctuates through the play, so does the vibrancy of her clothes. She makes her entrance in a neutral tobacco colored honeycomb print blouse, for example, but dons a luminous yellow shirt when she believes she has hit the ratings jackpot when her increasingly unmoored anchorman Howard Beale (played by Bryan Cranston) delivers his famous live broadcast announcing he is "mad as hell" and can't take it any more. Later, as her personal and professional lives go awry (her lover leaves and ratings plummet), more subtle, smudged colors appear in the form of dark green, wide leg pants bought online from Theory a week before the first preview. "I wanted another color for the ending as everything goes down," Ms. D'Huys said. What Ms. Christensen never has: "It" bags or other logo laden accessories. As to why, well, Ms. D'Huys said, "most of the people I have met who are very important and powerful don't show labels." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
The French actress Catherine Deneuve apologized to victims of sexual violence who decried a letter she signed with more than 100 other Frenchwomen denouncing the MeToo movement and its French counterpart, Balancetonporc, or "Expose Your Pig." In a letter published in the newspaper Liberation on Sunday, Ms. Deneuve said that while she stood by the original statement, published in another newspaper, Le Monde, she did not condone sexual abuse or misconduct. "I'm a free woman and I will remain one," Ms. Deneuve said in the letter to Liberation. "I fraternally salute all women victims of odious acts who may have felt aggrieved by the letter in Le Monde. It is to them, and them alone, that I apologize." Last week's letter, which said that using social media as a forum for sharing experiences of sexual misconduct had gone too far, drew some praise but also international criticism. The signatories argued that the MeToo movement had caused people who did not deserve to be condemned to face the same consequences as sex offenders. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
HOUSTON The U.S. Women's Open is one of Cristie Kerr's favorite things, the tournament that she most wants to win every year. But in her zeal to add a trophy to bookend her 2007 title in the event, she has often hurt herself by overthinking her strategy, overdoing her preparation, overemphasizing the results. But this year, before Kerr had the chance to get in her own way, a post abruptly appeared in her path. Driving a golf cart in the dark toward the practice range before an early morning tee time in Dallas last week, Kerr had to swerve to avoid an oncoming cart. Avoiding a collision, she slammed head on into the post instead. The impact drove the steering wheel into Kerr's sternum before throwing her, and her caddie, Matt Gelczis, who was riding with her, to the ground. Gelczis was hospitalized with a bump on his head. Kerr, 43, also was hospitalized, with two dislocated ribs and bruises all over her body. Forty eight hours before the first tee time at the Open this week, she feared she had no prayer of making her 23rd consecutive U.S. Women's Open start. It is the longest streak of any active player. She didn't make a swing with her driver until Wednesday, yet still made it to the first tee on Thursday with a different caddie, Brady Stockton, on her bag. What has happened since has been more astonishing: After a bogey free second round of two under par 69 at Cypress Creek, one of two Champions Club courses being used, Kerr sits tied for sixth place, five strokes behind the 36 hole leader, Hinako Shibuno. Kerr, a two time major winner and former world No. 1, won her U.S. Women's Open title in a week that started with her rolling her ankle. So maybe there is something to be said, she wondered in an interview, for managing pain instead of expectations. "It definitely has lowered my expectations," Kerr said, adding: "It's kind of a nice mental place to be. I'm not happy how I got here, but maybe it's meant to teach me a lesson." If anybody knows what Kerr is feeling, it would figure to be her friend and frequent playing companion Larry Fitzgerald, the veteran Arizona Cardinals receiver. In an exchange of text messages on Friday, Fitzgerald, an 11 time Pro Bowler, marveled at Kerr's toughness. "Whenever I have broken ribs or torn cartilage, I have to stop playing golf because the turn is so painful," he said. The world No. 6 Brooke Henderson, a former hockey goaltender, was similarly impressed, saying, "I don't see how I would ever be able to do that." Kerr can wrap her upper body like a mummy in kinesiology tape, but that addresses only her physical ailments. The emotional wounds are tougher to protect. After Thursday's first round, as Kerr was describing the accident, she choked up and her eyes welled with tears when she arrived at the part about being thrown from the cart. "I'm sorry," she said. "Maybe I shouldn't talk about it. I remember landing on my chest and it was awful. But I'm here and I played and I was tough today and I feel like I'm going to keep getting better every day." The Friday tee times were moved up in anticipation of a rainstorm that held off, except for scattered drops, until the end of Kerr's round. On the final fairway, she walked over to the gallery ropes and exchanged umbrellas with her husband, Erik Stevens, who asked, "Are you OK?" He hadn't really needed to ask. Kerr's uncharacteristic wildness off the tee over her last few holes telegraphed that the pain in her torso was flaring and her back was tightening. Despite the discomfort, which kept her from hitting through the ball with her usual speed, she played her last five holes in one under par. She birdied No. 8, her 17th hole. "I'm proud of the way I've been hanging in there," Kerr said afterward. "Clearly I'm not happy with the way I hit it coming in, but I know that's not fully in my control right now, so I've just got to be patient with myself." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
The hulking industrial buildings that line Sunset Park's waterfront once bustled with manufacturing and military activity. Elvis Presley deployed to Germany from the Brooklyn Army Terminal in 1958, one of three million troops to pass through the Cass Gilbert designed building. The area was once so busy that it had its own rail line and police and fire departments. Today, many of these historic buildings, with about 15 million square feet of light manufacturing space in Brooklyn, are antiquated and struggling to stay relevant. Built at the turn of the last century, many of them lack basic amenities like central air conditioning and automated elevators. As New York City bleeds manufacturing jobs to cheaper markets, persuading companies to stay is, at best, difficult. But the city, which owns more than one third of the space, and private developers are revamping these properties to appeal to a more nimble manufacturing tenant. And in doing so, the buildings are entering a new era that may ultimately benefit this working class neighborhood. Three of the area's biggest properties are undergoing makeovers: Industry City, a rambling 6.5 million square foot complex off the Gowanus Expressway, which has been reaching out to small food manufacturers to capture some of the energy of the Brooklyn artisanal food scene; Federal Building No. 2, now renamed Liberty View Industrial Plaza, which is in the midst of a 40 million renovation and may soon open a Bed Bath Beyond; and the city owned Brooklyn Army Terminal. "It's pretty exciting stuff. We're definitely seeing some improvements," said David D. Meade, executive director of the Southwest Brooklyn Industrial Development Corporation, a local economic development group. Industry City is emblematic of the plight of manufacturing here and its potential. Many of the 16 buildings in the complex, which dates to 1895, have fallen into disrepair. "After dark, it's like being in a Batman movie because the buildings are so old and massive and decayed," said Jennie Dundas, co owner of Blue Marble ice cream, which moved into a 3,000 square foot manufacturing space in Industry City in December. Only 66 percent of the property was occupied in January 2012, according to a loan analysis by Morningstar. About 2,500 people work at Industry City, according to the owners. By contrast, when Harry Helmsley owned Industry City in the 1970s, Topps Candy, makers of Bazooka bubble gum and baseball trading cards, had its headquarters there and the complex was 95 percent occupied, with 20,000 workers. Tenants said that until the current owners, Rubin Schron and Abraham Fruchthandler, began renovations a year ago, windows swung open, roofs leaked, hallways filled with rainwater and trash went uncollected. In December 2010, Schron and Fruchthandler failed to make payments on a 300 million loan on the property, according to the Morningstar analysis. "I really remember it being in trouble," said Jean Francois Bonnet, owner of Tumbador Chocolates, which has been a tenant since 2005 and provides sweets to places like the Pierre and the Mandarin Oriental. But Industry City is turning a corner. In April, the owners restructured their loan, reducing their debt and lowering their monthly payments. As part of the arrangement, they invested 30 million in the property, according to the Morningstar analysis. They plan to repave streets, upgrade buildings, improve infrastructure and modernize elevators. "The area's character is shifting from outdated to industrial chic," Bruce Federman, director of real estate at Industry City, said in a prepared statement. The owners have recently negotiated leases with Brooklyn based niche food manufacturers including Blue Marble, Industry City Distillery, Colson Bakery and Nunu Chocolates. In September 2011, Industry City Distillery, a new vodka producer, moved into a 6,500 square foot space. One of the location's draws was access to the roof, where the company hopes to build a greenhouse. "The infrastructure support that Industry City offered was great," said Zachary A. Bruner, a machinist and fabricator at the distillery. But redevelopment faces deeper challenges, as manufacturing's decline has accelerated in the last decade. The vacancy rate for industrial space in Sunset Park has hovered around 8 percent since 2005. It was just 3.1 percent in 2002, and less than 1 percent in 1997, according to data from the CoStar Group, a real estate information company. The number of manufacturing jobs has also dropped. In 2002, there were about 3,200 manufacturing jobs in the area between 31st and 63rd Streets and First and Third Avenues, according to census data. By 2010, the number had dropped by half, to 1,600. The area's overall job decline was much less, down to 17,000 from 19,000, in the same period. "Is it getting worse? Probably not. But this is not a cyclical problem. This is a structural problem," says Rene Circ, director of industrial research for Co Star, citing high rent and aging infrastructure as two factors. While manufacturing space cost an average of 13.16 a square foot in New York City in the second quarter, it was only 4.47 nationwide and 5.14 a square foot just across the river in New Jersey, according to a report by Newmark Grubb Knight Frank, a commercial real estate adviser. The Bloomberg administration, however, has intensified its commitment to manufacturing in Sunset Park. The city owns and operates 5.8 million square feet of the manufacturing space in the area, where about 3,400 people work at 140 companies. Jonathan Bowles, director of the Center for an Urban Future, said the city's designation of the area as an industrial business zone was "hugely helpful." In doing so, the city has pledged not to rezone the area for residential use. Business owners within the zone are also eligible for a one time 1,000 tax credit for every worker they employ, up to 100,000. Over the last 30 years, the city has invested 168 million in improvements at Brooklyn Army Terminal, a 1919 edifice that was the largest military supply base in the United States through World War II. A year ago, after occupancy fell to 87 percent, the New York City Economic Development Corporation spent another 4.2 million upgrading elevators and subdividing some of the building's 40,000 square foot floors to lure smaller tenants. In the last year, the Economic Development Corporation has signed leases with 30 new tenants. Today, the 3.1 million square feet of leasable space is 93 percent occupied, with rents from 6 to 12 a square foot. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
On March 21, 2019, the staff at the Penn Memory Center in Philadelphia was scrambling to learn more about an early morning announcement: Two pharmaceutical companies, Biogen and Eisai, would discontinue their clinical trial of a drug intended to slow the progression of early Alzheimer's disease. A "futility analysis" had shown that aducanumab, being studied in more than 3,200 people worldwide, would not prove effective. It was yet another disheartening result; after decades of drug research, one medication after another hundreds of them had failed to prevent, arrest or cure Alzheimer's. The Penn researchers wanted to be the ones to break the bad news to the 18 participants they had recruited. "When this effort you contributed months and years to is ending, that's something you want to hear from people you trust," said Emily Largent, a bioethicist and researcher there. But the Penn staff was too late to inform John Poritsky, a participant with early onset Alzheimer's, and his wife, Debra Morris. The news had already begun circulating online. "My friend had sent me a text, 'Did you hear that this study is ending?'" said Dr. Morris, an English professor at the Pennsylvania College of Technology. "I was horrified. Floored. I couldn't believe it." For nearly a year, they had regularly traveled three hours from their home in Williamsport, Pa., to Philadelphia, where Dr. Poritsky had undergone extensive testing and received monthly infusions without knowing whether he was receiving the drug or a placebo. "I'd built up a lot of hope," said Dr. Poritsky, 61, a retired English professor. He wasn't surprised to have developed Alzheimer's; his father, grandfather and great uncle all had the disease. But he had hardly expected a diagnosis before he turned 60. This drug study, a Phase 3 trial, had allowed him to think not only that he might benefit personally, but that he could help advance science. "I thought, I can be part of something that can cure or arrest this illness," he said. When the plug was suddenly pulled, "I was just devastated." This scenario occurs with distressing frequency. Most Alzheimer's drug trials are sponsored by publicly held pharmaceutical companies, which must follow federal Securities and Exchange Commission regulations when they disclose information that affects stock prices. Alerting patients or investigators before notifying shareholders would violate the companies' legal obligations. So they often issue early morning news releases. Years ago, most patients probably learned about discontinued trials from researchers and staff whom they had come to know. (The last Alzheimer's medication to receive F.D.A. approval was Namenda, in 2003.) But with social media and 24 hour digital reporting, plus keen public interest in Alzheimer's drugs, "this has become fast moving news in a way it wasn't before," Dr. Largent said. For Phil Gutis, 58, a former New York Times reporter diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's, "it was a kick in the stomach." Like Dr. Poritsky, he was enrolled in the aducanumab trial, and had learned of its termination from a friend's text. "There should be a better way," he said. Internationally, the Alzheimer's Association calculates that clinical trials now underway for dementia treatments drugs, dietary programs, devices and other interventions aim to enroll more than 56,000 people. Drug trials for Alzheimer's disease are often a particularly arduous commitment. "These are not simple protocols," said Dr. Sharon Cohen, a neurologist and principal investigator at the Toronto Memory Program, which had enrolled 29 participants in the aducanumab trial. "The visits are long. They are frequent. There is in depth testing. Blood draws. M.R.I. scans that may recur. PET scans. There may be spinal taps. And the study partner" a family member or friend "has to attend many of these as well." Why agree to all that, especially when researchers pointedly explain that the experimental drug may not help and could actually harm patients? Moreover, in a typical double blind study, half the participants won't even get the drug but will instead receive a placebo. Researchers and patients describe a mix of motives: desperation, altruism, trust in the investigators and sponsors. "I thought I was doing this for future generations," Mr. Gutis said. But as he learned more about aducanumab, "there was definitely optimism that this possibly could help me." Participants also come to value their deepening relationships with the study staff, who know so much about the disease and take such an interest in their condition. "It was almost familial," Dr. Poritsky said. "We were part of a community and a structure, and it was gone," Dr. Morris said. The aducanumab study also took an unexpected and uncommon turn. Seven months after ending the trial, Biogen and Esai announced (in another early morning news release) that a reanalysis, using additional data, indicated that at high doses the drug appeared to reduce cognitive decline after all. They plan to resume an open label trial (without a placebo) in March and to seek F.D.A. approval. The development was encouraging, but left study participants feeling especially whipsawed. In a recent editorial in JAMA Neurology, Drs. Karlawish and Largent argued for a more communicative approach. "We're trying to change the culture of the way we run clinical trials in Alzheimer's research," Dr. Karlawish said in an interview. Lobbying the S.E.C. to change its regulations would be "infeasible," he acknowledged. But the informed consent process, the researchers wrote, should prepare participants for the possibility of an abrupt end to the trial. Participants could opt to receive the pharmaceutical company's news release, or a letter, as soon as it is issued, "so you don't feel like you're the last one to know," Dr. Largent said. The researchers urged companies to share details of what a given study revealed; even failed experiments provide useful information. "It's an important way of demonstrating respect for their contributions," Dr. Largent said. Finally, study sites should provide support after trials end, by checking on the well being of participants and referring them to counseling or support groups as needed. Some of those suggestions may take hold. The Alzheimer's Association and the National Institute on Aging say they plan to meet with drug manufacturers to discuss improving communication with research participants. The Toronto Memory Center has gone a step further. In 2018 it hosted a lunch for participants and partners after a discontinued trial; the event included a presentation of the results, "to show them what their efforts had led to," Dr. Cohen said. She described the participants as "medical heroes, taking risks to benefit themselves and others." Last year, at another lunch, the center presented several participants with citizen scientist awards. Despite the disappointments, participants often remain eager to join other trials. When aducanumab testing resumes, both Mr. Gutis (who learned that he had been receiving the drug rather than a placebo, and thought it had helped him) and Dr. Poritsky (who thought so too, but had received a placebo) plan to re enroll. They will moderate their expectations this time, however. "You volunteer to be a lab rat," Mr. Gutis said. "But the rat doesn't have high hopes." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
THE actor Edward Herrmann has played F.D.R. in "Eleanor and Franklin," Nelson Rockefeller in "Nixon," Anderson Pearson in "The Practice" and the oldest intern in "Grey's Anatomy." But a role he enjoys as much as any of those is serving as master of ceremonies for the Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance. With an innate passion for automobiles and a manner that is at once formal, elegant and unpretentious, Mr. Herrmann is an ideal fit for the Pebble Beach podium. As expressive in a casual conversation as he is on the stage and the screen, he enthusiastically shares his insider's perspective of the concours, staged each August on the 18th fairway of the Pebble Beach Golf Links on the Monterey Peninsula of California. "Pebble is for the best of the best, for very rare examples of the finest automobiles in the world," Mr. Herrmann said in a telephone interview. "The philosophy of the show is simply to make the beauty and wonder of the world's most exceptional cars available to a large number of people. That, of course, is a huge task." Mr. Herrmann's role at Pebble Beach is not his only part in the world of classic cars; he is frequently involved in other concours events. He was scheduled to judge pre World War I Rolls Royce Silver Ghosts at next weekend's Amelia Island Concours d'Elegance in Florida, but a schedule conflict with his film work forced him to cancel. Mr. Herrmann's role as the M.C. at Pebble Beach is well defined. "I'm not involved in vehicle judging or selection," he said. "My job is to make the whole thing move and keep it fun. I try to hold it together." The job can be harder than his smooth delivery makes it look. "The show has a cachet and an inertia that set the pace, but sometimes it throws me a curve," he said. "An owner can disappear right before his car is to be introduced, or a 100 year old automobile might not start. When that happens, I juggle, but I try to do it seamlessly and elegantly." Mr. Herrmann came to the attention of the Pebble Beach organizers when he submitted his LeBaron bodied Packard 120 B to the selection committee and earned an invitation. The car didn't win its class, but its owner evidently impressed the show's staff. In 1999, he was asked to serve as M.C. and has continued in that role ever since. According to Mr. Herrmann, some of the most stringent judging takes place well before the first car drives onto the Pebble Beach turf. Although car owners can apply for an invitation, the selection committee actively seeks cars that will make the event interesting while maintaining its standards. Typically, fewer than 200 cars are invited. Mr. Herrmann explained that after the selection committee agrees that a car has earned a place in the concours, it falls to the judges to determine the class winners. The manner in which the cars are judged is a key element of Pebble Beach's lofty reputation. Major concours generally use one of two judging methods: the French system or the 100 point system. The French system focuses on subjective appeal. Is the car pretty? Does it move one emotionally? Many major shows, including the Meadow Brook concours in Rochester, Mich., follow the French judging method. Pebble Beach employs the exacting 100 point system, which starts from the assumption that a car that is perfect mechanically and aesthetically and is an accurate example of its type merits 100 points. When the car is judged, points are subtracted for each fault discovered by the judges. SPEEDSTER Mr. Herrmann's 1929 Auburn Boattail won its class at Pebble Beach in 2001. The 100 point system works best when the judges are extremely knowledgeable about their class. They must take their work very seriously. "Some of the judges take their work almost too seriously," Mr. Herrmann said with a chuckle. "You have the egos of the judges and the egos of the owners, and sometimes they clash. The disputes are frequently about minor details, but details are important at this level." Once the class winners have been determined, the honorary judges bestow the Most Elegant and Best of Show awards. Only class winners are considered for Best of Show. While the honorary judges are knowledgeable enthusiasts, their evaluation process is much more subjective than that of the class judges, allowing a car's emotional appeal to be a factor in the overall show results. Pebble Beach highlights different featured marques each year for 2010 those will be Alfa Romeo, Pierce Arrow and Jaguar, and the designs of Ghia will be honored. The classes are determined in advance, so the committee begins the job of extending invitations with a good idea of the cars they would like to see in attendance. The committee strives to keep the event fresh and interesting. For instance, Mr. Herrmann said, in 2009 a committee member came up with the idea of presenting a class of Dietrich designed Packards. "Dietrich was a brilliant automotive stylist and some of his best work was done on Packard chassis," he said. "Despite the small number of surviving examples, the selection committee was able to find quite a few excellent cars." From among those Dietrich Packards the best of class award went to the 1934 Packard Twelve 1108 Dietrich Sport Sedan of Robert and Sandra Bahre. This car had already been in prestigious shows: at the 1933 Century of Progress World's Fair in Chicago, it was exhibited under the dome of the Travel and Transport building, where it represented "the epitome of automotive transportation." Mr. Hermann's automotive acumen wasn't attained while he studied at Bucknell University or, as a Fulbright scholar, at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. Mr. Herrmann, 66, is a son of the Motor City, and as a youngster in the Detroit suburb of Grosse Pointe, he was fully immersed in things automotive. "You ingest the automobile in the very air of Detroit," he said. "Or at least you did in the 1940s and 1950s. I thought cars were essential ingredients of life itself. And the old cars especially. If you had seen the Bugatti Royale in its single spotlight at the end of two rows of polished classics in the vast teak floored hall of the Henry Ford Museum, you would know what I mean. Electric." Over the years, Mr. Hermann has owned and shown numerous cars. Perhaps the most successful was the 1929 Auburn 8 90 Boattail Speedster that he bought at the urging of his wife, Star. The Auburn had belonged to the daughter of E. L. Cord, whose automotive empire included the Auburn, Cord and Duesenberg brands, so it had an interesting history. It garnered best of class honors at Pebble Beach in 2001. Today, Mr. Hermann has another restoration project in the works, a recently purchased 1934 Alvis Speed 20. It's easy to hear the excitement in his voice when he speaks of it. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Automobiles |
Blair Thornburgh and Josh Maxwell first met about seven years ago at a backyard party at her parents' Philadelphia house, but at the time, neither seemed the least bit romantically interested in the other. Ms. Thornbugh was home on break from the University of Chicago, where she graduated with a degree in medieval studies. Mr. Maxwell, recently elected mayor of Downingtown, Pa., was a student in the public policy graduate program that her father, David Thornburgh, ran at the University of Pennsylvania. Both had been dating other people. Ms. Thornburgh, the granddaughter of Dick Thornburgh, the former Pennsylvania governor and United States attorney general, had been writing fiction since her late teens. Her debut novel, "Who's That Girl" (HarperTeen, 2017) was lauded for its honest portrayal of the awkwardness of adolescence. In 2015, she dived into a book idea that germinated years earlier involving a young slacker who inadvertently becomes mayor of a Pennsylvania town. She would quickly learn that the protagonist of a forthcoming book she is now working on, "The King of Jerksville," actually didn't have much in common with Mr. Maxwell. "Ted Dunker is basically the most unlikely candidate to become mayor of his town," she said of her character. "Not really driven, not very confident, your typical teenager." David Thornburgh, who worked directly with Mr. Maxwell on an independent study project while he was at Penn's Fels Institute, was impressed. "Josh was just this very solid guy who was kind of wise beyond his years," Mr. Thornburgh said. Which is why, after Mr. Maxwell graduated, he kept in touch. In 2016, he invited Mr. Maxwell to sit on a panel for young political hopefuls in Philadelphia. "The presidential election had just happened, and there was a surge of interest in getting involved in politics among young people," Mr. Thornburgh said. The panel he put together included civic activists who could talk about the ins and outs of running for office and serving. "I knew Blair was very interested in the politics of the time, so I thought she'd want to come," he said. "I didn't ask her intentionally to fix her up with Josh." Still, he added, "I guess I could rightfully claim to be matchmaker." Ms. Thornburgh, 28, an editor at Quirk Books in Philadelphia, liked what Mr. Maxwell, 34, had to say during the panel discussion. Her ears also perked when he mentioned being single. Despite what she called her "pedigree as a Pennsylvania Republican scion" her grandfather was attorney general under George H.W. Bush and governor from 1979 1987 Ms. Thornburgh has long shared Mr. Maxwell's left leaning views. She canvassed for Barack Obama in 2008. And these days, "I hang on Alexandria Ocasio Cortez's every word," she said, referring to the young Democratic candidate for New York's 14th congressional district. When the panel was over, she reintroduced herself to Mr. Maxwell and asked if she could interview him for her novel. Days later, they met for sandwiches. At MilkBoy, a restaurant in Philadelphia's Center City, Mr. Maxwell regaled her with newbie mayor stories, like the time a flood wreaked townwide havoc. But the meeting felt more datelike than businesslike. "We had one of those conversations where you want to tell each other so much, you can't stay on track," Ms. Thornburgh said. Mr. Maxwell liked that her hair, which she wears in a pixie cut, was pink. "But what I really thought is, this person has an active mind and can really hold my attention," he said. "I wanted to spend a lot more time with her." That, of course, is exactly what happened. By January 2017, Mr. Maxwell was whiling away weekend afternoons playing Scrabble with Ms. Thornburgh at her Philadelphia apartment. He thought of her as his girlfriend, though he hadn't yet told his mother and siblings about their deepening relationship. That changed abruptly when Mr. Maxwell, who has epilepsy, had a seizure in January 2017. Ms. Thornburgh remembers being on an exercise bike at the gym when her phone buzzed with an apology: Mr. Maxwell was being rushed to the hospital and couldn't make their date that evening. She jumped off the bike and sped to the hospital. Mr. Maxwell's three siblings were on their way, too. "We all showed up in the emergency room, and I'm all sweaty in my gym clothes, and they have no idea who I am. I was like, 'Hi, I'm Blair,'" Ms. Thornburgh said. Mr. Maxwell's mother, Beverly Maxwell, asked one of her daughters to snap a picture so she could see the woman her son had been worried about standing up. "I got Josh on the phone at the hospital and he was concerned because he didn't want this person he called his girlfriend to be upset," Ms. Maxwell said. "We were all thinking, 'Does he really have a girlfriend?' We weren't sure if he was confused." While his family wasn't sure about his relationship status, just about everyone on his train from Downingtown to Philadelphia apparently was. Mr. Maxwell made Ms. Thornburgh a coffee table at Dane Decor, a furniture shop in Downingtown where he worked part time, and he brought it to her for Valentine's Day via public transportation. "It's this big hulking piece of wood, and he carried it all the way through town," Ms. Thornburgh said. "That's when I knew this guy's for real. We immediately played Scrabble on it." On Dec. 4, Mr. Maxwell, feeling stressed out, suggested a hike in the rolling hills of Chester County. Twenty minutes in, they reached a scenic trail with no other hikers around. Mr. Maxwell paused, ready with a speech about loving her with all his heart, and pulled out the ring, which he had stuck in his pocket without a box. She said yes before he could finish proposing. "I immediately started crying," she said. Later that day, a visit to the Downingtown Public Library, where the mayor was to show his support at a fund raiser, turned into a celebration. "Not to be too 'Gilmore Girls,' but we were in this small town and everyone we wanted to share the news with was there and so happy for us," Ms. Thornburgh said. "I just hope we didn't upstage the library." On Aug. 4, about 100 Downingtown residents trekked to Philadelphia, where Ms. Thornburgh and Mr. Maxwell were married at the Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill by the Rev. Cynthia A. Jarvis, with assistance from the Rev. Brigid Boyle. Both are Presbyterian ministers who have known Ms. Thornburgh since she was 6. The bride, wearing an ivory Nicole Miller column dress, a long veil and her signature eyeglasses, walked down the aisle with her mother, Rebecca McKillip Thornburgh, and her father to meet a broad smiling Mr. Maxwell. He wore a royal blue suit with a yellow rose boutonniere. Mrs. Thornburgh and Ms. Maxwell each read bible passages from behind a podium before the couple were pronounced married in front of 192 guests. They then raised their joined hands in victory. Ginny Thornburgh, Ms. Thornburgh's grandmother, lingered in the church with her husband, Dick Thornburgh, who is now 86 and uses a wheelchair, as guests filed into the church yard to toast the couple. The longtime political wife, has been a mentor to Ms. Thornburgh and a supporter of Mr. Maxwell's political career. (She and Mr. Thornburgh had contributed to his unsuccessful campaign for the Pennsylvania House of Representatives earlier this year.) She offered some advice for her granddaughter as she embarked on a life of future campaigns and elections. "In the political world, there's going to be criticisms," she said. "Always remember to think about where the criticism is coming from. And love your husband." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
AT T, the telecommunications giant that has moved into media and entertainment, announced a changing of the guard on Friday. John Stankey, a veteran of the company, will become its new chief executive starting July 1. He will take the reins from Randall L. Stephenson, who has led AT T since 2007. Mr. Stankey, 57, became the chief operating officer last October and has managed the bulk of the company's operations since then. Before that, he led AT T's move into the media and entertainment industries after its 85.4 billion purchase of Time Warner, the home of CNN, HBO and the Warner Bros. movie studio, in 2018. Mr. Stephenson, 60, will stay on as executive chairman of the board through this year, the company said in a statement. "I've worked closely with John for well over 20 years," Mr. Stephenson said in a video addressed to the company's 244,000 employees on Friday. "I've asked him to take on some of our biggest challenges, and each time he's delivered." Mr. Stankey called it a "privilege" to work at AT T. In a separate statement, he added: "I can honestly say I didn't see this in the cards nearly 35 years ago when I joined the company handling customer requests for phone service." Mr. Stankey, a California native, started his career in 1985, at Pacific Bell. He has spent much of his time in Texas, working out of AT T's former headquarters in San Antonio until the company moved its main offices to Dallas in 2008. A self described "Bell head," he is known for a deep voice, blunt manner and a tendency to speak in technical jargon. He once led AT T's wireline operations and oversaw DirecTV, the satellite TV service acquired by the phone giant in 2015. That division has suffered major declines as customers have defected to cheaper, online alternatives such as Netflix. The migration of viewers to streaming prompted AT T's acquisition of Time Warner and the multi billion dollar development of HBO Max, the streaming service that is scheduled to make its debut on May 27. As the leader of AT T's WarnerMedia division from the time of the merger until recently, Mr. Stankey stepped out of the relatively anonymous role of telecommunications executive and into the media glare. He made visits to New York, Washington and Los Angeles as he brought the AT T ethos to CNN, HBO, the Turner cable channels and Warner Bros. In his 20 months at the WarnerMedia helm, Mr. Stankey refashioned the division to focus on streaming and dissolved the borders between the conglomerate's separate units. On his watch, the gregarious longtime HBO chief Richard Plepler left the company and signed a five year deal to produce shows and films for Apple TV Plus. Mr. Stankey has had his detractors. Not long after he was named to lead the media business, Elliott Management, one of Wall Street's biggest and most aggressive hedge funds, bought a 3.2 billion stake in AT T and sharply criticized its strategy. Elliott took direct aim at Mr. Stankey. 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. After he was named chief operating officer and president in October, the hedge fund noted with disapproval that Mr. Stankey "would now also be responsible for an additional 145 billion of revenue as the president and C.O.O. of the entire company." The tone has shifted since then. Elliott backed off after Mr. Stephenson agreed to some of its suggestions, and on Friday, the hedge fund announced its support of Mr. Stankey's appointment as chief executive. "We look forward to working with John as he begins his term as C.E.O.," said Jesse Cohn, the Elliott partner who led its investment in AT T. The timing of Mr. Stankey's appointment was a surprise. In October, Mr. Stephenson outlined a three year plan designed to increase the company's revenue that included his staying on as chief executive through 2020, rather than bowing out earlier, as he had planned. At the same time, the company started searching for a new chief executive, as well as someone to replace Mr. Stankey as head of WarnerMedia. For the WarnerMedia job, AT T settled on Jason Kilar, the former head of Hulu. He will take charge of that part of the company in May. The board concluded its search for a new AT T chief executive this month, much earlier than planned, and decided to announce Mr. Stankey as the new head right away. The company said Mr. Stephenson had said he would remain in the job for a year to give the board time to conduct its search. President Trump, who has repeatedly lashed out at CNN for its coverage of him, called Mr. Stephenson's departure "Great News!" on Twitter. In the first years of his presidency, as he railed against the news network on social media and at rallies, the Justice Department unsuccessfully sued to block AT T's merger with Time Warner. AT T declined to comment on Mr. Trump's remarks. For most of his career, Mr. Stankey was little known outside the telecommunications sphere, but quickly drew attention after AT T's blockbuster acquisition of Time Warner. He learned just how heavily the media industry was scrutinized when video of a sometimes awkward and tension filled town hall gathering of HBO employees featuring Mr. Stankey and Mr. Plepler was leaked to The New York Times. After the initial splash, Mr. Stankey went to work behind the scenes, installing his own leadership team piece by piece. He inherits an empire that encompasses telecommunications, media, technology and distribution. The company's valuation exceeds 209 billion, but its key wireless business has started to slow down as pricing wars with its competitors Verizon and T Mobile have dampened revenue. T Mobile became a hefty challenger when it closed its acquisition of Sprint this month. The fight for customers among the major wireless carriers has driven subscription prices downward. The average monthly wireless bill has fallen by over 25 percent in the past decade, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Wireless carriers still enjoy fat profits, but they have flattened or declined in recent years. AT T, the nation's second largest wireless carrier, with 79 million customers, took a hit from the coronavirus pandemic in the first quarter, with revenue falling by 600 million and profit down by 360 million, mostly because of the loss of sports programming at its Turner division. But the company also clawed back some of the licensing fees it paid the N.C.A.A. after the annual men's basketball tournament was canceled, accounting for the bulk of 420 million in cost savings at Turner. Mr. Stankey is also the heir to the plan laid out by Mr. Stephenson in October. It calls for a review of AT T's sprawling set of businesses to see which ones can be sold, including DirecTV, and an assurance it would pay the debt associated with its acquisition of Time Warner. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
The choreographer, dancer and social activist Katherine Dunham made headlines in 1944, when, after reluctantly performing for a racially segregated audience in Louisville, Ky., she declared that if the theater wanted her to return, it would have to integrate. This scene introduces an in depth, necessary new book on Dunham and her trailblazing career, "Katherine Dunham: Dance and the African Diaspora" (Oxford University Press), by the dance historian Joanna Dee Das. Ms. Das, who grew up studying Dunham Technique, examines the relationships, both explicit and subtle, between Dunham's art and activism, from her formative travels in Haiti to her support for the Black Arts Movement in East St. Louis, Ill. A multifaceted portrait emerges, of a woman who believed, as Ms. Das puts it, that "living in the space of diaspora, in between ness, was the way to achieve wholeness." Though Dunham is celebrated for her contributions to modern dance, her works are rarely restaged today. Ms. Das leaves us wondering: How can we see more? | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
Janet L. Yellen, the Federal Reserve chairwoman, said on Friday that she still expected the Fed to start raising its benchmark interest rate later this year. Weak growth during the first part of the year most likely reflected temporary disruptions, including the impact of winter weather, Ms. Yellen said in a speech delivered to the Chamber of Commerce in Providence, R.I. She added that government estimates also may have overstated the impact on the economy. "If the economy continues to improve as I expect, I think it will be appropriate at some point this year to take the initial step to raise the federal funds rate target and begin the process of normalizing monetary policy," Ms. Yellen said. Ms. Yellen's speech is the latest indication that the Fed's plans have shifted only slightly in recent months even as disappointing data has piled up. While reflecting her personal view, it largely echoes an account published on Wednesday of the Fed's most recent policy meeting. The Fed has backed away from the possibility of raising rates as soon as June, but officials have made clear that they do not see a reason to wait much longer. "Assuming that economic growth does rebound, and particularly now that there are signs of a pickup in underlying price inflation and wage growth, we don't think the Fed can wait any longer than September," Paul Ashworth, chief United States economist at Capital Economics, wrote on Friday after Ms. Yellen's speech. The Fed has held rates near zero since December 2008 as the centerpiece of its effort to strengthen the economy. Low rates encourage borrowing by businesses and consumers, and risk taking by investors seeking higher returns. Higher rates would be aimed at gradually withdrawing further stimulus, cooling off the economy to help keep future inflation from rising much above the Fed's target rate. A minority of Fed officials argue that the economy is not yet strong enough to lift rates. They point to the sluggish pace of inflation, which since the recession has lagged below the 2 percent annual pace that the Fed regards as most healthy. Some investors also expect economic weakness will force the Fed to wait. Charles Evans, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, argues that the Fed should be patient until inflation rebounds, which he regards as unlikely before next year. "I see no compelling reason for us to be in a hurry to tighten financial conditions before then," Mr. Evans said on Wednesday in Munich. In her speech, Ms. Yellen explained why she and other officials were inclined to move sooner, so long as they see the expected improvement in the economic data. She noted that the economy added more than three million jobs last year, and that other signs also suggested labor market conditions were improving, including an increase in workers who are quitting their jobs in pursuit of better opportunities. She said lower gas prices had yielded savings of about 700 a household. And she said some of the economy's problems appeared to be getting smaller. Home prices are rising and mortgages have become a little easier to obtain. State and local governments have stopped cutting back on spending. And Ms. Yellen said that she expected economic growth in the rest of the world to strengthen. "With the waning of the headwinds that I have discussed, the U.S. economy seems well positioned for continued growth," she said. Ms. Yellen also said the economy might be stronger than suggested by recent economic data, including the government's estimate that gross domestic output increased just 0.2 percent in the first three months of the year. "Some of this apparent weakness may just be statistical noise," she said. The government has consistently reported weak first quarter growth in recent years, leading some economists to question its methodology. The reported numbers are seasonally adjusted, meaning the government tries to strip away predictable seasonal variations, like holiday hiring around Christmas and declines in construction in the middle of winter, to reveal the underlying trend. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Economy |
The all new Equinox is more proof that General Motors has found its footing. The crossover takes care of five people, does the chores and looks good doing them. If I had a dollar for every time I was asked, "What's your favorite car?" I could buy that car. Even if it were an exotic. Truth be told, the vehicles that get my professional admiration are the everyday ones, the dependable workhorses that shuttle our children hither and yon, the cars that become part of the family. It's easy to love performance machines or luxury vehicles with fur lined glove boxes (not a thing, but you get the gist). But the car geek in me admires budget restrained engineering teams who create affordable cars that are truly desirable. That's a black art. The all new third generation Chevrolet Equinox crossover is more proof that under Mary Barra, General Motors has found its footing. The Equinox takes care of five people, does the chores, doesn't drink to excess and looks good. In the brutal automotive business, the compact crossover market is the most fiercely competitive. It includes not only the Equinox but also the Honda CR V, Mazda CX 5, Ford Escape, Toyota RAV4, Nissan Rogue, Kia Sportage, Volkswagen Tiguan and Hyundai Tucson. The Equinox is critical to General Motors. Chevrolet moved 242,195 of them in the United States in 2016, which was second in volume only to the Silverado pickup truck. The 2018 model will probably sell quicker because it's a far better vehicle. Here's why. The Equinox is more than four inches shorter now but retains the same interior space. The 400 pounds it has shed may exceed the weight of the young family who drives it. Let's buy a round for the engineers. The Equinox's breezy design language, which also graces the Cruze, Malibu and Volt, could be used by Lexus in a parallel universe. One reason the second generation overstayed its welcome is that the original design for the third generation was so unloved in consumer clinics that it was scrapped. Good to know the Chevrolet team understands that ugly is forever once it's on the road. Friends and neighbors fawned over the Premier model's cabin with stitched elements on the instrument panel. Owners will be staring at it for years in bad traffic, so glad it's handsome. Budget plastics are placed below the center console where they're seldom seen or touched. (It's how wise product planners cut costs.) The center console is roomy enough to fit a single lens reflex camera. G.M.'s touch screen user interface, with Android Auto and Apple CarPlay, is simple to use. A base price of 24,525 will give pause to price sensitive internet shoppers. Climbing to 33,975, my top trim Premier tester lacked available all wheel drive and a panoramic sunroof. And adaptive cruise control is not even listed as an option. To be fair, the price includes vented front seats, a heated steering wheel and a surround view camera system that some competitors don't offer. Generous pricing margins may allow Chevy dealers plenty of negotiation room. Get in there and haggle hard. Considering the comfort and refinement, the effort may be worth it. The Equinox shines by delivering a polished and quiet dynamic verging on luxury brand levels. If the roads to soccer or Little League practice are rough, this suspension smooths the bumps. It's respectable in the curves, too, without challenging the Mazda CX 5's cornering chops. Chevy's supportive seats impressed my backside (though that's a personal thing). A bonus: Set off the lane keeping assist system and the driver's cushion vibrates discreetly, with no tattletale chimes. It's a marriage saving feature first found in Cadillacs. The standard engine is a 1.5 liter turbocharged 4 cylinder providing 170 horsepower and 203 pound feet of torque. That's hooked up to a 6 speed transmission that aggressively holds low ratios for fuel efficiency. This standard power plant is smooth with acceleration in the middle of the pack. The CR V is a little quicker and efficient. The Environmental Protection Agency rated the average fuel economy of a front drive Equinox at 28 miles per gallon versus the Honda's at 30. A comparable RAV4 scores 25. Any performance and efficiency deficiencies can be rectified in spades with two engine options. There's a 2 liter turbo gasoline engine with 252 horsepower and a nine speed transmission for Speed Racer. Scrooge McDuck may be interested in the four cylinder turbo diesel paired to a six speed that's expected to return 40 miles per gallon. The Equinox's automatic engine start stop system is smooth enough to forget about in many situations. Good thing because it can't be turned off. Unlike the automatic all wheel drive systems used by others, the Equinox requires drivers to enable it manually. (There's a prompt to push the button when conditions warrant.) Automatic emergency braking is standard on the RAV4, the 2018 Nissan Rogue and most CR Vs. That safety tech is part of a 1,900 package on the Equinox and only available on the top Premier model. The back seat no longer slides fore and aft (eliminated because some second generation owners never knew it did). The space is generous with a raised seat cushion offering significant thigh support for adults and superior visibility for children. The back also sports two USB ports, a 12 volt socket and a 115 volt three prong outlet, so there's nothing that can't be charged. The days of Japan Inc. clearly outgunning Detroit Co. on every level are gone. While my left brain admires the overachieving Honda CR V, my right brain gives the nod to the comfortable, refined and stylish Equinox. Both engineering teams performed the black magic needed to make a mainstream car appealing. I won't be around to nag you to test drive. So experience at least three vehicles before writing that big check. A tip? The Equinox is worth a look. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Automobiles |
As Facebook has grown, so too has its ability to slice and dice the habits of its hundreds of millions of users, and offer them up to advertisers that want to reach specific groups for specific reasons. But while the social network has evolved to the point that it can target audiences as narrow as 18 to 24 year old men in Connecticut who are in long distance relationships, it has also created tools that allowed advertisers to discriminate against Americans in ways that were outlawed in the 1960s. Facebook responded on Friday to concern that it was violating anti discrimination laws, announcing that marketers placing housing, employment or credit ads on the social network would no longer be able to use tools that target people by ethnicity. "There are many nondiscriminatory uses of our ethnic affinity solution in these areas, but we have decided that we can best guard against discrimination by suspending these types of ads," Erin Egan, Facebook's chief privacy officer, said in a blog post on Friday. An article by ProPublica published last month reported that advertisers could use Facebook targeting to exclude certain races, or what the company calls "ethnic affinities," from housing and employment ads, potentially putting the social network in violation of the Fair Housing Act of 1968 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The article prompted scrutiny from civil rights groups and policy makers, including the American Civil Liberties Union and four members of Congress, and a class action lawsuit. The decision casts a perhaps unwelcome spotlight on what Facebook calls its "ethnic affinity marketing solution," which is still available for use outside the areas of housing, employment and credit advertising. One of Facebook's main draws for marketers is how narrowly it lets them target messages to its users. Ads can be sent to people based not only on standard demographics like age, gender and location, but also on a bevy of other factors, like whether they have an anniversary coming, their interest in horseback riding, whether they use Gmail or Hotmail, and the languages they speak. Users can also be excluded from seeing ads based on this data. On Facebook's ad buying website, however, advertisers can choose to include or exclude certain demographic "affinities" from ads in the United States. For instance, they can exclude African American, Asian American and four "types" of Hispanic bilingual, English dominant, Spanish dominant or all of the above. Facebook lists the number of people who match those affinities within its ads tool. What happened on Day 2 of Elizabeth Holmes's testimony. Kevin Spacey was ordered to pay 31 million to the 'House of Cards' studio after sexual harassment allegations. For example, if an advertiser wants to reach Americans ages 18 and up on Facebook, the company indicates that there are 26 million people with the "ethnic affinity" of African American. The company confirmed that because the assignment is based on activity, a white person could be targeted as African American and vice versa. Facebook users can visit their Ad Preferences and see what, if any, ethnic affinity is assigned to them under their "lifestyle and culture" interests, and remove it if they want, the company said. A reporter for The New York Times who is Indian American did not have "Asian American" listed under her interests in that section. A colleague, who is Hispanic and speaks primarily English, had "Ethnic affinity: African American (U.S.)" listed under descriptions like "away from family" and "books." ProPublica, for its article last month, bought an ad targeting Facebook users who were house hunting, and excluded people with an "affinity" for African American, Asian American or Hispanic people. The publication showed the ad to a civil rights lawyer, who called it a "blatant" violation of the Fair Housing Act. On Friday, Facebook declined to disclose the number of housing, credit and employment ads placed using ethnic affinity targeting. The company brought in roughly 18 billion in revenue last year, almost all of it from advertising. In her blog post, Ms. Egan wrote that this type of targeting "gives brands a way to reach multicultural audiences with more relevant advertising." In addition to tools that will disable ethnic affinity marketing for housing, employment or credit ads, Facebook will "require advertisers to affirm that they will not engage in discriminatory advertising" on the site and offer them information so they "understand their obligations with respect to housing, employment and credit." Amy Spitalnick, a spokeswoman for the New York State attorney general, said its civil rights bureau "inquired about Facebook's practices and, while we are still reviewing them, we are pleased to see this positive step by the company." Yvette D. Clarke, one of the members of Congress who called on Facebook to change its ad policy, commended the decision and took the opportunity to rap Silicon Valley's knuckles for its lack of racial and gender diversity. "To avoid these problems in the future, I urge Facebook and other technology companies to address the lack of diversity in the ranks of their leadership and staff by recruiting and retaining people of color and women," Ms. Clarke said in a statement. This is hardly the first time Facebook has received intense scrutiny over its ad targeting practices. In 2013, Facebook paid 20 million to settle a class action lawsuit against the company for sharing data with advertisers about users' "likes" without asking permission. The same year, a lawsuit accused the company of scanning users' private messages on the network and using the information for advertising purposes. In September of this year, a federal judge in California ruled against a bid to certify the case as a class action lawsuit. The changes to Facebook's ethnic marketing tool will very likely deal a difficult blow to the company's longstanding boasts about its superior ad targeting capabilities, especially in the face of competitors like Google, Twitter and Snapchat. Shares of Facebook closed down 1.5 percent on Friday. Facebook also faces criticism for the role it may have played in the election of Donald J. Trump, with critics assailing the amount of "fake news" that showed up in users' news feeds. The company came under fire this year for faults in its Trending Topics feature, which surfaced some of the most talked about stories and topics circulating on Facebook. Users discovered that Trending Topics, among many other areas of the site, was a source for the spread of fake news from disreputable websites. Separately on Friday, the company accidentally placed notices on the profile pages of many users indicating that they were dead. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
While the corps was not perfect only men were hired, work camps were segregated, and some projects caused ecological damage the C.C.C. was the most expansive and successful youth employment program in American history. It also played a crucial role in forging the Greatest Generation, which defeated fascism and built the strongest economy in the world. Today, there's plenty to do for a revitalized conservation corps that would put young Americans back to work. We've amassed a staggering backlog of restoration needs for our nation's lands and waters, and face escalating vulnerabilities to fires, floods, hurricanes and droughts. Our national parks, wildlife refuges and other public lands have 20 billion in deferred maintenance and states have tens of billions of dollars more. Eighty million acres of national forests need rehabilitation. Half a million abandoned coal and hard rock mines and thousands of orphaned oil and gas wells need reclamation. More than 12,000 species of at risk wildlife, fish and plants need conservation. Smart investments in natural solutions could create millions of immediate jobs for the demographic groups and regions acutely affected by the downturn. One study found that restoration jobs support up to 33 jobs per 1 million of investment, which can stimulate economic growth and employment in other industries. Those that would stand to benefit include outdoor recreation, agriculture, forestry and ranching, which have been hit hard by the pandemic. These projects would expand recreational opportunities, increase our resilience to extreme weather and use nature by planting trees to sequester the carbon dioxide emissions that are warming the planet. We already have federal, state, local and tribal plans and projects that have been vetted and are ready to go, and pending bipartisan legislation, like the Great America Outdoors Act and the Recovering America's Wildlife Act, which would provide financing for some of this work. We also have the infrastructure of AmeriCorps' National Civilian Community Corps and other programs that are part of the Corporation for National and Community Service. They can be scaled up and modernized, as proposed by Senators Chris Coons of Delaware and Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, both Democrats, and others. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
"I didn't love the neighborhood," said Ms. Schlesinger, 36. But she and her husband felt the amenities more than made up for whatever the area lacked. After moving in, Mr. Taralli, 39, was initially nervous about his wife's walking around by herself and insisted that she take the shuttle bus. "Everyone was telling us, be careful, it's not a safe neighborhood," he said. But once he became better acquainted with it, his view changed. "We don't see any trouble with this neighborhood at all." What began as a concern about security became an appreciation for the time saving convenience of a private bus. The midsize vehicle picks up passengers and takes them to and from the subway from 7 a.m. to 8:50 p.m. weekdays, with increased frequency during rush hour. Mr. Taralli says it takes him only 25 minutes to reach his office in Midtown. Gary Jacob, the executive vice president of Glenwood Management, which runs Hampton Court, said it was "very important for the buildings we have that are not really close to the subway line." Farther downtown, the Ohm lures renters to the wilds of 11th Avenue. The building offers residents a "retro arcade," a communal lounge with a fireplace and the assurance that they won't have to walk the 13 or so minutes to Pennsylvania Station during rush hour a stopgap measure until the subway expands west in the coming years. "We did know the 7 train was eventually coming," said Steven Charno, the president of Douglaston Development, the group behind the Ohm. "We've done development in pioneering neighborhoods, and we're always concerned about things like proximity to the subway." Mr. Charno added that Douglaston had always intended for the apartment building, which opened in early 2010, to have a private bus. "From the beginning, as part of our marketing, we let residents know and it was part of our initial planning that we would run a shuttle to Penn Station," he said. "And it's been very successful." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
I didn't think for me at any stage that I would suffer as much as I am. And I had no idea. In my family, no one talked about it. The women, the women never spoke. I wouldn't have known that my mom had gone through menopause. And did she go through menopause? I don't really know. My aunts, did they? They just soldiered on. I started hot flashes when I was 52. But I didn't realize that was menopause. I thought my heating was broken. And you know, I honestly thought I was ready to call British Gas, because I just got a new boiler. So I thought it was that. I was opening the window. I don't know why. Maybe I was in denial. I just Yeah. And then one day it clicked. I was like, "Oh, oh!" and I just laughed. They say, oh, well, just hot flashes, they're just hot flashes. But it's like you've just been sitting normally and suddenly you feel as if your whole body is going into a fever. You know, like you really, your whole body just breaks out into this sweat all over. You can feel it all over your body, in the roots of your hair and your neck and your chest. I can literally feel the hot flash start in my brain. And also I can feel where in the brain it starts. It's in the front like left hand side here. And as soon as a hot flash happens it sounds nuts, my partner laughs at me all the time I feel like something goes "whoosh," like it makes that sound too. In my mind it makes that sound, like something gets released, like there's a spark and it starts there first in the brain. Work was really stressful. We were getting married. We were buying a house. There was just, like, a lot going on. And I ended up with, like, really bad insomnia. And I remember saying to Ross, like, this sounds really silly, but I feel like I flipped my hormones upside down and I don't know how to get them back again. At that time I must have been 34, 35. And I went to the doctors. They are just, like, based on your results, it looks like you're going through menopause. And I was just, like, sorry, I don't understand. So, like, if I'm going through menopause, what does that mean if I want to have children? And the doctor just said, "Oh, yeah, you won't be able to have your own kids." Very rapidly my periods got heavier and heavier and heavier. It was the summer. It was a really hot day. And I was in the shower. And I'm having my shower and I'm washing my hair and then I looked down and the floor of the bath, you know, my feet and the base of the bath was just red. It was like someone had just tipped red paint in the bottom of the bath. It was just a sea of red. And I remember, I just stood there looking, thinking, OK, like, what do I do? Do I tell Tony to phone an ambulance? This can't be normal. The hair started falling out. Concentration levels got worse. My mood got worse. I felt really down. I felt really fat, really huge. You didn't have to eat a lot. You just take a breath and you're swollen and bloated. I don't understand how I can diet and detox for a whole day and wake up in the morning and weigh more. And you know, you can't take off anymore. You stood there naked on the scales weighing yourself. You weigh more and you've been eating celery and lettuce the day before and weeing nonstop. And you weigh more. What is that about? Night sweats, restless legs, hot flashes, migraines, like, really bad digestion, heartburn, like, brittle nails, dry skin, anxiety, low confidence, things like memory loss, I didn't realize that was a symptom of the menopause, so I just thought I was getting really shit at my job. I had brain fog. I started to forget things. I couldn't remember anything. And it was quite disconcerting because I had quite a job where I had to remember a lot of things. So I would have anxiety attacks, where I would start to get shortness of breath and burst into tears. Irrational, you become an irrational person. It doesn't matter this lifetime of learning you've had about managing your feelings and being aware, all of that just goes out the window. And it's just, it's rage. It's like, it's like there's an injustice, like there's massive injustice. It's really deeply unpleasant. In fact, it's beyond unpleasant it's scary, because I don't feel like me and I'm not in control. So there's something about, like, this stage of life where you just lose all patience. Whereas, when you're a younger woman you'd be like a people pleaser and just like, oh, it's OK, or laid back about things or trying to please people or trying to be seen in a "Oh, she's so nice." And then you just, like, don't even give a shit after a while with this. You just, like, you can't even pretend. I think that when you're going through the menopause, you start to really feel a bit of your mortality, you know. And you kind of know that you're going into this other phase of life, you know, you're no longer a fertile woman. I don't do I miss periods? I don't know what to say to that. I suppose the inconvenience down there. I don't miss that. But for me periods meant it was part of my femininity. It proved that I was still a woman and that if I wanted to have a child, I could have a child. But when you have that taken away from you, you do feel that you lose some of your womanness. I said one of the hardest things I've had to come to terms with is intimacy and sex and not having a desire for myself or with my partner. That's horrific. It's like I'm having a conversation with myself going, OK, how can I feel sexy today? How can I feel, like, when I look at my partner, I'm like, oh, my God, I want you inside me, I want to have it, you know, like, really? Like, I did go through a period where I thought that Ross would find me less attractive because I couldn't give him the one thing that we wanted. And he's never made me feel like that. But mentally, I just thought, like, my body has failed me, and I have failed, like, us as a family. And that is a really unattractive place to be. Your vagina starts losing its moisture levels and you start to dry up basically. And at the beginning it wasn't severe, but I had a lot of scar tissue from, first of all, the first birth I had an episiotomy. The second birth I had a bad tear and the skin on my perineum started to thin and dry a bit. And suddenly I had real problems with that scarring, like, it would feel really tight and painful, and sex became quite painful unless I used a lubricant. My libido did go completely. But I was OK with that. I think part of the change is we want to stay the same as we were. And we need to embrace where we're going. It's not a bad thing. If your libido goes, it's not necessarily bad. I remember a phrase that Boy George said. And he said, what did he say? He said, you know, "Sometimes I'd just rather have a cup of tea than have sex." And that is true. And there's nothing wrong with that. As women we're really sold that sexual energy is what is the most important. And when we lose that, then we feel like we don't have that anymore. It's not that we're losing it. It's changing, it's shifting into something else. You can start using sexual energy in a different way. I think it gets confusing for women because possibly that submissive receptivity is kind of gone. You know, where you're like, yeah, just take me, do me or it almost opens up all of these other avenues. Yeah, I would say that menopause is unpleasant. You know, like, we don't talk about it in society, but it's unpleasant. But of course, it's got its good sides as well, like, you know, it's wonderful now that I've come through the other side, I'm finished my menopause. It's like owning yourself in a way. I mean, I can't stress that high enough. I don't have these mood swings. I feel I'm constant, you know. I feel I understand myself better. All through your fertile years, at times, well, I did sort of question, "Who am I? I seem to be all over the place." That all kind of disappears. It's a wonderful relief. There's a million reasons why you can go through it. I know there's people younger than me that have gone through it. And no one tells you that. I often, like, want to tell all of my friends about it, you know. And I want them to understand all about their hormones and their ovulation, so that they can feel as empowered as me by that. I feel kind of like how I felt when I was, like, 11 or 12, 10 years old before I started getting the hormone changes of puberty where I just felt, like, this is me or you just feel like I know who I am. You do feel like estrogen was just this weird drug that you were under the influence of, like it was a trip. And now you're coming out the other end of this trip, and you're just looking back going like, weird. I feel it's really important to always speak up because there are still many women who think that menopause is the end of your life. Me, I'm just getting started. I got shit to do. You know, how could this be the end of my life? You know when you were 20 and you think 50 is ancient or when you were 10 and you think 21 is really grown up. No one knows what they're doing, like no one. So you may as well just live your life at any age, you know, I'm not lying down for it. LAUGHTER | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
Danny Schechter, whose media criticism became a staple of Boston radio and who went on to champion human rights as an author, filmmaker and television producer, died on Thursday in Manhattan. He was 72. The cause was pancreatic cancer, his brother, Bill, said. Mr. Schechter infused almost all his work whether it was for alternative or mainstream media with his deep rooted advocacy of human rights. He was a producer of an award winning public television series, "South Africa Now," and of the ABC News magazine "20/20." His cherubic, if bewhiskered, countenance belied an indomitability that began with the civil rights movement, projected him into the front lines of the campaign against apartheid in South Africa and endeared him to a generation of counterculture radio listeners as "the media dissector." He described himself as a "participatory journalist." "What distinguished Schechter," John Nichols wrote in The Nation online, "was his merging of a stark and serious old school I. F. Stone style understanding of media power and manipulation with a wild and joyous Yippie infused determination to rip it up and start again." In a tribute on his Facebook page, Charlayne Hunter Gault, the former public radio and television correspondent, wrote that Mr. Schechter had "used the media as Edward R. Murrow defined its mission: To teach, illuminate and inspire." Daniel Isaac Schechter was born in Manhattan on June 27, 1942. His father, Jerry, was a garment center pattern maker who became a sculptor. His mother, the former Ruth Lisa Lubin, was a secretary who became a poet. Mr. Schechter grew up in the Bronx, the grandson of socialist immigrants, and graduated from DeWitt Clinton High School and Cornell University, interrupting his studies there to organize rent strikes in Harlem. As an organizer for the Northern Student Movement, he also marched for civil rights in Washington and in the South. He received his master's degree from the London School of Economics, where he became active in the antiapartheid movement. In 1971 Mr. Schechter joined the Boston rock station WBCN FM, where he found a following as "Danny Schechter, the News Dissector." Noam Chomsky, the linguist and emeritus professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, recalled the "enlightenment and insight and humor" of his broadcasts, which, he said, "literally educated a generation." At the end of each broadcast, Mr. Schechter borrowed a phrase from Wes Nisker, a San Francisco broadcaster, and exhorted his listeners: "If you don't like the news, go out and make some of your own." He joined CNN in its early days, in 1980, before moving to "20/20," where his work won two Emmy Awards. In 1988, he and Rory O'Connor founded Globalvision, a New York production company, which produced "Rights Wrongs: Human Rights Television," a 1990s series hosted by Ms. Hunter Gault, and "South Africa Now," a weekly public affairs program that won a George Polk Award in 1990. In a letter to The New York Times in 1991, Mr. Schechter defended his programs against complaints from some stations that they crossed the line into advocacy. "How many PBS stations may have decided not to air our programs because they don't want the controversy generated by the self styled media police?" he wrote. "Self censorship is always the hardest to detect. The public television system needs to be more open to programming that challenges the conventional wisdom, that lets the voices of the world in." By his count, he wrote 17 books, among them "The More You Watch the Less You Know: News Wars/(sub)Merged Hopes/Media Adventures" and "Madiba A Z: The Many Faces of Nelson Mandela." He also made more than 30 films, including six documentaries on Mr. Mandela and another titled "WMD: Weapons of Mass Deception," and had blogged since 2002. He lived in Manhattan. Besides his brother, he is survived by a daughter, Sarah, and Denzil McKenzie, who lived with the family for years. His two marriages ended in divorce. "I know all this is easy for me to say," Mr. Schechter wrote a year ago on Common Dreams, which describes itself as a website for the progressive community. "All I seem to have these days is this keyboard to crank out more condemnations and calls to action, knowing full well, as I do it, that I don't know what else to do. I am compelled to make media, compelled to do what I can, thinking modestly that perhaps somewhere, in hearts I don't know, words or images can still stir souls to rise." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
THE McDonald's Happy Meal, which upended fast food dining when it was first rolled out nationally in 1979, was a brilliantly simple concept: add a toy with some marketing tie in to a colorful box with a burger, fries, a soft drink and cookies, and make children harass their parents until they steered for the double arches. "My feeling was if you get the children to think about McDonald's, Mom would bring them there," Bob Bernstein, the advertising executive who invented the Happy Meal, said in a 2004 interview. That marketing strategy now seems to be taking root in high end Manhattan real estate. Consider the Aldyn, a luxury condominium building at 60 Riverside Boulevard in Manhattan. It has 40,000 square feet of amenity space, including a full size basketball court, a two lane bowling alley, a golf simulator, a gym, a billiards table, a Ping Pong table and a sort of community cafe. Oh, and there's a two floor rock climbing wall. "This is what I call my closer," said Larry Kruysman, the building's director of sales. "After you sell them on the apartment, I take them here." Show me a kid who would not want to live there. That seems to be the point, and it's part of a marketing strategy that some developers are employing to try to keep Manhattan families from leaving the city or to lure them back after they escaped to the suburbs in search of more space for their kids to play. If you indulge your children, the theory goes, that will add peace and harmony to the stresses of living a normally cramped Manhattan life. Mr. Kruysman has seen this movie before, in his previous incarnation working in the supermarket business. "You always put the sweetened cereals along the bottom shelf because that's what the kids see," he said. "There is a science to shelf placement." While the Aldyn is catering to the "tween" market, other developers have contracted with companies like Kidville and Jodi's Gym to install modern playrooms for the infant to 5 set and create social hubs for their parents. "Over the years, more now than ever, we are seeing more families choose to stay in New York and raise their families in New York," said Kelly Mack, the president of Corcoran Sunshine Marketing Group, "and a lot of these people are having more kids than they did before. You start to make plans to accommodate those people." In the past three years, about 20 percent of condominium sales in Manhattan were for residences with three or more bedrooms, up from about 15 percent in 2003, Ms. Mack said. The average size of a new development residence is 1,330 square feet, about 5 percent larger than in 2007, she added. The Extell Development Company built more kid friendly amenities in a handful of buildings in the city, especially along Riverside Boulevard in the lower 60s, which has become a family friendly area of the Upper West Side dubbed Riverside South. Brokers boast that it is just 10 minutes from Lincoln Center, but you feel sort of isolated over there, with the nearby elevated highway adding a soundtrack. Still, there are soccer and baseball fields across from the buildings and a park under development. "This is as close as you get to living in a suburb while still living in the city," said Alma Sloan, 34, who lives with her husband and two children in a three bedroom apartment at the Rushmore, next door to the Aldyn. The majority of the apartments at the Aldyn and the Rushmore have two bedrooms or more. At the Aldyn, prices range from about 1.5 million, for a two bedroom, to about 15 million for a six bedroom duplex. Two duplexes for sale have 15 by 37.5 foot swimming pools. The developer started selling apartments in January 2011, and 70 percent of the residences at the Aldyn are under contract. At the Rushmore, two bedroom apartments are listed at 1.2 million, with four bedrooms running 3.58 million. Regardless of square footage, "you can always sell the kids on the place," Mr. Kruysman said. "You get these whiny little guys pushing their parents: 'This is where I want to live. I want to use that basketball court. I want to go bowling every day.' " None Testing the Limits: Only three of New York's 25 tallest residential buildings have completed safety tasks required by the city. The Downside to Life in a Supertall: 432 Park faces some significant design problems, and other luxury high rises may share its fate. Luxury Developers' Loophole: Soaring towers are able to push high into the sky because of a loophole in the city's labyrinthine zoning laws. An Evolving Skyline: The high rise building boom has transformed the city's skyline in recent years. Its impact will echo for years to come. Hidden Feats: Our critic looks at some supertall N.Y.C. buildings and how the ingenuity of engineers helped build landmarks. The bowling alley has been the Aldyn's most popular amenity, and the basketball court has been used for volleyball, soccer, birthday parties and a Halloween dance. On Tuesdays there is a "serious" basketball game for adults that has "been known to get a little bloody," he said. The upscale gym operator La Palestra is managing the amenity spaces for Extell. Donna Gargano, the senior vice president for development at Extell, says the company took advantage of the building's large footprint to create the enormous amenity spaces at the Aldyn. The lot along the river gave the developer 100,000 square feet of underground space on two levels. Using all of that for a parking garage might have been a waste. So the developer decided to build a space that could be shared among the Aldyn; the neighboring Ashley, a rental property; and a third building yet to be constructed about 750 residences in total. Next door at the Rushmore, parents coo over their padded wall playroom designed by Kidville, a company started by the founders of the restaurant chain Cosi. The playroom is open 24 hours a day, and families in the building get a Kidville Platinum membership (the company has 22 locations in the United States, and in far flung locales like Mumbai and Dubai). "The playroom is the reason we moved in here," said Julie Scher, 34. "It provides sanity, and makes living in the city easier." After moving into a three bedroom at the Rushmore, she and her husband, David, a lawyer, recently decided to trade up to a four bedroom rather than move to the suburbs. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
New signs that resemble the digital highway messages that typically flash bad news about road construction, traffic delays, flood warnings and missing children will be dotting New York City by Labor Day. But while they may warn of impending dangers, they are not typical. The 10 large solar powered signs installed in the five boroughs through October are part of "Climate Signals," an exhibition by the Climate Museum. They will display what the museum's director, Miranda Massie, describes as "aphoristic text" surprising poetry, metaphor, even humor designed to tempt passers by into discussing climate change and the role cities play in the problem and solutions. "It's becoming axiomatic and clear that we need cultural transformation on climate in order to move forward," she said. This project is a start, she added. It's the second for the museum, which Ms. Massie founded three years ago. Some signs will be in neighborhoods most vulnerable to climate change where Hurricanes Sandy and Irene had the most impact, for example and messages will appear in several languages. One of several partners on the project is the Mayor's Office for Climate Policy and Programs. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
None A schedule change made Sunday night special. Fearing that Tampa Bay's game in Las Vegas could be postponed because of coronavirus precautions, the N.F.L. moved Seattle's game in Arizona to the prime time spot. As a result, a national audience was treated to a thriller, with the Seahawks taking a lead in the game's first four minutes and not trailing again until the final play of overtime, when Arizona's Zane Gonzalez connected on a 48 yard field goal that gave the Cardinals a shocking 37 34 victory. Russell Wilson threw for 388 yards and rushed for 84, Kyler Murray threw for 360 and rushed for 67, and Tyler Lockett had 200 yards receiving and three touchdowns. But it was Arizona's defense stepping up in overtime that decided the game. Arizona's pass rush came alive in that extra period, sacking Wilson twice and pressuring him several other times, leading to Seattle's last offensive play in which Wilson rushed a bad pass and had it intercepted by seldom used linebacker Isaiah Simmons, who put his team in the position to win. "These are the games you honestly dream about," Murray said after his team improved to 5 2 while handing Seattle its first loss of the season. None Ohio suddenly has an intrastate rivalry. A game between Cincinnati and Cleveland got off to an inauspicious start when Joe Burrow and Baker Mayfield were both intercepted on their first drives. Odell Beckham Jr. of the Browns was lost to injury on that opening drive, and the Bengals were leading by 17 10 at halftime. But in the second half, the game morphed into a heavyweight bout between Mayfield, the No. 1 pick in the 2018 draft, and Burrow, the No. 1 pick in 2020. Mayfield won the day, finding Donovan Peoples Jones for a 24 yard touchdown with 11 seconds remaining that put Cleveland ahead to say, 37 34. But Burrow nearly kept up, throwing for 406 yards and three touchdowns. None Kansas City can win a game without much help from its offense. Playing in snowy conditions in Denver, the Chiefs were nowhere near their best when they had the ball, going 0 for 8 on third down conversion attempts. But Daniel Sorensen contributed a pick six, Byron Pringle had a 102 yard kickoff return and the Chiefs demolished the Broncos, 43 16, despite Denver having dramatic advantages in total yards and time of possession. San Francisco's top running back is Raheem Mostert. Coach Kyle Shanahan may actually prefer Tevin Coleman. The 49ers' third stringer is Jerick McKinnon, and their highest paid runner out of the backfield is fullback Kyle Juszczyk. Because of injuries to Mostert, Coleman and McKinnon, the team turned to Wilson on Sunday and the former standout for North Texas had the game of his life, racing for 112 yards and scoring three touchdowns. Keeping up with the theme of the season, however, Wilson's big day ended abruptly when he injured his ankle while scoring his third touchdown. The team has yet to weigh in on the full extent of the injury, but Shanahan said it was "not looking great." Buccaneers 45, Raiders 20 Tom Brady continued to spread the ball around, throwing touchdown passes to four different receivers, and Tampa Bay kept its momentum from last week's blowout win over the Packers. Cardinals 37, Seahawks 34 Arizona had several moments that would have caused a lesser team to quit. There was Budda Baker being chased down by DK Metcalf on what would have been a 98 yard interception return for a touchdown. Zane Gonzalez missed an attempt at a game winner from 41 yards during the Cardinals' first possession in overtime. And Metcalf had what appeared to be a 48 yard game winning touchdown in overtime negated by a holding penalty. But the Cardinals kept pushing until they had the win in hand. Chargers 39, Jaguars 29 Justin Herbert got his first career win, and he did it in a big way by throwing for 347 yards and three touchdowns while also running in a score. Herbert has thrown for at least 250 yards in each of his first five starts, a feat previously only accomplished by Patrick Mahomes, who did it in his first 10. Lions 23, Falcons 22 Detroit didn't get much production out of its running backs, but Matthew Stafford threw for 340 yards and a touchdown and the Lions won for the third time in four games. This was the 36th game winning drive of Stafford's career, according to Pro Football Reference, which trails only Drew Brees (37) since 2009. Footballers 25, Cowboys 3 Ezekiel Elliott was held to just 45 yards rushing, had a ball bounce off him for an interception and made mistakes in pass protection. Blame the team's struggles on Dallas's second and third string quarterbacks all you want, but Elliott isn't getting the job done. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
OAKLAND, Calif. The Golden State Warriors run a practice drill that Coach Steve Kerr did not intend as a tribute, even if he named it after someone who taught him a great deal. He calls it the "Lute Olson drill," and it is a blur of activity: a 3 on 2 exercise that Kerr uses to get his players up and down the court. "It's a good way to get a little running and rhythm and shooting," he said. The Warriors, who are pretty good at those things, have elevated basketball into modern art in recent seasons. But Kerr, as he helps define basketball's present, cannot help but dip into his past. He learned that drill in 1983, when he was a freshman guard at the University of Arizona playing for Olson, who was in the early stages of building a college powerhouse. Kerr, ever the student, was already absorbing as much as he could. Olson, 84, retired as the men's basketball coach at Arizona in 2008, but his influence resonates. Not so much, oddly enough, at the college level, where, of late, Arizona has had its well publicized struggles along with the rest of the Pac 12 Conference. Instead, Olson's impact exists largely in the N.B.A. and with the Warriors, in particular. Bruce Fraser, one of Kerr's longtime assistants, played for Olson in the 1980s before working under him as a graduate assistant. And Andre Iguodala, the veteran Warriors forward, played at Arizona from 2002 to 2004, when he sought to emulate an older teammate named Luke Walton. "All the fundamentals," Iguodala said. "Things like footwork, body positioning and just being a smart player." Walton, who now has the thankless task of coaching the Los Angeles Lakers, is still considered a member of the Warriors' extended family after serving as one of Kerr's assistants for two seasons. Before Walton joined the Warriors in 2014, Kerr did not know him well. But Olson recommended him, and that was more than enough. "If you came out of Arizona during that era, you knew how to play the game," Fraser said. "And that was mostly because of Lute." "If Coach Olson walked in and saw some of this, he'd be shaking his head," Fraser said. "He'd think we're so loose." The Warriors are still mindful of the essentials, though, especially at training camp, where they dribble around traffic cones and throw passes at pitch back nets configured with targets. If they channel the Harlem Globetrotters, their flamboyance is rooted in bedrock principles. "And I think you could tie a lot of that back to Coach Olson and Arizona," Fraser said. Kerr played for several legendary N.B.A. coaches Phil Jackson, Gregg Popovich, Lenny Wilkens, Cotton Fitzsimmons and he took pieces from each as he developed his own style. Jerry Marvin, his former coach at Palisades High School in Los Angeles, made a big impression, too. But these were coaches with unique approaches. "I think the common thread is their force of personality," Kerr said. "They all saw the game a little differently and ran different stuff, basing a lot of it on their personnel. But it's not what made them great coaches. It was having great talent, and then developing a great culture and system so that their talent could flourish." Olson, for example, adapted to the strengths of his roster. He became more guard oriented over the years, especially after he recruited high profile players like Damon Stoudamire, Khalid Reeves and Gilbert Arenas. (Kerr noted how he had been one of the "slow guys in the backcourt" when Olson was just starting out at Arizona.) But Olson was not necessarily trying to outwit anyone by being especially innovative. Basketball, Kerr said, is not like football, where a mastermind like Bill Belichick can lean on his tactical genius to mold the New England Patriots into the most dominant N.F.L. team of his era. It has become a hackneyed concept in sports, as if teams can just crack the code on demand, but Olson was all about culture, his former players say. Jason Terry, a retired N.B.A. guard who played at Arizona from 1995 to 1999, recalled his recruitment. He was not a shy young man, but Olson, at that point firmly established as one of the game's top coaches, had the sort of gravitas that intimidated him. On the second day of Terry's official visit to Arizona, Olson and his wife, Bobbi, had him over for pancakes. "These unbelievable pancakes," Terry, an analyst for Turner Sports, said in a telephone interview. "That was a big part of the recruitment. But I also remember that he kind of came over and put his big paw on my shoulder, and I jumped. He was like, 'Nothing to be scared of young fella. It's great to have you in my home.' And from that point on, you were just at ease." Olson, Terry said, was the first coach he had who never used profanity. Olson would glare. His face would go red. And those big paws would shake. "But he would never yell," Terry said. "He would just say your name over and over and over." Above all, Olson imbued his players with the sense that they were a part of something larger than themselves. Before the national championship game in 1997, two prominent alumni Kerr and Sean Elliott, both of whom had graduated to the N.B.A. boarded the team bus. Olson had invited them to address his players, and their message was simple: Do it for all of us who have come before you but could never quite get the job done. Terry saw that Olson had tears in his eyes. Arizona went on to win its first national title by defeating Kentucky in overtime. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
In a week when President Trump suddenly cranked up trade tensions with China and the central bank moved to counter economic uncertainties, the American labor market offered a comforting steadiness. Employers added 164,000 jobs in July, the Labor Department reported Friday, continuing a record hiring streak and keeping a tight lid on the unemployment rate. Payroll gains have clearly slowed since last year, when steep tax cuts and government spending revved up the economy. But more than 10 years into an economic expansion, a little cooling is expected. The monthly report reinforced the Federal Reserve's stance that the economy's underpinnings remain strong, even though it is unlikely to temper the push from some investors and Mr. Trump for the central bank to further reduce interest rates. On Wednesday, the Fed dropped its target rate for the first time in a decade. Anxiety about the economy stems less from the country's job creation abilities than from concerns about a global slowdown, trade tensions, muted inflation and the risk of tightening financial conditions. Mr. Trump ratcheted up those concerns on Thursday by announcing he intends to impose a 10 percent tariff on an additional 300 billion worth of Chinese imports. Beijing has promised to retaliate. "Trump is trying to kill two birds with one stone: getting China to accept any type of trade deal and pushing the Fed to cut rates," Mr. Daco said. "It's like shooting yourself in the foot just to get another dose of morphine. It's not a good approach." Tariffs and trade conflicts are likely responsible for the recent slowdown in manufacturing. But their impact has not yet trickled down to the rest of economy. The national unemployment rate is 3.7 percent, and confident consumers are still snapping open their wallets, and employers are searching for more workers. "I'm never at full employment," said Frank Lopez , executive vice president and chief human resources officer for Ryder System, which has 800 locations throughout North America. Explosive growth over the past five years has increased his company's appetite for skilled workers, particularly drivers and diesel mechanics. "I'm looking for 400 to 500 drivers at any given time," he said. To cope, the truck leasing, maintenance and logistics company has stepped up its efforts to develop its own talent pool, looking to recruit students right out of high school and service members finishing up military tours. It has established a partnership with Women in Trucking, a trade association, to attract more women to the industry. "Someone can start out pumping fuel and washing trucks and become a trained mechanic," Mr. Lopez said. The tight job market is continuing to pull in workers from the sidelines. The labor force participation rate of African American teenagers, for example, rose last month. Diane Swonk , chief economist at Grant Thornton, cited the improvement as evidence that the recovery is "finally getting into some parts of the economy that were left behind." She also noted a jump in the number of child and home health care workers, which can clear the way for more people to go to work. A broader measure of unemployment that includes part timers who would prefer to work full time and those too discouraged to job hunt dropped to 7 percent in July, the lowest rate since 2000. New entrants to the work force may have helped tamp down wage growth. Average hourly earnings rose 0.3 percent in June and July, bringing the year over year increase to 3.2 percent. Those at the lower end of the pay scale have benefited the most from employers' scrimmage for workers. Still, pay increases seem outpaced by employers' complaints about labor shortages. 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. Ask pretty much any general contractor, hospital leader or restaurant owner about his or her biggest headaches, and a lack of qualified workers comes up. "Ten percent of our positions are always open," said Ignacio Garcia Menocal , a co founder and chief executive of Grove Bay Hospitality in Miami, which operates several celebrity chef restaurants and employs 450 people. With two restaurants opening soon, Mr. Garcia Menocal said he was looking to hire 40 to 50 people, from dishwashers who start at 10 an hour to general managers, whose salaries can range from 70,000 to 90,000 a year. The competition for workers is intense, Mr. Garcia Menocal said during a lunchtime shift at Root Bone in Coral Gables, Fla.: "Somebody will jump to a place next door for a dollar." He said that his company had also raised wages but that profit margins in the restaurant business were too slim to go much higher. Grove Bay has dangled other incentives before its employees, including management training, health insurance and a paid monthlong sabbatical for those who have been with the company for seven years. The company regularly holds events for employees where prizes like iPhones, televisions and 1,000 gift cards are raffled off, Mr. Garcia Menocal said. He is also closely watching how Shake Shack's experiment with a four day workweek in some locations goes. A survey of business owners last month by the National Federation of Independent Business found job creation remains at a historically high level. "We're seeing it across the economy: Companies are hiring across industries, from data analysts to delivery drivers," said Becky Frankiewicz, president of ManpowerGroup North America. "I meet with C.E.O.s across the country on a regular basis, and they say they can't find the skilled workers they need." The low unemployment rate has helped Mr. Trump make the case that the economy's growth is one of his signature achievements, an argument that is expected to be a cornerstone of his 2020 re election strategy. Democratic presidential candidates, by contrast, have tended to skip over the labor market when looking for the economy's soft spots, pointing instead to mediocre wage increases, growing levels of household debt, yawning inequality, slowing growth and rising trade tensions. During the Democratic debates this week, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, for example, said Americans were "living paycheck to paycheck" and denounced profitable corporations that avoided paying taxes. Last month, Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts posted an essay on Medium warning of "the coming economic crash" and the "economy's shaky foundation." It is a strategy that Mr. Trump successfully used himself during the 2016 campaign. Although the jobless rate dropped sharply and millions of jobs were created during President Barack Obama's tenure, Mr. Trump hammered away at the economy's feeble spots, highlighting job losses in manufacturing and dismissing the government's job reports as phony. Even with the jobless rate now at a half century low, the expansion remains uneven, and many Americans who are employed say they lack economic security and stability. Senator Kamala Harris of California has accused the president of breaking his promises to farmers and autoworkers. And Julian Castro, a housing secretary in the Obama administration, declared from the debate stage that "the idea that America is doing just fine is wrong." "There are a lot of Americans right now that are hurting," he said. "Just go and ask the folks that just received notice that they're getting laid off by General Motors." Automobile workers at the General Motors plant in Warren, Mich., clocked their last hours last week as the plant ended production. And car sales have been slipping nationwide. Last month, the economy created 16,000 new manufacturing jobs, but the total number of hours worked in the sector declined. Jobless rates vary wildly depending on location. In several metropolitan areas, including New Orleans and Flint, Mich., the unemployment rate lingers above the national average. Retailers also continued to struggle, cutting jobs in July, the sixth month in a row. The mining sector contracted as well, probably because of lower oil prices. July's estimates will be revised twice more as the Labor Department collects new information. Revisions to previous reports shrank job gains in prior months by 41,000. So far, the monthly average for the last three months is 140,000, compared with 223,000 in 2018. But the labor market's energy is still on display. Restaurants, business services, health care and education all posted solid gains. And as long as employers increase their payrolls by roughly 100,000 each month, job creation can keep pace with population growth. "The trend is still strong enough to keep unemployment down," said Jim O'Sullivan , chief economist at High Frequency Economics. "If the economy is truly weakening sharply, jobless claims should be going up and that hasn't happened so far." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Economy |
Only connect: From left, Jennifer Tchiakpe, Juli Brandano and Jordan Isadore rehearsing "Co natural." A hologram of Farid Fairuz is in the background. There's an uncanny sight at the New Museum these days: a ghost in a machine. But that's not the only enigma there. Tucked behind the first floor cafe in the south galleries space, five dancers perform sequences of refined, minimal movement. They recite text about dozens of subjects, including a list of exotic animals and their prices the last one, "slave, 1,200 Libyan dinar," lands like a punch and even softly sing an aria from "Madama Butterfly." This labyrinth of dance and words, called "Co natural," is the brainchild of Alexandra Pirici, an acclaimed Romanian choreographer and artist who is exploring the relationship between inanimate bodies and real ones. For "Co natural," which runs through April 15 and is performed during museum hours, Ms. Pirici has turned the loftlike gallery space into a landscape that performers share with a hologram of another dancer remember our ghost? to showcase a disembodied presence. The performance exhibition also considers how bodies are connected to symbols and images from history. There are visual references throughout to the black power salute of a fist in the air and to Confederate statues and monuments. Ms. Pirici fits the space. She is more than a visual artist creating performance work; she is a choreographer creating art that considers history and the way bodies are affected over time. This may sound complicated, but "Co natural" with its steady, undulating pace and purposeful timing is a visceral experience. Ms. Pirici is a collagist, braiding together movement, collective memories and text to create a meditative whole. "Basically, I started thinking about the body and the self," she said after a recent rehearsal at the museum. "Where does presence begin and where does it end?" For Ms. Pirici, this question extends into all the traces we leave behind, from online profiles to selfies. Like it or not, she said, we are fragmented beings. "The notion of the individual that has total control and free will, it's false," she said. "There are all of these technologies about putting things in a box." Boxes, you get the feeling, aren't really Ms. Pirici's thing. She started as a ballet dancer, beginning her training in the fourth grade in her native Bucharest, Romania. Starting in the ninth grade, she attended the Vienna State Opera Ballet School on scholarship. It was, she said, a conservative country and her time there overlapped with the rise of extreme right. The school was also conservative, yet it made traditions outside of ballet available to its students, from contemporary dance and flamenco to jazz. "Slowly I just started to understand that I didn't want to close my world and continue with classical ballet," she said. Ms. Pirici returned to Bucharest and eventually discovered the National Dance Center, an institution for contemporary dance and performance. She began showing work there and experimenting. "I was looking for ways to move out of this situation where people come and sit down and look at something," she said. In 2011, she began placing live bodies in relation to public monuments. This series of what she called "sculptural actions" featured minimal movement and gestures, and that method has seeped into "Co natural" when the performers enact poses from sculptures, including those of Lenin, Christopher Columbus and Robert E. Lee. In Bucharest, she began the actions as a form of protest. While the dance center was struggling from a lack of funding, she said, a bronze sculpture, costing around 2 million euros (or around 2.5 million), was being installed nearby. "We would produce the sculpture with our bodies in front of the actual sculpture as a sort of ironic gesture," she said. "A message that if this is the only art that gets funded this solid, ossified, official art then we can also produce a version of that, which is even cheaper and more flexible and on a human scale." There was also a political dimension. She said she was often asked when showing or discussing the monuments work in Romania: "'What happens if you leave these images alone? Maybe they're harmless.' But I don't think they are. I think there is a subtle way in which these images and our visuals surrounding works on us and shapes us and transforms us." Because there was so much discussion and debate in Eastern Europe about the removal of monuments related to communism after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Ms. Pirici said, "When it started to happen in the U.S., I actually thought, wow that's kind of late." Ms. Pirici doesn't believe such monuments should be destroyed, but that instead they should be "recontextualized and placed somewhere else in a different setup," she said. "This was also what I was doing with performers: O.K., we leave this here, but what if I add someone on top of it? Or someone enacting a horse here? Maybe this changes what it signifies without having to tear it down." And there are advantages. "The biological body wants toilet breaks," she said, "it gets tired, it decays." A hologram, though, makes no demands. In "Co natural," the hologram, shown throughout the day on one hour loops, exists in relationship to the dancers, who perform for four hours at a time. (They do need bathroom breaks.) As the performance develops, dancers accumulate gradually and then disperse so that in the final hour only one remains. The hologram "only exists in relation to the others," she said. " You feel like he's really here. It's quite a big object. It shakes your mind." At times, the dancers also perform on a light box platform that reminds Ms. Pirici of a laboratory table she likes its science fiction vibe. One aspect she highlights is choreography for the hands, which was inspired by the movement of factory workers. In the end, Ms. Pirici is driven by the idea of exploring presence through connectivity. "I'm not saying that live performance is coming to save us from the alienation of the image," she said, with a laugh. "I'm trying to create an alliance. It's about how live bodies and images influence and shape each other. You can reshape the images around you, and they will reshape you in turn." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
WASHINGTON Arkansas will be the third state to require many Medicaid recipients to work or train for jobs, after the Trump administration granted it permission on Monday. But the administration held off on approving another request from the state that could have much broader consequences for the future of the program a proposal to cut back the expansion of Medicaid that was instituted under the Affordable Care Act. Seema Verma, the Trump appointee who oversees Medicaid, did not elaborate when asked twice about the delay at a news conference with Gov. Asa Hutchinson in Little Rock. She said only: "We are still working through some issues in that particular area." She and Mr. Hutchinson, a Republican, sought instead to emphasize the momentum that work requirements have gathered in the two months since Ms. Verma issued guidance to states allowing them to insist that many people work or prepare for jobs as a condition of keeping their Medicaid coverage. Ms. Verma said eight additional states had submitted work proposals and nine others had signaled interest in the requirements, the first such limits in the more than 50 years since the program was created to provide health insurance to poor Americans. Mr. Hutchinson, who is running for re election, exhibited the zeal with which Republicans have pursued work requirements this year, saying he expected to roll out Arkansas's even before the states that already won approval to do so, Kentucky and Indiana. "We are ready with our systems," Mr. Hutchinson said, noting the state had been preparing for more than a year. "This will be going fairly quickly." The Arkansas work requirements are somewhat softer than those of the other two states. People younger than 50 will be expected to work, or to train or search for jobs; attend school full time or volunteer 80 hours a month. Kentucky and Indiana are imposing the requirement on people younger than 65 and 60, respectively. But Arkansas's plan has harsher consequences for not meeting the requirement: those who do not comply for three months out of a year will be locked out of coverage until the following year. "This is not about punishing anyone," Mr. Hutchinson said. "It's about giving people an opportunity to work. It's about giving them the training they need. It's about helping them move out of poverty and up the economic ladder." So far, only one other state, Massachusetts, has joined Arkansas in seeking permission to roll back its Medicaid expansion, and make the program available only to people with incomes below the federal poverty level: 12,060 for a single person, or about twice that amount for a family of four. Under the terms of the Affordable Care Act, states that chose to expand Medicaid had to provide it to everyone with incomes up to 138 percent of that level: 16,642 for a single person. But if the Trump administration allows Arkansas to scale back its Medicaid expansion population, some of the other 31 states that expanded the program will likely want to follow, as a way to save money and appease conservative legislators who think the Obamacare expansion went too far. Other states may be tempted to expand Medicaid, after holding back for years, if they can limit it to those earning at or below the poverty level. The federal government initially paid the full cost of the expansion, but now states are on the hook for 6 percent of the cost; their share will gradually grow to 10 percent over the next few years. The Arkansas proposal would move about 60,000 people out of the program, by lowering the income threshold to the federal poverty level. Mr. Hutchinson wants those earning between 100 and 138 percent of the poverty level to move to the Affordable Care Act marketplace, where they would get federal subsidies to buy private insurance. But that could end up costing the federal government more money another reason the Trump administration may be slow to approve it. President Trump frequently refers to the marketplaces as "failing" and has taken a number of steps to weaken them. Regardless, Mr. Hutchinson said Monday he was optimistic about winning approval to shrink the expansion population after meeting recently with Alex Azar, the new Health and Human Services secretary. Mr. Hutchinson has long been under pressure from conservative Republicans in the Arkansas legislature who say the Medicaid expansion has proved too expensive, with far more people enrolling than originally estimated. Arkansas is anticipating spending about 136 million in general revenue on its Medicaid expansion in the coming fiscal year, with the federal government spending an additional 2 billion. The state uses federal Medicaid funds to buy private insurance for the poor an alternative that conservative Republicans found acceptable when it was first passed in 2013. About 285,000 people are now enrolled in the Medicaid expansion. Cindy Gillespie, the director of the Arkansas Department of Human Services, said the state was planning to activate an online portal on March 30 where those subject to the requirement will be expected to record how they're meeting it each month. In June, the state will start phasing it in, relying largely on its Department of Workforce services to connect job seekers with employment, education or training. Kentucky, for its part, is sending out the first notices about its work requirement this week and plans to start rolling it out in July. Indiana will not roll out its work requirement until next year. Like Kentucky and Indiana, Arkansas will exempt people who qualify as "medically frail" from the work requirement, as well as those who are pregnant, in treatment for substance abuse, in school full time or caring for children or someone incapacitated. Nor will those who qualified for Medicaid before the Obamacare expansion children and disabled or elderly adults be subject to it. Only people from the ages of 30 through 49 will be subject to the requirement this year, and state officials have estimated that about 60 percent of them 59,714 out of 98,632 either work already or will qualify for exemptions. Younger enrollees, down to the age of 19, will be subject to the work requirement starting next year. The National Health Law Program, a nonprofit advocacy group that has already sued to stop Kentucky's work requirement, said Monday that Arkansas's also "appears well outside the bounds of the limited authority" that the Department of Health and Human Services has to change Medicaid provisions. "The state's work requirement program, beyond being legally suspect, will disproportionately harm the most underserved populations," said Jane Perkins, the program's legal director. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
MIAMI BEACH On Tuesday, Donald J. Trump wrote on Twitter that people who burn the flag should be punished with "perhaps loss of citizenship or year in jail!" Two days later, I went to a little cafe here to meet with Nadya Tolokonnikova of the Russian punk band and activist art collective Pussy Riot. The group's 2012 guerrilla performance at the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow, which viciously mocked Vladimir Putin and the Russian Orthodox Church, resulted in a two year prison sentence for Ms. Tolokonnikova and another of its members. I had been in South Florida for family reasons and when I saw that Ms. Tolokonnikova was swinging through Miami for Art Basel, I immediately reached out to her. I'd come to view her as an emissary from a dystopian political media environment that seemed to be heading our way, with governmental threats against dissent, disinformation from the presidential level and increasingly assertive propagandists who stoke the perception that there can be no honest arbiter of truth. It's what Ms. Tolokonnikova was protesting, and it's what led to her brutal internment, which lasted more than 20 months and ended in 2013. Leading up to Ms. Tolokonnikova's trial, Russian news reports carried suggestions that she and her bandmates were pawns of Hillary Clinton's State Department or witches working with a global satanic conspiracy perhaps linked to the one that was behind the Sept. 11 attacks, as lawyers for one of their offended accusers put it. This is what we now call "fake news." Pussy Riot became an international symbol of Mr. Putin's crackdown on free speech; of how his regime uses falsehood and deflection to sow confusion and undermine critics. Now that the political media environment that we smugly thought to be "over there" seems to be arriving over here, Ms. Tolokonnikova has a message: "It's important not to say to yourself, 'Oh, it's O.K.,'" she told me. "It's important to remember that, for example, in Russia, for the first year of when Vladimir Putin came to power, everybody was thinking that it will be O.K." She pointed to Russian oligarchs who helped engineer Mr. Putin's rise to power at the end of 1999 but didn't appreciate the threat he posed to them until they found themselves under arrest, forced into exile or forced into giving up their businesses especially if those businesses included independent media critical of Mr. Putin (see Berezovsky, Boris; Gusinsky, Vladimir). Of course, the United States has checks, balances and traditions that presumably preclude anything like that from happening, she acknowledged as we sat comfortably in sunny Miami Beach while it played host to a celebration of free expression (Art Basel). They have been working on their English language music with Dave Sitek of TV on the Radio and the producer Ricky Reed, Ms. Tolokonnikova said. The last video they released, in late October, was called "Make America Great Again." It showed fictional Trump agents in red armbands raping and torturing in a campaign against Muslims, Mexicans, women who have abortions, gays and lesbians. It was certain to offend. But it wasn't illegal, at least not here at least not yet. And it was a modest Russia in America answer to the more voluminous pro Trump propaganda Mr. Putin exported to the United States. Some arrived through his sophisticated state financed news networks (one, Sputnik, featured CrookedHillary hashtags on its Twitter feed). And if assessments by the United States intelligence community are correct, some came through state supported internet skulduggery. Ms. Tolokonnikova said she became more involved here because the stakes were bigger than one country. "What happens in one country makes huge influence on what's going on in other countries," she said. "So, I didn't want Donald Trump to be elected because it would obviously encourage authoritarian politicians around the world to be more authoritarian, and it did." (To wit, President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines claiming without substantiation that Mr. Trump had endorsed his murderous drug crackdown.) Yet as the web enables Mr. Putin to spread propaganda that encourages nationalist movements to campaign for walls and isolation most recently, it is claimed, in Italy, where a referendum was held on Sunday it also breaks down the cultural barriers between countries. There are places in Russia where the internet provides a rare route to real news, given that Mr. Putin has effectively pressured so much of Russia's independent journalism out of existence on television, on radio and in print. But truth cannot break through if people never find it or believe it when they do. And the problem in Russia is the same one we're seeing here, Ms. Tolokonnikova told me. "A lot of people are living really unwealthy lives so they have to work not one but two jobs, so they don't have time to analyze and check facts, and you cannot blame them," she said. And, after so many years in which the "lift all boats" promises of globalization didn't come to pass, she said, "they don't trust bureaucrats, they don't trust politicians, and they don't really trust media." That's why the top Russian propagandist Dmitry K. Kiselyov can assert that "objectivity is a myth" and, here in the United States, the paid CNN Trump supporting contributor Scottie Nell Hughes can declare: "There's no such thing, unfortunately, anymore, of facts." When there is no truth, invasions are "liberations" and internment camps are "relocation centers." But, as Ms. Tolokonnikova said, "There is always a way if you really want to tell the truth." Doing so, for her, has come at a cost, even after prison. Informal Cossack security forces beat her and other Pussy Riot members as they prepared to perform in Sochi during the 2014 Olympics. That same year, a youth gang attacked her with trash and a green antiseptic chemical in Nizhny Novgorod, where she was protesting prison conditions. The men were clearly identifiable but, she said, police made no arrests. Ms. Tolokonnikova has also co founded a news site called Media Zona. She said it avoided opinion so that readers would accept it as a just the facts counter to disinformation. "You are always in danger of being shut down," she said. "But it's not the end of the story because we are prepared to fight." Her counsel for United States journalists: You better be, too. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
Like so many rousing military celebrations, Kate Millett's memorial service began with bagpipes. The veterans of second wave feminism had turned out by the hundreds, foot soldiers and commanders alike, including Gloria Steinem and Letty Cottin Pogrebin, both of whom wore leather pants, revolutionary style. ("We didn't coordinate that," Ms. Pogrebin said.) Cynthia MacAdams, the photographer known for her 1977 book, "Emergence," a collection of portraits of the era's feminists and other heroes Patti Smith, Lily Tomlin and Ms. Steinem wore a voluminous orange silk scarf that looked like a military sash. Her rendition of Dylan Thomas's "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night," was an anguished dirge to her late friend. Phyllis Chesler, the activist and author, should have worn a cast, because she'd broken her leg. Instead, she brought a walker and a cane. She ended her reflections by reading from the St. Crispin's Day speech from "Henry V," recast with feminine pronouns: "We few, we happy few, we band of sisters," and so on. Ms. Millett died Sept. 6 in Paris, a week before her 83rd birthday, with Sophie Keir, her spouse and partner of 39 years, by her side. The memorial was held Thursday afternoon at the Fourth Universalist Society, a Unitarian church on Central Park West. Before the service, friends and family traded war stories. Barbara Love, the lesbian activist, remembered a protest 50 years ago when she, Ms. Millett and others demonstrated against The New York Times and its gender segregated want ads. And Ms. Love recalled, hilariously, the many actions Ms. Millett attended with a toilet. "It was arrested several times," said Ms. Love of the toilet, though not at one famous demonstration in front of the Colgate Palmolive offices on Park Avenue, when Ms. Millett and others dumped soap flakes into it to protest the company's treatment of women on the assembly line. Ms. Millett's final demonstration was the women's march last January in New York City, Ms. Love said. She attended in her wheelchair, holding a sign with her name on it. The police opened the barricades for her, and the march's organizers led her to the front of the line, where demonstrators approached Ms. Millett to pay their respects and give thanks. "Even the police knew who she was," Ms. Love said. It was a fitting tribute to the woman who some have called the most famous feminist you've never heard of. Ms. Millett was the Oxford educated author of "Sexual Politics," her doctoral thesis for Columbia University that became a global sensation when it was published in 1970. Its rigorous analysis of gender dynamics in literature and history revealed a deep rooted pattern of male discrimination that pointed out women's conditioning to their second class status. As Judith Shulevitz wrote recently in The New York Review of Books, Ms. Millett all but invented feminist literary criticism. "Sex Pol," as Ms. Millett called it, would land her on the cover of Time magazine, which proclaimed her the Mao Zedong of the woman's movement, though as many recalled Thursday, Ms. Millett was uneasy with fame. Her discomfort was not just because she was extremely shy and suffered from manic depression, but because she anticipated, rightly, the fury that would greet her scholarship. But it was still a game changer. "It made me a feminist," said Ms. Pogrebin, adding that her first book, "How to Make it in a Man's World," and "Sexual Politics," were published the same year by the same publisher, Doubleday, and that the two women shared an editor, Betty Prashker. "Betty gave me Kate's manuscript," Ms. Pogrebin said, "and after reading it, I wanted to toss mine in the trash. I felt like I was capitulating to the patriarchy, and Kate was arguing for revolution. 'Sexual Politics' was my epiphany." Ms. Steinem began her reflections by reading a note from Catharine A. MacKinnon, the feminist activist and legal scholar who argued persuasively that sexual harassment was a title IX issue, and who wrote the introduction to last year's reprint of "Sexual Politics" by Columbia University Press. Quoting Ms. MacKinnon, Ms. Steinem declared that Ms. Millett "conceived the critique of sexuality as male dominated from the bedroom to the boardroom to the potted plant." Then Ms. Steinem paused and looked out at the crowd. "Don't you kind of wish we could read Kate on Harvey Weinstein?" she said, to loud applause and laughter from a group clearly familiar with the producer's alleged emissions into a potted plant. The speakers recalled Ms. Millett's upstate New York farm, otherwise known as The Farm, which she conceived as a utopian women's arts colony, and where bare breasted women grew Christmas trees that Ms. Millett would sell on the Bowery each December. In the early days, said Linda Clarke, an old friend, neighbors would complain about the nudity and call the police, until Ms. Millett won them over. On the farm, Ms. Clarke said, Ms. Millett was finally the president of her own university, a reference to Ms. Millett's frustration at not being able to hold on to an academic post. (In 1968 she was fired from her teaching position at Barnard College for her role in the student protests there.) The nine female speakers, including Yoko Ono, who spoke from a wheelchair, recalled Ms. Millett's Dadaist artwork (chairs with human arms and legs; stools wearing shoes; giant vulvas) and her proud bohemianism what Eleanor Pam, the president of the Veteran Feminists of America, called her reverse elitism. "She was probably the only person in the world who believed that being evicted from the Bowery was a step down," Ms. Pam said. More seriously, Ms. Turner said, "A feminist generation is marching again, this time into shadow. Another generation will march into the sun." In between speeches, the folk singer and activist Holly Near led the audience in familiar protest anthems from back in the day, including "Bread and Roses," from the poem about striking female mill workers, and Ms. Near's own, "Singing for Our Lives," which she wrote after Harvey Milk was murdered. Everyone seemed to know the words. Ms. Ono joined hands with Ms. Keir and Ms. Chesler. "I wouldn't have missed this revolution," Ms. Chesler said, "not for love or money." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
Each week, Kevin Roose, technology columnist at The New York Times, discusses developments in the tech industry, offering analysis and maybe a joke or two. Want this newsletter in your inbox? Sign up here. Hi, pals. I'm Kevin. I'm a columnist here at The Times, and I'll be filling in for Farhad and Mike on this newsletter while they're both "out on book leave." (Read: tweeting and playing Fortnite in their PJs.) Mostly, I write about Silicon Valley and how technology interacts with the larger worlds of business and culture. Today, though, I want to talk about the Midwest. This week, I published a column about a recent trip I took through the Midwest with a group of Silicon Valley venture capitalists. The three day tour, which was organized by Representative Tim Ryan, an Ohio Democrat, took us to cities like Akron, Ohio, and South Bend, Ind., and gave the investors a chance to meet local officials and case out nontraditional start up scenes. One of my main lessons from the trip was that a lot of Silicon Valley's elite have gotten fed up with the Bay Area for various reasons (housing prices, tech monoculture, too much money chasing too few start ups, etc.), and are looking enviously at other parts of the country. Which I thought was a pretty obvious and uncontroversial take! But the response to the piece has been, uh, opinionated. Some readers took issue with the headline ("Silicon Valley Is Over, Says Silicon Valley") and the way the coastal investors interviewed in the piece seemed to view cities like Flint and Detroit as if they were exotic foreign countries with quirky, charming customs. Others, like Axios' Dan Primack, doubted whether the venture capitalists on the bus were really going to relocate, or if they were just indulging in idle fantasy. And a few asked if I could bring the venture capitalists to their city next time. (I hear your pleas, Pike County, Ill.!) As a native Ohioan, I'm always delighted when people want to talk about my home region. (I have a lot of feelings about Steak 'n Shake and the "pop" vs. "soda" debate.) But in this case, I think some additional explanation is in order. There are basically three things I can imagine Silicon Valley investors doing in the Midwest in the near term: 2. Encouraging Silicon Valley based portfolio companies to relocate some percentage of their employees there. My guess is that No. 3 is, if not impossible, at least several years away from being realistic for most venture capitalists, many of whom have their roots planted in the Bay Area and benefit from being near dense clusters of start ups. But Nos. 1 and 2 seem completely plausible and, in fact, are already happening. Several regional start up success stories have persuaded investors to add the Midwest to their scouting itineraries. And many large tech companies have already moved a significant number of jobs out of the Bay Area Google just opened a huge office in Boulder, Colo., and Facebook is building one in Boston and that trend seems likely to continue, given the insane cost of living in Silicon Valley for anyone who isn't a billionaire. On the bus, I heard a lot of talk about "mid tech" jobs jobs at tech companies that aren't hard core engineering, but require some technical expertise. (Think sales, growth, design.) While executives and engineers get positive network effects from being near clusters of other executives and engineers in San Francisco, there's no real reason that mid tech employees can't just as easily be in Bend, Ore., or South Bend. I saw some skepticism about this kind of thinking from people like Adam Nash, an entrepreneur in residence at Greylock Partners. He said on Twitter that the move away from the Bay phenomenon is cyclical, and that in lean times tech employees tend to stay close to their headquarters, where they are assigned to more critical projects and are less likely to be cut in a round of layoffs. But I'm not so sure. Tools like Slack and GitHub now allow tech employees to work remotely in a way that previous generations weren't able to, and the cost of living differential between the Bay Area and every other city (with the exceptions of New York and L.A.) is so great these days that many employees might be willing to exchange some job security for the benefits of living elsewhere. If I had to guess, I'd predict that unless Bay Area housing costs miraculously come down in the next year or two, Silicon Valley will undergo a big shake up. Companies will feel increasingly compelled to move as many jobs as possible out of the Bay Area, and in time, the states between the coasts could effectively become Silicon Valley's back and middle office, in much the way that Wall Street banks now have thousands of employees in cities like Columbus, Ohio, and Salt Lake City. That kind of geographic balancing would be great for cities in the Midwest, where an influx of high paying mid tech jobs could transform local economies. And it would arguably be good for San Francisco, which is straining to accommodate its current population and would be well served by a modest exodus. But don't expect the same to happen with venture capital a highly face to face business in which proximity and start up density still matter. As much as the venture capitalists on the bus may have loved the Midwest, they're probably going to remain tourists for the time being. Kevin Roose writes a column called The Shift and is a writer at large for The New York Times Magazine. You can follow him on Twitter here: kevinroose. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
HUDSON COUNTY indisputably rules the rental housing market in New Jersey: It has the largest supply of Class A units around 13,000, according to industry experts and commands the highest average rental rates of any part of the state. This year and next, that rental kingdom is projected to grow rapidly. Developers are already at work on, or have recently announced, projects that will add several thousand more units in waterfront communities like Hoboken, Jersey City and Weehawken, and hundreds of other units elsewhere. Hudson County is one part of the state where builders "can still get the economics to work" in their favor, said David Barry, the president of the Ironstate Development Company in Hoboken. "You have to add in the fact that multifamily rentals seem to be the only thing for which builders can get a construction loan from lenders these days," Mr. Barry added, noting that this factor was keeping the rental development market "very warm, if not hot." Rents increased as much as 10 percent at some waterfront buildings in 2011, said Jose R. Cruz, a director of the real estate finance company Holliday Fenoglio Fowler. Mr. Cruz specializes in brokering apartment building sales for investors. He said rental rates had risen 7 to 8 percent in Hudson County as a whole over the last 12 months. The average monthly rent in the county was more than 2,600 for the first time in many recent market reports. Meanwhile, vacancy rates have decreased steadily since early last year, when the opening of the 524 unit Monaco Towers in Jersey City caused an "artificial" spike to 7 percent, Mr. Cruz said. Most market reports put it at 3 to 4 percent, and declining. Several companies forced to the sidelines by the recession are at work on projects. In Jersey City, the Manhattan Building Company has almost half finished a 20 story tower near the Holland Tunnel that will have two and three bedroom family size units, and Fields Development is working on a 131 unit luxury rental with studios, one and two bedrooms in the Paulus Hook neighborhood. In Hoboken, the Advance Realty Group is building a 140 unit rental called Willow14, scheduled for completion early next year. In addition, two longtime commercial office space developers announced plans in December to move into the residential rentals arena in Hudson County, starting with waterfront complexes. The other, Hartz Mountain Industries, plans to develop a 589 unit complex called the Estuary at Lincoln Harbor in Weehawken, with the Roseland Property Company. Work is starting immediately, and Hartz said it hoped to begin leasing at the first of three buildings by the end of next year. The company also acquired 99 Hudson Street in downtown Jersey City for 35 million, with the intention of having it rezoned to residential from commercial. Carl Goldberg, the managing partner of Roseland, said the Weehawken complex would have an array of amenities similar to those at the Monaco: a rooftop deck and pool, a hot tub, a fitness room, and a children's playroom and Wii game center. Hudson County's waterfront rental market is "totally connected" to Manhattan's, Mr. Barry said. And Mr. Goldberg agreed, noting that an integral reason the rental market is heated in Hudson County is because it is boiling in New York and at much higher prices. "The lifestyle differences in New Jersey are seen by many renters as advantages for which they pay less," Mr. Goldberg added. "They get rewarded twice in one location selection." Last year Mr. Barry's company opened a 275 unit building in a nonwaterfront location, taking the lead in rental development in Harrison's former industrial district, on a site next to a PATH station and close to the Red Bulls soccer stadium. Leasing there has also been brisk, and Mr. Barry said the building would probably be entirely occupied within the next six months. This year Ironstate will concentrate on construction of a hotel at the site, known as Harrison Station. Heller Industrial Parks another company making its first foray into residential construction is to begin demolition of vacant warehouse structures across the street from the hotel site this month, said Jeffrey J. Milanaik, Heller's president. It plans to open its first 125 unit residential building by the fall of 2013. Both Heller and Ironstate have long term plans to work on a mixed use community at Harrison Station. Ironstate's next rental project this year, however, will be in Jersey City. Construction is to start this spring in partnership with the Kushner Real Estate Group on a 422 unit building close to 225 Grand, a rental that Mr. Barry's company built two years ago and has fully leased. The building, to be known as 18 Park, should come online in the fall of 2013, he said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
The bursts of asterisks, the scattering of exclamation points and ellipses, the syncopated distribution of repeated phrases and capitalized words one could spot a Tom Wolfe sentence a room away. He seemed astonished by America, and he expressed that astonishment in sentences that zinged up and out like bottle rockets. Wolfe, who died on Monday at 88, was a breaker of journalistic conventions at a time when American society was breaking many of its own, and his was a style other writers liked to imitate and parody. Kurt Vonnegut, in his review of "The Kandy Kolored Tangerine Flake Streamline Baby" (1965), Wolfe's first book, wrote: "Holy animals! Sebaceous sleepers! Oxymorons and serpentae carminael! Tabescent! Infarcted! Stretchpants netherworld! Schlock!" Vonnegut was on more solid ground when he considered whether the young Wolfe more resembled Mark Twain or an extra member of the Beatles. With his trademark white linen suits and two tone shoes, Wolfe did later seem like a dandified figure from the cover of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." Wolfe's pyrotechnics wouldn't have mattered had he not been a brilliantly gifted social observer and satirist. Whether writing about stock car races or the upper reaches of Manhattan society ("Radical Chic and Mau Mauing the Flak Catchers") or hitching a cross country ride with Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters for "The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test" (1968), he made a fetish of close and often comically slashing detail. A kind of label maker on wheels, he put more phrases into popular usage than any writer of his era: The Me Decade. The Right Stuff. Masters of the Universe. Radical Chic. Good Old Boy. Social X rays. Pushing the Envelope. (Sometimes these fizzled. No one speaks of "the purple decades.") 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. As the field commander of the so called New Journalism, Wolfe made it plain that methodology namely, immersive reporting mattered as much as an eye popping present tense style. Kesey felt compelled to say to him, "Tom, why don't you put that notebook and that ballpoint pen away and just Be Here?" Yet Wolfe wasn't always, to borrow the title of a Nora Ephron book, merely a wallflower at the orgy. He could be a useful irritant, unafraid of kicking up at the pretensions of the literary establishment. In 1965, he wrote a 15,000 word two part takedown its title was "Tiny Mummies!" of what he saw as William Shawn's somnambulant New Yorker. He later wrote about Robert Silvers, the editor of The New York Review of Books: "His accent arrived mysteriously one day in a box from London. Intrigued, he slapped it into his mouth like a set of teeth." These skirmishes with the establishment would presage others. Wolfe found a subject as many angled as his ambitions with "The Right Stuff" (1979), his electric portrait of test pilots in the early days of NASA. As Paul Fussell pointed out in The New York Times Book Review, "Just as Mr. Wolfe hates human vices and follies, he loves their opposites manifestations of competence, courage and skill." The words seemed to pour freely from Wolfe, yet this was a misperception. He struggled writing the 1963 piece that would anchor "Streamline Baby" and make his name, for example. In frustration, he sent his editor at Esquire his notes they were published intact. To insure he'd finish his big, joyful and neon lit first novel, "The Bonfire of the Vanities" (1987), he arranged for Rolling Stone to serialize it. He wrote the first draft in public. As a novelist, Wolfe self consciously modeled himself on writers like Emile Zola and William Makepeace Thackeray, who attempted in their fiction to move past their own personal experience and capture wide swaths of society. Wolfe did a good deal of research for "Bonfire of the Vanities," a novel about what happens after a bond trader on the way back to Manhattan from J.F.K. Airport takes a wrong turn at night in the Bronx and, after a confrontation, accidentally hits a young black man with his car. Wolfe shadowed members of the Bronx homicide squad and lingered at the Manhattan criminal court. He made his case for this kind of immersion in an essay, "Stalking the Billion Footed Beast," which ran in Harper's Magazine in 1989. "At this weak, pale, tabescent moment in the history of American literature, we need a battalion, a brigade, of Zolas to head out into this wild, bizarre, unpredictable, Hog stomping, Baroque country of ours and reclaim it as literary property," he wrote. Norman Mailer read this and commented: "One has to applaud his moxie. Only an innocent or a simpleton could fail to recognize that a live hornet was being deposited in the crevice of every literary seat in town." Wolfe would tangle with Mailer, John Updike and John Irving over their negative reactions to his second novel, "A Man in Full" (1998). Updike called the novel "entertainment, not literature, even literature in a modest aspirant form." Mailer compared reading the 742 page book to making love to a 300 pound woman. ("Once she gets on top, it's over. Fall in love, or be asphyxiated.") Wolfe responded in an essay titled "My Three Stooges." Wolfe's two later novels, "I Am Charlotte Simmons" (2004), about sex and status and a small town girl at an elite college, and "Back to Blood" (2012), about Cuban immigrants in Miami, were not as well received. Wolfe frequently mocked the follies of youth, yet his own prose did not seem to age at all. In a collection titled "Hooking Up" (2000) he delivered what can be read as his credo: "America is a wonderful country! I mean it! No honest writer would challenge that statement! The human comedy never runs out of material! It never lets you down!" | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
NORTH ADAMS, Mass. The master plan for MASS MoCA in 1986 was a wildly ambitious dream: to simultaneously rehabilitate all 28 buildings of a shuttered 19th century factory in this depressed Berkshire County town for the long term display of monumental art installations. Instead, economic realities intervened. "We've had organic growth, inhabiting the space bit by bit over time," said Joseph Thompson, the founding director of the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, who has just completed the museum's third phase of expansion on the 16 acre campus after some three decades. Recently, Mr. Thompson led me along the vast new route, wending a giant figure eight around two courtyards, with views of the river from a ribbon of windows lining the perimeter of the lofty industrial space. Mr. Thompson estimates the cost per square foot at 5 percent of the price of recent museum projects in New York and San Francisco. The budget for the expansion led by Bruner/Cott Associates came to 56.4 million for design, construction, art installation and an increase to the endowment. The luxury of space has given this noncollecting institution the freedom to extend multidecade commitments to a slate of artists or their estates. Mr. Turrell, who began discussions with MASS MoCA in the late 1980s, has been able to build a museum within a museum of his ethereal light installations; it is to remain on view for 25 years. For Ms. Holzer, who has a home nearby in Hoosick Falls, N.Y., a dedicated space will allow her to create changing displays of her politically charged text based works over the next 15 years. "It's high tech to no tech," Mr. Thompson said of Ms. Anderson's displays. "I've always been interested in the idea of how you make a museum for artists whose work is performative." Building 6 is also now home to several surreal marble sculptures from the family of Louise Bourgeois, including a 15 ton carving she kept in her studio. The Rauschenberg Foundation, which runs a residency program at the artist's former home in Captiva Island, Fla., doesn't have public exhibition space there. Building 6 will be a long term space for the rotation of works by Rauschenberg currently a labyrinth of silk screened plexiglass and mirrored panels and for artists who have completed the residency, including Dawn DeDeaux and Lonnie Holley. Gunnar Schonbeck "believed every human being was a musician, and every inanimate object could potentially be a musical instrument," Mr. Thompson said. More than 300 of Schonbeck's inventive handmade instruments a nine foot banjo, a drum made from airplane fuselage, a chime rack from castoff objects now reside in Building 6 and can be played by visitors. Michael Govan worked on the museum's original plan with Mr. Thompson, his Williams College roommate, and their mentor Thomas Krens, before moving to New York as Mr. Krens's deputy at the Guggenheim Museum in 1988. "It's exciting to see the complex finally operating as a village of cultural spaces. "MASS MoCA's been conceived to have a foot both locally and globally," added Mr. Govan, now the director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. "Joe's taking risks in the juxtapositions." It took three museum exhibitions in 2013 in Los Angeles, Houston and New York to give Mr. Turrell as full a retrospective as he has here: nine immersive light installations that alter perception. A glowing cube in the corner of one room dematerializes as you approach. Walk toward a Rothkoesque plane of molten color in the next room, and you make the mind bending discovery that it's curved and you can stick your hand through the illuminated shallow space. In his "Dark Space" environment, it takes a good 12 minutes before your eyes fully adapt to his subtle light show. The showstopper here is Mr. Turrell's "Ganzfeld" installation, one of the tallest he's ever constructed. Stairs lead to a large rectangle of color that you can step into: a 30 foot high chamber bathed in slowly shifting hues that slide through the spectrum from the softest gray to a saturated tangerine red, challenging depth perception. Mr. Turrell has programmed a quick strobic blast every nine minutes "as a palate cleanser for your eyes." Known since the late 1970s for her elliptical texts carved into stone benches, emblazoned on billboards and projected on buildings, Ms. Holzer focuses here on work about the implications of war. Some 200 silk screened paintings from the last decade, reproducing at large scale declassified and redacted American documents relating to military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, hang salon style across two cavernous galleries. Pulsing LED installations, streaming with texts by the poet Anna Swir about her experiences as a resistance fighter in the 1939 Siege of Warsaw, cast a lurid purplish blue glow on the paintings, lit just so they're legible. "I was so concerned about the invasion," Ms. Holzer said, "and wanted to understand why we were going in, from every point of view the politicians, officers, enlisted men and eventually detainees." Every night for the next month, her projections of refugee poems will illuminate the north facade of MASS MoCA. Ms. Holzer has also placed 21 of her stone benches carved with "truisms" (such as "Your oldest fears are your worst ones") in nooks around the buildings. "Until now, we haven't been encouraging of people exploring the whole outdoor 16 acre campus," Mr. Thompson said. As a storyteller and performer, Ms. Anderson imagined a museum of her work might resemble a radio broadcasting station. That inspired the design of her glass walled gallery, now to be her home away from her New York home. When she's not in residency, you can listen to her recordings with headphones. Another gallery features her expressionistic charcoal drawings of her dog Lolabelle and visions of the Tibetan afterlife. In a black box gallery, white graffiti and drawings are scrawled across every plane of the room. There you can put on a virtual reality headset and lift off, tunneling through unfolding rooms with walls of her words. Drawings come to life and may turn into galaxies as Ms. Anderson's voice fills your head with stories. Virtual reality "does what I've always wanted to do as an artist from the time I've started, which is a kind of disembodiment," Ms. Anderson said. A second virtual experience puts you onto an airplane that peacefully disintegrates midair. As you drift through the heavens, reach for the floating Buddha or the copy of "Crime and Punishment" to trigger more storytelling. "It's magic," Ms. Anderson said. "You get to feel completely free." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
BERLIN When a new play from one of Germany's leading avant garde theatermakers sells out a 2,000 seat venue, you know the world's gone topsy turvy. Imagine Robert Wilson debuting a show to a full house at Radio City Music Hall! Yet, since October, a huge revue theater in the heart of Berlin, the Friedrichstadt Palast, has been selling out every night it presents a new work from the acclaimed writer director Rene Pollesch. (In 2021, Pollesch will become the artistic director of the high minded Berlin Volksbuhne.) At the cavernous Friedrichstadt Palast, the show shares the schedule with "Vivid," an over the top, Vegas style extravaganza that is about as far in tone from serious theater as you can get. This irony clearly hasn't been lost on Pollesch, whose play seems to refute "Vivid's" sleek, razzle dazzle aesthetic at every turn, starting with its mouthful of a title. "Believing in the Possibility of the World's Complete Renewal" ("Glauben an die Moglichkeit der volligen Erneuerung der Welt") is a minimalist chamber drama set loose on one of the world's largest stages. Don't expect death defying acrobatics or rousing musical numbers. It's a mordantly funny monologue about isolation and alienation that fuses personal reminiscences with critiques of capitalism. As its star, Fabian Hinrichs, pontificates about loneliness, 27 dancers from the "Vivid" cast follow him around the stage like dutiful children, imitating Hinrichs's gestures and poses and occasionally breaking into a choreographed number. Wandering the auditorium and stage in a gold bodysuit, the sad, funny figure of Hinrichs, who is billed as co director, intones his laconic and disjointed soliloquy with consummate theatricality (and often without a microphone). Is this melancholy poetry or tragically chic drivel? Pollesch seems to want it both ways. In addition to the dance troupe, "Believing in the Possibility" also recycles staging elements from "Vivid," including a gliding futuristic bridge and trippy laser lights. Such allusions seem intended to send up that vacuous blockbuster, whose non songs and bizarre sets are periodically enlivened by muscular acrobatics and outlandish costumes. (Think second or third rate Cirque du Soleil.) At the same time, there's a note of poignancy to Pollesch's text and Hinrichs's delivery: Against the odds, they make you believe in the sincerity of this undertaking. Local critics have gone gaga for "Believing in the Possibility," and much of the enthusiasm probably is owed to Pollesch's cult status here. But despite Hinrichs's blistering performance and Pollesch's unmistakable prose, the show feels slight, dwarfed less by the Friedrichstadt Palast's massive stage than by the all the hype. Inviting a serious avant garde director to work at such a huge commercial venue is both an act of folly and a publicity stunt, and I wonder how much the show's success has had to do with its breathless marketing, which promises the event of the century. The show's initial run has been limited to a dozen performances, but the Friedrichstadt Palast's website teases that more may be coming in 2021. "Believing in the Possibility of the World's Complete Renewal" could also serve as the slogan for Stefan Pucher's production of "King Lear" at the Munchner Kammerspiele in Munich. In this new translation by Thomas Melle, Lear's ungrateful daughters are radical feminists calling for the dismantling of the patriarchy by any means necessary. Surprisingly, it works. The production shifts the emphasis away from Lear's madness and focuses on the king's refusal to stand aside after ceding power to the next, female generation. While he clings to his privileges, his heirs set about dismantling those traditional power structures. Regan and Goneril are usually portrayed as scheming, bloodthirsty villains, but here they are guided by noble ideas. Understanding them as feminist crusaders neither cheapens their struggle nor excuses their wickedness. Melle does not go for moral relativism, and he does not exonerate the daughters for their villainy. Despite Melle's deep cuts including to the dramatis personae the plot is left pretty intact. But there are some unexpected changes, including a much younger than usual Lear (played with abrasive bluster by Thomas Schmauser) and a clever gender switch for Gloucester (the commanding Wiebke Puls), who chastises the king's rogue daughters at her peril. Another standout is the charming and chameleonlike Samouil Stoyanov, who does double duty as Kent and the Fool. The unnatural cruelty of children to their parents registers with forceful immediacy in this visually vibrant production. Set loose on Nina Peller's pop glam set (a single story, rotating house topped by a billboard announcing "The End"), nine exciting actors from the Kammerspiele's permanent company bring the story to contemporary life, fabulously attired in Annabelle Witt's eclectic costumes. Another contemporary take on a classic currently at the Kammerspiele is far less successful. In "Die Rauberinnen" ("The Robbers"), an all female deconstruction of Friedrich Schiller's 1781 play, the director Leonie Bohm reduces the five act melodrama to a plotless 80 minutes. Schiller's memorable characters represent Enlightenment values, but Bohm refuses to treat them as avatars of abstract ideals. Instead, they address the audience in confessional monologues that can be painfully personal, or funny, or both. Throughout the brisk performance, the focus remains on the protagonists' psychological profiles. The direct addresses, developed by Bohm together with her actresses, are lively, and the acting is engaging, but the production meanders despite the energetic performances. These include Julia Riedler's ultracool Karl, the play's hero, who leads a band of honorable robbers in the Bohemian forest, and Gro Swantje Kohlhof, who as Karl's rival, Spiegelberg, ad libs a lengthy and increasingly manic speech while standing on a seat in the middle of the audience. A massive cumulous cloud dominates the production. Eventually, a storm arrives, dousing the stage in rain for the last 20 minutes. The actresses peel off their clothes and slide around sopping wet wearing next to nothing. Does the rain come to wash away the male dominated canon of Western culture? | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
Huddled in the stands during the waning moments of the Giants' regular season finale last month, as the last seconds ticked off in yet another disastrous Giants season the team's sixth losing campaign in seven years Giants fans sought succor in a memory. On the sideline, where he uncomfortably paced as a backup, Eli Manning turned his eyes to the stands, smiled faintly and raised a hand in tribute, a scene that symbolized the mix of pride and melancholy accompanying the end of Manning's career, a retirement which will be made official Friday. During 16 seasons as an N.F.L. quarterback, the most visible and pressure packed position in American sports, Manning, a scion of football royalty, had a historic career reviving the storied N.F.L. franchise with two Super Bowl upset victories over the imperial New England Patriots. Manning, 39, entered the league in 2004 shrouded by the shadow of his accomplished older brother Peyton, who was considered the modern era's quintessential N.F.L. quarterback. Like an archetypical little brother, though, Eli carved a different path. While Peyton was hyper efficient on the field and won two Super Bowls of his own, Eli was known for goofy expressions and graceless missteps but also for his steely eyed resolve in the game's most tense moments. The younger Manning not only set dozens of records, he had a superior postseason record than his brother, never lost a Super Bowl or conference championship game (Peyton lost two Super Bowls and one conference championship game) and was celebrated for his poise on football's biggest stages. As the winner of the Most Valuable Player Award in the Super Bowls following the 2007 and 2011 seasons, the soft spoken, normally inconspicuous Manning instantly became a national personality in part because celebrity was in such contrast to his aw shucks demeanor. Soon, Manning was dancing and singing in prominent television commercials with his telegenic brother and hosting "Saturday Night Live," where he mocked his own gawkiness. But beginning in 2013, the Giants and Manning began a long decline. Manning's record as a starter in his final seven seasons was 39 60, with the Giants qualifying for the playoffs only once in that span. Manning, typically reliable, threw a career high (and league leading) 27 interceptions in 2013, and fumbled 53 times from that year on. At MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, where the Giants play home games and where Manning had long been feted by raucous crowds, he was booed with increasing frequency. Manning's relationship with fans, both nationwide and in the New York area, was complicated. When he was briefly benched in 2017, the reaction across the country could have been summed up in four words: What took so long? Giants fans, however, took Manning's demotion as a personal insult to the legacy of their glory years. Their outcry was so vociferous that Manning was restored as the starter and the team's coach, Ben McAdoo, and general manager, Jerry Reese, were fired. Manning may have been born in New Orleans and educated at the University of Mississippi, but New Yorkers claimed him as one of their own. None Week 11 Predictions: Here are our picks against the spread. N.F.L. Tightens Covid Protocols: As cases rise and Thanksgiving approaches, the league is requiring masks inside team facilities and increasing testing. The Packers' Defense Is Their M.V.P.: Green Bay's oft overlooked defense has kept the team from falling out of the Super Bowl chase. The Long Path to the Super Bowl: With 18 weeks in the regular season and fewer teams earning byes in the playoffs, the Super Bowl is still a long way off. Playoff Simulator: Explore every team's path to the postseason, updated live. Last year, the Giants finally acknowledged that Manning, the face of the franchise, nonetheless had to be replaced. Daniel Jones, from Duke University, was drafted in the first round and took over for Manning after just two games, both lopsided Giants losses. "It happens to everyone," Manning, in the last year of his Giants contract, said. "No one gets to play forever." As the season played out, there was speculation that Manning might choose to sign a free agent contract with another team next season. Those closest to Manning knew that was unlikely. Years earlier, Archie Manning, an all American quarterback at Mississippi, had said of his youngest son: "The thing you have to understand is that Eli really loves being the Giants quarterback. It's how he sees himself." The day after 2019 season ended, Manning said he would take time to weigh his future. But in the last month, he settled into a different routine, one that included coaching at some of his four children's youth sports events. Manning, who is active in multiple charities, grew more comfortable with life as a father, husband and volunteer in suburban northern New Jersey. The grind of 12 hour days studying film, memorizing game plans, practicing on weekdays and playing a violent game on Sundays started to feel less appealing. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
Mr. Corden, a musical theater enthusiast who won a Tony Award himself in 2012, for starring in the comedy "One Man, Two Guvnors," will preside over the award ceremony on June 9 at Radio City Music Hall. The ceremony will be broadcast on CBS, starting at 8 p.m. Eastern. This will be the second time that Mr. Corden, who is the host of CBS's "The Late Late Show," will host the awards he previously did so in 2016. In addition to "One Man, Two Guvnors," he also appeared on Broadway in a 2006 production of "The History Boys." The Tony Awards, formally called the Antoinette Perry Awards, are presented by the Broadway League and the American Theater Wing, and honor work done on Broadway during the previous season. This year's ceremony will honor shows that open by April 25; the nominees will be announced on April 30. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
The Clinton Hill apartment that Patrick Sandefur shares with his wife, Sarah Grace Holcomb, has a history tightly entwined with the New York City Marathon and those who lived there before them. Mr. Sandefur first encountered the space in 2007, shortly after he moved to New York and was invited to a marathon party there. Arriving that Sunday morning, he found a gathering similar, in its D.I.Y. spirit and aesthetic, to many he'd attended in the past. But standing on the stoop, cheering on tens of thousands of people as they ran by, he experienced something completely new. "The sheer scale of the marathon is overwhelming," he said. "What comes into relief when you're on the stoop is how much it takes to pull off. People think a marathon party will be corny, but it's really magical. It's truly a transfer of energy from all the runners." He was hooked. And so, he kept coming back. He noticed that a lot of other people came back, too, and the size and scale of the party increased by the year, with more elaborate cheers, costumes, decorations and breakfast foods. Then, in 2011, Danielle Strle, one of the two hosts, told him that it was going to be the last party because she was giving up the lease. "I was like, 'What, you're giving up this lease? I love this apartment,' " said Mr. Sandefur, an artist and location scout, who quickly found two other roommates to split the 2,400 a month rent for the two bedroom that was convertible to three bedrooms. On the first floor of a townhouse, it also included the backyard and basement. The party, of course, also came with the apartment. As did Nick Chapman, the other party host, who had long rented a room in the basement as his music studio and whom Mr. Sandefur was happy to keep on at his rate of 200 a month. Also included were Ms. Strle's and Mr. Chapman's sizable collection of party supplies: banners, horns, cow bells, reusable mylar balloons, numerous coffee makers, waffle presses, griddles, costumes, extension cords, decorative car lot style fringe, several musical instruments, laminated flags to honor the runners' many nationalities and sheets explaining how to say "keep going" and "run faster" in different languages. Occupation: Mr. Sandefur is an artist and location scout for film and TV. Ms. Holcomb is an artist and high school visual arts teacher. They also run creative nature retreats on the side. The G train: The G train: runs right underneath the apartment and makes the basement shake when it goes by. 16 years: is how many years the marathon party has been held, canceled only when the marathon itself was canceled after Hurricane Sandy. Breakfast: is served for about 150 to 200 people,including guests, neighbors, volunteers, and the guys from Luigi's pizza, who stop by on their way to work. Later in the day, they see them again, when they pick up 10 pizzas for their post marathon, backyard fire pit party. Inspiration: The most inspiring time to watch the marathon is around 2 p.m., when the runners who go by are just trying to stay ahead of the cleanup truck. "You see people carrying other people," said Mr. Chapman. "And then we do our own race to try to get all our party garbage onto the garbage truck." During Ms. Strle's first November in the apartment, she awoke to screams and cheering one morning, and was surprised and delighted to see the marathon going by outside. But after a decade in what began as her college apartment share, she was ready for a change, even if it also meant abandoning her perch along Mile 9 of the marathon route. She was, therefore, ecstatic that Mr. Sandefur would be taking on the place, and the party. "They're always covering the first place finishers, but there's like 50,000 people who run the race," said Ms. Strle. "People work so hard." "There's a sea of people, it's the triumph of the human spirit on display," Mr. Chapman said. The next year, the three of them threw the party together, with assists from roommates past and present and the upstairs neighbors, who routinely offer up their electrical outlets so that no fuses are blown in the process of feeding hundreds of people waffles, egg sandwiches and coffee, all while the sound system is blasting out their playlist of running, walking and doing your best in New York themed songs. Mr. Sandefur learned that someone had to be out at 6 a.m. to negotiate with the water table people, making sure they didn't set up right in front of their building; that the first runners the wheelchair group goes by around 8:45 a.m.; that the women's elite runners flash by about a half hour later; and that blowing up mylar balloons with a straw works better than a pump. Fortunately, in 2013, a fourth host joined their crew: Mr. Sandefur's girlfriend, now wife, Ms. Holcomb, who'd moved into the apartment. "New York can be rough. You walk down the sidewalk and it smells like pee or you get yelled at on the street," said Ms. Holcomb. "But watching the marathon is so inspiring it makes you love New York all over again. I cry every year. It's hard not to." The marathon is a very regimented event, and so, in many ways, must the party be, which has made it easier to notice even little changes over time. The cheerleader costumes have disappeared, replaced by a banana and Left Shark (the character made famous by Katy Perry's Super Bowl Halftime Show in 2015), the pre iPod MP3 player is now a Spotify playlist and increasingly, the wheeled conveyances that Ms. Holcomb and Ms. Strle whisk downstairs into the basement when their guests try to park strollers, not bicycles, out front. The apartment has evolved, too. It no longer resembles a college crash pad, but rather the thoughtfully decorated apartment of two married artists that it is. The couple now lives alone, paying 2,600 a month, offset by the 200 a month Mr. Chapman still pays for the basement studio, where he recently finished composing his first symphony. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
The N.F.L. has taken strides to repair its image as being insensitive to issues facing women and people of color. But the league continues to be confronted by an uncomfortable reality: Its efforts can be undercut by reports of toxic behavior at the tops of its franchises. Woody Johnson, the owner of the Jets and the United States's ambassador to Britain, was accused of making comments to embassy colleagues that they found racist or sexist, complaints that State Department investigators included in a report filed in February. The report has not been released publicly, but according to interviews with half a dozen current and former embassy employees, Johnson regularly made his female and Black staff members uncomfortable, or worse, with comments about their appearance or race. One Black female diplomat, for example, told colleagues that Johnson disparaged her efforts to schedule events for Black History Month, accusations that were first reported by CNN. The diplomat said Johnson once asked if he had to speak to an audience that "was just a bunch of Black people," and told her she was "marginalizing" herself. The accusations against Johnson have surfaced as the N.F.L. grapples with two other crises of racism and sexism that reached recent turning points. Its team in the Washington, D.C., area has abandoned its longtime name and logo, which many consider a racist slur against Native Americans, after team owner Daniel Snyder resisted any change for decades. Last week, the Washington Football Team, as it is now known, also hired lawyers to investigate charges in the team's front office of widespread harassment of women, who said male executives repeatedly commented on their looks, sent inappropriate text messages and pursued unwanted relationships. The re emergence of issues of discrimination involving two of the league's most prominent team owners comes as the nation confronts systemic racism in many of its institutions, including sports teams and leagues. Johnson has been the primary owner of the Jets since 2000, but he ceded daily control of the team to his brother, Christopher, when he was appointed ambassador in 2017 by President Trump. Johnson's arms length distance from the team makes this different from other cases the N.F.L. has faced. Still, the new allegations of racism and sexism threaten to undercut the league's efforts to promote itself as having learned from past failings. The N.F.L.'s personal conduct policy says that "everyone" who is part of the league must refrain from "conduct detrimental to the integrity of and public confidence in" the N.F.L. The word "everyone" is emphasized with a bold font. Yet the league has policed its owners inconsistently, in part because the circumstances around allegations that have surfaced have widely varied. The episodes surrounding Johnson and others raise fresh questions about how much the N.F.L. can change its culture without scrutinizing those with the most power in its franchises. None Week 11 Predictions: Here are our picks against the spread. N.F.L. Tightens Covid Protocols: As cases rise and Thanksgiving approaches, the league is requiring masks inside team facilities and increasing testing. The Packers' Defense Is Their M.V.P.: Green Bay's oft overlooked defense has kept the team from falling out of the Super Bowl chase. The Long Path to the Super Bowl: With 18 weeks in the regular season and fewer teams earning byes in the playoffs, the Super Bowl is still a long way off. Playoff Simulator: Explore every team's path to the postseason, updated live. "They have the same story and it keeps repeating itself," said Upton Bell, a longtime football executive and the son of Bert Bell, a former commissioner and onetime owner of the Philadelphia Eagles. "It isn't possible for the N.F.L. to be progressive." Johnson denied the allegations on the ambassador's official Twitter account. "I have followed the ethical rules and requirements of my office at all times," he wrote. "These false claims of insensitive remarks about race and gender are totally inconsistent with my longstanding record and values." In a statement, the N.F.L. said it was aware of accusations of problematic comments made by Johnson, but referred questions to the State Department. The league did not specify what action, if any, it is taking. The Jets said in a statement that since the Johnson family bought the team 20 years ago, the team has supported "many different social justice, diversity, women's, and inclusion initiatives." At least one Jets player, safety Jamal Adams, called out Johnson. "Right is right. Wrong is wrong!" Adams wrote on Twitter on Wednesday. "If u don't think this is wrong you're part of the problem not the solution." Adams, for months, has had a contentious relationship with the Jets, and on Saturday the team traded him and a 2022 fourth round draft pick to the Seattle Seahawks for a 2021 first rounder, a 2022 first rounder, a 2021 third rounder and safety Bradley McDougald. The N.F.L. has wrestled with the issues of race and sexism more prominently than most North American sports leagues. About three quarters of its players are Black and roughly half of its fans are women, but most majority owners are white men and the league has struggled to hire nonwhite head coaches and general managers. Individual franchises have in recent years faced scandals involving allegations of sexist behavior. In 2018, Jerry Richardson, the owner of the Carolina Panthers, sold the team and was fined by the N.F.L. after an investigation confirmed accusations, detailed in a Sports Illustrated report, that Richardson settled complaints of sexist and racist comments to employees with big payouts that came with nondisclosure agreements. The league fine was 2.75 million, while Richardson's proceeds from the sale were at least 2.2 billion. Last year, New England Patriots owner Robert K. Kraft was charged in Jupiter, Fla., with two misdemeanor counts of solicitation of prostitution. Kraft pleaded not guilty and a Palm Beach County judge threw out video evidence gathered in the day spa where Kraft twice went for massages. A three judge appeals court panel last month heard arguments in the case, which is still pending. That legal outcome could prompt penalties from the league under its personal conduct policy. The N.F.L. has tried to address sexism among players and staff by requiring teams to interview women for executive positions; instituting anti harassment training at the league office and clubs; and requiring teams to submit plans for unconscious bias training and anti racism training. Even so, some inclusion and diversity consultants for the league have expressed frustration at the slow pace of change. The league had also struggled to respond to protests against racial injustice led by the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick and other players who knelt during the playing of the national anthem beginning in 2016. After the N.F.L. neither defended nor stopped the protests immediately, Trump turned the league into a political punching bag, calling on owners, some of whom heavily supported him politically, to fire players who demonstrated during the playing of the national anthem in 2017. Trump reiterated his stance that players should stand during "The Star Spangled Banner" last month, giving new fuel to a divisive debate that has pitted fans against players and players against team owners. Kaepernick last played in the 2016 season, and when he went unsigned in 2017, he accused the owners of colluding to keep him out of the league because of his political beliefs. After numerous entertainers said they would not perform at N.F.L. events in solidarity with Kaepernick, the league paid the quarterback and his former teammate, Eric Reid, several millions of dollars to settle their case. Before the 2018 season, team owners also threatened to discipline players for demonstrating during the anthem, but the plan was quickly scuttled after the players' union objected. Renewed protests that grew after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in police custody in May led the league's commissioner, Roger Goodell, to side more firmly with players who wanted to speak out about systemic racism. After a number of star players released a video in June that called for the commissioner to explicitly say "Black Lives Matter," Goodell apologized for not having listened to the concerns of African American players earlier. It was a hard pivot for the league's top executive, who works at the behest of the team owners who form what is effectively a trade association. But the statement also did not acknowledge the status of Kaepernick, who has still not received an offer from an N.F.L. team. Goodell's efforts on racism have mostly centered on trainings for players and football staff, hiring practices, and on supporting community groups. The league pledged tens of millions of dollars in 2017 to organizations fighting social injustice. Last August, he hired Roc Nation, the company owned by music impresario Jay Z to help the league with a social justice initiative. The N.F.L. also pledged support to the Players Coalition, a player led group that focuses on legislative measures and other steps to fight systemic racism, and planned other cosmetic changes during games. But the public initiatives and performances do not focus on the owners, who have wide latitude to run their teams and immense sway over many issues governing the league. Team owners are seldom investigated or punished by the league for their own conduct, especially if complaints have little direct relation to the game of football. Still, some see the conflict between the actions of the N.F.L. and its owners as a sign of change. As the league office pushes ahead with initiatives like boosting the number of female executives, some individual teams lag. Ashland Johnson, the founder of Inclusion Playbook, a company that advises sports leagues on social responsibility, likened this dynamic to an N.F.L. receiver who catches a touchdown pass. The player might make the play look easy, but it is because of years spent practicing and preparing. Similarly, recognizing that a team name is racist or letting players speak out against social injustice happens after a lot of debate sways minds, she said. Even calling out an owner for his behavior is a sign of progress. "It's kind of a tug of war," Ashland Johnson said. "When you move the ball forward, sometimes you go backward. Some of these things take decades." Mark Landler in London, and Lara Jakes and Maggie Haberman in Washington contributed reporting. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
We're going to get an extraterrestrial visitor, perhaps early next week, when asteroid 2013 TX68 zips past Earth. There's been some agitated chatter about just how close the speeding rock will get. "What we know for sure is that it will not collide," said Sean Marshall, a Cornell University doctoral candidate who observes near Earth asteroids. "So don't panic." The size of 2013 TX68 is estimated to be 100 feet in diameter, about the size of a large yacht. This makes it slightly larger than the speeding rock that in 2013 exploded over the Russian city Chelyabinsk, damaging hundreds of buildings and injuring at least 1,500 people, mainly as windows shattered. The exact time and distance of the closest approach will not be known until after the encounter. Mr. Marshall said Tuesday that 2013 TX68 could zip through Earth's ring of geostationary satellites which orbit at a height of 22,300 miles or travel as far away as 40 times the distance to the moon. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
The Popcast is hosted by Jon Caramanica, a pop music critic for The New York Times. It covers the latest in pop music criticism, trends and news. The success of Drake's "Scorpion," which was released last Friday, was practically a self fulfilling prophecy. Certified platinum on its release day, it's likely to be the most commercially successful album of this year. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
"The other men, did they consider themselves to be Versace's partner too?" he asks. Whether such a lack of understanding affected Cunanan's evolution as a killer will presumably be a dominant theme for the rest of the season, which is loosely based on the journalist Maureen Orth's "Vulgar Favors: The Assassination of Gianni Versace." The first suggestion that he might be lacking a moral compass comes in a flashback to 1990, when a fawning and flirtatious Cunanan approaches Versace and his entourage in a crowded nightclub in San Francisco, but later tells his friends that it was Versace who initiated the conversation. It emerges that Cunanan who graduated from an elite private high school in San Diego and, after dropping out of college, lived off a series of benefactors tells so many lies that even he may have come to believe them. A Catholic and a former altar boy, he passes himself off as a Jew. Asked why he tells straight people that he's straight, and gay people that he's gay, he replies, "I tell people what they want to hear." Versace invites the young fabulist to a night at the opera: a production of Richard Strauss's "Capriccio," for which Versace designed the costumes. They exchange origin stories. Versace's centers on his muse his sister, Donatella and love of family. Cunanan's outlandish tale involves a wealthy father who owned a pineapple plantation in the Philippines, became a pilot for Imelda Marcos, and later ran off with a farmhand, who also served as the chauffeur of his Rolls Royce. Got that? If Versace is incredulous, he's too polite to say so. He is downright avuncular as he tells Cunanan, "You're handsome, you're clever, I'm sure you're going to be someone really special one day." That's some understatement: Returning to 1997, we learn that Cunanan was wanted for four other murders before Versace's. A botched nationwide manhunt, it seems, has failed to prevent a serial killer from striking again. The F.B.I. has joined the Miami Beach police as they home in on Cunanan. Meanwhile, Donatella Versace (Penelope Cruz) flies in from Italy and asserts control over her slain brother's business empire, which was headed for an initial public offering on the Milan and New York stock exchanges. She comes across as fiercely protective of her brother's legacy, if a little sinister. "My brother is still alive as long as Versace is alive," she declares, making clear that the brand has transcended the man. She later brushes aside a grieving D'Amico, telling him: "This is not a time for strangers. This is a time for family." The term "assassination" is, so far, an enigma. The hotels of South Beach, the nightclubs of San Francisco, the gay demimonde and the Italianate arias so lavishly depicted in this series seem fairly removed from the world of politics, particularly at a time when AIDS had begun to recede as a public health crisis and when legal recognition of same sex relationships still seemed like a distant prospect. How will this show's creators define politics, including the politics of the closet? What criteria will it use to deem Gianni Versace's death an assassination? Or as the bloodied turtle dove found next to his body suggests was it more like a martyrdom? | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
In his quest to reconcile these conflicts, Abe finds inspiration online in an unlikely source: a Brazilian American pop up run by a curmudgeonly chef, Chico (Seu George), whom Abe manages to annoy enough to be allowed into his kitchen as a trainee. This opens "Abe" into another cultural and culinary world. But it's rendered in the same flat and uninspired ways as Abe's home life. Chico's lessons are reduced to swift montages that are all tell and no show: Abe writes down words like "synergy" and "textures" and makes flavor maps in his notebook as the camera glides cursorily over spices and sauces and fruits, without any attempt to capture the sensations of taste and smell, the luscious pleasures of cooking and combining new foods. Ultimately, it's not even food that brings Abe's family together, but fear and concern when he runs away after yet another showdown. One could interpret this as a metaphor for the naive futility of Abe's plan to resolve political differences with a meal, but that would give the film's thin, inconsistent script much more credit than it deserves. Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 25 minutes. Rent or buy on iTunes, Google Play, Vudu and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
For the first time, you don't have to be a member of the armed forces to see "Blueprint Specials," a jaunty foray into a little known footnote in American military history. A series of musicals intended to boost morale and entertain the troops during World War II, these forgotten shows (only four survive) have now been resurrected by the theater company Waterwell. The production which combines elements of all of the extant shows is being presented in association with (and on the hangar deck of) the Intrepid Sea, Air Space Museum, as part of the Under the Radar festival. The title derives from the fact that after all the elements of the shows had been created songs (by Pvt. Frank Loesser, among others), choreography (by Pvt. Jose Limon, ditto) and book and designs they were packaged together with instructions on how regular G.I.s could assemble and perform them. The kits were sent to companies unreached by traditional U.S.O. shows. The new production, directed and adapted by Tom Ridgely, retains this informal, let's put on a show air, with simple sets and a spirited cast that includes professional performers notably the Broadway veterans Laura Osnes and Will Swenson alongside former and current members of the military. (We only see who's who when the servicemen and women wear their uniforms during the curtain call, while the others take their bows in mufti.) | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
Maggie Black, who for decades earned renown for teaching famous ballet and modern dancers how to move in ways, as she put it, that "humans weren't really made to do," configuring their bodies to avoid injuries and even to heal them, died on May 11 at her home in East Hampton, N.Y. She was 85. The cause was congestive heart failure, said Gary Chryst, a friend, former student and principal dancer of the Joffrey Ballet. From the 1960s to the '90s, Ms. Black's classes were studded with star dancers and choreographers from American Ballet Theater, New York City Ballet, the Joffrey, Dance Theater of Harlem, the Paul Taylor Dance Company and the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. Among them were Twyla Tharp, Trisha Brown, Eliot Feld, William Forsythe, Gelsey Kirkland, Tina LeBlanc, Lar Lubovitch, Natalia Makarova, Kevin McKenzie, Ohad Naharin, Lawrence Rhodes and Martine Van Hamel. Ms. Black and David Howard, a former soloist with the Royal Ballet in Britain, who died in 2013, were among the nation's most sought after ballet teachers. "She knew the body and how to carry your weight with the least effort and no strain," her former husband, the actor Joseph Ragno, wrote to a neighbor of hers, Arthur Wolf. "That was her contribution. So dancers from all the disciplines classical ballet, modern, Broadway, jazz came to her classes for the purity of her method, and she treated them all as equals and loved and helped them all." Margaret Black was born on March 31, 1930, in Central Falls, R.I., the daughter of William Henderson Black and the former Elizabeth Aberly. Her aunt took her to ballet classes as a child. "She left home at 16 and danced around the world and never came back," said Douglas Black, her nephew. He and his sister survive her. She made her debut at the old Roxy Theater in Manhattan's theater district and danced with the Cleveland Civic Ballet, the London Theater Ballet and Ballet Rambert in Britain, where she also studied with Audrey de Vos. She returned to New York and performed with American Ballet Theater before leaving again for Ballet Alicia Alonso in Cuba. She came back to dance with the Metropolitan Opera Ballet. The Met's ballet school was directed by the choreographer Antony Tudor, who invited Ms. Black, when she was 30, to accompany him when he joined the faculty of the Juilliard School. "The hardest thing for a performer to do," she once told Connoisseur magazine, "is to give up performing and move on to the next stage, whatever it may be." Though she had traveled the world, her New England roots were always present. "Her voice combines an impenetrable Rhode Island accent with the volume of a New England foghorn," Joseph Carman wrote in Dance magazine in 2004. For Ms. Black, teaching "was her own genius," Mr. Chryst said in an interview. "She taught us anatomically to dance within our own limitations and to be very clear with our movement through our own individuality," he said. "And she would say, 'I like to work on movement, but can't until we are standing correctly.' " She taught 50 or more students at a time in lofts near Lincoln Center and in Times Square. "She emphasized natural ability and simplicity in movement, and she threw out the old school notion that every dancer regardless of facility must have the same physicality and look," Rachel Straus, who teaches dance history at Juilliard, wrote in Dance Teacher magazine in 2012. "Black stressed that dancers maintain 'square' hips, so as not to skew alignment in favor of extensions, and her words 'Up, up, up!' were code for vertically aligning the pelvis." Mr. McKenzie, the artistic director of American Ballet Theater, said Ms. Black had a cleareyed understanding of the teacher's role. "The most revealing thing she ever said to me," he said, "was at a time I was becoming too reliant on her: 'You don't seem to understand that I will only view myself a success when you realize you no longer need my guidance.' "Ms. Black retired to Long Island in 1995 and rejected offers to teach a one time master class or to market videos, insisting that dancers could learn only through sustained, hands on teaching. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
Tom Hiddleston is going from the Avengers to adultery. The British actor, best known as the villainous Loki in a slew of Marvel superhero films, is coming to Broadway to star in a revival of Harold Pinter's classic "Betrayal." The show, directed by Jamie Lloyd, had a successful run earlier this year in the West End. Writing in The New York Times, the critic Matt Wolf said the production "represents a benchmark achievement for everyone involved, and shows Pinter's 1978 play in a revealing, even radical, new light." Mr. Lloyd, who has emerged as a devoted contemporary interpreter of the playwright's work, called it Pinter's "great masterpiece," and said that it made sense to revisit it now, a decade after his death. "It absolutely honors his words, but it gets rid of any circumstantial detail it's a very stark, stripped down production," he said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
A gun violence prevention organization named for the victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook school massacre has dropped Megyn Kelly of NBC as the host of its annual gala amid protests of Ms. Kelly's upcoming interview with Alex Jones, the conspiracy theorist who says the shooting was a hoax. Ms. Kelly said on Tuesday that she was disappointed at the decision by the organization, Sandy Hook Promise, to drop her as the host of its Promise Champions Gala, which is scheduled for Wednesday. But she defended her interview with Mr. Jones, which has been the subject of criticism since she announced it over the weekend on Twitter. "I find Alex Jones's suggestion that Sandy Hook was 'a hoax' as personally revolting as every other rational person does," Ms. Kelly said in a statement. "It left me, and many other Americans, asking the very question that prompted this interview: How does Jones, who traffics in these outrageous conspiracy theories, have the respect of the president of the United States and a growing audience of millions?" The statement from Ms. Kelly came after some of the families of the 26 people who were killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting criticized her interview with Mr. Jones, the host of "The Alex Jones Show" and the operator of the right wing website Infowars, who has said the shooting was a hoax perpetrated by forces hostile to the Second Amendment. Mr. Jones has a wide following. He has called the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in New York City an inside job, promoted and then later apologized for helping spread the hoax known as "Pizzagate," and asserted that an Idaho yogurt factory owned by a Kurdish immigrant was associated with a sexual assault before retracting that claim amid a lawsuit. A furor erupted on Sunday against NBC and Ms. Kelly, who left Fox News earlier this year to anchor a new weekly show, "Sunday Night With Megyn Kelly," after she announced on Twitter that she would air an interview with Mr. Jones on June 18 "to discuss controversies and conspiracies," giving him a new platform. In a segment on Infowars on Monday, even Mr. Jones called on NBC to not broadcast the interview. "They did not have me in there saying that I believed children died at Sandy Hook," Mr. Jones said about a preview clip that was shared on Twitter. He claimed that he was misled by Ms. Kelly and that the clip was edited to misrepresent him. Some of the families of Sandy Hook victims have endured harassment and threats by conspiracy theorists for years. Nelba Marquez Greene, whose daughter Ana Grace Marquez Greene, was killed, tweeted several photos of her daughter at Ms. Kelly. Sandy Hook Promise, said in a statement that the decision to cancel Ms. Kelly's job as gala host stemmed from NBC's planned broadcast of her interview with Mr. Jones. Retail earnings and Black Friday: the week in business. Elizabeth Holmes will resume her testimony in her fraud trial. "Sandy Hook Promise cannot support the decision by Megyn or NBC to give any form of voice or platform to Alex Jones and have asked Megyn Kelly to step down as our Promise Champion Gala host," Nicole Hockley, a founder and managing director of the group, said in the statement. "It is our hope that Megyn and NBC reconsider and not broadcast this interview." Ms. Kelly's said in her statement on Tuesday that she was disappointed that she would not be there in support, but she said: "Our goal in sitting down with him was to shine a light as journalists are supposed to do on this influential figure, and yes to discuss the considerable falsehoods he has promoted with near impunity." As a guest on Mr. Jones's show in 2015, Mr. Trump, then a Republican presidential candidate, told Mr. Jones: "Your reputation is amazing. I will not let you down. You will be very, very impressed, I hope. And I think we'll be speaking a lot." In her statement on Tuesday, Ms. Kelly cited the president as a reason that Mr. Jones was a worthy candidate for an interview. "President Trump, by praising and citing him, appearing on his show, and giving him White House press credentials, has helped elevate Jones, to the alarm of many," she said. "Absolutely not," said Mr. Jones. "A paranoid person would be hiding out in their house, not venturing out in public. I go out there on the street and battle Black Lives Matter, the Communists, point blank range." She then gives cues to Mr. Jones, prompting him to repeat some of the most prominent conspiracy theories he has touted. "Now 9/11 was an inside job, but when I say inside job it means criminal elements in our government working with Saudi Arabia and others, wanting to frame Iraq for it," Mr. Jones replies. "Well Sandy Hook's complex because I have had debates where, we devil's advocates have said the whole story is true, and then I have had debates where I have said, that none of it is true." Ms. Kelly then asked him: "When you say parents faked their children's death, people get very angry." "Well I know, but they don't get angry about the half million dead Iraqis from the sanctions, or they don't get angry about ... " Mr. Jones said, before he is interrupted by Ms. Kelly, who says, "That's a dodge." "No it's not a dodge," he continued. He said he "looked at all the angles of Newtown, and I made my statements long before the media even picked up on it. We didn't get any of the real important stuff." "Well here's the big one they always make fun of me. You probably want to throw this in there. Thirty years ago, they began creating animal human hybrids. Isn't that the big story Megyn Kelly should be doing?" Mr. Jones said. Six educators and 20 first grade students were shot dead by Adam Lanza on Dec. 14, 2012, at the Newtown, Conn., elementary school. Mr. Lanza, 20, who had also killed his mother earlier that morning, then turned the gun on himself. Parents of the Newtown victims have been harassed and threatened by conspiracy theorists, who accuse them of fabricating the massacre. This month, a Florida woman was sentenced to prison for issuing death threats to one Newtown family. Ms. Hassinger, who said in a telephone interview that she would not watch the program, said her family has been bombarded with requests for evidence that her mother was killed. "We have been harassed repeatedly by people who we call hoaxers that think this hasn't happened. When there is going to be such a widely available interview with attention given to one of the hoaxer ringleaders, it is going to unleash the trolls on us tenfold all over again." On Facebook, a page dedicated to the memory of a slain teacher, Victoria Soto, 27, addressed a post to Ms. Kelly and the network: "Alex and his followers have done nothing but make our lives a living hell for the last 4 1/2 years," it said. "This incessant need for ratings at the cost of the emotional well being of our family is disgusting and disappointing." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
MILAN On Friday evening, at the palatial Museo Bagatti Valsecchi, once home to a baronial family, Esquire gave a party. At the center of it was Jay Fielden, the new editor of the Hearst men's publication, which has been around since 1933. Among those who made their ways through rooms lined with tapestries and swords at this Milanese unveiling of the new Esquire man were Diego Della Valle, of Tod's; David Lauren, of Ralph Lauren; Thom Browne and Brunello Cucinelli, of their namesake brands; and Remo Ruffini, of Moncler. Mr. Fielden, 46, was already known to most of the guests, having made his name in fashion circles as the founding editor of Men's Vogue (2005 to 2008), and, more recently, as the editor of Town Country, a Hearst title where he retains the title of editorial director. Before his entry into journalism, the born and bred Texan worked at a Ralph Lauren boutique in San Antonio. This year, he replaced David Granger, the deeply respected (if not exactly fashion besotted) editor who amassed 17 National Magazine Awards during his 19 years at the Esquire helm. Along with Mr. Fielden, copies of his first issue, with Viggo Mortensen on the cover in a denim Polo Ralph Lauren jacket and a Brunello Cucinelli shirt, awaited the guests. During his tenure, Mr. Fielden said, fashion will be a particular focus. The landscape of men's style magazines is changing rapidly in America. At the end of 2015, Conde Nast folded Details; around the same time, Maxim, having hired Kate Lanphear to revamp the magazine in a more fashion forward and luxury centric direction, parted ways with her and returned to its naughty, laddie mag roots. That leaves Esquire to duke it out with GQ, its Conde Nast rival, which held a Milan party of its own Saturday night. "Having a great competitor is a great thing for everybody," Mr. Fielden said. Over a glass of pink Champagne ("Champagne: The Manliest Order," says the latest Esquire, page 82), Mr. Fielden paused to chat, interrupted intermittently to receive double cheek kisses and congratulations. A condensed and edited version of our conversation is below. Can you say where you're hoping to take Esquire? I want it to be fun, funny, stylish and substantive. Those are four things that if I could apply them to everything in the magazine, I'm happy. It needs a full on overhaul to be what I think Esquire should be in this day and age, which is dovetailing with a moment in which men are more eager than ever to embrace a certain amount of daring when it comes to style. Is the guy of 2016 ready for that in a way that the guy of the Men's Vogue era wasn't? To me, what's exciting about taking on fashion is that I'm a person who likes clothes, but I'm also a guy who worked at The New Yorker for 10 years. I don't think you have to be one guy or the other. I think there's sometimes an assumption, ''Oh, this is a guy who likes the superficial things in life,'' and then, ''This is a guy who's bookish and introverted.'' I don't believe that. I think they can be married together. Do you feel the magazine had gotten stale or fallen into a rut? I think with any magazine that is edited by a certain person for a long period of time, it expresses an idea about the world. It was successful, right? It's just inevitable, when you're new to something, you have to ask the most basic questions. And if you ask basic questions and they don't seem to line up with what was, then you have to change it. Where will we see that change? A big part of the beginning is how to re evaluate the content when it comes to fashion and the subject of style. If you think of Esquire, style starts with the words. It always did. It was about being stylish on the page. For me, fashion has to be as journalistic as the rest of the magazine. It has to be as important and interesting and relevant to this guy's life. If there's a guy who wants to read a 5,000 word piece by a pedigreed writer, then the fashion has to measure up to that. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
Once the L.G.B.T. Memorial in New York City opens, which is expected this month, its designer, the multimedia artist Anthony Goicolea, plans to offer personal tours of the site in Hudson River Park through Airbnb's Experience tours, exploring its composition of nine stones, some bisected by prismatic glass that radiate the colors of the L.G.B.T. flag. "I'll go over aspects of it that are not readily visible," said Mr. Goicolea, including the fact that is it oriented toward the Statue of Liberty in a salute to equal justice. This month is Pride month, a celebration of the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender communities, and a time when the travel industry rolls out the rainbow carpet in special hotel and travel related packages . This year, whether driven by the current conservative political climate or a maturing of travel campaigns that have been going on for a decade, the offerings are more inclusive; some feature activities and events that are introspective, philanthropic and activist. "The travel industry has gone from trivial to the substantial in terms of how it markets to the L.G.B.T. community," said Henry H. Harteveldt, a travel analyst and the president of the Atmosphere Research Group. "Whether it's talks or sponsorship of L.G.B.T. youth centers or career day events or anything that shows sincere, genuine and comprehensive commitment to the L.G.B.T. community, travel brands are taking this seriously as part of their corporate social responsibility." There's a financial incentive, of course. A survey by Community Marketing, Inc., a San Francisco based market research firm that focuses on the gay community, found that, on average, L.G.B.T. participants took 3.2 leisure trips, 1.4 business trips and 2.3 trips to visit friends or family in the 12 months preceding the survey, which was released last November. In comparison, A.A.A. reported in 2017 that 70 percent of Americans took one or two vacations a year. C.M.I. also found that 77 percent of the L.G.B.T. community has United States passports; the figure is roughly 42 percent in the general population. A 2016 survey from Witeck Communications, a marketing firm that specializes in the community, put L.G.B.T. buying power at 917 billion. "Compared to the average travel habits of Americans, the L.G.B.T. community does travel more frequently, so the propensity to capture that revenue is there," said John Tanzella, the president and chief executive of the International Gay Lesbian Travel Association. "But the community is very savvy to business and does its homework to make sure it's legitimately interested in the community, not just getting the pink dollar. Are they taking care of their own employees and marketing with appropriate imagery? Are they there for the long haul?" A little respect, say observers, goes a long way. "What L.G.B.T. travelers appreciate is being recognized as humans, not just as a target marketed to with a special rate or two for one cocktail at the bar with little rainbow flags in the mojitos," Mr. Harteveldt said. "The core of what we do as a hotel is we provide safe spaces and shelter for our guests everyday so it makes sense to engage with community organizations that are doing similar things," said Cherilyn Williams, the director of global portfolio marketing for Marriott. Plenty of hotels are piling on incentives this month to attract L.G.B.T. travelers. The Refinery Hotel in New York is selling a package that includes walking alongside a float in the Pride March on June 24. The seven Joie de Vivre hotels in San Francisco are offering a 20 percent off promotion, bookable with the code PRIDESF and available through year end. Kimpton Hotels will donate 10 to the Trevor Project, which provides crisis intervention for L.G.B.T. youth, for each night booked online. Guests also get 15 percent off room rates. Taking an advocacy path, W Hotels is expanding its Queer Me Out talk series featuring prominent members of the community discussing issues like political activism and the influence of social media. The hotel group also launched a new series of L.G.B.T. centric destination guides, beginning with Mexico City. "It's how we use the power of the brand to stand for an audience that's important to us and to make those issues heard by a broader audience," said Anthony Ingham, the global brand leader at W. Many destinations, too, are working hard to attract L.G.B.T. travelers. In Florida, the Greater Fort Lauderdale Convention Visitors Bureau last fall held its first "Global L.G.B.T.Q. Think Tank," uniting travel industry leadership to discuss how to improve the experience for that community. The Madrid Tourist Board actively promotes L.G.B.T. travel beyond June, including holding Gayday Madrid in September and the gay film festival Lesgaicinemad in November. Las Vegas, Buenos Aires and Toronto have been active in their outreach; Visit Houston runs a site called MyGayHouston; and this month Visit Seattle launched its own campaign around the hashtag weSEAlove. "People are very aware about what their consumption choices say about them," said Andrew Weir, the chief marketing officer for Tourism Toronto. "In a climate of greater hostility and an alarming degree of intolerance, many people want to make a statement about who they are and their own views of inclusivity." Some cruise lines and tour operators are also expanding their outreach. Celebrity Cruises held its first same sex marriage at sea in January. Carnival Corporation recently earned a perfect score from the Human Rights Campaign in its Corporate Equality Index, which rates companies on their treatment of L.G.B.T. customers, investors and employees. Azamara Club Cruises hosts meet and mingle shipboard social affairs with Meet Me Onboard, the social network for L.G.B.T. cruise fans. R Family Vacations, an L.G.B.T.Q. travel company, has partnered with Uniworld Boutique River Cruise Collection on adult and family itineraries this summer. This year, Latin Trails in Ecuador is launching two weeklong cruises in the Galapagos, one targeted to gay men and another to L.G.B.T. families. Where L.G.B.T. travelers are interested in going isn't that different from straight travelers, according to David M. Rubin, a Virtuoso travel adviser and the chief executive of DavidTravel in Corona del Mar, Calif. Foodies are big on Peru, he said. Iceland, Japan and Antarctica are hot. The most adventurous are interested in Iran and Ethiopia, treasure filled countries where homosexuality is illegal and, in the case of Iran, punishable by death. "We discuss the guidelines and how open or not open they can be," said Mr. Rubin, who tries to book broad minded guides and drivers. "We don't believe in closing the world. We believe in opening the world. We are ambassadors as travelers and where we can be open in dialogue, it helps educate people." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
BALTIMORE In a 14 hour operation, a young military veteran whose genitals were blown off by a bomb received an extraordinary transplant: a penis, scrotum and portion of the abdominal wall, taken from a deceased organ donor. The surgery, performed last month at Johns Hopkins Hospital, was the most complex and extensive penis transplant to date, and the first performed on a combat veteran maimed by a blast. Two other successful penis transplants have been performed in South Africa in 2014 and at the Massachusetts General Hospital in 2016 but they involved only the organ itself, not the scrotum or surrounding flesh. This latest operation transplanted a single piece of tissue that measured 10 inches by 11 inches and weighed four or five pounds. This is an evolving branch of medicine spurred in large part by the wounds of war particularly the blast injuries from improvised explosive devices, or I.E.D.s. The medical teams in Baltimore and Boston have spent years preparing for the surgery, practicing on cadavers and refining their techniques. The patient at Johns Hopkins is just one of many soldiers whose lives were shattered in a split second when they stepped on hidden bombs in Iraq or Afghanistan. He lost both legs above the knee, but the genital damage was even more devastating to him. "That injury, I felt like it banished me from a relationship," he said in an interview last week. "Like, that's it, you're done, you're by yourself for the rest of your life. I struggled with even viewing myself as a man for a long time." But now, four weeks after the surgery, he said, "I feel whole again." He asked that his name not be published, because of the stigma associated with genital injuries. Except for his immediate family and a few close friends, he has told no one about the nature of his wounds, he said. Dr. W.P. Andrew Lee, the chairman of plastic and reconstructive surgery at Johns Hopkins, said the goal of this type of transplant is "to restore a person's sense of identity and manhood." "We're hopeful we can restore sexual function in terms of spontaneous erection and orgasm," Dr. Lee said. Although the scrotum was transplanted, the donor's testes had been removed for ethical reasons: Keeping them might enable the recipient to father children that belonged genetically to the organ donor, something not considered acceptable by medical guidelines. Because the recipient's own reproductive tissue was destroyed, he will not be able to have biological children. He takes testosterone to compensate for the loss of his testes, and is being treated with another drug, Cialis, to encourage erectile function. How many men might need this type of transplant is not known. Data from the Defense Department show that more than 1,300 men sustained so called genitourinary injuries in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that 31 percent of those injuries involved the penis. About 20 percent of the penile injuries were considered severe but how many might warrant a transplant is not clear. Women in the military have also suffered genitourinary and reproductive injuries, but they are less common. Teams at Johns Hopkins and at the Massachusetts General Hospital are both evaluating more candidates for the surgery some hurt in the military, others affected by accidents or illness. But it can take a long time to find a matching donor the Johns Hopkins patient waited more than a year on the transplant list so no rush of operations is expected. After the explosion that injured the soldier, he remained conscious, he remembered, but knew he was sinking into shock. He passed out on the medevac helicopter. His next memory was waking up in the United States, relieved to be alive. Soon, the gravity of the damage hit. A military doctor told him it was permanent and irreparable. "That was crushing, but when he walked away I thought, he hasn't been a doctor long enough, he doesn't know what he's talking about," the patient said. "You got all this technology, how can you tell me this is permanent? There's got to be something." He felt isolated, even in the hospital among other wounded soldiers. "There were times you'd be hanging out and guys would be talking about getting hurt, and that's one of the first things when they get blown up, to check down there, and they would say things like, 'If I lost mine I'd just kill myself,'" he said. "And I'm sitting there. They didn't know, and I know they didn't mean any offense, but it kind of hits you in the gut." He struggled with thoughts of suicide, he said: "When I would actually think about killing myself, I would think, 'Am I really just gonna kill myself over a penis?'" He passed an exhaustive screening process. Certain nerves and blood vessels have to be intact, along with the urethra, the tube that carries urine out of the body. Candidates also have to qualify psychologically to be able to understand the risks and benefits and stick to their anti rejection medicine, as well as have a family or other support network. Families of organ donors are asked specifically for permission to use the penis, and past requests have been made for research purposes. Carisa M. Cooney, a clinical research manager in plastic and reconstructive surgery at Johns Hopkins, said that when families hear that the goal is to help wounded veterans, many consent. In this case, the donor's family sent the soldier a message via New England Donor Services: "We are all very proud that our loved one was able to help a young man that served this country. We are so thankful to say that our loved one would be proud and honored to know he provided such a special gift to you. As a family, we are very supportive of all the men and women who serve our country and grateful for the job you did for this nation. Please know that this is truly a heartfelt statement, as we have several veterans in the family. We hope you can return to better health very soon and we continue to wish you a speedy recovery." The donor was from another state, and three surgeons from Johns Hopkins Dr. Redett, Dr. Damon Cooney and Dr. Gerald Brandacher flew there by private jet to operate on him, an exacting procedure to remove precisely the tissue that would be needed. They had to coordinate with teams from other institutions who were collecting other organs, and at times there were 25 people in the operating room, Dr. Brandacher said. Part of his role was to remove nine vertebrae from the donor, to provide stem cells that the Johns Hopkins team would infuse into the recipient to help prevent rejection and minimize the amount of anti rejection medicine needed. The patient said that before the surgery, he wondered if he would accept the new body parts, mentally and emotionally. "What tripped me out at first is sometimes I would get a thought like, 'Am I going to be able to see it as my own?'" he said. "That thought would creep in. But once I had it done, that's the only way I see it. It's mine." Looking ahead, he sketched out his hopes. "Definitely, to do well in school, to go to medical school and follow my career as a doctor, find my niche in the field and just excel at it. Maybe settle down and maybe eventually find someone, and get into a relationship, maybe. Just that normal stuff." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
"We can't be indifferent anymore!" President Xi Jinping of China fumed at top officials early last month, referring to the public health risks of eating wildlife. On Feb. 24, the 13th National People's Congress issued a decision "Comprehensively Prohibiting the Illegal Trade of Wild Animals, Eliminating the Bad Habits of Wild Animal Consumption and Protecting the Health and Safety of the People." This and an earlier ban on wildlife markets were direct responses to concerns that the new coronavirus, which is thought to have originated in bats, may have been transmitted to humans via a wild animal for sale at a wet market in Wuhan, a city in central China. Genetic analyses have come up short of pinpointing the culprit so far, but among the prime suspects is the pangolin, a long snouted, scaly, ant eating mammal virtually unknown in the West but widely prized in China as a delicacy and for its purported medicinal virtues. So now, on suspicion that it might have infected humans with Covid 19, the pangolin will finally be spared and protected. Or will it? China has had wildlife trading bans on the books for three decades, but those haven't prevented pangolins from becoming the most trafficked mammal in the world. The country's first wildlife protection law dates back to the late 1980s, as does an official list of some 330 endangered species. Illegally poaching, smuggling or trading pangolins, for example, can carry lengthy prison terms. In 2000, China issued detailed regulations for more than 1,700 protected species considered to have biological, scientific or social value. Hunting toads in a pond or catching geckos could count as a violation. In 2007, the sale of pangolin products outside of specially certified hospitals and clinics was outlawed. In 2018, Hubei Province, where Wuhan is, created some 300 wildlife conservation zones and cracked down on unlicensed hunting and trading. But none of this has helped pangolins. In January 2019, nine tons of pangolin scales thought to have come from some 14,000 animals were seized in a single shipment in Hong Kong. The next month, 33 tons of pangolin meat were discovered in Malaysia, and in April, 14 tons of scales in Singapore. Except that our ancestors actually said otherwise. If anything, the meat of pangolins was believed to cause ailments, rather than cure any: It tastes bitter and was thought to be poisonous. "Beiji Qianjin Yaofang" (Bei Ji Qian Jin Yao Fang ), a collection of prescriptions compiled by Sun Simiao, an alchemist of the Tang dynasty, advised in 652: "There are lurking ailments in our stomachs. Don't eat the meat of pangolins, because it may trigger them and harm us." "Bencao Gangmu" (Ben Cao Gang Mu , Compendium of Materia Medica), the Chinese medicine and cuisine capstone by Li Shizhen (1518 93) an herbalist, naturalist and physician warned that people who eat pangolin "may contract chronic diarrhea, and then go into convulsion and get a fever." Ancient texts also cautioned against eating any number of other wild animals, including snakes and badgers and other creatures, such as boars, that today are thought to sometimes transmit diseases to humans. And yet big data retrieved from Baidu, China's equivalent of Google, show that over the decade before the Covid 19 outbreak, between 2009 and 2019, the keyword "pangolin" accounted for 23 percent of all the searches for "ye wei" (Ye Wei ), or "wild tastes." It trumped searches for boar, bamboo rat and palm civet. Since last month's ban on certain civets, bats, marmots and pangolins searches for what wild animals can still be eaten have been trending on Chinese social media. "Are bullfrogs still available?" "How about deer?" "And quail? Or quail eggs?" Did pangolins transmit the coronavirus to humans? Is Covid 19 their revenge on us for bringing them to the edge of extinction? In any event, yet another ban on trading and eating pangolins isn't likely to help them, especially with its caveats for medical uses. Better instead to take on modern misconceptions about health and traditions and for that, nothing beats going back to centuries old texts. Wufei Yu is a Chinese journalist and contributor to Outside Magazine. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
The corner of the end zone beckoned for Rams running back Darrell Henderson, who took a third quarter handoff, rounded the edge and sprinted toward the pylon. Scurrying away from Seattle's line, Henderson evaded one defender but not the man who raced clear across the formation to drag him down from behind, 2 yards short of the goal line. "There was no way I was going to let him walk into that end zone," Seahawks safety Jamal Adams said. By preventing a touchdown, Adams preserved the Seahawks' lead and embodied a smothering defensive effort that fueled their fifth victory in six games, by 20 9 over Los Angeles at Lumen Field in Seattle, and clinched their first N.F.C. West title since 2016. Back then, Seattle's identity revolved around its defense, around a fierce pass rush, a formidable secondary and the colorful personalities who powered them. This group doesn't reach or surpass the lofty standard set by the Legion of Boom. But over the last five weeks, as the playoffs draw near, no team has allowed fewer points (61) than the Seahawks. "There were times during the season where everybody had enough statistics to go ahead and blow us out, that we weren't worth anything on defense," Coach Pete Carroll said. "This defense is good. And they've shown it and they've declared it. This is the kind of defense that we've played in years past." Midway through the season, even as they were winning, the Seahawks were trending toward defensive embarrassment: the most yards and most passing yards allowed in league history. The unit's improvement has coincided with a drop in quality from its opposing quarterbacks facing Colt McCoy, Dwayne Haskins and Sam Darnold in three consecutive games but also with enhanced communication and comfort. 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. "You keep the explosive plays down, the points stay down," safety Quandre Diggs said after a game in which Los Angeles had only three plays of at least 20 yards, none longer than 26. "I think that's been the big thing for us." Even though the Rams (9 6) ran 14 more plays and held the ball for nearly six minutes longer than Seattle, they managed only nine points, on three field goals, stifled in moments big and small. The Seahawks (11 4) sacked Jared Goff three times and intercepted him once, and were at their mightiest near their end zone, stuffing the Rams on four chances inside the Seattle 5 yard line. Right before that stand, the Rams, trailing by 13 6, faced second and 5 from the Seattle 7. They ran a play that Adams had seen before, had sensed was coming, and he tore into the backfield as soon as the ball was snapped. Pursuing Henderson as if powered by rocket fuel, Adams yanked him down, saving what could have been the tying touchdown. In a sequence that Carroll said he'll never forget, the next four plays went for minus 2, 3, 0 and 0 yards, and after the Seahawks knocked back Malcolm Brown on fourth down, they galloped away in glee together. "Give us a blade of grass, and we'll defend it," Carroll said. "We were in full on attack mode." That attack mode materialized on offense in spurts on Sunday, as Russell Wilson escaped the Rams' pressure just enough times to lead two second half touchdown drives, running for one score and throwing another to Jacob Hollister with 2 minutes 51 seconds remaining. In clinching the division title, Seattle assured itself of earning at least the No. 3 seed in an N.F.C. playoff bracket that, bizarrely enough, might not even wind up including the Rams. Even in this week to week league, they are as trustworthy as an email from a Nigerian prince. Just as they were approaching stability, winning four of five in a stretch that began with a Week 10 victory against Seattle, they faltered at home against the winless Jets. Put another way, after beating Bill Belichick's Patriots on a short week, Sean McVay had 10 days to out coach Adam Gase and could not. The Rams, denied a postseason berth for the second consecutive week, can secure a wild card spot by beating Arizona in Week 17. But they might have to play without Goff, whose status was imperiled after he appeared to dislocate his right thumb, on his throwing hand. Even before Goff got hurt, he struggled. The first half unfolded as an extension of both teams' recent fortunes, all middling offense and suffocating defense with a modicum of scoring. Had the field been shortened to 60 yards, Seattle and Los Angeles might not have noticed: Neither ran a play in the red zone. The Rams' forays into Seahawks territory produced two field goals and an interception that defied justification. On first and 10 from the 29 yard line, Goff, flushed right, tottered toward the sideline, where a sliver of open space welcomed him. Instead of running, he floated a pass across his body into an area the size of a city park but absent any receivers. One of a few Seattle defenders nearby, Diggs swooped in for the interception, Goff's 13th of the season, and Seattle converted the turnover into the field goal that sent the game sputtering into halftime at 6 6. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
A probable case of local transmission of the Zika virus has been reported in Texas, state health officials announced on Monday, making it the second state, after Florida, in which the infection is thought to have been carried from person to person by mosquitoes. The patient is a woman who is not pregnant and lives in Brownsville, on the Gulf Coast near the Mexican border. The state's first case of chikungunya, a virus spread by the type of mosquito that carries Zika, was confirmed this year in Brownsville. Medical investigators must now determine whether the infection is spreading and, if so, how many people may have become infected. Officials have begun asking the woman's neighbors for urine samples and trapping mosquitoes to test for the virus. State and county health officials are working with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on the case. The state medical operations center has been activated to help with contact tracing, mosquito surveillance and public education. The C.D.C. sent a training team to Texas this year but has not yet been asked to send an emergency response team, said Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the agency's director. No travel alert suggesting that pregnant women avoid the area will be issued now, Dr. Frieden said, because a single case does not constitute evidence of continuing local transmission. "Most local cases are isolated dead ends," he said. Confirmation of several cases within a roughly one square mile area for more than about two weeks, despite aggressive mosquito control, would prompt an alert from federal authorities. In Florida this year, the C.D.C. first advised pregnant women to avoid Wynwood, the neighborhood where the first cases in Miami were discovered, and later suggested they avoid all of Miami Dade County. There have now been 4,444 confirmed cases of Zika infection in the continental United States, including 1,114 in pregnant women. Most of those infected had traveled to countries where the virus had been spreading, but 182 of the infections were contracted in Florida by people who had not visited such places. The Texas patient, who was not identified, told investigators that she had not traveled recently to anywhere the virus had been spreading. She had no other risk factors, such as having sex with someone who had visited an area with Zika transmission. "We knew it was only a matter of time before we saw a Zika case spread by a mosquito in Texas," said Dr. John Hellerstedt, the state health commissioner. Residents of Brownsville, a city of 183,000, are concerned but not fearful, Mayor Tony Martinez said on Monday. "I don't think it's something that people need to be alarmed about, but by the same token, they need to be cautious about it and report anything that needs to be reported to our health department," Mr. Martinez said. "On the coast, we kind of hoped that it wouldn't happen," he added, "but the likelihood was pretty high." Dr. Carmen Rocco, a Brownsville pediatrician, said she had been checking her patients for Zika, but none so far had been infected. Most of her patients are poor enough to be on Medicaid, and she praised state health officials for reinstating a Medicaid benefit for mosquito repellent. "Families were taking advantage of that," she said. While cold weather is arriving in other parts of the country, southern Texas has had an unusually hot autumn, making it more hospitable to the Aedes aegypti mosquitoes that transmit Zika. Even in normal years, Aedes aegypti can persist in the Brownsville area well into December, so new cases may be confirmed in January or later. "I predicted last April that we would see cases along the Texas Gulf Coast this summer," said Dr. Peter J. Hotez, the dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine. "This is now the one case we know about, but we don't know if there are dozens or hundreds." "Because of the lack of funds from Congress, there has been no active surveillance along the Gulf Coast," he added. "Those cases in Florida were found by serendipity." Chris Van Deusen, a spokesman for the Department of State Health Services in Texas, said the new case was discovered because the woman fell ill and was tested for Zika infection by a local doctor, who alerted public health authorities. All such cases are investigated to see if a patient has a travel history or other risk factors that might explain the infection. "Pregnant women should continue to protect themselves from mosquito bites there and elsewhere in Texas," Mr. Van Deusen said. Mosquito control measures will be stepped up, he said, but he did not know if they would involve aerial spraying of pesticides like Naled and larvicides like Bti. In the Wynwood section of Miami, mosquito swarms did not decrease enough to stop disease transmission until both types of aerial spraying were used. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
Italians historically know a lot about kidnappings. Between 1970 and 1990, more than 600 of them were recorded nationally; between 1975 and 1983, the annual average was more than 50. Kidnappings became such common practice in Italy that a systematized protocol formed around them: Mafia or independent bandits from Calabria and Sardinia would target wealthy families in the North and abscond with their victims to the densely wooded mountains of the south, where they would hide until a ransom was paid. Kidnappers were also known to sell their victims to other criminal groups as a faster means to cash before the original ransom demands were met. Of course, this system was not perfect (these were still criminals, after all). But if plans did not move as quickly as hoped for, there was protocol for that, too: mutilating a body part usually an ear and sending it to the family as a message. It was a just gruesome enough tactic to get the money levers moving and the victims returned. The practice became so common that, in 1991, an Italian law was implemented to freeze the assets of victims' families as soon as a kidnapping was reported and in doing so remove the profit motive. Which is all to say: The Getty kidnapping, as depicted in this week's episode of "Trust," fit the standard Italian kidnapping model of its time to a T. As both sides began to negotiate Paul's return, only Paul's mother is a wreck. This was odd, I thought. The rest of the parties, meanwhile Primo and his cronies, James Fletcher Chace, J. Paul Getty Sr., his secretary discuss negotiations with such practiced fluency that it seems as if these kidnappings happen all the time. With the exception of Getty's status as the richest man in the world, this is business as usual, Italian style. And this is true down to the location of the first scene, Calabria, where kidnappers often came from. We see Primo driving through the Calabrian countryside to pay a visit to his uncle Don Salvatore (Nicola Rignanese) and his uncle's "accountant," Leonardo (Francesco Colella). He has a present for them, says Primo: the Getty boy. From this we can infer that Primo is not the only crazy person in his family; Primo assumes his uncle will be happy to have this insane present. (He is.) Primo's official order of business there is to decide an asking price. Primo shoots for the sky: 200 million. This is a Getty heir, after all. Don Salvatore says, "Why not?" But Leonardo better versed in the rules of the game reels them back. Getting that kind of money would take too much time, he explains; Getty would have to sell off assets. And anyway, he says, typical ransom protocol is 10 percent of the family's total assets, "a kick in the balls but manageable." He adds, "Nobody goes bankrupt, nobody dies, everybody walks away." Taken together with the fact that Getty's wallet is a "clam shell," as Leonardo notes, they compromise on 17 million. But every good hostage negotiation needs a good negotiator, and in the absence of that, apparently a relative with a fancy college degree and a lot to lose will do. To that end, Primo threatens his lawyer cousin (Niccolo Senni) into becoming the negotiator. (For official business purposes, Primo gives him the code name Fifty.) Like most people, Fifty quakes in the mere presence of Primo. Against his will, Fifty takes Primo's marching orders and gets in touch with Paul's mom, Gail. This brings about a moment of rare comedy: Fifty unwilling, frightened and angry for being in this predicament tries various voices to disguise his identity when he dials Gail and then a local newspaper to pass along the ransom demand. Gail doesn't believe him (everybody claims to have Paul, she says), and the newspaper can't understand him as he muffles his voice with a pillow. At last, Fifty succeeds (he plays this frustrated triumph beautifully), and the demand lands on the front page: The kidnappers must have 17 million or Paul will be killed. Eventually, Gail does believe the kidnappers' authenticity after Fifty shares the name of Paul's dogs insider information that only the real kidnappers would know. (She's still erring on the side of caution, however: Anyone involved in a plan orchestrated by Paul could have that information, too.) Later, Fifty gives her a Polaroid taken of Paul, tied up beside the dead, bloodied corpse of his first kidnapper, Bertolini. That image will prove to be enough to convince Getty Sr. that this might not be a hoax after all. But it is James Fletcher Chace sharp and rational as ever who gets him all the way there: "What I'm saying is that, when people start getting killed, whatever it is, it's not a hoax anymore," he tells Getty (who had just been shown saying he would pay untold amounts of money to buy land from Native Americans for his oil endeavors). Getty lets out a sigh; he seems genuinely concerned. He sends Chace back to Rome and instructs him to open ransom negations "with the right people this time," he adds, letting out a muted chuckle. (He is apparently not that concerned.) As Primo awaits Getty's counteroffer, he buys the local bar a round of expensive drinks, anticipating his future riches. But then, Fifty shares Getty's official response: 600, plus expenses. It's the most money Getty can pay before it turns into extortion under Italian law. Getty is still the consummate business man, and as he points out to one of his girlfriends, he can load the expenses side of the ledger "like a packhorse." That amount should be enough to privately satisfy the kidnappers and ensure that the Gettys are seen publicly not to pay ransoms, and thus stay invulnerable to future kidnappings. (To his credit, Getty at least thinks he has figured out a way not to get his grandson killed.) Primo, meanwhile perhaps because he doesn't know the law can only fixate on the 600, not fully grasping how lucrative those expenses could be. He's done with this affair, he decides, and immediately reverts back to his psychopathic killer personality. He orders his translator, Angelo (Andrea Arcangeli), and his henchman to shoot and bury Paul, who, he says, better be dead by the time he returns with gas presumably to burn the evidence. But at the very end, a twist: Throughout the episode, Primo's translator, Angelo, is shown having empathy for Paul asking if he has a girlfriend, wondering what his life was like in California and Paul opens up to him. Paul would introduce him to Mick Jagger, if he could; he'd even have him in his wedding. So when Angelo is sent to fetch Paul for the execution, he decides to save Paul's life instead. "Hippy," he says to him, while his partner waits outside with a gun, "we need to get out of here." And with that, the stage for another escape is set. There were some atypical, emotionally rich surprises in this episode. They're a little distracting from the main story, but they are entertaining, almost like Getty fan fiction: Getty's Sutton Place gardener, Dennis (Jo Stone Fewings), and Bullimore, Getty's dedicated servant, may be on the verge of an affair. Bullimore checks in on Dennis after Getty heartlessly releases his attack dogs on him, wondering if Dennis is gay. Dennis greets Bullimore at his door and invites him inside. Bullimore a man who loves things arranged just so is blown away by Dennis's plant filled hide out. He relents to having a beer with him, and the chemistry ignites between them. Getty's primarily girlfriend, Penelope (Anna Chancellor), is having an affair of her own, and Getty senses it. He makes mention, time and again throughout the episode, of how often she has been leaving Sutton Place for reasons she does not disclose. Again, we may be seeing real emotion from Getty (even if it takes the unimpressive form of jealousy) tucked somewhere beneath those cold layers. Finally the greatest shock of all we learn Primo is scared of something: his uncle. When he shares news of his gift (Paul), he gets cocky about it. "If we're asking for peanuts," says Primo, "I'd rather do it alone." His uncle is outraged and slaps him, hard. "You dare to come here with a gift and take it away again?" he asks. "Your pardon, uncle," Primo says, twice. He appears to be under his uncle's thumb, which is unexpected from the man who willy nilly shoots people in the head. In future episodes, I imagine we'll learn more about where that subservience comes from. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
Anthony Mackie, left, and Chris Evans in "Captain America: The Winter Soldier," the rare superhero movie with glimpses of Washington. WASHINGTON We all know the basic formula for a superhero movie. After the necessary introductions and plot basics, there's the climactic conflict: at least one extraordinary individual doing battle with something evil, ricocheting around skyscrapers and vanquishing foes in the center of a bustling city. There's a snappy one liner amid rubble and urban destruction. Then government officials swoop in with solemn gratitude or veiled warnings to obey the law. Those officials are probably not from the federal government, because rarely do these blockbusters of superhuman heroism take place in the nation's capital. Glimpses of Washington have slipped through Captain America, played by Chris Evans, effortlessly ran laps around the National Mall during his second Marvel movie; it's where the federal government decides to create a team of dangerous criminals to save the world in "Suicide Squad." But the city rarely matters in superhero movies. "You see New York, and you see L.A.," said Rick Prelinger, a film archivist and professor of film and digital media at the University of California, Santa Cruz. "Washington isn't being pitched as the center of the world in the ways that it used to be." How is it that the heart of American democracy is often sidelined in the movies that dominate the box office? The reasons range from our perceptions of the city to the nature of comic books. A representative for Marvel Entertainment said that no one was available to discuss the question for this article, and DC Comics did not return a request for comment. But some film experts see an identity crisis. Outside of the government and the monuments, it's hard for Hollywood to imagine what Washington looks like. And worse (at least for D.C. enthusiasts): Whatever it looks like may not be exciting enough for these movies. "Although it's a distinct region not every city has trucks selling half smokes I think that Washington isn't part of what a lot of people's sense of their country is about," said Mr. Prelinger, who became familiar with the city's iconic sausage dish after living in the district for nearly two decades. He has since moved to California. "D.C. is dull." Matt Fraction, a comic book writer recognized for his work on Marvel's Iron Man, Hawkeye and other characters, said he found it was a location better served in news clips behind television anchors instead of as an accelerant to a spectacular fight scene. "Washington is an idea as much as anything else," he said in an interview. "Washington is about history and abstract notions." Kelly Sue DeConnick, who has written independent comics and developed story lines for Captain Marvel, points to the mid 20th century roots of the modern comic book, when the medium's writers and artists worked in New York. Though movies aren't always faithful to their source material, the city loomed large in the initial stories. It was where the biggest comic publishers were based and where most of their writers were living. "That was the center of both the Marvel and DC universe," Ms. DeConnick said. "People were telling stories of their lives, of their families, and what was important to them." "Only Washington, D.C.," she added, "thinks Washington, D.C., is the center of the universe." It's also not an ideal place for dynamic visuals, said Corey Creekmur, a film professor and comics scholar at the University of Iowa. "New York is famously vertical, and Washington isn't," he said, pointing to scenes of Superman flying over Metropolis, the fictional version of New York City, and the Avengers plummeting into Midtown. "It's not the space associated with superheroes in that regard." There are also logistics to consider. "It's hard to build tall buildings in the swamp, things for Spider Man to swing off of," Mr. Fraction said. Tom Holland, the current Spider Man, had to bounce off a helicopter to swing into the Washington Monument for a dramatic rescue in last year's "Spider Man: Homecoming." (Perhaps that's why he returned to New York City for the film's final confrontation.) "There's the power of looking up on Fifth Avenue and seeing something streak over your head," he said, "being enclosed on all sides by urban reality, and seeing what we're capable of streak by in the sky." While the district allows filming and is open to projects, its fees can mount quickly for large productions, and the city's federal spaces come with heavy caveats. On the National Mall alone, there's a delicate balance between stairs, permitted equipment and flags: You can film the Washington Monument outside the circle of flags around the base, but you cannot film the Lincoln Memorial above its white steps, and all of the Korean and Vietnam War memorials are open except that only a hand held camera is permitted. "A lot of it has to do with the scope of special effects, pyrotechnics, big explosions anything like that is going to be really sensitive to our federal core," said Herbert Niles, who heads the film division of the district's Office of Cable Television, Film, Music and Entertainment. He pointed to "Captain America: The Winter Soldier," for which more filming took place in Ohio than in Washington. "Ohio was able to give them a freeway and close it down for like three days," he said, adding that the district is working to make logistics easier for filming. "That's just not practical here." The government, and by default Washington, has also increasingly played an antagonistic role in superhero movies, Mr. Creekmur said, as some writers contemplated how individuals with extraordinary abilities would be regulated in a country increasingly focused on maintaining borders and security. Like Batman clashing with the police in Gotham City, there's often an inherent conflict between the superheroes' vision of justice and the government's. "Do we play along with the government, or do we work outside the government?" he said of the plotlines that drove the splintering factions in "Captain America: Civil War" (2016). "And I think of that as a post 9/11 narrative." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
In February, astronomers announced the discovery of a nearby star with seven Earth size planets, and at least some of the planets seemed to be in a zone that could provide cozy conditions for life. The finding of these planets circling the star Trappist 1 40 light years away came with a bit of mystery. The orbits of the planets are packed tightly, and computer calculations by the discoverers suggested that the gravitational jostling would send the planets colliding with each other or flying apart, some to deep space, others spiraling into the star and destruction. Now new research provides an explanation for the dynamics of how this planetary system could have formed and remained in stable harmony over billions of years. "It's actually a very special system," said Daniel Tamayo, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Toronto Scarborough and the lead author of a paper appearing in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. The scientist in the office next door to Dr. Tamayo found musical inspiration from the Trappist 1 planets. Matt Russo, an astrophysicist who is also a musician, turned to Dr. Tamayo's computer simulations for help turning the orbits into notes, and they have produced a sort of music of the spheres for the 21st century. "I think Trappist is the most musical system we'll ever discover," Dr. Russo said. "I hope I'm wrong." While the planets are roughly the size of Earth, the Trappist 1 system is very different from our solar system. Trappist 1 is a dwarf star that is much smaller and colder than our sun, and all seven of the planets orbit within six million miles of the star. By contrast, Mercury, the innermost planet of our solar system, is 36 million miles from our sun. Earth is nearly 93 million miles away. Since the Trappist 1 planets are so close to their star, they orbit quickly, and their "year" the time to complete one orbit ranges from 1.5 days to 19 days. The original discoverers noted that those orbits were almost exactly in what scientists call "resonance." That is, the second planet completes five orbits in almost exactly the time the first planet makes eight. The third planet completes three orbits for every five orbits of the second planet, and the fourth planet makes two orbits for every three orbits of the third. The other planets are also in resonance. (In our solar system, Pluto is in resonance with Neptune, with Pluto making two orbits for every three of Neptune.) Yet when they plugged the data into computer simulations, the orbits quickly became unstable, falling apart in less than a million years. Even when they added the effects of tides on the planets, which tend to push planets toward more circular, stable orbits, the system still often fell apart within a few million years, a cosmic instant compared with the estimated age of the Trappist 1 star (three billion to eight billion years). "We were missing some physics," said Amaury H.M.J. Triaud, an astronomer at the University of Cambridge in England and a member of the team that described the Trappist 1 planets. Also missing: exact information about the shape and tilt of the orbits. Dr. Tamayo and his colleagues took a different approach. Instead of just looking at the orbits of the planets today, they looked at possible ways that the planets got to where they are now. The planets formed out of a disk of gas and dust. After that formation, the remaining disk would have nudged the planets inward, and those nudges tend to push the planets toward the stable resonances. Dr. Tamayo offered the analogy of musicians in an orchestra. "It's not enough for members to merely keep time," he said. The missing information about orbits is like musicians playing out of tune, he said. "By contrast," Dr. Tamayo said, "simulating the formation of the system in its birth disk is analogous to the orchestra tuning itself before playing. When we create these harmonized systems, we find that the majority survive for as long as we can run our supercomputer simulations." In more than 300 computer runs, each simulating five million years, the vast majority stayed stable, Dr. Tamayo said. Then they ran 21 simulations each tracing about 50 million years of orbits, and 17 of those were stable. Each of the longer simulations consumed a week of supercomputer time. That suggests the orbits are stable for several billion years, although it does not provide definitive proof. "That's basically as long as we can hope to run our simulations," Dr. Tamayo said. Jack J. Lissauer, a planetary scientist at the NASA Ames Research Center who works on the space agency's Kepler planet finding mission, said the new results fit what was expected. "If the planets are indeed locked in resonances, it's quite reasonable for them to be stable for very long times," he said. "This wasn't a surprise, but it wasn't shown previously." Dr. Triaud said the new results could help refine their observations. "It's a really beautiful analysis," he said of Dr. Tamayo's approach. "We will be looking at our data to see if they match what they propose." The resonant orbits also inspired Dr. Russo, a guitarist in the indie pop group Rvnners. He and a bandmate, Andrew Santaguida, started playing around with the data. They arbitrarily assigned a particular musical note C to the outermost planet. That set the notes for the other planets based on their relative orbital periods, although they are not exactly in tune. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
PARIS Just about everything in Eduardo Manzanares's shop, Truffes Folies, is made with truffles. Sausage, cheese, spaghetti even popcorn. But during the year end holidays, the main order of business is fresh truffles, especially the black or Perigord truffle, Tuber melanosporum. The prized mushrooms are used to stuff Christmas turkeys, chickens or capons, Mr. Manzanares said, making Dec. 24 typically the biggest truffle eating night of the year in France. But it is also becoming an increasingly expensive tradition. Black truffles and other types of truffles are becoming scarcer, and some scientists say it is because of the effects of global climate change on the fungus's Mediterranean habitat. One wholesaler says prices have risen tenfold over the last dozen years. At Truffes Folies, in the chic Seventh Arrondissement of Paris, black truffles are selling for the equivalent of about 2,000 euros a kilogram, or more than 1,200 a pound living up to their traditional nickname, "black diamonds." Of course, few people buy black truffles by the pound. Still, even a single black truffle big enough for bits to be slipped under the skin of a turkey, the rest added to the stuffing, can easily cost 100 euros. "This hasn't been a great year for truffles," Mr. Manzanares said in his shop, which includes a small restaurant. He said some customers had switched to lesser varieties like the summer truffle, Tuber aestivum, also known as the Burgundy truffle, which sells for about 400 euros a kilogram when in season. The current substitute is more likely to be the winter truffle, Tuber brumale, which sells for about 900 euros a kilogram. Like fine wine, truffles are a global luxury with an appeal to the wealthy that keeps prices high even with Europe in recession. Stanley Ho, the Macau billionaire, paid 330,000 at a charity auction in 2010 for nearly 1.3 kilograms of Italian white truffles, a variety more treasured than even the black truffle. There are various reasons for what has been a decline over decades in the harvest of black truffles from southern France, Spain and Italy, including shrinking forests and changes in land use. In France alone, the annual black truffle harvest has fallen from about 1,000 tons in the 1930s to about 50 tons now. The painstaking nature of truffle gathering also adds to the cost. Despite gradual improvement in cultivation techniques, the subterranean fungi are still sniffed out by trained dogs and then carefully dug by hand from the tangle of tree roots in which they grow. But now, a team of scientists writing in the British journal Nature says that part of that decline appears to be linked to climate change. They found that the French and Spanish black truffle harvest correlated closely with summer rains, and that the truffle habitat had suffered over the last few decades from hotter summers and less precipitation. That trend is expected to continue, according to most climate models. The scientists said that the exact reasons hotter, drier summers should reduce yields was unknown, but it may be that the fungus and its host trees, mostly oaks and hazelnuts, end up competing for water when rainfall is scarce. "If we know the reason, maybe we can adapt and compensate," said Ulf Buntgen, the paleoclimatologist who led the study. Scientists will be watching to see whether the truffle harvest will continue its steep decline if as climate forecasts hold Mediterranean basin summers keep getting hotter and drier. Today in On Tech: Imagine not living in Big Tech's world. Dollar Tree will raise prices to 1.25 by the end of April. While Mr. Buntgen's team predicted a continued drop in the Mediterranean truffle yield, they held out the possibility that other, more northerly regions might become increasingly hospitable growing areas, in the same adaptive phenomenon that has led some French Champagne producers to start looking north to England as a possible future site for vineyards. Mr. Buntgen said the summer truffle was already being found north of the Alps more frequently than in the past. The researchers noted that Italy's black truffle yields had not shown a climate related falloff, which they speculated was because the habitat of Tuber melanosporum there has traditionally received twice the rainfall of other places it grows and thus has a built in buffer against the effects of changing climate. To be conclusive about any of this, though, Mr. Buntgen said much more research would be necessary to have better data about cultivation and harvests. "The mushroom people in general, and the truffle people in particular, are not good about sharing information," he said, a tendency complicated by what he called a huge black market in truffles. The truffle market is indeed notoriously opaque, with just one family owned company, Urbani Tartufi, based in Spoleto, Italy, controlling about three quarters of the truffle trade. Olga Urbani, a company spokeswoman, said the price Urbani charged its customers, which included restaurants and hotels, had risen from about 150 euros a kilogram for black truffles 12 years ago to about 1,500 euros a kilogram now, as the harvest declined by about two thirds. The trends are similar for the Italian white truffle and the summer truffle, she said. Forecasting a future of fewer truffles, Ms. Urbani said, the company set a strategy about decade ago to diversify from a "pure truffle" business toward what she called the "democratization" of the fungus by making relatively inexpensive truffle products sauces and the like for a broader clientele. Back in his shop, which was redolent with the earthy aroma of mushrooms, Mr. Manzanares reflected on his decades in the truffle business. "Twenty years ago, people bought a lot more because it wasn't nearly so expensive," he said. "Today it really is a luxury product." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Global Business |
The look of its pickup trucks is so important that General Motors put its best man on the job: the guy who does the Corvettes. Fresh from the task of designing the 2014 Stingray, Tom Peters took on the task of freshening up and toughening up the Chevrolet Silverado and its fraternal twin, the GMC Sierra. "A fist in the wind" is how Mr. Peters describes the pickups' design. The new G.M. trucks are not alone in looking as if they can deliver a punch. The latest full size pickups from G.M.'s crosstown rivals, Ford and Ram, step into the ring with flattened noses, their huge, blunt grilles often slathered in bright trim. A special edition of the latest Toyota Tundra seems to have as many bars as Milwaukee, capped with a flat, wide nostril. "There is a trend toward a bigger, bolder look," said Mr. Peters, the director of exterior design for Chevrolet trucks, full size crossovers and performance cars. Automobile grilles have long been carefully created to reflect the image of their brands and a particular model's place in the hierarchy, while truck grilles were comparatively bare and basic. But with trucks locked in ever fiercer sales battles, their grilles have grown larger and more eye catching, a modern, motorized riff on the battle shields of medieval crusaders. After taking a hit when the economy slumped, pickup sales are on the rise again on the strength of a rebounding construction industry: Ram (previously known as Dodge Trucks) gained 49 percent in April from a year earlier, and the full size truck sales of G.M. and Ford each rose around 24 percent. Manufacturers are scrambling to grab larger shares of this highly profitable market with tougher, more distinctive designs. Rugged exteriors help to hide the fact that many of today's macho looking trucks are softies on the inside, with interiors wrapped in soft leather, decked with wood trim and buzzing with electronic gadgets. Luxury trucks are especially hot. Ford says that about a third of its pickup sales come from the higher end versions priced at 35,000 or more. Not long ago, a 50,000 pickup seemed unimaginable. Now the price tags on fancy trucks can rise well above 60,000. In addition, a tough grille can obscure the fact that the power plant behind it is shrinking with more fuel efficient V 6 engines replacing thirsty V 8s in many pickup trucks. In Texas, where one sixth of the nation's pickups are sold, and where Mr. Peters showed off his new truck to the press recently, pickups are like the standard uniform of boots and cowboy hats: they are everywhere, but they come in many styles and shapes. Greater personalization, with a variety of available faces, is the latest truck trend. The image of the pickup truck is firmly wrapped in American mythology. Model names read like the listings for John Wayne Week on the Turner Classic Movies channel: High Country, King Ranch, Laramie Longhorn. Manufacturers present trucks primarily as work tools, but despite the ads featuring cowboys, farmers and construction workers, more and more trucks are being used partly or mostly as family vehicles. "There's a lot of diversity in the customer range," said Joe Dehner, chief exterior designer for Ram and Dodge. In addition to working trucks, he said, "we also get the 'air haulers,' which means they don't necessarily carry something." For decades, trucks looked like basic metal boxes. Then Dodge offered up a bold new look for its Ram for the 1994 model year. Under Tom Gale, then the design chief for Chrysler, the pickup added a touch of fantasy to the utilitarian box. With its arched grille and raised hood, the Ram resembled the cab of a mighty 18 wheeler. Today's Ram designers call it "the big rig look," said Mr. Dehner. "We own that." But pickups from other manufacturers began to show the Ram's influence as their designers visually separated the hood and fenders and raised the grille above the headlights. The perennial best selling pickup, the Ford F 150, was last redesigned for 2009. But today's F 150 wears many faces: depending on the model or trim level, the grille has multiple small bars or large planks of chrome along with different shapes and colors of meshlike patterns. The Atlas concept truck, unveiled in January at the Detroit auto show, appears to borrow the muscular look of Ford's Super Duty line of larger, more powerful pickups. The Atlas is believed to foreshadow the design of the next generation F 150, expected next year. The face of the Atlas adds vertical elements to the horizontal bars of the current F 150. The grille's frame forms a shape that suggests the nostrils of a bull. Toyota's new design for its big Tundra truck, first displayed at the Chicago auto show in February, was devised at the Calty design studio in California. The Tundra's grille frame has also been enlarged and its designers, too, use words like bold, chiseled and tough. In one sign of how much truck grilles have grown, the Nissan Titan's, which seemed notably aggressive when the truck made its debut as a 2004 model, looks relatively undersized in comparison with the newer designs of its rivals. Grilles play a critical role in differentiating the many submodels and trim levels of today's trucks. "It is almost mind boggling how complex the choices have become," Mr. Peters said. Ford offers a huge choice of variants with its F 150, visually distinguishing a range from base models to King Ranch and Harley Davidson editions, Special and Platinum luxury versions and the high performance SVT Raptor, with huge letters molded into a black front end that Ford calls a "brick wall grille." Mr. Dehner, the Ram designer, said: "There has been an explosion of different textures and finishes, not just in the grilles but with colors, wheels and trim packages. People want their vehicle to be customizable. It goes from the country to the urban cowboy and, if you will, the city slicker type. We want to be specific to their needs." The Ram 1500 comes in nine trim levels and offers four basic types of grille mesh. There is a "hex link" design on the Tradesman, Express and SLT models, with six sided cells that provide "the metaphor of the bolt head," Mr. Dehner said. The upscale Laramie has a similar "hex perf" grille, in chrome. Then there are two versions of "billet perf" on the Big Horn and Sport. "It goes with a monochromatic look, big wheels, a hot rod look," he said. The top of the line Laramie Longhorn offers "wave mesh" texture, a diamond wire pattern that dates to sports cars of the 1920s. "It is an adaptation of the wire mesh grilles on upscale sport utilities," Mr. Dehner said. Aerodynamics, surprisingly, may be behind some of the rugged, angular faces of trucks. As boxy as they look, all the trucks are carefully tested in wind tunnels. The fist in the wind must be streamlined: Chevrolet says it has cut aerodynamic drag by 5 percent from the previous Silverado. "Sometimes the design goes against what you assume is good for aero," said Gordon Platto of Ford, who directed the design of the Atlas concept truck. Crisp, clean lines on the sides and rear of a truck reduce drag. But in front, the Atlas has adjustable grille shutters, which close at higher speeds to reduce drag. The Ram trucks already have such a system, as do some passenger cars. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Automobiles |
THE KING AND THE CATHOLICS England, Ireland, and the Fight for Religious Freedom, 1780 1829 By Antonia Fraser Illustrated. 319 pp. Nan A. Talese/ Doubleday. 29.95. When Amazon Prime finally starts delivering to heaven, Evelyn Waugh should order a copy of Antonia Fraser's new book, "The King and the Catholics: England, Ireland, and the Fight for Religious Freedom, 1780 1829." Fraser's latest considers a topic close to Waugh's tart heart: bleak Roman Catholic prospects in aggressively Anglican England. The reference to religious freedom in the book's subtitle suggests why more earthly readers would find the book of interest, but, refreshingly, Fraser makes no effort to convince us that a centuries old story of religious and political conflicts and competing minority rights remains relevant. Such confidence is rare today, given the easy temptation to gravely invoke Brexit and ISIS and Donald Trump and the Vatican. Instead, Fraser trusts that we can make the germane connections or not. As far as she's concerned, the story matters anyway. "The King and the Catholics" isn't as magisterial as "Mary Queen of Scots" or as flat out exciting as "Faith and Treason: The Story of the Gunpowder Plot." Instead, it's a convincing and worthy addition to the already impressive Fraser corpus. It opens boldly. "The story begins with violence: In the summer of 1780 London was the scene of the worst riots the city had ever experienced." About 1,000 people died, and "the physical damage to the structure of the city would not be surpassed until the Blitz in the Second World War." The riots were a reaction to the Catholic Relief Act, passed two years before under George III, which proposed to repeal measures that had been in place since the Jesuit martyr Edmund Campion's day, including the arrest and imprisonment of Catholic priests and teachers, and the prohibition against Catholics purchasing land. A new Oath of Allegiance, featuring a repudiation of the pope's temporal authority and prayers for the king, was also included, but this didn't mollify the act's opponents, elite Protestants who stirred up popular resistance that was in turn fed by "Game of Thrones" worthy rumors, including one declaring the presence of "20,000 Jesuit priests lurking in the tunnels beneath the Thames, only waiting for orders from Rome to blow up the banks and bed of the river in order to flood the whole of London." There were no more than 80,000 Catholics in England at the time, in a population of seven million. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
"Merrily We Roll Along," a Stephen Sondheim musical that abruptly flopped on Broadway in 1981 but has become a much loved show in the decades since, will be revived Off Broadway next winter by the Roundabout Theater Company. The musical, a rueful deconstruction of the unraveling of a three way friendship, will be a production of Fiasco Theater, which is Roundabout's company in residence. Fiasco, known for its stripped down productions, often with simple props, did a well received production of "Into the Woods," another show with a score by Mr. Sondheim. "Merrily," which is based on a play by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart, features a book by George Furth. Its original production, which closed just two weeks after opening, was the subject of a 2016 documentary, "Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened." Noah Brody, Fiasco's co artistic director, will direct a cast that includes members of the company. The show will open Feb. 19 at the Laura Pels Theater. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
VENICE Damien Hirst's "Treasures From the Wreck of the Unbelievable" is the most talked about art show on earth. And all of it is for sale. The numbers boggle. Two museums; 54,000 square feet of exhibition space; 189 artworks, including more than 100 sculptures (one of them almost 60 feet high); 21 cabinets filled with smaller objects. Occupying the Punta della Dogana and the Palazzo Grassi, museums run by the French billionaire Francois Pinault's foundation, until Dec. 3, this privately financed exhibition purports to display artifacts that were once owned by the second century collector Cif Amotan II and that have been salvaged, at vast expense, from the depths of the Indian Ocean. Mr. Hirst told the BBC that he had sunk "probably more" than 50 million pounds, or about 64.5 million, of his own money into the project. The visitor soon discovers maybe when seeing a coral encrusted bronze self portrait of the artist as a collector holding Mickey Mouse by the hand that the shipwreck is an elaborate shaggy dog story. "Treasures" is Mr. Hirst's latest body of work that aims to astound with the scale of its ambition and commercial success, like his 200 million "Beautiful Inside My Head Forever" auction at Sotheby's in 2008. That the latest gigantic selling exhibition has been timed to coincide with the 57th Venice Biennale underlines the city's transformation every two years into the world's biggest art fair, as well as a must see overview of the latest currents in contemporary art. Tailoring the exhibition to the trophy hunting mentality of wealthy collectors, most of the major sculptures in the show are available in three versions: Coral (as if just retrieved from the sea), Treasure (as if just restored) and Copy (like a museum reproduction), each made in an edition of three, with two extra reserved for the artist. No real coral is used in the exhibition. The bronzes were cast by the Pangolin Editions foundry in western England, and the marbles carved in the Carrara region of Italy. The largest bronzes are priced at more than 5 million; a 4 foot long white marble "Sphinx" in the Copy format is 1.5 million. Mr. Hirst's showmanship and chutzpah have turned this extravaganza of "post truth" art into one of the great love it or hate it exhibitions of recent years. "It's virtuosity and a big workshop," said Susanne Titz, director of the Abteiberg Museum in Monchengladbach, Germany. "He's supersmart, but it is cynical." Critical opinion of the show is divided, but has "Treasures" drawn enough buyers to become a commercial success? Francois Odermatt, a collector from Montreal, is one such customer. "It's a fantasy; the ideas are brilliantly audacious," said Mr. Odermatt, who, like others, bought works after being shown images on an iPad by Mr. Hirst's dealers. Mr. Odermatt said he paid about 2 million for a color patinated Coral version of "The Diver," a 16 foot high bronze sculpture inspired by a Francis Bacon painting, now on display at the Punta della Dogana. He said he had also tried to buy two other sculptures, but that the editions of those pieces had already been bought. Mr. Hirst's dealers, Gagosian and White Cube, have declined to comment on sales. Mr. Hirst's blockbuster show is just one of a number of events in Venice looking to gain the attention and perhaps open the wallets of the thousands of collectors, curators and museum directors who flock to the Biennale, which runs through Nov. 26. Near the Palazzo Grassi, in the church of San Samuele, the Calgary, Alberta, gallery Trepanier Baer and the curator Michael Short are presenting "Ask Your Body," new and recent sculptures by the Canadian artist Evan Penny. One of the many "unofficial" collateral shows in Venice, "Ask Your Body" features hyper realistic pigmented silicone imaginings of the human body in varying states of decline and distress. The life size sculpture "Marsyas," informed by a celebrated Titian painting, is priced at 275,000. "We're happy our neighbor is Damien," said Yves Trepanier, the gallery's founder, adding that the works of Mr. Penny and Mr. Hirst "play off each other in interesting ways." On Tuesday, the London dealer Victoria Miro staked a more permanent claim in Venice, opening a gallery there with a show of 22 works on paper by Chris Ofili, the artist who represented Britain at the 2003 Venice Biennale. Ms. Miro has taken over the former Capricorno Gallery in the San Marco district from her friend Bruna Aickelin, now in her 90s. In its heyday, the small space mounted exhibitions by major 20th century artists, including Lucio Fontana and Robert Rauschenberg. Is it counterintuitive for a major international gallery to open a branch in a city as underpopulated and overtouristed as Venice? "Artists love coming here," Ms. Miro said, "and they're queuing up to exhibit in this space. The art world is so global now." Venice's alternating art and architecture biennales don't just draw artists, she said. "People do come to the shows." Titled "Poolside Magic," the inaugural show at Victoria Miro Venice consists of vibrantly colored mixed media drawings that evoke the exotic atmosphere of Trinidad, where Mr. Ofili lives and works. Prices range from about 50,000 to 100,000. The market is more discreet at the Biennale itself, but collectors who learn the codes are aware that there is plenty for sale. "This says 'call me,' " Alain Servais, a collector in Brussels, said on Wednesday at the "Viva Arte Viva" exhibition in the Central Pavilion in the Giardini. Mr. Servais was pointing to a label with the telltale combination of "Courtesy of the artist" and the name of a sponsoring commercial gallery. "Pretty well everything is for sale here," Mr. Servais added. Unlike at a mainstream art fair, curation this year in the hands of Christine Macel rather than commerce is the prime consideration of the Venice Biennale. Ms. Macel invited 120 artists to contribute to her main group show at the Giardini and the Arsenale, but with a budget of 13 million euros (about 14.2 million), the Biennale relies on dealers to fund these presentations. The African American artist Senga Nengudi was among 40 selected for the Giardini component of "Viva Arte Viva." Best known for her pantyhose sculptures from the 1970s, Ms. Nengudi, 73, is showing a new installation and wall pieces combining industrial metal with her trademark pantyhose medium. These were priced "on request" at about 120,000 to 250,000. "This is intellectually and curatorially driven," said Thomas Erben, a New York gallerist who represents Ms. Nengudi in collaboration with the international dealership Levy Gorvy. "She was invited by the curator. The Biennale is a prestigious event that will give her global exposure. Sales help recover the costs." Mr. Erben said he was confident that the works would sell to museums. Martin Bethenod, director of the Venice museums hosting the Hirst show, said that there was something appropriate about "Treasures" being at the Punta della Dogana, a former customs house. Venice has always been a city of art and trade. In 2017, the two are more closely entwined than ever. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
Gloomy economic news and the wild swings of the stock market may be getting you down. But at least you can count on this: We've entered the sweet spot of the iPhone cycle. Since Sept. 19, when the iPhone 6 and its larger sibling, the iPhone 6 Plus, went on sale, consumers have been ordering the gadgets faster than Apple can deliver them. The ripple effects are being felt throughout the economy and they have been moving the stock market. "The iPhone is having a measurable impact," said Michael Feroli, the chief United States economist for JPMorgan Chase. "It's a little gadget, but it costs a lot and it seems that everybody has one. When you do the multiplication, it's going to matter." He estimates that iPhone sales are adding one quarter to one third of a percentage point to the annualized growth rate of the gross domestic product. You may not think of the iPhone as a financial powerhouse. After all, it's just a consumer good albeit a highly functional, high end one that you can carry in your pocket or your purse. Sales typically surge every two years when, as now, Apple does a major iPhone upgrade. You may have the warm and personal relationship with the iPhone that Timothy D. Cook, Apple's chief executive, described on Monday to Wall Street analysts during a conference call. Apple's next three months will be "incredibly strong," he said. And he spoke enthusiastically about the principal reason for this performance: "These iPhones are the best we have ever created and customers absolutely love them." Whether you love them or not, though, it's a good moment to recognize their significance as a financial force. The iPhone's financial impact starts, of course, with Apple, which is reaping enormous profit from it. As the company disclosed in data embedded in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing on Monday, it has been selling a broad mix of iPhone models at an average price of 603. That's not remotely close to the "starting price of 199" that Apple advertises, as I wrote last month. The full price is embedded in service agreements that many customers in the United States reach with phone carriers. And many of those carriers are stating that full price quite openly. The real starting price for a new, basic iPhone is 649, and models with more memory and bigger screens cost much more. This price structure is lucrative for Apple. "The cost of building a basic phone has stayed at about 200 for years," said Andrew Rassweiler, senior director for cost benchmarking services, at IHS Technology. Toni Sacconaghi, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein, says the gross profit margin for the iPhone is close to 50 percent. Because the iPhone is Apple's most popular product with more than 39 million sold in the last quarter it accounts for a disproportionately large percentage of Apple's overall profit, somewhere between 60 and 70 percent, Mr. Sacconaghi said. "Apple is now so big that it takes a lot to make it grow appreciably," Mr. Sacconaghi said. It's producing an impressive interrelated ecosystem of products and services, including its forthcoming digital watches, its new digital payment system, its revived Mac line, refreshed iPads and new software operating systems. Even if all of its ventures succeed, none are likely in the next year or two to rival the financial impact of the iPhone. "The iPhone is the core of Apple right now," he said. In a sense, it's the core of the stock market as well. Apple is the biggest company, by market capitalization, in the world. Apple accounts for about 3.5 percent of the weighting of the Standard Poor's 500 stock index. And, through Thursday, because its stock has performed magnificently while the overall market has not, Apple accounted for 18 percent of the entire rise of the S. P. 500 index this year, according to calculations by Paul Hickey, co founder of the Bespoke Investment Group. And the engine driving Apple shares is the iPhone. Covid's impact on the supply chain continues. The pandemic has disrupted nearly every aspect of the global supply chain and made all kinds of products harder to find. In turn, scarcity has caused the prices of many things to go higher as inflation remains stubbornly high. Almost anything manufactured is in short supply. That includes everything from toilet paper to new cars. The disruptions go back to the beginning of the pandemic, when factories in Asia and Europe were forced to shut down and shipping companies cut their schedules. First, demand for home goods spiked. Money that Americans once spent on experiences were redirected to things for their homes. The surge clogged the system for transporting goods to the factories that needed them and finished products piled up because of a shortage of shipping containers. Now, ports are struggling to keep up. In North America and Europe, where containers are arriving, the heavy influx of ships is overwhelming ports. With warehouses full, containers are piling up. The chaos in global shipping is likely to persist as a result of the massive traffic jam. No one really knows when the crisis will end. Shortages and delays are likely to affect this year's Christmas and holiday shopping season, but what happens after that is unclear. Jerome Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, said he expects supply chain problems to persist "likely well into next year." "The market is obviously counting on another strong sales performance for the new iPhone," he said. So far, it's getting that performance. And, he said, Apple's invigorating effect is likely to continue. Because the iPhone is made mainly overseas and sold worldwide, it is stimulating the economy in other regions, particular in East Asia, Mr. Feroli observed, and it keeps a substantial amount of its cash abroad. Such factors make it harder to assess the company's impact domestically. "It's not like G.M. having a great quarter," Mr. Feroli said. "It doesn't translate directly into employment in the United States. It's a more complex world today, and, in that sense, Apple is representative of that world." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Your Money |
Ratcheting up an investigation that has been criticized by news organizations and press freedom groups, the San Francisco Police Department said a freelance journalist who had obtained a leaked police report was a suspected "co conspirator" in the purported "theft" of the document. The allegation, contained in a statement issued by the Police Department late Tuesday, was the first instance of law enforcement authorities describing the journalist, Bryan Carmody, as a subject of their investigation, according to Mr. Carmody's lawyer, Tom Burke. Mr. Carmody has covered news events in the Bay Area crime scenes, fires, car crashes for nearly 30 years as a self employed journalist. In February, he obtained a police report from an unidentified person, or persons, related to the death of San Francisco's longtime public defender, Jeff Adachi. Mr. Carmody said the document was among the supporting materials he sold to three local news programs that aired reports based on his work the day after Mr. Adachi's death. Mr. Carmody's reporting indicated that Mr. Adachi, who was 59 when he died in February, collapsed at the apartment of a woman who was not his wife. (In addition to the police report, Mr. Carmody obtained photographs of the apartment showing alcohol bottles and marijuana gummies.) The Police Department said Tuesday that it viewed the manner in which Mr. Carmody obtained the report with suspicion. "As the investigation developed," it said in its statement, "Mr. Carmody was and continues to be viewed by investigators as a possible co conspirator in this theft, rather than a passive recipient of the stolen document." William Scott, San Francisco's police chief, told reporters that investigators believed that Mr. Carmody's contact with whoever had provided him with the police report "went past just doing your job as a journalist." The police obtained search warrants and raided Mr. Carmody's home this month, taking a sledgehammer to his door and seizing his equipment and archives, after he refused to divulge the identity of his source. At a hearing in San Francisco Superior Court on Tuesday, a judge set a schedule for the filing of briefs related to Mr. Carmody's motion to quash the search warrants, which would prevent the information the police obtained in the raid from being used against him or anyone else. The government's briefs are due by the end of the month. Mr. Carmody was allowed to retrieve his equipment and archives after the hearing. The police said the sharing of the report could have constituted several crimes, including "the unlawful dissemination of official information," "the willful obstruction of justice" and "receiving stolen property." The police have not taken a similarly aggressive stance toward Evan Sernoffsky, a crime reporter for The San Francisco Chronicle who relied on unnamed sources familiar with the same report for an article he wrote about Mr. Adachi's death. 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. Law enforcement authorities have not taken any apparent action against Mr. Sernoffsky, the newspaper that employs him or others in the same newsroom who have covered the story, according to Audrey Cooper, The Chronicle's editor in chief. The raid of Mr. Carmody's apartment took place in the wake of President Trump's frequent anti press remarks and the federal government's prosecutions of the whistle blowers Chelsea Manning and Reality Winner. The Police Department's statement on Tuesday sought to characterize Mr. Carmody as someone hoping to profit from ill gotten official materials in his possession, rather than as a journalist. "Investigators learned that Mr. Carmody was offering to sell the stolen report to various Bay Area news organizations," the statement said. "Mr. Carmody's LinkedIn profile shows that he is a 'Freelance Videographer/Communications Manager, USO Bay Area' and that he was not employed by any of the news organizations who received the stolen report." It is common for self employed journalists to sell their work to news outlets that do not employ them. Those engaged in the kind of quick hit journalism practiced by Mr. Carmody are commonly known as stringers. Investigators believe that whoever leaked the police records to Mr. Carmody is employed by the Police Department, the statement said. As a public defender, Mr. Adachi often challenged the department over allegations of abuse. The raid of Mr. Carmody's apartment prompted criticism of what free press advocates have characterized as a trampling of First Amendment rights and a California shield law that protects journalists. Several dozen news organizations, including The New York Times Company and Dow Jones Company, have filed a friend of the court letter in support of Mr. Carmody. Mayor London Breed, after initially supporting the police, shifted her position over the weekend. "The more we learn," she said of the raid, "the less appropriate it looks to me." George Gascon, the city's district attorney, has been less equivocal in his public criticism of the search. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
Malaga has long been a vacation spot for sun lovers in search of an affordable beach getaway. The metropolis of about 600,000 in southern Spain and the capital of the eponymous Andalusian province is part of the country's tourist heavy Costa del Sol and full of beachside resorts offering all inclusive packages at wallet friendly prices. Today, the growing number of cultural attractions here may be more of a reason to come than the soft golden sand beaches and sparkling Mediterranean. In the last decade, more than 20 museums have opened in the port city showcasing everything from paintings by art world heavy hitters to rare automobiles. Many are concentrated in the historical center, much of it entirely pedestrian and dating back to Phoenician times. Two of the most prominent institutions arrived in March 2015: the Centre Pompidou Malaga, the first branch of the Paris museum outside of France, and the Collection of the Russian Museum St. Petersburg/Malaga, also a first venture outside of Russia for the State Russian Museum. Part of an ambitious plan driven by the local government to transform Malaga into a global center for the arts, the City Council spent about seven million euros (about 7,760,000) to finance the Pompidou, and another two million euros for the Russian Museum. World class museums like these opening in Malaga are a revolution for the city, said Virginia Irurita, the founder of the Madrid based travel company Made for Spain and Portugal. "Malaga is where you went for a cheap beach holiday. People couldn't care less about the city itself, but it's become the place now where all the Spanish want to come and stay to see the museums," she said. Malaga's tide started to turn with the 2003 opening of the Museo Picasso Malaga in a 16th century palace in the historical center. Picasso was born in the city and lived there with his family for about a decade, and many of the museum's more than 200 works were donated by his daughter in law and grandson Christine and Bernard Ruiz Picasso. Although there are other Picasso museums including one in Paris, Malaga's is unique because of the artist's connection to the city, said Cristina Savage, who works in the museum's education department. "Since so much of what is on display in this museum comes from Picasso's family, and he is from here, there is something very personal about the art," she said. More museums over the next decade continued to follow Picasso's. The Automobile Museum of Malaga, for example, opened in 2010 in a former tobacco factory on the outskirts of the city. The sprawling building houses more than 90 rare vehicles from the 19th century to the present, such as a Mercedes 540K from 1937 that had its debut in a motor show in Paris in 1936; other brands on display include Bugatti, Aston Martin, Rolls Royce and Jaguar. The cars are owned by Joao Magalhaes, a businessman from Portugal whose father started the collection in the 1930s. Also in the historical center and in a 16th century building like the Museo Picasso's is the Museo Carmen Thyssen Malaga, which opened in 2011, and is home to more than 200 works of Spanish art. The Centre Pompidou Malaga, housed in a futuristic looking glass cube with red, yellow, blue and green squares on the city's marina, makes a dramatic mark on the skyline. The visual appeal continues inside with works from marquee artists such as Frida Kahlo, Francis Bacon, Marc Chagall and John Currin. Malaga's mayor, Francisco de la Torre, brought the endeavor to fruition by traveling to Paris and presenting a proposal from the city hall to Pompidou Center officials. "We already had the Picasso museum and came up with a strategy to build on that to make Malaga more cultural," he said in Spanish through a translator. The museum had about 220,000 visitors in its first year, a number that he anticipates only to increase, he said. The mayor's deal for Malaga's branch of the Russian Museum St. Petersburg keeps the museum open for 10 years with the option to extend for another decade. Situated in the same tobacco factory complex as the Automobile Museum, the light filled space, spanning two floors and about 43,000 square feet, is a showcase for 18th century to modern day works by prolific artists who are Russian or who have worked in Russia, such as the 19th century landscape painter Ivan Shishkin and the 20th century painter Vladimir Gavrilov. These museums undoubtedly have made Malaga culturally relevant. But the mayor said the transformation isn't over. "We have big plans for the city, and there's more coming to the work we've already done." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
Is it brave or foolish? A principal dancer at American Ballet Theater hangs up her pointe shoes to start her own dance company. And she is still in her prime. It has been four years since Michele Wiles left the comfort of Ballet Theater to form BalletNext, which returned to New York Live Arts on Tuesday with the first of two programs. In it, three works show the group's peculiar split personality: two dances set to live Baroque music, and a third featuring rock and pop samples. That one, "Don't Blink," is a collaboration with the Brooklyn born flex dancer Jay Donn. His brand of storytelling frequently conveyed with his eyes and mouth open in perpetual amazement adds little to ballet. And ballet adds just as little to this street dance form in which dancers, alternating between speed and slowness, reimagine gravity with contortions and slippery footwork. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
MILAN Let's get it out of the way from the start: Gucci was gone. Decamped to Paris (one time only) for a show on Monday; no longer the hype driven, baby dragon toting curtain raiser for Milan Fashion Week. Oh, woe is us? When the star act is out of town, it gives others a chance to step into the ring. Consider the Austrian born, Milan based designer Arthur Arbesser, who often takes his inspiration from art and artists. This season, he looked to ceramics and the Italian sculptor Fausto Melotti to create swirling, eye popping prints upon structured shapes in mismatching textures, and skirts and tunics emblazoned with Mr. Melotti's signature little horse sculptures, belting them with rope. There was also the designer's first foray into sequins, which gave dresses a liquid metallic glaze. The aim, Mr. Arbesser said, was to show beauty not only in a finished article, but also in the various imperfect and unfinished states of its creation. It was a lot to take in, but somehow it worked. Over at Jil Sander, meanwhile, a seemingly polar opposite approach to what makes essential women's wear pieces was on display, courtesy of Luke and Lucie Meier, now in their third season at the brand's creative helm. The show venue itself could have overloaded the senses: It was a derelict panettone factory, with lilacs and fig trees sprouting through cracked tiled floors and broken glass ceilings. But when it came to the clothes themselves, the show was a paean to the stark white minimalism for which Jil Sander is well known. Using ideas of uniform as a benchmark, there were boxy, collared sleeveless shifts layered over practical pants, or square silhouette shirts with oversized cuffs and inside out construction, teamed with knife pleated short skirts. The purist approach of the husband and wife duo highlighted the skilled and painstaking work that goes into luxury clothes which often appear to be simple, but in reality are anything but. Another take on effortless elegance and easy wearability (if you are lucky enough to be able to afford it) also could be found in the delicious suiting pieces offered by Brunello Cucinelli, in sun baked tones like spicy tobacco and burnt cherry, and layered with sumptuous macrame knits, silks and glittering metallic sliders. The affable billionaire, who offers guests the best antipasti in town while they admire his latest wares, made that money by knowing his customers well and giving them exactly what they want. This season the same couldn't be said, however, for another legend in Italian fashion: Alberta Ferretti. Every model of the moment walked in her show on Wednesday evening, from Kendall Jenner to Kaia Gerber, and the sisters Bella and Gigi Hadid, sporting candy colored chinos and stonewashed denim jackets, cropped T shirts and eyelet trimmed cotton rompers, looked as if they were auditioning for a remake of the 1990s cult TV show "Sweet Valley High." Fashion makes a big deal of never looking back. But reading the room, there was a clear sense of longing for Ms. Ferretti's romantic and womanly gowns of yesteryear, a niche in which she outshines almost all others. Not that there is always something wrong with a change in perspective or in presentation to embrace the new. Moncler continued to eschew a catwalk show format in favor of its Genius project, in which a group of designers reinterpret the outerwear brand into their own sub collections. For this season, titled "The Next Chapter," the collections were showcased in immersive, state of the art video displays, the better to bring the garments to life. So Simone Rocha had her feminine but edgy puffa dresses, finished with embroidered flowers, at work on girls cultivating a garden; Craig Green, inspired this season by kitesurfing, lashed his monastic style robes in primary hues onto moving wooden frames, blasting the viewer with waves of sculptural tension; and Noir Kei Ninomiya constructed and reconstructed his all black pieces in 3 D over and over again, to bold effect. To see the clothes in a totally different state gave them a different perspective. A chance to see things already seen, once over in a new light. Without the dominant shadow so often cast by Gucci on the first day of this third leg of the spring women's wear shows, the same might also be said this season of the opening day of Milan. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
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