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Just six months after being the first airline to sell seats on regularly scheduled flights to Cuba, Silver Airways, a regional carrier based in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., that specializes in smaller markets, will scrap its service to the island next month. It is the latest industry move to underscore that fewer Americans are traveling to Cuba than originally anticipated. Citing low demand and competition from major airlines, Silver said it would cease its operations in Cuba effective April 22. The move follows other reductions by American Airlines and JetBlue, which in recent weeks either switched to smaller aircraft or cut back on the number of flights. Experts say the changes in the young market illustrate not so much a lack of passengers, but the rush of airlines into new territory with an abundance of seats the market could not possibly fill. "Other airlines continue to serve this market with too many flights and oversized aircraft, which has led to an increase in capacity of approximately 300 percent between the U.S. and Cuba," said Misty Pinson, the director of communications for Silver. "It is not in the best interest of Silver and its team members to behave in the same irrational manner as other airlines." Also this month, Denver based Frontier Airlines said that it would cease its daily flight to Havana from Miami on June 4. The airline said costs in Havana significantly exceeded initial assumptions, "market conditions failed to materialize" and too much capacity had been allocated between Florida and Cuba. Regularly scheduled passenger jet service to Cuba had been cut off for more than 50 years. Americans who wanted to go there had to go through third countries or take expensive charter flights that were notorious for long delays and steep baggage fees. President Barack Obama renewed diplomatic relations with Cuba in 2015, and then brought back commercial airline travel last year. The companies that were authorized by the Department of Transportation booked routes not just to Havana, but also to less traveled cities such as Manzanillo and Holguin. With no history of commercial airline traffic to judge by, the airlines were largely guessing how many United States citizens and Cubans would line up for tickets. United Airlines has service from Newark and Houston, and Alaska Airlines flies to Havana from Los Angeles. Delta offers three daily flights to Havana from Atlanta, Miami and Kennedy International Airport in New York. Destinations like Santa Clara proved to be less popular than the airlines had hoped, and some were forced to scale back. "We started pretty big in Cuba," said Laura Masvidal, a spokeswoman for American Airlines. "We made some adjustments to adjust to the market demand." Until February, American Airlines offered 1,920 seats a day to Cuba. The number dropped last month to 1,472, a nearly 25 percent reduction. The airline cut flights to Holguin, Santa Clara and Varadero to one daily flight from two, Ms. Masvidal said. JetBlue Airways, which on Aug. 31 was the first to fly to Cuba, still offers nearly 50 weekly round trip flights between the United States and four Cuban cities, but the airline recently switched to smaller planes. Silver Airways has been flying 22 flights a week with smaller aircraft to nine Cuban destinations other than the capital, including Santa Clara, Holguin and Cayo Coco. Demand, Ms. Pinson said, was depressed by complications with online travel agency distribution and code share agreements that still have not been resolved. The airline had already tried reducing its offerings. The airline's decision comes even as passenger traffic to Cuba is actually increasing at a brisk pace. "The market is exploding," said Chad Olin, the president of Cuba Candela, which specializes in booking trips to Cuba for the millennial traveler. "There is some demand adjustment happening as well, but net outcome is still one of the fastest growing markets in global tourism history." And to hear the Cuban government media tell it, Americans interested in visiting Cuba were triggered by a message that told everyone to "travel now." The number of Americans who visited Cuba was up 125 percent in January, compared with the same month last year, the government reported, calling it a "virtual stampede." Americans, the report said, were prompted by President Trump's administration calling for a total review of the Cuba policies enacted by Mr. Obama. Under the administration of George W. Bush, Cuban Americans were limited to how often they could visit their families, so that niche also had a 38 percent increase, the Cuban media report said. But it was still not enough to fill the flights. "I think that a lot of airlines thought that there would be more demand than there is," said Paul Berry, a spokesman for Spirit airlines, which flies twice a day to Havana from Fort Lauderdale. "Loads are not very heavy." Mr. Berry said there are still glitches, including not being able to easily use American credit cards. The landing fees alone, Mr. Berry said, are sometimes more expensive than the actual airfare. American citizens are still required to report which of the 12 authorized types of travel they are undertaking, which could also be limiting the number of potential passengers, he said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
The first thing you notice about the filmmaker Gregg Araki is his hands. It is two weeks before the premiere of his first foray into television, "Now Apocalypse," and he's sitting on the walled off patio of a Starbucks in North Hollywood as unseen cars whiz behind him. While he describes the show as the "culmination of every movie I've ever done," his legacy is tattooed across his knuckles: "NOW HERE." The tattoo is a reference to "Nowhere," his seminal 1997 portrait of Gen Xers raised in the shadow of the H.I.V. AIDS crisis: having sex, getting high and getting obliterated by an unexplained reptilian menace. Films like "The Living End," "Mysterious Skin" and "Kaboom" further cemented his preoccupation with, in Araki's words, "sexually confused young people" in End Times America. "Now Apocalypse," a half hour comedy that begins Sunday on Starz, shows the years haven't changed him. Written by Araki and Karley Sciortino, a sex columnist at Vogue, the series picks up where those films left off. Avan Jogia (TV's "Caprica") plays Uly, a 20 something slacker who can't tell if doomsday is upon us or he just smoked too much pot. The show shares the trappings of Araki's earlier work alleyway hookups, three ways with Antifa protesters, alien lizards but his trademark obsessions are especially timely in this politically charged cultural climate. "Kaboom" was initially envisioned as a TV show before it became a feature film. Why did you feel it was time to take another crack at a series? I've been wanting to do a TV show like this for at least 20 years. I'm really excited about the idea of TV because you can tell this longer story, and you develop a different relationship with TV than you do with a movie. Because it comes into your house every week, these people become very much like your friends. My friends and I talk about "Sex and the City" like they're friends of ours. "Now Apocalypse" reminded me of that doomsday paranoia you were tapping into back in 2010 with "Kaboom." It felt even more relevant today. Do you feel the world has become more like a Gregg Araki movie in the past nine years? When Karley and I first wrote "Now Apocalypse" , we started during the twilight years of the Obama administration. That's why the show has that almost utopian quality of free love these kids having sex and figuring themselves out. Then 2016 happened. There's always been that darker, Lynchian aspect of the show, but that became more pronounced. The specific example I give is Episode 1, when Ulie and Gabriel are in front of the coffee shop after their date and they're kissing good night, then the fag bashers drive by. That was actually added after 2016 because it was that feeling of the world being a little more dangerous than it used to be. It's interesting that you describe the show as a utopia because of the furtiveness of male male relationships in your previous work. There are all these scenes in "Doom Generation" of the male characters looking at each other with such longing but never knowing quite how to articulate it. In "Now Apocalypse," there's so much sex. How has your own relationship with depicting sexuality onscreen evolved? The political world we live in right now is all about "Make America Repressive Again." We've made so much progress since I started making films. The world has changed so much for the better that it's really upsetting to me to go backward after we've come so far. The overriding message of the show is that people should be able to just be themselves and live their lives without fear of violence or oppression. In "Now Apocalypse," one of the characters says sexual fluidity is a "requirement" for the new generation, but your depictions of adolescence have always shown different facets of queerness. Did that feel more true to your own experience? When we were at Sundance, Karley said: "I saw 'Nowhere' when I was 18 and I had blue hair and was living in London. That movie changed my life. I'd never seen a depiction of sex, sexuality and fluidity like that before." I believe that sexuality is on a spectrum. There are people that are 99 percent straight and 99 percent gay, but there's a lot of people in between. The world and particularly young people today are much more open to that. What has it been like for you to see the movement that L.G.B.T.Q. people have made in the past couple of decades? I think it's fantastic. I do think that we live in a little bit of a bubble here in L.A., New York or San Francisco. It's not so easy for kids in Idaho or North Dakota these places that are not as accepting and open minded. That's one of the most exciting things for me about "Now Apocalypse." Because it's TV, it's not something like "Kaboom" or "Nowhere" where it's like, "Oh, I've got to figure out where to see this if there's a theater anywhere within 100 miles of here." Some closeted kid in some faraway town somewhere can watch this show, and it's really rewarding for me as a filmmaker that it could give a kid like that hope. It must feel surreal for you because preservation has been so unkind to many of your movies. For a long time, one was stuck with mostly VHS copies with terrible audio, if you could find the films at all. Now you have the resources of a multimillion dollar cable network. My first film at Sundance was "The Living End." It was this 16 mm punk rock movie, and we made it for 20,000. It was so wild, however many years later, to be back at Sundance with this show that's on Starz. My work started out in the early '90s as something that was so far out of the mainstream just this weird indie movie but now you drive down Sunset and there's a billboard for "Now Apocalypse" next to the billboard for "A Star Is Born." It's really mind boggling for me. If you had a Season 2, what would you hope to tackle? Everything. The model of the show is very much like "Girls," "Insecure" and "Looking" HBO R rated sex comedies. But the problem with those shows in 2019 is that you really run out of stories. By Season 2, everybody's expletive everybody. Everybody's cheated on everybody, and there's nowhere to go. Those shows die on the vine really quickly. This show has always had this other layer, which is this sci fi, surreal aspect of it. For me, that's the wild card that keeps the show alive. I always wanted the show to be really unpredictable. I hate shows where you feel like, "I know where this is going." That's what happens in these millennial comedies is that you already know what's going to happen. I love "Insecure" to death, but the last season, I wanted something to happen. I've seen it all already. When we started the scripts for Season 2, I told Gregory Jacobs, an executive producer , "I just don't want to repeat Season 1." We're about six scripts into Season 2. It's going to be amazing. I hope we get to do it. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
BROADWAY A History of New York City in Thirteen Miles By Fran Leadon Illustrated. 512 pp. W.W. Norton Company. 35. Broadway. Songwriters say it's where the neon lights are bright, where you can come on along and listen to its lullaby, where you can blame it all on its nights and where, of course, you must not forget to give your regards. Countless tunes have been written about this storied New York boulevard, its megawatt allure and its broken dreams. Why should lyricists be different from the rest of us? Say "Broadway" and most people think of the dozen or so blocks that form the spine of the theater district and go far to define New York. But Broadway is a good deal more than that dazzling patch of neon and LED. It is a long, winding ribbon extending from Lower Manhattan through the Bronx and into the Westchester suburbs north of the city. Some blocks are graceful, many others far from it. Rarely, however, are they dull. In "Broadway," his meticulously researched book, Fran Leadon, an architect steeped in New York's heritage, takes us on an invigorating historical stroll along the 13 miles that are the thoroughfare's Manhattan portion. Leadon offers textured snapshots of life as it once was, and sometimes still is, dividing his walk into 13 sections, one for each mile, from Bowling Green near the lower tip of the island to Marble Hill in what looks like the Bronx on a map but is administratively part of Manhattan. Broadway developed initially along a straight north south route, but in the early 19th century it began to angle in what is now Greenwich Village, slicing across Manhattan's street grid to circumnavigate various estates. As it stretched ever northward, it overlapped in sections with the major routes of Bloomingdale Road and The Boulevard. Eventually, it absorbed them both. (Longtime residents of the Upper West Side may recall a barbecue place on the southeast corner of Broadway and 88th Street called The Boulevard, which was succeeded by a fancier establishment called Bloomingdale Road. The restaurants were like their namesakes. Neither of them made it in the long run.) Leadon's tale is a whirl of characters: architects and landlords, capitalists and unionists, reformers and traditionalists, visionaries and charlatans. It is a whirl, too, of events like ticker tape parades, civic battles, financial booms and inevitable busts. Enlivening the stories are cameo appearances by the rich and famous, like the showmen David Belasco and George M. Cohan, the ever burdened Edgar Allan Poe, the radical Emma Goldman and the rivalrous cousins of enormous wealth William Waldorf Astor and John Jacob Astor 4th. And in this age when we've all been (Lin Manuel) Mirandized, how can one leave out Alexander Hamilton? Leadon makes sure to include him. Hamilton's farmhouse, the Grange, figures prominently in the Mile 10 section, exploring a part of town that modern real estate developers have christened Hamilton Heights. There is plenty here that rings familiar to 21st century ears. "As the city expanded, and as the divide between rich and poor grew ever wider, alarming numbers of indigent men and women gathered each day on Broadway," Leadon writes. He's talking about the 1840s. Ten years later, New York had become "a city of strangers." By the 1890s, "it was noisy." The homeless, referred to as "the tramp class" in a blunter era, vexed the middle class just as they do now. After economic collapse in the Panic of 1893, The New York Tribune "complained that it had become impossible to relax on a park bench without a 'greasy, rum soaked tramp leaning against your shoulder.'" A robust act of civil disobedience in 1901 was the sort that easily could take place today. Chairs had been placed in Madison Square Park, ruled by a concessionaire who charged 5 cents to sit, equivalent to about 1.30 now. Attendants overturned the chair of anyone who dared take a seat without forking over a nickel. Many New Yorkers deemed the fee unfair, and in the collar wilting summer of 1901, they had had enough. They ignited the "Merry Chair War," refusing to pay and tossing chairs into the street. Soon enough, the concessionaire caved, and the nickel chair became history. Thousands flocked to the park in celebration. Today, they might well go by OccupyMadisonSquare. This is a book best read in several sittings; there is a lot of detail to absorb. At times, it can be nearly numbing. Is it really necessary to recite practically the entire inventory of the vast Arnold Constable department store, located in 1869 at Broadway and 19th Street? But Leadon is graced with a wry wit. Flashes of it are sprinkled throughout, as when he describes Union Square's ascendance as a gathering spot for all manner of causes. At the onset of the Civil War, an immense crowd formed there. New York Sun journalists reported not seeing a single drunk or hearing a profane word. "No doubt," Leadon says dryly, "they weren't looking very hard." For all the diversity of its 13 miles, from financial citadels far downtown to bodegas way uptown, Broadway will always mean the theater to many people the Great White Way. By the dawn of the 20th century "Broadway had become New York's chief cultural export," Leadon writes. To an extent, it still is. Nothing, though, can compare with the creative flow in the years before the Great Depression. In 1927 alone, 264 new Broadway shows opened. Sustaining that kind of energy would have been nigh impossible. As Leadon says, "It is the nature of things in New York that very little lasts." True enough, and "Broadway" the book shows that Broadway the street is no exception. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
"The eraser is a godsend," said Jon Burgerman, pointing an iPhone in the direction of a compact, raggedy haired dog outside a Blue Bottle Coffee shop in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn. He recorded a four second video of the canine sniffing the sidewalk and then quickly used his finger to sketch a hot dog with wide eyes, a gaping mouth and hands and feet, using the eraser feature to make the lines crisper. The press of a button and the scene went up on Instagram, where Mr. Burgerman, a self deprecating British artist with a penchant for bright colors and googly eyes, has nearly 64,000 followers. Mr. Burgerman's primary technique is to overlay doodles onto scenes of everyday life in New York, adding a stylized bird into the lap of a distracted subway rider, say, or sketching a quick pair of faces onto a bunch of bananas hanging off a vendor's cart. "Once your eyes open to this kind of thing, you see it everywhere," he said. The stories have become so popular that the Tate Modern featured them in an exhibition last year. "There is a pleasure in using unsophisticated equipment," said Mr. Burgerman, 37. But he is hardly an online naif. In an attention getting 2015 series called "Jon's Famous Friends," he juxtaposed clipped images of himself and celebrities side by side. In one, you see Mr. Burgerman on his couch, smiling at Taylor Swift, who is seated on a bench and gazing in his direction. In another, he pats the rippled torso of a young, shirtless and pantless Arnold Schwarzenegger. In a third, he applies lipstick to an open mouthed Kim Kardashian West. "I wanted to show that if you put one image next to another, you can alter the reading," he said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
The Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary owe their first in the nation status partly to circumstance. Decades ago, Iowa's caucus was the initial step in a long, complex process that the state used to award delegates, which meant that the voting had to happen early in the year. New Hampshire was mostly trying to save money by scheduling its primary on the same day as many annual town meetings, which were held before the spring mud season. But circumstance has not kept Iowa and New Hampshire at the front of the line. An aggressive protection of their own self interest has. As primaries and caucuses became a bigger part of national politics in the 1970s, officials in Iowa and New Hampshire have fought hard to stay first. "We weren't stupid," Cliff Larsen, a former chairman of the Iowa Democratic Party, once said. New Hampshire passed a law saying its primary always must be the first, and Iowa has been similarly protective. "Iowa caucuses are first in the nation mainly because the state insists on remaining first," Kathie Obradovich, a prominent Iowa journalist, has said. It's all worked out very nicely for the two states. A typical voter in Iowa or New Hampshire has up to 20 times more influence than somebody in later voting states, one study found. Sometimes, the two states have turned a parochial issue (ethanol) into a national priority. Local hotels, restaurants, pollsters and television and radio stations have received millions of dollars in extra business. I know the usual excuse for Iowa's and New Hampshire's special status: That the good people there take extra care in selecting candidates. And many Iowans and New Hampshirites are good people who take their civic duty seriously. Mark Penn and Andrew Stein write that "only a broader course correction to the center will give Democrats a fighting chance in 2022" and beyond. Tory Gavito and Adam Jentleson write that the Virgina loss should "shock Democrats into confronting the powerful role that racially coded attacks play in American politics." Ezra Klein speaks to David Shor, who discusses his fear that Democrats face electoral catastrophe unless they shift their messaging. Ross Douthat writes that the outcome of the Virginia gubernatorial race shows Democrats need a "new way to talk about progressive ideology and education." But step back and think about how paternalistic and condescending that explanation is. The residents of New Jersey, New Mexico, Indiana, Louisiana and other late voting states somehow aren't sufficiently civic minded or intelligent to choose their own presidential candidates? They always need the same two states to winnow the field? Right now, I'm as obsessed as anyone with the early state polls. Yet I also want to use this moment to point out how bizarre the current system is and to make a plea: The 2020 cycle should be the last time that Iowa and New Hampshire benefit at the country's expense. The strongest part of the case for change, of course, is the racial aspect of the current calendar. Iowa and New Hampshire are among the country's whitest states. About 6 percent of their combined population is black or Asian American. Almost 87 percent is non Hispanic white, compared with 60 percent for the country as a whole. Demographically, Iowa and New Hampshire look roughly like the America of 1870. Julian Castro, the former presidential candidate, was right when he called out the Democratic Party's hypocritical support for the status quo. "Iowa and New Hampshire are wonderful states with wonderful people," Castro said. But Democrats can't "complain about Republicans suppressing the votes of people of color, and then begin our nominating contest in two states that hardly have people of color." The typical defense from Iowa officials is that their state can be trusted because it once voted for a black man (Barack Obama) which is a pretty stark bit of paternalism. In truth, the whiteness of Iowa and New Hampshire matters. Consider that Cory Booker and Kamala Harris were doing as well as Amy Klobuchar in early polls of more diverse states; they led Pete Buttigieg in some polls. But Booker and Harris are finished, in no small part because of their struggles in Iowa and New Hampshire. Klobuchar and Buttigieg still might break out. Or consider that a candidate with strong white support (like Bernie Sanders) could win both Iowa and New Hampshire this year. That result would create a media narrative about Joe Biden's campaign being badly wounded, even though Biden leads among two large groups of Democratic voters: African Americans and Latinos. Those voters, however, are told to wait their turn. All of this skews the campaign. And it's another form of privilege for groups that already benefit from the Senate and Electoral College white voters, older voters and voters outside of major metropolitan areas. It would not be hard to create a fairer system, one that aspired to treat all Americans equally. It could even retain the best aspect of Iowa and New Hampshire: the emphasis on in person politics that a small state demands. One or two smaller states could always go first, with the specific states rotating each cycle. (Many smaller states like Delaware, Hawaii, Mississippi, New Mexico and Rhode Island are diverse.) They could immediately be followed by a couple of larger states that are home to major cities. Obviously, politicians in Iowa and New Hampshire will fight any such change, as they always have. They'll use lofty language, about how solemnly they take their responsibilities and how the current system allows the voices of ordinary citizens to be heard. Strip away the rhetoric, though, and their argument comes down to this: We're better than the rest of you, and we deserve special treatment forever. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
Say you are prescribed medication for depression, anxiety or even just to sleep. Would you want to take it if you knew that the drug had only been tested on men and male animals? Rebecca Shansky, a neuroscientist at Northeastern University in Boston, thinks you might not. When she tells nonscientific audiences that researchers "for the most part don't study female animals, people are blown away," she said. She added: "It seems like such an obvious thing to a normal person. But when you come up in the academic and science world, it's like, 'Oh no, females are so complicated, so we just don't study them.'" In 2016, the National Institutes of Health and its Canadian counterpart mandated that all preclinical research they fund must include female subjects. Now, Dr. Shansky and other scientists wonder if that requirement will do enough to improve how research is conducted. In an essay published Thursday in Science, Dr. Shansky questions whether simply adding female organisms to experiments or looking for sex differences misses the point. She warns that this is a public health problem with implications beyond neuroscience and says scientists should design experiments better suited to both biological sexes. If scientists don't stop looking through a male lens, outdated gender stereotypes will continue to foster dangerous assumptions about the brain and behavior, resulting in clinical studies and eventual treatments that don't work equally for all people on the gender spectrum. Basic research is the foundation for clinical studies and practice, and that often begins with animals, which offer controlled settings for research of human diseases. "Because we start there , that does end up affecting human studies and the drugs that go to market, and the way they're marketed to men and women, and how we know if they work differently in men and women," said Tory Eisenlohr Moul, a researcher and clinician who works with conditions related to hormones in women. "We live in a world where the assumption is that males are the standard, the reference population, and females are the ones that are odd." Women make up about half of the population, but female animals make up a far smaller percentage of biomedical research subjects. In neuroscience studies, males outnumbered females nearly six to one. Dr. Shansky and others say this is a public health issue because women are more vulnerable to mood or anxiety disorders like major depression or post traumatic stress than men. At the same time, men are more vulnerable to autism and attention deficit disorder. Men and women may express symptoms of these conditions differently. And of course some conditions, like postpartum depression and premenstrual dysphoric disorder, are only found in women. By only looking at male animals in initial research, "we may be missing big pieces of the puzzle," said Liisa Hantsoo, who studies stress, PMS and PMDD at the University of Pennsylvania's medical school. The reasons women and female animals are often omitted from research are the same: ovarian hormones. In the Victorian era, the idea that women were inferior to men was replaced by the notion that women were hysterical, disorganized, emotional the hormone driven counterpoints to rational, stable men. By studying males only, mostly male scientists believed they could more easily identify the most basic ways the brain worked without the "messiness" of fluctuating female hormones. This stereotype is so pervasive that some biomedical researchers still don't question why they aren't looking at female rats or mice. It also set up men as the norm. "We live in a world where the assumption is that males are the standard, the reference population, and females are the ones that are odd," said Daniela Pollak, a neurobiologist who wrote an essay on the problem earlier this year. In recent years, analyses of hundreds of neuroscience studies offered clear evidence disproving the idea that males are less hormonal. In some cases, male rodents living in groups were messier because their testosterone (which essentially works on the brain like estrogen) fluctuates, depending on dominance hierarchies in groups. That males were hormonal, emotional and messy still didn't get them kicked out of studies. Even if scientists had shown that females were more complex subjects, "it would not suffice as an excuse," said Dr. Pollak. "Scientists are not meant to give up on a problem just because it starts becoming complicated." Encouraged by the N.I.H. and Canadian mandates, scientists are reconsidering the effects of sex in their research. But this may not be enough to improve the outcomes if it primarily results in researchers just using more female subjects without understanding all the ways stereotypes influence animal studies. Dr. Shansky offered an example of how females were expected to behave in tasks designed to model post traumatic stress in male rodents. Instead of freezing as males did, the females darted around during experimental tests. Without recognizing this behavior as different, rather than wrong, one might say females failed the task. "We've gone from excluding women and female animals to this ham handed implementation of sex as biological variable," said Ann Fink, a feminist neuroscientist and gender scholar at Lehigh University. She emphasized that sex is biological and gender is a social construct , and that using gender stereotypes to study basic biological concepts first contributed to omitting female subjects from research. But drawing conclusions about gender from animal subjects that don't have this social construct potentially reaffirms damaging stereotypes or encourages dangerous practices. In 2013, for example, the Food and Drug Administration issued an advisory recommending women take half the dose of the sleeping pill Ambien than men, because women were reporting more severe side effects. But body weight, not sex, was the cause of the incorrect dosing. Telling doctors the problem was a sex difference could have resulted in overweight women being underdosed, and underweight men being overdosed. Like the Science Times page on Facebook. Sign up for the Science Times newsletter. Dr. Fink pointed out that many researchers are now looking for sex differences because they think that's what they have to do to adhere to the mandate, but that wasn't its intention. "The socially accepted way to go is to give into the fact that you must consider female subjects," said Dr. Pollak. "That's good for science studies, but if you also want to tackle the mind set for the future, we need to go deeper." Attitudes are changing about studying both sexes. Within five years, we'll know if the mandate worked as intended. And within a couple decades, we'll see if it leads to more personalized treatments . Until then, Dr. Shansky said, research can be improved by studying the sexes in parallel or in the same cohort, instead of experimenting on one sex after the other and making the first set of results the standard. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
Hundreds of playbills mostly from 19th century New York theater performances will be restored and digitized, thanks to a grant by the National Endowment for the Humanities to the Museum of the City of New York. The museum's collection consists of about 700 of these broadsides, many of which are extremely fragile; all of them will be digitized, while half of them will go through a conservation process. The N.E.H. has given 143,804 for this project. "A lot of the pieces have bits barely hanging on by a thread," Morgen Stevens Garmon, the project's director and an associate curator of the museum's theater collection, said in an interview. These one sheet playbills trace the history of theater in New York. They were originally posted around Manhattan to advertise Shakespeare plays, minstrel shows, new American plays and early musicals. One showcases a performance of "The Black Crook," which opened in 1866 and is often credited as the first musical. The earliest broadside in the collection advertises the Old American Company's performance of "The Merchant of Venice" in 1785; tickets were four shillings for a gallery seat. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
Sinclair Broadcast Group, which has faced criticism for forcing its nearly 200 local television stations to air right leaning "must run" segments, has distributed a new two minute commentary defending the use of tear gas on migrants at the border. In the segment, Boris Epshteyn, the broadcaster's chief political analyst and a former Trump White House official, argued that American authorities "had to use tear gas" on hundreds of migrants at a border crossing near San Diego on Sunday to guard against an "attempted invasion" of the United States. "The fact of the matter is that this is an attempted invasion of our country," Mr. Epshteyn said, echoing language that President Trump has used repeatedly to describe the caravan of Central American migrants, many of whom are seeking asylum from countries plagued by violence. The right to apply for asylum is protected by federal law. Mr. Epshteyn argued in the segment that the tear gas was necessary to prevent the migrants from entering the country. As of Wednesday morning, the segment had aired on at least two dozen Sinclair stations from Maine to Texas to Washington, according to a review by The New York Times. Media Matters for America, a progressive watchdog organization, and others reported that the commentary was among the "must run" segments produced by Sinclair, the largest operator of local TV stations in the country. At the time, Scott Livingston, the company's vice president for news, defended against the suggestion of right leaning bias. "We work very hard to be objective and fair and be in the middle," he said. "I think maybe some other news organizations may be to the left of center, and we work very hard to be in the center." This year, Timothy Burke, when he was the video director at Deadspin, stitched together a widely shared video of dozens of local news anchors at Sinclair stations reciting the same script, voicing concern over "fake stories" and "the troubling trend of irresponsible, one sided news stories plaguing our country." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
This summer, 100 city bus shelters will be transformed into platforms for an exhibition of work by a New York based photographer, Elle Perez. Perez's "from sun to sun," which opens on Aug. 13, is the first exhibition in a collaboration between the nonprofit Public Art Fund and the advertising firm JCDecaux, which controls the ad space for about 3,400 bus shelters in New York City. The Public Art Fund will use this unconventional canvas to present two solo photography exhibitions annually; each exhibition will run for 14 weeks on 100 bus shelters. Mx. Perez, 29, has been photographing New York, and especially the Bronx, for years. Past work by Mx. Perez, who uses the gender neutral pronouns "they" and "them," has explored the punk community in the Bronx, underground night life culture, gender identity and Latinx communities. (Latinx is a gender neutral alternative to Latino or Latina.) For "from sun to sun," Mx. Perez will shoot new work all over the city mostly focused on portraiture, but also on revisiting locations that have personal significance. "I grew up all over the city," Mx. Perez said, recalling long rides on the No. 6 train from Lower Manhattan to the Bronx, "certain spots in Harlem" and the Puerto Rican neighborhood in Bushwick where they now live. "I've been hanging out in bus stops for research," they said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
After performing in seven works by seven choreographers on Friday night, the dancer Gesel Mason said with a laugh, "I can't keep doing this." Fifteen years ago, Ms. Mason embarked on an ambitious and necessary project that has continued evolving and expanding, "No Boundaries: Dancing the Visions of Contemporary Black Choreographers." Over the weekend, she presented it live at the Billie Holiday Theater in Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, for what she said would be the last time. The desire to move on is understandable. "No Boundaries," a living archive of dances mostly solos by trailblazers including Rennie Harris, Donald McKayle and Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, is a marathon of an evening for a dancer. Ms. Mason, who lives in Boulder, Colo., started the project in part to highlight the diverse styles of African American choreographers, to challenge the notion of a monolithic genre called "black dance." The stamina it demands and that Ms. Mason elegantly summons isn't just about powering through so many pieces but about fully inhabiting each landscape, from the psychedelic fury of Ms. Zollar's "Bent" (2004) to the supple intricacies of Kyle Abraham's brand new "Don't Explain." Yet "No Boundaries," which also includes candid video interviews with artists and academics, isn't over; in some ways it's just getting started. As Ms. Mason explained after the show (a presentation of 651 Arts), she plans to give it a home online as a digital forum with all of the project's components, a collection that can continue to grow. Scholars of dance history and American history should take note. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
AUSTRALIA FESTIVAL at the Joyce Theater (through May 12). This event continues with performances by Australian Dance Theater (Friday to Monday) and the Australian Ballet (May 9 to 12). For its program, Australian Dance Theater explores the natural world in "The Beginning of Nature," which is set to a score sung in Kaurna, the first language of the Indigenous peoples of the Adelaide Plains of South Australia. The Australian Ballet wraps up the festival with a trio of dances: Alice Topp's "Aurum," Stephen Baynes's "Unspoken Dialoguesfollows" and a yet to be titled premiere by Tim Harbour. 212 242 0800, joyce.org COLUMBIA BALLET COLLABORATIVE'S SPRING 2019 PERFORMANCES at Miller Theater (May 4, 8 p.m.; May 5, 3 p.m.). Dances by the choreographers Tom Gold, Morgan McEwen, Durante Verzola, Nadia Vostrikov and Andrea Ward will grace the stage of this student run group, which was formed in 2007 by five professional ballet dancers enrolled at Columbia University. A sixth premiere, by the Columbia Ph.D. student James Shee a former dancer with National Ballet of Canada is also be part of the mix; it has been created under the guidance of the former American Ballet Theater soloist and Columbia Ballet choreographer Craig Salstein. 212 854 7799, columbiaballetcollaborative.com CONVERSATIONS WITH MERCE at N.Y.U. Skirball Center for the Performing Arts (May 3 4, 7:30 p.m.). The Merce Cunningham Centennial festivities continue with three new works celebrating the choreographer's legacy. This presentation, curated by Rashaun Mitchell, a former company member and a trustee with the Merce Cunningham Trust, explores the theoretical, practical and experiential approaches to Cunningham's work. Three respected choreographers take part: Moriah Evans, Mina Nishimura and Netta Yerushalmy. In their responses to his lineage, they focus on conceptual, formal and personal connections with the choreographer. In addition to the commissioned works, Cunningham solos will be performed by Shayla Vie Jenkins and Keith Sabado. 212 998 4941, nyuskirball.org | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
Daisuke Hirose, a Tepco spokesman, inside the Unit 5 reactor at the Fukushima nuclear power plant. Tepco used underwater robots that finally found the melted uranium fuel inside Unit 3, another reactor that was destroyed.Credit...Ko Sasaki for The New York Times Daisuke Hirose, a Tepco spokesman, inside the Unit 5 reactor at the Fukushima nuclear power plant. Tepco used underwater robots that finally found the melted uranium fuel inside Unit 3, another reactor that was destroyed. FUKUSHIMA DAIICHI NUCLEAR POWER PLANT, Japan Four engineers hunched before a bank of monitors, one holding what looked like a game controller. They had spent a month training for what they were about to do: pilot a small robot into the contaminated heart of the ruined Fukushima nuclear plant. Earlier robots had failed, getting caught on debris or suffering circuit malfunctions from excess radiation. But the newer version, called the Mini Manbo, or "little sunfish," was made of radiation hardened materials with a sensor to help it avoid dangerous hot spots in the plant's flooded reactor buildings. The size of a shoe box, the Manbo used tiny propellers to hover and glide through water in a manner similar to an aerial drone. The discovery in July at Unit 3, and similar successes this year in locating the fuel of the plant's other two ruined reactors, mark what Japanese officials hope will prove to be a turning point in the worst atomic disaster since Chernobyl. The fate of the fuel had been one of the most enduring mysteries of the catastrophe, which occurred on March 11, 2011, when an earthquake and 50 foot tsunami knocked out vital cooling systems here at the plant. Left to overheat, three of the six reactors melted down. Their uranium fuel rods liquefied like candle wax, dripping to the bottom of the reactor vessels in a molten mass hot enough to burn through the steel walls and even penetrate the concrete floors below. No one knew for sure exactly how far those molten fuel cores had traveled before desperate plant workers later celebrated as the "Fukushima Fifty" were able to cool them again by pumping water into the reactor buildings. With radiation levels so high, the fate of the fuel remained unknown. As officials became more confident about managing the disaster, they began a search for the missing fuel. Scientists and engineers built radiation resistant robots like the Manbo and a device like a huge X ray machine that uses exotic space particles called muons to see the reactors' innards. Now that engineers say they have found the fuel, officials of the government and the utility that runs the plant hope to sway public opinion. Six and a half years after the accident spewed radiation over northern Japan, and at one point seemed to endanger Tokyo, the officials hope to persuade a skeptical world that the plant has moved out of post disaster crisis mode and into something much less threatening: cleanup. "Until now, we didn't know exactly where the fuel was, or what it looked like," said Takahiro Kimoto, a general manager in the nuclear power division of the plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co., or Tepco. "Now that we have seen it, we can make plans to retrieve it." Tepco is keen to portray the plant as one big industrial cleanup site. About 7,000 people work here, building new water storage tanks, moving radioactive debris to a new disposal site, and erecting enormous scaffoldings over reactor buildings torn apart by the huge hydrogen explosions that occurred during the accident. Access to the plant is easier than it was just a year ago, when visitors still had to change into special protective clothing. These days, workers and visitors can move about all but the most dangerous areas in street clothes. A Tepco guide explained this was because the central plant grounds had been deforested and paved over, sealing in contaminated soil. During a recent visit, the mood within the plant was noticeably more relaxed, though movements were still tightly controlled and everyone was required to wear radiation measuring badges. Inside a "resting building," workers ate in a large cafeteria and bought snacks in a convenience store. At the plant's entrance, a sign warned: "Games like Pokemon GO are forbidden within the facility." "We have finished the debris cleanup and gotten the plant under control," said the guide, Daisuke Hirose, a spokesman for Tepco's subsidiary in charge of decommissioning the plant. "Now, we are finally preparing for decommissioning." In September, the prime minister's office set a target date of 2021 the 10th anniversary of the disaster for the next significant stage, when workers begin extracting the melted fuel from at least one of the three destroyed reactors, though they have yet to choose which one. The government admits that cleaning up the plant will take at least another three to four decades and tens of billions of dollars. A 100 million research center has been built nearby to help scientists and engineers develop a new generation of robots to enter the reactor buildings and scoop up the melted fuel. At Chernobyl, the Soviets simply entombed the charred reactor in concrete after the deadly 1986 accident. But Japan has pledged to dismantle the Fukushima plant and decontaminate the surrounding countryside, which was home to about 160,000 people who were evacuated after accident. Many of them have been allowed to return as the rural towns around the plant have been decontaminated. But without at least starting a cleanup of the plant itself, officials admit they will find it difficult to convince the public that the accident is truly over. They also hope that beginning the cleanup will help them win the public's consent to restart Japan's undamaged nuclear plants, most of which remain shut down since the disaster. Tepco and the government are treading cautiously to avoid further mishaps that could raise doubts that the plant is under control. "They are being very methodical too slow, some would say in making a careful effort to avoid any missteps or nasty surprises," said David Lochbaum, director of the nuclear safety project at the Union of Concerned Scientists, who was a co author of a book on the disaster. "They want to regain trust. They have learned that trust can be lost much quicker than it can be recovered." To examine the other two reactors, engineers built a "snake" robot that could thread its way through wreckage, and the imaging device using muons, which can pass through most matter. The muon device has produced crude, ghostly images of the reactors' interiors. Extracting the melted fuel will present its own set of technical challenges, and risks. Engineers are developing the new radiation resistant robots at the Naraha Remote Technology Development Center. It includes a hangar sized building to hold full scale mock ups of the plant and a virtual reality room that simulates the interiors of the reactor buildings, including locations of known debris. "I've been a robotic engineer for 30 years, and we've never faced anything as hard as this," said Shinji Kawatsuma, director of research and development at the center. "This is a divine mission for Japan's robot engineers." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
To get onto his Facebook account, the police used Tony Chung's body. When officers swarmed him at a Hong Kong shopping mall last month, they pulled him into a stairwell and pinned his head in front of his phone an attempt to trigger the facial recognition system. Later, at his home, officers forced his finger onto a separate phone. Then they demanded passwords. "They said, 'Do you know with the national security law, we have all the rights to unlock your phones and get your passwords?'" Mr. Chung recalled. Emboldened by that new law, Hong Kong security forces are turning to harsher tactics as they close a digital dragnet on activists, pro democracy politicians and media leaders. Their approaches which in the past month have included installing a camera outside the home of a prominent politician and breaking into the Facebook account of another bear marked similarities to those long used by the fearsome domestic security forces in mainland China. Dogged by the global reach of the law, even people from Hong Kong living far away from the city worry. One Facebook discussion group of Hong Kongers living in Australia closed off public access after a user claimed to have reported discussions to the Hong Kong authorities for potentially violating the law. Major internet companies like Facebook and Twitter have temporarily cut off data sharing with the local police. Others have gone further, devising more permanent solutions. In July, Yahoo changed its terms of service so that users in Hong Kong are protected under American law, not local rules. It also cut access for employees in Hong Kong to user data to protect them from the law, according to two people familiar with the matter. A Google spokeswoman said in a statement that the company had not produced data for the Hong Kong authorities since the national security law was enacted, and that the authorities could seek information for criminal investigations through U.S. diplomatic channels. That means the company is effectively treating data requests in the city the way it does those from mainland China. Long known as a financial hub, Hong Kong is now emerging as a land of internet fault lines, a place where China's harsh techno authoritarian rule collides with the open internet in a society and economy governed by rules that protect digital rights. "With China's rising influence and power, it's not safe for technology companies to put their servers in China or Hong Kong now," said a prominent activist, Joshua Wong. "It's important for them to help support Hong Kong's citizens and society with digital security." The first coordinated sting under the new security law made Mr. Chung an example of an offense new to Hong Kong but common in mainland China: an internet crime. The police accused him of writing a post calling for Hong Kong independence on the Facebook page of a newly formed political party and demanded he delete it. He denied writing it. Enforcing internet laws meant gathering digital evidence, and the police pushed hard to gain access to Mr. Chung's accounts. Though less than fully prepared for the arrest, Mr. Chung said, he was able to foil officers at each turn. In the stairwell when the police forced his head in front of his phone, he closed his eyes and scrunched his face, rendering useless his iPhone's facial recognition software. He had long since disabled the fingerprint unlock on his other phone. For passwords, he told the police that he had forgotten them. 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. Even so, a few hours after he was detained, his friends noticed that his Facebook account was active, appearing as if he were online and using it. Mr. Chung believes that the security forces broke in, though he said he wasn't sure how. When he was released and tried to sign back in, Facebook had frozen his account over a suspicious login. There are also concerns that the Hong Kong police are adopting invasive surveillance techniques commonly used by China's secret police force. Agnes Chow, a prominent activist and politician, is no stranger to police attention. Weeks before she was arrested this month, she released a YouTube video punctuated with animations designed to teach Hong Kongers the basics of cybersecurity. She dispensed tips like how to enable two factor authentication and how to maintain a "public toilet phone" where users can download apps they don't trust like, she pointed out, those from mainland China. Yet she was surprised when strange men appeared near her house, apparently keeping watch in shifts and openly filming her with their smartphones. "I'm a bit scared," she wrote in a Facebook post a day before her arrest that included a photo of the men. A statement released after her arrest said an infrared surveillance camera had also appeared next to her doorstep in the weeks ahead of her arrest and was removed after she was pulled in by the police. In China, putting a camera outside the door of dissidents is a common trick of the secret police. If the surveillance caught Ms. Chow off guard, her response also showed how Hong Kong activists are successfully adapting to aggressive police tactics. Shortly after she was arrested, her personal Facebook account was suspended. An assistant posted on her public page to explain that the account, with the help of Facebook, had been disabled to protect it. The company allows people to appoint other legal administrators to an account. That person can then coordinate with Facebook to shut the account to protect the data in the event of an arrest. Other police tactics have been more subtle, and more challenging to address. Hours after the media mogul Jimmy Lai was arrested, an employee at his company, Next Digital, received a message from someone posing as a part of tech support. Using the names of his employees, the message asked for login details to Mr. Lai's Twitter account in order to set up a new iPhone for Mr. Lai. Schooled from years of cyberattacks, the recipient of the message flagged it as suspicious. Mark Simon, an executive at Next Digital, said the company believed it was an attempt by the Hong Kong police to get the login information for Mr. Lai's account. The tactic has added to a new level of paranoia that has made day to day operations more difficult, according to Mr. Simon. "The problem is this slows everything down, because now everyone is double checking: 'Did you send this message? Did you send that?' It never stops; it just never, ever stops," he said. Calling new police tactics "more aggressive," Mr. Simon said it had become difficult for Mr. Lai to hold on to a phone because of the spate of arrests. "I think they have four of his phones now," he said. "They take his phone every damn time. Teenage rock stars throwing fits don't go through as many phones as Jimmy does, thanks to the Hong Kong police." Mr. Simon added that people in Hong Kong were quickly adapting to the new information security environment. With the police now able to tap phones without a warrant, many citizens have switched entirely to encrypted chat apps. Many, he said, go further, setting the apps to auto delete messages and even eschewing taking paper notes in meetings. "I just don't want to come off this is the end of the world; it's not. This is just a nuisance that we have to live with every day," Mr. Simon said. "In China this is normal stuff. In Hong Kong they're learning how to operate." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
In the video for Breland's breakout single, "My Truck," the twangy sung intro is mouthed by a stoic Marlboro Man type. But then comes Breland, wiry and enthusiastic, shoving him out of the frame to take over the singing, providing an object lesson in genre and racial expectations. "My Truck," one of the year's most beguiling singles, is a fluent amalgam of country verbiage and vocal texture with hip hop bluster and cadence. "Wood grain dash with the matte black finish," Breland sing raps, "and it match my shawty with the big ol' butt." Breland made the song last September, in between writing R B demos, as both an exercise and an inspired bit of strategy. "I've had a Billboard Pro membership for years," he said recently in a FaceTime interview from his Atlanta home, wearing a shirt that read GODFIDENCE. "I was aware of the fact that the biggest record of all time is a country trap song by an unknown artist from Atlanta and now no one else is putting out songs that sound like that. Wide open. Why on earth would I not give it a shot?" "My Truck" his first attempt manages to be playful without being kitsch, earnestly embracing the truck culture of the South while sprinkling in some frisky lyrics and arched eyebrow meta commentary about being a black performer in a traditionally white space: "Scuff these Jordans/You can say you hate me." It's a little bit of a dare from someone gleefully divebombing into rural aesthetics. "I'm the fourth wall breaker," Breland said. "It is impossible for me to exist in this space and not acknowledge the fact that it's a little weird." Breland a 24 year old genre fluid pop minded talent with a lithe singing voice and an instinctual ability to mimic Young Thug esque flow patterns savvily jumped into that vacuum. On Friday he'll release his self titled debut EP (on Bad Realm/Atlantic), full of breezy, intuitive songs that make light work of the borders between country, hip hop, R B and pop, including country themed trap ("Horseride"), country textured R B ("Wifi") and hip hop accented pop country ("In the Woulds," with the country singers Chase Rice and Lauren Alaina). It's a huge swing, and also utterly logical. Breland's approach is a successor to both the country rap tunes that dominated the South in the 1990s and 2000s and also the hip hop inflected country that's been a persistent presence in Nashville in the 2010s, best espoused by Sam Hunt (and less impressively by umpteen of his peers). Yet Breland, born Daniel Breland, wasn't raised in either of those traditions he grew up in a New Jersey household of gospel singers, and sang and arranged a cappella with a group called the Phantoms when he was in college at Georgetown. He started making his earliest inroads as a professional songwriter then, too, and during his sophomore year, he found himself working in Far Rockaway, at the home of the French Montana affiliate Chinx (formerly Chinx Drugz). One night, Breland recalled, "He left and said, 'I'm going to go do this show.'" He never came back: Chinx had been murdered. "That let me know that hip hop probably wasn't going to be for me," Breland said. "I don't think that I'm really cut out to be in the trenches like that." After graduation, Breland moved to Atlanta and began writing predominantly R B songs, around 2,000 in three years, he estimates, with only flickers of success. But he was diligent, and also impressive enough of a singer that when he posted Chris Brown covers, Brown would sometimes repost them. He got used to sharing snippets of new work on his Instagram story, which is where he first posted the "My Truck" hook, and received encouragement to release it on his own. "'My Truck' can be a very polarizing song," Breland said. "The question for me to answer was, 'Do I believe that I could pull this song off?' And then the answer that I had was: 'Why not, right? Why not me?'" Since then, he's doubled down on the sound. He worked with the Nashville based Sam Sumser and Sean Small, who've written and produced for Lizzo and Usher, and also Mitchell Tenpenny and Walker Hayes. "You don't know if it's a joke, playing off the current craze, the country trap thing; we went into it hoping it was more sincere than just a one song thing," said Sumser, who along with Small worked on two songs on the EP, "Hot Sauce" and "In the Woulds." "This kid is way more than a quick meme." (Charlie Handsome, who has produced for Post Malone, Kanye West and Khalid, produced on two songs as well.) "I really knew from hearing 'My Truck' that he was talented, but being in the room with him, it was another level," Hunt said in a phone interview. One of the ideas they kicked around was a "My Truck" remix with Hunt on it. Over the next few weeks, Hunt wrote several verses, and settled on two, including lyrics that are, Hunt said, "as far into rural country as I've ever gone": "Toolbox full of dirty dove shot empties, muddy old clodhoppers and a Mossberg pump/Pull up on you at the red light, homie, throw some Bone Thugs on and make your loose change jump." For the video, he bought the kind of pickup truck he had in mind when writing the verse, a 1993 Chevrolet C/K 1500 4x4. Part of the excitement of the song in addition to hearing Hunt sing Breland's boast, "Young, rich and I'm pretty" is hearing Hunt, a syrupy country singer, lean into the melodies and patterns Breland established, a proof of concept for more aggressive blends of country, R B and hip hop on the horizon. The original "My Truck" had early support from 97.9 The Box (KBXX FM), Houston's influential hip hop station. "This sounds like Houston, it sounds like our station," said Terri Thomas, its program director, who had reached out to Breland via Instagram direct message within minutes of hearing "My Truck" in early February. When they spoke later that day, Thomas said, "I told him, 'By the end of the day, you're going to be the new priority at the label.'" The song has since been played widely throughout the South, where truck culture is gospel. Much of the balancing act for Breland moving forward involves courting both sides. He has two managers one from the world of hip hop and R B, one from country. The coronavirus pandemic led him to cancel his promotional tour, a frustration for John McMann, Atlantic's senior vice president of pop and rhythmic promotion, who was keen to get the effervescent Breland in rooms with radio decision makers: "He's the textbook built artist to do the promo game, go from market to market and break down the doors," McMann said. Instead of a tour, Breland did Instagram Live performances for more than 50 radio stations while locked down with his family in New Jersey, where he was originally quarantining. And he opened up a contest for songwriters to contribute verses to "In the Woulds." He posts comedic videos on TikTok, including "How to Make a Drake Song in 1 Minute" and one, for "Horseride," in which he stands on his father's back as he crawls across the living room floor. "The one thing that I didn't want to do was lose steam," Breland said. "You know how music is the sounds change every six months, for real." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
The optimist, according to an old joke, believes that this is the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist fears that the optimist is right. Mainers are accustomed to second guessing good news. Which is what you'd do, too, if you'd experienced enough late season ice storms. This year, over 200,000 of us lost power in the wake of a furious blizzard. In April. Maybe this is what gives so many Mainers a dark turn of mind. There's a story about the time Mark Twain gave a reading at a bookstore near Bangor, to a crowd that mostly sat there in stony silence. Afterward, Twain heard a couple talking. The wife said, "I think he might have been the funniest person I've heard in my life." The husband replied, "I'll tell ya, he was so funny, it was all I could do to keep from laughing." Maine voters aren't laughing this fall. Everything feels too high stakes. Our Senate race Senator Susan Collins versus the Maine House speaker, Sara Gideon might well decide whether the Democrats take back that chamber. But it's not just the high stakes that have us on edge; it's also the race itself. (One of the nicest of the negative ads says, "Gideon had her cake and ate it too!") A Bangor Daily News poll released last week found Ms. Gideon and Senator Collins within a single point of each other. Last month, in an act that one lawmaker called "political terrorism," unknown persons in Bowdoinham burned a sculpture of a donkey. And over in Rockland, two police officers were fired after beating porcupines to death with their nightsticks. The porcupine slayers don't appear to have been politically motivated, but the story feels very 2020 to me. These are dark days, man. Last Monday, in hopes of finding a little escape, my wife and I drove out to Acadia National Park, on Mount Desert Island. Our route took us through both of our state's congressional districts the reliably blue First, which went for Hillary Clinton in 2016, and the rural and more conservative Second, which went for Donald Trump. I tried to get a sense of how the 2020 Maine vote is going to go by counting yard signs. My poll gave an edge to Joe Biden and Ms. Gideon but just barely. (There was also one sign still up for Bernie Sanders, an act of defiance I found very on brand.) A Trump Pence sign in Trenton had been edited by someone with a can of spray paint; the candidates' names had been overwritten with a big orange " 750" (the amount of taxes Mr. Trump paid in 2016). As we drove toward the coast we also saw lots of ghosts and skeletons and gravestones, evidence that many Mainers take Halloween almost as seriously as Christmas. In one yard a pair of zombie hands rose out of a tomb. Not far away was a sign: "TRUMP." It was impossible, in looking at that display, not to wonder whether the president, too, might somehow rise from the near dead. It's happened before, of course. Four years ago almost to the day we were all reeling from the "grab them by the pussy" tape. How confident I was then that Americans would find this kind of talk repulsive! How sure I was that we were just weeks away from electing our first female president! I was wrong, of course. The pessimist says, "Things can't get any worse." The optimist says, "Oh, yes they can!" A yard sign for Maine House Speaker Sara Gideon in Raymond, Maine, last month. Sarah Rice for The New York Times Things look better for Joe Biden now than they did for Hillary Clinton then, if you believe the polls anyhow. But then the Mainer in me remembers the six months of winter lurking beyond every summer day and those zombie hands crawling out of the ground. In Acadia, Deedie and I rode our bikes through the sparkling autumn sunshine, drove our car up Cadillac Mountain, ate popovers and chowder at the Jordan Pond House. Later that night we settled into chairs at a Bar Harbor restaurant called Havana, where Deedie had seafood paella and I had the lobster moqueca, simmered in a coconut broth with haddock and red peppers. It was really good. The next day we went down to Thunder Hole, a rock formation where the Atlantic crashes into a cavern. We sat down on a chunk of granite, two old people with our arms wrapped around each other, feeling the spray on our faces. We had been there together as a young couple 32 years ago. Now we were back. The day before, Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas had issued a rant against marriage equality, which they called a "novel constitutional right" in defiance of religious liberty. As we sat there by the sea, I felt a stranger's eyes upon us. It was a look of disapproval I'm accustomed to by now, but it still hurts. I wondered whether the coming election will decide not just the fate of the presidency and the Senate, but that of my marriage as well. On the way home we passed a Unitarian church with a sign out front that said: "Defeat Hate. Vote Love." On the radio we heard Patty Griffin singing "Mother of God." Something as simple as boys and girls gets tossed all around and then lost in the world. Something as hard as a prayer on your back can wait a long time for an answer. Patty Griffin is from Maine, too. Deedie and I got back to Belgrade Lakes in time to watch the vice presidential debate that night. The next morning I went outside to split some wood. The sky was blue from stem to stern, and as I stood in the dooryard, holding my ax, I felt a rush of good cheer. Could I trust the optimism I felt? Could it be that just this once, my hopes would not get crushed, as the saying goes, "flatter than a pounded hake"? As I stood there by the woodpile I heard a sound. I looked over to see a porcupine emerging from the woods. He was the fastest porcupine I ever saw. If you didn't know better, you'd think he had the whole Rockland police force chasing after him. It was so funny, it was all I could do to keep from laughing. The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We'd like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here's our email: letters nytimes.com. Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter ( NYTopinion) and Instagram. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
The initial offerings include a sheer gel blush and a pink lip balm with color that develops as it reacts to the pH level of one's lips, as well as an aluminum free deodorant. Additions like a waterproof mascara and a tinted serum and brow gel, along with cleansing wipes and a moisturizing facial spray, are due in May. While these cosmetics add a touch of color, their effect is less pronounced than, say, highly pigmented powders or products with a more matte finish. "It's really to help enhance your natural self and give you a little bit more polish," Katia Beauchamp, a founder of Birchbox, explained. "We weren't trying to create something that was like a heavy makeup, where you're thinking about perfection. It's more lightweight." As you may expect, wearing cosmetics in the sweaty environment of the gym also has its naysayers. "When you perspire, you are a setup for all kinds of things to go awry," said Macrene Alexiades Armenakas, a dermatologist in Manhattan. "You're creating a petri dish situation by perspiring with the added variable of occlusion that's the covering and the protection of the skin from oxygen. A lot of makeup will occlude the skin. It would theoretically increase your risk of breaking out." Dr. Alexiades Armenakas said that eye products like waterproof mascara are less perilous, although some of their ingredients have a high incidence of allergy. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
AS final touches are applied to carmakers' displays ahead of the opening of the 2012 North American International Auto Show, the auto industry has good reason to celebrate. With 12.8 million vehicles sold in the United States in 2011, it was the industry's highest volume sales year since 2008. The Detroit automakers each finished in the black for the full year the first time that has happened since 2004. Monday's start of two press preview days at Cobo Center in Detroit will no doubt bring reminders from Chrysler, Ford and General Motors that each gained market share for the year. Analysts contacted for this article could not remember the last time that happened. Optimism is growing for success in 2012, too. Forecasters queried by Automotive News, an industry publication, said that sales volume could exceed 13.6 million in the new year. The organizers of the Detroit exhibition, the Detroit Auto Dealers Association which is renewing its contract to keep the show at Cobo Center through 2017 are suggesting that this will be the best showcase here since 2008. "Re: the strength of the show, we are in a great position," Marc Harlow, a spokesman for the show, wrote in an e mail. "On the global stage, the N.A.I.A.S. remains one of the major players, with about 40 vehicle introductions this year." Still, it may be a bit early to schedule Champagne showers. Clouds hover over the industry, the city and the auto show. Despite renewed hiring by the area's resurgent auto industry, the local economy remains as bleak as the surrounding landscape. Vast swaths of downtown are vacant; the 2010 census found the city's population had shrunk to 713,777 from a high of nearly 2 million in the 1950s, at the peak of the American auto industry's hegemony. Notwithstanding talk of yet another downtown renaissance following similar pronouncements in the 1970s and 1990s Detroit remains in harrowing financial shape. Mayor Dave Bing, the former professional basketball player, rebuffed recent suggestions that the state of Michigan should seize control of the city's operations. In 2009, a new regional authority took control of the convention center. A 288 million expansion plan was subsequently rejected in favor of almost 200 million in repairs, updates and reconfiguration of the half century old complex. Damage to Cobo had threatened the 2009 show; many automakers suggested the time had come to move to a different venue. Automakers including Porsche, Ferrari, Rolls Royce, Land Rover, Suzuki, Mitsubishi, Nissan and Infiniti did not bother with displays at the show. Some have since returned most notably Nissan and Infiniti this year although Land Rover and Jaguar have snubbed Detroit to attend the 2012 New Delhi auto show instead. Meanwhile, the renovation of the American auto industry remains a work in progress. The federal government, which oversaw the reorganization of G.M. and Chrysler in 2009, still owns 26 percent 500 million shares of G.M. stock. Despite shedding billions of dollars of debt in bankruptcy, financial obligations remain, including a pension plan that is underfunded by at least 22 billion. The chief executive, Daniel F. Akerson, ordered thermostats lowered this winter to further pinch pennies. Though Chrysler repaid its federal loans last year, the Fiat Group of Italy now controls the company. In an unexpected twist, Fiat, struggling in Europe, is actually being buoyed by Chrysler's profits. And Ford, the only one of the Detroit 3 to eschew a federal bailout, is likewise seeing its profit generating North American earnings dragged down by losses in Europe. But after four years of cutbacks throughout the auto industry, Detroit's hometown show has, like the industry it serves, diminished in both size and international stature. Consider it a sensible shoes kind of show, featuring downsized sedans, people movers, hybrids and customized compacts. The lavish, multimillion dollar displays, impractically wild and exotic concept cars, smoke machines and Champagne fountains of yesteryear are, for the most part, just memories. The 40 "world premieres" constitute a rather modest display of lowered expectations, from a vehicular standpoint. Almost no major introductions are planned for the types of fire breathing, high horsepower machines that once made Detroit famous, though there will be a shapely Lexus sport coupe, the LF LC, and Mercedes Benz will unveil a new high tech SL550 two seater. Small is no longer a bad word: G.M.'s brands are presenting a compact Buick Encore crossover sport utility; Cadillac will show its new, smallest sedan, the ATS; and Chevy will offer a souped up RS version of its Sonic subcompact. Ford is rolling out a revamped version of its Fusion midsize sedan. Also on tap are two new compact hybrid crossovers in its C Max line. Dodge is bringing back the Dart name for a new small sedan based on an Alfa Romeo Giulietta, one of Fiat's brands, to replace the Dodge Caliber. Japanese automakers, after a dismal 2011 disrupted by earthquakes, a tsunami and nuclear emergencies in their homeland; floods devastating their suppliers in Thailand; and seemingly endless quality and safety recalls in the U.S., are looking at Detroit for their own sort of renaissance. Toyota, which was cleared by a 2011 federal study of unintended acceleration accusations, is emphasizing improved hybrid propulsion systems here for its sedans, hatchbacks and even small sports cars. Its Scion division will introduce a rear drive sporty coupe, the FR S. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Automobiles |
LONDON As Spain's deepening financial problems make a European bailout a more distinct possibility, a looming question is where the money will come from. Spain is the euro zone's fourth largest economy, after Germany, France and Italy, and the cost of a rescue would strain the resources of Europe's new 700 billion euros ( 867 billion) bailout fund that is to become available this summer. That would leave little margin for any additional bailouts. Spanish and European officials hope a bailout will not be needed. But each day, financial turmoil mounts over the government takeover of the giant Spanish mortgage lender Bankia, the flight of money to safer borders and a worsening recession. Compounding Spain's problems has been an outflow of foreign capital from the country, meaning the Spanish banks in recent months have been the only major buyers of its government bonds needed to finance the nation's budget deficits. With those bonds now plummeting in value, the fate of Spain's banks and government are intertwined in a financial tailspin. Spain's problems pose a far greater challenge to European policy makers than does Greece, which is much smaller. Hoping to ease the pressure, the European Commission on Wednesday urged Spain to take market calming measures, and Lael Brainard, an under secretary at the United States Treasury Department, arrived in Madrid for talks with government officials as part of a regional tour. Worries about Spain helped send stock markets down broadly in Europe, with Wall Street retreating in afternoon trading. In the bond market, the Spanish government's borrowing costs are approaching the symbolically dangerous level of 7 percent on 10 year bonds. The rise has stoked worries that Spain might need bailouts similar in scope though many times larger than those extended to Greece, Portugal and Ireland. Interest rates in that range had pushed them out of the debt markets that governments rely on to finance their operations. "At 7 percent, it will be very hard for Spain to obtain funding," said Santiago Valverde, an economics professor at the University of Granada and a research consultant for the Federal Reserve Bank in Chicago. "It's not just the government either, but big banks and companies, as well. The markets will close." On Wednesday, Spain's economy minister, Luis de Guindos, acknowledged as much when he said interest rates were "not sustainable in the long term." The yield on Spain's 10 year bond rose 0.21 percentage point Wednesday, to 6.61 percent. In Italy a country whose debt burden of 120 percent of gross domestic product is much higher than Spain's the yield on 10 year bonds rose about 6 percent, hitting a 10 month high. Since the nationalization of Bankia on May 9 signaled the perilous state of Spain's banking industry, and drew attention to the limited ability of the government to shore up the banks and prevent the flight of capital from the country, the prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, has insisted that Spain will not need a Greek style bailout. No head of state would welcome such intervention, because as Athens and Dublin and Lisbon have found, those rescues come with demands for deeper budget cuts and fiscal rigor. But Mr. Rajoy's administration has been floating the idea of engineering a bailout by other means. These include getting Europe's rescue fund to provide money directly to the country's banks or to buy Spanish government bonds on the open market, without Europe's demanding new levels of scrutiny and tough payback conditions. Economists estimate that if Spain were forced out of the bond markets by its high borrowing costs and had to rely on funds from Europe and the International Monetary Fund to survive, the cost could reach 500 billion euros over several years. Today in On Tech: Imagine not living in Big Tech's world. Dollar Tree will raise prices to 1.25 by the end of April. Europe's new bailout fund, the European Stability Mechanism, will have about 700 billion euros when it goes into operation this summer. But it remains untested in its ability to work quickly. At the root of Spain's crisis has been a drastic flight of foreign capital from the country one that, paradoxically, has been accentuated by the European Central Bank's program of providing low cost three year loans to European banks so that they might buy their governments' bonds. When the central bank created that program late last year, and dispensed two rounds of loans within a few months, it was credited with having done much to ease Europe's crisis. In the case of Spain, while the program bought time, it has made the country's underlying problems worse. Spanish banks have by far been the most aggressive participants in the cheap loan program, having borrowed more than 300 billion euros from the central bank. And much of that money was spent on Spanish government bonds. In the short term, those bond purchases helped the government by bringing down interest rates by reducing Madrid's cost of borrowing. But as a result, Spanish banks now own a larger share, about 67 percent, of their own government's debt than the banks of any other country in the euro zone, according to research by BNP Paribas. Now the value of those bonds is declining prices fall as yields rise and further weakening Spanish banks. In recent months, some of the biggest sellers of those bonds back to Spain's banks have been foreign banks and investors eager to take their money and run. In March, foreign bond investors owned only 26 percent of Spain's bonds, according to a recent analysis by J. P. Morgan, down from about 40 percent a year earlier. Most analysts say they assume if that measure were made now, the foreign holdings would be even a smaller share of the total. "There has been a great retreat here, and you can see it in the reduced foreign ownership of Spanish government bonds," said John Whittaker, an economist at Lancaster University in Britain who tracks capital flows within the euro zone. Burdened as they are by problem loans from the collapse of Spain's real estate bubble, banks now have the additional onus of carrying large holdings of government bonds that are losing value by the day. Among the largest holders of Spanish bonds are the country's international banking giants Santander and BBVA, which, through February, owned 60 billion euros and 49 billion euros. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Global Business |
SAN FRANCISCO Voters in San Francisco approved a tax increase on the city's largest businesses that would nearly double its budget for homeless services, a measure seen as an effort to hold wealthy technology companies accountable for exacerbating the local housing crisis. Tech executives have poured money into the campaigns for and against the measure. Jack Dorsey, the chief executive of Twitter and the payments company Square, spent 125,000 to oppose it, while Marc Benioff, the chief executive of Salesforce, spent 2 million to support it. Salesforce contributed an additional 5 million to the campaign in favor of the initiative, known as Proposition C. Mr. Benioff and Mr. Dorsey sparred on Twitter over Proposition C in October, fueling a debate that coursed through the tech industry in the run up to the election. The battle continued in the days before the vote, with Mark Pincus, the co founder of the online gaming company Zynga, tweeting Saturday that Proposition C is "the dumbest, least thought out" initiative and asking his followers to vote against it. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
John Steinbeck is best known for his weighty, quintessentially American classics like "The Grapes of Wrath" and "East of Eden." But one of his short stories, now published in English for the first time, is not about social injustice, arduous journeys or humanity's capacity for cruelty. Rather, it is a funny tale about a Parisian chef whose cooking companion is a cat. During a mid 20th century stint in Paris, a city he loved, Steinbeck wrote a series of 17 short pieces, mostly nonfiction, for the newspaper Le Figaro. He composed them in English and they were translated into French. One of those submissions, a fictional piece called "The Amiable Fleas," can be found in the new issue of The Strand Magazine, a literary quarterly based in Birmingham, Mich. The magazine has previously unearthed pieces by Ernest Hemingway and Raymond Chandler. In 2014 it featured another short story by Steinbeck, the Nobel Prize winning author. That one had been composed for a patriotic radio show during World War II, and Orson Welles read it aloud in a 1943 broadcast. Andrew F. Gulli, the Strand's managing editor, said that in his search for stories to publish, he hired a researcher who sifted through manuscripts at the Harry Ransom Center, a rare books and manuscripts collection at the University of Texas at Austin. "I read this one and I was like, 'Oh my god,'" Mr. Gulli said of "The Amiable Fleas." "From the perspective of a short story editor, this one really interested me. There was something universal about it with the gourmet, the cat, the family conflict and the tension." In the story, a fictional restaurant called The Amiable Fleas is situated not far from the Place de la Concorde, a plaza along the Seine. (The restaurant could be a nod to Les Deux Magots, a cafe known as a famous gathering place for writers and artists that still exists.) It is run by a chef named Mr. Amite, who has received one Michelin star and is eager to earn another. 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. "He's very, very flustered about everything," Mr. Gulli said. "He relies on his cat to taste the food and nod his approval or disapproval. The cat is a very magnificent cat named Apollo." If you'd like to read the 1,500 word story for yourself, the rest of this paragraph could spoil your appetite: On the day the Michelin inspector is expected to dine, there is a series of mishaps, and Mr. Amite steps on Apollo's tail. Then he kicks the cat, which stalks off to an alley in apparent anger. With Apollo gone, the meal is a disaster. But then comes a plot twist, a second chance and a revelation about a secret ingredient. "He liked to spin up funny stories and he had a great sense of humor," she said. "People might say this isn't signature Steinbeck. But it kind of is, because he does have that range and that flexibility." Steinbeck's novels of the 1930s, like "Tortilla Flat," "Of Mice and Men" and "The Grapes of Wrath," which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, were largely rooted in a particular time and place. They followed people who struggled around the time of the Depression, and who lived in or were drawn to the author's home state, California. But then came the '40s, a time of transition. Steinbeck wrote a travelogue with the marine biologist Ed Ricketts, did some war reporting and finished a few more novels, including "Cannery Row." He had a difficult year in 1948, when he split from his second wife and when Mr. Ricketts, a good friend, died unexpectedly. The '50s were better. Steinbeck married for the last time in 1950, published "East of Eden" in 1952 and traveled frequently with his wife, Elaine. Despite a lifetime of restlessness, Steinbeck's love for Paris was evident, Dr. Shillinglaw said. At the time he was writing for Le Figaro in 1954, she added, "he was probably a happy man." In his first piece for the newspaper, Mr. Steinbeck wrote that he thought it might be presumptuous for him, a foreigner, to write about Paris. But he added that he changed his mind after considering the perspective that an outsider can bring. "The uninstructed eye sees things the expert does not notice," Steinbeck wrote in that first submission to Le Figaro. "Mine is a completely naive eye on Paris but it is an eye of delight." Shortly thereafter came the story of the nervous Mr. Amite and the imperious Apollo. It was not only about a chef and his cat. The piece began more broadly, with a defense of "little stories" and "soft verities," which, the narrator argued, could sustain people better than hard news stories, or "the drums of daily doom." And it poked fun at the intellectuals who gathered at the fictional restaurant, describing a painter who worked in invisible ink, an architect whose reputation was staked on his hatred for flying buttresses, and a poet "whose work was so gloriously obscure that even he did not understand it." In the '60s, Steinbeck won the Nobel Prize in Literature. He once again turned his focus to life in the United States, examining it critically in the memoir "Travels With Charley: In Search of America," about a road trip he took with his poodle. He died of heart failure in 1968, at 66. Steinbeck was an old hand at gravitas, but he should also be remembered for his modesty and enduring appreciation for comedy, Dr. Shillinglaw said, which shone through in pieces like the ones he wrote in Paris. "What's important about this is his range that he could write something silly as well as be profound," she added. "I think that sort of effortless charm is characteristic Steinbeck." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
"I'm sorry." Two simple words, not so simply said. On Wednesday, the public representatives of two embattled American institutions United Airlines and the White House found themselves on national television grappling with a delicate and increasingly common ritual of the corporate and political worlds: the public apology. Oscar Munoz, United's chief executive, recalled his "shame" upon seeing a cellphone video, shared by millions of people, of a paying passenger being violently evicted from one of his airline's flights. Face taut, voice soft, Mr. Munoz's televised prostration was a far cry from the robotic statement issued by United days earlier, expressing regret for "re accommodating" a traveler. Around the same time, President Trump's press secretary, Sean Spicer, was denouncing himself as "reprehensible" for having favorably compared Hitler to President Bashar al Assad of Syria and referring to Nazi death camps as "Holocaust centers," all while standing at the White House podium. The fine art of repentance is a skill taught in business schools and promoted by high priced consultants. But all kinds of offenders in public life still seem to struggle with the execution. Corporations like BP and Wells Fargo have faced criticism for dawdling responses to cascading crises, while politicians from Bill Clinton to Anthony Weiner have had difficulty admitting to peccadilloes. The key to contrition, according to public relations experts, is projecting sincerity, humanity, and a plain spoken demeanor the better to convince a cynical public. And in this age of whipsawing social media, you had better do it fast. "The head of United should never have been allowed to take three swings at correcting and apologizing for an incident that was on more social media than Kim and Kanye's wedding," said Mortimer Matz, a New York consultant who has guided decades' worth of clients through crises small and large. United issued several halting statements about the plane episode, which first emerged Monday morning, before Mr. Munoz made his abject appearance on Wednesday on ABC. Mr. Matz said the airline had missed its moment. "You've got to be a fast thinker in the digital age," said Mr. Matz, who will be 93 in July. Many companies now take steps to be nimble and responsive when a furor erupts online. Last week, Pepsi took less than 24 hours to apologize and retract a multimillion dollar advertising campaign that used populist imagery to sell soda. It was a rapid U turn that would have been unthinkable a few years ago. This week, Mr. Spicer was quick to recognize the damage done by his ill considered remarks, which prompted immediate denunciations on Twitter as well as calls for his resignation. He appeared on CNN within hours of his gaffe, while Mr. Munoz waited two days. Still, Mr. Spicer's apology came only after his office tried to clarify his remarks with several statements that, while remorseful, did not clearly admit error. On Wednesday, in a previously scheduled interview at the Newseum in Washington, Mr. Spicer took a new tack: no excuses. "I made a mistake; there's no other way to say it," Mr. Spicer told Greta van Susteren, the MSNBC anchor, his tone notably subdued. "I got into a topic that I shouldn't have, and I screwed up." He added: "It really is painful to myself to know that I did something like that." Mr. Munoz, interviewed on "Good Morning America" on Wednesday, was similarly solemn. "That shame and embarrassment was pretty palpable for me," he told the correspondent Rebecca Jarvis, emotion in his voice. "This can never will never happen again on a United Airlines flight. That's my premise and that's my promise." Later on Wednesday, United said it would refund the fares of all passengers on the affected flight. Retail earnings and Black Friday: the week in business. Elizabeth Holmes will resume her testimony in her fraud trial. Both Mr. Munoz, who was named "communicator of the year" by PR Week magazine last month, and Mr. Spicer took pains to personalize their apologies. It's a technique that, conscious or not, is recommended by crisis experts. "That's on me, I have to fix that," Mr. Munoz said when asked about the airline policies that led to the violent ejection. Mr. Spicer described his blunder as "mine to own, mine to apologize for, mine to ask forgiveness for." That plead no contest approach, consultants say, is one of the few ways to start rebuilding trust. The accounting firm PwC, for instance, gave a detailed explanation, and quick apology, for this year's Oscar best picture fiasco, eventually holding onto its Academy Awards account. "People want someone to throw the book at," said Katie Sprehe, a senior director at the communications firm APCO Worldwide. Ms. Sprehe, who studies reputation maintenance, said United had erred by not moving swiftly to mirror its customers' outrage. "You need to speak your stakeholders' language, and coming out with P.R. mumbo jumbo, like 're accommodate,' is the wrong thing to do," she said. Stu Loeser, an adviser to executives in the technology and finance industries, said that a high profile apology must be considered in context. "Oscar Munoz answers to more than 85,000 employees who want to know that if they were the ones caught in a viral video maelstrom, he'd back them up," said Mr. Loeser, who was press secretary to former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York. "Sean Spicer ultimately answers to one person and one person only" Mr. Trump "someone who sees backing down or apologizing as not only a weakness, but a character flaw." "In both cases," Mr. Loeser added, "what might appear to be an irrational series of statements that got you into trouble makes more sense, when you think about who they're actually answering to." Mr. Munoz ended his interview by saying he had no plans to resign. "I was hired to make United better, and I've been doing that, and that's what I'll continue to do," he said. Mr. Spicer, asked by Ms. Van Susteren if he enjoyed being press secretary, said he loved it. "I truly do believe it's an honor to have this job," he said. "It is a privilege. And if you don't believe it, then you shouldn't be here." Whether the apologies outlive the gaffes remains to be seen. Ken Sunshine, who founded the public relations firm Sunshine Sachs, said he was skeptical. "My rule?" he said. "You get one shot." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
The digital call to arms came shortly after the first round of the French presidential election. On an online message board frequented by extremists in the United States, an anonymous user last month urged others to bombard social media sites in France in support of Marine Le Pen, the far right French candidate, by using memes, hashtags and other digital tricks that they successfully employed during last year's American presidential election. Within days, the online thread and similar discussions across the internet was flooded with hundreds of users in the United States offering to help the digital campaign. But the American tactics have not translated overseas. Despite such efforts, the far right in the United States and elsewhere has so far failed to reach much of the French electorate ahead of the country's vote this weekend, according to a review of social media activity done for The New York Times. The analysis, which was based on a review of millions of Twitter messages related to the election since last summer, showed that more than one third of posts linked to certain political hashtags originated from the United States, although few went viral in France. "There's a big cultural gap that these groups have to jump over to expand their message," said Ben Nimmo, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, a think tank, who has studied the far right's recent efforts in France. "The language and iconography of the alt right is pretty specific. Most of it just isn't going to translate well." The French presidential election is the latest front in the digital assault by the American far right or alt right, a diverse and loosely connected group of internet based radicals who have garnered attention by using memes online satirical photographs with often biting captions and other tactics to further their views worldwide. The activists, a combination of white supremacists, anti Semitic campaigners and other far right types, were closely linked to the presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump, although the extent of their influence remains unclear. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
WASHINGTON The Trump administration is weighing a ban on some or all products made with cotton from the Xinjiang region of China, a move that could come as soon as Tuesday as the United States looks to punish Beijing over alleged human rights violations, three people familiar with the matter said. The potential ban, which could affect a wide range of apparel and other products, comes amid widespread concerns about the use of forced labor in Xinjiang, where China has carried out a crackdown against mostly Muslim minorities, including a campaign of mass detentions. The scope of the order remains unclear, including whether it would cover all cotton products shipped from Xinjiang or China, or potentially extend to items that contain Xinjiang cotton and are shipped from third countries. But any move to block cotton imports could have huge implications for global apparel makers. Xinjiang is a major source of cotton, textiles, petrochemicals and other goods that feed into Chinese factories. Many of the world's largest and best known clothing brands rely on supply chains that extend into China, including using cotton and textiles produced in Xinjiang, in the country's far west. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Economy |
Since 2016, Jessie Reyez, a Canadian songwriter whose parents came from Colombia, has built a fervent audience for songs that delve into loyalty and betrayal, ambition and obstacles, heartbreak and vengeance songs that map the messy, volatile mood swings of 21st century romance. The 2016 single that brought her international attention, "Figures," is a ballad built on doo wop guitar picking that veers between anger and tears; it has been streamed more than 63 million times on YouTube alone. From the beginning, Reyez, 28, has come across with palpable sincerity and a sense of emotional transparency. "I've always made it a point to be authentic," she said via FaceTime from her home in Toronto, wearing a nondesigner T shirt with a cartoon montage of movie gangsters. Her luxuriant long black hair was gathered on her head in two asymmetrical poofs. Reyez doesn't strike simplistic pop poses; she doesn't present herself as an inspirational superwoman or a sexual dynamo, a creature of pure affection or of long suffering self pity. Ambivalent impulses flicker constantly through her lyrics and flaunt themselves in her voice, which can be sweet or raspy, childishly innocent or acidly scornful. Her music, though it's categorized as R B, pulls together the impulses of folky singer songwriters and syllable spitting rappers as well as pop melody and hip hop impact. The fans who eagerly sing along at Reyez's concerts see their own growing pains in hers. That reaction can still surprise her. "I never really made music for other people," she said. "I always made it selfishly. I always made it in my bedroom by myself." But seeing people connect with tracks she made to soothe herself has changed her outlook: "It helps me feel like I'm doing something right, you know?" "Gatekeeper," which appeared on her 2017 EP "Kiddo," bluntly describes her music business MeToo encounter with a producer who claimed to be interested in her voice: "30 million people want a shot/How much would it take for you to spread those legs apart?" she sang. She not only made a music video of the song itself, but also a 13 minute film dramatizing the incident. Reyez wrote "Far Away," released in 2019, about a faithful long distance romance, only to realize after she finished writing the song that certain lines jumped out at her: "You're still waiting for your papers/Been feeling like the government wants us to break up." The song's video showed wrenching images of an immigration raid and family separations. "I felt motivated to want to make something that would act as a conduit for empathy, as a window for anybody who'd never been through it," she said. Reyez released her EPs in 2017 and 2018; the second, "Being Human in Public," was nominated for a Grammy for best urban contemporary album. She also had guest spots on songs by hitmakers like Romeo Santos (singing in Spanish), Calvin Harris and Eminem, who returned the favor by appearing on the new album as the seething but still attached boyfriend in "Coffin," a lovers' quarrel infused with mortality that imagines a coffin "handmade for two." A picture of it appears on the album cover. Eminem, who discovered Reyez singing "Gatekeeper" on late night television, said he admires both her directness and her craftsmanship. "She sings from her heart," he said by phone from Detroit. "She's writing about expletive that she's been through and stuff like that. But it's not easy to do what she does, and she makes it look so easy." He added, "She doesn't sound like anybody. Her style of singing, the way she enunciates her words and everything, she's just naturally dope. It seems like she's not even trying, and she's that good. Her voice and her cadences don't sound like anybody I had ever heard before." This year, Reyez was all geared up to release her full length debut album, "Before Love Came to Kill Us," which arrives on Friday. She was treating the album, unlike the songs collected on her EPs, "as a project to be taken in as a whole," she said. "It's like, 'Let me put my phone on airplane mode, let me sage the room, let me grab a bottle of wine or a bottle of whiskey and let me sink into this.'" In years of songwriting, Reyez had reserved some of her darker, more probing songs for this moment. Her fall 2019 headlining tour introduced a devotional, elegiac ballad, "Love in the Dark"; she followed it with "Ankles," which sneers at a cheating boyfriend's dalliances over a blend of choirlike vocals and ratcheting drum machine beats. (Reyez gives a songwriting credit on "Ankles" to her mother, who consoled her after a breakup with a saying in Spanish that other girls "don't come up to your ankles.") The plan was to release the LP while she was touring arenas, opening for the teenage superstar Billie Eilish. While rehearsing her new songs for the stage, she decided to overhaul the album, swapping in songs and punching up mixes, giving the music more jolts and forcing her label and streaming services to scramble with new files. "When I was building the album, I remember hearing from multiple people that it needs to be cohesive, cohesive, cohesive, and I kind of let that get to my head," Reyez said. "But my entire time as an artist, I've always been a child of polarities." Contrast, she said, is part of who she is. "It's innately in me to want to yell and love at the same time. I haven't been compromising this whole time as an artist. Why would I start with my album?" The tour got underway; Reyez was on the road with Eilish in early March when the coronavirus brought nearly all the pop machinery to a halt. Instead of singing in arenas over the coming weeks, now Reyez is at home trying to improve her piano playing. "I feel weird promoting in these times," she said. "It feels like music is kind of minuscule in comparison to what's going on." Facing the prospect of the pandemic, Reyez started having second thoughts about releasing an album called "Before Love Came to Kill Us." "The whole premise of the album was to motivate people to think about their mortality," she said. "Now that it's coming out, at this time, either I'm insensitive or I'm tuned in." She added: "It messed me up because I was like, 'I don't want to seem insensitive, but this has been my reality for a long time.' Because that's just the way I've grown up. I've grown up thinking about death as something that could easily happen tomorrow. But I know that for everybody else, there's a lot of fear right now." Reyez put the question to fans on Instagram: Should she postpone the album? The response, she said, was overwhelming. "It was like 3 percent or 4 percent of people saying yes, and everybody else saying ' expletive no! Because the music helps me in these times." The album plunges into tangled relationships: vituperative and clingy, flippant and desperate, awash in second thoughts. Gentle bossa nova chords accompany Reyez as she sings about murderous jealousy in "Intruders"; "Deaf" is a revenge taunt set to skidding, sliding, disorienting electronics. "Kill Us" moves from a 1950s slow dance kiss off to tremulous thoughts of a second chance. There's also a song in Spanish: "La Memoria," a mournful reproach to a lover who mistreated her, and a reminder of Reyez's Latin heritage. "It's in my face, it's in my blood, it's in my dark hair, it's in my brown skin," she said. "It's in the way that my soul lifts up when I hear Colombia. It's in the way that I hug my mom. My parents purposely kept me connected to our roots, our blood." Reyez still has misgivings about releasing the album now not for its music, but for the state of the world. "I'm conflicted," she said, gazing earnestly in the FaceTime camera and then shrugging. "But I've decided I'm putting it out, because indecision never did anything for anybody." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
I recently read about an elementary school class that was studying the American Revolution. Each student chose a historical figure to write about. When the teacher asked if anyone had picked a woman, a little girl called out: "No! There were no women then!" Even in 2019 this is what many kids think, which is why we still need a month dedicated to the words and deeds of females. Knowing the challenges and achievements of all manner of women history makers, from the big names (I'm looking at you, Amelia Earhart) to the unsung heroes, destroys the false notion that females are mere observers to history. Their stories serve as both inspiration and empowerment: If she could, then I can. PLANTING STORIES: The Life of Librarian and Storyteller Pura Belpre (HarperCollins, 40 pp., 17.99; ages 4 to 8) beautifully captures the life and essence of Pura Belpre, the first Puerto Rican librarian in New York City. Arriving in Manhattan with the "stories her abuela taught her," Belpre eventually takes a job at the library as a bilingual assistant. "But where are her abuela's stories? Not one folk tale from Puerto Rico is on the shelves. How lucky for the library that Pura has story seeds ready to plant and grow." Belpre goes on to transform library programs through the telling (and eventual publishing) of several culturally diverse stories. Anika Aldamuy Denise's intimate telling captures the magical, folk tale feeling of Belpre's own stories. Her lyrical text, sprinkled like fairy dust with Spanish words, begs to be read aloud, while Paola Escobar's stylishly detailed and warmly expressive illustrations capture the joy of sharing stories. But this biography, like all good biographies, does not simply chronicle a life. Beneath all the fun is a valuable message. As Denise writes in her author's note, Belpre's life is a "testament to the power of our own stories to build bridges not just to literacy, but to social change." Powerful females are not a modern invention. They've always been with us, chipping away at society's restraints and influencing history. Young readers will discover this when they read about Anna Atkins, the subject of Fiona Robinson's THE BLUEST OF BLUES: Anna Atkins and the First Book of Photographs (Abrams, 48 pp., 17.99; ages 6 to 9). Anna is raised by her scientist father, who does not believe gender should limit accomplishment. Not only does he provide Anna with an extraordinary education, but he also encourages her to wonder, question and experiment. And so readers watch Anna grow with each page turn of this elegantly designed book from a curious child gathering buttercups in an English meadow in 1807 to a learned botanist who collects, records and renders exquisite and detailed scientific drawings. "But when will she get to share her knowledge of the natural world with the scientific community?" Robinson writes. On this question hangs Anna's greatest achievement. Barred from the Royal Society of London because she is a woman, Anna finds a way around the limits imposed by society, eventually publishing the world's first photography book in 1843. Robinson cleverly renders her illustrations almost exclusively in the cool blue of Anna's cyanotype photographs. This gives the book a dreamlike quality; Anna's world feels misty and faded. In fact, much of what we know about Anna has been lost to history. In her author's note Robinson admits to creating scenes in the first part of the story because of this. This elaboration, of course, makes the book historical fiction, rather than biography. But it is Anna's deeds that matter here. Her life is one worth knowing. Robinson's book is one worth reading. Wilma Mankiller, who died in 2010, was the first woman chief of the Cherokee Nation, and as most women do who rise to elevated leadership roles, she scrapped and struggled to get there. In WILMA'S WAY HOME: The Life of Wilma Mankiller (Disney Hyperion, 48 pp., 17.99; ages 7 to 10), Doreen Rappaport and Linda Kukuk unfurl Mankiller's evolution from "dirt poor" child growing up in a society that devalues Native culture into an exemplar of leadership and strength. It is a detailed account, lovingly rendered in Kukuk's occasionally awkward but enthusiastic artwork, and skillfully told in Rappaport's clear and accessible prose. But it is the use of Mankiller's own words, woven throughout the text, that makes this book soar. Hearing her voice gives us a sense of the real woman. When Mankiller says, "Women can help turn the world right side up," her sincerity resonates, and we can't help nodding at the wisdom of her words. From the first sentence of OUT OF THIS WORLD: The Surreal Art of Leonora Carrington (Balzer Bray, 40 pp., 17.99; ages 4 to 8), written by Michelle Markel and illustrated by Amanda Hall, readers know that the artist Leonora Carrington is a rebel. "Leonora's parents wanted her to be like every other well bred English girl," Markel writes. "But she was not." Boarding schools and debutante balls could not quash Leonora's artist spirit, and she heads to art school, then off to Paris and into the orbit of the Surrealists. But it isn't until she flees to Mexico ahead of the Nazis that Leonora discovers her true artistic voice. Wisely, Hall chooses not to recreate Carrington's art (which can be brooding and sexually suggestive). Instead, she creates bright, busy spreads filled with enchantment. Hyenas sport wild, black manes (much like Leonora's own hair). Tortoises peek from pockets. Green potions bubble. Markel's telling evocative and poetic feels enchanted, too, even if she does occasionally overstate for effect: "Leonora and the other female Surrealists ... had no interest in painting women who looked like pretty decorations, as men had done for centuries." One could argue that artists from Rembrandt to Goya to Millet depicted women as they lived and worked, not just as ornaments. But the author's point is understood. Carrington's depiction of women is singular. And Markel's gorgeous description of Carrington's paintings is the perfect summation of the extraordinariness found in all females: In them, "women have special gifts; they can do things beyond anybody's wildest dreams which is marvelous, and it's powerful, and it's true." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
Alison and Scott Simon saw many benefits to living in Manhattan. There was the diversity they loved, the easy commute, along with great bars, restaurants and cultural sites within walking distance or a subway ride. But their cramped one bedroom rental on the Upper East Side sometimes made them forget just how good city life could be. Home was a constant maneuvering around their son's baby stroller, set up next to a play mat in the middle of the living room, and a dining alcove with a crib squeezed in. And none of this came cheaply, of course. "We had considered buying in the city, but we could only afford a large one bedroom or a very small two bedroom, and we knew we wanted to have more than one kid," said Ms. Simon, 32, who works in pharmaceutical sales. So the couple did what countless other city dwellers with growing families and a hankering for more space or different lifestyles often do: They moved to the suburbs. Some, like the Simons, may have been priced out; others looked to cash out and take advantage of the steady run up in property prices. The Simons' quest for the right community took months of planning and legwork in three regions where they had considered relocating (namely: Long Island, Westchester and northern New Jersey) before settling on Upper Montclair, N.J., last summer. For them, and for most other urban defectors, the house hunting is the easier part. Finding their tribe that is, a community where they feel most comfortable shopping, jogging or taking their children to school is trickier. "It's less about the home you want to buy and more about what you're looking for in terms of the lifestyle," said Kathy Braddock, a managing director of William Raveis Real Estate, which recently created the Raveis Escapes website to match buyers with towns that best reflect their desired lifestyles. To help you find your grassy niche, many brokers have expanded their services by offering seminars and guided tours of the suburbs, sometimes connecting buyers with their agent counterparts beyond the boroughs. Sotheby's International Realty in Park Slope, Brooklyn, hosted a "Beyond Brooklyn" series. The Douglas Elliman Real Estate brokers Stacey Oestreich and Nancy Strong held "Should We Stay or Should We Go?" events and discussion groups. They also keep a list of previous clients who left the city and who are willing to share their experiences of suburban life. NeighborhoodScout, a paid service starting at 79 a month, goes deeper. Subscribers can evaluate various locations, even so called micro neighborhoods there are 13,631 of them within a 50 mile radius of Midtown, according to the company using hundreds of search criteria, including real estate data, demographics, crime rates and schools. For many city residents, the decision to leave is difficult, and often fraught with a whole new set of compromises. You may be happily trading an overcrowded co op for a commodious colonial, but you may have less time to enjoy it because of the long train ride home from work. And you're responsible for maintaining it, rather than relying on a super. Forget, too, about hailing a cab to get you around town. "We knew we had to give up something somewhere," said Alexandra White, 34, a grant writer, who recently moved to Bedford, N.Y., in Westchester, from the Upper West Side with her husband, Nulty White, 32, who specializes in corporate branding. While she works from home, his commute to the city now takes roughly an hour and 45 minutes each way. "He doesn't mind," Ms. White said. "He says it's like coming home to vacation every day." Once you have made up your mind to leave the city, for whatever reason, how then should you begin the journey to suburbia? "First, think about why are you leaving," said Alison Bernstein, the founder of Suburban Jungle, which requires clients to fill out a questionnaire before they begin their search. "Are you looking for more space? A better school system? How do you want to raise your kids? How far are you willing to commute? You need to take inventory of your family life." Another important consideration: where your extended family and close friends reside. "Are they going to be part of your life? This can anchor you to an area," Ms. Bernstein said. If you have a general idea of the region (or regions) that you may want to explore and are ready to begin looking, nothing beats actually going there in person. Here are some additional criteria to consider as you stroll around town. Let's start with the tangibles. Some characteristics of a community will obviously remain constant, like the geographic composition. Others are slow to change, like the population and demographic makeup, along with the infrastructure and housing stock. "If you really enjoy the waterfront or want something that's near water, that narrows down the communities," Ms. Braddock said. The same holds true for those who may relish a more rural setting, or maybe a place with a defined business district with historic homes. Something to keep in mind: Communities tend to transform every 15 years or so as residents come and go, or local ordinances change. "You have to look at the young migrants," Ms. Bernstein said. It's for this reason that she and others stress the importance of connecting with people closely involved with a town like an experienced local agent, once you've narrowed down a selection of communities. "You're not contacting them because they're attached to a house," Ms. Braddock said. "You want them to be your trusted adviser, like a Seeing Eye dog." The next step is to pay a visit, or three. "Spend some time in the suburbs whether on the weekends or weekdays or overnight and check out the amenities that interest you," said Greg Todora of Douglas Elliman Real Estate, who with his partner, Justin Petraglia, operates in New York City, Westchester and Connecticut. "Meet other couples with children. This will help you decide whether you can see yourselves there." Some municipalities have reputations for being more artsy, outdoorsy, country club like or urban. Basic demographic information about each town is available from sites like NeighborhoodScout, which provides breakdowns of age and ethnicity, median household income and educational attainment. City data.com has similar information, along with forums for discussion. "All the data is out there," Ms. Bernstein said. "But it's not the data that you necessarily need. Go and see the people who are sitting in the local Starbucks. Go to the preschool you're thinking of sending your children to and see who's picking up and dropping off." The latter can reveal whether the community is made up of families with stay at home mothers or commuting couples. And she offered another piece of advice: Don't discount a town because it doesn't have everything on your wish list, like, say, a defined downtown. "You can go out to dinner somewhere else," she said. "It's not 1905. You're not stuck in your little village." You can typically afford a lot more square footage in the suburbs, which is one of the reasons city dwellers decide to leave. The median sale price for a home in Westchester, for instance, was 438,000 at the end of last year, compared with 1.050 million for co ops and condominiums in Manhattan and 750,000 in Brooklyn, according to the appraiser Jonathan J. Miller of Miller Samuel. But many suburbs are now greatly in demand, he warned, which is helping drive up sales and prices. Mr. Miller said that Fairfield, Conn., Long Island (excluding the Hamptons and the North Fork) and Westchester have each experienced record or near record sales in the last several quarters. Bidding wars are especially common for homes under 1.5 million, agents say. Then there are the hidden costs buyers might not have considered before their move. "Some people may not be getting much more when you look at the longer commute, higher property taxes and additional upkeep on their property," Ms. Bernstein said. "It's not necessarily always cheaper living in the suburbs." The Simons, who paid 1.05 million for their Upper Montclair house, had to buy two cars after their move. Other unanticipated costs included the need to replace the hot water heater, fix a gas leak and buy a new stove, washing machine and dryer. Good schools are often another suburban draw. It was one reason Erin Peschiera, a stay at home mother, and her husband, Francisco Peschiera, a business consultant, both in their late 30s, decided to move to Mount Kisco in Westchester from Washington Heights last summer. But Ms. Bernstein, of Suburban Jungle, said that parents shouldn't be making their decisions solely on the public school system. "Never discount the private school possibilities," she said. Technology has changed the way some people evaluate commuting times. Because more people's jobs allow them to telecommute, it may not be as crucial to live near a transit hub, which can open up more purchasing possibilities. Mr. Peschiera, for one, regularly works from home part of the week. For those with less flexibility, having a good commute one that is an hour or less each way and with more than one transportation option can be invaluable. Agents, though, recommend that buyers try out the commute during peak hours to get a better gauge. Adam Van Fossen, 30, a marketing director for a tech start up, said that having a reasonable commute was a major factor in his decision to buy a house in Bloomfield, N.J., about 15 miles away from Midtown, with both bus and train service available. He and his wife, May, 28, who have a toddler and another child on the way, are scheduled to move from an Upper West Side rental into a remodeled four bedroom two bath colonial at the end of April. "I'll really miss the fast commute that I have now," he said. "It was only a 15 minute subway ride." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
Early in "El Camino," Old Joe (Larry Hankin), a junkyard proprietor, visits Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul) to relieve him of the stolen pickup car that gives this sequel its title. This job's on the house, he tells Jesse, for old times' sake. "Magnets!" he says, recalling a famous physics based Season 5 escapade. "Yeah, that was a good one." It's a striking line, as if Joe were a nostalgic fan of the very story that he's a character in. If remembering the heyday of one of TV's greatest series is enough for him, then he might be just the audience for "El Camino," now on Netflix and in theaters. The film, written and directed by the series's creator, Vince Gilligan, is a well crafted postscript that entertainingly extends the "Breaking Bad" cinematic universe by two hours without really adding to it. The Jesse we meet in "El Camino" is not the boisterous "Yeah, bitch! Magnets!" Jesse of memory, and with good reason. He's vacant eyed and half feral, just freed from enslavement to a white supremacist gang by his ex partner, the druglord Walter White (Bryan Cranston). Showing up on the doorstep of his old buddies Badger (Matt Jones) and Skinny Pete (Charles Baker), he's suddenly back in the land of liberty and Axe body spray, with hours to get his hands on enough cash to disappear before the law finds him. Paul's performance was often overshadowed by Cranston's during the series's run, but he's phenomenal here. For much of "El Camino" he practically stars in a silent film, giving us Jesse as a hunted animal so scarred that even speaking is an effort. (This makes an asset of the 40 year old Paul's playing a character in his twenties; you can believe that Jesse's last year aged him a decade.) When, in a flashback scene, his captor Todd (Jesse Plemons) talks him out of a gun and a shot at freedom, a tear leaks out of Paul's eye like the last liquefied remnant of Jesse's spirit. "Breaking Bad," with its standoffs and lonely desert vistas, was always at least half Western. "El Camino" is even more so, literally climaxing in a "Wild West" quick draw gunfight and fitting its heist scenes into an outlaw gets out of Dodge story. "El Camino" means "the road" or "the way" in Spanish, and the title is as much about Jesse's path from A to B as it is about his temporary wheels. Scene for scene, the movie is a satisfying reminder of what "Breaking Bad" did so well, not simply because it manages curtain calls for Jonathan Banks (as the grizzled enforcer Mike Ehrmantraut), Robert Forster (as Ed, the vacuum cleaner salesman with a sideline in disappearing criminals) and Krysten Ritter (as Jesse's departed junkie soul mate, Jane a rare female presence in what is a very male story even by "Breaking Bad" standards). There's that familiar, arid humor, much of it coming during that lost weekend at Todd's apartment, when he and Jesse removed the body of Todd's cleaning lady. (I had not pegged him as the space age bachelor pad type.) There's the trademark use of cars as character, as Jesse tries to make it to the finish line in a borrowed rattletrap Pontiac Fiero. Gilligan walks Jesse through a gantlet of frying pans and fires, a series of break ins and double crosses as tense and seamless as any "Breaking Bad" caper. But that's the thing: They're almost exactly what you'd expect from a "Breaking Bad" episode, except more drawn out. A series that popularized the idea of TV as "cinematic" spectacular in visual scale, adept with surprising imagery and montage has produced an actual film that plays like an extended TV episode. Stipulating that it's the lowest form of criticism to fault artists for telling the story they did rather than the one you hoped for, I still have to ask: What did we need from "El Camino"? It ends with Jesse in Alaska, a place he talked about escaping to and the place I'd have assumed he ended up had the movie never been made. It's a zippy and scenic ride, but we already had the map. "El Camino" is more interesting when it makes us ask: Just what do we want for Jesse? It's not simply escape. Even if we assume that he has suffered enough for what was, after all, a career killing people and making deadly drugs, we saw him escape in the "Breaking Bad" finale. More important is what life he's escaping to, what kind of person he's escaping to become. Jesse was, flaws and all, the show's criminal conscience. He was tormented over killing; he was motivated to protect children; when he resisted Walt's schemes, his older mentor manipulated him into playing along. The two partners reunite near the end of "El Camino," in a scene the movie dangles for fans like a reward for sticking around. In the series timeline, it's somewhere in Season 2; they've just completed the marathon meth cook in the episode "4 Days Out." Walt still thinks he's about to die of cancer, and he tells Jesse that he envies him: "You didn't have to wait your whole life to do something special." It's a pensive moment. It's also a reminder that Walt was always full of it. Up to the bitter end, he believes he is the hero of his own life much like the chunk of the fan base who approved his murderous exploits and insists that he's proud of the "something special" he did: "I was alive." So what I think we hoped for Jesse what I hoped, at least was for him to find a better way to feel alive than Walt did, and to make it stick. "El Camino" does not entirely give us this. He gets a "Coward of the County" Western arc, twice surrendering his gun to bad men who break his will, then finally winning his freedom in a shootout. The beaten cur gets his mojo back by pulling the trigger. Walt would be proud. That's not to say the ending felt false. This is who Jesse is right now; he was sprung from hell just hours ago. He does not have a spare cheek to turn at the moment. (Though it's worth pointing out that the finale arguably gives him more powerful closure by having him refuse to shoot Walt, despite his fury, when Walt urges him to.) But that's why I wonder if a more interesting film would have picked up with Jesse in Alaska. That story might have avoided being a "Breaking Bad" cover band by jumping ahead and changing up its rhythms, much as "Better Call Saul" found new moral angles on its subject by delving into the past. Instead, "El Camino" has more in common with the narco drama half of "Saul," which hunts the "Breaking Bad" desert to unearth origin stories and hide Easter eggs. Maybe Gilligan didn't want to foreclose too much future story in case "Saul" flashes forward before it ends. So we get Jesse driving off one more time, not screaming and manic as at the end of "Breaking Bad" but heading, we hope, in the general direction of peace. And who knows? We may yet meet Jesse Pinkman down the road someday. He may have been Hoovered up out of Albuquerque, but so long as there's a willing audience, Netflix can find you anywhere. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
Hubbard Street Dance Chicago is a confusing company though it's easy to see why talented dancers flock to it. They want to perform, and if this group has anything, it's an abundance of contemporary repertory. Its identity is harder to pin down. Led by the artistic director Glenn Edgerton, Hubbard Street returned to the Joyce Theater on Tuesday with five dances, four of which were so monotonous in lighting and tone a generic blending of windmilling arms, darting changes of directions and accented gestures that in the end, it seemed like one long piece with interruptions. The company's resident choreographer, Alejandro Cerrudo, offers two works: an excerpt from "Second to Last," set to well trodden Arvo Part, and "Cloudless," which features Ana Lopez and Jacqueline Burnett. In "Second" five couples exhibit elastic stretch, but there's too little to differentiate one pair from the next; their fluidity, while lovely, is like wallpaper. For "Cloudless," Mr. Cerrudo focuses on mirroring movement as the two women wind together and apart until they merge as one, turning as if a spindle on a turntable. In "Waxing Moon," by Robyn Mineko Williams, a love triangle ends similarly as Ms. Burnett, held horizontally with her legs and arms outstretched, is spun by Andrew Murdock. The watery dance, in which a man contemplates two potential lovers, has a voyeur edge, but no real distinction. Crystal Pite's gimmicky "A Picture of You Falling" features a voice over and the dancer Jason Hortin reacting to statements like, "This is how you collapse." At least it shows Mr. Hortin's nimble proficiency for stuttering, slippery movement. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
It is hard to find an anchor in "Cartography." Kaneza Schaal and Christopher Myers's documentary show, at the New Victory Theater, does not have a linear structure, presenting its stories for young audiences in interweaving fragments and hopscotching around countries and timelines. The set itself is made up of cardboard boxes that keep being rearranged they form a back wall onto which images are projected, and it later tumbles down. The show's title refers to the study and drawing of maps, but even those keep changing. "I know my passport has expired," a migrant played by Malaika Uwamahoro says. "So has my country." This sense of constant flux is a thoughtful representation of the impermanence that weighs on refugees, the people at the show's heart. Four of them are gathered in a room, waiting to fill out the forms and answer the questions that will move them, maybe, one step closer to a new home. They are fairly patient and good humored, considering. After all, this is just one more obstacle on a course that must feel close to endless. Portrayed by Uwamahoro, Janice Amaya, Noor Hamdi and Victoria Nassif, these forced nomads tell us, and each other, what has brought them to this room. They have left behind families and friends; the journeys have been arduous. At one point, they take turns inflating a boat with a hand pump. It takes quite a while, and the result looks terrifyingly flimsy for use on rough seas. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
Agnes Bourne, an interior designer based in Jackson, Wyo., always loved to visit her sister's rustic dwelling near Spokane, Wash. The 1890s log house was on an astonishing site: next to a lake full of trout, deep within a thousand acres of unlogged forests of Douglas firs and Ponderosa pines. It was filled with open skies, eagles, ospreys, wildflowers and giant boulders, some marked with Native American petroglyphs. But staying warm in the winter with only a wood burning stove was tough. Around 2008, Ms. Bourne, a trustee of the Cooper Hewitt Museum, and architect Tom Kundig, of the Olson Kundig design firm in Seattle, suggested a new house made of materials from the rocky site. "We were not thinking of just another log cabin," Ms. Bourne clarified. "This land sits between two mountains and is believed to have healing energies." The goal was a modern house to exude that spirit and those qualities. "The core of all of my work is about the relationship between light and material," Mr. Girardoni, 50, said. Conceived as a skylit, sonorous room a temple dedicated to the sun it was to have "both mass and void, fullness and emptiness," Mr. Girardoni said. "Light and shadows affect the way we perceive things. To prevent shadows, the room needed to be without any corner geometry." In essence, he wanted an empty chamber with curved white walls and a vaulted ceiling with an oculus. "I began to work from the inside out, but I really did not know how to make such a structure large," Mr. Girardoni said. Mr. Kundig and his team did. They modeled an elliptical egglike interior on a computer and tweaked it until it was 24 feet high, 22 feet deep and 16 feet wide, to control a beam of light streaming in from above, just as the artist wanted. "A perfect sphere would simply not have worked," Mr. Girardoni said. Partly because of its size, the sculpture had to be placed half inside and half outside the living area, so they decided to clad it with weather resistant Cor Ten steel segments welded together; a narrow slot, just as wide as the owner's shoulders, forms an entryway from the living room. Inside, the sculpture's curved wood and lath framing is covered with a four inch thick layer of white slake lime, mixed with straw and horsehair, that immediately offers a powerful sensory experience because of its scent. "I had not worked with lime before," Mr. Girardoni said, although it is commonly used in his native Austria. "I met an old builder near my summer studio near Vienna and took a weeklong crash course in old school plastering," he said. "The finished lime plaster absorbs moisture just like adobe. It is a breathing skin against which sounds reverberate eerily." Mr. Girardoni's all white creation titled "The Infinite Room" because light arcs across its walls all day like a pendulum marking time endlessly is fitted with an ovoid, featureless, blackened wood platform that represents the absence of light. "People seated inside seem to get a heightened awareness of being alive because of the changing light and the acoustics," Mr. Girardoni said. "Some guests slip inside to chant or meditate. Others cry when they can hear echoes of their breath behind them, and still others beg to leave." Mr. Kundig, whose firm has previously integrated a fully conceived piece with a translucent oculus by the artist James Turrell in another building, found this reverse site specific collaboration with Mr. Girardoni just as absorbing. "We took what Johannes was imagining and made it into architecture," Mr. Kundig said. "We came up with a buildable shape by following his cues." The 3,500 square foot, single story, steel reinforced wood frame home is relatively rectilinear, its two asymmetrical wings laid north to south in an H plan linked together by a glass wall breezeway. French doors slide open to semienclosed courtyards that have Japanese style raked gravel beds and scattered rock displays. The main wing contains a master suite at the north end, open plan living spaces surrounding "The Infinite Room" in the middle and a garage that doubles as a media room at the south end. The shorter wing contains a north facing office, a guest room and library in the middle and a south suite for the owner's spiritual guru, who visits from India where, interestingly, a lunar calendar prevails. Diagonally opposite "The Infinite Room," which depends on sunlight for its meaning, the architect placed a conceptual twin: a small steel and glass tower, accessible via a compact spiral staircase, that is just large enough for a bathtub from where the owner can engage in the ancient yogic practice of gazing at the rising moon. Some exterior details reappear inside. The fireplace and several walls are covered with stacked granite boulders and sliced basalt found on the property, and the concrete floors, which have radiant heat from solar and geothermal sources, are polished to reveal stone aggregate from the site. All the wood, including paneling for walls and ceilings and the furniture that Ms. Bourne designed, was harvested from fallen trees. The linen and cotton upholstery from Christopher Farr and the textile designer Jack Lenor Larsen, although not local, is organic and green. Linen drapes are all lined so they can be drawn across expanses of glass to keep artificial light from disturbing tiny nocturnal animals that roam freely. "Quite simply, we didn't just try to protect the terrain," Ms. Bourne explained. "We tried hard not to disrupt the nature of anything in this special place." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
Schools Chancellor Dennis M. Walcott was preparing to meet with the chancellor of the State Board of Regents, Merryl H. Tisch, when a reporter called. Dr. Tisch had just told the Daily News editorial board that she was frustrated with how New York City had been using millions of dollars from the federal government to fix failing schools, which she said had become "warehouses" for struggling students. What, the reporter wanted to know, did Mr. Walcott think of her assessment? He was stung. At the meeting, according to Dr. Tisch and the state education commissioner, John B. King Jr., who accompanied her, Mr. Walcott confronted her about what exactly she had said and why she did not bring her complaints to him privately. "If you don't want me to tell the truth," Dr. Tisch said in a recent interview, "you have the wrong person on this job." The confrontation was just another marker in the increasingly testy relationship between the educational leadership in Albany and City Hall. While Dr. Tisch has frequently showered praise on Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg in the interview, she extolled his "selfless" commitment to the city and said, "I don't like people trashing the mayor" she just as frequently seems to go out of her way to qualify his successes in transforming the schools. Dr. Tisch has questioned the value of a high school diploma from the city and the reliability of test score increases among students in grades three through eight, telling the audience at a forum in August, "I think the city has an obligation to show the public that what they've done here is real." She has accused the city of making it too easy for students who fail a course to make up the credits. And she has undercut the city's leadership for example, months before the city was to release its measures on how well high schools were preparing students for higher education, the state put out its own report that said three out of four students who finished high school in four years needed extra help once they got to college. "When you have 75 percent of the youngsters graduating high schools who are going to two year colleges needing to be remediated," Dr. Tisch said at the forum, "are you kidding me?" For Mr. Bloomberg, who has sought to build his legacy on education, her criticism or comments what they are depends on whom you ask have become a nagging headache. As the mayor nears the end of his tenure, Dr. Tisch's counterpoint to his administration's views has helped embolden an opposition of parents, union leaders, political adversaries and others who do not support his policies. Rumors floating her name as a potential candidate for mayor in 2013, which Dr. Tisch has yet to put to rest definitively, have offered a measure of explanation to those in Mr. Bloomberg's inner circle, or at least some consolation. In private, one of them characterized her remarks as an effort to "pull the rug from under our feet." Even publicly, the mayor and his aides have been surprisingly blunt about Dr. Tisch. Mr. Bloomberg called her "totally wrong" and "obviously misinformed" when asked about her comments about the warehousing of students. Asked about the relationship, Howard Wolfson, the deputy mayor for government affairs, said: "We have worked productively with the chancellor in the past, but a lot of this criticism seemed to start around the same time as the rumors of a mayoral run. I hope mayoral politics wouldn't influence the Regents' decision making." The Regents, who regulate all education institutions, have often had an adversarial relationship with New York City, home to roughly half of the state's students. But Dr. Tisch's connections, credentials and cachet have made the chancellor's post, which she has held since 2009, particularly influential and decidedly more high profile. Like Mr. Bloomberg, she is a member of the city's ruling elite: her husband, James S. Tisch, is the chief executive of the Loews Corporation, a conglomerate that includes hotels, insurance and oil drilling operations. She is also a close friend of the State Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver; they grew up together on the Lower East Side. "Merryl has a first name relationship with the mayor and all of the principal actors on the political stage," said Carl T. Hayden, a lawyer from Elmira, who served as the Regents' chancellor from 1995 to 2002. "So she can have, and will have, frank conversations with them whenever she feels like it, and whether they like it or not." William C. Thompson Jr., a former city comptroller who has run for mayor, was president of the city's old Board of Education during Dr. Tisch's early years as a Regent. "The one thing Merryl realizes is that there's a danger in just sitting back and allowing people to believe that everything is fine," Mr. Thompson said. Dr. Tisch solidified her power when Dr. King was named state education commissioner this May they attended the same doctoral program at Columbia University's Teachers College and have similar philosophies on many issues. They were together for the Daily News interview in November and a visit that preceded it to Automotive High School in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, whose unruly conditions prompted Dr. Tisch's criticism of the city's handling of the federal money, called school improvement grants. Dr. King was also by her side on Nov. 15, when she zoomed in on the misuse of the credit recovery system at a meeting with the editorial board of The New York Post. In a television interview last year, Dr. Tisch had kinder words for the city school system, calling it "a national model of how to move a complicated, urban school district" and saying students' gains on test scores were "real gains." But in the interview after the controversy over Automotive, she said the city had "gone as far as it's going to go in terms of improvement" until it found ways to help its most challenging students, including those who are still learning English, only 7 percent of whom graduated on time and were ready for college or careers last year, according to the state's analysis. More than a year ago, the state directed the city to come up with a plan to improve performance with those students. Last month, the city released its 31 page plan, unveiling, among other things, the extent to which it had been in violation of state law, like leaving thousands of students without the language lessons they were entitled to because of a lack of certified teachers. Dr. Tisch said the plan still left a lot of room for improvement. She has vowed to keep the pressure, even if it means antagonizing some of the same people with whom the state has to partner. "I don't care what critics say," she said. "When I walk the streets of New York, people come up to me and thank me for giving them some clarity." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Education |
Though it is rooted in street dance and hip hop, 'Inoah,' by the choreographer Bruno Beltrao, is something altogether stranger. It can take a long time for your eyes to adjust to "Inoah," a dance work by the Brazilian company Grupo de Rua that had its New York debut at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on Thursday. It's not just that the lighting is exceptionally dim. Even once you make out what's happening onstage, much of "Inoah" remains dark and strange. High up, video projections simulate a squat band of windows, a glimpse of an outside world of power lines and birds and weather, day followed by stormy night followed by dawn. Occasionally, the lighting (designed by Renato Machado ) seems to come from passing cars, but whatever its source, it is not under the control of the 10 men who mass and mill in this space. The industrial sounding score (by Felipe Storino), beginning as a low rumble, combines with those high windows to suggest some large, empty enclosure an abandoned warehouse, perhaps. (A program note identifies the work's title as the name of an area outside Rio de Janeiro where the company was able to find rehearsal space.) It is an urban environment that much seems clear. And Grupo de Rua and its choreographer, Bruno Beltrao, are rooted in urban dance, street dance, hip hop. Highlight reels of this work emphasize the spectacular moves you might expect from a hip hop troupe: t wisting and tumbling in sneakers, bouncing on shoulders and sliding on heads. But these glimpses give a misleading impression of this challenging, ambiguous work . Such explosions are scarce. In fact, the dance frequently comes to a halt, with the performers frozen in odd positions. At one early point, it stops for so long that you may wonder if it will ever start up again. It does get unstuck, yet its rhythms remain irregular and unpredictable. The dance drifts and gusts in eddies and reversals. The dancers roll in and out like tumbleweed, confusing backward and forward, upside down and right side up. It's unsettling yet beautiful, patience testing but curiously absorbing. This sense that the men lack will, that they are totally at the mercy of invisible forces, rubs against the sense that they are totally in control of their bodies . Whether they are spinning in the air or on their knees or end over end seems not to matter to them, so elastic and easy are their recoveries. The bursts of unbelievable motion seen in the highlight reel are shocking amid all the slowing and murk. But only to us, never to the dancers. It's not that they look comfortable, exactly. Habitually, they hunch forward, arms dangling, or lean back, as if bent. Many of their twisted postures resemble some kind of torture. Something is not right. Hip hop bravado has been filtered out, but this is still a masculine world, taut with the tension of men sharing space. Sometimes they wrestle, delicately sharing weight, and sometimes one shoves another. But the parts that feel most like a fight are those in which they aren't touching or even looking at one another. After a collective burst of motion, someone is often left lying on the floor. That person gets up, though, and the whole thing continues. The lighting might imply the passage of time, but the dance doesn't progress. It just keeps going. In interviews, Mr. Beltrao has questioned how much this abstract, enigmatic work reflects the turmoil in his country. Do his unfazed dancers signify despair or hope? It's difficult to see. Through Nov. 2 at the Brooklyn Academy of Music; bam.org. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
Billie Eilish and her brother, Finneas O'Connell, famously recorded her megaselling, multi Grammy winning debut album "When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?" by themselves in Finneas's childhood bedroom. The songs they made there conjure an even more tightly claustrophobic space: Eilish's music sounds like it's taking place within the quivering confines of a single anxious mind. But midway through her latest single, "No Time to Die," the swell of a full orchestra and the smoke rings of a moody guitar riff open into something more panoramic and familiar than we've heard from her before. The orchestral part was composed by Hans Zimmer, and the riff is played by the former Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr, who collaborated on the score for "No Time to Die," the forthcoming 25th James Bond movie. The track makes the 18 year old Eilish the youngest artist ever to record a Bond theme, the latest in a string of achievements that has made the precocious Gen Z er a regular fixture on the Guinness World Records blog. But "No Time to Die" also comes during a monthlong stretch that has felt a bit like a mainstream debutante ball for the young superstar, who until very recently was better known by her fellow teens than their parents. The Grammys changed that; Eilish's subsequent performance at the Oscars two weeks later cemented the feeling that she was suddenly everywhere. (She crooned a solemn, tasteful cover of the Beatles' "Yesterday" during the ceremony's ultra decorous In Memoriam segment.) In between those two busy weekends, she was revealed as the cover star of the latest issue of Vogue. Unlike her generational cohort of anarchic SoundCloud rappers and sartorially sex positive pop stars, Eilish has the kind of talent that is easily understood and praised by the old guard: She writes her own songs, she redirects the gaze from the shape of her body with oversized silhouettes, she has a voice that, while whispery and strange, is still classically lovely. The 56 year old Marr summed up this sentiment on the red carpet at the Brit Awards on Tuesday. "Billie's just the best new, I don't want to say pop act, but it's great when someone that cool is that popular, individual and a lot of people can relate to her," he said. "I know a great musician when I see one." At the same time, the ever expressive Eilish has a way of telegraphing a certain reluctance at becoming the next gen poster girl of pop culture's most time tested institutions. Just before clinching the Grammy for album of the year the win that completed her sweep of the big four categories, making her the first woman and youngest person ever to do so she could be seen on camera whispering, "Please don't be me, please." (A tweet captured the moment: "Billie Eilish being genuinely disgusted by her own success is one of the most hilarious things I've ever seen at a major awards show.") At the Oscars, she was even less comfortable in her sanctioned role of Ambassador to the Youth. In an interview with Zane Lowe the day after the show, she told him that she'd been sick on Oscar night and felt that she had "bombed" her performance: "That expletive was trash." She has also pushed back vehemently against those who commend her for covering up her body. "The positive comments about how I dress have this slut shaming element," she said in a V Magazine interview last summer. "Like, 'I am so glad that you're dressing like a boy, so other girls can dress like boys, so that they aren't sluts.' That's basically what it sounds like to me. And I can't overstate how strongly I do not appreciate that, at all." Eilish's Bond theme, though, might be the Boomer approved role she's embraced with the most straightforward enthusiasm. "We've been wanting to make a Bond song for years," she told the BBC this week. Macabre and elegant, "No Time to Die" proves that despite the fact that the franchise has existed for 39 more years than Eilish has there is quite a bit of overlap between the aesthetics of Billie and Bond. Her vocal has her characteristic focused intensity, but as the strings swell toward the climactic ending, Eilish rises to belt a note that is showier than anything on her debut album. When she hit it during her transfixing performance alongside Finneas, Zimmer and Marr at the Brit Awards, the crowd went wild. As more opportunities and accolades inevitably come her way, time will tell which pop star traditions Eilish will wholeheartedly welcome, which she'll rework in her own style and which she'll reject with her signature side eye. Given that the past two Bond themes by Adele and Sam Smith have earned their artists Oscars, it's quite possible that Eilish will be invited back among the movie stars next year. Maybe we'll get another "please don't be me" moment right before her name is called. Or maybe by then Eilish will have had a chance to make more sense of the surreal dream that has suddenly become her life. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
WASHINGTON The Food and Drug Administration said Tuesday that it would permit the sale of IQOS, a "heat not burn" tobacco device made by Philip Morris International, in the United States. While the agency stopped short of declaring that the device was safer than traditional cigarettes, the F.D.A. did say the heated tobacco stick system could help people to quit smoking. Philip Morris has waited two years for the agency to clear IQOS (pronounced EYE kose), a penlike electronic device that comes with a sleek battery pack resembling a cigarette case. The product includes an electronically controlled heating blade that warms a tobacco stick and releases a vapor with the taste of tobacco but fewer harmful chemicals than cigarette smoke. It differs from e cigarettes already on the market because it contains tobacco rather than liquid nicotine. But IQOS still delivers an amount of nicotine that's similar to traditional cigarettes. "The F.D.A.'s decision to authorize IQOS in the U.S. is an important step forward for the approximately 40 million American men and women who smoke," said Andre Calantzopoulos, the chief executive of Philip Morris International. "Some will quit. Most won't, and for them IQOS offers a smoke free alternative to continued smoking." Howard A. Willard III, chief executive of Altria, which will distribute the product in this country, said the company planned to begin sales of IQOS in Atlanta. A few years ago, the F.D.A.'s decision would have been a clear win for both Philip Morris and Altria. But IQOS products will now have to compete with the extremely popular devices sold by the vaping giant Juul Labs, in which Altria has a 35 percent stake. Altria officials say the products will appeal to different consumers. But the Philip Morris team had chafed at their product's being kept off the shelves while Juul gobbled up market share, and was unhappy with Altria's 12.8 billion investment in the San Francisco start up. Juul now commands more than 70 percent of the e cigarette market in this country. But in the last year, it has been sharply criticized, largely blamed for the soaring increase in teenage vaping. Under pressure from the F.D.A. and a public backlash over marketing tactics that appeared to target youths, the company stopped supplying most of its flavored pods to retail stores around the country and curtailed its social media promotions. The F.D.A. said it did not appear that the IQOS devices, which will be sold with Marlboro branded regular and menthol sticks, would appeal to younger people. In Japan and Italy, the devices haven't attracted use among teenagers, and the product isn't sold in flavors except for menthol, the F.D.A. noted in its report. But in an effort to prevent sales of IQOS to minors, the agency said the company would have to submit advertising and marketing plans for review. The F.D.A. said it still considered IQOS to be a type of cigarette, even though it releases fewer toxic chemicals. That designation means that IQOS must adhere to the same advertising and other federal restrictions. In addition, Philip Morris must include a label warning that nicotine is addictive. Most public health groups criticized the F.D.A.'s decision. Erika Sward, an assistant vice president of the American Lung Association, said: "Inhaling chemicals and toxins into one's lungs always poses risks. Lungs are on the front line and have been showing immediate results of being exposed to chemicals whether in the workplace, using tobacco products or outdoor air pollution." Philip Morris International introduced IQOS in test cities in late 2014. It became nationally available in Japan in the spring of 2016 and quickly became popular. It is now sold in 47 countries. Philip Morris had hoped to become the first company in the United States permitted to claim that it was selling a new tobacco product that would be considered less harmful than other products, like traditional cigarettes. But the agency is still reviewing its application, first submitted in December 2016, to sell the device under such a label. The company's share price rose 2 percent by the close of trading on Tuesday. During the review process, Philip Morris, like other major tobacco companies, faced lingering skepticism and distrust from the public health community for the industry's decades long history of concealing evidence that cigarettes caused cancer. In January 2018, a federal advisory panel questioned the quality of the company's safety studies and its claim that IQOS would not appeal to youths. The F.D.A.'s tobacco control policy under Dr. Scott Gottlieb, its commissioner until a month ago, centered on offering smokers a variety of reduced risk alternatives to cigarettes. But Dr. Gottlieb's early support of e cigarettes shifted as evidence piled up that teenage vaping had grown. The ensuing F.D.A. crackdown on e cigarettes and sales to minors has drawn opposition from vaping shops and manufacturers, who argue that the agency is making it tough for smokers to gain access to safer alternatives. Although smoking rates have declined, cigarettes still kill about 480,000 people every year. Dr. Ned Sharpless, the acting F.D.A. commissioner, said he intended to continue Dr. Gottlieb's effort to curb youth vaping. The agency warned Philip Morris that it would be subject to scrutiny even though it had received clearance to sell the devices. "We'll be keeping a close watch on the marketplace," said Mitch Zeller, director of the agency's tobacco control unit. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
Q. I'm getting warnings about my iCloud drive's being full, and Apple wants to sell me more space. Are there other options that are easier and cheaper? I don't need to back up my whole computer, just random stuff. A. Apple gives every iCloud account holder five free gigabytes of space on its servers to store online copies of documents, photos and videos, as well as device backups. The files can all be reached from iOS devices, Macs and PCs running the iCloud software. Messages from iCloud mail accounts (and Apple's older mail services using me.com and mac.com) are also stored within that space. If you get warning messages, Apple suggests either buying more iCloud storage or deleting old messages, files and iOS device backups to free up space within your original five gigabytes. Buying more storage directly from Apple is relatively easy because you do not have to download or install any new software and the company may already have your credit card on file if you buy media content and apps from its iTunes, iBooks or App Stores. Prices start at 99 cents a month to tack on 50 gigabytes of storage space; 200 gigabytes costs 2.99 a month, and two terabytes of server space is 9.99 a month. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
Paige Jennings has seen her mother with blood on her hands before. But this week "The Americans" took it to a new level: a horrified Paige seeing her mother's face covered in the blood, not to mention the brains, of an American general she'd just killed. This is going to be a hard one to explain. That gruesome scene was the close of the episode, titled "Tchaikovsky" (and directed by Matthew Rhys, doing double duty). But it had already been a challenging hour for the furiously multitasking Elizabeth. After the bleak ending last week, when she angrily rejected Philip's concern and marched upstairs alone, this week opened with her coming back down the stairs, still silent and defiantly smoking a morning cigarette. (Philip had made an indelicate and tactically flawed reference to her smelling like cigarettes all the time.) Her plate was more than full. She was pulling her shifts as a home health aide at the Haskard house, spying on the husband (an American arms negotiator) and putting up with his wife, whom she has to help keep alive through the coming Reagan Gorbachev summit. This meant sitting still for an impromptu drawing lesson from Erica Haskard, perhaps the only person this side of Claudia who can order Elizabeth around. It was fun to see the unstoppable Elizabeth shutting up, sitting down and picking up a pencil for the immovable Erica. The whole notion of Elizabeth's being possibly awakened by her exposure to Erica's art hasn't been my favorite thing about this season it's more of a stretch than the show usually makes but there was a zing to their exchange, with Elizabeth's demurral, "Trust me, I can't draw," met by Erica's retort, "No, that's not your problem." Erica told her not to focus on the object but, rather, just to see light and shade exactly the opposite of what Elizabeth has trained herself to do in order to carry out her duties. When she wasn't bedside with Erica or photographing documents on Glenn's desk, Elizabeth made time for lunch with another source, Patrick McCleesh (Reed Birney) at the State Department. (He appears to be her fake work husband sort of like her own Martha, but without the sex and the mock wedding.) It was a relatively uneventful scene, except for Elizabeth's nearly being caught by security guards. McCleesh told her that Ronald Reagan was starting to show signs of dementia. Claudia responded to that nugget with a "huh" as far as the K.G.B. is concerned, American presidents come and go. Elizabeth had to be nimble with her lies on the home front, too. Again turning down Philip's offer to talk, she neglected to mention that she had killed a Navy security guard who'd had a run in with Paige, finessing the whole situation by saying that Paige "got somebody's name wrong." But the real challenge to her composure came when Paige asked, "Do our people ever use sex to get information?" Elizabeth's eyes averted "What?" was about as flustered as she gets, although she immediately recovered and denied that such a thing could ever happen. (She later backtracked, saying, Well, maybe some people, in some circumstances, might bend the rules a little.) Presumably Paige will learn the truth about these things even if she lands the comfortable State Department or C.I.A. job that Elizabeth is angling for her to get. But maybe she'll never have to know what her own mother has been getting up to all these years. (Nice moment: Paige's wearily dismissive "Obviously" when Elizabeth lectured her about not checking out books about espionage from the library.) And then there was the general. We'd met him before, as Colonel Lyle Rennhull, back in Season 1. (The final episode of that season, "The Colonel," was named after him.) Back then, he was meeting Philip to tell him that America's Star Wars missile defense system was a pipe dream, a meeting that initiated a sequence of events that ended with Elizabeth's being shot. He resurfaced because Moscow wanted Elizabeth to shake him down for a piece of American tech, a lithium based radiation sensor. If he didn't obtain one, his past treason would be exposed. Rennhull (still played by Victor Slezak) has not been the most admirable character in Season 2 he killed the informant Sanford Prince in order to protect himself but this time he decided to stand on principle, declaring that all he ever wanted to do was avoid war and that he wouldn't sell out his country now. So, an idealist, like Elizabeth. When they met in a park in Virginia, he pulled a gun, and she fell to her knees and played the I'm a mother card, pretending to beg for her life. This was a distraction, of course, before she lunged, tackled him, wrestled for the gun and then slowly, purposefully forced it under his chin and pulled the trigger. Paige ran from her post in the parking lot to her mom's aid, but this being "The Americans," there was no hugging or crying. The emotion was packed into the moment when their eyes locked, as Elizabeth yelled at Paige to get back to the car. Paige, the good soldier, hesitated only briefly before turning and running back without a word. Then the credits rolled, the fallout put off until next week. Elsewhere in the episode, Philip had further setbacks in his new capitalist existence. His employee Stavos (Anthony Arkin) lost one of the travel agency's valuable clients, and when Philip told the story to Henry, the son gently reprimanded the father: Maybe Stavos was right and Philip should have kept the client himself. The American born Henry probably has better business instincts than his wannabe bourgeois dad. Henry's brief appearance, by phone from New Hampshire, was one of two heartwarming cameos. The other: a walk on by the mail robot, gliding through the back of a scene at F.B.I. headquarters. In a related subplot, we were given both some comic relief and some spy story tension via the Gennadi and Sofia story. Tired of her once glamorous husband, Sofia let it slip to Stan that she had found a sympathetic ear at the Tass office, a co worker named Bogdan. The episode was time stamped by the baseball game on Glenn Haskard's radio: Oct. 4, the last day of the 1987 season. Glenn listened as Chili Davis of the San Francisco Giants tied the game, 4 4, with a home run off the Atlanta Braves' Chuck Cary. (The Giants went on to win, 5 4, on Bob Brenly's walk off homer in the 10th inning. They won the National League West that year but lost to the St. Louis Cardinals in the league championship series.) Finally, the episode's title referred to Claudia's favorite composer. She played a Tchaikovsky recording for Paige I'm sure one of you can tell us which piece it was and the melancholy strains continued on the soundtrack as Paige and Elizabeth had their uncomfortable conversation about sex. Let us know in the comments what you thought about "Tchaikovsky" and the latest stages in Paige's education. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
The nation's employers are creating jobs at less than half the pace they were when this year began, according to a government report released Friday. The addition of just 115,000 jobs in April was disappointing, but economists urged no panic just yet. Maybe the unusually warm winter had encouraged companies to do their spring hiring a little early, they offered in one of several theories. Maybe high gas prices, now falling, temporarily discouraged job growth. Better yet, maybe this latest report understates how many jobs were added, since the initial estimates for earlier months have been revised upward. But no matter which hopeful explanation you choose, America's 13.7 million jobless workers still look pretty discouraged. Many economists had been predicting that strong job growth early this year would persuade many people sitting on the sidelines to re enter the job market. Instead, for reasons that are unclear, workers continue to peel off the labor force. An estimated 342,000 Americans dropped out of the job market altogether in April. That is why the unemployment rate fell to 8.1 percent from 8.2 percent not because more workers found jobs, but because so many people left the work force. It's just one month of data, and the survey numbers are not precise. Still, the figures fit into a longer term trend. The share of working age Americans who are either working or actively looking for a job is now at its lowest level since 1981, when far fewer women chose to do paid work. The share of men taking part in the labor force fell in April to 70 percent, the lowest figure since the Labor Department began collecting these data in 1948. The decline in labor force participation is partly because baby boomers are hitting retirement age. But economists had expected the wave of retirements to be at least partly offset by the number of workers rejoining the labor force as the economy improved. "There were a lot of younger people who had gone back to school to get more education and training, and we thought we'd see more of them joining the work force now," said Andrew Tilton, a senior economist at Goldman Sachs. Instead, the number of young people in the labor force also fell. "May, June and July the months when people are typically coming out of schooling will be the big test," he said. College enrollment, particularly among young women, has indeed been growing quickly, which bodes well for the economy in the years ahead. But of course not everyone dropping out of the labor force is doing so to collect more credentials. With the average duration of unemployment now at an interminable 39.1 weeks, many people have simply given up looking for work. Many of them might have given up months ago, but had clung to the job search because doing so kept them eligible for extended unemployment benefits. As more and more workers roll off those benefits, they are officially stopping their job searches and dropping out. It's unclear whether workers will continue dropping out, said Alan B. Krueger, chairman of President Obama's Council of Economic Advisers. Today in On Tech: Imagine not living in Big Tech's world. Dollar Tree will raise prices to 1.25 by the end of April. Bank regulators released a 'road map' for crypto regulation that is short on details. "I think you're going to have crosscurrents," he said. "One factor is that extended benefits have kept people in the labor force. But then some of the reforms that the president proposed and that Congress has passed will encourage the unemployed to search for a job." He cited as an example a federal program granting funds to 10 states that are experimenting with subsidized training and private sector jobs, modeled in part on a pilot program in Georgia. Other job training and placement programs have been strained by government shortfalls, however. Washington also seems unlikely to engage in additional significant job creation programs before the November elections. The Federal Reserve, which had helped stimulate the economy in the past when Congress deadlocked, does not seem to be gearing up for more monetary easing, either. "This keeps the Fed where they've been," Jay Feldman, an economist at Credit Suisse, said of the April jobs report, which the Labor Department released Friday. "There could be more stimulus if April turns out to be a new trend, but by itself it's no provocation for a quick ease." Rather than prodding employment growth, the government is actually providing a drag on the economy. Government spending has fallen for six straight quarters as Recovery Act funds have been exhausted and state and local governments have struggled with tax revenue shortfalls. Accordingly, the public sector has been shedding workers relatively consistently since the recovery officially began in mid 2009, with the exception of a brief spike of temporary hiring during the decennial census. Last month, governments eliminated 15,000 jobs. Private companies added 130,000 jobs over all, with professional and business services, retail trade and health care doing the most hiring. "My guess is the weather made job growth look too strong in the first couple of months, and now it looks too weak as payback for the warm winter weather," said Paul Ashworth, chief United States economist for Capital Economics. "It'll probably settle somewhere in between." Averaging the strong months of total job growth in January and February with the weaker ones in March and April, the economy has been adding about 200,000 jobs a month this year. Job growth of any kind is obviously welcome. That pace, however, is not nearly fast enough to recover the losses from the Great Recession and its aftermath in the foreseeable future. At this rate, it would take more than two more years just to return to the prerecession peak in employment, though the country should actually have even more jobs given population growth and the current size of the economy. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Economy |
CLINTON, Ark. After a brief shutdown to hinder the coronavirus's spread, Arkansas began opening up, slowly and cautiously, on May 11. Businesses are placing limits on the number of customers they will serve at any one time, and social distancing and mask wearing is still required in establishments like restaurants. The state's Republican governor, Asa Hutchinson, has been critical of businesses and customers that don't follow these rules. Even so, Arkansas has seen a second peak of coronavirus infection, as cases surge especially among younger people and the Latino population in northwestern counties. On Thursday, Governor Hutchinson announced the largest single day increase in community transmission 261 cases. Despite this, and despite predictions that the virus will take a "crushing toll" in rural areas like ours, this part of Arkansas has so far been spared the worst health effects of Covid 19. Van Buren County, where I live, has fewer than 17,000 people and has had only 28 confirmed cases of the coronavirus to date. Two people died, but the rest have recovered. Early cases were concentrated in bigger cities, like Little Rock and a suburb of Memphis, and were disproportionately among black Arkansans. There have been more than 6,500 cases in the state about a fifth of them have been in prisons, and those cases weren't even added to official totals at first, all of which is a human rights disaster but most families haven't been affected. Any death is a tragedy, but death from Covid 19 hasn't personally touched very many people here. At least not yet. I moved back here to my hometown two and a half years ago to write a book about it. Since returning, I've become more active on Facebook, which is both a source of local gossip and official news; county officials and offices often post important updates, especially about the coronavirus outbreak, to their Facebook pages. I'm also a member of three local news groups that are a source of insight into how my neighbors think about current events. I've found that a vast majority of people here approach political issues, whether local or national, with suspicion of taxation and government spending, even when such spending is for their own benefit. This has remained true even during these unprecedented times. We have been hit with the economic devastation caused by the pandemic. The median household income in the state is 45,726; for the county it's 34,428, so there are many people who live paycheck to paycheck. While a large majority of Americans 74 percent support continued efforts to slow the virus's spread, and there are plenty of well off Americans and business owners eager to get back to work, the divide over whether lockdowns should continue is a strongly partisan one. Many Republicans, including low and middle income whites think businesses should reopen now. For the most part, the people I've spoken to and seen commenting online here accept as a given that the only way to be able to pay their rent or to feed their kids is to return to work: They don't think it's possible to protect our health and our economic well being at the same time. Many people I spoke with here were happy with the 1,200 economic impact payments, but it wasn't enough to replace incomes. And yet, many were eager, as the Senate debated, to include a 500 billion pot of money for the biggest corporations in the country. They thought sending a lifeline to gigantic, publicly traded corporations would be the key to holding on to their jobs. I asked a woman who lives in my county whether she thought that was the only way to ensure her well being. "Yes, ma'am," she said, before bowing out because the discussion became too political. "It's the trickle effect." There were arguments over whether unemployment insurance should have been enhanced by 600 a week. Many of my friends here were upset that people could make more by not working and indeed, that has happened for some. A friend of mine, Amy Johnson, who grew up here but lives in Little Rock, applied for unemployment insurance when the restaurant she works at closed down. She says she makes a little more right now, 2,720 a month, compared with about 2,300 during her busiest months bartending. The state of Arkansas hasn't moved to help workers, like initiating payment moratoriums on rent or utilities. During a public conference call with our state representative, Josh Miller, I asked whether there had been any discussion with lawmakers about taking measures like those. He said he hadn't been part of any such conversations. "A lot of our work force is able to continue to work," said Mr. Miller, whose district includes parts of Cleburne, Van Buren and Faulkner Counties. "And so they're being paid like normal. You don't want folks taking advantage of a crisis situation." Though obviously not every one holds this view, I've found that fear of others' "taking advantage" is the dominant operating mode of even charity at the individual level for many people here. It is largely driven by ideology that says working for a paycheck is good but seeking government assistance is bad. Governor Hutchinson has been holding almost daily news briefings since the pandemic began, and state residents can watch on Facebook and comment as the briefing unfolds, a sort of virtual town hall. Early on, in March, as other states began issuing lockdown orders and Arkansas remained a holdout, one commenter summed up the attitude well when she said: "Maybe some people who are pushing for a mandatory stay at home order want to get paid for sitting around and doing a bunch of nothing. Which is what they would do on a normal day anyway. It's a way of life for them." The attitude that some people just don't want to work is often linked to racism: A 2017 Urban Institute study found that states with larger black populations were less generous with their welfare benefits. Indeed, Arkansas was one of the first states to tie Medicaid benefits to a work requirement, though that has since been struck down by a judge. Food stamp beneficiaries in the state also must meet work requirements. The hesitation to support those out of work seems linked to the fact that black and Latino Arkansans have been hit disproportionately hard by the virus. Indeed, when asked whether the rise in cases among the Latino population was tied to work sites, Governor Hutchinson responded: "They want to work. They're hardworking." Perhaps people here would rather support the idea of local charities because they can control where benefits go. During the holidays, I saw many people on Facebook posting generous offers to buy meals for "truly deserving" families in need, whole boxes of turkeys and vegetables and cranberry sauce. The people who did so spent at least an extra 30 at the grocery store to provide a holiday meal for someone else. But it was on a small scale: one individual giving to one family her or she could personally screen. The community as a whole votes against food stamps, disability payments and other social safety net programs, and often laments that people are "taking advantage" of them. It's a weird idea: The entire point of charity, and of social safety nets, is that people are meant to take advantage of them. I wanted to respond to those posts and say, "What if I told you that you could spend 30 a year to help feed families year round through the food stamp program?" There have been similar personal efforts now: The food bank connected to a local church is busier than usual, and other churches are passing out boxes of food at lunchtime. The school is sending the lunches it would otherwise be serving in the cafeteria out to families via school buses. Early on, before the state issued guidelines to the contrary, the teachers and bus drivers were hopping out to hug the kids and their families, taking pictures and posting them on Facebook. There's a sense that anything labeled "government" is cold and distant, while handing a family a box of food feels warm and good. Individual good will is unlikely to meet Arkansas's need, however. Some jobs and businesses simply won't return. This will be even truer if case numbers start rising again and the full force of the pandemic hits this community. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
Actors aren't always as interesting as their performances. Whatever you think of Olympia Dukakis, she is not so splendid a raconteur that she can carry "Olympia," a feature length profile directed with grating obsequiousness by Harry Mavromichalis. The heart of the documentary consists of Dukakis (an Oscar winner for "Moonstruck") holding forth on her life and career, often with her husband, the actor Louis Zorich, who died in 2018. Her many admirers and collaborators offer praise, generally in vague, grandiose terms. ("Olympia probably invented the feminist movement," says Rocco Sisto, a former student of hers, explaining some of her acting preferences.) The film presents Dukakis, now 89, as a self made star who founded a theater company in Montclair, N.J., to play the parts she wanted and to counter the drama world's bias against her Greek American background. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
A Dilemma for Diabetes Patients: How Low to Push Blood Sugar, and How to Do It? Heart disease is the leading cause of death for people with Type 2 diabetes. Surely, then, the way to dodge this bullet is to treat the disease and lower blood sugar. Well, maybe. Growing evidence suggests that the method by which blood sugar is lowered may make a big difference in heart risk. That has raised a medical dilemma affecting tens of millions of people with Type 2 diabetes and for the doctors who treat them. Some diabetes drugs lower blood sugar, yet somehow can increase the chances of heart attacks and strokes. Other medications have no effect on heart risk, while still others lower the odds of heart disease but may have other drawbacks, like high cost or side effects. It's becoming clear, researchers say, that there's far too little evidence on how diabetes drugs affect the heart to make rational evidence based judgments. "If you think the landscape is confusing, it really is," said Dr. Leigh Simmons, an internist in Boston. "Daunting" is how Dr. JoAnn Manson, the chief of preventive medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital, describes the situation for patients and their doctors. She explained the option and uncertainties in a recent commentary in JAMA. There are 12 classes of drugs on the market and two or three different agents in each class. The drugs range in price from about 4 a month for older drugs to 700 a month for newer ones, and they have varying side effects. Many patients take more than one drug. The older, cheaper and more popular diabetes drugs were never tested for their effects on the heart they were approved before any links were noticed. A particular drug's effect on blood sugar does not predict its effects on the heart. Even understanding the chemistry at work the drugs act in very different ways to lower blood sugar does not predict whether a particular medication will increase heart risk in a particular patient, researchers say. "We can't predict what happens to people just based on the mechanisms of these drugs," said Dr. Kasia J. Lipska, a diabetes expert at Yale University who wrote a recent paper on the issue. "We have to study large groups of patients and examine what drugs reduce complications of diabetes such as heart attacks, and in which patients." But that has rarely been done. These drugs are already approved; there is little incentive to do such expensive studies now. "It's a disgrace" that so little is known, said Dr. Victor M. Montori, a diabetes expert at the Mayo Clinic. No one disputes the importance of lowering blood sugar when levels are very high. Doing so may help prevent complications like kidney disease, nerve damage and damage to the eyes, and may alleviate symptoms like fatigue and frequent urination. The starting point for lowering blood sugar is diet and exercise. But for many patients, that is not sufficient. Then doctors and patients are faced with two questions: How low should blood sugar go? And what drugs should be used to lower it? Doctors track blood sugar by testing for levels of a protein, hemoglobin A1C, which reveals average levels over the previous three months. The higher a patient's A1C, the greater the risk of complications of diabetes. While this measurement is a good predictor of risk, "the question is, who benefits from intensive blood sugar lowering and which drugs are best for whom?" said Dr. Harlan Krumholz, a cardiologist at Yale. The target level varies among patients, though many do not realize it. They and their doctors often aim, at times obsessively, for an A1C level of seven. Yet that level is actually appropriate only for young, newly diagnosed people who have no other medical problems, Dr. Manson and others said. Older patients with other chronic conditions, like atherosclerosis, should not aim for such a low level, the researchers add. Studies find no obvious benefit to them no real reduction in the rate of complications like kidney, nerve or eye disease. Perhaps more distressing, while higher levels of A1C are linked to an increased risk of heart disease, "what is not clear is whether a drug that reduces A1C will also improve cardiovascular risk," said Dr. Montori. That was made abundantly clear in recent years when, at the insistence of the Food and Drug Administration, companies making some of the newer diabetes drugs began testing them to be certain they were not actually raising the chances of heart disease even as they lowered A1C in patients. The results were a surprise. At identical A1C levels, some drugs lowered risk, some did not change it and some actually increased the chances of heart disease. Older and much cheaper diabetes medications, like metformin, have not been subjected to such tests, although they do have long and well established safety records. But whether they actually prevent heart problems is unknown, Dr. Montori noted. None of that has stopped doctors from urging patients to lower blood sugar at all costs. But many of their patients, particularly older ones, often take other medications, too. The more drugs they take to get to an A1C level of seven, the greater the risk of ensuing complications (to say nothing of skyrocketing costs). And they run the risk that blood sugar levels will dip too low. Vito Ciaccia, 64, of Old Saybrook, Conn., learned he had diabetes 30 years ago. He spent years chasing an A1C of seven, spurred on by doctors who focused single mindedly on that number. "They were always upping the dosage of drugs, wanting to get to seven" he said. "One doctor was very adamant and very demanding. He told me if I didn't do what he said, I would not be here much longer." "I felt the treatment was just to pound drugs in and hope they work," Mr. Ciaccia added. But he rarely hit that A1C target, and the drugs caused uncomfortable side effects. While he was taking them, his blood sugar dipped up and down, often going so low that he experienced sweating, confusion and dizziness. Had his doctors realized that how tenuous was the connection between lowering A1C and heart disease, the biggest threat to these patients, they might have been less insistent. And he might have been less worried. "I have patients who flip out if their A1C level is above seven," said Dr. John Buse, an endocrinologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "Some are desperate to get it to six. I try to talk them down, but sometimes I fail." "I don't think there is evidence for such zealotry," he added. Mr. Ciaccia is now being cared for by Dr. Lipska. She tells him he'll do fine with an A1C level higher than seven, and can avoid the low blood sugar episodes that were so distressing. And it was O.K. to take one drug insulin which he preferred over a pile of diabetes drugs. Her approach, Dr. Lipska said, is to be straightforward with patients about the choices of treatment. "I tell them, this is what we know and this is what we don't know,'" she said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
With some movies, it's best not to allow worries over historical accuracy to derail our enjoyment. And there's plenty to enjoy in "All Is True," Kenneth Branagh's fondly poignant look at William Shakespeare's final years. Not much is known about that time, after the playwright's beloved Globe Theatre burned to the ground in 1613 and he returned to his family home in Stratford upon Avon. It's not a peaceful retirement. Reconnecting with his neglected wife (Judi Dench, brilliantly huffy) and two variously troubled daughters (Kathryn Wilder and Lydia Wilson) is challenging, to say the least. But if Ben Elton's screenplay benefits from dramatic imaginings and factual fudging, I'm content that Branagh who stars as well as directs and whose devotion to Shakespeare is inarguable be the one to approve them. The result is more country soap than biopic, a slow and soothing tale of family secrets and festering resentments. A little soppy and a tad dull Will putters constantly in the garden, mourning the long ago death of his young son the movie is so sedately paced that Branagh's distracting prosthetic nose can seem to enter scenes well before the rest of him. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
WE have undervalued creativity and research. And despite the hoopla whenever Apple or Google releases a new product, we haven't grasped the full significance of innovation. That critique wouldn't be surprising if it came from an underappreciated artist, scientist or technologist. But it's being made in what may seem an unexpected quarter: the offices of the federal government. It's the verdict of the experts who measure the American economy. We live in an increasingly knowledge based economy, but until now, official statistics haven't adequately captured that reality, particularly in the single number describing the economy's size: the gross domestic product. That's the view of Steve Landefeld, director of the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the Commerce Department unit that measures G.D.P. "We've been trying to understand the sources of growth in the G.D.P.," he said. "One of the longstanding gaps in the numbers has been the contributions of intangibles creations in the arts and entertainment, research and development, things like that and what they contribute to G.D.P." This week, the bureau is doing something about it. It plans to give a greater economic weighting to the creation of many types of intellectual property from books to movies to music to biotech drugs. The economy won't change overnight, but the numbers will. Going all the way back to 1929, the G.D.P. will look bigger. This is to take place on Wednesday, when the bureau releases the results of an immense revaluation of the size and composition of the American economy from the Great Depression to the present. It undertakes this exercise every five years or so, altering its methods as the economy and data quality change. Among the bureau's revisions is a change in its treatment of research and development and the creation of what it calls "entertainment, literary and other artistic originals." That category seemed startling when I saw it in a bureau study on intangibles and the economy. Artistic originals include books, movies, TV shows, music, photographs and greeting cards yes, greeting cards. That may seem strange it did to me, at first but bear with me. Copies of an original card that is designed today can still be sold a year or more from now. In that sense, a greeting card is like a building or a machine tool or computer software it's a capital investment that can generate revenue for years to come. Items that fit the bureau's economic definitions will be given a bigger weight in G.D.P. calculations. They will be considered assets capital investments rather than expenses and the cost of producing them will be added to G.D.P. In addition, the revenue generated by the cards will be included in G.D.P. later on, when the money flows in. That may bolster the self esteem of some writers, but it will do nothing for those of us who write for newspapers, magazines, blogs and the like. A newspaper column has no enduring value, from the bureau's pecuniary perspective. That made for an awkward moment in a conversation with Robert Kornfeld, a bureau economist. He assured me that he wasn't making a literary judgment. It's simply that daily journalism is perishable, he said. It's not worth much commercially a year after it's published. In the new digital world, a column might turn into an e book with long shelf life, and the bureau might be able to embrace it. "Who knows?" he said. "We re evaluate these things all the time." Work in other creative fields is being excluded from the investment category, too, and for similar reasons. "Seinfeld" has long term commercial value, he said. "Monday Night Football" does not, at least not in the new calculations. TV sitcoms and dramas generally count as investments. Soap operas, reality shows and sports do not. The big picture is this: Recalculating the treatment of all "artistic originals" that fit the bureau's definitions would have increased the economy in 2007 by about 70 billion, or 0.5 percent. And R. D., particularly in the field of biotechnology, would have added more than 200 billion. Combined, these two changes would have swelled G.D.P. by almost 3 percent, Mr. Kornfeld said. How it will affect G.D.P. this year and in the restatement of past numbers was being calculated as we spoke. Brent R. Moulton, the bureau's associate director for national accounts, said the statistics would be out this week. He noted that other nations had been making such shifts as well. The changes could have profound implications. R. D. and the creation of entertainment originals have generally been treated as a cost of doing business, reducing G.D.P. Now they will be recognized for their potential to add economic value for years to come. Business software has been treated this way since the 1990s. "It makes sense to expand our definitions," Mr. Landefeld said. "That's something the bureau has done for decades." But the bureau's changes will widen the gap between corporate and national economic accounting, said Baruch Lev, a professor of accounting and finance at New York University. Despite the change in G.D.P. accounting, he said, R. D. is still generally treated as an expense, not as an investment, in calculating profits and tax liability. "National accounting G.D.P. accounting is giving us a more accurate picture of the world," he said, adding that various intangibles might constitute as much as 50 percent of the value of publicly traded companies. These assets don't show up on corporate balance sheets, he said, keeping investors "in the dark about the true value of many of the companies traded in the stock market." THE bureau is still in the dark about many things, too. It doesn't know the commercial value of a new movie or of esoteric R. D. in biotechnology, Mr. Landefeld said. "Some of these things succeed, some fail, some have no enduring value; we don't make a judgment," he said. When George Lucas made the first "Star Wars" movie in the 1970s, for example, no one knew that it would generate hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue in a stream that continues to this day. Should it have been considered an investment? It could easily have bombed. "From the standpoint of accounting, we wouldn't care," Mr. Landefeld said. The bureau is tallying the production costs of movies, blockbusters and clunkers alike, adding them as assets to the G.D.P. in the years when they were made. The revenue they bring in later will be counted, too. "Some movies are forgettable; some aren't," he said. "We'll average that out and get the big picture and we hope it will give us a better understanding of the economy." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Your Money |
Ford announced Environmental Protection Agency fuel economy estimates Friday for its all new, mostly aluminum body 2015 F 150 pickup, claiming better numbers than other full size gasoline power pickups on the market in the United States. The automaker said rear wheel drive models equipped with an optional 325 horsepower turbocharged 2.7 liter V6 engine was rated at an estimated 19 miles per gallon in the city and 26 m.p.g. on the highway, for a combined total of 22 m.p.g. For comparison, Ford's most economical F 150 from the 2014 model year, which, according to the E.P.A., was the one equipped with the standard equipment 3.7 liter V6, was rated at 17 m.p.g. in the city and 23 m.p.g. on the highway, for a combined 19 m.p.g. By E.P.A. reckoning, the most fuel efficient full size pickup on the market, regardless of fuel type, is not the F 150, but the diesel equipped Ram 1500. Chrysler's EcoDiesel model produces 240 horsepower, 420 pound feet of torque and carries an E.P.A. fuel economy rating of 20 m.p.g. in the city and 28 m.p.g. on the highway, for a combined 23 m.p.g. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Automobiles |
A robot at the Musee de la Grande Guerre, or the Museum of the Great War, in Meaux, France, about 30 miles east of Paris. MEAUX, France Near the edge of a parapet of stacked sandbags, a test robot rumbles, offering visitors hundreds of miles away a bleak view of military life in World War I trenches. A real French or German soldier could never have seen more than about 30 feet along the zigzag shelters. But now, at the Musee de la Grande Guerre, or the Museum of the Great War, ultimately anyone in the world will be able to pilot a robot by computer to zoom in for a close look at cramped replicas of German and French dugouts. The robot doesn't have a name yet or its shiny suit. But it reflects the growing experimentation with so called telepresence creatures in institutions from the American Museum of Natural History in New York and the Mob Museum in Las Vegas to the Canada Science and Technology Museum in Ottawa. Many of them are turning to robots to make culture more accessible and democratic to build an international following and attract disabled visitors unable to make personal tours. "The idea is not to replace humans with robots, but to reach people and distant visitors, thanks to technology," said Elena Le Gall, a community manager for the World War I museum, which opened in 2011 in a vast, three story building in this town about 30 miles east of Paris. For the last three years, a consortium of six French companies has been developing the robot, which now looks more like an industrial vacuum cleaner topped by a screen and equipped with three computers, a camera and a microphone. A human guide always trails at its side to offer running commentary while visitors direct its path. Laser technology brings it to a halt when obstacles loom. The eventual goal is to use mass production to bring down the price of the robots to about 2,000 euros, or around 2,100, from about 20,000 euros, or approximately 21,300, according to Didier Sansier, the manager of Another World, a French technology company and one of the partners in the French project. "It's the future, but it doesn't replace the emotions of a visit," said Mr. Sansier, as he stalked a test robot by a trench to the piped music of French soldiers singing "La Marseillaise." Museums have been experimenting with robots since the 1990s, but it is only in the last five years that new companies have produced telepresence robots that can be exploited as guides or electronic showmen to attract visitors especially during hours when the institutions are closed or underused. Two years ago, the Tate Britain deployed four robots and four human guides for visitors to explore its galleries after dark, via computer, from 10 p.m. to 3 a.m., while its art was usually sleeping. The American Museum of Natural History has also used robots powered by distant tour guides: indigenous people from Haida Gwaii, an archipelago off the north coast of British Columbia, for an exhibition involving their culture. Last year, the Quai Branly, the museum of indigenous art in Paris, tried something even more sophisticated. With its exhibition "Persona Strangely Human," it featured a robot critic with a bowler hat, scarf and googly eyes that was programmed to record visitor reactions to artworks through a camera in its right eye. Then it used the data to develop its own taste, which it expressed with colors green for a positive impression, red for a negative view. The market for so called telepresence robots is expected to grow from 825 million in 2015 to 7 billion by 2022, as the devices become more sophisticated, with sensors and navigation software, according to the market research firm Wintergreen. Caroline Boutin, a spokeswoman for the Canada Science and Technology museum, said that while its building was closed for an 80.5 million renovation project, it was testing the French robot and exploring a pilot project that would coincide with the reopening of the museum next fall. "A robot roaming the museum's gallery becomes an exhibit in itself evoking people's curiosity and sparking the imagination," she said, adding that roving robots could also link schools with experts, such as scientists who "could remotely lead a group through a tour of important scientific discoveries." The museum has also acquired a traveling robot, Hitchbot, a solar powered device that researchers created in 2014 from a plastic bucket, a cake holder and flexible limbs. They intended to track it as a social experiment as it hitchhiked across Canada. The robot, equipped with GPS, roamed more than 10,000 miles. But a year later, a second one was vandalized and ripped apart in the Philadelphia area. The French World War I museum created with a private collection amassed over 40 years is constantly seeking inventive strategies to attract international tourists from the country's core museum hub, Paris. Although it is about a half hour by train from the French capital, the museum has to work hard to attract about 100,000 visitors a year to an area where two major battles of the Marne took place in 1914 and 1918. Since it opened in 2011, the museum has published a book designed to read like Facebook postings from the front, with comments from a young French soldier, whose clipped words are paired with historical photographs of life in the trenches and grim portraits of dead men. This year it is organizing conferences and an exhibition about Americans' experiences in the war, including those of Alabama soldiers who were part of the 167th Infantry Regiment of the Rainbow Division. It is also the first French museum to offer guided hourlong web visits for school groups, with human guides who offer programs in French and English. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
Nine months after his wife died, Mr. Smith was perusing the web when he came across a dating site, Compatible Partners. He was soon staring at the profile of Robert Steinborn, now 67, a semiretired optician who learned the trade while serving in the Army during the Vietnam War. "He seemed like the nicest guy," Mr. Smith said. Mr. Smith and Mr. Steinborn, whose partner, Michael James Phu, died in 2014 from a massive stroke, decided to meet for dinner in October 2017. Mr. Smith drove from his Tucson home to Mr. Steinborn's home in Chandler, Ariz. "We talked, went to dinner, returned to his place and talked some more," Mr. Smith said. "We really had a great time and when that first get together was over, I made my way back to my car, feeling pretty confident that Bob would call me back soon after to make plans to see each other again." As it turned out, Mr. Steinborn called Mr. Smith back sooner than he expected. "I was just getting into my car when Bob called out and waved me back over to the porch to ask if I would like to join him and two friends at his timeshare in Puerto Vallarta for Christmas," Mr. Smith said. "He knew that this would be my first Christmas without my wife." Mr. Smith accepted the invitation, and booked a ticket on Mr. Steinborn's flight. "The flight was largely booked," he said. "But midway through the cabin, the middle seat next to Bob's was vacant on both outbound and return flights, and we took that as a sign of the universe's blessing of our plan." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
Sebastien Chapelle, left, and Marvin Dein in their new store, Nous, in Paris. The name means "us" in French. PARIS The grate was not yet down on Colette before the eulogies began. For two decades, Colette Roussaux and Sarah Andelman's store had been the one that fashion people looked to to tell them what was cresting on the horizon, that introduced them not only to designer fashion but also to art books and heavy, expensive twice a year magazines and candles and gadgets and sneakers and tchotchkes of every unpredictable type. It had essentially made the fortune of its stretch of Rue St. Honore, now colonized by luxury brands, and become a site of pilgrimage not only for Parisians but also for fashion industry types on their semiannual fashion week rounds. But in December, Colette shut for the final time, Ms. Roussaux to "take her time," as her daughter, Ms. Andelman, put it, and Ms. Andelman to consult. The eulogies turned to a question: Where would we go now? The answer is not likely to be a single store but, less than a month after the closure of Colette, a contender has emerged: Nous (French for "us"), from two of Ms. Andelman's longtime employees, Sebastien Chapelle, who ran the watches and electronics department at Colette, a 14 year veteran of the store; and Marvin Dein, who handled sneakers and had been there for nine. Gadgets and sneakers had been two of the mainstays of Colette's always thronged ground floor, and Mr. Chapelle and Mr. Dein have imported their respective specialties to Nous. More sneakers are to come, but watches (100 euro Casios, or 122, and five figure timepieces customized by Bamford and Mad Paris) are already arrayed, near instant cameras, sunglasses and the odd pair of binoculars. Many of the products featured at Colette have come along too: OnePlus 5T Android cellphones (EUR559), for example, an early best seller since Nous opened, or rolling papers from Devambez for the stoner antiquarian of means (32 rolling papers and 32 paper tips, EUR85). (Maison Devambez is better known as a supplier of fine stationery and the like.) As Colette had a selection of magazines, so does Nous, as well as the Mizensir candles the store used to stock. Colette customers Mr. Chapelle said many have already been by might even recognize some of Colette's security guards at the door. But Nous has less whimsy than Colette had, and less fashion, too. "We're more into streetwear," Mr. Chapelle said, taking a break from some notes scrawled, still, on a Colette pad, and a sleeker, harder edge and sound. (On the soundtrack: the English rapper J Hus and Drake.) The mix skews toward men's wear, though there are some women's pieces, and more to come. "This is not something that we wanted, to be the inheritors of Colette," Mr. Chapelle said. "It's hard to have that name on our shoulders." In fact, he added, "There would be no reason to do it if there was Colette." But there isn't Colette, even if there is blessed memory, so Nous has sprung up on Rue Cambon, not far from its predecessor, and just down the block from the famous apartment (and shop) of Chanel. Mr. Chapelle recounted that a group from Chanel had already come in, lured by the sight of trompe l'oeil art piece of a Pharrell Williams sneaker designed in collaboration with Chanel and Adidas carved from a single block of wood. For EUR5,000, Nous offers shoppers the opportunity to commission their own wooden sneaker, of any make and model. The whole space came together in about three months, said Mr. Chapelle, who requested the poured concrete walls and rows of glass vitrines. He was under the pressure of being open in time for men's fashion week, when he knew from years of experience, the hordes would descend. And on a recent weekday just before the event's start here, browsers included not only a young pair in his and hers faux furs but also a delegation from Valentino (Pierpaolo Piccioli, the house's creative director, presumably at work on his collection, was absent but wanted a full report, one said.) No one had been sleeping much in the lead up to the opening, Mr. Chapelle said, but the doors opened on Jan. 8, just in time. "If you had come three days before the opening, nobody would believe it," he said. "I had customers coming saying: 'Are you open tomorrow? Are you sure?'" | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
More hotels are accepting pets, and most that do charge a fee often 25 to 150 per stay to cover the extra cleaning they say the room undergoes after a pet checks out. Travel and Allergies: What to Do When Animals Are on Board Allergies to peanuts, shellfish, dogs, cats and other triggers haven't stopped 31 year old Allie Bahn, a fourth grade teacher and blogger from Boston, from living in Italy for three years and in Australia for seven months. She keeps medication and sanitary wipes handy. Still, she's had mystery attacks while traveling, including a severe one last fall that forced her to flee a hotel in the middle of the night. Consequently, she prefers renting apartments, as she can interview the owners, and calls airlines in advance to determine her risk. "I recently flew American Airlines and they let me pre board so I could use those wipes," she said. Preparedness allows Ms. Bahn, who is among more than 50 million Americans with allergies, to manage environmental threats, including the growing number of animals inhabiting the travel world from airplanes to hotels and that in some cases are pitting animal advocates against the allergy afflicted. Passionate debate on the topic was ignited recently by an incident involving a 7 year old boy who boarded an Allegiant Air flight in Bellingham, Wash., with his parents only to discover that he was allergic when seated near a service dog. The episode caused a 90 minute flight delay before the family was asked to deplane (making matters worse, some passengers reportedly cheered and the family wasn't able to get home for two days). About 10 percent of the United States population suffers from pet allergies, according to Dr. Stephen Tilles, a Seattle based allergist and president elect of the American College of Allergy, Asthma Immunology. Symptoms run from itchy eyes, runny nose and sneezing to more severe asthma symptoms including chest tightening, shortness of breath and wheezing, and hives. Cats, he said, are twice as allergy causing as dogs. Yet it's dogs that tend to travel. According to the American Pet Products Association, about 39 percent of dog owners take their pets when traveling for two nights or more, versus 11 percent of cat people. While most of those traveling pets do so in the privacy of their masters' cars, Amtrak just expanded its pet friendliness to most Eastern corridor and long distance trains. And on its website, the Federal Aviation Administration warns: "You will still be exposed to pet dander on every flight, even without any pets in the passenger cabin. This is because most allergens are carried into the cabin on the clothes of other passengers." Aiming to fulfill demand without turning their cabins into zoos, airlines limit the size and number of pets that passengers can carry on for a fee. For example, Delta Air Lines allows six pet carriers per flight, at 125 each. American Airlines flew 122,818 pets as carry ons last year, and while Southwest Airlines said it doesn't tally the figure, the number of pets tends to spike during the holidays when travelers are flying to visit family. Not included in these figures are service animals that assist the disabled and are not considered pets. Under the Air Carrier Access Act, commercial airlines must accommodate service animals without charging a fee. They must also accommodate emotional support animals, defined as those that help relieve symptoms of stress, depression and other psychiatric conditions for which passengers are required to have a current letter from a mental health professional. Online sources for these documents abound, and in response to a recent New York Times article on pet allergies, a number of readers complained that this practice is being exploited by travelers seeking to avoid pet carry on fees. The airline solution to animal versus allergy is to reseat the afflicted. "We will reseat them in a place furthest from the animal or, if that is not acceptable or available, we will put them on the next available flight at no additional cost," said Ross Feinstein, a spokesman for American Airlines. Once they arrive at their destination, pets and their human escorts will have little trouble finding a hotel room. According to a 2014 survey by the American Hotel Lodging Association, roughly 60 percent of hotels allow pets, up 10 percent over the previous decade. From fancy homemade dog food to designer bedding, pet amenities abound at hotels. Increasingly, properties that never allowed dogs such as the 70 year old Cheeca Lodge Spa in Islamorada in the Florida Keys are now accepting them, and those that did including Emerson Resort Spa in the Catskills region of New York are expanding availability, in this case to 22 of its 53 rooms. "People think of their dogs as part of the family and most of the time you wouldn't consider going on vacation without them unless it's a 12 hour flight and your dog wouldn't be comfortable," said Melissa Halliburton, the president and founder of the pet travel website BringFido.com, which lists over 100,000 global pet friendly hotels, attractions and restaurants. "With all the people traveling to hotels, they don't want to leave their dog in their hotel room," she said. And even if the guests don't pack pets, many hotels claim canine mascots, including the JW Marriott Houston Downtown where Sir Griffin, a pug, mingles with guests and their pets. House dogs reside at several Preferred Hotels Resorts including Monti, a beagle, at the Jefferson in Washington, D.C., and Monty, a Bernese Mountain dog, at Montage Deer Valley in Utah. There are no industry guidelines for animal care or capacity in hotels, leading to great variation. Although every hotel room must be available to a traveler with a service animal, in practice some hotels will create pet specific floors or rooms in deference to travelers with allergies or those with aversions to the four legged. "Mixing and matching different guests in a hotel is a millennia old challenge," said Chekitan S. Dev, a professor of marketing and branding at Cornell University's School of Hotel Administration. "If I'm a hotel manager, I'm torn. On the one hand it creates additional service complexities. On the other hand, if you travel with your pet you'll be happiest with your stay and be more likely to come back." Most hotels that accept pets charge a fee generally 25 to 150 per stay to cover the extra cleaning they say the room undergoes after a pet checks out. At Residence Inn, Marriott's extended stay brand, pet fees range from 75 to 150 and are used to hire special cleaning services after a stay. Diane Mayer, global brand manager for Residence Inn, estimates that less than five percent of occupied rooms include pets, though seasonal fluctuations (for example, when Midwestern snowbirds are driving south for the winter) can cause regional spikes. Allergies, she said, haven't been a problem, though, "We've had to ask the guest to leave because the dog won't stop barking or the dog is aggressive." Despite deep cleaning, pet dander can persist for several months, according to allergists. "Keep in mind that the average house without an animal in it has viable cat allergens in the dust in that house," said Dr. Tilles of the American College of Allergy. "It comes from proteins off people's clothing. It's prevalent. Zero exposure isn't a reasonable expectation." One bright spot for allergy sufferers: the availability of hypoallergenic hotel rooms rose 15 percent between 2004 and 2014 to 45 percent, according to the lodging association. Motivated by the travel complaints of his patients, Dr. Mark Lazarovich, an allergist in South Burlington, Vt., created AllerPassMD.com, a free website that reviews more than 1,200 hotels with hypoallergenic rooms in cities including New York and Paris. During his research, he called one hotel with hypoallergenic rooms, which are intended to be pet free, and, when he inquired, was told he could bring a dog. "I think the good will is there, but there is a certain level of understanding of the problem that's missing," he said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
When the vibrating yoga pants were switched on, the party perked up considerably. "Oh, I like this," said Briana Siaca, facing the floor in a downward dog pose, as electronic sensors pulsed along her legs. Ms. Siaca, 23, a two time Miss New York runner up with more than 6,200 Instagram followers, was one of several fit young women who attended a private shopping party in Little Italy last week for Wearable X, a high tech clothing company that embeds haptic technology within its garments. It wasn't by chance that the sculpted women in that Mulberry Street penthouse looked as if they had been shaken, like subscription cards, from the pages of an Allure magazine. Six of the small clutch of party guests had been recruited through Surkus, an app that matches demographically desirable civilians including aspiring models, actors in waiting and social media dwarf stars with club promoters, marketers and other clients willing to pay for an attractive human garnish at their events. Members can make as much as 100 for a couple of hours of hanging around a nightclub. The app is a marketplace where influencers, the talent and the merely lovely can connect with buzz seekers who want to rent such youthful glamour, with Surkus taking 50 percent of the fee. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
WASHINGTON The Federal Reserve is joining a network of central banks and other financial regulators focused on conducting research and shaping policies to help prepare the financial system for the effects of climate change. The Fed's board in Washington voted unanimously to become a member of the Network of Central Banks and Supervisors for Greening the Financial System, it said in a statement on Tuesday. The central bank began participating in the group more than a year ago, but its formal membership is something that Democratic lawmakers have been pushing for and that Republicans have eyed warily. The Fed's halting approach to joining underlines how politically fraught climate related issues remain in the United States. The network exists to help central banks and other regulators exchange ideas, research and best practices as they figure out how to account for environment and climate risk in the financial sector. While the Fed had participated informally, its decision to join as a member is the latest sign of its recognition that the central bank must begin to take extreme weather events into account as they occur with increasing frequency and pose a growing risk to the financial system whether doing so is politically palatable or not. "The broad response to climate change on the part of society really needs to be set by elected representatives that's you. We see implications of climate change for the job that you've given us, and that's what we're working on." Still, the latest move could incite a backlash. The announcement comes shortly after Republican House members urged Mr. Powell and the vice chair for supervision, Randal K. Quarles, in a letter on Dec. 9 not to join the network "without first making public commitments" to accept only policies that would not put the United States at a disadvantage or have "harmful impacts" on American bank customers. Republicans have been particularly concerned that increased attention to climate risk by financial regulators could imperil credit access for fossil fuel and other energy companies. For instance, banks might be less likely to extend credit to those industries if regulators viewed such loans as risky and made them harder to provide. Mr. Powell had recently emphasized that the Fed was likely at some point to join the network alongside its peers, including the Bank of England and Bank of Japan, and the central bank first indicated last month that it would soon be joining the group. Mr. Quarles said during congressional testimony that the Fed was in the process of requesting membership and expected that it would be granted, in response to questions from Senator Brian Schatz, Democrat of Hawaii. "Now that they have joined this international effort, I will expect them to take further concrete steps towards managing climate risks," Mr. Schatz said in a statement in response the announcement on Tuesday. "That includes setting clear supervisory expectations for how banks should manage their climate risk exposure, and using tools like stress testing to hold them accountable." The Fed did not comment on why it decided to join now and despite several requests since Mr. Quarles's statement would not say when the central bank had applied to join. Joining the network requires a formal email request from a central bank's leader or head of supervision. Ford and Rivian no longer plan to work jointly on electric vehicles. Elizabeth Holmes took the stand in her trial. Follow along with our reporters. Ken Griffin, head of Citadel, bid highest for a copy of the Constitution. The move is the latest step in an evolution in which the Fed, which once rarely spoke publicly about the issue, has paid more public attention to climate change. The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, led by Mary C. Daly, held the system's first conference on climate last year. Lael Brainard, a Fed governor and the lone Democrat on the central bank's board in Washington, spoke there, and she has delivered other remarks on the topic. For the first time, the Fed's financial stability report this year included an in depth section on financial risks posed by climate change. Even so, the Fed has been more reticent than many of its peers when it comes to embracing a role in working to alleviate climate change and manage its fallout. The Bank of England has unveiled its plans to run banks through climate stress tests which will test how their balance sheets will fare amid extreme weather events though they have been postponed by the coronavirus pandemic. The president of the European Central Bank, Christine Lagarde, has indicated that her central bank is considering whether it should take climate into account when buying corporate debt. Climate change is a partisan topic in the United States, so more aggressive action to combat it could open up the Fed which prizes its independence to political attack. The Trump administration denied or questioned the science behind climate change, and though the incoming administration of Joseph R. Biden Jr. is poised to make it a top issue, many Republican lawmakers stand ready to police the Fed's embrace of climate related policy. "I'm going to be raising this issue much more vociferously I think my colleagues will as well," Representative Andy Barr, Republican of Kentucky and the lead signatory on the Dec. 9 letter, said in an interview on Monday. Mr. Barr said he was concerned that the Fed might move toward carrying out climate stress tests or put in place other policies that would make it harder for oil and coal companies to gain access to credit. Democrats will struggle to get policies like the so called Green New Deal through Congress, he said, and he worries they will try to carry out their policy objectives through the "backdoor" of financial regulation. Mr. Barr said both Mr. Quarles's statement that the Fed would be joining the Network of Central Banks and Supervisors for Greening the Financial System and Mr. Powell's recent comments caught his attention. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Economy |
For two weeks, all seemed well with the plan to hold the United States Open in New York just a few months after the city had become the epicenter for the coronavirus in the Western world. With a handful of notable exceptions, the best players in the world began arriving in mid August, nearly all of them housed at a Long Island hotel, where they were supposed to comply with strict social distancing rules as they played a warm up tournament and prepared to play the U.S. Open itself at the U.S.T.A. Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Queens. The plan that leaders of the United States Tennis Association had developed closely with city and state public health officials including closing the tournament site to spectators, regular testing, education, behavior monitoring and contact tracing appeared to be working. And there were protocols in place for what would happen if a player tested positive protocols that players had agreed upon. Organizers thought they had all the bases covered. Then, two days before the U.S. Open, Benoit Paire of France, a 31 year old veteran known for his smooth strokes and his stylishly bushy beard, tested positive for the coronavirus. The series of events that has ensued, including revisions to the protocols, disgruntled players confined to their hotel rooms, and contradictory rulings from different public health departments, led to matches' being delayed and canceled at the last minute and injected chaos into one of the world's highest profile sporting events as the tournament heads into its climactic second week. Electronic contact tracing revealed that Paire had been in close contact for an extended period of time a card game at the hotel and possibly other socializing with seven players, most of them French, including Kristina Mladenovic. A day after two top men's singles players had to wait two and a half hours to find out whether they would be able to take the court, tennis officials had to eliminate the top seeded women's doubles team of Mladenovic and Timea Babos. Health officials in Nassau County, where the players' hotel is, decided that allowing Mladenovic to play would violate the county's protocols, even though Mladenovic had been participating in the tournament all week. The U.S.T.A., which was caught off guard by Nassau County's sudden involvement in the tournament's protocols, said in a statement that it was obligated to comply with the county's ruling that all of those who had been in close contact with Paire would have to remain alone in their hotel rooms through a quarantine period that ends next Saturday. It was the third time in less than a week, and the second time in 24 hours, that the rules for players exposed to the virus had changed. A Nassau County official speaking on behalf of its health department said it became aware of Paire's positive test in recent days and was treating the players like any other person in the county who has had direct contact with someone who has tested positive for the virus. The official, who said he could not be quoted by name but declined to give a reason, was not able to explain why the county waited five days after Paire was removed from the draw to enforce its stringent rules on the quarantine. "We always knew we were going to have to stay vigilant and monitor everything every single day, because we have learned how quickly things can change in this Covid 19 world that we are now living in," said Chris Widmaier, chief spokesman for the U.S.T.A. Those words were likely to be little comfort to Mladenovic, who said earlier in the week that the tournament had become a "nightmare" for her. "I have only one desire, and that's to get my freedom back, and even that we don't have yet," Mladenovic said in French, fighting back tears, after she lost her second round singles match Wednesday. Mladenovic has maintained that her exposure to Paire consisted of playing cards with him and other players around a large table for roughly 40 minutes and that everyone had been wearing masks. None of the other players has tested positive. Mladenovic and her representatives did not respond to messages Saturday. Before the U.S. Open began, Alexis Colvin, an orthopedist who is the medical director for the U.S.T.A., said the tournament would be a test of how well players could adapt to changes in the middle of a competition. Colvin, who worked in a coronavirus ward earlier in the year, said that because knowledge about the virus prevention measures changes seemingly each week, it was entirely possible that rules would change during the tournament. "Our protocols are dictated by New York State and the Centers for Disease Control, so if they change then we change," she said. And yet, even Colvin could not have foreseen the shifting rules and the subsequent confusion that local health departments have caused. Widmaier said that during the summer, the U.S.T.A. had made it clear to players, their representatives and leaders of both the Association of Tennis Professionals and the Women's Tennis Association, which represent players and the leaders of tennis tournaments, that players who tested positive would be withdrawn from the tournament and would have to go into quarantine in New York. Players who had come into contact with any player who tested positive would be subject to local health regulations, too. However, Widmaier said, the organization did not have a final plan for what would happen to players who continued to test negative after they had been exposed to players who tested positive. Also, while the U.S.T.A. worked closely with health officials in New York City and with Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, it did not work closely with officials in Nassau County, even though the player hotels are there. Last weekend, after Paire's positive test, U.S.T.A. officials scrambled to produce a new set of rules for players who had had extended contact with him but whose tests were negative. The rules, which received the approval of health officials in New York City, included daily testing and isolation from the rest of the players, including separate buses, use of hotel stairs instead of elevators and no access to common areas at the National Tennis Center. To remain in the tournament, players had to sign an agreement saying they would adhere with the rules. Those rules remained in place until Friday, when health officials in Nassau County distributed notices at the player hotels spelling out their decision that the players who had been exposed to Paire would be required to remain in their rooms until the end of their quarantine period next Saturday. Adrian Mannarino, one of the exposed players, was at the National Tennis Center at the time. For nearly three hours, tennis officials negotiated with state health officials over whether he would be allowed to play his scheduled match with Alexander Zverev of Germany. The match, originally scheduled for 2:30 p.m., began at 5 p.m. Mannarino lost and said after the match that he would return to the hotel to enter quarantine. That appeared to clear the way for Mladenovic to play her doubles match, which was scheduled for Saturday, but the match was removed from the schedule before play started. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
With insulin prices skyrocketing and substantial shortages developing in poorer countries, the World Health Organization said on Wednesday that it would begin testing and approving generic versions of the drug. Agency officials said they hoped to drive down insulin prices by encouraging makers of generic drugs to enter the market, increasing competition. At the moment, the world's insulin market is dominated by three companies Eli Lilly, Novo Nordisk and Sanofi and they have steadily pushed up prices for two decades. "Four hundred million people are living with diabetes, the amount of insulin available is too low and the price is too high, so we really need to do something," Emer Cooke, the W.H.O.'s head of regulation of medicines and health technologies, said as she announced the plan. The approval process, which the W.H.O. calls "prequalification," will permit United Nations agencies and medical charities like Doctors Without Borders to buy approved generic versions of insulin. The process also will reassure countries without strong regulatory agencies that the approved drugs are safe for their health ministries to purchase. The W.H.O. aims to duplicate its success in widening global access to H.I.V. drugs. Started in 2002, prequalification helped to rapidly lower the prices of these medications in poor and middle income countries. At that time, nearly 7,000 Africans were dying of AIDS every day because they could not afford H.I.V. medications, for which Western drug companies charged up to 15,000 a year. Now the drugs are made in India, China and other countries with thriving generics industries, and they cost less than 75 a year. About 80 percent of the people in the world taking H.I.V. drugs are taking inexpensive generics tested and approved by the W.H.O. The crisis now facing people with diabetes is equally dire. Over the last 35 years, the number of people in the world with diabetes has quadrupled to 400 million , said Dr. Gojka Roglic, the W.H.O.'s chief of diabetes management guidelines. People with uncontrolled diabetes face premature death, blindness, strokes, foot amputations and other consequences of dangerously high blood sugar levels. The increase in diabetes is partly a result of population growth and rising life expectancy, but mostly it is driven by the obesity epidemic and lack of exercise, which contribute to Type 2 diabetes. Type 1 diabetes an autoimmune disease that typically begins in childhood and destroys the body's ability to make insulin has also increased by about 3 percent a year for unknown reasons, Dr. Roglic said. Everyone with Type 1 about 20 million people, the W.H.O. estimates needs regular injections of insulin. So do about one fifth of those with Type 2, another 60 million people. Even though insulin has been on the W.H.O.'s essential medicines list for over 40 years, about half of those 80 million people cannot get the insulin they need, because they or their country's health systems cannot afford it, the W.H.O. said. In the United States, where the price of a vial has risen to 275 from 35 over two decades, diabetics without good health insurance are forced to ration whatever they can afford or to buy insulin on the black market. Drug companies making insulin for domestic use exist in India, China, Poland, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, Brazil, Mexico and Russia, Ms. Cooke said. Several have already expressed interest in entering the global market if they can win W.H.O. approval. "We've been waiting for this for a long time," said Christa Cepuch, the pharmacist coordinator of the access to medicines campaign at Doctors Without Borders. Novo Nordisk "welcomes the new prequalification program, which reflects an increased focus on diabetes by the W.H.O.," a company spokesman, Ken Inchausti, said. "Novo Nordisk is committed to be part of the solution." Nicolas Kressmann, a Sanofi representative, said he had not heard of the W.H.O. plan but added: "We definitely support any solution that makes access easier for patients." Kelley Murphy, an Eli Lilly spokeswoman, said: "Any program that makes access to insulin easier for people is important." In a recent W.H.O. survey of 24 countries, most of which were poor or middle income, 40 percent of health care facilities had no insulin on hand. In some countries, the price of a vial in private pharmacies was 15 to 20 percent of a typical worker's take home pay. Noting that Americans also struggle to afford insulin, Ms. Cooke speculated that her agency could spur the entry of generics into the American market by working with the Food and Drug Administration to "raise confidence in products we'd approved." But the health agency's move is unlikely to immediately affect the sky high price of the hormone in the United States. The American market is regulated by the F.D.A., and merely applying for approval is prohibitively expensive for many small companies. Insulin was discovered almost 100 years ago. The drug itself is not patented, although different ways to make and deliver it are. In the United States, established pharmaceutical companies often file suits claiming patent violations to drive generic competitors out of the marketplace. Still, Americans are increasingly aware that virtually every country in the world pays less for medicine, a realization that has set off congressional hearings and become a rallying cry for Presidential candidates. In July, for example, Bernie Sanders took a group of Americans with diabetes to Canada to buy insulin, saying that corporate greed had made the price in this country almost 10 times higher than the price in Canada. President Trump has said he will lower drug prices, though a plan to do so has not yet been enacted. The director of the Affordable Insulin Now campaign, Rosemary Enobakhare, on Wednesday called the W.H.O. announcement "a good first step toward affordable insulin for all around the world," but said it would not help the 30 million people with diabetes in the United States. Any measure to lower American prices "must require Congress to grant Medicare the power to negotiate drug prices," she added. Like the Science Times page on Facebook. Sign up for the Science Times newsletter. Ms. Cooke said cheaper insulins could be on the market within two years. A meeting of all the world's insulin manufacturers is planned for March. It will take time for each to submit data showing how they make and test their products. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
Full disclosure: I was already sold on Milwaukee before I arrived. I'm originally from outside Chicago, and spent some time in Wisconsin's largest city around 10 years ago when I was performing in a local theater production. During my time there, I came to appreciate the city's appealing mix of outstanding cultural institutions, fantastic food and dive bars. I am satisfied to report that, in those respects, very little has changed. I found a small but vibrant city that balances its traditional Germanic origins with an embrace of contemporary art and design, great live music, and fun, casual dining. Whether it was a concert at Turner Hall or a quick, satisfying dinner at the bar of the Noble, I was constantly impressed by how good (and cheap) almost everything was that I encountered. Lily Shea, a student and waitress at Lakefront Brewery, maybe put it best: "Milwaukee is really underrated. I think it surprises people." I couldn't agree more. It's also a quick jaunt from Chicago, where I was visiting family, so I decided to check my ground transit options. Wanderu, a metasearch aggregator that specializes in buses and trains, spat out results that varied in price from high ( 25 one way on Amtrak) to low ( 11 one way on Megabus). Since I would save only about 30 minutes traveling by train Milwaukee is just 90 minutes up Interstate 94 I went with the cheaper bus option. Some of you may already know how that trip turned out. Luckily, it wasn't a harbinger for the rest of the trip. From the bus terminal (which is also the Amtrak terminal), it was easy to get to my Airbnb in the Lower East Side neighborhood, between Lake Michigan and the Milwaukee River (New Yorkers, I can sense your confusion). For what I paid, 55 a night, the cozy apartment with a twin bed on the fifth floor of a sometimes walkup (the elevator didn't always work) was a decent value. But in this instance, saving money by using Airbnb may have been something of a hollow victory. On a different night during my stay, I booked a room at the Hyatt downtown: 66 a night, found on Priceline. In this case, the added comfort and reliability of a hotel was worth the extra 11. But the location of the Airbnb was great. It was an easy walk over to Brady Street, a busy restaurant and shopping area that's just slightly over a half mile long. He's seen generations of customers grow up: "Some of them come in now and they're 70 years old. They say, 'Remember when you used to have those open barrels of olives in the front of the store?' And I say, 'And I used to catch you eating them!' " I enjoyed a spicy sausage and pepperoni calzone at Glorioso's ( 5.95), a gooey pocket of tender dough filled with cheese, sauce, pepperoni and homemade sausage. The sausage was particularly good: tender and crumbly, with a faint spicy kick. The eating options in Milwaukee may not always be the healthiest, but the amount of simple, down to earth, delicious comfort food is seemingly without end. And what better way to represent America's Dairyland (the phrase that's been on Wisconsin's license plates since the 1940s) than a butter burger from Kopp's Frozen Custard? Elsa Kopp opened the business in 1950, and the stand's frozen custard and butter burgers burgers in which the patties have been thoroughly slathered in butter made the place a local legend. The frozen custard, which is similar to ice cream but is made with eggs in addition to the requisite cream, feels like something between frozen yogurt and ice cream. Huge mixers behind the ordering counter churn the stuff out, and it pours slowly, like concrete. I had a cheeseburger ( 4.75) with ketchup, onions and mustard, served on a pillow soft bun with a couple of bread and butter pickles slapped on top. It was a greasy, delicious mess: hard to dislike something so unabashed and in your face about being bad for you. I chased it all down with a root beer float ( 2.85) made with root beer from Sprecher, a nearby craft beer brewery, and vanilla frozen custard. That, too, was pure decadence. Eating and drinking go hand in hand, of course, and Milwaukee is a city built on beer. Waves of German immigrants settled in Milwaukee throughout the 1800s, and they brought brewing traditions with them. Milwaukee once had four of the world's largest breweries within its city limits Miller, Pabst, Schlitz and Blatz. (Miller, still located in "Miller Valley," about three miles west of downtown, is the only one left. Blatz and Schlitz were acquired by Pabst, which is now based in Los Angeles.) Today, there are newcomers on the Milwaukee beer scene, one of the best of which is Lakefront Brewery, in the Riverwest neighborhood. Started in 1987 as a small brewery by brothers Russ and Jim Klisch, Lakefront grew quickly and moved to its current location, an enormous former electric plant. Today it has one of the more entertaining brewery tours. My Uber driver pointed me toward it during my ride from the bus station to my Airbnb. "By the end, you won't know who's drunker: you or the tour guides," he said. I was convinced. "The tour starts in five minutes," the voice on the intercom crackled. "Make sure you have a beer. A full beer!" The tour, which is 9, is half off on Mondays from 4 to 8 p.m. The tour price includes four beer tokens, each good for a six ounce pour of some of Lakefront's finest. I got an IPA and joined my group. Our tour guide, Max, was in rare form. "You can call me Max, Maxwell, Maximilian, or my personal favorite, Optimax Prime," he began, and proceeded to riff through a well rehearsed spiel about the brewery's history. The jokes came a mile a minute. And while many were groan worthy, his energy won over even the most jaded in the group. "In my neighborhood, Riverwest," he said, "there's a bar and church on every block, meaning you can sin and repent in one fell swoop." Rimshot! Among other Lakefront tidbits imparted to us on the tour: The brewery was the first to produce an organic and gluten free beer approved by the federal government; indeed, a surprising 27 percent of Lakefront's sales come from their gluten free beer. We proceeded to look at the huge brewing tanks, followed by what Max said was the original assembly line featured in the opening credits of "Laverne Shirley," the classic Milwaukee based sitcom that ran in the late '70s and early '80s. (Max wasn't merely a good tour guide, by the way. The concert at Turner Hall and dinner at the Noble? His suggestions.) After the tour, we went back in the main meeting hall for more beer pints are also half price between 4 and 8 p.m. on Mondays. As are the cheese curds. Lakefront makes some mean pub grub as well, and if you've never had beer battered and deep fried cheese curds (regularly 8), you are truly missing out on something spectacular. They're fat, springy chunks of creamy, mild cheese with a crisp outer fried layer, but they have retained their characteristic "squeak." Slightly gooey and served with a tangy garlic ranch dipping sauce, they're the ideal vehicle to absorb alcohol. I also enjoyed a bratwurst from Usinger's a famous local purveyor of sausages and meats with a pretzel bun ( 5). It's tough to burn off all those calories, but a stroll through the Milwaukee Art Museum will get you part of the way. Housed in a gorgeous set of buildings designed by Santiago Calatrava, Eero Saarinen, David Kahler and James Shields, the museum is worth visiting for its swooping, stunning architecture alone. It also houses a world class collection of around 30,000 works, including pieces by Picasso, Chagall and Miro. Georgia O'Keeffe, a Wisconsin native, is also well represented. Admission is 17, 15 for students and seniors, and free the first Friday of every month. Kevin Miyazaki for The New York Times | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
A roundup of motoring news from the web: Ford announced this week that it would give 1 million worth of automotive design scholarships over the next two decades in memory of William Clay Ford, the last surviving grandchild of Henry Ford and a former vice chairman of the company. Mr. Ford, who died earlier this week, chaired the company's design committee for more than 30 years. (The Detroit Free Press) Cynthia A. Telles will step down from her position on General Motors' 14 member board of directors, according to a filing with the federal Securities and Exchange Commission. Two other board members are likely to step down this spring, which would leave G.M. with three empty seats on its board. (Detroit News) According to a study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, cameras are more effective than sensors for preventing crashes while backing up a vehicle. The institute said that nearly 300 people are killed and about 18,000 injured annually when motorists back into them or run them over while backing up. Cameras helped drivers avoid such collisions in a test, the institute found. (The Los Angeles Times) When Vehicle Production Group the company that built wheelchair accessible vans ceased production last year, AM General, the former producer of military Humvees, took control. AM General has resumed production of the MV 1, and announced Tuesday that it would sell the vans for 50 60,000. (WBST) | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Automobiles |
Relations between Kim Kardashian West and the country of Japan eased on Tuesday after Ms. Kardashian West announced that she would change the name of her shapewear line, which she had said last week would be named Kimono. That announcement of the trademark caused an uproar (kimono being a traditional Japanese garment) and invited pushback from Japanese officials. The mayor of Kyoto sent Ms. Kardashian West a letter to ask her to reconsider the name. Days later, she did. On Tuesday, Hiroshige Seko, Japan's trade minister, acknowledged Ms. Kardashian West's pledge to revisit the name. Still, he said that he planned to send someone to speak to the United States Patent and Trademark Office, and that he would keep an eye on the shapewear situation. A publicist who reached out on behalf of Kyoto did not yet have any update on whether the mayor's invitation to Ms. Kardashian West to visit his city still stood. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
FLORENCE, Italy Like baby rabbits, so pale and unformed are the teenage models cast by the Russian street style phenomenon Gosha Rubchinskiy whose rapid ascent to cult design status was slyly overseen by the marketing masterminds of the Japanese designer Rei Kawakubo's company, Comme des Garcons. Response to an Instagram call for potential models for Mr. Rubchinskiy's show at Pitti Uomo, the men's wear trade show here, was so overwhelming that it crashed an assistant's email account. And that is how Quinn Straw, a 17 year old from Santa Ana, Calif., found himself loafing in a makeshift backstage area at the vast and semi abandoned Manifattura Tabacchi a former tobacco factory that is the least well known, perhaps, of the Rationalist masterpieces by the Italian engineer and architect Pier Luigi Nervi. "Gosha thought I had a strong look," said Quinn, who said his parents, both nurses, sacrificed a family vacation to help pay for his trip to Florence. Like all the underage models (and they were almost uniformly underage), he was accompanied by a chaperone. In Quinn's case, it was his mother, Cat. The budding model added that his 76 year old grandfather, Vincent Quinn, happily provided funds for the trip, because he is a fan of Mr. Rubchinskiy's clothes and even bought one of his sweaters. The Moscow skate rats and street boys who have inspired his designs ever since Mr. Rubchinskiy a former hairdresser, stylist and costume designer first turned his talents to producing a men's wear line in 2008 were well represented by boys like Anton Schmidt, a 16 year old from Denmark, and Valtierri Niemala, another 16 year old, from Helsinki, Finland. With their white lashes, complexions as smooth as a linoleum floor and their scrawny chests, they embodied perfectly the age cohort that marketers of all kinds have been desperate to tap into, the generation of true digital natives, people who have never known a world without social media. Their allegiance is fundamentally to the internet ether, a no place place where Lauge Koch, a 16 year old from Copenhagen, for instance, can make common cause with Samuel Nicholas, a 16 year old from Yorkshire, England. "I don't know anyone who's done anything the likes of this from Bradford," Mr. Nicholas said, referring to his hometown. "To come to Italy and model with guys from all over the world for one of the world's biggest brands of the moment is something no one I've ever known has ever done." The success of Mr. Rubchinskiy's designs owes much to his canny and largely intuitive apprehension of the tastes of a generation for whom the circumscribed borders that traditionally defined our world have little meaning. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
The coronavirus is spreading faster than we can contain it, faster than municipalities can track it and here in the United States, much faster than our testing capacity can handle. By the time you read a statistic, chances are it's outdated. It's becoming increasingly clear that people in power can't keep up. On Monday, Alex Azar, the secretary of health and human services, said he couldn't provide accurate numbers of tested Americans because private labs don't have to report results to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The C.D.C. has come under fire for taking testing numbers off its website and for its inability to supply timely information on the spread of the virus. On Wednesday, Reuters reported that the White House told officials at the Department of Health Human Services to classify coronavirus deliberations, adding a layer of secrecy to the government's response. As a result, there's not just an absence of information but also an absence of authority. In cases where the government has issued guidance like telling Americans to avoid cruise ships it did so despite misgivings from the president and reports of internal fighting. Agencies like the C.D.C. offer rudimentary advice on what symptoms to watch for and how to wash hands effectively, and say not to touch one's face. But most guidance stops there and fails to give unambiguous advice on when and how to limit gatherings, cancel big events, postpone travel and how, precisely, people should prepare for potential quarantines or hunkering down. Fear of inducing panic or creating economic hardships means most advice is framed as a personal choice, rather than a collective one. In the absence of government leaders offering concrete plans, we need experts from outside the government right now more than ever. And we need them to be loud and definitive. We need them to bat down misinformation and to be brave enough to speak up with bold pronouncements. We need them to be calm but sober, to remind us that upending the normal routines of our lives is not in itself a reason to panic but a way to stave off needing to panic down the line. And finally, we need those in positions of authority managers, community leaders, even household leaders to heed and act on their advice. It's a big ask, but if you look hard enough, these experts are stepping up. For me, they've been most visible via long, informative Twitter threads. Most are academics and unsung practitioners with years of experience studying infectious diseases. Most say the same thing, with repetition for emphasis: People in the United States and those in places with community spread of the virus need to start putting into effect more extreme measures of social distancing to flatten the curve of the outbreak. On Tuesday, a Harvard epidemiologist, Marc Lipsitch, shared his recent research into the coronavirus epidemics in Wuhan and Guangzhou, China, comparing their I.C.U. and hospital bed use with the capacity here in the United States. His conclusion was blunt: "We need to stop feeling sheepish about it and just realize that some places (Italy, Iran) are in crisis, and some are very likely in the days before crisis, a crisis that will be less bad if we slow down the virus. flattenthecurve to reduce peak demand on health care." Unlike government officials offering vague advice, many experts seem clear that difficult measures must be put in place. In a 35 tweet thread on Monday, Tom Inglesby, director of the Center for Health Security of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, laid out the case for social distancing in American cities. At a basic level, social distancing means keeping sick people home and out of contact with healthy as well as vulnerable people. It also means that healthy people distance themselves by avoiding crowded or public places, canceling plans and not traveling. It's intended to slow down the spread of the virus so that it doesn't overwhelm the health system all at once. Dr. Inglesby argues that "we will need partial solutions that fit into different communities" and that in many places, "a 75% solution to a social distancing measure may be all that is possible" but that it is a "lot better than 0%, of forcing 100% solution that will fail." Advice from public health experts like Dr. Inglesby's is nuanced. It realizes the hardships of social distancing, especially on vulnerable populations, including children who rely on schools for meals and minor health care. Even here, policy experts are stepping up. At the Brookings Institution, Lauren Bauer and Diane Schanzenbach offer comprehensive suggestions for stimulus to increase food security in response to the virus. But outside experts can't enforce quarantines, close schools and prohibit forms of travel. They can't force an economic stimulus. Ideally, that would fall to higher up authorities in government. And while it's still possible that we'll see broad action here in the United States (the president and others are considering a large payroll tax cut), swift action can happen locally via community leaders making hard decisions early. For managers, that means following the lead of C.E.O.s like Anil Dash, who runs the programming company Glitch. On Tuesday, Mr. Dash asked his employees to work remotely. More important, he laid out the company's reasoning to his almost 600,000 followers on Twitter and urged them to do the same. "I want to clearly acknowledge the privilege that we have working in tech, and that we see in adjacent industries like media and finance," he wrote, adding that the company was distancing itself to try to reduce the risk for workers in other fields without labor protections and social safety nets. Mr. Dash then shared resources collected by the entrepreneur Aniyia Williams and Black Brown Founders, with advice on working from home. While Mr. Dash's advice is practical, the real goal of the announcement is similar to that of the public health officials and doctors: to quickly try to establish new norms around social distancing. "In nearly every country around the world, we've seen a reluctance to act until it's too late, often resulting in disaster," Mr. Dash wrote. That reluctance makes sense. Even those who are preparing for an outbreak with panic buying of supplies seem unsure of what they're preparing for. "Quarantine collectively scans as a threat to normalcy more than a threat to life," Colin Horgan noted recently about compulsive toilet paper purchasing at big box stores like Costco. "What we try to protect, at least mentally, is not our lives but our lifestyle." But it's apparent that our lifestyles need to change, temporarily at least. It is likely to be burdensome for all, trying for most and truly perilous for some. For this reason and because the virus is moving faster than our ability to understand it we're not likely to take appropriate action if left to our own devices. In my own life, these experts have influenced my thinking and behavior. I'm staying calm but watching developments vigilantly. I'm stocking up on food and other supplies, but doing so responsibly I'm not hoarding hand sanitizer. I've canceled trips and cut back on going to public events. I've donated to my local food bank and asked around for ways to help prepare vulnerable parts of my community. All of those actions have come on the advice of experts who know how to mitigate the spread and damage of an infectious disease. But those steps are effective only when everyone who can participates, too. It's why authority is so important in a crisis it helps to influence behavior at scale. The authority void needs to be filled by experts and leaders large and small. If you're in a position to step up, do it now. By the time action seems obvious, it might be too late to make a difference. 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 |
WINDSOR, England The sun was glad. The air was the exact temperature of God's warm breath as he whispers a secret in your ear (72 degrees Fahrenheit). The breeze was discreet; the clouds were for decoration only; the roads looked newly born; the volunteers were eager to volunteer in some way; the grass smelled like even more grass than it was; the horses were lauded as "brave," "affectionate" and "very tolerant of drunk people"; the policemen were armed with semiautomatic rifles; the empire, while dead, was verging toward an eerie approximation of vitality (rigor mortis, perhaps?); the earth was careening through space at a rate of 1,000 miles an hour; and Rachel Meghan Markle was getting married MARRIED! to the sudden and frantic delight of millions. These were the sparkling images beamed from the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead on May 19 to dazzle a global audience: The bride in lustrous, heavy white silk. The groom lustily biting his lip as he cast his eyes upon her. Oprah Winfrey striding into a medieval chapel in a dress the color of chilled rose. Less than 24 hours earlier, the day before the royal wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, a tightly packed horde of nameless well wishers had found themselves crushed between police barricades outside the walled complex of buildings known collectively as Windsor Castle. As the sun began to dip in the west, the well wishers grew agitated. Police presence suddenly increased on the already well policed street, as word had spread that an appearance from a member of the British royal family was imminent. Women in sandals negotiated for purchase on railings. Dogs and children were for several minutes at risk of being trampled, and then were. Specific complaints about certain people in the crowd were voiced loudly into the evening air, presented as general observations about humanity. Everyone was desperate to see Ms. Markle. They did not hunger to see her; it is possible to live for weeks without solid food. These people needed Ms. Markle as they needed oxygen. They needed to witness firsthand the color of the dress she had chosen to wear for the afternoon of her last day as a divorced single woman. They needed to watch the fading light glint off her shiny, healthy hair and would it be up or down? They needed, each, to scream their personal well wishes at her, or maybe just to feel her name rip out of their throats MEGHAN! so it could never be said that they'd had the opportunity to try to command her attention and failed to. Minutes crawled by. The crowd grew angrier at the prolonged wait for whoever might be going to come outside, their energy mutating from excited to inconvenienced to furious. It was a relief, then, when Prince Harry emerged from the castle gates accompanied by his brother, Prince William. Harry was half, or at least 45 percent, of the reason everyone had gathered here, 25 miles outside of London. Harry was the one whose future happiness they had come to verify and endorse. Harry was ... spending an awful lot of time talking to children at the other end of the street. Harry was waving goodbye to the children. Harry was going back inside the castle without having made a full and complete circumnavigation around the perimeter of the police barricades that were stacked several bodies deep with people resolute in their desire to give him well wishes. At first, there was stunned, disbelieving silence. Then, with the prince still in earshot still climbing his way back to the castle because William the Conqueror built his fortress on a hill, and so the road leading to its modern gates is steep and awkward to navigate in dress shoes a wave of furious boos swelled up from the crowd. "He's balding!" yelled one woman as Harry retreated. "Look how balding he is!" "Why do you care?" is a question that has been slapped against me like a cold, slimy haddock carcass many times since the royal wedding became a topic of conversation last fall. The answer is: I don't care at all, and yet I must know every detail or I will die. Do I love "Suits," the show on which Meghan Markle portrayed a former paralegal? Yes. Have I ever seen "Suits"? Absolutely not. Do I have plans to watch it? No, no offense. Am I addicted to Meghan Markle? One hundred percent. What is the cure? More Meghan. Am I Meghan? Unclear. Am I not not Meghan? Almost certainly. What would I do if Meghan attempted to install herself as a monarch ruling over the United States? Strike her down. Do the inner workings of the British monarchy affect me in any way? Meghan loves cross body bags. In the spirit of science, here is my earnest attempt to break down the appeal of the concept of Meghan, for me: She is beautiful, which makes her an object of fascination in the same way as a bright red cardinal or a dramatic sunset. She is, like me, a biracial American woman, and while there is no more interesting topic than myself, Ms. Markle will do in a pinch. Her path to royalty is strewn with the indignities accrued by actors toiling on the lower rungs of fame (ads for Canadian clothing companies; photographs of her scooping up freebies at promotional gifting suites), available for my online perusal any time I want to remind myself that the Duchess of Sussex, now a vaunted figure who embodies grace and humanitarian ideals, used to be a regular embarrassing person. I am impressed that she has become immensely retroactively famous for a TV show she no longer appears on and in which she played a supporting character. Is it possible that anyone could truly live, breathe and bleed charity to the pathological degree Ms. Markle's bio page on the royal family's official website would indicate? I must know, for no reason. Most intriguingly, to marry a core member of the British royal family, Meghan Markle has completely dismantled her old life: She converted to a religion that requires her to acknowledge her husband's grandmother as "the highest power under God." She gave up a dog named Bogart who could not come to England for reasons that have never been entirely explained. She moved into a secure compound with her husband's immediate family. She has made herself a tremendous kidnap risk and virtually guaranteed that the children she has expressed a desire to raise will have traumatic, possibly terrifying, childhoods. The day of her marriage marked Meghan's official hiring into the job she will have for the rest of her life until she gets divorced, becomes too infirm to perform it or dies, and I'd like to know more about what kind of person would do that. Sort of Close, But Actually Just Very Far An oft heard defense of the British royal family's tax funded existence is that its members are a boon to the national economy. The United States has soybeans. Saudi Arabia has oil. The United Kingdom has seven to 10 white people, plus, now, Meghan Markle, and so it was no surprise that her photo was everywhere. And yet, the extent to which her image, name, initials and flag of origin had been officially monetized, even before she had married into the royal family, was staggering. Images of Ms. Markle and Prince Harry were used to sell an official 261 "limited edition royal wedding commemorative cup and saucer pair" finished with 22 karat gold in the (multiple) gift shops of Buckingham Palace. They were incorporated into the display of an official commemorative wedding coin for sale at the Tower of London, where two of Ms. Markle's royal wife predecessors were jailed by their husband before their beheadings (on site). At Kensington Palace, the couple's London home, their portraits were used to sell an officially monogrammed pill box. The souvenir shop inside St. George's Chapel, mere yards from where Ms. Markle and Prince Harry exchanged their vows in the presence of God, sells a book that observes, on the topic of Ms. Markle's yearslong romantic relationship with a Canadian chef named Cory Vitiello, "rumors persist that they were still an item when Harry and Meghan first met." Speaking of bunting strings of paper triangles highly prized by the British people there was so much of it strung in cheery zigzag patterns around Windsor that Ms. Markle could have tightrope walked across the town from end to end without ever having to touch the ground. If you added up all the Americans who have ever died, plus those yet to be born, plus those currently alive, the sum would be fewer than the number of Americans who descended upon Windsor Saturday, May 19. Members of the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority, whose Northwestern University chapter Ms. Markle pledged, staked out a prime spot at the front of the wedding procession route at an ungraceful and ungodly hour on Saturday, for Kappas only, and led a series of screaming chants into the cold early morning air. Within spitting distance, Americans grumbled through hours of verbal altercations with other Americans who they felt were encroaching on their standing spots. There were British people, too tens of thousands but unlike the foreign visitors who tended to congregate in the cramped, uncomfortable spots closest to the castle, they were willing to sacrifice physical proximity to the bodies of the royal family for general health and happiness. The greatest number milled about in the sun along the Long Walk, a 2.5 mile ramrod straight avenue leading directly to a gate at Windsor Castle. The grassy banks on either side of the walk had been transformed into a temporary fairground with trucks selling hot dogs, pizza, burgers, ice cream and alcohol tucked in the shade of an infinite line of horse chestnut trees. "Hooray!" exclaimed white lettering on the side of a red double decker bus converted into a stationary bar, "It's Pimm's O'Clock." At a discreet distance from the food were the neatest rows of port a potties man has ever created. Near nothing in particular, a gaggle of children wearing cardboard Harry and Meghan masks spontaneously began swinging their arms in a stiff limbed arrhythmic dance for several minutes with no apparent aim or supervision and the uncanny jerkiness of their movements was enhanced by the eerie floating stillness of the adult sized faces. "Boo to Camilla!" a white haired woman hissed at the screen, in clarification. "Those are for Charlie boy." When the queen emerged from her car, many in the crowd waved at her image. Shortly before noon, a vintage Rolls Royce containing Ms. Markle and her mother Doria Ragland flew past the crowds gathered on the Long Walk so quickly that the only claim anyone could make about her dress was that it appeared to be white. The crowd turned to the video screens to get a better look than real life provided. When Ms. Markle emerged from the car, the thousands of people on the lawns burst into applause. A close up shot of the groom watching her walk down the aisle engendered awwws. Inside St. George's, the flowers looked like exploding white bouquets frozen mid detonation. Outside, confetti of any kind was banned. By far the liveliest moment of the broadcast was the impassioned sermon of Bishop Michael Curry. Over the course of his 13 minute speech, BBC cameras periodically made jarring cuts to the faces of the royal family, to the amusement of the crowd. A shot of the Duchess of Cambridge wearing a glazed, far off expression stirred up laughter; an abrupt zoom to the stony faced queen, just after Bishop Curry finished quoting a slave spiritual, prompted howls. Bishop Curry's performance garnered cheers and applause. (The more muted remarks from the Dean of Windsor did not.) The rings were exchanged. Strains of "My Country 'Tis of Thee" issued from the speakers, but the entire Long Walk enthusiastically sang "God Save the Queen," from which the former borrows its melody, instead. The newly married couple kissed, and then set off on their carriage ride through the heavily patrolled, totally empty streets of town. Through Windsor and on the video screens, they waved at the nameless hordes. They waved from their wrists, in quick, short strokes, as if scrubbing out a spot in the air; to wave any bigger would have burned through the muscle energy required to keep their arms in constant motion for the duration of the twenty minute procession. In less than a year in fewer than six hours, if you peg it to live TV coverage Ms. Markle had gone from essentially unknown to one of the most famous people on the planet. More than 100,000 people had traveled to Windsor to be in the vicinity of an invitation only event of which she was the star; just shy of two billion were estimated to watch it on TV. She was at that precise moment in thoughts of, very conservatively, tens of millions of human beings. She and Prince Harry came bounding down the Long Walk. Everyone clambered for a second of eye contact, but their faces flew by so suddenly even a second was impossible to claim. And then, much more quickly than it began, it was over. The police could eat ice cream again, and did. A trio of elderly Brits speculated about whether the couple would have sex before that evening's private reception. The crowd, which, moments before, had sung a proud pledge to the monarch, dropped their plastic flags on the ground and abandoned them. The day was too fine to waste on ceremony. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
LONDON Organizers of Art Basel, the centerpiece of the European art market calendar, have canceled the show in Basel, Switzerland, in September because of ongoing health and safety concerns related to the coronavirus pandemic. The 50th anniversary edition of the event, featuring more than 250 international galleries, had originally been scheduled to take place in June, but had been postponed to Sept. 15 20. The Swiss Federal Council had delayed its decision on whether the fair could go ahead until later this month. Uncertainty about the regulatory environment, together with concerns about the financial risks for exhibitors and partners, as well as "ongoing impediments to international travel," had been additional factors in the decision to cancel, Art Basel said in a statement. "We are acutely aware that our galleries are facing unprecedented challenges and economic difficulties, and we had fervently hoped to support the art market's recovery with a successful fair in September," said Marc Spiegler, global director of Art Basel. "Unfortunately, the uncertainties that we face remain too high." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
ALBANY Lauren Mullen pulled her black hat low over her eyes, paid 10 for a ticket and entered Sefcu Arena just before tip off recently. She sat in Section 150. There were 18 rows between her and any other fans. She trained her focus on the two head coaches. On the visiting bench sat the University of Massachusetts, Lowell coach, Tom Garrick, a former N.B.A. player. Last spring, Mullen, then the women's basketball coach at New York University, interviewed for the position that Garrick now holds. It was the third time in four years that she had been a finalist for a Division I head coaching job. Her resume included a 103 58 record and five postseason berths with the Violets. On the home sideline stood Mullen's wife, Colleen, the coach of SUNY Albany. Colleen got the job one month after Lauren lost out to Garrick. An associate coach at West Point for six years, Colleen reached the N.C.A.A. Division I tournament twice. When Albany hired Colleen, Lauren resigned from N.Y.U. to stay at home with their children: Maggie, 3, and their 1 year old twins, Brennan and Callan. "When you think about it, if I had gotten the Lowell job, I would've been over there," Lauren said, pointing to Garrick. And Colleen, she added, would have been with the children. "Crazy, just crazy,'' she said. It is, though, the path they are taking as a same sex coaching couple with three small children and all sorts of demands and challenges. Indeed, Colleen joined a small sorority when Albany hired her. Although the Supreme Court approved same sex marriage three years ago and college campuses can be among the more progressive places in the United States, Colleen says she is one of only five women she knows of who are openly gay head coaches in college basketball. She recalled how Sue Johnson, her coach at the University of New Hampshire at the time who is now the athletic director at Concord Academy in Massachusetts, came out 16 years ago, when Colleen was a senior. At the time, Johnson's longtime partner, Kelly, was pregnant, and Johnson informed the team of their relationship after a practice. It was the chaos familiar to a lot of dual income households that led Lauren and Colleen to a crossroads last winter. After four years of matching basketball calendars to Colleen's biological clock to plan births for the off season, timing recruiting calls around nap schedules, and wrestling with nanny problems and a merry go round of fill in babysitters, they needed a change. "We were at a breaking point," Colleen said. "A lot of coming and going." "Absolute insanity," Lauren said. "To be frank, at the end of last year, it was like, 'O.K., what are we going to do?'" Both 38, the Mullens knew one of them needed to get a Division I head coaching job so the other could afford to step back into a supporting role. A pact was made early on. They would not pursue the same jobs, though they had competed for employment once before. That occurred when they met, in 2007. At the time, Lauren was a graduate assistant at Lehigh. There was an opening for an assistant coaching position, and Lauren applied for the internal promotion. Colleen, then an assistant at Southern New Hampshire University, also applied. They possessed similar credentials. Colleen stood 5 feet 2 inches and had starred at the University of New Hampshire as a pass first point guard. Lauren was 5 foot 4, and was a facilitator at Hofstra. Colleen, who is six months older, got the job. Soon after, they played one on one for the first and only time. Lauren beat Colleen. Any lingering tension turned to mutual interest. On opening day of practice that season, they went on their first date. "She didn't hate me for that long," Colleen said. "She got a master's from Lehigh. She's in good shape." They kept their relationship quiet as they began to climb the coaching ladder, drawing interest from South Carolina to Connecticut. Once, while Colleen was at Long Island University and Lauren was at Sacred Heart in Connecticut, they were in the same conference. L.I.U. beat Sacred Heart both times they played. "I slept on the couch," Colleen said. "It's fine." "She's lying," Lauren said. "She would have made me sleep on the couch. Takes her a little time to let the steam off." Colleen went north to West Point to become an assistant coach in June 2011. Weeks later, President Obama ended the United States military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy, the 17 year old law that banned openly gay men, lesbians and bisexuals from military service. Colleen then found herself in competition with Lauren once more, this time for a recruit. Her name was Kelsey Minato, from Huntington Beach, Calif. Minato was a prolific outside scorer and Lauren was the first to reach out to her. She and Colleen had sat side by side in the stands watching Minato at a tournament in Arizona, and Colleen encouraged Lauren to speak with Minato's coach afterward. Lauren followed through. A few weeks later, Army realized it needed a guard, and Colleen asked Lauren whether she would mind if Army pursued Minato. Lauren welcomed the competition. Minato was unaware of the relationship between the recruiters, and narrowed her choices to Sacred Heart and Army. She eventually became the best player in Army history, scoring 49 points in one game, breaking records and having her No. 5 jersey retired. "I was going to ride that wave for a long time, have a nice halo around my head for finding her," Colleen said. "When I am talking to certain people, and I bring up my wife, there's a second thought in my head," Colleen said. "It's like, 'Should I just talk about my kids?' It doesn't feel right when you censor yourself." Up in the stands, it has not taken long for Lauren to find her voice as a spectator. When the season schedule was announced, she cleared her calendar to be in attendance at Albany's opener at the University of South Florida. She had not been able to make one of Colleen's games in years. In the stands, Lauren described herself as "out of control.'' "I knew it, but I couldn't help myself,'' Lauren said. "I was like, I need to calm down, but then I'd say, 'That's a walk! They walked!'" She and Colleen bought a house in Bethlehem, N.Y., last August. On a recent night there, Maggie played with Disney princess stamps as Lauren cut chicken nuggets for the boys. A chalkboard featured a to do list above a diagram of "Double Horns," an offensive set. "We're like a sociology experiment because Maggie wants gowns and she'd maybe seen her moms in like 10 dresses combined," Lauren said. The boys, she added, had all girls toys to choose from but are indicating an interest in trucks. And Maggie is learning what comes with winning. After a victory over the University of Maryland Baltimore County, the Great Danes awaited Colleen in the home locker room. Maggie was hesitant to go inside, so Lauren let her know that she would be waiting in the hallway. After Maggie and Colleen entered, the door closed behind them. A roar could be heard as guard Kyara Frames lifted Colleen in the air, per their celebratory custom. Eleven seconds later, Maggie ran out crying. "Mom's having fun," Lauren told her. "The girls are having fun." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
Brigitte Macron, left, the wife of French President Emmanuel Macron, and the first lady, Melania Trump, in the National Gallery of Art in Washington. Maybe Melania Trump really is the hero of this particular story. How else to interpret her decision to wear a statement making, broad brimmed severe white hat Tuesday morning to greet the French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife, Brigitte, as they arrived at the White House on the second day of their state visit? Online commenters had a variety of interpretations. Some saw Beyonce (people see Beyonce in everything). The "Scandal" comparison may be the most instructive, if not the most amusing. When Olivia wore her white hat, which matched her white coats, it was always to demonstrate she was really one of "the good guys." Could it be the same for Mrs. Trump? After all, according to the folks at Merriam Webster, one of the definitions of "white hat" is "one who is admirable and honorable." Also, "a mark or symbol of goodness." In the iconography of the Western, the good guys wore white hats, and the bad ones black. Today, it's the same in the hacking community. It's possible Mrs. Trump is not aware of this and just, well, liked the idea of the decorum of a hat. Except she has something of a history of using white suits to send what seem like fairly pointed messages; see her decision to wear white associated with women's rights in the form of the suffragist movement, as well as Hillary Clinton to her husband's first State of the Union address, which happened to be her first high profile appearance with him after the Stormy Daniels scandal broke. It turns out that the hat she wore on Tuesday was specially made, commissioned by Mrs. Trump's sometime stylist Herve Pierre to match the white Michael Kors skirt suit she was wearing. Which was not, in case anyone was wondering, the same Michael Kors white skirt suit she wore in Israel during her first foreign trip with her husband, though it was similar. But back to the hat. It wasn't an accidental accessory. The scrutiny and symbolism that would be attached to every part of the first state visit of the Trump administration cannot have escaped either the Macron camp or the Trump camp (see: the details regarding the use of the Clinton and Bush china, dinner ingredients from a vegetable garden originally planted during the Obama years, and cherry blossoms as decoration). Mrs. Macron seemingly tackled the issue by sticking with a wardrobe the bright pink coat worn to deplane, the yellow coat she wore to Mount Vernon, and the white dress and jacket she wore on Tuesday created by what has become her go to fashion brand, Louis Vuitton, thus promoting a French name and lessening the amount that could be said about her choices. Mrs. Trump, however, has already worn a panoply of names both French and American. The day before the Michael Kors suit, for example, she wore a black cape by Givenchy, heels by Christian Louboutin and a black clutch by Dior, all French brands, mixed up with a broad belt from Ralph Lauren, the ur American name that also made her Jackie Kennedy esque inauguration suit. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
For travel, he uses a packing and storage service called DUFL. "Someone in my office clicks on the icon and two suitcases are packed up with my clean clothes, and when I get to the hotel they're there in my room. Sometimes they put in a sweatshirt with a picture of Jack Kerouac's typewriter on it, because I'm essentially a beatnik. A beatnik that stays at the Four Seasons and has someone else move his luggage around." Here is what he packs on every trip: "It's a perfectly ordinary deck of cards. Honest! Honest! I like to practice. People usually think practicing with a deck of cards is a lot of finger flicking, which I used to do, but people who are, like, 20 are so much better that it's a little bit disheartening. I do a lot of mental and memorization stuff with cards, so I have them with me to play with. The problem is that some people know you from television as being a magician, and if you pull out a deck of cards you seem in some way impolite. It's like being on an airplane with someone who pulls out a guitar; it's kind of embarrassing, like they want you to ask them to do a song or something." "I carry probably more electronics than you'd think a human being would carry. I carry the biggest MacBook, fully loaded, with terabytes of space. Which is stupid because I use it essentially for word processing. I also have the iPad Pro. That's what The New York Times looks best on. I don't ever agree with The New York Times but I read it all the way through every day." My Bose wireless noise canceling headphones that I use on airplanes. And money, so if someone steals the bag they won't be disappointed that they're just getting a computer that's equipped to N.S.A. standards. At least they're getting something for their trouble." "Never mind the Beatles, I'm a Monkees fan and they are three quarters American. So it's a patriotic hat. I am proud to call Mike Nesmith a friend and I've met them all. When I have a show I don't wear a hat because I want my hair to be perfect, but on travel days I'm wearing my Monkees hat all day long." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
Dolphins making faces, or whatever the equivalent is for an animal that doesn't have smile muscles. Looks like a lot of fun, and not only for the dolphins. Scientists behind a one way mirror in an aquarium wall watched and recorded the dolphins over three years. What they saw was not only twirling and close up looks and bubble play, but animals who recognize themselves. That's a cognitive ability seen only in a few other animals, like humans, chimpanzees, and elephants. Even more interesting, the two young dolphins in this study, Bayley and Foster, showed self recognition at an earlier age than chimps or humans. And that's what scientists predicted, because dolphins develop earlier than humans or chimps in numerous social and physical ways. One thing that scientists looked at was self directed behavior. They're using the mirror to view themselves. They're looking in their eyes closely. They may look at the insides of their mouths and wiggle their tongues. That kind of behavior appeared in one dolphin, Bayley, at seven months. In humans, mugging for the mirror doesn't start until 12 months or later. Next was the mark test. The animal must notice and pay attention to a mark on a part of its body it couldn't see without a mirror. The dolphins passed that too, at two years of age, which was the earliest that animal care rules would allow the scientists to draw things on dolphins. This gives us a new look at the development of dolphins' extraordinary brains, and how that development compares to our own and that of other smart animals. And just for the record, Foster visited the camera a lot more than Bayley. Who says dolphins aren't vain? music | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
The Rev. Roderick Dwayne Belin, a senior A.M.E. Church leader, stood before a gathering of more than 1,000 pastors in a drafty Marriott ballroom in Naperville, Ill., this month and extolled the virtues of a Hollywood movie. "Imagine this clip playing to your congregation, perhaps tied to a theological discussion about our sacred lives and our secular lives and how there is really no division," he said, before showing the trailer for "Hidden Figures," which 20th Century Fox will release in theaters nationwide on Jan. 6. The film has no obvious religious message. Rather, it is a feel good drama about unsung black heroines in the NASA space race of the 1960s. But Fox working with a little known firm called Wit PR, which pitches movies to churches sought out Mr. Belin to help sell "Hidden Figures" as an aspirational story about women who have faith in themselves. He became a proponent after a visit to the movie's set in Atlanta, where Wit PR invited seven influential pastors to watch filming and hang out with stars like Kevin Costner and Taraji P. Henson, who spoke of her own struggles to succeed in Hollywood. "I came away really interested in using film to explore faith," Mr. Belin said. On the surface, Hollywood is a land of loose morals, where materialism rules, sex and drugs are celebrated on screen (and off), and power players can have a distant relationship with the truth. But movie studios and their partners have quietly very quietly, sometimes to the degree of a black ops endeavor been building deep connections to Christian filmgoers who dwell elsewhere on the spectrum of politics and social values. In doing so, they have tapped churches, military groups, right leaning bloggers and, particularly, a fraternity of marketing specialists who cut their teeth on overtly religious movies but now put their influence behind mainstream works like "Frozen," "The Conjuring," "Sully" and "Hidden Figures." The marketers are writing bullet points for sermons, providing footage for television screens mounted in sanctuaries and proposing Sunday school lesson plans. In some cases, studios are even flying actors, costume designers and producers to megachurch discussion groups. Hollywood's awareness of its need to pay better attention to flyover state audiences has grown even more urgent of late, as ultraliberal movie executives, shocked to see a celebrity encircled Hillary Clinton lose the presidential election to Donald J. Trump, have realized the degree to which they are out of touch with a vast pool of Americans. Tens of millions of voters did not care what stars had to say in support of Mrs. Clinton. Are those voters also ignoring the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio and Meryl Streep when they promote movies? Would they listen if it were a church leader telling them to buy a ticket instead? Film companies can no longer afford to take any audience for granted. Despite a growing population, North America's moviegoing has been more or less flat not exactly what investors want to hear. Last year, 1.32 billion tickets were sold, up from the year before but down from the 10 year high of 1.42 billion in 2009, according to the Motion Picture Association of America. More troubling, cheaper and more convenient in home entertainment options are threatening the grip that multiplexes have long had on young adults; the number of frequent moviegoers ages 12 to 24 has fallen for three consecutive years. Hollywood is under pressure to reverse that trend. Churches may seem like an unusual path toward young people, but 41 percent of millennials engage in some form of daily prayer, according to a 2010 Pew Research paper. To reach them, many ministers have built vast social media networks. The Rev. Jamal H. Bryant, a megachurch pastor in Baltimore, has 250,000 followers on Twitter. (His church also has a smartphone app.) In the coming weeks, Mr. Bryant plans to bring up to 300 parishioners to a Wit PR organized screening of "Hidden Figures" in Northwest Baltimore. Afterward, Mr. Bryant intends to lead a discussion connecting the plot to a theological message. "Most studios, to be honest, have no idea how to market to us," Mr. Bryant said. "They're still doing the Sammy Davis Jr. tap dance: 'Look at me! Aren't you impressed?' Well, no, not really. But if you bring us into the tent, we are often excited to spread the word." People of faith and their sheer numbers by some estimates, the United States has roughly 90 million evangelicals are not a new discovery in Hollywood. Moviedom's leading Christian consultancy, Grace Hill Media, was founded in 2000 by a former publicist for Warner Bros. Studios woke up to the power of the market in 2004, when Mel Gibson's 30 million "The Passion of the Christ" came out of nowhere to sell 612 million in tickets worldwide. Sony Pictures has for years found success with low budget religious films like "Soul Surfer" and "Miracles From Heaven." What is new is the aggression and sophistication. Even in the wake of several flops among them this summer's "Ben Hur," which cost at least 150 million to make and market and collected 94 million studios are working on at least a dozen movies in this arena, including "The Star," an animated film about the animal heroes of the first Christmas. Last month, Metro Goldwyn Mayer announced the introduction of Light TV, a faith and family broadcast network. Other media companies are considering the creation of faith based streaming services, essentially Netflix for the pious. At the same time, consultants are refining their efforts. Kevin Goetz, the chief executive of the movie research company Screen Engine/ASI, recently initiated a proprietary Faith Tracker that monitors moviegoing in a sample of 800 people evangelical, traditional Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Mormon and those whom he calls "spiritual but not necessarily religious." It's a tool designed to help studios understand whether their faith based advertising and publicity efforts are connecting with the target audience before a film's release. An even bolder Screen Engine/ASI initiative involves a 1,000 member "influencer" service made up of movie attuned pastors. Some of those will be invited to view unfinished films online, to offer feedback that may help filmmakers shape them and marketers sell them. And film studios, desperate to assemble large crowds on opening weekends, have newly realized that religious Americans, if approached on their own terms, can be captured for movies that would, at first glance, seem to be an unusual fit. Mr. Mitchell and his Wit PR partner, Corby Pons, have recently been hired to use their clergy connections to tout "The Magnificent Seven," a Sony remake of the classic Western; "Sully," the Warner Bros. hit about the 2009 emergency landing of a US Airways jet in the Hudson River; and "Rules Don't Apply," a period romance directed by Warren Beatty. Last year, Wit even worked to connect an essentially profane tale, "Room," about a woman held prisoner as a sex slave, with Scripture. "How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever?" reads a discussion guide, prepared by the firm, quoting Psalm 13:1 2. "If you feel comfortable doing so, discuss the times in your life where you have felt abandoned by God," suggests the guide, alongside a photo of the film's star, Brie Larson. For instance, Fox broadly positioned "The Revenant" as bloody revenge thriller, but Mr. Mitchell and Mr. Pons emphasized themes of man's inhumanity toward his fellow man and honor versus greed. The R rated movie collected 533 million worldwide for Fox. "It's amazing watching people in Hollywood discover there is interest in their content they never knew existed," Mr. Pons said. "On the faith side, some people are surprised to learn that, hey, there is good content coming from studios. Hollywood isn't always the enemy." Movie executives tend to view the Christian audience as monolithic. It is not, of course. That may be why "Noah" sold fewer tickets in 2014 than Paramount had hoped. The studio figured the big budget movie about the biblical figure would attract religious viewers en masse, but "Noah" landed poorly with more literal interpreters of Scripture, who objected to the film's depiction of fallen angels as "Transformers" style rock monsters. The increasing number of consultants arriving in Hollywood to help forestall such problems for fees starting at about 300,000 per film and going up to 3 million is also leading to gridlock at church offices. Some megachurch pastors, for instance, complain that they are being inundated with film related requests. "Nobody wants to feel used, and sometimes the movie business acts like people of faith are there to be turned on and off as the marketers see fit," said DeVon Franklin, an ordained minister, an author and a producer of films like "Miracles From Heaven." Undoubtedly aware of that perception, studios try to keep a tight lid on their efforts, sometimes even insisting that no faith outreach is happening on behalf of a film, when there is actually a coordinated effort. Studios live in equal fear that obvious appeals to religious audiences will alienate more secular ticket buyers. Almost all studio executives contacted for this article rejected repeated interview requests, citing policies not to publicly discuss marketing strategies of any kind. But the basic rules in selling a film are the same, said Jonathan Bock, the founder of Grace Hill, which has quietly marketed movies to spiritually minded people, including "Man of Steel." "What religious people want most when they go to the movies, like people who aren't religious, is to be entertained," he said. For decades, religious audiences had little tolerance for many of the movies produced by Hollywood. By the 1990s, when films like Quentin Tarantino's violent "Pulp Fiction" entered the mainstream, the culture gap seemed unbridgeable. But a pronounced swing toward family fare, helped by a growing overseas appetite for animation and PG or PG 13 rated superhero fantasies, opened the door to new connections between Hollywood and faith audiences. If "The Passion of the Christ" showed that a mass audience existed for overt religious stories on screen, "The Blind Side," a 2009 family sports drama about a young black man taken in by a white family, showed the promise of less obvious storytelling. The 29 million film took off at the box office (ultimately selling 309 million in tickets). Mr. Bock and Grace Hill circulated film clips and sermon outlines to 22,000 pastors, some of whom preached its story of personal determination and racial conciliation. One suggested "sermon starter" involved a scene where the lead character, played by Sandra Bullock, abruptly persuades her husband to stop their car and offer a young man a ride. "Has God ever nudged your heart?" the notes read. Mr. Bock, who is Presbyterian, is credited with being the first Hollywood marketer to realize that churches had started to install enormous screens to use during their services, sometimes just to display hymn lyrics. More recently, 35,000 video walls have become more common in sanctuaries. "It makes church feel more contemporary," Mr. Bock said, adding that ministers are becoming adept at "building vibrant social media communities that expand their reach far beyond Sunday morning." Promotional efforts for "Hidden Figures" included a free concert by Pharrell Williams at the Toronto International Film Festival in September. The film has no obvious religious method, but some pastors endorse its inspirational message. Sony's faith based unit, Affirm Films, has lately been working to tap Christian audiences overseas, an area that studios have largely ignored. "There are pockets of evangelical Protestants around the world, but it takes a lot of preplanning," said Rich Peluso, a Sony executive vice president. "You have to develop a relationship with them." In some cases, Sony has bypassed film distributors and made release deals for dramas like the prayer focused "War Room" with Christian media companies in countries including Italy and Australia. "People are sometimes surprised to find me, a conservative Christian guy, working in Hollywood," Mr. Peluso said. "There are a lot of us, actually. More than people think." "Hidden Figures," produced by Chernin Entertainment and Levantine Films for about 25 million, after accounting for tax credits, has been marketed with all of the usual Hollywood bells and whistles. A trailer came out in August. In September, Fox staged a publicity stunt at the Toronto International Film Festival, showing 20 minutes of the film followed by a free concert by Pharrell Williams, who contributed to the score. Another trailer followed. Ads popped up on TV, billboards, bus shelters, websites. Fox, which is releasing the film in 15 cities on Christmas Day, also lined up a partnership with Pepsi and has backed the film with a robust Oscar campaign. Elizabeth Gabler, the president of Fox 2000, the studio division behind "Hidden Figures," said in a statement, "Corby and Marshall help to locate these important faith audiences and leaders who are hungry for aspirational content without feeling like they are going to church." Mr. Mitchell, 46, and Mr. Pons, 39, went to work early last year, reading the "Hidden Figures" script, written by Theodore Melfi and Allison Schroeder (and based on Margot Lee Shetterly's book). They decided that this film, because it was not overtly religious, needed to be "poured with Dixie cups instead of buckets," as Mr. Pons put it. Translation: Spread the word by facilitating discussion rather than hammering home a message through blanket ads in Christian publications. "We see this as a healing movie," Mr. Mitchell said. "At a moment when so many people right and left, black and white are arguing over what America is or what America isn't, here is a chance to come together in a theater and look up, to space quite literally in this case, but metaphorically too." Wit PR operates with one foot inside Hollywood and one foot out. Mr. Pons, lanky and self deprecating, lives in Los Angeles with his wife and is the five person company's primary contact with studios. He works from a home office. Prone to folksy sayings that charm the slick Hollywood crowd "your cheese done slid off your cracker" is a frequent one and means "you're out of your mind" Mr. Pons grew up in the rural North Carolina hills, where his parents run the Christian Training Center International. Mr. Mitchell, quick witted and single, operates from an office near the historic Salem Baptist Church in Jenkintown, Pa., a Philadelphia suburb; he has served as the church's pastor since 2012. He sometimes speaks with the fiery conviction of a preacher but has a secular background. His resume includes a stint as a senior enrollment and operations official at Wilberforce University in Ohio. The two men met in Washington. Mr. Mitchell, already at Wilberforce, had served as chief of staff to the Rev. Floyd Flake, then a New York congressman and now senior pastor at a Queens megachurch. Mr. Pons was a young aide to a North Carolina congressman, helping him to scrutinize public relations efforts around the Iraq war, work that ended up as part of a Rolling Stone expose. In 2008, along with a third friend, they formed a publicity company called Different Drummer. Mr. Pons and Mr. Mitchell split from that firm in 2014 and founded Wit PR, picking a name that is meant to convey smarts but also stands for "whatever it takes." That kind of gumption was recently on display on a Wit PR conference call. The principals were going through a list of "activations" planned for "Hidden Figures." Mr. Mitchell announced that he had just arranged with two Christian sororities to bring students and alumnae together for "Hidden Figures" screenings and discussions on opening weekend. "Through those faith relationships, we're going to end up selling at least 1,000 tickets," he said. "Delivering a measurable result like that is the goal." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
MADRID Spain's ailing banking industry could need as much as 59.3 billion euros, or 76.4 billion, in additional capital, according to an independent banking assessment published on Friday. The report paves the way for Madrid to request bank rescue loans that European finance ministers have agreed to extend. The number was within the range of previous estimates and well below the potential 100 billion euros, or 128.8 billion, in bailout money that Spain negotiated with other euro zone countries in June. And of the 14 banks assessed by the consulting firm Oliver Wyman, half are not in need of emergency funds. These include Santander, BBVA and La Caixa, the country's three largest financial institutions. Presenting the report, Fernando Jimenez Latorre, the Spanish secretary of state for the economy, said at a news conference that Spain would probably soon request about 40 billion euros, roughly 50 billion, of the European bailout offer. The audit, he said, should end the debate among investors about whether the Spanish banking sector can survive the consequences of a decade of reckless property lending. After Spain's real estate bubble burst in 2008, many of its banks found themselves holding growing numbers of loans in or near default. The bailout negotiations, and the need for an audit to assess the extent of the damage, were prompted by the government's seizure in May of Bankia, one of the biggest real estate lenders, and signs that several others were on the brink of collapse. The latest findings "should remove all the doubts about the strength of the system," Mr. Jimenez Latorre said. "The bulk of it is solid, and the problems are well identified." The European Central Bank and the European Commission both issued statements Friday applauding the audit and expressing support for Spain. "This is a major step in implementing the financial assistance program and toward strengthening the viability of and confidence in the Spanish banking sector," the commission, the administrative arm of the European Union, said in its statement. In Washington, Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, also issued a statement, which said in part, "I strongly support the authorities' commitment to ensure that capital needs are met in a timely manner and that the weakest banks are dealt with effectively." Still unresolved, though, is an issue over which Spain has been wrangling with its European partners since June, involving the exact terms of the banking rescue. The Spanish government has argued, so far without success, that emergency loans should be channeled straight to the banks rather than through the government, which would add to Spain's debt load. Spain's credit rating has gradually been lowered by the main rating agencies, with Moody's expected to deliver another blow to Madrid as early as this weekend. The poor credit rating is one reason that the Spanish government's borrowing costs have been higher than those of many other euro zone countries, which could pose an even bigger challenge for the government of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy. Mr. Rajoy and his finance officials have been pondering whether to ask for help through a bond buying program recently announced by the central bank, which in many ways was designed with Spain in mind. Today in On Tech: Imagine not living in Big Tech's world. Dollar Tree will raise prices to 1.25 by the end of April. The problem for Mr. Rajoy is the stigma of seeking assistance from the central bank program along with the requirements for tougher fiscal discipline that might accompany the aid. He is already facing an increasingly restive public, and threats of secession by the economically powerful Catalan region, over the austerity budget measures his government has imposed. And yet, the audit showed at least a potential exit path for Spain from its bank problems. The independent report, which Oliver Wyman based on its own work and on audits from four other firms, indicated that the banks could need as much as 53.745 billion euros to be cleaned up, assuming that mergers and restructuring plans currently under way were completed. The figure would climb to 59.3 billion euros if those plans failed, the report said. The audit confirmed the central role played by Bankia in Spain's banking crisis, which peaked in early May with the government takeover. Bankia's new board then asked for 19 billion euros to replenish its capital reserves, on top of the 4.5 billion euros it had already received from a government bailout. According to the report, Bankia could need a slightly higher amount, as much as 24.7 billion euros, to meet required capital levels if Spain's economy remained in recession. Three other nationalized banks face a combined capital shortfall of 21.5 billion euros. Among the threatened institutions is Banco Popular, a big commercial bank that faces a shortfall of 3.2 billion euros, according to Oliver Wyman. The findings were in line with a forecast the economy minister, Luis de Guindos, made in an interview last month, as well as with a preliminary assessment by Oliver Wyman, which estimated in June that Spanish banks needed 51 billion to 62 billion euros of extra capital. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Global Business |
An Apple Store in Brooklyn. The new Coalition for App Fairness will push for changes in Apple's and Google's app stores. SAN FRANCISCO For months, complaints from tech companies against Apple's and Google's power have grown louder. Spotify, the music streaming app, criticized Apple for the rules it imposed in the App Store. A founder of the software company Basecamp attacked Apple's "highway robbery rates" on apps. And last month, Epic Games, maker of the popular game Fortnite, sued Apple and Google, claiming they violated antitrust rules. Now these app makers are uniting in an unusual show of opposition against Apple and Google and the power they have over their app stores. On Thursday, the smaller companies said they had formed the Coalition for App Fairness, a nonprofit group that plans to push for changes in the app stores and "protect the app economy." The 13 initial members include Spotify, Basecamp, Epic and Match Group, which has apps like Tinder and Hinge. "They've collectively decided, 'We're not alone in this, and maybe what we should do is advocate on behalf of everybody,'" said Sarah Maxwell, a spokeswoman for the group. She added that the new nonprofit would be "a voice for many." Scrutiny of the largest tech companies has reached a new intensity. The Department of Justice is expected to file an antitrust case against Google as soon as next week, focused on the company's dominance in internet search. In July, Congress grilled the chief executives of Google, Apple, Amazon and Facebook about their practices in a high profile antitrust hearing. And in Europe, regulators have opened a formal antitrust investigation into Apple's App Store tactics and are preparing to bring antitrust charges against Amazon for abusing its dominance in internet commerce. For years, smaller rivals were loath to speak up against the mammoth companies for fear of retaliation. But the growing backlash has emboldened them to take action. Spotify and others have become more vocal. And on Monday, Epic and Apple are set to meet in a virtual courtroom in the Northern District of California to present their cases for whether Fortnite should stay on the App Store, before a trial over the antitrust complaint next year. At the heart of the new alliance's effort is opposition to Apple's and Google's tight grip on their app stores and the fortunes of the apps in them. The two companies control virtually all of the world's smartphones through their software and the distribution of apps via their stores. Both also charge a 30 percent fee for payments made inside apps in their systems. App makers have increasingly taken issue with the payment rules, arguing that a 30 percent fee is a tax that hobbles their ability to compete. In some cases, they have said, they are competing with Apple's and Google's own apps and their unfair advantages. Apple has argued that its fee is standard across online marketplaces. On Thursday, the coalition published a list of 10 principles, outlined on its website, for what it said were fairer app practices. They include a more transparent process for getting apps approved and the right to communicate directly with their users. The top principle states that developers should not be forced to exclusively use the payments systems of the app store publishers. Each of the alliance's members has agreed to contribute an undisclosed membership fee to the effort. "Apple leverages its platform to give its own services an unfair advantage over competitors," said Kirsten Daru, vice president and general counsel of Tile, a start up that makes Bluetooth tracking devices and is part of the new nonprofit. "That's bad for consumers, competition and innovation." Ms. Daru testified to lawmakers this year that Apple had begun making the permissions around Tile's app more difficult for people to use after it developed a competing feature. Apple did not immediately have a comment on the coalition; Google didn't respond to a request for comment. The coalition came together in recent months after discussions among executives at Tile, Epic, Spotify and Match Group, the four companies that have been most vocal in their opposition to the big tech companies, Ms. Maxwell said. Some of the conversations took place after Apple and Google booted Fortnite from their app stores last month for violating their payment rules. As Epic's fight with Apple and Google escalated, Spotify and Match Group spoke out in support of the video game company. Apple has argued that Epic's situation "is entirely of Epic's own making." The new coalition could spur more companies to publicly voice longstanding complaints, its members said. Peter Smith, chief executive of Blockchain.com, said his cryptocurrency finance company had joined the group partly because it offered strength in numbers. "Can they ban us all?" he said. "I doubt it." Apple has blocked Blockchain's apps several times, Mr. Smith said. Some customers were so frustrated by the blockages that they posted videos of themselves destroying iPhones with machetes. "These app stores have gotten so big that they are effectively deciding what customers get access to," Mr. Smith said. Tim Sweeney, Epic's chief executive, said his company had received "vast, vast amounts of communication" from app developers who supported it after it sued. But many are afraid to speak up publicly, he said. "Apple and Google have infinite ways of retaliating without it being obvious to the outside world" by slowing down apps, reinterpreting rules in negative ways or saying no to new features, Mr. Sweeney said in an interview this week. He said Epic had a history of standing up for what it thought was right. "But of course," he added, "it is very stressful to go through, you know, a fight with two companies that are over 200 times our size." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
Watching is The New York Times's TV and film recommendation website. Sign up for our twice weekly newsletter here. Below are the most interesting of what we've found among the new TV series and movies coming to the major streaming services this month, plus a roundup of all the best new titles in all genres. (Streaming services occasionally change schedules without giving notice.) 'Knock Down the House' Starts streaming: May 1 Rachel Lears's award winning documentary follows four female congressional candidates going up against established male incumbents in the 2018 midterm elections, each of them refusing to accept corporate PAC donations in order to mount grassroots campaigns. The result is an intimate, fly on the wall look at these uphill battles, and an appreciation of how being underestimated can sometimes work in an underdog's favor. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez's opponent, for example, doesn't even bother showing up for their first debate, sending an inarticulate proxy instead and demonstrating the possibility that his youthful challenger might be more dedicated in representing voters' interests. Regardless of one's politics, this is a fascinating watch. Jen (Christina Applegate), a widow, and Judy (Linda Cardellini), who has recently lost her fiance, meet in a grief support group. The two women form a fast friendship, which soon becomes really weird for them but quite entertaining for the viewer. This dark comedy digs deep into the different ways people process traumatic loss; Jen, for instance, needs a friend who won't be driven away by her sudden fits of rage. There are also unexpected layers of intrigue and mystery, in which secrets are revealed, evidence is destroyed and oddly concocted sympathy casseroles are eaten. Red wine and Entenmann's cookies would pair nicely for this one. Wanda Sykes takes angry aim at many cultural targets in her new stand up special the president, "The Bachelor," menopause but she's at her sharpest on the subject of race. Her takes on topics such as the centering of white communities in the opioid crisis narratives and rampant police shootings are especially incisive, and she deploys wicked humor in telling stories about herself, her white wife and their two white children. Is a balloon kicked in her face something to be outraged about, or is it just playtime? Can black people get lice? Sykes has a lot of fun teasing these and other thoughts out. 'When They See Us' Limited Series Starts streaming: May 31 In 1989 a female jogger was brutally raped and beaten in Central Park; five teenagers of color were arrested and convicted of the crime, only to be exonerated several years later. Ava DuVernay's dramatization of the Central Park Five case delves into all of the official blunders made along the way the police coerced confessions, the conflicting witness accounts and physical evidence, the ensuing media frenzy. DuVernay doesn't simply demonize the authorities (who include the esteemed Linda Fairstein, then the head of Manhattan's sex crimes unit, played here by Felicity Huffman); more usefully, she explores the systemic racism that led them to desperately seek someone anyone to blame for the atrocity. ("It's no longer about justice," admits a prosecutor played by Vera Farmiga. "It's about politics.") In a story of many sorrows, Michael K. Williams is heartbreaking as the conflicted parent of one of the accused teens, who bears some of the guilt for his son's predicament. Also arriving: "Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery" (May 1), "The Dark Crystal" (May 1), "Gosford Park" (May 1), "Gremlins" (May 1), "Hairspray" (May 1), "Hoosiers" (May 1), "The Matrix" (May 1), "Revolutionary Road" (May 1), "Scarface" (May 1), "Scream" (May 1), "Snowpiercer" (May 1), "Wedding Crashers" (May 1), "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" (May 1), "Zombieland" (May 1), "Mr. Mom" (May 3), "Tuca Bertie" Season 1 (May 3), "Lucifer" Season 4 (May 8), "Insidious" (May 9), "Pose" Season 1 (May 10), "Wine Country (May 10), "Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj" Volume 3 (May 12), "Moonlight" (May 21), "Riverdale" Season 3 (May 23), "She's Gotta Have It" Season 2 (May 24), "The Perfection" (May 24), "Historical Roasts" (May 27), "Outlander" Seasons 1 2 (May 27) and "My Week with Marilyn" (May 30). In Season 2 of this hilarious meta comedy, the frazzled Londoner Fleabag (played by the show's creator Phoebe Waller Bridge) is still a mess. She flails her way through a life that seems to consist of one bizarre disaster after another: Fleabag finds the perfect guy, but he's a priest; she attends a family reunion where multiple bloody noses ensue. You probably didn't need yet another peak TV obsession, but here it is anyway. An angel (Michael Sheen) and a demon (David Tennant) team up to fend off Armageddon but it will require locating the Antichrist, who, in an unholy mix up, was mistakenly given to an ordinary family at birth and is completely unaware of his own diabolical potential. This irreverent comedy is based on Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett's 1990 fantasy novel (Gaiman serves as showrunner), and fun cameos abound (Benedict Cumberbatch as the voice of Satan, Frances McDormand as the voice of God). It's wonderfully weird. Also arriving: "The Yellow Handkerchief" (May 2), "Suspiria" (May 3), "Crash" (May 5), "Sneaky Pete" Season 3 (May 10), "Poldark" Season 4 (May 17), "Jesus' Son" (May 20), "The Constant Gardener" (May 31), "The Doors" (May 31), "Friday Night Lights" (May 31), "Friday the 13th" (May 31), "I'm Gonna Git You Sucka" (May 31), "Mission Impossible" (May 31), "Patriot Games" (May 31), "Planes, Trains Automobiles" (May 31), "The Puffy Chair" (May 31), "Reservoir Dogs" (May 31) and "The Secret of NIMH" (May 31). 'At the Heart of Gold: Inside the U.S.A. Gymnastics Scandal' Starts streaming: May 3 "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned," said the U.S.A. Gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar in a trial statement acknowledging the dozens of girls and women who accused him of sexual abuse enacted under the guise of medical treatment. In Erin Lee Carr's documentary, the victims are seen in a very different light. Carr (whose father was David Carr, a New York Times columnist who died in 2015) details how the osteopath befriended the aspiring Olympians, enabled by a culture in which the girls were taught never to complain, to persist through pain and injury and to accept Nassar as one of their few allies. Seeing their testimony in both interviews and victim impact statements in court is gut wrenching; Carr goes even deeper, displaying the system of enablers who knew of this abuse and allowed it to continue anyway. This powerful documentary, an inside look at the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services as well as the children and parents attempting to navigate it, shines a harsh light on the vast imperfections of the foster care system. The writer and director Mark Jonathan Harris follows several children who have been in the system their whole lives, and reveals the unique difficulties they have in transitioning from adolescence into adulthood. "Foster" underscores a devastating social issue: There are too many children in need of help, and too few reliable adults and resources to provide it. Fans of David Milch's acclaimed TV western have wanted closure for years the original series was canceled abruptly, allowing for no wrap up finale. Now, at last, "Deadwood," the movie, provides a bittersweet coda. The reliably vulgar Al Swearengen (Ian McShane) still holds court at the Gem Saloon, but his health and power are waning. (In what seems like a nod to Milch's recently publicized diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease, Al is never sure what day it is.) George Hearst (Gerald McRaney), now a U.S. Senator, returns to town to commemorate South Dakota's newly bestowed statehood but no one's very happy to see him (except for those with bloodletting in mind). As has always been the case, the scabrous palaver employed in this frontier town is likely to affect a viewer's own vocabulary and civilized impulses. Welcome back. Also arriving: "Amelie" (May 1), "Away From Her" (May 1), "Blinded by the Lights" Season 1 (May 1), "Bruno" (May 1), "Conan the Barbarian" (May 1), "The Danish Girl" (May 1), "Deadpool 2" (May 1), "In the Bedroom" (May 1), "The Jackal" (May 1), "Tupac: Resurrection" (May 1), "The Shop" (May 4), "Chernobyl" Limited Series Premiere (May 6), "Signs" (May 6), "Night School" (May 11), "What's My Name: Muhammad Ali" Parts 1 2 (May 14), "Halloween" (May 25), "Game of Thrones: The Last Watch" (May 26) and "Running with Beto" (May 28). George Clooney directs and co stars in this adaptation of Joseph Heller's classic 1961 novel, which follows the struggle of a World War II air force captain named Yossarian (Christopher Abbott) against his true enemy the everyday surrealism of military bureaucracy. Yossarian desperately wants to stop flying so many combat missions; a guy could get killed. He tries to have himself declared insane, but there's a catch (of course): Anyone who wants to avoid getting killed is demonstrably sane. The stellar cast includes Hugh Laurie and Kyle Chandler, but Clooney, playing the demented Colonel Scheisskopf, deserves most of the medals. Also arriving: "The Birdcage" (May 1), "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan" (May 1), "Cecil B. Demented" (May 1), "Chocolat" (May 1), "Clerks" (May 1), "Dazed and Confused" (May 1), "The English Patient" (May 1), "Fatal Attraction" (May 1), "Flashdance" (May 1), "The Green Mile" (May 1), "Happy Go Lucky" (May 1), "Julie Julia" (May 1), "Mermaids" (May 1), "The Night We Never Met" (May 1), "Twelve Monkeys" (May 1), "Wargames" (May 1), "Zombieland" (May 1), "The Yellow Handkerchief" (May 3), "Crash" (May 6), "Claws" Season 2 (May 12), "Beautiful Girls" (May 15), "Iris" (May 15), "Knocked Up" (May 16), "Preacher" Season 3 (May 21), "Jesus' Son" (May 21), "Broad City" Season 5 (May 27), "The Terror" Season 1 (May 29) and "Angie Tribeca" Season 4 (May 30). | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
From left, Paul Kay, Steven McRae and Sarah Lamb of the Royal Ballet in Wayne McGregor's "Tetractys: Art of Fugue," with music by Bach and design by the American artist Tauba Auerbach. LONDON You could assemble a rewardingly hybrid festival of all the choreography of note that's been made to the music of Bach. His scores welcome dance anachronisms: point work or bare feet, jeans or leotards. The latest choreographer to tackle him is the Briton Wayne McGregor, originally a modern dance man his Random Dance company revisits Montclair, N.J., in March with his new "Atomos" who, since 2006, has been resident choreographer at the Royal Ballet at Covent Garden. His "Tetractys" is set to Bach's "The Art of Fugue," in a commissioned orchestral arrangement by the British composer Michael Berkeley. Sets and costumes featuring a changing array of body tights and hanging neon type geometric light shapes against a black void are by the American artist Tauba Auerbach. Is Mr. McGregor a cuckoo in the Royal Ballet nest? Or is he a much needed extension of its tradition? His dance language for "Tetractys: Art of Fugue" (and most other works) includes aspects of body popping and pedestrian movement as well as point work, multiple pirouettes, extreme hyperextension and leg beating ballet jumps. Heads jut (a favorite McGregor move), buttocks jut also, impulses travel up the torso like visible waves, and women's legs are pulled up into 6 o'clock splits and then twisted further, so that the dancer (with a tweak of the torso) seems to sweep a leg around in an arc of 270 degrees. "Tetractys" had its world premiere here on Feb. 7 as the centerpiece of a Royal Ballet triple bill, sandwiched between two ballets, both from 1980, by the two choreographers central to Royal Ballet tradition, Frederick Ashton ("Rhapsody) and Kenneth MacMillan ("Gloria"). Headlines were made when it was revealed that Natalia Osipova, who had started as a full member of the Royal Ballet in November, suffered a concussion in the Feb. 8 matinee of "Tetractys" and had been advised to rest for 48 hours. (The same program was performed that evening without it.) At Saturday's matinee (the program's fifth performance), however, she was onstage again: one of the 12 dancers in this work, which features three other female principals. The fundamentally sensationalist nature of Mr. McGregor's dance idiom (he doesn't do small, delicate, gentle or subtle) is on one side; on the other is his strenuous braininess. The word "Tetractys" means "fourness"; this refers to the meeting of Bach, Mr. McGregor, Mr. Berkeley and Ms. Auerbach; to the four note phrase with which Bach opens his fugue; and to complex aspects of Bach's musical patterning. As dance theater, "Tetractys" arrives in separate sections, each with a new design element. New lights and geometries occur in successive neon decors and costumes. Dancers wear a changing selection of tights, mainly two tone (the division is vertical or horizontal or front back; white and one other color red, blue, purple, yellow, green). This part is a duet, that a trio, and so on up to far more complex ensembles. Mr. Berkeley's arrangement is prettily classical, employing solo piano, violins and woodwinds. He closes, as does Bach's original score, in the inconclusive middle of one fugal structure. Mr. McGregor's movement is seldom step for note, but answers the music like counterpoint. In principle that's unexceptionable; choreographic counterpoint goes back to Bach's day. A problem, however, is that Mr. McGregor's skill in counterpoint is poor (Ashton and MacMillan both provide far more remarkable examples in this same program); he accompanies the music's austere phrases with coarse dance phrases of thwacks, thrusts and wiggles. A larger problem is that he makes dancers look mere pawns in his game. The individuality of Ms. Osipova, Federico Bonelli, Lauren Cuthbertson, Sarah Lamb, Steven McRae, Marianela Nunez, Thiago Soares all principal dancers does not grow interesting here; the lighting, by Lucy Carter, often makes it hard to tell them apart. And a central paradox of Mr. McGregor's idiom is that its huge and stressful dance vocabulary soon feels narrow. Yet he has real virtues. Though his men partner extensively, they are sometimes also asked to do actual dancing; and his women dance in their own right as well as in their partners' arms. The finest sections of "Tetractys" demonstrate aspects of truly classical construction, with witty connections in trios and quintets between partnered and unpartnered movement. (The past master of this format is Ashton; and there are passages in "Tetractys" in which Mr. McGregor looks more Ashtonian than ever before.) While "Tetractys" ambitious, complex and awkward derives plenty from Bach's score, its wham bam phrasing connects uneasily to it. And its schematic structures make it feel like an installation but unlike theater. Ashton's "Rhapsody" with Steven McRae in the role made for Mikhail Baryshnikov, Laura Morera as his partner, and six men and six women sensitively coached received the best performance I have seen in 25 years. It could be improved: Ms. Morera, technically brilliant and stylistically superb, adopts a wide eyed ballerina persona here and in other roles that feels artificial; and Mr. McRae arrogantly altered the ballet's end. But I marveled anew at the work's compositional felicities, and at the verve with which today's dancers rose to Ashton's ebullient dynamic contrasts and complex plasticity. Barry Wordsworth conducted Rachmaninoff's "Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini," and Robert Clark played the solo piano, both with considerable panache. MacMillan's dance dramas are laden with aspects of passive aggression in both tone and subject: The lead characters aim their suffering straight at the audience. In "Gloria," he applied this to World War I. Poulenc's "Gloria" invokes God, while ghosts (costumed by Andy Klunder, with men in soldiers' helmets and women as silvery wraiths) rise from the trenches of that war. We died for you, but why? In a central trio, one woman and two men even aim at the audience the famous finger pointing Lord Kitchener "Your Country Needs You" poster gesture. But MacMillan's imagery connects sex and suffering in a clotted nexus until the heroine, who seldom initiates anything throughout the ballet, has used swastika legs to hook each man to either side of her groin. This ballet, acclaimed since its premiere, has many fine points of construction and phrasing; but a serious analysis of its messy expressionism renders it gruesome. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
Late Night Is Ready for the Election to Be Over None Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night's highlights that lets you sleep and lets us get paid to watch comedy. We're all stuck at home at the moment, so here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now. With ballots still being counted in key states on Wednesday, late night hosts shared America's stress as they waited to hear who'd won the presidential election. "Seriously, today felt like waking up with a hangover and realizing you're still at the bar," Jimmy Fallon said on "The Tonight Show." Jimmy Kimmel echoed Fallon's exhaustion, saying the past day had been a "pollercoaster of emotions and nausea." "I thought if your election lasted more than 48 hours you were supposed to seek medical attention," he said in his monologue. "Joe Biden definitely did better than Hillary Clinton. He was able to pick up the sexist vote but he didn't do as well among racists, so... ." JIMMY KIMMEL "Very early this morning, Biden spoke to a drive in crowd in Wilmington, Del., and he told us that we need patience. But I'm not sure it's one of America's strengths. I mean, if a TikTok isn't fun in the first three seconds we're like, 'Eh, next.'" JIMMY FALLON "We just have to be patient in a country that literally invented the Domino's tracker so we know exactly when our pizza will arrive." JIMMY FALLON "One good thing about the pandemic: We're now used to waiting a few days for results." JIMMY KIMMEL "After all that good news for Biden, in a move that just reeks of desperation and cheap cologne, with eight million votes still uncounted, Trump's campaign manager came out of the blue to announce, 'We are declaring a victory in Pennsylvania.' Bold! And I fully expect his victory in Pennsylvania to be just as successful as his victory over coronavirus." STEPHEN COLBERT "You can't claim the votes. This is the Electoral College, it's not baggage at an airport carousel." JIMMY KIMMEL "I mean, I knew that Trump didn't like science, but I didn't realize he had disavowed numbers. I mean, maybe this explains why he's always in debt." TREVOR NOAH "If they hadn't canceled the Olympics this year, he would have won that, too. Basically, his message last night in a nutshell was, 'We won a completely fraudulent election.'" JIMMY KIMMEL "Counting votes is not finding votes. They're not scanning the beach with a metal detector." SETH MEYERS "Trump's mishandling of the virus may have played a large part in Biden's win, because recently, Wisconsin has become a Covid 19 hot spot. But with this win, Democrats across the country can breathe a little easier except for the ones in Wisconsin, because, again, it's a Covid 19 hot spot." STEPHEN COLBERT "Friends and neighbors, last night wasn't just about the fate of democracy; it was also about getting high, because voters across the nation, Americans of all stripes, voted yes on the proposition, 'You guys party?'" STEPHEN COLBERT "First, the recreational use of marijuana was legalized by New Jersey voters, so we might finally get an answer to the question, 'What if Chris Christie got the munchies?'" STEPHEN COLBERT "But I am excited for New Jersey to have weed. Imagine how next level edibles are going to be when Italian Americans are running dispensaries: In a New Jersey accent 'Yeah, so this is an indica pepperoni calzone. I like it with a side of O.G. Kush marinara sauce.'" TREVOR NOAH "That's right, New Jersey, South Dakota and Arizona voted yesterday to legalize recreational marijuana, though right now all marijuana is medicinal." SETH MEYERS "Out west, they're taking it a step further, because Oregon has become the first state to decriminalize hard drugs like cocaine and heroin. This has upset a lot of people, but on the plus side, it will bring millions of jobs in the tiny sandwich bag industry." STEPHEN COLBERT "Oregon did it right! They're the only state with a backup plan in case Biden loses." TREVOR NOAH "Honestly, though, I think this is a good thing, because way too many people get locked up in America for way too long. Although, let's be real: Whoever proposed this bill definitely had a little heroin, cocaine and meth on them at the same time, right?" TREVOR NOAH "In Washington, D.C., voters passed a measure to decriminalize the use of magic mushrooms. Now that is wait a second: Are we sure D.C. didn't decriminalize mushrooms four years ago, and this has all been a bad trip?" STEPHEN COLBERT "Jimmy Kimmel Live" enlisted Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, among others, for a timely "Mean Tweets Political Edition." What We're Excited About on Thursday Night The French avant pop artist Christine and the Queens will perform on Thursday's "Late Late Show." Also, Check This Out This year more than ever, holiday gift guides can be a wonderful distraction from daily stress. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
This three story cottage is in the village of Biddestone, on the southeastern edge of the Cotswolds, an area west of London that stretches over almost 800 square miles. The house was built around 300 years ago, and its history is reflected in details throughout. The kitchen was likely once the stables, said Annalisa Duff, the owner, and the central hallway, once a kitchen, still has an ornamental stove. But the approximately 3,000 square foot home which has four bedrooms and two and a half baths has been recently updated, with the floors, bathrooms and kitchen redone since 2001. The front door opens into a hallway in the middle of the house. To the right is a sitting room with exposed oak beam ceilings and a corner fireplace. The mantel is decorated with a carving of a hawthorn berry, inspired by the property's name, Hawthorn Cottage, said Ms. Duff and Andrew Russell, an agent with Strutt Parker, the affiliate of Christie's International Real Estate that has the listing. Beyond is a study. Turning left from the entry, steps lead to an upper hallway that connects the kitchen, dining room, a utility room and a south facing garden room with skylights and several glass doors. The kitchen has an Aga range, granite counters and a breakfast bar. A half bath is in the entry hall, next to the stairs. The second and third floors have two bedrooms each. There is a large dressing room that could be converted into a fifth bedroom, Ms. Duff said. The en suite master bedroom is on the second floor, and the other three bedrooms share a bath. The approximately quarter acre lot has a sprawling cherry tree, a vegetable garden and a lawn, Ms. Duff said. The cottage's layout and its proximity to good schools, as well as Bristol and London, make it "ideal for a family," Mr. Russell said. Ms. Duff described Biddestone, which has a population of about 500, as "a lovely sort of old fashioned, proper English village, which hasn't been spoiled at all." There is a supermarket about 10 minutes away. Bath, which is between 10 and 15 miles away, has excellent schools, Ms. Duff said. Chippenham railway station, which has train service to Paddington Station in London, is five miles away; the train trip takes about 75 minutes. The international airport in Bristol is just under an hour's drive, and Heathrow is less than 90 miles east. The Cotswolds, an area about two thirds the size of Rhode Island, attracts a variety of buyers from outside the region, agents said. About half are commuters from London who move to cities along the train line, and the rest are second home buyers smitten with quintessential English villages, said James Mackenzie, head of Strutt Parker's national country house department. "Everybody wants rolling hills and a view," Mr. Mackenzie said. The north, he added, is frequented by "media types" and politicians, including the former prime minister David Cameron, while the south is favored by some of England's nobility. The Soho Farmhouse, a private club that opened several years ago, has been drawing international clientele to the Cotswolds, he added. While home prices across London dipped about 5 percent compared with the same period last year, other parts of England, including in and around the Cotswolds, have fared better, according to a September report on England's residential market by Knight Frank. In Bath and Cheltenham, prices were up 4.7 percent and 6.4 percent over last year. Across the United Kingdom, prices rose around 2 percent, Knight Frank found. According to the Office for National Statistics, prices in the Cotswolds rose 16.2 percent between July 2016 and 2017, reaching around 385,000 British pounds (or about 505,000), while prices in London fell 18.4 percent over the same period, reaching around PS740,000 ( 970,000). David Parris, the managing director of the Jackson Stops real estate offices in the Cotswolds, said the region's figures were distorted by a small number of high value transactions; he estimated that, excepting those, prices rose around 5 percent in that period. Londoners, particularly a growing number who work remotely, have recently been looking for value in the Cotswolds, he added. Prime properties there cost PS500 to PS550 per square foot (about 660 to 720), but can reach PS3,000 ( 3,900) per square foot in prime, central London. The average in the Cotswolds is PS300 to PS400 per square foot (or about 390 to 530). "London used to be a place where you could make a lot of money on housing," he said, adding that because of appreciation, it was once possible to buy a piece of property and make PS100,000 in three years. "That's come to an end; whether that's temporary or permanent, we don't know." The number of second home buyers in the Cotswolds, however, has declined, possibly because of an increase in stamp duty levied on second home purchases that went into effect in April 2016. Mr. Mackenzie said that for homes in the PS500,000 to PS1.25 million range in the Cotswolds, prices have increased 5 percent since last year. But for homes priced between PS1.25 million and PS3 million, the stamp duty "hits hard," he said, which has resulted in stagnating prices or even a drop of one percent or so over the past 18 months. Above that price range, he added, the market is "fickle," with some properties having their asking prices reduced and others having multiple interested buyers. WHO BUYS IN THE COTSWOLDS The majority of buyers in the Cotswolds are British, Mr. Parris said, estimating that 10 percent of his agency's are foreign, based on Jackson Stops sales from April 2016 through March 2017. Mr. Mackenzie said that about 40 percent of his agency's recent Cotswolds buyers have been foreign, based on Strutt Parker sales for roughly the past 18 months, a number that includes British expatriates returning to the country for retirement, particularly from Hong Kong. About 5 or 10 percent are buyers from the United States, he said, who may be taking advantage of the strong dollar. Foreigners face no restrictions on buying property in England. Transactions are typically handled by a lawyer, and each side retains its own representation. The buyer's and seller's lawyers must be from different firms, said Felicity Sergeant, a partner at Streathers Solicitors, a law firm in London. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
Fox News drew the highest ratings for a Republican debate since December with 16.9 million viewers tuning in Thursday night. The debate reunited Donald J. Trump and Megyn Kelly on the stage for the first time since August. The ratings on Thursday represent the fourth highest viewership for a debate. The numbers were significantly higher than the 12.5 million viewers who watched the late January debate on Fox News that Mr. Trump refused to join because of Ms. Kelly's involvement. The viewership total is also the largest since CNN's debate in December, which drew more than 18 million people. Fox News holds the record for the most watched primary debate: Its August debate had 24 million viewers. The Thursday debate also had 1.5 million concurrent streams, according to Omniture and Akamai; that is a primary debate record for live streams. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
New iPhones Are Coming. Here's How to Save on an Upgrade. It's the time of year when smartphone makers introduce their newest wares to tempt you to spend your hard earned dollars on the latest, priciest devices. The gadget mania began last month, when Samsung started selling its 1,000 Galaxy Note9, a luxurious device with an extra large screen and the ability to be converted into a personal computer if connected with a display. Next month, Google is also holding an event where it is likely to show its newest Pixel smartphones. Follow our live briefing coverage of the 2018 Apple Event. And this Wednesday, Apple is set to introduce three new iPhones, including some models with bigger screens and higher starting prices. According to a person briefed on Apple's new products, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the plans were confidential, the changes will include: A new entry level phone to replace the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus, with a larger display, at 6.1 inches. An updated, faster 5.8 inch iPhone X, which Apple took the wraps off last year and priced at 999. The introduction of a big screen premium phone with a 6.5 inch display, Apple's biggest ever. In what has become an ever clearer trend, the prices of some of these new iPhones are also expected to go up. The new entry level iPhone may start at 749, with the 5.8 inch iPhone X coming in at 949 and 1,049 for the giant 6.5 inch screen model, analysts estimated. In contrast, just a few years ago Apple's iPhones started at 649 for the smaller model and 749 for the larger one. An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment on the prices of the new phones. The increasing number of higher priced, bigger screen smartphones has become a well worn strategy by the phone makers. Given that many people around the world especially in developed countries already own a phone and upgrade at a slower pace than they used to, phone vendors industrywide are focused on wringing more dollars out of each device by having them get larger and more expensive. So where does that leave us? If you want to upgrade to some of the latest devices without breaking the bank, I have a few tips on how to achieve that. Trade in your old phone The easiest way to save some money on your next phone is to trade in your current cellphone. In the last few years, wireless carriers and retailers have expanded their trade in programs to be seamless and more inclusive. Here's an overview of how some of them work. Apple offers a trade in program called Apple GiveBack. On Apple's webpage, you can select the device you want to trade in, including iPhones or other smartphones from brands like Samsung, HTC and BlackBerry. You then answer a few questions about the model and condition of the phone to receive an estimate for what you can receive in Apple store credit. From there, you can take your phone to an Apple retail store or ask the company to send you a shipping kit to mail it in. The carriers have similar programs. AT T, Verizon, T Mobile and Sprint each accept a wide array of phones from various brands, which can be sold for credit that can be applied toward purchasing a new phone through the carrier. Gazelle has an extensive buyback program. The online reseller will let you sell smartphones, tablets and Macs. Similar to Apple, Gazelle will send you a shipping kit to mail in your device, or you can just send it with your own packaging. The benefit of using Gazelle which is one reason I prefer it is that it will offer cash, whereas the others only offer store credit that is tied to specific merchants. Best Buy offers gift credit in exchange for many used devices. Those include smartphones, tablets and video game hardware. This may be your most flexible trade in option: Best Buy buys more types of devices from a broader array of brands than other buyback programs I have tested. In addition, the retailer sells phones that work with each of the big carriers. After trading in your phone, you can use the credit in a couple of ways. Let's say, for example, you are trading in an iPhone 7 to Verizon Wireless. The Verizon webpage offers 185 in credit for that phone, and you accept it. Now let's imagine that the next new iPhone costs 1,049. If you buy the device outright from Verizon, you could shave 185 off the 1,049, bringing the total to 864. You could sell your old device directly to another consumer for a chance to get more cash than through a trade in program. This is similar to how selling a used car in a private sale usually yields more money than trading it in at a dealership. There are plenty of sites for listing your phone and selling it directly to another person, including eBay, Swappa and Glyde. I have sold my used phones on eBay for roughly double what I was quoted by a device trade in program. But there are trade offs: Some buyers can be a nuisance and bombard you with lots of questions or take a long time to send payment. You could also ask your friends and family whether they want to buy your used phone. Just don't offer it to the hagglers among them. There's an extra low cost option, of course: Keep using the old phone and skip the upgrade altogether. Smartphones require periodic maintenance to keep running smoothly, but a bit of tender loving care will go a long way. If your phone is feeling slow, there are methods to speed it up. Those include hiring a repair shop to replace your phone battery, clearing out storage from the device and doing a fresh install of the operating system. Taking care of your gadgets takes time. But with the rising costs of phones, the benefits are greater now that you will save even more by sticking with the tried and true. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
FRANKFURT Forward guidance might sound like something to mount on the dashboard of a car. But in the world of monetary policy it is a crucial concept, one that was the focus of the European Central Bank's meeting on Thursday. In its latest policy setting discussion, the bank moved ever so cautiously toward the day when it will ease off on the stimulus it has been providing to the eurozone economy. Mario Draghi, the central bank's president, sought to address the intense interest among investors and economists in how quickly the central bank will reduce its purchases of government and corporate bonds, a form of money printing known as quantitative easing. The European Central Bank did not announce any policy changes on Thursday when it met in Tallinn, Estonia. And it made only small changes to its forward guidance. But at a news conference afterward, Mr. Draghi expressed more confidence in the eurozone economy. A strong economy is a precondition for any move by the central bank to cut back its bond buying. To prevent market turmoil, Mr. Draghi wants to give investors ample warning of what is coming. But he also wants to leave room to maneuver if economic conditions change. Navigating that communications minefield is what forward guidance is about. Here are some of the important points from the news conference: The European Central Bank has promised to continue buying bonds at least through the end of the year "or beyond, if necessary." It is the beyond part that analysts are trying to figure out. Mr. Draghi disappointed those who had predicted he would indicate how long quantitative easing will last beyond December, and how quickly the volume of the purchases will be reduced or tapered. Mr. Draghi refused even to say when the central bank will announce its intentions. "It was not discussed," he said. "The E.C.B. will be in the market a long time." Many analysts had expected a stronger statement. The euro fell against the dollar as investors recalibrated their expectations of when the European Central Bank will allow market interest rates to rise. In an opening statement approved by other members of the central bank's governing council, Mr. Draghi said that economic risks were "broadly balanced." That was a more optimistic assessment than Mr. Draghi gave at his last news conference in April, when he said that risks to growth were "still tilted to the downside." Retail earnings and Black Friday: the week in business. Elizabeth Holmes will resume her testimony in her fraud trial. In the meantime, unemployment has continued to fall, while growth has been better than expected. Eurostat, the European Union's statistics office, on Thursday revised upward its estimate of eurozone growth in the first three months of the year to 0.6 percent from 0.5 percent. But stronger growth will not prompt a change in monetary policy unless it is accompanied by higher inflation, which is still nowhere in sight. The European Central Bank has said it will not touch its benchmark interest rates until it has ended the bond buying program and, in any case, will keep rates low for "an extended period of time." Still, analysts have already begun speculating about when the first rate increases might occur. There was some excitement before the news conference when the central bank, in a routine statement announcing that benchmark interest rates remained unchanged, dropped a phrase emphasizing that it could reduce rates further if needed. The prices of trillions of dollars in bonds and other securities can hang on such minor adjustments in central bank wording. But Mr. Draghi blunted the impact of the change when he said during the news conference that, of course, the central bank can reduce rates at any time and is prepared to do so if needed. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Economy |
The result is one of the most frank and searing discussions of race I have ever read. This is a book that will anger some readers, especially those who reject Dyson's central premise: that if we want true racial equality in America, whites themselves must destroy the enduring myths of white supremacy. Even sympathetic readers might mistake this extraordinary work for merely a catalog of white sins. But such a reading fails to account for the actual experience of Dyson's sermon, in which a black preacher speaks to his white congregants in the most tender, intimate terms, even as he preaches against a culture of "whiteness" that "grows more shameless, more cruel, more uncaring by the day." Dyson is all too familiar with the claims of innocence and the kneejerk defensiveness that will surely greet this book, and yet he sets out to conquer such denial not only with the difficult truth but also, astonishingly, with love. "Beloved," he writes, in the voice of one ministering to the sick, "your white innocence is a burden to you, a burden to the nation, a burden to our progress. It is time to let it go, to let it die in the place of the black bodies it wills into nonbeing." Many white readers may wince, as I did, to hear their own indifference to black suffering named with such precision, and some, desperate not to face their involvement in America's systems of racial oppression, might abandon this book altogether. But that would be to miss an essential lesson. For again and again Dyson makes it clear that more than white guilt, he seeks action, and more than condemnation, he wants change. He wants readers to wake from their sleep of ignorance about "what it means to be black in America." Reading his praise for James Baldwin, I couldn't help thinking that the same is true of Dyson himself: "His words drip with the searing eloquence of an evangelist of race determined to get to the brutal bottom of America's original sin." If there is a criticism here, it is that Dyson gathers steam slowly, and his opening "Hymns of Praise" to hip hop artists give little indication of the moral power to come. But this is a small quibble with a deeply serious, urgent book, which should take its place in the tradition of Baldwin's "The Fire Next Time" and King's "Why We Can't Wait." The comparison might at first seem hyperbolic, but like those books, "Tears We Cannot Stop" is a lament, originating from within the grieving heart of black America, aimed directly at white readers who are often too frightened, or indifferent, or ashamed, to look a man like in the eyes. I can only hope that others will read and be changed by this book. It ends with a desperate plea for white Americans to rise up in defense of, and in solidarity with, our African American brothers and sisters. In response, I say simply: Amen. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
American authorities brought criminal charges on Thursday against the owners of one of the world's biggest cryptocurrency trading exchanges, BitMEX, accusing them of allowing the Hong Kong based company to launder money and engage in other illegal transactions. BitMEX is far from the first cryptocurrency company to be suspected of facilitating criminal activity. But it is the largest and most established exchange to face criminal charges. Federal prosecutors in Manhattan indicted the chief executive of BitMEX, Arthur Hayes, and three co owners: Benjamin Delo, Samuel Reed and Gregory Dwyer. Mr. Reed was arrested in Massachusetts on Thursday, while the other three men remained at large, authorities said. Prosecutors said BitMEX had taken few steps to limit customers even after being informed that the exchange was being used by hackers to launder stolen money, and by people in countries under sanctions, like Iran. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
Shakespeare worried or pretended to worry about whether the "wooden O" of the Globe Theater could house a pivotal battle. The director Robert O'Hara has only 12 square feet of carpet to work with in his swift, sometimes stumbling production of "Henry V" for the Public Theater's Mobile Unit. The Mobile Unit travels around to underserved populations, performing for the homeless, the elderly, the incarcerated, before rolling back up to the Public Theater. If the history play "Henry V" hasn't insinuated itself into popular culture as easily as some plays hi, Hamlet! it lends itself to carting around, however small the carpet swatch. It's a brisk and straightforward history play with a plot that doesn't do the twist. Following the "Henry IV" plays, it describes Henry's rash but ultimately successful invasion of France. Though the play isn't as on the nose jingoistic as some interpretations insist, it's still a provocative choice in a volatile political moment. Well, Mr. O'Hara, who is also a playwright ("Bootycandy," "Barbecue"), doesn't mind provoking, but while he complicates the script in several ways, it takes a long time to figure out what he wants to do with it. The nine actors speak the prologue as a chorus, then spend the next 100 minutes running from one side of the room to the other, tugging on red accessories when they're playing the English and blue ones for the French. (Only a few costume pieces and props are used, and there's no set except for that carpet and a throne.) Having the same actors play opposing sides undercuts our desire to cheer for the English, subverting the play's nationalism. If the exaggerated accents are a privilege of the French roles, almost all the parts are played as caricature. The verse is usually clear sometimes those snooty accents muddy it but there's not much interiority on display. Color coding aside, it can be tough to suss out who's who. An exception is Patrice Johnson's shade throwing, scarf wielding Mountjoy. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
Yet again, the nonconformist rebels of yesteryear become the standard setters of today. The Museum of Modern Art exhibition "Judson Dance Theater: The Work Is Never Done" shows why the work of the New York downtown dance experimentalists of the 1960s was once radical. Many people would still be challenged by it today. The show is accompanied by performances of work by these dance makers, many of whom are still alive. What's become ever more evident is that some of those 1960s dances, apart from being challenging, are, memorably, witty and sensuous. They also show points in common with dances made in that era by far more establishment figures. This week the exhibition is featuring dances made by Yvonne Rainer from 1961 to '69. (Other choreographers are represented in weeks to come.) Watching the performances on Monday, I was happily amazed by how much of the material brought a smile to my face. And I found myself making connections between it and choreography by figures as diverse as Frederick Ashton, Pina Bausch, Merce Cunningham, Jerome Robbins and Twyla Tharp. It's far easier to see today that "Trio A" her best known creation, often called the seminal work of postmodern dance exemplifies virtues shared with several other dance greats: complex physical coordination, contrasts of dynamics and fascinating tests of phrasing. We saw this classic in several iterations here: as a solo ("Retrograde"), a duet ("Facing") and a quartet ("In the Midnight Hour"), each showing significant compositional alterations. "Trio A" (1966) contains a dramatic moment in which a dancer leans forward from the waist with arms spread, so that head, torso, arms and hands make a plane parallel to, and addressing, the floor: That's an image that Robbins used memorably in "Dances at a Gathering" (1969). And there's a sequence in which the arms circle vertically, in opposition, while the dancer slowly wheels one leg around from back to front while advancing: That kind of tricky simultaneity of upper and lower body movement is something that abounds in Ashton's ballets. As "Trio A" links a series of apparently unrelated physical tasks into one chain, it seems to deny what's usually recognized as phrasing, with everything delivered in the same cool matter of fact flatness. Really, though, this linking, with no stops or starts, becomes one of the ultimate feats of phrasing. The experiment of combining unrelated movements in sequence is something that Cunningham had already developed (with greater technical rigor), and that Ms. Tharp was also pursuing, both in the 1960s and in later dances. These characteristics are related to many of the epic dance theater creations of Bausch, who was dancing in New York in the early 1960s. One performer here is Pat Catterson, who is Ms. Rainer's assistant for this production and has been a longtime custodian of her early work. She's lucid without any attempt at polish: awkwardness rawness plays its part. Another dancer, Emily Coates, tackles some of the technically hardest assignments with brilliantly commanding precision. The Rainer style allows for both kinds of performance; it also easily includes the marvelous playfulness and fantasy expressed by Keith Sabado and the uninhibited absurdity of Patricia Hoffbauer as well as for other highly individual figures. The dances include "Talking Solos" (from "Terrain," 1963), which establish an ironic dichotomy between speech and movement, and which may have prompted Cunningham's "How to Pass, Kick, Fall and Run" (1968). There are several experiments with choreographic musicality. "Three Satie Spoons" (1961) is a series of three solos danced to Erik Satie's "Three Gymnopedies," featuring remarkably sudden jumps, pounces and contrasts (legato and staccato, motion and stillness), all interestingly set to the famous piano items. Her "Three Seascapes" (1962) begins with dance set against the romantically intense third movement of Rachmaninov's Second Piano Concerto, then carries on against the abrasive "Poem for Tables, Chairs, Benches" by the still avant garde composer La Monte Young. Tina Turner's "River Deep, Mountain High" is another soundtrack, rhythmically used in Ms. Rainer's "Chair Pillow." This, like several other Rainer creations, can be seen now as part of the Theater of the Absurd, a genre that in spoken theater began in the 1950s with Beckett, Ionesco and Pinter. Like many of their plays, the complex feats of Ms. Rainer's dances now reveal a deep and often happy humanity. Look they seem to say how fabulously these people look at the same time both peculiar and natural, self contradictory and touching. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
NEW YORK ASIAN FILM FESTIVAL at Film at Lincoln Center and the SVA Theater (June 28 July 14). This year's festival of (mainly) contemporary Asian cinema kicks off with a marathon specifically "Samurai Marathon" (on Friday), a historical drama directed by Bernard Rose ("Candyman"). In the 1850s, as foreign ships converge on Japan, a feudal lord contrives a race to strengthen the minds and bodies of his men for a potential invasion, and his daughter joins in. The festival will present a lifetime achievement award to Yuen Woo ping, the martial arts choreographer whose wizardry with action has been seen in "The Grandmaster," the "Kill Bill" films, "The Matrix" and "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon." Three of his features as a director will be shown, with Yuen in attendance: "Master Z: Ip Man Legacy" (on Monday), "The Miracle Fighters" (on Tuesday) and "Iron Monkey" (on Wednesday). nyaff.org Read about the events that our other critics have chosen for the week ahead. 'ONE SINGS, THE OTHER DOESN'T' at Syndicated (June 29 30). This 1977 feature from Agnes Varda (1928 2019) follows two friends Pauline (Valerie Mairesse), a choir singer who, as the film begins, has not yet left her parents' home, and the slightly older Suzanne (Therese Liotard), who was perhaps too young when she settled for a life of domesticity from the early 1960s through the '70s, a time of passionate politics and feminism in France. "Arguing for abortion rights while celebrating motherhood, 'One Sings' is an anthology of Ms. Varda's other interests, including photography, documenting rural France and unconventional domestic arrangements," J. Hoberman wrote in The New York Times when the film played in a restoration last year. 718 386 3399, syndicatedbk.com SUMMER OF MICHEL LEGRAND at French Institute Alliance Francaise (July 2 30). The great French composer, who worked on films by Jacques Demy, Agnes Varda, Jean Luc Godard and Orson Welles (including on last year's "The Other Side of the Wind"), died in January. This retrospective pays tribute to Legrand with screenings of some of his most celebrated films, a lineup bookended by two Demy classics: the all sung "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg" (on Tuesday) and its larger canvas, meta musical follow up, "The Young Girls of Rochefort" (on July 30). That screening that will be followed by Legrand karaoke. The French Institute doesn't say anything about performing songs dressed as Catherine Deneuve and Francoise Dorleac's "twins born in the sign of Gemini" or as Gene Kelly. But nothing's stopping you, either. 800 982 2787, fiaf.org | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
Beyonce, flanked by a pair of dancers and performing in front of giant video images of herself, during the "Formation" world tour at Citi Field on Tuesday night. "O.K. ladies, now let's get in formation." These were Beyonce's first words at Citi Field on Tuesday night, when her "Formation" world tour made it to New York. The ladies in question her backup dancers were already in place, their heads nodding, like hers, under wide brimmed black sombreros. But it's fitting that Beyonce acknowledged them before doing anything else. For what she does in concert, she needs all her ladies. I went to Citi Field to check out the dancing, and there was a lot of it to take in. (The "Formation" concert has already been reviewed, when the tour opened in Miami in April.) There are sections of the show when Beyonce sings alone, but it's never long before the dancers return, as few as a pair or as many as 20, and she dances with them. They are both a source and a manifestation of her strength, and it matters a great deal that they are all women not something you see at a Rihanna or a Madonna concert. All the musicians are also women. A Beyonce concert is a display of a female power, even when she isn't singing about girls running the world or telling the audience that "there's no such thing as a weak woman." The dancers back up that message, too. And they have her back, especially in the context of her latest album, "Lemonade," with its story line of male infidelity and betrayal and violent emotional reactions. When she follows her own instructions in "Sorry," to wave a middle finger in the face of a cheating man, the ladies all wave their fingers with her. Projected images from the hourlong video version of "Lemonade," rightly praised as an advance in Beyonce's artistry, give the concert much of its visual style. But nothing happens onstage that has the power of the video images of Beyonce smashing car windows and surveillance cameras with a baseball bat and a big smile. And there's nothing as politically provocative as the Black Panther gear that she and her dancers wore for this year's Super Bowl halftime show. The video, in its high ambition, largely avoids dance; the concert, using dance heavily, doesn't aim as high. Because Beyonce mostly does the same moves as the dancers do, and vice versa, they are a kind of visual amplifier of her dancing. As much as the jumbo screen projections on the monolithic cube that is the concert's main set piece, the dancers broadcast Beyonce's actions all over the arena. Dressed as she is, they sometimes seem an extension of her outfit, flowing behind her like a cape as she struts out onto the catwalk that extends into midfield, or advancing in front of her like body armor. The dancers' comings and goings are essential to the concert's theatrical rhythm. When they leave her by herself, their absence creates a sudden intimacy, like a spotlight: just Beyonce and her thousands of fans. The main power expressed by the dancing is sexual. "She loves to grind," as she says in "6 inch," and grind she does, very well. Beyonce has always bragged about her body and flaunted it. The strength of the choreography flows from its wide and low squats, its whipping hair, its percussive isolation of body parts, sometimes accompanied (aptly) by the sound of a gun being cocked. A hip thrust forward is a potent weapon, even when fired often, but the highest caliber ammunition, of course, is Beyonce's famous backside, nearly bare in some costumes. There is not necessarily any contradiction between this exhibition of female bodies and the theme of female empowerment, between the booty shaking and the raised fists. When Beyonce and her dancers act out the song "Feeling Myself," there's a clear sense of self pleasure, of their doing what they are doing as much for themselves as for the benefit of any man watching. And along with bragging and flaunting comes the threat of withholding, of see what you'll be missing, an exercise of control. And yet it's hard not to notice that the women are often in boxes. For one number, the containers look like sarcophagi; in another, they are mirrored doors. But as the dancers writhed and slinked against their framing boxes, or cages, the image they kept summoning, at least for me, was of prostitutes selling themselves in the windows of Amsterdam's red light district. The bit with Beyonce mounting a chair is borrowed from the Crazy Horse cabaret in Paris. Sex, obviously, is part of what Beyonce sells. But the range of her music is notably wider than that of her movement. Her songs, especially on the current album, break out of genre boxes, and her versatile voice handles many accents and styles. The dancing is much more restricted. It has essentially three formations: vertical line, horizontal line or a "V" with Beyonce at the tip. It is always attached to the song's rhythm in the same way, the line of bouncing dancers looking like a graphic equalizer on an old stereo flashing the beat in mobile bar chart form. The tough girl country song "Daddy Lessons" occasions a little shuffling and a hint of the Virginia reel. And for "Freedom," the ladies slip out of their platform heels to splash in a wading pool of water, their swinging kicks and stomps sloshing up the party time release toward which the whole concert rushes, the water emphasizing the footwork absent elsewhere. But mostly, the dancing stays in one mode. A bit of aerial display with women in harnesses is perfunctory. Beyonce sings her anger and pain and vulnerability. She doesn't dance it. No one can say that Beyonce isn't a hard worker. Where other pop stars throw their fans bits of clothing or drumsticks, she throws them towels drenched in her sweat. Is it asking too much to want more from her? Beyonce raises expectations. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
Rick Nash, a No. 1 overall N.H.L. draft pick and a star for the Columbus Blue Jackets and the Rangers, has retired because of concussion related symptoms, his agent said Friday. Nash, 34, trailed only Alex Ovechkin and Patrick Marleau in career goals among active players with 437. He also had 368 assists in 1,060 career games. "Due to unresolved issues/symptoms from the concussion sustained last March, Rick Nash will be forced to retire from the game of hockey," his agent, Joe Resnick, said in a statement. "Under the advice of his medical team, the risk of further brain injury is far too great if Rick returns to play." The Columbus Blue Jackets selected Nash, from Brampton, Ontario, in the 2002 draft. He entered the league at 18 and spent the first nine seasons with Columbus. He remains the franchise's career leader in goals and points. In 2012, the Blue Jackets traded him to the Rangers, with whom he spent six seasons, and he also played 11 games with the Boston Bruins in 2018 after being traded there in February. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
From left: Jessica Lehrman for The New York Times; Devin Yalkin for The New York Times; Jessica Lehrman for The New York Times From left: Jessica Lehrman for The New York Times; Devin Yalkin for The New York Times; Jessica Lehrman for The New York Times Credit... From left: Jessica Lehrman for The New York Times; Devin Yalkin for The New York Times; Jessica Lehrman for The New York Times It's the penultimate episode of the new season of "The Boys," Amazon's superhero action series, and it's time for a costumed champion named Starlight to give one of those rousing speeches that inspires listeners to ignore insurmountable odds and get motivated for the journey ahead. Her eyes brimming with tears, Starlight says, "I gave my whole life to nothing," then adds: "The good guys don't win. The bad guys don't get punished. What we do means nothing. It's just all for money." It's not exactly an "I am Iron Man" moment. But then again, "The Boys" was never trying to be the Marvel Cinematic Universe. "The Boys," which begins its second season on Sept. 4, is in many ways the moral inverse of a typical comic book adaptation. It is populated with superhuman adventurers (known as "supes" in the show's parlance) who are often narcissistic, vainglorious and unconcerned with human life. Fighting to bring them down is a small band of mercenaries the Boys of the show's title regarded as terrorists by the general public. As its star Karl Urban, who plays the Boys' ruthless leader, Billy Butcher, explained, "The show supposes a world where superheroes are deeply flawed celebrities with secret, nefarious habits where you can't trust what a politician or a corporation says, and victory isn't guaranteed for the good guys." "To me," he added wryly, "it's a no brainer why people are gravitating toward this." "The Boys" takes its inspiration from Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson's comic series of the same title, an unapologetically profane pushback against post 9/11 politics and storytelling standards, rife with naughty words and naked bodies. (Ennis and Robertson are both credited as co executive producers on the TV series.) Eric Kripke, who developed "The Boys" for television, said that the source material was likely too outrageous to be translated directly to the screen. But Kripke, the creator of the long running demon hunting drama "Supernatural," shared the authors' intentions to "shock people out of the complacency of superhero comics," he said, and aimed to emulate creative idols like Rod Serling and Chris Carter by using the story's fantastical elements to address real world issues. "I realized what a perfect metaphor this was for the exact second we're living in," he said. "For this world where authoritarianism and celebrity are combined and fascism is packaged through social media." At the same time, "The Boys" also offered the opportunity to comment on the rampant ubiquity of superhero stories in film and television while breaking away from the genre's conventional good versus evil binary. "Look, I grew up in the Spielberg generation I'm a huge fan of escapism," Kripke said. "But we are living in a really fraught moment, and that demands some examination and discussion." The series retains many of the characters and plot points from the comic books, revolving around a Justice League like superteam called the Seven. The group is gallant in appearance but deeply corrupt in practice, and led by Homelander, a brutal, omnipotent crime fighter named who wears a cape modeled after the American flag. Antony Starr, who plays Homelander, said his performance is based in part on the star spangled, jingoistic characters who provided the foundations of American comic books and have since been exported worldwide. Though he is from New Zealand, Starr said, "We're just so saturated that many of us now have an inbuilt knowledge of Superman and Captain America. I've spent a bit of time in America now, so I know how patriotic the lovely Americans are." Another point of reference for his character, Starr said, is "our fearless comrade Trump," who "is coming up with new material for Homelander on a daily basis." More broadly, Starr said that Homelander embodied what happens when overwhelming power is decoupled from any sense of integrity. In the opposing corner sit the Boys, including the veteran teammates Butcher and Mother's Milk (Laz Alonso), the physically enhanced fugitive Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara) and the naive newcomer Hughie Campbell (Jack Quaid), whose girlfriend was accidentally killed by a member of the Seven. Though each of the Boys has a justifiable reason for hating the superheroes, their personal vendettas are gradually overtaken by a thirst for revenge for its own sake, and viewers are asked to question just how much they should identify with these characters and their choices. "It's a dance between morality and justice, and sometimes that line tends to blur," Alonso said. "How much personal morality are you willing to sacrifice to achieve justice? Are you a part of the Boys, or are you a part of the supes?" In its first season, "The Boys" dealt with ideas of oppression and freedom, collateral damage and post traumatic stress disorder. It also included a story line, adapted from the comics, in which Starlight is sexually assaulted by one of her teammates on the Seven. Erin Moriarty, who plays Starlight, said this story line was not included in the pilot script she received when she was first hired for "The Boys." But she felt that the series handled the character's assault seriously and responsibly. "I knew that although the show was a dark comedy and satirical, it would not be depicted in a humorous way at all," Moriarty said. "You can't add levity to that situation." She said it was just as crucial that Starlight's experience became an avenue for "The Boys" to take inspiration from social movements like MeToo and Time's Up and show how the assault had long lasting ramifications for her and her abuser, continuing throughout Season 1 and into Season 2. "It's her reaction to the situation and the follow up that's most important, and that she has a role in it," Moriarty explained. "She calls out the perpetrator. She exposes him. This woman is ultimately allowed to empower herself." This season addresses these ideas most directly with the introduction of a new character, Stormfront (Aya Cash), a superpowered demagogue who becomes a member of the Seven. The new episodes also delve deeper into the group's relationship to a shadowy company called Vought International, a conglomerate powerful enough to regard the United States government as a mere inconvenience. The new season is, if anything, even more cynical than Season 1 was about how power and fame function in America. But two years into a series about a world that is seemingly devoid of bravery or nobility, where the virtuous rarely prevail and villains are almost never punished for their misdeeds (and which Amazon has already renewed for a third season), it's worth asking how much longer that attitude can sustain "The Boys" before it risks becoming repellent. Kripke, for his part, did not from shy away from acknowledging the cynicism in the series and said he did not necessarily see it as a pejorative quality. "The show is really about a healthy questioning of authority," he said. "You should question every authority figure. You should question every celebrity. You should question every corporation. It's how this show really works as a metaphor of this moment. Because the truth is, behind closed doors, celebrities and politicians are very, very different than who they are on camera." "If I was on a show where I had to pretend that the world wasn't on fire right now, I don't really know how I would feel about that," Quaid said. "We have to talk about the things that plague us as a society, because if we don't then they just get worse." But the show's cast and creator also argued that "The Boys" was not solely a cynical show just as important are the characters who manage to connect and forge meaningful relationships despite the selfishness and cruelty around them. That sentiment, they said, can be found in the dynamics of several characters, most prominently in the budding love affair between would be adversaries Hughie and Starlight, which started in the first season and is further explored in the new episodes. "I always saw it as an oasis in a desert of misery," Quaid said of the romance. "In a world that's this insane, you have to have scenes where you can breathe a little bit." "The Boys" being "The Boys," of course, the show throws up as many obstacles as possible to keep its most valorous characters from finding true happiness with each other. But, as Kripke said, if the two of them are willing to keep fighting for it, then there might be hope for the rest of us. "My worldview is, the more human and vulnerable you can admit you are, the more heroic and stronger you are," he said. "To me, heroism doesn't come from swooping in it comes from quiet little moments of grace among people just trying to find each other and form families. That's how the world gets saved." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
The editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values . It is separate from the newsroom. When George Floyd died under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer, the scourge of police violence, festering for generations, became a rallying point for Americans yearning for the fulfillment of this country's founding aspiration to promote life, liberty and happiness. Yet as they turned out to exercise their most basic rights as citizens, these Americans have often encountered only more contempt for those rights from the people who are supposed to protect them. Some protesters crossed the line into violence. Some people took advantage of the chaos to loot. But all too often, facing peaceful demonstrations against police violence, the police responded with more violence against protesters, journalists and bystanders. In a handful of cities, local leaders recognized what was at stake, and their response can point the way forward for the country. In Houston, the police chief, Art Acevedo, told protesters: "We will march as a department with everybody in this community. I will march until I can't stand no more. But I will not allow anyone to tear down this city." He had the sense to recognize that a vast majority of demonstrators wanted what he wanted, a better city. And he clearly saw that the responsibility of the police was not to abridge but to safeguard the First Amendment, which protects freedom of speech, assembly, the press and religion. In many places, the country is experiencing a communal breakdown so complete that mayors have thrown up their hands and ordered curfews or called in the National Guard. Unable to maintain urban life, they have tried to suspend it, just as they had done in response to the spread of the coronavirus. Healing the wounds ripped open in recent days and months will not be easy. The pandemic has made Americans fearful of their neighbors, cut them off from their communities of faith, shut their outlets for exercise and recreation and culture and learning. Worst of all, it has separated Americans from their own livelihoods. Fear of the police has further separated communities from those sworn to protect their rights. President Trump, who tends to see only political opportunity in public fear and anger, is in his customary manner contributing heat rather than light to the confrontations between protesters and authority. In the absence of national leadership, it is all the more vital that mayors and governors affirm the rules that ought to govern American society. The nation is founded on the freedom of speech and particularly the right to gather in protest against the government. Politicians must hold the police accountable for protecting the rights of everyone they are sworn to protect and serve. In the same vein, city and state leaders should pursue the reopening of houses of worship in consultation with public health authorities. Particularly in this agonizing time, many Americans want to turn to their communities of faith for support. And religious leaders have often been at the forefront of nonviolent social change. The chaos unleashed by the death of Mr. Floyd defies simple prescriptions; it is a result of too many underlying conditions. Authorities are facing a stern test: It can be all but impossible to police the boundaries of legitimate protest, particularly on the ground. And it must be painful for many police officers who put their lives on the line to hear themselves criticized by their fellow citizens. Yet the testimony of local journalism, eyewitnesses and videos posted online make clear that too many police officers have little interest in protecting legitimate protest. While some officers have joined protests or knelt in solidarity, others, often in the same cities, have acted savagely, inciting or exacerbating violence. Just a few weeks ago, the police demonstrated remarkable forbearance as heavily armed groups turned out in several state capitals to oppose coronavirus related public heath measures. Now the police are demonstrating an equally remarkable intolerance to protests against their own behavior. The police have imposed arbitrary limits on protests, creating excuses for confrontation. They have fired countless rounds of tear gas and rubber bullets into unarmed crowds, sometimes without warning. They have attacked with fists, truncheons, shields and cars. They have behaved as if determined to prevent peaceful protest by introducing violence. In some of the most troubling attacks, police officers have singled out those who spoke up, wading into crowds of protesters and silencing the loudest voices. In Charleston, S.C., a black man dropped to one knee and told the police, "All of you are my family." The police arrested him. In Kansas City, Mo., a black man shouted from a crowd of protesters, "If you ain't got the balls to protect the streets and protect and serve like you were paid to do, turn in your damned badge." The police arrested him. In scores of incidents across the country, police officers also have deliberately attacked journalists reporting on the protests. Minneapolis police arrested a CNN crew on live television. Video captured Louisville police firing pepper bullets at a local TV crew. The Manhattan district attorney's office is investigating the alleged assault of a Wall Street Journal reporter by the police. Protesters, for their part, have also targeted reporters, including a Fox News crew outside the White House. In a brazen display of this administration's disregard for the First Amendment, the nation's chief law enforcement officer, Attorney General William Barr, ordered federal officers to clear a peaceful protest in front of the White House. The police used tear gas, rubber bullets and riot shields to drive away protesters, journalists and priests standing on the private porch of St. John's Church, all so Mr. Trump could pose for photos. The photo op managed to take aim at the freedom of assembly, speech and religion all at the same time. The governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz, apologized to the CNN reporters arrested in Minneapolis, and then took a moment to dilate on the importance of a free press. "The protection and security and safety of the journalists covering this is a top priority, not because it is a nice thing to do, because it is a key component of how we fix this," Mr. Walz said. "Sunshine, disinfectant and seeing what's happening has to be done." On Tuesday, Mr. Walz ordered a civil rights investigation into the "systemic racism" of the Minneapolis Police Department. It is not enough, right now, for officials to focus on protecting private property. It is not enough even for them to think only of protecting life, though that is critical. They need to also protect the freedoms of assembly and expression, and then, like Mr. Walz, to hear what's being said. That's where the healing may begin. 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 |
First, Emil Ferris Was Paralyzed. Then Her Book Got Lost at Sea. Like many of the best monster stories, Emil Ferris's true life horror tale starts with a bite. But more about that in a moment. First, a word concerning Ms. Ferris's blood tingling debut graphic novel, "My Favorite Thing Is Monsters," which oozes with the secrets and hungers that shadow childhood. Set in turbulent, late 1960s Chicago, it braids vintage monster imagery with the preternatural curiosity of a 10 year old named Karen Reyes, who fancies herself a wolf girl. According to Art Spiegelman, creator of "Maus": "Emil Ferris is one of the most important comics artists of our time." At 40, she found herself in a wheelchair, with a 6 year old daughter, Ruby, to raise. But Ms. Ferris, like her stubborn heroine, doesn't give in. She taught herself to draw again, received an M.F.A. in creative writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and eventually plunged into "Monsters." "The virus both impelled and scared me at the same time," she said. "I honed my focus and determination, and the book saw me through." "Monsters," from Fantagraphics, takes the form of a sketchbook diary as Karen tries to solve the murder of her stunning yet mysterious upstairs neighbor, Anka. Ms. Ferris's ferocious Expressionistic art, with its Crumb like crosshatching, nails the grit in your mouth feel of her home city. And monsters are more than a metaphor for Ms. Ferris. "I still do love monsters," she said. "And when I was a kid, they were really important to me. I couldn't wait for Saturday night." Because Saturdays meant the local creature double feature and fright fests like "Carnival of Souls" and "The Pit and the Pendulum." Ms. Ferris says those film terrors provided a crucial counterpoint to her own life: "This was the '60s. I watched protests being broken up by the police. I saw bigotry. It made me think about our own inner monstrousness." Of the passion needed to complete a 400 page graphic novel a second similarly scary tome is almost done Ms. Ferris wrote in an email: "For an impetuous minded artist the requisite devotion and rituals of creating a graphic novel are a bit like a hair shirt, a cat o' nine tails (and a chastity belt, certainly)." Ms. Ferris has worked in a range of media, from animation to painting, but "Monsters," with its rainbow hues, is almost wholly drawn in Bic pen, complemented by Flair markers. She started out drawing it on actual white, lined notebook paper. "But then I started to do it in layers, because it was so hard to make corrections." There are still days when Ms. Ferris needs to hole up. "When I'm too worn out or in pain I lie in bed and write in my mind," she said in an email. Her dreams often pick up the slack, and they helped her create one of the book's grisly delights. "Monsters" is sprinkled with covers of terror mags that never were: Ghastly, Gory Stories, Ghoulish and more, inspired by movie posters and classic 1950s EC comics like Tales From the Crypt and The Vault of Horror. Ms. Ferris has lived mostly in Chicago, and that intimate knowledge shines through in her Dickensian drawings of city life. Born on the South Side, she grew up in the Uptown neighborhood on the North Side. "We lived in this beautiful old building that was in great disrepair," she said. "We were all from somewhere else, and living in these castles." Ms. Ferris has spent her life as an artist, but she has also waited tables and cleaned houses. And she still hasn't put that hand to mouth life behind her. "As we speak," she said, "I have 14 and a bag of pecans. I'm basically still stealing bank coffee." But her inner life has always been rich because of her love for art. "It's a delicious thing, to think about the artists you love," Ms. Ferris said. "I tend to taste chocolate." Those who conjure sweetness for her include Otto Dix, George Grosz and Aubrey Beardsley. Among cartoonists she cites R. Crumb, Alison Bechdel and Mr. Spiegelman. "When I read 'Maus,' I realized you could tell a story of tremendous import using the graphic novel." That's what Karen does, too. Throughout "Monsters," there's the subtle hum of her sexual confusion. She knows it's easier to be a wolf girl than to unveil her deepest self. "There's Karen's desire to be a monster, rather than a hetero woman," said Ms. Ferris, who says she's a bisexual whose longest relationships have been with women. "And basically, Karen is Emil." But, she added: "I never quite became the monster I wanted to be. I feel mostly monstrous as I more become myself. Because the more you become yourself, the more it disturbs other people." Ms. Ferris paused and it wasn't clear whether she meant the mosquito that gave her West Nile, some seductive vampire or the rapture of art and declared: | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. At last week's Arnold Palmer Invitational, Phil Mickelson carded a 68 in the first round while chewing gum. The next day, without gum, he sprayed his shots all over the Bay Hill course and shot a 78. To boost his cognitive functioning, Mickelson, 48, started chewing gum during competition in January at the Desert Classic and tied for second. Two starts later, chewing gum as he walked, Mickelson clinched his 44th PGA Tour title. "The chewing aspect stimulates the frontal cortex," said Mickelson, who couldn't get his putter activated Thursday in the opening round of the Players Championship. Mickelson, the 2007 champion, had a four putt from 25 feet on the par 3 third hole, which was his 12th of the round, for a triple bogey 6 on his way to a two over par 74. That left him nine strokes behind the leaders, Tommy Fleetwood and Keegan Bradley, who each posted a 65. "It didn't help much today," Mickelson said with a rueful laugh. But, to the amusement of his peers, Mickelson has no plans to give up the gum. "I've seen him chomping on that gum, and I was wondering what he was doing," Steve Stricker said. "Leave it to Phil, I guess, to come up with that." There is some actual science to Mickelson's assertions. Studies have shown that chewing gum is associated with improved alertness and the ability to process new information, though the results are far from definitive. A 2011 study by psychologists at St. Lawrence University found that students who chewed gum and then discarded it performed demanding cognitive tasks like repeating numbers backward and solving complex logic puzzles better than those who did not chew gum. Mickelson's caddie and younger brother, Tim, said he could not speak to the science of gum chewing, but he could vouch for Mickelson's improved focus. Last year, he said, Mickelson on occasion would ask him to pick a club for him to hit because he couldn't gather his thoughts. An inability to focus hadn't been an issue this year, Mickelson's brother said. In the copycat world of professional golf, where players have turned their searching minds to mouth guards, tobacco chewing and copper bracelets as performance aids, could Mickelson's success this year spawn other gum chewers? Any players tempted to make like Violet Beauregarde, the "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" character who obsessively worked the same piece of gum for months at a time, should consider themselves warned. Serge Onyper, who co wrote the St. Lawrence University study, noted in an email on Wednesday that those who chewed gum for five minutes before getting rid of it benefited compared with those who did not chew gum at all. But, he wrote, "those who chewed the gum throughout the cognitive tasks did not benefit compared to those who did not chew gum." Mickelson, 48, said he chews two pieces per round, but would not divulge the type or brand. "It's not on the market yet," he said. Gum comes with and without sugar, with caffeine and, now, infused with cannabidiol, or CBD, which has been used to treat a variety of symptoms, including joint inflammation. It is categorized by the tour as a dietary supplement and is not prohibited, though players are advised to use extreme caution when using it and other supplements because, in general, there is no guarantee that what's on the label is what's in the product. Tiger Woods noted that Michael Jordan chewed gum when he played basketball and said he has chewed gum on occasion for a quick sugar boost. There have been other gum chewers in the game, notably Payne Stewart, a three time major winner. In the 1980s, the golfer Hubert Green bestowed upon Tim Norris the nickname Pac Man because he chomped gum the way the arcade game character gobbled ghosts. Paul Azinger, NBC's lead golf analyst, described Norris, the 1982 Greater Hartford Open champion, as "the greatest gum chewer in the history of golf," a distinction that made Norris chuckle when it was recently relayed to him. Norris described his gum chewing as "a nervous habit" and said he preferred the spearmint flavor "because it was green, and if I did accidentally drop it, it blended into the grass." After Norris left competitive golf and embarked on a college coaching career, "I kind of grew out of the habit," he said. Billy Horschel, the 2014 FedEx Cup champion, was forced to curb his gum habit recently when he started wearing a clear aligner on his upper teeth. Horschel described his gum chewing as "kind of a superstitious thing" but said it served a purpose. "I could chew on it harder when I needed to work out some frustrations," he said Thursday after signing for a 69. Some players never stuck with gum chewing long enough for it to become habit forming. It was not calming for Bubba Watson, who said, "I tried to do it to take my mind off things going on but I bit my tongue too much." And Stricker said, "I started chewing gum and all of the sudden I was building up tension in my jaws because I started really grinding on it." In 2017, Jordan Spieth chewed gum on his way to winning the British Open for his third major title. "I did it for no intended reason," said Spieth, whose swing coach, Cameron McCormick, offered him a piece of gum before his opening tee shot. He got off to a quick start and just kept chomping on it until after he was done with his post round news conference. Spieth hasn't made gum chewing a habit, "but I think there's something to it," he said. "I could sit here and say Phil's blowing smoke but this one makes sense. When you're focused on chewing, that can take your mind off of golf and can kind of calm players a bit." If Mickelson is so sold on gum's cognitive benefits, why didn't he chew his standard two pieces during the second round of the Arnold Palmer Invitational, where he ended up missing the cut? | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
LOS ANGELES And the award for best political stemwinder goes to ... After a movie awards season that was already one for the political history books, it was the Oscars' turn to speak truth to power from a place of privilege on Sunday night. Following a reserved and fitful start, the show delivered some of the political punch Washington and Los Angeles and everyone in between had been girding for. There were statements against Mr. Trump's border wall and immigration restrictions, and pointed messages extolling the virtues of "opposing without hatred," and journalism that has the "moral courage" to "challenge authority," conveyed in a message that flashed above Sting while he sang. Given the cultural and political rifts that have followed President Trump's election, and the aggressive way in which Mr. Trump has pursued his agenda, it was natural that some would want to use their international Oscar platforms to make big statements about free speech, diversity and cherished American values. But they were treading on tricky terrain. First, there was the question of whom they were actually winning over with political oratory delivered amid a bacchanalia of self celebration and haute couture, some of it costing as much as the average American's home down payment. (A poll by The Hollywood Reporter last week found that two thirds of Trump voters turn off awards shows at the first hint of politics.) And for all the talk of inclusion in the political speechifying leading up to, and during, the Oscars, how inclusive is Hollywood itself? The answer is that despite the big honors that black actors and black themed films took home Sunday night after two straight years of OscarsSoWhite controversy the industry still has a long way to go to improve diversity throughout its ranks. This year's nominations and Sunday's victories didn't change the fact that the number of minorities in the ranks of studio executives remains woefully low; that the female director continues to be that rarest of species (this is yet another year without a woman among the directing nominees), and that the consequences for bad behavior alleged or confirmed still seem to go by a sliding scale based on whom your connections are or your potential at the box office. And all the celebration of the black nominees this year was tempered by what about us complaints from Asian Americans, Hispanics, women whose nominations declined in nonacting categories compared with last year and older Americans. "The OscarsSoWhite hashtag has to be viewed as a synecdoche for 'industry so white,'" said Franklin Leonard, the founder of The Black List, a script crowdsourcing site. "If you view OscarsSoWhite as being only about more nominations for black actors at the Oscars, then you totally missed the point, and a lot of people did miss the point." Hollywood's diversity issues, of course, aren't all that different from those of corporate America, the United States Senate or, I might add, the news industry. And to Mr. Trump's critics, Hollywood's flaws would pale in comparison to the president's moves against immigration, transgender rights and environmental protections, among other indignities. Mr. Leonard's argument is that in Hollywood, the more diverse the executive ranks, the better the chance for diversity in storytelling. As The Atlantic reports in its latest issue, his list which polls hundreds of film executives on the best overlooked scripts they've read has helped push into production great screenplays, including "Slumdog Millionaire" and "Spotlight," both of which won best picture. This year's more diverse Oscar slate centered on unexpected hits like "Moonlight" (about a black youth struggling with his sexual identity in abusive home and school environments); "Hidden Figures" (about unheralded black, female mathematicians at NASA during the space race); and "Fences" (based on the August Wilson play about the generational struggles of a working class black family in Pittsburgh). Retail earnings and Black Friday: the week in business. Elizabeth Holmes will resume her testimony in her fraud trial. Some of the nominees from those films Octavia Spencer in "Hidden Figures," the supporting actress winner Viola Davis in "Fences" and the supporting actor winner Mahershala Ali in "Moonlight" "have been in the industry forever," Mr. Leonard noted. "But the rise of a new generation of filmmakers and the slow realization that diversity can result in box office results has finally given many of these actors roles that are worthy of their talents." "As any sociology major will tell you, people flock to people they know and people that are like them," Ms. Min said. That was evident, for instance, when the "Jurassic World" producer Frank Marshall told SlashFilm in 2015 that he and Steven Spielberg had taken a chance and hired the relatively unknown Colin Trevorrow to direct the big budget movie after another white male director in their clique, Brad Bird, said he "reminds me of me." Women in the business noticed. Ms. Min became so fed up with the lack of progress for women in Hollywood that she announced that same year that The Reporter was going to stop its rankings for women in its "Power 100" list. The ranking, she wrote, pitted women against each other when they needed to band together in the face of their many obstacles here. The magazine's current list of Hollywood's most powerful people "with the ability to say 'yes' and get a show made or a movie made," as the magazine's editorial director Matthew Belloni described it has its share of women in the top 25, including the Universal Pictures chairwoman Donna Langley; the Fox Television Group chairwoman Dana Walden; and Oprah Winfrey. But it was otherwise short on blacks, Hispanics and Asians. The studios I reached out to last week weren't eager to speak to me about the issue, perhaps because the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is weighing whether to bring a lawsuit against the major studios over charges the American Civil Liberties Union brought that the studios discriminated against women in hiring decisions for directors. The A.C.L.U. pointed to research by the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism showing that women had accounted for only 1.9 percent of the directors of the top 100 grossing films in 2013 and 2014. The author of that research, Stacy L. Smith, said in an interview that part of the problem had to do with myths throughout the industry that women don't want to direct big budget blockbusters, for instance, or that certain movies won't make money. Ms. Smith said she saw the success of "Hidden Figures" as pivotal because it would speak to Hollywood in its favorite language: cash. "Here we have a film not only nominated for best picture but is financially lucrative," she said. It had generated nearly 170 million in worldwide receipts as of last week, Bloomberg reported. For all of its strides toward diversity, the awards season had its wrinkles. As The Times reported in January, some saw race as a factor in the way Nate Parker's film, "The Birth of a Nation," lost its luster after the resurfacing of a case in which Mr. Parker was acquitted of charges that he raped a female student while at Penn State. However, Casey Affleck cruised to a best actor nomination for "Manchester by the Sea," and won, despite having settled sexual harassment allegations made against him in two civil suits (he denied the allegations). Also, this year's awards saw a second chance for Mel Gibson, whose best director nomination for "Hacksaw Ridge" came just over 10 years after he made anti Semitic and misogynist remarks during a drunken driving arrest. It was around the same time that Mr. Trump was caught on tape by "Access Hollywood" bragging about grabbing women's genitals. Mr. Gibson, of course, is an actor and director. Mr. Trump is now president and Los Angeles is such a bastion of opposition against him that it was only natural that he would inspire some political Oscar speeches this year. But Hollywood's judgment would go a lot further if it directed some of that political energy back at itself. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
LOS ANGELES Since November, a single tabloid magazine, In Touch Weekly, has devoted its cover to them in full or in part at least 14 times. In total, In Touch has done more than 90 articles on them. The Kardashians? No. Christina and Tarek El Moussa. The El Moussas were strangers to me when they started appearing on checkout aisle covers. They seemed to be reality show hosts going through a divorce. What bizarre news judgment, I thought. Were no actual stars generating gossip? Oh, well. Back to the groceries. But the barrage continued, with Just Jared and E! Online pumping out items as well. Puzzled, I asked a few Hollywood publicists if they could explain why the celebrity news media cared so much about the El Moussas. The head of publicity for one big studio responded, "Is that a fragrance?" Now obsessed with the obsession, I reached out to magazine editors. As it turns out, the two reality stars are fascinating not as newsmakers, but as a window into the evolving celebrity news business. "The whole category is really struggling to figure out where to go," said Janice Min, the former editor of Us Weekly and The Hollywood Reporter. "You're seeing the continued erosion of traditional star power and the effects of a culturally divided America." Reality stars, of course, have long been tabloid fodder. Ms. Min noted that she put Jon and Kate Gosselin, the stars of "Jon Kate Plus 8," on at least seven consecutive Us Weekly covers before their 2009 divorce. "There's a compelling American dream, lemon into lemonade factor with all these reality families," she said. "Foreclosures into riches, sex tape into stardom, ugly houses into pretty ones." But the coverage of "Jon Kate Plus 8" was validated by a record 10 million people tuning in for the fifth season premiere in 2009. The many children involved raised the stakes. Though the El Moussas are undeniably telegenic, their show, "Flip or Flop" showcasing their efforts to buy foreclosed homes, gussy them up and sell them at a profit pales in comparison. (And they have only two kids.) Airing since 2013 and based in Orange County, Calif., "Flip or Flop" has been a modest ratings success, fueled by some drama. Early on, a viewer noticed that Tarek had a lump on his neck and notified the show's producers, who insisted he see a doctor: He had thyroid cancer. Us Weekly and "Today" took note. Ratings went up to about three million viewers per episode, a big hit by HGTV standards. Then came the onslaught. In December, TMZ reported that the couple had separated and that the police had responded to the El Moussa home after a report about a possibly suicidal man; Tarek was found in a nearby park with a gun in his backpack. He said he was fine and turned over the firearm. People magazine then put the El Moussas on its cover (for the first time) with an all capitalized headline: "A Marriage Explodes." "There was news value in that moment," acknowledged Howard Bragman, the chairman of 15 Minutes Public Relations and Mr. El Moussa's publicist. But six months later, with In Touch and others still pounding away at the El Moussas, Mr. Bragman is now baffled and angry. "I actually do think these outlets used to have some shame," he said. "There was proportionality. Here, we have a fairly ordinary couple getting a divorce. And that merits nearly 100 articles in six months? I've been doing this for four decades, and I've never seen anything like it." In Touch responded in a statement: "In Touch's reporting, often relying on eyewitnesses and events caught on video, uncovered newsworthy details relevant to the narrative of their hit show." The nonstop El Moussa coverage since speaks in part to a shortage of bankable subjects. When People did a glossy President Trump cover in November, it was attacked by anti Trump readers and liberal celebrities. Editors say readers revere the Kardashians less than they used to; ratings for "Keeping Up With the Kardashians" have plummeted. And most movie stars have little tabloid tread left on them. For the 10,000th time: Jennifer Aniston is not pregnant. With print sales plunging, celebrity magazines and other news outlets are also placing more emphasis on digital data: What is generating clicks and how can we make more of it? If there is no news, just glom onto something tiny. In Touch recently did an entire article about a basic Instagram post by Mr. El Moussa. ("See it here!") "If readers weren't clicking if the El Moussas weren't selling they obviously wouldn't be getting the attention," said Ian Drew, until recently the entertainment director of Us Weekly, which was offloaded by Wenner Media in March. Mr. El Moussa and Ms. El Moussa, who remain friendly, aren't shrinking violets. She was photographed in a bikini; he posed shirtless. "I do get a little kick out of it sometimes," he told me, speaking of the tabloid chase. But they both seemed genuinely surprised by the blanket coverage. "When does it end?" Ms. El Moussa said by phone. "Some of these stories really hurt my feelings and disgust me. So much is untrue." The new issue of Life Style magazine had just arrived with her on the cover and the headline, "Christina's Story: Why I Took Tarek Back." "I did? News to me," she said of the article, for which she said she had provided no interview. "Meanwhile, I've gotten, like, 50 texts from friends about it." As media consumption of all kinds continues to fragment, there are fewer breakout entertainment personalities; there is no mass, there is only niche. So celebrity magazines are just fishing in the biggest ponds left. And HGTV is one, particularly in Middle America. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
And don't say it's because the Electoral College protects us from being dominated by the big cities like New York and Los Angeles. That argument, the most popular anti popular vote one currently in circulation, relies on distortions of both history and statistics. There were no big cities as we think of them when the Constitution was adopted. It's true that some framers were concerned about protecting the power of small states in the presidential election, but their solution was not the Electoral College as most of us think of it today; it was an obscure provision for a backup election that hasn't been triggered in almost two centuries. (Specifically, it sends a deadlocked election to the House of Representatives, where each state, big or small, gets a single vote. This is a terrible idea, as the framers quickly came to see and as virtually everyone today agrees.) Anyway, even if big city voters cast every single one of their ballots for one candidate, presumably the Democrat (spoiler alert: they don't), the nation's 100 biggest cities hold just under 20 percent of Americans. That's roughly the same as the number who live in rural areas, and not nearly enough to dictate who becomes president. If it were, how did George W. Bush cruise to a national popular vote win in 2004? A more historically accurate explanation for the Electoral College is that some of the Constitution's framers worried that most voters who rarely ventured far from home and had no easy way of getting information quickly couldn't know enough about national candidates to make an informed decision. That's one reason the framers settled on a system of electors: men who would be, in the words of Alexander Hamilton, "most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station, and acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation." That passage, which appears not in the Constitution but in Federalist No. 68, has long evoked for many Americans a romantic ideal a "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" assertion of independent conscience and impassioned citizenship. It was the inspiration behind the formation of the "Hamilton Electors," a group of Democratic electors in 2016 who tried desperately to keep Donald Trump out of the White House by appealing to the patriotism of their Republican counterparts, in the hope that enough would join together to cast their ballots for someone else. The problem is that the Electoral College has never worked as Alexander Hamilton claimed it would. National political parties developed within a few years of the Constitution's ratification, and electors quickly joined one team or the other. By the middle of the 19th century, the existence of partisan electors was so established as to be taken for granted. Justice Joseph Story wrote at the time that any elector's effort to exercise "independent judgment would be treated as a political usurpation, dishonorable to the individual, and a fraud upon his constituents." That's how the system has always functioned, for better or worse. Today, 32 states and the District of Columbia require electors to pledge to vote for a specific candidate; about half of those also penalize or replace faithless electors. But even in states without such laws, faithless electors are vanishingly rare, and for a simple reason: They were chosen precisely because of their partisan loyalty. They want to vote for their party's candidate. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
For half a century, climate scientists have seen the West Antarctic ice sheet, a remnant of the last ice age, as a sword of Damocles hanging over human civilization. The great ice sheet, larger than Mexico, is thought to be potentially vulnerable to disintegration from a relatively small amount of global warming, and capable of raising the sea level by 12 feet or more should it break up. But researchers long assumed the worst effects would take hundreds if not thousands of years to occur. Now, new research suggests the disaster scenario could play out much sooner. Continued high emissions of heat trapping gases could launch a disintegration of the ice sheet within decades, according to a study published Wednesday, heaving enough water into the ocean to raise the sea level as much as three feet by the end of this century. The situation would grow far worse beyond 2100, the researchers found, with the rise of the sea exceeding a pace of a foot per decade by the middle of the 22nd century. Scientists had documented such rates of increase in the geologic past, when far larger ice sheets were collapsing, but most of them had long assumed it would be impossible to reach rates so extreme with the smaller ice sheets of today. "We are not saying this is definitely going to happen," said David Pollard, a researcher at Pennsylvania State University and a co author of the new paper. "But I think we are pointing out that there's a danger, and it should receive a lot more attention." The long term effect would likely be to drown the world's coastlines, including many of its great cities. New York City is nearly 400 years old; in the worst case scenario conjured by the research, its chances of surviving another 400 years in anything like its present form would appear to be remote. Miami, New Orleans, London, Venice, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Sydney, Australia, are all just as vulnerable as New York, or more so. In principle, coastal defenses could be built to protect the densest cities, but experts believe it will be impossible to do that along all 95,000 miles of the American coastline, meaning that immense areas will most likely have to be abandoned to the rising sea. The new research, published by the journal Nature, is based on improvements in a computerized model of Antarctica and its complex landscape of rocks and glaciers, meant to capture factors newly recognized as imperiling the stability of the ice. The new version of the model allowed the scientists, for the first time, to reproduce high sea levels of the past, such as a climatic period about 125,000 years ago when the seas rose to levels 20 to 30 feet higher than today. That gave them greater confidence in the model's ability to project the future sea level, though they acknowledged that they do not yet have an answer that could be called definitive. Dr. Alley was not an author of the new paper, though it is based in part on his ideas about the stability of glacial ice. Several other scientists not involved in the paper described it as significant, with some of them characterizing it as a milestone in the analysis of huge ice sheets and the risks they pose in a warming world. But those same scientists emphasized that it was a single paper, and unlikely to be the last word on the fate of West Antarctica. The effort to include the newly recognized factors imperiling the ice is still crude, with years of work likely needed to improve the models. Peter U. Clark of Oregon State University helped lead the last effort by a United Nations panel to assess the risks of sea level rise; he was not involved in the new paper. He emphasized that the research, like much previous work, highlighted the urgency of bringing emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases under control. Dr. Clark described the new work as "a really important paper that adds to the growing recognition that in the absence of rapid and strong mitigation of carbon emissions, we are in store for a large sea level rise at rates that may be even faster than has been considered." It was his panel that had estimated an upper limit of three feet or so on the likely sea level rise in the 21st century, while specifically warning that a better understanding of the vulnerability of Antarctic ice could change that estimate. The new research is the work of two scientists who have been at the forefront of ice sheet modeling for years. They are Robert M. DeConto of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and Dr. Pollard, who is a colleague of Dr. Alley's at Penn State. In a lengthy interview on Monday, Dr. DeConto recounted years of frustration. The computer program he had built in a long running collaboration with Dr. Pollard showed increasing sophistication in its ability to explain the behavior of ice sheets, but it had some trouble analyzing the past. Unless global temperatures were raised to unrealistic levels, the model would not melt enough ice to reproduce the high sea levels known to have occurred in previous periods when either the atmosphere or the ocean was warmer. The ability to reproduce past events is considered a stringent test of the merits of any geological model. "We knew something was missing," Dr. DeConto said. The new idea came from Dr. Alley. He urged his colleagues to consider what would happen as a warming climate attacked huge shelves of floating ice that help to protect and buttress the West Antarctic ice sheet. Smaller, nearby ice shelves have already started to disintegrate, most spectacularly in 2002, when an ice shelf the size of Rhode Island, the Larsen B shelf, broke apart in two weeks. The West Antarctic ice sheet sits in a sort of deep bowl that extends far below sea level, and if it loses its protective fringes of floating ice, the result is likely to be the formation of vast, sheer cliffs of ice facing the sea. These will be so high they will become unstable in places, Dr. Alley said in an interview, and the warming atmosphere is likely to encourage melting on their surface in the summer that would weaken them further. The result, Dr. Alley suspected, might be a rapid shrinkage as the unstable cliffs collapsed into the water. Something like this seems to be happening already at several glaciers, including at least two in Greenland, but on a far smaller scale than may be possible in West Antarctica. When Dr. DeConto and Dr. Pollard, drawing on prior work by J. N. Bassis and C. C. Walker, devised some equations to capture this "ice cliff instability," their model produced striking results. In contrast to many prior attempts, it suddenly had no difficulty recreating the high sea levels of past warm periods. The obvious next step was to ask the model what might happen if human society continues to warm the planet by pouring huge amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. The answer the scientists got is described in their paper in the dry language of science, but it could easily serve as the plot device of a Hollywood disaster movie. They found that West Antarctica, which is already showing disturbing signs of instability, would start to break apart by the 2050s. Vulnerable parts of the higher, colder ice sheet of East Antarctica would eventually fall apart, too, and the result by the year 2500 would be 43 feet of sea level rise from Antarctica alone, with still more water coming from elsewhere, the computer estimated. In some areas, the shoreline would be likely to move inland by miles. The paper published Wednesday does contain some good news. A far more stringent effort to limit emissions of greenhouse gases would stand a fairly good chance of saving West Antarctica from collapse, the scientists found. That aspect of their paper contrasts with other recent studies postulating that a gradual disintegration of West Antarctica may have already become unstoppable. But the recent climate deal negotiated in Paris would not reduce emissions nearly enough to achieve that goal. That deal is to be formally signed by world leaders in a ceremony in New York next month, in a United Nations building that stands directly by the rising water. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
Graco Children's Products, which resisted recalling about 1.8 million child restraints earlier this year, has responded to a special order from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration demanding more information about incidents or injuries involving the rear facing infant restraints. But despite continued pressure from the safety agency, Graco is not saying whether it will remain steadfast in its refusal. "We are confident that the ongoing dialogue with N.H.T.S.A. and our shared commitment to child safety continues and will result in the best possible outcome for consumers," wrote Ashley Mowrey, a spokeswoman for Graco, which is a division of Atlanta based Newell Rubbermaid. The special order is an unusual and aggressive move by N.H.T.S.A. as it presses for a recall by Graco. It is the same type of order sent to General Motors on March 4 over the automaker's multiyear delay in recalling about 1.6 million small cars because of an ignition problem that could result in the engine's being accidentally switched off. The special orders come as N.H.T.S.A. itself is under scrutiny in the G.M. case, with consumer advocates and some former N.H.T.S.A. employees saying the agency should have done an investigation years ago. The agency insists it lacked evidence of a "defect trend." N.H.T.S.A.'s concern with Graco's product is that faulty buckles can jam and make it difficult to free a child in an emergency. The agency file includes a wrongful death suit in California that contends a child died of burns in 2011 when she couldn't be quickly removed from her forward facing seat after a crash. The company insists that the buckle was not at fault. N.H.T.S.A. began investigating the defect in late 2012, based on complaints from owners. In February, Graco agreed to recall about 3.8 million forward facing restraints designed for older children, including the model in which the California girl died. Then in March, the company added another 403,000 restraints to the recall. The 1.8 million restraints Graco is refusing to recall are rear facing models used for infants. Graco says those seats use the same defective buckles as the regular, forward facing seats used by older children. But it says a recall is not necessary because the portion of the seat holding the child can be detached from the base, which is anchored to the vehicle's seat. N.H.T.S.A. disagreed with Graco, prompting the special order, which was sent on March 6. The special order says answers from Graco must be accompanied by a sworn statement from "a responsible officer of Graco" saying the information provided is "complete and correct." Falsifying or withholding information could lead to a criminal investigation, the document said. That warning is far more stern than what normally accompanies information requests from the agency. The safety agency said it received Graco's response to the special order on Thursday, the deadline it had set for a response, and is reviewing the material, which it has not yet made public. On its website, Graco wrote, "Graco can assure you there have been no reported injuries as a result of the harness buckles used on Graco car seats." However, among the documentation the company provided to N.H.T.S.A. was material related to the wrongful death case in California. But Graco stands behind its statement that there have been no injuries tied to the defect, Ms. Mowrey said. Graco settled the case out of court, Ms. Mowrey said, adding that Graco could not provide details because of a confidentiality agreement that was part of the settlement. She also said: "We did not find any evidence that the buckle involved in that accident was defective. The circumstances of that accident, as described in testimony given in that case, did not implicate the buckle, and we do not believe there is a connection between the Ramirez case and the current recall based on those circumstances." Ms. Mowrey said that she did not know if Graco originated that confidentiality request, but that all parties agreed to it. The models not yet recalled are the Snugride, Snugride 30, Snugride 32, Infant Safe Seat Step 1, Snugride 35, Tuetonia 35 and Snugride Click Connect 40. The seats included in the recall are the Cozy Cline, Comfort Sport, Classic Ride 50, My Ride 65, My Ride with Safety Surround, My Ride 70, Size 4 Me 70, Smartseat, Nautilus, Nautilus Elite and Argos 70, all from the 2009 13 model years. If Graco continues to refuse to recall the seats and N.H.T.S.A. wishes to pursue the matter it could take Graco to court. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Automobiles |
When the Trump administration announced on Tuesday that it would end an Obama era program that shielded young undocumented immigrants from deportation, Sherwin Sheik quickly sized up the potential toll on his business. Mr. Sheik is the chief executive and founder of CareLinx, which matches home care workers with patients and their families. The company relies heavily on authorized immigrant labor, making the looming demise of the program which has transformed around 700,000 people brought to this country as children into authorized workers a decidedly unwelcome development. The move, Mr. Sheik said, would compound an already "disastrous situation in terms of shortages of supply." He added, "This is a big issue we're focusing on." Recalling the revolt among business executives that followed President Trump's refusal to single out white supremacists for causing violence last month in Charlottesville, Va., leaders of companies in the finance, manufacturing and technology industries, including Microsoft and JPMorgan Chase, have been quick to oppose the decision to end the program, known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA. Those executives may have empathy for the beneficiaries of the program, known as Dreamers, as well as a broader interest in more liberal immigration policies to satisfy their labor needs. But the practical effect on their businesses will typically be minimal. The number of workers who benefit from the program is tiny alongside a national labor force of more than 150 million, and the DACA workers are spread out relatively evenly across most industries. In health care, on the other hand, the economic impact could be significant, depriving patients of help they depend on and driving up costs for families and taxpayers. Surveys of DACA beneficiaries reveal that roughly one fifth of them work in the health care and educational sector, suggesting a potential loss of tens of thousands of workers from in demand job categories like home health aide and nursing assistant. At the same time, projections by the government and advocacy groups show that the economy will need to add hundreds of thousands of workers in these fields over the next five to 10 years simply to keep up with escalating demand, caused primarily by a rapidly aging population. "It's going to have a real impact on consumers," Paul Osterman, a professor at the Sloan School at MIT and author of a new book on long term care workers, said of the DACA move. The DACA program benefits people who entered the country as children and were under age 31 as of June 2012. A 2016 survey by pro immigration groups and a researcher at the University of California, San Diego, shows that roughly half are still in school, and more than two thirds have earned less than a bachelor's degree. That would make fields like home health care aide or nursing and health assistants, which don't require a college degree, potentially attractive. Josue De Luna Navarro, a DACA beneficiary, came to the United States from Mexico when he was 9 years old. He became interested in a career in health care after his father nearly died from complications relating to heart disease. Now a 21 year old senior at the University of New Mexico, Mr. Navarro works as a health assistant at a clinic in Albuquerque and plans to apply to medical school after he graduates. He worries that if DACA is revoked, he will not be able to work at all. "Without that work permit, my career in medicine will be very, very difficult," he said. Under the Obama era program, recipients had to apply to renew their status every two years. The Trump administration said on Tuesday that some beneficiaries would be able to renew their status up until Oct. 5. Others could face deportation beginning in March, unless Congress intervenes beforehand. Jeff Bezos gives 100 million to the Obama Foundation. Stocks rise after President Biden says Jerome Powell will stay atop the Fed. Experts say the effects of undoing the program could quickly ripple out from DACA beneficiaries to other workers. "It destabilizes that work force," said Robert Espinoza, vice president for policy at PHI, a group that advocates on behalf of personal care workers. "If you are seeing family members, children, neighbors being deported, threatened, and so on, the ability to be present on the job is undermined." The health care field's reliance on immigrant labor makes it particularly vulnerable. According to census data Mr. Osterman analyzed, more than one quarter of home health aides in 2015 were immigrants. The proportion in certain states is far higher, reaching nearly one half in California and nearly two thirds in New York. The undoing of DACA may also herald the undoing of other programs that provide a steady source of immigrant labor in the health care sector. For example, the government can grant people from certain countries that have endured hardship, like natural disasters or civil wars, what it calls temporary protected status. The overwhelming majority of workers granted that status hail from El Salvador, Honduras and Haiti, and many have flocked to low paying health care professions as well. "We know from surveys that T.P.S. recipients are highly represented in the work force in certain areas," said Tom Jawetz, a vice president of the Center for American Progress, a think tank that favors more liberal immigration policies. "In particular, many especially Haitians work in home health care." The Trump administration has suggested it may not extend the program for Haitians when its most recent extension expires in January, raising questions about whether it will end the program for Hondurans and Salvadorans as well. As a basic matter of economics, removing tens of thousands of workers from occupations that already suffer from a serious labor shortage the Labor Department predicts that the country will need more than 1.25 million home health aides by 2024, up from about 900,000 in 2014 generally has one unambiguous effect: driving up costs. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Economy |
The resignation of a Justice Department prosecutor over the sentencing of Roger Stone is a major event. The prosecutor, Jonathan Kravis, apparently concluded that he could not, in good conscience, remain in his post if the department leadership appeared to buckle under White House pressure to abandon a sentencing recommendation in the case of Mr. Stone, the associate of President Trump who was convicted of obstructing a congressional inquiry into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. Three of his colleagues quit the Stone case but remain with the department: Mr. Kravis left altogether. Even though the president for years has derided federal law enforcement officials, accusing them variously of conflicts of interest and criminality and weakness in not pursuing prosecution of his political opposition, Mr. Kravis's is the first resignation in the face of these assaults. Dramatically forceful responses to Mr. Trump's assaults on rule of law norms have been all too rare. A resignation can set off an alarm bell for an institution whose failings an official might be unable to bring to light in no other way, or as effectively. It upholds rule of law norms in the very act of signaling that they are failing. It makes its point with power and transparency, and stands a chance of rallying support from those who remain in place and compelling other institutions like the press and Congress to take close notice. The government official who resigns for these reasons is, paradoxically, doing his or her job by leaving it. Why did the Stone matter so clearly warrant resignation? The president has used Twitter to denounce and pressure department officials, senior administration lawyers and the Mueller team. When he did that to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, his deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, and the special counsel Robert Mueller, they stuck it out. They must have thought that the best way to serve the rule of law was to hold off or humor the president, maintaining regular order as much as possible even as Mr. Trump raged that he could not fully control his department. And there is a case to make for their choice. Mr. Sessions stood up to the president and adhered to his decision to recuse himself from the Russia investigation. Mr. Mueller was not fired and completed his investigation in the Russia matter. But this time, the president got what he wanted. Mr. Trump attacked the department sentencing recommendation as an unacceptable "miscarriage of justice" that was "horrible and unfair." And then the department did switch positions on the sentencing, criticizing its own prosecutors for failing to be "reasonable" in their recommendation to the court. This, then, could be seen as the extreme case, whereas normally a lawyer might decide that "working from the inside" is the best, most responsible answer to the president's behavior. Still, if resignation had been seen earlier as viable, even necessary option, it's possible that we would not have arrived at this point. Mr. Sessions could have resigned over the president's public calls for him to ignore his recusal requirements or prosecute Hillary Clinton. If Mr. Mueller had resigned over the president's attacks on him and refusal to sit for an interview, he might not have completed his report but he would have rendered a devastating and unequivocal judgment. And, without a report he felt compelled to rely on, Mr. Mueller might have felt himself more at liberty to testify in detail to Congress. Resignation, while an act of professional conscience, can be effective in pushing back against violations of norms of impartial, professional law enforcement insulated from political pressure. According to the Mueller report, having been finally pushed too far, the White House counsel Don McGahn threatened to resign in June 2017 over Mr. Trump's directive to fire Mr. Mueller. What did the president do? He backed down. That was then. Mr. Trump has established a new normal at the senior legal leadership of his administration. The rhetoric of Mr. Sessions's successor, William Barr, suggests that he accepts, to a disturbing degree, the president's desire for a politically responsive Justice Department. Mr. McGahn's successor, Pat Cipollone, defended the president in the impeachment proceeding with arguments of the kind, in tone and variance from the factual record, you would expect to hear from Trump surrogates on Fox News. We can't know if a wave of resignations early in this administration would have made a difference in preventing or tempering the unfortunate appearance, and perhaps increasing reality, that the administration of justice is being politicized. During the Watergate scandal, the Saturday Night Massacre resignations by Justice Department leaders certainly made an impression on President Richard Nixon, who then appointed an effective independent prosecutor, Leon Jaworski. Resignations can be a shock to the system, just what is needed to clarify the issues, force Congress to pay attention and alter a president's behavior. What government lawyers are prepared to accept, the conditions under which they are willing to work, still matters. Institutions can be severely damaged in one huge blow or whittled away. Of course, resignation as an act of protest is not a choice to be lightly made by those who join an administration and find themselves in disagreement with the president. It is not justified by policy decisions that a subordinate official would have made differently. But the president should not be able to command this loyalty when the conflict concerns something as fundamental as the professionalism and independence of the Justice Department and involves a case in which the president has a direct personal interest and the defendant is a political associate. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
Thanks to a relentless news cycle and a dedicated fan in the Oval Office Fox News has defied the downward trends in the television business, notching its highest rated year in 2017 even as audiences dwindled for many networks. But the mass migration of viewers away from traditional cable and satellite packages is accelerating. And now Fox News is plotting a leap into the uncertain digital future that rivals like CNN have so far put off. On Tuesday, Fox News is set to announce Fox Nation, a stand alone subscription service available without a cable package. The streaming service, expected to start by the end of the year, would focus primarily on right leaning commentary, with original shows and cameos by popular personalities like Sean Hannity. It would not overlap with Fox News's 24 hour cable broadcast not even reruns because of the channel's contractual agreements with cable operators. Instead, the network is planning to develop hours of new daily programming with a mostly fresh slate of anchors and commentators. "Fox Nation is designed to appeal to the Fox superfan," John Finley, who oversees program development and production for Fox News, said in an interview. "These are the folks who watch Fox News every night for hours at a time, the dedicated audience that really wants more of what we have to offer." Mr. Finley said the network was still discussing the cost of a subscription. The Fox News venture joins an increasingly crowded and increasingly niche marketplace for web only streaming television. ESPN is starting its subscription service, ESPN Plus, in the spring. About five million viewers signed up last year for HBO and Cinemax digital subscriptions. Last week, CBS said it counted five million subscriptions to its CBS and Showtime streaming services, and it plans to add two more stand alone products, CBS Sports HQ and an offering branded for "Entertainment Tonight." Fox Nation, depending on its popularity, may prove more consequential to the country's political life than the average streaming service. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
After anxious weeks since learning that he had cancer, a man prepares for an operation that he hopes will give him a longer life. Then, days before, his surgeon tells him that plans have changed. His surgery will be put off because of concerns about the spread of the coronavirus. Doctors and patients throughout the country are having difficult conversations like this. As Covid 19 cases have surged, hospitals have suspended not just elective surgeries like hip replacements, hernia repairs and cosmetic procedures, but even crucial treatments like cancer surgery. These postponements can be wrenching and frustrating for doctors and have forced patients into a battle on two fronts, against their disease and against the coronavirus. Traveling to hospitals or clinics for tests, procedures and treatments might place patients at greater risk of coronavirus infection. Cancer treatments like chemotherapy, radiation and surgery might weaken a patient's immune system, impairing his ability to fight off the virus. As more hospital beds are needed for Covid 19 patients, physicians must re evaluate the urgency of surgery. To weigh risks and benefits during the outbreak, the American College of Surgeons, the Commission on Cancer, other national and international organizations as well as hospitals and medical practices have created triage guidelines to determine whether to delay surgery and other medical procedures. In simplest terms, the guidelines are intended to help hospitals identify patients who can safely wait for surgery, and patients whose best option is still to proceed. For example, many guidelines recommend postponing surgery for small, slow growing lung cancers, but removing larger, more aggressive ones. Using the guidelines, doctors may also suggest changing the order of treatments, delaying surgery by giving chemotherapy for several weeks first, instead of after. In some cases, particularly for patients with multiple medical problems, a nonsurgical treatment like radiation may make more sense. Similar types of guidelines are being created for other procedures, such as open heart surgery. In many instances, there is already evidence that changing the order of treatments does not change cancer outcomes. "Patients who would ordinarily have their breast cancers removed surgically as their first treatment are now being treated initially with hormone therapy or chemotherapy," said Dr. Lawrence Shulman, a medical oncologist and deputy director for clinical services at the University of Pennsylvania's Abramson Cancer Center. "This can delay surgery for three to six months without reducing the patient's chance for cure." Doctors are trying to do what they believe is best for their patients, but so much crucial information is unknown. Will some patients be harmed by forgoing or delaying surgery? "We don't know yet," said Dr. Benjamin Judson, chief of ear, nose and throat surgery at Yale's Smilow Cancer Hospital, "but it is possible, depending on how long the pandemic disrupts our ability to care for cancer patients." Most of the guidelines and hospital planning presume that we will begin to recover from the pandemic within three or four months. If the pandemic lasts longer, doctors will face even more difficult triaging decisions, such as how to deal with patients whose surgery had been delayed for months. At the same time, hospitals are working to reduce the chances of infection so that procedures can resume well before the pandemic has run its course. Beyond its effect on standard treatments, the pandemic has also affected trials of experimental therapies. Many clinical trials have stopped enrolling patients over concerns about infection. These suspensions may be devastating for some patients who may not live to see the trials reopen. Better guidance on cancer care is almost certainly forthcoming as clinicians from China and Europe share their experience managing Covid 19 patients. However, it still may take months or even years to fully understand the true risks that patients face by having surgery or deferring it. By amplifying the uncertainty surrounding treatment, the pandemic has created a tremendous anxiety. "We don't really know when this will end, so it is difficult to plan for patients, and plans often change," Dr. Judson said. "I recently called a patient, days before a major cancer operation, to tell them we were going treat them without surgery," news that can be traumatic. And receiving diagnosis and treatment can feel especially isolating, when offices and hospitals bar visitors or companions. "Now patients may sit alone for hours during chemotherapy sessions, while other patients are hospitalized for several days after surgery without seeing a familiar face," noted Dr. Tristen Park, an assistant professor of surgical oncology at Smilow. Staff members have been looking for ways to connect with patients electronically. Charlotte Beales, who works with pediatric cancer patients at Yale New Haven Hospital, uses digital games. "Even our clowns plan to use FaceTime with our kids," she said. Some of the medical responses to the pandemic response may have long term value. Many clinicians are reducing tests and procedures to those that are essential, to minimize patient travel. Many practices have moved outpatient treatment from hospitals to sites that are closer to patients. The pandemic has also accelerated efforts to connect patients and clinicians electronically. These, and other innovations, may persist well after they pandemic has been quelled. It's unlikely that many cancer patients will see that as a bright spot right now when the normal anxieties surrounding cancer are intensified by the threat of coronavirus C infection. It may be hard for patients to have faith in anyone in such disquieting times, but navigating uncertainty is a cornerstone of medicine, and doctors have never been more committed to do what's right for their patients. Daniel Boffa is a thoracic surgeon specializing in lung and esophageal cancer. The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We'd like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here's our email: letters nytimes.com. Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter ( NYTopinion) and Instagram. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
The late cartoonist Charles M. Schulz once said, "Big sisters are the crab grass in the lawn of life." Though he was not referring to Maryanne Trump Barry, the older sister of Donald Trump, the retired federal judge has come back to haunt her little brother by deeming him a liar and a cheater with "no principles." When your own sister testifies against your character, and your niece pens a scathing tome to expound the root of your rotten persona, maybe, just maybe, you are not fit to hold the most powerful office in the world. "That's what I believe." That's what the president's sister says about Donald Trump's having had someone else take the "SATs or whatever" exams for him. Her belief is not proof, and yet the media continues to publicize the idea as if it is true. I despise Mr. Trump and want him out of office yesterday, but I don't think it does the case against him any good to perpetuate half truths or speculation. There's plenty to damn him without that. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
Eric Taylor, a relatively unknown Texas singer songwriter revered by his more celebrated peers for his painterly lyrics and dexterous finger style guitar playing, died on March 9 in Austin. He was 70. Susan Lindfors Taylor, his wife and musical collaborator, said the cause was liver disease. Steeped in the country blues of Lightnin' Hopkins and Mississippi Fred McDowell, the poetry of the Beat Generation and the Southern Gothic of Tennessee Williams and Carson McCullers, Mr. Taylor's songs fused a brooding yet tender melodicism with evocative stream of consciousness narration, to hypnotic effect. In the song "Comanche," from his album "Resurrect" (1998), Mr. Taylor beguilingly juxtaposes a series of seemingly unrelated declarations to form a seamless whole. In the final stanza, singing in a measured baritone while accompanying himself with filigreed acoustic guitar work, he asserts: I think there's a place there in West Memphis That's just crawlin' with the cops And I think that poetry and jazz are lies I think it's wrong that all good whiskey Costs more by the shot And I think you ought to hold on one more night. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
From its inception, however, the group had trouble maintaining its political agenda. Members argued over everything from whether to remain a trio or operate as a flexible musical unit with different writers moving in and out of the lineup to word choices in the poems. Nelson left the group first, creating space for the poets Felipe Luciano and Umar Bin Hassan to join. Later, Kain and Luciano departed, leaving Oyewole and Hassan to record their first album, "The Last Poets" (1970), with Jalal Mansur Nuriddin, a New York poet, and the drummer Nilija Obabi. A year later, Oyewole was in a North Carolina prison on a robbery conviction, and the Last Poets recorded "This Is Madness" (1971) without him. The former members released an album too, rebranding themselves the Original Last Poets. The dueling groups then fought over rights to the name in court. I've laid out this history because it's hard to grasp from "The Last Poets," a novelized account by Christine Otten, a Dutch playwright and author who discovered the group through her 11 year old son, a hip hop fan. Otten subsequently traveled to the United States, and over a period of several years conducted conversations with many of the group's surviving members (not all agreed to speak with her), studied their albums and poems, and interviewed their musical partners and family members. The result is an unusual and often frustrating book, consisting of fragmented portraits of the Last Poets as young men coming of age during the 1960s and early '70s, each of its six sections named after an album, song or theme the group pursued. Otten imagines the Last Poets as modern Romantics whose personal histories, performance styles and Afro diasporic musical roots provide access to a sublime black aesthetic. Notice, for instance, the way she envisions the story of how the group got its name. Lore has it that Nelson found the name in "Towards a Walk in the Sun," by the South African poet Keorapetse Kgositsile, known as Willie. Otten explains that the tale has been "repeated and written so many times that it had become a fact," even though "the term 'last poets' never appeared in Kgositsile's poem." After reading "Towards a Walk in the Sun" for the first time, Otten writes, Nelson heard God whisper to him: "'We are the last poets of the world / and our spirit breath rhythm words ...' That thought gave him hope. God was more reliable than history. God wouldn't forget him." This is a moment of Romantic epiphany: Kgositsile's poem gives Nelson psychological ballast, divinely inspired. The book unfolds episodically, but rather than form narrative arcs that capture significant moments in the group's history its formation, for example, or the arrival of a new member the episodes feel elliptical, forcing the reader to extract meaningful connections among them. They are also broken up in time, flashing forward from, say, "Akron, Ohio, 1967" to "Newark, New Jersey, September 2001," or from "Harlem, 1970" to "Paris, September 2002." Otten has attempted to structure her book like a docudrama by including commentary between episodes by experts on the Last Poets, among them Baraka, Douglas, the Young Lords founding member Mickey Melendez and Hassan's adult daughter, Khadijah Hassan Da Silva. But the interludes and jump cuts are almost always jarring, and the book requires close reading to understand how the sequences fit together. Jonathan Reeder's translation from the Dutch is lucid. Nonetheless, this formally ambitious work demands too much of readers; Otten compels readers to shape her narrative shards into a mosaic, to labor in order to grasp such basic things as the Last Poets' motivations for making art, or why some members decided to leave the group. In an author's note, she explains that she wanted the novel to mirror the "raw, daring, unpredictable and jazzy" feel of the Last Poets' aesthetic. Too often, though, her work has the texture of transcription, not invention or improvisation. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
K pop, the fizzy Korean youth culture genre that has become an irrepressible international export, is at the top of the charts once again thanks to the group BTS. For the second time in six months, the seven member boy band has the No. 1 album in the United States, having followed up "Love Yourself: Tear" from May, the first K pop album to ever lead the Billboard 200, with "Love Yourself: Answer," another chart topper. "Answer," the third part of a trilogy, is a compilation of sorts, featuring more than a dozen songs culled from the previous two chapters but adding on 10 additional tracks exclusive to this release, including "Idol," a crossover collaboration with Nicki Minaj. "Answer" sold a total of 185,000 units in its first week, according to Nielsen, including 39 million digital streams and 141,000 in traditional sales. Overall, those numbers bested "Love Yourself: Tear," which tallied 135,000 units in its debut week. Billboard reported that among albums this year that are classified as pop, only Justin Timberlake and Ariana Grande had bigger opening weeks than BTS's "Love Yourself: Answer." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
How do New York Times journalists use technology in their jobs and in their personal lives? Marcelle Hopkins, deputy video editor and co director of virtual reality at The Times, discussed the tech she is using. Video has changed a lot in recent years. How have you and the video department incorporated new video technologies, and what technologies has the department helped pioneer for journalism? Journalists and technologists from various parts of The Times started experimenting with virtual reality a few years ago. We launched NYT VR in November 2015 with the publication of the V.R. documentary "The Displaced" (about three children displaced by war) and the distribution of more than one million Google Cardboard headsets to our subscribers. Since then, we've produced more than 20 V.R. films, and we learn a lot with each one. Last year, we launched The Daily 360, a series that produces a 360 degree video from somewhere in the world every day. The volume and cadence of daily publication accelerated our learnings in V.R. It allowed us to quickly iterate on a young storytelling form, train our journalists in a new reporting tool and introduce immersive journalism to a broad Times audience. Sometimes we practice with new cameras around the office or at home before using them on a story. Other times we send them out on a reporting trip for a trial by fire. The first time we used the V.R. camera Z Cam S1, we took it to the hottest place on Earth: Danakil, Ethiopia, where temperatures can reach 125 degrees Fahrenheit. In the early days of our V.R. production, we'd had a lot of problems with cameras overheating and turning off. So we weren't sure how the Z Cam would perform in such a difficult environment. To our delight, it never overheated as it captured stunning images for the resulting film, "The Land of Salt and Fire." What have been the strengths of using virtual reality for journalism? What unexpected stumbling blocks have you come across with it? V.R. is great for creating a sense of place. We often use it for stories in which the place is important to the story and being there can create a visceral experience that is rare in other mediums. V.R. can transport our audience to places they otherwise couldn't or wouldn't go, as in "The Antarctica Series," which takes people below and above the ice of Antarctica. Unexpected stumbling blocks arise frequently because we're working on the edges of what we know how to do. There's often a gap between how we want to tell a story and the tools that we have to do it. That's when we hack available hardware or software to suit our needs. Among the virtual reality headsets from Facebook's Oculus, HTC, Google, Sony and Samsung, which do you think is most likely to become mainstream first, and why? I don't know who will make it, but the first immersive media wearable to be widely adopted will look and function more like a pair of reading glasses than like the V.R. headsets we have today. The first generation of modern V.R. and augmented reality headsets are too clunky to go mainstream. They're heavy and awkward, sometimes connected to a computer by a cable. They're good prototypes for getting us started in immersive platforms, but I hope someone builds something that's more convenient for everyday use. I'm ready for a pair of glasses that uses light field technology to integrate interactive digital information in the real world around me. I want Google Maps to draw directions on the street in front of me. I want Netflix to project a movie on my living room wall. I want AccuWeather to show me today's highs and lows on my coat closet door. I want NYT Cooking to put recipe demos on my countertop. When that's possible, I think, glasses will eventually replace smartphones. How are you thinking about augmented reality and its application toward journalism? A.R. has huge potential for journalism. There are already a few applications that we've seen that could be useful in our reporting. One is creating three dimensional objects and putting them in the user's environment. For example, if we build a 3 D model of how gravitational waves are generated from colliding black holes, you could walk around it to observe the mechanics of an invisible astronomical event. Location based A.R. has widespread applications for news, travel, culture and real estate. When visiting the vineyards of Sonoma County, you could access tips and highlights from our Travel section. I'm also very interested in A.R. portals. Imagine a digital "door" in your living room that leads to a Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh. Of course, I'm most excited about the A.R. applications we haven't thought of yet. Outside of work, what tech product are you currently obsessed with using in your daily life and why? I often joke that Spotify knows me better than anyone in my life. My favorite feature is Spotify's Discover Weekly, which serves me a personalized playlist of music I've never heard. I save the songs I like, and occasionally make my own playlists out of the ones I love. As with any machine learning algorithm, the more you use it, the smarter it gets. At this point, Spotify is really good (probably better than me) at something I don't have time for anymore finding new music I like. How much do you take video personally for friends and family and for social media? Or do you leave all of that at work? I've gone through phases with documenting my personal life. Right now I'm in a social media lull and don't take many photos or videos outside of work. It's a real treat for me to abandon my phone when I'm spending time with friends and family. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
In 2010, Dr. Pamela Munster mailed her saliva to 23andMe, a relatively new DNA testing company, and later opted in for a BRCA test. As an oncologist, she knew a mutation of this gene would put her at high risk for breast and ovarian cancer. She was relieved by the negative result. Two years later, after she learned she had breast cancer, she took a more complete genetic test from a different lab. This time it was positive. A study of 100,000 people released earlier this month suggested that this experience could be widespread. Nearly 90 percent of participants who carried a BRCA mutation would have been missed by 23andMe's test, geneticists found. 23andMe's testing formula for this risk is built around just three genetic variants, most prevalent among Ashkenazi Jews. The new study demonstrated that most people carry other mutations of the gene, something many doctors have long suspected. "It's as if you offered a pregnancy test, but only the Jewish women would turn positive," said Dr. Munster, who is the co leader of the Center for BRCA Research at the University of California, San Francisco. She was not involved in the new study, which was conducted by Invitae, a diagnostic company. 23andMe said response to the study by its potential competitor had been overblown because the site makes it clear that it is testing only for three of the mutations. Dr. Munster said that 23andMe was "not doing anything actively deceptive." But she is still concerned that many customers do not grasp the limits of mail in genetic testing. 23andMe now has more than 10 million customers. Even if only a small percentage take the test, that's thousands who could be misled. Mary Claire King, a professor at the University of Washington who discovered the region on the genome that became known as BRCA1, had a more blunt assessment of the Food and Drug Administration's decision to allow the test. "The F.D.A. should not have permitted this out of date approach to be used for medical purposes," Dr. King said. "Misleading, falsely reassuring results from their incomplete testing can cost women's lives." How was the study conducted? The study, which was presented at the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics annual meeting and has not been peer reviewed, was built around more than 100,000 patients who underwent breast cancer risk testing with Invitae, a diagnostic company. Despite the lack of peer review and Invitae's potential role as a business competitor, genetic medicine experts not affiliated with Invitae said in interviews that they found the work to be credible, particularly as the company's findings echo other, smaller studies. 23andMe's test focuses on BRCA1 and BRCA2, genes involved in suppressing growth of abnormal cells. Specifically, it looks for three notorious genetic variants, known as founder mutations. Invitae's analysts expanded their search to include thousands of other variants. Dr. Susan Klugman, vice president for clinical genetics at the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics, likened it to a broader spell check. Whereas 23andMe looks for errors in a few paragraphs, the Invitae analysts used more advanced genetic technology to search through 25 chapters. (Dr. Klugman was not involved in the Invitae study.) In about 5,000 subjects, analysts identified at least one variant known to significantly increase an individual's risk of breast and ovarian cancer. Among the Ashkenazi Jews in the positive group, 81 percent had one of the three founder mutations, suggesting that 23andMe's test could be helpful for them. Among the rest, 94 percent carried variants that would have failed to be detected by 23andMe. Why create a test that misses so many people? One reason is purely technical: To return to the literary metaphor, 23andMe isn't set up to scan entire genetic books the way some labs are. So even if the company wanted to look for other variants, that would not be possible without changing its approach, said Dr. Robert C. Green, a professor at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Green said that limitation is not necessarily a problem. "I think people have the right to their own genetic information, but with that right comes a responsibility," he said. "If you are going to go around the medical mainstream, read the caveats." Dr. Jeffrey Pollard, 23andMe's director of medical affairs, said that the company's focus was far from arbitrary. "We test for these three variants since they are three of the most well studied and carry clear, documented risk for breast and ovarian cancer," he said. "About one in 40 individuals of Ashkenazi Jewish descent has one of these three variants. Women with one of these variants have a 45 to 85 percent chance of developing breast cancer by age 70." The company warns customers that it is not testing for all variants, and its approach has been approved by the F.D.A., he said. (The company said that data on how many people have taken its test was not available.) Yes. Alongside the primary study, Invitae analysts also presented a smaller study investigating this question, built around 102 patients. All participants had been told that they had a mutation of the gene from a mail in test or other online analysis service. (Whether they used 23andMe or another service was not documented. Based on their reading of the data, 23andMe analysts insisted their company's results were not a part of the study.) In nearly half of the patients, Invitae could not confirm the presence of a mutation. That means that had these patients not taken a second test, they would have gone on thinking that they were at greater risk for inherited cancer than they really were. A positive result can be a major life event: Some people may opt to get a preventive mastectomy or hysterectomy. Others may increase the frequency of their doctors' visits or alter other habits. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
On my first night in La Paz, Bolivia, I was indoctrinated into the intern culture. Five fellow interns and an 18 year old staff assistant smoked a blunt until two of them threw up. Over the following weeks, whether it was imbibing San Pedro mescaline around the Tiwanaku ruins or snorting at the underground cocaine bar, Route 36, our social agenda almost always involved substances. Though I never partook in drug explorations, I was implicating myself by tagging along. One night, we went to a bar named Diesel in a taxi cum drugstore stocked with coke for just under 15 a gram. Because possession of cocaine, like marijuana, is a serious crime in Bolivia, I was afraid of what might happen if we were arrested. Opportunities can turn into opportunities for disaster when students blindly leap into situations in foreign countries. When I accepted the offer to intern last summer in La Paz, I was in the midst of my freshman year at Columbia University. I had already completed two domestic internships (and one since then) and, while in high school, studied abroad in England and Spain. I found last summer's internship, at The Bolivian Express, on a list emailed by Columbia's student newspaper to help contributors in their search for summer plans. According to the description, its purpose was to give aspiring journalists the skills to succeed in the field while promoting tourism and Bolivian culture through a free English language magazine. It included 40 hours a month of instruction in writing, photography and Spanish language and the chance to do real reporting. After a Skype interview with the 28 year old editor in chief, a University of Oxford alumnus who helped found the magazine, I was hooked, regardless of the lack of pay and the nearly 6,000 it would cost me in tuition, flights and accommodations. The Columbia Undergraduate Scholars Program helped foot the bill with a 2,000 grant. My parents were hesitant to send me to South America, comforted only by Columbia's financial stamp of approval. The scholars program gives its participants, who make up about 10 percent of the student body, support so that they can accept unpaid or barely paid internships over the summer even though Columbia does not give academic credit for internships. Students secure and propose their own experiences, whether working on H.I.V. research in California or with a filmmaker in France. But Columbia does not vet the programs it helps finance, and I flew into a problematic placement. According to the Institute of International Education, 15,000 students interned, worked or volunteered abroad for no credit in 2012 13, up 18 percent over the previous year. Of those students, 20 percent were stationed in Latin America or the Caribbean. I asked Troy Peden, one of the founders of GoAbroad, what was fueling the trend. He cited the desire for a resume builder and lust for a fun foreign excursion. Sexy one liners about meaningful travel "Gain Practical Experience in an Adventurous Setting!" entice undergraduates to work for free or less than minimum wage. Forget internships at home; the great unknown is so much more appealing, not to mention adding an international credential to one's C.V. But wanderlust fantasies can be just that: fantasies. Some of my friends have told me about a lack of purpose in their internship experiences. One Ivy League student complained about working for a tech giant in China and being given almost no work. She spent her days reading the news, scrolling on Facebook, and researching things to do in the city. After two weeks in La Paz, it was apparent my internship was not a good fit. I was working on three articles, but my subjects were sociopolitical, ambitious and over my head. Scheduling conflicts kept getting in the way of promised training sessions. I felt I was wasting my parents' and my school's money and, off hours, involving myself in dangerous situations. We lived in the BX House, two floors of an apartment complex in the trendy Sopocachi neighborhood. The gate was locked, our quarters not. On my second weekend, as the sun rose, the interns trickled in after a night of partying. The teenage staff assistant tripped through my lockless bedroom door, accompanied by a local he had met at a bar the week before. I returned from my morning shower to see both in my trundle. As I stood nearly naked in front of a stranger snuggled in my cot, who had access to all of my possessions and me, I decided I didn't want to be scared anymore. I returned home two days later. Though I had to eat the cost of my flight, I received a refund of three fourths of my tuition and apologies. The assistant, a volunteer, was let go, according to Ivan Rodriguez Petkovic, who took over as general director in the fall. (The editor in chief had been juggling jobs, and has left.) They convened a meeting to remind the interns of the rules, particularly that drugs are prohibited within the BX House. But the organizers made it clear to me: They would not police the behavior of young adults. They emailed me a string of glowing testimonials. I, too, put out a call for reviews. Joel Balsam interned there in 2012. Just graduated from Concordia University in Montreal, he had wanted to backpack through South America "Let's be honest, telling family and friends you are going for an internship is far better then saying you are going just to see the world." He acknowledged that his colleagues had shared an affinity for having fun, but he called it a "superior" internship that led to another one at a Canadian media outlet. The Bolivian Express has produced 46 issues since its inception in 2010, and relies on the work of interns; more than 100 have participated. "They come to learn the language, to know local people, and on the recommendation of past interns," Mr. Petkovic said. "They leave Bolivia with experience," he added. "This, for me, is a success." He pointed out that the group dynamic changes from term to term. My fellow interns came from recognized European universities like the University of Edinburgh and the University of Bristol. Like me, they were seeking an experience something extraordinary outside of their comfort zones, and to "understand more of a new place," as one University of Cambridge student wrote in the magazine's 31st issue. But she went on to express discontent with the insularity of La Paz's backpacking community. "Since being here, I have interacted mostly with travelers who can afford to make the journey halfway across the world making them well off even in their home countries." She wrote of the drug tourism and clubbing scene "fuzzy memories of Route 36" and "jungle trips" that dominated visitors' time. I was only 18 when I signed a contract to move to La Paz for two months. Should I have been on my own in South America, just a year out of high school? With this new global fad, will other young people find themselves in situations they are not yet equipped to handle? Should this generation slow down in its search for the next extraordinary? | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Education |
THE moment you enter Jose Stevenson's apartment on the Grand Concourse, you see an image you don't expect to find in this corner of the Bronx. In a moody painting that hangs in the foyer, a herd of hulking golden buffalo chomp happily on a seemingly endless plain. The work by Robert Lindneux, well known for his depictions of Native Americans and their fading world, speaks eloquently to Mr. Stevenson's roots in the Cherokee Nation. On his father's side these roots extend back at least six generations, to George Lowrey Jr., who was known as Rising Fawn and was an assistant chief of the Cherokee Nation. A copy of "A Cherokee Prayer," thanking the four points of the compass for the gifts they bestow, holds pride of place in the bedroom. It was written by Jose's father, Gelvin Stevenson. The prayer and the buffalo evoke a distant place. Yet Mr. Stevenson, who is 34 and works as a bank examiner for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, is a child of the Bronx through and through. It's no surprise that he ended up on the borough's most celebrated street, a strip lined with glossy Art Deco apartment houses that was a destination for generations of upwardly mobile New Yorkers. His mother, Clara Rodriguez, who is Puerto Rican, was born in the Bronx, and his parents lived in the borough for four decades. ("Marry me and marry the Bronx," she told his father before their wedding.) Jose and his sister spent their childhood in East Tremont, at a time the neighborhood was so rough that he remembers using crack vials he found in an alley to make eyes for a snowman. College took Mr. Stevenson to Wesleyan, in Middletown, Conn., and then to the University of Michigan, from which he received a master's degree in public policy. Upon returning to New York, he rented a one bedroom apartment in East Harlem, and felt a deep connection with the neighborhood's pulsing Latino culture, especially La Marqueta, the local marketplace, and the sound of salsa in the streets. But after seven years of wanting to buy and finding prices beyond his reach, he turned his sights west, specifically to Executive Towers at 165th Street in the West Bronx. "I really ended up in this particular building because of the Wesleyan connection," Mr. Stevenson said. A good friend from college was a broker who had moved to Executive Towers nearly a decade earlier, and in part thanks to his affection for the 24 story white brick building, a dozen Wesleyan grads followed suit. Attractions included spacious, relatively affordable apartments Mr. Stevenson, who bought his in 2010 for 260,000, has nine closets and a dining room and the easy commute to Manhattan. "People think we're on the other side of the world," Mr. Stevenson said. "But it's just three stops to Manhattan, just 20 minutes to my office near Rockefeller Center." Though not exactly a diehard Yankee fan, he savors a 19th floor view that includes the stadium, stretching as it does from Midtown to Westchester County. When Mr. Stevenson arrived, he was greeted by an assortment of Victoriana left by the previous residents that included a crystal chandelier and an elaborately carved wooden couch and matching desk. For a while, the couch and the desk were all he had in the way of furniture, and he slept on an air mattress. Busy with his job and with running the TriLatino Triathlon Club, a charitable organization that he and five friends founded in 2009, he didn't see getting the apartment in shape as a priority. Because of some unfortunate measurements, Mr. Stevenson ended up with 200 extra square feet of bamboo that set him back 700, no small sum for a person decorating on a budget. But he is enormously pleased with the results. The wood reminds him of the bamboo that surrounds the house his parents own in Puerto Rico, a regular destination for family vacations. He transformed the second bedroom into a gym, complete with a multipurpose Bowflex machine. But except for the bed and a new sofa, most items are family heirlooms or hand me downs. Mr. Stevenson's father grew up in Tarkio, Mo., and when his mother died in 2007, she left a huge house full of treasures to be divided among her survivors. Along with the Lindneux painting, inheritances include a fainting couch upholstered in ivory and chocolate brocade, her Bible, and a wall mounted telephone, a 35 pound contraption complete with speaking tube. From his mother's family in Puerto Rico come a pair of steel swords topped with ivory handles carved with the heads of birds. The swords were a prized possession of his grandfather Angelo Rodriguez, a 33rd Degree Freemason. A framed certificate identifies Mr. Rodriguez as a lifetime member of the Masonic Lodge. Photos along a hallway trace more recent family journeys. Images of Mr. Stevenson's parents when they were young his father in a crew cut, his mother in her high school graduation mortarboard share space with images of Mr. Stevenson shaking hands with Bill Clinton, a souvenir of a post college stint working in the White House. Slowly, the apartment is coming together. With help from his father, Mr. Stevenson reconfigured the closets in the bedroom. Neon bright AstroTurf carpets the balcony. The dining room glows with cheerful orange walls. The teddy bear he grew up with sits atop his bed. Then came the Super Bowl. "This past February, when the Giants made it into the Super Bowl, I decided I wanted to throw a great Super Bowl party," he said. "Which meant that I had to get my home theater experience up to par." Having no TV, he turned to Craigslist to buy a 46 inch Samsung that can pick up signals via an antenna mounted on the wall. He also bought a 100 inch drop down screen that he hung from the ceiling, on which the game could be shown via a projector. "The images would skip sometimes, and I was very nervous," Mr. Stevenson said. "I had 30 people watching the biggest game of the year. But fortunately the two images never skipped at the same time. And I did all this without even having cable." As he pushes ahead with getting the place in shape, he is savoring life on the Bronx's most famous street. But even as the fortunes of the borough continue to improve, the young people who are served by the TriLatino Triathlon Club remind him of the journey ahead. "Most of the kids in our program come from low income families," he said, "and many of them come to practice on an empty stomach. They help me see firsthand that for many people, the Bronx continues to be a tough place to live." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
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