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Tbilisi is home to a lively art scene, great local cuisine, a wealth of Georgian wine, luxurious bathhouses and more, all of which we outline in our local guide to the city. Before you go, pack these essentials to make the most of your trip. We've shared packing essentials for any 36 hour trip in previous lists, so we asked Debra Kamin, who wrote our guide to Tbilisi, to name a few items she was glad to have on her last visit or wished she had packed. Then we turned to Ria Misra, an editor at Wirecutter, for the best products to fill those needs as well as her expert suggestions. Here are their picks. "The city is endlessly photogenic," Ms. Kamin said. So Ms. Misra recommended a camera that is portable enough to slip into a bag (so you don't look like a tourist) that also takes beautiful photos. The Olympus OM D E M10 Mark II is easy to use and has plenty of great lens options. It's a mirrorless camera, which offers terrific image quality in a compact frame. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
Warren Kanders Says He Is Getting Out of the Tear Gas Business None Andrew White for The New York Times Warren Kanders, who stepped down as a vice chairman of the Whitney Museum of American Art last year after protests over his company's sale of tear gas, announced Tuesday that he was divesting his company of divisions that sell "crowd control solutions, including chemical agents, munitions and batons, to law enforcement and military agencies." The announcement came as Mr. Kanders and his company, Safariland, were once again drawing negative attention because tear gas manufactured by a division of the company has been used by law enforcement against people protesting the death of George Floyd. The group that had led the Whitney protests, Decolonize This Place, has been calling out the company's role on social media. One member of the group, Marz Saffore, said in an Instagram comment that Mr. Kanders and his company were "responsible for supplying tear gas to police in MN and all over the world." Among the complaints raised against Safariland during the Whitney protests was that its tear gas had been reportedly used against migrants at the United States Mexico border. Reacting to Mr. Kanders's announcement, Eyal Weizman, the founder of Forensic Architecture, a group that aims to collect evidence of potential human rights violations, said: "Tear gas is a chemical weapon. We need to move beyond Kanders and use the momentum of the current protests to ban tear gas outright and worldwide." Mr. Kanders's statement did not address the reasons for selling off the divisions of the company except to say that it allowed Safariland to focus on products like bulletproof vests that offer "passive defensive protection." Mr. Kanders declined to comment further. The statement did not express any concerns about the company's role in supplying such materials to police departments and contained a statement of continuing support for law enforcement. "As we look to the future, Safariland will continue to support public safety professionals in all lines of service as they risk their lives daily to keep the public safe," the statement said. Mr. Kanders and his wife, Allison Kanders, at a museum event in 2016. She was a co chairwoman of the museum's painting and sculpture committee but resigned when he did. Safariland, a Jacksonville, Fla. based manufacturer of law enforcement and military supplies including the bulletproof vests and tear gas, as well as bomb defusing robots and gun holsters has seen a drastic increase in demand from police departments because of the protests. Under the planned divestment, the Safariland Group has agreed to divest two business segments Defense Technology and Monadnock that made tear gas and other crowd control products. The two segments are responsible for 6 percent of the company's overall total revenue of roughly 500 million. The transaction, expected to be completed in the third quarter of this year, is subject to customary conditions, according to Safariland's announcement, such as ensuring it abides by regulations governing international trade and the transfer of operating licenses. Defense Technology's current management team will become the owners of the new, separated company. Additional terms were not disclosed, leaving uncertain the price of the deal, whether Mr. Kanders will receive continuing payments and whether he will continue to own stock. Mr. Kanders's presence on the Whitney board became a flash point last year that brought increasing attention to the question of where cultural institutions get their funding. The art website Hyperallergic published photos showing Safariland's name on metal canisters that were said to have been found where the American authorities used tear gas to disperse hundreds of migrants including children running toward a crossing from Tijuana to San Diego. Protesters argued that tear gas from Mr. Kanders's company had also been used against Palestinians in the Middle East and protesters in Egypt, Puerto Rico and Standing Rock, N.D. The Whitney's signature Biennial exhibition itself was part of the Kanders critique. Forensic Architecture, one of the exhibitors, presented a video work, "Triple Chaser," named for Safariland tear gas canisters that tracked the deployment and health effects of the product. Eight artists pulled out of the museum's biennial exhibition and vocal demonstrators filled the museum's lobby at one point marching to Mr. Kanders's Greenwich Village townhouse demanding his resignation. Mr. Kanders was angered by the way the protests were handled he had not been informed about the Forensic Architecture video until the day it was installed and his displeasure came through in his July 2019 resignation letter. "The politicized and oftentimes toxic environment in which we find ourselves," he wrote, "across all spheres of public discourse, including the art community, puts the work of this board in great jeopardy." Mr. Kanders, 62, joined the Whitney board in 2006, served on the executive committee for seven years, and donated more than 10 million to the museum. His wife, Allison, who was co chairwoman of the museum's painting and sculpture committee, resigned simultaneously with her husband. Last month, the lawyer Neal Sher, once the Justice Department's chief Nazi hunter, filed a complaint seeking to remove the Whitney's tax exempt status on the grounds that it mishandled the protests against Mr. Kanders and pressured him to leave. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
As luxury department stores prepare to reopen their doors, global retailers share their plans and fears for the future of shopping. When department stores reopen their doors, a familiar whoosh will still greet customers at the entrance: the sudden gust of air conditioning, the gleam of polished marble floors, the sensation of not really knowing where to start. But beyond the doors, new and unfamiliar sights await: hand sanitizer dispensers scattered on every surface, employees smizing through their face masks, signs displaying checklists of "what we're doing to keep you safe." When Saks Fifth Avenue reopened in Houston, the store stamped a trail of warnings on its white tile floors, in blocky black text, asking shoppers to "please maintain social distancing of at least six feet from others." This is department store shopping during a pandemic. After months of lockdown, the world of retail is reawakening. Stay at home orders are beginning to lift, even as coronavirus related deaths mount. And in those places, department stores when not preparing to file for bankruptcy have been among the first to come back, rolling out detailed safety plans. Saks Fifth Avenue began unlocking its doors in Texas last Friday and said it aims to open a few Ohio and Florida stores this week. Galeries Lafayette began to reopen its stores in France on Monday. Nordstrom said that by early this week, the company plans to have 32 stores open a combination of full line stores and Nordstrom Rack locations in South Carolina, Texas, Oklahoma and Tennessee. Selfridges and Harrods are also expected to reopen in the coming weeks, subject to British government directives. So far their plans are similar: Employees will wear face masks and submit to health screenings; some store layouts will be reconfigured to create more space and promote one way traffic flows; customer capacity will be limited; stores will be cleaned more often; hours will be reduced; hand sanitizer will be liberally available; in store events or any services requiring close contact (beauty tutorials, bra fittings) will be suspended or adapted. There are also a few differences: At Nordstrom all employees will wear gloves, for example; at Saks they will not. Yet even with these plans announced, or soon to be announced, none of the retailers know how they'll be received. "We have this idea of what it's going to look like when we open the doors," said Jamie Nordstrom, the company's president of stores. "We'll be wrong about half of it." Despite years of financial turmoil, the purpose of department stores has largely remained unchanged. They are still one stop shops for a sprawling catalog of goods; they are still home to Santa Claus photo ops and panic buying before the holidays; they still exist in the imagination as settings for movie makeovers and dressing room montages. Many people are hungry to have this kind of shopping experience again. But many are also feeling "psychologically vulnerable," said Michael R. Solomon, a consumer behavior consultant. "Obviously it's going to be a downer," he said. "Nobody wants to be out there wearing a mask, even if it's from Gucci." Consumers may turn to shopping, as they have in the past, to deal with the emotional stress of this moment. Yet how can they escape that stress when they're surrounded by reminders of it? "The most basic thing people will be looking for is health and well being: Am I going to be safe?" said Mary Portas, a retail consultant and broadcaster. "That said, the fact people want to come to that space means they are going to buy. They have made the effort. They have intention." For pandemic era retailers, the more obvious signs of cleaning, the better. One commercial cleaning company, Enviro Master, has even begun offering clients certificates to hang in their windows proving they received a "virus vaporizer" service. Visibility offers reassurance, and wary shoppers need reassurance. That starts at the entrance to their stores. "It's important that the measures implemented are visible and become rituals," said Andrew Keith, the president of Lane Crawford, the high end department store chain in Hong Kong and China (where its locations, bar one in a Beijing mall, remained open throughout the coronavirus outbreak). Mr. Keith said that his store's employees, like most others, must wear masks and have their temperatures checked when they arrive. So must Lane Crawford customers (who also declare their travel histories). Such policies are unlikely to catch on in other regions, Ms. Portas said. "I can't see somewhere like Britain having temperature checks on every entry and exit point for customers," she said. "It doesn't feel like a cultural fit. What feels reassuring in Asia might feel off putting here, when buying a new piece of fashion. It is still about selling a dream, after all, even if this is the new retail reality." This is the challenge of reopening an upscale department store right now: fitting the dream of luxury shopping "the treasure hunt," as Mr. Solomon put it into the anxious reality of an ongoing pandemic. "In stores like this, you want to appeal to the senses, and not just visually," he said. "You want to use textures and touch and wearing gloves and so on doesn't help that. So you design around that." MJ Munsell, a retail designer and the chief creative officer at MG2, an architecture firm in Seattle, offered a number of ways retailers can manufacture warm environments upon entry. They could have associates show personality with customized protective gear; build elaborate and delightful displays of merchandise; diffuse memory evoking fragrances throughout the store; or play high quality music to boost energy, particularly when there are fewer shoppers around. Companies shouldn't take these steps only at their outsize flagships in New York or Los Angeles, Ms. Munsell added, but at their comparatively overlooked suburban locations, too. "The retailer who is going to succeed is going to understand the value of that suburban experience," Ms. Munsell said. Nordstrom said its strategy for its 116 locations (soon to be 100, with many in suburbia) is to "overcommunicate." Before reopening, the company wants to prepare shoppers for what to expect by posting photos and videos of the changes on social media. It wants to hold customers' hands in a gloved, socially distant kind of way from the moment they walk in (and are handed a disposable mask) to the moment they check out (behind a plexiglass partition). Who Gets to Be a V.I.P.? The beating heart of a department store is the beauty counter typically on the first floor, near a busy entrance, staffed with eager and eagle eyed representatives from each brand. Makeovers and smoky eye tutorials happen here. Perfumes are spritzed and moisturizers are sampled there. A lot of money is spent. But without skin to skin contact, the experience of testing and purchasing products will change dramatically. "Brands are going to have to be very inventive," Ms. Munsell said. "We still need someone to help us through the vast assortment of choices." Virtual try ons technology already used by Sephora and Ulta, among others could become standard. Employees will need to find new ways of demonstrating how to use products; they may still be able to put eye makeup on a customer (though that could violate social distancing), but lipstick and bronzer can't be applied behind a face mask. And not everyone will want a high touch, high technology experience. As with makeup, the experience of trying on clothes in a fitting room those small, and confined, shared spaces will also change. "Are customers going to feel safe going into a dressing room?" Ms. Munsell said. "Do we need to consider spacing them out or making them larger? Having them be by appointment so they can be sanitized by a sales associate in advance?" At Saks and Nordstrom, clothing brought into fitting rooms will be quarantined for a period of time (48 hours at Saks, 72 at Nordstrom) before being returned to the sales floor. The same goes for returns and Nordstrom expects its first few days back in business to be dominated by returns of merchandise bought online during lockdown. At Saks, foot coverings used when trying on shoes will also be thrown out after one use. Nordstrom will rely on visibility, spacing out dressing rooms and posting forms indicating the last time they were cleaned which will be after every customer, the company said. But the expectation is that those shoppers who do return in the coming months will be far more likely to buy. Simply put, retailers need to be selling more goods to fewer shoppers. And that means rolling out the red carpet. "Last Monday, we had an extraordinary transaction in Beijing," said Mr. Keith of Lane Crawford. "A customer contacted her stylist and said she was making one of her first journeys outside her home since January, and she wanted to come to the store but only had an hour. She bought 80 pieces of ready to wear and accessories, a total transaction of 1.4 million renminbi" around 200,000 at current conversion rates "in that hour." A tiny handful of shoppers can afford such a spending spree, but customers should expect a higher degree of service and attention, regardless of how much they can spend. Marc Metrick, the president of Saks, said that while store hours will be reduced, the company will offer by appointment shopping before opening and after closing, "giving people the opportunity for one on one service when the store is limited to just a few customers." Virtual appointments to shop via video conferencing are also in the pipeline. Lane Crawford has introduced an app that lets associates send personalized looks to customers. Associates will play a more important role than ever before in making shoppers feel comfortable in what may initially feel like clinical or alien surroundings. "Retailers often talk about how it starts with a smile," Mr. Nordstrom said. "That gets harder when you're wearing a mask." Before the pandemic, retailers were increasingly entering the hospitality business. But for now, department store dining options from coffee shops to cocktail bars in cities like London and New York are shuttered. When they do reopen, most will adhere to the local directives in place for the hospitality industry, from double spacing between tables and online rather than physical menus. "It's certainly going to look different for some period of time," Mr. Nordstrom said. In Britain at least, food service has started to resume in some department stores. The food hall at Selfridges reopened on May 1, albeit with a limited number of shoppers allowed inside, a one way traffic policy, hand sanitizer pumps everywhere and sneeze guards for staff, who also have their temperatures checked once a day. Eventually, it's assumed, food and beverage service will return to normal. Strict social distancing measures will be relaxed like Saks's decision to close off elevators to customers unless they are elderly, pregnant or disabled. (Escalators are still in service, though steps will be marked to keep shoppers six feet apart.) But the last stop customers usually make at a department store the cash register may permanently change. At Lane Crawford, centralized cash registers have been replaced by remote points of sale to limit lines, while associates roam floors with tablets or phones (wearing gloves to handle all cash and credit card transactions). Western department stores are likely to follow suit, with many looking at how to install contactless checkout and create more space at stores for curbside pickup and returns and "click and collect" stations, where customers can claim items they already bought online. According to Ms. Portas, these services will become increasingly important as customers adjust to shopping in the Covid 19 era. Many shoppers will be too nervous or unable to browse or linger in line, she said. Ms. Munsell added that she expected to see more stores using Apple Pay, or their own apps, for payment transactions. Department stores were already becoming more technologically savvy, bridging their e commerce and brick and mortar businesses. Covid 19 has meant that these efforts have been accelerated by a few years. But this acceleration will require money and time, which were in short supply even before the lockdown began devastating retailers. Still, Mr. Nordstrom appeared sanguine in the days leading up to his stores' reopening announcement, as if accustomed to his industry's constant and ruthless change. "A lot of old department stores that have gone away over the last 20 to 30 years they stopped changing, they stopped evolving," he said. "The minute you stop evolving, the customer is going to move on. Who knows what curveball gets thrown at us a week from now?" | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
News of Mr. Gates's book was reported earlier by Business Insider. Other books from former Trump aides and associates are in the pipeline, including a memoir from Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump's former lawyer, who is serving a three year prison sentence for campaign finance violations and other crimes that were part of an effort to pay for the silence of two women who said they had affairs with Mr. Trump. Mr. Cohen's book is tentatively titled "Disloyal: The True Story of Michael Cohen, Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump." Last month, Mr. Cohen, who was on furlough because of the coronavirus, said that a decision to return him to prison was an attempt by the administration to punish him for writing the book, and a judge agreed, ordering him released back to home confinement. Mr. Gates, who has never spoken publicly about his experience on the Trump campaign apart from his testimony, is likely to face fewer obstacles to sharing his account. He never served in the administration so does not face a government review to ensure he isn't sharing classified information. In his book, "Wicked Game," Mr. Gates adds context to the publicized, politicized public account provided in the Mueller investigation, including information that was left out of the report, he said in an interview on Friday. Readers hoping for another explosive tell all about the president may be disappointed. Mr. Gates said he isn't trying to settle scores and that his book takes "a middle of the road approach," a position that could hamper the book's commercial prospects in a polarized media environment. At one point, Mr. Gates had a deal with a big publishing house, but it fell through because he declined to make changes that the publisher requested, including removing passages that were critical of the Mueller investigation, he said. Instead, "Wicked Game" is being released by a smaller, independent press that specializes in conservative political books, as well as business, self help, health, military and Christian titles. Mr. Gates co wrote it with Mark Dagostino, who has worked on books with Chip and Joanna Gaines and Hulk Hogan. He added that his book will shed new light on the inner workings of the Mueller investigation, which he is highly critical of, as the book's subtitle, "An Insider's Story on How Trump Won, Mueller Failed, and America Lost" suggests. He describes the hard nosed tactics prosecutors used and notes that Robert S. Mueller III never interviewed him. Mr. Gates said he isn't aiming to walk back his guilty plea. "I accepted the charges, and I knew the consequences that were associated with them," Mr. Gates said. "At the end of the day, they did find me as the most credible fact witness." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
Leonard Kamsler used stop motion strobe photography to break down the complete arc of a golfer's swing. He documented the swings of more than 400 pro golfers. Leonard Kamsler, a photojournalist whose award winning pictures of professional golf for nearly 50 years pushed the envelope of sports strobe photography as he amassed a trove of more than 200,000 images on the PGA Tour, died on Nov. 18 in Bethel, N.Y. He was 85. His husband and only immediate survivor, Stephen Lyles, said the cause was organ failure. Mr. Kamsler had homes in Bethel and Manhattan. Jim Richerson, president of the PGA of America, called Mr. Kamsler "the undisputed dean of golf photography." Last month, Mr. Kamsler became the first recipient of the organization's Lifetime Achievement Award in Photojournalism. Practically half of that lifetime was spent on the golf course, though lugging a camera instead of clubs. Beginning in 1963, he covered 40 consecutive Masters tournaments, 17 P.G.A. championships and 22 U.S. Opens, freezing moments of action in indelible images. "His ability to take the perfect picture at the perfect time was unsurpassed by anyone in the business," the champion golfer Tom Watson said in a videotaped tribute when Mr. Kamsler received the lifetime achievement award. Mr. Kamsler's technical innovations in high speed strobe photography broke down the complete arc of a golf swing from beginning to end in stop motion exposures from address to backswing to contact to follow through each position of the hands, arms, feet, legs, torso, head and club contained in a single sequential image suggestive of a pinwheel. George Peper, his editor at Golf Magazine for 25 of Mr. Kamsler's 60 years associated with the publication, said it was Mr. Kamsler who "created the swing sequence in golf without question." Mr. Kamsler, he said, "learned at Edgerton's knee," referring to Harold Edgerton, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who pioneered stroboscopic technology. Mr. Kamsler began consulting with Mr. Edgerton in 1957. Mr. Kamsler's primary instrument was a hulking Hulcher high speed 35 millimeter camera, originally designed to shoot at some 70 frames per second. He was able to push the limit to 100, and then 200, frames per second meaning that in less than three seconds of lightning fast exposures he could dissect an entire golf swing. Mr. Kamsler's first sequential stop motion study, of Arnold Palmer's technique and clubhead dynamics, "created a sensation," Mr. Peper said, adding that as a teaching tool "it was posted on every golf instructor's wall in America." Mr. Kamsler documented more than 400 golf swing sequences of other champion golfers, including Sam Snead, Jack Nicklaus, Kathy Whitworth and Tiger Woods. During a tournament he could be innovative in capturing the action. One risky technique was to flatten himself on the ground with his camera and have the best golfers in the world hit past his head. During one practice tee setup, he positioned Mr. Nicklaus so close to him that the golfer's explosive shot just missed destroying Mr. Kamsler's lens. According to the P.G.A., Mr. Kamsler was the first photographer to set up remote control cameras behind the notoriously challenging holes 12 and 15 at Augusta National Golf Club, where the Masters is played. Some golfers abhorred being photographed up close during competition, so Mr. Kamsler would resort to subterfuge. He once hid himself in a garbage bag to snap the camera shy Australian Bruce Crampton. Starting in the 1970s, Mr. Kamsler widened his field to profile performers in Nashville, including Johnny Cash, Dolly Parton, Waylon Jennings, Tammy Wynette and Loretta Lynn. Many of his pictures became the covers of record albums. His collection of music images was recently purchased by the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville, where many are on view. More than 20 of his photos were shown in "Country Music," the 2019 documentary series by Ken Burns for PBS. Mr. Kamsler's strobe lighting work also reached beyond golf. He devised one complex strobe system to capture the first attempt at a quintuple somersault by the Flying Cranes aerial troupe of the Moscow Circus. The picture ran in The New York Times Magazine on Dec. 30, 1990, with a cover article about the troupe. A circus aficionado, he also photographed performances of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum Bailey Circus, the animal trainer Gunther Gebel Williams and the magicians Siegfried Roy's stage act using tigers. Mr. Kamsler sold his library of more than 200,000 images to Popperfoto, a partnership with Getty Images, in 2018. For all his involvement with golf, the game itself never beckoned to more than his shutter finger. After a lifetime of tournament trudging, Mr. Kamsler was proud to say, "I never played a single game of golf." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
Re "Officials Agonize Over Allotment of First Vaccines" (front page, Dec. 6): The fact is that it will be many months before there is enough vaccine for everyone. Therefore, whatever choices our C.D.C. officials, governors and local officials make, some people will receive the vaccine sooner than others. So let's not turn this into yet another "I'm right and you're wrong" polarizing, politically loaded debate. Before making a pitch that their group should get priority, advocates should start by acknowledging, as we all should, that there is no perfectly equitable outcome. And we all should try to remember that we're all in this together. I am 71 years old and have no underlying health conditions. As much as I would love to eat in restaurants and socialize indoors again, I do not think I should receive the Covid 19 vaccine ahead of essential workers who interact with the public. It would be no great hardship for me to continue with my Covid cautious lifestyle for a few more months so that these workers, many of whom are low paid people of color, can get the protection they need. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. "So this is the New Woman all the papers are raving about?" So asks the chic, drunken husband of and about his chic, ravenously ambitious wife in "Lempicka," the exciting new musical having its world premiere at the Williamstown Theater Festival here. She's an imposing figure, all right, this platinum blond powerhouse, with her outsize jewelry, outsize confidence and especially outsize singing voice. Conscientious theatergoers, however, may find themselves thinking they've seen someone a lot like this New Woman before. Who else gave her exotic, three syllable name to the title of a poperetta set amid the historical tumult of revolution and political persecution? Full points if you answered "Evita." That's the late 1970s blockbuster about Eva Peron, the charismatic first lady of Argentina, and the show that made a marquee diva out of its steamroller Broadway star, Patti LuPone. Musical theater fans who've been wondering why they don't write dominating parts like that for women anymore have reason to cheer. And there's more good news about this production, written by Carson Kreitzer (the straightforward book and lyrics) and Matt Gould (the often stirring, richly polyphonicmusic), and directed by the miracle worker Rachel Chavkin. The title role inspired by the Polish born Art Deco portraitist Tamara de Lempicka (1898 1980) is filled to the bursting point by Eden Espinosa (best known for belting through "Brooklyn" 14 years ago), who has finally found a part to match her high voltage talent. Dressed to dazzle in luxurious period costumes by Montana Levi Blanco, her Lempicka is indeed a legitimate successor to Ms. LuPone's Peron. One major difference, though: There are a few chinks in the glittering armor of this international glamour girl. Like Evita, Tamara could be accused of sleeping and marrying her way into fame and fortune. But as she wends through a giddy but uneasy Paris between the two world wars, our Tamara has the dramatic benefit of a bad conscience. And instead of being the leading expediter of a fascism flavored regime, Tamara is the potential victim of such governments. Her father was Jewish, for one thing, and, oh yes, she would appear to prefer the company of women as bedmates. "Lempicka" might be called a woke throwback. It's an old fashioned musical, at least if you think of "Evita" and "Les Miserables," the blockbusters that ruled Broadway three decades ago, as old fashioned. These were period shows of epic sweep, with propulsive electronic scores that force marched you across decades of political struggle and strife. But "Great Comet" had an intellectual wryness and an immersive, do it yourself presentation that made it both funky and thoroughly modern. "Lempicka" is as earnest a work of storytelling as "Les Miserables." And it aspires to bigness in many of the same ways. The surprise is how close "Lempicka" comes to realizing those goals especially with limited rehearsal time in a sylvan summer theater. Ms. Chavkin and her ace design team espouse a style of rich minimalism, as we follow Tamara from Revolutionary Russia (where she is the bride of the aristocrat Tadeusz Lempicki, nicely embodied as a charming weakling by Andrew Samonsky), to very gay Paree (where she finds herself as a painter), to sun soaked California (where she broods in later life exile). These changes of location are signaled by the presence of a lower chunk of the Eiffel Tower in Riccardo Hernandez's blank canvas of a set, which also features assorted, highly mobile platform scenery to conjure a world in flux. And the perhaps overtaxed ensemble members dress up as revolting Russians or, later, menacing proto Nazis, while also doing duty as radio broadcasters who speak in urgent headlines. (Steven Rattazzi, as a macho Italian painter, and Natalie Joy Johnson, as a cafe owner, are standouts in the supporting cast.) Raja Feather Kelly's highly imaginative and efficient choreography, based in simple and clear cut gestures, keeps the cast in synchronized swirl. And Bradley King's rich, saturating lighting sets the tone for Tamara's artistic and erotic epiphanies. Tamara finds her raison d'etre as a painter when she falls for her model Rafaela (a slinky voiced Carmen Cusack, in feral kitten mode), a bohemian prostitute and a composite of several figures from the real Lempicka's portraits. That is to give life on canvas to the aforementioned New Woman, who has a modern streamlined momentum all her own, going where she chooses and ruling her own destiny. O.K., I don't buy this cause and effect entirely either. And there are a few clunker moments common to shows about artistic creation. ("Sunday in the Park With George" it ain't.) Fortunately, in addition to pulling off those rousing "Les Mis" style numbers of history on the move, Mr. Gould writes duets in which voices layer against each other like lovers between the sheets. The scene in which Tamara first paints Rafaela has an incandescent song, "Stillness," about the symbiotically sensual needs of a painter and her muse. It will all end in tears, of course, and not just because Hitler is making ominous noises over in Germany. (There's a violent scene in which a lesbian bar is destroyed by thugs.) Tamara is torn between her liberating passion for Rafaela and the domestic security provided by Tadeusz and their daughter (Alexandra Templer, who doesn't quite convince in growing from infancy to adulthood). "Lempicka" draws implicit parallels between the divided world of today and an earlier era of increasing, frightening intolerance. Mostly, it doesn't overdo them, though the show still needs tightening and polishing. But if it leans toward didactic overstatement and soap opera pulpiness, "Tamara" also delivers a surprising, intricately shaded portrait of an artist as a conflicted woman. The title character of "Evita" was an animated tabloid cover. Tamara, someone else who knows what she wants and how to get there, has the benefit of enough ambivalence to give her pause but not to paralyze. Chutzpah wins out for this conquering heroine, but we also feel the lingering sting of her doubt in a world where dominating women were always suspect. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
A fairy tale, in its essence, is a story of reversal. Silent and impoverished girls discover not only voices, but jewels and riches pouring from their mouths; the castoff and abandoned find unexpected families and birthrights; mad kings and wicked stepmothers lose status, kingdoms and even lives. A fairy tale has no toleration for ambiguities. It is abrupt, immediate and often brutal more tip of the blade than bonny glen. The dangers are real and they are everywhere. Tread carefully, these stories remind us. Keep your eyes open. Be kind and generous and fair. And for God's sake, don't succumb to greed, because that never ends well. For readers steeped in the wonder and precision of fairy tales, unable to resist diving into yet another retelling (and I place myself in this category), three new books take the fabric of some old stories, and, with a keen eye and a very sharp needle, reshape each one into something new. Rebecca Solnit's CINDERELLA LIBERATOR (Haymarket, 48 pp., 17.99; ages 6 and up) applies subtle shifts and gentle questions to recast this familiar story into a tale that is fundamentally about freedom. In Solnit's version, Cinderella begins as the original: She is lonely and overworked and unloved, deprived of comforts and even her own name. She longs for friendship and connection and, delightfully, to one day run her own cake shop. When the fairy godmother arrives and asks for mice (to become horses) and a rat (to become the coachwoman) and a group of lizards (to be transformed into footwomen), the story begins to alter from the original. "Do lizards want to become footwomen?" Cinderella wonders out loud, setting the stage for larger questions about consent, choice, self determination and liberty. While the narration very occasionally gets more heavy handed than it ought to, largely the tone remains clear, deft and purposeful, as the form requires. The decision to use Arthur Rackham's original cut paper silhouette illustrations was a brilliant choice. And for the true book nerd, Solnit's backmatter explores the deeper meaning of the Cinderella story, and the light it sheds on the plight of the downtrodden and subjugated even today. Solnit shares the stories of women in her own family who persisted through destitution and despair they were Cinderella stories sans happy endings. "Their tragedies," Solnit concludes, "were a century ago and more, but this book is also with love and hope for every child who's overworked and undervalued, every kid who feels alone with hope that they get to write their own story, and make it come out with love and liberation." This is, hands down, a wonderful book one that even the jaded reader will clasp upon completion with a contented sigh. Ben Nadler retells one of my favorite fairy tales in THE WHITE SNAKE (Toon Books, 64 pp., 16.99; ages 8 to 12), turning it into a fast paced and irreverent graphic novel. The result is funny, engaging and an absolute delight. In Nadler's version, the status obsessed King Arnold sends his servant Randall to spy on his neighbor, King Boris, to discover the secrets of that ruler's fabled wisdom. This gambit occurs over the strenuous objections of Princess Tilda, both friend to Randall and exasperated conscience to her father, King Arnold. It is clear from the outset that Princess Tilda is far more suited for kingship than her father, but listening is not one of King Arnold's strong points. Randall makes the journey to the next kingdom, and King Boris hires him straight away. As in the original tale, Randall discovers that King Boris eats a magical white snake each night, for secret reasons. Consumed with curiosity, Randall takes a bite, and discovers that he now, like the king, has been given the gift of speaking with animals. This is where Nadler's telling begins to diverge from the original. On Randall's long journey home, the animals he meets are more than just helpers or props. Rather, in his interactions with a beached fish, an imperiled ant colony and a nest of orphaned ravens, Randall sees himself as equal to his animal brethren recognizing that he owes kindness and generosity to each of them, just as he would for his fellow humans. It is not from the ability to speak to animals that wisdom derives, Randall now understands, but rather from the act of listening. King Arnold (who has been growing madder and more irrational by the day) is sorely lacking in that regard, Randall realizes, and can't be trusted with the secret of the white snake. In the end, it is Princess Tilda's agency and ingenuity that spurs the story forward. Kindness and fairness are rewarded, wisdom is a gift generously given, and the burden of the crown lands at last on the cool head of the wise girl who knows how to use it. Marriage, in this "White Snake," is no longer the prize of a hero's journey, but rather the partnership of equals. Perhaps not the most revolutionary of story lines, but in the context of this zippy, irreverent and comic retelling of the classic tale, it is profoundly satisfying all the same. The book ends with an unexpected treat: a section delving into the history of the fairy tale as well as the philosophy underpinning this retelling. Jessie Burton's THE RESTLESS GIRLS (Bloomsbury, 160 pp., 19.99; ages 8 to 12), illustrated by Angela Barrett, takes another favorite story of mine, "The Twelve Dancing Princesses," and weaves a story of female empowerment, agency and sisterhood. In the start of this tale, the 12 daughters of the king and queen of Kalia live an idyllic life. Each girl possesses the support and encouragement to explore her divergent interests and pursuits (including painting, botany, aviation, mathematics, music, veterinary science). When their mother dies following a tragic crash in her beloved racecar, the king goes mad with grief. He blocks the sunlight from the windows, and music from the halls, and, horribly, locks the girls in a windowless room where they must spend all of their days. For their safety, he insists. But this is a fairy tale, after all, and we are ready for the reversal. A painting hides a secret door, which leads to a castle built in a tree, complete with a peacock in a waistcoat and an animal jazz band and a lioness acting as both gracious hostess and enigmatic wizard. The discovery of this secret world makes their lives in the grief shrouded castle bearable, but the eldest, Frida, knows that it can't last forever. The ways in which Burton diverges from the source text are both satisfying and unexpected and I won't tell you what they are, for that would be a terrible spoiler. What I will say is this: "The Restless Girls" is one of the prettiest books I've seen in a long time. Barrett's artwork is exquisite, and provides another layer to the story that is not explicitly explored in the text (the girls and their mother are all depicted as black and biracial, and as suffering under the increasing irrationality and restrictions of the white, mad king; the royal advisers and visiting princes represent a wide range of racial backgrounds). Despite this beauty, the narration, while maintaining a controlled, nimble and energetic tone in the beginning and again in the end, alas, becomes overwrought and diffuse in the middle. This is a danger for fairy tale retellings, generally, and why so many of them fail. The form requires taut, precise storytelling; spongy over explanations do not suit it. It is disappointing that Burton succumbs to this, given the sly prose she offers at the story's outset. Still, in spite of this miscalculation I enjoyed the book, and I hope Burton, who is an actress and the author of novels for adults including "The Muse," will be offering even more for children in the future. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
As the social neurologist John Cacioppo and his team at the University of Chicago discovered, the feeling of loneliness the subjective experience itself, not the bare fact of being alone brings about hypervigilance to social threat. This state, which is entered into unknowingly, makes the lonely person far more alert to signs of rejection or exclusion than those of warmth or friendliness. It's a vicious circle, in that each misreading of social nuance becomes evidence for further withdrawal, causing loneliness to become steadily more entrenched. Because hypervigilance is entered into invisibly, it has to be consciously recognized and corrected. In the current circumstances, most social encounters are likely to happen on the internet or by phone. Perhaps a tweet isn't liked, or a message is read but not replied to, the blue tick inflaming the sense of going unregarded. Rather than jumping to alarmed conclusions about being left out or disliked, it's vital to remember that a bias is occurring, and to keep maintaining and participating in social contact. Part of the reason the current crisis is so frightening is that it sets off a fear not just of being in quarantine but also of being abandoned altogether, the nightmare of the social animal. This is what lies behind all those empty cities in science fiction films: the terror of being the last one left, patrolling deserted grocery aisles, like a desolate, despairing Will Smith in "I Am Legend," the resources running out, no one left to love. This feeling is profoundly isolating to experience and yet it's also a point of connection with billions of strangers. One of the hardest things to grasp about loneliness is that it's a shared state, inhabited by a multitude at any time. Whatever anxiety you're experiencing right now, you're not alone. Everyone is frightened of being left behind. The need for connection is so central to our being that to experience its lack plunges the body into a state of minor emergency, driving up cortisol and adrenaline and contributing to a feeling of what for most people will already be peak anxiety. There are antidotes, from simple breathing exercises to deliberately noticing small pleasures in the physical environment: a budding leaf, a cloud, the taste of toast. The natural world continues, and paying attention to it is a way of grounding terror remembering that whatever else may happen, spring is on the way. But loneliness isn't just a negative state, to be vanquished or suppressed. There's a magical aspect to it too, an intensifying of perception that led Virginia Woolf to write in her diary of 1929: "If I could catch the feeling, I would: the feeling of the singing of the real world, as one is driven by loneliness and silence from the habitable world." Woolf was no stranger to quarantine. Confined to a sickbed for long periods, she saw something thrilling in loneliness, a state of lack and longing that can be intensely creative. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
Perry Fewell improved those around him in many of the stops he has made during his 35 year coaching career. Repeating the feat in his new job may be far more difficult. On Thursday, the N.F.L. announced that Fewell had become its senior vice president of officiating administration, a newly created position that will involve overseeing an often criticized department with increasingly complex duties. Disputes over the quality of the N.F.L.'s officiating have grown louder in recent years. Officials have tried to keep up with the increasing speed of the game and the athleticism of its players, yet every weekend, video replays, myriad camera angles and former referees turned analysts amplify pressure on officials to get every call right, a virtually unattainable goal. "When we fail in officiating, we fail the game of football, we fail the fans, the clubs, the coaches and the players," Troy Vincent, the N.F.L.'s executive vice president of football operations, said in an interview. "The stripes," he said, referring to the officials, "should never be in the middle of the game." The complaints and confusion reached a crescendo last year, when the N.F.L. for the first time allowed coaches to challenge calls involving pass interference, which are among the most subjective in the game. The change came in response to a blown call late in the 2019 N.F.C. championship game, during which officials failed to penalize Los Angeles Rams cornerback Nickell Robey Coleman for what appeared to be pass interference against a New Orleans Saints receiver. The results of the new review process were underwhelming, with only a fraction of the challenges leading to overturned calls. No team proposed extending the pass interference reviews to this coming season. "That dies a natural death," Rich McKay, the chairman of the competition committee, said in a SiriusXM interview this month. "We were trying to apply something that we've been wary about," he added, "putting a totally subjective play into replay." The notoriety of the blown playoff call and the league's clumsy attempt to address it illustrate the challenges of officiating the high speed and often nuanced game of pro football, which will be under more scrutiny than ever as legalized sports gambling grows. Vincent said the swirl of problems made him realize that the job of running the officiating department was "too large for one person," so he split it into four parts. He hired Fewell, known as a disciplined leader, to run the department day to day and to speak with the news media, the owners, the coaches and the league's broadcast partners. Riveron will now focus solely on the league's replay review process. Walt Anderson, a longtime N.F.L. referee, was hired to recruit and train game day officials. Michelle McKenna, the league's chief information officer, will continue to oversee game day technology. 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. Vincent said that Fewell's coaching experience should help shape decisions in a department that had been run largely by referees. Fewell's hiring was formally announced to the 32 franchise owners as they met in a video conference and approved several rules changes, including strengthening penalties for hitting a defenseless punt returner and expanding the type of plays that are automatically reviewed to include scoring plays and turnovers negated by a foul. None of the proposals, if approved, will change the game dramatically, a departure from recent years when a dizzying number of tweaks were made to keep up with larger and faster players and with the increasing emphasis on the passing game. That evolution forced the league to clarify even fundamental parts of the game, like the definition of a catch. Other changes were designed to offset obvious errors, like the blown call in the Rams Saints playoff game. At times, they have led to more confusion, longer games and a growing belief that the game is excessively officiated. Fewell, 57, will be jumping into a very different high profile position. For the first time in decades, he will wear a suit to an office, not roam the sidelines in sneakers and a cap. "I've spent a long time on the sidelines," Fewell said in a recent interview. "I know the transition isn't an easy one." Vincent was coached by Fewell in Buffalo at the end of his career, and came to know him as a successful leader. The year before Fewell arrived as the Bills defensive coordinator, the team had the 24th best defense in the N.F.L. With Fewell at the helm, the defense ranked 10th the next season. When Fewell took the same position with the Giants in 2010, the defense was coming off a season when it ranked as one of the worst in the league. The Giants rose to 17th in their first season under Fewell, and the year after that they became Super Bowl champions. Fewell is not the first coach to work in the league's officiating department. Over the years, former coaches such as Joe Philbin, Jim Schwartz and Mike Singletary have worked there temporarily. Fewell, who will have a bigger role, said he hoped to improve the game by finding ways to reduce the frequency of the replay review. "I think it has a function in a game," he said, but "I still think the officiating should be done on the field." Fewell emphasized that botched calls are relatively rare. There are roughly 40,000 plays in a typical 256 game regular season. In 2019, only 417 plays, or about 1 percent, required a timeout for referees to review a play. Of those, 196 reviews resulted in a reversal of the call on the field. Of the 417 reviews, 101, or just under one quarter, involved pass interference plays. Just 24 of those reviews resulted in a call's reversal. Even so, the number of reviewed calls that are overturned has been rising, to 47 percent last year, the second highest since the current review system began in 1999. Reviews receive extra attention because they tend to happen at critical junctures of a game and because commentators on TV shows and fans on social media pore over every call. Those who know Fewell say his energy and preparation skills will serve him well. "He is fair, he's honest, he's open and he's approachable," said Tom Coughlin, the longtime coach and executive who gave Fewell his first N.F.L. job, as a defensive backs coach in Jacksonville, and hired him again with the Giants. "Perry was always a team guy, always upbeat. There's no ego, no question about it." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
At the end of the exhausting April June ballet season, my plan for this week is to indulge myself and watch all eight performances of Frederick Ashton's "Cinderella" (1948) at American Ballet Theater. (It's otherwise a quiet week.) Some balletomanes return to the same ballet so that they can compare one dancer with another; and this revival (Monday Saturday) brings four casts of the lead couple. For me, however, the dancers of "Cinderella" are secondary; this is a ballet to which I return just to get deeper into its steps, rhythms, patterns. After Cinderella's magical entrance into the ballroom in Act II descending the steps on point without looking down the enchantment suddenly turns into a force field as the corps de ballet of 12 visiting female Stars formally, impersonally, frame the heroine and the Prince in a box shape: four on the left, four on the right, four behind, with different arms, steps, directions. (Check out 1.2 1.47 on this YouTube clip, though the camera's view only hints at how many things these 12 women are doing at the same time.) Because the heroine and hero are dancing center stage, it's easy to miss this box sequence altogether. (It recalls another, also for 12 women, in George Balanchine's 1947 "Theme and Variations" check out 6.30 7.45 of this clip though Ashton's details are more dazzling in their intricate density.) Once you notice it, however, it not only fascinates for the brilliance of its composition, it also makes the mysterious drama of the ballroom take off. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
For years, medical students who chose a residency in radiology were said to be on the ROAD to happiness. The acronym highlighted the specialties radiology, ophthalmology, anesthesiology and dermatology said to promise the best lifestyle for doctors, including the most money for the least grueling work. Not anymore. Radiologists still make twice as much as family doctors, but are high on the list of specialists whose incomes are in steepest decline. Recent radiology graduates with huge medical school debts are having trouble finding work, let alone the 400,000 and up dream jobs that beckoned as they signed on for five to seven years of relatively low paid labor as trainees. On Internet forums, younger radiology residents agonize about whether it is too late to switch tracks. At St. Barnabas Hospital in the Bronx, a dozen radiologists in training, including Dr. Luke Gerges, 28, are suddenly stranded on an expensive road to nowhere. All received termination notices recently because their hospital is ending their residency program next year as part of a plan to replace its radiologists with a teleradiology company that reads diagnostic images remotely. "Those days of raking in the dough with radiology are gone," said Dr. Gerges, who is four years beyond medical school and 300,000 in debt. He said he chose a specialty he loves without caring that big salaries were waning, but never imagined it would be this hard to finish his postgraduate training and get a job. "No one is going to hire me to be a radiologist without my training," he said. Few specialties have been immune to the same factors depressing radiology: deep Medicare cuts, cut rate competition driven by technology, doubts about the health value of many tests and procedures and new measures to tilt public money to primary care. The case of St. Barnabas may be extreme, said Dr. Paul H. Ellenbogen, chairman of the American College of Radiology, the principal organization of the nation's 30,000 radiologists, who called the hospital's treatment of the residents "unconscionable." But it is part of a larger pattern that has made radiology the target of a dozen cuts in Medicare reimbursement since 2006, he said, totaling 6 billion. "We were somewhat victims of our success," said Dr. Ellenbogen, in Dallas, whose career spans what radiologists call the golden years, when the cost of diagnostic imaging grew faster than other items in health care. Starting in the 1980s, the advent of technology like M.R.I.'s and CT scans, combined with a fee for service system, created ballooning demand for imaging and drove the compensation of radiologists to unsustainable heights, he said. "That led to a sense of entitlement in some people's minds," he said. "And that led to this development of offshore remote reading of cases." By 2001, with the supply of radiologists limited by a 1997 Congressional cap on all Medicare supported residencies, nighttime demand was unmanageable for smaller emergency rooms. So called nighthawk radiology services began pooling the diagnostic imaging loads of several hospitals and transmitting them electronically to American radiologists stationed overseas or working from home. Though outsourcing to India grabbed headlines, the big growth in teleradiology was domestic. Now the nighthawk companies, staffed by recent radiology graduates, are competing for the daytime work, too. St. Barnabas pays radiology residents 48,000 to 60,000 a year and collects about 150,000 for each in "direct graduate medical education" Medicare payments, which, besides their pay, is supposed to cover malpractice insurance and education in the program, accredited by the American Osteopathic Association. But the hospital will not release the money to other programs where the radiology residents could complete their training, Steven Clark, a hospital spokesman, said, because it plans to use the money to expand primary care residencies. That decision could be seen as a small victory for national policies intended to bolster primary care. But to many St. Barnabas residents, it mainly shows that the system of graduate medical education is broken. "If the model becomes that everything is remote reading, it comes at the expense of training," said Dr. Nirav Shelat, another third year radiology resident. "Are we going to allow our trainees to essentially be kicked out by corporations?" St. Barnabas, a 461 bed community hospital that lost 10 million last year and pays its chief executive nearly 1 million annually, now contracts with a traditional group practice of 18 radiologists to be its radiology department. Mr. Clark would not name the companies competing to replace the group practice, but said, "From a cost cutting perspective and from a quality perspective, you can have a lot more people reading X rays remotely than you can inside the hospital." In desperation to find a new traineeship. Dr. David Zelman, a fourth year resident, offered to work without pay. He said hospitals told him that it would be unethical to accept free labor, or that training him would still be too costly without additional money for malpractice insurance and benefits. One hospital, McLaren Macomb, in suburban Detroit, instead offered several residents slots in its "unfunded program," in which most radiology residents essentially pay for their own positions through donations, typically from a spouse or parents: 65,000 a year to cover a 42,000 salary and 2,000 for expenses. "Obviously it would be your last choice, but if there are no open funded positions and you can scrounge up the funds, keep it in mind," the program director, Dr. Eli Shapiro, wrote in an e mail to Dr. Gerges. Dr. Shapiro, 57, added in an interview that every specialty was clamoring for more residents. "They're nice to have," he said, "especially when there's a call at 3 o'clock in the morning. They're around and I'm not." Despite declining prospects, competition for many traineeships is fiercer because the number of medical school graduates has grown by a third since 2002. "The way this whole medical education is, you're essentially just in an indentured servitude position," said Dr. Tom Chen, a first year radiology resident at St. Barnabas from Queens. The demand for imaging began to slow after 2006, even as technology increased productivity, studies show. Besides reimbursement cuts and rising deductibles, factors that curbed the scans included new concerns about radiation and useless tests. Compensation began to drop. Last year, an annual salary survey of 24,000 physicians by Medscape, an online resource for doctors, found radiologists and orthopedic surgeons still topped the list of specialties, but their mean incomes had dropped by 10 percent between 2010 and 2011, to 315,000 from 350,000. Anesthesiologists, facing competition from nurse anesthetists and Medicare cutbacks, were down by 5 percent, to 309,000. Ophthalmologists were up by 9 percent, to 270,000, but have not recovered from earlier cuts for procedures like cataract surgery, sped up by technology. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
Most of us have come to expect reality television stars to be anything but real. Yet Lauren Speed, 34, and Cameron Hamilton, 29, Atlanta based newlyweds who became breakout stars on the hit Netflix dating show, "Love Is Blind," have proven to be the real deal. Since their TV debut earlier this year, where they got engaged sight unseen, the couple have become YouTubers, producing content for their show, Hanging with the Hamiltons, which has more than 600,000 subscribers. In recent weeks, Ms. Speed, a digital content creator and former model, and Mr. Hamilton, a fireman turned artificial intelligence professional, have had to tackle tough conversations about racism, while also navigating the obstacles that come with being an interracial couple. Getting Comfortable With the Uncomfortable The days following the death of George Floyd, who was killed in police custody in Minneapolis, and the preceding deaths of Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbrey, led to protests around the world, including in their hometown Atlanta. None of this makes for a sexy conversation with a spouse, but the Hamiltons are figuring out how to discuss these important events. "They're just real conversations we have to have," Ms. Speed said. "This is nothing new for black people. This whole grief, this sadness, this frustration has been going on since we've been in this country. Right now it's so important for him to just listen. That is what black people want. We want to be heard. We want you to hear how we feel." Mr. Hamilton is listening, and together they use their platform to share resources, donate to relevant organizations, and contact politicians to demand policy reform. "I can't pretend to understand what it's like to be black and go through this," Mr. Hamilton said. "I ask myself, 'What is it that I can do to be of service?' I'm constantly reminded that listening is one thing I always need to practice. Listening and understanding what I can do to help." While the Hamiltons are smitten with their dog, Sparx, they intend to expand their family in the near future. They know that doing so will come with challenges beyond late night feedings and diaper changes. "Parents begin having conversations with their children about interaction with law enforcement in black households at 6 years old," said Ms. Speed. "Of course it's a hard conversation to have, especially as a white dad and a black mom." Mr. Hamilton added, "Unfortunately I will be treated differently by society than they will. That's not right, but we have to work toward a better future. I will remind them that they are always loved and we will do our best to protect them." All couples have pet peeves and some would argue that differences are actually healthy for a romantic partnership. However, those differences can seem more annoying after months in quarantine. Mr. Hamilton leaving dishes in their kitchen sink sends Ms. Speed into a mini panic. "Even when he does wash the dishes, he'll leave the wet dishrag there to mildew and mold," she said. "Another thing Cam does that drives me crazy is taking the last piece of paper towel or toilet tissue and leaving the empty roll there." Mr. Hamilton swiftly added, "There's no rhyme or reason to the way she loads the dishwasher. About 60 percent of it is still empty." Ms. Speed responds with a chuckle, "As long as they get clean." Sign up for Love Letter and always get the latest in Modern Love, weddings, and relationships in the news by email. The Hamiltons have found fun ways to entertain each other while staying indoors. "It gets mundane if you have the same pattern, so it's cool to do something new together like learn a new game," Ms. Speed said. "We're obsessed with Cheez Its." The couple came up with a silly yet sort of sexy game to incorporate their favorite snack. "Basically one person throws a Cheez It and the other person opens their mouth and tries to catch it." They even found a way to incorporate this new pastime into their "Quarantine Diaries" series on their YouTube channel. Taco Tuesday, Any Day of the Week "We definitely eat a lot of tacos," Ms. Speed said. "Sometimes we'll have a margarita night where we eat tacos and watch our favorite movies and shows." The couple is also putting one of their kitchen gadgets to good use. "We have an air fryer and it's heaven sent," she said. "We literally use it every day." "Lauren likes to take long baths," Mr. Hamilton said. "So I just sort of get that set up in the bathroom for her maybe put rose petals in the bath and add some bath salts. It's kind of funny and maybe T.M.I., but our water tank is really small so I have to heat up a ton of water on the stove and run it upstairs. It is a lot of effort but worth it." Ms. Speed appreciates the effort: "It is super sweet." Continue following our fashion and lifestyle coverage on Facebook (Styles and Modern Love), Twitter (Styles, Fashion and Weddings) and Instagram. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
HONG KONG Gregory Joinau Baronnet arrived in Hong Kong about a year ago with little more than a couple of suitcases and a desire to make a living in the wine business. In France, Mr. Joinau Baronnet had been a real estate agent specialized in selling wine related property like vineyards. But business ground to a halt as the global financial crisis took hold in 2008. By late 2010, Mr. Joinau Baronnet had had enough. In January last year, he got on a plane to a place he knew was booming: Hong Kong, which is now attracting immigrants from France faster than its does from the United States, Britain or Germany. "I needed to move," said Mr. Joinau Baronnet, 31, who has set up Jetson Trading, a small business that sells high end wines and mineral water from his native Bordeaux. Guillaume Fortin, another Frenchman who arrived last year, joined him as sales manager. As luxury companies storm Asia to soak up its rising wealth and sate a voracious appetite for their goods, a flood of French expats is arriving along with them, catering to the Asian nouveau riche with a savoir faire that is changing the face of the traditionally Anglo Saxon communities in Hong Kong and Singapore. (Both cities are favored destinations for their functioning legal systems and access to hinterland markets in mainland China and Southeast Asia.) The flow of Westerners who flock to Asia in search of jobs, business opportunities or a little Asian spice for the resume has picked up in the past few years, said James Carss, a senior executive at the recruitment firm Hudson in Hong Kong. And the French now lead that charge. The French community in Hong Kong has grown more than 60 percent since 2006, and now numbers more than 10,000, according to the French consulate in the city. In Singapore, it has approximately doubled to more than 9,200 during the same period. There are also sizeable French groupings in mainland China, Bangkok and southern India that also have expanded rapidly. At least part of this growth has occurred because French companies associated with luxury, fine dining, wines, banking and other industries want French nationals on their local teams. The sheer size of the United States, and Hong Kong's traditional ties to Britain, mean that there are still about 10 times as many Americans and many more Britons than French in the city, which is a special administrative region of China. But the number of American and British residents is rising only slowly: it has increased less than 10 percent since late 2006. The German community has stayed more or less flat. The French influx can be heard, seen and felt all over the city. Walk through the bar districts or high end shopping malls of Hong Kong, and it is likely you will encounter passers by speaking French much more likely than it would have been two or three years ago. The French international school is bursting. French run restaurants have multiplied. Pastis, a small restaurant in the Central district of Hong Kong, has been a favored hangout for French expats since it opened in late 2009. At least two more French restaurants have opened in just the past few months. There is even a cafe with three dusty courts for boules, a lawn game popular in France, incongruously tucked away in a basement on Hong Kong island. Hong Kong's appeal to shoppers from neighboring China, who benefit from the city's lower taxes on many goods, makes Hong Kong a key location for anyone catering to Chinese consumers. It has also helped ensure that the French community in Hong Kong is one of the largest in Asia. "Asia in general, and China in particular, is booming," said Arnaud Barthelemy, the consul general of France in Hong Kong. French "companies derive their growth from this region," he said, noting that many have subsidiaries or regional headquarters in the city. Fanny Duguet is a case in point. She moved here with her husband and two young children last August, dispatched by her employer Richemont, the luxury goods giant, to help with the company's expansion in the region. In a more independent vein, Edouard Malingue, a 38 year old art dealer from Paris, decided Hong Kong offered better prospects than Europe or America for a new art gallery. Mr. Malingue moved to Hong Kong in September 2009 and opened his gallery in the financial district a year later. Like other entrepreneurs, he was attracted by the lack of red tape and the relative ease of setting up a business. Hong Kong is not without its challenges, however. Retailers have to work harder than in Europe or the United States to cultivate tastes and habits among customers who may not know the products or lifestyle they represent. In Hong Kong, Mr. Malingue noted, "there is not as much of a culture of visiting galleries as there is in Europe. It takes a lot more effort to grab peoples' attention." Despite the challenges, Mr. Malingue said, the gallery is now doing well. Competition in many sectors, meanwhile, is fierce, as businesses rush to get in on the action. Salaries, if not augmented by increasingly rare benefits for expats, do not meet many Westerners' expectations. Both local and foreign employers generally prefer people with experience in Asia and language skills to match, said Mr. Carss, the recruitment executive. In addition, commercial and residential rents are sky high. Mr. Joinau Baronnet, for example, is about to open a shop in the Tsim Sha Tsui neighborhood of Hong Kong. The rent on the small space he had to settle for is four times what a comparable space would cost in his native Bordeaux, and twice as much as in Paris, he said. But he is undeterred. In addition to his new location in Hong Kong, he is considering a second store in Shenzhen or Guangzhou, just across the Chinese border, next year. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Global Business |
The upper crust of New York's art world will soon have about two acres of gallery space to peruse at Sotheby's about a third more than is there now. The auction house on Friday announced a redesign and expansion of its headquarters on the Upper East Side that is being led by the designer Shohei Shigematsu of the Rem Koolhaas founded firm OMA. The exhibition space there will grow to over 90,000 square feet from 67,000, and the project will include the addition of several new galleries, which will open on May 3. The goal, Mr. Shigematsu explained in a phone interview, is to make "a series of different size and different height rooms that really create a diversity of gallery space." Among the new galleries are nine for discreet private sales and one dedicated to small scale objects, like jewelry and watches. Three, two story spaces will be set aside for exhibitions, as well as a 150 foot long space intended to showcase full collections. The redesign will also add a coffee bar to the lobby. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
The makeup artist Nick Barose imagines women in masks experimenting with looks "that are a little weird because they're not as exposed." As a makeup artist, Keita Moore has become an observer of faces. Months ago, in the early stages of the pandemic, he saw very little makeup when he ran out on the occasional errand. Lately, though, he has noticed that the faces are changing, slowly. Masks are plentiful, as are filled in brows and lashes coated in mascara. "So many people are doing this," Mr. Moore said. "It's fun to get dressed and get cute, even if it's just to get groceries." Dismissing makeup as frivolity would be easier than ever now. Our professional and social lives are scaled down, and we've withdrawn inside. Collectively we've gone back to basics, and makeup is plainly nonessential. But it is also a cultural artifact, reflecting the aesthetics and ethos of the era. What will our faces show as we live through months or years of the pandemic? Nick Barose, a makeup artist, looked back and found makeup's future. At the beginning of his lockdown in March, he organized his Brooklyn apartment "to make it more homey, since I'd actually be home," he said. That's when he discovered reference materials books, images, magazine tear sheets he had used as he learned to do makeup. He was drawn to avant garde beauty editorials of the 1980s, with images of Old Hollywood stars like Marilyn Monroe. The nostalgia boosted his mood. "You can listen to '80s music, put on '80s makeup and fantasize about a life that's not yours," Mr. Barose said. Makeup, he predicts, will take two distinct courses as the pandemic plays out. The first will be practical and edited, emphasizing long wear products and natural brows and lashes. But for some, makeup will be an escape. "Our reality is so uncertain that I can see people getting experimental," he said. "It's a scary time, so it's a time when you want to dream more, too." "Most women choose foundation for the look," said Keanda Snagg, a makeup artist, meaning that they're going for color match and finish and are usually not as concerned about performance. Now is the time to consider a formula's staying power, too. Ms. Snagg suggests Fenty Pro Filt'r Hydrating Longwear Foundation, 35. Mr. Moore swears by Premiere Products Blue Marble Selr Spray, 14, a cult favorite setting spray, to keep makeup in place. "A lot of drag queens use it when they perform onstage," he said. "It makes your makeup absolutely transfer proof. You could lie down on a pillow and there'd be no foundation on it after you got up." Erin Parsons, another makeup artist, predicts that foundation formulas will evolve to focus on skin care. "Masks will shift how we think about foundation," Ms. Parsons said. "When you take them off, your skin is irritated and red. I keep thinking the next generation of foundation will be soothing and protecting." The new basic face is filled in brows and amplified lashes. "If there's one thing we should learn now, it's how to properly fill in your brows," Mr. Moore said. Eyebrow pencils give users more control of color density (and most people go too dark on brows), so he prefers them to powders, which can be blotchy. "People tend to fill in too much at the inner part of the brows," he said. "Focus on the tail because that's where most brows are sparse. Brush your brows up and outward and fill in only where you need more hair." Pick a pencil with an angled flat tip, like the Lip Bar Hi Brow Gel Pencil, 14. This shape helps you mimic the look and direction of hair growth. The Lashify at home lash extension kit, 145, creates a lash look that's a step up from a coat of mascara. The system contains individual lashes, so your result is customizable. "You can just add a couple lashes to the outer end of your lashes for more drama," Mr. Moore said. As our time in masks wears on, makeup artists expect we'll transition to eye makeup that's simple yet expressive. Eyeliner is the best tool for these times because it's uncomplicated. A bright color is interesting and fun without requiring the layering and dimension of eye shadow. "My favorite is winged eyeliner in any bright color pink, blue, burgundy anything that's not black," Ms. Snagg said. She likes NYX Epic Wear Liquid Liner, 10, a waterproof formula. ("You could jump in a pool and it wouldn't budge," she said.) An eyeliner newbie can start with a simple line along the lashes and, with practice, work up to a wing. Ms. Snagg's winged liner technique: Draw a triangle at the outer corner of the eye. Then, using gentle strokes, create a line that connects that triangle to the inner corner of your eye. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
The Rev. Joseph A. O'Hare in 1998. As president of Fordham University, he brought the school national prominence while also serving New York City as a civic watchdog. The Rev. Joseph A. O'Hare, who as the longest serving president of Fordham University transformed it into a national institution and applied the moral rectitude of his clerical collar to civic reform in New York City, died on Sunday in the Bronx. He was 89. His nephew William Scesney said he died from complications of liver cancer at Murray Weigel Hall, a Jesuit retirement home and infirmary on the Fordham campus. A plain spoken priest, Father O'Hare created a core curriculum at Fordham; integrated the campuses at Rose Hill in the Bronx and Lincoln Center in Manhattan; and increased the Jesuit run university's endowment more than sevenfold. He oversaw the construction of a 54 million neo Gothic research library and transformed Fordham into a residential university by building four dormitories (including one now named O'Hare Hall) in the Bronx and a 20 story residence in Manhattan to house another 3,500 students. Father O'Hare, who served from 1984 to 2003, was Fordham's 31st president. He was also the only one born in the Bronx since the university was founded in 1841. His priestly status proved an asset for the mayors who recruited him to civic service. He served on two commissions to revise the New York City Charter; a panel to expunge politics from mayoral appointments; and, most notably, the city's pioneering Campaign Finance Board, created in 1988 in the wake of municipal corruption scandals. Appointed the board's first chairman by Mayor Edward I. Koch to oversee the city's innovative program of public campaign financing for municipal offices, he also served under three of Mr. Koch's successors before retiring in 2003. "Joe O'Hare's unquestioned integrity, gravitas, nonpartisanship, intelligence, wit and, yes, the fact that he was a Jesuit priest, commanded instant respect for the board in an arena fraught with political challenges," Nicole Gordon, the board's longtime executive director, said in an email. As Fordham's president, and as the only educator to serve as chairman of both the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities and the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities, Father O'Hare found himself, more often than he liked, refereeing rifts in the church over dogma and academic freedom, differences between American bishops and the Vatican, and ideological conflicts among an increasingly diverse student body about issues like abortion and gay rights. While acknowledging his own orthodox moral position, he tolerated a decision by the student government to recognize groups that discussed or promoted an "enlightened understanding" of both those issues. Similarly, he defended the right of American bishops to denounce abortion, just as they did racial injustice or the nuclear arms race. "It is neither anti Catholic nor un American to argue against the bishops in this debate," he wrote of abortion in a New York Times Op Ed article in 1976, "but to question their right to be heard is a persistent form of bigotry." Still, he said he bristled when some Catholic politicians who dissented from doctrine were threatened with excommunication. "It's unfortunate for the bishops to equate pro choice with pro abortion," he told The New York Times in 1990. "That's too broad a label to apply to Catholic politicians." That same year, he expressed relief when Pope John Paul II issued a document on education that urged Catholic universities to maintain their fidelity to Catholic education, but that also recognized the legitimacy of academic freedom, institutional autonomy and the latitude to hire non Catholic faculty. (In 1984, the Fordham faculty included 70 Jesuits; today, about 24 Jesuits are teachers and administrators.) In a meeting with Vatican officials, Father O'Hare said, Catholic educators stated "loud and clear that universities all around the world were concerned about not having universal prescriptions from Rome." "Joe combined Jesuit humanism with Bronx street smarts," the author Peter Quinn, a Fordham graduate, said in an email. "He was a serious intellectual who refused to take himself too seriously. He never lost his New York accent or his Irish sense of humor. He knew how to laugh and how to lead." Father O'Hare's common sense approach became apparent to the public in his role on the finance board under Mr. Koch; David N. Dinkins, who was fined by the board for excessive spending and, at the end of his mayoralty, fired him; Mr. Giuliani, who reinstated him, but was later also fined; and Michael R. Bloomberg. "In a city of legendary Irish pols," Mr. Bloomberg said of Father O'Hare in a statement this week, "one of the very best never ran for office but he left a mark on politics like no other." Rectitude, however, did not necessarily denote reticence. At a finance board meeting in 2001, the irascible political consultant Hank Morris insisted that he could volunteer his services to his friend Alan G. Hevesi, who was running for mayor, and that therefore the monetary value of those services should not be covered by the legal cap on campaign spending. A verbal tussle at a public hearing culminated in Mr. Morris's threat to take the case to court. Father O'Hare was unfazed. Jack Newfield, writing in The New York Post, characterized Father O'Hare as "the conscience of campaign finance reform and walking gravitas." "His native New York gave him a directness, a maturity and a no nonsense wisdom," the Rev. J. Donald Monan, a former president of Boston College, once said. After graduating from Regis High School in Manhattan, Father O'Hare joined the Society of Jesus at 17. "When I decided I wanted to be a Jesuit, the models that attracted me the most were the labor priests, like Father John Corridan," he told The Times in 1998, referring to the crusader against corruption on whom Karl Malden's character in the movie "On the Waterfront" was loosely based. "It's not an otherworldly kind of spirituality it's the kind very geared to involvement in the present time." In 1954 he graduated with a bachelor's degree from Berchmans College in Cebu City, the Philippines, where he had been assigned by the Jesuits. He received a master's degree from the college the next year. He taught at Ateneo de Manila University, a Jesuit school there. Father O'Hare also received licentiate degrees in philosophy and theology from Woodstock College in Maryland. In 1968 he received a doctorate in philosophy from Fordham. From 1975 until he became president of Fordham, he was the editor in chief of America, the influential Jesuit magazine. (He returned there as associate editor after leaving Fordham and also briefly served as president of Regis.) Inheriting an 85 acre campus in the Bronx, a borough that was then synonymous with crime and poverty, Father O'Hare added 1.1 million square feet of academic and residential space in the Bronx and Manhattan and merged Fordham with Marymount College, a traditionally Catholic women's institution in Tarrytown, N.Y., in 2002. He wooed the Rev. Avery Dulles, an eminent theologian, to a new professorship in religion and society in the theology department. In February 2001, Pope John Paul II named Father Dulles a cardinal a rare appointment for a theologian and cleric who was not a bishop. Before Father O'Hare became president, 70 percent or more of Fordham's students were commuters; when he left, 70 percent lived on campus. As recently as the 1970s, as many as 85 percent of the students came from New York City or nearby suburbs. Today, about 60 percent are from out of state. "Father O'Hare leaves behind a record of expansion and building that any of his predecessors might envy," said Msgr. Thomas J. Shelley, emeritus professor of church history at Fordham and author of "Fordham, a History of the Jesuit University of New York: 1841 2003" (2016). As Father O'Hare saw it, building for succeeding generations was integral to his conception of belief. "You can betray your faith, religious faith, personal faith, academic faith," he once said, "by trying to hold on to some frozen moment of the past. You have to keep your faith alive by bringing it forward into the future." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Education |
A crescendo of barks greeted a vehicle that recently pulled up to the Montego Bay Animal Haven in Jamaica. Penned dogs 147 of them were tipped off it was time for their morning walk. They leapt at the chain link fence, tails wagging, then surged in joyous waves through a gate. Dog loving visitors, in expendable clothing, climbed out of the van to welcome the onslaught with laughter, no fear. "Hiking with the Hooligans" began as a tourist activity in January, a raucous way to enjoy Jamaica's hilly countryside flush with ackee, guava, mango and papaya trees. There are no sea views from this inland sanctuary; the dogs grab all the attention. The hourlong hike is rugged, not a day at the beach, so wearing flip flops would be a mistake. Tammy Browne, the haven's founder, was inspired after visiting Territorio de Zaguates (Land of the Strays) in Costa Rica last year, a no kill sanctuary with hundreds of dogs roaming the land (it is currently closed to the public). Since Ms. Browne's 17 acre property in Jamaica is enclosed, the dogs are unleashed for the hike. The panting pack sociably trots together, the shelter's guides breaking up the occasional disagreement. Charlie Brown had three legs. Albus was missing an eye and part of his tail. Stallone's head was furrowed with scars; his street wise gravitas commanded respect from the other dogs. To the untrained eye, those lacking distinctive features looked pretty much alike, but Ms. Browne knew all their names. She had rescued them from the streets or abusive owners and nursed them back to health. They are spayed and have the relevant vaccines. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
A private investor has bought this corner mixed use six story elevator building in Washington Heights as a 1031 exchange, which is a way to offset capital gains from the sale of another property. Built in 1910, the 49,380 square foot building features 42 rent stabilized apartments six one bedrooms, 14 two bedrooms, one three bedroom and 21 four bedrooms as well as a cleaner and grocery on the ground floor. It sold for 16.43 times the rent roll, with a cap rate of 3.4 percent. 61 Ninth Street, Unit 14 (between the Gowanus Canal and Second Avenue) A law office, given two months' free rent for its buildout and expected to open on Aug. 15, has signed a five year lease for a 500 square foot ground floor office space in this three story commercial loft building, which was originally a carriage house and is now part of a 118,367 square foot multibuilding commercial complex. Annual rent increases will be 3 percent. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
THE LIFE AND LOVES OF E. NESBIT Let's assume that you have never heard of the English author E. Nesbit. Let's also assume that you didn't know that "E." stands for a woman's name (Edith), or that she wrote dozens of children's books in the Victorian and Edwardian eras that brought her instant fame. Many of these classics are still read today, and one, "Five Children and It" the first book I ever borrowed from a library, upon getting a library card at the age of 5 has been continually in print since 1902. That novel is about a bad tempered, goggle eyed Psammead (Greek for sand fairy) whom five children dig up in a gravel pit. In her new biography, "The Life and Loves of E. Nesbit," Eleanor Fitzsimons suggests that Nesbit may have "dreamed up her Psammead" as a 7 year old in Brighton, where she was disappointed that the stony beach had "only sandiness," not sand. The creature grants the children a wish a day, which expires at sunset. The wishes come out badly: having wings (they get stranded on top of a church tower at nightfall); being rich (nobody trusts their gold pieces and they're nearly arrested); being gorgeous (nobody recognizes them, which they find distressing); having the house besieged by warriors (difficulties obvious). As the Psammead grumpily explains, "You hadn't the sense to wish for what was good for you." Let's further assume that you need to be told that Nesbit has influenced writers from J. K. Rowling and Neil Gaiman to George Bernard Shaw (whose flower girl Eliza Doolittle was inspired in part by Nesbit's effusive personality). And that you could use a lesson on sundry other details about her, including, for example, that in the late 1880s, when Shaw and Nesbit were both in their 20s, she fell hard in love with him. They met through the socialist Fabian Society a band of "very jolly" (Nesbit's words) rabble rousers from the "educated middle class intelligentsia" (Shaw's words) which served as an important incubator of Britain's future Labour Party. Nesbit co founded the society in 1884, along with half a dozen other contrarian idealists, including her sexist, womanizing, monocle sporting husband, Hubert Bland. Shaw rebuffed Nesbit's overtures, given that she was the wife of a friend and fellow Fabian, as well as the mother of three small children, with a fourth on the way (though that one, Rosamund, whom Nesbit would raise as her own, was borne by another woman, one of her husband's many lovers). But Shaw and Nesbit remained friends. Nesbit had a lifelong habit of cultivating literary people. In her 60s, she met Noel Coward, then in his 20s, when he rented a cottage near her home in Kent. The area was thick with writers, among them Henry James, Joseph Conrad, Ford Madox Ford and H. G. Wells, though Wells's friendship with Nesbit and Bland ended in 1908, when he tried to run off with Rosamund. As a little boy, Coward told Nesbit, he had been so stirred by her stories about the Psammead that he stole a coral necklace and pawned it so he could buy a book in which the tales were collected. 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. Nesbit was "delighted" to hear of his youthful transgression. She was well known for her "contempt for conventionally 'good' children" and reserved her admiration for high spirited children and grown ups whose intensity and well meaning inspirations landed them in fascinating scrapes and eventful brushes with history. This, after all, had been her own pattern. She was like a steampunk perpetual motion machine, popping out distinctive creative work and dynamic social plans on a conveyor belt that never stopped but sometimes had a hitch or two. Fitzsimons evidently assumes you already know most of these things. Taking her subject as a known quantity, she opens her book with a sentimental description of a lurid incident from Nesbit's childhood that haunted the author for the rest of her life. At 9, she went to see mummies in a church in Bordeaux, thinking they would be neatly and hygienically displayed in glass cases, as at the British Museum in London. Instead, she beheld a horror show hundreds of leathery, desiccated corpses, propped against a wall in a dank, cold crypt, "the flesh hardened on their bones." This was something Nesbit herself had to do throughout her life, beginning when Hubert Bland got smallpox and lost his business right after their marriage, and Nesbit, then only 22 and the mother of an infant, had to support them all. As Bland's fortunes waxed and waned, Nesbit's unflagging literary productivity provided for the upkeep of her children, paid the rent on apartments, houses and holidays, subsidized down on their luck relatives and the deserving poor, and bankrolled an endless stream of dinners, theatricals and house parties that Nesbit hosted for her sociable entourage. The Bastable brood, like the children in Nesbit's own household, outraged their London neighbors by begging change from morning commuters and selling penny bunches of flowers to passers by. In search of greater returns, they become "bandits," kidnapping a whining neighbor boy named Albert and holding him hostage for 3,000 British pounds ransom nearly half a million dollars in today's money. "You will be confined in a dark, subterranean dungeon where toads and snakes crawl," Oswald, the Bandit Captain, declares, though Alice reassures the boy it's "only play." When the child's uncle arrives with the ransom note, he says, "Albert really is not worth 3,000 pounds" (the children agree), and secures his release with a handful of pennies. The Bastable stories were strikingly original in children's literature because, even if fanciful, they were not supernatural. Nesbit wrote them from the child's point of view and with a child's logic as if the author herself were one of the gang. "I make it a point of honor never to write down to a child," she explained to a friend. The public clamored for more of these adventures, and Nesbit swiftly delivered several, including one called "The Wouldbegoods" (1901), in which the Bastables, echoing Fabian Society principles, seek to make amends for their bad actions by forming a Society of the Wouldbegoods, whose aim is to perform "great and unselfish deeds." They wished to "rise above the kind of interesting things that you ought not to do, but to do kindnesses to all, however low and mean." Whereas Nesbit's writing for adults was constricted by Victorian mores and tastes, she wrote for children in an unrestrained, authentic voice. Her first biographer, Doris Langley Moore, writing in 1933, called that voice "naturalistic, warmly personal in tone, and based, with whatever additives of humor and plot, on recaptured experience." Fitzsimons agrees, but she shows less interest in rhapsodizing over Nesbit's style than in exploring the purpose and personal history that underlay it. "When writing for children, Edith seemed keen to deliver a strong message of social justice," she writes. That message emerged forcefully in her most successful novel, "The Railway Children," about a family of plucky kids who undertake noble hearted (if not always strictly legal, or safe) acts to help their mother and community after their father is unjustly imprisoned. Nesbit's child characters "are far more visionary and ambitious than her adults," Fitzsimons notes. "They reflect the Fabian belief that socialism transcends class since it benefits everyone." The Bastables, the Psammead children and the railway children put that belief into action in their fictional lives. But did Nesbit do so in her real one? Fitzsimons explores this question thoroughly, contrasting the author's prodigious energy, literary output, social activism and generosity with her tolerance of her husband's philandering, her deference to his misogynistic views and her opposition (mirroring his) to female suffrage and women's rights in general. When the Fabians asked Nesbit, as a "socialist wife and mother who had herself gained economic independence by her arduous and brilliant work," to give a talk on "women and work," they were appalled that her speech cast women as "predominately creatures of sex, whose paramount need is a mate and children,"and claimed that women were hampered by "physical and mental disabilities unknown to men." How could a self respecting "Wouldbegood" profess such an off message outlook, ignoring her own example? According to the Wouldbegoods' seventh rule, "The Society is to be kept a profound secret from all the world except us." In her biography, Fitzsimons handily reassembles the hundreds of intricate, idiosyncratic parts of the miraculous E. Nesbit machine; but the secret of how she made it all come together and hum remains intact. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
The Best Bras Might Be Made in Poland A few years ago, I stumbled upon the subreddit ABraThatFits, where people share their struggle to find a bra and pass along what they have learned. While scrolling through the forum, I often came across a specific piece of advice: go Polish. The Redditors mentioned a few brands in particular, Ewa Michalak and Comexim, but there are 47 companies listed on their "Polish guide." As it turns out, lingerie experts and enthusiasts hold a special reverence for bras made in Poland, and a growing number of boutiques in the United States carry them. Laura Henny, the owner of the Rack Shack, a boutique on Central Avenue in the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn, gets calls every week about whether she stocks Ewa Michalak bras. She herself wears Ewa Michalak bras most of the time. "They're extremely comfortable, and I just really like the shape that they give," Ms. Henny said. Tina Omer, the owner of Aphrodite's Closet in San Antonio, said she wears mostly Nessa, another Polish brand, and stocks Nessa and Ewa Michalak in her shop. Both proprietors praise these brands' materials and the construction. Most Polish bras, even those made by larger manufacturers, are still designed and constructed in Poland by hand, with fabrics and laces from Italy and Spain. And unlike in the United States, where confusion and misinformation abound about bands and cups, care is taken with sizing. Many Polish designers follow the principles of "brafitting" (in Poland, one word), which begins with the idea that regardless of whether your breasts are small or large, simply measuring across and under the bust will not produce a bra that fits. To understand Polish bras, you first need to understand brafitting. The practice originated in Britain, and it's touted and heatedly discussed by an online community of frustrated bra shoppers, fitters and manufacturers scattered around the world. The fundamental tenet of brafitting is that the band of a bra the number in someone's bra size provides most of the support, and in many cases should be smaller than what standard sizing methods spit out. One basic agreement among brafitters? American bras, for the most part, don't fit. "When I see the underwear in the U.S., even in the movies, it's a disaster for me," said Agnieszka Jablonska, a brafitter trained in Britain who works in sales for the Polish brand Samanta. For a long time I thought I was a 36C because that's what they told me at Victoria's Secret. When I entered five (!) measurements into a calculator that approximates brafitting principles, created by the Reddit folks, it said I was a 32F. Producing a wide size range is complicated and expensive, so companies producing bras for big chains avoid it. Many American brands with notable exceptions, like Rihanna's line Savage x Fenty only go up to D, DD or DDD cups. But brafitters say that D cups, when properly fit, are for breasts generally perceived to be small, and that many women wearing them might prefer the fit of E, F, G, or H cups (and beyond). If someone at a chain store measures you and says you're a DD cup, it doesn't necessarily mean that you have enormous breasts, they say it might just be that DD is the biggest size the store has, and they want to sell it to you. The brafitting community is leery of Big Bra. The cultural notion that D cups are big is actually just a quirk of industrial production, and decisions by individual companies to increase margins wherever possible. In 2008, Julia Krysztofiak Szopa started an online Polish discussion forum "bra community" called Balkonetka. Thousands of women posted detailed reviews and photos of their bras. A few years later, she moved from Warsaw to Palo Alto, Calif. When she looked for bras in her size, 34HH, at Macy's and Nordstrom, she found that nearly all of them stopped at D. So Ms. Krysztofiak Szopa started ordering her bras from Poland. For several years, she and her sister sold bras made by Comexim to American women, through a company they started called Wellfitting. "I thought, this is really weird supposedly the largest economy in the world, with a massive consumer market, massive shopping malls, and they have no freakin' D plus bras," she said. "And Americans don't have a tiny frame, at the end of the day. So I was very surprised to see there is something off about how American brands treat their consumers, trying to lock them into just four sizes, and trying to tell women that if they do not fit, there's something off about them." On a recent trip to Poland, I decided to see whether I could find the perfect bra, and find out for myself why the ones made there are said to be so special. I began my quest in Kazimierz, the Jewish quarter of Krakow that is now trendy, at a tiny boutique called Brafitteria. I noticed a few brafitting certifications on the wall, including some from courses by the British lingerie company Panache. After trying about 10 bras under the gentle guidance of a brafitter named Ludmila, I bought a sheer Prussian blue one with sprays of pink floral embroidery on the cups, from the brand Samanta (209 zloty, about 55). It looked like it had been tattooed onto me. (A signature of Polish bras is narrow wires and deep cups that mold closely to your body.) "The Polish wire just so perfectly fits," said Agnieszka Socha, who started the Academy of Professional Brafitting, which teaches and offers certification in the practice, in 2011. She prepped me on the basics of Polish bras before my trip. "If you just put it on the chest, it fits like somebody made it only for you. It's not too wide it's just perfect." Next: the mall. I figured I had to. At Ewa Bien, a store in Galeria Kazimierz, I tried on my favorite design of dozens of bras I tried on my trip: a beige balconette with yellow and green floral embroidery, and salmon pink piping on the cups. It reminded me of a botanical drawing, and it was on sale for 158 zloty (about 40). At another shop near the mall, the brafitter said my breasts were asymmetrical. This wouldn't bother me, but it was never mentioned any of the other times I was measured. That shop made me tired, so I stopped at a pierogi shack before going to bed early. The next morning, I took a train to Lodz, Poland's third largest city, three hours north of Krakow. Ewa Michalak and Comexim are based there, and a lingerie trade show was happening that weekend. I wanted to see if I could find a perfect bra at the source. One could call Lodz and the surrounding region the lingerie capital of Poland. During the years of the Polish People's Republic, one government run lingerie company in the area was a major employer. In the early 1990s, that factory broke out into hundreds of independent lingerie companies. "Almost every second house did something in lingerie," said Marzena Pudlowska, the co owner of KrisLine, founded in 1992. KrisLine is one of few companies that managed to survive past that period in part, Ms. Pudlowska thinks, because of its decision to respond to consumers by expanding its size range. New designers like Ewa Michalak and Comexim had the perfect ingredients to make bras with a global reputation: makers with decades of experience, access to high quality materials and a willingness to produce bras that fit pretty much everyone. She explained to me that if someone has pendulous breasts, measuring while she is standing up doesn't really tell you how much breast the bra must support. Neither does measuring someone who is already wearing a bra. "With bigger and therefore heavier breasts, different technical solutions are needed for bras," she said in Polish, with her staff helping to translate. "In fact, a whole other approach to constructing bras is in order." I had never bought a padded bra before they never looked right but I left with two that looked great: a tan plunge with a pearl drop in the center (about 54); and a black lace plunge with decorative straps (about 61). No one needs to be reminded that there are many more important things to be concerned with than underwear. (In Poland, as in the United States.) But many women wear bras every day, and like other banal aspects of daily life, considering them in any depth can reveal subtle injustices of the market. The market determines which bodies are normal, and by extension, who is deserving of clothes that fit. I didn't find one perfect bra in Poland, but I left with five new ones that help me stand a bit taller. Before I discovered the brafitters I would often catch my reflection in a window while walking. I'd feel a little embarrassed about the excessive movement of my chest, and my hunched posture. But I didn't perceive the bras as not fitting me. I just thought that my breasts had a weird, abnormal shape. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
FOR countless newly minted college graduates, it's a rite of passage. After the mortarboards have been tossed into the air, they head for New York City, ready to embark on the next chapter of their lives. In 2010, some 40,000 graduates age 22 to 28 moved to the city in search of jobs, according to the latest figures from the Census Bureau's American Community Survey. But whatever the next step, they first need a place to live. As rents continue to soar in August, the average monthly rent for a Manhattan apartment was 3,536 and the job market sputters, the task can be daunting, especially for those on the lower rungs of the economic ladder. Even people who have heard horror stories about how hard it can be to find a first apartment in New York aren't prepared for the challenges. For an up close look at what the search is like, several dozen new graduates were interviewed and four were followed as they set out to find a home. They represented renters looking in three price ranges from 1,000 to 2,000 a month. Isaac Hancock, a Connecticut College graduate who is teaching at Success Academy Bed Stuy in Brooklyn through Teach for America, wanted an apartment where he and four roommates would each pay about 1,000 in rent. With the help of Teacher Space NY, an agency that caters to teachers on tight house hunting schedules and equally tight budgets, the group found a five bedroom on the Upper East Side that is near the subway and is flooded with natural light. Riley Hall and Averi Ahsmann, who graduated with combined bachelor and master's degrees from St. Bonaventure University, about an hour's drive from Buffalo, N.Y., wanted to pay a rent of 1,250 each. Ms. Hall, who is studying for her certified public accountants' exam, and Ms. Ahsmann, who works as a marketing assistant, found a two bedroom apartment with a large living area near Gramercy Park, with the help of Morgan Turkewitz of Citi Habitats. Charles McConnell, a recent graduate of Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., who plans to travel and play professional tennis while looking for a job in politics, wanted an apartment where he and two fraternity brothers could each pay about 2,000 in rent. With the help of the Next Step Realty, a national real estate company that specializes in finding apartments for new college graduates, they found a three bedroom in Murray Hill, complete with exposed brick, working fireplaces and a skylight. A coin laundry, a pizza place, a grocery store, A.T.M.'s and other services are within a block. To give a sense of what it's like for new graduates to find a first apartment in New York, these four people were asked to keep track of the ups and downs of their search from the moment they began looking for a place to the day they signed the lease. (By coincidence, all four wound up in Manhattan, despite the fact that Brooklyn, and increasingly, parts of Queens, attract great numbers of young renters.) In all cases, the search proved more challenging than anticipated, but all four were happy with the place where they ended up. These new graduates didn't get exactly what they were looking for when they started out, especially when it came to price. But now that they are settled into their new places and are preparing to embark on their new lives in the city, they can look back and impart a little wisdom to those who will come after them. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
Nancy Stark Smith and her collaborator Steve Paxton in 1984. "As a contact improviser," she wrote, "I've been a reflex junkie, a momentum freak; loving to feel the adrenaline rush." Nancy Stark Smith didn't care much for dance as a child and a teenager. In a talk she gave in 2005 about contact improvisation the vigorous movement form of which she was a founding member she said: "I'd see the dancers standing in front of a wall of mirrors looking at themselves and making little movements. I didn't understand what was exciting about that." It wasn't as if she didn't relish movement. While growing up in Great Neck, N.Y., and later attending Oberlin College in Ohio, she was involved in sports and gymnastics; even as an adult, she played in a volleyball league. But dance held little interest for her until the choreographer Twyla Tharp, whose company was in residence at Oberlin, changed her mind in 1971. "There was a January term project in dance, and someone suggested I try it," Ms. Stark Smith said. While in residence at Oberlin Ms. Tharp created her work "The History of Up and Down, I II." Ms. Stark Smith recalled: "She used a wide variety of movement, and the training was physically and mentally rigorous. I got excited by what dance could be from working with her." The director of Oberlin's modern dance company, Brenda Way, saw Ms. Stark Smith performing and asked her to join the group. The next year, Grand Union, the New York improvisational collective made up of postmodern dance artists, was in residency at Oberlin. The dancer and choreographer Steve Paxton, who was part of that group, taught what he called an early morning "soft class," which, he said in a phone interview, was a mix of "meditations and mild exercising." It was in that class at Oberlin that Ms. Stark Smith began studying with Mr. Paxton. She especially admired his "Magnesium," a daring all male experimental work that he made during the residency. "My aim was to just throw myself off the earth without worrying about what landing was going to be like," Mr. Paxton recalled of "Magnesium." "I figured my reflexes would somehow take care of me. Nancy said if I ever did it again, to consider inviting her." Those experiments led to his creation of contact improvisation. Both an artful and athletic endeavor, contact is an exploration of touch, gravity and weight sharing; it can be still and sensorial or physically robust. Ms. Stark Smith was one of 17 dancers in the first group that Mr. Paxton worked with, and, he said, "she carried on throughout her life with it." Ms. Stark Smith died on May 1 at her home in Florence, Mass. She was 68. The cause was ovarian cancer, said the dance artist Lisa Nelson, with whom Ms. Stark Smith created Contact Quarterly, a dance and improvisation journal, in 1975. The women had met in 1972, when Ms. Nelson and Mr. Paxton were both teaching at Bennington College in Vermont; Ms. Stark Smith had gone there to visit Mr. Paxton. "We started talking and never stopped," Ms. Nelson said. Ms. Stark Smith, whose signature braid became longer and grayer over time, was also a prolific writer and respected teacher who, beginning in 1990, developed what she called "Underscore," a structure or framework for practicing long form dance and improvisation. Nancy Stark Smith was born on Feb. 11, 1952, in Brooklyn to Lucille (Stark) Smith and Dr. Joseph J. Smith, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx. Her family moved to Great Neck in 1954. Her mother died when Nancy was 5. Moving fast was always one of her passions. "As a child, I would race with my sister to see who could get their pajamas on first," Ms. Stark Smith wrote in Contact Quarterly in 1996. "As a contact improviser, I've been a reflex junkie, a momentum freak; loving to feel the adrenaline rush, test and take to the turbulent waters with a partner, seeking our limits: of body, mind and communication." She took part in the first performances of contact improvisation, at the John Weber Gallery in New York City in 1972. From there the form grew even as the original group of dancers scattered across the country. "The nature of this form is that you need a partner to do it, and I think this is one of the most important reasons it has spread," Ms. Stark Smith said. After graduating from Oberlin in 1974 with a degree in dance and writing, she studied meditation and Buddhism at what is now the Buddhist inspired Naropa University in Boulder, Colo. There she met the feminist Beat poet Diane di Prima. When Ms. di Prima made it known that she was looking for someone to transcribe her journals back home in California, Ms. Stark Smith spoke up. "A fast typist, already in this swirling world of art and spirituality, I offered my services," she recalled in "Caught Falling: The Confluence of Contact Improvisation, Nancy Stark Smith, and Other Moving Ideas" (2008), a book she wrote with David Koteen. Moving to California to work for Ms. de Prima, she lived in Stinson Beach for several years while continuing to teach and tour with Mr. Paxton. (They later taught together as well.) "She was athletic, she was responsive, she would take initiative," Mr. Paxton said of Ms. Stark Smith, adding, "She was very daring." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
SAN FRANCISCO From self driving cars to multi language translation, machine learning is underpinning many of the technology industry's biggest advances with its form of artificial intelligence. Now, Google's parent company, Alphabet, says it plans to apply machine learning technology to promote more civil discourse on the internet and make comment sections on sites a little less awful. Jigsaw, a technology incubator within Alphabet, says it has developed a new tool for web publishers to identify toxic comments that can undermine a civil exchange of ideas. Starting Thursday, publishers can start applying for access to use Jigsaw's software, called Perspective, without charge. "We have more information and more articles than any other time in history, and yet the toxicity of the conversations that follow those articles are driving people away from the conversation," said Jared Cohen, president of Jigsaw, formerly known as Google Ideas. Unless carefully managed, discussion in comments sections often devolves into a hateful exchange. This has prompted some publishers to turn off the comments section because moderating them can be time consuming. With machine learning, a computer system is programmed to learn from repetition. It takes in training data essentially, example after example until it is familiar enough to anticipate with a high degree of confidence the proper response. In this instance, Jigsaw had a team review hundreds of thousands of comments to identify the types of comments that might deter people from a conversation. Based on that data, Perspective provided a score from zero to 100 on how similar the new comments are to the ones identified as toxic. Jigsaw said it settled on the word toxic after finding that most reviewers shared views about what types of comments drive people away from a conversation. Opinions about what comments constituted, for example, a personal attack ranged widely. The same methodology is being provided to publishers, who could use the scores to have human moderators review comments only for responses that registered above a certain number, or allow a reader to filter out comments above a certain level of toxicity. Jigsaw worked with The New York Times and Wikipedia to develop Perspective. The Times's comments section is managed by 14 moderators, who manually review nearly every comment. Because this requires considerable labor and time, The Times allows commenting on only about 10 percent of its articles. The Times said in a statement last year that it made its comments archive available to Jigsaw to help develop the machine learning algorithm running Perspective. Linda Zebian, a spokeswoman for the Times, declined to comment on Wednesday. Mr. Cohen said the technology was in its early stages and might flag some false positives, but he expected that it would become more accurate over time with access to a greater set of comments. Jigsaw, whose stated mission is to use technology to tackle "geopolitical challenges" such as cybersecurity attacks and online censorship, said it also saw opportunities for its machine learning software to identify comments that are off topic or unsubstantial. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
I've been a runner in more than 60 countries, including seven marathons on all seven continents. From casual runs in the streets of Sydney to half marathons in Anchorage to a mountain trail marathon in Northern Mongolia, running has become a part of my every journey, if not the journey itself. I'm not alone. A desire to travel the world to run marathons has spawned an international tribe of globe trotters who plan destinations based on upcoming races. Now marathoners set goals to run in every state in the United States, to chase the trophy called the Abbott World Marathon Majors (a series of six major city marathons), or to complete their own customized bucket list. Next month New York City will welcome many of these running travelers, as the more than 50,000 entrants for the TCS New York City Marathon, the world's largest marathon, come from all 50 states and 150 countries. Many of these runners I've spoken to confess that it's their way of challenging themselves to see the world in a different way. Andro Besic, a 60 something New Zealander I met at the Antarctica marathon, competes in only the most exotic races from the Polar Circle in Greenland to the Tenzing Hillary Everest Marathon in Nepal, a run down from the Everest base camp. "These races show what you are made of and what you want from yourself," he said. I've created my own group of running friends who have traveled to Toronto, Buenos Aires and the Gold Coast of Australia to run, often times leading to some unexpected revelations. For my sister, Peg Pardini, and I, deciding to run a marathon in Ireland, the birthplace of our paternal grandparents, allowed us to explore our heritage. Before the race, we set out to find our grandfather's family in County Monaghan. Not only did we find a large group of relatives, but discovered there the richness of our family history, dating back to the early 1800s. Now my advice to every runner is to seek out a race in a place where your forefathers came from you never know what might be waiting for you. On a running trip to Mongolia, Peg and I slept in yurts for a week, acclimatizing for a mountain run. With no Wi Fi or contact with the outside world, the 65 runners bonded with conversations, card games and group dinners, a reminder of how rewarding human interaction is in a tech free world. If you are a single traveler, it's easy to plug into any of the race activities, before and after the main event, to meet people from all over the world. Keith LaScalea, 46, has traveled to more than 20 marathons on his own. "It allows me to experience the full spirit of the race and meet other runners, some who have become friends," he said. For me, there have been disappointments along the way, of course, from facing a cancellation because of monsoon like weather (South Africa) to coping with sweltering heat (Tanzania) and dealing with injuries (too many places to remember). But like my fellow marathoners, I've learned to take it all in stride and have gained valuable travel tips. Some of the best lessons I've learned include: carrying my own first aid kit, being prepared for any type of weather condition and always packing my running gear in my carry on luggage. Global marathoning has become such a phenomenon that some travel companies are now devoted to it. Marathon Tours, a 40 year old company based in Boston, offers trips to more than 40 running events around the world, including those in Bhutan and Myanmar. They guarantee a race entry (there may be waiting lists for popular runs), help with hotel accommodations and organize pre and post race celebrations. The company's founder, Thom Gilligan, said that the demand has exploded in the last few years as more runners pursue marathon medals from around the world. "Travel has became an integral part of the runner's lifestyle that allows them to break through the touristic veneer," Mr. Gilligan said. Michael Clinton is the author of "Tales from the Trails: Runners' Stories that Inspire and Transform." 52 PLACES AND MUCH, MUCH MORE Follow our 52 Places traveler, Sebastian Modak, on Instagram as he travels the world, and discover more Travel coverage by following us on Twitter and Facebook. And sign up for our Travel Dispatch newsletter: Each week you'll receive tips on traveling smarter, stories on hot destinations and access to photos from all over the world. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
Re "Even as Meat Workers Get Sick, Trump Acts to Keep Plants Open" (front page, April 29): Given the massive public health crisis we have been facing, it is unfathomable that President Trump has not made greater use of the Defense Production Act to lessen the pandemic's impact. If he had acted to provide the needed personal protective equipment and testing capabilities, infections and deaths of thousands of Americans, including many of our front line medical workers, could have been averted. To add insult to injury, Mr. Trump has now invoked the act to force meat processing plants to be open without requiring that they adhere to Centers for Disease Control guidelines. Ironically, he has used the act to exacerbate rather than mitigate the public health fallout from the pandemic. If Mr. Trump has deemed that forcing meat processing plants to stay open is necessary for our food supply chain, he still could greatly mitigate the extent of new outbreaks and deaths by requiring plants to follow C.D.C. guidelines and to provide extensive Covid 19 testing of the factory workers. Let Loved Ones Visit the Critically Ill Re "Gasping for Breaths the Size of a Tablespoon" (front page, April 27): Dr. Emmy Rubin and her team at Massachusetts General Hospital should be commended not only for their extraordinary effort in saving Jim Bello, but also for their humane and empathetic approach of allowing his wife, Kim, to visit him while he was so critically ill when most hospitals do not allow any visitors for Covid 19 patients. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
LOS ANGELES When Rupert Friend stepped out of wardrobe on a recent Wednesday, he wore a filthy checked shirt, baggy tweed pants and boots that looked as if they could have been used as chew toys. "Basically, we do everything you're not supposed to do on a leading man," said J.R. Hawbaker, the costume designer, as she adjusted a button. David DiGilio, a writer and producer, added: "We said, 'Don't let him look good." Mr. Friend, a fan favorite for his work on "Homeland," was on a shoot for "Strange Angel," a CBS All Access show that begins streaming June 14. It is inspired by the weird but true tale of Jack Parsons, a handsome rocket engineer in 1930s Los Angeles who joined a sex magic cult known as the Agape Lodge. (L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, was among its guests.) Mr. Friend plays Ernest Donovan, the next door neighbor who introduces Jack (played by Jack Reynor) to the cult, "a place where you can be the man you always dreamed of being." If you're looking for a man to lead you astray, you could do worse than Mr. Friend, who specializes in rebels, rakes and hit men. He's that rare Hollywood animal, a starring actor who feels genuinely dangerous, onscreen anyway. "I don't bite," his character says in "Strange Angel." Then he does. Earlier that day, Mr. Friend, 36, had bounded into the conference room at the Paramount Pictures lot, near the sheds where "Strange Angel" shoots, wearing clothes that actually fit: a frisky corduroy suit and shining shoes. He gave the office space a quick once over ("It looks like you're interviewing me for a job," he said) before folding himself into an ergonomic chair and cracking open a mini bottle of water. In person, he is unreserved, often wry. When the motion sensor lights kept blinking off, he said, with a deadpan, "Very energy efficient." So what's a nice guy like him doing with a bad boy resume like his? Blame that face. "The Cro Magnon" look, he calls it wide forehead, frostbit eyes, a chin so square it must make mathematicians swoon. Even before he was cast as Peter Quinn, the C.I.A. assassin he played for five seasons on "Homeland," people would assume he'd come to kill them. "It stopped them picking fights," he said. That face was a brilliant fit for Quinn, introduced in Season 2 as a coldhearted operative with a soft spot for Carrie Mathison, the show's lead, played by Claire Danes. Alex Gansa, the showrunner for "Homeland," said that he had cast Mr. Friend, then a relative unknown, because "he had these leading man looks and yet there were deep currents running underneath." Quinn was meant to die in Season 5, a victim of sarin gas poisoning. But when he learned that his character would perish, Mr. Friend was asked to draft the not quite a love letter that Quinn leaves Carrie from his deathbed: "Just think of me as a light on the headlands, a beacon, steering you clear of the rocks." "It was so beautifully composed and wonderful," Mr. Gansa said, that the producers brought Quinn back for Season 6. "In a way he saved himself." The Quinn who returned was a damaged man, weakened by a stroke, tormented by his shortcomings. Fans were drawn to Mr. Friend's mix of reserve and vulnerability, his portrait of a man soldiering on despite serious PTSD. When Quinn finally met his end, taking a hail of bullets to protect the president elect, some fans were so incensed that they bought a full page ad in The Hollywood Reporter, shaming the producers for, among other things, Quinn's incapacity "for loving and being loved." Mr. Friend grew up in a small town in Oxfordshire, England. After finishing high school he played in a band, spent a gap year traveling and then enrolled in drama school, mostly because he thought acting meant he wouldn't have to do the same thing day after day. While studying at the Webber Douglas Academy he was cast as Johnny Depp's lover in "The Libertine," a biopic about the Earl of Rochester. Then he played the lady killer in "Pride and Prejudice," Joe Wright's adaptation of the Jane Austen romance, starring opposite Keira Knightley. He and Ms. Knightley dated for several years, though they were careful to avoid mentioning each other in the media. For a long time, Mr. Friend had a contentious relationship with reporters. If you read old interviews, you'll see he did use to bite. (In a 2008 interview with The Observer, he sits down with the reporter and dismisses the meeting as "so boring.") His cynicism extended to his peers. He watched some of his acting colleagues "chase a kind of fame that I wasn't chasing," he said. They'd find a type and play it again and again. "And then that was it. Fine. Done. Now I'm going to Malibu. Goodbye," he said. Mr. Friend could have easily fallen into that trap himself. In between "Homeland" seasons, he played another assassin, in the action film "Hitman: Agent 47." The other day he was reading a script, he said, and his wife, the athlete and activist Aimee Mullins, overheard him murmuring, "'Oh, man. Another troubled character.' And she was like, 'They always are.'" But Mr. Friend is trying to show the world that he's more than just a dour face. His Twitter and Instagram avatar is a sweet cartoon bear (from the English cartoon Rupert Bear), and many of his posts are love notes to his wife. After "Homeland," he took on less predictable roles. In "The Death of Stalin," a farcical look at Soviet history, he plays Stalin's punching bag of a son. In Julian Schnabel's coming "At Eternity's Gate," he plays Theo van Gogh, the loving brother of Vincent. "He's nothing like he was in 'Homeland.'" Mr. Schnabel said. "I think he's a sweetheart." In his next movie, Paul Feig's "A Simple Favor," a noirish thriller about mommy bloggers, he turned down a lead and instead requested the smaller role of a self obsessed fashion designer named Dennis Nylon. Mr. Feig said he "was completely shocked because it is kind of this ridiculous part." And Mr. Friend can now be found on the Paramount lot, cuddling a goat, crashing a motorcycle, playing the ukulele, doing whatever else "Strange Angel" requires. After reading the scripts on an Antarctic vacation, he discovered that Ernest wasn't really a dark character after all, or at least not entirely. He was a seeker and a poet, "the kind of guy who asks you for a beer and you know it's going to end in jail, but you want to go anyway," he said. He was there to shoot a two minute scene in the kitchen, in which Jack confesses professional doubts while Ernest bakes up ritual wafers made with flour and menstrual blood. After rehearsing the scene, Mr. Friend emerged from the house with a frilly white and green flowered apron tied around his shabby tweeds. Peter Quinn would never have been caught dead in it, and the cast and crew took note, diving for their smartphones as Mr. Friend sauntered over to the craft services table for some salami. One of the actresses, Bella Heathcote, who plays Jack's wife, Susan, snapped a picture. "You should send that to your wife," she said, showing it to Mr. Friend. "I already did," he said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
Zika, the mosquito borne virus associated with fetal birth defects, has bitten hard into the travel business as it has spread across the Caribbean and parts of Florida, resulting in enticing deals in the present shoulder season and traveler uncertainty about what to do over the coming holidays. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Zika now touches 29 Caribbean island nations and territories, including Puerto Rico and the United States Virgin Islands, as well as Mexico and Central America. Except for Chile and Uruguay, it's found throughout South America. But it's not solely a Western Hemisphere problem. Zika has been detected in Southeast Asia, including the Maldives, Thailand and Vietnam, and is present in some Pacific island nations. Since last February when the World Health Organization declared Zika an emergency, the virus has influenced North American travel patterns based on demographics. The C.D.C. advises pregnant women and those seeking to become pregnant to avoid unnecessary travel in Zika regions. "Zika has primarily affected the destination wedding and honeymoons business because these are people of childbearing years coming to celebrate romance, and there are plenty of honeymoon babies," said Matt Cooper, chief marketing officer with the Caribbean Hotel Tourism Association. Some destinations out of the Zika zone report an uptick in traffic, such as Bermuda where leisure visits are up 12 percent this year. Though their increase can't definitively be tied to Zika, the number of travelers ages 25 to 34 was up 23 percent through June. Zika is transmitted primarily through infected Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus mosquitoes, which also spread the dengue and chikungunya viruses. There is no vaccine for these viruses, and travelers are advised to wear long sleeves and pants, and apply bug spray. "Always try to avoid insects because many people get infected without knowing it and can unknowingly pass it on through sexual transmission," said Assunta Uffer Marcolongo, president of the nonprofit International Association for Medical Assistance to Travelers. The organization's website, iamat.org, contains health advice by country, including regional Zika outbreaks, as well as a guide to preventing insect bites. For those not in the childbearing demographic, destinations in the Caribbean, Latin America and Florida are offering a mix of information on the outbreak and financial incentive to visit. FLORIDA. Among Americans with Zika, locally acquired cases have been in Florida, predominantly in a small area in Miami's art filled Wynwood neighborhood near downtown, a 4.5 square mile area in Miami Beach and a newly detected area in North Miami. Since Zika was detected in Wynwood in July, abatement efforts have been successful, and on Sept. 19, the C.D.C. noted that no new cases of the virus had been detected in three mosquito incubation periods, about 45 days, and lifted the travel warning. "We are very optimistic because the same plan that was implemented in Wynwood is being implemented in Miami Beach," said Rolando Aedo, chief marketing officer for the Greater Miami Convention Visitors Bureau. That plan includes draining standing water and spraying the area from the ground and, controversially, the air. Its efficacy may be encouraged by cooler, drier fall weather when mosquito activity drops. The bureau maintains updated travel advisory information on its website, miamiandbeaches.com. It also rounds up hotel deals, including up to 15 percent off rooms at the trendy Hotel of South Beach through December. MEXICO AND CENTRAL AMERICA. Mexico is on the C.D.C.'s list of countries with Zika, but some operators in popular destinations, including Puerto Vallarta and Los Cabos, claim they are Zika free. The C.D.C. also maintains a map on its website, noting that regions above 6,500 feet elevation, which includes Mexico City and Puebla, are unlikely to be affected as mosquitoes cannot survive there. "Because of the warning for Mexico, many people assume that the whole country has been affected, but that is not the case," wrote Antonio Duran, director of sales at SunRock Condo Hotel in Cabo San Lucas, in an email. In May, the Mexican Health Ministry reported one case of Zika in the Yucatan and none in the state of Quintana Roo, home to Cancun and the Riviera Maya. Shoulder season deals here include a 35 percent discount at the Royal Hideaway Playacar Resort through Dec. 20. In Costa Rica, also on the C.D.C. list, Hans Pfister, a founder of the Cayuga Collection resort, which includes the eco lodge Lapa Rios, says the honeymooners who often took off season trips in spring and fall trailed off. But the family market picked up in July and August and over the forthcoming holidays. The company offers shoulder season deals, including the fourth night free at Lapa Rios through Dec. 20. "One misconception is that the further away you are in the jungle, the more likely you are to get a tropical disease, and it's not true," he said. "If you're in a balanced ecosystem with natural predators for mosquitoes, you're better off." CARIBBEAN. The number of Caribbean islands with Zika seems to grow weekly. St. Kitts and Nevis were recently added to the list. Puerto Rico has been hardest hit, with over 21,000 locally acquired cases through Sept. 28, according to the C.D.C. Though the Puerto Rico Tourism Company says nonresident visitor numbers dropped just one percent from February to July, it is fighting back with an information campaign devoted to prevention at puertoriconow.seepuertorico.com. It has also enlisted stars like the Olympic tennis gold medalist Monica Puig to talk about protection. The C.D.C. recently announced a 13 million investment in the Puerto Rico Science, Technology and Research Trust for mosquito control. The fallout means bargains galore. CheapCaribbean.com has Puerto Rico packages including, recently, a four night deal with air fare for 399 at the luxury hotel El Conquistador, a Waldorf Astoria Resort, through Dec. 22. Many Caribbean resorts supply free bug spray or sell it. Le Guanahani in St. Barts will reopen Oct. 20 after its annual two month closure, giving management further opportunity to treat its gardens and starve mosquitoes of their victims. Cooler weather means fewer mosquitoes and, it is hoped, fewer Zika cases. The December holiday season is the highest of high seasons in the region with few deals at top resorts, especially because Christmas and New Year's fall on weekends this year. But if you can wait a week later, in January, the Four Seasons Resort Nevis is offering five nights for the price of four. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
The 2014 Subaru Forester was the only one of 13 compact crossovers and S.U.V.'s to earn the highest rating in a new, more severe front crash test by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. The new Forester was rated Good, and the 2013 Mitsubishi Outlander Sport received the next highest rating, Acceptable. The insurance institute, which is financed by the insurance industry, began conducting the new test, called the small overlap test, in 2012. The results are rated on a scale of Good, Acceptable, Marginal and Poor. Vehicles are rated separately for their structure, for how well the driver dummy is restrained and for potential injuries to the dummy. Those are combined into the overall rating. Moreover, the redesigned Forester was the first vehicle of 47 tested to date to receive perfect scores in all of those categories. "It's what we envisioned when we were first developing this test," said Joe Nolan, the institute's vice president for vehicle research. "They addressed the issues of structure. They addressed the issues of keeping the occupant engaged with the frontal air bag; keeping the steering wheel in front of the driver; deploying the side curtain air bag. All of those things, when they work together, they work very well." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Automobiles |
Rob Elliott, former senior managing director of Bessemer Trust, said acquisitions of wealth advisory firms raised questions for their clients. "If your adviser says, 'This will be seamless to you,'" he said, "look out." Wealth management firms, big and small, are being bought at a rapid pace. A 10 year bull market has pumped up their values, and bigger wealth management companies and private equity firms are looking to acquire those that have a steady, predictable cash flow from fees. This is great for the advisers who have ownership stakes in the acquired firms. They receive a large payment from the buyer, usually some multiple of the annual fees they generate. They get a succession plan, since someone else will be there to take over when they retire. And they get to hand off tasks they may not want to do, like risk management, compliance with federal rules, human resources and other back office functions. But what's in it for the client? After all, the value of any wealth management firm comes from the money invested and the fees generated from managing it. And that money comes from just one place: the people who have entrusted those advisers with thousands, millions, even billions of dollars. "The problem is the uncertainty from the client perspective and what the acquisition may mean to them," said Rob Elliott, former senior managing director of Bessemer Trust and retired vice chairman of Market Street Trust Company, the investment vehicle for the family behind Corning glass. "If your adviser says, 'This will be seamless to you, we'll handle all the changes' the transfer of assets, the retitling of things look out." "The adviser is going to say, 'We're going to have the same team.' But will you really?" Mr. Elliott added. "There are going to be new members of the team. Your adviser will assure you that he's the key person and it's going to work. Maybe the acquiring firm is going to get acquired again. Or what's to stop the broker from changing one more time?" The first half of 2019 set a record both for the number of deals for advisory firms and for the amount of assets that were transferred, according to a report by Fidelity. In the biggest acquisition, Goldman Sachs agreed in May to pay 750 million in cash for United Capital, which manages 25 billion. It seemed like a town and gown match. United Capital's founder, Joe Duran, was a leader among registered investment advisers who sought independence from larger firms and served single digit millionaires. Goldman Sachs, on the other hand, is known for focusing on ultra high net worth clients. When deals occur, the first concern for clients is probably what will happen to their adviser. Maybe the adviser sold the firm as a path to retirement at which point the client may be better or worse off with the replacement. Or the adviser may have wanted to free up more time to spend with clients or to get access to a platform or technology that the firm could not otherwise have afforded. Both of those outcomes could benefit clients. Jill B. Steinberg, a partner at Beacon Pointe Advisors since selling it her firm in 2017, said she had been able to balance the small feel of her office, which has six employees, with the benefits of the larger firm's more sophisticated software for relationship management, wealth planning and access to investments. But will the acquiring firms push their advisers to sell clients products that earn higher fees? That's a hard one to answer, since no firm is going to admit that's the plan, and because what you get for your money matters, too. David Barton, vice chairman of Mercer Advisors, has been acquiring smaller advisers about 26 since 2016, with five more set to close soon and he now manages 17 billion in assets, up from 8 billion in 2016. He said Mercer had generally shied away from buying firms that charged high fees, because they probably would not be a good cultural fit. But it's also tricky when a firm charges lower fees than Mercer. "If the firm has lower fees, we'll keep those intact for a period of time," Mr. Barton said. "But if the clients want access to everything else we offer, they have to go to our fee schedule." That includes free estate planning and tax preparation done at a reduced rate. Rick Buoncore, managing partner at MAI Capital Management in Cleveland, tries to solve the fee problem by grouping clients into three buckets: retirement clients who are saving to stop working, estate planning clients who have more than 15 million, and family office clients, whose assets are at least 50 million. "There is a commonality to it, but the retirement client doesn't need everything the family office client needs," he said. There's the option, of course, of moving to another firm, but that's a hassle, especially for wealthier, more complex families. Mr. Elliott gave the example of a family that has a trust with an institutional trustee. Moving to another firm requires that all the assets in the trust be retitled, naming the new institutional trustee. It's time consuming and stressful if not done properly. The same goes for a new firm that suggests using a new accountant to prepare taxes, Mr. Elliott said. "That's a potential loss of privacy, since there's a whole new set of people who are aware of your wealth," he said. So is this wave of consolidation of wealth management better for clients or advisers? That answer depends on whom you ask. Bob Oros, the new chief executive at HighTower Advisors, which manages more than 60 billion, said his goal when HighTower acquired firms was to give more to clients. But, he said, he also wants to provide teams that often worked in isolation with the shared knowledge of HighTower's 250 advisers. Mr. Elliott argued that consolidation wasn't better for the type of wealthy clients his firms served. Those firms should grow organically, he said. But he does see a spot for smaller advisory firms that provide advice to clients of more modest means. It could give them capital for costly needs like cybersecurity and resources to get their practice to a critical mass. Brad Bueermann, chief executive of FP Transitions, which values wealth management firms and advises them on sales, said small might be better for many clients. And he disagreed with the premise that bigger platforms offered more technology and better access and abilities. "We firmly believe at the client level that doing business locally with people who understand the community where their clients are going to retire into and who have a close connection to the client are better," he said. "Independent practices have flourished for a reason: Consolidation is the world we came from 30 years ago." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Your Money |
In November 1963, 17 year old Laura Welch ran a stop sign and crashed into another car, killing its teenage driver. Such accidents don't usually end up on the animated series "Family Guy," but that one did because Laura Welch went on to marry George W. Bush and become first lady of the United States. Now the cartoon's joke serves as title and throughline for the sneakily engaging solo play "Laura Bush Killed a Guy," at the Flea Theater. Ian Allen's comedy is divided into three short sections, each one starting with Mrs. Bush (a nicely understated Lisa Hodsoll) lamenting the fact that judging by Google searches, her claims to fame are her Cowboy Cookies recipe and that fateful night in Texas. (For the sake of critical thoroughness, I helped myself to one of the free treats at the theater; it was tasty, even if the coconut cowboy connection remains murky.) The first go round makes clear that this will not be a standard bio play, as Mrs. Bush breezily explains that the accident was, in fact, a cover up for a deliberate murder. Opening the second part, she contends she had been drunk; the third time is a matter of fact account of a driving mistake with tragic consequences. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
Apart from half of the choreography, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater's opening night gala at City Center on Wednesday was inspiring, admirable, restorative, happy. How much does it matter that two of the evening's works were offensive? Around Ailey, such questions recur. Over all, the program, the start of the troupe's five week annual season at City Center, demonstrated that the Ailey organization was one of the dance world's great success stories. If you can overlook the worse half of the repertory, no company in America has achieved more or keeps on achieving more. Ailey died 25 years ago this week; on Wednesday, we were reminded that Ailey himself last week was accorded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. It's no surprise that his classic "Revelations" one of the great works of the American spirit, whose vision still speaks powerfully brought the gala to a close. What was especially cheering was the strict, objective, subtle, intensely absorbing way it was delivered with marvelous live music conducted by Nedra Olds Neal. So you thought you knew "Revelations"? This rendition made you pay new attention, above all in the brilliantly suspenseful phrasing brought by Antonio Douthit Boyd to the "I Wanna Be Ready" solo. Joan H. Weill, the extraordinary chairwoman of the Alvin Ailey Dance Foundation Board of Trustees, who has given a superlative home to both the troupe and its school, is departing after 14 years in that post; this gala honored her in stirring and endearing terms. A performance by members of the school "A Grateful Gathering," choreographed by Hope Boykin brought to the stage not just students of all ages but also the beloved dancer Renee Robinson, who retired only two years ago from the company (after 30 years) and is now an Ailey teacher. She and the youngsters all danced to and for Mrs. Weill, who was seated at the side of the stage with her husband, Sanford I. Weill. Both Robert Battle, the company's artistic director, and Judith Jamison, his predecessor, talked to and about Mrs. Weill. Mr. Battle has a pleasant, jocose style of public address, but Ms Jamison's is without equal, exciting in rhythm and phrasing, hilarious in off the cuff remarks, generous in spirit. Both Mrs. and Mr. Weill spoke, too; they regarded the Ailey organization as family, and their friendly, unpretentious, welcoming manner made us feel that we, too, belonged to the family. But, but, but. The evening's speeches kept referring to the "Ailey legacy." I would like someone to define what that legacy is and then tell us how it is in any way honored by the horrid choreography of the evening's first two works: Hofesh Shechter's "Uprising" (2006) and Mr. Battle's "Unfold" (2005). Both are sensationalist, both have been brought into the Ailey repertory from elsewhere, and both are dreadful. "Uprising," whose all male cast is dressed to have a modern urban look, is a tedious collage of images of violence and confrontation. On the evening of the Staten Island grand jury decision concerning the death of Eric Garner, it was grim to observe a choreographed chokehold presented as part of a long and pointless male duet. Mr. Shechter's theatrics are intensely manipulative: Smoke hangs in the air, lights address the audience and silhouette the dancers, and the work ends in a "Liberty Leading the People" tableau. Apart from one good but minuscule solo, in which a dancer aspires upward in rapid, flickering gestures, the work's dynamics are consistently heavy, ponderous. If "Uprising" has a message, it's that male violence can be applied in various ways: chokehold, insurrection, workout. But really, it's just a cheap minded array of dull wow effects, largely devoid of serious dance impulse. Mr. Shechter is Israeli; "Uprising" was made in Britain, where he continues to create much of his work. In a speech, Mr. Battle spoke of Mr. Shechter's originality, but nothing in "Uprising" was original. And its music, by Mr. Shechter and Vex'd, chiefly consists of the same echoing thud, repeated for minutes on end. This was followed by a speech by the actor Jeffrey Wright, who told us that dance is about a "love of life." Oh, yeah? The joyless "Uprising" had contradicted this, and so did what followed: the depiction of a mutually abusive male female relationship that is Mr. Battle's "Unfold." The woman's showily sustained backbends seem to invite her partner to manhandle her; he duly obliges, and occasionally she gets him back by tugging him down to the floor. If you understand the ecstatically erotic French words of the operatic aria that Mr. Battle takes as his accompaniment here "Depuis le jour," from Gustave Charpentier's "Louise" then you see that Mr. Battle means his duet as an exercise in pointed theatrical irony. The soprano sings of the delicious tremblings arising from her charming memories of living with her lover; the dancing shows us a couple forever locked in grimly flamboyant and aggressive behavior that brings them no joy. Is this really part of the Ailey legacy? To me, it looks wholly anti Ailey. Usually, "Unfold" is accompanied by Leontyne Price's slow, lush recording of the "Louise" aria. On this occasion, the aria was sung live onstage by Angela Gheorghiu, with Eugene Kohn's piano accompaniment. Ms. Gheorghiu's singing, often under the note, was into a microphone; though she makes more of the words than Ms. Price, her singing on this occasion was unusually tense and unsteady. (It's worth listening to recordings from Charpentier's day, all of which take a far less dilatory tempo.) Dance in America today abounds in examples of inventive, ebullient African American dance idioms Memphis jookin and Detroit Jit are just two but you won't find the best aspects of this modernity in the Ailey repertory. Instead, the repertory inclines to ostentatious theatrics and flashy physicality devoid of artistic subtlety. Here's hoping that this City Center season proves me wrong. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
LONDON Britain might be convulsed by Brexit, but the contemporary art world, and the 0.1 percent of the population that makes it go around, carries on as normal. At least, so it seems. This week, thousands of international collectors, dealers and curators gathered here for the Frieze London and Frieze Masters fairs in Regent's Park, as well as a dizzying array of dealer shows, auctions and other satellite events. "Geopolitically, it may seem as though the world is going sideways, but the art market chugs ahead," said Wendy Cromwell, an art adviser based in New York, in town for "Frieze Week." "Primary sales are alive and well, as is the secondary market for top quality, rare, in demand work," added Ms. Cromwell, referring to the "primary" market for new works from commercial galleries and the "secondary" trade in re offered pieces, such as at auction. "Auction material is a little weak this fall with concerns around Brexit," said Ms. Cromwell on Tuesday, unaware that a Banksy would sell at Sotheby's on Thursday for 12 million. "But the pound is at a record low," she added, "so these sales favor the bold." London's less than stellar auctions (Banksy apart) were balanced by a formidable lineup of dealer shows. Within just a square mile or so of the city center, there were new works by Mark Bradford available at Hauser Wirth, Damien Hirst at White Cube and Peter Doig at Michael Werner. Boosted by recent exceptional auction results, the former graffiti tagger Brian Donnelly, a.k.a. KAWS, is the market phenomenon of the moment. Skarstedt offered 10 new vibrant acrylic abstracts by the artist, as well as two large scale resin sculptures, all of which found buyers, according to the gallery. The unique paintings were marked at 450,000 to 575,000, while the sculptures, each available in a total edition of seven, were priced at 850,000 each. "The problem is that if there's a good show you get 200 people wanting to buy it," said Candace Worth, another New York art adviser, who was also in London. "There's a huge clientele for a relatively small number of artists. It's a pressure cooker." A case in point was the show at the Stephen Friedman Gallery of 20 new paintings and works on paper by the South African artist Lisa Brice, who had a solo show at Tate Britain in 2018. "Challenging and reinterpreting traditional depictions of the female nude from the perspective of a female artist," according to a statement from the gallery, these politically charged images were perfectly in tune with mission of many museum curators and private collectors to widen the art historical canon. They sold out for prices ranging from 9,000 pounds about 11,000 for drawings, to PS175,000 for large scale painted folding screens, said Mira Dimitrova, the gallery's spokeswoman. Mr. Marshall's wryly observational "Car Girl 2," showing a woman leaning on a car from which a dog is leaning out, was sold by the New York dealer David Zwirner for 3.8 million, while the London based Lisson Gallery sold four new colorful geometric abstracts by Mr. Whitney, priced between 350,000 to 450,000, to buyers in the Middle East, Norway and the United States, according to Lisson. The dealership was concurrently hosting a show of Mr. Whitney's paintings, which also sold out. While the Frieze London preview was busy, there was a distinctly more subdued atmosphere at its sister fair Frieze Masters, which presents a "crossover" mix of works ranging across 6,000 years. Old masters have proved a hard sell at this elegant event, but so too have 20th century masters. Leading "secondary market" dealers in modern art such as Levy Gorvy and Luxembourg Dayan, both based in New York and London , and Galeria Elvira Gonzalez, from Madrid, were notable absentees from this latest edition. But on Wednesday the New York dealer Van de Weghe did sell an elaborately detailed 1986 Jean Michel Basquiat drawing with an asking price of 2.2 million, and the London based old master dealership Moretti Fine Art found a buyer for a little circa 1400 Florentine painting, "Christ at the Column," priced at 200,000. With Brexit beckoning, and major galleries such David Zwirner, White Cube and Pace either opening or exploring options in Paris, can London maintain its long held status as the international capital of the European art market? | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
Re "An Ecosystem Under Threat in Manhattan" (front page, May 13): Working from home may indeed become the rule in the wake or continuation of the Covid 19 pandemic. Barclays, Morgan Stanley and many others stand to save a significant amount of money on commercial rents, while stay at home workers' utility and household costs will rise. Will the commercial rent savings reaped by the corporations be shared fairly with those workers at home? Will the employer pay moving costs and increases in monthly housing costs for those needing larger quarters? Will "Can you work from home?" become the new slightly illicit question asked at hiring interviews, improving the chances of more well resourced applicants? If workers continue to underwrite the costs of office work done at home, the wealth gap between corporations and workers, especially less well off workers, will only increase. Rita Charon New York The writer is a professor at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
Seven and a half months after being nominated to lead NASA, Jim Bridenstine finally gets to start his new job. His confirmation following a vote in the Senate ends the longest span of time that NASA has operated without a permanent leader, and comes with a vivid reminder that few posts in Washington are now spared from partisan conflict. On Thursday, the Senate confirmed Mr. Bridenstine, an Oklahoma congressman, as the new NASA administrator in a stark partisan vote: 50 Republicans voting for him and 47 Democrats plus two independents against. The vote lasted more than 45 minutes as Republicans waited for Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona to cast his lot. The vote was also punctuated by the appearance of Senator Tammy Duckworth, Democrat of Illinois, who cast her "no" vote on the Senate floor with her newborn daughter in hand. Mr. Bridenstine takes over an agency in transition. While President Obama talked of sending astronauts to Mars in a couple of decades, the Trump administration has instead focused on a nearer, quicker goal: to return to the moon. The administration has also proposed getting NASA out of the business of running the International Space Station and instead spur commercial alternatives that do not yet exist. Critics have questioned whether the agency's new administrator is up to the task. Mr. Bridenstine, a former Navy pilot who is now in his third term in the House of Representatives, has become immersed in space issues. In 2016, he sponsored a bill called the American Space Renaissance Act, which proposed broad, ambitious goals for the nation's space program, including directing NASA to devise a 20 year plan. Although it did not reach a vote, some of the ideas were incorporated into other legislation. But Democratic senators, led by Bill Nelson of Florida, opposed Mr. Bridenstine for several reasons. For one, they said Mr. Bridenstine was too political he would be the first elected official to serve as NASA administrator. During the confirmation hearings in November, Mr. Nelson read back Mr. Bridenstine's disparaging remarks about other politicians, even other Republicans. "I think what's not right for NASA," Mr. Nelson said during a speech on the Senate floor on Wednesday, "is an administrator who is politically divisive and who is not prepared to be the last in line to make that fateful decision on 'go' or 'no go' for launch." Mr. Bridenstine also has no experience running a large government bureaucracy. The expectation was that someone with that type of background would be tapped to be NASA's deputy administrator to handle more of the day to day management. However, the Trump administration has yet to nominate anyone for that position. On Wednesday, the Project on Government Oversight, an independent watchdog organization, raised questions about Mr. Bridenstine's actions as executive director of the Tulsa Air and Space Museum and Planetarium from 2008 to 2010, before he ran for Congress. One of the events that he organized as executive was an air show in 2010 featuring races by rocket powered airplanes by a business he had personally invested in. That could be considered "self dealing," where a nonprofit official directs money from the organization toward a commercial venture the official has a stake in. Nick Schwellenbach, director of investigations at the watchdog organization, said Mr. Bridenstine's actions at the museum raise concerns given that the administrator oversees an agency with a 20 billion budget and more than 18,000 employees. "Someone in that position needs to set a strong ethical tone, from the top, about the proper use of taxpayer dollars," Mr. Schwellenbach said in an interview. Mr. Bridenstine has since moderated his public views, saying he supports NASA research into the causes of extreme weather. During his confirmation hearing, he agreed that human activity "absolutely" contributed to climate change, but sparred with Senator Brian Schatz, Democrat of Hawaii, over whether it was "a contributor" or the "primary cause." Some opponents also cite Mr. Bridenstine's conservative social views like opposition to same sex marriage. "I stand squarely in support of traditional marriage," Mr. Bridenstine wrote on his congressional website in July 2013. In his confirmation hearing, Mr. Bridenstine tried to make a distinction between views he espoused as a politician and how he would act as the manager of a large federal agency. "I want to make sure that NASA remains, as you said, apolitical," Mr. Bridenstine said to Mr. Nelson. The previous administrator, Charles F. Bolden Jr., stepped down on Jan. 20, 2017, the first day of the Trump presidency. Since then, a longtime NASA official, Robert Lightfoot Jr., has been filling in. By the time Mr. Bridenstine was officially nominated, on Sept. 5, Mr. Lightfoot had already served 228 days, the longest span for an acting administrator. Mr. Lightfoot then served for another 226 days, until Thursday. Mr. Bridenstine's nomination languished, because although the Republicans hold a 51 49 majority, he did not appear to have the necessary votes for confirmation. Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, was away for cancer treatment, while Marco Rubio, the other Florida senator, a Republican, also expressed reservations about putting a politician at the top of NASA. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
A large government trial comparing treatments for a life threatening condition called sepsis is putting participants at risk of organ failure and even death, critics charge, and should be immediately shut down. A detailed analysis of the trial design prepared by senior investigators at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center in Bethesda, Md., concluded that the study "places seriously ill patients at risk without the possibility of gaining information that can provide benefits either to the subjects or to future patients." In a letter to the federal Office for Human Research Protection, representatives of Public Citizen's Health Research Group compared the study, called Clovers, to "an experiment that would be conducted on laboratory animals." "The human subjects of the Clovers trial, as designed and currently conducted, are unwitting guinea pigs in a physiology experiment," Dr. Michael Carome and Dr. Sidney M. Wolfe wrote in their letter. Begun in March, Clovers is funded by the N.I.H. despite the criticism of its own investigators and aims to enroll 2,320 patients at 44 hospitals around the country. In interviews, the scientists leading the study defended its design, saying that participants are receiving all the care that sepsis patients normally would receive. "The guiding principle is patient safety, which takes priority over all else," said Dr. Nathan I. Shapiro, a professor of emergency medicine at Harvard Medical School and co chairman of the protocol committee for the study. Sepsis develops when the body mounts an overwhelming attack against an infection, causing inflammation throughout the body. It is first treated with antibiotics. If sepsis progresses, the body may experience a catastrophic cascade of changes, including blood clots and leaky blood vessels that impede blood flow to organs. At least one million Americans are diagnosed with sepsis every year, and the death rate is high: up to 30 percent succumb to the illness. But while most adults know they must seek care immediately for a heart attack or stroke, only about half know that sepsis requires urgent medical attention, according to a survey by Sepsis Alliance, a nonprofit organization. Signs of sepsis include an abnormally high or low temperature, an underlying infection (which may not be apparent without a blood test), signs of confusion or sleepiness, and feelings of extreme illness, pain or discomfort that make people feel they are about to die. Clovers is designed to test a new strategy for treating septic shock, a dangerous drop in blood pressure that chokes blood flow to organs, affects the heart and can result in death. The goal of the trial is to determine whether it is better to limit fluids and start vasopressors drugs that constrict blood vessels quickly, or to use more intravenous fluids and postpone giving the drugs to patients. At issue is whether patients participating in Clovers are being given treatment that deviates from usual care so much so that lives may be endangered by the research. Participants are only enrolled for 24 hours, but the first hours of treatment are critical for survival. When patients experience septic shock, current guidelines call for raising blood pressure by administering fluids within the first three hours of care, and then administering vasopressors within the first six hours if patients do not respond to fluids. Vasopressors can be administered early on, during or after the infusion of fluids; a new treatment guideline for hospitals says the drugs should be started within the first hour if patients aren't responding to intravenous fluids. Many physicians have been critical of rigid guidelines like this one because they don't allow for individualizing treatment and appear to discount the doctor's clinical judgment. Both fluids in large amounts and vasopressors can cause serious complications, but when a patient's condition continues to deteriorate, doctors use both interventions, adjusting them depending on the severity of illness. They generally start with fluids, which in small amounts are considered less toxic than vasopressors. Like the Science Times page on Facebook. Sign up for the Science Times newsletter. But participants in Clovers are randomly assigned to a "liberal fluids" group who receive large infusions of fluids in a very short time but limits the use of vasopressors, or to a "restrictive fluids" group in which fluids are minimized and drug treatment begun earlier. Scientists leading the study note that treatment is not hard and fast, and insist that all participants are getting medical care that "falls within the range of usual care." Still, they recently altered one of the treatment protocols after physicians in the study complained that its protocols were inconsistent with their practices. The recent protocol modification slowed the rapid infusion of fluids in the first group, the "liberal fluids" arm of the trial. But the change co uld delay administration of vasopressors in that group even when blood pressure remains dangerously low. Critics say the change did not allay their concerns: Patients in both treatment arms potentially could go without lifesaving therapy and are not being properly informed of the risks. "Both vasopressors and fluids are lifesaving, and inadequate or excessive amounts of either one can cause death," Dr. Carome said. If neither treatment arm approximates usual care, as critics contend, the investigators may be unable to draw meaningful conclusions they won't know how the two experimental treatments stack up against the usual care. It will also be difficult for safety monitors to know if participants are dying at abnormally high rates. Though patients in the trial are randomly assigned to one of two groups getting very different treatments, Dr. Shapiro insisted all are receiving what would be considered "usual care" because treatment for sepsis already is variable in hospitals around the country. In the study, a patient's physician may deviate from the experimental treatments at any point to provide a lifesaving alternative. "If the physician at the bedside thinks the patient needs a specific treatment, they will get it," Dr. Shapiro said. The trial protocol, he noted, was developed by more than 20 experts in emergency and critical care medicine, reviewed by an independent peer review committee and approved by a central institutional review board tasked with protecting the rights of human subjects. Medical experts in the field generally agree there is a need for better scientific evidence on how to treat sepsis. "There is not a lot of data about how much fluid to give, how much is enough, how much is too much, how much is too little," said Dr. Tiffany Osborn, an emergency physician and critical care specialist speaking on behalf of the College of Emergency Medical Physicians. "That information is hard to get a handle on." Another expert not involved in the trial said the study appears designed to challenge current care guidelines. "Certainly care is often fluids and then vasopressors, and this study is provocative in that it goes against that and says maybe what we've been doing for decades may not be the right thing, and maybe we should be giving the vasopressors early on," said Dr. Matthew Churpek, an assistant professor of pulmonary and critical care medicine at the University of Chicago. Dr. Carome, of Public Citizen, is not convinced that the study provides anything like the usual care. "We think Clovers can't be fixed," he said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
Ja Morant of Murray State went from third best scoring option as a freshman to a breakout star as a sophomore. HARTFORD Rick Byrd, the longtime Belmont coach, began hearing rumors before the season began. Belmont had played Murray State, an Ohio Valley Conference rival, twice last season, and Byrd knew that Ja Morant, then a freshman, was a perfectly solid player. But then Byrd and his staff started getting the word of mouth from preseason workouts, Byrd said Friday in a telephone interview. Morant was not just solid. He was the best player in the league, they heard. In fact, after the season, he would be an N.B.A. draft pick. Make that an N.B.A. lottery pick. "It was hard to believe," Byrd said, "because he was the third wheel on that team at best, really." "He just was a guy," Byrd added. "You knew you didn't want him in the open floor on the break. You knew he could see the floor and pass the ball. But we went under all his strong screens" that is, on pick and rolls, Belmont dared Morant to shoot. Now Byrd is a believer, along with everyone else, and not just because Morant led Murray State to the conference championship over Belmont this month. Morant has emerged as college basketball's most exciting player this side of Duke's Zion Williamson, the transcendent freshman who may well turn out to be the only player taken ahead of Morant in June's N.B.A. draft. Morant is eighth in Division I in scoring, with 24.4 points a game, and first in assists, with 10.2. On Thursday, Morant led the 12th seeded Racers (28 4) to an 83 64 thrashing of fifth seeded Marquette in Hartford in the N.C.A.A. tournament's first round, contributing 17 points, 11 rebounds and 16 assists the first men's tournament triple double since 2012. He followed that with 28 points, 5 rebounds and 4 assists in a 90 62 loss to No. 4 Florida State on Saturday. Even in a loss, Morant was the game's leading scorer. Morant's coaches and teammates, his firmest backers and closest watchers, acknowledge that they were not quite prepared for this. It is as if Morant had received magic beans or sold his soul to the Devil down at the crossroads. "We didn't see the jump he's had this year coming," the Murray State assistant coach Casey Long said, "but we knew the work ethic he put in and his ability that allowed him to make the jump." Jonathan Stark, who won conference player of the year honors on last year's Murray State team and is now on an N.B.A. development league roster, said in an interview: "I knew he was going to have the keys to the ignition. I knew he was going to be an N.B.A. player. I knew he was going to go first round." "No. 1 and 2?" Stark added, referring to predicted draft position. "I honestly didn't know about that." A sudden rise like Morant's is not supposed to happen in 2019. The very best high school players are spotted early and gravitate to the top programs, which they treat as the basketball equivalent of a two hour airport layover on their way to their preferred, even expected destination: the N.B.A. If, as expected, Morant is taken with a top three pick, he will be the first American who was not a freshman so honored since 2013, and the first from a midmajor university since Memphis's Derrick Rose in 2008. The college basketball establishment probably took longer to catch up to Morant's abilities because he was under recruited. Morant, whose YouTube highlight reels are on hoops fanatics' heavy rotations, said Friday that he was under six feet tall as recently as his senior year of high school (he is now listed at 6 foot 3) and that he could not reliably dunk the ball until he was nearly in college. This also explains what to Morant's coach, Matt McMahon, was an underrated freshman season, one in which Morant averaged 12.7 points, 6.3 assists and 6.5 rebounds per game numbers that McMahon compared to college seasons of future N.B.A. stars like Anfernee Hardaway and Jason Kidd. Morant's evolution from his freshman to sophomore seasons was neither "exponential" nor "linear," the Murray State strength and conditioning coach Zach Whitman said. Morant is lanky listed at 175 pounds but Whitman said he probably added 20 pounds since arriving at Murray State's campus in far western Kentucky in 2017. "Over the summer," said his teammate Brion Sanchious, "he dunked on one of my teammates, and I thought, 'Yeah, he's here.'" Morant's shooting has improved, too, with both his 2 and 3 point percentages up. But maybe most of all, the explanation for Morant's remarkable improvement between two seasons was the changing team dynamics around him, and his willingness last season to sublimate his own numbers for the team's sake. In the seniors Stark and Terrell Miller Jr., the Racers had two proven scorers last year. They would go on to average nearly 37 points a game combined, and lead the Racers to the N.C.A.A. tournament, as Morant accepted a role as the team's third scoring option and shared point guard duties with the more experienced Stark. "Last year, I just felt like I didn't have to take many shots," Morant said. "He was more of a role player last year, due to Jonathan Stark and Terrell," added Shaq Buchanan, Morant's current backcourt partner. "He played the role great," Buchanan added, "and when the time came for him to be that leader and player we needed, he stepped up and delivered for us." This year, he put on the show of the tournament's first day, and afterward Dwyane Wade tweeted about him while Luka Doncic and De'Aaron Fox direct messaged him on Instagram. And Morant hardly seemed fazed as he spoke in the locker room on Friday afternoon. "Last year, I felt like I was excited to be here, had a little bit of nerves," Morant said. "This year, I feel way more comfortable." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
SINCE Dane Peters retired three years ago as head of school at Brooklyn Heights Montessori School in Brooklyn, he has fused a life of consulting, volunteering and leisure time. "It's my trifecta," he said. "Paid work, giving back and relaxation. I call it 'consulteering.'" Like Mr. Peters, who is 68, a growing number of retirees are seeking a similar equilibrium. "My hunch is that we'll be seeing more of 'consulteering,'" said Dorian Mintzer, a retirement transition coach. "It's a great way to fit work into life rather than trying to squeeze time for life into your work schedule." Ms. Mintzer's clients, she said, are "intentional in figuring out what's next realizing they benefit from some work structure and want to build social connection, mental engagement and meaning into their life." Even after stepping away from a full time job, for many "retirees," work is still their primary identity. "It's an important part of how they define themselves, and they don't want to totally give it up," Ms. Mintzer said. "But they want to create their own hours and have time for other things that matter to them." The interest in consulteering a word Mr. Peters said he thought up on his own is one sign among many that traditional retirement no longer satisfies as many older people as it once did. A recent study from the Employee Benefit Research Institute found that fewer older Americans say they're having a great time during retirement. Based on a 15 year period of data from the University of Michigan's Health and Retirement Study, the most comprehensive national survey of older Americans, the share of people reporting "very satisfying" retirements dropped significantly from just over 60 percent in 1998 to under 49 percent in 2012. Staving off retirement blues takes preparation. The first step for Mr. Peters and his wife, Chris, a retired teacher, was to move closer to family. They relocated to Greenland, N.H., to live near their son and daughter in law and their two young granddaughters, ages 3 and 5. It wasn't a rash move. They rented for a year. "We wanted to get a lay of the land and not disrupt our son and his family's life, and at the same time find a place we could afford," Mr. Peters said. Consulting allowed him to look for work from his new home. "I did not want to stop working altogether for my own sense of self, and I wanted to stay in the game and support independent schools with my expertise in leadership and governance," he said. "Yet, I didn't want to keep up the pace of a 70 hour workweek." To test the waters, he accepted weekend consulting assignments before retiring. "There was a demand, so now I pick and choose when I work generally one job a month," he said. After moving to Greenland, Mr. and Mrs. Peters began volunteering together for an acting troupe called Senior Moments, a nonprofit performance group. The group writes its own plays and short skits, and performs them throughout New Hampshire at senior centers. "My wife and I are the young kids in the group," Mr. Peters said. "The guy who runs it is 84." Locast, a nonprofit streaming service for local TV, is shutting down Capital One's chief executive was fined after being called a 'repeat offender.' To further engage in their interest in theater, they usher at a local music hall and the Seacoast Repertory Theater, and sell concessions. "I make a lot of popcorn," Mr. Peters said. He also serves as a board member at a handful of small nonprofits. The third leg of the stool is family and leisure. Dane and Chris Peters care for their granddaughters two days a week before and after school. This year, they have already traveled to San Miguel, Mexico, and have booked an Alaskan cruise and a biking and barge tour in France. To keep in shape for all of these activities, Mr. Peters says he typically cycles nine miles a day. "Fitness is a big piece of retirement for me." What it all comes down to is "balancing a life of leisure with a life of purpose," Mr. Peters said. "The biggest challenge is time management. The management comes in how many gigs I will take on and how much volunteering we can realistically do." Similarly, Ann Seltz, 66, who lives in Rockville, Md., keeps a tight rein on her paid work in retirement, limiting it to an average of 25 hours a week, so she has time for her volunteer work and other activities. Ms. Seltz sings in a Sweet Adelines barbershop group that performs locally, competes regionally and includes a regular exercise program of yoga, walking and aqua fitness. "My mission is to keep moving and stay active mentally, so I don't become some fat, old woman with a cane," Ms. Seltz said. "You need to be intentional about taking care of yourself. You have to plan how you want to spend these years. You can't just drift." But the transition took time. "I loved my last full time job," recalled Ms. Seltz, a former vice president of marketing. "It was a fast moving, hard charging media company covering the residential design and construction field, and there was always a new impossible challenge or revenue number to make." Then it all fell apart. Roughly six years ago, Ms. Seltz was let go a circumstance faced by many older workers. "I was expensive upper management in a collapsing residential construction world," she recalled. "I was laid off one day, given a pretty generous severance and sent on my way." A sizable 60 percent of retirees surveyed last year by the nonprofit Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies said they were pushed out of their jobs before age 65, largely for reasons out of their control, according to Catherine Collinson, president of T.C.R.S. After bouncing around in a few short term positions, Ms. Seltz decided to set up her own shingle, starting SeltzSolutions.com, a marketing consulting practice. To land assignments, she tapped FlexProfessionals, an employment agency in Washington and Boston that matches experienced professionals with part time employment. Her hourly rate was about a third of what it would have been for project management and marketing assignments at the top of her game, she figured. For Ms. Seltz, lowering her wage bar wasn't a stumbling block. "I've come to see work as something that funds my real passion volunteering," she said. "In fact, what kept me from falling into depression when my 'real' career blew up was my volunteer work." Not all retirees are willing to work for less than they feel they're worth. That is often a mistake. "They have unrealistic expectations for pay and responsibility, especially for part time positions," said Gwenn Rosener, co founder of FlexProfessionals. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Your Money |
For several seasons now, fashion observers have gingerly expressed enthusiasm for the increasing diversity on the runways, often concerned that what seemed like a real change could be nothing more than a trend. But in New York, at least, the slow but steady transformation may have staying power. A new report released by The Fashion Spot that assessed 2,601 runway appearances over 94 shows during New York Fashion Week found that there were at least two nonwhite models cast in each show, and 90 plus size castings. (In February, at the fall shows, there were 30). Charlee Fraser, who is Indigenous Australian, walked in 20 shows, the most shows of any model, according to the report. "Every season we're seeing progress over previous seasons, but not to this extent," said Jennifer Davidson, the editor in chief of The Fashion Spot, which has compiled diversity reports since the spring 2015 season. "The numbers really jumped this year. Even just a year ago there were plenty of shows that had no models of color." Of the 90 plus size appearances, 56 were at Addition Elle and Torrid (showing at fashion week for the first time); both are companies that sell clothing above a size 10. Not far behind were Christian Siriano and Chromat, which between them had 21 appearances from plus size models including Marquita Pring and Jocelyn Corona. Teddy Quinlivan, who revealed last week that she has lived as a woman since she was 16, walked in 11 runway shows, boosting the number of appearances from transgender and nonbinary models to 31, a new high. Chromat contributed the highest share to the total: Six of its models were transgender or nonbinary. Last season, six models over the age of 50 walked in New York Fashion Week, and this time was just a slight improvement, with 10. Coco Mitchell, Susan Cianciolo, Sophia Lamar and others hit the runway for Eckhaus Latta, Helmut Lang and Chromat. "Diversity is really a part of the conversation, not just in fashion, but also in television, movies and any kind of media," Ms. Davidson said. "Designers can see that there's a real benefit to inclusion." And the inverse is true as well. No diversity on your runway? "People aren't going to tolerate it," she said. As models have become more fluent on social media, they have taken to speaking out against the dominance of white, straight size models in the industry. The Model Alliance, for example, a labor rights organization run by Sara Ziff, regularly takes a public stand on diversity in the workplace, while the Instagram account More Models of Color shares images of nonwhite models and calls out labels that lack diversity in castings. Platforms like Instagram have also enabled models who are not signed by agencies to promote themselves. "They're able to reach out directly to casting directors," said Gilleon Smith, who has chosen models for Chromat, Ane Amour and Phelan. "That's really how a lot of models come to me." In 1999 or even in 2009, she said, "how were you even supposed to know who was casting that show?" Ms. Davidson will analyze the shows in London, Milan and Paris and share reports from those cities as well, along with a final report from all the shows. "Europe lags behind, especially for plus size women," she said. Ms. Smith wonders when it will expand to Milan and Paris and London. "Once you're over there," she said, "you're going back to that one politically correct black girl that's in the show." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
Tyler, the Creator's performance at the 62nd annual Grammy Awards on Sunday night began with what felt like a familiar Grammys energy. Onstage for a performance of his song "Earfquake," he was joined by the R B titans Charlie Wilson (who is on the original track) and Boyz II Men a meeting of genres, a smorgasbord of generations. A Grammy Moment(tm), as it were. Then Tyler, wearing his white ish bowl cut "Igor" wig, stepped to center stage and transitioned to "New Magic Wand," a harsh electro industrial number. The performance was wild emphatic inhales and exhales, sharp shouts, zombie walk dancing and, finally, unhinged moshing. About 20 Igor alikes, an array reminiscent of Eminem's breakout performance at the 2000 MTV Video Music Awards, accented the scene, all captured by what may well have been the Grammys' first ever moshing along camera. A little later in the show, Tyler won best rap album for "Igor" and gave an enthused, amused and sweetly sincere speech in which he spoke of "growing up feeling left of center to a lot of stuff that I saw on TV" and thanked his friends for putting up with his "annoying hyperactive energy." But this year may well be remembered as one of severe, jolting transition for the Grammys, and not just because of the behind the scenes conflagration about conflicts of interest, irregularities in the nomination process, sexual harassment and more that overshadowed the event. Instead, Sunday night's show featured several impressive moments spotlighting some of pop music's youngest innovators: Tyler, Lizzo, Billie Eilish, Rosalia. And while there were plenty of the usual serious as a snore Grammy performances, they faded from memory thanks to the night's cleverest and hungriest attendees. That there's room for those performers on the show now is, in part, a positive side effect of the institution's own necrosis. The Grammys have systematically alienated a whole generation or two of hip hop and pop stars, many of the most crucial musicians of the last two decades. Think about everyone who was not in attendance this year: Drake, Beyonce, Jay Z, Taylor Swift, Kanye West, Rihanna, Justin Bieber, Kendrick Lamar. What's left? The veterans who are a part of the show's firmament, but more intriguingly, the new kids on the block. The sneakily traditional Billie Eilish won five awards, including a sweep of the biggest categories: album, song and record of the year, and best new artist. (Her brother and producer, Finneas, also won trophies for producer of the year, non classical and best engineered album, non classical.) Her performance of "When the Party's Over" was supple if a little sleepy. (It was just two years ago that Lorde, nominated for album of the year, wasn't even offered a solo performance slot.) But perhaps the most promising performance, and the one best attuned to pop's increasing unpredictability never a Grammys strength was the multi ring circus that was Lil Nas X's "Old Town Road," which reigned atop the Billboard Hot 100 for a record 19 weeks last year, aided by a seemingly unending string of remixes. Rather than turn "Old Town Road" dour, perhaps with a performance by some country elders, the Grammys leaned into the mayhem. Lil Nas X performed on a rotating stage cut into sections representing different versions of the song: one featured BTS, the K pop supernova; another held the child yodeler Mason Ramsey and Diplo absently strumming a banjo; yet another was seemingly built for Young Thug, who was a no show. At the end, everyone including Billy Ray Cyrus, whose appearance on the original remix vaulted the song to pop novelty infamy convened together, dancing and partying and generally indulging in the utterly absurd unlikeliness of it all. It was like a Technicolor meme convention, a gathering of misfits, and perhaps the most honest representation of the new pop economy rule making that the Grammys have ever seen. It also, conveniently, displaced a lot of the performance pressure off Lil Nas X, who won two of the six Grammys he was nominated for he's still very green, and it shows. The "Old Town Road" performance not the night's best, but certainly the most delirious also presented a possible solution to at least part of the Grammys crisis at hand. Turning the show into a showcase of up and coming talent and de emphasizing legacy acts would make for a more dynamic telecast than the sorts of sluggish heart rate performances that veterans favor, and that rising performers are often pushed into. (Though there were plenty of those, too, of course the third hour, in particular, was a slog. Grammys gonna Grammy.) The flickers of life gave a kind of hope for a new generation of talent whose relationship to Grammy acclaim is both genuine and also salted with just a touch of skepticism, or whimsy. No one appeared to be having more fun than Lizzo, who provided one cheeky reaction shot after another, and who briefly screamed alongside Steven Tyler of Aerosmith when he strolled past her during "Livin' on the Edge." In the second part of his performance, Lil Nas X was joined by actual Nas or "Big Nas," as he called himself who's never won a Grammy despite earning 13 nominations and being one of the most important and gifted rappers of all time. That he was willing to be in on the joke on a stage this huge was a true reflection of the changing times. Before Eilish won album of the year, her fourth of five awards, the cameras captured her mouthing, "Please don't be me, please." Tyler, who tweeted a decade ago that winning a Grammy was one of his goals, did a bit of protest work backstage in the press room, as well. When asked about the recent Grammy controversies, he was frank: "Half of me feels like the rap nomination was just a backhanded compliment. Like, my little cousin wants to play the game. Let's give him the unplugged controller so he can shut up and feel good about it." Truly updating and reforming the Grammys will require the participation of artists who understand its limitations, but still believe in it as a platform. After Tyler won his award, he tweeted about how excited he was to get played off the stage, a classic awards show indignity. There may be a new generation ascending, but the old Grammys are unlikely to go down without a fight. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
After 178 years of operation, the British tour operator Thomas Cook, one of the world's oldest travel brands, with 19 million annual customers, closed shop on Monday. The company announced that it would be liquidating its assets and filed for bankruptcy, despite attempts to rescue the brand. At the moment of its collapse, Thomas Cook had a debt of 1.7 billion pounds, about 2.1 billion, an amount the chief executive, Peter Fankhauser, had called "insurmountable." It had been in negotiations to obtain 250 million in emergency financing when it declared bankruptcy. About 600,000 travelers around the world were affected, 150,000 of them from the United Kingdom and about twice as many from Germany, said the airline industry analyst Bob Mann, and more than 20,000 employees worldwide found themselves without a job. What happened? At a time when more people than ever are traveling, how could an established brand like Thomas Cook implode? And what now? The Thomas Cook Group was a British travel company famous for offering a distinct convenience to travelers: the ability to have all the pieces of their vacations linked, from flight to hotel room to local transport to tours, and even meals. The brand offered one stop shopping for those who needed a getaway: Book a Thomas Cook vacation, and the only thing you'd need to do was pack a bag and go. The company even ran its own hotels and in recent years, operated its own airline. Its slogan pointed to the all inclusive aspect of its business model: "Don't just book it, Thomas Cook it." The sudden collapse of Thomas Cook snarled travel plans, sowed confusion at airports and left hundreds of thousands stranded. That concept worked for generations of travelers, and the brand built a solid reputation. Zane Kerby, president and chief executive of the American Society of Travel Advisors, an association representing travel agencies, said that Thomas Cook's reputation among both travel advisers and their clients was very good: "a quality brand." As recently as this summer, Thomas Cook Airlines was flying passengers to at least 82 destinations around the world, in Africa, Asia, North America and Europe. Although the United States was not the company's primary market, it still had a significant presence in some markets: over the past year, the company operated nearly 1,000 flights with 257,000 passengers out of Orlando International Airport, according to Carolyn Fennell, the airport's senior director of public affairs. "They were never very good at digital," said Rafat Ali, the chief executive of Skift, a New York based media company that provides research and marketing services for the travel industry, "that's fair to say." "The package holiday market has gotten squeezed because it is so much easier for consumers to pick the elements they want for a holiday, and for them to be able to pick them at a good price," said Tim Davis, the managing director of Pace Dimensions, a consulting firm that advises travel businesses on how to adapt to the digital world. He pointed out that over the past decade, Expedia and Booking Holdings have come to dominate the market with their search capabilities. "Instead of moving in that direction, Thomas Cook moved toward the direction of being a tour operator. Although they had more control over it by owning the hotels and the airline the market has continued to get squeezed." Mr. Davis put it bluntly: "It is a market that is going to die, it is just a matter of time." Scott Keyes, founder of the air travel website Scott's Cheap Flights, said the desire of millennials for more individualized journeys also played a role. People can now do their own research, "find your own adventures," Mr. Keyes said. "There's new competition in tours and activities, whether it's big players like Airbnb or smaller players, the market has gotten more difficult for tour operators because of this shifting taste. It's not as necessary to book packages." The package business is also seasonal, said Mr. Ali, of Skift. "The problem is that packages have a very defined season. So if one season goes bad maybe because the summer is too hot, or because a key market, like Egypt, is experiencing trouble it affects the cash flow of a company like Thomas Cook very badly." In the early 2000s, Thomas Cook began moving into the airline business. The company slowly absorbed Condor, a Frankfurt based airline that was formerly a subsidiary of Lufthansa. In 2003, the company began operating its own airline, Thomas Cook Airlines, a United Kingdom based operation with 34 planes in the fleet traveling to 82 destinations. Many experts pointed to that decision as a primary source of its troubles. "It's very hard to operate a travel agency, and it is very hard to operate an airline," said Mr. Kerby of the Travel Advisors association. "And the lessons you learn operating a successful agency do not always transfer to operating an airline. Both are independent, complicated businesses in their own ways." The aviation consultant John Strickland noted that carriers like Thomas Cook don't have the flexibility of a stand alone airline. "You aren't offering the same kind of schedule options," he said. The sunk costs of running an airline, combined with the operating costs the crew, maintenance, and more make any airline vulnerable to declines in demand. But Mr. Strickland said that Thomas Cook's business model made it even more troublesome. "The nature of the market is that they are seeing big peaks in the summer and troughs in the winter," he said. If you own your own planes and don't have passengers during quieter months, "that becomes a big challenge." Thomas Cook's chief competition was the German based tour company TUI Group, which also has an airline. When the internet threatened to eat into the business of conventional tour operators, TUI executives started acquiring and operating cruise ships and hotels in an attempt to differentiate their agency from the competition. Now, in addition to a fleet of 150 airplanes flown by five company owned airlines, TUI operates 17 ocean liners and 380 hotels mainly in Southern Europe and Southeast Asia. "We're getting 70 percent of our earnings from our cruise ships and hotels. Tour operations and airlines make up only 30 percent," said Kuzy Alexander Esener, the head of media relations for TUI. The loss of Thomas Cook is an opportunity for TUI, Mr. Esener said. Its TUI Fly airline has been contacted by the British authorities searching for jetliners to charter to bring Thomas Cook's stranded passengers back home. In May, Thomas Cook's chief executive, Mr. Fankhauser, warned that "the Brexit process has led many U.K. customers to delay their holiday plans for this summer." Mr. Kerby also blamed the uncertainty around Brexit, at least in part. He pointed to the particular difficulty of operating an airline in Europe, a market that is awash in low cost carriers like Ryanair and easyJet, and where purchases need to be made in dollars. "A lot of your bills are in dollars; you have to buy oil in dollars," he said. "So when there are shocks to the system, like the U.K. with Brexit and the pound losing so much value, all of a sudden that makes the loans you have very difficult to service." "Travel agencies are doing well around the world. Airlines are doing well around the world. But combining those together with an uncertain market and a falling currency, for a company that is saddled with that much debt, you get a perfect storm." Thomas Cook customers who have flights booked through October 6 will be flown home, using a cobbled together fleet of airplanes, most of them from charter companies, said Mr. Mann, the airline analyst. Those with tickets on Condor, a German carrier that is a subsidiary of Thomas Cook, will be able to fly home on that airline, which continues to operate. There are at least a dozen charter airlines around the world that together have more than 60 planes that could be put to use, he said. Many will have available planes because of the dip in airline traffic that comes in the post summer travel season, he said. Atlas Air of Purchase, N.Y., a cargo company that owns a 747 passenger plane, dispatched its 400 plus seat jumbo jet to Manchester, England, to help with the repatriation. Mr. Mann expected charter companies that fly passengers to the Hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca, which ended in August, to be enlisted. He also expected airlines like Malaysia Airlines, with underused Airbus A380 wide body planes, to be enlisted. "The logistics of the British piece are probably going to be 750 flights, assuming they can do them efficiently and get people on them," Mr. Mann said. "It's kind of Dunkirk as far as the United Kingdom goes," referring to the naval evacuation of British troops from France during World War II. A spokeswoman for British Airways said the airline is working with the U.K. Civil Aviation Authority to provide seats for customers returning to the United Kingdom on existing flights. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
Ennio Morricone, the Italian composer whose atmospheric scores for spaghetti westerns and some 500 films by a Who's Who of international directors made him one of the world's most versatile and influential creators of music for the modern cinema, died on Monday in Rome. He was 91. His death, at a hospital, was confirmed by his lawyer, Giorgio Assumma, who said that Mr. Morricone was admitted there last week after falling and fracturing a femur. Mr. Assumma also distributed a statement that Mr. Morricone had written himself, titled, "I, Ennio Morricone, am dead." To many cineastes, Maestro Morricone (pronounced (mo ree CONE eh) was a unique talent, composing melodic accompaniments to comedies, thrillers and historical dramas by Bernardo Bertolucci, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Terrence Malick, Roland Joffe, Brian De Palma, Barry Levinson, Mike Nichols, John Carpenter, Quentin Tarantino and other filmmakers. He scored many popular films of the past 40 years: Edouard Molinaro's "La Cage aux Folles" (1978), Mr. Carpenter's "The Thing" (1982), Mr. De Palma's "The Untouchables" (1987), Roman Polanski's "Frantic" (1988), Giuseppe Tornatore's "Cinema Paradiso" (1988), Wolfgang Petersen's "In the Line of Fire" (1993), and Mr. Tarantino's "The Hateful Eight" (2015). But the work that made him world famous, and that was best known to moviegoers, was his blend of music and sound effects for Sergio Leone's so called spaghetti westerns of the 1960s: a ticking pocket watch, a sign creaking in the wind, buzzing flies, a twanging Jew's harp, haunting whistles, cracking whips, gunshots and a bizarre, wailing "ah ee ah ee ah," played on a sweet potato shaped wind instrument called an ocarina. Imitated, scorned, spoofed, what came to be known as "The Dollars Trilogy" "A Fistful of Dollars" (1964), "For a Few Dollars More" (1965) and "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" (1966), all released in the United States in 1967 starred Clint Eastwood as "The Man With No Name" and were enormous hits, with a combined budget of 2 million and gross worldwide receipts of 280 million. "In the films that established his reputation in the 1960s, the series of spaghetti westerns he scored for Mr. Leone, Mr. Morricone's music is anything but a backdrop," The New York Times critic Jon Pareles wrote in 2007. "It's sometimes a conspirator, sometimes a lampoon, with tunes that are as vividly in the foreground as any of the actors' faces." Mr. Morricone also scored Mr. Leone's "Once Upon a Time in the West" (1968) and his Jewish gangster drama, "Once Upon a Time in America" (1984), both widely considered masterpieces. But he became most closely identified with "The Dollars Trilogy," and in time grew weary of answering for their lowbrow sensibilities. Asked by The Guardian in 2006 why "A Fistful of Dollars" had made such an impact, he said: "I don't know. It's the worst film Leone made and the worst score I did." "The Ecstasy of Gold," from "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly," was one of Mr. Morricone's biggest hits. It was recorded by the cellist Yo Yo Ma on a 2004 album of Mr. Morricone's compositions and used in concert by two rock bands: as closing music for the Ramones and the introductory theme for Metallica. Mr. Morricone looked professorial in bow ties and spectacles, with wisps of flyaway white hair. He sometimes holed up in his palazzo in Rome and wrote music for weeks on end, composing not at a piano but at a desk. He heard the music in his mind, he said, and wrote it in pencil on score paper for all orchestra parts. He sometimes scored 20 or more films a year, often working only from a script before screening the rushes. Directors marveled at his range tarantellas, psychedelic screeches, swelling love themes, tense passages of high drama, stately evocations of the 18th century or eerie dissonances of the 20th and at the ingenuity of his silences: He was wary of too much music, of overloading an audience with emotions. Mr. Morricone composed for television films and series, (some of his music was reused on "The Sopranos" and "The Simpsons"), wrote about 100 concert pieces, and orchestrated music for popular singers, including Joan Baez, Paul Anka and Anna Maria Quaini, the Italian star known as Mina. Mr. Morricone never learned to speak English, never left Rome to compose, and for years refused to fly anywhere, though he eventually flew all over the world to conduct orchestras, sometimes performing his own compositions. While he wrote extensively for Hollywood, he did not appear in concert in the United States until 2007, when, at 78, he made a monthlong tour, punctuated by festivals of his films. Ennio Morricone was born in Rome on Nov. 10, 1928, one of five children of Mario and Libera (Ridolfi) Morricone. His father, a trumpet player, taught him to read music and play various instruments. Ennio wrote his first compositions at 6. In 1940, he entered the National Academy of Santa Cecilia, where he studied trumpet, composition and direction. His World War II experiences hunger and the dangers of Rome as an "open city" under German and American armies were reflected in some of his later work. After the war, he wrote music for radio; for Italy's broadcasting service, RAI; and for singers under contract to RCA. Mr. Morricone's survivors include his wife, Maria Travia, whom he married in 1956 and cited when accepting his 2016 Oscar; four children, Marco, Alessandra, Andrea (a composer and conductor) and Giovanni; and four grandchildren. Mr. Morricone's first film credit was for Luciano Salce's comedy "The Fascist" (1961). He soon began his collaboration with Mr. Leone, a former schoolmate. But he also scored political films: Gillo Pontecorvo's "The Battle of Algiers" (1966), Mr. Pasolini's "The Hawks and the Sparrows" (1966), Giuliano Montaldo's "Sacco and Vanzetti" (1971) and Mr. Bertolucci's "1900" (1976). | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
And now they wait. While the 2020 World Surf League Championship Tour has been called off due to the pandemic, the league left a door ajar for potential exhibition events should safety allow. Surfing was poised for a monumental year in 2020 with its arrival on the Olympic stage. But the pandemic has not only caused a postponement of the Tokyo Games, it has now led the World Surf League to cancel the World Championship Tour this year and to revamp the next tour schedule. The 2021 tour will begin later this year, an early start designed to provide leeway in case the pandemic worsens and causes schedule changes later in the calendar. The 2020 championship tour, which had been scheduled to begin in March with the Corona Open Gold Coast in Queensland, Australia, never got off the ground because of the pandemic. It was a jarring realization. If surfing a sport that takes place outside, with physically distant competitors couldn't pull off competition safely, was there hope for any other sport? As event after event was canceled, it became obvious that the surfing season could not continue amid coronavirus infections and the extensive international travel that the tour demands. "When we entered into what we thought was a longer, more protracted hold, it became clear that this could be a transformative moment for the sport," Erik Logan, the chief executive of the surf league, said. So Logan, along with the league's executive team and a round table of surfers, went to the drawing board. Corralling a group of stakeholders over Zoom was surely less complicated than it would have been to coordinate groups of pro athletes and executives as they bounced around the globe from Australia to Brazil to France. All questions were up for discussion. Former world champions were asked about their experiences: How should athletes earn that crown? When should the tour start and end, and how many events would be included? Were there too many surfers on the tour? The questions have long been posed to fans, surfers and sports executives. Professional surfing has decided world champions in much the same fashion since 1976, awarding points to surfers at each tour event and crowning a champion based on total aggregate season points. It's not particularly easy to follow, or satisfying for fans, given that well over half of the winners since the mid 1970s have not claimed their title in the water, said Matt Warshaw, the author of the Encyclopedia of Surfing. The titles for the men's and women's tours are frequently awarded far before the final event begins, which can be bizarre to witness. That's what happened in 2016, when Tyler Wright was walking on the beach and someone ran up to her to say "hey, you're the world champ!" She responded with, "What, I won?" The next year, John John Florence the 2016 World Title holder won the 2017 title by default after Gabriel Medina was eliminated from a quarterfinal heat. Florence was showered with champagne in a backyard when his competitor paddled back to shore. The dream scenario played out in real time, for the first time, in 2019. The two top athletes Medina and Italo Ferreira were the last two surfers in the final heat of the final competition of the year. A win would mean the world title, and the commentators and executives were thrilled. Creating a true championship all or nothing event was one of the first things the league decided to do going forward. The bulk of the 2021 season will still award points to surfers. But the final event of the year will only include the top five men and the top five women based on those rankings. The last man and woman standing are the world champions. And for the first time, the men's and women's championship tours will have the same number of stops. In previous years, the women's tour which has long had to fight for peak conditions, swells and coverage had fewer stops than the men's tour. The women will now have a stop at one of the most famed and feared waves in the word Teahupo'o in Tahiti. The wave, home of the 2024 Olympics, has a name that translates roughly to "wall of skulls." "The equal amount of men's and women's events represents a standard for the tour we never had," said Jessi Miley Dyer, the World Surf League's vice president of tours and competition, adding that returning to competing at Teahupo'o a site that has not been on the women's world tour since 2006 represents a "return to waves of consequence for us." For all the upcoming changes, tour organizers are still hoping to get the surfers in the water before the 2021 tour kicks off. They won't be at Jeffreys Bay, South Africa, where surfers had originally been scheduled to compete this month. Or in Chiba, where they were expected to compete in the 2020 Olympics. And surely not in Teahupo'o, where surfers would fly after Tokyo. Logan did leave the door to competition ajar for some preseason, regional exhibition events pandemic and health guidelines pending at Kelly Slater's wave pool in Lemoore, Calif., along with events in Australia, France and Portugal. Only athletes living in those regions will be invited to compete. And the 2021 tour is scheduled to begin in 2020 too, a move the W.S.L. said they hoped would give organizers some padding should things need to be pushed back because of safety concerns. The women's tour is slated for a November start in Maui, and the men's tour is scheduled to begin in December in Oahu. But, Logan said, in a moment of vulnerability uncommon among most high level sports executives, "Who knows? Nobody knows." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
Before introducing Maria Bamford, the headliner of a livestreaming comedy show Saturday, Jackie Kashian, her opening act, posed a philosophical question: "Is it possible to warm up an audience on the internet?" A tree falling in the forest does in fact make a sound, but whether a crowd laughs at a joke over Zoom is a more complicated question. In this show, for instance, the audience, 2,700 strong, was muted. But there was a chat room where fans typed out a steady stream of clapping emojis and LOLs. By the time Bamford appeared, her bright blue eyes beaming near a portrait of a cat, the scroll sped up, and the feedback suggested a kind of frenzied anticipation not like the atmosphere of a club, exactly, more like the birth of a Twitter mob, if it trafficked in joy instead of outrage. The quarantine hasn't so much revolutionized comedy as accelerated the direction it was already going: toward digital platforms. After four months of lockdown, the transition from live to livestreaming remains awkward, but a sampling of recent shows reveals that comics are getting better at playing to the camera on bustling new platforms that are drawing audiences and laughs. Bamford, who was actually appearing on Rushtix.com, is more suited than most to tell jokes in a room by herself, since she has performed to audiences of two and even one in formally daring specials. In a hilariously manic style that evokes Robin Williams, her frenetic comedy doesn't require a booming response, in part because her jokes pivot so quickly into a dizzying array of characters that already fill a room. She's particularly funny impersonating new age types or cluelessly entitled white women (she has called them "variations of Karen") stuck in situations that turn dark fast. In one aside, she gives voice to a woman hoping in death to "fit in a Size 4 coffin." Bamford's portraits of her family even benefit from the intimacy of these shows, shot in tight close up. In talking about her cancer stricken mother consulting a shaman, Bamford only needs to whisper to make an impact. Death is never far from her mind, as when she reveals that she and her husband, with the help of a therapist, have written up a kind of contract to promise not to kill themselves that is posted on the refrigerator. "If there's one thing that will keep people from committing suicide," she said. "It's paperwork." That her husband shows up at one point somehow put your mind at ease. While this show works without laughs, the Nowhere Comedy Club, another new outlet that has recruited an impressive lineup of stand ups, does more to simulate a club atmosphere, allowing you to see and hear audience members, each appearing in a box onscreen next to the comic. On Friday, the host, Danny Jolles, remarked on how quiet the crowd was, goosing us to laugh more. When a joke kills, you are reminded of how laughter can radically boost the momentum of a set. Conversely, when Laurie Kilmartin brought up on Monday night that her mother had recently died from Covid 19, the sudden silence added tension, which she exploded by adding: "My mom was a Trump supporter, so this was ruled a suicide." Comics have clearly shifted their aesthetic during this period, cutting back broad physical movements and emphasizing facial expressions. We're in a golden age of mugging. To a small crowd on the Nowhere Comedy Club, Chloe Radcliffe, a "Tonight" Show writer, did a bit about how masks cover up a birthmark on her cheek, and Sean Patton, a rambunctious physical performer, reinvented himself as a much more contained, intimate comic, moving close to the camera to show off a new scar. In between fireworks near his Brooklyn apartment, Patton detailed the transgressive thrill of seeing a friend early in the lockdown, comparing it to the first night of trying out swinging. In these shows, audiences can be more central than in a club since they are onscreen. It's why I looked forward to Todd Barry's Virtual Crowd Work Show on Monday, the second time he has done this off the cuff set. More than 350 people showed up from all over the world, old and young, people in tiny apartments, in couples and solo, in bed and even in a pool. Barry had nightmarish technical difficulties, struggling to hear several people, leading to awkward stretches. And after he finally found a woman with volume that worked, she revealed she had just been laid off when her sound quit. She resorted to writing her answers on a piece of paper, a metaphor perhaps for the desperation to connect in the quarantine. "I feel like this whole Zoom comedy thing is like five years from being easy to do," Barry joked. And yet, only a few audience members left. Many laughed more. And Barry somehow fought through the sound troubles, even checking out of the Zoom conversation to fix the problems. At this point, I started looking around the audience, spying on their houses, until I spotted a friend I hadn't seen since the lockdown and because you can send private messages to other patrons, I contacted her. We joked about the technical problems and speculated on the lives of the audience members he did talk with, "Mystery Science Theater" style. This was fun in a way that you could never do in a club, and not long after Barry returned, the tech issues were sorted out and he found a comic rhythm. No one thinks these livestreams can replace the experience of seeing stand up in person. It's better to think of them as an altogether different experience, one that might stick around long after the virus is gone. Comics have also proved that you can develop material on Zoom. Some of the best topical jokes about our moment can be found in the new album by Nore Davis who mocks the cold, impersonal format, beginning and ending with a dystopian computerized voice giving instructions the comedy answer to HAL from "2001: A Space Odyssey." Davis finds humor in the gravity of the recent Black Lives Matter protests as well as the mundane annoyances of suddenly having to help his kid learn math remotely, the only subject in school, he explains, where you're introduced to problems. "Science you discover. English you write. Gym you play. Math is like: Solve this problem." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
PANDORA 8 p.m. on CW. This new series recalls the CW adventure "The Outpost," albeit with a sci fi twist. Set in 2199, the show is about Jax (Priscilla Quintana), who, after losing her parents in an attack, enrolls in the Fleet Training Academy on Earth to become a guardian against intergalactic threats. She befriends human and alien students, and learns that everything she knows about her past is a lie. BEHIND CLOSED DOORS (2019) 8 p.m. on HBO; stream on HBO platforms. In 2008, Aarushi Talwar, 13, was found dead in her home in northern India. The police initially suspected the killer to be the family's live in servant, Hemraj Banjade. But when his body was found on the Talwars' roof days later, officers set their eyes on Aarushi's parents. The story gripped India for years and even spawned a feature film. India's Central Bureau of Investigation tried to close the case, citing insufficient evidence, but a special judicial magistrate later charged the parents with murder. They were convicted but have since appealed the verdict. This new two part documentary tries to recap the timeline of events and highlight how class divisions may have thwarted the search for the truth. EX ON THE BEACH 8 p.m. on MTV. In this chaotic reality show, back for a third season, 10 single reality TV stars arrive at a beach in search of romance, knowing that their former partners will intrude at some point. That inevitably leads to yelling matches, a rekindling of old flames, or both. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
Tom Hollander is nervous. When he took the part of Henry Carr, the very civil servant at the swirling center of "Travesties," Tom Stoppard's 1974 Zurich set brainteaser, he worried he couldn't learn it. Then he worried he couldn't pull it off. He did. First at London's Menier Chocolate Factory, then in the West End, earning career best reviews. The production, directed by Patrick Marber and presented by the Roundabout Theater Company, opens April 24 on Broadway. Acting a role more than a hundred times might relax some men. Not Mr. Hollander. "I don't know an actor living who isn't in a state of anxiety before a show opens," he said. Tucked into a corner of a theater district bistro a few days before previews began, Mr. Hollander, 50, worried about memory, about mortality, about Americans understanding the crucial difference between trousers and pants (this fun new fear is my fault) and mostly about whether the little finger on his left hand, broken in a cringingly funny skiing accident, would heal before the first performance. He wouldn't dream of wearing the cast onstage. "It would change the meaning of the play," he said. "Obviously." Obviously? It isn't always easy to tell when Mr. Hollander is joking and that's a lot of his appeal. He is vitally funny in dramatic roles, wrenchingly somber in comic ones. Mr. Stoppard, speaking by telephone, called him "a comedian, as well as a tough cookie, a tough egg." He is someone, the novelist and screenwriter Julian Fellowes said, who "can play and suggest many different truths and emotions at once." One more thing: The Daily Mail, playing on Mr. Hollander's 5'5" frame, has named him a "sex thimble." So he has that to work with, too. In the last several years he's played an overburdened inner city vicar in "Rev.," a brash aide de camp in "The Night Manager," a compassionate country medic in "Doctor Thorne" and a periwigged baddie in "Pirates of the Caribbean," so if he has a type, he's keeping it quiet. But in Henry Carr, a soldier and a dandy and a lover and a prig, who moves through the play sometimes in his sprightly 20s and sometimes in his fuddled 60s, Mr. Hollander has one of the great roles and one of the great monologues, a five page tongue twirler that begins the play. Good thing it has come to him now and not a minute later. "An actor's failing powers get you in the end," he said mordantly. His glass was half empty. A waiter poured more Perrier. He grew up in Oxford, the younger child of schoolteachers. Mr. Marber, the director of "Travesties," remembered seeing a teenage Mr. Hollander acting in a student production of "Volpone." "I thought, 'Who is this cherub?'" Mr. Marber recalled. "He was an angelic youth. Very sparkling, very confident." Mr. Hollander is sparkling, he is confident. He is irrepressibly charming and as his friend Ralph Fiennes, who has already seen "Travesties" four times said, "He is very, very, very, very clever." Olivia Colman co starred with him in "Rev." Her encapsulation: "He's magic." But he is also self deprecating and punishingly self aware. He starts and stops his sentences, notes when something "is a bit of a cliche," narrates himself. "He petered out," he'll say. "He attacked his chicken with renewed vigor," he'll say. The lunch was book ended by espressos, suggesting that Mr. Hollander does not ease up without a fight. He's been acting from "Volpone" on, except for a dry spell after Cambridge when he worked in a toy shop and he still seems a little surprised that he's made it his life's work. Is it a reasonable life? A useful one? Doctors, engineers, schoolteachers like his parents, they're the ones doing the useful work, he said. "People in the entertainment industry shouldn't take themselves too seriously." Still, telling stories, that has "an ancient function, that's being human, isn't it?" he asked. He didn't seem sure. Acting is useful to Mr. Hollander anyway. Liam Neeson, who starred with Mr. Hollander on Broadway 20 years ago in David Hare's "The Judas Kiss," wrote, "He's small in stature, yet when he performs he becomes huge." Mr. Hollander's self consciousness rarely follows him onstage. A good role, he said, is like taking a paid vacation from himself. Each television show, each movie, each play, it's a chance to disappear into a character. "It's like going on holiday without having to get on an airplane," he said. Obviously obviously? the Zurich of "Travesties" is a nice place to land. A minor consular official, Carr meets up with the Dadaist Tristan Tzara, the novelist James Joyce and the Leninist Vladimir Lenin, all of whom actually traipsed through Switzerland in 1917. John Wood created the role of Henry Carr, winning a Tony Award for his pains; Antony Sher played it a generation later. When Mr. Hollander and Mr. Marber discussed the revival, they knew they wanted to make Carr a more poignant figure, his younger self haunted by the war that wounded him, his older hassled by senility. "It's a comic role, but Tom is able to make it a tragic role as well, which is what I wanted," Mr. Marber said. Carr is always dreaming up titles for his memoirs: "Further Recollections of a Consular Official in Whitest Switzerland," "Memories of Dada by a Consular Friend," "Zurich by One Who Was There." Does Mr. Hollander, who has written teasing columns for The Spectator (I'm partial to the one about Joan Collins), ever plan on writing a memoir? Does he have a title? Not yet. "I feel ... it might be premature," he said. "I hope it's premature." There are a lot of not yets in Mr. Hollander's life. For decades he's told interviewers that he'd like to marry and have children. He's never managed it. "I always thought it would happen. It didn't happen. I can't blame anyone but myself," he said. Then he made the joke about attacking the roast chicken. Mr. Marber has wondered if some kind of wound, some kind of loneliness enables Mr. Hollander's acting. But Mr. Hollander denies it. "I have the same wounds as everyone else," he said. "There isn't a particular trauma that I'm employing on this one, just other than general trauma of being a human being." With lunch ended, at least he could put the particular trauma of slicing a roast chicken with a broken finger behind him. After finishing his second espresso and paying the bill, he collected his coat from the rack. The maitre d' noticed his hand. "Tom, what happened? Did you punch someone," he asked. "If only I'd done something so macho," Mr. Hollander replied. (The real story: He failed to exit a Swiss ski lift in a timely fashion.) He walked a few blocks of what he called "the miracle that is Manhattan" and stepped down into the subway, swiping his MetroCard. It didn't take. He swiped it again. "That should be the title of my memoir," he said resignedly. "'Insufficient Fare.'" | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
LOS ANGELES As actresses came forward publicly on Tuesday with vivid accounts of sexual harassment by Harvey Weinstein stretching back decades, questions arose about Disney, which owned his Miramax studio when some of the harassment was alleged to have taken place. In a statement, the Walt Disney Company said it was "unaware of any complaints, lawsuits or settlements" regarding the sexual behavior of Mr. Weinstein, who left Disney in 2005 to found the Weinstein Company, another film and television studio. Disney's statement added that Mr. Weinstein and his brother, Bob Weinstein, who co founded Miramax, had "operated and managed their business with virtual autonomy." Michael D. Eisner, who ran Disney during the Weinsteins' tenure there, wrote on Twitter on Tuesday: "Fired Weinsteins because they were irresponsible, and Harvey was an incorrigible bully. Had no idea he was capable of these horrible actions." Mr. Eisner declined to comment further. Former President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, also released a statement about Mr. Weinstein, saying that "any man who demeans and degrades women in such fashion needs to be condemned and held accountable, regardless of wealth or status." The Obamas' older daughter, Malia, was an intern at the Weinstein Company this year. The Weinstein Company's board said in a statement on Tuesday that it was "shocked and dismayed" by the allegations. "These alleged actions are antithetical to human decency," the board said. One third of the company's all male board had resigned on Friday. Also on Tuesday, Georgina Chapman, Mr. Weinstein's wife, told People magazine that she was leaving him. And the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts said it had decided to reject his earlier pledge to fund a 5 million endowment for female filmmakers. Mr. Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg, who was then in charge of Disney's movie divisions, bought Miramax in 1993 for 80 million. At the time, Miramax was becoming a superpower in the art film business by turning offbeat, inexpensive movies into mainstream hits. It was in 1992, for instance, that Miramax released the micro budgeted thriller "The Crying Game," which collected 62 million at the box office, or 110 million in today's dollars. On Tuesday, Mr. Katzenberg released an email that he sent to Mr. Weinstein on Sunday and that said he was "sickened" by the allegations. "There appear to be two Harvey Weinsteins ... one that I have known well, appreciated and admired and another that I have not known at all," Mr. Katzenberg's email said. Jeff Bezos gives 100 million to the Obama Foundation. Stocks rise after President Biden says Jerome Powell will stay atop the Fed. Robert A. Iger, Disney's current chief executive, said in a separate statement, "Harvey Weinstein's reported behavior is abhorrent and unacceptable, and it has no place in our society." Disney sold Miramax in 2010 for 660 million. The flurry of comments came five days after a New York Times investigation chronicled a hidden history of sexual harassment allegations against Mr. Weinstein, including settlements paid, often involving former employees, over three decades. On Sunday, the Weinstein Company fired him, citing "new information about misconduct by Harvey Weinstein." In response to the allegations, Mr. Weinstein has acknowledged that his behavior "caused a lot of pain." But a spokeswoman, Sallie Hofmeister, also said he "unequivocally denied" any allegations of nonconsensual sex. Disney's purchase of Miramax included provisions that shielded Miramax from corporate interference. The Weinsteins were given the ability to "greenlight" films with budgets of tens of millions of dollars without approval from Disney. Miramax also got to retain its own chief financial officer, head of human relations and general counsel. According to reports at the time, the brothers demanded the autonomy, arguing that their films which would include rough and rowdy titles like "Pulp Fiction," released in 1994 could not be incubated inside a corporate environment. While with Disney, Miramax released more than 300 movies, which generated 5 billion in North American ticket sales and tallied at least 220 Academy Award nominations and 53 wins, including best picture Oscars for "Shakespeare in Love," "The English Patient" and "Chicago." But Disney also clashed bitterly with the Weinsteins, who took advantage of their autonomy to start an expensive magazine, Talk, without approval and to move forward with the political documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11" despite being told that Disney would not distribute it. At the time, executives at Disney said Miramax had hidden its financing of that film by not including it on monthly reports about films in development; Miramax officials countered that they were aboveboard. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
NOW WE SHALL BE ENTIRELY FREE By Andrew Miller Over the years, a number of people, me included, have compared the British author Andrew Miller to Hilary Mantel. Though much less well known, he is a very stylish, almost painterly writer, and he has her gift for historical reconstruction, for describing the past without making it seem like a wax museum. In some of his best books like "Ingenious Pain," his first, about an 18th century doctor, and the more recent "Pure," about an engineer in pre revolutionary France trying to clean up an ancient cemetery he brings off the Mantel trick of plunging you so deeply into the past that before long you take it completely for granted. Miller's new novel, "Now We Shall Be Entirely Free," seems bent on defying convention and expectations, and deploys the Mantel magic only intermittently. Like most of his books, it's set in the past in the early 19th century, in this case, when John Lacroix, a British Army officer and veteran of the Peninsular War between England and France, is deposited, half dead, at his estate in Somerset. But what begins as if it might be a full immersion historical novel (in the manner, say, of Bernard Cornwell's Sharpe series, also set during that war) quickly becomes instead a psychological mystery. Lacroix, once he recovers, proves to be half deaf and broken in spirit, suffering from what we would now call PTSD. Instead of rejoining his regiment, he decides, for reasons that are as unclear to him as they are to the reader, to travel to the Scottish islands, where he has never been. Though he doesn't learn it until quite late in the book, Lacroix is being pursued. While fighting in Spain, it eventually becomes apparent, he was witness to a My Lai like massacre carried out by frightened, starving British troops against the small Spanish village of Morales. The Spanish authorities raise a fuss, and the British high command, needing a scapegoat to appease their allies against Bonaparte, dispatch a vicious corporal named Calley (no coincidence, surely) to quietly eliminate Lacroix. A Spaniard is sent with him, just to make certain the job is done right. Much of the book alternates, in thriller like fashion, between these hunters and their fugitive, who a couple of times unknowingly come within inches of one another. Both the Hebridean setting and the idea of an innocent man being chased by people he doesn't know may even remind readers of "The Thirty Nine Steps," John Buchan's classic adventure novel. But until the end much of the cat and mouse suspense in "Now We Shall Be Entirely Free" is unwound and undercut deliberately, it would seem by the plot's way of going off on tangents and detours. At one point, for example, Calley comes upon a textile mill, a pile of satanic brick and chimneys, and the story pauses while he reveals that as a boy he worked in just such a place, "14 hours a day. ... 16 when business was brisk," and explains to his companion about "the creeler, the gaffer, the carding room. The winding stroke. Doffing and piercing." He remembers 9 year old Lizzie Bentley, from Southwark, who one day caught her hand in a belt and had her arm ripped off at the shoulder. "The blood was like water spun from a twirl mop." Another time, they come upon a group of men bathing naked in a river. Calley's companion quickly strips and joins them, splashing around and swimming in circles. Afterward they drink brandy, smoke, tell stories. Calley rolls up his trousers but doesn't go in above his knees. "All wankers," he says, "every one of them," employing a word that surely won't be used this way for another hundred years. Lacroix, meanwhile, gets mugged, spends some time in delirium and, in an almost slapstick scene, comes ashore on a small Scottish island on the back of a cow. There he falls in with the Frends, a hippieish clan of vegetarian free spirits led by Cornelius Frend, who don't believe in marriage, religion or war and smoke something called bang a 19th century version of dope, apparently while digging for artifacts in a peat bog. They seem to be in thrall to a mysterious character named Thorpe, and, like those experimental communities bankrolled by Robert Owen, they're funded, skimpily, by a rich copper smelter from Swansea. Lacroix falls in love with one of the Frends, Emily, whose eyesight is as bad as his hearing. She's going blind from what seems to be glaucoma, and they travel to Glasgow in search of medical help. There, with Lacroix at one point unwittingly sharing a bed with Calley's companion, the suspense story turns into a romance of sorts, the most predictable part of the novel, though Miller does his best to enliven it with some fascinating medical scenes. Emily and Lacroix have the good fortune to come across a doctor who not only can operate on her eyes, with a scalpel as fine as a needle, but also believes in washing his hands. Eventually, in a long monologue, Lacroix reveals his secret, which is pretty much what we imagined, and Emily decides it doesn't matter. In perhaps the book's strangest moment, neither seems much affected by the morally troublesome. The book's relation to history is more complicated than in Miller's other novels. At times he suggests that the past and the present greatly resemble each other. There's the My Lai Morales parallel, for example, and the stoner cultism of the Frends. At other times he's at pains to point out how backward they were in the early 19th century. People don't know about germs yet; they think the world can't be older than 75,000 years. In Glasgow, Lacroix is astonished by what he eventually decides must be gaslights, and later he tries to imagine the world in 60 more years. What would you see? "Gas, steam ships. Electrical this and that. A sky full of air balloons. Balloons driven by steam? Why not?" Even more often, Miller emphasizes not so much the pastness of the past as its strangeness, dwelling on details remarkable just for their oddity: Three giants in a yard, stripped to the waist, their skin dyed blue. A man skiing in mud. Someone who seems to be wearing birds on his feet. A storyteller, a black man, who wears on his head the model of a ship. Lacroix's surroundings at times appear solid to him; at others, especially when he has been drinking or taking laudanum, they're ghostly and insubstantial. A subtheme of this novel, where one of the main characters can't see and the other can't hear, is unknowability, how hard it is to make sense of the world. "Even the most sensible people have an edge of lunacy to them," Lacroix thinks at one point, "like fat on a cutlet." In its formal slipperiness, first one kind of book, then another, "Now We Shall Be Entirely Free" seems to be making the same point: that things are never quite what you expect, and history is altogether stranger than most accounts suggest. What makes Miller's own account so riveting is its alertness to wonder and unpredictability. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
Rooms start at 395 euros, or about 462 U.S. dollars, during high season (July, August and September) and 280 euros other months. A dreamed of experience of the French Riviera is to find one of those secret and stunningly beautiful coves and beaches that miraculously survive just as nature made them. Good luck with that, you may be thinking. But the French hotelier Valery Grego decided to make it easy by renovating a '50s vintage hotel in the Var department with one of the most spectacular seaside settings in the south of France. To get any closer to the sea, you'd have to sleep in a boat. The Paris based design team Festen (Hugo Sauzay and Charlotte de Tonnac) created the new b ohemian beach shack look of the redone Hotel Les Roches Rouges, which opened last May. It features two seaside pools a long heated one for laps, and a big stone lined saltwater basin for lolling terraced gardens with hammocks, a spacious stone paved sun deck, a swimming pontoon, two restaurants and three bars. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
"Grieving," originally published in Spanish in 2011, is considered one of contemporary Mexico's first literary reckonings with its epidemic of violence. It has been expertly translated by Sarah Booker and covers an impressive array of topics, including environmental degradation, femicide, neoliberalism and migration. Throughout, Rivera Garza's focus never waivers from her overriding concern: the violence and impunity plaguing Mexico. In an essay called "The Visceraless State" she dissects a country in thrall to leaders who have reduced the government to little more than a vessel for personal enrichment a system without "hearts or bones or innards" and with the drug trafficker as its inevitable byproduct. "Government corruption along with the narco's signature executions demonstrate what was once easy to deny," she tells us. "Drug lords are businessmen prepared to go as far as necessary which frequently means that space where the human condition ends in order to ensure and, above all, increase their profits." Rivera Garza is compelled to document her country's trauma, she writes in another essay, "Writing Against War," because not to catalog, speak or write about it means that it will eventually be forgotten. "Without a record of testimonials ... without a large community archive that protects victims' voices, we will not only forget the massacres and the pain in years to come but also, and perhaps above all, the labor taken on by entire generations that amorous and routine, dialogic and constant labor to form the community that we call a neighborhood." Without this public accounting, she contends, there can be no grieving, and Mexican society can never heal. "Grieving connects us in ways that are subtly and candidly material," she writes. "Grieving breaks us apart, indeed, and keeps us together." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
SINCE the very first bunk bed, roommates have annoyed each other. They leave their clothes all over the floor; they host overnight guests unannounced. Big deal. You tell them to pick up their stuff; you work out a "sexile" schedule. But housing officials say that lately they are noticing something different: students seem to lack the will, and skill, to address these ordinary conflicts. "We have students who are mad at each other and they text each other in the same room," says Tom Kane, director of housing at Appalachian State University, in Boone, N.C. "So many of our roommate conflicts are because kids don't know how to negotiate a problem." And as any pop psychologist will tell you, bottled emotions lead to silent seething that can boil over into frustration and anger. At the University of Florida, emotional outbursts occur about once a week, says Norbert Dunkel, the university's director of housing and residence education. "It used to be: 'Let's sit down and talk about it,' " he says. "Over the past five years, roommate conflicts have intensified. The students don't have the person to person discussions and they don't know how to handle them." The problem is most dramatic among freshmen; housing professionals say they see improvement as students move toward graduation, but some never seem to catch on, and they worry about how such students will deal with conflicts after college. Administrators speculate that reliance on cellphones and the Internet may have made it easier for young people to avoid uncomfortable encounters. Why express anger in person when you can vent in a text? Facebook creates even more friction as complaints go public. "Things are posted on someone's wall on Facebook: 'Oh, my roommate kept me up all night studying,' " says Dana Pysz, an assistant director in the office of residential life at the University of California, Los Angeles. "It's a different way to express their conflict to each other." Dissatisfied students rarely take up an offer from a resident adviser to mediate, Mr. Pysz says. "With mediation you have to have buy in from both," he says. "We don't have a lot of mediation. We have a lot of avoidance." In recent focus groups at North Carolina State University, dorm residents said they would not even confront noisy neighbors on their floor. "It was clear from the focus groups that the students expect the R.A.'s to keep the floors quiet," says Susan Grant, the university's director of housing. Administrators point to parents who have fixed their children's problems their entire lives. Now in college, the children lack the skills to attend to even modest conflicts. Some parents continue to intervene on campus. "I can't tell you the number of times I am talking to a student and thinking I am making headway and the student gets out their phone and says, 'Can you talk to my mom about this?' " Mr. Kane says. Or housing officials field calls from parents pleading or demanding that the college get involved in a dispute, only for the officials to discover that the dispute was little more than a minor irritation, if anything. Constant cellphone connection means parents jump in too quickly, says Sarah English, director of housing and residential life at Marist College, in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. Some go directly to the source, Ms. English says: "It surprises me when students say, 'My roommate's mother called and yelled at me,' and I think, 'Are you kidding me?' I can't believe parents call students. Ten years ago, I never heard of that." With avoidance often comes escalation. With the trend toward smaller families, many new undergraduates may never have shared a bedroom with a sibling. Without that experience, students don't know how to negotiate potential areas of friction like keeping the room in (relative) order, watching a roommate's television or borrowing an iPod. Ryan Melson and Matt Blumenreich had their own bedrooms at home before rooming together as freshmen at Grinnell College in Iowa. They really hit it off. They both played on the baseball team and encouraged each other through long nights of studying during a grueling first semester. But Mr. Melson is a neat freak, and Mr. Blumenreich, by his own admission, is "the opposite." Quite the opposite. Mr. Melson says: "I just wanted him to clear a path so I could walk over to my stuff. I always had my own room and had it clean. I didn't know how to handle it." Finally in October, he had had enough. "Hey, man, can you just move your stuff!" he said, clearly upset. "It didn't sound very nice," he remembers. "I really wish I could have taken that back." Mr. Blumenreich retreated into silence for several weeks. "I wasn't used to having someone harp on me to change who I am, to clean up after myself," he says. Adding to the tension, Mr. Blumenreich was hearing from other students that Mr. Melson was unhappy with him. The epiphanies came after winter break. "Ryan came back and walked into the room with a big smile on his face," Mr. Blumenreich says, "and he seemed so happy to see me that we just talked and we realized it was an insignificant difference. I realized I can't always do things the way I want to." Mr. Melson compromised, too: "I've gotten a little messier myself." MANY campuses don't have sufficient housing to accommodate student requests for room changes. At Loyola University in Chicago, students who want to switch rooms have to find someone to trade places with them. Four years ago, as requests began to increase (to 50 now from about 20), the university started a "swap night" three weeks into classes for students dissatisfied with their roommates. It's a chance to size up potential roommates. Pizza is served. "It takes the burden off professional staff to match the people up and it engages students to own the process so the student has some say," says Warren Hale, former director of residence life at Loyola and now director of university residence halls and apartments at the University at Buffalo. When relationships really go south, colleges react. Marist used to ban first semester students from changing roommates but in the past few years has been making more exceptions, Ms. English says. "It just gets to the point where they can't live together anymore and we've exhausted all conflict negotiations and they are sleeping in other rooms and it's involving other people," she says. Five years ago, 5 to 10 students at Marist might have asked to change roommates after the first six weeks; now 30 to 40 do. Marist has had to assign more staff members to freshmen dorms to referee conflicts, which number two to three a day during the first weeks, and peak again during times of stress like exam period. (Older students generate only two or three interventions a semester.) Colleges are focusing on training members of the residence staff in conflict resolution. R.A.'s at the University of Florida attend a two hour session with a psychologist on how to handle roommate confrontations. Some colleges have roommates draw up and sign a contract on bedtime schedules, study times, sex in the room, room cleanup and using each other's possessions. The goal is to anticipate issues and provide students with a starting point to discuss problems as they arise. Colleges have also been moving away from the purely random assignment, adding lengthier questionnaires designed to pinpoint compatibility or software programs that allow students to have a greater say in who becomes their roommate. "That ownership is incredibly important," Mr. Dunkel says. The University of Florida uses RoomBug, a Facebook application in which students describe themselves and their vision of a perfect roommate, then browse profiles. Prospective matches communicate on Facebook, and submit their request to the school. But such matchmaking is hardly foolproof. The lion's share of freshman year roommates 72 percent according to one study, 83 percent in another don't live together sophomore year. Instead, they choose from compatible friends, supporting sociologists' theory of homophily: birds of a feather flock together. Colleen Card, Kara Gifford and Bridget Christie, freshmen at Marist last year, will live together in the fall. Ms. Christie says they are free spirits who talk easily with one another (unlike her first roommate, who preferred Post its to talking about sticky issues like restocking the water bottles in their fridge). They also stay up late to study and like to sleep in. At Marist, campus housing after freshman year is assigned based on merit. Students get more points for high G.P.A.'s, campus involvement and good conduct (like not being written up for under age drinking) and deductions for infractions (like damaging rooms). The best housing goes to high scoring groups of roommates. At an all day event in April, students gathered in the gym to learn the housing consequences of their actions and friendships. Based on their group's point average, students selected housing style and size. Snacks and boxes of tissue were on hand along with members of the housing and counseling staff to buffer bad news. As the day progressed, choices diminished. No more townhouses for 10? Only suites for six? Friends must be dropped from the group thus the Kleenex. Most of the strategizing, though, occurred before the event. A rocky first semester academically had given Ms. Gifford a low score. Ms. Card's was average. Friends with designs on the desirable Gartland Commons dorm ditched Ms. Gifford, but Ms. Card refused to abandon her in the service of better housing. The two teamed with Ms. Christie, a top scorer who was then invited to join another student with high points. She, too, declined, even with the prospect of another year in a restrictive freshman dorm. "Our room will be the cool room, the cool, drama free room," Ms. Card said. Then, in a twist of fate, this month their names were plucked from a waiting list for Gartland Commons, a destination that eluded those first friends. "It's really funny the way it worked out," Ms. Card says now. "I chose to stay with Kara and get along with my roommates instead of living with a group of people whom I might not have gotten along with but had better housing. And I ended up getting my roommate and getting good housing." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Education |
Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week's most notable new songs and videos and anything else that strikes them as intriguing. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know attheplaylist nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once a week blast of our pop music coverage. "Ill Wind" was a postscript to Radiohead's 2016 album, "A Moon Shaped Pool," released on a bonus disc but not, until now, to streaming services. Its very few lyrics counsel isolation and detachment for fear of provoking that "ill wind." They're set to one of Radiohead's morose bossa novas, at first akin to "Knives Out": a nest of minor key counterpoint on guitar and bass. But then more layers arrive, fluty sounds and buzzy ones, swallowing the song before prettily fading out. What seemed like a sanctuary was a trap. JON PARELES Adia Victoria, a songwriter from South Carolina who's now based in Nashville, offers a terse taxonomy of breakups in "Different Kind of Love," from her second album due next month. "Some of them I knew it best to hesitate/Some I've never seen again," she notes. The setting seems retro at first: a hypnotic rockabilly shuffle with a hefty backbeat and plenty of reverb on the guitar, soon to be punched up by a saxophone section. But it's not back to basics: extra guitars and other, more elusive sounds thicken the mix, as Victoria gets around to a classic, nonnegotiable demand: "Tell me, who do you love?" PARELES The pop punk trio Pottymouth, three women who have been working together since their teens, confronts aging with a galloping punk rock beat in really, this is not a high number "22." Abby Weems sings, "Oh, 22 I still do what I used to do." And why not? Their speed and passion haven't faded. PARELES Two Washington, D.C. trios that aren't afraid to think and rock at the same time are returning this spring: Ex Hex's "It's Real" is due March 22 and Priests' "The Seduction of Kansas" will be released on April 5. Priests' title track is like a semiotics class set to an arty dance beat: the singer Katie Alice Greer flings around signifiers of American culture Superman, Dorothy, Applebee's before repeating a vow that teeters between genuine and controlling: "It's true, I'm the one that loves you." Ex Hex, led by Helium and Wild Flag's Mary Timony, start off with a surfy bop that glances back to the Ramones' interpretation of girl group pop. Their lips aren't sealed. CARYN GANZ Lana Del Rey, 'Hope Is a Dangerous Thing for a Woman Like Me to Have But I Have It' A stark stunner from Lana Del Rey, narrating as someone who's "24/7 Sylvia Plath/Writing in blood on your walls/'Cause the ink in my pen don't look good in my pad." The arrangement is minimal piano, haunting as an empty, dark cave. And Del Rey spins into deliciously morbid, almost absurdist lyrics: "Hello, it's the most famous woman you know on the iPad/Calling from beyond the grave, I just wanna say, 'Hi, Dad.'" CARAMANICA The Weeknd is back to his louche ways on "Lost in the Fire," the second single from "Hyperion," the forthcoming album by the gloomy French electro house producer Gesaffelstein. The mood is overcast 1980s Miami, and the singing blends empathy with eroticism. No one is better than the Weeknd at underscoring the trauma common to both. CARAMANICA The Texas bluesman Gary Clark Jr. announces that he's "paranoid and pissed off" as he charges into the title song of his coming album, "This Land," declaring that he's bought himself 50 acres "right in the middle of Trump country" and is braced for racist neighbors: "I see you looking out your window/Can't wait to call the police on me." All the tones are confrontational and raw: a distorted bass line, Clark's not always in tune lead guitar, his gruff voice, an underlying blues meets reggae riff. The video imagery invokes slavery, lynchings, Confederate flags and cross burning bonfires. "I'm America's son," he taunts. "This is where I come from." PARELES Here is the MeToo movement in action, simultaneously methodical and melodic. The midtempo folk rock behind Stella Donnelly's voice doesn't telegraph her fury, but she's reading a self defense manual and preparing to execute painful moves against someone married, prosperous, powerful who is acting inappropriately. "Are you scared of me old man," she sings, "or are you scared of what I'll do?" PARELES Kassa Overall featuring Judi Jackson, 'Who's on the Playlist' Kassa Overall's new album the irreverently titled "Go Get Ice Cream and Listen to Jazz" attests to the diverse musical identity of this drummer, producer and rapper. It's one of the few genuine sounding, full scope amalgams of contemporary hip hop and jazz to surface in recent years. On "Who's on the Playlist," as the pianist Sullivan Fortner traces the chords to Miles Davis and Bill Evans's "Blue in Green," Overall, 36, daubs his snare drum with brushes, then adds a splatter of electronic percussion. He starts the track with a mumbly, ironic Master P quote before cracking a window into his heart on a verse that grows tensile and urgent before stopping up short. Judi Jackson, a young British jazz singer, shows that the interdisciplinary spirit is contagious or at least, generational: She sings in an Erykah Badu purr for most of the song, then rattles off a cold rap verse. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
"Donnybrook" is a movie about, among other things, bare knuckle fighting, but it's the viewers who will feel beaten down. And it won't take very long, either, as it seems almost every encounter in this lugubrious, headache inducing drama involves violence. Even the announcement of the title, its stark black letters slammed against a blood red background, feels like an assault. This is a movie that makes its points with a piledriver, the coarseness extending to characters' names. At the center is Jarhead Earl (Jamie Bell), a desperate veteran with two children and a drug addicted wife. (Back story any story, really is so minimal we're forced to make a great many inferences on our own.) Hoping for a fresh start, Earl plans to enter the Donnybrook (the word derives from Dublin's infamously rowdy Donnybrook Fair), an illicit cage fight whose 100,000 prize would finance his wife's recovery and his family's future. A gun store robbery (how else will he find the fight's entry fee?) kicks off Earl's, and the film's, odyssey of brutality. Its main engine is a terrifying meth dealer named Chainsaw Angus (Frank Grillo), a slab of psychosis whose seemingly longtime beef with Earl is never made quite clear. To amuse himself while tracking Earl and managing his methheads, Angus maintains a revoltingly abusive, possibly incestuous relationship with his deeply damaged sister, Delia (Margaret Qualley). You could feel sorry for her were her behavior not at times as disgusting as his. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
Before each performance of "Social Dance 1 8: Index," the choreographer Moriah Evans personally escorts audience members to seats of her choosing. It's the action of a hostess, though Ms. Evans isn't cordial. As a cold abstraction of a social gesture, and as an indication of Ms. Evans's close control over every part of her work, this is an apt introduction to what follows. The setting, at Issue Project Room in Downtown Brooklyn, is also coldly formal: a ballroom made for an Elks Lodge, with a high, vaulted ceiling and lots of marble. At first, the choreography is precise, minimalist and repetitive. And much of it continues in that mode, as the five dancers work out patterns and permutations, shifting among orientations and speeds, coming and going like changings of the guard. Yet they also hold hands, as in folk dance, and move together in circles and lines. Occasionally, they include a seated viewer in their circle, connecting by hand clasp; the gesture is at once sweet and cultishly creepy. The costumes, by Alan Calpe and Christopher Crawford, are austerely black, yet also sparkling with sequins and fringed for twirling. The minimalist vocabulary admits shimmying shoulders, rippling torsos, rolling hips. These are moves associated with getting down on a different kind of dance floor. At Issue Project Room, accompanied by David Watson's score of low drones and long violin lines that have been partly erased, the moves are abstracted. The performers maintain eye contact with one another and even smile Maggie Cloud appears to be having a ball but much of "Social Dance" can feel like social dance drained of pleasure, of life. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
In the morning, he blasts his favorite record while dressing smartly for work, in a white dress shirt and blue sweater. He observes a multi product skin and hair care regimen. He gets along great with his employees at Allsafe, the cybersecurity firm at which he is chief executive. He's close with his dad, who still runs his computer repair company, Mr. Robot, after all these years. Today, Elliot is out to to land the giant conglomerate F Corp as a client, which will require establishing a rapport with its nebbishy leader, Tyrell Wellick. Tomorrow, Elliot is getting married to his closest childhood friend, Angela Moss although he first wants to surprise her with a signed first edition of E.L. Konigsburg's "From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler." Yes, everything's coming up roses for Elliot Alderson. So pay no attention to his nagging headache, his brief vision of a logo for something called "E Corp," the tremor that just rocked New York City from its epicenter in Washington Township, the blood and shattered glass he finds in Angela's trash can, or the black clad doppelganger in his apartment. I'm sure everything will be just fine. Yes, it finally happened. After years of speculation, "Mr. Robot" pulled back the curtain on its single biggest mystery. It activated the secret machine that Whiterose, the leader of the Dark Army hacker collective and the Deus Group secret society of 1 percenters, built beneath the nuclear power plant in Elliot's home, Washington Township. It really is a device intended to access a parallel world, one brighter and better than our own. And if we're to believe our eyes during the episode's final scenes, it worked. How? The show is playing that particular card close to its vest; all it reveals is that the machine requires so much energy that switching it on draws power away from the nuclear plant's cooling system, causing a meltdown. Honestly, that's all the information we need. After carefully walking us through several dozen elaborate hacking exploits over four seasons, the show has more than earned a little science fiction hand waving where generating alternate realities is concerned. This goes double when the buildup to the parallel world revelation is so expertly crafted. Sam Esmail, the show's creator and the writer and director of this episode, repeatedly presents us with some of the series's most memorable and bloody imagery to date. There's Whiterose, calmly walking through a charnel house of slain F.B.I. agents while flanked by her Dark Army minions, proclaiming that her male presenting alter ego, Minister Zhang, is dead. There's Elliot, prowling through the power plant and finding it totally deserted, with ominous evidence of deadly struggles around every corner. And there's Whiterose's final act: shooting herself to death while Elliot watches, as a show of faith in the efficacy of her machine. But before her suicide, Whiterose engages in a passionate debate with Elliot about whether society can be redeemed rather than rebooted outright. This gives the actor B.D. Wong a shot at a career best performance, as the terrorist leader laughs to the point of near mania at Elliot's assertion that she hates the world and its people. She insists that she loves people, that she wants to rescue them from the self hatred drilled into them by the powers that be the same system that prevented her from being who she really is. "You dare to point the finger at me when I try to bring order to its chaos?" she says, her voice on the verge of breaking. "Don't make me laugh!" A sort of hitching chuckle makes the word "laugh" trail off, and it is followed by a quiet percussive riff in the composer Mac Quayle's score that draws it out even further. Whiterose then turns Elliot's accusation back at him. Isn't he the guy who named his hacker group "fsociety"? Doesn't that profane sentiment mark him as the person who hates people? Against the stark blue and black backdrop of the strange room where they're holding their conversation, Elliot admits it. He does hate people, and fears them. After the trauma he has been through, this is almost a given. But, he insists: "Some people refuse to let you hate them. They care about you in spite of it." These special people his sister, Darlene; his friend, Angela; and even his alternate personality, Mr. Robot love Elliot, something he is incapable of feeling about himself. "That heals me," he says. It gives him the strength not to give up on the world in which such special people exist. This declaration delivered with a hearty epithet directed at Whiterose more or less ends the argument. But it doesn't stop the machine, which was already running before Elliot arrived at the plant to install malware that would destroy it. It doesn't stop Whiterose from killing herself. And it doesn't stop the meltdown the machine causes. Despite their best efforts at shutting the machine down, a choice Whiterose placed in their hands with a text based computer game rigged to stop the process, they're too late. In a strangely touching moment, Elliot and Mr. Robot quietly express their love to each other. "It's an exciting time in the world," Elliot adds. Then the screen fades to red, and Elliot wakes up in his new world. It's a testament to Esmail's visual acumen, and the vulnerable, powerful performances of Wong, Rami Malek and Christian Slater, that the transition works as well as it does. "Mr. Robot" has taken us to a lot of strange places, and this, with just hours remaining in the series, is the strangest yet. And here I am, still happy to be along for the ride. None In addition to its visual panache, this episode featured a suite of some of the show's strongest music cues: the Beach Boys' "Heroes Villains" while Elliot makes his way to and through Washington Township; Afterhours' "White Widow" as the Dark Army escorts him to his rendezvous with Whiterose; OK Go's "Turn Up the Radio" accompanying the new Elliot in the parallel reality. None Although she isn't the focus of the parallel reality segment, Whiterose is still there by way of news footage revealing her to be the world's richest woman and a multibillion dollar philanthropist. None During his conversation with the alternate Tyrell Wellick who's dressed and groomed to look a lot like Mr. Robot the new Elliot says that the worst thing about his life is feeling stuck in a routine, and that he sometimes fantasizes about leading a more exciting life. We've seen what that looks like. None So who is the hoodie wearing Elliot that the new Elliot finds in his apartment in the episode's final moments? Is it the genuine article or a mental projection? Is either man the alluded to alternate persona we've never seen before? | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
HERE'S a quiz for the coming campaign season. Which one of these actions could get you disciplined or fired? B) Sending emails to your colleagues soliciting support for a controversial cause. C) Writing a blog at home stating your opinions about a local campaign and posting it on Facebook. The answer is D. Now, that's not an absolute. It depends on whether you are a private or public employee. It also depends on where you live. But if you're a nonunion private employee, your boss has great latitude to control your political actions. As Lee Tien, a lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, put it, "You don't have the right to speak freely in the workplace." Or even outside it. It's an issue that bubbles up around every major election, said Paula Brantner, executive director of Workplace Fairness, an informational site for employees. But the combination of intense political polarization, the Internet's power to spread and magnify seemingly innocuous or private statements and technology's growing ability to blur the line between workplace and home, make it a conundrum for employers and employees. So it's crucial that workers and their bosses understand their rights and responsibilities. Here are the two most important points: For private employees, who account for about 85 percent of the work force, the First Amendment's guarantee offers no protection from being fired for something you've said, either in the workplace or outside of it, as on social media. That's because the amendment addresses actions by the government to impede free speech, not by the private sector. And while federal laws bar employers from firing workers because of such variables as their race, religion and gender, there is no such protection for political affiliation or activity. A handful of states and localities address this issue, among them New York, California, Colorado, North Dakota and the District of Columbia. The broadest based laws, such as those in California and New York, make it illegal to discriminate on the basis of an employees' political activity or beliefs in or out of work, Ms. Brantner said, unless such activity interferes with the functioning of the business. The laws also set limits on how much employers can try to influence their employees to vote for a candidate or issue. On the other hand, anyone who works for a government office, whether local, state or federal, is for the most part protected by the First Amendment, as long an employee's actions don't disrupt the workplace, said Lee Rowland, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union. Federal employees are also guided by the Hatch Act, which limits some political activity, such as wearing partisan political buttons while on duty or soliciting or receiving political contributions. And workers who belong to unions generally have more protection and can be fired for only specific job related reasons, which typically wouldn't include political activity, Ms. Brantner said. But if you don't fall into any of those categories, you don't have a lot of rights, and many workers have found that out the hard way. Here are just a few examples that have received attention: During the 2004 presidential campaign, Lynne Gobbell was fired from her job in Moulton, Ala., because her car had a Kerry/Edwards bumper sticker. Her boss was a strong George W. Bush supporter. Her story has an interesting twist. When news of her dismissal became public, she was hired by the Kerry campaign. And the next year, Patricia Kunkle filed a lawsuit claiming she had been fired from an Ohio military contracting company for voting for President Obama. The company said she was laid off for economic reasons and the case was settled out of court for an undisclosed amount. Issues of what workers can do while off duty, like attend rallies and work for political candidates, have raised questions in the past, but the spotlight of the Internet has amplified the conversation, Mr. Tien of the Electronic Frontier Foundation said. Post a photo of yourself at a rally or write an online opinion piece and your boss can easily see it. "We get calls on our complaint line about someone getting into trouble not usually fired, but spoken to about writing a blog" that could be seen as controversial, Mr. Tien said. In addition, questions of when someone is actually off duty arise now more than ever, he said. "I'm talking to you from a personal iPhone from home, but I'm checking my company email on my laptop." It's important to remember that even though private employees don't have constitutional or federal protection, they do have a due process right, Mr. Tien said. So a worker being harassed for political beliefs or activity by a supervisor who was not harassing other workers might have legal recourse. "There is a patchwork of laws, and it is incumbent upon employers to have clear rules and communicate them clearly to employees," Ms. Rowland said. All companies should check with their lawyers to make sure they understand federal and state laws governing what employees are allowed to do, said Ilyse Schuman, a lawyer with the law firm Littler, which specializes in employment and labor law. Then they should draw up formal and clear policies. To make sure political activity isn't being singled out, employment lawyers say, companies can have policies that ban all forms of solicitation, including political campaigning, in the workplace. Companies can also have dress codes that don't allow displays of nonbusiness related items (including political buttons, T shirts and hats) and should have an electronic communications policy that spells out how the Internet, social media sites and so on can be used on the job. Knowing what is and isn't allowed under law can be tricky. For example, because the National Labor Relations Act allows workers to display labor union insignia at work, an employee can probably wear a union button that contains a political message, such as "Teamsters for Obama." Finally, all these issues affect people who work for others, so one would assume the dilemma wouldn't involve the 30 percent or so of the work force who work for themselves. It's true, those freelancers don't have to answer to a boss. But they do to a client. Robin H C (she legally shortened her hyphenated last name), found that out when she was meeting a client a few years ago. She works as a consultant in Toronto and was being hired to do a series of events by an American automotive executive. "We were in a restaurant and the TV was on," showing the coming presidential election, Ms. H C said. "I said I was excited that Obama was going to be re elected." The client's "whole body stiffened, and it was clear he was not an Obama supporter." Even though the contracts were all but signed, he dropped out of sight; ultimately, she received a call from the human resources department telling her the company decided to "go in a different direction." "I lost 30,000 to 40,000," she said. "The lesson was to be very aware of other people's beliefs and to be very delicate about what could trigger them." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Your Money |
An artist's rendering shows a flyby of the New Horizons spacecraft of 2014 MU69, a distant object in the solar system's Kuiper belt. MU69 is no more than 20 miles wide, and it's possible, scientists say, it has an even smaller moon. In just over a year, a NASA spacecraft will visit a tiny world at the edge of the solar system. Now that tiny object appears to have an even tinier moon, scientists announced on Tuesday. The object, known as 2014 MU69, is small, no more than 20 miles wide, but planetary scientists hope that it will turn out to be an ancient and pristine fragment from the earliest days of the solar system. The moon, if it exists, might be about three miles wide, circling at a distance of about 120 miles from MU69, completing an orbit every two to four weeks, estimated Marc W. Buie, an astronomer at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo. He cautioned that the findings were tentative. "The story could change next week," he said. Dr. Buie and others working on NASA's New Horizons mission provided an update on Tuesday at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union meeting here. New Horizons flew past Pluto two years ago, sending back spectacular views that revealed a world with soaring mountains of ice, smooth plains and maybe even an subsurface ocean of liquid water. New Horizon's work is not yet done. Pluto is the largest object in the Kuiper belt, a ring of icy debris beyond Neptune. After the Pluto flyby, mission managers shifted the spacecraft's trajectory toward MU69, located a billion miles beyond Pluto. New Horizons will zip past MU69 on Jan. 1, 2019. MU69 is so small that it can be seen only by the Hubble Space Telescope and then only as a faint point of light. But by happenstance, it passed in front of three stars within a few weeks this summer. Members of the New Horizons team crisscrossed oceans and continents, hoping to observe these occultations when the stars briefly vanished as MU69 passed in front of them. But the story still was not quite right. During an attempt in July to view an occultation from NASA's Sofia observatory, a modified 747 jet that carries a 100 inch telescope, the astronomers did not see anything definitive, but there was a suggestive blip. Perhaps Sofia's path just grazed the shadow. But whatever Sofia observed was not quite in the same position as where MU69 turned out to be during successful observations in Argentina a week later. Even in the successful observations, MU69 was slightly off from the predicted location. That might have been a consequence of uncertainties in the positions of the background stars. When Dr. Buie received an update of the star catalog a compendium of Milky Way stars produced by a European Space Agency mission called Gaia he reran his calculations. The discrepancy was even larger, too large for him to reconcile. Then he realized that Sofia may have detected a second object: a moon, which could explain the discrepancies. That could be the first of the surprises to come. If there were just one moon, said S. Alan Stern, the principal investigator for New Horizons, "then it's kind of a needle in a haystack, and it would be unlikely that Sofia would just happen to trip over it. So this might be the harbinger. It might be a hint there's actually a swarm of satellites around MU69." The presence of a moon would also add complications; its gravitational pull would cause MU69 to wobble, and the mission managers will have to adjust the observations to make sure the instruments are pointed in the right direction. But that will all have to be done in the days just before the flyby. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
Two people sit opposite each other at a table and talk: Can this be a dance? Tentative answer: Maybe. After all, the speakers are the downtown choreographer Will Rawls and Kaitlyn Gilliland, who danced with the New York City Ballet until 2011. You could feel the question rustling through the audience on Thursday night during this opening event of "Platform 2015: Dancers, Buildings and People in the Streets," a two month series of performances, workshops and panels organized by Claudia La Rocco and presented by Danspace Projects in St. Mark's Church. Ms. La Rocco, a freelance critic for The New York Times, was inspired by the writings of the poet and dance writer Edwin Denby to pair selected artists from ballet and contemporary dance and ask them to create a "dance dialogue" together. "Dancers, Buildings and People in the Streets" is also the title of a 1965 book by Mr. Denby, in which he wrote with equal eloquence of George Balanchine, Merce Cunningham and choreographers who emerged from the radical Judson Dance Theater in New York. In their " loveyoumeanit, part 1," Ms. Gilliland and Mr. Rawls are separated by more than the table and their respective disciplines. They are distanced from their earlier selves by the text messages that they wrote across miles and during the months leading up to Thursday night and now read from a script. They voice everything that would appear on their computer screens; the words "emoji" and "hashtag" form a rhythmic undercurrent, icons flashing onto a screen behind them. The spectators hear of a friendship burgeoning long before the two meet, and theirs is a pas de deux of sorts, its rhythms produced by flirtatiousness, guarded admissions and word games. At some point, Mr. Rawls gets up to start casually spinning out loose, twisting movements, while Ms. Gilliland tries to influence their quality by calling out words she has scribbled. The audience doesn't get to see Part 2 of this brainy concoction until after the second "dialogue" of the evening, between Adrian Danchig Waring, a principal with New York City Ballet, and the dancer choreographer Silas Riener, who was a member of Merce Cunningham's company. This untitled work uncorks the audience's suppressed need for dancing. Mr. Riener, wearing nondescript practice clothes and a hood, bursts into the church; soaring repeatedly, his legs together in the air, he looks like a rocket on its trial flight. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
Silas Riener, now free from the constraints of a conventional group he was a member of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company from 2007 until it disbanded in 2011 is a rare sort of dancer, one whose body emits force, whether the results are satiny, vigorously unyielding or somewhere in between. In his new work, "Blue Name," Mr. Riener strips his exacting strength down to its essence in the intimate setting of the Chocolate Factory, where he performed on Oct. 14. Who, or what, is in charge? As his shoulders contract and then billow out and he takes off in different directions, it seems as if he is driving a car without a steering wheel. Mr. Riener explores the power of unearthly movement, but with such proximity to the audience that there's an added touch of confinement. "Blue Name" is an uneven piece for which Mr. Riener has compiled dances created over 18 months; wearing fitted earpieces as he did in a previous solo performed as part of "Platform 2015: Dancers, Buildings and People in the Streets" at Danspace Project, he exudes a sense of solitude as he covers the length of the theater with stiff, straight legged brushes or, later, crosses to the back of the stage in consecutive splits. He wears a T shirt over a unitard that initially appears threadbare around the knees and crotch. Later he removes his shirt to display chest hair, nipples, star tattoos. This costume cleverly designed by the choreographer with George Venson, Reid Bartleme and Julia Donaldson is his second skin, a version of Mr. Riener's body painted onto the unitard in a fabric he couldn't escape while in the Cunningham company. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
CHANTILLY, Va. Standing before the space shuttle Discovery in a voluminous hangar outside of Washington, Vice President Mike Pence announced on Thursday a renewed focus on putting Americans in space and making a return to the moon. "We will return American astronauts to the moon, not only to leave behind footprints and flags, but to build the foundation we need to send Americans to Mars and beyond," Mr. Pence said during a meeting of the National Space Council. The council, a group of senior federal officials that coordinates policy between NASA, the Defense Department and other agencies involved with space, was disbanded in 1993, but President Trump signed an executive order in June to reestablish it. (The meeting, which was held at the National Air Space Museum's Steven F. Udvar Hazy Center, was streamed live on the internet). Council members include Secretary of State Rex Tillerson; Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao; Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross; General H.R. McMaster, the national security adviser; and Mike Mulvaney, director of the Office of Management and Budget. Mr. Pence did not lay out a timetable for when American astronauts would step on the moon again or propose a strategy for getting there, much less broach the topic of a price tag. In his introductory comments to the council, Mr. Pence described the United States space program as in decline, and leveled sharp criticism of the Obama administration. "Rather than competing with other nations to create the best space technology, the previous administration chose capitulation," he said. "Have we fallen behind as we believe?" Mr. Pence asked private sector aerospace executives speaking at the session. "Is that your judgment from the outside?" "I would say, first of all, that is very important today, that it is an imperative," said Marillyn A. Hewson, chief executive of Lockheed Martin. She said that there was a need to be "vigilant" about protecting communications and intelligence satellites from attack, but then pivoted to talking about the economic, educational and inspirational benefits of the space program. She and Dennis A. Muilenburg, chief executive of Boeing, both said there was a need for consistent financing and steady commitment to achieve long term objectives in space. Gwynne Shotwell, president of SpaceX, far from describing a neglected space program in the United States, highlighted her company's meteoric rise in recent years, with 13 launches in 2017. "In short, there is a renaissance underway right now in space," she said. The focus on the moon marks an expected turn from the priorities of the Obama administration, which had downplayed the moon and instructed NASA to instead aim for an asteroid and then Mars. The approach is more of a return to the path described by President George W. Bush in 2004 and his father, President George H.W. Bush, 15 years earlier. Both times, the initiatives petered out. Since the last Apollo moon landing in 1972, no astronauts have traveled beyond low Earth orbit. Mr. Pence suggested that private industry might play a larger role in a moon mission this time. "To fully unlock the mysteries of space, President Trump recognizes that we must look beyond the halls of government for input and guidance," he said. In a Wall Street Journal opinion article published on Wednesday where Mr. Pence addressed similar themes, he made zero mention of NASA. What will change in practice under the Trump administration is unclear. Although the Obama administration downplayed sending NASA astronauts to the moon, it did support commercial start ups seeking to send robotic landers there, and Mr. Pence said that the longer term goal of getting astronauts to Mars remains. Phillip Larson, a former White House space adviser in the Obama administration and now an assistant dean at the University of Colorado engineering school disagreed with Mr. Pence's criticism. He pointed to SpaceX's success and billions of dollars of private investment in space ventures in recent years. "That type of activity is what the Obama administration worked to promote and create and foment a whole new industry," said Mr. Larson, who did not attend the meeting. He said it was also too early to tell whether the Trump administration's space efforts would succeed. "It was just very interesting to do this type of process without a NASA administrator or a science adviser in the White House," he said. "Until they produce a plan, which it looks like they're moving toward, this is mostly theater and produces a little bit of confusion, I think. I still remain optimistic." The Senate has not yet held confirmation hearings for Jim Bridenstine, an Oklahoma congressman nominated last month to be the next NASA administrator. President Trump has yet to name a science adviser. John Logsdon, a former director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University, was more positive, noting that administration had chosen to hold its first meeting publicly at a high profile venue to draw more attention. "Words are the first step to action," he said. Are the words different this time? | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
So much fashion seems designed to obscure the hands that made it. It chases perfection, smoothness, a certain sheen. The clothes aren't designed to raise questions, only answer them, or render them moot. But to deny the presence of human hands has not only political consequences, but aesthetic ones as well. We did not arrive at these outfits without assistance. If we have dressed better, it is only by standing on the taste of others. That's always been true, but over the last year or so, we've been in a golden moment of human touch in clothing, from hand painting and drawing by Raf Simons to the wild appliques of Discount Universe to the choose your own adventure designs of Craig Green. These are clothes that reify not only the wearer, but also the creators. They scream a story that stretches back well before the act of getting dressed. This is, in an age of late capitalism, a small act of resistance a blow to fast and medium speed fashion and an acknowledgment of the potency of human intervention. But it's also a jolt to the senses, a reminder that a person many people had hands on your clothes before you did. Everything that seems effortless is really the product of a very refined set of decisions. I like to see the work in progress. I don't mean artisanal, in the sense that a label fetishizes the labor and skill that go into a product. Rather, I'm drawn to clothes for which the behind the scenes choices are loud and clear and, in some cases, still not wholly finished. They don't always look right, or fit right, but they never bore. Linder feels like a store born for that approach, and for this moment. A tiny shop on one of those quiet SoHo blocks that could pass for the West Village, it doesn't advertise itself loudly. There are only three racks of clothing, a few shelves of accessories, a few more of shoes, and that's it. Yet there's this: Nearly every item in the store, from clothing to shoes to jewelry to accessories, feels like the product of a fresh mind, a creator at work hoping to make something just slightly different from what peers are coming up with, without edging into triteness. It begins with the Linder house line, which spans minimalist, reversible flight jackets that aren't bogged down by elastic at the waist ( 437) and cardigans in a pseudo boucle style with bright trim ( 416). Or take the work of the Israeli designer Hed Mayner, who seems interested in disrupting and exaggerating the usual garment proportions. He had a camel colored leather vest ( 725) that was broad and stiff and smelled excellent, and a collarless bomber jacket with overlong arms and a short torso ( 763). He also had scoop neck T shirts that looked like hospital scrubs and a boxy jacquard work coat with Carhartt proportions and royal mien ( 490). From Qasimi, a designer who shuttles between London and Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates, there was a luxe knit guayabera ( 259) and shirts with intriguing irregularities, like pinstripes that stopped abruptly and intersected at strange angles, or two chest pockets, but one atop the other on one side of the shirt. Each of these pieces forced an additional layer of reflection, a consideration of the thought process that birthed it. In other cases, the hand of creation was more literal, like on the exquisite hand painted denim pieces by the artist Patrick Church, in surrealist comic book style ( 350 to 400). There was innovation in the shoes, too, like the sneakers with hand painted bulbous figures, a collaboration between Linder and Hus Hus ( 395). Or the lace up numbers by a young French label, Soloviere ( 325), that look like Capezios but in pebbled leather and with extra fabric gathered at the top, something a particularly frilly monk might wear. Even more striking are the shoes that don't scream about their innovations, like the ankle boot made by the venerable Foster Son ( 435); it has elastic pulls like a Chelsea boot but they are inserted at an angle for an aerodynamic look. Or the Lucchese cowboy boots ( 995), which might not match the aesthetic of the rest of the store but do match the fetish for handcrafted detail. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
The Twitter account for "The Lightning Thief: The Percy Jackson Musical" has more than 50,000 followers. Ashlee Latimer knows them better than most. She knows their names and handles, their inside jokes, their favorite Percy fan theories. She knows which follower is a massive Taylor Swift fan, and she knows that a delegation of Norwegians loves the musical. When she posted a tweet with a pair of cryptic emojis, a wink to a lyric on the then unannounced cast album, she knew exactly which sleuthing follower would reply within minutes and crack the code. But the show's fans know next to nothing about Latimer. They're plenty familiar, though, with her alter ego: Mx. Thief, the gender neutral alias posting memes and motivational notes on the LTMusical account since the show's run Off Broadway in 2017. Mx. Thief has become a carefully crafted and recognizable voice in some posts mysterious and teasing; in others, urging followers to spread kindness. Sometimes, Mx. Thief is straight sass, a camp counselor crossed with an older sibling, calling out trolls, or professional theater critics. And now that the Broadway run is over "The Lightning Thief" had its final performance on Sunday Latimer, 28, is coming out from behind the curtain for the first time. Mx. Thief became a fan favorite, not unlike the characters onstage at the Longacre Theater, receiving gifts and art works from followers including an illustration of an anonymous figure with a thick, old school computer monitor for a head and a collage sent from Australia of the artist's favorite Mx. Thief tweets, printed and mounted on blue cardstock. "Getting messages and tweets and comments about the ways that the show has changed their life, and also how the social has impacted them, has been so special," Latimer said. But for three years her identity remained anonymous. This isn't unusual; most brand accounts have no reason to disclose the social media manager pulling the strings. But when followers began to ask questions Who exactly was running the account? Was it a member of the cast? A character from the Percy Jackson books? it was decided that Latimer should maintain the mystique. While the musical was met with harsh reviews and low weekly grosses, its social media presence helped to bring in first time theatergoers, said Carl White, one of its producers. "Hamilton" and "Dear Evan Hansen" have far larger Twitter followings, but "Lightning Thief" was on par with the long running "Phantom of the Opera" and "Waitress," which also closed on Sunday. And producers encouraged Latimer to push certain envelopes: After opening night reviews were less than stellar Jesse Green in The New York Times called the show "a failed attempt to board the teenage fantasy angst train" the account responded. "I don't think there's anything wrong with clapping back at one's critics," said White, who praised the account for prompting "tremendous" engagement. "We know that a consumer is more likely to listen to the recommendation from a friend than they are necessarily a critic." For many fans, that's what Latimer became. Followers last year gave her the name Mr. Thief, before she requested a correction that caught on: Mx. Thief would be a better choice, to avoid making an assumption about her identity. (Latimer is gender fluid and uses she/her pronouns.) In 2017, Latimer was working at the Pekoe Group, a theater marketing agency, and was assigned to take on "The Lightning Thief" and its social media. After the Off Broadway run wrapped up, the musical's producers hired her directly to stay on through last year's national tour and the transfer to Broadway. Since August 2019, she has also been an associate at TBD Theatricals, where she juggles a full time creative development gig with her "Lightning Thief" responsibilities. There's another pretty big Mx. Thief detail that followers don't know about: She has a Tony Award. Latimer was a producer on "Once on This Island," which won the best musical revival prize in 2018. (A video of her weeping on live television during the acceptance became a bit of a meme.) Latimer is not much older than the primarily Generation Z fan base for "The Lightning Thief," but there are enough years between her and her audience to have had what she calls "'Freaky Friday' crypt keeper" moments using acronyms and slang from her teenage years that no longer translate. She grew up in the era of Myspace and still has traumatic memories of the fear that came with accidentally overusing pay per minute internet on her cellphone. "I feel like the kids are going to hear this and be like, wow, she is ancient," she said. Her closest tie to online fandom was through now defunct Harry Potter message boards, where she could post dissertations on "Half Blood Prince" fan theories. Fast forward a decade, and she's the one helping "Lightning Thief" followers meet kindred spirits in other time zones. Fans shouldn't mourn Mx. Thief just yet. The show will have another national tour, though Latimer won't be behind the account anymore. "There will be a new Mx. Thief," she promised, "whoever they end up being." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
Getting to Mars Is Easy. It's the Stopping That Can Kill You. None When NASA's Perseverance rover arrives at Mars, mission managers will be watching, helpless to do anything. The 2.4 billion spacecraft will hit the top of the Martian atmosphere at more than 12,000 miles per hour and then come to a complete stop seven minutes later. That the one ton rover will end up on Mars on the afternoon of Feb. 18 is nearly certain (presuming it is able to launch before the middle of August, when the planet moves too far away from Earth). The spacecraft navigators will have put the robotic explorer on a collision course with the planet. The only question is whether Perseverance will be on the ground in one piece, or smashed to bits. Spacecraft from Europe and the Soviet Union have made it all the way to the red planet, only to end up as expensive scorch marks on its dusty surface. But NASA has a good track record at Mars. It is the only space agency so far to pull off a successful mission on the surface of the red planet. Perseverance is largely the same design as the Curiosity rover, which set down in 2012, and will have the same convoluted but now tried and true "sky crane" landing choreography. "When people look at it, it looks crazy," Adam Steltzner, a NASA engineer, said in a video that NASA produced leading up to Curiosity's landing that described the components: heat shield, parachute, rocket engines and finally a hovering crane that lowered the rover to the surface. "That's a very natural thing," Dr. Stelzner said. "Sometimes when we look at it, it looks crazy. It is the result of reasoned, engineering thought. But it still looks crazy." While everything worked, the engineers got a chance to take a look at what could be improved this time around. "We don't usually get a chance to kind of redo or fix the mistakes we made last time," Allen Chen, who leads the Perseverance entry, descent and landing team for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said in an interview. For example, Curiosity actually landed too slow, hitting the ground at 1.4 miles per hour instead of the 1.7 miles per hour that had been expected. That, by itself, was not a problem. A softer landing is gentler on the spacecraft. But the engineers wanted to understand what had happened in order to make sure that the next landing that of Perseverance did not come down faster than intended. It turns out that their calculation of the gravity of Mars was slightly wrong. In areas of the planet that possess less mass like the 96 mile wide crater that Curiosity landed in the pull of gravity is a bit weaker. The NASA mission includes Perseverance, a 2,200 pound rover, and Ingenuity, an experimental Mars helicopter. The four pound aircraft will communicate wirelessly with the Perseverance rover. Four carbon fiber blades will spin at about 2,400 r.p.m. The plutonium based power supply will charge the rover's batteries. Instruments will take videos, panoramas and photographs. A laser will study the chemistry of Martian rocks. Will identify chemical elements to seek signs of past life on Mars. A turret with many instruments is attached to a 7 foot robotic arm. A drill will extract samples from Martian rocks. The Sherloc device will identify molecules and minerals to detect potential biosignatures, with help from the Watson camera. The 2,200 pound rover will explore Jezero Crater. It has aluminum wheels and a suspension system to drive over obstacles. The aircraft will communicate wirelessly with the rover. The plutonium based power supply will charge the rover's batteries. Instruments will take videos, panoramas and photographs. A laser will study the chemistry of Martian rocks. Will identify chemical elements to seek signs of past life on Mars. A turret with many instruments is attached to a 7 foot robotic arm. A drill will extract samples from Martian rocks. The Sherloc device will identify molecules and minerals to detect potential biosignatures, with help from the Watson camera. The 2,200 pound rover will explore Jezero Crater. It has aluminum wheels and a suspension system to drive over obstacles. A turret with many instruments is attached to a 7 foot robotic arm. A drill will extract samples from Martian rocks. The Sherloc device will identify molecules and minerals to detect potential biosignatures, with help from the Watson camera. PiXl will identify chemical elements to seek signs of past life on Mars. "We didn't have sufficient fidelity in our gravity modeling to understand that the gravity there was actually different than elsewhere on the planet," Mr. Chen said. "So that was one thing that we fixed." Another component that was tweaked was the parachute that is unfurled when the spacecraft is hurling down at supersonic speeds. A parachute failure in a prototype test of a future Mars landing system led Mr. Chen's team to make sure they had not just gotten lucky with Curiosity. "That gave us pause," he said. The engineers are now confident of Perseverance's parachute after supersonic tests of a strengthened design. One major addition to Perseverance is what NASA calls "terrain relative navigation." A camera on the spacecraft will take pictures of the landscape and match them with its stored maps. It would then steer to what looks like the safest landing spot it can. "I don't need the whole place to be flat and boring," Mr. Chen said. "I just need parts of it that I can reach to be flat and boring." A successful test of the parachute that will help land NASA's Perseverance rover on Mars during the third and final flight of the Advanced Supersonic Parachute Inflation Research Experiment in September 2018. Video by NASA/JPL Caltech Without this system, there would be more than a one in five chance that Perseverance would end up somewhere unfortunate damaged by a boulder, tipped over on a steep slope or surrounded by sand traps. That would be an unacceptably high risk for such a high profile, expensive mission. If it works, the same technology will be used when NASA sends a mission to pick up the rock samples that Perseverance will be collecting, part of the so called Mars sample return. That spacecraft will carry enough fuel that it is able not only to avoid obstacles but also to fly to a specific location, landing within tens of yards of the target. Still, next Feb. 18, the control room at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory is expected to be full of nervous engineers watching the telemetry coming back from Perseverance. That data will take minutes to travel millions of miles far too far and too slow for anyone at NASA to make last second corrections. "Mars is not for the faint of heart," Mr. Chen said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
"Head Over Heels," the exuberant mash up of a 16th century prose poem with songs of the Go Go's, will close on Broadway on Jan. 6. The musical, about a royal family that goes on a wild and wacky journey to escape an oracle's dire predictions, celebrates love in many forms. It opened on July 26 to mixed reviews; in The New York Times, Ben Brantley called it "as timid and awkward as the new kid on the first day of school," while in New York magazine, Sara Holdren said, "The show is a lot nutso, in the most delightfully daffy, exuberantly heart open way." The show, which began its life at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and then, after substantial revisions, had a pre Broadway run at the Curran Theater in San Francisco, never caught on with New York audiences; for a time it was promoted as a Go Go's jukebox musical, and when that didn't work, the show was marketed as a fabulous fairy tale. It has consistently struggled at the box office it grossed an underwhelming 348,117 in its first full week of performances and then slid further, grossing 208,221 during the week ending Nov. 25 and it has remained open largely thanks to the generosity of its producers, who include Louise Gund, a member of one of America's richest families, as well as the lead producer, Christine Russell, the film star Gwyneth Paltrow and the actor Donovan Leitch, as well as the Jujamcyn Theaters president Jordan Roth. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
TOKYO Japan's newly installed prime minister startled the nation on Friday by warning that it could face a financial crisis of Greek proportions if it does not tackle its colossal debt. The stark words from the prime minister, Naoto Kan, followed by just hours the resignation of his banking minister and ally in the governing Democratic Party, Shizuka Kamei an advocate of big spending. Mr. Kamei's departure seemed to signal that the new government would focus on reducing Japan's heavy government debt, called sovereign debt, by far the highest in the industrialized world, and cutting back on the wasteful public works projects. "It is difficult to sustain a policy that relies too heavily on issuing debt," Mr. Kan told the Japanese Parliament in his first policy speech. "As we have seen with the financial confusion in the European Community stemming from Greece, our finances could collapse if trust in national bonds is lost and growing national debt is left alone." Worried by the Greek debt crisis, policy makers around the world have increasingly raised the alarm over runaway government spending of the past two years, as the world has grappled with an economic crisis. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Global Business |
As three dancers the piece's choreographer, Aimee Meredith Cox, as well as Freyani Patrice and Kenya Joy Gibson make their way down escalators and a winding staircase to the lower base of the multilevel center, three dimensional crystals featuring diamond mosaics and propellers dance alongside them. Some preparation is in order: To see these floating crystals, you must first download the Refrakt application and aim your smartphone on a design on the dancers' dresses. When it works and you have to be close enough a crystal suddenly appears to hover around the dancer's body. Spookily beautiful, these crystals help you reimagine space and time. Are the dancers impersonating the crystals, or is the crystal a guise? As the barefoot dancers incorporate lush African undulations and hold still positions with such focus and poise that they could be sculptures, even the hectic Fulton Center quiets down. When they reach ground level, Ms. Cox, the leader of the group, dances before Ms. Patrice and Ms. Gibson while holding an iPad to reveal the crystals; it's as if she's demonstrating, wordlessly, how the application works. But the action also enhances the dreamlike quality of the dance in which a duet with the help of a crystal becomes a trio. Their exit is most haunting: Ascending escalators, they glide away. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
The acoustics in the Werner and Elaine Dannheisser Lobby Gallery, on the fourth floor of the Museum of Modern Art, aren't so great or not ideal, at least, for dancing nonstop while reciting John Cage's seminal "Lecture on Nothing," as Eszter Salamon does in her 2010 solo "Dance for Nothing." But last Thursday evening, during the work's United States premiere engagement, presented as part of the American Realness festival, one refrain couldn't be missed: "More and more, I have the feeling that we are getting nowhere. Slowly, as the talk goes on, we are getting nowhere, and that is a pleasure." Ms. Salamon returned to these words again and again addressing herself as much as her audience in the round in the grounded tone and spontaneous cadence that characterized her 45 minute delivery. Simultaneously, she may have been doing any number of the oddly intriguing things that made up her physical vocabulary: flapping her hands, swiveling on one knee, coyly strutting, scrawling in the air with gangly, interlocked arms. The notion of "getting nowhere" resonated on multiple levels. If any one idea forms the core of Cage's unsentimental composition, which he wrote in 1949, it's that, quite simply, "here we are." As another recurring phrase goes: "It is not irritating to be where one is. It is only irritating to think one would like to be somewhere else." In her restless perpetual motion, Ms. Salamon, a Hungarian born choreographer based in Paris and Berlin, imbued that philosophy with an eerie sense of truth. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
"With this book, I wanted to explore the state of nature, who we are, and what we perceive is required for our survival," Collins said in a statement. "The reconstruction period 10 years after the war, commonly referred to as the Dark Days as the country of Panem struggles back to its feet provides fertile ground for characters to grapple with these questions and thereby define their views of humanity." With a prequel, Collins will revive one of the most successful fantasy franchises of the past several decades. Set in a fictional dystopian world where children from competing districts are forced to fight in a televised, reality show like competition, "The Hunger Games" was a groundbreaking novel that redefined the boundaries of young adult fiction. Its gritty, violent story featured a resilient young protagonist, the bow and arrow slinging heroine Katniss Everdeen. In the wake of best selling Y.A. fantasy series like "Twilight" and "Harry Potter," Collins's series ushered in a new wave of dark dystopian and post apocalyptic children's books. When "The Hunger Games" was released, in 2008, it became an instant best seller. Two more books followed, and the trilogy was translated into 54 languages, with more than 100 million copies in print, and remained on The New York Times best seller list for more than five consecutive years. Film adaptations, starring Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen, earned nearly 3 billion worldwide at the box office. (Lionsgate is in talks with Collins about adapting the prequel novel into a film as well, according to a statement from a Lionsgate executive.) Collins has said she got the idea for the series when flipping channels between reality TV programs and a news segment about the conflict in Iraq. The jarring contrast gave her the idea for a world where an orchestrated battle to the death was televised for entertainment as a way to appease and oppress the masses. Collins was also influenced by her father's military service in Vietnam and wanted to introduce young readers to "just war theory" by describing a government that was so oppressive that armed revolution would be the only recourse. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
Information may want to be free, as an aphorism had it in the early days of digital media. But these days, increasingly, journalism wants to be paid for. New York Media, the parent company of New York magazine, will become the latest publisher to institute a paywall when it starts charging for access to its websites. Under its longtime editor, Adam Moss, New York was a pioneer in breaking various areas of coverage into separate websites known as verticals. Its related online offerings are composed of the flagship NYMag.com, The Cut (fashion), Grub Street (food), Intelligencer (politics), The Strategist (shopping) and Vulture (pop culture). The move to a metered paywall has been in the works for a year, said Pamela Wasserstein, the daughter of the late New York magazine owner Bruce Wasserstein and the company's chief executive since 2016. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
Followers of the temperance movement late in the 19th century created a place called National Prohibition Park, where they could escape the stresses and bad influences of the city. The community, on Staten Island's North Shore, is now known as Westerleigh. In many ways, Westerleigh has retained the air of its origins. It is a wholesome place where residents enjoy a peaceful existence in contrast to the hectic nature of much of New York. With most commerce relegated to its periphery, Westerleigh has a residential core that reflects pure, old fashioned Americana. Here, you find tree lined streets, well kept historic homes, a Little League field and a central park where the whole neighborhood gathers on the last Sunday in June to hear a brass band play patriotic tunes from a gazebo. Residents praise the neighborhood for its tight knit, neighborly atmosphere. Many city workers police officers, bus drivers, sanitation workers live here. Jennifer Dooley, a nurse at Staten Island Hospital, used to come to Westerleigh as a child to visit her aunt. Several years ago, when her aunt's home was for sale, she and her husband, Bill Clark, bought it. They are now expecting their first child. Ms. Dooley said Westerleigh was the only place on Staten Island where her husband, originally from Rockland County, would live because he liked the neighborhood's sense of community. "If we stay on Staten Island, we stay in Westerleigh," she said. The sentiment, that once in Westerleigh, always in Westerleigh, is shared by other residents. Scott Dobrin, an associate broker with Re/Max Metro, said he is representing sellers of a ranch style Westerleigh home. The family wanted more space, but they did not want to leave the neighborhood. So they are building a larger house on a lot a few doors down. "Westerleigh is small town America," Mr. Dobrin said. "People stay for a long time. They buy and stay forever." Maintaining the small town feel of the neighborhood has been a priority for the Westerleigh Improvement Society, a civic group. Michael Morrell, the society's president, said the group successfully fought for more stringent zoning regulations in 2008. He said the society's push for zoning changes began in 2005 after older houses on Jewett Avenue were razed and replaced with two family homes. Mary DiBiase Blaich for The New York Times "We wanted to preserve the basic footprint of the neighborhood," Mr. Morrell said. "Residents felt that tear downs were the wrong direction." He said the new rules allowed only single family, fully detached homes in a large section of the roughly two square mile neighborhood. Certainly, the historic character of the neighborhood has been preserved and vestiges of its temperance era origins remain. Many streets are named after former Prohibition Party politicians and temperance leaders. Neal Dow Avenue commemorates a former governor of Maine who was the Prohibition Party's candidate for president in 1880, and Livermore Avenue recalls Mary A. Livermore, an author and temperance leader. Some ornate Queen Anne style Victorian homes built for the temperance movement's leaders still exist along Jewett Avenue and a short but grandly named thoroughfare, the Boulevard. One of these homes, "the Bluestone," a seven bedroom five bath mansion, has been on the market for several months, listed at 1.099 million, the highest priced property in Westerleigh. Most of the housing stock in the neighborhood, however, is more modest: smaller homes on smaller lots. A grid of narrow streets that once housed tents where visitors to Prohibition Park could stay was later developed with houses. Now, the grid is made up of charming one way streets with closely spaced homes in a variety of styles. Pockets of newer development do exist, like a townhouse community on Vogel Loop built in the late 1980s before the zoning changes. Mary DiBiase Blaich for The New York Times According to a recent check of the Staten Island Board of Realtors website, about 60 properties were listed for sale in Westerleigh. Tom Crimmins, a broker and owner of Tom Crimmins Realty, said most homes become available when older couples downsize or families move away because they need more space. Often, however, homeowners in Westerleigh find ways to make their current homes work because they do not want to leave the area, Mr. Crimmins said. "That's why we will see roof raises. Families are growing but they like the neighborhood so much they look to expand rather than move." Those looking to buy in Westerleigh are almost exclusively from other parts of Staten Island, Mr. Crimmins said. "Usually, they are upgrading from other areas of the Island; they were renters and are buying a home for the first time," he said. Mr. Crimmins said the average price for a home in Westerleigh was about 425,000. This middle ground is made up mainly of single family, three bedroom colonial, Tudor and some Dutch colonial style houses. Higher end houses larger buildings on bigger lots sell in the 700,000s and the lower end homes, usually townhouses, sell in the 300,000s, he said. 242 Manor Road A (718) 370 3200 two family home with a three bedroom unit over a two bedroom, listed at 475,000.(718) 370 3200 Mary DiBiase Blaich for The New York Times Mr. Crimmins said home prices were higher before the economic downturn, when a home now selling for 425,000 would have sold in the low 500,000s. He added, however, that because the neighborhood is so stable, its real estate market suffered less than other areas. Now, when a home comes on the market and it is priced reasonably, he receives multiple offers. Neighborhood activity centers around Westerleigh Park, a small rectangle of green with towering old trees, paved paths, benches and the gazebo. The community's annual Patriotic Sunday is held there in June. An active Little League operates out of Westerleigh's Northerleigh Park. Residents also frequent nearby Clove Lakes Park. The Westerleigh Tennis Club on College Avenue is a small private club founded in 1910. The original building of Public School 30, the Westerleigh was constructed in 1905 on the site of the former Park Hotel, a grand inn. The school has 815 students in prekindergarten through Grade 5. The neighborhood is served by Susan E. Wagner High School and Port Richmond High School. According to the city Department of Education, average SAT scores in 2013 for Wagner High were 469 in critical reading, 484 in math and 466 in writing, compared with citywide scores of 437, 463 and 433. Port Richmond High's scores were 431 in critical reading, 440 in math and 419 in writing. Live in Westerleigh and you will likely own a car. Most residents drive when doing errands or going to jobs elsewhere on Staten Island. For commuting into Manhattan, express buses are popular. Residents can pick up these buses along the main commercial thoroughfares. The X42 bus, for example, leaving the intersection of Watchogue Road and Livermore Avenue at 7 a.m. would arrive at East 57th Street and Madison Avenue in about 70 minutes. National Prohibition Park opened as a summer retreat on July 4, 1888. According to a history of the neighborhood, "Westerleigh: the Town that Temperance Built," published by the Westerleigh Improvement Society, 60,000 people visited the park its first summer season. In the early 1900s when leaders of the National Prohibition Park Company began selling lots, they made an effort to impose their temperance beliefs on the new owners. Land deeds contained a provision that alcohol could not be consumed, stored or manufactured on the properties. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
Patrons of Grupo de Pesca Desportiva a Linha, a local hand line fishing club, in Montemor o Novo. These clubs are usually members only, but they may wave you in. The Alentejo's local specialty is porco preto, or black pig, which mostly feeds on the acorns that fall from the cork trees. Long a vacation destination for travelers on the lookout for European pleasures at typically Portuguese budget prices, the Alentejo is rapidly becoming one of the top wine destinations in the world. Long a vacation destination for travelers on the lookout for European pleasures at typically Portuguese budget prices, the Alentejo is rapidly becoming one of the top wine destinations in the world. The surprising thing about touching down at Lisbon Airport is how fast, heading south in a car, you find yourself transported into deep countryside. I arrived on a mild October morning, was met there by my old friend Martin Earl, and within a few minutes was crossing the Vasco da Gama Bridge, longest in Europe, an affair of towers and cables that stretches like a single bolt of flung steel across more than 10 miles of the Tagus River estuary. Immediately thereafter we swerved off the highway and decelerated into the dreaming, older world of the Alentejo (the word literally means "beyond the Tejo" or Tagus). For the next five days we'd travel among medieval whitewashed villages, rolling hills, mountain forts and a constellation of sparklingly modern vineyards. Long a vacation destination for travelers on the lookout for European pleasures at typically Portuguese budget prices, the Alentejo is finally taking its bow on the international stage, and is rapidly becoming one of the top wine destinations in the world. This fact would have both positive and negative consequences, as I'd come to discover. In the meantime, I was there to sample the landscapes and hospitality with my friend Martin, who would also be my guide. By way of background I should explain that Martin and I were part of a group of five guys who'd all met in college, been star struck by the dream of literature and had remained adream ever since even while somehow, inexplicably, becoming middle aged along the way. But differently from the rest of us, Martin, a poet, had "gone native," settling down with a local Portuguese girl and crossing over into a life lived entirely and permanently in another language. I hadn't been to Portugal in years, and was eager to understand a little bit more what three decades of voluntary exile does to a person. The challenge, more specifically, was to reconcile the calm, gray haired fellow currently sitting beside me in a buzzing Fiat with the former comet of New York night life and dauphin of the poet John Ashbery, a young man possessing the aplomb to once approach a conceited, beautiful woman at a party and ask her, "Excuse me, would you mind giving me your phone number if I promised to write it on this cigarette and smoke it?" Meanwhile, the whitewashed villages kept coming, one after the other. We stopped for a coffee in a particularly sleepy, sun blasted one called Montemor o Novo. Amid the mostly deserted low buildings there seemed to be a single cafe. But was it a cafe? The sign above it read, Grupo de Pesca Desportiva a Linha de Montemor o Novo. This was a local hand line fishing club, Martin explained, devoted to the old, pure form of the sport in which the line is held in the hands, dropped to the bottom and jiggled in emulation of live bait. These clubs are usually members only, but the cheerful potbellied locals seated outside immediately waved us in. An excited barista explained that they were about to celebrate something extraordinary. The traditional Cante Alentejano, a polyphonic singing unique to the region, had just been designated by Unesco to be listed as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Better yet, one of the singers was right there and about to be feted. We watched as a waiter presented the singer a middle aged man distinguishable from the other patrons only by his dyed blond hair with a tray bearing a white cube, roughly the size of a small brick. When I asked what this was, one of the old boys, to the merriment of the others, grunted at me like a pig. Martin and I caught up the phrase, of course, means something entirely different in the era of connectivity while the tilled brown fields rose and fell out the windows and occasionally a concrete bus shelter flashed by, edged with the characteristic blue or burnt sienna trim that provides a charming bit of bright color in the landscape. Often we were stuck behind contraptions that resembled riding lawnmowers fitted with rudimentary car bodies. These slow, sputtering vehicles are known as "mata velhos" the word means "old person killers" because their tiny 50 cubic centimeter engines don't require a driver's license to operate and because they are often driven and crashed by the elderly. "Do you ever forget?" I asked him. He gave a hesitant smile as we slewed sideways in one of the seemingly endless traffic circles that dot the countryside. "It's funny, but for the longest time all I wanted to do was pass as a local. I worked on the accent and studied the clothes. That all falls away over the years. Now I couldn't care less. Yet in a way I think of America more now than I ever have before. I appreciate it and revile it at the same time. Crazy, no? You hungry?" We turned off for lunch in a smallish town called Redondo. A local woman, when asked directions to a good restaurant, first pointed agreeably up the road and then without changing expression began screaming, according to Martin, that we were international drug smugglers and should be shot. "Ignore her," he said immediately, "and don't make eye contact. She's the village crazy." The woman's screaming lessened in volume as she turned away and entered her building and returned when she leaned out the second story window still screaming and ordered us, apparently, to admire her cat. We found a promising looking place called Porfirio's, with Mediterranean tavern decor of whitewashed walls and beamed ceilings. A tray of the tasty pay as you go appetizers or entradas typical in Portugal was soon placed on our table: herbed and vinegared olives, breads, sausages and two kinds of fresh cheese. The lunch itself opened with an exquisite dogfish soup the dogfish is a kind of shark, white fleshed and sweet followed by a first course of something called arroz de pato, or duck rice. A staple of the Portuguese menu, this dish characteristically distills the simplicity of its ingredients into something that explodes on the tongue like a bomb. But a last word about that pig. The animal reigns at the top of the food chain on Alentejo menus, consumed in all its parts down to nearly its eyelashes. The local specialty is porco preto, or black pig, a member of the swine family fed mostly on the acorns that fall from cork trees and presented in sausage, bacon and chops and as an enriching agent in a variety of stews. The animal's intense depth of flavor is due partly to that acorn heavy diet, and as a bonus, those acorns imbue the flesh with oleic acid, the same heart friendly ingredient found in olive oil. The next two days would take on an easy natural rhythm of eating, sightseeing and drinking the cheap, wonderfully well structured local wines. We stayed in the beautiful mountain towns Monsaraz and Marvao. Each of them was originally built as a fortified redoubt against invasion from nearby Spain and was visible from the valleys below looking like a kind of terra cotta headpiece set high in the hills. Each was entered through several miles of switchbacks, and inside the thickly fortified walls, each had a similar array of aerobically steep cobbled streets, a castle, a small museum, shops, restaurants and panoramic views. In the smaller Monsaraz, we stayed at the immaculate Casa Pinto, a three star hotel whose rooms were all furnished with different reminders of the once mighty Portuguese colonial empire. My room was called Mombasa and boasted beautiful Moorish cum African decor, with wreathing ibex horns, dark wood ceilings and a lovely, mood lit stone grotto bathroom. But it was in the surrounding city, alas, that I first felt the weight of the tourist trade wearing away some of the indigenous sparkle. To put it plainly, the restaurants in these showcase mountain towns tended toward the tired, and the little ateliers and stores that honeycombed the alleyways seemed filled mainly with kitsch. "I belong to the first class that studied winemaking in school, professionally," he said. "My particular innovation was that instead of working in the Douro" Portugal's traditional wine region, farther north "I decided to head south to the unsung Alentejo. It was my good luck to get in on the ground floor of the worldwide growth of wine and ride that wave." When asked the difference between Portuguese wine and that of other nations, Mr. Duarte didn't hesitate. "The wines of Chile and Argentina are too sweet," he said. "You think Spain, you think the tempranillo grape. Well, we don't use the same grapes everyone else does. We have 315 different grape varieties, many of them unique to us. We've also taken many French grapes and adopted them for our own use." With a wave of the hand, he indicated the glasses on our table, still filled with the remnants of his elegant, delicious vintages, including several (of his own label) that have regularly landed in the Wine Enthusiast magazine's Top 100, and said: "You want a velvety and well balanced wine at a good price? Think Portugal." After lunch, elevated by the previous two hours of eating and drinking, we strolled a bit in the nearby vineyards. It was late afternoon, the sun low in the sky, and in the lengthening shadows, workers were still on the job industriously trimming the vines. The air was filled with nostalgic aromas of earth and mown grass, and as we walked, I found myself remembering my own near exile in Italy, a place where I'd spent a total of eight years. Different from the Alentejo, Italy is long accustomed to being a sightseeing shrine of sorts, and its tourist treasures, as extraordinary as they are, often have a kind of annealed feeling to them, as of having been visited so often that they've been buffed smooth by the experience. But Portugal, and particularly the Alentejo, give an entirely different impression: that of a place showcase mountain towns apart still waking up to its own worldly importance, and as a result, still vivid and sparklingly fresh. We had, meanwhile, been walking in a large circle and were almost returned to the main building when we saw a dog, a golden retriever, amble out to greet us. The animal was immediately approached by a barnyard cat. Instead of fighting, the two touched noses. "Around here," Martin said with a wry smile, "everyone's so happy that even interspecies enemies kiss and make up." We laughed and turned back toward the car. It had been five days in that peculiar suspension of real life known as the road trip, and it was time to go home. Several hours later, back in the airport in Lisbon, I hugged my old friend goodbye. I was relieved to have found him at peace in his adopted country. There's an essential melancholy in exile, a sadness from the severed connections to family, habit and what the poet Paul Celan called the "fatal once only" of the mother tongue that can weigh on those who've made the move. In Martin's case, these deficits were offset by a good marriage, his unswerving devotion to his art and a country whose ancient ways allowed him the kind of concentration that speeding New York would have almost certainly denied him. In the process, coincidentally, that country had offered me two things: a reassuring insight into the adaptability of human nature over time, and a tour of the hilly, magical Alentejo, and with it, some of the very best eating and drinking of my life. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
When Harvey Koeppel and his wife, Peggy Koeppel, bought their three bedroom apartment on the 12th floor of Trump Place at 200 Riverside Boulevard in 2000, it seemed like a solid investment. With Hudson River views and amenities that include a full time doorman, concierge desk, a gym filled with the latest Life Fitness equipment and a pool that eventually got its own waterfall, they thought they'd found the perfect spot to raise their son. A trove of celebrities including Kathleen Turner, Bruce Willis, Kristin Chenoweth and Montel Williams moved into Trump condominium buildings in the complex, increasing the sense of panache. In 2012, the Obamas even made an appearance, darting into the neighboring 220 Riverside Boulevard for a re election fund raiser. The Koeppels were never huge fans of Donald J. Trump, but gave little thought to the fact that their home carried his name. Until the 2016 election. This summer, the couple, who were in the process of retiring and moving full time to their country house in Rhinebeck, N.Y., listed their apartment with the Corcoran Group for 2.85 million. Two people showed up at their open house in late September. No one made an offer, even after the Koeppels dropped their price by 55,000. Then, in mid October, their broker suggested cutting the price by another 100,000 and they decided to delist it. "We're taking it off the market," Mr. Koeppel said. "My sense is that there's a definite negative impact to having Trump's name there right now. For me personally, I'm embarrassed to tell people I live in a Trump building." While there are other factors that may explain why the Koeppels' apartment has had no takers 3,711 in monthly common charges and real estate taxes is no small sum the couple is not alone in thinking this caustic campaign season has had an unforeseen effect on the Manhattan residential properties that carry the Trump name. Just south of Mr. Koeppel's condo, at three neighboring buildings that are largely rentals, residents are attempting to have Mr. Trump's name removed from the properties, the doormen's uniforms and the lobby floor mats. And north, at 220 Riverside Drive, Ian Shrank, the owner of a 1,900 square foot 36th floor condo, has been petitioning to have the Trump name removed from that building. So far, those efforts have not borne fruit, and Mr. Shrank declined to comment, saying that any attempt to discuss the matter could only lead to more unwanted publicity for the building he loves and the name on it that he doesn't. But in a letter to shareholders dated Oct. 14, the condo board explained it was rejecting Mr. Shrank's petition because it does not have the authority to adjudicate the matter, and that a decision to change the name would require a two thirds majority vote. (Only 57 owners out of about 400 signed the original petition posted on Brick Underground.) There are clearly dissenters arguing to keep well enough alone. Abe Botha, an associate broker at Douglas Elliman Real Estate who has sold several dozen apartments at Riverside Boulevard, said he was more concerned about the larger New York real estate economy than about fallout from the presidential race. "There's an overall softening," he said, adding that Mr. Trump still has his supporters, including some on Riverside Boulevard who see having the Trump name as a bonus. "There are plenty of people who would purchase in one of the Trump buildings, probably as many as who wouldn't." Mr. Botha did not seem eager to mention in an interview that he is an owner at Riverside Boulevard as well as a broker there. Nearby was a broker from Corcoran, taking what may be a last whack at trying to sell the Koeppels' apartment. How was that going, a reporter asked. "Slow," said the broker, who did not wish to be identified. There is increasing data to suggest that potential homeowners may be wary about buying in properties carrying the Trump name. Over the last two years, the amount of available inventory from Trump branded residential buildings in Manhattan has stayed relatively constant, according to listings pulled from StreetEasy.com. For the 12 months ending October 2015, there were 159 apartments sold at 10 Trump condominiums, including a 21.38 million penthouse at Trump Park Avenue that was sold by Mr. Trump shortly after announcing his candidacy. That number on StreetEasy fell to 117 sales for the period between November 2015 and October 2016, a drop of more than 26 percent. The decrease is especially notable when compared with the performance of the overall Manhattan resale condo market, which showed an increase of 3.8 percent. To Michael Vargas, a principal of the Manhattan based Vanderbilt Appraisal Company, the data had clear indications. "Absorption rates are a pretty good way to look at this," he said. "There has been a reassessment of that brand, on the part of property owners. Where that brand used to enhance value, it is now being perceived as a detraction to value. It's a slowdown in the real estate market combined with a negative view of the brand." At Trump Park Avenue, the 30 plus story former hotel that Mr. Trump purchased in 2002 and converted into condos, 10 apartments sold last year while eight were delisted. This year, six apartments sold and 18 units were listed but later taken off the market, according to StreetEasy. 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 condominium buildings on Riverside Boulevard told a similar story, with the number of listings taken off the market rising to 82 from 67, even as available units inched downward. This was also the case at Trump International, the 44 story condominium tower at the northern tip of Columbus Circle, where six of 14 units sold this year, compared with 14 of 20 last year. "I can't see any good near term or long term effect for this campaign on Trump's real estate brand," said Robert Dankner, the president of Prime Manhattan Residential. "Does the election bring attention to Donald Trump's brand?" Mr. Dankner said. "Yes. Does it increase the good will toward his brand? No. He's turning a lot of people off, with his divisive statements that are directed toward specific nationalities and religions." Still, few brokers who have sold apartments in Trump buildings seem willing to go as far as Mr. Dankner, citing both Mr. Trump's long history of lawsuits and Mr. Trump's son in law Jared Kushner's standing in the real estate community, thanks in part to his status as the owner of the New York Observer. David B. Dubin of Douglas Elliman, who is a broker of a 2.195 million apartment at Trump Tower that has been on the market for more than nine months, said only, "I don't want to discuss the election." Repeated attempts to obtain comment from representatives of Mr. Trump were unsuccessful. Nikki Sun, another Douglas Elliman agent, who listed a unit at Trump SoHo, a hotel and residential condominium, was more forthcoming. Back when the cozy 11th floor hotel room at the Trump SoHo first went on the market in the winter of 2014, the seller was asking 949,000, Ms. Sun said. Numerous price reductions followed, and two real estate brokers came and went as the unit's price dropped to 900,000, and then 800,000, before hitting 799,000; it was subsequently taken off the market. Selling the property has been "a huge problem," Ms. Sun said. "My owner bought it for around 1.025 million. Now she's taking a huge loss." As Ms. Sun was quick to note, her problems with the listing extend beyond Mr. Trump's campaign and include the fact that some major banks do not lend to buyers in hotel/condo buildings. But, she added, "I have international buyers who said right away, 'I do not want to be associated with Trump anything.' " At Trump Tower, it is particularly hard to argue that Mr. Trump's dominance of the news cycle is bringing the sort of attention buyers and sellers crave. Paparazzi line up outside regularly to catch Mr. Trump entering and leaving the building, where he lives in a three floor, marble accented penthouse. Protesters parade by, carrying slogans that refer in explicit terms to both Mr. Trump and his opponent, Hillary Clinton. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
When the violinist Leila Josefowicz was given the 100,000 Avery Fisher Prize on Thursday evening, she was at David Geffen Hall with the New York Philharmonic performing Stravinsky's Violin Concerto in D which counts almost as early music for her. Ms. Josefowicz is one of classical music's great champions of the new, and has introduced works by many of today's leading composers including John Adams, who wrote "Scheherazade.2," a dramatic portrait of a woman confronting oppression, for her in 2015. In an interview, Ms. Josefowicz, 40, said that she grew enamored of new music at a crucial turning point: as she was making the transition from child prodigy to mature artist. She had performed with an orchestra by the age of 8, gotten professional management by 13 and appeared on television with Johnny Carson, and in a Bob Hope special, while still a child. "I think that my desire to play new music and perform new music, and learn new scores, was in many ways a result of having to reinvent myself for myself so that I was happy playing the violin and making music," she said. "And also feeling like I wanted to make a contribution to this art form by commissioning and performing new works." She has now done that, repeatedly. In addition to Mr. Adams, she has championed composers including Colin Matthews, Steven Mackey, Luca Francesconi and Esa Pekka Salonen, who wrote his Violin Concerto for her. Mr. Adams said that he was captivated by her playing, and by her ability to absorb the most difficult new works. "It's an incredible combination of emotional intensity and just supreme technical virtuosity," he said, "and some extra level of charisma, a kind of electricity onstage." Winning the prestigious Fisher prize also earns Ms. Josefowicz a place on a plaque in Geffen Hall (formerly Avery Fisher Hall) alongside past recipients including the cellist Yo Yo Ma, the pianist Emanuel Ax, and the violinists Midori and Joshua Bell. Ms. Josefowicz noted that the award came during a year in which she had lost two formative figures in her career the British composer Oliver Knussen, whose work she played frequently and who she said had been "very much responsible for carving out my new path with 20th and 21st century music," and her early manager, Charles Hamlen, who she said had protected her as a young musician, often urging patience. "He said I had time," she recalled. She is already planning to perform more new works, "to invite audiences to not listen with familiarity, to have them listen with curiosity, with a sense of adventure, with a sense of spontaneity." "Familiarity has been like a heavy X ray blanket that's covered most of the way people listen to music," she said. "Even people who love music don't perhaps know this incredible world that's in front of them, that all we need to do is perform for them." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
At Krystal and Matt Ritter's wedding last April, Mr. Ritter wore socks imprinted with the face of their Yorkshire terrier, Chloe. How to Keep From Getting Cold Feet at the Wedding Krystal and Matt Ritter's wedding last April at the W Fort Lauderdale hotel was a black tie preferred event, but shoes were optional for their bridal party and 155 guests at least on the dance floor. The couple, who met at Florida State University and now live in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., instead made wedding branded socks available for anyone wishing to toss off their uncomfortable heels or oxfords. At the reception, near the dance floor, a wooden sign read: "A little treat for your dancing feet. Grab a pair leave your excuses under the table." A basket was filled with navy blue socks with the text " ForRitterOrPoorer" inked in white. "I didn't want it to be an iron on I wanted it to be embedded in the sock, so when it got washed, the hashtag didn't go away," said Ms. Ritter, 29, who paid more than 800 for these custom designed party favors. She had a similarly themed sock for herself, only in white. The groomsmen had argyle patterned socks, while Mr. Ritter had blue socks imprinted with the face of their six pound, 8 year old Yorkshire terrier, Chloe, whom they wanted to be part of their special day. "Obviously, that was also my wife's idea," Mr. Ritter, 30, an account director at a public relations firm, said of his special footwear. He said he was surprised, though, by how many people took advantage of the socks. "There were more people using them than I thought," he said. "We anticipated that mostly women would be the ones to use them, and they were thrilled that they didn't have to walk around the dance floor barefoot." Ms. Ritter, an experiential marketing manager, said she had envisioned incorporating socks into her wedding even before she was engaged. She was inspired by a flip flop giveaway at a New Year's Eve reception. "Socks were one of the things I knew I wanted to do," she said. More and more couples seem to be doing the same. Ivory Mason Socks sold 76,000 pairs of men's socks since the beginning of the year, and as much as 70 percent of business has been driven by weddings, according to Shervin Natan, the chief executive. "When we started, it was one offs," he said. "We quickly transitioned to selling sock kits. Our customers were women, and they were ordering packs of eight and packs of 12. They were saying 'It's for our weddings'." More specifically, for their grooms' inner circles. "It adds a fun element to the wedding," said Mr. Natan, whose business has catered to larger orders, including 300 pairs for a Houston wedding this past March. Other businesses have been dipping their toes into the matrimony focused sock pool. No Cold Feet, which is based in Chicago, specializes in men's wedding socks and labels. The Etsy shop ItsYourTurnSocks, which operates out of Louisville, Ky., offers options for the best man, uncles, brothers and the father of bride. The Sock Drawer and John's Crazy Socks also sell a variety of fun, less formal and themed socks for brides, grooms and other wedding goers. When Andrew Glaser, 32, of Closter, N.J., married in September 2015, his groomsmen, father and father in law were all gifted matching accessories on the wedding day, and that included socks. "I gave everybody socks, which were nautical themed," Mr. Glaser said. "My wife wanted everybody to look fluid and similar." He said he understands the importance of this request: "It's to make sure nobody wears some ridiculous color sock, and then makes your pictures look weird." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
FJK Dance, led by the Iraqi born dancer and choreographer Fadi J. Khoury, specializes in a fusion of styles. Imagine bits of Middle Eastern movement wedged between slices of ballet and ballroom. Yet beyond that, his New York based group has loftier ambitions: to unite through the power of dance. This would be a challenge for any troupe, but it's especially problematic for one led by Mr. Khoury, who moves from the chest with his arms pinned firmly back. The ballroom effect rarely leaves his body, and that is hard to transcend. Though Sevin Ceviker, Mr. Khoury's main partner, was also featured, this group of five men and five women has one star: Mr. Khoury himself. At first it seemed that editing would improve this ponderous program, performed at New York Live Arts on Wednesday; it ran nearly two and a half hours and included five works and a video. (Several of the dancers seemed weary by the end, too.) But as the performance continued, it became apparent that trimming sections wouldn't be enough. The works have a stale, lugubrious air, despite their different costumes, which Mr. Khoury designs they are immaculately tailored and their different settings. In "Take Two," the environment was a nightclub with a "True Blood" vibe; a red chair, surrounded by fake candles, was planted at the back of the stage like a throne. The meandering "Reflections" resembled an underwater dance. In both of these premieres, Mr. Khoury repeated an unappealing choreographic tendency: No matter the idiom or the music, his movement incorporates a slow motion prowl, whether in a seductive duet or a raunchier pas de trois. That became something of a theme, especially in "Take Two," in which Lucia Jackson, self possessed and lovely, and Felipe Escalante became enmeshed in Mr. Khoury's bizarre game of wrapped limbs and intense stares. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
Q. How do you delete Kindle books you have finished on an iPad? A. When you have completed an e book and are ready to remove it from your iPad, open the iOS Kindle app and go to your library screen that displays your collection. Tap the Downloaded button at the top of the screen to see only the books stored on the tablet. When you find the book you want to delete, swipe to the left and tap the red Archive button. For more options, you can instead press your finger on the cover image for a second until a menu appears. Choose Remove From Device to delete the book from the iPad. (You can dump old sample chapters and other free content from the Kindle app by selecting the Delete Permanently option from the menu instead.) | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
A close range film about distance, the short, poignant documentary "I'm Leaving Now" unfolds like a character study. It opens with Felipe Hernandez , a Mexican man in Brooklyn, collecting recyclables in the early morning hours. The directors, Lindsey Cordero and Armando Croda , establish the rhythms of his routine. The camera, apparently attached to Felipe's cart, rattles as he trudges along. This is just one way that Felipe earns money to send to family members in Mexico, from whom he's been away for about 16 years. We see him doing janitorial work. He wears a shirt that says "US OPEN STAFF." He lives in a spartan cubbyhole of an apartment. And from what we see, his relationship with his family consists almost entirely of phone conversations and has for a long time. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
The man who received the first penis transplant in the United States left a hospital on Wednesday, three and a half weeks after the operation. He is recovering well, with good blood flow to the transplanted organ and no signs of rejection, his doctors said. "Everything seems to be healing," said the patient, Thomas Manning, 64, a bank courier from Halifax, Mass. "Everything's fine. It's going to get better, too." Mr. Manning needed the transplant because his penis was removed in 2012 to treat cancer. The replacement organ, from a deceased donor, was attached during a 15 hour operation on May 8 and 9 at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. "He's doing great," said Dr. Curtis L. Cetrulo, a plastic and reconstructive surgeon. "So far, so good. We're very pleased." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
The British sculptor Antony Gormley will unveil a new installation at Pier 3 in Brooklyn Bridge Park in February, part of a series of global arts projects funded by the wildly popular K pop band BTS. Titled "New York Clearing," the work comprises 11 miles of aluminum tubing that will loop around each other, evoking a frenetic "drawing in space" that counters the grid of the city. It will be on view from Feb. 4 through March 27. Mr. Gormley is one of 22 artists participating in the global project. Interdisciplinary works will be on view in four other cities over the coming months and will be free to the public. In London, the Serpentine Galleries are showcasing "Catharsis," a digital stimulation of an old growth forest by the New York based, Danish artist Jakob Kudsk Steensen, through March 15. The Martin Gropius Bau in Berlin will host performances by 17 international artists, including Jelili Atiku of Nigeria, the performance artist known as Boychild and the Turkish artist Cevdet Erek. The performances, on view from Jan. 15 through Feb. 2, include experimental choreography and audio installations. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
On Jan. 23, a fire gutted the upper floors of 70 Mulberry Street. In March, workers unloaded more than 2,000 boxes of artifacts from the Museum of Chinese in America's collection on the second floor. After the Fire, a Chinatown Museum Sifts Through What Survived When a fire ripped through the upper floors of the red brick building that held the archives of the Museum of Chinese in America, the staff thought that all was lost. The second floor of 70 Mulberry Street, a 130 year old building that is a cherished cultural landmark in Chinatown, had been home to 85,000 items that helped tell the story of more than a century of Chinese American history and culture. There were signs from long shuttered Chinatown restaurants, traditional textiles, delicate paper sculptures and the jiapu, or genealogies, of families that document traditional Chinese names over decades. The fire started on Jan. 23 at around 8 p.m. on the fourth floor, destroying the roof of the building but leaving the museum's collection unburned. The archives were still in grave danger: Firefighters had pumped water into the building for more than 20 hours, and museum staff members were told that no one would be allowed to enter and retrieve the items for months, leaving them to deteriorate and grow mold. The message that went out to the community was that tens of thousands of artifacts were likely to be lost. Nancy Yao Maasbach, the president of the museum, received frantic calls and text messages from dozens of people whose family heirlooms had been donated to the collection. The museum which is now based on Centre Street, just a short walk from the site of the fire has been documenting Chinese American history since it was founded in 1980 as the New York Chinatown History Project. "There was a groundswell of mourning," Ms. Maasbach said. "It was like 350 family legacies had died." The day before a planned community march to pressure the city to save the artifacts, municipal officials informed the museum that it would be able to recover the waterlogged archives earlier than expected. From early morning to evening on March 8, about 20 workers wearing hard hats and gas masks passed more than 2,000 boxes filled with the beloved archives from one person to the next, down the building's fire escape and into a truck. Watching from across Bayard street, under the awning of a Cantonese noodle shop, Ms. Maasbach and her museum colleagues tried to identify the objects being saved from the wreckage. One of the first pieces she pried out of the densely packed boxes was from a collection of letters written by Hsin Chih Lee and Chofeng Lin Lee, two Peking University graduates who immigrated from China to the United States separately in the late 1930s and later married in New York. In one letter dated Feb. 24, 1946 Ms. Lee, who was 35 years old at the time, asked her boss to extend her maternity leave by six months because she could not afford child care. The baby Ms. Lee was nursing was Kai Lee, who grew up to become a scholar of environmental studies. In the early 1990s, he found a leather suitcase filled with his parents' letters. And in 2007, after they had died, he donated much of the correspondence to the museum. Kai Lee, 74, said the museum was interested in the letters because they offered insight into the lives of highly educated Chinese immigrants. Mr. Lee said his mother was one of the few women to graduate from Peking University in the 1930s and went on to become an employee of the United Nations Secretariat. His father graduated from college, despite having been born into a peasant family, and later worked as an editor for a newspaper in Manhattan's Chinatown. "When I saw the news about the fire, I notified our daughters and their husbands about this loss of the family's legacy," Mr. Lee said in a phone interview. "We had all grieved about it." The realization that the letters survived, Mr. Lee said, was a "wonderful gift." Tucked into a musty room at the facility in Rockland County, cluttered with artifacts that had been laid out to dry on every surface available, there was a poster size photo of a family of four standing inside a cramped office space. The photograph showed the Chin family in Sam Wah Laundry in 1952. The father, Quock Chin, married a daughter of the Wong family, which had purchased the hand laundry in the Bronx in the 1930s. "They often lived, ate and worked in that space 24/7," Ms. Maasbach said of the families who ran laundries. In 1981 Mr. Chin was killed in an attempted robbery. The family decided to close the business and move to New Jersey. But first, his widow offered the museum the laundry's contents in an effort to document the lives of workers like her family. When Ms. Maasbach saw the Buddha sitting there, surrounded by industrial fans blowing air on his round cheeks, she immediately sent off a text. "Buddha is getting a facial at the offsite sauna," she texted Rocky Chin, the retired civil rights attorney whose family had donated the statue. For decades, the Buddha sat in the lobby of Savoy Inn, a white tablecloth establishment in Freeport, N.Y., that Mr. Chin's aunt, Ettie Chin Hong, helped run. They believe her husband, Edward Lim Hong, acquired it on a trip to Taiwan. After the restaurant closed and Ms. Hong moved to a senior residence in Manhattan, the Buddha followed her. When she passed away, it came to the museum. This clipping and others had survived, but the museum's staff was particularly concerned about the fate of another item, one of the few English language newspapers in the 1950s and '60s that was created for a multigenerational Chinese American readership. The museum says it is the only institution to have in its collection the entire run of the monthly Chinese American Times, which was established in 1955 by William Yukon Chang and had catered to the English speaking second generation Chinese immigrants. The museum staff was told that the newspapers had absorbed a lot of water during the fire and were considered in the worst condition of all the artifacts. As they celebrated the recovery of archives they believed had been destroyed, the museum staff members had a nagging anxiety about the survival of newspapers like the Chinese American Times, which chronicled the life, culture and politics of the Chinese in New York until the early 1970s. "It's our No. 1 worry right now," Ms. Maasbach said, "in terms of the artifacts that could be lost." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
LONDON A group of well heeled, elegantly dressed women sit around a table inside a historic British manor house, arguing over rules and manners. Accusations fly, and two of them storm off. Amid the chaos, one blonde keeps her attention on her potatoes and green beans, seemingly oblivious to the bickering. She is Caroline Fleming, a Danish baroness. The setting is Mapperton House. The reason the women have gathered despite the boiling tensions is to shoot Bravo's "Ladies of London," a "Real Housewives" esque reality television show where ancestral status can matter as much as, if not more than, wealth. The scene cuts to an interview with Ms. Fleming. It's a close friend of hers, Caroline Stanbury, who is at the heart of the night's drama, and Ms. Stanbury appears to feel attacked by the other women. "I'm not going anywhere," Ms. Fleming says. "The food is much too delicious." The episode, from the third and most recent season of "Ladies of London," encapsulated Ms. Fleming's approach not only to reality television she has starred in several shows, including "Denmark's Next Top Model" but also to life. "It's not my place to get involved in other people's stuff," she said on a recent afternoon in London. Barefoot and wearing leather pants from the Row and a Chloe top, Ms. Fleming was perched on a high chair in the kitchen of her townhouse in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, which is considered London's most upscale neighborhood. "It's noise," she added. "I don't want this noise in my life. Leave me to my pots." Ms. Fleming, 41, calls cooking her biggest passion after her three children. "I wake up every morning, so excited to eat," she said, glancing over at her stovetop, where several pots held the components of a kale and bacon soup, one of the recipes she is testing for a coming cookbook, her third over all and first in English. "I'm excited about lunch already. And I'm excited about dinner." Cooking isn't just a hobby for Ms. Fleming; it's a conduit toward happiness, a state of being she discusses with the fervor of a self improvement guru in the making. The obsessiveness may have something to do with how elusive Ms. Fleming found contentment to be during the first half of her life. It may seem surprising that someone from a country the United Nations has thrice deemed the happiest on earth has struggled to find her joy. But Ms. Fleming was never just a regular citizen. Born Caroline Luel Brockdorff, the first female heir to Valdemars Slot, a castle in Denmark, she grew up feeling stifled by aristocratic mores. "Normal Danish people are absolutely affectionate," she said. "I don't come from that place. I come from a tiny percentage of the Danish population that is very formal and not particularly physical or open about the truth that's in their hearts." Though Ms. Fleming spent some time modeling, by her mid 20s she was wed to Rory Fleming, nephew of Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond, and expected to spend the rest of her life as a housewife, much like her mother (who died when Ms. Fleming was a child) and her grandmother. "You're told how you're going to do everything in your life," she said. "I thought I knew my destiny. But I woke up, aged 27, 28, and my heart and soul started knocking. And I realized I had completely disconnected from my feelings because of wanting to live up to expectations." From then on, a new chapter began. "I started working on myself," said Ms. Fleming, who is now divorced. "And that meant taking down all the bricks." The changes caused friction between Ms. Fleming and her family, all of whom remained very polite and very private. "Aristocracy doesn't have space for anyone being different or unique or having opposite opinions," she said. As for food, Ms. Fleming has a deep confidence in its power to unite and heal, and she is a fiend for ingredients. While preparing a batch of granola at her home recently, she offered guests Afghan mulberries and macadamia nuts, promoting the many health benefits they are said to have. She pulled out the crowded shelves of her pantry, pointing out Turkish walnuts, Amazonian cacao powder and Madagascan vanilla, and proudly displayed a bowl of pink Himalayan salt. "This is, in my opinion, one of life's greatest ingredients," she said, and explained that her witch (of the homeopathic variety) had taught her to suck on Himalayan salt crystals to clear her sinuses during colds. According to Ms. Fleming, the remedy works every time. For one tired visitor, the ever moving Ms. Fleming whipped up a cup of coffee "the best in London" and offered to send him home with fresh made cinnamon buns when she discovered that his girlfriend was Danish. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
Young people from remote parts of the country face special challenges in furthering their education ("Colleges Discover the Rural Student"). Many are low income and first in their families to attend college. Universities can be big and distant, and scary: Are the students smarter? Are their values the same? Six students talked about their choices. 'I hate to be judged for my beliefs.' Autumn Crawford When deer season opens in mid November, the halls of Pine River Backus High School in Minnesota are abuzz with "who got the biggest buck or the nicest doe," said Autumn Crawford. She passes hours still and silent in a deer stand with her mother's Remington bolt action .243 rifle ready, though last fall she focused more on her role in "High School Musical" and big news: early acceptance to Ohio State University. Her application essay tackled the issue of identity. "A lot of people think conservatives are close minded and have little respect for anyone but their own," she wrote. "That can apply to many, but not me." Autumn was raised in Backus (pop. 250), where jobs include logging (her father removes trees), manufacturing (Pequot Tool Manufacturing is nearby) and seasonal tourism. "Most of my family is within an hour's drive," she said. "They have a really hard time accepting that I won't just be able to come home when I want." But with plans to be a lawyer Autumn expects to "move to a pretty big city." At college, she will hold fast to her Christian roots. "I am not going to give up my beliefs because I am around people who don't have the same beliefs." 'I was tired of seeing people in my family fail.' John Dunn From the moment he saw the red Wolfpack logo, John Dunn hungered to enroll at North Carolina State. Born into a family troubled by drugs and poverty in Rose Hill, N.C. (pop. 1,600), he is the first of them to finish high school. Heading to a campus of 34,000 this past fall required courage. "I was nervous," he said. "I didn't want them to look at me and see the country boy and think, 'Oh, he's just a redneck. He doesn't know how to spell, doesn't know how to read.'" Having done farm work since childhood, he was also self conscious about his appearance. "I wasn't raised clean," he said. While he often has to use his phone for assignments because he doesn't have a computer, he has earned A's and B's. So far, college has confirmed his know how (he studies agriculture), reinforced his plan to work "in the swine industry" and expanded his social confidence. "I am just a poor white boy from Rose Hill, N.C., that has nothing but what I have on my back and my vehicle," he said. "Now I have friends with parents who will buy them anything and give them gas money." 'There are a lot of kids that don't think they are good enough for college.' Emily Steele Most nights from 5 to 10:30, Emily Steele is stationed at the fryer or the drive through window at Arby's, earning 7.25 an hour. That money is for college. So is the profit from two calves Cecil, who sold for 1,069 last spring, and Otis, once she fattens him up. Emily, a senior at Fleming County High School in rural Kentucky, wants to study biology. She had researched flagships in Michigan, Alabama and Kentucky, but her parents were concerned about safety, so she applied to Morehead State, a 40 minute drive from her home, in Wallingford (pop. 2,300). "Take U.K., it is in a big city," she said. "There are shootings. I would rather be safe and close." Emily is the fourth of five children, and the first to apply to college. In a county where only 13 percent of adults hold a bachelor's degree, the credential isn't much valued. "I am hoping with our new president that people will realize it is not a necessity," said Emily's mother, bringing up her eldest son, who makes "a lot of money" running a tow business, as an example. Said Emily: "A lot of kids I see on a daily basis think they will be welders. A lot think they will be truckers." 'I'm an Eagle Scout. I want to go out and do the best for myself.' Richard Livingston For five hours of his school day, Richard Livingston is parked in a computer lab, his MacBook perched on a folding table, taking online Advanced Placement in biology, human geography and United States government and politics. At Wallace Rose Hill High School in North Carolina, course offerings are limited, and his only live class is English literature and composition, also A.P. The son of the manager of the town of Wallace (pop. 4,000) and a nurse, Richard plans to study medicine and Spanish (the area has many Ecuadorean farm workers) and return to be a primary care physician in a county with a 28 percent poverty rate. With an ACT score of 32 and a grade point average of 3.95, he has applied to eight schools, including the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the University of Virginia and Brown. Many of his classmates fear cities and big campuses. "We hear stories about these giant classes of 300 kids and these kids, they just know a lot more than us," he said. "That is something that is scary. 'Few school staff knew what Wellesley College was.' One teacher said, 'You are going to become a damn Yankee.' Amanda Wahlstedt A teenager who liked to engage her high school classmates on touchy issues like race and women's rights, Amanda Wahlstedt wrote an opinion piece for The Courier Journal in Louisville on how college is out of poor students' reach. Impressed, a college consultant offered help, gratis. Amanda is now a freshman at Wellesley College, where she has outfitted her dorm room in comforting Kentucky memorabilia. The adjustment is tough in ways she didn't expect. In Barbourville (pop. 3,100) "I was the token liberal," she said. (So her father couldn't hear, she would watch "The Daily Show" on mute, though it was hard to pick up the sarcasm with closed captioning.) "When I got to Wellesley, I realized I was very much a conservative" on economic issues. At church over the holidays, children clad in pajamas (cheaper than clothing) reminded her of the distress of growing up on food stamps; 35 percent of Knox County residents are below the poverty line. Back in Massachusetts, at Hillary Clinton's alma mater, classmates "wanted to write off Appalachia and write off these rural areas," angry over heartland support for her opponent. "Colleges need more rural students who are willing to say, 'I don't think the way you think and I don't act the way you act, but I am still capable of doing the same work you are doing.' " 'There is no shame in not going to college.' Ryan Lee Ryan Lee's toolbox is 44 inches of red enameled steel on wheels with 13 drawers of ratchets and wrenches. He struggled with reading until middle school but found synchronicity with built things, and loves to tinker. Last spring, he bought a 1980 Ford F 150, repaired a ring and piston and sold it for 1,000, making a quick 200. A senior at Union City High School in Oklahoma, Ryan will forgo college. "If I can turn wrenches with my education level and what I've learned, I'd make the same if not more money than if I go to college," he said. (He makes 10 an hour, but is slated for a raise to 14.) Too many, he said, "want to go to college because their parents are going to pay for it" and "don't know what they want to do or major in." His school schedule runs 7:30 to 10:30 a.m., then he takes classes at Canadian Valley Technology Center in pursuit of a certificate in diesel technology. While he plans to work at his same job after graduation, for a company that sells and services farm equipment, the certificate will allow him to overhaul semi trucks and tractors, pushing his wage to 27 an hour. He prides himself on learning quickly: "Once I have done something once, I don't need to be shown how to do it again." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Education |
Horticulture and red wine were served up the other night at the Sill, a boutique on Hester Street, as Christopher Satch, a botanist wearing a T shirt that read, "Plants Make People Happy," the company motto, led a workshop on carnivorous plants. It was plant stand up slightly blue patter with quick takes on Linnaeus and Darwin; binomial nomenclature (note the shape of the Venus fly trap for cues to how it got its name); detailed care instructions (carnivorous plants evolved in acidic bogs, which means they need distilled water, not tap, and lots of it); and a show and tell of Mr. Satch's collection of butterworts and sundews. Among the rapt attendees were Madison Steinberg and Lindsay Reisman, both 23 and working in public relations, and Brayan Poma, also 23, who works in construction; afterward they each took home an attractive tropical pitcher plant. "I like plants, but I kill so many of them," said Mr. Poma, who wore a green hoodie and a goatee. "Maybe that's why I find them so alluring." Mr. Poma is not the only millennial to feel that allure. Buoyed by Instagram, his generation's obsession with houseplants is growing faster and more tenaciously than English ivy. Plant influencers, the horticultural stars of that medium, now have book deals, sponsors and hundreds of thousands of followers. That's not to be confused with "How to Make a Plant Love You: Cultivating Your Personal Green Space," out next year, by Summer Rayne Oakes, a 34 year old activist, nature blogger and fashion model with degrees in environmental science and entomology who lives with some 700 plants in her Brooklyn apartment. Ms. Oakes may be the original plant influencer: In 2012, the makers of the Toyota Prius designed the subcompact Prius C with Ms. Oakes in mind (the company described her as an "active eco optimist") and created a paint color in her name. Boyswithplants, with over 95,000 followers, offers a different sort of inspiration, found in beefcake photos of young men (some of whom also happen to be influencers, botanical and otherwise) posing with their plants. The account will migrate from Instagram into a book of the same name, out from Chronicle Books next spring. Last year, nearly a quarter of houseplant sales were made by those between the ages of 18 and 34, according to Gardenresearch.com. Plant industry marketers, like Garden Media, call them the Indoor Generation, noting they are overwhelmingly renters in urban areas with little or no access to yards, and deeply aware of the physical and mental benefits of living with plants (cleaner air, for example). This appetite is why the Sill is not simply a cheeky, curated plant boutique with locations on the Lower East Side and the Upper West Side selling moss balls (adorable algae pods that resemble damp, emerald green Tribbles), fiddle leaf figs and a startling number of miniature succulents (over 100,000 this year). Its founder, Eliza Blank, a 33 year old former brand strategist who started the business six years ago in her Lower East Side apartment with a 12,000 Kickstarter campaign, has conceived the Sill as a plant lifestyle company, or a global plant brand a Glossier of plants, she said. This past summer, the company's revenues reached 5 million. Seventy percent of its sales are online purchases, though Ms. Blank's ambitions include more bricks and mortar; two additional stores will open in Los Angeles in late January. The Sill sells stylish ceramic planters in millennial colors (mint green and pale pink); watering cans; misters with upbeat messages; fertilizer and soil mixes; totes and T shirts; and hosts community building events like movie nights and "sip and shop" cocktail parties. An ambassador program encourages "brand evangelists" to host their own. It is Ms. Blank's aim to reinvent the garden center and your local horticultural society. Her timing has been fortuitous. In 2012, when Ms. Blank began selling plants out of her apartment, Pinterest and Instagram were just two years old. People were looking to their social media feeds, rather than shelter magazines, for inspiration on home decor. Design blogs like Justina Blakeney's Thejungalow, now with over one million followers, were fomenting a 1970s style revival, making indoor jungles of textiles, wicker and a riot of hanging plants, cactuses and snake ferns. "A succulent goes along with your Eames chair and your Group Partner ceramics vase," Ms. Churchill said, referring to the clay torsos made by a Brooklyn based artist that have been enjoying a long pop cultural moment. But a houseplant also confers upon its owner "a more authentic form of existence," she said. "You can have this robust urban lifestyle maybe there is only mayonnaise in your fridge but because you have a plant, that indicates you have a modicum of ability to care for something." It is also important to note "how well a glossy green houseplant goes with millennial pink," as Ingrid Abramovitch, the features director of Elle Decor said. If plants are "an affordable way to fill the void," as Ms. Blakeney, the designer behind Thejungalow put it recently, the Sill's ambition is to be the go to source. But it has competition. A couple of years ago, three friends practiced a form of extreme horticulture in their apartment in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, kitting it out with plants instead of furniture. At its peak, there were 500 plants in there, said Ryan Lee, now 29, who has worked in finance and technology. He and his roommates, Jonathan Wu, a software engineer, and Kay Kim, a former creative director at an ad agency, both 27, held plant pop up sales their friends nicknamed them the Plantboys and refined the idea for what Mr. Lee, echoing Ms. Blank, calls a modern plant company. Their store, Rooted, opened in May in a warehouse building in Greenpoint; it, too, is an e commerce platform, archly branded with dude friendly vernacular (the care instructions for a bird's nest fern note that it's low maintenance: "A ten day surf trip to Bali is still in the cards") and stocked with minimalist planters in tough looking pressed clay and concrete fiber. The Plantboys also plan to sell branded gear like apparel and gardening products. "We want to be the pre eminent green brand," Mr. Lee said, adding that Patagonia is an inspiration. "We want to create a company our generation will trust that we can leverage to enact positive change for the environment." That's basically the manifesto of Tula House, another new houseplant company in Brooklyn, started by Christan Summers, 34, and Ivan Martinez, 38, both of whom are escapees from the advertising business. For the past few years, the couple has been selling plants from a truck they retrofitted and parked in front of design and arts centers, like the Invisible Dog in Boerum Hill. Last summer they were parked in SoHo in front of Patagonia, offering plant care demonstrations, seasonal collections of pottery by local artists and T shirts and postcards with "environmental action oriented tasks," Ms. Summers said. When the Sill started in 2012, Ms. Blank pointed out, Williams Sonoma had just introduced its Agrarian line of high end gardening products, including an 880 chicken coop . "It seemed like that was the only way to connect with plants," she said. "We're offering something more bite sized and inviting." Consider the moss balls, otherwise known as filamentous green algae or pond scum. They grow in icy lakes, Ms. Blank said, which makes them a natural fit for apartment dwellers. (Two furry balls and a goldfish bowl cost 25.) "They can be cold and alone in the dark," Ms. Blank said. "All you have to do is change the water every once in a while. Now we're talking about self care. People want to interact with something that's not technical. They come to the store and say, 'I've killed a plant.' We say, 'It's O.K., we've all been there.' We have a saying: 'It's O.K. if the only thing you did today was survive.' This is an entire generation that feels inadequate. Nobody wants another thing they're not going to be good at." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
Members of the media outside the Stockholm courthouse where the assault trial of the rapper ASAP Rocky began on Tuesday. STOCKHOLM To some cheers and an equal amount of mockery, President Trump has treated the ASAP Rocky assault case as something akin to an international hostage crisis. So when Rocky went on trial here on Tuesday along with two members of his entourage, few were very surprised when Robert C. O'Brien took a seat in the courtroom, joining the journalists and a handful of teenage rap fans and curious onlookers already assembled there. Mr. O'Brien is the president's special envoy for hostage affairs. "The president asked me to come here and support these American citizens," Mr. O'Brien said in an interview. "I'll be here until they come home." Whether Mr. O'Brien was in for an extended Swedish stay will soon be decided, as a case that has become a low point in American Scandinavian relations has come down to the judicial matter of whether the defendants had good reason to beat up a man on a Stockholm street a month ago. Rocky will not testify until the trial resumes on Thursday, but according to a transcript of his police interview, he said that Mr. Jafari and another man had been harassing and following him and that he feared he was about to be attacked. Mr. Jafari gave his side of the events on Tuesday. Speaking in Persian through an interpreter, he said that he had been in town and had become separated from a friend when he came across Rocky and his group outside a burger restaurant and asked them if they had seen his friend. Rocky's bodyguard, who is named only as Tee in court papers, told him to go away, then pushed him, Mr. Jafari said. "If someone says in a nice way, 'Go away from here,' then you do," he added. "But he just pushed me. What he did was wrong." Mr. Jafari said Rocky's bodyguard then grabbed him by the throat, lifted him off the ground and carried him away from the group. In so doing, Mr. Jafari said, the bodyguard broke a pair of headphones Mr. Jafari was wearing. Mr. Jafari said he threw them at the security guard, then followed Rocky's group around, complaining about his broken headphones. He didn't know who Rocky was, he added. The bodyguard, who was not charged, was not in court to give his account, but Slobodan Jovicic, Rocky's lawyer, said the bodyguard had just been "doing his job." Mr. Jovicic said that Mr. Jafari broke the headphones himself when he tried to punch the bodyguard. Mr. Jafari said he followed Rocky and his entourage onto a side street and tried to talk to them again about the broken headphones. "While I'm talking to them, all of a sudden one of these guys comes from behind and hits me with a bottle," smashing it on the right side of the head behind his ear, Mr. Jafari said. He did not know which man hit him with the bottle, he said. Mr. Jafari said that once he was down on the ground, he was kicked and punched repeatedly, at least 20 times by all four men in the group . "I felt they were going to beat me to death," he said. Magnus Stromberg , Mr. Jafari's lawyer, said his client was asking for about 16,000 in compensation for injuries and lost income. Mr. Jafari suffered cuts to his face, arms and hands that required 13 stitches and would leave scars, Mr. Stromberg said. Some wounds appeared to come from a broken bottle found at the scene, he added. Mr. Jovicic denied Rocky or his friends used a bottle. The court was shown several videos of the attack , but none of them showed a bottle being used in it. Mr. Jafari could have accidentally rolled on a bottle at the scene, Mr. Jovicic said. After testimony ends, most likely on Friday, the presiding judge, Per Lennerbrant, and three other judges , will reach a verdict , though it was not clear how quickly that would happen. The Swedish prime minister, Stefan Lofven, has said he cannot intervene, despite Mr. Trump's urging in a cordial phone call and some less cordial Twitter posts that Mr. Lofven step in. Mr. Trump began taking an interest in the case after the rap star Kanye West and his wife, Kim Kardashian West, brought it to the White House's attention. Mr. Trump, who has been sparring with prominent black figures in recent weeks, has posted a string of tweets in the last two weeks in which he referenced the FreeRocky hashtag and said that Sweden had "let our African American community down." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
The drama of the approaching photo insert nags at the reader of biographies. Do you skip ahead and devour the eye candy? Or do you hold off, slogging toward the photographs as if they were a small, warm inn at the midpoint of a long, pebbly hike? The issue is pressing while reading "What Becomes a Legend Most," Philip Gefter's wise and ebullient new biography of Richard Avedon. Gefter takes the reader inside so many of Avedon's photo shoots, and so deftly explicates his work, that you're thirsty to sate your eyes with Avedon's actual images. They aren't in this book. The two photo inserts contain, surely because of rights issues, pictures of ... Richard Avedon. He was eye candy, too. He did most of his bold, minimal, revolutionary fashion work for Harper's Bazaar, and its longtime editor, Carmel Snow. Ginette Spanier, the director of the House of Balmain in Paris, first met Avedon in 1948. She accurately described him in her autobiography as "small, dark and electric with his own sort of vitality. Crackling. Sparks seem to fly out of him. He flashes his fingers like tiny rapid moths." Since I'm already complaining about a book I admire, allow me to get one more thing out of the way. The drama of Avedon's career lay in his effort to escape the taint of being seen as merely a fashion and a commercial photographer. A certain glitz factor followed him wherever he went. His wealth, his flowing hair, his eager showmanship; he was his own klieg light. Though he was personally close to Diane Arbus among the first people to arrive at her apartment after her suicide most of the downtown photography elite, including Robert Frank, never trusted him. One of the achievements of Gefter's biography is to argue persuasively for Avedon's place, as a maker of portraits, as one of the 20th century's most consequential artists. To dismiss him as a celebrity photographer, this book suggests, is "an intellectual slur." Gefter further situates Avedon on a continuum that includes photographers like Nadar, Julia Margaret Cameron and August Sander. Given all this, it's baffling that Gefter would use as his book's title the tag line from a series of mink coat ads that Avedon shot for Blackglama in the late 1960s. "What Becomes a Legend Most," as a title, spritzes cheap cologne on Gefter's own thesis. Avedon's career was long. His first fashion photograph appeared in Harper's Bazaar in 1944, when he was 21, and he was still shooting for The New Yorker at the time of his death 60 years later. He knew everyone and photographed everyone, and part of the pleasure of this biography lies in watching life's rich pageant pass by. Avedon went to Kansas with Truman Capote to take images of the killers Capote wrote about in "In Cold Blood." He was in the room the night Leonard Bernstein threw the party Tom Wolfe wrote about in "Radical Chic: That Party at Lenny's." Bernstein, Sidney Lumet, Harold Brodkey and Mike Nichols were among Avedon's closest friends. Avedon, who married twice, was a closeted gay man. A previous biographer, Norma Stevens, one of Avedon's business partners, alleged that Avedon and Nichols had a long clandestine romance. Gefter holds this assertion somewhat at arm's length. Gefter selects the right photo sessions to linger over. These include Avedon's time with Marilyn Monroe, Charlie Chaplin, the Chicago Seven, James Baldwin, Rudolf Nureyev (who posed nude), the Beatles, Andy Warhol's Factory crew, Jorge Luis Borges and Nastassja Kinski, whom Avedon also photographed nude, lying with a boa constrictor curving along her own curves and licking her ear in an image that was plastered on a million dorm room walls. Gefter's prose is unshowy but supple. "Avedon's signature was the formality of a straight on figure against the white nuclear backdrop," he writes, "with a proscenium frame composed of the edges of the film printed as part of the image the ID picture taken to its apotheosis." Avedon was born on Manhattan's Upper West Side in 1923. His parents were the children of recent Jewish immigrants. His father ran a sophisticated clothing store on Fifth Avenue before shutting it and filing for bankruptcy soon after the 1929 stock market crash. His mother introduced Avedon and his younger sister, Louise, to as much culture as they could handle, sometimes finding ways to sneak into performances without tickets. Avedon was picked on as a kid. He was Jewish, effeminate and an aesthete; he disliked sports and was told he threw like a girl. At DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx, he found a close friend in Baldwin; together they edited the school's literary magazine. During his senior year, Avedon's father paid for him to have a nose job. Philip Gefter, the author of a new biography of the photographer Richard Avedon. Avedon was a poor student, and joined the merchant marine in 1942 in part to avoid telling his parents that he would have to repeat senior year. He had an easy war, working stateside as a photographer's assistant. He never attended college and nursed an inferiority complex over that fact. Avedon enjoyed his rapid embourgeoisement. "Richard Avedon taught me how to be a rich person," Nichols commented. The photographer's houses and apartments were baronial. If he saw a play in Stockholm he loved, he'd fly over four additional times to see it, bringing friends on each occasion. He had big, varied, elegant buffet lunches at his studio every day; friends dropped in to meet whomever he was shooting. He could get a table at the last minute in any restaurant, the best seats to any opera. His friend Adam Gopnik wrote of him: "He smelled faintly, richly, of limes." Avedon would fly in first class while his assistants were in coach. One assistant told Gefter: "Dick would bring a huge tin of caviar from Petrossian on the flight, and, at some point, he would bring the uneaten half of the tin and blinis back to us and say, 'I can't eat anymore. Enjoy.'" He could be magnanimous; he loved the big gesture. On long car trips with his team, he liked to sit in the back seat and read books aloud. He was just as often remote. He was not emotionally close to his son. When he took a serious male lover later in his life, he didn't publicly acknowledge their relationship even as his elite gay friends, one by one, came out of the closet. Gefter, whose previous books include "Wagstaff: Before and After Mapplethorpe," and who was an editor at The New York Times for 15 years (The Times is a big place and I've never met him), details the long running antagonism between Avedon and John Szarkowski, the king making director of photography at the Museum of Modern Art. Critics were hot and cold on the lavishly staged shows of Avedon's work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Marlborough gallery and elsewhere, and he took criticism hard. When a negative review of his 1974 show "Jacob Israel Avedon," a series of portraits of his aging father, appeared in this newspaper's Arts Leisure section, Avedon was in the hospital with pericarditis, an inflammation near the heart. He tried to take the review calmly. He could not. Distraught, he eventually rose from his bed and took a lighted match to the corner of the offending section. The fire grew out of control. He wrestled the mess into the toilet, where it continued to fizzle. A journalist for Playboy, writing a profile, captured the rest of the scene: "There he knelt, world famous glamorous person Richard Avedon, flushing the toilet again and again, forcing down the soggy glob of paper until he was elbow deep in intimate plumbing. Finally, with a gurgle, the cremated remains started off to sea." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
About 5,000 years ago, 10 donkeys were laid to rest in painstakingly constructed brick grave chambers at a site connected with one of the earliest Egyptian kings. They were buried in a place of importance, "where the highest lords would be," said Fiona Marshall, an archaeologist at Washington University in St. Louis who studies the domestication of donkeys. Because of their importance in trade across the Sahara, she said, donkeys had "superhigh status." Unfortunately, even the most passionate defenders of donkeys recognize that the animal they love gets little respect in the wider world today. "Donkeys are the least of the least," said Eric Davis, the veterinarian from the University of California, Davis, who started the symposium. He travels with other vets to provide free care to donkeys in many places where none is available. Donkeys are sometimes abused and, in the worst cases, slaughtered for gelatin and for meat. Fortunately, as the symposium made clear, the animals are not friendless. Their benefactors may not be large in number (conference attendance was 77), but they are as fierce in their loyalty as donkeys are in defense of their territories (more about donkey fierceness later). They are also devoted to debunking donkey myths. You may have heard, for instance, that donkeys are stubborn. But Ben Hart, a trainer who works for the Donkey Sanctuary in Britain, put it this way: "Anybody who says a donkey is stubborn has been outsmarted by a donkey." They are cautious, he said, not contrary. They like to think before they act. The reason may be that their ancestor, the African wild ass, is not a herd animal. Wild asses have individual territories, and each must decide where to go and when to eat, run or fight. Donkeys have retained some of that thoughtful intelligence, said Dr. Marshall, who was not at the symposium. They like to decide for themselves. That's what Balaam's donkey did in the Bible. It refused three times to go forward even though its master had insisted. He beat it for its apparent balkiness, and the donkey, the only animal in the Bible other than the serpent to speak, said, "What have I done unto thee, that thou hast smitten me these three times?" The donkey was quite sensibly avoiding a very threatening angel with a sword, who explained to Balaam after the fact that if it had not been for the animal's sagacity, Balaam himself would have died by the angel's sword. Although donkeys may avoid armed angels and can run when threatened, that isn't their usual reaction to predators. That's when they become fierce. "A donkey will stand and fight," said Mark Meyers, who runs Peaceful Valley Donkey Rescue in Miles, Tex., and had brought donkeys to the symposium for adoption. He and others at the meeting said donkeys would attack dogs, coyotes or foxes. There has been at least one report of a donkey attacking a mountain lion. That is why donkeys are kept to protect sheep, goats and other animals. That's right. Guard donkeys. Google them. Their history with humans, of course, is as the ultimate beasts of burden. And among the earliest. The donkey, not the camel, opened up the Sahara, Dr. Marshall said, enabling trade between Egypt and Mesopotamia. That is why those 10 were buried with a king. Camel caravans did not appear until about 3,000 years ago. The first donkeys were probably domesticated about 6,000 years ago, and their importance was evident in those 5,000 year old burials. Since then, donkeys have carried building stones, food, trade goods, ammunition and people, including Jesus when he rode into Jerusalem on the day Christians celebrate as Palm Sunday. And yet museums are full of celebrations of horses, not donkeys. "It's so galling, when you become an eccentric donkey person," Dr. Marshall said. True, they are not the most exciting animals. Unlike their equine cousins, "donkeys have two speeds: slow and slower," the saying goes. But the gap in prestige between the elegant horse and the dumpy donkey is of human doing. African wild asses of which there are perhaps 600 left in nature are "magnificent wild animals," Dr. Marshall said, "really elegant and fast and feisty as anything." And they are the animals from which the first donkeys were bred. The first horses, she said, "were short, stubby little things, sort of like a barrel on legs." People bred them to be long legged racers and great jumpers, just as the lithe wild ass was bred to become a stubby little donkey. One nonscientific claim about donkeys is that they are lovable, and they are. I stood in a corral with Ben Hart while he spent half his time scratching the ears of one donkey that chased away 10 or so others who wanted to get in on the petting. Kimberly Brockett, who keeps mammoth donkeys at Tripledale Farm in Guilford, Conn., said, "It's a dog you can ride." In the United States and Britain, a number of organizations work to rescue donkeys that are poorly cared for or abused. Groups like the Donkey Sanctuary in England and Brooke: Action for Working Horses and Donkeys support education and veterinary care. But many donkeys are not kept as pets or working animals, but slaughtered for their meat or hides. Philip Mshelia, a veterinarian from Nigeria, spoke at the symposium about the suffering of donkeys in Africa. They have been slaughtered without regulation in several countries for food and for shipment to China, where a gelatinlike substance, or ejiao, from their hides is used in medicines. Because tens of thousands of donkeys have been killed, Burkina Faso and Niger banned the export of donkeys this year. Dr. Davis warned those at the conference that the future may hold more such horrors. Even though the number of donkeys is increasing, he said, global economic development might well mean that tractors, cars and trucks will become available to the poor who now depend on donkeys. What happens to donkeys then may be what happened to horses in developed countries as cars and trucks replaced them widespread slaughter. If that happens, he added, donkey lovers might have to work to make their inevitable deaths as humane as possible. Dr. Davis spoke by telephone at 7 a.m. one recent morning, fresh from feeding the five donkeys that he and his wife keep. Asked why people who do not have or know donkeys should care about them, he said, "Much of human civilization was created because there were donkeys to move pastoralists and traders around the world." "I think that we as a species owe something to donkeys." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
Anyone who grew up in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, would tell you that by the winter of 1997 the glory days of the Cine Variedades were long gone. What had once been a palatial movie house with velvet curtains, a wide lobby and marimba concerts before each show was now a rundown establishment where rats were rumored to run between patrons' legs, and college students sneaked in for loud make out sessions followed by cigarettes, despite the bright neon "No Smoking" signs. But anyone could've fooled me the weekend before Christmas that year, when I sat down to watch Fox Animation Studio's "Anastasia." Warm buttery popcorn and Coke in hand, I sat dazzled by the images conjured by the animators in Don Bluth and Gary Goldman's film. Given that I thought myself a very mature 11 year old with a taste for classic Hollywood films and the finer things in life, I lost myself in the story about how the young orphan Anya seeks to reclaim her title as the Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova, youngest daughter of Czar Nicholas II, who was killed during the Russian Revolution. I was particularly enthralled by sequences in which the young Anya dreams of finding her grandmother, the Dowager Empress, living in exile in Paris. Growing up as a gay boy in a conservative country that has become one of the most violent in the world, I knew even then that, like Anya, I'd have to find a home elsewhere. When a Mexican magazine came up with a trivia contest to win an Anastasia doll, I answered all the questions but asked my mother to send the entry under her name. I was more worried about what bullies would think about me owning a doll than about not winning. What a thrill when a couple of months later we received a box from Mexico with a brand new doll that had a secret locket like the one in the movie. Growing up I was the kind of kid who wanted dolls and plush animals, never toy cars and police kits the kind of kid likelier to pretend to be Anastasia than to be her love interest Dimitri. On several occasions my mother sat me down to congratulate me for embracing female characters, but also to remind me that, as a boy, there were other heroes to value. "Give it a try, pretend you're Aladdin next time," she would say. I wish I could have pleased her. Two decades passed, and I learned they were turning my beloved film into a Broadway musical. Would my affection for it feel the same? Could I have outgrown the tale of the Russian duchess? I sat excitedly at the Broadhurst Theater this spring to see "Anastasia" onstage, and had my answer: The opening notes of the overture began, and I was 11 again. It didn't matter that I had a full beard, some gray hairs in my head, and had survived a hate crime, heartbreak and more farewells than I'd like to count. Christy Altomare stepped onstage and she was exactly the Anastasia I dreamed of as a kid, all spunk and heart, fierce and regal, with a voice to match. She was who I'd wanted to become. Many of my fellow critics have pointed out flaws in the show (and the movie), but I find its charms outweigh its imperfections. Given the times we live in, I welcome any opportunity to dream and escape, and there are few journeys I'd like to emulate as much as Anya's. When I saw the show a second time recently (I loved it even more), I saw Ms. Altomare's effect on other audience members, young and old, who waited to meet her at the stage door. For almost a half hour, she walked the line as fans yelled her name, some of them with tears in their eyes. Even though I often interview Broadway artists and see over 200 shows each year, I can still be a giddy fan at a stage door. And I was happy to see that among the many girls who requested a selfie, there were also little boys who timidly handed Ms. Altomare their Playbills. I asked one of them what he liked most about the show. He raised his eyebrow and blurted, "Duh, Anastasia." Audience members were there from Japan and New Zealand, and it became clear that through the show's much loved anthem "Journey to the Past" the character of Anastasia had connected with many of us, immigrants in one way or another. When it was my turn to speak to Ms. Altomare, she showed me the same warmth she'd displayed with countless others. I could see her eyes get misty when I told her about having left my home country and knowing that returning there could mean death for me. The animated "Anastasia" includes such fantastical elements as talking albino bats and an evil wizard, all of which are gone from the show, which instead focuses on a story about people who are forced to leave their homes. A song that was once sung by gargoyles and a bat now becomes a mournful farewell to the bridges, rivers and forests of one's homeland. Ms. Altomare acknowledged that the song, "Stay, I Pray You," which she performs with the ensemble, has new meaning for her, now, too, given world events. "I think of all the people who've had to leave their homeland, I think about the refugees in Syria, young kids who have to move," she said. "Anyone can relate if they've had to say goodbye to a place that they loved." I left the Broadhurst both elated and filled with melancholy. I'd finally met the Grand Duchess from my childhood dreams, and she was divine. But for the first time I realized that despite the happiness I've found in a life of safety and opportunity in New York City, I did miss Honduras. With its vast rivers, pine forests, crystalline beaches and imposing mountains and despite the fear I feel every time I listen to news coming from there, memories of violence, macho bullies, and decaying movie theaters like Anastasia, I too will "bless my homeland till I die." A doll and secret locket are waiting there for me. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
The story of 1960s and '70s rock 'n' roll has been told over and over in books and documentaries, to the extent that it has become, as a non rock 'n' roll song puts it, a tale as old as time. In this hardly epochal but largely pleasant documentary directed by Leslie Ann Coles , the tale is told through the eye of Melody Maker, the British music weekly that printed its first issue in 1926. Originally a trade paper for gigging musicians, stuffed with players wanted classified ads, Melody Maker's embrace of rock in the mid 60s inspired staff members to walk out. Their replacements created timely features and interviews that were scooped up by the larger public. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
Terry Scott Cohen, 42, enjoys roller coasters, mushing in Alaska and tobogganing in the Pyrenees Mountains. Though he gets about in a motorized scooter, he has not let his myotonic dystrophy, a disease involving progressive muscle loss, curtail his travels. His father, Barry M. Cohen, 72, a retired industrial psychologist, acts as his travel companion, and together the two Floridians have written a book, "Travel Near Travel Far: Step Out of Your Disabled World!" that provides both encouragement for disabled travelers and practical advice on navigating the world from a scooter or wheelchair. The elder Mr. Cohen recently discussed the book; here are excerpts from that conversation. Q. Why should people with disabilities travel? A. There actually are medical reasons to travel. People who have disabilities and travel have a much easier time sleeping. They're not as stressed as other people. Particularly if they are in the house and confined, traveling is an incredible way to grow yourself as a person and impact your mind. And travel can produce long term health benefits such as using leisure as a coping mechanism for stress. People who have disabilities unfortunately don't get as much activity as other people. But when they're in travel mode, they do get activity, which actually contributes to their overall heath. What are the characteristics of a good travel companion? The right travel companion can make or break a trip. First is conscientiousness. It takes a person who is going to help the disabled person even if it means personal inconvenience and sacrifice. Second, you want a person who's caring and thoughtful, because they can recognize and appreciate the physical limitations of the person traveling. Number three, you need a person who can remain cool under fire and doesn't get upset when they're faced with setbacks. Physical strength is important. You have to at certain points lift up the wheelchair or scooter to get it into something or another. What destinations have been friendliest for those with disabilities? The U.S. and Canada are extremely friendly. The best in Europe is Germany. When you take a train, for example, in a lot of countries there's a space between the platform and train. In Berlin, at every station, you can request that the engineer come out and put a special piece of equipment between the train and the platform. In Thailand, the king who recently died ordered the government to have attendants stationed in every handicapped bathroom to help the disabled. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
THE EDUCATION OF BRETT KAVANAUGH An Investigation By Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly Nearly a year after the fateful Supreme Court confirmation hearings, Christine Blasey Ford and Brett Kavanaugh have become martyrs in separate and hostile galaxies one for believeallwomen and the other for those who believe Democrats will use any means necessary to take down good and honorable men. So there is a weird satisfaction in rewinding the story more than 30 years, back to the moment when the two lived in suburban Maryland and coexisted as part of a small social circle of teenagers who hung out at country club pools all summer and whose pressing concern was which parents were out of town for the weekend. "The Education of Brett Kavanaugh," by Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly, two experienced New York Times reporters who helped cover the confirmation hearings, comes with an expectation of bombshells (the galleys are stamped "EMBARGOED" on every page). And the authors do in fact turn up a few new revelations about the assault accusations against Kavanaugh. But their real work is to smooth out the main story, create a fuller picture of Kavanaugh himself, place him in relation to Blasey Ford and put the minor players in motion, so that the confirmation showdown has a kind of cinematic inevitability. The book places Blasey Ford in the summer of 1982, when, she later said, Kavanaugh tried to rape her. A rising junior at Holton Arms school, a tall cheerleader with feathered bangs and saddle shoes, she spent her days with friends at the Columbia Country Club pool exchanging the early '80s equivalent of the eye roll emoji ("mange moi" and "Kill Dick"). Kavanaugh, as we know from his infamously meticulous calendar, spent his time mowing lawns and figuring out which of his Georgetown Prep friends was "popping," the technical term for holding a party when your parents were out of town. For most of the book the writers take an omniscient Woodwardian tone, staying careful and balanced and not cluttering up every sentence with newspaper style sourcing. But I couldn't help reading a lot into the title. On my own copy I idly scribbled "Mis" before the "Education," since it's clear that academic enrichment is not what the authors have in mind. In high school and college and even a little into law school, the main thing they portray Kavanaugh learning is how to expertly blend into the background hum of blase misogyny and clubby competitive drinking. The picture that emerges of Kavanaugh as an actual student is admirable if indistinct. He works hard, graduates near or at the top in his class. A college friend recalls him having a neat stack of books and papers he would move through like a machine. A couple of people remember him as special but just as many remember him as "straightforward and uncomplicated" or, as some college friends put it, "ham on white." My favorite observation about his college years is: "Along with playing and writing about sports, Kavanaugh enjoyed watching them in his downtime." Really, that could be anyone. In fact, when he got his big break as a clerk for Judge Alex Kozinski, the law professor who recommended him described him as a "good student" and not a "great one," but added, "I got to know his character from basketball." Where Kavanaugh jumps off the page is in what might euphemistically be called "extracurriculars." He went to high school with classmates who had private pools and tennis courts and sometimes even private jets. He came of age during the era of "Porky's" and "Fast Times at Ridgemont High." That combination of extreme privilege and extreme license, which he seemed to take for granted as a teenager, in retrospect looks lethal. He lived in the athlete bubble and made fun of kids outside it. He was not known as a starter of trouble but as a joiner, signing on to the "100 Keg Club," riding in the Party Van, singing obnoxious songs about who was a good lay. His friends ran an underground paper called The Unknown Hoya, dispensing helpful tips such as "all it takes to have a good time with any H.H. (Holton Hosebag)" is a Montgomery County library card. People who knew Kavanaugh said he was nice and well mannered except when he was drinking or hanging out with his friends and showed his "cocky dismissive side." In his confirmation hearings Kavanaugh bristled at his drinking being characterized as anything other than perfectly normal. And maybe it was perfectly normal by the standards of upper middle class white teenagers in the '80s, but the norm is sometimes worth examining. In Kavanaugh's case, it encouraged years of proud obnoxious partying, belligerent public behavior and a smugness about being above the rules. As he told a group of students in 2014 recounting his law school years, they had a motto: "What happens on the bus stays on the bus." Pogrebin and Kelly spend significant time digging into Blasey Ford's accusations and also those of Deborah Ramirez, a woman who says Kavanaugh put his penis in her face at a Yale college party. They track down any witnesses and friends willing to talk, comb through legal documents, do their best to find the house where Blasey Ford says the assault took place. They point out critical witnesses that the F.B.I., in its very limited investigation, did not have time to interview. In the end they turn up no smoking gun, no secret confession, no friend who comes forth to say Kavanaugh was lying all this time. What they do instead is almost too cruel: use his mother's words against him. In an extremely satisfying epilogue, Pogrebin and Kelly invoke as a guide something Martha Kavanaugh, who was a state prosecutor, would often say at the dinner table: "Use your common sense. What rings true? What rings false?" With this standard they come to a generous but also damning conclusion, which is that Blasey Ford and Ramirez are believable and were in fact mistreated by Kavanaugh as teenagers, but that over the next 35 years he became a better person. No woman has come forward to say Kavanaugh assaulted her after law school (though an unidentified woman has claimed that in 1998 her daughter witnessed him "very aggressively and sexually" push a friend of the daughter's whom Kavanaugh was allegedly dating at the time). Many women have said he was a generous mentor and boss. Over half his clerks were women, something he set his mind to after reading a story about the sudden drop in female law clerks. And here and there, Kavanaugh has made decisions that support feminist causes. He has two daughters, and he coaches their teams. The conclusion Pogrebin and Kelly come to about Kavanaugh is therefore pretty narrow. He was a teenager whose heavy drinking may have led to a bad memory. That's the working theory. And he grew up to be a man skilled enough at evading questions about his teenage drinking to stop just short of a lie. It's as small and frustrating a conclusion as we expected. Now we can think it with more confidence. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
In the latest season of "The Crown," the Duke of Edinburgh makes a request of his only daughter, Princess Anne. He wants her help, he says, because she is "the most thrifty, feet on the ground, low profile, unpretentious royal we've got." He isn't wrong. Fourteen when Season 3 opens, Anne (played by Erin Doherty ) belts out David Bowie in the car. She punches her older brother in the stomach never mind that he'll be king one day. As her mother helms the monarchy, her father has a midlife crisis and her brother grapples with the responsibilities of being an heir, Anne is busy just enjoying herself. There's something about her sass, her nonchalance "I look like a hydrangea," she responds to a compliment on her blue evening gown that gives the princess a relatable edge, even if she did grow up in a palace. The real life Princess Anne is just as complex; here's what to know about her when you watch Season 3. Our first glimpse of Princess Anne this season is a close up of her riding boots as she strides through the halls of Buckingham Palace. A soft spot for horses runs in the royal family: As we see in the show, the Queen owns and breeds horses, and she has been known to make an appearance at races and other events. Princess Anne took that same affinity all the way to the 1976 Olympics, where she competed with the British equestrian team in Montreal. In 1971 she was the first royal to be named Sports Personality of the Year by the BBC, and she is now the president of the British Olympic Association. Her daughter, Zara Tindall (born Zara Phillips), continues the tradition. She competed in the same equestrian event at the 2012 London Olympics, where her team won the silver medal presented by her mother. She was third in line to the throne at the time of her birth, after her mother and older brother. Today, at 69, she is much further down 14th in line, behind her brothers and their descendants. (A 2011 decision to stop prioritizing younger male heirs over their sisters doesn't apply to anyone born before the children of Charles's eldest son, Prince William.) In 1987, the Queen gave her a new title: Princess Royal, a lifelong honorific given to the monarch's oldest daughter. Her Royal Highness, Queen of '60s and '70s Fashion Queen Elizabeth II has her bright, monochromatic suits. The Princess Royal has bold patterns and vibrant pops of color: outfits that remain enviable, even decades later. There were the colorful flowers and puffy sleeves of the high necked gown she wore to a 1973 film premiere . In 1968, there was the mustard coat, with a striking hat to match, worn at an equestrian event. There were the lively blue stripes at her son's christening in 1977. And let's not forget: the power suit. She sometimes, with her numerous honorary military appointments, will appear in a military uniform a rarity for women in the royal family. She Was in a Royal Love Triangle ... or Rectangle? For Camilla (now the Duchess of Cornwall), before she married Prince Charles, she was married to Andrew Parker Bowles. And for Andrew, before Camilla, there was Princess Anne. As we see in the show, Anne was dating Andrew in the '70s , around the same time her brother started seeing Camilla. But then Andrew married Camilla, who eventually went back to Prince Charles after her marriage with Andrew ended. Prince Charles, speaking with his great uncle in one episode, perhaps put it best: "It's all a bit messy." A 26 year old would be kidnapper, who targeted the princess one evening in 1974, messed with the wrong royal. Princess Anne and her first husband, Capt. Mark Phillips, were in their car in London when Ian Bell began shooting at the vehicle. Two police officers, the car's driver and a nearby journalist were shot and wounded. When Bell tried to get Princess Anne out of the car in the hopes of getting a ransom of 2 million pounds the princess, according to government documents released 30 years later, said her cooperation was not "bloody likely." Bell tried to escape but was tackled and apprehended by another officer. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
They call it the Robin Hood tax a tiny levy on trades in the financial markets that would take money from the banks and give it to the world's poor. And like the mythical hero of Sherwood Forest, it is beginning to capture the public's imagination. Driven by populist anger at bankers as well as government needs for more revenue, the idea of a tax on trades of stocks, bonds and other financial instruments has attracted an array of influential champions, including the leaders of France and Germany, the billionaire philanthropists Bill Gates and George Soros, former Vice President Al Gore, the consumer activist Ralph Nader, Pope Benedict XVI and the archbishop of Canterbury. "We all agree that a financial transaction tax would be the right signal to show that we have understood that financial markets have to contribute their share to the recovery of economies," the chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel, told her Parliament recently. On Sunday, Mario Monti, the new prime minister of Italy, announced plans to impose a tax on certain financial transactions as part of a far reaching plan to fix his country's budgetary problems, and he endorsed the idea of a Europewide transactions tax. So far, the broader debt crisis engulfing the euro zone nations has pushed discussion of the tax into the background. But if European leaders can agree on a plan that calms the financial markets, they would be in a stronger position to enact a levy, analysts said. "There is some momentum behind this," said Simon Tilford, chief economist of the Center for European Reform in London. "If they keep the show on the road, they probably will attempt to run with this." The Robin Hood tax has also become a rallying point for labor unions, nongovernmental organizations and the Occupy Wall Street movement, which view it as a way to claw back money from the top 1 percent to help the other 99 percent. Last month, thousands of demonstrators, including hundreds in Robin Hood outfits with bright green caps and bows and arrows, flooded into southern France to urge the leaders of the Group of 20 nations to do more to help the poor, including passing a financial transactions tax. Enacting such a tax still faces many hurdles, however most notably, skepticism from leaders in the United States and Britain, home to some of the world's most important financial exchanges. Ms. Merkel and France's president, Nicolas Sarkozy, quickly piped up, enthusiastically endorsing the tax. But Britain's prime minister, David Cameron, expressed serious reservations, saying Britain would embrace it only if it were adopted globally. British officials fear that unless the tax is worldwide, trading will flee London's huge markets to countries with no tax. The Obama administration has also been lukewarm, expressing sympathy but saying it would be hard to execute, could drive trading overseas and would hurt pension funds and individual investors in addition to banks. Administration officials say they would prefer a tax on the assets of the largest banks as a way to discourage them from risky activities. "The president is sympathetic to the goals that a financial transactions tax is trying to achieve and he is pushing for a financial crisis responsibility fee and closing other Wall Street loopholes as the best and most feasible way to achieve those goals," an administration official said. Still, support is growing for the idea, which has been largely dormant since the 1970s, when a version was first proposed by the economist James Tobin, later a Nobel Prize winner. "The tax is a good idea because banks are where the money is. It's the same reason Jesse James robbed banks," said Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of National Nurses United, which recently held demonstrations at the offices of 60 members of Congress in support of the levy. "The thing about the financial transactions tax is it's stunning how quickly people get it and how fast they embrace it." Labor groups like the nurses' union and the A.F.L. C.I.O. see the tax as a way to finance job creation programs to fight high unemployment in the United States and Europe. Other advocates hope it will slow the speculation that many blame for undermining the euro and causing wild swings in financial markets. Mr. Gates and Mr. Sarkozy would like to use the money to finance development in the world's poorest nations. And leaders like Ms. Merkel and some members of Congress are eyeing it as a relatively painless source of money to help plug government deficits. On Nov. 16, the French Senate passed a bill supporting a financial transactions tax. And the European Commission in Brussels has said it would like to put a tax of 10 per 10,000 of transactions in place throughout the European Union by 2014, predicting it would raise 57 billion euros ( 77 billion) a year in European countries alone. Last month, Representative Peter DeFazio, an Oregon Democrat, and Senator Tom Harkin, an Iowa Democrat, proposed an American version of the tax that they said could raise 350 billion over 10 years. Their legislation would impose 3 in taxes for each 10,000 in transactions. Other proposals, including those from the nurses' union, call for a tax of 50 per 10,000. Mr. DeFazio said his tax plan would "raise money to invest in the real economy," but he acknowledged that it faced an uphill battle in Washington, especially within the antitax Republican caucus. Opponents say that even at the rate in the DeFazio Harkin bill, the tax would add significantly to the cost of trading, exceeding what institutional investors pay in commissions. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Global Business |
For most of the history of women's tennis, the "dress" once upon a time a long skirt, now more of a wisp of an idea has symbolized the feminine side of the game in its most retrograde sense, and been used as a means of gender stereotype, self expression, and eyeball attracting marketing. It has flirted with the tropes of fashion as decoration, and fashion as an extension of a personal brand, but only within well behaved bounds. Finally, however, in the hands of Serena Williams, it has become a political tool: an unabashed statement of female empowerment and independence not just for herself, but for all. It has been happening slowly over the last year, but it crystallized this week with the French Open, which began on Sunday. That's where Ms. Williams unveiled her latest Nike outfit or Nike x Off White outfit (designed by Virgil Abloh, the multi hyphenate founder of Off White as well as the artistic director of Louis Vuitton men's wear). Which was a black and white striped crop top, tennis skirt, trapeze back jacket that flew out like a cape in the wind, and maxi skirt (for photos), all emblazoned with the French words for "Mother, Champion, Queen, Goddess." But while this is all to a certain extent a statement about Ms. Williams and her talent, what's really interesting is that it's also a statement about women in general. (In case anyone doubted that was where this was all going.) And to what extent they should be free to break old rules that have lost all meaning. It began this time last year, when Ms. Williams appeared at the French Open in a catsuit. She said it was to help prevent blood clots after what had been a difficult birth and recovery and also it made her feel like a superhero (a legitimate connection, though why superheroes always wear catsuits is another question). The French Open authorities, however, saw it a different way dress code violation! and controversy ensued. The Gallic powers that be looked hidebound and prissy; public opinion applauded her (duh!) and suddenly the whole idea of what should and should not be worn on the court and who should get to decide, a subject of debate since Andre Agassi threw his first neon colored tantrum in the 1990s, was back in the news. Only this time the subject was women's bodies, and this time the world had changed. Whether Ms. Williams had planned it or not, she became the sharp end of the spear aimed at the artifact that was the women's tennis rule book. And though she never said it exactly, she played the point with her usual expertise, and has chosen the mantle that now rests on her shoulders. At the U.S. Open that August Ms. Williams appeared in a tennis tutu (also designed by Mr. Abloh for Nike). A dress that on its own was taken as something of a riposte to the French you want girlie, I can do girlie but which sent a message about reclaiming and reinventing old tropes of what was considered traditionally "ladylike" and defining them as powerfully as she pleased. And then, in January, Ms. Williams showed up at the Australian Open in a short unitard, liberated from the idea of a skirt altogether. Which brings us back to the French Open. "I love when fashion becomes a vehicle for sharing a powerful message," Ms. Williams said in a statement when the style was first released. In recent years, for many players that message had been individual, and kind of corporate. She's making it universal, and using it, perhaps, to carve a new off court future for herself. Earlier this month she stood at the top of the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in a long Versace gown (with sneakers, natch) as one of the co hosts of the Costume Institute Gala. She understands as well as anyone on the court or in sport, for that matter what fashion can do. She learned long ago, along with her sister, that people were going to pay attention to what players wore. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
In Chris Gall's GO FOR THE MOON: A ROCKET, A BOY, AND THE FIRST MOON LANDING (Roaring Brook, 48 pp., 19.99; ages 5 to 10), it's 1969, and a young narrator acts as an earthbound crewmate, keeping pace with the Apollo 11 astronauts from his suburban backyard. Double page spreads juxtapose the stages of the journey, from launch to triumphant splashdown, with inset images of a Tang sipping kid in hornrims and sneakers, building and transporting his model rocket, testing out a cardboard lunar module and joyfully bounding through his own moon walk after watching Neil Armstrong's first steps on a fuzzy black and white television. Throughout, the boy uses soccer balls, string and other everyday objects to explain underlying concepts such as thrust and landing angles. Working in a crisply delineated digital style that gives shapes an almost 3 D quality, Gall balances densely explanatory pages with wide angle scenes filled with tension and drama. Readers who want close ups of fuel cells and docking components will find those specifics, while others can take in the miraculous big picture: the small silver capsules traveling through blackest black space. Best of all, Gall's young narrator shows how leaps of imagination can transform the grandest milestones into the most personal experiences. In anticipation of this summer's anniversary, Brian Floca set out to update his extraordinary 2009 account of the first moon landing, which was named a New York Times Best Illustrated Children's Book that year, among other awards. He emerged from the project with a substantially expanded edition, which includes eight new pages of artwork and additional text. The newly revised MOONSHOT: THE FLIGHT OF APOLLO 11 (Richard Jackson/Atheneum, 56 pp., 19.99; ages 4 to 10) is even more glorious than the original, and also more inclusive. Whereas the 2009 edition focused on the three astronauts, here there are more vignettes of the diverse men and women white, black and brown whose ingenuity and labor made the mission possible: the "thousands of people, / for millions of parts." New lines of text retain the grace and clarity of Floca's economical free verse while adding information, such as the tricky logistics of spacecraft rendezvous. And as before, Floca's artwork remains an extraordinary delight for a reader of any age. Like the astronauts' own photographs, his expansive, heart stopping images convey the unfathomable beauty of both the bright, dusty moon and the blue jewel of Earth. Several new books focus on individuals rather than overviews of the big event. Suzanne Slade's A COMPUTER CALLED KATHERINE: HOW KATHERINE JOHNSON HELPED PUT AMERICA ON THE MOON (Little, Brown, 40 pp., 18.99; ages 4 to 8) picks up the story of the "human computers," of "Hidden Figures" fame. Slade, a mechanical engineer who has worked on rockets for NASA and the Air Force, brings deep background knowledge to her biography of Johnson, an African American math prodigy who overcame barriers of race and gender to become a profoundly influential member of the Apollo missions' team. Slade writes with appealing rhythm and repetition, and she folds in a clever game of false equations to emphasize moments of injustice: Limited beliefs about women's professional roles, for example, are "as wrong as 10 5 3." In her picture book debut, the illustrator Veronica Miller Jamison mixes neatly composed, straightforward action with inventive, swirling images dramatizing Johnson's brilliant calculations. The story is followed by an informational spread that includes a rousing quote from Johnson: "Girls are capable of doing everything men are capable of doing." The astronaut Alan Bean was the fourth person, and the first artist, to walk on the moon. Written with assistance from Bean, Dean Robbins's THE ASTRONAUT WHO PAINTED THE MOON: THE TRUE STORY OF ALAN BEAN (Orchard/Scholastic, 40 pp., 17.99; ages 4 to 8) intersperses action scenes from the Apollo 12 mission with moments from Bean's life, as he learns to combine his love of flight with his urgent wish to "paint what he saw." After returning to Earth, Bean is disappointed with photographs that fail to capture the moon's "barren beauty." So, with color and imagination, he paints "how stunning outer space looked through his eyes. How it made him feel." A final striking spread pairs reproductions of photographs taken by Apollo 12's astronauts and Bean's paintings of the same scenes. The astronauts are friendly, relatable characters in Sean Rubin's jewel colored, crosshatched artwork, which smooths out narrative shifts with skillfully extended motifs, including aircraft that transform from model airplanes to Air Force fighters to the Apollo 12 rocket as the pages turn. And as in Bean's paintings, a brilliant palette animates the scenes of space with vibrant, palpable energy. More than an account of a singular figure, Robbins's notable biography is a beautiful reminder that science and art are a vital combination and, together, can create new understanding. Of course, for some children, the details of the Apollo missions may seem as dull and unappealing as freeze dried food. Young kids, especially preschoolers, may want to start with something more familiar the moon itself. Susanna Leonard Hill's MOON'S FIRST FRIENDS: ONE GIANT LEAP FOR FRIENDSHIP (Sourcebooks, 40 pp., 17.99; ages 3 to 6) sparks lunar interest with an age old approach: Put a face on it. Forget the Man in the Moon (or the rabbit). This cheerful title introduces a rosy cheeked, eye lashed "Queen of the Night Sky," lonely after 4.5 billion years of silvery bright solitude. Humans' experiments with early air flight get her hopes up, but alas; she remains alone, despite her efforts to attract attention, including a solar eclipse. Then, "one hot July day," visitors arrive. Elisa Paganelli's textured digital artwork extends the winsome story with a cozy version of space, a soothing, star speckled blue rather than bottomless black, and watched over by the eager, anthropomorphized "queen," who cheers as the Eagle lands right between her eyes. The book's substantial back matter about the Apollo 11 mission seems aimed at older siblings, rather than the story's primary young audience. A more immediate connection might come from a QR code printed on the endpapers, which leads to NASA's sound file of Neil Armstrong's first words after his ever astonishing "one small step." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
FOR two years, Althea Girard Blakey toted a black canvas bag when she went to work, full of the enormous collection of papers documenting her request for a mortgage modification. "I never knew when I was going to need it," said Ms. Girard Blakey, 59, who was struggling to make payments on a loan she took out on her home in East Palo Alto, Calif. Now, Ms. Girard Blakey can leave the sack at home. Her lender, Chase, has approved a permanent loan modification that reduced her monthly payments to an amount she can afford. She made the first of the new payments on Oct. 1. In the context of the housing crisis, Ms. Girard Blakey is one of the lucky ones: She got to keep her home, a compact two bedroom with a pale exterior framed by bougainvillea. "Home, sweet home," she said, smiling, during an interview in her cozy living room, which she has decorated in brown hues, contrasted with colorful orange and green accent pillows. Getting the necessary approval involved several false starts and proved to be a frustrating, sometimes bewildering, process for Ms. Girard Blakey and her husband, Cornel Blakey, 61. Her experience shows how the loan modification process can tax the resources of people who already are stressed by the demands of a difficult economy. Coming as close as she did to losing the house was wrenching, because Ms. Girard Blakey had owned it for more than 30 years. She bought the property in 1975, for what now seems like the startlingly low sum of 17,500. "It's like buying a car, now," she said of the price. A young single mother at the time, she wanted a home in which to raise her daughter. "I needed a place to get us settled," she said. She was able to secure a mortgage by saving a small amount for a down payment from her income as a preschool teacher, she recalled, and also by agreeing to pay the owner part of the purchase price over time. Over the years, she said, she borrowed against the house to make improvements, like a new roof and an additional bedroom, and once to support herself during a period of unemployment. More recently, she and her husband added a small covered patio with artificial turf in the backyard. "This is my favorite part of the house," she said while giving a visitor a tour. She viewed the debt financed upgrades as positive, at the time. "I had my house working for me," she said. The most recent refinance came in November 2007, when, amid the housing bubble, the home's value had grown to more than 500,000, according to the real estate Web site Zillow. She took out a 30 year fixed rate loan, arranged through a broker, for roughly 265,000. The loan was sold to Washington Mutual and ended up at Chase after Chase took ownership of WaMu's mortgages in September 2008. (Mr. Blakey wasn't a borrower on the loan, although his income helped pay the bill; because Ms. Girard Blakey had owned the home herself before the couple married in 2000, they considered it her asset, they said). The resulting monthly payment of more than 1,600 was higher than she had expected. Still, she initially was able to handle the payments. But two years later, the stalled economy was affecting Mr. Blakey's income and straining the couple's ability to pay their bills. East Palo Alto, populated by many African American and Hispanic families, is less affluent than its neighbor Palo Alto, home to Stanford University and technology companies, including Hewlett Packard. East Palo Alto was hit hard by the recession. On a recent Saturday, as children played in the street, a woman approached passers by, asking for spare change. Mr. Blakey had worked for years cutting hair at the barber shop his father had operated since the 1960s. But long time customers began to move away, he said, and new ones seemed to be getting fewer haircuts during the slow economy. Finally, late last year, his father retired, and they closed the shop. The sign, East Bayshore Barber Shop, still hangs on the building a few blocks from their home, but the space has been taken over by a neighboring liquor store. "Right now, I'm unemployed," said Mr. Blakey, a slight, soft spoken man wearing a felt cap. He makes some money cutting hair for a few customers in a makeshift barber shop in the garage. Ms. Girard Blakey's job as a receptionist at an office in nearby Mountain View was steady, she said, but it was getting harder to pay the bills, which included credit card debt. In the summer of 2009, after she missed a mortgage payment, she sought help from Caughern Associates, a Bedford, Tex., company that offered to get her a better deal on her loan. "Your chances of avoiding foreclosure are much greater if you have professionals on your side," the firm's Web site says. A friend had recommended Caughern, saying they would handle burdensome negotiations for her. So she signed up, instead of calling Chase directly. Ms. Girard Blakey now says that was a mistake. "This was new to me and I didn't know what I was doing," she said, shaking her head. "It seemed like a good idea." Ms. Girard Blakey filled out a packet of forms in July 2009 and paid Caughern one month's mortgage payment in three installments as a fee; that put her further behind on her home loan. The company's representative told her to be patient, so Ms. Girard Blakey waited a couple of months before following up. When she began calling, she said, she was given various reasons for why no progress had been made; one time, she was told that her representative was on leave having surgery. "Nothing seemed to happen," she said. (Her agreement with Caughern predated federal rules that took effect in January, making it illegal for most mortgage relief firms to collect advance fees to negotiate modifications.) Then, in a letter dated Jan. 19, 2010, Chase offered a trial loan modification, under the Home Affordable Modification Program, a federal program to prevent foreclosure that began in 2009. If she made three consecutive loan payments at the reduced amount of 954.18, beginning in March, the letter said, she would be considered for a permanent modification. She was also given a month to submit six separate pieces of information, including pay stubs and a form authorizing release of income tax information from the Internal Revenue Service. Ms. Girard Blakey signed the forms at the end of January, her records show. Tim Caughern, chief executive of Caughern Associates, said the trial modification was the result of an application his firm submitted on Ms. Girard Blakey's behalf in November 2009. His employees kept notes, he said, which indicate the application was assigned to a negotiator at Chase in early December and that a trial modification offer was sent to her in late January. "We did everything we were supposed to do, and more," Mr. Caughern said. Caughern's files, he said, indicate that Ms. Girard Blakey continued to make payments even after the three month trial was up, and that Chase informed Caughern in early July that it was preparing a permanent modification offer. But on July 26, according to Caughern's notes, the bank told her that her application had been denied; the reason wasn't clear. Ms. Girard Blakey said she was disappointed in Caughern's service: "They didn't get me a permanent modification. That's the bottom line." A common criticism of the Home Affordable Modification Program, especially before the middle of 2010, was that banks were unprepared for the onslaught of modification applications and often mishandled paperwork. But according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, it's also not uncommon for modifications to founder when applicants miss paperwork deadlines. In addition to making the payments, Ms. Girard Blakey recalls sending in the necessary documents. "I think they keep losing things," she said of Chase. Chase declined to comment for publication on the specifics of Ms. Girard Blakey's experience with her loan modification due to "privacy issues," a bank spokesman, Tom Kelly, said in an e mail. "We have continued to improve our modification process to help 404,000 families get permanent modifications," he said. Ms. Girard Blakey then received an invitation from Chase to attend a mortgage modification event in Oakland, where the bank has a home ownership center. As the housing crisis dragged on, Chase set up such centers across the country and sponsored special events, where struggling borrowers could meet in person with modification specialists. One event was held over five days in Oakland in August 2010. Ms. Girard Blakey and her husband drove 45 minutes to the event at a Marriott hotel to discuss a modification. In a cavernous ballroom filled with long lines of desks and chairs, and other worried borrowers, "We filled out all the forms again," Ms. Girard Blakey said. Mr. Blakey said he was encouraged after the meeting with a Chase representative and believed that the meeting would escalate the modification application. But, when his wife followed up with phone calls, Mr. Blakey said, she was always directed to different people, which was confusing. "When I called, they said, 'You haven't sent the paperwork in, send it again,' " she said. "I kept going, until I got overstressed." On Sept. 7, 2010, struggling to pay her bills and her credit card debt, Ms. Girard Blakey filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection. She couldn't afford a lawyer, but paid a document preparer to help her complete the required forms. That seemed to derail her pursuit of a loan modification, she said; in a letter dated Sept. 16, Chase informed her that her home loan was now being monitored by the bank's bankruptcy department. "I couldn't really understand it," she said. "But everything seemed to stop, after that." A bankruptcy filing doesn't disqualify homeowners from obtaining a loan modification, according to the Home Affordable Modification Program Web site. But loan counselors say a filing can slow the approval process assuming the borrower wants to keep the home in part because many loan servicers have a separate department that handles modification applications from borrowers who are in bankruptcy. The homeowner may need to submit additional forms, and provide updated financial information multiple times, because the department may have the application for several months. Sitting at her dining room table recently, in an attempt to piece together a paper trail of her experience, Ms. Girard Blakey shuffled through piles of documents letters from Chase and Caughern mingled with oversize envelopes, pay stubs, tax forms and sticky notes scribbled with reminders and seemed overwhelmed. "What am I looking for, again?" she asked more than once. She and her husband recalled that as the weeks dragged on, they would find notices on their door indicating that a representative from Chase had stopped by; the notes included a phone number to call. Apparently, the bank was checking to see if the home was occupied; some distressed borrowers were simply abandoning their homes. Discouraged, Ms. Girard Blakey became resigned to losing the house. In early 2011, she began packing her belongings in boxes, stacking them in her daughter's former bedroom and looking for apartments to rent. "I said, I can't do it anymore. They can have the house," she recalled. But that upset her daughter, Rachel Brown, who had grown up in the house. "She'd been there so long," Ms. Brown said in a phone interview. "I didn't want her to lose the house." Ms. Brown had a friend, she said, whose parents were in the same situation and were able to stay in their home with the help of a nonprofit. She got the number and urged her mother to call. So, with her expectations low, Ms. Girard Blakey called the nonprofit, called CredAbility, in February. The outfit, based in Atlanta but with a national reach, is approved by the Department of Housing and Urban Development to work with distressed homeowners on possible solutions, including loan modifications. A counselor, Carolyn Murray, called Chase with Ms. Girard Blakey on the phone, so she could give permission for Ms. Murray to speak to the bank on her behalf. Then, Ms. Girard Blakey again filled out forms and faxed documentation of her employment and income to the lender. Chase confirmed receipt of the application in a letter dated Feb. 25. "They told me to stay in the house," she said, referring to CredAbility. So Ms. Girard Blakey stayed although she didn't unpack her boxes right away. Ms. Murray said Ms. Girard Blakey appeared to be a good candidate for a loan modification because she had a steady employment history and had a hardship because of the couple's reduced household income. When evaluating prospects for modification, she said, the program evaluates a borrower's ability to make a given payment based on a percentage of their income, and it appeared Ms. Girard Blakey could qualify. Chase next approved another trial modification, which it confirmed in a letter dated July 27. If she made three successive monthly payments of 789.61, the letter said, she would be eligible for a permanent modification. Ms. Girard Blakey made sure to get the payments in on time. She called Chase weekly to check on the status of her application and faxed supporting documents from her little black bag multiple times even if the bank had not requested them to make sure they had been received. On Aug. 19, she received a letter beginning with a single world: "Congratulations!" If she filled out two more copies of a new modification agreement and submitted them by Sept. 2, her new payment amount would be permanent, as of Oct. 1. Ms. Girard Blakey has made that new payment and is confident she can afford to continue doing so. "I can handle it," she said. She and her husband, meanwhile, are living as frugally as they can. They disconnected their cable television and rely on cellphones, and they are facing a winter without heat in their home. Their furnace needs to be replaced, she said, but they don't have the money to repair it. To arrive at the lower payment, Chase deferred 99,600 in principal, lengthened the term of the loan to 40 years from 30 and reduced the initial interest rate to 2 percent. Her total loan balance is about 305,000, because of the addition to her principal of missed payments and interest, but her monthly payment is based on a principal amount of 205,402. The rate can increase annually after the first five years, but it is capped at 5 percent. (The deferred principal comes due when the loan matures, or when the house is sold). The downside of the lower payment is that because the mortgage is extended for another 10 years, it is now scheduled to mature in 2051, when Ms. Girard Blakey would be 99 years old. She's aware that if she hadn't taken out additional loans on her home over the years, she would probably be finished paying any mortgage. "I wish I never refinanced," she said. The extra time added to the mortgage, however, is worth it, she said, because she can remain in her home. "I cherish my little house," she said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Your Money |
With beaches replenished, boardwalks rebuilt and stores reopened, the Jersey Shore is gearing up for a summer busy enough to make last year's anemic one a distant memory. As renters rush to book their summer houses and buyers snatch up newly vacant land, a different Jersey Shore is taking shape one and a half years after Hurricane Sandy, one in which the small working class bungalows that once defined communities like Ortley Beach are being replaced with spacious dream homes intended to entice wealthy vacationers. Warnings of climate change and rising sea levels have done little to deter buyers who see opportunity in disaster. For some, the storm tossed shore is a blank canvas, awaiting new construction that could redefine the look and feel of the coastline. Others, in the market for a safer bet on the beach, are zeroing in on areas that emerged relatively unscathed. In short, Hurricane Sandy hit the reset button on the Jersey Shore. "At the end of the day, we're going to be in a better spot," said Eric J. Birchler, the owner of Birchler Realtors, which sells properties in Ortley Beach and Lavallette, two of the hardest hit areas. "You just stepped the entire gentrification of Ortley Beach forward five years because everything had to be rebuilt." Soon after Hurricane Sandy destroyed the vacation house and seasonal business of Chris Marino and Joanne de Franca Marino in Lavallette, the couple began putting their lives back together. At first they planned to rebuild their 2,500 square foot house across the street from the bay. But then they saw a listing for a nearby 12,000 square foot parcel on a cove with 180 feet of bulkhead on the bay. Before the storm, the property had been listed for 1.898 million. But the Marinos bought it in March for 999,000. They plan to tear down the existing 1,600 square foot brick house and invest about 1 million in a 4,200 square foot, two and a half story replacement. Outside will be a gazebo and an in ground pool. "It's a phenomenal buying opportunity," said Mr. Marino, whose family has been summering on the Jersey Shore for generations. "It's one of the largest bulkheads on the whole island." Of the 127 miles of New Jersey coastline that spans four counties from Cape May in the south to Monmouth County in the north, Hurricane Sandy hit Ocean and Monmouth counties the hardest. In all, the storm destroyed or damaged 346,000 homes in New Jersey. But Sandy was not evenhanded in her wrath. While whole blocks in Ortley Beach were leveled, neighboring Midway Beach, replete with the very same style of bungalows, survived largely intact. While the handsome seaside mansions of Mantoloking were gutted, nearby Bay Head fared much better. Many people credit protective armor like sand dunes and sea walls for providing critical cover. Rebuilding in a high hazard area is not cheap. If a house was destroyed or sustained substantial damage, it must be rebuilt to local floodplain requirements, which in the most risky areas can require costly measures like elevating the house on pilings or columns. Other protections include hurricane proof windows and breakaway walls, which are exterior walls designed to collapse during a severe storm without causing damage to the elevated part of the house or to the foundation. Homeowners with federally backed mortgages must also buy flood insurance, which can be expensive. Owners who can't afford the flood insurance premiums or who can't afford to rebuild to these standards are selling. "This is now an opportunity to build bigger homes and they are certainly going to have to build them at a higher elevation and it's going to cost more," said Peter S. Reinhart, the director of the Kislak Real Estate Institute at Monmouth University. "I think we're going to lose some of that blue collar flavor in the area." For Ortley Beach homeowners like John and Gina McConeghy, Hurricane Sandy closed a chapter on their lives. After the storm flooded their 800 square foot bungalow with 22 inches of water, the couple ripped it down to the frame. But without flood insurance, they could not afford the 400,000 it would have cost to rebuild to floodplain requirements. So last February, the couple sold their property with views of the bay for 200,000. Ellen and Bob Farrell and their new four bedroom place in Surf City, Long Beach Island, N.J. The drop in real estate prices following Hurricane Sandy put the turnkey house within their reach. Karsten Moran for The New York Times "When you're down there and it's a nice day and the sun's out, and you hear the ocean, you're going to miss it," said Mr. McConeghy, a 54 year old contractor who lives in Wayne, N.J. "But it became a business decision. I'm not in the financial position to pay that kind of money for a summer home that I only use a few months out of the year." Prices for waterfront property in hard hit areas plunged after the storm, largely because of damage to houses. Suddenly, towns where land was rarely available, like Mantoloking, had listings. Of waterfront homes that sold in the area between November 2012 and June 2013, the median selling price dropped 34 percent from the same time period a year earlier, according to an analysis of listings data by Tom Wissel, Multiple Listing Service coordinator for the Ocean County Board of Realtors. Buyers who had previously been priced out of the market may now be able to get a foothold in a town like Mantoloking, where a house with 70 feet of footage on the ocean sold for 3.75 million before the storm. After the storm, a similar lot with more than double the oceanfront footage sold for 2.75 million. In Lavallette, bayside lots that listed for 550,000 before the storm now list for 400,000. And in Ortley Beach, bayside lots that listed for 350,000 before the storm now list for 200,000, according to Birchler Realtors. "People are starting to say, 'Hold it, I'm going to miss out on this,' " said Shawn Clayton, the owner of Clayton Clayton Realtors, which sells properties in Mantoloking and Bay Head. " 'Let me get my financing together so I don't miss out.' " Much of the area has been transformed into a construction zone. Drive along the oceanfront in Mantoloking and scores of stately houses are covered in Tyvek sheeting or are raised off their foundations. In Ortley Beach, whole blocks have been reduced to sandy lots punctuated by the occasional framing for a new house. But other communities look pristine, with shops, homes and boardwalks largely restored. Since last July, Mr. Clayton's office has sold eight oceanfront properties, about one a month. Before Sandy, his company generally sold five such properties a year. Most buyers are tearing down what exists and building large elevated houses according to the stricter guidelines and adding elevators, swimming pools and walls of windows. Paul J. Scriffignano, 32, is one such buyer. He has been summering on the Jersey Shore since childhood. After his parents' house in Brick was damaged by Sandy, Mr. Scriffignano began spending more time in the area helping his family recover. Last summer, he and his wife, Alexandra, 28, bought a property in Normandy Beach. They plan to tear down the existing house because of its condition and small size, and to replace it with a three story 3,100 square foot home built on pilings with a hurricane proof roof and windows, five bedrooms and a swimming pool. "I don't know if a storm like this is ever going to happen again, but I have a lot of friends and family here," said Mr. Scriffignano, whose sister and brother in law bought a vacation home in Curtis Point last summer. "It's almost like we wanted to band together and say, 'We don't want to give up on this area. Whatever happens, happens.' " Buyers may be experiencing a renewed confidence in the Jersey Shore, but scientists point out that areas like the barrier islands are increasingly vulnerable to coastal flooding as sea levels rise. The New York City Panel on Climate Change estimates that by the 2020s New York City could be beset by 2 to 11 inches of sea level rise. And by the 2050s a little longer than the length of a 30 year mortgage the sea could rise by as much as 31 inches. Barrier islands like Long Beach face another challenge: they sit on top of sediment that is slowly compacting, causing them to sink. As the sea level rises, the risk of coastal flooding increases even in a moderate storm. "The people who are making these decisions are taking some real risk," said Ben Strauss, the director of the Program on Sea Level Rise at Climate Central, a group that studies the effects of climate change. "I hope that they are viewing it with their eyes open." Joanne deFranca Marino and Chris Marino at the Lavallette house they bought after the storm destroyed another house of theirs. They plan to replace their new purchase with a structure almost three times as large. Karsten Moran for The New York Times Flooding is already a chronic problem in New Jersey, and some wonder if allowing homeowners to rebuild in high risk areas is good public policy. In the past nine years, the state has had 11 separate flooding events that have been severe enough to trigger a presidential disaster declaration. Yet the state remains committed to rebuilding rather than encouraging homeowners in flood prone areas to relocate to higher ground. Since Sandy, New Jersey has provided homeowners with grant money to rebuild and has invested in infrastructure in flood prone areas, like the new Route 35, which was breached during Sandy and is being rebuilt to withstand a 25 year storm, a 265 million project. "We, as a state, need to start getting it. This is our fate," said John A. Miller, a water resource engineer and the legislative committee chairman for the New Jersey Association for Floodplain Management. "We have to start adapting because this is going to happen again." The Jersey Shore is integral to the state's economy and to its identity. Tourism accounts for nearly 7 percent of the state's economy and half of the 40 billion a year tourism industry comes from the Shore. For people whose families have strolled the boardwalks for years, walking away is simply unimaginable. But a future with rising sea levels "is where reality meets the romance of the coast," said Robert W. Freudenberg, the New Jersey director of the Regional Plan Association. "You want to be there, you want a piece of that, but if the reality is a future of evacuations and flooding, it puts a damper on that romance." To some extent, Hurricane Sandy created a barometer of risk: a town or property that survived the storm sets wary buyers at ease. Less than a year after the storm, Pier Village, a beachfront community in Long Branch where little damage occurred, began selling condominiums near the water. Now, 70 percent of the 44 units have sold, with prices for remaining units ranging from 439,000 for a two bedroom to 698,000 for a three bedroom with a den. The condo is a short walk from shops and restaurants as well as the beach. "Almost everyone asks about the storm," said Dawn Nassaney, the sales manager for 55 Melrose Terrace at Pier Village. "If we came through Sandy unscathed, that's a huge selling point." And on Long Beach Island, Ellen and Bob Farrell spent years searching, but had not been able to find a turnkey property for less than 1 million. It wasn't until after the storm that they finally found one: a 2,600 square foot clapboard house with wood floors throughout, an open floor plan and an updated kitchen just a block from the beach in Surf City. The Farrells bought it on Halloween for 723,000. "With all the devastation that went on, there is no time like the present," Ms. Farrell, 50, said. "Sandy was a reality check for a lot of people, especially for us. We felt like we really need to step back and enjoy our lives." Any home in a flood zone that was declared substantially damaged meaning it would cost 50 percent or more of the home's pre damage market value to restore must be rebuilt to current standards, which may require elevating the property. New construction in a flood zone may also have to be elevated. In New Jersey, the first floor of new homes built in a flood zone must be elevated at least one foot above the flood line, although local communities may have stricter rules. Homes that are at risk of three foot breaking waves must be built on pilings or columns. Required for anyone with a federally backed mortgage in a flood zone. This can be costly for homes that aren't elevated. For example, the annual premium for a house built three feet below the recommended elevation level is 7,806 per year, and 374 a year for the same home built one foot above that level. FEMA can help policyholders cover some costs. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
WASHINGTON Lawmakers leveled stinging criticism and sharp questions at Big Tech executives on Tuesday, attacking Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google for their market power, their perceived bias as gatekeepers of communication and Facebook's ambitions to reshape the financial industry. The criticisms came at three hearings on Capitol Hill that showcased Washington's widening range of concerns with Silicon Valley. Lawmakers from both parties, including Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas who oversees a subcommittee on the Constitution, and Representative David N. Cicilline, Democrat of Rhode Island who leads a subcommittee on antitrust law, took aim at the businesses. The executives acknowledged that technology had changed, and sometimes hurt, companies in industries like retailing, advertising, music and movies. But their companies, they said, have opened new opportunities to millions of entrepreneurs and small businesses. They insisted they faced competitors at every turn entrenched big companies, ascendant start ups and each other. And consumers, they said, are big winners, benefiting from convenience, lower prices and new products and services. But their celebration of the virtues of Big Tech did not carry the day. Some lawmakers were sympathetic, but this was not their stage. Most were decidedly unconvinced, even disdainful. "Facebook has said, 'Just trust us,'" Senator Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio, said at a hearing focused on the social media company's cryptocurrency efforts. "And every time Americans trust you, they seem to get burned." The hearing performances were a telling moment, showing the rising force of the backlash against the tech giants. Not long ago revered as treasures of American capitalism, they are now targets of political attacks from both parties, growing public criticism and regulatory scrutiny. President Trump has also turned up the volume of his critique of tech companies in recent weeks. The Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission recently decided to divide responsibility for potential antitrust investigations. The Justice Department is taking Google and Apple, while the F.T.C. has Facebook and Amazon. Last week, the F.T.C. voted to fine Facebook about 5 billion for mishandling users' personal information, by far the agency's largest fine against a tech company. The House Judiciary Committee has opened a bipartisan inquiry into the power and practices of major technology companies. The subcommittee announced the investigation last month and planned to request documents from the companies and hear testimony from confidential witnesses, who may fear retribution from the tech giants. It has also started holding hearings, including one on Tuesday afternoon that was focused on how Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google altered innovation and entrepreneurial activity. The practices under scrutiny included acquiring upstart competitors and favoring their own offerings on the digital marketplaces they operate. Lawmakers appeared to be zeroing in on the areas that concern them the most. In one exchange, Mr. Cicilline addressed whether the tech companies' marketplaces for goods, software apps and online ads gave them an unfair advantage over rivals who rely on those marketplaces to distribute their own products or services. He pointed to Amazon's many lines of private label products, which compete for sales on the company's site with similar products from other brands. "I respectfully disagree," replied Mr. Sutton, who said that many big brick and mortar retailers offer private label brands. Amazon's control of products on its site, Mr. Cicilline said, is different and stronger than that of a traditional retailer that offers some private label merchandise. At one point, Mr. Cicilline pointedly told Mr. Sutton, "I may remind you, sir. You are under oath." Isn't it the case, Mr. Cicilline pressed, that the best sale for Amazon is the sale of an Amazon branded product, and that Amazon uses the vast amount of data it collects to favor its own offerings? "No, that is not true," Mr. Sutton replied. Let Us Help You Protect Your Digital Life None With Apple's latest mobile software update, we can decide whether apps monitor and share our activities with others. Here's what to know. A little maintenance on your devices and accounts can go a long way in maintaining your security against outside parties' unwanted attempts to access your data. Here's a guide to the few simple changes you can make to protect yourself and your information online. Ever considered a password manager? You should. There are also many ways to brush away the tracks you leave on the internet. He pointed out that not only is Facebook the world's largest social network, but that those ranked third, fourth and sixth WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Instagram are Facebook properties. Owning the four of the top six players in a market, Mr. Neguse said, spoke for itself. "We have a word for that," he said. "It is called monopoly." Earlier in the day, in the hearing about Facebook's cryptocurrency project, Libra, lawmakers grilled David Marcus, a top executive. The company has a bold goal with the project: to offer an alternative financial system that makes it possible to send money around the world with few fees. But the company has run into bipartisan resistance from Washington, including the White House. The initiative is far from the first effort of its kind. The best known cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, is in wide circulation, and it introduced the idea of digital currencies that are free from government control. But the Libra effort has put a spotlight on cryptocurrencies and amplified the voices of critics who say the technology has little value beyond speculative investing and illegal transactions, like online drug sales. Last week, the chair of the Federal Reserve, Jerome H. Powell, said Libra raised "serious concerns" around "money laundering, consumer protection and financial stability." Mr. Trump and the treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, have also criticized Libra and other cryptocurrencies in the past week. Senator Martha McSally, Republican of Arizona, said, "I don't trust you guys." Mr. Marcus, a former PayPal executive, was handpicked by Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's chief executive, to lead the Libra effort. Mr. Marcus, adopting a conciliatory tone, said the company would do its best to fight fraud and earn back the trust of the more than two billion people who use Facebook's services regularly. "We've made mistakes in the past," Mr. Marcus said. "We have been working, and are working hard to get better." Google was at the center of the day's third hearing, about censorship in search, held by a Senate subcommittee. Republican lawmakers used the hearing to air often repeated but largely unproven claims that Google tilts search results to bias against conservative viewpoints. Democrats called the hearing a charade and raised concerns about Google's inability to effectively police the content on YouTube. The Republicans took turns battering Karan Bhatia, Google's vice president for government affairs and public policy. Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, delivered the most pointed attacks. He said it was hard to believe Google's executives when they say that censoring search results would go against the company's mission and ideology, considering that the search giant had been working on plans to re enter China with a censored search engine. "Clearly, our trust and patience in your company and your monopoly has run out," said Mr. Hawley, who has been a vocal critic of Google. Mr. Bhatia responded by saying that Google had abandoned plans to restart its search engine in China. Mr. Cruz, the chairman of the subcommittee, said Congress needed to rethink the legal immunity for internet companies, established in 1996, that protects them from liability for content posted by users. The law, known as Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, has allowed platforms like Google's YouTube, Facebook and Twitter to grow rapidly without concern of being held liable for content on those services. Even before the hearing that focused on Google, the president applied his own brand of pressure with an early morning tweet. He said that his administration "will investigate" remarks from the billionaire investor Peter Thiel, who said that Google had been infiltrated by the Chinese intelligence. Mr. Thiel also accused the technology giant of treason for refusing to work with the Pentagon on a future artificial intelligence project while agreeing to work with the Chinese military. He provided no evidence for his allegations. A Google spokeswoman said in a statement that the company had not worked with the Chinese military and that it had cooperated with the American government in many areas such as cybersecurity, recruiting and health care. When asked whether Chinese intelligence had infiltrated the company's management, software or private data during the hearing, Mr. Bhatia said: "Absolutely not." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
While there may not be any one word to describe our collective state of limbo, one footwear category has emerged, like a gentle intervention, to help us stand astride the void. It's a water shoe moment. Water shoes, or amphibious footwear, as those in the industry refer to it, were made for moments defined by being in between. Not quite a sneaker, not simply a sandal, and unequivocally not a Croc, water shoes were designed for ease of movement between water and land, without emphasizing one over the other, all the while allowing feet to dry quickly so as to prevent athlete's foot. As far as footwear comes, it is the closest thing to a cure for uncertainty. Or as Teva, the pioneering company in amphibious footwear, used to say: "Free your feet and your mind will follow." The present day demand for footwear that offers no inhibition has spurred luxury brands and performance footwear makers to reimagine the category for strange times. Earlier this spring, before the coronavirus brought daily life to a halt, Balenciaga sent its models splashing down the runway in water shoes, an ode to climate change. For the last year, Kanye West's Yeezy brand has been teasing a "foam runner," made in part from hydroponically produced algae, which is reportedly planned for a 2020 release. In March, the leap became most visible when Hoka One One, a forward thinking maker of running shoes, introduced its Hopara line of high performance water shoes, made to "fly" over terrains as diverse as "remote forests" or "urban jungles." Built on a paunchy mound of rubberized ethylene vinyl acetate (EVA), the Hopara arrived in the mold of the company's tumescent running shoes, whose strange geometry has helped attract a fanatic fan base. The Hopara veers into less familiar territory with cutouts slashed into its sides, for easy water drainage, and a rubberized toecap that looks like a small plate of armor, to protect against riverbed rocks. Despite its bulky appearance, the shoes weigh only 12 ounces. What the Hopara makes clear is that the water shoe is moving into that final evolutionary stage of footwear: the street wear grail. In this case, a grail worn predominantly by those who will likely never reach the trails and streams for which the shoes are intended. Kaitlin Phillips, a publicist and writer who lives in New York but who was born and raised in Montana, home to an avid hiking community, prefers to walk around Manhattan in her Chaco water shoes because they are so comfortable. "I don't know how many pairs I have," she said. After Hoparas were recommended in GQ (which suggested wearing them with socks "and maybe a suit") and listed by the street wear publication Highsnobiety, the shoe sold quickly at hype driven street wear boutiques. REI, a more traditional retailer, focused on outdoor gear, had so much success selling Hoparas online that it plans to move the shoe into its stores in 2021. This kind of crossover success, for a shoe as fashion defiant as the Hopara, is further evidence that consumers aren't looking for footwear that serves a singular need. They're drawn to the water shoe as a function of the "abjection trend cycle," said Thom Bettridge, the Highsnobiety editor. In this cycle, the ugly is embraced unironically by daring consumers, and in the process, they relieve a serious amount of pent up fashion shame. "Recent histories are embarrassing," Mr. Bettridge said. "When you look at the water shoes you wore five to 10 years ago, you feel disgusted. But you can conquer what once embarrassed you. You conquer it by loving them again, and now you're seeing people starting to indulge in their out of placeness." While some may find this pop psychology less than convincing, Mr. Bettridge noted that this new wave of water shoes offer another form of mental relief: They're relatively cheap and easy to obtain, a rarity in the world of drops and overhyped footwear. The Hopara starts at 120, and Mr. West's foam runners are anticipated to sell for 75. The Hydro Moc is even more affordable. A water shoe released last fall by Merrell, the maker of high performance hiking boots, it has a list price of 40 and is something of a Croc gone wild. It is constructed from a single piece of rubberized EVA, with the exception of a rubber heel strap. It's offered in eight different tie dye colorways, styled to mimic water's hazy emulsions. The shoe's array of pocked cutouts, for air flow, could set off a trypophobic response. Some see the Hydro Moc as an enlightened response to the reign of the Croc, a moment defined by comfort at the cost of function and remorseless ugliness. "The Croc is so destroyed it's played out," said Chris Black, a partner at the Public Announcement brand consultancy, who noted the Croc's own cultural upcycle, from suburban mom standard to Balenciaga novelty. "I think people will buy the Hydro Moc because they look crazy and they're not a Croc," he said. "Plus, they're new and very cheap, making them immediately appealing to a wider swath of consumers." "This shoe was designed for the kind of hiker that saws the handle off their toothbrush to save space in their kit," said Scott Portzline, the Merrell vice president for design, who oversaw the shoe's production. Achieving the ultimate goal of versatility is the main reason the shoe has made the jump from hikers to city dwellers. "'Versatility' is a word I love to hate," Mr. Portzline said. "But it's still awesome. It means you're getting more out of less, and people are embracing that more than ever. From a fashion perspective, it's when we knew we were on to something." Since its release last fall, the Hydro Moc has become one of Merrell's best sellers. "We don't see the Hydro Moc going away in the near future, even if consumers move on to the next thing," said Lindsey Lindemulder, the company's marketing director for lifestyle. "It will remain a part of the footwear landscape, theoretically for the rest of time, because it's such a new space for consumers." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
The Zika virus usually disappears from the blood of recovering victims within two weeks, after which it can no longer be transferred by mosquitoes. In some cases, the Zika virus can linger in sperm for months. The sex of the victim was not given, but most Zika testing focuses on pregnant women; the disease is usually mild in adults, but can be fatal to a growing fetus. Officials believe the Hidalgo County resident picked up the virus locally because the person had not traveled recently to any areas with local Zika transmission and had no other risk factors, such as sex with a man who had the virus. Local officials said they have increased mosquito control efforts and have asked doctors in the area to be on the lookout for more cases. In late June, the Pan American Health Organization reported continuing local transmission of Zika in most of Mexico, including counties along the Texas border. But transmission was highest in southern Mexico, and the country's overall case numbers were down by more than 90 percent from their peak in October. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
Ms. Weiss is an Opinion staff writer and editor, and the author of " How to Fight Anti Semitism." Michelle Au works at Emory St. Joseph's Hospital in Atlanta. These days she feels like she works at Chernobyl. As an anesthesiologist, Dr. Au is responsible for one of the most dangerous parts of tending to patients with the coronavirus: intubating those who can't breathe. The procedure, which involves snaking a tube into the patient's trachea, is so dangerous because it brings the doctor close to the patient's mouth, which is constantly shedding the virus. Patients sometimes exhale or cough as the tube is inserted, which aerosolizes the virus, allowing it to hang in the air for several hours. Last week Dr. Au intubated two patients with Covid 19. "You're aware of every moment you're in there," she told me. "Ten seconds. Twenty seconds. Thirty seconds. You feel radioactive." "Have you seen the HBO show 'Chernobyl'?" she asked. "There are invisible risks that trail you." Those invisible risks a trace of the coronavirus under a fingernail or on a strand of hair don't give Dr. Au nightmares just because she is worried about her own health and that of her colleagues. It's because waiting at home she has a husband and three children. And so every day before she leaves the hospital, Dr. Au takes a shower, washes her hair and changes clothes. Then she does the same thing at home, her old clothes now contaminated because she wore them in her car. Last, she takes a diluted bleach solution and wipes down every surface she has touched: doorknobs, car handle, phone and so on. Not long ago she would have thought these precautions were crazy. "Now," she said, "it seems completely reasonable." For two weeks she has slept in the basement, while her husband, a surgeon, sleeps in their bedroom, because, "One of us has to stay healthy." Dr. Au's situation is not the exception, but the rule, among doctors and nurses treating coronavirus patients. Since the end of February, Dr. John Marshall, the chairman of emergency medicine at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, has slept in a separate room from his wife. ("The dog chose her over me.") Living at home allows Dr. Marshall to see his sons 11, 13 and 15 for the hour or two a day when he isn't sleeping or working at the hospital, where dozens of patients with Covid 19 are being treated. But others in his hospital have sent their families to safer ground or chosen to protect them by staying alone in an Airbnb. As soon as next week, Columbia University is planning to turn some of its dorms over to doctors and other health care workers so they can avoid long commutes and the risk of infecting others, according to a university spokesman. Some doctors already have the virus. Dr. Richa Bhardwaj is a gastroenterology fellow at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan; her husband is also a doctor. He tested positive for Covid 19 on Wednesday. They have a 5 month old daughter who is breastfeeding. The family has now split up. Dr. Bhardwaj's husband is at her brother's house in Yonkers; she is in her bedroom waiting for her own test results; and the baby is in the guest room with her in laws. "I haven't seen my baby since yesterday," she said. She wonders if the baby would be safer living somewhere else. "I'm so conflicted," she said. She's pumping milk so her in laws can feed the baby, but she's terrified of getting her or her in laws sick. "We know what to do when a gunshot wound comes in; we know what to do when someone comes in with sepsis or a heart attack," Dr. Marshall told me. "In this instance there isn't certainty about how to protect yourself. And so there is also uncertainty about how to protect your family." "If I could marinate myself in sanitizer I would," said Dr. Sharon Levine, the section chief for geriatric medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Early research shows that health care workers are more likely to contract the coronavirus than the average person and, when they get it, to suffer more severe symptoms. Many doctors are already rationing the protective gowns, gloves and masks that are necessary to keep them safe. They are also drawing up their wills. Dr. Au and her husband sat down over the weekend and updated the list of who should take care of their children if both of them die. "We have it four deep now," she said. "The top two choices are older and these people are in a high risk group. The third person is a doctor. So we added a fourth person who is a low risk for contracting this thing. As the backstop in case it comes to that." Dr. Jane van Dis is an ob gyn in Los Angeles and the medical director for Maven, a telemedicine platform. She is also a single mother. "I realized that if something happened to me that my life is all in my head," she told me. "So on Saturday I combed through all of my policies life insurance and disability and all of my credit cards, my mortgage, my auto loan, trying to think of all of the details of my life so that if someone were trying to take it over for me they could." Dr. Marshall said he's been encouraging his colleagues who don't yet have wills to draw them up. "We know what's coming," he told me. "There are a good number of people who are going to die here," he said, and "health care workers will be part of that number." Dr. Vicki Jackson, the chief of palliative care and geriatrics at Mass General, said she recently told her husband that she wants him to remarry if she dies. "But it's important to me that she be spunky," she told him. "No milquetoast role models for the kids." These are the kinds of conversations that many doctors have spent their careers urging patients facing serious illness to have. They are now showing us how it's done. "Most people are in complete denial that your life can change on a dime," said Dr. Jackson. "In medicine we know it, and we are more likely to talk about it." Because of the coronavirus outbreak, she added, "the veil is less opaque right now. And I don't think that's bad." In a sense, Dr. Jackson was built for this moment: Her medical practice and scholarly work are focused on helping patients and their families answer questions like: What does quality of life mean for me? What would I be willing to go through to get more time? Right now, she says, that conversation comes easily. "It is like the pandemic has allowed patients to be more courageous, more clear." Her colleague, Dr. Levine, has spent the past couple of weeks talking to older patients about whether their wishes for end of life care have changed in light of the coronavirus. One patient, she told me, didn't want her chart to just say "I don't want to be intubated." She "wanted it specifically to be stated that if someone needed a ventilator more than she did, that they should have it." Every doctor I spoke to talked about the fear of running out of ventilators and protective gear like masks. They are universally shocked by the way this pandemic has revealed the precariousness of the American health care system. "Who would imagine that in the United States of America doctors would have to go on social media begging for supplies?" Dr. Au asked. "Patients are calling in and saying: I found three N95 masks in my toolbox. Can I bring them by? They came to drop them off to me in the hospital driveway." "In first world medicine, there are certain supplies we assume are there," she said, comparing it to turning on the faucet and assuming water will come out. She said it was "very, very shocking to see how close we were to the knife's edge." This is part of the reason she said she is running for the Georgia State Senate this year. "You have trusted the system your whole life to keep you safe," she said. "You keep waiting for the system to kick in. But you realize no one's coming to save us." Dr. Jackson put it this way: "We are standing on the edge of the ocean in the dark. We're waiting for the wave to hit and we have no idea how high the wave is going to be." For now, they are working. Eighty, sometimes 100 hours a week. Days bleed into each other. They don't stop. I asked Dr. Bhardwaj if she ever thinks of quitting. "Being a mom now, it's more challenging than before, because I am responsible for the baby," she said. "But I wouldn't change the fact that I'm a doctor. I would never walk away." Dr. Au told me she was recently talking to a friend from high school, someone who doesn't work in medicine. "And he said: 'How are you feeling aside from all this?' And I said: 'There is nothing besides this.' " The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We'd like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here's our email: letters nytimes.com. Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter ( NYTopinion) and Instagram. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
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