text stringlengths 1 39.7k | label int64 0 0 | original_task stringclasses 8 values | original_label stringclasses 35 values |
|---|---|---|---|
DEARBORN, Mich. In the fiercely competitive world of luxury cars, the Ford Motor Company's Lincoln brand has long been stuck in the slow lane, with stodgy models, older buyers and a distinct lack of pizazz. But Ford is determined to change that. On Monday, the company will announce upgraded customer service initiatives, a new brand name for Lincoln that plays down the Ford connection and an unusual advertising campaign that features Abraham Lincoln, the president for whom the brand is named. Ford's chief executive, Alan R. Mulally, will begin the rebranding effort at an event outside Lincoln Center in Manhattan the first in a series of moves meant to reverse Lincoln's seemingly perpetual state of decline. Ford will formally rechristen the brand as the Lincoln Motor Company and introduce a television spot that begins with an image of Lincoln, stovepipe hat and all. The brand's first Super Bowl commercial is in the works, as is a revamped Web site that links consumers to a Lincoln "concierge" who can arrange test drives or set up appointments at dealerships. Mr. Mulally will also announce the on sale date in early 2013 for the radically redesigned Lincoln MKZ sedan, as well as plans for three new vehicles down the road. If it seems like an all out grab for attention, well, that's exactly the point, said James D. Farley Jr., Ford's head of global sales and marketing and the newly named chief of the Lincoln revival effort. "The most important thing is for people to be aware that there is a transition going on," Mr. Farley said. "We have to shake them up." The shake up is long overdue and critically important to Ford, the nation's second largest car company behind General Motors. As recently as the 1990s, Lincoln was the top selling luxury automotive brand in the United States. Its large Town Car sedan and hulking Navigator S.U.V. defined the brand, and sales topped more than 230,000 vehicles a year. But since then, Lincoln has been left in the dust by the German category leaders BMW and Mercedes Benz, and Toyota's Lexus division. This year, Lincoln ranks eighth in the American luxury segment, with sales down 2 percent, to 69,000, vehicles in the first 10 months of the year. Its crosstown rival G.M. has had much better success reviving its Cadillac brand. "Cadillac has been stabilized, but Lincoln is still muddling about," said Jack Trout, president of the marketing firm Trout and Partners. "The big question is, how can Lincoln convince people it is more than just a gussied up Ford?" That task has now fallen to Mr. Farley, who left Toyota five years ago to join Ford just as Mr. Mulally's transformation of the company was under way. Since then, Ford has introduced a succession of sleeker, more fuel efficient and technology laden models that have lifted sales and made it among the most profitable car companies in the world. Lincoln, however, has not benefited from the turnaround. It accounts for only 3 percent of Ford's total sales, down from 8 percent during the brand's heyday. And since Ford has sold off foreign luxury divisions like Volvo and Jaguar, Lincoln is the sole upscale brand in the company. "There is nothing more frustrating for us than to have someone who loves their Ford car and S.U.V., but goes out to buy a luxury model from another brand because we don't have one," Mr. Farley said. The Lincoln comeback effort starts with the midsize MKZ, which has been redesigned with a sweeping grille, tapered body style and an all glass retractable roof. It will be followed by three other new models, including a larger sedan and S.U.V. But the brand's image needs much more than better cars. Under Mr. Farley's direction, a newly formed team of 200 people is intent on establishing the Lincoln Motor Company as a boutique luxury line known for personalized service. Every customer who reserves an MKZ, for example, will be presented with an elegant gift upon receiving the car. Choices include a selection of wines and Champagne, custom made jewelry or sunglasses, or a one night stay at a Ritz Carlton hotel. Lincoln's Web site will also have a consultant available 24 hours a day for live discussions about the products and to streamline the buying process. Prospective buyers will be given an opportunity for a "date night" with Lincoln, which includes a two day test drive and a free meal at a restaurant. The brand's 300 dealers across the country are learning the new tenets of luxury service at training sessions nicknamed the Lincoln Academy. A 108 page manual of "luxury truths" details the new approach to pampering potential buyers, from how to welcome them at a dealership to celebrating the anniversary of their purchase. Lavishing attention on luxury buyers is hardly a new idea. Lexus and BMW have been perfecting their sales experiences for years. The new Lincoln philosophy borrows heavily from those models, but emphasizes the one on one relationship between sales employees and consumers. "Offering better hospitality doesn't cost us a dime," said Kevin Cour, who was recruited from Toyota to become the new head of Lincoln's dealer operations. Changing Lincoln's image from stuffy to stylish is a higher hurdle to clear. The new advertising campaign mixes the heritage of classic Lincolns of the 1950s and '60s, including presidential limousines, with dreamy shots of the new MKZ. And for the first time, the brand uses Abraham Lincoln as a metaphor for its cars. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Automobiles |
Breaking the rules always came easy to Barkley L. Hendricks. One of the most influential artists and photographers of the 20th century, he was best known for his portrayal of everyday black life in the United States. He often eschewed convention and experimented with shapes and space in his works unlike anyone had before him. But his most significant departure from the norm was in the subjects he chose to paint. They were his neighbors, friends and strangers set against bold backdrops in works that might not have seemed out of place among centuries old European portraits. Hendricks was a student at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in the 1960s and took a trip to Europe to study European masters, like Paul Cezanne and Rembrandt, and was dismayed to find a dearth of black subjects, so he painted his own. His style combined the techniques of the old masters with his own abstractions in an effort to bring to life a vibrant black America. By doing so, he set the stage for several notable contemporary artists, such as Kehinde Wiley and Mickalene Thomas. He died in 2017 at 72. "It was very impactful because African Americans and people of color and people who seemed to be pushed out of the elitism of the art world could see themselves in a museum for the first time," Trevor Schoonmaker, the director at Duke University's Nasher Museum of Art, said in an interview. Schoonmaker worked with Hendricks extensively beginning in 2000, including curating shows featuring the artist. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
The N.F.L. owners worried about a protracted legal fight. They fretted over potentially embarrassing disclosures. They were concerned about further alienating fans and sponsors. So they took the unusual step of reaching a settlement rather than continue to battle an adversary who was viewed in some circles as a victim of the league's sharp elbows. All of this happened nearly six years ago, when the league found it more expedient to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to retired players who contended the N.F.L. had concealed the dangers of repeated hits to the head. Among other things, the 2013 concussion settlement enabled the league to avoid the acute discomfort of battling in court with former players who had sustained neurological damage. In many ways, the N.F.L. followed this same road map on Friday when it announced that it had reached another settlement, this time with the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick and his former teammate Eric Reid. They had accused the owners of colluding to keep them out of the league because they had knelt during the playing of "The Star Spangled Banner" at games, an action that prompted other players to do so as well. The N.F.L. has a reputation for using a scorched earth legal strategy, and its decisions to settle in both cases have been viewed by some as admissions of guilt. In fact, the league did not acknowledge wrongdoing in the concussion settlement, and it is not clear what it may have admitted to in Friday's settlement because of a confidentiality agreement between the two sides. Still, by settling each time, the owners may have calculated that they and many fans could then try to move past the contentious issues at the heart of the two cases the long term effects of repeated head trauma in the first instance, and the right of players to protest in the second instance. "There are broader issues than just money that the league considers," said Matthew J. Mitten, the director of the National Sports Law Institute at Marquette University. "They need to take into account social issues and public perception." The two cases, in some ways, are very different. One was a class action lawsuit involving 20,000 retired players who sued in federal court, the other a grievance filed under the collective bargaining agreement. The league stood a chance of winning both cases, had it persisted, but each case generated years of negative publicity. So the league, which earns 14 billion a year, was in a position to spend money to make both cases go away. Significantly, the two settlements provide the league with a measure of protection, Mitten said. The concussion settlement precludes players in the future from suing the league for concussion related damages, and the settlement with Kaepernick and Reid avoided any adverse precedent being set. Mark Geragos, the lead attorney for Kaepernick and Reid, told CNN on Saturday that he thought Kaepernick would get a shot at an N.F.L. job now that the litigation was over. None Week 11 Takeaways: Here is what we learned this week. N.F.L. Tightens Covid Protocols: As cases rise and Thanksgiving approaches, the league is requiring masks inside team facilities and increasing testing. The Jets Lose Again: Falling to the Miami Dolphins, the Jets' receiver Elijah Moore offered consolation. The Long Path to the Super Bowl: With 18 weeks in the regular season and fewer teams earning byes in the playoffs, the Super Bowl is still a long way off. Playoff Simulator: Explore every team's path to the postseason, updated live. "I'll make the bold prediction, and you can save the tape," Geragos told the network. "I think you're going to see within the next two weeks that somebody's going to step up." He added, "It would not surprise me if Bob Kraft makes a move," referring to the owner of the New England Patriots, who just won their sixth Super Bowl title. Geragos also mentioned the Carolina Panthers, who signed Reid a few weeks into the 2018 season, as a potential landing spot for Kaepernick. Geragos, who has made similar predictions in the past, did not cite any sources to back up his assertions. A Patriots representative declined to comment, and the Panthers did not return a message requesting a response to Geragos's remarks. Still, even off the field, Kaepernick has loomed large. Before the 2018 season began, Kaepernick persuaded the arbitrator in his case to dismiss the league's attempts to throw out his grievance. Then he announced a lucrative endorsement deal with Nike, which provides uniforms to all 32 N.F.L. teams. To add to the owners' discomfort, Nike also made Kaepernick a face of its "Just Do It" campaign, putting out a commercial narrated by him during the opening game of the season. "This has been a P.R. nightmare for the league, and in some sense, it's remarkable that Kaepernick proved himself to be a larger public figure than the N.F.L. with his Nike deal," said Michael LeRoy, who teaches sports law classes at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. "He outshined the league in a very significant way." The presence of Kaepernick, who rarely speaks in public, also hung over the Super Bowl this month. The basketball stars LeBron James and Kevin Durant were photographed wearing Kaepernick jerseys on Super Bowl weekend; the rapper Common tweeted a photograph of himself alongside the longtime activist Angela Davis, who was wearing a Kaepernick jersey; and the filmmaker Ava DuVernay said on Twitter that she was boycotting the Super Bowl in support of Kaepernick. Days before the game, the N.F.L. canceled its traditional news conference for the performers of the halftime show after reports emerged that several prominent musicians, in gestures of support for Kaepernick, had turned down a chance to take part in the show. The league also had to consider the arbitrator in Kaepernick's case. Players file dozens of grievances every season, but most are resolved without becoming public. Kaepernick's case, though, was being heard by Stephen B. Burbank, the arbitrator who ruled in August that Kaepernick's lawyers had gathered enough evidence for the case to proceed. A University of Pennsylvania law professor and an expert in contract law, Burbank has worked as an arbitrator for the league since 2002 and has a reputation for independence. He began his law career as a clerk for Warren Burger, then the chief justice of the United States. One of his first tasks for Burger was to proofread the monumental United States v. Nixon ruling in 1974 in which President Nixon was ordered to turn over tape recordings and other materials in connection with the Watergate case. More than 40 years later, Burbank is wrestling with cases that may not be as historic but still carry plenty of significance. "He told me once the main qualification of the job is not having any skin in the game," said Stephen Walters, a friend of Burbank's who clerked with him on the Supreme Court. "He isn't an N.F.L. fan of any sort, but he is the perfect guy for the job." Kaepernick and the league could have been encouraged and worried by Burbank's previous rulings as an arbitrator. Over the years, he has at times ruled for the players, as he did in a case involving miscategorized ticket revenue. He has also ruled for the league, as he did in a case involving the circumvention of the salary cap. And in a case involving revenue sharing, he ruled in part for the league and in part for the players. Reid filed his case in May, while he was a free agent and was drawing limited interest despite having just finished his best season statistically. The Panthers ultimately signed Reid to a one year, 1.39 million contract after the third week of the 2018 season, and this week they gave him a more lucrative, three year extension. Reid missed only three games before joining the Panthers, and Kaepernick has been out of the league for two seasons. In that sense, the potential monetary damages Reid could have won with a favorable ruling from the arbitrator were probably much less than Kaepernick could have won. In any case, he has settled, too, and the N.F.L. can try to move on. "The N.F.L. has so many other issues around player health and well being, they need to remove all the other static," said Jodi Balsam, a professor at Brooklyn Law School who worked as a lawyer for the N.F.L. It is worth recalling that during the recent Super Bowl in Atlanta, which took place less than two weeks before the league settled with Kaepernick and Reid, the N.F.L. invited civil rights leaders to take part in the pregame coin toss. In doing so, the league was embracing pioneers who helped bring social change to the country, and particularly to the South. But some wondered whether the N.F.L. was also trying to counter the effect of Kaepernick, whose principled protest continued to resonate. Now the league has settled with Kaepernick and with Reid. Still, if the concussion case is any indicator, merely settling will not make the issues that Kaepernick raised simply go away. After all, nearly six years after the concussion settlement, the N.F.L. is still dogged by stories of former players in dire mental and physical health, and fears that football can cause brain damage have now reduced participation in youth football. In the end, settlements, no matter what is at stake, can go only so far. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
No one can know if the actress Debbie Reynolds who died on Wednesday, a day after her daughter, Carrie Fisher died of a broken heart. Ms. Reynolds, 84, had suffered from several health problems in recent years, and doctors said any number of factors could have contributed to her death, possibly from a stroke. But by all accounts, she and her daughter were very close in recent years, and death from a broken heart is a well established occurrence, both in medical literature and throughout the folklore of the earliest human communities. One form of the phenomenon is called Takotsubo syndrome, after the Japanese term for "octopus trap," because the heart looks as if it is caught from below, its upper chambers ballooning as if trying to escape. The sudden loss of a child or spouse, perhaps foremost among life's cruelties, sets off "an overflow of stress hormones, and the heart can't take it," said Dr. Suzanne Steinbaum, director of women's heart health at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York. "It appears to be a massive heart attack," but, she said, "the heart is literally stunned." The octopus trap can grab any heart, healthy or not, young or old, and most people survive, doctors say. The sudden flood of stress hormones causes a temporary weakening of the heart muscle itself, unlike a classic heart attack, in which a clot blocks blood flow. "I've seen estimates that about 1 percent of perceived heart attacks" are because of broken heart syndrome, said Dr. Anne Curtis, chair of medicine at the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at the University at Buffalo, "and that seems about right. I think every cardiologist has seen cases. We tell people that many will return to normal or near normal heart function." Ms. Reynolds's did not, though the timing of her death may have just coincided with her daughter's. In her 2013 memoir, Ms. Reynolds wrote about suffering a mini stroke and partial kidney failure. In 2015, she was awarded an honorary Oscar but was too sick to attend the ceremony. In interviews, Ms. Fisher had talked about how frail her mother was. "It's a lot of times terrifying, but watching my mother, who's incredibly resilient, coping with certain health issues that she's had," she told National Public Radio this fall. In an interview with People magazine in May, she said her mother had had a "spinal issue" but had "recovered amazingly." Ms. Fisher, 60, died on Tuesday after suffering a heart attack on a flight from London to Los Angeles a few days earlier. On Wednesday, Ms. Reynolds was rushed to an emergency room amid reports that she had possibly had a stroke. Yet if indeed a stroke was the primary cause of death, as her son, Todd Fisher, has said a heart squeezed by the sudden loss of a beloved daughter could have contributed. The stunned organ, especially in a person who might have had any of the underlying cardiovascular infirmities of aging, could increase the likelihood of a clot forming and moving to the brain. In a 2005 paper in The New England Journal of Medicine, doctors at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine reviewed cases of 18 women and one man who landed in coronary care units in Baltimore, between 1999 and 2003, with chest pains and no signs of classic heart attack on exam. Most were older, but one was 27 and another 32. The doctors, led by Dr. Ilan Wittstein, nicknamed the condition broken heart syndrome and noted that it occurred not only after grief but after any sudden stress. All of the patients survived. "We had people who'd been held up at gunpoint, who'd been up in front of a group to speak, who were severely claustrophobic and in an M.R.I. scanner, who were angry and in heated arguments," Dr. Wittstein said in an interview. Dr. Wittstein said that at the time the paper appeared virtually the only mentions of the syndrome were in Japanese medical literature. Now, he said, thousands of cases have been reported, and about 90 percent of them are women in middle age or older. One possible reason, he said, is that estrogen protects the heart's smaller vessels those most affected by stress hormones and estrogen levels drop with age. There have been cases of well known couples dying in close succession. The country stars Johnny and June Cash died within months of each other, after a long marriage. The former football star Doug Flutie's parents died on the same day, both of heart attacks. To some medical experts, what Ms. Reynolds experienced is one of the greatest traumas of all. "No one wants to change the order of nature, that is the first thing I thought when I heard," said Dr. Victor Fornari, a psychiatrist at Northwell Health on Long Island. "A parent outliving a child it's one of the most unspeakable things there is." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
A tiekiedraai, or dance party, on New Year's Eve. Mr. Coetzee remembers: "I had a flash attachment on the Wega but could never get the flash to synchronize with the shutter."Credit...J.M. Coetzee A tiekiedraai, or dance party, on New Year's Eve. Mr. Coetzee remembers: "I had a flash attachment on the Wega but could never get the flash to synchronize with the shutter." In 2014, years after he moved from South Africa to Australia, the novelist J.M. Coetzee finally sold his own apartment in Cape Town. Soon after a researcher went through a cardboard box left behind in the vacated flat and inside, to his astonishment, he discovered a welter of remarkable unpublished materials by the taciturn Nobel laureate. But they were not manuscripts. They were photographs: sheafs of yellowing prints that depicted "scenes from provincial life," as his three volumes of autobiography are subtitled, as well as undeveloped negatives. Before he turned to literature, it turns out, Mr. Coetzee was a committed teenage photographer and his black and white impressions of his family, his school and daily life on his uncle's farm are on view for the first time, in an exhibition at the Irma Stern Museum in Cape Town. Mr. Coetzee had never showed the photographs to anyone; he was suspicious, when the exhibition was proposed, whether a writer's early experiments with the camera had any importance at all. But the images, shot in 1955 and 1956, when the author was 15 and 16 years old, offer a crucial vista onto the formation of an author as restrained in his personal disclosures as in his prose. More than that, they give a new depth to his fiction, which owes as much to the arts of the lens as of the page. The exhibition, which closes this weekend, was organized by the curator Farzanah Badsha and Hermann Wittenberg, the scholar who first found the images. Mr. Wittenberg provided me with digital reproductions of Mr. Coetzee's early snaps, which had to suffice for me I wasn't able to make it to Cape Town for the show (and the beach). Nearly two dozen of the photographs in the exhibition are vintage prints; another 58 are newly printed from negatives abraded and speckled by time. Soon he set up a darkroom in his family home in the suburbs of Cape Town. His mother, Vera, was a schoolteacher; John loved her deeply, and photographed her outside their tidy house, asleep on a sofa or reading with his younger brother, David. John felt more alienated from his father, Zacharias (known as Jack or Zac), as the author elaborated in "Summertime" (2009), the third and most fictionalized of his autobiographical books. Jack appears in just one photograph, in which his son has captured him at his meekest. Jack's shoulders are slumped forward, his arms crossed, while John's maternal aunt Annie reproves him with an extended finger. The school did offer the relief of sport, especially cricket, with which the teenage John was obsessed. In "Diary of a Bad Year" (2007), Mr. Coetzee confesses (in the voice of an alter ego, the novelist Senor C) that "in childhood, almost as soon as I learned to throw a ball, cricket took a grip on me, not just as a game but as a ritual.... But one question baffled me from the beginning: how a creature of the kind I seemed to be reserved, quiet, solitary could ever become good at a game in which quite another character type seemed to excel: matter of fact, unreflective, pugnacious." If the writer to be found Cape Town stultifying, he was enraptured by the Karoo, the arid interior region of South Africa where his uncle had a farm, called Voelfontein (or "Bird Fountain," in Afrikaans). The pockmarked landscape of the Karoo played a central role in the young writer's perceptions of nature, family and colonization. In "Boyhood" Mr. Coetzee writes: "He knows Voelfontein best in summer, when it lies flattened under an even, blinding light that pours down from the sky." It's an impression compounded in one of his photographs, whose top half is occupied by an unbroken vault of cloud. The most remarkable images in this juvenile archive depict two farmhands at Voelfontein, named Ros and Freek, whom Mr. Coetzee describes in "Boyhood" with rapt admiration. The laborers are "coloured" an apartheid era designation for people of mixed African, European and Asian background and as a child he struggles with the written and unwritten rules that keep them apart. One day in 1955 or 1956 the Coetzees traveled to the beach with Ros and Freek, who had never seen the sea before. Mr. Coetzee does not mention this trip in "Boyhood," but his numerous shots of the farmhands, shot in a powerful low contrast that recalls the willfully spare new world of his recent "The Childhood of Jesus" (2013), reflect the momentousness of the day for the men and the boy alike. In one of his rare interviews, when asked about the literary influences on "In the Heart of the Country," Mr. Coetzee responded: "There is, I think, a more fundamental influence: film and/or photography." And beyond the underlying influence of the camera, photographs have played a part in many of his novels: from his debut, "Dusklands" (1974), narrated in part by an American government researcher who carries photographs of war atrocities in Vietnam, to "Disgrace" (1999), his brutal dissection of post apartheid South Africa, in which a shamed English professor encounters a belittling portrait of himself in the student newspaper. Later, in "Slow Man" (2005), Mr. Coetzee made his main character a photographer one disenchanted to learn that digital images "could be sucked into a machine and emerge from it doctored, untrue." In "Boyhood" and the subsequent autobiographies, Mr. Coetzee refers to himself only by the pronoun he. Even his decision to write under the name J.M. Coetzee eliding the name "John," and using a middle initial that he allowed to be misidentified for decades (it stands for Maxwell, not Michael) drew a curtain around himself. Yet in his photographic self portraits, now more than 60 years old, a similar authorial detachment is mixed with frankness, sincerity and even pride. We see the adolescent John in a wool vest and open necked shirt, cheeks ruddy, eyes soulful and sad. He leans to one side and appears somewhat frail, yet he stares forth with an assurance beyond his years. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
Oh, thank God. Last week's episode was a petulant mess blame game champ Thorgy Thor was eliminated, while Milk, the stepchild you meet after the wedding, threw a tantrum over merely being safe. But this week's contest, with a boisterous main challenge and wig filled runway, delighted. "Another day in the workroom: You get up, you walk in, you step over the body of a dead friend and you just move along," Trixie Mattel said in a confessional. If only there was a prize for how good Trixie is at confessionals oh right, there is: her own show on Viceland. But in competition she recedes, and she knows it. "I never had my star moment," she told BeBe Zahara Benet later in the episode. "This time I have to change that." Sadly she'll have to wait another week, because this week all flights were rerouted to Kennedy. After not quite registering in the first two episodes, Kennedy Davenport leaped to the foreground last night and stayed there the whole episode. In minute one, she disapproved of the penis Thorgy drew on the workroom mirror in parting and clashed with Milk. "She's a clown and you're not," Milk said, of Thorgy. "Well, you look like a clown right now." (I hate to concede anything to Milk, but Kennedy, who'd yet again glued a bunch of mirrorball pieces to her face, looked like a gecko in a diamond mine.) Milk, who's developed more new American drama than the Steppenwolf Theater Company, leaned in, adding: "I would've chosen Thorgy to stay." This further wounded Kennedy, who'd also been up for elimination. This episode's challenge was to portray a contestant on "The Bitchelor," a parody of the unspeakable ABC hit. With assigned roles and a series of unscripted scenes, the queens' acting and improvisation skills were put to the test muscles many were eager to flex, except for Chi Chi DeVayne. "I don't consider myself to be a comedian and an actress and all that," she said. "I'm getting so intimidated." Shangela, her partner in the challenge, went full Stella Adler: "How are you going to play your character? How's she going to talk, how's she going to act?" The actor Jeffrey Bowyer Chapman, whose smile I'd take a midwinter shuttle bus for, guested as the Bachelor, sitting down with the queens in teamed pairs. BeBe started out strong as the Virgin, a princess direct from Africa who kept kneeling at his feet but ran out of steam fast. Trixie, as the Fake Bitch, wrested a couple moments from Milk, who, as the Psycho Stalker, babbled and shrieked over her. ("Don't talk over each other," Michelle Visage had cautioned beforehand.) Chi Chi and Shangela, as a polyamorous lesbian couple, were unspecific and out to sea. And as the Needy Girl, Aja whined and moaned incessantly Take it from me: neediness is often silent, and patient. I rolled my eyes when BenDeLaCreme was assigned the Cougar, but her boozy matron, spilling a Cosmo and sliding along the side of her limo toward Mr. Bowyer Chapman with her skirt hiked up and crotch pixelated, made me howl. Even funnier was Kennedy's raunchy Party Girl, who also had trouble getting out of the limo, and hid bottle service in her padding. "We gonna make a toast to love," she said as Mr. Bowyer Chapman disrobed for a massage by the pool, and the camera swooped in for a thirsty "Planet Earth" pan of his torso. Kennedy slathered him in lotion, went in for a sloppy kiss, and, before passing out drunk, added, "I'm a man." (This tour de force should come as no surprise; her turn as Little Richard won her Season 7's Snatch Game.) The runway challenge, Wigs on Wigs on Wigs, was inspired by the Season 5 runner up Roxxxy Andrews's reveal of a second wig during a lip sync. The queens scrambled to get ready, gluing down their eyebrows and predicting the bottom three. How fun, with everyone in earshot! Tell me when you're tired of this, but on the show with the amateur British bakers, if someone has extra time say they've gotten their bread dough in the proving drawer early, or their 3 D gingerbread story didn't collapse they'll help other bakers, glaze things, get things from the fridge for them. On the runway, BeBe, Shangela and Trixie were safe. In the bottom: Aja, whose three wigged Kawaii look was the best of the night but didn't redeem her failed Needy Girl performance; mod clad Milk, deservedly dragged for her one note Psycho (if only they'd seen the workroom footage); and Chi Chi, lovely on the runway but overshadowed in the challenge. "I'm so sorry," Chi Chi tearfully told the judges, admitting the other queens' skills made her question her worth. "Chi Chi, you're worth it," the guest judge and pop up life coach Constance Zimmer said. The top two? BenDeLaCreme, for the third week in a row, and Kennedy, who announced backstage that she would forgo one on one appeals and decide who to eliminate on her own terms. BenDeLaCreme still kept office hours, though. Aja stopped by, knowing full well she wasn't going home three wigs. Chi Chi shuffled over resignedly, as did Milk, who whispered, "The judges actually want me to continue in this." (What a choice: Chi Chi, a box of puppies, and Milk, a parking ticket.) A steady, inhabited lip sync to Lorde's "Green Light" won Kennedy the episode, and she eliminated Milk, who proved you can go big and go home. Will Chi Chi conquer her self doubt? Will Trixie break out from the pack? Would Jeffrey Bowyer Chapman like to meet a truly needy girl? Until next week. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
WASHINGTON The Justice Department released recommendations on Wednesday to pare back the legal shield for online platforms that has been crucial to their growth since the earliest days of the internet, taking a direct shot at companies like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube that have come into the cross hairs of the Trump administration. In a 25 page recommendation, the agency called on lawmakers to repeal parts of a law that has given sites broad immunity from lawsuits for words, images and videos people have posted on their services. The changes to the law, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, would put the onus on social media and other online platforms to more strongly police harmful content and conduct while also being consistent about their moderation. The Justice Department proposal, reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal, is a legislative plan that would have to be adopted by Congress. It adds to growing calls in Washington, from elected officials of both parties, to change Section 230. Last month, President Trump signed an executive order to limit protections for online platforms. Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, has criticized the law before, too. On Capitol Hill, Republicans have become increasingly critical of Facebook, Google and Twitter for abusing the safe harbor to take down content that employees disagree with, including conservative views. The size of the largest tech companies, the agency said in its recommendation, "has raised valid questions of whether those large tech companies still require the blanket immunity of Section 230 provided to the nascent internet industry." The tech industry criticized the agency's proposal on Wednesday as a political ploy meant to aid Mr. Trump's battle against social media firms. Mr. Trump announced his social media executive order after Twitter labeled his tweets last month for violating the company's rules against voter suppression and the glorification of violence. Internet companies say they are already liable to some degree for criminal content and a reinterpretation of the 1996 legislation would constrain their ability to moderate harmful and problematic third party content without fear of more liability. "This is a coordinated attack by the administration against tech businesses to sidestep the First Amendment," said Carl Szabo, vice president of the tech lobbying organization NetChoice. The Justice Department recommendation is part of a sweeping review of big tech announced last July by Attorney General William P. Barr. As part of that review, the agency is expected to bring an antitrust monopolization case against Google in the coming months. The proposal is based on a 10 month investigation into online platforms and their record on monitoring and ridding sites of harmful content, including child exploitation and pornography. Earlier this year, Mr. Barr also instructed his staff to review Section 230, which was created to help encourage the growth of internet start ups. In February, Mr. Barr held a daylong workshop focused on how to revise the law. "A driving motivation behind our broader perspective, including Section 230, is the need for the department's enforcement efforts to keep up with rapidly changing technological landscape around us," Mr. Barr said at the February event. "No longer are tech companies the underdog upstarts; they have become titans of U.S. industry." The law generally shields websites from legal action for images, text and videos posted by users. The law also gives the website broad immunity for taking down that material. The agency's proposal, if passed by Congress, would open the door to civil lawsuits for posts with illegal and harmful content. It explicitly calls for an end to immunity on the most egregious content online, such as child exploitation and abuse, terrorist content and cyberstalking. The agency's proposal would also put greater scrutiny on the moderation of content, the focus of Mr. Trump's complaints. He and other Republicans have accused Twitter, Google and Facebook of suppressing and removing the materials of conservative public figures and media outlets. The agency proposes to strike language in the law that allows platforms to take down a broad array of "otherwise objectionable" content. The Justice Department said in its recommendation that technology has become essential to society and that several online platforms have become the nation's biggest and most valuable companies. It proposed reforms that would bar the biggest tech platforms from using Section 230 speech protections in its defense in antitrust cases. Their use of sophisticated algorithms for targeting and connecting users and a broad interpretation of the law by courts have "reduced the incentives of online platforms to address illicit activity on their services and, at the same time, left them free to moderate lawful content without transparency or accountability," the agency said in its report. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
Anthony Davis has the Knicks on equal footing with the Los Angeles Lakers as he considers what teams he would be willing to join on a long term deal after securing a trade from the New Orleans Pelicans, according to two people with knowledge of Davis's thinking. A trade to any team did not appear imminent Wednesday night, as Thursday's 3 p.m. trade deadline drew near. But Davis's recent request to be traded did not include a demand that the move happen before the deadline, according to the people, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the situation publicly. The Knicks have won only one playoff series over the past 18 seasons and their public image has suffered under the ownership of James L. Dolan. But the lure of playing in one of the league's most attractive markets along with the way the Knicks have positioned themselves to pursue marquee free agents after trading away their franchise player, Kristaps Porzingis, have resonated with Davis, according to the people. The Lakers had been aggressively trying to complete a trade for Davis with the Pelicans before the deadline, because the Boston Celtics who have been planning a trade run at Davis for months cannot trade for the All Star forward while Kyrie Irving is on the Celtics' roster. (Davis and Irving are both playing under maximum rookie scale contract extensions; league rules preclude teams from fielding more than one such player.) | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
FINE watches have long been about more than just telling time. They have served as gifts for graduation and retirement. They have been collected and coveted for their craftsmanship. They are often flaunted as status symbols. Even so, the current economic climate would not seem conducive for timepieces filled with wheels and springs the finest ones do not use batteries that start at 15,000 and go up to 1 million or more. Plus, any cellphone can tell you the time. It turns out, though, that the market for vintage timepieces has been booming. Watches are now the sixth largest department at Christie's, accounting for 116 million in sales in 2011. That was a 26 percent increase from the year before, and much of the growth is being driven by Asian collectors. "We have new collectors looking at watches as alternative investments," said Sam Hines, head of watches in Asia for Christie's. "There has also been the formation of a trophy market." These trophies are watches that are very rare, if not one of a kind. Last year, the most expensive wristwatch sold at auction was a Patek Philippe chronograph from 1928, which sold in Geneva for 3.6 million, a record price for that model. The demand is only partly driven by the watches' condition, rarity and "complications" the horological term for how many different things a watch keeps track of, from day and date to bells that chime at precise intervals. Instead, much as an art gallery does for an artist, the top end watchmakers have created an allure around their brands. Patek Philippe, the strongest performer at auctions with eight of the 10 highest prices at Christie's in 2011, focuses on legacy, with advertisements evoking fathers and sons in earnest discussion over what a watch can mean to their relationship. Breguet has featured its most famous owners in advertisements, including Napoleon, Marie Antoinette and Winston Churchill. Audemars Piguet has gone the other way, signing up a roster of athletes whose sports connote precision, including golfers, tennis players and racecar drivers. So it would seem safe to assume that these timepieces are good investments. Certainly watchmakers and auction houses are in no hurry to dispel that notion. But many collectors even those whose own watches have doubled or tripled in value are quick to dissuade people who want to speculate on time, as it were. "From an investment point of view, most watches do not do very well," said William Massena, a real estate consultant who collects Patek Philippe watches. "You have to be a smart buyer to have a watch hold its value." He said his collection, which began with a Patek Philippe Calatrava that he bought in Paris 18 years ago, has appreciated substantially, with some watches tripling or quadrupling in value. But he attributes that success to timing, a bit of luck and a very different market. "People weren't interested in these watches when I bought them," Mr. Massena said. "I was lucky enough to get in early and to have the taste of my generation sporty, chronograph, bigger watches." So what gives a watch investment potential as opposed to just being an expensive way to tell time? Here is some of what I learned. INVESTMENT The likelihood that watches will increase in value depends on how few were made and how complicated they are. But their value also depends on how the watch has been maintained. Paul Boutros, an engineer who collects watches made by Vacheron Constantin and Audemars Piguet, said owners often inadvertently undercut the investment potential of a watch by regularly wearing it. Sweat, for example, can enter the case and cause it to decay. Or if the face fades or shows wear, and the owner gets it refinished. "The person wearing the watch likes that, but we collectors want all original all the time," he said. "We look for legitimacy in the watch." Hugues de Pins, president of Vacheron Constantin North America, advised collectors to look for something rare in gold or platinum and to focus on watches made in limited editions if they hope for their purchase to appreciate. His company's watches range in price from 10,000 to 800,000. The company recently bought a rare pocket watch it made in 1918 for 1.7 million at auction. The 20 karat gold watch, owned by James Ward Packard, the automobile maker, had been sitting unnoticed in a family bank vault for 60 years. RISKS Wealthy, but not necessarily knowledgeable, watch buyers face various risks. Fraud is an obvious one. And these fakes are not the knockoff Rolexes sold at tourist stops in Manhattan. The outright fakes are usually models that were produced in greater quantities than the rare, complicated watches, and feel real, too. There are subtler problems. Patrick van der Vorst, a former Sotheby's appraiser and the founder of ValueMyStuff.com, said determining whether a watch was fake or real was easy for an appraiser. But assessing if someone has cut corners in maintaining a watch takes more time. "What mainly happens, even for the very expensive watches, is that someone buys a 2,000 watch and reuses the original wheels or crown but in the more expensive watch," Mr. Van der Vorst said. "They're original watch parts, but they wouldn't have belonged to that watch." While the watch is not a fake, its value is lower. The big risk now is that the brands that have appreciated so much over the last 30 years may not be the ones that appreciate over the next decade. Mr. Massena said he wrote a post on the TimeZone watch forum in 1998 about the vintage watches that he thought were most undervalued. "I was wrong in everything I wrote," he said. "If you want to invest, buy stocks or real estate." Mr. Hines said that while there was high demand from Asian collectors for many types of fine watches, their interest was increasingly directed at small brands, like F. P. Journe and Greubel Forsey. VALUE MANAGEMENT Some watchmakers are taking a more active role in the management of their vintage market. Audemars Piguet has created an exhibition to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Royal Oak, its distinctive and popular sports watch. The exhibit opened for four days in New York last month and will travel to Milan, Paris, Beijing, Singapore and Dubai. Francois Henry Bennahmias, president and chief executive of Audemars Piguet North America, said a Royal Oak cost 3,000 in 1972 and would be worth 35,000 to 60,000 today, depending on the condition. He said new Royal Oaks started at 14,000. Mr. Bennahmias said the company's watches had not been appreciating as quickly as they did before 2008, when the company was producing limited edition watches whose values could rise 20 to 40 percent from the preorder to release date. He said clients now were more interested in the watch holding its value or not depreciating too greatly. Vacheron Constantin, founded in 1755, has just started to sell its own vintage watches, which the company is tuning up and authenticating. Mr. de Pins said the company wanted to meet client demand for authentic vintage watches. For people who covet these fine watches but cannot afford a new one, this could be an option. Vacheron's vintage collection in New York was selling a round, gold wristwatch from 1956 for 9,000. Mr. de Pins said a similar model new would retail for 18,000. Short of that, a collector can hope to be lucky. Mr. Boutros, whose passion for watches started as a hobby with his father, said they once bought an Audemars Piguet in 1989 from a jewelry dealer who could not even pronounce the watchmaker's name. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Your Money |
Liyna Anwar, a podcast producer of South Asian descent whose struggle to find a stem cell donor to treat her cancer became the center of a social media campaign that aimed to make up for racial disparities in marrow and stem cell registries, died on March 26 in a hospital in Duarte, Calif. She was 30. Her brother, Abbas Anwar, said the cause was complications of acute myeloid leukemia, the disease for which she had needed a stem cell transplant. Stem cell and bone marrow transplants, critical treatments for blood cancers and other diseases, are far more likely to succeed when the recipient and donor are close genetic matches. When Ms. Anwar's family sought a match for her, they found a dearth of potential minority donors registered. Among members of her family, her brother was the closest match, but still not an ideal donor for her. A South Asian patient has about a 38 percent chance of finding a matching donor, considerably lower than white patients, who have about a 77 percent chance, said Kate McDermott, a representative of the nonprofit organization Be the Match, which manages the largest marrow registry in the world. Of 22 million registrants, she said, only 1 percent were of South Asian descent. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
The existence of the parallel worlds, which have grown more and more different in the 30 years since the second world's creation, is a closely (and implausibly) held secret. Privy to it are the senior members of the large, somewhat bumbling bidimensional bureaucracy that manages the portal, who are allowed to pass between worlds using visas measured in hours. The two Howards are part of that apparatus, the meek Howard a paper shuffler in the original world and the macho Howard a covert agent for the splinter world. They meet an almost unheard of occurrence when the macho Howard follows a criminal who manages to cross between worlds and needs to pose as the meek Howard to catch her. The story's Cold War allusions and Berlin setting provide an apt or maybe too cute framework for a story of alternate worlds suddenly developing side by side. They also drive home Mr. Marks's debt to John le Carre "Counterpart" pays hommage to Mr. le Carre's classic Cold War morality tale, "The Spy Who Came in From the Cold," while pumping up the dystopian, Orwellian mood and visuals (and borrowing discreetly from the premise of the Fox sci fi series "Fringe"). More centrally, the show is an argument about nature versus nurture, in both geopolitical and personal terms. Will the two worlds, and the two Howards, in their separation, inevitably become nothing like each other? Or will their basic natures prove to be stronger? Through six episodes, Mr. Marks doesn't do anything especially interesting with that premise, but luckily for him and us, Mr. Simmons, an Oscar winner in 2015 for "Whiplash," does. He plays with inflections, rhythms, expressions, postures and bearings to make his identical Howards utterly distinct, and at the same time he gives each one flashes of the other's personality. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
Candle lanterns add ambience to any space, indoors or out. But they are perhaps most magical used for alfresco dining at dusk. "They're wonderful, because people can sit outside even if they don't have outdoor lighting, and see each other while they have dinner or drinks," said Janice Parker, a landscape architect in Greenwich, Conn. "They're very atmospheric, and add that soft glow and flicker." Ms. Parker frequently uses candle lanterns, also known as hurricane lamps, to illuminate tables, seating groups and circulation areas outside, even when there is landscape lighting. "You can use them to outline the edges of a terrace or a patio, and they look amazing when you put them around a pool, because they reflect in the water," she said. "Multiples are good as focal points or on tables, but singles can really explain the landscape for people in the dark." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
A college degree at 19. A medical school graduate with a Ph.D. at 27. By the time he completed training in vascular surgery in 2014, Dr. Sapan Desai had cast himself as an ambitious physician, an entrepreneur with an M.B.A. and a prolific researcher published in medical journals. Then the novel coronavirus hit and Dr. Desai seized the moment. With a Harvard professor, he produced two studies in May that almost instantly disrupted multiple clinical trials amid the pandemic. One study's findings were particularly dramatic, reporting that anti malaria drugs like hydroxychloroquine, which President Trump promoted, were linked to increased deaths of Covid 19 patients. But that study and another were retracted in June by the renowned journals that had published them, weeks after researchers around the world suggested the data was dubious. Dr. Desai, who declined to share the raw information even with his co authors, claimed it was culled from a massive trove acquired by Surgisphere, a business he started during his residency. The now tainted studies helped sow confusion and erode public confidence in scientific guidance when the nation was already deeply divided over how to respond to the pandemic. And the anti malaria drugs cited in the papers have continued to generate controversy, as new research prompted some scientists to petition for expanding their use against the coronavirus, despite Food and Drug Administration warnings against them. While the journal debacle has shaken the broader scientific community, many people who have known Dr. Desai, 41, described him as a man in a hurry, a former whiz kid willing to cut corners, misrepresent information or embellish his credentials as he pursued his ambitions. In interviews, more than a dozen doctors who worked with him during training and residency said they had often found him to be an unreliable physician, who seemed less interested in patient care than in the medical journal he founded and his company, branded early on as a medical publishing business. "You couldn't trust what he said," said Dr. Vanessa Olcese, a former chief resident who worked with Dr. Desai at Duke University Medical Center. "You would verify everything that he did and take everything he did with a grain of salt." His performance there and during a later fellowship at the University of Texas Health Science Center raised questions about whether he would be permitted to move to the next level of training. In both instances, he was. More recently, in February, Dr. Desai left his job at a community hospital in a Chicago suburb where he had worked as a surgeon since 2016. He was named as a defendant in three medical malpractice lawsuits last year, court records show. His spokeswoman said he "deems any lawsuit naming him to be unfounded." The New York Times interviewed more than two dozen people who have known Dr. Desai over the past two decades. Dr. Desai, who declined to be interviewed for this article and did not respond to repeated requests for comment, has defended his company's data. In an interview in late May, he said it was his "life's work" to build a company that could provide lifesaving clinical insights to make "the world a better place." "We did this because it was an opportunity to help. We're not making any money from this," he said. "This is why I went into medicine." Dr. Desai was always a striver. During high school in the Chicago suburbs, he took 13 Advanced Placement classes, according to an article in The Daily Herald, a local newspaper. He acquired enough college credits to graduate from the University of Illinois at Chicago at 19. "His goal was to be the first person at U.I.C. that ever graduated college in one year," said Peter Okkema, a biology professor in whose lab the young undergraduate worked. He seemed eager to impress people, the professor recalled, but never sought advice or guidance. He entered a joint M.D. Ph.D. program at the university; his doctoral adviser, Prof. Anna Lysakowski, remembers him as "very bright, very quick." She also said he told her he was enrolled at John Marshall Law School. (The school has no record of him, a spokeswoman said, and the degree is not on his resume.) Several doctors who knew Dr. Desai after he moved to Duke for his residency in 2006 recalled his saying he had a law degree and described his license plate listing his supposed credentials: M.D., J.D. and Ph.D. The doctors, many of whom were also residents, said they could not trust information he provided about patients' medical conditions or test results. Several doctors said it became standard practice to double check anything Dr. Desai said about a patient, such as how the person had fared overnight or whether a test had been ordered. Several former colleagues said that often he did not follow through on directives about treating patients, and that when he was questioned about it, he sometimes passed blame or offered implausible explanations. In one instance, Dr. Desai did not respond to pages from nurses during an overnight shift while on call, recalled Dr. Olcese. When she asked about the missed pages, he said he had been resuscitating an infant by performing a rare, complicated procedure an incident the charge nurse said never occurred, according to Dr. Olcese and another doctor present for Dr. Desai's explanation. "He was essentially a giant roadblock that you had to work around," said Dr. Olcese, now a neurocritical care doctor at Wexner Medical Center in Columbus, Ohio. "You didn't want him to bring you down with him." In 2008 or early 2009, Dr. Olcese and another chief resident shared concerns about Dr. Desai with their supervisors senior physicians and faculty at Duke during discussions about whether to promote him to the next year of residency. It is unclear what the faculty members discussed during their private deliberations, but ultimately, Dr. Desai was moved up. A Duke spokeswoman would confirm only his time there. After his residency, Dr. Desai obtained an M.B.A. in three months from Western Governors University, an online university based in Salt Lake City, the school confirmed. Then, after starting a vascular surgery fellowship at the University of Texas at Houston, he ran into trouble. He had so antagonized some supervisors that they asked the department chairman to expel him, said Dr. Hazim Safi, who was then in that role. "Some of the attending staff didn't like his behavior, and didn't want him to graduate," Dr. Safi said in an interview. While Dr. Safi said that Dr. Desai could be abrasive, he had worked on papers with the younger physician and was convinced the complaints were driven by personality differences and professional jealousy, not substantive deficiencies in surgical skill or patient care. Instead of failing him, he said, he gave Dr. Desai an opportunity to work on his professionalism and interpersonal skills. "I intervened and he graduated," the former chairman said. At Dr. Desai's most recent post at Northwest Community Hospital in Arlington Heights, Ill., he became involved in at least four medical malpractice cases that are still pending, including three filed in 2019. Those suits include a claim that he failed to properly perform surgery to restore circulation to an accident victim's leg, which later required partial amputation. Another alleges that negligent treatment by Dr. Desai and other doctors resulted in the removal of a substantial portion of a patient's bowel. The earlier case against the hospital contends that Dr. Desai performed surgery in 2016 to remove plaque buildup from a 60 year old man's carotid artery, then failed to report to the hospital after the patient developed swelling in his neck that caused difficulty swallowing and breathing. The patient later died. Over the years, Surgisphere had developed a product called QuartzClinical that offered health centers a platform using data analytics to improve outcomes. Dr. Desai said the product had enabled Surgisphere to amass a giant registry with anonymized electronic health records from more than 1,200 hospitals and health centers, with data about more than 240 million patient encounters in 45 countries. While the existence of the database has not been confirmed Dr. Desai cited contractual obligations to keep confidential the identities of participating hospitals he said he had been building it for a decade with fewer than a dozen employees. Few people were needed, he said, because hospitals could easily input anonymized patient data from disparate electronic health record systems, translating the information into a single, homogenized registry without technical assistance. One former Surgisphere employee, Ariane Anderson, was surprised by Dr. Desai's assertion, given the difficulties of combining information from disparate institutions with various electronic records systems. Ms. Anderson, who was hired to market QuartzClinical to hospitals and other health centers in 2019, said in an interview that generating interest in the company had been an uphill battle, and that entering data into Surgisphere's system was laborious. When one hospital wanted to try out the system last July, she said, she spent two days there extracting data from a sampling of 200 patients to put into a spreadsheet. By the end of 2019, Ms. Anderson said, she knew of only one hospital that had signed a contract with QuartzClinical, declining to identify it. The next paper, published May 22 in The Lancet, evaluated anti malaria drugs that Mr. Trump has promoted as antidotes to the coronavirus. The researchers claimed to have analyzed the outcomes of nearly 100,000 Covid 19 patients from 671 hospitals on six continents. The results were sensational: Patients treated with chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine were up to five times as likely to have abnormal heart rhythms as other patients and were at higher risk of dying. Though it was an observational study, considered to provide relatively weak scientific evidence, the paper's impact was felt around the world. A physician commenting on CNN called it "the mother of all studies," and investigators including the World Health Organization halted clinical trials of the drugs. (Some have since resumed.) The paper soon drew scrutiny from scientists who demanded to know more about the data and began questioning the New England Journal study too. Dr. Desai's co authors, conceding they had never seen the raw data, called for an independent review, but Dr. Desai balked, invoking confidentiality agreements. On June 4, both journals retracted the studies. Surgisphere's flashy website has been dismantled. Dr. Desai, who gave several interviews before the studies were retracted, has gone silent. Research was contributed by Susan C. Beachy, Alain Delaqueriere, Jack Begg and Sheelagh McNeill. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
Hair has once again caused a political tempest in a blow dryer. This week , the Washington Times published a story saying that Representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez had spent 80 on a haircut and 180 on color at a Washington, D.C. salon, a styling choice the newspaper presented as hypocritical, given she "regularly rails against the rich and complains about the cost of living inside the Beltway." Almost immediately, charges of sexism and superficiality began to fly online (also, a debate about the average price of a woman's haircut, and how little men seem to understand the cost of certain aspects of life). It would be easy to dismiss this as mere distraction, except it is also the latest in a long line of hair related controversies in the corridors of power that have surrounded both men and women. Hair is, it seems, a particularly well, tangled, subject. Not to mention an equal opportunity target. Hillary Clinton acknowledged it in 2014, when she joked that the subtitle of her memoir, "Hard Choices," should be "The Scrunchie Chronicles: 112 Countries and It's Still All About My Hair." Though Mrs. Clinton is probably the most famous hair lightning rod, whether it was her chopping and changing while in the White House as first lady (seen as reflecting the opportunism of her husband's policies), her I don't care I'm getting down to work scrunchies as secretary of state, her John Barrett styling trip while on the campaign trail (average price per cut: 600) or her postelection lank and limp blues, she is far from the only politician scrutinized. Her husband was also mocked as far back as 1993 for having a plane wait on the tarmac in Los Angeles while he received a trim from Cristophe of Beverly Hills. The New York Times reported: "Questions about Mr. Clinton's runway razor cut dominated the White House news briefing today, with the communications director, George Stephanopoulos, scrambling to explain why the populist President tied up one of the country's busiest airports to have his hair trimmed." John Edwards, of course, became something of a poster boy for follicular faux pas during the 2007 presidential campaign when it was revealed he had indulged in two haircuts totaling approximately 800 at a time when he was attempting to sell himself as a champion for working class Americans. It's not just an American obsession. In 2016, Francois Hollande, then the president of France, came under fire for a reported 10,000 a month styling bill, which was seen as inappropriate for a socialist (it even got its own hashtag: Coiffuregate). During the 2015 Canadian election, Justin Trudeau's hair, which, in its lushness, seemed to represent his youth and privilege, had its own Twitter account TrudeausHair. The Economist referred to him as the "hair apparent" (a reference to his father, former Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau). And he wasn't the only one under a follicular microscope: the hair of all the (all male) candidates played a fairly public role in that election. It's fair to say hair is not just some stringy stuff on the top of our heads. According to Grant McCracken, an anthropologist and author of "Big Hair," our hair is "our court of deliberation, the place where we contemplate who and what we are." It is visible, accessible, gender freighted. It has associations with sex, punishment, class and power. It is probably not happenstance that the United States has not elected a bald president since Dwight D. Eisenhower left office in 1961. When it comes to politics, to care too much about hair, to spend too much on it, makes one seen as superficial and vain; focused on yourself at the expense (literally sometimes) of taxpayers. Ignore it and you are sloppy and lack attention to detail. Men have traditionally used their ability to get inexpensive barber trims as bragging rights and something of a badge of hono r. In the Washington Times story, former Attorney General Jeff Sessions is lauded for the fact he got his cuts at the Senate Hair Care Services in the basement of the Russell Senate Office Building for a mere 20 though it is acknowledged that "men's haircuts there and everywhere else are cheaper than women's." In turn, women have often complained about a double standard in price and scrutiny. This has only become more true in the age of Instagram, and during a White House administration where hair has played an outsize symbolic role, from the glossy, blow dried locks of pretty much all the women in the Trump orbit (the first lady, Tiffany Trump, Vanessa Trump, Kimberly Guilfoyle, Hope Hicks and Ivanka before the bob) to the orange hued and complicated comb over worn by the president himself. People joke about it, but no one forgets it. Fact is, we're talking about hair more than ever these days, not less. All of which suggests that, whether we like it or not, when it comes to politics (as when it comes to a lot of life), a trim is rarely just a trim. It's a weapon, and a tool. If we don't admit that and wield it ourselves with humor, ideally then someone else will. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
Grace Wales Bonner, the 25 year old breakout star of the London men's wear scene who has become known for collections that explore black culture and identity, has won the LVMH 2016 prize for emerging talent. She is the third London based designer, and the third graduate of Central Saint Martins in a row, to win the prize, which was introduced in November 2013. Ms. Wales Bonner will receive a grant of 300,000 euros (about 335,000), plus a year of coaching and mentorship from LVMH executives, the French luxury group announced Thursday at a ceremony at the Louis Vuitton Foundation art museum in Paris. The jury for the prize included Karl Lagerfeld, Marc Jacobs, Phoebe Philo and Jonathan Anderson. Ms. Wales Bonner was awarded the gold star prize by Lea Seydoux, the French film actress and a brand ambassador for Louis Vuitton. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
BUNSCHOTEN SPAKENBURG, the Netherlands Every seat, every perch, every conceivable inch of space is occupied. The two grandstands that run alongside the field at the Sportpark de Westmaat are full. The extra bleachers that have been put up for the occasion, no more than scaffold and gangplanks, are full. Fans hang over railings and cram into corners, standing four or five deep, straining on their toes to get a decent view. Once all the feasible vantage points are gone, one or two decide that there is no other option than to head for the roof. It feels as if everyone in this sleepy seaside village, an hour or so southeast of Amsterdam, has turned out for the occasion, and several more besides. Ronald Koeman, the coach of the Dutch national team, is here; so is Aad de Mos, the veteran former coach of Ajax. Fans, less illustrious, have traveled the length and breadth of the country to be here. Today, though, is an 8,000 capacity sellout, and there are reporters and camera crews from Fox Sports posted around the field, too. For those who could not get a ticket, the game is being broadcast live on national television. Not bad for a third division game in a village of scarcely more than 20,000 people. "We will make as much money from today as we will from the rest of the season," Muijs said. The reason for that is simple: The visitor today is S.V. Spakenburg, a rival so local that the two clubs' stadiums are all but contiguous. (They are both called the Sportpark de Westmaat, and share a parking lot; when the teams meet, Spakenburg's players walk from their own home ground to the changing rooms at IJsselmeervogels.) This game is widely regarded as the "biggest amateur derby in Holland," said Rob Commandeur, a fan who has made the trip from Heinkenszand, not far from the Belgian border, just to see it. Given the scale of the crowd, and the interest, there is a compelling case to be made that description undersells it a little. A Copa90 documentary in 2016 labeled IJsselmeervogels Spakenburg the "world's biggest amateur derby (probably)." In the village, they regard this game as fiercer than even Ajax and Feyenoord, the country's most famous rivalry. "It is the derby of derbies," Jan de Jong, an IJsselmeervogels fan, said. Aside from the occasional flash of color a red IJsselmeervogels scarf, a hat adorned with Spakenburg's blue badge most residents keep their affiliations hidden underneath thick jackets. One or two silken flags have been draped from balconies. Down the side streets, where each house boasts not just a number but a small plaque denoting the name of the family who call it home, a few more flutter from doorways. Often, red and blue sit side by side, in those places where loyalties are split. There is a reason for the peace. Bars in Spakenburg are forbidden from selling alcohol until 5 p.m. on derby day, the legacy of sporadic outbreaks of violence in years gone by. Some suggest the problems were related to hooligans from professional teams Ajax and ADO Den Haag, in particular who used the game as an excuse to settle their own scores; others look a little closer to home. Regardless, the effect of the alcohol ban has been pronounced. Rather than thronging the town, fans now tend to gather at house parties instead. "We started at 11," de Jong said. "We ate fish. Also there was beer." He is swaying, just a little, as he says it. Occasional bursts of boisterous chanting echo around the streets, though the big celebration an official fan party thrown by IJsselmeervogels fans was held on an industrial estate a 40 minute walk away. That, too, you sense, is deliberate: A brisk walk in freezing temperatures has a conveniently sobering effect. It is as kickoff approaches that the fans appear: dozens at first, then hundreds, a great tide walking toward the Sportpark, so many that it seems impossible that the village seemed empty just a few minutes earlier. Slowly, the stadium begins to fill. Finally, the show starts. In recent years, though, the game's reputation has grown, particularly among a certain type of soccer fan. It has become a destination game, a kind of hipster bucket list item for anyone seeking a jolt of authenticity, something untainted by the sanitized, prepackaged corporate glamour of the world's elite leagues. "It is quite a cool mix," said Commandeur, here with a clutch of his teammates from their hometown club. "It is an amateur game, but with a more professional vibe." In the Netherlands, it is now what puts Spakenburg on the map. "I travel a lot for work, to Amsterdam, to Utrecht," van Dierman said. "When people ask you where you are from, the first thing they say is: 'Oh, Spakenburg. Are you a red, or are you a blue?'" That fame, though, has spread well beyond the Dutch border. "We have had requests from fans from Belgium, Germany, Austria, everywhere," said Henk van de Groep, IJsselmeervogels's communications manager. Muijs, too, has been inundated with requests. "There have been a lot of things on social media," he said. "A few years ago, there was a list of the top 20 derbies in the world. Boca Juniors against River Plate was first. We were 19th. It's not even a professional game!" The game's appeal is not the standard of play, but the theater that surrounds it. "It is a strong rivalry, but in a good way," said Reinie van de Groep (no relation to Henk); she grew up here, but regards herself as a "purple." "It is very humorous, very creative," she said. There are streamers and glitter cannons and air dancers. The game kicks off 10 minutes late, in fact, because the display was so lavish that nobody seemed to have taken into account that all of the paraphernalia would have to be removed from the field. For much of the first half, players on one flank have to dodge not only opponents but the bright red streamers left littering the halfway line, too. The game, almost inevitably, feels something of an afterthought. IJsselmeervogels historically the more successful of the two teams, and chasing a championship again this season takes the lead. Spakenburg equalizes a few minutes later. Early in the second half, the host is reduced to 10 men, its midfielder Maikel de Harder sent off for lashing out at a Spakenburg player. It peters out into a feisty, full blooded tie. By the end, the noise has abated a little. Fans start to filter out, clutching their masks as mementos. Perhaps the result has left everybody dissatisfied. Perhaps thoughts are drifting, now, to the lifting of the alcohol ban at 5 p.m. A few fans confide that this has been a more low key affair than they had been expecting, that the previous encounter this season also a tie was a little more colorful, a little more of an occasion. They wonder if the novelty has worn off, or if the reputation now weighs too heavily, if the expectations are impossible to match. A few minutes after the game, the road out of Spakenburg is choked with traffic. Those who came from much further afield to watch the derby of derbies are starting to leave. They have had their weekend road trip, seen the world's biggest amateur derby, ticked another item off the bucket list, devoured another experience. The locals walk home, to the houses with their names etched outside and the flags hanging from balconies, to clear up the detritus of the parties they hosted. Spakenburg will be quiet again soon, the same as ever. The game that defines it, though, is changing, an occasion that used to be exclusively local irrevocably altered, somehow, by its contact with the global. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
For decades, the southwest corner of 57th Street and Fifth Avenue was Bill Cunningham's main perch. Over the years, he had gone everywhere in the city one of his 30 bicycles would take him. Up to the Botanical Garden, down to the Christopher Street piers and over to Tompkins Square Park. But Fifth Avenue remained for him the greatest place in the world, an intersection where East met West, uptown met downtown, publishing types in pencil skirts met Chanel clad socialites, and black met white. Mr. Cunningham loved himself a parade, the bulk of which seemed to take place there. That's where Puerto Ricans headed the second week in June, decked out in red, white, blue and everything in between. A few weeks later, he'd head back for the gay pride parade. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
The seventh floor apartment at 73 Fifth Avenue, a block from Union Square, seems more like an art museum than a residence, with works from Lucian Freud, Andy Warhol, Pablo Picasso and countless other artists holding court in every room. Stacks of art books and intriguing objets d'art can also be found throughout the space. What else would you expect from what had been a primary home and workplace of John Richardson, the renowned Picasso biographer and art historian who opened the New York office of Christie's auction house in the 1960s? Mr. Richardson died in March at age 95. His extensive art collection is to be auctioned sometime next year. Now his Fifth Avenue apartment, at East 15th Street in the Flatiron district, is being sold by his estate. The asking price is 7.2 million, with 4,571 in monthly maintenance, according to Jeffrey Stockwell of Compass, who is listing the property with his colleagues Jill Bernard and Alan Shaker. The co op measures around 5,400 square feet and encompasses a full floor. It was once a raw, open loft used by a dance studio. But after Mr. Richardson bought it in 1995, he carved up the space, creating an enfilade of rooms connected via mahogany doorways crowned with neoclassical pediments. Movable room dividers were also built, and Mr. Richardson's idiosyncratic decor was employed throughout the space. (The architect Ernesto Buch helped with the design of the loft.) The rambling residence is currently configured with two bedrooms and two and a half baths. Entry into the apartment is through a well lit, orange hued reception room, where there is also a powder room and storage space. The area is presently being used by Mr. Richardson's editorial staff, who are working to finish his fourth and final volume of "A Life of Picasso." (Publication is expected in the fall of 2020, according to Ms. Wanger, who is a senior editor of Penguin Random House, the book's publisher.) On one side of the reception area is a spacious library, also used by staff. The burnt umber painted room is lined with built in shelves crammed with art books and periodicals. A side table there displays numerous photographs of Mr. Richardson and his many famous friends, including a young and old Picasso, and Warhol with Pope John Paul II. At the other side of the reception room is the great room. It's jammed with an eclectic mix of antique and traditional furnishings, along with numerous paintings, prints, photographs and sculptures from artists like Picasso, Warhol, Kathy Ruttenberg, Ugo Rondinone and Salvator Rosa. Among the room's many standout pieces: an enormous ethereal landscape by Lucien Levy Dhurmer and a large portrait of Mr. Richardson by Warhol. Within the great room is a dining area with a round table set for four and an ornamental fireplace with faux marble. The space leads to a windowless kitchen equipped with stainless steel appliances, oak countertops and laminate cabinets. And through a nearby back hallway is a guest bedroom; two full bathrooms, one decked out in Moroccan tile; a laundry room and storage space. Just beyond the great room is the master bedroom with another ornamental fireplace, and then a green turquoise studio, one of Mr. Richardson's favorite rooms. "He did a lot of work in that studio," Ms. Wanger said, and it also served as entertaining space during the frequent dinner parties he gave. The spacious studio contains two beds, including an 18th century four poster, and an antique campaign desk, where Mr. Richardson did much of his work. The room is also teeming with art, books and various curiosities. There are Chinese vases, statuary casts and tortoise shells, along with a distinctive rubber relief sculpture by the artist Alex Hoda. While Mr. Richardson had lived in many homes throughout his long life including an estate in New Milford, Conn., that was sold just two years ago he seemed to have had a special affinity for the Manhattan loft. "He got great pleasure out of it," Ms. Wanger said. "It was such a great place for working, hanging out with friends and dinner parties." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
Mr. Levin, according to two people with direct knowledge of the visit, broached the possibility of Mr. Trump sitting for another interview on his new Fox News series, "Objectified," a spinoff from last fall's special. The show, which is expected to make its debut in September, is to feature interviews with celebrities who describe cherished objects in their lives. One of Mr. Levin's ideal guests is Tom Brady, the New England Patriots quarterback and a friend of Mr. Trump, and Mr. Levin planned to ask the president if he would help secure the athlete's participation, according to one of the people who described the visit. Mr. Levin, 66, visited the day after Mr. Trump's first formal address to Congress, and was given a warm White House welcome. He received a tour of the presidential residence, including a stop in the Lincoln Bedroom photographs of which he proudly showed to friends after returning to Los Angeles, one of the people said. Both spoke on condition of anonymity to share details of conversations that were intended to be private. Repeated inquiries to Mr. Levin and TMZ brought no response. Mr. Levin, whose White House visit was first described on Tuesday by the website Entitymag.com, is a lawyer who gained prominence as a commentator on the O.J. Simpson trial. He founded TMZ in 2005, building the Hollywood focused operation into a powerful force in tabloid news, known for its scoops and its guerrilla interviews with celebrities at airports and other public places. His interview with Mr. Trump, filmed in September, was a Barbara Walters style, soft toned profile of the Republican presidential nominee, who reminisced at length about his childhood in Queens, military academy education, reality television career and rise to prominence. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
WALK THIS WAY The public staircase at Heath Avenue and West 229th Street is one of a series in Kingsbridge, whose steep hills and circuitous roads make pedestrian shortcuts very handy. THE Harlem River curves by Kingsbridge, a middle class neighborhood of 47,000 folded into a valley in the northwestern Bronx. There's also a busy highway, the six lane Major Deegan Expressway, that slices through the area. And mature trees shade many sidewalks as along Tibbett Avenue, which is named for a brook buried long ago. But the feature that makes the most lasting impression is the series of open air public stairways running up neighborhood hills; they seem as steep and geometric as lines on a graph. One staircase, squeezed between midrise apartment houses, connects West 231st Street with Naples Terrace. Another links Bailey and Heath Avenues. And Ewen Park, an expanse of lawns at Kingsbridge's edge, even has a staircase reminiscent of the magisterial Potemkin Stairs, in the Ukrainian seaport of Odessa (though not anywhere near as wide or as long); they climb up, and up, and up, promising a heart pounding shortcut to Riverdale. "They're really important, because the roads zigzag so much," said Dean Parker, a resident, referring to all the stairs. "It would take too long to get around without them." For new arrivals, adjusting to the neighborhood can be like a strenuous stair climb: It requires a little work and some faith, maybe, but the payoff can be extraordinary, residents say. For Mr. Parker, who works as a composer, Kingsbridge offered the chance to buy a house large enough to include a recording studio which would have been unthinkable in many city neighborhoods, especially in the two bedroom co op he used to own in Riverdale. His seven bedroom, 2,300 square foot house, bought in December, also has room enough for an office for his wife, Tanya Krohn, an SAT tutor, and plenty of space for the couple's two sons. The 1910 wood frame home, with a gambrel roof and metal siding, and views of the Jerome Park Reservoir from the third floor, cost 250,000, about a third of what it would have sold for in Riverdale, Mr. Parker guesses. But it definitely was not in move in condition: at some point, pipes broke, raining water down on walls. Mr. Parker took care of some renovating himself. The upside was the area, with its interesting mix of residents quite different from Bronxville, in the Westchester suburbs, which Mr. Parker recalled as homogeneous. "I like a diverse economy, diverse cultural backgrounds," he said. "I think it keeps everybody polite." There also seems to be a golden rule in effect about working together to solve problems. Mr. Parker, for instance, recently aided a neighbor's house painting job by letting him set up a ladder in his yard. "Everybody realizes that it's better off to be connected than isolated here," he said. Judging from the local attitude toward various new commercial developments in recent years, people also appreciate their importance in providing a needed jolt to the somewhat ragtag shopping strip along Broadway. Tears were shed in 2009 when Stella D'Oro, the cookie company, closed its longtime factory on West 237th Street, but many are looking forward to a 118,000 square foot BJ's, of big box fame, which is set to rise in its place. Also, a 133,000 square foot shopping center is to go up on a city parking lot on West 230th Street. And, under plans being weighed by the city, the castlelike Kingsbridge Armory, long empty, could someday have shops inside. They would join River Plaza on West 225th Street, an eight year old mall with a Target store, which Urvashi Rangan is fond of. But she often has to drive to Yonkers in Westchester (where she works as a toxicologist) for big grocery purchases, which is why she's in favor of new supermarkets. "If we were living in the country and somebody was going to stick a big development next to me," Ms. Rangan said, "I don't think I would like it. But we live in a very dense area already, and everybody needs to eat." Though some blocks may be shoehorn tight, that doesn't mean they lack for square footage, or style. A case in point: Ms. Rangan's home, a four story Queen Anne that soars from a skinny lot, boasting cedar clapboards, pocket doors and a turret. In 2002, it cost 410,000. But it, too, needed major fixes, including a new boiler, kitchen and roof. Ms. Rangan's house is in Marble Hill which, though contiguous to the neighborhood and on the same side of the Harlem River, is not officially part of the Bronx at all, but a part of Manhattan, to which it was geographically connected before the river was reoriented in 1897, cutting it off. Yet just as Marble Hill telephones use the Bronx's 718 area code and the area is represented by the Bronx's Community Board 8, Marble Hill residents don't cross the river every time they go shopping. Boundaries are one thing, convenience another, as Ms. Rangan's approach makes clear. Describing the sometimes annoying way salsa music blares from cars and echoes up the hills, she said, "There's a vibrancy here that's made me appreciate the Bronx." Kingsbridge is a patchwork of smaller neighborhoods, each with a personality all its own, spread over barely 0.75 square miles. Kingsbridge proper sits in the crease of a valley. Along Corlear Avenue, a row of bungalows look as though they could be on a waterfront. And at the turn of the last century West 230th Street was actually an oxbow of the Harlem River, before it was diverted and the riverbed filled. Close by are attached brick homes from a more modern era, some of which seem tiny beside glassy high rises that have recently shouldered their way in. Terraced across the eastern ridge is Kingsbridge Heights, where row houses have security gates on their windows, as on Heath Avenue. The crime rate in the 50th Precinct, which includes upscale Riverdale, is relatively low: there were four murders in 2011, versus eight in 2001, and one so far this year. Van Cortlandt Village, which flanks the reservoir, is dominated by co ops: to be precise, the Amalgamated Cooperative Houses, a Tudor esque complex developed by a garment workers union in 1927. It has 1,500 units in 11 buildings. In 2004, a city rezoning made it harder to build tall condominiums. As for the reservoir, it is dry now, but will be refilled by next summer, according to the city Department of Environmental Protection; at that point a water tunnel being built next door in Van Cortlandt Park will be complete. Eighty five percent of the housing stock is rentals, census figures show. That means there is never a lot on the for sale market. This month there were 30 listings, among them houses, co ops and condos, asking an average of 246,000, according to Streeteasy.com. They ranged from a co op studio in a seven story brick building on Kingsbridge Terrace facing the reservoir, at 69,900, to a postwar two family row house, with a total of five bedrooms and updated kitchens, at 795,000. Sales volume has plunged since the recession, though prices have since stabilized. In 2007, at the height of the market, there were 119 sales of market rate houses, co ops and condos, at an average price of 267,000, according to Streeteasy data. In 2011 there were just 27, though the average was virtually unchanged. The market is relatively resilient because Kingsbridge is "close to everything: transportation, good schools, parks," said Maria Moragianis, a broker with Weichert Realtors House and Home, who lived there for 25 years. "It just works all around." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
A Breitbart News editor said on Monday that she had been fired from the conservative news site for the anti Muslim tweets she sent after a terrorist attack in London on Saturday. The editor, Katie McHugh, who has written hundreds of articles for the site since 2015 and previously worked for The Daily Caller, said on Twitter, "Breitbart News fired me for telling the truth about Islam and Muslim immigration." A Breitbart News spokesman declined to comment on Monday, leaving the precise reason for her leaving the company unknown. But Ms. McHugh said her dismissal from the news site was related to several Twitter posts on Saturday that drew widespread attention, including a CNN report. Shortly before 7 p.m. Saturday, Ms. McHugh tweeted, "There would be no deadly terror attacks in the U.K. if Muslims didn't live there." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
Anyone familiar with the doomed fruit seller of Mr. Fassbinder's "The Merchant of Four Seasons," the luckless lottery winner of his "Fox and His Friends," or the Weimar era ne'er do well hero of his "Berlin Alexanderplatz" (with Mr. John as a villain as treacherous as Jochen is good hearted) is forgiven for expecting the worst. While few characters in "Eight Hours" wind up dead or humiliated, it's not as if Mr. Fassbinder's bleak worldview has entirely gone away. That "Eight Hours" is a comedy or perhaps a tragedy stopped short owes something to both design and chance. According to the film scholar Brad Prager, Mr. Fassbinder told a contemporaneous interviewer that he wanted to leave a broad TV audience with a sense that the world was full of possibilities. On the other hand, West German television, which commissioned the project, pulled the plug before the director was able to film the last three episodes, in which he had planned to lower the hammer. But "Eight Hours" nevertheless feels complete, a lighthearted polemic that is at once a soft Marxist guide on how to band together to improve your workplace and an almost traditionalist ode to family and community. Jochen, a factory worker who makes specialized tools, leads his fellow laborers in pushing for their friend's promotion. Wishing to turn a shuttered library into a day care center, Grandma (Luise Ullrich), the strong willed matriarch, and her new companion, Gregor (Werner Finck), don't wait for city permission. As always, the polish of Mr. Fassbinder's direction is a marvel; none of his 1970s contemporaries ever used zooms to better comic effect. And for a man who found time to make more than 40 features in his 37 years, the fluidity of his camera and blocking is miraculous particularly in a nearly half hour wedding party sequence at the end of Episode 4. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
Bret Stephens said it perfectly: Senator Tom Cotton "is a leading spokesman for a major current of public opinion. To suggest our readers should not have the chance to examine his opinions for themselves is to patronize them." Like Mr. Stephens, I did not agree with Senator Cotton's position in favor of using military troops against violent protesters, but I appreciate reading Op Eds on both sides of an issue. The Times does its readers an enormous disservice when it refuses to publish or disavows an Op Ed that runs contrary to the political leanings of its readership or journalists. After all, those readers who insist on partisan safe spaces can always turn on to MSNBC or Fox. I have the greatest respect for Roger Cohen, but I believe he is conflating fairness with good journalism. The New York Times is under no obligation to publish propaganda. And Tom Cotton was free to find another platform for his dangerous, ill informed and anti American views. The New York Times could have then covered its publication elsewhere and the response to it as a genuine news story rather than allowing itself to be used by Senator Cotton. Yes, Senator Cotton speaks for millions of Americans. But The Times is not obligated to spread his views in the name of "fairness." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
Display Copy, the magazine that debuted online and on newsstands on Oct. 22, looks, in most ways, like a typical magazine. It has a well known model/personality on the cover: Paloma Elsesser, the plus size model, inclusivity champion and British Vogue favorite. It has glossy shoots by famous photographers: Katerina Jebb and Mark Borthwick. And it has clothing credits that include Helmut Lang, Paul Smith, Adidas and Balenciaga. In one way, however, it is not typical at all. The credits for "where to buy" include the Salvation Army, Etsy and eBay. Display Copy may be a new magazine, but, as the editor's letter says, it "doesn't feature a single new fashion item." Every item of clothing it pictures and promotes is vintage. Secondhand. Thrifted. Pre loved. For resale. After years of pushing only new, new, new (while behind the scenes scouring flea markets for inspiration), fashion brands are beginning, finally, to publicly embrace the old. Upcycling is reaching critical mass. It may be the most concrete shift in the fashion system to come out of the pandemic: the one real product to emerge from all of the industry talk in May and June about change and sustainability and value systems. The week before Display Copy arrived, Miu Miu introduced Upcycled by Miu Miu: a limited collection of vintage dresses from the 1940s through the '70s that have been tweaked, refashioned and otherwise jazzed up for a contemporary customer. The week before that, Levi's unveiled Levi's Secondhand, a buyback and resale program that will allow customers to sell their old denim to Levi's so it can be repaired, reinvented and resold (or recycled). They are both following in the footsteps of Maison Margiela, which put upcycling at the center of its creative process back in February when it introduced the Recicla line (Italian for "recycle") a collection built on garments the designer John Galliano's team finds in charity shops and then deconstructs and reworks and has since doubled down on the idea. Which itself came in the wake of Patagonia's Worn Wear program, a pioneer in the field. In early October, Gucci announced a partnership with the RealReal, the resale site, for a Gucci specific second life store on the platform, just as Stella McCartney and Burberry did before it. And speaking of Ms. McCartney, she has created a new plan to upcycle her own samples and pieces that were made but never put into production clothes that had been gathering dust in a storage closet or waiting to be sold off cheaply at sample sale. The upcycling will include adding some extra embellishment and handwritten notes on the tags and offering the pieces as one off quasi couture. She is also plotting to reissue her most popular former styles, as is Michael Kors, who last season remade a cape from a fall 1999 collection and recently included a dress from spring 1991, originally worn by Anna Wintour to Grace Coddington's 50th birthday party at Indochine, in his spring 2021 collection. Add to that Cate Blanchett recycling her wardrobe during the Venice Film Festival in September. There is no "just" about it, though. Such a development is the inverse of the former conventional wisdom, which held that if you didn't inundate people with a constant stream of fresh products, addling their senses and saturating their judgment centers, you risked losing their attention and wallet share. That was, it turned out, a short term way of thinking that reeked of insecurity, relying on freneticism and white noise. It may have boosted sales, but it also led to not only a glut of stuff but also an erosion of the value proposition. After all, if the company that made a garment didn't think it was worth hanging on to for more than a few weeks, why should the person who buys it? Once that confidence and understanding is lost, it is unclear how it ever comes back. Upcycling may be the answer. "I started being a fashion designer because I never found anything I liked," said Mrs. Prada, who hates throwing clothes away and has a whole separate apartment where she keeps her old wardrobe as well as her mother's. "Before that, for 10 years I dressed in vintage," she continued. "I always asked myself why I liked it so much, and I think it's the history. Each dress represents a person, a piece of a life. For me, the past always had an incredible value because anything you learn comes from there." Yet not that long ago, during a discussion in early 2019 for Muse magazine about fashion's role in the climate crisis, I asked Marco Bizzarri, the chief executive of Gucci, why his brand didn't take back its own clothes once consumers were done with them so they could be upcycled and resold. Why, though fashion was increasingly grappling with the environmental impact of materials at the start of a product's life, there wasn't as much focus on its end of life, or second life. At the time, he said it was too complicated and systems weren't in place. So what changed? First, the fact that, early in the pandemic when countries were in lockdown, many mills were not working, so designers had to turn to deadstock (fabric left over from previous collections and a word that in itself reflects the industry's former attitude) to create products. This helped break the "old" barrier, said Batsheva Hay, who used her leftover fabric to make a series of limited edition "housedresses." Traditionally, she said, fashion had been "afraid of anything last season," even though consumers have positive associations with the word "sustainability." Add to this the realization that consumers themselves were, as Giorgio Belloli, the chief commercial and sustainability officer of Farfetch, said, "changing their behavior and starting to see more value in their items." (This in turn prompted Farfetch to expand its Second Life program, which allows customers to offer old handbags for on site credit in Britain, the United States and several other countries in Europe.) They're changing because of pandemic induced economic factors and the understanding, no longer debated, that the responsibility to address the landfill problem lies not just with fashion producers, but also shoppers. All of which has helped bolster the much heralded growth of the resale market, which ThredUp has predicted will hit 64 billion by 2024, with the online secondhand market growing 69 percent between 2019 and 2021. And the fact that increasingly, Gen Z, or what Ms. Heminway of Display Copy calls "the Depop generation," has turned away from the waste of fast fashion and, priced out of even contemporary fashion, moved toward thrifting. The result is a powerful combination of forces pushing fashion, and how we think about clothes, in a new direction. Though perhaps the most powerful force of all is self interest and not just commercial. It turns out that the challenge of working with old stuff, of reinventing it, whether with technology or design (or both), has opened up whole new realms of intellectual and aesthetic possibility in the way that problem solving often does. As Display Copy reads, "our intention is to celebrate the ingenuity we find in ourselves when we are determined to preserve the things we love." Mrs. Prada said working on Upcycled Miu Miu had been creatively inspiring. In a podcast about his Recicla initiative, Mr. Galliano called it "restorative." Who wouldn't want to buy that right about now? | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
The outbreak of plague in Madagascar has spread to the Seychelles, a nearby chain of islands in the Indian Ocean, the country's health ministry said Wednesday. According to the ministry, a 34 year old man who fell ill after returning from Madagascar on Friday has tested positive for pneumonic plague. He is now in isolation at Seychelles Hospital and is receiving antibiotics. Fifteen people who had contact with him after his return also have been given antibiotics as a precaution and are under surveillance, the ministry said. His partner appears to be ill and is being tested for plague, as is the child who lives with them. Dr. Jude Gedeon, public health commissioner of the Seychelles, asked citizens not to panic. Air Seychelles has canceled all flights to Madagascar, and citizens have been advised not to travel there. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
The sale gives Mr. Bloomberg ownership, via a private trust, of almost the entire five story neo Grec townhouse co op. He has been buying up apartments there for nearly three decades, knocking down walls to combine the space with his adjoining townhouse and primary residence, at 17 East 79th Street. The intensely private former mayor who served three consecutive terms, from 2002 through 2013, during which time he opted to live in his townhouse instead of Gracie Mansion had no comment on his latest purchase, according to a spokesman, Marc LaVorgna. There's one unit left for him to buy at No. 19: the top floor apartment owned for more than three decades by Jeffery Wood and his wife, Pamela Jenrette. In a 2009 interview, Mr. Wood said he loved the building and would "never leave." Ms. Jenrette added that she enjoyed "the benefit of 24 hour security," a perk of having the mayor as a neighbor. Contacted this past week, Ms. Jenrette said she had no comment on whether she and her husband have had a change of heart about selling their place. Mr. Bloomberg bought 17 East 79th in 1986, according to city records, which do not provide sale prices going that far back. He branched into 19 East 79th in 1989 with the purchase of a first floor unit for about 550,000; in 2000, he paid about 1.2 million for the second floor unit. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
After successfully leading revolutions in home computers, portable digital music players and smart phones, Apple has done much to raise interest in the future of wrist worn computers with its arrival in the growing smart watch market. The debut does not, however, solve one of the basic problems of design for such a small device, a problem researchers continue to think about. As computing sophistication grows, our wrists remain the same size. "The smart watch interface is generally not very good," said Bruce Tognazzini, a pioneering former Apple employee whose web site, askTog.com, is popular among industry insiders. "As a stand alone device it has enormous problems because of the small screen." Researchers have looked at a number of solutions to maximize the viewing surface and, perhaps more importantly, interact with the device without blocking the screen real estate with fingers a problem faced by smart watches that rely solely on touch screens. "It's clear that people are thinking we need more space and input for these devices," said James Landay, a computer science professor and a specialist in human computer interaction at Stanford University. Chris Harrison, a human computer interaction professor at Carnegie Mellon University, predicts that next generation watches might be capable of constantly monitoring what the user says, or where he glances. "It's going to be Siri plus plus plus," he said, referring to Apple's voice recognition system. Dr. Harrison predicts that future watches will become "active" listeners. If Mount Kilimanjaro, in Africa, is mentioned in a conversation, for example, the watch will automatically look up the mountain's key information height, location, references in popular literature, for example which the user can, with a flick of the wrist, read and seamlessly integrate into the conversation. "Just glancing at your smart watch will give you relevant information," he said. Current computing limitations aside, Dr. Harrison warns that voice control might never be practical as the only way to interact with the watches because it is not suitable for some controls such as reading through lists and exploring pages of information. Dr. Landay agrees. "It's a limited number of things you can do" with voice recognition, he said. "You can't rely on it as the only way. Besides, there are a lot of places where it is quite inappropriate to use speech." Socially more widely accepted, interacting with the devices using fingers or pens is apparently not limited to manipulating the watch itself. Dr. Landay predicts that movements of the hand wearing the watch could control it. With the help of skin sensors, gyroscopes and accelerometers in the device, a pinching gesture made in midair could reduce the map displayed on the screen. "It's clear that people are thinking that we need more space for input for these devices," he said. Another way to enlarge the screen and interactive areas of the watches would make the wearer's skin function as both a display and an input device. Dr. Harrison and his team have been building and testing watches that can project buttons onto skin. The buttons, which in tests appear as little red projections, can be clicked by touching the area of skin on which they are projected. With infrared reflective technology, the entire arm could become a working touch screen when the user needs it. "The trend is toward more exotic mechanisms for interfaces," he said. Another test watch built by Dr. Harrison is controlled by a movable watch case. By twisting or clicking the case in four directions, a cursor on the screen can be manipulated, as though controlled by a mouse or trackpad. By clicking the whole case to the right, for example, the user can scroll to the next picture. By turning the case clockwise, he can zoom in. Although this mechanism does not create as much space as the skin buttons, it does keep fingers off the screen and makes controlling the smart watch a more tactile experience. Apple's proposed crown, which like a traditional watch crown turns in almost imperceptible increments but also functions as a clickable button, promises to work well for that reason and because it allows input to happen away from the display. "Even a single dimensional pointing device is a big win; it gets the fingers off the screen," Mr. Tognazzini said. "The thing about Apple is that first of all they really do deep, deep designing they go out and look at the issue, and then they come back and do it right. And there's expectation that, if Apple does it, it's been done right." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
The White House barred a CNN journalist from attending a public appearance by President Trump in the Rose Garden on Wednesday, an apparent act of retaliation that drew immediate rebuke from news organizations and signaled the latest escalation of Mr. Trump's hostilities toward the news media. Kaitlan Collins, a White House correspondent for CNN, said she was called into the West Wing and chastised by administration officials for what they deemed "inappropriate" questions that she had asked of Mr. Trump during an Oval Office photo opportunity earlier in the day. The officials Bill Shine, the newly appointed deputy chief of staff, and Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the press secretary then informed Ms. Collins that they would not allow her to attend Mr. Trump's public remarks with the president of the European Commission, an event that was otherwise open to the media. "They did not like the questions I asked President Trump about the news of the day," Ms. Collins said. It is standard practice for reporters to ask questions of Mr. Trump at the end of photo ops, where the president often engages at length even as his aides try to shuffle the reporters from the scene. On Wednesday, Ms. Collins who attended as a pool reporter, representing the major television networks asked Mr. Trump several times if he had concerns about the loyalty of his former personal lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, whom the president had tweeted about on Wednesday morning. And then: "Mr. President, are you worried about what Michael Cohen is about to say to the prosecutors?" The president has routinely castigated journalists, describing media outlets he deems "fake news" as "the enemy of the people." At a rally on Tuesday, he encouraged his supporters to ignore coverage of his administration, saying, "What you're seeing and what you're reading is not what's happening." The move against Ms. Collins prompted criticism from news organizations including Fox News, Mr. Shine's former employer and the network he was overseeing until being forced out last year. Mr. Shine has been the White House communications chief for less than three weeks. "We stand in strong solidarity with CNN for the right to full access for our journalists as part of a free and unfettered press," Jay Wallace, the president of Fox News, said in a statement. He was echoed on air by the network's chief political anchor, Bret Baier, who took a moment in his nightly newscast to say Fox News "stands firmly with CNN on this issue of access." 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. Ms. Sanders, the press secretary, said in a statement on Wednesday that Ms. Collins "shouted questions and refused to leave" the Oval Office event, "despite repeatedly being asked to do so." "Subsequently, our staff informed her she was not welcome to participate in the next event," Ms. Sanders wrote, adding that other CNN journalists were welcome to attend. She added: "To be clear, we support a free press and ask that everyone be respectful of the presidency and guests at the White House." That explanation failed to placate other journalists, some of whom condemned the actions of the White House as akin to authoritarianism. The White House Correspondents' Association issued a notably sharp statement, calling the action "wholly inappropriate, wrong headed, and weak." "It cannot stand," the association's president, Olivier Knox of SiriusXM Radio, wrote. "Reporters asking questions of powerful government officials, up to and including the president, helps hold those people accountable." The White House's treatment of CNN on Wednesday and the subsequent outcry from rival networks echoed an incident in 2009 when the Obama administration tried to exclude Fox News reporters from official events after expressing anger over the network's coverage. At the time, other news organizations protested, refusing to attend a Treasury Department event if Fox News was not granted access, too. Signs of solidarity in the White House press corps usually an intensely competitive bunch have been cropping up in the wake of Mr. Trump's recent attacks. At a briefing last week, Ms. Sanders tried to skip a question from an NBC News correspondent, Hallie Jackson, by calling on a competing journalist for The Hill. The Hill reporter, Jordan Fabian, ceded the floor to Ms. Jackson instead. Mr. Trump's displeasure with CNN is well established, but he has lately appeared to ramp up his open hostility toward the network. In Britain this month, he called the network "fake news" while standing alongside the British prime minister, Theresa May, and refused to take a question from a CNN correspondent, Jim Acosta. Riding on Air Force One during the trip, Mr. Trump raged at his staff when he discovered a television onboard was tuned to CNN, telling aides that Fox News had to be the default channel. And those frustrations came before Tuesday evening, when CNN broadcast an audio recording of a conversation between the president and Mr. Cohen, in which the two men can be heard discussing a payment to Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model who has claimed that she had an affair with Mr. Trump. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
Loretta Lazar has a continuing love affair with Paris and with Cartier. "Cartier is a maison with a great history, and I like what they do," Ms. Lazar said. "It's elegant and refined." As for Paris, it took a few years and moves before that spark was struck. She was born in Shanghai, and her family fled the Cultural Revolution when she was nine and moved to Hong Kong. Ms. Lazar attended the Thacher School in Ojai, Calif., and eventually earned a master of arts degree in economics and East Asian studies from Harvard. Then she fell in love with an American in Paris. "The day I moved to Paris I felt as if I had found my spiritual home." Today, she and her family live in Paris, but she frequently travels to Hong Kong and China, where she represents the fashion designer Andrew Gn and some smaller fashion brands. She also consults for Christie's on the Chinese market and high net worth individuals. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
Jeremy Earl had been a father for two weeks when one of his favorite songwriters David Berman, of the Silver Jews emailed him with a plea: Help me make my first record in a decade. Since 2005, Earl's wistful falsetto has anchored Woods, the twinkling psychedelic rock band that will release its most magnetic record yet, "Strange to Explain," on Friday. He has also helmed Woodsist, a tiny but vital label that has served as a clearinghouse for early records by Kurt Vile, Kevin Morby and Real Estate. At their space in Brooklyn known as Rear House, Earl and the rest of Woods once ran the imprint, a studio, a practice area and a crowded crash pad for a stream of touring bands. It was, as Morby remembered, all "empty beer cans and cigarette butts, dudes in their 20s making nonstop music." But in early May 2018, when Berman wrote, Earl was taking a break to focus on his newborn daughter, Sierra, and the 11 acre spread he and his wife, Nicole, were turning into their home in New York's leafy Hudson Valley. "I was in no rush to do anything," Earl said in a phone interview from the barn that doubles as his home studio and Woodsist's headquarters. "It was a welcome breather after years of putting the band above everything." Still, Earl's bandmate Jarvis Taveniere told him to write Berman back. Taveniere had been a Silver Jews zealot since he was 15, and he had pined for Berman to return from his self imposed hiatus. Since meeting at Purchase College two decades earlier, Earl and Taveniere had been best friends and perennial bandmates. In Woods, Earl emerged as the songwriter with the bittersweet bleat, while Taveniere was the band's intuitive instrumentalist and in demand producer, even relocating to Los Angeles in 2018 to help others make records. That's the tandem Berman wanted. Berman began dispatching reams of lyrics and, later, self made demos. Earl and Taveniere had been admitted to a secret world, a private warren in which one of indie rock's most compelling lyricists had holed up to pen some of his saddest and sharpest work, his wit studding pieces about despair like diamonds. A month later, they were in Chicago, rehearsing with Berman by day and sharing a mattress in a tiny apartment in the basement of his label, Drag City, by night. Berman called them his "jangle merchants." By year's end, Berman's first album in a decade, released last summer as Purple Mountains, was ready. "David would say, 'If this sounds like my songs with Woods as my backing band, that's not a bad thing,'" Taveniere said in a call from Los Angeles. "It seems like a dream. Did David Berman really come out of retirement and contact us?" What had felt like a fantasy, though, morphed into a nightmare. To stay close to his family, Earl opted to sit out tours with Purple Mountains. Instead, Taveniere would play bass and serve as "music director" for a band he built. In August 2019, they convened in a Brooklyn apartment to rehearse. Berman made jokes and sang perfectly, Taveniere remembered he now covets his iPhone recordings of those enthusiastic practices. Berman mentioned his long battles with depression, warning the band it might flare up on tour. "But he talked about it in a hopeful way," Taveniere said. Four days into rehearsals, on a sunny New York morning, Taveniere was shopping for a suit to wear onstage when he was summoned to the apartment. He thought Berman was still sleeping but was horrified to discover the truth: Berman had killed himself at the age of 52. Earl was on vacation at a Virginia lake when Taveniere called him that afternoon. They sat silently on the phone, too dazed to speak much. Days later, they rendezvoused at Earl's home. They swam, then tried to get lost in finishing "Strange to Explain," the album they'd cut during two weeklong sessions at an ocean side California redoubt with their bandmates, the drummer Aaron Neveu, the multi instrumentalist John Andrews and the keyboardist Kyle Forester. Nothing on "Strange to Explain" addresses Berman's death it was written and recorded before Purple Mountains began their rehearsals. But Earl and Taveniere had spent months living with the words of Berman, who rhymed, "I spent a decade playing chicken with oblivion/Day to day, I'm neck and neck with giving in" during the first verse of Purple Mountains' debut. Those feelings of being trapped by your own fear, of looking for some way out seeped into Earl's work. At home, after he put Sierra to bed, he would slip into his barn to contemplate his dreams, his temporary sanctuaries from the day's worries. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
The opening sequence of Steve McQueen's "Mangrove" follows Frank Crichlow (Shaun Parkes) out of a basement gambling parlor and along a few blocks of the west London neighborhood of Notting Hill to the restaurant that gives the film its name. (He's the owner.) It's 1968, and the streets are splashed with graffiti attacking immigrants and praising the racist politician Enoch Powell. Those grim omens are balanced by vibrant street life and the buoyant sounds of "Try Me" by Bob Marley and the Wailers on the soundtrack. But this is not just another superficial flashback to the '60s, blending pop music and political turmoil into a thin broth of nostalgia. A brief voice over signals a more serious intention, an approach to history that is argumentative rather than antiquarian. We are told of the existence of "new types of human beings" in whom "are to be found all the traditional virtues of the English nation, not in decay as they are in official society, but in full flower because these men have perspective." Frank, a small business man in a nation of shopkeepers, is one of these new people, though he might not know it yet. The quote comes from the Trinidad born historian, social critic and Marxist thinker C.L.R. James, who will show up briefly in "Mangrove," played by Derek Griffiths as a kind of tutelary theoretical deity. The voice we hear reading his words belongs to Malachi Kirby, the actor playing Darcus Howe, who along with Frank Crichlow and seven other Black Londoners will be accused of "riot and affray" after participating in a demonstration against police harassment. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
Phil Linz played on three World Series teams with the Yankees in the 1960s and spent seven seasons in the major leagues. But he was remembered mostly for playing the harmonica. Linz was usually a fill in at shortstop, third base or second base, and occasionally in the outfield, bringing him the nickname Supersub. But in the summer of 1964 he briefly became a baseball celebrity of sorts. On the afternoon of Aug. 20, the Yankees were on the team bus heading to O'Hare Airport in Chicago for a flight to Boston to play the Red Sox after losing four straight games to the White Sox while in a tight pennant race. Linz was sitting at the rear of the bus practicing on a harmonica he had bought earlier in the road trip. It came with a learner's sheet, and the first tune was "Mary Had a Little Lamb." Manager Yogi Berra, seated up front, was hardly in the mood for frivolity in view of the Yankees' slump and shouted toward the back of the bus, "Shove that harmonica up!" "I wasn't sure what he said," Linz told USA Today in 2013. So he sought help from Mickey Mantle, who was sitting across from him. "I asked, 'What did he say, Mickey?'" Mantle, quick to seize an opportunity for a practical joke, told him that Berra had said, "Play it louder." Berra charged toward Linz, who either flipped his harmonica toward him or had it swatted away by Berra; accounts differ. "I went in and apologized to Yogi the next day, told him it was disrespectful, shook hands and promised it would never happen again," Linz remembered. "Yogi said, 'I still got to fine you.' He fined me 250. It was all right. I was making 14,000." By then, the New York sportswriters who were on the Yankee bus had filed stories describing the episode, and The Associated Press had spread its account to newspapers throughout the country. Two weeks later, Hohner, the company that had manufactured the offending harmonica, offered Linz 10,000 to endorse its brand. Linz gladly accepted. Linz's son, Philip, said he died on Wednesday at a rehabilitation center in Leesburg, Va., where he was being treated for Parkinson's disease and dementia. He was 81. After the harmonica incident, the Yankees went on to post a 22 6 record in September, their pitching buttressed by the arrival of Mel Stottlemyre, who went 9 3 following his August call up from the minors, as well as by Whitey Ford's recovery from a bruised heel and the September acquisition of the Cleveland Indians' Pedro Ramos, who was credited with eight saves. With a rotation that also included Jim Bouton and Al Downing, the Yankees won the American League pennant, finishing one game ahead of the White Sox. Linz who often played shortstop that season in place of Tony Kubek, who was limited by back and neck injuries and then sprained a wrist started against the St. Louis Cardinals in every game of the World Series. He hit two home runs, one off the intimidating Bob Gibson, but the Yankees lost to the Cards in seven games. Berra, the longtime Yankee catcher who was a future Hall of Famer and a beloved figure in the baseball world, was fired as manager the day after the Series ended and replaced by Johnny Keane, the Cardinals' manager. Ralph Houk, the Yankees' general manager, gave no reason for the stunning moves. (The Yankees, heading into some lean times, would not appear in another World Series for 12 years.) Philip Francis Linz was born on June 4, 1939, in Baltimore, the son of Ben and Frances Linz. His father was a mechanic for Bethlehem Steel. He was signed by the Yankee organization out of high school and made his debut with the team in April 1962. The Yankees traded Linz to the Philadelphia Phillies after the 1965 season. The Phillies sent him to the Mets in July 1967 (by then Berra was a coach for the Mets), and he retired after the 1968 season with a career batting average of .235 and 11 home runs. In addition to his son, Linz is survived by his wife, Lynn (Parker) Linz, a former flight attendant, and a grandson. Two sisters died before him. After his playing days, Linz joined with Art Shamsky, his former Mets teammate, as owners of a popular restaurant and night spot, Mr. Laffs, at First Avenue and 64th Street on Manhattan's Upper East Side. He kept the business going for more than 20 years. "It became the postgame destination for Knicks and Rangers and all those who basked in their reflected glory," Sports Illustrated recalled in 2005. Linz also sold insurance in Manhattan while living in Stamford, Conn. He appeared at baseball shows over the years to retell the story of an ordinary ballplayer and his famous harmonica. When the Yankees' 1965 yearbook came out, Linz had an encore for Yankee fans. In an advertisement paid for by Hohner, he was depicted on the back cover in his Yankee uniform with a harmonica. The caption read, "Play It Again, Phil." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
With more than six million American children having received a diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, concern has been rising that the condition is being significantly misdiagnosed and overtreated with prescription medications. Yet now some powerful figures in mental health are claiming to have identified a new disorder that could vastly expand the ranks of young people treated for attention problems. Called sluggish cognitive tempo, the condition is said to be characterized by lethargy, daydreaming and slow mental processing. By some researchers' estimates, it is present in perhaps two million children. Experts pushing for more research into sluggish cognitive tempo say it is gaining momentum toward recognition as a legitimate disorder and, as such, a candidate for pharmacological treatment. Some of the condition's researchers have helped Eli Lilly investigate how its flagship A.D.H.D. drug might treat it. The Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology devoted 136 pages of its January issue to papers describing the illness, with the lead paper claiming that the question of its existence "seems to be laid to rest as of this issue." The psychologist Russell Barkley of the Medical University of South Carolina, for 30 years one of A.D.H.D.'s most influential and visible proponents, has claimed in research papers and lectures that sluggish cognitive tempo "has become the new attention disorder." In an interview, Keith McBurnett, a professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco, and co author of several papers on sluggish cognitive tempo, said: "When you start talking about things like daydreaming, mind wandering, those types of behaviors, someone who has a son or daughter who does this excessively says, 'I know about this from my own experience.' They know what you're talking about." Yet some experts, including Dr. McBurnett and some members of the journal's editorial board, say that there is no consensus on the new disorder's specific symptoms, let alone scientific validity. They warn that the concept's promotion without vastly more scientific rigor could expose children to unwarranted diagnoses and prescription medications problems that A.D.H.D. already faces. "We're seeing a fad in evolution: Just as A.D.H.D. has been the diagnosis du jour for 15 years or so, this is the beginning of another," said Dr. Allen Frances, an emeritus professor of psychiatry at Duke University. "This is a public health experiment on millions of kids." Though the concept of sluggish cognitive tempo, or S.C.T., has been researched sporadically since the 1980s, it has never been recognized in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, which codifies conditions recognized by the American Psychiatric Association. The editor in chief of The Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, Charlotte Johnston, said in an email that recent renewed interest in the condition is what led the journal to devote most of one issue to "highlight areas in which further study is needed." Dr. Barkley declined repeated requests for interviews about his work and statements regarding sluggish cognitive tempo. Several of the field's other key researchers, Stephen P. Becker of Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, Benjamin B. Lahey of the University of Chicago and Stephen A. Marshall of Ohio University, also declined to comment on their work. Papers have proposed that a recognition of sluggish cognitive tempo could help resolve some longstanding confusion about A.D.H.D., which despite having hyperactivity in its name includes about two million children who are not hyperactive, merely inattentive. Some researchers propose that about half of those children would be better classified as having sluggish cognitive tempo, with perhaps one million additional children, who do not meet A.D.H.D.'s criteria now, having the new disorder, too. "These children are not the ones giving adults much trouble, so they're easy to miss," Dr. McBurnett said. "They're the daydreamy ones, the ones with work that's not turned in, leaving names off of papers or skipping questions, things like that, that impinge on grades or performance. So anything we can do to understand what's going on with these kids is a good thing." But Dr. McBurnett added that sluggish cognitive tempo remained many years from any scientific consensus: "We haven't even agreed on the symptom list that's how early on we are in the process." Steve S. Lee, an associate professor of psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles, who serves on the editorial board of The Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, said in an interview that he was conflicted over the journal's emphasis on sluggish cognitive tempo. He expressed concern that A.D.H.D. had already grown to encompass too many children with common youthful behavior, or whose problems are derived not from a neurological disorder but from inadequate sleep, a different learning disability or other sources. About two thirds of children with an A.D.H.D. diagnosis take daily medication such as Adderall or Concerta, which often quells severe impulsiveness and inattention but also carries risks for insomnia, appetite suppression and, among teenagers and adults, abuse or addiction. "The scientist part of me says we need to pursue knowledge, but we know that people will start saying their kids have it, and doctors will start diagnosing it and prescribing for it long before we know whether it's real," Dr. Lee said. "A.D.H.D. has become a public health, societal question, and it's a fair question to ask of S.C.T. We better pump the brakes more diligently." Dr. McBurnett recently conducted a clinical trial funded and overseen by Eli Lilly that investigated whether proposed symptoms of sluggish cognitive tempo could be treated with Strattera, the company's primary A.D.H.D. drug. (One of Strattera's selling points is that it is not a stimulant like Adderall and Concerta, medications more susceptible to abuse.) His study, published in The Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychopharmacology, concluded, "This is the first study to report significant effects of any medication on S.C.T." An Eli Lilly spokeswoman said in an email, "Sluggish cognitive tempo is one of many conditions that Lilly scientists continue to study to help satisfy unmet medical needs around the world." Representatives of the drug companies that make the best selling medications for A.D.H.D. Shire (extended release Adderall and Vyvanse), Novartis (Focalin) and Janssen (Concerta) said they are not currently conducting research into sluggish cognitive tempo. However, because the new condition shares so many symptoms with A.D.H.D., these products might easily be repositioned to serve the new market. Dr. Barkley, who has said that "S.C.T. is a newly recognized disorder," also has financial ties to Eli Lilly; he received 118,000 from 2009 to 2012 for consulting and speaking engagements, according to propublica.org. While detailing sluggish cognitive tempo in The Journal of Psychiatric Practice, Dr. Barkley stated that Strattera's performance on sluggish cognitive tempo symptoms was "an exciting finding." Dr. Barkley has also published a symptom checklist for mental health professionals to identify adults with the condition; the forms are available for 131.75 apiece from Guilford Press, which funds some of his research. Dr. Barkley, who edits sluggish cognitive tempo's Wikipedia page, declined a request to discuss his financial interests in the condition's acceptance. "I have no doubt there are kids who meet the criteria for this thing, but nothing is more irrelevant," Dr. Frances said. "The enthusiasts here are thinking of missed patients. What about the mislabeled kids who are called patients when there's nothing wrong with them? They are not considering what is happening in the real world." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
At the International CES show on Tuesday, Peloton unveiled a 3,995 treadmill. It includes a 32 inch screen for viewing the company's on demand fitness classes. The home fitness start up Peloton might sound faddish, like another in the parade of bougie tech lifestyle brands selling dubious sounding "disruption!" at millionaire prices. Its first product an internet connected, brushed steel spin bicycle equipped with a 22 inch touch screen sells for 2,000, and you still have to pay 39 a month to get any content to fill the screen. Peloton's next act ladles on extra extravagance at an even higher price. At the International CES trade show in Las Vegas on Tuesday, the company unveiled a treadmill. Called Peloton Tread, it has been in development for nearly two years and will begin shipping in the fall. Its design boasts exotic materials, enveloping surround sound, a running board that fairly glides under your feet, and a den size 32 inch screen. Its price: 3,995 a princely premium over a no frills home treadmill that might set you back about 500. In an industry dominated by smartphone apps, cloud services and cheap knockoffs, hardware companies have had a hard time getting traction. But Peloton said it did nearly 400 million in sales last year, up from about 170 million in 2016, and said it planned to reach profitability this year. It's done all this on the strength of a singular insight: The gadget itself isn't as important as the service. Peloton does not sell just a simple piece of hardware. Instead, the company spent tens of millions of dollars creating an inviting experience, complete with brand ambassador celebrities and high end retail locations. At the core of its business is a beguiling online service: Get on the bike, turn on the screen, and you are instantly connected with live fitness classes tailored to your preferences and athletic abilities. It's like having a personal trainer who comes to your house whenever you like. With its treadmill, Peloton is aiming for the fat middle of the global fitness industry. The path is fraught; lots of hardware start ups have hit trouble translating early success into mainstream permanence. On Monday, GoPro, the camera maker of choice among outdoor sports enthusiasts, cut its revenue forecast, announced a layoff, and said it would consider a sale. Peloton which has raised nearly 450 million from several investors, including Wellington Management and Fidelity, at a valuation of 1.25 billion surely faces hurdles in selling the Tread. The company plans to sell the treadmill on an installment plan, with a monthly price of 149, which makes it comparable to a high end gym membership and still pretty rich for many people. Peloton's treadmill is also bigger and louder than the bike, which might make it less palatable to apartment dwellers. And marketing the device could be tough. The company says the Tread is best suited for offering full body "boot camp" style exercises that you might do at a gym. That is, it's not just for running which is an odd line to push about a treadmill. Yet consider how Peloton revolutionized the spin bike. People have been trying to reinvent home fitness machines forever. But from the NordicTrack to the Bowflex, most of these devices suffered the same fatal flaw the novelty wore off, the guilt piled up, and soon you ended up with a very expensive laundry rack. Peloton solves the novelty problem in the same way Netflix does: It creates can't miss programming. Its classes, which are streamed from a studio in Manhattan, faithfully recreate the moody, devotional atmospherics of a boutique spin class. The experience is communal and interactive as you ride, you can see how you stack up against others in the class. But it's also more intimate and personalized than a spin class. The company produces more than a dozen classes every day in a variety of lengths, tailored to every workout style. The instructors are shot close up, and they often shout out the names and accomplishments of home riders, as if they are cheering you on directly. The bond between rider and instructor runs so deep that Peloton's instructors have become the sort of social media celebrities who are instantly mobbed on the street. "When you have the endorphins flowing and you're in people's homes three to seven times a week, there's a real familiarity that builds up and so, yeah, it's a little interesting when people stop me at the supermarket to say hi," said Robin Arzon, Peloton's vice president for fitness programming and its chief instructor. If this sounds over the top, you're right: The Peloton cult is real. That annoying friend who can't shut up about how SoulCycle is her church? Peloton groupies are kind of like that, only more insistent, because they also point out how convenient it is you can Peloton at any time without prebooking, without commuting, in any clothes you want. They are also likely to argue they are saving money, too: If you ride three times a week for a year, you'll pay about 16 per Peloton workout in your first year, cheaper than classes at many fitness studios. "Over 95 percent of the bikes we've ever sold are still paying subscriptions," Mr. Foley said. And here's a confession: I'm one of them. After hearing three different people in the tech industry sing the bike's praises last summer, I asked Peloton to send me a bike to review to see what the fuss was about. After three weeks, I couldn't give it up. I called up the company and handed over my credit card number. I've been a committed rider ever since. The one problem with the spin bike is that it does not offer a complete workout. Spinning is by nature a lower body, cardio heavy exercise, but there is a far larger audience of people who want a full body workout that combines weight training and cardio. This is the animating idea behind Peloton Tread. "We think only about half the workout will happen on the treadmill," Mr. Foley said. "You'll start with some jogging, perhaps sprints, then get off the treadmill, do curls, push ups, planks, then get on the treadmill and start the cycle again. When you're done, you'll have spent 40 minutes there and burned 700 calories, and every part of your body will feel energized." I stopped by Peloton's New York offices several times last fall to check on the development of the treadmill, which departs from tradition in several ways. Most treadmills are controlled with small buttons that are difficult to press while running at high speed. Peloton's uses two big knobs that look like the resistance knob on its bike a control mechanism that doesn't require any close fiddling. The company also spent many months engineering the treadmill's running deck. Unlike most other treadmills, whose track effectively pauses each time you step on it, Peloton's uses a series of slats that sit on ball bearings a mechanism that creates a springy, "frictionless" track that it says offers a more comfortable run. I can't tell you if this amounts to a significantly better treadmill. The device is still only a near final prototype, and it will be months before the company begins creating workouts. But remember, in the Peloton story, the gadget itself isn't as important as the service. Peloton's treadmill will be powered by the same irresistible content machine that powers its bike. For many who are already in the growing club, that alone might be enough of a reason to commit to it. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
A LONG ISLAND real estate developer has listed his octagon shaped penthouse at CitySpire, which the owner says has the highest terraces in New York City, for 100 million. Emboldened by the red hot market for trophy properties, Steven Klar, president of the Klar Organization, is listing the 8,000 square foot apartment for more than any other currently on the market in the city. "Art is what people are willing to pay for, and an apartment like this is like a piece of art," Mr. Klar said Wednesday while giving a tour of the penthouse, which has six bedrooms and nine bathrooms, and about 3,000 square feet of wraparound terrace space. Mr. Klar said he bought the apartment in 1993 as raw space for about 4.5 million, after banks took back the 814 foot tower from its original developer, Ian Bruce Eichner. The unit is spread out over three full floors, Nos. 73 to 75, with a guest suite on the 72nd floor. Mr. Klar said he had spent at least as much to renovate the space as he had to buy it. It became his Manhattan address, a place to hang his Napoleonic era artwork and to display (behind glass) several hundred of his lead miniature soldiers (he's an avid collector), spanning ancient Greek and Roman wars, Napoleonic battles and the American Civil War. Mr. Klar said that for family reasons, he had decided it was time to sell. His 5 year old son "could potentially get out on the terraces," he said. In the 17 years he has lived atop CitySpire, at 150 West 56th Street, he has watched from his terrace as the Time Warner Center, and then 15 Central Park West, and now One57, were constructed. Along the way, apartments in those buildings shattered city sales records. "I am looking at that and I am saying, 'They cannot go outside on the terrace and see the city of New York the way I do,' " Mr. Klar said. The terrace and the octagonal design are the defining features of the penthouse, which does not have high ceilings. Light streams in from all angles through the 135 windows, and one can see pretty much all of the bridges in the city from the apartment, along with a stunning view of the Fifth Avenue co ops and condos that line the park; they seem almost tiny from this height. None Testing the Limits: Only three of New York's 25 tallest residential buildings have completed safety tasks required by the city. The Downside to Life in a Supertall: 432 Park faces some significant design problems, and other luxury high rises may share its fate. Luxury Developers' Loophole: Soaring towers are able to push high into the sky because of a loophole in the city's labyrinthine zoning laws. An Evolving Skyline: The high rise building boom has transformed the city's skyline in recent years. Its impact will echo for years to come. Hidden Feats: Our critic looks at some supertall N.Y.C. buildings and how the ingenuity of engineers helped build landmarks. The 360 degree terraces on three floors, which are wide enough for one person to walk around comfortably, are the highest in the city, said Raphael De Niro, a broker with Prudential Douglas Elliman, who is listing the property with Victoria Logvinsky, also from Elliman. Wind and clouds are sometimes a nuisance, Mr. Klar said. When Pope John Paul II visited Central Park in 1995, "a cloudy, foggy day" prevented Mr. Klar and his wife from viewing the event from their terrace, he said. After it opened in 1988, CitySpire became a bit of a magnet for controversy. Mr. Eichner built it taller than zoning rules allowed. It also began to whistle so loudly that residents of nearby buildings complained. The city threatened daily fines. Developers finally silenced the noise by removing some louvers in a cooling tower to widen the channels through which the wind whistled. Lenders took the building back from Mr. Eichner when a housing downturn in the early 1990s slowed sales and left him with a lot of debt. The banks brought in Zeckendorf Realty to finish and then market the 75 unsold apartments. Mr. Klar's company was brought in to help, but he became so enamored of the penthouse space which was to have been a home for Mr. Eichner that he claimed it for himself. Now Mr. Klar is ready to find another Manhattan home. "This has been a part of my life," he said, "and it was a good part." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
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. Hundreds of protesters walked toward Cadman Plaza Park in Brooklyn on Wednesday night around 9 o'clock. Encountering a line of New York City police officers in riot gear, they chanted peacefully, hands in the air. Officers responded by beating them with nightsticks. Similar scenes have played out across New York in recent days. Even as the police struggle to prevent looting and other illegal activity, the city has sent scores of armored officers to contain and confront peaceful protesters. Video footage shows officers pushing, punching and beating people, pepper spraying people, hitting people with police vehicles. New Yorkers have taken to the streets of the city to demand an end to police brutality, to express their pain and their hope that their voices will be heard that their rights will be respected. All too often, the police have responded with more violence. New York's mayor, Bill de Blasio, is responsible for the city's failure to protect the safety of its residents. As evidence of police abuse has mounted, he has averted his eyes, insisting Thursday that the Police Department uses as "light a touch as possible." "We are doing everything from a perspective of restraint," he said at a news conference. Many police officers are performing with grace under difficult conditions; some have been injured in the line of duty. And it cannot be easy for men and women sworn to protect the public to hear themselves accused by demonstrators as threats to society. The Police Department also faces a genuine challenge in preventing lawless outbursts of looting that have left shopping streets in New York and other cities in ruins. But Mr. de Blasio appears unwilling to confront the reality that the department is failing to meet the demands of this moment. Officers have been allowed to behave in a manner that disgraces their mission to protect and serve, and violates the public trust. The mayor is allowing that to happen. Mr. de Blasio has escalated tensions by imposing a curfew on the city, a curfew that primarily seems to be serving to criminalize what would otherwise be lawful assemblies. The mayor defended the policy on Thursday, declaring, "There is a point where enough is enough." He added, "If officers say now is the point we need you to go home, it's time to go home." Mr. de Blasio may have the power to erect such arbitrary barriers to protest; he clearly does not have the wisdom to refrain from using it. So long as demonstrations are peaceful, the mayor and the police should stop and listen to the legitimate concerns of those they serve. It is abhorrent to instead respond to protests about police violence by beating protesters. The governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, also has shied away from the problem, insisting on Thursday that the police were not bludgeoning peaceful citizens "for no reason." "That's not a fact," he said. "They don't do that." If they did, he added, "it's wrong." What pressing responsibilities have so occupied these two officials that they do not have the time to make sure the safety of New Yorkers is protected and the rights of New Yorkers are respected? How is it possible that after so many reports of police misconduct, they still can't be bothered to supervise the police? These problems are hardly specific to New York. Police officers in cities across the country have subjected protesters, journalists and innocent bystanders to similar abuse. But the failure of Messrs. de Blasio and Cuomo to protect their constituents from police violence is a particularly painful betrayal. Mr. de Blasio campaigned on a promise to hold the Police Department accountable, particularly for the fair treatment of black and Hispanic New Yorkers. His signature 2013 campaign ad featured his black son, Dante de Blasio, promising voters that his father understood the dangers and pain too often faced by black people at the hands of the police. In recent days, both the mayor and the governor have walked a messy, head spinning line on the unrest in New York, defending the police in one breath, then acknowledging the need for reforms in another. The state's police unions have a long history of fiercely and successfully opposing necessary reforms. The clear message of these protests is that change cannot be deferred any longer. In a letter published in The Daily News this week, more than 200 current and former de Blasio administration officials said they "could not remain silent while the Administration we served allows the NYPD to turn our City into an occupied territory." They wrote, "Our former boss might not hear the cries for justice from Black and brown New Yorkers, but we do." The mayor has committed to modest reforms. He said he would sign a City Council bill that would make the use of chokeholds by the police a crime, but only if there were an exception for circumstances where the life of the officer was in danger. He has promised to investigate the use of police force against protesters in recent days. He has vowed to speed up the police disciplinary process. That's not nearly enough, but those debates can wait a few more days. The immediate imperative is to keep a firm hand on police behavior in this dangerous moment. The police commissioner serves at the pleasure of Mr. de Blasio. If he cannot maintain control of his officers, Mr. de Blasio must find someone who can. 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 |
Another high anthocyanin red smoothie, this one also delivers the benefits of red cabbage, a cruciferous vegetable high in antioxidant rich sulfur compounds, and almonds, a very good source of manganese and vitamin E. 1 cup mixed frozen berries, preferably with some cherries included in the mix Place all of the ingredients in a blender and blend for 1 full minute. Pour into a glass, garnish with an orange slice and enjoy. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
The sight of old spires squeezed between new towering high rises suggests the ability of churches and other houses of worship to hang on through block altering building booms. Yet the current cycle is drastically testing this staying power, say pastors, preservationists and city officials, even as the chance to develop church property is also presenting opportunities for reinvention. Facing a shortage of conventional parcels, developers are taking aim at structures with stained glass and bell towers, whose owners are often saddled with mounting bills and declining membership. But while the moves might seem mutually beneficial, controversy often clouds them. Some critics accuse developers of preying on struggling organizations, while others call churches the bad guys, betraying their mission by encouraging luxury housing and spurring gentrification in the process. Similarly, the 1906 brick parish house for the Madison Avenue Baptist Church on East 31st Street in NoMad has been replaced by 30E31, a 40 story, 42 unit condo from Ekstein Development Group and Pinnacle Group opening this fall. One bedrooms start at 1.7 million. And the Lagree Baptist Church, which had been based since 1975 in a Beaux Arts detailed former movie theater on West 125th Street, has been razed for Eleven Hancock, a glassy 12 story, 71 unit condo. Nortco Development, a Manhattan developer making its first push into Harlem, bought the property from Lagree in 2016 for 28.5 million. Priced from 585,000, Eleven Hancock offers mostly one and two bedrooms, with floor to ceiling windows, black toned kitchen faucets and quartz counters. A three level space aimed at big box retailers is also in the building, which cantilevers over a neighboring building. Jeff Krantz, an associate broker agent at Halstead Development Marketing who is handling sales, declined to say how many contracts had been signed since sales began in August. But Mr. Krantz, who has lived in Harlem for a decade, said church conversions are a common local sight. "They're doing deals to raise capital," he said. Baptist Church of the Redeemer at Flatbush, pictured here in the summer of 2015, had fallen into disrepair. "There was water coming in everywhere," the pastor said. With more than 900 sites in Manhattan currently classified as religious buildings a list that includes synagogues, rectories and convents, a few dozen lost buildings might not seem calamitous. But the number is significant enough to worry some city officials and other watchdog groups. Gale A. Brewer, the Manhattan Borough President, for one, has compiled a list of nearly 200 properties that could be vulnerable, perhaps because they aren't as big as they could be under zoning laws, which means they have loads of unused development rights, or air rights, to sell. Staff members from Ms. Brewer's office have been paying visits to the properties to determine whether they are in harm's way. On the list of potentially threatened sites , which Ms. Brewer's office is reluctant to broadcast over fears it might have the unintended effect of piquing developers' interest, are many structures that are relatively small, like Bethany Baptist Church, a diminutive red brick building on West 153rd Street in Harlem, and Saint Cyril's Church, a brownstone style structure for Slovenian Catholics on Saint Mark's Place in the East Village. But higher profile institutions are also a concern, like Park Avenue Synagogue, a Moorish style confection on East 87th Street on the Upper East Side that is outside the bounds of the area's historic districts. If churches do decide to play developer, Ms. Brewer hopes that affordable housing and not market rate units will result. To that end, in September she announced the formation of a task force made up of religious leaders, affordable housing developers and preservationists that will hold its first public hearing in November. Also working to balance solvency and morality is the Rev. Donna Schaper, the senior pastor at Judson Memorial Church in Greenwich Village, where five congregations share a single space to help defray costs. Three years ago, Ms. Schaper founded Bricks and Mortals, a consulting service that encourages parishes to rent out their rooms to soup kitchens, Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and musical performances, to help balance their books. A more sweeping solution would be to change zoning rules to let churches sell air rights to noncontiguous sites, like the 2017 Midtown East rezoning, which would be a dramatic expansion of existing rules. Otherwise, "churches are just going to sell to the highest bidder and become high end restaurants and high end buildings, which we don't need any more of in New York," Ms. Schaper said. But two years after its promised completion, the building is still not finished, which has created major financial hardship for Saint Luke, according to a fraud suit the church filed against Azimuth this summer. Not only has Azimuth failed to make good on about 21,000 a month in "delay payments," according to the suit, the church also has had to shell out 15,000 a month for its temporary home in a different part of Harlem, a storefront at Park Avenue and East 130th Street. "Azimuth, a sophisticated development company that has made its fortune by targeting low income neighborhoods for gentrification," the suit says, "has now used its expertise to take advantage of a church." Azimuth denies the charges, though Guido Subotovsky, the firm's president, said in an interview that the new building, a 12 story tower with either 23 rentals or condos, should be completed this fall. Mr. Subotovsky, who is also converting the Bronx Pentecostal Deliverance Center, a church in the Soundview neighborhood, into a 326 unit mixed use complex, says developers like him can offer churches much needed help. "There are so many churches that say they have 500 people but only 35 show up on Sunday," he said. "We can put them in a position where they can flourish for years to come." Pastors like Mr. Wilson of Second Canaan remain wary. To avoid the fate of Saint Luke, he chose not to merely be a purchaser in the new building, but signed on to actually to codevelop the site with a partner, Level One Holdings. The new church is on the ground floor of an eight story building located a block from Central Park. The 25 million project, known as 10 Lenox, will open this fall with 29 studios to three bedrooms, plus a roof deck with grills. Twelve of the 29 units, which start at 615,000, have gone into contract since April, according to a spokeswoman for Halstead, which is handling sales. But already, Second Canaan has tapped proceeds from its deal for a new bus and van, while also setting up an endowment for the 72 year old, 300 member organization, according to Mr. Wilson. In the mid 2000s, many houses of worship in Brooklyn, especially in neighborhoods with historic landmark protections, were converted into apartment buildings. This time around, developers are casting wider nets. Developers of market rate condos regularly phoned to get her to sell, including one persistent caller who disguised his voice on a second attempt, she said. Ultimately, she went with Mutual Housing Association of New York, a nonprofit that paid 5 million last year and is now building a 76 unit affordable complex on the site. "When you walk through the neighborhood, new apartments are going up on every block," Ms. Williams said. Going with affordable over market rate units "was a necessary response to gentrification." When completed in 2020, the building will feature a smaller nave that's a better fit for her 60 parishioners. But a soup kitchen that had been shuttered because of a lack of suitable space will be reinstated, she said. The church has been temporarily housed a few blocks away at the Emmanuel Church of God on Flatbush Avenue, near Foster Avenue. Not everybody is impressed. Twice, neighbors asked the city's Landmarks Preservation Commission to declare the 1920 church a landmark. But they were unsuccessful. Others took issue with the height of the new tower, which at nine stories, seems enormous compared with wood frame Victorians around the corner. "But everything in New York City is changing," Ms. Williams said, "and our change is in the direction of serving the underserved." Churches in need of basic repairs can turn to the Sacred Sites Program of the New York Landmarks Conservancy, an advocacy group. Since 1986, the program has awarded grants of up to 50,000 to hundreds of churches for things like patching roofs. Ann Isabel Friedman, the program's director, said she wished her funds had been tapped to fix the Church of the Redeemer, an 1866 bluestone building at 24 Fourth Avenue in Boerum Hill before it became too run down to repair. Besides informing churches about grant opportunities and offering them work space in Brooklyn Borough Hall, the office also invests in faith based development projects, Mr. Monrose said. "We're still the Borough of Churches," he said. After the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints outgrew its two story column fronted chapel in the Murray Hill section of Queens, near Flushing, it sought to build a soaring new facility on a residential block in nearby Linden Hill. Despite some local opposition to the construction of a church building on a street lined with houses, the city granted a zoning variance for the new chapel, which has a 92 foot steeple and which claimed three houses in order to be built. Rong Xin Realty, meanwhile, bought the old site for 27 million in 2018, where it is building Flushing Garden Condominiums, an eight story project with 131 one to two bedrooms, about half of which have balconies. Sales will start next year at the market rate building, which hopes to sell apartments for around 1,000 a square foot, said Benny Chen, a Rong Xin principal. The condo will open in 2021. "We got the last spot in Flushing," Mr. Chen said. Good deeds were on the mind of the leaders of the First Presbyterian Church of Jamaica, which has partnered with the Bluestone Organization, a for profit developer, on a 12 story, 174 unit affordable tower on a former church parking lot. Called the Tree of Life, the 74 million mid rise will have studios to three bedrooms, and feature solar panels and a roof deck, plus job training facilities for the public. Individuals with incomes as low as 32,000 can qualify to live at the project, which opens next summer. "We had the sense we could do more for the community," said the Rev. Patrick O'Connor, who heads a 500 member church that has continuously operated in Jamaica since 1662 and which currently offers a soup kitchen, recovery services and health screenings. Mr. O'Connor arrived at his decision to marry God and mammon, so to speak, after surveying more than 1,000 neighbors, who said what Jamaica was lacking was reasonably priced apartments. The Tree of Life, rising from property purchased by the church in 2008, didn't require the demolition of any historic structures on the church's tree shaded multi building campus. But the church did transfer air rights to the building, which is by far the tallest on its block. As Mr. O'Connor sees it, some churches rightfully deserve a bad rap for being too profit minded about real estate. But at the same time, the city has become so expensive for working class people that it has pushed churches to take action, which in many cases means putting shovels in the ground. "In a sense," he said, "it's forced churches to be better stewards of the resources that are available to them." For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: nytrealestate. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
Haley Messner and Tanner Cemper do not disagree that 2020 has been a difficult year. But for them, it's a tossup on whether 2019 might have been worse. Ms. Messner said she was "pretty homeless" for a while that year. Mr. Cemper, too, spent a solid part of it feeling he had skidded off the rails both financially and personally. Relief from what they call "the dark ages" would find them by Dec. 31, 2019, though not before they vowed to climb out of debt together. Ms. Messner, 29, and Mr. Cemper, 30, met on June 9, 2013 over beers with mutual friends at Bangkok Poco, a San Diego Thai restaurant. She had just graduated from San Diego State University and had a few weeks to kill before starting an internship in public relations. He graduated from San Diego State the year before and was settling into a career with Cemper Contracting, his family's construction business in Cardiff, Calif. "We instantly had this sarcastic back and forth," Ms. Messner said. It extended past the last sip of beer and into that summer, something that surprised them both. "Likewise, I just thought we had a fun day and I was ready to move on," Mr. Cemper said. Instead, Ms. Messner uncharacteristically texted Mr. Cemper a few days later. "It wasn't like me," she said. "To this day I ask myself why I did it." Whatever unknown forces were at work, Mr. Cemper had hoped they would continue. But he didn't let Ms. Messner know that until a few months later, when she moved out of one house and into another within San Diego. Mr. Cemper used his construction van to move her and the needle of their relationship: After she was settled into her new place, he asked her to be his girlfriend. "It was kind of old fashioned and great," Ms. Messner said. That fall, their twosome became a regular foursome. Ms. Messner's best friend and roommate, Kelsey Cecil, was dating her now husband, Matthew Cecil; he and Mr. Cemper became close. The couples spent weekends at area wine tastings and restaurants, with occasional road trips to visit Ms. Messner's parents, David and Tracey Messner, in Santa Barbara, Calif. Ms. Messner grew up there with a younger sister, Shelby. Her father is an aerospace engineer who moonlights as an Orange Theory exercise instructor; her mother is a bookkeeper and real estate agent. By late 2015, though, her relationship with the Cempers had intensified. "I was spending so much time with them it was weird," she said. Most of that time was spent in the hospital. Mrs. Cemper has congenital heart disease. From October 2015 to April 2016, she was hospitalized after complications from an open heart procedure. "We almost lost her," Mr. Cemper said. Every day, even over the holidays, she joined Mr. Cemper and his father to keep vigil at the hospital. Her devotion made Mr. Cemper, an only child, feel loved. In the spring, when Mrs. Cemper's health was improving, the couple found an apartment together in San Diego. "We had gotten a lot closer," Mr. Cemper said. Not close enough, though, to be transparent about their finances. "In my family, money is a private thing you don't talk about," Mr. Cemper said. For Ms. Messner, it was more a matter of avoiding a subject she had long considered an abstraction. "Because she's a bookkeeper, my mom put me in money camp as a kid," she said. "I hated it. I didn't want to go back the second day." Beyond the basics of bill paying, finances felt like a foreign language she didn't want to learn. "I was a publicist. I thought I didn't need to know about money." When Mr. Cemper proposed on a February 2018 trip to the Phi Phi Islands in Thailand with their best friends the Cecils, they still hadn't talked openly about money. Ms. Messner's stunned but ecstatic yes to Mr. Cemper's sunrise proposal was premature, something they would not realize until they started planning an Aug. 24, 2019, wedding for 100 in Santa Barbara. "It was really just an average wedding, nothing lavish," she said, adding that her parents were contributing toward the wedding costs, estimated to run around 35,000. But by the time they were ready to hire a photographer, cracks in the foundation of their relationship were starting to show. "At first I didn't put together that behind the scenes Tanner was really stressed about money," Ms. Messner said. "Then he was working double and triple time to manage things, and it became a conversation." What emerged in that conversation was that Mr. Cemper had maxed out a credit card, and that both were paying off multiple student loans. Together, they owed more than 30,000. "One day I was like, 'How much debt do you actually have?,'" Ms. Messner said. "Then he started opening up, and it was like, wow, we're about to go into this wedding with a lot of financial issues. It went from this happy thing to freak out mode." Sign up for Love Letter and always get the latest in Modern Love, weddings, and relationships in the news by email. That summer, Ms. Messner and Mr. Cemper moved from their San Diego apartment into a spare room in Mr. Cemper's parents' house, a money saving strategy. "It was not the most comfortable situation, but I felt it needed to be done," Ms. Messner said. Their fights over finances escalated, and led to a reckoning that maybe they shouldn't get married the following summer. Two months in, they broke up and called off their wedding. Late in 2018, Ms. Messner moved out. Her co workers at Fast Forward, an events company where she was by then a public relations manager, came to her rescue with more than just moral support. "They were like family," she said. "One of my bosses was like, 'Come live in our extra room,' so I moved in with him and his wife for eight weeks," she said. Other colleagues and friends took her in afterward. Mr. Cemper, home with his parents, was a wreck. "It was a life changing experience," he said. But it brought them both clarity. "When Tanner's mom was sick I didn't realize he wasn't working much and basically living off a credit card," Ms. Messner said. "It was a game changer," Mr. Cemper said. Ms. Messner recalled a class in which Mr. Cemper scissored his credit cards on the spot. "I still get teary thinking about it," she said. "It was the first time we were on the same page, moneywise." The day of their originally planned wedding, on Aug. 24, 2019, was difficult. But both had by then adopted a belt tightening strategy. They confided in friends about the struggles that led to their called off wedding and asked for support. "We turned down a lot of invitations for things that cost a lot, like vacations," Ms. Messner said. "That's hard to do when you're in your 20s." But friends, including the Cecils, had their backs. "Instead of going out to restaurants, they were cooking at home and having wine at home, so we'd join them," Ms. Cecil said. "Their plans were just as fun." By the end of 2019, they were closing in on eliminating all their debt. At the Cecils' New Year's Eve party in Las Vegas, to which the couple drove instead of flew to save money, Mr. Cemper proposed again with the ring Ms. Messner had given back when they broke up. At the stroke of midnight, "I pulled her aside and said, 'I'm ready to do this if you are,'" Mr. Cemper said. With a smile as bright as the Vegas skyline, she said yes. "We were especially ready to put 2019 behind us," she said. The new year, of course, would come with its own challenges. A budget conscious wedding they had planned for 100 guests on June 27 had to be canceled in late April because of the coronavirus. But an even more budget friendly wedding emerged this one on Sept. 26 for only 20 close friends and family members in the Santa Barbara back yard of Susan Millhollan, Ms. Messner's grandmother. Ms. Messner, in an ivory mermaid style gown with a plunging neckline, walked down a grassy aisle with her father to two bridesmaids holding lush bouquets. Mr. Cemper, in a tan suit, escorted his mother down the aisle before joining two groomsmen. The Cecils, who led the ceremony, awaited them. "We're here to celebrate one of the best things that's going to happen in 2020," Mr. Cecil said. "You have already worked so hard on your relationship," Ms. Cecil said. "We are in awe of you two." After Ms. Messner and Mr. Cemper took turns promising to fill each other's hearts and feed each other's souls, they read handwritten vows. "Back in 2015 when my mom was in critical care, you never left my side," Mr. Cemper said. "You're the most caring person I've met in my life. I promise to show you for the rest of my life how much I love you." Ms. Messner said she never expected to fall in love with Mr. Cemper. "And I certainly didn't expect three wedding dates and a global pandemic to be thrown into the mix," she said. Just before Ms. Cecil, a deputized as a marriage commissioner by Santa Barbara for the event, pronounced them married, Ms. Messner promised to always encourage Mr. Cemper and to help him find the positive. "I promise to love you from this day forward. You will never walk alone." Virtual Celebrating After the ceremony, Ms. Messner and Mr. Cemper joined 133 guests on Zoom for a champagne toast featuring virtual hugs and blown kisses. Later, they gathered with their in person guests for a reception in the backyard of Ms. Messner's parents, also in Santa Barbara. Looking Ahead Before they read their vows, Ms. Messner and Mr. Cemper placed sealed love letters to each other in a locked box to be opened on their 10th anniversary. They plan to write each other new letters in 2030, to be opened on their 20th. Fiscally Fine In June, Ms. Messner said a reluctant goodbye to her colleagues at Fast Forward to accept a new position at You Need a Budget, a company that teaches budgeting skills. "Something about the job description resonated with me," she said. Continue following our fashion and lifestyle coverage on Facebook (Styles and Modern Love), Twitter (Styles, Fashion and Weddings) and Instagram. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
The more usual scene in Saudi Arabia is that a wealthy killer saves himself by offering the victim's family big sums of blood money while raising the money from relatives as an act of "charity" and creating a lucrative business for middlemen. The overall result is a culture that "mitigates the atrocious behavior of killers and criminals," as a Saudi journalist, Hani Alhadri, described last year. In 1990, the problem was exported to Pakistan, with its Qisas and Diyat Ordinance, a law that made blood money a legal option to close cases of murder. It soon proved to be a perfect cover for so called honor killings: Once a family decided to kill their daughter for their twisted notion of "honor," the brother could do the job, and the father could simply "pardon" him. In 2012, Pakistan was shocked by the story of Shahzeb Khan, a young university student who protected his sisters from drunken thugs, only to be killed by them. But the thugs' powerful family threatened Mr. Khan's poor family that they would kill the Khan daughters as well unless the Khans accepted blood money to close the case. Cases like those have led a Pakistani scholar, Hassan Javid, to call for ending all blood money laws, which are in effect in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Iran, because they "provide the rich and powerful with the means by which to evade responsibility for any crimes that they might commit." However, there is a major obstacle to such legal reform: the notion of blood money comes from the Quran, and for some Muslims, that ends any discussion. But those Muslims are missing something important: The Quran, a scripture with a human context of the seventh century, appealed to a very different society, in which blood money served a very different purpose. We can understand this context through The Great Exegesis by the 12th century Sunni scholar Fakhr al Din al Razi: Before Islam, Arabia was a war zone of tribes, lacking any central authority, police force or court system. Murder among these tribes was punished with "qisas," the principle of "life for a life, eye for an eye." However, tribes had different claims to "honor," and the haughtier ones demanded two or more lives for one of their fallen. This led to disputes and blood feuds that went on for generations. That is why, as the Islamic history expert Montgomery Watt, alluding to a custom among early Anglo Saxons, noted: "The wiser and more progressive men of the time seem to have recognized the advantages of substituting a blood wit for the actual taking of a life." Which is exactly what the Quran did. It authorized the law of retaliation, but also added: "But if any remission is made by the brother of the slain, then grant any reasonable demand, and compensate him with handsome gratitude, this is a concession and a mercy from your Lord." (2:178) | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
The costume designer Julian Day didn't simply copy the star's outfits over the years (or those glasses dozens of pairs were crafted for the film). To say that Elton John is unmasked in the biopic "Rocketman" would be a grave understatement. He's dehorned, his wings cut off, feathers plucked and rhinestones popped off, until, at the end of this musical romp through the rock star's early career, we're left looking at a man in a simple black Puma tracksuit and wire rimmed glasses the antithesis of the bejeweled mad hatter that was his stage persona in the 1970s. In flashbacks, the director Dexter Fletcher deconstructs the rise of Reginald Dwight, the shy, neglected schoolboy, into Elton John, the addict millionaire (played by Taron Egerton). At the same time, Julian Day, the movie's costume designer, is building John's wardrobe, his looks growing more elaborate with each success. At John's zenith in that era, the screen becomes almost a frenzy of platform shoes, silk kimonos, feather trimmed lame jackets and rhinestone covered headdresses, accompanied, of course, by outrageous glasses. And almost all of it was built from scratch for the film. "Julian was just brilliant," Elton John (the real one) told Melena Ryzik in an interview with The New York Times. "They weren't copies, but they were so like the things I wore, not just onstage. He observed my life during the '70s very closely and he got it right, without being imitative to a boring degree." Read the interview with Elton John and Bernie Taupin. The pop star reviewed the costumes and "could have passed on anything at anytime," Day said by phone from Nice, France . "But he just let us get on with our jobs." Egerton is first shown walking into a rehab session, sweat pouring from under a flame embroidered yellow orange Lycra jumpsuit, topped by a rhinestone cap with black horns and balancing a shoulder harness attached to red and black feathered wings so big they'd make the most experienced Mardi Gras queen swoon. The sweat was real, Day said of the often two hour process of getting Egerton into costume. Elton has turned into a drug and sex addicted devil, but his wings are heart shaped and so are his glasses in a nod to his quest for love, Day continued. "He hasn't really been loved properly by anyone at this point in his life, save for his grandma, and his journey to rock bottom is the result of that." Poring over Elton John's personal archives, Day came across a picture of John as a child, dressed as a cowboy. That inspired him to create a custom western wear suit for Egerton, and though we see hints of the cowboy in many looks, that outfit didn't actually make it into the movie. Still, the image was an important starting point for the designer and a reminder of the importance of costume in the star's life, Day said. The star's sexual awakening in the movie coincides with his first booking in the United States, at the Troubadour in Los Angeles. Egerton enters in a vintage inspired T shirt printed with a giant tube of lipstick. Shortly after, he's wearing another T shirt with giant red lips surrounding a large cherry. The designs reflect the liberated, graphic era of the sexual revolution '70s, Day said, adding, "The lipstick is meant to be phallic. And, well, Elton had popped his cherry." Inspired by pop artists like Roy Lichtenstein, Day had the shirts custom printed by a graphic designer. "We're getting away from subtlety, away from England. This is American fashion and Elton is really coming out." Egerton wears more than 70 pairs of glasses in the movie, and almost half were custom built by Day and other designers. Gucci, a label that had always factored heavily in John's personal wardrobe, even contributed a few. (Gucci's spring 2018 clothing line was also influenced by John's stage looks.) Several of the most memorable glasses, Day said, came from the eyewear specialist David Cox, one of Britain's last handmade frame makers and the man behind Dame Edna Everage's (Barry Humphries) fancy spectacles. "When I first called him, he wasn't sure he was up to the challenge," Day said of Cox. "He didn't think it was his style, that he could do it. Then he ended up making several pairs." Because he's an extravagant dresser in everyday life, Egerton's "stage gear," as he calls it in the movie, had to be "taken up a notch," Day said, to give them contrast onscreen. The designer Bob Mackie, who created many of John's looks on and offstage, was a big influence. "Mackie and others were designing for people like Cher and Diana Ross living goddesses. And maybe that applied here as well," Day said. A pair of gold winged platform boots (a la the Greek god Hermes), also get a decent amount of screen time. In the '70s, John wore similar pairs made by Mr Freedom, a clothing and lifestyle brand of the decade that mixed bohemian style with theatrical costumes into over the top streetwear. The real boots were more rounded, "so I sharpened these up a bit, made them a bit more 21st century," Day said. John loved them so much, Day had a second pair made as a gift. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week's most notable new songs and videos and anything else that strikes them as intriguing. This week, Prince's original 1984 recording of a song best known as a Sinead O'Connor hit, three takes on reggaeton pop crossover, and a Grant Green cover of a James Brown track. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at theplaylist nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once a week blast of our pop music coverage. Prince's estate has released his original 1984 studio recording of "Nothing Compares 2 U," the song that became an international hit for Sinead O'Connor in 1990. Prince recorded every part except some backing vocals (by Paul Peterson and Susannah Melvoin) and a saxophone solo (by Eric Leeds), and it's a mystery why he didn't release it initially himself. It's already a crescendo of heartache underscored by everyday details, a finished song. (Ms. O'Connor's version hollowed out the arrangement, amplifying the loneliness, and added a crucial touch an upward leap when she sings "Nothing.") The video clip uses rehearsal footage of Prince dancing with his bands: strutting, kicking, spinning, doing splits, all in his high heeled boots. While the images distract from the song, they're a reminder of his physical presence joyful and, yes, incomparable. JON PARELES It's been just under a year since a suicide bomber killed 22 people leaving an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, England; the victims ranged in age from 8 to 51. From the title, Ms. Grande's first new song since the attack "No Tears Left to Cry" would seem to be a ballad about emotional exhaustion and the long toll of trauma. It is ... not that. Instead, Ms. Grande delivers neutered British influenced dance pop with an occasional sprinkled lyric "We way too fly to partake in all this hate/We out here vibing" that scans more as discourtesy than tribute. JON CARAMANICA As Anteloper, the drummer Jason Nazary and the trumpeter Jaimie Branch steer their acoustic instruments through an atmosphere of electric whorls and beats and grounding tones. There's nothing distant or bashful about those digital sounds, but it's the analog playing that provides clarity and direction (even as Ms. Branch maintains her aversion to smooth, linear phrasing). "Oryx," the opening track from Anteloper's debut album, "Kudu," begins with a gargle of static and high tones; Mr. Nazary starts an irregular pattern on the snare drum and hi hat, and Ms. Branch's trumpet comes swirling in close behind. Eventually she starts on a wagging, anticipation building melody, almost songlike. Just as things are about to dissolve into a haze again, a Moog arrives with an synth pop hook, inviting a pithy, soulful trumpet statement on the way out bolstered, of course, by an octave pedal and a fleet of acid effects. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO The pandemic has been a time of renewal and reinvention for Taylor Swift. After releasing two quarantine albums, the singer is in the process of releasing the rerecordings of her first six albums. None A Fight for Her Masters: Revisit the origin story of Swift's rerecordings: a feud with the powerful manager Scooter Braun. Pandemic Records: In 2020, Ms. Swift released two new albums, "Folklore" and "Evermore." In debuting a new sound, she turned to indie music. Fearless: For the release of "Fearless (Taylor's Version)," the first of the rerecordings, Times critics and reporters dissected its sound and purpose. Reshifting the Power: The new 10 minute version of a bitter breakup song from 2012 can be seen as a woman's attempt to fix an unbalanced relationship by weaponizing memories. How would you like your reggaeton pop crossover? a) At the mercy of a mid tier former British boy bander who greasily sings, "Your hips roll, you do the calypso" b) Delivered in English as part of a cravenly calculated collaboration with an electronic music producer and a pair of endlessly flexible rappers This may well become the year of true mix and match Latin influenced pop, with lesser artists looking to appear progressive in the post "Despacito" haze. So far, few of these efforts have truly worked (and Pitbull was doing this years ago, to little recognition or respect). Of this latest crop, the correct choice, in so much as there may be one, is b. But maybe it's really d) Let's call the whole thing off. Grant Green's guitar style is one of jazz's simple pleasures: stout and crisp; articulated in strong, single note lines or little spinning helixes of harmony. In his own unflashy way, Green by the end of the 1960s was doing a lot to explode the divisions that the recording industry had helped to establish in the landscape of black music. The albums he made for Blue Note covered hard bop and bossa nova, molasses dripping blues and earnest funk. On "Funk in France: From Paris to Antibes (1969 1970)," a new archival release out Saturday, Green covers James Brown's "I Don't Want Nobody to Give Me Nothing (Open the Door, I'll Get It Myself)," managing to sound down home, au courant and prescient all at once. Listen to his darkly seductive riffs here caustic minor phrases over Larry Ridley's single, repeated bass note and you can easily hear the seeds being planted for Jeff Parker's brand of beat driven contemporary jazz. G.R. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
Shakespeare might be right that "a rose by any other name would smell as sweet," but the leaders of New Jersey's largest museum felt that changing its name was an important part of shaping its identity. The Newark Museum announced on Wednesday that it would now be known as the Newark Museum of Art. Linda Harrison, the museum's chief executive and director, explained that the decision to change its name was driven by both practical and philosophical considerations. Surveys conducted by the museum revealed that a large portion of its prospective audience was confused about what type of museum the Newark Museum was. "The data really helped drive home that we want to be clear and have people be clear about what we are and what they can expect," she said in an interview. Among the 110 year old museum's most significant holdings are its collection of Tibetan art, considered to be one of the most significant in the Western Hemisphere, and its collection of American art, which includes work from the colonial era and the 19th century Hudson River School of painting as well as modern pieces by Edward Hopper , Georgia O'Keeffe and others. But for Ms. Harrison, who became the museum's eighth director early this year , emphasizing art isn't just a way to publicize the museum's rich collections. "We want the museum to now be an active hub, an ecosystem where art begins and drives conversations about big ideas and social issues," she said. This approach, she added, is aimed at making the museum more welcoming to a broad range of visitors. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
The German finance minister, Wolfgang Schauble, left, and Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner met Monday on the North Sea island of Sylt. LONDON Borrowing costs for Spain and Italy eased once again on Monday as officials in the region continued voicing their commitment to supporting the euro currency union. The German finance minister, Wolfgang Schauble, and the United States Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, issued a joint statement expressing confidence in euro zone members' efforts to revamp their economies after meeting on the North Sea island of Sylt. And Jean Claude Juncker, Luxembourg's prime minister and the head of the Eurogroup of 17 euro zone finance ministers, added his support in comments published Monday in Le Figaro in France and Suddeutsche Zeitung in Germany. "The euro zone is at a point where it must prove, with all its means, its determination to guarantee stability," Mr. Juncker said, adding that "no one should doubt the collective will of the 17 countries." Mr. Geithner met Monday evening in Frankfurt with the president of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi, who incited a market rally last Thursday by saying the central bank would do "whatever it takes" to support the euro. In fact, given the three session rally in European stocks since then, the market could be set up for a significant drop if there was no sign of a big move after the central bank's governing council meeting on Thursday. If anything, the European tour by Mr. Geithner is a visible reminder that the euro crisis, which began in early 2010, is having global repercussions. 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. Mr. Draghi is trying to win support for a move by the central bank to help Italy and Spain finance government debt at lower rates than the bond markets had been allowing lately. Since he stated his intention, the Italian treasury was able to auction 4.73 billion euros, or 5.79 billion, worth of five and 10 year bonds at reduced costs on Monday. The yield, or interest rate, paid on 10 year debt was 5.96 percent, down from 6.19 percent on June 28, while five year bonds were priced to yield 5.29 percent, compared with 5.84 percent last month. In market trading, Spain's 10 year bond yield fell Monday, to 6.53 percent, nearly a full percentage point lower than where it traded last week before Mr. Draghi's pledge of support. But pledges and investor enthusiasm cannot mask fundamental problems. The difficulties confronting Spain, which is imposing strict measures to curb its deficit while dealing with a banking crisis, were underlined Monday when new data showed that it had slid deeper into recession in the second quarter. The Spanish economy shrank 0.4 percent from the previous quarter, after contracting 0.3 percent in the first. The economy was 1 percent smaller than it had been a year earlier, according to the data. And in Greece, which is still trying to secure its next installment of bailout money from international lenders, a meeting of leaders of the coalition government Monday evening ended without a final decision on the 11.5 billion euros in budget savings for 2013 and 2014. The cuts have been demanded by the creditors in exchange for further rescue aid for Greece. The two junior partners in the tripartite coalition are reluctant to impose further cuts to pensions and social benefits on austerity weary Greeks. The office of the Greek prime minister, Antonis Samaras, released no comment immediately. Envoys representing the troika of Greece's international lenders the European Central Bank, the European Commission and the International Monetary Fund announced Sunday that they were extending their mission to Athens indefinitely to help government leaders complete a "credible package" of savings. Over the last two years, the troika has given Greece two loan deals worth 240 billion euros but has expressed frustration at the Greek authorities' slow adoption of overhauls they had promised in return for the aid. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Global Business |
Hundreds of Google employees, upset at the company's decision to secretly build a censored version of its search engine for China, have signed a letter demanding more transparency to understand the ethical consequences of their work. In the letter, which was obtained by The New York Times, employees wrote that the project and Google's apparent willingness to abide by China's censorship requirements "raise urgent moral and ethical issues." They added, "Currently we do not have the information required to make ethically informed decisions about our work, our projects, and our employment." The letter is circulating on Google's internal communication systems and is signed by about 1,400 employees, according to three people familiar with the document, who were not authorized to speak publicly. The internal activism presents another obstacle for Google's potential return to China eight years after the company publicly withdrew from the country in protest of censorship and government hacking. China has the world's largest internet audience but has frustrated American tech giants with content restrictions or outright blockages of services including Facebook and Instagram. It is also the latest example of how Google's outspoken work force has agitated for changes to strategy. In April, the internet company's employees spoke out against its involvement in a Pentagon program that uses artificial intelligence to improve weaponry. By June, Google had said it would not renew a contract with the Pentagon for A.I. work. Google's interest in bringing search back to China came to the forefront earlier this month, when reports surfaced that the company was working on a search app that restricts content banned by Beijing. The project, known internally as Dragonfly, was developed largely in secret, prompting outrage among employees who worried they had been unwittingly working on technology that would help China withhold information from its citizens. "We urgently need more transparency, a seat at the table, and a commitment to clear and open processes: Google employees need to know what we're building," the letter said. The letter also called on Google to allow employees to participate in ethical reviews of the company's products, to appoint external representatives to ensure transparency and to publish an ethical assessment of controversial projects. The document referred to the situation as a code yellow, a process used in engineering to address critical problems that impact several teams. Google declined to comment on the letter. It has said in the past that it will not comment on Dragonfly or "speculation about future plans." Late on Thursday, employees pressed Google's chief executive, Sundar Pichai, and other management about Dragonfly at a weekly staff meeting. As of late Wednesday, one of the top questions on an internal software system called Dory, which lets employees vote for the queries that executives should answer at the meeting, asked whether Google had lost its ethical compass, said people who had reviewed the questions. Other questions on Dory asked directly about the Dragonfly project and specific information that may be censored by the Chinese government, such as air pollution data. "If we were to do our mission well, we are to think seriously about how to do more in China," Mr. Pichai said in the staff meeting, audio of which was obtained by The Times. "That said, we are not close to launching a search product in China." Mr. Pichai and Sergey Brin, a co founder of Google, stopped answering questions about Dragonfly after seeing their answers posted on Twitter. This week's staff meeting was the first opportunity for Google's work force to ask executives about Dragonfly, because the meeting was not held last week. The absence of a gathering the result of a regularly scheduled break in the summer, according to a company spokesman, Rob Shilkin led to fears among employees that leadership was becoming less transparent following several controversies over Google's government work. Google has traditionally been more responsive to employee concerns and more transparent about future projects and inner workings than other major technology companies, inviting questions from workers at its staff meetings and encouraging internal debate. The internal dissent over Dragonfly comes on the heels of the employee protests over Google's involvement in the Pentagon project to use artificial intelligence. After Google said it would not renew its contract with the Pentagon, it unveiled a series of ethical principles governing its use of A.I. In those principles, Google publicly committed to use A.I. only in "socially beneficial" ways that would not cause harm and promised to develop its capabilities in accordance with human rights law. Some employees have raised concerns that helping China suppress the free flow of information would violate these new principles. In 2010, Google said it had discovered that Chinese hackers had attacked the company's corporate infrastructure in an attempt to access to the Gmail accounts of human rights activists. The attack, combined with government censorship, propelled Google to pull its search engine from the country. The exit from China was a seminal moment for the company a symbol of its uncompromising idealism captured by Google's unofficial motto of "Don't Be Evil." At the time, Chinese internet users marked the loss of Google's search engine by laying flowers at the company's Beijing offices in what became known as an "illegal flower tribute." A possible re entry to China, according to current and former employees, is a sign of a more mature and pragmatic company. Google has maintained a significant presence in China even though its flagship services are not accessible in the country. Last year, Google announced plans for a research center in China focused on artificial intelligence. And it has introduced translation and file management apps for the Chinese market. Google now has more than 700 employees in China. Google's work on Dragonfly is not a guarantee that its search engine will be welcomed back to China. The government would have to approve its return and it has kept American technology firms like Facebook at arm's length, opting instead to work closely with homegrown internet behemoths. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
The European Championship, second only to the World Cup in importance and value in international soccer, will be postponed until 2021, tournament organizers decided on Tuesday. Hours later, the organizers of the Copa America, South America's continental championship, which was scheduled to run concurrently with the Euros, announced that they would do the same, moving their event set for Argentina and Colombia this summer back a year. The move by the governing body for soccer in Europe, UEFA, will clear the month of summer dates blocked out for the tournament, known as Euro 2020, and could allow national leagues that have been suspended because of the coronavirus outbreak to complete their seasons. Officials from Conmebol, the South American confederation that organizes the Copa America, said they had made the decision to delay their championship to try to avoid the spread of the coronavirus, which is already present in several of its member countries. "It has not been easy to make this decision," Conmebol said in a statement, "but we must safeguard at all times the health of our athletes and of all the agents who are part of the great family of South American football." Though the decisions have been announced, they still must be ratified by FIFA, which will hold a conference call including President Gianni Infantino and the heads of soccer's confederations on Wednesday. "Cooperation, mutual respect and understanding must be the guiding principles for all decision makers to have in mind at this crucial moment in time," Infantino said in a statement. He said he planned to speak with the Chinese government about postponing the newly expanded Club World Cup, which was set to be the first major men's soccer tournament to be played there, next summer. The event, Infantino said, could now be played at an alternate date in 2021, 2022 or 2023. Hours after the Euros announcement, UEFA said it had committed to finishing domestic club leagues by June 30, in places where it would be possible. It also said that European club competitions would share match dates with domestic leagues, meaning Champions League games, which normally take place midweek, could be played on the weekends. The decision to delay the Euros and all other matches in Europe came after a series of video conferences involving leaders from UEFA and representatives of clubs, leagues and the global players' union. With so much disruption, including club seasons that have been suspended midyear, officials appear to have concluded that priority should be given to those domestic competitions and not to a quadrennial tournament that had not yet begun even one as important as the Euros. Moving the European Championship back a year will have ripple effects on the international soccer calendar. Beyond the Club World Cup, the women's Euros, which had been scheduled for 2021, will now be moved back to 2022, according to a person familiar with the decision, though the organization made no official comment on its future competitions. UEFA also said all events and matches (including friendlies) for its clubs and national teams for both men and women were postponed until further notice. "It was important that, as the governing body of European football, UEFA led the process and made the biggest sacrifice," Ceferin said. "Moving Euro 2020 comes at a huge cost for UEFA but we will do our best to ensure that the vital funding for grassroots, women's football and the development of the game in our 55 countries is not affected." Norway's national federation was the first to confirm a final decision had been made about the Euros, posting on its official Twitter feed that the championships would be played between June 11 and July 11 next year. Speculation about the fate of Euro 2020, which crowns the European men's national team champion, had been building for weeks as the spread of the virus started cutting a swath through the sporting calendar. This year's championship was to be the first in the event's history to be played in 12 cities across Europe, rather than in one or two countries. While the postponement allows some breathing room for domestic leagues to be completed, there is no timetable for when those leagues can restart. Several countries in Europe are in various states of lockdown, with emergency measures that have closed businesses and, in the cases of Italy, Spain and France, restricted citizens to their homes. Since suspending its two major club competitions last week the Champions League and the Europa League UEFA's leadership has been weighing complex scenarios that would best allow those competitions to be completed. It quickly became apparent that insisting that Euro 2020 take place in June would make it all but impossible for domestic competitions to finish. Failing to complete those domestic seasons which may go unfinished even with the European Championship postponement would unleash a cascading list of problems for organizers around the Continent, not least defining league winners, deciding which teams will be promoted and relegated for next season, and sorting out which teams qualify for the next edition of the Champions League and Europa League. All of those decisions have significant financial consequences for the clubs involved. Ceferin, UEFA's president, had led a conference call on Tuesday from his home in Slovenia, which included leaders of trade bodies for the top leagues and the clubs, as well as representatives from the global players' union, FIFPro. That was followed by a second call with officials from Europe's 55 national federations many of which are heavily reliant on the money UEFA generates from the quadrennial European Championship and events like the Champions League, which is played every season. The decision to postpone the Euros was finally decided through an exchange of emails between members of UEFA's executive committee. During the meeting it was decided to set up two separate working groups. One will deal with the complex calendar modifications required, and a second will discuss how to handle the inevitable financial consequences of the postponement. Canceling the Euros an event that UEFA had expected to generate more than 2.5 billion and one for which organizers had already received about 30 million ticket requests is a complicated matter. The tournament was to be played in multiple venues, from Azerbaijan to Ireland,, with the semifinals and final at Wembley Stadium in London. That meant agreeing to contracts with several different regional and national governments, and dedicating about 400 UEFA staff members to the event. UEFA estimates the cost of cancellation as up to 400 million euros. Before Tuesday's decision, UEFA officials had combed through various contracts and spoke with other main stakeholders, including broadcast partners, to make sure that postponement would not expose the organization in an unexpected way. Still, the decision is likely to cost the governing body millions in lost revenue. Domestic soccer took priority in the end because of the possibility of insolvency and the potential impact on the wider soccer economy especially for players and officials not contracted to the biggest and richest teams. Estimates for Germany alone indicate that more than 60,000 people are employed directly through the sport. The decision also allows clubs to take stock of the repercussions of the virus, which has already led to some of the highest profile players and teams being placed in isolation, including the 13 time European club champion Real Madrid, the Italian giant Juventus and a quarter of the clubs in the English Premier League. Some federation officials have also announced that they have contracted the virus. For several weeks there had been a confused response from the soccer world, with some games being played as though nothing had changed, while others were moved behind closed doors, until finally there was no option to play on. The Premier League in England, the sport's richest domestic league, was among the last to act. That led to frustration and fury among some of the players. In a column for The Sunday Times, a London based newspaper, the former Manchester United star Wayne Rooney criticized the soccer authorities for treating players like "guinea pigs" and for not sharing information about why they were being asked to play on while other European leagues had been suspended. Damiano Tommasi, a former Roma player and the head of the players' union in Italy, said something similar when games were initially pushed behind closed doors and not canceled. A major lingering issue in the disruption to the soccer calendar is player contracts, which typically run through the end of June. That means players in the last year of their deals would be out of contract should the season run into July or beyond. Representatives of FIFPro have called for there to be temporary extensions given the extraordinary circumstances. Smaller clubs have also called for financial assistance to allow them to be able to make payroll. There also exists the possibility that seasons might have to be abandoned altogether. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
The Great State of Pennsylvania? No. The Greatest State. Also, Not a State. None Ask anyone from Pennsylvania and they'll tell you they're from Pennsylvania: the fifth largest state by population; second state admitted to the union; one of only four states that is actually a commonwealth, which is the same as being a state, except it's actually a commonwealth; longtime home of Benjamin Franklin (not technically his birthplace but definitely his main thing that he loved); the birthplace of Patti LaBelle, Sharon Stone and others; a place that is wider, geographically wider, than you think (roughly 300 miles east to west). For whatever reason, that portion of the United States that is not Pennsylvania tends not to find Pennsylvania riveting. But now, as the anxious nation awaits the final tally of votes in the 2020 presidential election, all eyes are glued to Georgia, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Arizona or, as people from Pennsylvania interpret it: to Pennsylvania. Although Pennsylvania (home state of Meek Mill and James Stewart) has long been regarded as an election swing state due to the heterogenous political composition of its residents, the extra attention paid to Pennsylvania this election cycle is the result of an imbroglio of its own design: a prolonged ballot counting period brought about by the Republican led state legislature's refusal to allow mail ballot tallying to begin earlier than usual, despite what was expected to be (and turned out to be) an extraordinarily high number of mail ballots. While in Georgia, vote totals for Donald J. Trump and Joseph R. Biden Jr. are expected to be separated by a hair's width margin, government officials in Pennsylvania have been predicting a comfortable win for Mr. Biden for days. It's just taking a long time to note it. (Philadelphia's mayor, Jim Kenney, referred to Mr. Biden on Friday morning as the "winner.") Free ice cream, sponsored by Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta, at the Church of the Advocate polling location in North Philadelphia on election day. Kriston Jae Bethel for The New York Times Understandably, many Americans have been frustrated at the slow trickle of results. "The human body was not made to expend this much energy thinking about Pennsylvania," Stephen Colbert tweeted at 7:13 p.m. Pennsylvania time on Election Day with still days of counting left to come. Then, days into the national election effectively being held hostage (in part) by Pennsylvania, social media users or at least those rooting for the democratic candidate suddenly gave in to Stockholm syndrome. They gleefully warned of the foolhardiness of anyone who would travel to Philadelphia to start trouble, swapping tales and impressions of the seemingly deranged conduct of its residents under normal circumstances. As night fell, videos of people dancing outside the Pennsylvania Convention Center where votes were being counted dressed up as mailboxes and Philadelphia City Hall surfaced on social media to riotous approval. The streets of Philadelphia on Nov. 6. "With everyone all interested in Pennsylvania," tweeted the state's lieutenant governor, John Fetterman, as bleary, fraying Americans prepared for another sleepless night of waiting for Pennsylvania to finish counting votes, "I wanted to remind you that one crackerjack LG had 500 pounds of delicious PA butter crafted into a fitting tribute for Gritty this year. ButterGritty." The text was accompanied by a photo of him posing with a monstrous butter sculpture of the demented Philadelphia Flyers hockey mascot a mascot people in Philadelphia mocked when it debuted in 2018, until people outside Philadelphia began to join in, at which point the City Council passed a resolution officially honoring "the spirit and passion that Gritty has brought to the City of Philadelphia." Earlier in the week, conservative political commentators had encouraged supporters of President Trump to travel to Philadelphia to demonstrate their displeasure with the continued ballot counting that appeared poised to deliver a victory to Democrats. "The great thing about Philadelphia is you literally can't insult them," declared one Twitter user on Thursday afternoon. "They take any attempt at insult as either a compliment or an offer to fight which is also a compliment in Philly." Judging from social media response to the commentators' scrutiny, that sentiment could well be extrapolated to describe the entire state where, as you likely know, "Rocky," "Rocky II," "Rocky III" and "Rocky V," as well as all of the big M. Night Shyamalan movies, were filmed. Philadelphia election officials announced on Friday that they would release the results of another 2,000 to 3,000 ballots before the day's end. These updated tallies will leave still tens of thousands of ballots left to be counted, ensuring that, for just a while longer, Americans will continue to view goings on in Pennsylvania the way Pennsylvanians always have: as interesting and notable events. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
One way to quickly see if a coronavirus vaccine works would be to immunize healthy people and then deliberately expose them to the virus, some researchers are suggesting. Proponents say this strategy, called a human challenge trial, could save time because rather than conducting tests the usual way by waiting for vaccinated people to encounter the virus naturally researchers could just infect them. For both ethical and practical reasons, the idea of challenge trials for a coronavirus vaccine has provoked fierce debate. In a draft report published last month, the World Health Organization said that challenge trials could yield important information, but that they would be daunting to run because of the potential of the coronavirus "to cause severe and fatal illness and its high transmissibility." The report, by a 19 member advisory panel, provided detailed guidelines about the safest way to conduct challenge trials, recommending that they be limited to healthy people ages 18 to 25 because they have the least risk of severe illness or death from the virus. The virus in a dose carefully calculated to produce an infection but unlikely to cause severe illness would be dripped into their noses. But the panel also said its members split nearly in half over several major issues. They were divided over whether trials should be carried out if no highly effective therapy had been identified to treat participants who got sick; over whether studies in healthy young adults could predict the efficacy of a vaccine in older people or other high risk adults; and over whether challenge trials could really speed vaccine development. Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the institute, said in an interview on Wednesday that challenge trials might be needed if the pandemic waned and there were not enough natural infections to determine in a traditional study whether a vaccine worked. But given the rising case numbers now, he said he expected no shortage of infections by July and August, when several large trials are scheduled to begin. Citing concerns about putting healthy people at risk, Dr. Fauci said that any challenge trial would have to be conducted "with absolute intense examination by a group of independent ethicists and independent people who have nothing to do with the trial." But the National Institutes of Health, the umbrella organization for the institute, offered a more cautious assessment, saying the government "is not planning to support human challenge studies for Covid 19," in an email from a spokeswoman, Renate Myles. "There is an expectation of sufficient natural transmission for efficacy studies that will be launched as early as summer 2020. The development of a human challenge model would take longer than this timeline and human challenge studies have a number of serious ethical considerations." Among the staunchest advocates of challenge trials is Arthur L. Caplan, a bioethicist at NYU Langone Medical Center. "Despite the danger, we believe it is ethical to ask now for volunteers who would be informed about the known and unknown risks," they wrote. "Such an approach is not without risks, but every week that vaccine rollout is delayed will be accompanied by many thousands of deaths globally," a team led by Nir Eyal, a bioethicist at Rutgers, wrote in March, in an article in The Journal of Infectious Diseases. Dr. Eyal's group suggested choosing an age range of 20 to 45, and even proposed using a control group that would receive a placebo shot rather than the vaccine but would still be exposed to the virus, so at least some would almost certainly fall ill. "I think that's a little bit cuckoo," Dr. Caplan said. "That's too risky." There is no highly effective treatment for Covid, and no sure way to predict who will recover quickly and who will become severely ill. "Multiple measures would be put in place to ensure that, prior to consenting, potential participants fully comprehend the unusual risks involved in the study," Dr. Eyal's group wrote. Who should get a booster shot? It depends, Dr. Scott Gottlieb says. Virginia's new lieutenant governor elect says she won't force vaccines. Jeffrey Kahn, director of the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics, sharply questioned any form of a challenge trial for Covid, saying that participants cannot be fully informed about the risks, because too little is known about the virus. "There are too many uncertainties," he said. Although it is not common, healthy young people have inexplicably become critically ill from the virus, and some have died. Several vaccine makers had lukewarm reactions to the idea. Dr. Paul Stoffels, chief scientific officer at Johnson Johnson, said the company would consider challenge trials only if a treatment became available. He also said larger, traditional Phase 3 trials would provide more safety information. Dr. Tal Zaks, chief medical officer of Moderna, which expects to begin Phase 3 vaccine trials this month, said in an interview that the question of a challenge trial "will likely be moot as it relates to our development." "If such a model were available we would look at it, but I'd hate to put people in harm's way," Dr. Zaks said. "We are right now leading this race and it might be relevant for other vaccines behind us." Other vaccine makers are considering the idea. Dr. Adrian Hill, director of the Jenner Institute at the University of Oxford, which developed a coronavirus vaccine that is already in Phase 3 testing, said there was "potential utility" in challenge trials for vaccines and treatments. He said his institute, which has conducted such studies in the past for malaria, typhoid and other diseases, might perform one for Covid before the end of the year, to test vaccine efficacy. He said the studies were also a good way to compare vaccines. The trials would be acceptable even without a treatment, he said, because the participants would be young and fit, and exposed to only a low dose of the virus, so any illness that occurred would most likely be "self limiting." But Dr. Hill added: "Having a treatment would be helpful. By the time we get to doing this there may be one." Dr. Caplan argues that the first few vaccine candidates are likely to fail, and that it will be increasingly difficult to recruit the 20,000 or 30,000 people needed for each subsequent trial. Challenge trials in small numbers of participants could more quickly identify products that do not work, letting researchers scrap them and reserve larger studies for more promising candidates. But small challenge studies may miss rare side effects that could become a serious problem once a vaccine is given to millions of people. "The number of people who will have received the vaccine at the time of licensure will be very small in comparison to the usual Phase 3 efficacy trials," said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University and a member of a group that will review vaccine data as advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Because many vaccine candidates involve new technologies, "that's all the more reason you need a large safety base," Dr. Schaffner said. Challenge trials might also be seen by the public as a means of cutting corners, and undermine confidence in coronavirus vaccines, he said, adding, "I think it's not a great idea." Advocates say volunteers for a coronavirus challenge trial would be young and healthy, without chronic health problems. They would also have a "substantial" risk of catching the disease anyway even without being deliberately exposed because they live in hot spots with high transmission rates, or because of their jobs or living conditions, proponents say. They would be quarantined and monitored closely, and if they became ill would receive the best known treatment possibly the antiviral drug remdesivir, or convalescent plasma from people who had recovered from the illness. But so far, remdesivir's benefits have been described as "modest," and studies of convalescent plasma are still underway. The steroid dexamethasone lowered the death rate in one study, but is recommended only for those who become severely ill. The article by Dr. Eyal's group struck a chord with Josh Morrison, 34. Eight years ago, he donated a kidney to a stranger, and now runs an advocacy group for kidney donors. The opportunity to save someone else's life meant a great deal to him, and he sees challenge trials as a chance to do it again. "If it could lead to a speedier creation of a vaccine for the disease Covid 19, we are willing without reservation to have doctors infect us with the novel coronavirus," he and Sophie Rose, 22, a graduate student in epidemiology, wrote in The Washington Post. Mr. Morrison, who had a brief career as a corporate lawyer, has begun organizing others who are interested in volunteering into a group called 1DaySooner. So far, about 30,000 people from 140 countries have signed up online saying they might participate in a challenge trial. Donations of 700,000 have enabled him to hire three full time staff members. "There are significant risks in childbirth and kidney donation," Mr. Morrison said in an interview. "No one should take them lightly but they are things we allow people to consent to. I hope for an effective treatment by the time a trial would be conducted, but if not, I do think it would be reasonable to go forward with challenge trials." His hope is that an established research center will conduct the trials. Much of his efforts have gone toward finding a company to produce batches of the virus for use in the studies. "Our goal is not to manage the manufacturing process or trial process ourselves," he said. "Our goal is to make the preconditions, so that if challenge trials would be useful, they're available. " So far, donors have offered a total of 1 million for virus production, if Mr. Morrison can find a vendor. He said he had a promising candidate, but declined to name the company. Several vaccine makers have expressed interest in challenge trials, but the discussions have been confidential, so he could not reveal which companies, he said. But he believes the trials will happen. "I don't think of this as a pie in the sky idea." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
SAN FRANCISCO Senator Elizabeth Warren has called for the breakup of big tech companies like Facebook. Regulators have opened investigations into Facebook's power in social networking. Even one of Facebook's own founders has laid out a case for why the company needs to be split up. Now the world's biggest social network has started to modify its behavior in both pre emptive and defensive ways to deal with those threats. Late last year, Facebook halted acquisition talks with Houseparty, a video focused social network in Silicon Valley, for fear of inciting antitrust concerns, according to two people with knowledge of the discussions. Acquiring another social network after Facebook was already such a dominant player in that market was too risky, said the people, who spoke on the condition they not be identified because the discussions were confidential. Facebook has also begun internal changes that make itself harder to break up. The company has been knitting together the messaging systems of Facebook Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp and has reorganized the departments so that Facebook is more clearly in charge, said two people briefed on the matter. Executives have also worked on rebranding Instagram and WhatsApp to more prominently associate them with Facebook. The social network's changes are now prompting a debate about whether a more knitted together Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram is just smart business or helps strengthen potential anticompetitive practices. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's founder and chief executive, has repeatedly said his company faces competition on all sides and is loath to accept a fragmented version of the social giant. He does not want to lose Instagram and WhatsApp, which are enormous and have the ability to continue fueling Facebook's 56 billion business. "The big question is, is this a logical business plan?" said Gene Kimmelman, a former antitrust official in the Obama administration and senior adviser to Public Knowledge, a nonprofit think tank in Washington. "For a social network with enormous growth in photos and messaging, there's probably significant business justification for combining the units." But Representative David Cicilline, Democrat of Rhode Island and the chairman of the House antitrust subcommittee, said Facebook's moves needed to be scrutinized. "The combination of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp into the single largest communications platform in history is a clear attempt to evade effective antitrust enforcement by making it harder for the company to be broken up," he said. "We need to hit the pause button." Facebook has pushed back on the idea that the company's moves particularly in private messaging are in anticipation of a potential breakup. "Building more ways for people to communicate through our messaging apps has always been about creating benefits for people plain and simple," said Stan Chudnovsky, a vice president at Facebook overseeing messaging. "People want to be able to reach as many people as they can with the messaging app they choose." In Washington, Facebook has its eye particularly on the Federal Trade Commission, the agency that is now investigating it for anticompetitive practices, said two of the people with knowledge of the social network. The F.T.C. became interested in looking at Facebook and its power last year when the agency's investigators were separately examining the company for privacy violations, said two people close to the process. At the time, the F.T.C.'s investigators uncovered internal Facebook documents that prompted concerns around how the company was acquiring rivals, they said. Facebook's long string of acquisitions it bought Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014, among many others have been targeted by academics and policymakers for reducing competition. They have argued that the company engaged in "serial defensive acquisitions" to protect its dominant position in social networking. This year, the F.T.C. sought clearance from the Justice Department to open an antitrust investigation into potentially anticompetitive behavior at Facebook, the people close to the process said. The F.T.C. was cleared to do so, and notified Facebook in June. By late July, the agency had contacted at least a half dozen founders of companies that Facebook had bought over the past 15 years for information on its acquisition practices, said four people with knowledge of the outreach. Around the time that the F.T.C. activity on Facebook ramped up, the company also stepped back on at least one potential acquisition. Last December, Facebook executives were in advanced discussions to buy Houseparty, a social networking app that lets multiple people video chat on their mobile phones at once, said two people with knowledge of the talks. Houseparty, co founded in 2016 by two Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, Ben Rubin and Sima Sistani, was especially popular with audiences under the age of 24. Facebook, whose members are getting older, has coveted younger users. But weeks into the discussions, Facebook's corporate development team killed the talks with Houseparty, the people said. Houseparty's executives were told that a deal would draw unwelcome federal government scrutiny to Facebook, they said. Houseparty was later purchased by Epic Games, the makers of the video game Fortnite. Facebook's changes that appear to make a breakup of its apps more difficult began more than a year ago. Mr. Zuckerberg focused on combining the underlying infrastructure of WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook Messenger. The project, called "interoperability," requires years of deeply technical and difficult engineering work. The aim, in part, was to create less of a hodgepodge of companies and more of a unified network, said people briefed on the strategy. Publicly, Mr. Zuckerberg has said the initiative will help build a more "private" version of Facebook so customers can "communicate across networks easily and securely," as users flock to messaging services en masse. People will also get a better and more streamlined user experience, he has said. Mr. Zuckerberg has added that a unified messaging system would better lend itself to moneymaking efforts on WhatsApp, which today brings in little revenue. But the idea of "interoperability" was a departure for Facebook. While Facebook and Instagram have long shared much of the same infrastructure, its different messaging products generally operated independently. Though employees at Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp are in separate physical buildings, executives have also pushed for them to share more internal resources and have reorganized their reporting lines. In one instance, Facebook executives ordered a change in the messaging teams, two of the people said, requiring the Instagram messenger division to report to the leaders at Facebook's Messenger app. Bloomberg earlier reported on the internal reorganization. Last year, Facebook also began a rebranding project, tapping at least one outside agency for help, said three people familiar with the initiative. The agency, Prophet Brand Strategy, was asked to make Facebook into a "branded house," where Facebook's moniker always preceded the names of WhatsApp and Instagram, they said. The rebranding mandate came from Mr. Zuckerberg and Antonio Lucio, Facebook's chief marketing officer, they said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
Our weekday morning digest that includes consumer news, deals, tips and anything else that travelers may want to know. IN COLORADO, A RESORT WHERE IT'S ALL ABOUT POT CannaCamp: A Bud Breakfast Mountain Resort, claims it is the country's first cannabis focused resort, will open July 1 in Durango, Colo. The 170 acre property, a former ranch, will accommodate up to 40 guests in nine rustic cabins. Like summer camp it will offer outdoor activities including kayaking, fishing, hiking and mountain biking, as well as art and yoga classes. Unlike summer camp, CannaCamp will offer workshops in cultivating marijuana, cooking with it, and its medical applications. A cannabis concierge will be on hand to suggest optimal pairings of pot to meals and to activities, such as one that will complement a dinner of roast duck breast or a mellow strain sampled before yoga hour. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
In the world war against the coronavirus, there's both very good news and very bad news. To understand what lies ahead, epidemiologists study the places battered first. Here are lessons from the front lines: First, we have a toolbox that works. Even for countries that bungled the initial response, like Italy and the United States, there's hope: Social distancing succeeds in slowing the contagion, and it does so quickly within a few weeks of the adoption of tough measures. Both Italy and Iran appear to have passed through the worst of this wave of Covid 19, as measured by new cases. But even after new cases slow, deaths continue at a high rate because people often die four weeks after they were infected. This was effective. New Rochelle is no longer a hot spot, and Washington also flattened its curve, with coronavirus hospitalizations dropping. For the United States as a whole, confirmed infections are still increasing rapidly, but one hopeful sign is that Kinsa Health Internet linked thermometers show a downward trend in fevers across most of the country (these are for all kinds of fevers, not just those from Covid 19, and some people with infections are asymptomatic). On balance, all this is excellent news. Early on, epidemiologists simply didn't know how well social distancing would work. Now it's clearer: We have the tools to save lives, if we will use them. Second, countless thousands will still die because of past mistakes and complacency. A pandemic is like an oil tanker: It continues to move forward long after you hit the brakes. In China, deaths didn't fall sharply until a month after controls had been imposed. The benefits from social distancing in the United States will take time to ripple through the system, and there will continue to be new infections and many more deaths. The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington has a constantly updated model that predicts that the daily death toll across the United States will rise until April 16 and then slowly decline. By the beginning of August, it estimates that more than 93,000 Americans will have died from Covid 19. More bad news: Case fatality rates have been creeping up, and lethality may be greater than many had expected. Germany was hailed for a death rate of only about 0.5 percent, and South Korea was not much higher; now both have case fatality rates well above 1 percent. In models of the virus that my colleague Stuart A. Thompson and I published, we used a death rate of 1 percent. But if the South Korean death rate by age is applied to the demography of the United States, the American case fatality rate is about 2 percent, according to Dr. Christopher Murray, the director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. A great majority of the deaths in the United States will have been avoidable. South Korea and the United States had their first coronavirus cases on the same day, but Seoul did a far better job managing the response. The upshot: It has suffered only 174 coronavirus deaths, equivalent to 1,100 for a population the size of America's. That suggests that we may lose 90,000 Americans in this wave of infections because the United States did not manage the crisis as well as South Korea did. As of Friday night, the U.S. had already had more than 7,000 deaths. Third, while we can bend the curve, it will bend back when we relax our social distancing. This is more bad news, for many people seem to believe that once we get through this grim month or two, the nightmare will be over. But the virus is resilient, and health experts warn that this may be just the first wave of what may be many waves of infections until we get a vaccine sometime in 2021. Already, Japan after initial success is seeing a surge of infections, while China and South Korea have struggled with imported infections; that seems inevitable as economies restart and travel resumes. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
This past weekend, Demna Gvasalia, the creative director of Balenciaga, unveiled a new logo for the French fashion house at its new Madison Avenue store: new leaner letters "inspired by the clarity of public transportation signage." Clarity and mundanity are constant inspirations for Mr. Gvasalia; he's a founder of the design collective Vetements, which appeared on the map two years ago after showing a collection that included pieces with the red and yellow DHL delivery logo. Mr. Gvasalia, who previously worked for Maison Margiela and under Marc Jacobs and Nicolas Ghesquiere at Louis Vuitton, was appointed creative director at Balenciaga in 2016. Since then, he has appropriated Bernie Sanders's campaign logo, salesman khakis, politician polo shirts and take the cat to the vet sweatpants for the luxury space, meming fashion, making us laugh and look twice. The thrust of Mr. Gvasalia's references are best summed by my partner, Carrie, as she puts on a pair of Balenciaga sunglasses in the store: "These are the exact glasses that my mom has, except hers are transition lenses and she uses them for driving." You know when you leave a movie and feel as if you're still in the movie? Once you've been into Balenciaga, everyone on the street appears to be in a full Balenciaga look. For days, Carrie and I elbow each other when we see one: "Balenciaga," we whisper. A man in baggy khakis and thick soled sneakers bending to pick up after his dog, a child in a red puffer coat carrying both his and his little sister's backpacks after school, a tourist wearing a sweatshirt with the Eiffel Tower on it. All of these outfits have a 5,000 version hanging in the Balenciaga Matrix. In store, an Italian shopper is holding a small shoulder bag made from a cut up and resewn blue Ikea Frakta bag. The leather one Mr. Gvasalia made for Balenciaga ( 1,695) inspired fashion fans to cut up and craft all kinds of pieces from the plastic carryalls. In a dressing room, I turn over a tiny stool to check: It's Ikea. I try on a sweater with bra underwire sewn into it ( 1,150) and am really excited when I see that there's a small knitted strap hidden inside, like the back of the bra. This seems like something Cristobal Balenciaga, an exactingly playful designer in his own way, would do. I get deodorant on the sweater when I take it off and consider sending a pic to Mr. Gvasalia: "Next season?" He might. I try on a blazer with hip inserts that exaggerate it into an hourglass. On its shoulders are seams pushed way, way forward, so that even when you're standing up straight, you're emulating the famous fashion pose, squeezing your waist and pushing out your collarbone. This is construction as pun, a far more difficult and refined way to make a joke than with just a silk screen. It's genius. There's a peacoat ( 2,150) you imagine was inspired by a toddler who screamed, "I do it!": Its button up is way off. There's a check mohair version ( 3,150) with gold buttons that similarly get lost, letting you button the coat at the shoulder. Depending on how often you can tolerate saying, "No, it's supposed to be like this" (it does button up "normally" if you desire), it seems like the perfect everyday coat. Balenciaga's location on the Upper East Side is part of the gag. A saleswoman tells us there have been some confused double takes when shoppers enter and see the Mark Jenkins mannequin sculpture, which looks like two men in khakis and sneakers one in a blue Balenciaga campaign tee, one in red leaning away from each other but tied by their hoodie strings, making the hoods pucker and squeeze to the point of suffocating tension. "The store's so pretty!" an expensive vested woman says when she walks in with her preteen daughter. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
Naptown. India No Place. My hometown had a lot of nicknames when I was growing up there in the '80s and '90s, few of them charitable. Even more generous ones, like "Crossroads of America," seemed to say that Indianapolis was a place one merely passed through. But things have changed since then. These days, I'm playing catch up each time I return home, overwhelmed by the new restaurants, galleries, venues and boutiques bringing youth and energy to its streets. A new public transportation system called the Red Line, opened in September, connects the mid size city's most vital cultural areas, making it easier and safer than ever to bounce from one hip dive or farm to table restaurant to the next. And for all the new places to eat, browse or catch a show, Indy stays true to its Midwestern roots: short on pretension, heavy on pork and still, for the most part, incomprehensibly cheap. The Indiana Central Canal was dug in the 1830s as a way to transport goods, but was never completed. Today, the downtown portion is flanked with museums and parks as it makes its way toward the White River. Start at the Eiteljorg Museum just a few blocks west of Monument Circle. Dedicated to the American West, it is brimming with a world class Native American art and artifacts collection, including works by contemporary artists like the painter Kay WalkingStick and the multimedia artist Joe Feddersen . For sports fans, a pleasant stroll along the canal, past the Indiana State Museum, leads to the N.C.A.A. Hall of Champions, which showcases talent in all 24 N.C.A.A. sports. And this month , the Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library, dedicated to the city's favorite literary son, reopened in its new location on Indiana Avenue, just a few blocks north of the Eiteljorg. Included in the collection are his drawings and an array of rejection letters, including one from The Atlantic Monthly that said his account of t he Allied bombing of Dresden, Germany, during World War II wasn't "compelling enough" to publish. Opened in 2013, the Alexander hotel was developed as a joint venture with the Indianapolis Museum of Art. Art themed hotels weren't new, but the collaboration set it apart, as did the collection. Its crown jewel, however, may be the bar, Plat 99, designed by the Cuban born artist Jorge Pardo, hung with 99 colorful, hand molded acrylic lamps. The menu includes pick me ups like a latte made with doughnut milk for 6 (that's milk in which doughnuts have been soaked) and a cocktail made with two kinds of local moonshine for 12. From there, grab a bar seat at nearby St. Elmo Steak House, which most locals agree is the city's best steakhouse, dating to 1902. Stay for a dry aged rib eye, or just do what I did: Pop by for a dirty martini and its rightfully famous shrimp cocktail ( 15.95). The sauce is made daily and not for the faint of heart: It's at least three quarters horseradish, edible with a fork. Just southeast is the hottest area in town, Fountain Square and the adjacent Fletcher Place neighborhood, where many restaurants have opened in the past decade, some of them quite good. Bluebeard, a James Beard Award semifinalist, is one of the best in town, with an ever changing menu of locally sourced New American cuisine. Small plates might include chicken liver pate with pepperoncinis and candied pepitas ( 14), while a regional staple like the pork chop comes with European accents like grilled focaccia, gremolata and smoked Coppa ( 46). Looking for something more low key? Iaria's has been dishing out traditional Italian food in a family style setting a few blocks away since 1933. Fill up on a huge plate of traditional spaghetti and meatballs for about 14, or fettuccine with spicy clam sauce for 21. After dinner, head to one of the many music and entertainment venues clustered in Fountain Square. Hi Fi and Radio Radio are intimate spaces for local and smaller national musical acts mostly indie, folk, rock and hip hop. Pioneer is the place for experimental, jazz, hip hop, electronic music and late night themed dance parties. The White Rabbit Cabaret hosts small musical acts, comedy, storytelling nights and rowdy burlesque shows. Nightcap? Stop by the deco styled Brass Ring Lounge to mingle with the beautiful and tattooed. I always hit the vintage stores back home because unlike in New York, that perfectly faded '70s concert tee hasn't been marked up to 10 times what it's worth. Burn off that sourdough brioche doughnut from Milktooth by walking down Virginia Avenue to Vintage Vogue and its neighbor Zodiac Vintage, which specializes in vintage designer clothing, band T shirts and American work wear. On the same block is Square Cat Vinyl, which has old records, but also a lot of new ones, along with a bar that serves coffee and beer. The neighborhood owes its vintage soul largely to the restored Fountain Square Theater building, first opened in 1928, which hosts swing dance nights and has two duckpin bowling alleys. (The 1930s style alley on the fourth floor, Action Duckpin Bowl, costs 40 an hour per lane.) For the uninitiated, the sport involves balls that can be palmed (no holes), like a cross between regular bowling and Skee Ball. Like those sports, it can also involve beer. The closest thing Indiana has to a state food is the pork tenderloin sandwich: a tenderloin medallion, pounded until it is as broad and flat as an Indiana cornfield, then breaded and deep fried. In its most authentic form, it's a comedic sandwich: The meat can run 8 to 12 inches wide but is often served on a regular size bun, meaning you can't actually eat it with your hands. Hoosiers have strong and varied opinions about who does it best, but the tenderloin at Aristocrat, just south of the Broad Ripple neighborhood (in the area commonly referred to as South Broad Ripple), a wood paneled pub and restaurant established in 1933, always ranks among the city's best ( 11.55). Aristocrat also offers a grilled, non breaded (sacrilegious) version for (slightly) more health conscious customers. Head west to the elaborate grounds of the former Eli Lilly estate, home to the Indianapolis Museum of Art. The whole complex was inexplicably rebranded Newfields, but the art and botanic gardens are as world class as ever (personal favorites include the extensive Asian art section and works by J.M.W. Turner and James Turrell), and the seasonal beer garden is delightful in warmer months. Across the canal is a 100 acre nature and sculpture park; like Storm King Art Center in upstate New York, it is especially lovely when the leaves are turning each fall. (The park is free; all access admission to the museum and gardens is 18.) Broad Ripple has had many identities over the decades these days, it's where the clubbing and sports bar crowd parties on weekends but the neighborhood never completely lost its bohemian roots, as evidenced by its many vintage stores, cafes, brew pubs and locally owned restaurants my favorite being Public Greens, a cafeteria with a healthy, locally sourced menu (when I went, it included a strawberry salad with kohlrabi for 6 and a blackened trout bowl with quinoa, veggies and ranch dressing for 16) that donates 100 percent of its profits to charity. While you're in Broad Ripple, stop by the Monon Coffee Co. for coffee or one of many teas pu erh ginger, sencha fukujya, blue jasmine with pea flower. (Full disclosure: I used to sling lattes there.) The area is also home to my two favorite Indianapolis record stores, both of which host in store concerts: Indy CD Vinyl, on the main strip, and Luna Music, just south on College Ave nue. The Monon Trail, a wooded walking and biking trail paved over an old railway line, is just a few blocks out of the way and the nicest way to wander south before sundown. "You can kind of, like, do stuff in Indianapolis, and it's cheap enough where you can get away with whatever." So sayeth Chef Chris Benedyk, of the appropriately named Love Handle on Massachusetts Avenue, the heart of the local gay scene and another bustling strip for restaurants, bars and boutique shopping. At Love Handle, that means getting away with putting things in your breakfast that confuse the brain but somehow make sense to the mouth. The fluid menu may offer fried oysters with your grits ( 9). Waffles may come with braised beef tongue and a duck egg ( 13). And if biscuits and gravy weren't rich enough per usual, here they might include butternut squash and pork belly ( 15.25). On the same block, stroll over to Homespun: Modern Handmade, which sells work by more than 400 artists and artisans, about half from Indiana. A few doors down, Boomerang Boutique also spotlights local designers, emphasizing diversity and women's clothing and accessories. But it's afternoon now, so head over to the tasting room at Sun King Brewery to sample the roughly 25 beers on tap. An in house lunch counter run by Goose the Market, an upscale local deli that smokes and cures its own meats, has you covered if you get hungry again. Many hotels have art, but the art at the 209 room Alexander made by local, national and international artists is installed museum style, with identifying wall texts. The downtown location puts you right in the city's heart and close to Fountain Square, and the bar, designed by the MacArthur "genius grant" winner Jorge Pardo, is one of Indy's most fashionable spots come nightfall (333 South Delaware Street; thealexander.com; doubles from 159). A block from trendy Massachusetts Avenue, the six room Nestle Inn offers a cozy bed and breakfast style experience in a 19th century building. The inn emphasizes its modernity: self check in, private bathrooms and, instead of serving breakfast on site, the inn provides breakfast vouchers for partnering Massachusetts Avenue restaurants. It also offers chef led cooking classes Friday through Sunday. (637 North East Street; nestleindy.com, doubles from 159.) | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
"I have a solid six ideas every single day for a business," said Ariel Arce, the owner of two Greenwich Village hot spots: Tokyo Record Bar and Air's Champagne Parlor. "That's not to say that all of those are good ideas. But because I'm naturally really impulsive, I just want to do it and I want to get people involved in it. And I shouldn't do that." Still, Ms. Arce, 31, has not been able to limit herself. Two years after opening those first two venues, frequented by actors and comedians like Jake Gyllenhaal, Mandy Moore, Wanda Sykes and Olivia Wilde, she is opening two more restaurants this spring. At Niche Niche, which opens next week at 43 Macdougal Street, a sommelier or some other beverage nerd will pick four wines per night, and food will be cooked to match. Customers pay 40 for the tasting and 40 for food. In April, Special Club, a supper club that will feature live musicians, will open in the same building. (The building previously housed an Italian American social club that was plagued by rumors about organized crime.) | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
WITH only a few weeks left until school starts, the tutoring business is gearing up. And it is one industry in America that seems immune to recession. More parents are paying for tutors for their children. Spending on tutors is growing at more than 5 percent a year, said Steve Pines, executive director of the Education Industry Association. This is down from yearly growth of 8 to 10 percent in 2007, when the education research firm EduVentures estimated the size of the tutoring industry at 5 billion to 7 billion a year. But it is still strong, given the state of most people's personal finances. And Sandi Ayaz, executive director of the National Tutoring Association, said the number of tutors her organization had certified had grown 18 percent in each of the last five years. While tutors once focused on helping children who were falling behind in particular subjects or had a learning disability, they are now being used far more to guide students through particularly tough courses, insure their grades are equal to or above their peers' and, in the end, polish a child's college application. This costs parents a lot of money, and the question is, What returns should they expect for their investment? And how does that desire mesh with what is right? Before I go further, I want to address the question of fairness, which is ever present in the world of high priced tutors. The simple answer is that it is surely not fair that wealthy children can have private tutors when poor children cannot. But many things in life are not fair, and I want to look at tutoring from an investment point of view. Is there any way to measure what parents and children are getting for all this money? What can a tutor reasonably be expected to do? Is this money well spent? SHOPPING AROUND Even with the increase in the use of tutors, parents are not necessarily spending money the way they once did. Some are, of course, since money is still no object when it comes to their children. Yet even in Manhattan, where tutors are particularly popular, plenty of parents are shopping around for less expensive options. "People have been pulling back for tutors charging 250 to 400 an hour," said Sandy Bass, editor and publisher of Private School Insider, an online newsletter. "They're still using tutors, but they're searching around for more reasonably priced help. In Manhattan, 85 to 150 is the acceptable range for reasonably priced." Mr. Pines of the Education Industry Association said he had seen the same reassessment in the rest of the country, where the average rate was 45 to 65 an hour. Parents who once would have had in home tutors are going to tutoring centers, while some using the centers have cut back on hours or moved to online only platforms. He said a rising player in this field is TutorVista, an online education company based in Bangalore, India, that charges 99.99 a month for help on an Internet platform. Where access to tutors appears to be drying up is for people with limited means. In the past, the issue was not whether they could afford it, but rather whether they could finance it. And Jeffrey Cohen, the president and chief executive of Sylvan Learning Centers, which operates one of the largest chains of tutoring franchises in the country, said the lack of financing had been a big blow to less wealthy families. "Programs do exist, but they're hard to come by," Mr. Cohen said. "Prerecession families with a decent credit score could get approved to finance these programs. They could put themselves on a multiyear monthly payment schedule." HELP OR HINDRANCE? Money can't buy you love, the song says, but what should it buy? The cardinal sin of tutoring is writing a student's college essay. This is the murkiest part of the industry. After all, the first line in the National Tutoring Association's ethics code is: "I understand that my role as a tutor is to never do the student's work for him or her." Not surprisingly, people in the industry cringe when the issue is brought up, particularly with online tutoring. "That's where the parent has to play a role of oversight," Mr. Pines said. "It has to be monitored at home, and I can't let Mom and Dad off the hook for that." But the bigger question that springs from this is, How do you make sure the money you're spending is benefiting your child? Helping children improve in areas where they are struggling is clearly important. But Ms. Bass said any tutoring should bolster standardized test scores. "You're not going to go from a 550 to an 800 on the SAT, but you can count on a 100 point rise," she said. "A lot of that is just getting a kid used to taking the test." This has reached its absurd extreme. Ms. Bass said most private schools in New York had started to discount the Early Childhood Admissions Assessment, more commonly called the E.R.B. after the Educational Records Bureau, the company that administers it, because parents hired tutors to coach their 4 year olds on acing it. While this is one way to spend your money, it may not be the best way to teach children the long term skills they will need after they get into that top kindergarten. It may also hinder them more than help them. "I always say be careful in doing this," said Lloyd Thacker, a former college admissions officer and the executive director of the Education Conservancy. "Not only does it jeopardize your child's 'studenthood' those qualities that make learning happen but someone finding your way for you and packaging you in the process jeopardizes your ability to be yourself." In other words, hiring a tutor to help a child who is struggling in math is a good use of money. Hiring one so the child does not have to push himself is a bad one. "In an ideal world, students should realize they can do it themselves," said Mr. Thacker, an admitted opponent of the hyper tutoring culture. And many of them could, but would parents risk letting them try? HARVARD OR BUST A financier I know who was educated at a trifecta of top institutions St. Paul's School, Yale and Columbia Law observed that wealthy parents today were paying for tutoring and private school as a forward contract on the Ivy League, with anything less being a disappointment. This was a cynical take, for sure, but it stuck with me: what constitutes success after paying for thousands of hours of tutoring at 100 plus an hour? The argument for this extra attention as a means to create well rounded students is not convincing, since private tutoring in college tends to be for remedial help. School competition is clearly part of parents' thinking, but it's not just for college. "Parents are concerned about how their children rank against their friends, their neighbors, kids in the next town over, the next state over, even the next country over," Mr. Cohen said. On the positive side, for children, tutors can often comfort them and let them talk to someone beyond their parents. "They can say what they want and that person will translate it to Mom and Dad," Ms. Bass said. "That's what the kid needs because they're afraid of letting Mom and Dad down." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Your Money |
Credit...Ryan Pfluger for The New York Times For sisters in the public eye, Beyonce and Solange Knowles have managed to resist the siren call to overshare the minutiae of their personal lives. But there is one topic they are happy to gush about: their mother, Tina Knowles Lawson. In the January issue of Interview magazine, Solange is interviewed by Beyonce and waxes lyrical about how their mother "always taught us to be in control of our voice and our bodies and our work." Last June, when accepting the fashion icon award from the Council of Fashion Designers of America, Beyonce dedicated it to her "fabulous and beautiful" mother. And in November, when Solange appeared on "Saturday Night Live," a backstage video posted on Instagram, showing the singer carried by Mom and Big Sis, caused the internet to let out a collective "aww." The shadow of Ms. Lawson, a former Southern beautician who is a lifelong collector of black contemporary art, hovers over the artsy allusions in "Lemonade" to intergenerational African American motherhood, marital strife and their family's deep Creole roots. On the agitpop single "Formation," Beyonce shouts out her "Momma Louisiana." The journalist averse Beyonce broke her silence to talk about her mother's creative influence (though on email, coordinated through a publicist). "I think it was important to my mother to surround us with positive, powerful, strong images of African and African American art so that we could reflect and see ourselves in them," Beyonce said. "My mother has always been invested in making women feel beautiful," she added, "whether it was through someone sitting in her hair chair or making a prom dress for one of the girls at church. And her art collection always told the stories of women wanting to do the same." Ms. Lawson's appearance on "A Seat at the Table" is more explicit. In "Tina Taught Me," a cerebral 74 second spoken word interlude, she sermonizes about black cultural pride, saying: "I've always been proud to be black. Never wanted to be nothing else." She also says it "saddens" her when people considers that to be "antiwhite." "If my sister and my project feels like an 'awakening' to some," she added, "I am constantly saying that we both grew up in a home with two words: Tina Knowles." The matriarch of pop music's reigning family resides (rather fittingly for a woman who once posed on the cover of Ebony wearing a gold crown) in a gated, castlelike home atop the winding Hollywood Hills in Los Angeles. On a warm evening in late November, Ms. Lawson sat in her brightly colored living room, filled with postimpressionist and abstract works, mostly by African and African American artists. Dressed casually in an all black ensemble, "Miss Tina" as she likes to be called is all natural warmth and poise. She may have nurtured two supernatural superstar daughters, but she comes across as a sage retiree supremely at ease in her dewy, flawless skin. She offered a tour of works by Henry Ossawa Tanner and Elizabeth Catlett that hang salon style on her walls, saying that her children "grew up surrounded by art and feeling proud about who they are." Her irreverent side is familiar to her nearly one million followers on Instagram, a platform hardly known as welcoming to African American women in their 60s. She cracks dorky mom jokes "I told my assistant to have a really great day, and you know what she did? She went home!" impersonates Tina Turner and generally clowns around with her friends and family. "I want to show people the regularity of my life, and that not everything is so fancy," she said. Her fans can't get enough. "If you're not following Beyonce's mom on Instagram, here's what you're missing," declared an article from Harper's Bazaar in August. "She's basically everybody's auntie who is a sweetheart, but still keeps it real when necessary," said Crissle West, a co host of "The Read," a popular podcast on hip hop and pop culture. Ms. Lawson, nee Celestine Ann Beyince, grew up in the 1950s in "a real small town" in Galveston, Tex. The last of seven siblings, her father was a longshoreman and her mother was a seamstress. She picked up dressmaking at a young age, creating sparkly stage outfits for her Supremes inspired singing group while in high school. At 19, she moved to California to work as a makeup artist for Shiseido Cosmetics (she learned styling tricks from drag queens, she said) but returned to Texas a year later when her parents fell ill. With help from her then husband, Matthew Knowles, a former Xerox executive, she opened a 12 seat hair salon in Houston called Headliners. The salon, which had more than a two decade run, helped the Knowles family afford an upper class lifestyle. It was also an impromptu stage for her young brood, while women under dryers acted as judges. When Destiny's Child, the girl group whose most famous lineup consisted of Beyonce, Kelly Rowland ("my other daughter") and Michelle Williams, began to break out in the late 1990s, Ms. Lawson returned to dressmaking and whipped up matching cutaway Boy Scout uniforms, barely there camouflage hot pants and Tarzan like fur sheaths for the group to wear onstage. As Beyonce put it in her Council of Fashion Designers of America speech last year, designers were reluctant to dress "black country curvy girls," so her mother stepped in. "They looked a little crazy sometimes," Ms. Lawson said, "but people always wondered what they were going to wear next." The "Bootylicious" touch helped the group stand out. Destiny's Child went on to sell over 60 million records worldwide, and Destiny's mother became a fashion force. In 2004, she and Beyonce started the House of Dereon, a trendy, low priced clothing brand named after Ms. Lawson's mother. A juniors collection, bedding and a clothing line aimed at older women called Miss Tina soon followed. When the group disbanded in 2005, Ms. Lawson continued to create showstoppers for Beyonce as a solo artist, including the black brocade ball gown she wore for the 2005 Academy Awards. But in 2009, just when her professional life seemed to be at its peak, Ms. Lawson said her "world completely stopped." After 33 years of marriage, she filed for divorce from Mr. Knowles, who had been a talent manager for their daughters. Citing a "conflict of personalities" in court papers, the divorce was made final in 2011. The split raised existential questions. "What kind of life was I going to have now?" Ms. Lawson said. "I thought it was too late for me to try something new. You have all these doubts in your mind." In search of answers, she closed all her fashion businesses and, at 59, left Houston for Los Angeles for what she jokingly said was "a new house, a new car, a new man and a new life." In 2013, she reconnected with an old friend, Richard Lawson, a TV actor known for his roles in "Dynasty" and "All My Children." The couple tied the knot two years later. "I just feel so liberated now, I really do," she said. Ms. Lawson now focuses much of her time on black female empowerment issues and philanthropy (she was honored at the Essence Festival in New Orleans last year), and she is writing an autobiography she says is a "how to get your life back book." She and her husband plan to open in March an acting workshop for underserved youth in Los Angeles, called the WACO Theater Center (short for "Where Art Can Occur"). And after her self imposed break from fashion, she designed the gold fringe outfit that Solange wore in her music video "Cranes in the Sky," as well as the white dress Solange wore for her performance at former President Barack Obama's farewell party at the White House on Jan. 6. "The day I had kids, I thought, 'I might screw everything else up, but not this,'" Ms. Lawson said, flashing a knowing smile as she sat, regally postured, on her sofa. "Now that they're grown women, it's like, 'It's my turn.'" | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
LONDON For most of the last 10 years, the Murdoch family, which controls 21st Century Fox, has wanted one thing for its global media empire above all else: the complete ownership of the popular and highly profitable Sky satellite and cable network. Sky is the dominant pay television system here, a hub for Premier League soccer, movies, and networks like Fox News, MTV and Zee Punjabi. It was Rupert Murdoch who founded Sky, and 21st Century Fox already owns part of it. Owning it outright, however, would give the Murdochs an important new cash generator to feed the rapacious appetite for growth and conquest that has made their family business the most influential media conglomerate in the world one that helped hasten Britain's "Brexit" from the European Union and helped deliver Donald J. Trump to the White House. But three words threaten to stand in the way: "fit and proper." "Fit and proper" is that so perfectly British standard by which regulators here decide whether a company should be allowed to gain and retain broadcast licenses. It's based on the premise that those who control news, information and entertainment options on television and radio should be held to high ethical standards, and that doing so determines "the kind of country we are," as Jane Bonham Carter, a member of Parliament, recently put it. Understanding just how important the Sky deal would be for the Murdochs' personal and global ambitions, and the complications that "fit and proper" could present to them, is vital to understanding the head spinning developments at Fox News these past few months. A fit and proper corporate culture or one that wants to show it's fit and proper acts quickly to oust a division chairman when he is publicly accused of having sexually harassed various women over many years, no matter how wildly successful he is, and despite his denials. That's what 21st Century Fox did with Roger Ailes last summer. But would a fit and proper company have been so blind for so long to such serious alleged misbehavior at the top of one of its most important divisions, to the extent that the United States attorney's office is now investigating whether it properly accounted for sexual harassment settlements? Likewise, nothing says "fit and proper" like firing your highest rated star after The New York Times reported that sexual harassment allegations against him had led to at least 13 million in settlements. (Yes, I'm talking about Bill O'Reilly, who also denies the accusations.) Six years later, Mr. Murdoch is, if anything, at the height of his political power, given his special relationship with President Trump and the architects of the successful Leave campaign in Britain. The Murdoch media stable showed just how little its political muscle had atrophied on the day of the European Union referendum, using the front page of The Sun to promote both the imminent release of its "Independence Day: Resurgence" movie and the Leave campaign with a headline that read, "Independence Day: Britain's Resurgence." Now Mr. Murdoch has a chance to bring it all full circle with a successful Sky deal. For James Murdoch, a Sky deal would solidify his hold on a business he's credited with adroitly expanding to Germany and Italy and into broadband. But there's something more at stake: "a chance at full corporate redemption," as the London based analyst Claire Enders put it to me last week, "after his perilously close brush in 2011." That brush is most closely associated with his testimony that he did not know the extent of the hacking inside the newspaper division that fell under his purview at the time. An email unearthed by investigators showed that a top editor had informed him that the hacking was more widespread than the company had acknowledged. (He said he had not read the email in full.) But much of the judicial inquiry that followed centered on whether the Sky bid he led at the time had too aggressively sought to trade on the company's political sway. As he pursued the Sky deal, James Murdoch appeared to be an adept student of his father's use of power and influence. In 2009 he gave a speech calling the BBC, his biggest competitor, and Ofcom "unaccountable institutions" that were bucking the free market's rules of Darwinian evolution. A few months later, The Sun swung its support to the Conservative Party leader, Mr. Cameron who had said Ofcom "as we know it" would cease to exist under Conservatives and away from the Labour Party leader, Gordon Brown, who promised no such thing. (James Murdoch delivered the news to Mr. Cameron personally.) After the endorsement, Jeremy Hunt, a member of the Conservative Party, declared that a Conservative government would "rip up" the BBC's royal charter. Mr. Cameron and the Murdochs denied Labour Party charges that there had been a quid pro quo; a judicial investigation known as the Leveson inquiry did not find that there was one, and Sky went through the expected regulatory scrutiny. But the inquiry reported inappropriately close contact between the Murdochs' lobbyist and Mr. Hunt, the key cabinet minister overseeing the process, and noted it was "regrettable" that James Murdoch had not sought to halt it. That was in line with the findings of Ofcom, which cleared him of any wrongdoing related to hacking but said he "repeatedly fell short of the exercise of responsibility to be expected of him as C.E.O. and chairman." That critique came up again this year when the culture secretary, Karen Bradley, alerted 21st Century Fox that she might refer the Sky deal for regulatory review. 21st Century Fox says it's confident it will win approval. It's certainly hoping that regulators will focus on improvements James Murdoch and his brother, Lachlan, have ushered in at the company, like enhanced benefits and a new emphasis on diversity. While some old opponents remain steadfast, like the consumer group Hacked Off, one former opponent, Ms. Enders, the analyst, is not opposed this time. In an interview, Ms. Enders pointed to James Murdoch's successful work in expanding Sky's business while placing a large number of women in senior positions and a speech he gave at a conference in which he spoke warmly about the BBC. "He's understood the error of his ways," she said, adding that he is now "20 times more cautious, anxious, obsessed with the corporate governance of Fox." Few are predicting where Ofcom will come down, though Wall Street seemed to think Mr. O'Reilly's ouster helped the deal's chances, given the boost in Sky's stock price that followed it. The agency will have to determine whether the move against Mr. O'Reilly came from typical Murdochian pragmatism or from something Wall Street doesn't necessarily reward: the fit and proper commitment to doing what's right. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
Each week, technology reporters and columnists from The New York Times review the week's news, offering analysis and maybe a joke or two about the most important developments in the tech industry. Want this newsletter in your inbox? Sign up here. Hello! I'm Nellie Bowles, the Silicon Valley and tech culture reporter at The Times, now with the privilege of bringing you the last tech newsletter of 2018. Readers of this letter know all too well what happened in tech news this year. We had some good times (crypto!), but mostly the headlines from Silicon Valley were dire revelations about corporate power, violations of consumer trust and platform led disinformation. Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, even finished the year with a product mishap: It accidentally released horizontal scrolling to horrified users, Sandra E. Garcia and Niraj Chokshi reported. I'm not going to pretend 2019 will be free of Facebook news, but a new set of stories are going hit this newsletter. The year looks as if it's going to be a Silicon Valley I.P.O. palooza. Uber, Airbnb, Lyft, Palantir and Pinterest are all angling to go public in 2019, despite the recent stock market swoon. Cash, locked up in stock options, is about to flood the region, and fleets of new millionaires will be roving. It'll be a boom, except San Francisco never really had a bust. So it'll just be more. The housing market will be strained. More. Restaurants will open. Or reopen. And the city will have another chance to funnel these gains into infrastructure. Finally, this generation of start ups, some still losing large amounts of money, will see how they can fare under the scrutiny of public markets. Will public investors be less forgiving than the venture investing counterparts of unprofitable companies? We'll be there to cover all of it. Now for the week's stories: Vindu Goel told how Amazon and Walmart might find themselves under strict new Indian laws against offering discounts, exclusive products or products supplied by affiliated companies on their Indian shopping sites. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
In this week's "Star Trek: Picard," the puzzle pieces, scattered in the first half of the season, finally start coming together. Picard reunites with Hugh on the captured Borg cube and finally connects with Soji. But not before Narek finally makes his intentions clear and tries to murder Soji, who at this point discovers who she really is: an android. Soji is a character constantly in search of secrets in a world hiding them from her. She knows Narek is hiding something and probes him for answers, to which she gets none not even his real name. She suspects that there is more to her identity, but he doesn't quite know what. Narek has to thread the needle here: Soji needs to know just enough to find the location of other synthetics, but not so much that she gets activated. He almost gets away with it too. First, he places her in what appears to be a Romulan sauna and probes her dreams for clues about the whereabouts of the other synthetics. Then he locks her in and tries to poison her. Not a great date if you ask me! This was a marvelous bit of directing by Maja Vrvilo: "Picard" has already shown its willingness to kill off a seemingly main character with Soji's sister, Dahj. So killing off Soji didn't seem out of the realm of possibility for the show. The way the scene is shot is full of tension as a result. But Soji gets activated regardless, and her superhuman strength I should say, her android muscle gets her out of the situation. I thought this was the best episode of the season, with some caveats. "Picard" has a tendency to rely on some clumsy exposition to help viewers remember details or to fill in back stories for plot lines to come. When Jurati is reminding the audience why Picard is uneasy about being on a Borg cube, it felt off. Anyone with a cursory knowledge of the character knows why Picard does not want to go back. But it does lead to a nice opportunity to watch Patrick Stewart dial into Picard's anger at the Borg much as he did in "Star Trek: First Contact." Speaking of "First Contact," there are some lovely callbacks during this episode, including references to the Borg Queen and a glimpse of Picard as Locutus. In one great shot, Picard faces the projection screen with Locutus's picture on it, and the camera swivels around to juxtapose the two faces, underscoring his internal tension. But there's no bigger callback than the reunion between Hugh and Picard. Here, I must register a small complaint. It is certainly wonderful as a Trek fan to see two beloved characters from some of the best episodes of "The Next Generation" reunite. But the version of Hugh that Jonathan Del Arco plays in "Picard" seems entirely different from the intensely earnest one he played in "The Next Generation." I realize that Hugh evolved and reclaimed more of his humanity. People change and grow over time. Certainly, former Borg drones who leave the collective do. Hugh doesn't have as many cybernetic implants now. And I credit Del Arco with bringing warmth to this version of Hugh. Jeri Ryan did something similar with her resurrection of Seven of Nine. It feels almost as if these characters had been totally recast. I am being nitpicky here, of course. Ryan and Del Arco are excellent at their craft. I just wish we saw a bit more of the personalities we became accustomed to before "Picard" Hugh's oblivious sincerity, Seven of Nine's well meaning desire for order rather than a wholesale reinvention. Even so, Del Arco's Hugh is compelling and helps Picard and Soji escape by leading them to the "Queen's Cell." I will register a louder complaint. WHY. DOES. PICARD. LEAVE. ELNOR. BEHIND?! There was no reason for it! Even Picard asks exasperated, "What are you doing?" when Elnor says he is staying behind to fight. Picard and Soji are able to step through the spatial trajector before the other Romulans arrive so why does Elnor need to stay? This was such a waste of a great fighter. It feels like a gaping plot hole in a series that has otherwise been the most tightly written stretch of "Trek" episodes in the franchise. And do the Romulans even know about the spatial trajector? The implication from Hugh is that this Queen's Cell is in a hiding spot of sorts. None Jurati, who deftly hid her murderous ways in last week's episode, begins a romance with Rios as he kicks around a soccer ball shirtless. (Not the first soccer reference on "Star Trek," by the way.) I'm still not sure what to make of Jurati but she seems genuinely remorseful for murdering Maddox. Or she could be a well trained Romulan spy. Or both. And I'm certainly not sure of what to make of her being relieved about not having to go to the Borg cube. None Raffi seems to be spiraling, although she deftly talks a Starfleet official into letting Picard request diplomatic credentials to board the Borg cube and deduces that the Romulans have kept Dahj alive for a reason. She is presented as someone for whom work is the only thing that can get her to focus. It's her therapy. Yet, this episode makes clear that work isn't enough. The scene with Raffi and Rios shows that her estrangement from her son is a source of deep frustration. Even a hard mission can't solve that. None So what happens with Hugh here? When we leave him, he is about to help Elnor fight off the oncoming Romulans. Presumably, the Romulans won't be happy with him for helping Picard escape. So shouldn't he have gone with Soji too? He could want to stay help out the reclaimed drones, but I am not sure how he does that now. None Did anyone notice the former Borg drone who recognizes Locutus and calls his name in the hallway? And also that Picard turns his head? A nice touch there by Stewart and Vrvilo. None This was not the first "Star Trek" episode to deal with an android's dreams. Recall the "Next Generation" episode "Phantasms" as well as "Birthright," during which Data discovers his own evolution. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
SAN FRANCISCO Each year, one out of every five patients admitted to a hospital in the United States for serious care develops acute kidney injury. For a variety of reasons, these patients' kidneys suddenly stop functioning normally and become unable to properly remove toxins from the bloodstream. The condition can permanently damage the kidneys, cause other illnesses or even lead to death. Acute kidney disease, or A.K.I., contributes to nearly 300,000 deaths in the United States each year, according to a 2016 study. But if the condition is identified in its early stages and properly treated, it can be stopped or reversed. In a paper published on Wednesday in the science journal Nature, researchers from DeepMind, a London artificial intelligence lab owned by Google's parent company, detail a system that can analyze a patient's health records, including blood tests, vital signs and past medical history, and predict A.K.I. up to 48 hours before onset. The paper is part of widespread efforts to build technology that can automatically diagnose or predict illness and disease, from diabetic blindness to meningitis to cancer. In academia and industry, particularly at companies like Google and DeepMind, researchers are rapidly improving this new type of automated health care. But there are many questions regarding the research, especially when it involves big corporate labs. To build and improve their automated systems, such labs must acquire vast amounts of patient data from hospitals and other medical institutions. That has repeatedly raised concerns over patient privacy. In 2017, a British government watchdog agency ruled that DeepMind had violated patient privacy in acquiring medical records from the country's National Health Service. In November, after saying that it would not share such data with Google, the London lab said it was transferring the unit that acquired the records to the American technology giant, prompting complaints from privacy advocates in Britain and elsewhere. With Google, privacy concerns are heightened because the company already controls so much data describing what people do online. DeepMind's new research is based on what is called a neural network, a complex mathematical system that can learn tasks by analyzing vast amounts of data. By analyzing thousands of dog photos, for instance, a neural network can learn to recognize a dog. Tech giants like Google already use such technology to recognize faces in photos, identify spoken words and translate languages on popular internet services and consumer devices. Now, researchers are applying the idea to health care. In the new paper, DeepMind researchers describe a system that learns to predict acute kidney injury by identifying patterns in over 700,000 patient records from the Department of Veterans Affairs. The system was reasonably accurate with its predictions, but it still missed almost half of the cases of A.K.I. "This perhaps points at the need to look into other data sources that may paint a more complete picture of the patient's clinical reality," said Dr. L. Nelson Sanchez Pinto, a researcher at Northwestern University who was not involved in the DeepMind paper but is exploring similar technology. Because the system learns from the medical history of mostly male patients admitted to V.A. hospitals, it is also unclear how well the technology would work when used with patients outside that particular population. As Dr. Sanchez Pinto indicated, the system could be improved with more, and more varied, data. But that is where DeepMind and Google are running into problems. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
In the tortuous mythology of the AIDS epidemic, one legend never seems to die: Patient Zero, a.k.a. Gaetan Dugas, a globe trotting, sexually insatiable French Canadian flight attendant who supposedly picked up H.I.V. in Haiti or Africa and spread it to dozens, even hundreds, of men before his death in 1984. Mr. Dugas was once blamed for setting off the entire American AIDS epidemic, which traumatized the nation in the 1980s and has since killed more than 500,000 Americans. The New York Post even described him with the headline "The Man Who Gave Us AIDS." But after a new genetic analysis of stored blood samples, bolstered by some intriguing historical detective work, scientists on Wednesday declared him innocent. The strain of H.I.V. responsible for almost all AIDS cases in the United States, which was carried from Zaire to Haiti around 1967, spread from there to New York City around 1971, researchers concluded in the journal Nature. From New York, it spread to San Francisco around 1976. The researchers also reported that originally, Mr. Dugas was not even called Patient Zero in an early epidemiological study of cases, he was designated Patient O, for "outside Southern California," where the study began. The ambiguous circular symbol on a chart was later read as a zero, stoking the notion that blame for the epidemic could be placed on one man. Myths like that of Patient Zero echo in prevention efforts even today, experts said. Many vulnerable groups, including young gay men and African women, fail to use protective drugs or avoid testing because they fear being stigmatized or accused of being carriers. Reflecting on the epidemic's early days, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, then a doctor treating AIDS patients and now the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said he remembered it seeming plausible at the time that one person was responsible. In hindsight, he added, the idea now seems absurd. "We were unaware of how widespread it was in Africa," Dr. Fauci said. "Also, we thought, based on very little data, that it was only about two years from infection to death." The new data is consistent with the scenario described in 2011 in "The Origins of AIDS," by Dr. Jacques Pepin, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Sherbrooke in Quebec. Relying on previous genetic research and African colonial records, Dr. Pepin showed that H.I.V. was carried from Kinshasa to Haiti in the 1960s most likely by one of the thousands of Haitian civil servants recruited by the United Nations to work in the former Belgian Congo after colonial rule collapsed. Gaetan Dugas, the flight attendant once described as Patient Zero in the American AIDS epidemic. In Haiti, he theorized, a few cases were multiplied by unsterile conditions at a private blood collecting company, Hemo Caribbean, that opened in 1971 and exported 1,600 gallons of plasma to the United States monthly. Plasma clotting factors were used by American hemophiliacs, many of whom died of AIDS. Haiti was also a sex tourism destination for gay men, another route the virus could have taken to New York. The blood samples analyzed in the new study were collected in 1978 and 1979 in New York City and San Francisco as part of an effort to make a hepatitis B vaccine. Researchers stored almost 16,000 blood samples; nearly 7 percent of those from New York and 4 percent of those from California later turned out to be infected with H.I.V. A team led by Michael Worobey, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona in Tucson and the lead author of the Nature paper, sequenced the genomes of the H.I.V. found in some of those samples and compared them with viral DNA in samples collected in the early 1980s from Haitians, Dominicans and others treated in American hospitals. Because decades spent in freezers had degraded many samples, Dr. Worobey said, his lab developed an "RNA jackhammering" technique similar to that used to reconstruct the ancient Neanderthal genome. Counting mutations allowed the researchers to "wind back the molecular clock" and see when each strain of H.I.V. diverged from its ancestors. Africa has a dozen H.I.V. groups, and Haiti's epidemic came from one of those. The New York samples all derive from one Haitian strain, and those from San Francisco are all so closely related that they probably all resulted from one person introducing one New York strain, Dr. Worobey said. The symptoms that were later called AIDS were first recognized in 1981, and the legend of Patient Zero began with a 1984 study that traced the sexual contacts of 40 gay men with Kaposi's sarcoma or other indicators of late stage AIDS. Eight of them, half in New York and half in Southern California, had had sex with an unidentified flight attendant. Initially described as "Case 057" and then as Patient O, he reported having about 250 sexual partners a year. That study incorrectly assumed that most patients developed AIDS symptoms within about 10 months of infection. In reality, it takes years so some participants may have been infected long before meeting Mr. Dugas. Also, Mr. Dugas may have become the cluster's focal point partly because he kept a diary. Men in the study reported an average of 227 partners a year, often quick, anonymous encounters in bars and bathhouses. Dr. Harold W. Jaffe, who was one of the original investigators and is now the associate director for science at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said the text of the original article referred to a "patient outside California." But the chart, of which he had an early copy, was admittedly ambiguous. At the center is the "O" or "0," identified as the "index patient." The other cases are numbered: "LA3" and "NY15," for example. Mr. Shilts said he was initially horrified that his publisher, St. Martin's Press, focused his book tour on Patient Zero instead of the government's slow response to the epidemic, but he went along. Although Mr. Shilts did not accuse Mr. Dugas of starting the American epidemic, he demonized him as a deliberate spreader of the virus who ignored a doctor's demand that he stop having unprotected sex, and coldbloodedly told some sex partners that he had "gay cancer" and now they might get it. Back in 1984, the term Patient Zero was not normally used to describe an outbreak's first case, said Dr. Jaffe, an author of the new Nature paper. "I don't remember who first used it," he said. "But after Randy Shilts did, we started saying it ourselves." Humanizing Mr. Dugas could help in the fight to end the epidemic, said Dr. Robert M. Grant, an AIDS researcher at the University of California, San Francisco. Even though the disease can now be prevented and controlled, many people in San Francisco and in Africa, he said resist getting tested for H.I.V. and fool themselves into believing they are not at risk because they fear being blamed by their social circle. "No one wants to be the Patient Zero of their village," he said. "But this may be helpful because it says, 'Just because you are the first to be diagnosed doesn't mean you started the epidemic.'" | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
Credit...Christina Horsten/Picture Alliance, via Getty Images Despite its critical role in our daily lives, air is not something most of us spend a great deal of time thinking about. It's that easy to take for granted. Unlike water, we don't need to fill up a cup to consume it. If some escapes from the room, more will find its way back in, whether we open the door or not. "If you are comfortable, you ignore it," said Wade H. Conlan, a mechanical engineer who evaluates ventilation systems on behalf of Hanson Professional Services. But like so many little luxuries we once took for granted, our days of blissfully ignoring air may be numbered. Because a growing number of scientists are convinced that a significant amount of coronavirus transmission occurs through the air in indoor spaces, and that poor ventilation magnifies the risk. Not everyone has the ability or resources to make the changes to a home or workplace to improve air circulation. But scientists and engineers say that it's worth trying to understand the basics of how airflow works in case there is a relatively easy tweak that could keep you a bit safer. The precise way that viral particles flow through a room when an infected person talks, sings, exhales or eats is something that scientists are continuing to investigate. Previous case studies have shown that it's complicated. If there is one easy to understand principle that aerosol scientists and engineers have come to agree on, though, it's this: The more outdoor air coming into a room, the better for dispersing that cloud of viral particles that might be lingering. And one of the most reliable and cost effective ways to get outdoor air into a room is to open a window. "If you don't know if the place is well ventilated, but you have the ability to open a window I would do it," said Shelly Miller, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder. That, she said, or get out quickly if you're swinging by an indoor location with other people in it. The outdoor air that comes in will eventually replace the indoor air, according to Jose Luis Jimenez, an aerosol scientist at the University of Colorado Boulder. "The more outside air you have, the more you dilute the virus," said Dr. Jimenez, who was among the scientists and engineers who sent a letter that pushed the World Health Organization to acknowledge that airborne transmission of the novel coronavirus is a threat in indoor spaces. If you want to speed up the flow of outdoor air into a room, you could also take a box fan, place it in a window and blast it outward, Dr. Jimenez said. When any amount of air leaves, that same amount of air returns it's a fixed volume. Therefore, the fan should help pull in the same amount of outdoor air. Some pull in outdoor air. Others simply recirculate indoor air. If you have air conditioning in your home, no one is saying that you need to give up on it entirely. When it's sweltering out, air conditioning can be essential not only to help you function but also to avoid heatstroke. But if you are going to spend time in a cooled space with other people, it may be worth understanding a bit more about the cool air you are breathing. Basically, all air conditioning falls into one of three categories. None The unit cools both indoor and outdoor air. None The unit cools and recirculates only indoor air. None The unit relies entirely on pulling in outdoor air. (These are uncommon outside hospitals and labs.) Centralized air systems, such as those common in office buildings, dorms and some large apartment buildings, often fall in category one. Dr. Jimenez and other building scientists involved in coronavirus prevention are currently advising owners of businesses and buildings with category one systems to adjust the ratio to pull in more outdoor air, an enterprise that can be costly. Take a casino in Las Vegas, which is kept cool enough to keep people gambling inside while it's 120 degrees Fahrenheit outside. Cooling that hot outdoor air will be more expensive than recirculating the already cool inside air. But given that keeping customers healthy is also a priority, more are willing to revisit their approach, Dr. Jimenez said. Few of us have the ability to adjust our air conditioning in this way. Most window units sitting with their rears facing the outdoors, for example, fall into category two. Instead of pulling in outdoor air, they are dumping heat from the room outdoors, said William Bahnfleth, a professor of architectural engineering at Penn State's Institutes of Energy and the Environment. If you live alone, or with people you're sure aren't infectious, those units are fine. But if you give in to throwing that birthday dinner for your parents, or if your teenager has been less than strict about staying home, it's worth remembering that "any virus that's present will be mixed in" to the recirculating indoor air, Dr. Jimenez said. And so, if you have to have people over, it may be preferable to revert to rule one: When in doubt, open the windows. Or better yet, go outside. Not all filters are equal. But a good filter can be just as effective as pulling in outside air. So what do you do if you're stuck with a unit that primarily recirculates indoor air and it's unrealistic to open the window? This is where filters come in. The right filter is just as effective as pulling in outside air, said Dr. Edward A. Nardell, a professor at Harvard Medical School who has written about the role that air conditioning plays in spreading airborne diseases. Along with removing dust, pollen, cooking odors, tobacco smoke and chemicals, filters can take viral particles from the air. Some filters go directly in air conditioning units and central air systems. Others are designed to stand alone. MERV and HEPA are two widely trusted, certified types. MERV filters are rated on how efficiently they remove particles in a specific size range from the air. ASHRAE, a professional society of air conditioning, heating and refrigerating engineers, recommends MERV 13 and above for filtering out the coronavirus, said Dr. Bahnfleth, who leads the group's epidemic task force. It is what Dr. Bahnfleth has in his own house. Any HEPA filter is even more efficient than the highest rated MERV filter, he added, so either should effectively capture coronavirus particles. Many central air systems are designed to incorporate specialized filters. But not all can handle the most advanced filters. Lower rated filters still could be helpful, Mr. Conlan said it's not that they won't ever catch smaller particles; they just won't do it as frequently. Window units are typically designed for comfort, not health, and have even more filter limitations. For those who can afford them or push their employers or landlords to buy them a stand alone HEPA filter is a good option Dr. Bahnfleth said. Some are designed for bigger spaces than others. The key, Dr. Jimenez added, is picking one that will filter all the air in the room at least twice an hour. Be aware that if an air filtration system sounds too good to be true, your instincts may be right. Some of them appear to rely on questionable marketing and science, Dr. Jimenez said. Instead, keep your distance, wear a mask, get out quickly if you can. Now that you're an air expert, it may be tempting to think that you know how to pick the safest position in a restaurant or other indoor space you might find you have a reason to be in. But even experts cannot easily eyeball the lowest risk location, said Andrew Persily, who oversaw the development of an online tool to estimate exposure to infectious aerosols in rooms and buildings as chief of the Energy Environment Division at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. "Depending on the airflow pattern and where the aerosols are released, there may be regions in the room that result in higher exposure than others," he said. "It's tough to predict." It's also hard to gauge how many is too many people in a given space. After all it only takes one infected person to get other people sick. If you have a carbon dioxide detector, you could try a technique previously used to manage the spread of tuberculosis, and use that to tip you off, Dr. Miller suggests. If CO2 levels are above 1,000 parts per one million, you'd be wise to decrease the number of people in the indoor space, increase the amount of outdoor air or both, she says. An alternate approach is to look around. Do you see other people? If so, leave. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
The tenor Lawrence Brownlee asked himself, "Why don't I think about doing some type of song cycle, detailing our own perspective of what it is to be a black man in America?" The result, "Cycles of My Being," has its premiere on Feb. 20 in Philadelphia. When Carnegie Hall came calling in 2016, asking the tenor Lawrence Brownlee to plan a recital, he knew he wanted to include a classic German song cycle. Schumann's "Dichterliebe" was high on his list. But what to perform alongside it? That year, Mr. Brownlee, an international star in the bel canto operatic repertory, sang an arrangement of the African American spiritual "There's a Man Going 'Round Taking Names" with the jazz pianist Jason Moran. Conceived as an artistic statement in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement, the performance lingered in Mr. Brownlee's mind, and helped him answer the question of what he should sing at Carnegie. The result is "Cycles of My Being," a 40 minute work in six parts by the composer Tyshawn Sorey and the poet Terrance Hayes. Or, more precisely, a pair of works. The first version scored for cello, violin, clarinet and piano, in addition to voice will have its premiere on Tuesday at the Kimmel Center under the auspices of Opera Philadelphia, where Mr. Brownlee is an artistic adviser. A slightly shorter arrangement for piano and tenor will then travel to Chicago (as part of Lyric Opera of Chicago's Lyric Unlimited series) before arriving at Carnegie in April for that pairing with Schumann. "We talk about hope, we talk about hate," Mr. Brownlee said of the piece. "We talk about consciousness. We talk about religion." Mr. Brownlee listened to that Baker cycle which Zachary Woolfe called "one of the most important works of art yet to emerge from the era of Black Lives Matter" in The New York Times and other Sorey works on YouTube, and became convinced he had found a musical partner. For texts, they turned to Terrance Hayes, whose poetry has considered issues of race and masculinity. The lyrics Mr. Hayes wrote are varied. Some stanzas relay deeply personal conceptual ideas, in list poem format. Other sections offer pointed political questions for the nation, and lines addressed directly to those who hate. The sometimes searing, occasionally abstract words prompted Mr. Sorey to venture into his full storehouse of stylistic effects, and he has responded with a score that teems with vivid contrasts. ("It's a jump, isn't it?" Mr. Brownlee said, in an understatement, comparing the new score with the Bellini and Rossini he is known for.) But Mr. Sorey has created more than a showcase for virtuoso complexity. The lyrics' attention to cyclical processes is dramatized, early on, by the music's shift through harmonic intervals. And Mr. Sorey can paint moods as effectively as Mr. Hayes does. Describing the second movement in a recent interview, Mr. Sorey said, "You have these sort of tonal sections; some stuff is really pretty. There's a lot of patterns." But during the third movement, he added with a soft laugh, "it definitely takes a turn." This metrically tricky, powerhouse section contains some booming, sustained piano chords. It also requires the vocalist to move quickly between dynamics, including some unusually loud ones. The volatile music suggests the unpredictable ways racial prejudice manifests itself in daily life. "Every day that my feet hit the floor, I have to know that I'm going to encounter some of these small minuscule, minute things," Mr. Brownlee said. "And the decisions you make in an instant can change the course of your life." The music of "Cycles of My Being" reflects both the changeability and the gravity of that life, and puts an emphasis on empathy, even from the musicians. Mr. Sorey asks all the players to read from the full score, instead of from individual parts. "I want them to see the actual lyrics," he said. "I want all of the players to have a total experience of what it means to sing the music. Imagining themselves as the vocalist, and them singing the music. That's how I like to try to frame it." Though Mr. Brownlee spoke with clear pride about a song cycle entirely created by black men, he also said he wanted the work to reach out to many different communities and audiences. "The song cycle is meant to do good," he said. He also wants listeners less familiar with some of the work's themes to leave thinking: "O.K., that was some tough information we got, but I understand. It wasn't just, like, someone shaking their fist at me, so I walked away angry." It is a statement that is, above all, personal. "Opera singers spend their whole life occupying other characters," said David Devan, the general director of Opera Philadelphia. "A song cycle allows them to perform and try material that is about them." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
PARIS As the four city fashion show cavalcade comes to an end, here's a look at some of the catwalk styles from Paris that could sharpen your wardrobe this fall. More elegant and practical than the poncho and with better options for layering, capes in captivating cuts and either rich or technical fabrics have returned as the heroines of outerwear this season. Whether your preference is the strong shoulders and block colors with a more traditional feel or the more contemporary strange and sculpted silhouettes and hooded nylon options, expect pieces to swirl their way into stores and online retailers soon. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
Several private companies have confirmed that they were struck by the attack, including: Trading of FedEx's shares were briefly halted on Wednesday after the company said that the global operations of a subsidiary, TNT Express, had also been impacted. WHAT THE RANSOMWARE IS Cybersecurity researchers first called the new ransomware attack Petya, as it was similar to a ransomware strain known by that name that was first reported by Kasperksy in March 2016. But Kaspersky later said that its investigation into the new attack found that it was a type of ransomware that had never been seen before. Photographs and videos of computers affected by the attack showed a message of red text on a black screen: "Oops, your important files have been encrypted. If you see this text then your files are no longer accessible because they have been encrypted. Perhaps you are busy looking to recover your files but don't waste your time." Symantec, a Silicon Valley cybersecurity firm, confirmed that the ransomware was infecting computers through at least one exploit, or vulnerability to computer systems, known as Eternal Blue. The exploit was leaked online last April by a mysterious group of hackers known as the Shadow Brokers, who have previously released hacking tools used by the National Security Agency. That vulnerability was used in May to spread the WannaCry ransomware, which affected hundreds of thousands of computers in more than 150 countries. PEOPLE ARE PAYING Cybersecurity researchers identified a Bitcoin address to which the attackers are demanding a payment of 300 from their victims. At least some appear to have paid the ransom (As of Wednesday morning, the address had logged 45 transactions), even though the email address used by the attackers was shut down. That removes the possibility that the attackers could restore a victim's access to their computer networks, even once ransom is paid. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
"While on the floor," the magazine reported, "a buyer may receive from Europe a cable order for a cargo of grain, flour, or provisions, may purchase what is ordered, charter a vessel for shipment, engage an elevator to load the grain, or a lighter to move provisions or flour, effect insurance, sell exchange, cable back the fact of his purchases, and write and mail his letters." The building had lounges, a restaurant, meeting halls, offices for rent and a library that carried foreign and domestic periodicals, including, for instance, The Bangor Rustler of Dakota Territory. National and world prices were established here for petroleum, turpentine and staples like wheat and corn; in the 1880s the exchange processed orders of about 60 million bushels of each, and by 1900 was doing 15 million a day in business. But by the 1950s, exchange membership had fallen to 500, down from 2,500 in the 1880s, and in 1953 the members announced they would part with their venerable headquarters in favor of a new 30 story office building, a tall, angled slab set on a low base, like an early TV on a swivel table, designed by William Lescaze. The architectural historian Talbot F. Hamlin tilted at this windmill in the same year in Architectural Forum, which was becoming known as an independent voice in the field of architecture, ignoring the influence of advertisers. Hamlin called the produce exchange the best of Post's work, "striking in color" and also "expressive of its time," a sine qua non for modernists. He railed against demolition, asking whether New Yorkers were "such slaves to economic pressures that they can have no say in what they see, no power to preserve what they love?" For some reason certainly not Hamlin's outrage the members hesitated until 1957. Then they moved out and the structure came down. The new No. 2 Broadway was welcomed by businesses in the financial district; the postwar period for downtown real estate had been slow. But critics were less hospitable. Emery Roth had succeeded Lescaze and was no favorite: In a 1982 essay in The New Criterion, Ada Louise Huxtable derided his checkerboard modernist facade, saying it looked "as if it could be demolished with a can opener." Nathan Silver, in his prescient 1967 book, "Lost New York," cut to the quick: "The produce exchange, one of the best buildings in New York, was replaced after 1957 by one of the worst." Graybeards who mourn the rich red brick of the produce exchange must be few in number by now. At the time no one mobilized or picketed or raised any ruckus. But its passing became one of those subliminal "aha" moments, a ready reference in the collective consciousness of New Yorkers that something valuable was slipping away, piece by piece. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
"Konfessions of a Klabautermann" by Hardeep Pandhal in the exhibition "Knock Knock: Humor in Contemporary Art" at the South London Gallery. LONDON The clown dozes peacefully on the gallery floor, his flabby gut exposed. He wears a shiny red nose and an exaggerated grin. Yet there's nothing terribly cheery about him; he's a vision of gloom. The clown is a fiberglass sculpture from 2002 by Ugo Rondinone called "If There Were Anywhere But Desert. Friday," and it will be a highlight of "Knock Knock: Humor in Contemporary Art" at the South London Gallery. The show, which opens on Saturday and runs through Nov. 18, celebrates the 127 year old institution's reopening after a major expansion. The two part show is staged in the spacious main gallery and in a new multistory building across the street, a former Victorian fire station. Perched on the main gallery's ceiling beams are a group of stuffed pigeons by Maurizio Cattelan. Other lighthearted displays include Lynn Hershman Leeson's image of a woman with a clock in place of a torso, "Biological Clock 2," from 1995, and Matthew Higgs's "Portrait (Landscape)," from 2006, an all red canvas bearing the inscription "NO OIL PAINTING" across the middle. The humor in many other works in the exhibition is even more elusive. Barbara Kruger's 1988 image "Untitled (We Don't Need Another Hero)" shows a chubby man peeling a banana. A sculpture by Basim Magdy is a glass basketball hoop titled "Good Things Happen When You Least Expect Them," from 2010. "Everyone is going to come here and say, 'But that's not funny work, and this isn't about humor' and I want people to do that," said the artist Ryan Gander, who co curated the exhibition. "For me, the best shows are the ones that, when you're on the bus on the way home, you still think about, even if you didn't like them." "If you curate an exhibition that makes people laugh, it's just a theme of entertainment: This is not what exhibition making's purpose is," added Mr. Gander, who also has a work in the show: a pair of large, animatronic eyes set in the wall that react to the viewer in a manner that's both droll and spooky. The South London Gallery's director, Margot Heller, the show's main curator, said that the expansion deserved to be celebrated with a range of works that was "open to the whole gamut of audiences." At the same time, she added, "laughing out loud is not our gauge for success." The exhibition is "intended to be quite thought provoking about what humor is, what makes us laugh and what doesn't, and why," she said. "Artists use humor as a device, as a mechanism to achieve something else, which isn't about laughter. It's about prompting people to think about other issues. That's the defining characteristic running through most, if not all, of the work." One artist in the exhibition whose work has met with mirth (not all of it good) is Martin Creed. He won the 2001 Turner Prize after being nominated for a work that involved the lights in an empty gallery switching on and off every five seconds. It led one visitor to throw eggs at the wall and prompted the British tabloid newspaper The Sun to start a mock competition called the "Turnip Prize." Mr. Creed has also exhibited a crumpled piece of paper and presented videos of people vomiting and defecating. His stated aim is to make art that, like life itself, is "stupid," or devoid of meaning or explanation. His "Knock Knock" contribution is a row of potted cactus plants and a wall painted with diagonal stripes. Mr. Creed said in an interview that it was not his intention to be humorous. "The problem of laughter is, it's gone in a second. If you're living with your own work, you can't laugh all the time: It's a momentary thing," he said. "If some of my work makes people laugh, that makes me happy. But to me, the worst possible thing is a person who thinks that they're funny, or wants to be funny and isn't. Basically, I don't want to run that race, because I don't want to lose the race." The focus of "Knock, Knock" is contemporary art, but humor has been present in art for centuries. Hieronymus Bosch crowded his paintings with farcical looking creatures, and William Hogarth amused the viewer with his crude cautionary tales. It became a much more important subject in the 20th century, as the author Sheri Klein explains in her 2007 book "Art and Laughter." Ms. Klein argues that the artist most directly responsible for that was Marcel Duchamp, who famously submitted a porcelain urinal to a 1917 exhibition in New York. Two years later, he presented a painting of a mustachioed Mona Lisa labeled "L.H.O.O.Q." (which means "she's hot to trot," in cruder language, in French). Decades later, Pop Art provoked amusement by using banal everyday items as a subject, like Andy Warhol's Campbell's soup cans, Jeff Koons's vacuum cleaners, and Claes Oldenburg's giant sculpture of a hamburger. Despite those examples, art and humor make awkward bedfellows, Ms. Klein said in an interview, and they are not often examined together as a subject. "There is a stigma about laughter as a response to a work of art: If it arouses laughter, then it must not be serious," she said. Humor is also "associated with low class behavior. If an artist is evoking laughter, then it must mean that it's a low class piece of work," she added. Ms. Klein recalled that in the immediate postwar period, the United States had plenty of artists who made pun filled, laughter inducing art, such as the Chicago Imagists, a group of artists in the 1960s whose Surrealist inspired work made use of word plays and puns. But today, "the culture at large is a more joyless culture," she said. "We are in a time of great pessimism: Humor is not being used as a form of resistance anymore." Ms. Heller said the exhibition deliberately showcased "artists you haven't heard of or seen, or who haven't had exposure," rather than rolling out the usual suspects. "It's more of an essay, going through it: a little winding journey through diverse approaches." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
WASHINGTON The Federal Reserve is all but certain to move to spur the nation's sputtering recovery this Wednesday, but most economists say it is unlikely to have a big impact on employment and growth. Overruling objections from a handful of inflation fearing dissidents, the Fed's policy setting committee, which begins a two day meeting on Tuesday, is expected to resume quantitative easing, a strategy of buying Treasury securities to put downward pressure on long term interest rates. The hope is that new action by the Fed will make a deflationary spiral of falling prices less likely, and make it somewhat easier for consumers and businesses to borrow and spend. In theory, the Fed could print trillions of dollars to achieve its aim, but it is far more likely to start with a smaller amount perhaps a few hundred billion and gradually buy more bonds as conditions warrant. That open ended, conditional approach would be a departure from the Fed's first, 1.7 trillion round of debt purchases, which lasted about 15 months and ended in March. The Fed's chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, seems to be under no illusion about the potency of the new purchases, having declared in August that "central bankers alone cannot solve the world's economic problems." With inflation well below the Fed's unofficial target of 2 percent, unemployment stuck at nearly 10 percent, and gross domestic product growing at a lethargic rate, Mr. Bernanke has evidently concluded that doing nothing is not an option. Mr. Bernanke has long argued that a central bank, having lowered short term rates to zero, as the Fed did in December 2008, still has tools to prevent an economy from slipping into deflation; he is now following that advice. But economists seem to be in broad agreement that no matter the magnitude of the Fed's actions this week, the economy will remain challenged for some time. "There is a substantial chance that the U.S. economy is headed into a lost decade, similar to what Japan has experienced in the past 15 years, possibly with zero inflation instead of actual deflation," said Robert J. Gordon, of Northwestern University, who serves on the committee that determines the start and end dates of recessions. "But the consequences for the U.S. population will be much more severe than in Japan," he added, "because of our higher unemployment rate, our lack of a social safety net, our system that ties medical insurance to employment instead of making it a right of citizenship, our greater inequality and our higher level of poverty." Guillermo A. Calvo, of the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, gave a similar assessment. "The central problem in the U.S. is the breakdown of the credit channel, especially credit for small firms and for working capital," he said. "Buying long term Treasury bonds amounts to directing credit toward a sector that has no need for it." The Fed's actions, Mr. Calvo said, will mostly be felt abroad. Quantitative easing is likely to push down the value of the dollar and send even more money flowing into the faster growing economies of Asia and Latin America, where interest rates are higher and inflation is a greater worry than in the sluggish economies of North America and Western Europe. On Aug. 10, the Fed took a baby step toward additional monetary expansion, deciding to use proceeds from its portfolio of mortgage backed securities to buy two to 10 year Treasury securities. In an Aug. 27 speech in Jackson Hole, Wyo., Mr. Bernanke emphasized the need to analyze both the costs and the benefits of action, but made it clear he was prepared to move if needed. At the Fed's most recent policy meeting, on Sept. 21, the committee said it was "prepared to provide additional accommodation if needed," and in a speech in Boston on Oct. 15, Mr. Bernanke said "there would appear all else being equal to be a case for further action." The actions have already had an effect. Since Aug. 10, long term interest rates have fallen, stock prices have risen and expectations of inflation have crept upward. At a closed door gathering of central bankers from the Group of 20 economic powers in Gyeongju, South Korea, on Oct. 22 and 23, Mr. Bernanke tried to reassure his peers, some of whom expressed alarm about the effect of Fed action on the dollar. In response, Mr. Bernanke cited the imperative of supporting domestic growth and the role American consumer demand plays in sustaining the worldwide recovery, according to people who attended the meeting. What the chairman has not managed or necessarily tried to do, however, is to quell the dissenting voices within the Fed who say additional action is a grave mistake. The most prominent dissenter, Thomas M. Hoenig, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, has argued that new quantitative easing could lead to imbalances and volatility, undermine the Fed's independence and unmoor inflation expectations. In his most pointed language to date, he recently called the plan a "dangerous gamble" and a "bargain with the devil." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Economy |
WASHINGTON New opponents confronted Facebook on Wednesday as it moves forward with a plan to encrypt all of its messaging platforms: child welfare advocates who said that encryption would allow child predators to operate with impunity across the company's apps. "Facebook has a responsibility to work with law enforcement and to prevent the use of your sites and services for sexual abuse," a group of 129 child protection organizations, led by the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, said in a letter to the Silicon Valley company. "An increased risk of child abuse being facilitated on or by Facebook is not a reasonable trade off to make." The letter indicates how activists and law enforcement agencies have seized on child exploitation as a new way to combat the expanded use of encryption in consumer technology. The Justice Department and its counterparts in Britain and Australia previously used the threat of terrorist activity to rail against encryption, saying that tech companies were shielding malicious and dangerous criminals. But they have recently shifted their focus to child exploitation as tech companies have made good on plans to make it harder to see or stop illicit activity on those platforms. In a statement, Facebook said, "Encryption is critically important to keep everyone safe from hackers and criminals." The company said it was building safety measures for children and working closely with child safety experts. "We have led the industry in safeguarding children from exploitation and we are bringing this same commitment and leadership to our work on encryption," Facebook said. Last March, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's chief executive, announced that he planned to knit together and encrypt the company's various messaging services, including WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook Messenger. The products serve billions of people globally. Facebook has been grappling with its role in the explosion of online child pornography. In 2018, tech companies reported more than 45 million online photos and videos of children being sexually abused. Facebook accounted for more than 90 percent of reports that tech companies flagged that year. Once Facebook Messenger the company's main source of such imagery is fully encrypted, it will be nearly impossible for Facebook to detect such images. Tech companies said they had found other ways to combat abuse of their services, even if they introduce encryption. Those methods include scanning and matching the profile photos of users to those of known predators, as well as relying on user reports and complaints. WhatsApp, which is already fully encrypted, has said it bans more than 250,000 users every month for posting imagery of exploited children. The scope and severity of online child pornography has grown exponentially along with the rise of social networks. 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. It is possible to find images and videos of children as young as infants being raped and abused online, and some services allow people to watch pay per view live streams of assaults of victims from around the world. Many victims live in fear of being recognized, thanks to the near impossibility of deleting these images from the internet. It would take nearly every agent at the F.B.I. to pursue every child pornography lead that came into the bureau, according to F.B.I. and Justice Department officials who have fought to obtain information that companies like Apple say they cannot give because of the strengthened security in their products. In a hearing with the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, Christopher Wray, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, also criticized Facebook on its encryption plans, calling it a "dream come true" for predators and child pornographers who use the services to traffic in illicit material. "If Facebook moves forward with the plans that they have at the moment, we will be blinded," Mr. Wray said. "They will blind themselves and law enforcement." Mr. Wray said Facebook should not be able to decide unilaterally to shut out law enforcement, leaving open the possibility that American lawmakers could try to mitigate the problem through legislation, as Australia has done. In 2018, the Australian Parliament passed a bill that required tech companies to provide law enforcement authorities with access to encrypted communications. "Tech companies like Facebook have a vital responsibility to balance privacy with the safety of vulnerable children," Priti Patel, the British home secretary, said in a statement on Wednesday. "We have also submitted detailed evidence to the U.S. Senate about these concerns." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
They were nowhere near significant enough in Wayne County, or anywhere else in Michigan, to change President elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.'s victory. Mayor Mike Duggan of Detroit said they involved just 357 votes out of about 250,000 cast in the city. Election certification is supposed to be routine: Canvassers at the county or municipal level (depending on the state) review precinct results, make sure every ballot is accounted for and every vote was counted, double check the totals and send the certified numbers to state officials. It's the process by which the results reported on election night are confirmed. This is basically an accounting task. If the canvassers find possible errors, it is their job to look into and resolve them, but refusing to certify results based on minor discrepancies is not normal. Michigan's canvassing boards always have four members split between the two parties, and it is extremely rare for members to decline to certify an election that their party lost. "It is common for some precincts in Michigan and across the country to be out of balance by a small number of votes, especially when turnout is high," Jocelyn Benson, the Michigan secretary of state, said in a statement Tuesday evening. "Importantly, this is not an indication that any votes were improperly cast or counted." It is also highly abnormal to suggest, as Ms. Palmer did, that canvassers certify the results in one place but not another when there is no meaningful difference between the two in terms of the number or severity of discrepancies. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
Credit...Celeste Sloman for The New York Times At the End of the New Pier 26, a Surprise Expanding a park usually means modifying an existing landscape. The designers of Pier 26 faced a far more daunting challenge: creating an entirely new one in the swift current of the Hudson River. The results can be seen on Wednesday afternoon, when the revamped pier opens at the end of North Moore Street in Manhattan. The latest addition to Hudson River Park, this 2.5 acre expanse is the city's only public pier dedicated to river ecology. Incorporating a lawn, a sports court and decks elevated more than 12 feet above the water, it exhibits indigenous plants and trees that hark back to when only Native Americans occupied what is now New York. But the pier's most distinctive feature is a feat of 21st century artifice: Because the park's sea wall prevented developing a rocky intertidal wetland a science education bonanza at the shoreline, the trust decided to engineer one on the river itself. "We all know that you can build marshland and tidal pools near a bulkhead," said Madelyn Wils, president and chief executive of the Hudson River Park Trust, the nonprofit public corporation that operates and continues to develop the park. "But how would they actually do 800 feet out on the water?" Ms. Wils presented her vision to OLIN, a Philadelphia based landscape architecture firm. Its team, including Trevor Lee as lead designer and Lucinda Sanders, OLIN's chief executive, worked with Mueser Rutledge Consulting Engineers and Biohabitats, a company specializing in ecological restoration, to design a 15,000 square foot wetland. Called the Tide Deck, this human engineered rocky marsh rests on a concrete platform atop 36 steel piles that descend into the river bottom under and around the end of the pier. To break up the waves and provide refuge for water fowl, Demetrios Staurinos, the project manager, and Jamee Kominsky, another OLIN landscape architect, selected 1,300 boulders from upstate New York that they assembled "like a jigsaw puzzle," Mr. Staurinos said. Spaces were carved into these rocks to make tidal pools for marine creatures. To give the marsh plant life, the designers inserted smooth cordgrass into 96 modules of durable polyester that were anchored to the platform. "It's sort of like hair transplants," Ms. Wils said during a recent walk around the pier. "You plant the grass in the plugs," and then sediment naturally collects around the seedlings. Twice a day, at high tide, this manufactured wetland floods completely, a process that visitors can observe from the decks overhead. During low tide, tour groups and school classes can descend a walkway into the marsh, where they can closely study the Hudson estuary, a vast ecosystem where the saltwater of the Atlantic Ocean mingles with the freshwater of the river's tributaries. The designers plan to attach Biohuts, artificial habitats to nurture young fish, at different heights along the Tide Deck's piles. The trust is also striving to rebuild the oyster population, which students will be able to examine. The pier's redevelopment has been long in coming. Built over the footprint of an old maritime wharf, the new Pier 26 was begun in the early 2000s. But the project ran out of funds; except for the City Vineyard restaurant and the Downtown Boathouse, which were independently financed, nothing new has been constructed at the pier since the end of 2008. During this hiatus, the trust developed new funding partnerships: The City of New York, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation and Citi, which has offices nearby, have paid for the 37.7 million project that is opening now; it has also received grants from New York State's Environmental Protection Fund. The trust, which hired OLIN in 2015, treated the pause in construction as an opportunity to re envision the site. "Aside from being flat, many piers are also kind of one note you just want to get to the end," Mr. Staurinos said. "We wanted to make that journey from the city out to the water interesting." That meant creating a series of environments and elevations. As visitors stroll westward, they encounter a sequence of small ecological habitats woodland forest, coastal grassland, maritime scrub, the wetland and, finally, the river. Ascending walkways on the north and south sides eventually converge in an inverted V around the marshland; at that apex, a 1,353 square foot platform angles high over the Hudson. The pier's perimeter, which offers seating that includes stadium style bleachers and deck chairs, also has an unexpected north wall with window openings, bar stools and a desk level shelf for coffee cups or laptops. By providing shade and blocking wind, the wall "is going to extend the seasonal use of this park," Ms. Sanders said. OLIN also added modern day gazebos: two sheds, one wood and the other perforated steel, each equipped with pairs of six foot wide swings. These designs are "more like a folly, having a bit of fun," Ms. Sanders said. Another goal was sustainability, as well as a rigid substructure designed to withstand another superstorm like Sandy. Instead of rainforest hardwood, the decks and furnishings are made of Kebony, an alcohol impregnated pine, while most of the metal is stainless steel; both can weather a maritime environment. Tillett Lighting Design Associates also engineered the illumination throughout the site so that it would neither compete with the stars nor disturb the Hudson's 70 fish species. The full project, however, is not yet complete. An "estuarium," a 30 million educational center that is still at the fund raising stage, and a 4 million playground with two giant models of endangered sturgeon species to frolic inside will be built at the eastern edge of the site, just before the pier begins. The objective is the kind of comprehensive urban oasis that New Yorkers first craved in the years following Sept. 11, Ms. Wils said. "Now, we're finishing this in the time of Covid," she added, "when, again, parks have become less of an amenity and more of a necessity." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
The studio for what is arguably the world's most successful online course is tucked into a corner of Barb and Phil Oakley's basement, a converted TV room that smells faintly of cat urine. (At the end of every video session, the Oakleys pin up the green fabric that serves as the backdrop so Fluffy doesn't ruin it.) This is where they put together "Learning How to Learn," taken by more than 1.8 million students from 200 countries, the most ever on Coursera. The course provides practical advice on tackling daunting subjects and on beating procrastination, and the lessons engagingly blend neuroscience and common sense. Dr. Oakley, an engineering professor at Oakland University in Rochester, Mich., created the class with Terrence Sejnowski, a neuroscientist at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, and with the University of California, San Diego. Prestigious universities have spent millions and employ hundreds of professionally trained videographers, editors and producers to create their massive open online courses, known as MOOCs. The Oakleys put together their studio with equipment that cost 5,000. They figured out what to buy by Googling "how to set up a green screen studio" and "how to set up studio lighting." Mr. Oakley runs the camera and teleprompter. She does most of the editing. The course is free ( 49 for a certificate of completion Coursera won't divulge how many finish). "It's actually not rocket science," said Dr. Oakley but she's careful where she says that these days. When she spoke at Harvard in 2015, she said, "the hackles went up"; she crossed her arms sternly by way of grim illustration. This is home brew, not Harvard. And it has worked. Spectacularly. The Oakleys never could have predicted their success. Many of the early sessions had to be trashed. "I looked like a deer in the headlights," Dr. Oakley said. She would flub her lines and moan, "I just can't do this." Her husband would say, "Come on. We're going to have lunch, and we're going to come right back to this." But he confessed to having had doubts, too. "We were in the basement, worrying, 'Is anybody even going to look at this?'" Dr. Oakley is not the only person teaching students how to use tools drawn from neuroscience to enhance learning. But her popularity is a testament to her skill at presenting the material, and also to the course's message of hope. Many of her online students are 25 to 44 years old, likely to be facing career changes in an unforgiving economy and seeking better ways to climb new learning curves. Dr. Oakley's lessons are rich in metaphor, which she knows helps get complex ideas across. The practice is rooted in the theory of neural reuse, which states that metaphors use the same neural circuits in the brain as the underlying concept does, so the metaphor brings difficult concepts "more rapidly on board," as she puts it. She illustrates her concepts with goofy animations: There are surfing zombies, metabolic vampires and an "octopus of attention." Hammy editing tricks may have Dr. Oakley moving out of the frame to the right and popping up on the left, or cringing away from an animated, disembodied head that she has put on the screen to discuss a property of the brain. Sitting in the Oakleys' comfortable living room, with its solid Mission furniture and mementos of their world travels, Dr. Oakley said she believes that just about anyone can train himself to learn. "Students may look at math, for example, and say, 'I can't figure this out it must mean I'm really stupid!' They don't know how their brain works." Her own feelings of inadequacy give her empathy for students who feel hopeless. "I know the hiccups and the troubles people have when they're trying to learn something." After all, she was her own lab rat. "I rewired my brain," she said, "and it wasn't easy." As a youngster, she was not a diligent student. "I flunked my way through elementary, middle school and high school math and science," she said. She joined the Army out of high school to help pay for college and received extensive training in Russian at the Defense Language Institute. Once out, she realized she would have a better career path with a technical degree (specifically, electrical engineering), and set out to tackle math and science, training herself to grind through technical subjects with many of the techniques of practice and repetition that she had used to let Russian vocabulary and declension soak in. Along the way, she met Philip Oakley in, of all places, Antarctica. It was 1983, and she was working as a radio operator at the Amundsen Scott South Pole Station. (She has also worked as a translator on a Russian trawler. She's been around.) Mr. Oakley managed the garage at the station, keeping machinery working under some of the planet's most punishing conditions. She had noticed him largely because, unlike so many men at the lonely pole, he hadn't made any moves on her. "You can be ugly as a toad out there and you are the most popular girl," she said. She found him "comfortably confident." After he left a party without even saying hello, she told a friend she'd like to get to know him better. The next day, he was waiting for her at breakfast with a big smile on his face. Three weeks later, on New Year's Eve, he walked her over to the true South Pole and proposed at the stroke of midnight. A few weeks after that, they were "off the ice" in New Zealand and got married. Dr. Oakley recounts her journey in both of her best selling books: "A Mind for Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science (Even if You Flunked Algebra)" and, out this past spring, "Mindshift: Break Through Obstacles to Learning and Discover Your Hidden Potential." The new book is about learning new skills, with a focus on career switchers. And yes, she has a MOOC for that, too. Dr. Oakley is already planning her next book, another guide to learning how to learn but aimed at 10 to 13 year olds. She wants to tell them, "Even if you are not a superstar learner, here's how to see the great aspects of what you do have." She would like to see learning clubs in school to help young people develop the skills they need. "We have chess clubs, we have art clubs," she said. "We don't have learning clubs. I just think that teaching kids how to learn is one of the greatest things we can possibly do." Four Techniques to Help You Learn FOCUS/DON'T The brain has two modes of thinking that Dr. Oakley simplifies as "focused," in which learners concentrate on the material, and "diffuse," a neural resting state in which consolidation occurs that is, the new information can settle into the brain. (Cognitive scientists talk about task positive networks and default mode networks, respectively, in describing the two states.) In diffuse mode, connections between bits of information, and unexpected insights, can occur. That's why it's helpful to take a brief break after a burst of focused work. TAKE A BREAK To accomplish those periods of focused and diffuse mode thinking, Dr. Oakley recommends what is known as the Pomodoro Technique, developed by one Francesco Cirillo. Set a kitchen timer for a 25 minute stretch of focused work, followed by a brief reward, which includes a break for diffuse reflection. ("Pomodoro" is Italian for tomato some timers look like tomatoes.) The reward listening to a song, taking a walk, anything to enter a relaxed state takes your mind off the task at hand. Precisely because you're not thinking about the task, the brain can subconsciously consolidate the new knowledge. Dr. Oakley compares this process to "a librarian filing books away on shelves for later retrieval." As a bonus, the ritual of setting the timer can also help overcome procrastination. Dr. Oakley teaches that even thinking about doing things we dislike activates the pain centers of the brain. The Pomodoro Technique, she said, "helps the mind slip into focus and begin work without thinking about the work." "Virtually anyone can focus for 25 minutes, and the more you practice, the easier it gets." PRACTICE "Chunking" is the process of creating a neural pattern that can be reactivated when needed. It might be an equation or a phrase in French or a guitar chord. Research shows that having a mental library of well practiced neural chunks is necessary for developing expertise. Practice brings procedural fluency, says Dr. Oakley, who compares the process to backing up a car. "When you first are learning to back up, your working memory is overwhelmed with input." In time, "you don't even need to think more than 'Hey, back up,' " and the mind is free to think about other things. Chunks build on chunks, and, she says, the neural network built upon that knowledge grows bigger. "You remember longer bits of music, for example, or more complex phrases in French." Mastering low level math concepts allows tackling more complex mental acrobatics. "You can easily bring them to mind even while your active focus is grappling with newer, more difficult information." KNOW THYSELF Dr. Oakley urges her students to understand that people learn in different ways. Those who have "racecar brains" snap up information; those with "hiker brains" take longer to assimilate information but, like a hiker, perceive more details along the way. Recognizing the advantages and disadvantages, she says, is the first step in learning how to approach unfamiliar material. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Education |
Matthew and Audrey Lorence outside their home in Needham, Mass. Their parents, Jean and Mark, are struggling to best get the college students Matthew, a junior at New York University, and Audrey, a first year at the University of Pittsburgh to school. Younger siblings Meredith and Luke usually take part in this family tradition. No dice this year. Maureen Rayhill of Seattle sounds like a public health official as she describes the current process for coronavirus testing, rattling off research she's done on in person testing centers versus mail order companies and how their turnaround times for results compare. But she's not. She's a mother, just trying to get her oldest child to college. The poignant annual tradition of college drop off parents driving the new, nervous college student to school, bringing along brothers and sisters to see their sibling's new home, setting up the tiny dorm room together, sharing one last meal with the entire family, then waving goodbye as the almost adult runs off with a big pack of possible new best friends has become the latest family milestone rendered almost unrecognizable by the coronavirus pandemic. Ms. Rayhill, 49, has already canceled the family vacation in Maine that she had dreamed of taking before bringing Corrigan to Colby College in Waterville next month. Instead, the retired nurse and homemaker is frantically caught up with how to get a virus test done within 72 hours of departure to meet the Maine state requirements, when current test results are taking up to five days to be returned. "It's nothing like what we thought it would be," she says. The drop off has always been a momentous trip, fraught with strong emotions felt by parents and children alike. Now pile on the additional stress of Covid 19. Families need to navigate how to best get to campus while minimizing their exposure to the virus, all while trying to adhere to changing and often confusing school and state health, safety and travel rules. "When we dropped off my son three years ago, the whole family went and it was this bittersweet fun event for us all," said Mark Lorence of Needham, Mass., as he recalled the first trip to leave his oldest son, Matthew, at New York University. This fall will likely see Mr. Lorence, 58, driving down to New York, with masks and food from home, and back again in one day. "Now we have Plan A, B and C, depending on what's going on." Randy Dunbar, a father trying to coordinate the cross country trip for his daughter, Alex, from Colorado to North Carolina, echoed the sentiment. "It's supposed to be a time to contemplate this great goodbye," he said. "But I'm thinking, 'Where am I allowed to park?'" Logistics at the state, college and personal level Complications and confusion come way before those campus gates. Nearly half of the country's states currently have statewide travel restrictions, with various degrees of self quarantines orders encouraged, strongly encouraged, mandatory not to mention suggested or required testing. Some counties, metro areas or municipalities have issued their own rules for travelers. New York is one of many states with extremely strict travel policies, requiring anyone traveling from Puerto Rico, Washington, D.C., and 34 other states those with high infection rates to self quarantine for 14 days. Jennifer Overholt of Menlo Park, Calif., 56, said she paged through screen after screen of quarantine related comments and questions on a Facebook page for parents of students attending Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., where her son, Cole Mediratta, will go for his sophomore year. "There's worry and concern," said Ms. Overholt, a nonprofit executive. First year parents, who already had questions, like whether rice cookers are allowed in dorm rooms, are now wondering where their child will be quarantined if they test positive for the virus. Two questions about travel bubbled up again and again. Does a 14 day quarantine mean that if you arrive in New York, you have to stay for 14 days? (No, you can leave anytime, but must quarantine the whole time you are in the state.) Do you have to quarantine if your home state is not on the restricted list, but you drive through a hot zone state on the way to New York? (Not as long as you spent fewer than 24 hours in hot zone states.) "It was kind of overwhelming, so I stopped looking," she said. Parents are discovering that, regardless of what guidelines are posted, policies are changing with new data and little notice almost daily. Washington, D.C., home to around 20 colleges and universities, announced last Friday that beginning this Monday, travelers coming into the city from a high risk area need to self quarantine for 14 days. This group includes students. The only silver lining: Travel that brings people into the area for less than 24 hours is allowed, so parents can drop off students. No lingering. The area's schools are now determining how to comply. The order is so new and has such broad implications that colleges did not immediately specify how they would respond. A spokeswoman at Georgetown University, Ruth McBain, wrote in an email that officials were reviewing the new order and would ensure that the schools reopening plan would comply with the district's guidance. But families across the country are waiting for details to be finalized. Mr. Dunbar, a management consultant who will be taking his daughter from their home in Boulder, Colo., to the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, said he's already had to change their flights three times as Alex's move in dates shifted. His wife, Shawna, he said, spends about an hour a day scanning the school's website for new information and comparing plans with friends who are also sending offspring to college. They are laser focused on the latest updates from other schools, Mr. Dunbar, 57, said, "because it seems like when one rolls out a new policy, others follow it." Other parents may have their offspring around the house a bit longer. Mr. Lorence, the management consultant from Needham, Mass., expected to drop off Matthew at New York University in August. But just last week Matthew decided to stay home until October. His classes are all online, and his musical performance was canceled. He thinks a later move in would perhaps help him snag an apartment with reduced rent. Meanwhile, the Lorences' oldest daughter, Audrey, will be a first year student at University of Pittsburgh. For her drop off in mid August, the entire family (Mark, his wife, Jean, and younger siblings Meredith and Luke) wanted to go along for the ride. Now it will only be the parents, and they struggled on whether to stay with family in town grandparents or an uncle's family usually host them. This year, they decided to stay in a hotel. "Uncertainty is the word to describe it," Mr. Lorence said. Other families are deciding to fly or drive. Sure, air circulation on planes is excellent, and the journey should be shorter, but it's hard to know how full the flight will be or if flight attendants will be enforcing mask wearing. There are also fewer nonstop flights between smaller cities, fewer flights period, and airlines have been frequently changing times and dates of flights to optimize revenues. All these headaches from the air need to be weighed against a drive that might require hours in the car, food stops and a hotel stay. The Feder Johnson family of Madison, Wis., typically flies to New Orleans each school year, to drop off their daughter, Nora, at Tulane University. This year, mother, father and daughter are driving the 14 hours each way. At restroom and fuel stops, Nora's mother, Elizabeth Feder, a public health researcher, will be looking to see if the people around her are taking the necessary precautions. "If we pull into a gas station and the people there aren't wearing masks, we'll go on by to the next one," Dr. Feder, 62, said. Louisiana has had more than 100,000 Covid cases (including a significant increase in July), so when they arrive in New Orleans, instead of exploring the sights, hearing live music and eating at favorite restaurants as they did in years past, the family plans to eat takeout and make "essential trips only" to help Nora set up her home. Household items will be ordered online and picked up curbside. Finding a hotel for their short stay has been a worry. "The websites of the national chains make the cleaning sound so thorough you could do surgery in their rooms," Ms. Feder said, but it's hard to know what a particular property is doing. Even packing for the college student is different this year. With concerns that the virus may flare on campus and cause the school to shut down, Gina Anstey, 48, is sending her daughter Elise from Seattle to her first year at Fordham University in New York City with just two large suitcases, eschewing everything but the essentials. "They might decide on a dime, 'you gotta go' and she'll have to take it all home again," said Ms. Anstey, a philanthropic consultant. For some students, that heartbreaking scenario became real before they even arrived. On July 20, Spelman College in Atlanta made the decision to move instruction online. Just three weeks earlier the school had announced a plan to welcome students back to campus, but in that short period, the health crisis worsened. Other schools, from Occidental College in California to Lafayette College in Pennsylvania, are following suit to help ensure the safety of their students and faculty. Get in, get settled, get out Once on campus, forget the once common niceties like parent orientations and let's get to know you coffees. No more chitchat with your child's new roommate and their family, or meanderings around campus to check out the new science lab. The 19 page move in guide issued by the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill this year asks families to "leave as soon as is possible once all student belongings have been brought to their rooms." Like many other schools, it also has limits on how many helpers can enter the dorm and asks families to share the elevator with their own move in group only. Stores and restaurants, used to welcoming the influx of back to school families, are under new rules as well. North Carolina restaurants are under orders to separate tables of diners by six feet and to operate at no more than 50 percent capacity. Mr. Dunbar and Alex have decided not to dine anywhere indoors, and were relieved to learn that their favorite fried chicken on biscuits from Time Out in Chapel Hill was available for takeout. The two are avoiding going inside stores as well by ordering dorm essentials to be shipped to a friend's house in town where they will pick them up. "There's an overwhelming focus on logistics," Mr. Dunbar said. Students who arrive on campus should expect a heightened focus on health. The University of Idaho will test all students returning to the Moscow campus in August. Colby College will test students a number of times during the first few weeks of school, and they will not be allowed to leave the state until the end of the academic term. Cornell University, in upstate New York, is asking all students to quarantine at home for two weeks before departure and all will be tested when they arrive in Ithaca. In addition, students arriving from the many states under Governor Cuomo's executive travel order will need to quarantine in New York State, or another state that is not on the New York list before stepping onto campus. Students scheduled to live in dorms had been told they would be asked to quarantine in a Cornell provided location, but now they are expected to quarantine themselves before arriving on campus, or take classes online until their state comes off the list. Parents are not allowed into the dorms during move in or at any time during the fall semester. Some parents ultimately are deciding to send their offspring to school by themselves, particularly if they are returning students. Ms. Overholt's son, Cole, will travel alone from California to begin his second year at Rensselaer. Ms. Overholt was planning to accompany him, but then the virus hit. "I don't see any reason I should get on a plane right now," she said, assured that Cole is capable of moving himself in. "I don't need to add to the problem." Indeed, college students are much less likely than their parents to get very sick from the coronavirus. You could say that part of growing up is learning to be safe. At least that hasn't changed. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
On a cold January night, all seven tables inside the Grange, a restaurant housed in a 1903 former post office in the Hudson Valley town of Warwick, were full. In dutiful farm to fork fashion, the evening's specials, written on a big chalkboard on one wall, were tagged with the names of local farms: Hudson Valley Cattle Company beef, Hillery Farms chicken, Meadowburn Cheddar. Exposed beams and brick and a waitress with thick black glasses and hair done up in a head scarf completed the scene a tableau common in so many city restaurants but somewhat less expected here, in what used to be my humble little hometown. Warwick is barely an hour's drive from the George Washington Bridge, a primary gateway to Manhattan. Yet the town and surrounding communities in Orange County were for a long time off the radar of city dwellers. Rolling hills, centuries old farms, untouched Appalachian forests all of this we had in spades. But a place to get decent sushi or a hotel mindful of thread count were still largely rare and exotic commodities when I left home for college nearly 20 years ago. Yet as I discovered on a recent trip back to my Hudson Valley roots, times have changed. What haven't, by and large, are the prices. Despite its proximity to New York, this historic swath of the lower Hudson Valley is still a bargain, especially in the winter low season. A local food movement, atmospheric inns dating back hundreds of years and a formidable expanse of state parks and ski mountains make for a frugal paradise within easy reach of one of the country's most expensive cities. Built in the 1800s as a private residence, Chateau Hathorn has a turret roof, a grand ballroom done up in mahogany and oak, and a 12,000 bottle walk in wine cellar. Restored in recent decades after an unfortunate stint as a dude ranch, it still needs a bit of work but otherwise oozes great spooky mansion ambience. A room with its own fireplace cost me 135, not exactly frugal but worth the splurge. I dropped my bags upstairs before heading back down to the hotel restaurant for a nightcap. Up at the big hardwood bar, I ordered a nice Bordeaux and polished off a plate of old fashioned oysters Rockefeller ( 14.50) before climbing the creaking stairs and making my way down a long, dark hallway to my room. The next day, I set out for Orange County's original shopping mecca, though by no means its best known. That distinction belongs to Woodbury Common, the sprawling, high end outlet mall that attracts 13 million visitors a year. Just a few miles up Route 17, however, is the antithesis of that anonymous outlet experience the traditional crafts village of Sugar Loaf. Along a single street lined with 18th century houses, a dozen or so local artists goldsmiths, soap makers, wood carvers, glassblowers, leather workers make and sell wares out of their homes. I stopped into the Candle Shop, where one of the village's craft pioneers still lives and works. "Forty six years here it's a lifetime, man," said Peter Lendved, who had a graying ponytail and spoke in long digressions about Sugar Loaf's past: royalist refuge during the American Revolution, secret Underground Railroad stop, hippie hot spot during the '60s arts and crafts renaissance. As I was leaving, he discreetly wrapped one of his candles which go for 9 and come in just one, vanilla based scent in a piece of tissue paper and handed it to me as a gift, wishing me the best on my life's journey. After stocking up on hand cured soaps and loose leaf teas, and making a quick pit stop in the nearby Warwick Valley Winery (great ciders, but skip the wine), I was ready to get outdoors. The low, rounded spine of the Appalachian Mountains cuts through Orange County, which makes for great hiking in summer and decent skiing in winter, at least when nature cooperates. As I drove down a dirt road to Mount Peter, a family run ski center in Warwick, the ground was ominously bare, but a haze of artificial snow hung over the mountain. Opened in 1936, partly to serve as a backdrop for Macy's to show off winter fashions, Mount Peter claims to be the oldest operating ski mountain in the state and lucky for me was an early adopter of snow making technology. Though ski pros are likely to be underwhelmed maximum vertical drop on Peter's dozen or so runs is just a few hundred feet for a beginner like me, the modest slopes were a perfect fit. And the price is right: Weekday lift tickets are 25 and rentals are just 30. I hopped on the Hailey's Comet chairlift and rode to the peak, watching below as little kids snowplowed their way straight down the mountain. The 1789 Baird gristmill in Warwick is a working farm. Remy Scalza for The New York Times I spent the afternoon working on my turns while soaking up the small mountain charm: no lift lines, friendly ski instructors who volunteered pointers, hamburgers in the lodge for the throwback price of 4.95. At the end of the day, I watched the sun set over a rolling patchwork of farm fields and hardwood forests, before shimmying down Dynamite a black diamond, by local standards at least on my last run. The perfect apres ski spot is just down the mountain, in a home that served as a Revolutionary War era iron furnace. The 1760 Iron Forge Inn is best known locally as a fine dining spot, serving classic dishes like lamb loin and duck breast in its formal dining rooms. But the basement has been converted into a casual taproom with equally good but much cheaper bar food. I ducked to avoid hitting the rough hewed beams overhead and squeezed into a chair near the open fireplace. Between the fieldstone foundations and antique muskets on the walls, it wasn't hard to picture patriots quaffing a few pints here back in the day, after routing some redcoats. A half rack of slow roasted pork ribs ( 16) later, I stepped out into the crisp, dead quiet country night, full moon overhead. My clothes would smell like campfire for days. Not wanting to miss a view of the Hudson River itself, I got an early start the next morning for Bear Mountain State Park. Hundreds of miles of trails wind through thousands of acres of coastal forest, while a grand old 1915 inn and outdoor skating rink remain reliable draws. A section of the Appalachian Trail climbs steeply to the park's namesake peak. From the 1,305 foot summit (about an hour's hike up), I had a clear view of the Hudson River far below, curling its way south all the way to the distant Manhattan skyline. But this part of the Hudson Valley has its sophisticated side as well. From Bear Mountain, I headed just across county lines to Dia:Beacon ( 12 admission), a contemporary art gallery opened in 2003 in a rambling old Nabisco box factory down by the river, not far from a Metro North commuter rail station. Inside, the art is minimalist, challenging and, evidently, extremely popular. Throngs of patrons wandered amid heaps of scrap metal, canvases painted pure white and other masterpieces by avant garde lions like Andy Warhol, Richard Serra and the German painter Blinky Palermo. For modern art greenhorns, however, the building itself is likely to be the star attraction an enormous industrial space flooded with soft natural light. Main Street in the town of Beacon offered less abstract charms. Rows of ornate, century old brick buildings, packed with bookstores, cafes and an uncommon number of bakeries and restaurants, climb a hill above the Hudson. Once a factory town, Beacon seems to have weathered industrial decline and come out the other side with its soul intact no small feat in this part of New York. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
Humana is teaming up with two investment firms to become the nation's largest provider of hospice care, dominating a rapidly growing and controversial business. Death has always been lucrative enterprise, whether it involves mahogany caskets or teams of estate and tax lawyers. But hospice, the business of caring for those who are nearing death, has become a booming multibillion dollar industry that is attracting more and more for profit companies, including one of the nation's major insurers. That insurer, Humana, is making an unusual bet beyond the current strategy of health insurers to merge with pharmacies or buy up doctors' practices. In teaming up with two investment firms, Humana plans to buy two hospice chains that together would create the industry's biggest operator with hundreds of locations in dozens of states. Humana, which specializes in offering private Medicare Advantage plans, joined forces with TPG Capital and Welsh, Carson, Anderson Stowe, two private equity firms, last December to take over a division of Kindred Healthcare that offers both home health and hospice care. In April, the same group said it planned to buy another large hospice outfit, Curo Health Services, owned by another investment firm, Thomas H. Lee Partners. In short, Humana, which provides Medicare Advantage plans to about 3 and a half million people for their medical needs, also wants to dominate care for those at the end stages of life, whether it provides aid in a home setting or in a facility. But a spate of government lawsuits charging negligence and malfeasance against some hospice providers underscores the risks of profiting from the dying: Companies have been accused of signing up people who are not terminally ill, denying visits from a nurse or even refusing a needed trip to the hospital . While people getting hospice care may be at less risk for getting medical tests and treatments they do not need or want, they could get too little care, said Dr. Joan Teno, a professor of medicine and a health services researcher at the Oregon Health Science University. The danger when a profit driven company is delivering care is "the focus is more on profits than on quality," she said. "We need to make sure quality is front and center," she said. Humana's decision to purchase the two hospice outfits puts it squarely in the middle of the debate. Both of the companies it plans to acquire have been embroiled in lawsuits brought by the federal government accusing them of, in one case, overbilling Medicare and, in another, paying doctors and nurses illegal kickbacks to refer patients to hospice. Medicare has largely driven the recent interest in hospice, spending about 17 billion on such care in 2016, the most recent figure available. The program covering health care for people 65 and over began paying for hospice in 1983, a time when many people at the end of life were forced to spend their last days in a hospital bed, receiving expensive but futile treatments. To allow people to die more comfortably at home, the program started services like nursing care and a home health aide for people with a life expectancy of six months or less. People typically agree to stop treatments aimed at curing their disease in favor of care that makes them more comfortable. Hospices are paid a fixed amount per day and are expected to oversee the care of someone with a terminal illness, including home visits, medicines to control pain and trips to a specialist or hospital if needed. While a hospice is paid about 150 to 200 a day for routine care, they can get paid nearly 1,000 a day if someone needs round the clock services. Patients can stay in hospice as long as doctors agree they remain terminally ill. Many hospice outfits have been sued by the government, accused of overbilling Medicare by enrolling patients who did not qualify, or for stinting on care. Last year, the Department of Justice settled a lawsuit against one company, Chemed, for 75 million. Chemed, a public company, also owns Roto Rooter, the plumbing and drain cleaning business. Government officials had accused Chemed and its hospice unit, Vitas, of aggressively billing Medicare for "crisis care," even when patients did not require intensive services. One nurse who worked for Vitas described being sent to patients' homes during a so called crisis only to find the patients "were at church, the beauty parlor, or playing bingo." Vitas, which was the nation's largest hospice chain at the time, went ahead and billed for crisis care, according to the government's lawsuit. In one particularly egregious case, a hospice outfit in Texas has been accused by the federal government of giving patients unnecessarily high doses of medication that may have led to some death s. Earlier this month, a nurse case manager pleaded guilty in the case, acknowledging that she collected unused medications like morphine from patients who had died to administer to other patients, and admitted to helping overmedicate some patients to hasten their death. Kindred, whose hospice business Humana hopes to buy, was penalized 3 million in 2016 by federal officials and closed some facilities after the government said it could not ensure that it was not overbilling Medicare. The hospice outfit now owned by Kindred had paid 25 million in penalties in 2012 to settle accusations of improper billing. Curo, the other hospice business, has also had its share of run ins with federal officials. Last year, it paid 12 million to settle accusations that it handed out kickbacks to reward doctors for sending patients to its hospices. Even UnitedHealth Group, the nation's largest health insurer with fingers in a number of pies like doctors' practices, free standing surgery clinics and urgent care centers, sold its hospice business in 2016, the same year it settled a case with the Justice Department. United's hospice unit, known as Evercare, was accused of enrolling patients who did not qualify, setting "aggressive census targets" for enrollment and paying employees bonuses if they met those targets. The company employed a team to "troll nursing homes, hospitals and other care facilities to obtain new Evercare hospice patients," the Justice Department said. The flood of lawsuits has discouraged some companies from getting into this field. "There's a lot of risk," said Paul Keckley, an independent health care analyst. But Ms. Evans contends that "the margin may well be worth the headline risk." The federal government doesn't seem to have "a good plan or an aggressive plan" in prosecuting some of the bad behavior that takes place, she said. The potential for great profit margins has certainly caught the eye of bigger businesses. While local nonprofit groups used to provide services, much of the hospice care now available is dominated by companies that may seek higher profits even if that involves enrolling patients who don't need such care, or cutting staff and services to bare levels. For profit companies tend to argue they are more efficient and can invest in the people and technology to provide better care for dying patients, especially at home. Humana and the two investment firms declined to comment because they have not yet completed the purchases. Humana has a significant interest in being able to better manage people in their Medicare Advantage plans, which are private insurance plans for people enrolled in Medicare who do not want to be in the traditional program where the government pays doctors and hospitals directly for their care. Its proposed merger with Aetna, another giant insurer, was blocked last year after the Justice Department claimed it would harm consumers. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
What happens when a newly minted gay icon kicks off the Oscars red carpet? Pure, unapologetic edge. Adam Rippon, 28, an Olympic figure skater who was the first out gay American man to qualify for the Winter Games, wore a black harness under his tuxedo to the normally buttoned up event on Sunday night. He also wore a black bow tie and eschewed socks. The S M inspired look by Moschino immediately spurred support on social media once photos of the outfit hit the internet. "Somewhere in heaven, Oscar Wilde, Harvey Milk, James Baldwin, and Michelangelo just shared a margarita," tweeted Chris Rovzar, of Bloomberg. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
The night President and Mrs. Trump had dinner at Mar a Lago with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan and his wife, Akie Abe after a nice round of golf and a garden tour, before North Korea necessitated an impromptu news conference Alexander Wang dragged his audience up to the crumbling abandoned RKO Hamilton Theater on 146th Street in Harlem and jammed everyone into a standing room only area that once housed orchestra seats and now framed a raised runway. Ansel Elgort craned his neck over Luka Sabbat's head. Zoe Kravitz was smooshed against the barrier. Lights flashed red; the air smelled like beer; and the models came stomping out as if they were ready to rumble. In tight black leather pants and silver studs, chain mail black tie tank tops and strapless cat suits in Prince of Wales check, they were dressed for it, anyway. Some chopped off their hair specially for the night. They looked mad. I mention the simultaneous events not because they have any direct relationship, but because it is increasingly clear that it is almost impossible to think about New York Fashion Week and what happens on the runway without thinking, to varying extents, about Mr. Trump. He the world he has currently created is the prism through which everything is seen, and evaluated. There's just no getting away from it. So far, there has been a lot of symbolic posturing. The Council of Fashion Designers of America gave out buttons in support of Planned Parenthood, and some people have been wearing them around. Christian Siriano designed a message tee that read "People Are People" after the Depeche Mode song (sample lyrics: "People are people so why should it be / You and I should get along so awfully / Help me understand") and paired it with a long pink silk faille skirt. Jeremy Scott sent out on the runway a sequined tank top touting "As Seen on TV." At Public School, the designers Maxwell Osborne and Dao Yi Chow topped off their first collection since quitting their second jobs as designers at DKNY with red baseball caps re embroidered with "Make America New York" on the front and "44 1/2" on the side. Their commentary on Mr. Trump was a little fuzzy they said, in a statement, the show was about "constantly examining your beliefs, values and privileges and matching your intent to your action," though sweatshirts with "We Need Leaders" made more sense but it made for a good Instagram. The best burgundy nylon evening anorak I've ever seen possibly the only one, to be fair made for better clothes, however. (So, too, the flannel shirtdress with a navy train, and the jacquard floral camo mini dress.) And potentially a more lasting impact. Victoria Beckham summed it up when she said (during a preview before her show), "The world is so confused right now, I just want to make my customer feel secure." In the end, the job of fashion should be to make a woman feel confident in her clothes feel like a stronger version of herself so she can proactively think about something else. Message tees are a beginning, but they are also easy; it's message clothing that is hard. By that measure, how are things stacking up? Despite the fact that Mr. Wang's show seemed conceived to put a sharp as nails stiletto boot into the eye of the establishment (see Bella Hadid in a vintage T shirt sporting the words "Night of Treason"), the whole felt less convincing than calculated. It didn't help that, though he had his show in Harlem, there were less than a handful of black models on the runway. Mr. Wang has been down the studs 'n' staples route before, and while he has a knack for combining the trappings of punk with some neat men's wear tailoring and couture cuts, here the latter was unfortunately in short supply. Instead there was a lot of slicing and dicing sleight of hand. The most original part of the collection was where he put the majority of his verbiage: on sheer tights that blared "No after party" up the thigh. That at least echoed a certain truth. This is not a time for fiddling, after all. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
On an October evening in 2017, Natalia Piland, a graduate student at the University of Chicago, gathered with classmates at a popular Hyde Park bar to celebrate what seemed like a turning point: Teaching and research assistants at the university had voted to unionize. "People were really emotional," said Ms. Piland, who started attending union meetings in 2016. "We finally saw the fruits of our labor." As she toasted the victory, Ms. Piland thought she could see the path ahead formal recognition by the university, a fast start to the bargaining process and a contract guaranteeing more timely stipend payments and other benefits for students with teaching and research responsibilities. But she soon found that campus organizing was not that simple. "We really thought the university was going to respect that election," said Ms. Piland, who is about to begin her sixth year as a Ph.D. candidate in biology. "It was a little naive." Three years ago, the National Labor Relations Board announced a landmark ruling that gave teaching and research assistants at private universities a federally backed right to unionize, paving the way for students at universities across the country to hold legally binding union votes. But in many cases, a quagmire followed. Despite holding successful elections, students at the University of Chicago, Yale, Boston College and several other universities have faced staunch opposition from college administrators, as well as a shifting political and regulatory landscape. Over the last two years, President Trump has replaced labor officials who helped orchestrate the 2016 decision with conservative board members who have moved to limit union powers. On Friday, the N.L.R.B. proposed a new regulation that would effectively reverse the board's previous decision, stripping unionization rights from teaching and research assistants at private universities. The board's jurisdiction covers only private universities because the National Labor Relations Act applies to the private sector. State laws govern the eligibility of employees at public universities to unionize. The progress has been uneven, however. In 2017, Yale graduate students held successful union votes in a handful of academic departments. But university administrators never formally recognized the union, despite a high profile hunger strike and a protest march on commencement morning. "The window may have closed for them," said William Gould , a former N.L.R.B. chairman who teaches labor law at Stanford University. "Union organizing is very much a matter of momentum, and it may be that they lost that momentum." Even before the board's move on Friday, some unionization efforts were in retreat. After the University of Chicago challenged the legal basis of its students' vote, the union there and groups at Yale, Boston College and the University of Pennsylvania withdrew their labor petitions in 2018 rather than risk a battle in which the Columbia decision might be overturned by the N.L.R.B. And at universities where contract negotiations have taken place, the unions have sometimes found it difficult to secure concrete gains. Over the past few months, the bargaining process at Harvard has stalled over the union's demand for an independent adjudication system to resolve members' claims of sexual harassment and discrimination. "This is one of the factors that was driving the union 'yes' vote in our election," said Ege Yumusak , a third year philosophy student who belongs to the Harvard Graduate Students Union, which is affiliated with the U.A.W. "It's a strike issue." Ms. Yumusak said some bargaining sessions with the university had grown tense, as graduate students described sexual harassment they had experienced at Harvard. With no agreement in sight, the union is planning a strike authorization vote in the fall. A Harvard spokesman said the university was concerned that a new arbitration system would violate federal law by creating a process for union members only, separate from the provisions of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. "It is unfortunate that a work disruption is being considered," said the spokesman, Jonathan L. Swain . "There remains an ongoing commitment on the part of the university to these negotiations." It's not clear how the N.L.R.B.'s proposed rule will affect universities where bargaining is underway. Mr. Swain said Harvard was reviewing the proposed rule to "assess what implications it may have." Columbia said it had no immediate comment. But the regulation could give universities the upper hand in negotiations. "This could be an additional reason that they could articulate or rely upon to discontinue bargaining, or limit bargaining on certain issues," said Mr. Gould, the former N.L.R.B. chairman. "The only option for the union then would be to go to the very N.L.R.B. that had established a contrary position." The rule proposed Friday is the latest swing on an issue that has divided the board along partisan lines for two decades. In 2000, the N.L.R.B. overturned a longstanding precedent and gave students at New York University the right to unionize. But that ruling was reversed in 2004, in a decision involving Brown University, before the board switched back to the pro union standard in 2016. In the proposed rule, the N.L.R.B. states that students at private universities who "perform services" related to their studies are "primarily students with a primarily educational, not economic, relationship with their university." After a 60 day period for public comment, the board will revisit the proposal. "This rule making is intended to obtain maximum input on this issue from the public, and then to bring stability to this important area of federal labor law," John F. Ring , the chairman of the N.L.R.B., said in a statement. The N.L.R.B. has generally used its rule making authority to clarify existing precedents and has reserved its more sweeping judgments for decisions adjudicating individual cases. The current board, however, has outlined an unusually ambitious rule making agenda that seeks to change a number of longstanding labor practices. Ms. Yumusak, the Harvard philosophy student, called the proposed graduate student rule "an egregious and desperate misuse of power." Andrew Crook, a spokesman for the American Federation of Teachers, said graduate students were planning to rally at the N.L.R.B. offices next month and submit comments to the board calling for the rule to be scrapped. In any case, union advocates at the University of Chicago plan to push for their agenda outside the formal bargaining process. Even without recognition, the organizers say, graduate students have made progress on a number of fronts, securing child care grants and improvements to the school's parental leave policies. The union has also held demonstrations intended to increase pressure on administrators. In June, graduate students went on strike for three days, carrying picket signs that left little doubt that the work stoppage was occurring on an elite college campus. "Theorem: Our union is well defined," one sign read. "Proof: graduate students workers." "We've become increasingly annoying to them, and I do think that's how a lot of workplace organizing gets done," said Laura Colaneri , a union member who is pursuing a Ph.D. in Hispanic and Brazilian studies. "Eventually," she said, "the tide does turn." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Economy |
The statement Robert Mapplethorpe made with his photographs was practically self evident. Every one of his pictures says "I think this is beautiful." But the statement is followed by a question: "Don't you?" Seen more than one at a time, his images create provocative, often startling juxtapositions. Consider the spadix of a white calla lily emerging from the center of the flower, next to, say, a man's penis hanging outside the unzipped pants of a suit. Mapplethorpe's question became one of the most controversial in modern art. And one that continued to linger long after his death in 1989, at age 42, from AIDS. "Mapplethorpe," directed by Ondi Timoner, is a fictionalized biography of the photographer that is most alive when it's putting its subject's pictures on the screen, which it does often. And should have done more, because the movie is otherwise as timid as its subject was bold. Beginning with young Mapplethorpe in uniform as an R.O.T.C. cadet at Pratt, it cuts to some "New York City! Wow!" archival footage before the rebellious Robert meets cute with the poet Patti. The alliance between Mapplethorpe and the future rock star Patti Smith was movingly memorialized and mythologized by Smith herself in the 2010 book "Just Kids." It came as both a surprise, and maybe not so much of one, to be informed in its pages that Smith was the practical one in the relationship. For all that, the art worshipping duo were fierce nonconformists. "Mapplethorpe" does something I thought impossible: It makes Smith and Mapplethorpe kind of boring. The scene in which they dance together to a Tim Hardin record could be dropped into the middle of an episode of "This Is Us" and you'd never know the difference. (Patti is played, with a blandness that's near hilarious, by Marianne Rendon.) | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
'ART AFTER STONEWALL, 1969 1989' at Grey Art Gallery (through July 20) and at Leslie Lohman Museum (through July 21). For this summer's half century anniversary of the 1969 Stonewall riots, substantial displays of art produced in the long wake of the uprising are filling New York City museums and public spaces. The largest is this two part exhibition, organized by Jonathan Weinberg and shared by Grey Art Gallery at N.Y.U. and Leslie Lohman Museum. The Leslie Lohman half, which focuses on the 1970s and has lots of archival matter, feels tight and combustible. Much of what's in it was hot off the political burner, responsive to crisis conditions. The pace at Grey, where much of the work dates from the 1980s, is more measured, but has tensions of its own as the story encompasses AIDS and the culture wars. (Holland Cotter) 212 998 6780, greyartgallery.nyu.edu 212 431 2609, leslielohman.org 'ARTISTS RESPOND: AMERICAN ART AND THE VIETNAM WAR, 1965 1975' (through Aug. 18) and 'TIFFANY CHUNG: VIETNAM, PAST IS PROLOGUE' (through Sept. 2) at Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington. Everything in "Artists Respond," a big, inspiriting blast of a historical survey, dates from a time when the United States was losing its soul, and its artists some, anyway were trying to save theirs by denouncing a racist war. Figures well known for their politically hard hitting work Judith Bernstein, Leon Golub, Hans Haacke, Peter Saul, Nancy Spero are here in strength. But so are others, like Dan Flavin and Donald Judd and Barnett Newman, seldom associated with visual activism. Concurrent with the survey is a smaller, fine tuned show by a contemporary Vietnamese born artist, Tiffany Chung; it views the war through the eyes of people on the receiving end of aggression. (Cotter) 202 663 7970, americanart.si.edu 'AUSCHWITZ. NOT LONG AGO. NOT FAR AWAY' at the Museum of Jewish Heritage (through Jan. 3). Killing as a communal business, made widely lucrative by the Third Reich, permeates this traveling exhibition about the largest German death camp, Auschwitz, whose yawning gatehouse, with its converging rail tracks, has become emblematic of the Holocaust. Well timed, during a worldwide surge of anti Semitism, the harrowing installation strives, successfully, for fresh relevance. The exhibition illuminates the topography of evil, the deliberate designing of a hell on earth by fanatical racists and compliant architects and provisioners, while also highlighting the strenuous struggle for survival in a place where, as Primo Levi learned, "there is no why." (Ralph Blumenthal) 646 437 4202, mjhnyc.org 'CAMP: NOTES ON FASHION' at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (through Sept. 8). Inspired by Susan Sontag's famous 1964 essay, "Notes on 'Camp,'" the latest spectacular from the Met's Costume Institute attempts to define this elastic, constantly evolving concept, which leaves taste, seriousness and heteronormativity in the dust. The show researches camp's emergence in 18th century France and 19th century England, examines "Sontagian Camp" and culminates in an immense gallery of designer confectionaries from the 1980s to now that calls to mind a big, shiny Christmas tree barricaded with presents. (Roberta Smith) 212 535 7100, metmuseum.org 'LEONARD COHEN: A CRACK IN EVERYTHING' at the Jewish Museum (through Sept. 8). The curators of this show, John Zeppetelli of the Musee d'Art Contemporain de Montreal and Victor Shiffman, commissioned artists of various disciplines to develop pieces inspired by Cohen. Some are simple and quiet, like "Ear on a Worm" from the film artist Tacita Dean, a small image playing on a loop high in the space that shows a perched bird, a reference to "Bird on the Wire" from Cohen's 1969 album "Songs From a Room." Some are closer to traditional documentary, like George Fok's "Passing Through," which intercuts performances by Cohen throughout his career with video that surrounds the viewer, suggesting the songs are constant and eternal while the performer's body changes with time. Taken together, the layered work on display has a lot to offer on Cohen, but even more to say about how we respond to music, bring it into our lives, and use it as both a balm and an agent for transformation. (Mark Richardson) 212 423 3200, thejewishmuseum.org 'CYCLING IN THE CITY: A 200 YEAR HISTORY' at the Museum of the City of New York (through Oct. 6). The complex past, present and future roles of the bicycle as a vehicle for both social progress and strife are explored in this exhibition. With more than 150 objects including 14 bicycles and vintage cycling apparel it traces the transformation of cycling's significance from a form of democratized transportation, which gave women and immigrants a sense of freedom, to a political football that continues to pit the city's more than 800,000 cyclists against their detractors today. (Julianne McShane) 212 534 1672, mcny.org 'THE JIM HENSON EXHIBITION' at the Museum of the Moving Image (ongoing). The rainbow connection has been established in Astoria, Queens, where this museum has opened a new permanent wing devoted to the career of America's great puppeteer, who was born in Mississippi in 1936 and died, too young, in 1990. Henson began presenting the short TV program "Sam and Friends" before he was out of his teens; one of its characters, the soft faced Kermit, was fashioned from his mother's old coat and would not mature into a frog for more than a decade. The influence of early variety television, with its succession of skits and songs, runs through "Sesame Street" and "The Muppet Show," though Henson also spent the late 1960s crafting peace and love documentaries and prototyping a psychedelic nightclub. Young visitors will delight in seeing Big Bird, Elmo, Miss Piggy and the Swedish Chef; adults can dig deep into sketches and storyboards and rediscover some old friends. (Jason Farago) 718 784 0077, movingimage.us 'ALICJA KWADE: PARAPIVOT' at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (through Oct. 27). This shrewd and scientifically inclined artist, born in Poland and based in Berlin, has delivered the best edition in five years of the Met's hit or miss rooftop sculpture commission. Two tall armatures of interlocking steel rectangles, the taller of them rising more than 18 feet, support heavy orbs of different colored marble; some of the balls perch precariously on the steel frames, while others, head scratchingly, are squinched between them. Walk around these astral abstractions and the frames seem to become quotation marks for the transformed skyline of Midtown; the marbles might be planets, each just as precarious as the one from which they've been quarried. (Farago) 212 535 7710, metmuseum.org 'LOVE RESISTANCE: STONEWALL 50' at New York Public Library (through July 13). Organized by Jason Baumann, this archival show functions as a timeline of the gay movement from the founding of the Mattachine Society in the 1950s through Stonewall and its immediate aftermath. Pictures by Diana Davies and Kay Tobin Lahusen, lesbian photojournalists, mark a forward path that is lined with protest posters, dance club fliers and L.G.T.B.Q. publications (Transvestia, Demi Gods, Third World Women's Gayzette). (Cotter) 917 275 6975, nypl.org 'NOBODY PROMISED YOU TOMORROW: 50 YEARS AFTER STONEWALL' at Brooklyn Museum (through Dec. 8). In this large group show, 28 young queer and transgender artists, most born after 1980, carry the buzz of Stonewall resistance into the present. Historical heroes, including Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, are honored (in a film by Sasha Wortzel and Tourmaline). Friends in life, Johnson and Rivera are tutelary spirits of an exhibition in which a trans presence, long marginalized by mainstream gay politics, is pronounced in the work of Juliana Huxtable, Hugo Gyrl, Amaryllis DeJesus Moleski and Elle Perez (who is also in the current Whitney Biennial). (Cotter) 718 638 5000, brooklynmuseum.org 'OCEAN WONDERS: SHARKS!' at the New York Aquarium (ongoing). For years, the aquarium's 14 acre campus hunkered behind a wall, turning its back to the beach. When aquarium officials last year finally got around to completing the long promised building that houses this new shark exhibit, maybe the biggest move, architecturally speaking, was breaking through that wall. The overall effect makes the aquarium more of a visible, welcoming presence along the boardwalk. Inside, "Ocean Wonders" features 115 species sharing 784,000 gallons of water. It stresses timely eco consciousness, introducing visitors to shark habitats, explaining how critical sharks are to the ocean's food chains and ecologies, debunking myths about the danger sharks pose to people while documenting the threats people pose to sharks via overfishing and pollution. The narrow, snaking layout suggests an underwater landscape carved by water. Past the exit, an outdoor ramp inclines visitors toward the roof of the building where the Atlantic Ocean suddenly spreads out below. You can see Luna Park in one direction, Brighton Beach in the other. The architectural point becomes clear: Sharks aren't just movie stars and aquarium attractions. They're also our neighbors as much a part of Coney Island as the roller coasters and summer dreams. (Michael Kimmelman) 718 265 3474, nyaquarium.com Read about the events that our other critics have chosen for the week ahead. 'PLAY IT LOUD: INSTRUMENTS OF ROCK ROLL' at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (through Oct. 1). Presented in collaboration with the Rock Roll Hall of Fame, this exhibition offers a vision of history in which the rock music that flowered in the 1960s and '70s sits firmly at the center. The format of the rock band provides the structure of the show, with one room given over to the rhythm section and another showcasing "Guitar Gods." Yet another room has a display highlighting the guitar's destruction, with pieces of instruments trashed by Kurt Cobain and Pete Townshend. To the extent that it shifts focus toward the tools of the rock trade, the show is illuminating. Of particular interest is the room set aside for "Creating a Sound," which focuses on the sonic possibility of electronics. The lighting in "Play It Loud" is dim, perhaps reflecting rock music as the sound of the night. Each individual instrument shines like a beacon, as if it's catching the glint of an onstage spotlight. It makes the space between audience member and musician seem vast, but that doesn't diminish the wonder of browsing the tools once used by pop royalty. (Richardson) 212 535 7710, metmuseum.org 'CHARLOTTE POSENENSKE: WORK IN PROGRESS' at Dia Art Foundation in Beacon, N.Y. (through Sept. 9). This Hudson Valley institution continues its satisfying enlargement of its roll call of Miminalists and Conceptualists with a major showcase of this German artist, who showed her modular, industrially inspired sculptures alongside Donald Judd and Frank Stella in the late 1960s, but then abandoned art for sociology. Posenenske's most important works were free standing pipes, made of sheet steel or cardboard, that look almost exactly like commercial air ducts. Unlike some of the control freaks whose art is also on view here, Posenenske made her art in infinite editions, out of parts that can be arranged in any shape you like: a generous distribution of authorship from the artist to her fabricators and collectors. (Farago) diaart.org 'PUNK LUST: RAW PROVOCATION 1971 1985' at the Museum of Sex (through Nov. 30). This show begins with imagery from the Velvet Underground: The 1963 paperback of that title, an exploration of what was then called deviant sexual behavior and gave the band its name, is one of the first objects on display. Working through photos, album art and fliers by artists like Iggy Pop, the New York Dolls, Patti Smith and, yes, the Sex Pistols, the exhibition demonstrates how punk offered a space for sexual expression outside the mainstream. In the story told by "Punk Lust," much of it laid out in placards by the writer and musician Vivien Goldman, one of the show's curators, graphic sexual imagery is a tool for shock that frightens away the straight world and offers comfort to those who remain inside. While some of the power dynamic is typical underage groupies cavorting with rock stars images from female, queer and nonbinary artists like Jayne County and the Slits make a strong case for sex as an essential source of punk liberation. (Richardson) 212 689 6337, museumofsex.com 'SCENES FROM THE COLLECTION' at the Jewish Museum (ongoing). After a surgical renovation to its grand pile on Fifth Avenue, the Jewish Museum has reopened its third floor galleries with a rethought, refreshed display of its permanent collection, which intermingles 4,000 years of Judaica with modern and contemporary art by Jews and gentiles alike Mark Rothko, Lee Krasner, Nan Goldin, Cindy Sherman and the excellent young Nigerian draftswoman Ruby Onyinyechi Amanze. The works are shown in a nimble, nonchronological suite of galleries, and some of its century spanning juxtapositions are bracing; others feel reductive, even dilettantish. But always, the Jewish Museum conceives of art and religion as interlocking elements of a story of civilization, commendably open to new influences and new interpretations. (Farago) 212 423 3200, thejewishmuseum.org STATUE OF LIBERTY MUSEUM on Liberty Island (ongoing). Security concerns stemming from the Sept. 11 attacks led the National Park Service to restrict the number of people who could go inside the Statue of Liberty's massive stone pedestal and up to the crown. So the Statue of Liberty Ellis Island Foundation wanted to offer something more for visitors who found the outdoor view less than satisfying: a stand alone museum on the island that would welcome everyone who wanted to hear the story behind Lady Liberty. Going beyond the vague and often dubious ideal of American "liberty," the museum's displays highlight the doubts of black Americans and women who saw their personal liberties compromised on a daily basis in the 1880s, when the statue opened. These exhibits also spotlight a bit of history that is often forgotten: that the French creators intended the statue as a commemoration of the abolition of slavery in the United States. (Julia Jacobs) statueoflibertymuseum.org 'STONEWALL 50 AT THE NEW YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY' (through Sept. 22). For its Stonewall summer, the society offers a bouquet of three micro shows. One is devoted to relics of L.G.B.T.Q. night life, from the 1950s lesbian bar called the Sea Colony to the gay male sex clubs like the Anvil and the Ramrod that sizzled in the 1970s. Another documents the founding in 1974 by Joan Nestle, Deborah Edel, Sahli Cavallero, Pamela Olin and Julia Stanley of a compendious and still growing register of lesbian culture called the Herstory Archives. And a third turns a solo spotlight on charismatic individuals: Storme DeLarverie (1920 2014), Mother Flawless Sabrina/Jack Doroshow (1939 2017), Keith Haring (1958 90) and Rollerena Fairy Godmother. (Cotter) 212 873 3400, nyhistory.org 'TOO FAST TO LIVE, TOO YOUNG TO DIE: PUNK GRAPHICS, 1976 1986' at the Museum of Arts and Design (through Aug. 18). Many of the objects on display in this exhibition were first hung in record stores or in the bedrooms of teenagers. Posters promoting new albums, tours and shows are mixed in with album art, zines, buttons and other miscellany. Most of the pieces are affixed to the walls with magnets and are not framed, and almost all show signs of wear. The presentation reinforces that this was commercial art meant for wide consumption, and the ragged edges and prominent creases in the works make the history feel alive. (Richardson) 212 299 7777, madmuseum.org 'T. REX: THE ULTIMATE PREDATOR' at the American Museum of Natural History (through Aug. 9, 2020). Everyone's favorite 18,000 pound prehistoric killer gets the star treatment in this eye opening exhibition, which presents the latest scientific research on T. rex and also introduces many other tyrannosaurs, some discovered only this century in China and Mongolia. T. rex evolved mainly during the Cretaceous period to have keen eyes, spindly arms and massive conical teeth, which could bear down on prey with the force of a U Haul truck; the dinosaur could even swallow whole bones, as affirmed here by a kid friendly display of fossilized excrement. The show mixes 66 million year old teeth with the latest 3 D prints of dino bones, and also presents new models of T. rex as a baby, a juvenile and a full grown annihilator. Turns out this most savage beast was covered with believe it! a soft coat of beige or white feathers. (Farago) 212 769 5100, amnh.org '2019 WHITNEY BIENNIAL' at the Whitney Museum of American Art (through Sept. 22). Given the political tensions that have sent spasms through the nation over the past two years, you might have expected hoped that this year's biennial would be one big, sharp Occupy style yawp. It isn't. Politics are present but, with a few notable exceptions, murmured, coded, stitched into the weave of fastidiously form conscious, labor intensive work. As a result, the exhibition, organized by two young Whitney curators, Rujeko Hockley and Jane Panetta, gives the initial impression of being a well groomed group show rather than a statement of resistance. But once you start looking closely, the impression changes artist by artist, piece by piece there's quiet agitation in the air. (Cotter) 212 570 3600, whitney.org 'VIOLET HOLDINGS: LGBTQ HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE N.Y.U. SPECIAL COLLECTIONS' at Bobst Library (through Dec. 31). With the Stonewall Inn now a National Historic Landmark (and a bar again; it was a bagel shop in the 1980s), nearby New York University has produced a homegrown archival exhibition at Bobst Library, across the park from Grey Art Gallery. Organized by Hugh Ryan, it takes the local history of queer identity back to the 19th century with documents on Elizabeth Robins (1862 1952), an American actor, suffragist and friend of Virginia Woolf, and forward with ephemera related to the musician and drag king Johnny Science (1955 2007) and the African American D.J. Larry Levan (1954 92), who, in the 1980s, presided, godlike, at a gay disco called the Paradise Garage, which was a short walk from the campus. (Cotter) 212 998 2500, library.nyu.edu 'JEFF WALL' at Gagosian (through July 26). Rumination and risk taking, in equal measure, mark this conceptual photographer's spellbinding new exhibition. The show, Wall's first at this Chelsea gallery since ending a 25 year run with the rival dealer Marian Goodman, feels decidedly introspective. Figures alone in contemplative trances, or alienated from their partners in scenes of evident tension, define most of the works. The encyclopedic visual literacy that has long characterized Wall's pictures (with their compositional echoes of old master paintings) has been pared back, allowing more psychological complexity to emerge. Just as new is an emphasis on narrative and sequence; among the pieces are two diptychs and an enveloping, cinematic triptych. (Karen Rosenberg) 212 741 1717, gagosian.com 'MAYBE MAYBE NOT: CHRISTOPHER WOOL AND THE HILL COLLECTION' at the Hill Art Foundation (through June 28). This foundation's inaugural show presents more than a dozen paintings, works on paper and photographs by Wool, the painter who wrenched abstraction into the No Wave era. In a stenciled painting from 1989, the drippy black letters of the word "SPOKESMAN" are arranged three by three, filling the white aluminum background with the same deductive logic as Frank Stella's early stripes. After making layered, silk screened floral patterns in the 1990s, Wool became more gestural; three extraordinary paintings here from the 2000s, with cloudy spray gun loop de loops and merciless erasures, exhibit a simultaneous love and doubt of abstraction that recalls the best of Albert Oehlen. His enthrallingly difficult later silk screens cannibalize his own archive, discordantly remixing earlier works and treating paint as both material and information. (Farago) 212 337 4455, hillartfoundation.org 'THE SELF PORTRAIT, FROM SCHIELE TO BECKMANN' at the Neue Galerie (through June 24). Self portraiture can seem pretty narrow. But the 70 odd works in this exhibition, which run from a handful of delightfully exact Rembrandt etchings to Felix Nussbaum's searing 1940 painting "Self Portrait in the Camp," ably demonstrate the genre's universal scope: It's a consciously constructed illusion of spontaneous self revelation, a sincere put on. And as such it's a peek beneath the hood of art in general. (Will Heinrich) 212 994 9493, neuegalerie.org 'THE WORLD BETWEEN EMPIRES: ART AND IDENTITY IN THE ANCIENT MIDDLE EAST' at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (through June 23). The Met excels at epic scale archaeological exhibitions, and this is a prime example. It brings together work made between 100 B.C. and A.D. 250 in what we now know as Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen. In the ancient world, all were in the sphere of two competing superpowers Rome to the west and Parthia to the east and though imperial influence was strong, it was far from all determining. Each of the subject territories selectively grafted it onto local traditions to create distinctive new grass roots cultural blends. Equally important, the show addresses the fate of art from the past in a politically fraught present. (Cotter) 212 535 7710, metmuseum.org | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
As the images streamed out of Charlottesville, Va., this month showing white nationalists protesting the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee, many could not help noticing the product illuminating the faces twisted into sneers of hate: Tiki torches. Those innocuous bamboo beacons, produced by Tiki Brand, a 60 year old company, and known primarily for their presence at family barbecues, poolside cabanas, lush resort grounds and Pacific island themed restaurants, were now lighting the way for racists. Tiki, which is owned by the Wisconsin based Lamplight Farms, denounced the white nationalists in a Facebook post on Aug. 12. "We do not support their message or the use of our products in this way," it said. "Our products are designed to enhance backyard gatherings and to help family and friends connect with each other at home in their yard." Mark Werner, vice president of marketing at Lamplight Farms, issued an addendum to the statement that read: "The feedback that we have received from the public regarding our earlier statement has been very positive. We will continue to reinforce that Tiki Brand products are to be enjoyed by friends and family outdoors in a loving environment." Andrew D. Gilman, who has consulted with companies like Johnson Johnson, General Motors and Pepsi during crises, described Tiki as essentially "minding its own business" when it found itself caught up in the Charlottesville demonstrations. "You hope that people are rational enough not to blame the innocent with the association that others are taking for it," Mr. Gilman said. "But you cannot sit back passively and let this happen." This is not the first time that white nationalists and other members of the so called alt right have chosen particular products to co opt or endorse. For years, the British clothing line Fred Perry has been dogged by its affiliation with skinheads, who seemed to favor its polo shirts as a sort of uniform, along with Dr. Martens, the makers of steel toed boots. Fred Perry has denounced racist groups. When an advertising campaign by the skin care brand Nivea this spring used the tagline "White is purity" to promote its line of streak proof deodorants, it became widely circulated on social media accounts for white supremacists, prompting the company to pull the ad. Even the Detroit Red Wings of the National Hockey League issued a statement after an adaptation of its team logo appeared on posters in the Charlottesville rally, reportedly wielded by members of a Michigan white nationalist group calling itself the Detroit Right Wings. Jeff Bezos gives 100 million to the Obama Foundation. Stocks rise after President Biden says Jerome Powell will stay atop the Fed. "The Detroit Red Wings vehemently disagree with and are not associated in any way with the event taking place today in Charlottesville, Va.," the team said in a statement. "We are exploring every possible legal action as it pertains to the misuse of our logo in this disturbing demonstration." The Tiki torches were probably just a matter of convenience, said Joan Donovan, lead researcher in media manipulation at the research institute Data Society, who studies hate groups and white supremacists. Torches have long been associated with the Ku Klux Klan, but those used in the past were far more likely to be homemade. In many cases, though, these extremists and other members of the far right will latch onto brands that are already stirring controversy as a way to ride the wave of publicity. Late last year, the hate website Daily Stormer referred to New Balance as the "official shoes of white people" after a company vice president made a flattering comment about then candidate Donald J. Trump. The company issued forceful statements distancing itself from white supremacists. Ms. Donovan said that the best way to counter any perception of being embraced by extremist groups is for brands to avoid even mentioning the people or groups that are trying to use their products. "If you acknowledge and promote their existence and validate their actions in a way that even says 'We disavow you,' then it doesn't give room to talk about the things you do support or find to be positive ways forward," she said. However, Scott Farrell, a specialist in crisis management and the president of Golin Corporate Communications, said that the use of the Tiki torches by racist groups in Charlottesville was so egregious and antithetical to the product's good natured image that "a swift and decisive response is the only way to go." "I think they did absolutely the right thing," Mr. Farrell said. "Their messaging came out fast on Saturday, it had the right tone and tenor. It's a page of the playbook that other people should be looking at right now." That playbook is rapidly being rewritten, forcing chief marketing officers to remain abnormally vigilant about how their products are being perceived and adopted in the marketplace. "Historically, risk management centered on two questions: what's possible and what's probable," Mr. Farrell said. "Today, to answer what's possible, marketers have to push themselves to the extreme margins of reality." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
An 18,000 year old puppy buried for centuries in a lump of frozen mud was unveiled on Monday by scientists who hope it can help bridge the connection between dogs and wolves. The puppy, which was male, was discovered 18 months ago, preserved in a layer of permafrost in Siberia's Far Eastern reaches, according to Dave Stanton, a research fellow at the Center for Palaeogenetics in Stockholm and one of the scientists who examined its DNA. The fur, skeleton, teeth, head, lashes and whiskers of the pup, named Dogor, are still intact, he said. But scientists don't know whether it is a dog or wolf. Dr. Stanton said more DNA research would be conducted in the coming months. "We need to put this information into context," he said in an interview. Many scientists say dogs evolved about 15,000 years ago from a species of extinct wolves. Others suggest it could have happened much earlier, perhaps 30,000 years ago or more. These wolves evolved after generations of exposure to humans, were domesticated and became the canine companions we know today. The puppy, which was found by locals, is being studied at North Eastern Federal University in Yakutsk, the capital of Yakutia, a sprawling region in eastern Siberia that constitutes 20 percent of Russia. (The puppy remains were found near Yakutsk.) Nikolai Androsov, director of the Northern World museum where the remains will be kept, presented the discovery on Monday, according to The Associated Press. Yakutia is known for its oil and gas reserves and abundance of diamond mines. Several extinct animals have been found in the thick permafrost, in part because of the melting of ice resulting from climate change. They include a male steppe bison, a woolly rhinoceros, a mummified pony and several mammoths. Dr. Stanton said treasure seekers sometimes used water cannons to break through the permafrost to extract mammoth ivory tusks, which are later sold. "It must have frozen quickly before scavengers could get to it," Dr. Stanton said of the puppy. "We also found a lot of samples that were not well preserved. There seems to be natural traps in the landscape where animals are frozen before they decomposed." He said the DNA used to date the puppy and figure out its gender was extracted from a rib bone. He said he was not sure if an autopsy was performed to see if its organs, including the heart and liver, were intact. "The body is well preserved, which is rare," Dr. Stanton said. "It's the best I've seen." Modern dogs are not like modern wolves. Wolves are reluctant to eat in front of people, for example, while domesticated dogs beg for dinner table scraps. Their physiology is different, with dogs having shorter snouts and wider skulls. And male wolves participate in pup raising, while male dogs generally avoid it. Dr. Stanton said the dating of the dog was done at Oxford University, and he and his colleagues will continue to collaborate with scientists at North Eastern Federal University. "We need to look at more samples from that time period," he said. "Then we will be able to understand if it was a dog or a wolf." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
Stately Seclusion off the Coast of France This four bedroom house is in the northern parish of St. John on Jersey, a British dependency that is one of the Channel Islands, 15 miles off the northwestern coast of France. The 5,428 square foot house sits among a group of buildings on a former 19th century farmstead and includes an attached duplex workshop, a two car garage and an 8,700 square foot yard. Built in 1875 with a granite ashlar facade and slate roof, the house consists of a three story main portion and a perpendicular one story section. It has been renovated in the past decade, incorporating modern features inside while retaining much of its historic character, said Simon Torode, the founder and chief executive of Livingroom, the Jersey based agency that has the listing. "Jersey's historic buildings are a tangible part of the island's distinctive cultural heritage," he said. Several two and three story structures on the site have been converted into homes and are not included in the sale. The original developer of the property also lives on the site, in a small walled complex. "It's very peaceful, and the neighbors are nice without being intrusive," Mr. Torode said. A tree lined drive approaches the house, known as Le Douet. From the entry hall, a lounge, dining room and kitchen are to the left; and a sitting room, library, bathroom and cloakroom are to the right. The central hall has black and white tiled floors, while the common rooms have a mix of concrete, carpeted and traditional stripped wooden floors. The lounge, sitting room and dining room have fireplaces, and there is also a large wood burning stove in the lounge. Furniture is not included in the asking price, but it is available to buy, Mr. Torode said. A trapdoor leads to a subterranean space that could be used as a wine cellar, he said. The kitchen has a vaulted skylight that opens electronically, wooden ceiling beams and a long center island with seating for six at one end and storage at the other. Appliances are made by Neff and include a five ring induction cooker, two ovens and a wine fridge. An adjoining living room has multiple skylights and doors that open to the garden. A hall staircase has a colorful stained glass window on the landing that is believed to be original, Mr. Torode said. The second floor has three bedrooms, one with an en suite bathroom and two that share a bathroom. A modern wood staircase climbs to the third floor attic space, which has been converted into a master suite with a large dressing area. The master bath has a free standing egg tub and a glass shower. With a population of about 3,000, St. John is one of the least populated administrative parishes on Jersey. St. John's Village, about two miles from this property, has a cafe, pharmacy, pub, medical facilities, shops, a church and a school. Cliffs on the northern coastline, less than a mile away, offer some of the island's best views. Jersey Airport, the island's only airport, is about seven miles away. The St. Helier ferry dock, which offers routes to France, southern England and the other Channel Islands, is five miles away, on Jersey's southern coast. Jersey, a rural, 45 square mile island with about 100,000 permanent residents, is an autonomous parliamentary democracy with its own financial, legal and judicial systems. It is not part of the United Kingdom, but the U.K. is legally responsible for its defense. Jersey's highly regulated housing market has been especially buoyant in the past 18 months to two years, said Donald Meiklejohn, a property negotiator with Moore Properties, a Channel Islands agency. "Our house prices are typically fairly stable, though we have our blips now and again, but we're in a kind of pre Brexit rising market right now," Mr. Meiklejohn said. "I think it's due to confidence in the economy, and the sector that's been very buoyant has been family homes." Families are lured by the island's natural and historic attractions, which helps keep demand and prices high, he said: "We're lucky Jersey is a safe haven to live in, and a lot of people think it's a good place to bring their kids up, and it's quite a nice way of life. Now with the internet, people can still operate their businesses while residing here." Home prices on Jersey are "probably on a par with central London," said Aimee Sinclair Horgan, a partner with the Wilsons Knight Frank agency in Jersey. At PS491,000 (about 648,000), the average home price on Jersey in the fourth quarter of 2018 was higher than that in London, at PS476,000 ( 630,000), and more than twice that in the United Kingdom overall, according to Statistics Jersey, the government agency that tracks statistics on the island. While home sales grew by 5.3 percent from 2017 to 2018, sales of homes at PS1 million ( 1.3 million) and above grew by 34.2 percent , said Oliver Knight, an associate for residential research at Wilsons Knight Frank. Homes valued over PS500,000 ( 660,000) accounted for 44.9 percent of the sales in 2018, up from 35.4 percent in 2017. Among wealthier buyers, the properties currently most in demand are contemporary homes on the cliffs above St. Brelade's Bay, a beach area on the southwestern coast, Ms. Sinclair Horgan said. In the fourth quarter of 2018, Ms. Sinclair Horgan said, the mean price of a one bedroom apartment on Jersey was PS238,000 ( 315,000); that of a two bedroom apartment was PS400,000 ( 528,000); that of a two bedroom house was PS456,000 ( 602,000); that of a three bedroom house was PS580,000 ( 765,000); and that of a four bedroom house was PS928,000 ( 1.2 million). Because the Jersey government tightly regulates the housing market, the vast majority of off island buyers are from the United Kingdom, although there are occasionally buyers from Europe and other countries, Mr. Torode said. Those with an "essential work permit" can apply for a license to buy a home in Jersey. Most buyers who fall into this category are from the United Kingdom, although some are from offshore financial jurisdictions similar to Jersey, including Hong Kong, Malaysia, the Cayman Islands and Geneva, Mr. Meiklejohn said. Wealthy individuals who want to live on Jersey can apply for an "entitled high value residency," which basically requires an annual income of at least PS725,000 ( 957,000), Ms. Sinclair Horgan said, and is a prerequisite for applying for entitled status to buy a home. In recent years, a dozen or more high value approvals have been granted annually. According to another Wilsons Knight Frank report, between 2013 and 2017, 66 percent of those granted this status came from England, while 8.5 percent were from Switzerland, 4.7 percent from Scotland, 2.8 percent from Australia and 10.4 percent from the rest of the world. Applications to buy a home or establish residency on Jersey are assessed on a case by case basis, brokers said. "A lot of it is basically to regulate the population," Mr. Meiklejohn said. "It's a small island with a population of about 110,000 people, and there are a lot of green belts, so space is at a premium." Locate Jersey, a government backed organization that promotes Jersey and assists individuals looking to move there, is often the first stop for foreigners who want to set up a business or live on Jersey. Immigration regulations and rules can be found on the Jersey government website. Modern details include a wood, metal and glass staircase that ascends to the third floor. Off island buyers should hire a lawyer to represent them, brokers said. A lawyer's fee is usually about 1 percent of a home's sale price, but rates can vary. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
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. Banks don't like lending in lower income neighborhoods, even as they profit from deposits taken from those same communities. Since 1977, the Community Reinvestment Act has forced the issue, requiring banks to provide mortgages, small business loans and other services in all areas where they operate. The current crop of federal banking regulators, picked by President Trump, is now proposing to let banks pump less money into lower income communities, and even to claim credit for lending that does not benefit those communities. One egregious example: Banks could count loans for improvements to stadiums that happen to sit in poor neighborhoods. Yes, you read that right: Under the proposal, the banks that financed the new sound system at M T Bank Stadium in Baltimore could claim credit for investing in the community. The proposal is such a perversion of the law that it has prompted an unusual split among federal agencies. Federal banking regulation is a byzantine mess, and enforcement of the Community Reinvestment Act is a prime example. Responsibility for supervising the compliance of the nation's roughly 5,200 banks is divided among three different agencies. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency supervises most large banks, which make about 70 percent of the loans covered by the law. Supervision of the remaining banks, mostly smaller, is divided between the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Federal Reserve. Joseph Otting, the comptroller of the currency, is pushing the proposed changes, and he has won the support of the F.D.I.C. The two agencies published their proposal in December. But the Fed has withheld its support. On Wednesday, the Fed's point person on the issue, Lael Brainard, a Fed governor, criticized details of the proposal in a speech at the Urban Institute and urged, "It is much more important to get reform right than to do it quickly." There is a clear need for an overhaul. The Community Reinvestment Act has succeeded in increasing lending in lower income communities, but it remains much too weak. The standards are subjective, and bank regulators have long erred on the side of leniency. On average, more than 97 percent of banks get passing grades, and the government has rarely exercised its power to prevent banks with poor records from expanding or acquiring rivals. More than four decades after the law took effect, many lower income neighborhoods remain credit deserts. And minorities, in particular, still struggle to get mortgages and business loans. Banks have legitimate complaints, too. The rules, which haven't been significantly updated since the 1990s, still define a bank's community by the locations of its branches, even as banks increasingly serve customers online. Banks also would benefit from clearer standards. But Mr. Trump's appointees are not trying to improve the law. Quite the opposite. Mr. Otting previously worked as chief executive of OneWest Bank, a California bank that was owned by an investment group led by Steven Mnuchin, now the treasury secretary. In 2015, the federal government allowed CIT Group to acquire OneWest over the objections of community groups, which argued that OneWest was failing to meet its community lending obligations, and which sought to extract commitments for increased investment. Mr. Mnuchin and Mr. Otting made a lot of money, but the battle left a bad taste. Both men have said they want to rewrite the rules to protect bankers from similar demands. The changes amount to a betrayal of the public interest for the benefit of banks. Under the current system, regulators evaluate the amount of money a bank pumps into the community, and separately evaluate the services it provides, such as bank branches and low cost checking accounts. The current rules also define eligible areas narrowly, and emphasize the volume of lending; banks cannot meet the standards by investing in a few large projects. The core of Mr. Otting's proposal is to provide each bank instead with a simple dollar target for community investment, combined with greater flexibility in the kinds of investments that count toward the target and in the places where those investments can be made. The proposal resembles other actions by the Trump administration that combine high minded language about encouraging investment in lower income communities with policies that are actually written to let money flow to other places. Mr. Trump's 2017 tax cut allows the wealthy to avoid capital gains taxation by investing in "opportunity zones" billed as investment deserts but quietly designed to include ritzy projects in wealthy areas. The administration also has proposed a new interpretation of the Fair Housing Act that would bring an abrupt end to a promising effort started under President Barack Obama to reduce residential segregation. Ms. Brainard, of the Fed, outlined the beginnings of a better approach in her speech on Wednesday. It sounds almost quaint in the Trump era, but the Fed carefully examined bank lending under the current law in the last 15 years, seeking to fashion new rules that would promote lending, particularly during economic downturns. The Fed's approach also would preserve an emphasis on keeping branches open and making small dollar loans. The industry is backing Mr. Otting's proposal, but bankers have reason to be wary of any proposal that doesn't command the unified support of federal regulators. The Fed's opposition suggests that the proposed rules might not long outlast this presidency. Defying the public will by gutting a law is not a good business plan. The industry should push for all three agencies to jointly develop a proposal that will stand the test of time. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
SHANGHAI Ever since Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer at the Chinese technology giant Huawei, was arrested in Canada nearly two months ago, Chinese officials have denounced the move as "wrongful" and "arbitrary" a political affair cloaked in a judicial one. Now that the United States has laid out its case against Ms. Meng in greater detail, neither Huawei nor the Chinese government has easy options for responding or retaliating. Huawei, the world's largest provider of the equipment that powers mobile phone and data networks, said on Tuesday that it was innocent of charges unveiled in Washington the day before that it had misled the United States government about its business in Iran, obstructed a criminal investigation and stolen American industrial secrets. China's Foreign Ministry called again for the United States and Canada to release Ms. Meng, who is a daughter of Huawei's founder and chief executive, Ren Zhengfei. But should Ms. Meng be extradited to the United States to face charges, as American officials say they plan to request before a deadline on Wednesday, Beijing will have few ways to force Washington's hand. China is in the middle of a trade war that it is eager to end as its vast economy slows. Any effort to get tough on the United States such as by detaining American nationals, as it did to Canadians after Ms. Meng was arrested could scuttle the negotiations. Those talks are set to resume on Wednesday, and Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, said in a television interview on Tuesday that the case against Ms. Meng would not affect them. "Forced technology issues are part of trade discussions," Mr. Mnuchin said, while emphasizing that any issues related "to violation of U.S. law or U.S. sanctions are going through a separate track, which is the Justice Department." The broad language of the Justice Department's indictments suggests that other Huawei leaders, including Mr. Ren, a former officer in the People's Liberation Army, might wish to exercise caution while traveling to countries that have an extradition treaty with the United States. "If I was his lawyer, I would advise him to be careful," said Julian Ku, a professor of law at Hofstra University. But that kind of caution could make it harder still for Huawei to hold on to its business in places like Europe. Already, the United States has been applying pressure on all sides against Huawei, fearing that the Chinese government could use the company's gear to sabotage other countries' communication networks. Previously, Canadian officials had said Ms. Meng was accused of tricking financial institutions into making transactions that violated United States sanctions on Iran. One of the two indictments unsealed on Monday outlines a broader effort. The indictment says Huawei's misrepresentations to the United States government and four multinational financial institutions began in 2007. It cites an interview between agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Mr. Ren around July of that year, in which Mr. Ren said that his company complied with all American laws and that it had not dealt directly with any Iranian company. The indictment also cites 2012 testimony before the United States Congress in which a Huawei executive said the company's business in Iran had not violated sanctions. That executive was Charles Ding, a corporate senior vice president. Mr. Ding, who was not mentioned by name in Monday's indictment, could not be reached for comment. Also in the indictment is a reference to a file found on an electronic device that Ms. Meng was carrying when she arrived at Kennedy International Airport in New York in 2014. Officials detained her for a couple of hours when she arrived, according to a person with knowledge of the events. During that time, they briefly confiscated her electronic devices, said the person, who asked for anonymity because the events had not been made public. The file she was carrying, which the indictment said might have been deleted before being discovered, contained "suggested talking points" about Huawei's relationship with Skycom, the company that prosecutors accuse Huawei of using as an unofficial subsidiary to obtain American sourced goods, technology and services for its Iranian business. The indictment also said Skycom employed at least one United States citizen in Iran, a violation of American law. And it said that after Huawei found out that the United States was pursuing a criminal investigation in 2017, the company destroyed evidence and tried to move unspecified witnesses who knew about its Iranian business to China, beyond the reach of the American government. The other indictment, which concerns the theft of trade secrets from the American wireless provider T Mobile, refers to internal emails describing a plot to steal testing equipment from T Mobile's lab in Bellevue, Wash. Huawei has contended that its employees were acting on their own to learn more about a robot that T Mobile used to test smartphones, nicknamed Tappy because it could rapidly tap a phone screen. But the indictment cites multiple emails exchanged between Huawei engineers urging those with access to Tappy to take increasingly precise measurements. Ren Zhengfei, the founder and chief executive of Huawei, is Ms. Meng's father. Eventually, the indictment says, a Huawei engineer sneaked into the Tappy laboratory with the help of other Huawei employees who had access. He was caught and thrown out but returned, the indictment said. Later, after all but one Huawei employee had their access to the robot revoked, the employee took a Tappy robotic arm home for closer study, according to the indictment. A Huawei investigation into the issue, which concluded there was minimal coordination among the engineers, contained false statements, the indictment said. The indictment also cites a Huawei program started in 2013 to reward employees for stealing confidential information from competitors. They were directed to post such information to an internal Huawei website, or in special cases to an encrypted email address, the indictment said. Bonuses were apportioned to those who stole the most valuable information, it said. The evidence presented in this week's indictments bolsters the American case for extraditing Ms. Meng, said Mr. Ku of Hofstra University. "The standard for extradition is whether a Canadian court would send her to trial," Mr. Ku said. "Essentially, is there enough evidence to indict someone? I think this will help meet that standard." Prosecutors redacted the identity of at least one of the defendants, most likely to leave open the option of arresting that person. That person isn't likely to be Mr. Ren, said Mr. Ku, because he is mentioned later in the indictment. But that doesn't guarantee prosectors won't target him later. Huawei has worked for a reset in Washington as relations with the American government have worsened. Last year it cut staff in Washington after investigations into the company deepened and AT T walked away from a deal to sell Huawei's phones. Further personnel shifts in recent weeks appear to be focused on improving its image in America. Ms. Tan, Huawei's incoming head of government affairs in Washington, has for years played a key role in the company's media relations. She will be tasked with engaging an American administration that has grown hawkish on China. Her predecessor in Washington, Mr. Zhang, had previously been responsible for sales in Mexico. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
The connections in New York City basketball run deep. Generations of boys and young men starred on the playgrounds, on the school courts, on the A.A.U. circuit. If you did not play with someone, you probably played against him. Across the basketball courts of New York, there aren't many degrees of separation. It did not take the coronavirus to know this. But the pandemic has reinforced it fatally. David Cain, who grew up in Harlem and played basketball for St. John's University in the early 1990s, had a birthday coming, his 49th. He spread word that there would be a party on March 14 at Mom's Cigar Lounge Warehouse in Scarsdale, a suburb north of the city. Lee Green, 49, a former St. John's teammate of his from the Bronx, would serve as the D.J. Dozens of men, mostly in their 40s and 50s, most connected to the web of New York City basketball, would come. They found wipes at the door, then relaxed in the leather chairs, shared drinks and food, and soaked in the smoke and camaraderie. Ten days later, two of the men were dead after testing positive for the coronavirus: Green and Jonathan Duck, 50, a big man from the Bronx who played at Iona. He and Cain were A.A.U. teammates and high school rivals. At least four others who attended the party have tested positive, including Cain, who is now recovering alone at home. Many others were either waiting for results, Cain said, or monitoring their symptoms. The party crowd likewise included at least two former N.B.A. players who emerged as New York stars in the 1970s: Steve Burtt Sr. was there and, according to Cain and Burtt, so was David Britton. Burtt, 57, the former Iona star who played parts of four seasons with the Golden State Warriors, the Los Angeles Clippers, the Phoenix Suns and the Washington Bullets, said on Saturday by telephone that he was "just glad to be OK" amid a self quarantine. Because he is asymptomatic, Burtt said, he had not been given a test for Covid 19. Britton, 61, was drafted in the third round (No. 57 over all) in 1980 by the expansion Dallas Mavericks after growing up in the Bronx and playing at Potomac State and Texas A M. He could not be immediately reached for comment. "I feel so bad for Lee and the other guys that got sick," Burtt said. "We were just out having a good time. When I got wind of it, I called Dave to check on him, but I didn't put two and two together. And then Lee died. I'm like: 'Wait a minute they said he was at a party. I was at the party.'" Cain said: "The week leading up to it, we were like: 'Do people even want to come out? Are people scared?' We weren't fearing it at this point, or maybe not understanding. I don't think we understood social distances, for real." At least one other New York basketball star has died in the coronavirus pandemic David Edwards of Queens, who played a season at Georgetown and then starred at Texas A M, where he averaged 13.5 points a game and left as the career leader in assists and steals. He was 48. The thought dangled. "It's a mental thing now," he said. As the coronavirus has spread around the globe, scientists and politicians have urged or forced social distancing. Highly contagious, the virus can slip easily from one person to the next, even if there are no symptoms. It is how Covid 19 spread from Wuhan, China, in the first place a small outbreak became a pandemic because people traveled and gave it to one another. A market in Wuhan. A nursing home near Seattle. A party in Connecticut. Mardi Gras in New Orleans. A birthday party in Scarsdale, perhaps. It is not known if they got the disease there or were already infected, but its toll has devastated their tight knit group. New York had its first confirmed case on March 1. Suburban New Rochelle soon was locked down by a cluster of cases. There was the introduction of elbow bumping in lieu of handshakes, then there were plans to close restaurants. On March 11, after Rudy Gobert of the Utah Jazz tested positive, the N.B.A. suspended its season. An announcement that schools in New York City would close came on March 15. But on March 14, a Saturday, there would be a party, in anticipation of Cain's birthday three days later. Mom's Cigar Lounge Warehouse has a private room that can accommodate 70 people, and at that point there were no restrictions in New York on gatherings of that size. Mitul Shah, one of the owners, said that he had discussed canceling the party with Cain, and that they had decided to take extra precautions. There would be plenty of cleaning and sanitary wipes, employees would wear gloves and nobody showing symptoms of a cold or flu would be admitted. Shah said the March 14 party was the last private one held at the establishment. Like other New York businesses, it remained open for another week, until all nonessential establishments were ordered to close. The party was almost exclusively men, Cain said, the room filled with "30 year friendships." Green, who retired from the New York City Police Department a year ago, fired up the music. Being a D.J. was a lifelong hobby of his. His nickname, picked up through his on court exploits at Harlem's Rucker Park, was El Dorado. In February, Green was at Madison Square Garden for a St. John's game, reveling in a reunion with Lamont Middleton, his former teammate and roommate. Middleton grew up in the Bronx and now lives with his family in North Carolina. He surmised that there would have been little hope, for anyone, of talking Green out of serving as the D.J. at the party. Middleton laughed as he recounted how hard it was to persuade Green to turn his music down when they shared a cramped space in college even when Middleton had to study. "At St. John's, that was his thing," Middleton said. "We used to kind of, like, fight sometimes." He was not surprised that the party took place amid the viral threat. "We're New Yorkers," Middleton said. "Just being from New York, you get stubborn. Then a week later, it's a whole different world." Cain began to feel ill a few days later a fever, chills and sweats, he said. A test for the flu was negative. When he told doctors that he had been in the New York City area at a party, they tested him for the coronavirus. As he waited several days for the results, Cain learned that another person at the party had tested positive. When he got his own results back, on March 22, he spread the news again: Quarantine yourself and get tested. He did not know that, by then, Green was in the final throes of the virus. He had felt sick all week, mostly with a cough. When his fever spiked on March 20, he went to the hospital. He was tested for the coronavirus, his family said, and was told the results would take some time. He went home. He lived alone. "I'm not going to lie," he texted to his daughter, Bria Natalie Green, 26, one of his four grown children. "I was scared to death." Lee Green in a photograph provided by his family. It was the last text she got from her father. On March 22, Green called his sister, Aiyana Green, in New Jersey, using FaceTime. It was her birthday. "He called me and I could tell he wasn't feeling well," she said. "He said, 'Happy birthday, sis.' I said, 'You look a mess.' He said: 'I know. I feel crazy. I can't even walk to the kitchen right now. I can't breathe.'" By the time she could get to the Bronx, he had texted to say he was on the way to the hospital. Which one? she asked. Einstein, he wrote. It was their last communication. Just a week or so earlier, Aiyana Green's phone had died. Lee, eight years older, was concerned that he could not reach her over several hours. He went to New Jersey to bang on her door at 2 a.m. to make sure she was OK. "He was the best big brother," she said. She rushed to the hospital, but could not get inside. "I just wanted to hold his hand. I wanted to be near him," she said, crying as she retold the story. "I kept telling the doctor, if you keep saying my name to him, I promise he's going to live. Keep saying Aiyana, Aiyana, Aiyana. Please. But I know they were so overwhelmed." She spent much of Thursday figuring out funeral and burial plans. They will be limited to 10 people. Had Green, Duck or Edwards died any other way, at any other time, the New York basketball community would hold big funerals, big celebrations of life. Relatives of Duck and Edwards did not respond to messages. But the Green family wanted to get a message out. "I want people to stay inside so we can get through this a lot faster and I can personally get out of this nightmare," Green's daughter, Bria Natalie, said. She cried. "I want people to know my dad was loved by all, and he wanted people to love each other. And I would do anything to have him back." Aiyana Green does not blame the cigar party for her brother's death. Just a couple of weeks ago, talk of the spreading virus was mostly about the elderly and the ill. It was not about basketball players in middle age. "My brother must have thought that that he didn't fit the mold," she said. "That it was OK to be amongst his friends." In Syracuse, Cain remained in isolation at home on Friday. His sadness was blended with guilt. He wondered how many others got the virus that night, and how many people they spread it to. "That virus ran through at least 10 people that night, and that's just what I know of," Cain said. "It's not a joke." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
Kendal Fisher has lived in Harlem since he arrived in New York nine years ago, having spent much of that time in a large rental complex in Manhattanville. Mr. Fisher, 34, stayed there for six years, with his monthly rent rising to around 1,650. "I lived in a studio," he said. "It was all I could afford, and it was all I needed." That changed over time. He often had guests sleeping on the couch, infringing on his privacy. And he adopted Seven, an energetic miniature schnauzer. "I felt the dog needed more space to run around," he said. "In a studio, she's running in a circle." His salary grew, and last spring he decided to upgrade to a one bedroom. Mr. Fisher, a graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University, wanted to move a bit farther south, to shorten his commute to Midtown, where he works as an executive assistant. Most of all, he craved some creature comforts namely, a washer dryer and central air conditioning. "There were certain things I had on my checklist, and I wasn't going to move until I had them," he said. Mr. Fisher grew up with central air conditioning in Virginia, and he was surprised to find it was not all that common in New York. His rental included a through the wall unit, with gaps in the sleeve where hot air seeped in. "My apartment wouldn't be that cool, but my Con Ed bill would be sky high," he said. "I figured with central air, the Con Ed bill might be high but I would have air equally spread throughout the room." Also, laundry was a hassle, with machines that were often broken. The complex he was living in had overhauled its two crowded laundry rooms, but the new machines "lasted maybe a month before they started to break down," he said. The buildings listed on StreetEasy and Craigslist with the features he sought tended to be newer developments, with rents in the mid to high 2,000s, although he was willing to spend more. He started with a renovated unit in the Kalahari building on West 116th Street, which opened in 2006. He didn't realize at first that the 249 unit complex was a condominium and he would be renting from the unit owner. "The application process is gruesome," he said, with an application fee, multiple forms and an indefinite wait for approval. The same thing was true of many places he saw: relatively new condo building, beautiful inside, burdensome application process. In some cases, the building allowed dogs but that didn't mean the unit owner did. "It's confusing when they have 'dogs accepted' on the listing, but when I get there it's 'I have to check with the owner,'" he said. "That's misleading." He worried, too, that a capricious owner could arbitrarily decide not to renew his lease. He grew leery of renting a condo. Mr. Fisher found a few new rental developments that fit his criteria, including a 20 unit boutique building on Pleasant Avenue near East 118th Street, in East Harlem. It was conveniently a few minutes from Target in East River Plaza, and its modern style, with protruding balconies, was conspicuous on the block. But to Mr. Fisher, the building didn't feel like home. And it was all electric. "The agent said the Con Ed bills were astronomical, so I am thinking that defeats the purpose of what I want," he said. In his research, Perch Harlem often popped up. The 34 unit building opened late last fall with the features he sought a washer dryer and central air but he dismissed it because it was on 153rd Street in Hamilton Heights, farther uptown with a longer trip to work. "But something just told me to go see it," Mr. Fisher said. "What do you have to lose?" He contacted Juan Rosado, the leasing agent, then with Citi Habitats and now with Compass. Mr. Rosado told him it was a passive house building. "I had no idea what that meant," Mr. Fisher said. Mr. Rosado explained that the building was constructed to certain energy saving standards, with central heating and cooling, constant air circulation and airtight insulation. As a result, the electric bill would be significantly lower. "We are all electric, but because of the passive house standard, the tenants save on their energy costs," Mr. Rosado said. Mr. Fisher returned twice. He learned about the services, including Rhino, which for a monthly fee eliminates the security deposit, and Hello Alfred, an in home concierge (with one year provided free). He walked around the neighborhood only two stops farther north on the 1 train and said to himself, "This is my new home." Mr. Fisher chose a unit on a high floor in the south facing back of the building rather than the front, which overlooks the Trinity Church Cemetery and Mausoleum. It had an open kitchen, a big bedroom closet and enough space for Seven to run around. He arrived in the spring, paying a monthly rent of 2,830, with two months free on a 26 month lease. "Nobody has ever lived in my unit," he said. "I am the very first person. I never imagined that would happen unless I built something from the ground up. It's a home instead of somewhere I just sleep." The stacked washer dryer is tucked into a nook near the bedroom. "I don't have to worry about schlepping a bag down the hall or to the basement or even outside," he said. "Because it is ventless," he said of the dryer, "it takes extremely long to dry things but I'm home, so it doesn't matter." Mr. Fisher's summer electric bill dropped by half from 140 a month at his old place to 70 at Perch Harlem. "That is the main thing that has impressed me so far," he said. "The apartment is way more comfortable than my previous apartment. I don't even know how hot it is outside until I take my dog out." For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: nytrealestate. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
Did you feel the slight tremble rippling through the cosmos this morning? Did you puzzle for an extra minute over which shirt to wear? No, Mercury is not in retrograde. It's just that New York Fashion Week is here. (Completists, in fact, will have already begun their fashion week rounds: a handful of shows, including the young gun showcase VFiles, took place on Wednesday.) The show of the day is, without question, Kanye West's. Mr. West's ambitions are arena size, so he's done the logical thing and booked an arena. A lucky few thousand will pack Madison Square Garden to see his latest Yeezy collection and hear the premiere of Mr. West's new album "The Life of Pablo" (formerly "Waves," formerly "Swish"). Expect throngs. And we will be live blogging it from 4 p.m. on. BUT WHAT COMES FIRST? The action begins at 9 a.m. with Nicholas K, the brother sister label from (Ms.) Nicholas and Christopher Kunz. From there, it's on to the crowd friendly va va voom of BCBG Max Azria. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
James Murdoch, the son of the billionaire media mogul Rupert Murdoch, is set to take a significant stake in the M.C.H. Group, the Swiss owners of the Art Basel fairs. Investment from Mr. Murdoch's company, Lupa Systems, will help transform the company from a traditional events business into one focused on "future oriented platforms and communities," M.C.H. said in a statement on Friday. If the move is approved at a meeting on Aug. 3, Mr. Murdoch's company will own about one third of M.C.H.'s shares, rising to a possible 44 percent controlling stake later, the statement added. Founded in 1970 by three gallerists in the Swiss city, Art Basel has grown into the world's biggest and most prestigious international art fair business. Its flagship event in Basel in June, which last year attracted 93,000 visitors, has become the centerpiece of Europe's summer art market calendar. Art Basel Hong Kong, typically held in March, has enabled Western dealers to significantly expand the market for international contemporary art in Asia. And Art Basel Miami Beach has gained a reputation for attracting the hippest American collectors and works by the hottest new artists. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
Trying to guess how and when the tax code is going to change and plan for those changes now is an impossible task. Most prognosticators guessed correctly that President Trump was going to slash the corporate tax rate in 2017. But the doubling of the estate and gift tax exemption to more than 23 million a couple, from an already generous 11 million, was a bit of a surprise. More so was the elimination of deductions for state and local taxes, which disproportionately hit California and states in the Northeast that have high tax rates. But with a presidential election just a few months away, the game of predicting and analyzing proposals that might affect taxpayers has begun. Most candidates are talking about the big headline grabbing moves, like health insurance, climate change and infrastructure, as well as the wealth tax that Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have pitched. What needs to be analyzed for affluent individuals are the potential changes no candidate is talking about: lowering exemptions and raising rates for the estate and gift taxes and ending the valuation discount for closely held family businesses, a tax break that allows families to transfer a valuable asset for less than it is worth. The valuation discount can affect any small business that the owner expects to pass to heirs. The current exemption levels for the estate and gift taxes are so high that the tax applies to very few people, but both the exemption level and the tax rate could change if the next president wants to raise revenue. This is the first of what I expect will be several columns this year looking at how tax provisions that a new president can quickly change may affect high net worth individuals and what they can do to plan for them. First, the estate tax. The current exemption, in effect until 2025, is 11.4 million for an individual and 23 million for a couple. Everything above that is taxed at a rate of 40 percent. Lowering the exemption and increasing the tax rate are on the agenda of many progressive candidates, who see the changes as a way to raise revenue and make a statement against income inequality. The estate tax is high on the list for many candidates because it can fill the tax coffers without affecting a lot of people. Planning for what could happen with estate and gift taxes is a challenge. In 2012, the last time the estate and gift tax exemptions were predicted to decrease, they were raised instead. "People say exemptions have never gone down," said Chris Pegg, senior director of wealth planning for Wells Fargo Private Bank. "That's true. But we've never had exemptions this large, and we've never had candidates talking about wealth redistribution. If you look at some of the dials that are most likely to be turned, I think the estate tax is one of them." Mr. Pegg said that taking advantage of the high estate tax exemption and the valuation discount around closely held businesses could allow business owners to pass more of their wealth to heirs free of tax. It could also help settle some business issues now, not later when the owners die. "You have a powerful, tax free way to move money," said Joanne Johnson, senior wealth adviser at J.P. Morgan's private bank. "Just moving money for the sake of moving money, it's not impactful. You have to identify your goals that's the most important thing." In certain states, like Connecticut, it may not make sense to plan so aggressively because the state's estate and gift tax exemptions are lower than the federal ones. (In Connecticut, those exemptions are set to become equal in 2023.) James Dougherty, a partner in the private client and tax team at the law firm Withers Bergman, advises clients to not rush. "Take a break and leave room in your plan for changes," he said. "Every day, the I.R.S. is inventing new ways to go after tax planning." What a Democratic president could do with a stroke of the pen is enforce a section of the Internal Revenue Code that ends valuation discounts for closely held family businesses. The Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service under President Barack Obama had proposed regulations that would have disallowed these discounts, which were seen as being overly generous when it came to estate planning. A few months after taking office, Mr. Trump issued an executive order that told the Treasury Department to withdraw the regulations. But advisers have pointed out that the statute eliminating valuation discounts remains on the books and is easy to reinstate. "Those regulations were shelved; they weren't unwritten," Mr. Pegg said. "You could reinstruct the secretary of the Treasury to propose them again, and they'd become law in the form of regulations." Eliminating valuation discounts also has support within the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. "If they have any way to scale back tax rules that benefit the 1 percent, they're likely to do it," said Bill Smith, managing director in the national tax office of at CBIZ MHM, an accounting firm. "This is certainly what they'd think of as a '1 percent rule.' It isn't, in my mind, because it affects all small business." The discounts were meant to be used by a private business that was owned by several family members. For example: Five people each own a 20 percent stake in a 100 million company. The difficulty they would have selling a stake to a nonfamily member meant it was not really worth 20 million. Generally, 30 percent was considered a reasonable discount for this type of illiquidity. Some planners pushed the discount limit to 40 percent and beyond. A few egregious examples drew the ire of policymakers, like ones where a family partnership was created to hold a basket of marketable securities, whose value was easy to ascertain. Ron Shepard, a small business owner who lives in Orange County, Calif., is in the process of using various tax structures to pass his family business to his son and daughter. His business, Shepard Brothers, makes cleaners, sanitizers and water treatment products used for food safety. "The tax implications are all part of that equation," he said. The company is based in California, which has high state taxes on top of federal taxes. The structures to protect those shares are also appealing to individuals. Irrevocable trusts, for example, can allow a business owner to give a share of a business at a discounted valuation and still have it protected from creditors. The business itself can be recapitalized so those shares do not carry a vote. This allows the business owner to have full control over day to day decisions while still saving on any future estate tax. Mr. Shepard said it had taken him nearly 10 years to get to the point where he was ready to begin passing on the business. He realized that he could continue building the business himself and leave it to his children later. But he chose to include them while they were still young, a decision that helped the family build mutual trust, he said. That made the transfer easier. "A lot of people will get the advisory side right, where they can put all kinds of things into all kinds of vehicles to protect it, but that doesn't teach them how to spend the money," he said. "The main thing I taught my kids about the business we have is you have to understand the asset and how it works because you're going to own it one day, even if you don't work in the business." That's easier to plan for than what a tax rate is going to be and when. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Your Money |
A decade after Lucille Clifton's "Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir, 1969 1980" and "Next: New Poems" were both finalists for the 1988 Pulitzer Prize in poetry, I was a prisoner at Red Onion State Prison in Virginia, befriended by a brother with long locs, a knife stashed in the dirt on the rec yard and a copy of Michael Harper's anthology "Every Shut Eye Ain't Sleep." The man's name I've long forgotten, but Clifton's poems in that book all of them taken from her first four collections, also found in "Good Woman" would follow me in a way rivaled only by those years in a cell. This is the thing. Back then every day teemed with violence, and the poems, like all of Clifton's poems, let me imagine even the wildest dudes around me as my brother. I read "cutting greens" as a way to understand my bid and all its contradictions. Prisons held our "bodies in an obscene embrace" and we were left, often, "thinking of everything but kinship." But at some point, you realized that "the pot is black, / the cutting board is black, / my hand, / and just for a minute / the greens roll black under the knife / and the kitchen twists dark on its spine / and i taste in my natural appetite / the bond of living things everywhere." During those days, no one called me by my father's name. Instead, for a few years I'd been going by Shahid, christening myself with the Arabic word for witness. Everyone around me was changing his name, the chosen nom de plumes all abstract and aspirational: Divine God Allah, Wisdom Self, Double barrel, Icepick. Then I read Clifton's "my poem." The poem was an announcement, this is who I am: "mine is already / an afrikan name." Once, I mailed everyone I knew a copy of Clifton's "won't you celebrate with me." My mother, my aunts, a cousin. It was Mother's Day and, against prison regs, I typed the poem up again and again in the law library. I underlined the last lines, "come celebrate / with me that everyday / something has tried to kill me / and has failed." I didn't know then that mostly what I was doing when reading Clifton, more than when reading anyone else, was understanding myself. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
BERLIN When he conducts, Kirill Petrenko presents a paradox: How can an artist so mysteriously shy and monastic offstage manage to steal the spotlight whenever he's on? Mr. Petrenko who is deep into his inaugural season as the chief conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, which he led in Mahler's Sixth Symphony here on Thursday doesn't grant interviews to the press. He only rarely (and reluctantly) releases recordings. "I prefer," he once said, "to speak through my work on the podium." When he speaks that way, in his conducting, it's with his entire body. Mr. Petrenko's face is a private theater for his players emotive and joyful, with veins on the sides of his forehead that bulge to the tides of musical phrases. He tenses his shoulders, twists his torso and practically crouches in retreat. Whether big or small, his gestures wield uncanny authority; he can remind you of Mickey Mouse in "Fantasia," able to sculpt the ocean itself with just a scoop of his hand. Somehow, it works. Look up old videos of Leonard Bernstein conducting Mahler, and you'll see how an approach like this can go wrong: Bernstein looks mannered, overemotional, performatively in search of transcendence. But Mr. Petrenko's conducting, for all its theatricality, is without pretense. You can trace a clear line from his movements to the character of his orchestra's sound; the strike of a tightly held fist elicited the chilling beat of a funeral march. This does mean that Mr. Petrenko tends to be the focus when he conducts, for better or worse. In Munich, he regularly attracts more applause than even the starriest singers. And after Thursday's sold out concert in Berlin (the program will be streamed through the Philharmonic's Digital Concert Hall on Saturday), his name could be heard repeatedly on the walk from the Philharmonie to the trains at Potsdamer Platz nearby. The Philharmonic's players elected him to the chief conductor post in 2015 after he'd led the orchestra only three times, and he's appeared here only a few times so far this season. Each piece is still a proving ground; few are as daunting as Mahler's Sixth. This passionate 80 minute work requires an extremely sure hand, as well as a stance on historically fraught issues like the order of the inner movements the Andante came before the Scherzo on Thursday and whether to restore the third, excised hammer blow in the finale. (Mr. Petrenko didn't.) Whatever decisions Mr. Petrenko made, the Philharmonic players seemed willing to follow. Call it a lingering honeymoon glow, but they responded to his every gesture with enthusiasm and virtually flawless precision especially in the brasses. He is at the very least a worthy custodian of this storied ensemble's sound; Thursday's concert showed promise for much more. The opening march's headlong momentum was frighteningly articulated, with the bows of cellos crunching against strings. When, after nearly three minutes, a gentler theme was introduced a portrait of Mahler's wife, Alma, if she, one of music history's most unreliable narrators, is to be believed it was bitterly ironic, a term of endearment through clenched teeth. It's a mood that carried to the chaotically happy ending of the first movement, here sounding more like hubris than a reprieve. Mr. Petrenko's reading of the inner movements was remarkably lucid, making a persuasive case for the Sixth as one of Mahler's most logically constructed symphonies. Even more impressive, though, was how he maintained clarity through the 30 minute finale, which unfolds as an epic drama of a hero's downfall. This movement, full of hope that ebbs and flows in counterpoint with despair, comes nearly an hour into the symphony; it's all too easy to lose control or slip into stormy hysterics. Mr. Petrenko was neither overblown nor restrained, with a focus on teasing out intricacies and echoes from previous movements that give the Sixth its programmatic cohesion. As the audience applauded, Mr. Petrenko waited nearly a minute before turning to face it. He may have wanted the ovations to be for the orchestra first, but he was, once again, the star. I left the Philharmonie thinking about how Mr. Petrenko might be best suited to works like Mahler's Sixth, in which a mastery of structure coexists with dramatic flexibility. During the past year and a half in Munich where he and the Bavarian State Opera's general manager, Nikolaus Bachler, have made that house the global destination for opera I have heard him lead six works by Wagner, as well as pieces by Verdi and Korngold and a program of, believe it or not, show tunes. Through video recordings, including the Digital Concert Hall, I have also seen him conduct Berg's "Lulu" and Strauss's "Salome," along with symphonies by Beethoven and, in a welcome surprise, Josef Suk. Taken as a whole, this varied slate reveals a conductor with gifts and flaws. Mr. Petrenko's exacting approach mesmerized in "Parsifal" the opening bars, with an unearthly balance of freedom and control, seemed to exist beyond measured time and he has uncovered prestige in seemingly superficial places, like Gershwin's "An American in Paris." But Mr. Petrenko's interpretations can sometimes feel cold. His "Otello" in Munich as obsessed with detail as the opera's tragic hero is with his wife's infidelity was downright chilly. A similar frostiness permeated a recent performance in Berlin of Beethoven's Third Piano Concerto that was often at odds with its more freewheeling soloist, Daniel Barenboim. It's no surprise that Mr. Petrenko's true Beethoven triumph was last August, in the Ninth Symphony, whose Romanticism leans more toward Wagner than does the concerto's Classicism. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
On a recent afternoon in Hell's Kitchen, a pink and orange Chevrolet Stepvan, pulled up to the curb. It looked suspiciously like a food truck peddling Miami fusion tacos, but the only thing cooking inside was a generator, pumping power into a 12 foot photo studio in the back. It was a head shot truck, and with its white exposed faux brick walls, new wooden floor, makeup station, changing area and chair bolted into the floor, the compact studio makes use of every available inch. The head shots happen in the back, where customers can choose from 14 colored backdrops that unroll like yoga mats. On this day, Adam Hendershott, 33, the truck's owner and lead photographer, snapped shots of Douglas Widick, an actor and a founder of the North Coast Hip Hop Improv Comedy team who took Mr. Hendershott up on his offer of a freebie. "Lean way forward on your feet like you're Michael Jackson," Mr. Hendershott told him. "Chin down." The two turned their attention to Mr. Widick's image on a large iMac screen nearby. "What's that in my teeth?" he asked, before realizing it was the remnants of the burrito he had eaten for lunch. Take 2. The Headshot Truck, which arrived in New York City two months ago, specializes in portraits for actors, corporate types and anyone else who wants a social media thumbnail that's an upgrade from a selfie. Packages range from 69 to 700, depending on makeup requirements and how many "looks" a customer wants. The truck also offers Express Days, when companies can reserve its services for a day at a discounted rate. The business was created two years ago in Los Angeles as a convenient, affordable alternative to boutique photo studios, which charge as much as 5,000 for a head shot. Clients have included Malcolm Jamal Warner and Jorge Garcia, who played Hurley on "Lost." The idea came to Mr. Hendershott while he was helping a friend move furniture out of a U Haul. He noticed sunlight on his friend's face and had a brainstorm: Had anyone ever taken head shots in the back of a truck before? Google said no. Teaming with his business partners, William Harper and Zac Hardy, he bought an old bread truck and raised 25,000 on Kickstarter to revamp it. The truck roamed West Hollywood and Burbank, Calif. It was successful enough to enable the owners to buy out a competitor who started after Mr. Hendershott was already up and rolling a truck called the Best Little Headshot Truck in Texas, Y'all. The decision to try their hand in New York was an easy one. "We wanted to be in a city that's as vastly different than L.A. as possible," Mr. Harper said. "New York's clientele is much more varied." Mr. Hendershoot added: "It seems like people are just more sure of themselves here. In L.A., everybody is looking for that approval of the casting director and the agent. The actors here seem to just come in and go: 'This is who I am. Let's shoot this.'" Hannah Bush was one such new New York customer. Ms. Bush, a dancer, said the industry today requires you to "dabble in everything," so she needed a head shot for jobs like commercial and print modeling. She learned about the Headshot Truck through Actors Connection, an educational and networking studio in the city. Sitting in the parked truck in Hell's Kitchen last month, she inspected on an iMac screen the photograph that Mr. Hendershott had snapped. She wasn't pleased with what she described as her "just came from the beach" look. A brush and some hair mousse remedied the situation. Mr. Hendershott knows show business types. He himself was discovered by a talent manager when he was 6 years old, at a Bob's Big Boy restaurant. He appeared as a child actor on "Doogie Howser, M.D.," "Night Court" and "Roseanne." He took up photography in his 20s, shooting weddings and head shots and the occasional advertising campaign. For its New York debut, Mr. Hendershott shipped the original Headshot Truck from Los Angeles. Most of it remains the same, but it has been modified slightly. "We added faux brick so it looks like that exposed brick in New York apartments," he said. Adjusting to city traffic has been an issue. During the trip from a parking lot in Harlem, where the truck is housed for 450 month, to Hell's Kitchen, a cab cut off the truck causing a neck brace worthy stop. He also was pulled over once for driving his commercial vehicle on the F.D.R. Drive. As the workday came to a close, Julie Grega, whom Mr. Hendershott was training, took a turn behind the camera. Her subject, Jeffrey St Victor, needed head shots to reflect a new, shorter hairstyle. He paid 200 for a one look photo session with 60 shots, including makeup by Meg Murphy. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
All quiet on the Western front: the once bustling Standard near the Hudson River, part of the meatpacking district's makeover, is now boarded over and idle. There was a time in the not so far off past when hotels lived or died by being an out of towner's fantasy: the Plaza, the Four Seasons, the St. Regis. Then, as new money poured into real estate in the mid 1990s, and as Mayor Rudolph Giuliani cracked down on dance clubs like the Sound Factory and Tunnel, as food culture ascended and laptop computers and Startac phones enabled the self employed to work outside their homes, a new group of boutique hotels became the new New York's fantasy of itself: ritzy, but not fusty. Gender nonconforming sex workers cycled out, star chefs rolled in. Guests at the city's boutique hotels engaged in spirited debates about which "Sex and the City" character they were: Charlotte, Carrie, Samantha or Miranda. Self employed, Helmut Lang clad creative types too good for Starbucks conducted business in the lobbies. And D.J.s played in their basement nightclubs. Philippe Starck brought the furnishings, David Barton designed the gym, Gianni Versace hung out in the cabanas in the back. Mr. Schrager and his competitors blanched at having their establishments referred to as "boutique hotels." The goal was to create so called cinematic experiences aimed less at tourists and more toward locals or those returned from Paris and Los Angeles to hatch film deals and complain about fashion week. The hotel that really defined the first part of the era in New York was Andre Balazs's Mercer Hotel, which opened on Prince Street in SoHo in 1997. On one side of the basement was a restaurant run by Jean Georges Vongerichten. On the other, a nightclub called the SubMercer, which, because it was small, invitation only and closed on the early side, managed to operate seemingly unimpeded by the police. After that came the remixes. Sixty Soho (2001) ushered in the trend of rooftop bars. The Gansevoort (2004) attempted to one up Sixty Thompson with an outdoor pool. The Ace (2009) housed a luxury goods store, Opening Ceremony. The Standard (2009), a "Mad Men" style nightclub with panoramic views of New York. The party traveled to the Upper East Side with the Mark (2009) and across the river to Williamsburg with the Wythe (2012). But now, the beer garden at the Standard in the meatpacking district is boarded up. The Ace's Michelin star restaurant, the Breslin, isn't even offering delivery through UberEats or Door Dash. Harvey Weinstein, once the mascot of the Mercer, is serving a 23 year prison sentence after being convicted of sexual assault and rape. And recently it was announced that the Times Square Edition, a hotel Mr. Schrager opened last year in conjunction with Marriott, is closing permanently this summer. The best hope of saving this whole little world, according to Izak Senbahar, the proprietor of the Mark? "A vaccine!" he said in an interview earlier this week. Perhaps because apartments are made for marriages while hotels enable affairs, bad news often adds to the legend, as Sid Vicious proved in 1978 when the body of his girlfriend, Nancy Spungen, was found beneath the sink of Room 100 at the Chelsea Hotel on West 23rd Street in Manhattan. Helmut Newton died in Los Angeles in 2004 when he crashed his car into the wall of the Chateau Marmont, prompting Karl Lagerfeld to comment on how fitting it was for such a delightfully noirish figure of photography to die such a delightfully noirish death. For the last 30 years, the Chateau has been operated by Mr. Balazs, whose restoration of the hotel maintained the slightly haunted aura of the original and helped bring the boutique to Los Angeles. In 1997, Mr. Balazs who is currently ensconced at Locusts on Hudson, a 78 acre estate and farm he owns in Staatsburg, N.Y., and declined to comment for this article opened the Mercer, a New York creation that, much like Madonna, can be seen as representing either the end of its beginning or the beginning of its end. Mr. Balazs got into hospitality after dabbling in the club scene. He is the son of a Hungarian research professor at Harvard University; his ex wife is the modeling world scion Katie Ford. Mr. Balazs early on invested in M.K., which opened in 1988 and had a brief run as a rare A list New York disco with a kitchen and restaurant. The fact that Mr. Balazs is movie star handsome and, after divorcing Ms. Ford, went on to date Uma Thurman, Courtney Love and Chelsea Handler, probably wasn't incidental to the aura he acquired. (One that took on a different cast in 2017 after four women accused Mr. Balazs of groping them. He did not respond publicly.) Haughtiness was built into the Mercer's sales pitch. "I always found that lobby to be slightly predatory, actually," the writer Jon Robin Baitz said. "It had a calculated cool to it, and it implicated you, that merely by sitting there, you were signifying membership in a class of creative vagabonds and flaneurs who wore the same neutral clothing and had the same slightly oud mixed with citrus scent. The books on those shelves were not meant to be experienced as anything other than props." In 2005, Russell Crowe was arrested at the hotel after hurling a phone at a concierge who'd failed to help him place a call to his wife, Danielle Spencer, in Australia. He was charged with felony assault and pleaded guilty, although not before his publicist blamed a "faulty phone" in his room and a "clerk on duty" who gave him nothing but "attitude." Perhaps besides the point; perhaps also true. In 2009, Mr. Balazs opened the Standard, an 18 story block of industrial design where the rooms were best known for the nonreflective windows, which showed everything that went on inside. During the last days of construction, the hotel placed ads online inviting people to come for preview stays. "We'll put up with your banging if you'll put up with ours," the ads said. To gain access to the Boom Boom Room, the party space on the 18th floor, one had to have a membership, appear on a guest list or gain the approval of a discerning door guy named Joey Jalleo. In 2007, Mr. MacPherson and Eric Goode (a founder of the seminal 1980s club Area) opened, with Graydon Carter, the Waverly Inn, a West Village homage to Elaine's. Mr. MacPherson and Mr. Goode also opened the Bowery Hotel, with Ira Druckier, on the Lower East Side. A year later, on the West Side Highway, they debuted the Jane, where barely solvent fashion brands hosted parties. Daniel Day Lewis camped out at the Marlton Hotel, which arrived on Eighth street in 2013 and helped end the block's status as the Doc Martens capital of the world. Mr. MacPherson's latest job is a restoration of the Hotel Chelsea, which will likely pay homage to its bohemian history but will sell luxury condos, rent hotel rooms and house a Japanese restaurant. On a recent afternoon, Mr. MacPherson was driving back to Montauk from Manhattan, where he'd been doing a walk through of the hotel. During his stay, he'd been to the Hudson River Park and seen scores of millennials socializing and not wearing masks. Which was an indication that prognostications about the end of going out and spending money rarely wind up being true. People have short memories. They get sick of staying home, especially when forced. He's also been reading Ernest Hemingway's writings about the Spanish flu. "This terrible, terrible event and we slogged on," Mr. MacPherson said. "I imagine that's what will happen here." He puts in the plus column that hotels are "pretty good at disinfecting things and creating a sense of cleanliness." He believes rapid testing will enable things to open more successfully. And that people want to socialize. Still, he grew up in Malibu during the first series of devastating fires, operated numerous hotels during Hurricane Sandy and survived the Sept. 11 terror attacks and the 2008 financial crisis. Speaking about the travel industry, he said, "This is on such a different level. I'm not sure how we get out of this thing." Jeff Klein at least has something of a parachute. He was 31 when he was a partner in the City Club, which opened in Times Square in 2001. Back then, he said, there was no "master plan" to become the proprietor of the most Hollywood of Hollywood hotels. City Club opened shortly before the Sept. 11 attacks. What saved it was a 27 hamburger, courtesy of the celebrity chef Daniel Boulud, which became a hit with nearby editors from Conde Nast, who worked a block away and ate at DB Bistro Moderne. "What that taught me is that soul of a hotel is the restaurant," Mr. Klein said. Three years later, after the economy rebounded, he pulled together 25 million in financing and headed to Los Angeles, where he renovated an Art Deco hotel on the Sunset Strip. He called it the Sunset Tower and installed at its restaurant, The Tower Bar, a quirky maitre d' named Dimitri Dimitrov, whose skill of not lingering too long at the tables of movie stars helped him become sort of famous. "True tourists," Mr. Klein said, were never the hotel's target customers. "Insiders" were: those who either lived and worked in Los Angeles, or who came from New York but had jobs in entertainment, fashion and media. The hotel first opened on Sept. 10, 2001, and catered to the Hamptons Magazine/Ocean Drive set. "Impeccable timing," he said. But after the disaster that followed, the enemy was clear, the devastation finite. Capitalism became a cause, with elected leaders imploring people in 2001 to "get out there, go to restaurants, spend money. The idea was don't let the terrorists win," Mr. Pomeranc said. "Now we're being forced into the opposite reaction. In order to beat this thing, we have to not go out." He thinks travelers will return to New York, but maybe not this summer. And there are an awful lot of people like Mr. Baitz, who said that dining in a clubby restaurant "with everyone in masks feels too close to the Roger Corman version of Edgar Allan Poe for my liking." Before the coronavirus and now, "during our much needed reconsideration of our relationship to law enforcement, so much feels like those horrid people in the big city in 'The Hunger Games.'" And hotel management is a difficult business, highly leveraged with low margins. "Pretty much every hotel is restructuring their debt," said Sean Hennessey, who runs Lodging Advisors, a travel consultancy that's worked for storied names like the St. Regis and the Plaza. "They either need to get more equity pumped in to sustain themselves, or they need to reach an agreement with lenders to get their debt extended." "Unlike office buildings, where leases typically last for five to 10 years, hotels have guests for an average of a night and a half," he said. "That's why whenever there's a downturn they are one of the first industries that gets walloped, along with airlines and cruise ships." Besides the closing of Mr. Schrager's project with Marriott, Mr. Balazs, Mr. Klein, Mr. MacPherson and Mr. Pomeranc have all laid off or furloughed staff. Several in the industry said that Mr. Senbahar is barely staving off losing control of the Mark Hotel, despite rates among the highest in the city and great reviews. In an interview, Mr. Senbahar said he thinks he will be fine, although he acknowledged that there have been some financing issues. He's seen colleagues in the industry say that their bookings have dropped 70 percent. Which he thinks is nonsense. "No one has any guests," he said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
In an era whose ascendant short story practitioners lean into high concept experiments of genre and form, Emma Cline represents something of a throwback. The 10 stories that constitute her first collection, "Daddy" (following her much raved about 2016 debut novel, "The Girls"), are almost classical in structure you won't find a fragmentary collage, list or screenplay among them. Though she's not one for a sudden, curious departure of voice or dissolution of the fourth wall, Cline has an unnerving narrative proprioception, and her stories have the clean, bright lines of modernist architecture. As for her style, she seems to eschew the telegraphic mode made popular by writers like Sally Rooney or Rachel Cusk for something at once direct and musical. Cline's idiom is earnestness punctuated by millennial cool but nothing too fussy, everything in just the right place. At the start of "Son of Friedman," she writes: "The light in the restaurant was golden light, heavy light an outdated sort of light, honestly, popular in the '90s but now a remnant of a kind of gaudy, old school pleasure it was no longer fashionable to enjoy." There's a riffing playfulness to her prose as it turns back on itself to interrupt, comment or elaborate. This self aware tone appears here or there in the collection, cluing us in that the author, or at least the narrating intelligence, knows something these characters do not, covering the stories in a patina of wisdom or insight. In "Los Angeles," a story about a young woman who works at a clothing store and takes acting classes, we get lines like: "They sold cheap, slutty clothes in primary colors, clothes invoking a low level athleticism tube socks, track shorts as if sex was an alternative sport," and "Before they put the clothes on the racks, they had to steam them, trying to reanimate the sheen of value." There's also the killer first line of "Mack the Knife," about a depressed man in early middle life trying to find his way back to some semblance of order in New York: "He had been sad, clinically so, but over all things had improved." All of the stories are narrated in a close third person, told from the perspectives of both men and women. The primary axis of tension is, interestingly enough, not so much between genders as between generations. Cline preserves the usual hierarchy: the weary young, the flummoxed and resentful old, everyone tumbling around feeling constrained. The first story, "What Can You Do With a General," follows John as he tries and fails to reconnect with his adult children during a holiday visit, his baffled disgust clearly visible. During a scene that finds John revisiting old home movies, Cline observes, "How easily a veil dropped between him and this group of people who were his family. They fuzzed out, pleasantly, became vague enough that he could love them." In "The Nanny," 24 year old Kayla has taken refuge with a family friend, Mary, to hide from a tabloid scandal involving her affair with a famous actor. Cline nails Kayla's withering deadpan: "Mary, with her loose linen shirts, her silver oxfords, was the kind of older woman that younger girls were always saying they wanted to be like. ... Kayla understood that Mary was a nice person without really believing it; Mary irritated her." In "Northeast Regional," a surly father takes the train to collect his son from boarding school after he's been involved in an alluded to but unnamed "incident." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
Amy Sherald makes about 13 paintings a year. "It's hard for me to find people to paint," she said. "There has got to be something about them that only I can see." BALTIMORE "I'm just going to pretend it's not a big deal," said the artist Amy Sherald, speaking in her spare studio in the neighborhood known as Station North. "I paint paintings of people. And I'm painting a painting of another person." But it is a big deal, since the person Ms. Sherald happens to be painting is Michelle Obama. Earlier this month, the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery announced that it had commissioned Ms. Sherald, 44, for the official portrait of the former first lady, and tapped Kehinde Wiley, 40, for the likeness of former President Barack Obama the first time black artists have been selected to paint a presidential couple for the Gallery. Mr. Wiley already has international renown a painting of his sold for 143,000 at auction and his work is in major institutions like the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Obama commission is likely to catapult her into another league. "There is going to be a spotlight on her," said Paul Staiti, a professor at Mount Holyoke College who is an expert on portraiture. "She should fasten her seatbelt." A tall, athletic woman in white framed glasses who lives with her Pekingese Jack Russell terrier, named August Wilson, Ms. Sherald said she is not allowed to speak about the commission until it is unveiled at the National Portrait Gallery early next year. Nor would Mrs. Obama comment. Kim Sajet, the Portrait Gallery's director, would only divulge that Mrs. Obama and Ms. Sherald have already met about the portrait, that the paintings typically involve multiple sittings and that this year's subjects chose the artists from about 20 portfolios submitted by the curators. The first lady has to personally approve the finished work, as does the Portrait Gallery's advisory board. The Smithsonian plans to pay for both works with 500,000 in private donations of which 300,000 has been raised so far. This amount covers everything including each artist's fees, which Ms. Sajet would not specify. Ms. Sherald's paintings typically sell for 15,000 to 25,000. There is no prescribed format for an official portrait, Ms. Sajet said, except that it be a painting not a work on paper and that the artists "be respectful of both the person and the position they hold." Official portraits have ranged from "highly formal to much more relaxed," Ms. Sajet added, citing as examples Ron Sherr's 1994 portrait of George H. W. Bush standing in a suit and tie at the White House and Robert Anderson's 2008 likeness of George W. Bush in an open collared shirt on a couch at Camp David. The selection of Ms. Sherald, who typically depicts African Americans doing everyday things two women in bathing suits, a man holding a child has historical significance. "It's as if she's saying, 'Let's be clear: the President and I are African Americans and proudly so," Mr. Staiti said, "and these portraits are going to have an African American vibe they're going to break out of that rather staid tradition. I think it's important and I think it's political," he added, referring to Mrs. Obama's choice. While Ms. Sherald could not discuss her interactions with Mrs. Obama, the way she generally works offers clear insights into her likely process with the former first lady. She invites her subjects to her studio here, where she photographs them in an outfit she has selected for them. Or, she said, she may go to their homes to "shop from their closets" and photograph them there. Ms. Sherald always shoots her subjects outdoors with natural light. "I like the way it highlights the textures of the skin," she said. The commission represents something of a departure for Ms. Sherald; she usually chooses subjects who arrest her attention on the street, in an airport. She literally approaches strangers. "I would wonder how she'd feel about this leading to commissions of other prominent people," Mr. Staiti said. "She's interested in the exact opposite; she's interested in ordinariness." Ms. Sherald said how much the selection means to her, how Mrs. Obama loomed large in her life, though they had not previously met. "We've been on a first name basis for eight years," she said jokingly. "Seeing her made my world better." "She's an archetype that a lot of women can relate to no matter shape, size, race or color," Ms. Sherald added. "We see our best selves in her." Ms. Sherald is a survivor of congestive heart failure, diagnosed at age 30 just as she was earning her master's degree at the Maryland Institute College of Art and was training for a triathlon. She received a transplant at 39. She interrupted her career again, taking a four year break to care for two ailing relatives back in her hometown Columbus, Ga. She lost her father, a dentist, to Parkinson's in 2000; her brother to lung cancer in 2012. But she does not think of herself as unlucky. In fact, she said she is keenly aware of those less fortunate around her like children in her own community who are aging out of foster care. (One block from her studio, she said she "can see 10 addicts at any given time.") Ms. Sherald, who has taught art in the Baltimore City Detention Center, hopes to give back financially as soon as she pays off her school loans and can more easily afford her extensive medication: 13 different pills a day. "They exist in a place of the past, the present and the future," she added. "It's like something I sense with my spirit more than my mind." Ms. Sherald only paints African Americans. Having studied European art history, she is keenly aware of the scarcity of black faces. "There's not enough images of us," she said. Last year she had her first solo show at Monique Meloche's Chicago gallery and became the first woman to win the Portrait Gallery's Outwin Boochever competition. Now there are waiting lists for her work. "Everybody responds to her paintings," Ms. Meloche said. "There is something that's so alive in these characters; they're very calm but they're still very confrontational." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
How do New York Times journalists use technology in their jobs and in their personal lives? Emily Bazelon, a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine, discussed the tech she's using. What are the most important tools that you, as a magazine writer who does investigative reporting, rely on? Honestly, the vital tool in my work is people's willingness to trust me with their stories and to patiently explain to me what I don't understand. That's what I need to do my job. Everything is a means to that end. Talking to people face to face is still the best, and when I can't meet someone in person, Skype is my substitute. When I Skype from my laptop, it looks like I'm calling from my cellphone number. I use a software addition called Call Recorder to tape calls (after asking people's permission). It pops up when the call begins, which makes me remember to hit the button, and then it saves the calls in Ecamm Movie Tools. From there, it's easy to export the files and play them. When I say easy, I mean it, because when a tech tool isn't easy to use to the point of being self explanatory, I can't get myself to use it. I don't say that with pride. It's a handicap to be bad at solving tech related problems. But when I can't figure something out quickly, I don't think, "Hmm, this is an interesting puzzle how can I solve it?" I just get frustrated and mad. Another tool I rely on is my Zoom H1n digital voice recorder. It's light and hand held, and it doesn't obviously look like a tape recorder. It even comes in a little case that looks as if it could be for eyeglasses. The sound quality is good, especially for its size. I do think the design could be updated: For example, you need an old USB cable to export files onto your laptop, and then I have trouble remembering how to find them. One more tool: Freedom of Information Act requests. The state and federal laws that allow citizens to request information from the government are a great friend. (There's a caveat: Some agencies take a long time to respond, so if you're on a tight deadline, you may be stonewalled.) I've done investigative projects based on a relatively small number of documents, but if I ever have to sift through a huge data dump, looking for patterns and smoking guns, I'll use a software program called Everlaw. It lets you browse quickly without worrying about what format a document is in. (For example, you can switch back and forth between text messages and a PowerPoint.) I like the options it offers for organizing material. Full disclosure: My nephew Zach Sabin is a software engineer who helped develop this product. You are also a co host of Slate's Political Gabfest podcast. What does your podcast setup look like? When David Plotz, John Dickerson and I started taping the Gabfest more than a dozen years ago, we worked together in an office in Washington and sat down in a studio there and just talked into microphones. Then I moved to New Haven. For a while, I used a tie line box, which is a kind of magical connection I won't try to explain. Later, I switched to an app for my iPhone called Report IT Enterprise Edition. This one is dummy proof. It has a Report Live feature, which connects you in much the way the tie line does, or so it seems to me. Report IT also offers Record a Report. For this option, you place a regular telephone call and then tape yourself talking into your iPhone. When the call is done, you upload it and send it off to some server in the sky. I have screwed up Report IT only once, and that was because I forgot to turn it on. Last year, though, it stopped working because of a security firewall in Slate's Washington office. So I started taping at the Yale Broadcast Studio, where the engineers are super nice and competent and all I have to do is stay on mic. As a pretty active Twitter user, you get a fair amount of feedback from readers, good and bad. What's your advice for dealing with the hate? My advice is to be thick skinned about hate but open to thoughtful criticism. Of course, I don't always take my own advice. Last summer, I wrote an essay for The Times Magazine about the term "white people," which launched a thousand neo Nazi trolls in my Twitter timeline. Actually, I have no way of knowing if there were a thousand trolls or five trolls and 995 bots, but lots and lots of accounts were tweeting anti Semitic garbage at me. Other Jewish journalists have experienced this to a greater degree than I did, and journalists of color regularly have it much worse, as do women who write about misogyny. I didn't enjoy my turn at being trolled, but I feel defiantly attached to my essay. I will say, though, that I still think setting limits is crucial. I like the mantra "People sleep upstairs. Phones sleep downstairs." These days, my family bonds more over my tech ineptitude than any tech product. (It would be better if the gender dynamics in this story were reversed, but so it goes.) In particular, I'm mocked for not being able to turn on the television. There are four remote controls, with cryptic prompts for activating four different boxes. I can't keep it all straight. I get to pick the shows sometimes, though. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
If ever there were a time to be drunk in the theater, this is it. And the good news is that "Escape to Margaritaville," the Jimmy Buffett jukebox musical that opened on Thursday, makes getting sloshed on Broadway easier than ever. The lobby at the Marquis Theater has been kitted out as an island style thatched hut alcohol fueling station, complete with margaritas for 12 (on the rocks) or 16 (frozen), as well as bottle openers, koozies and other drink oriented paraphernalia. The bad news is that you still have to see the show. Or at least that was bad news for me, stone cold sober and with enough functioning brain cells to recall the past glory of musicals. If my twentysomething nephew liked "Escape to Margaritaville" better than I did, perhaps that's because he had two drinks and no historical horror. But if you're not drunk or a Parrothead, as Mr. Buffett's fans are called, you're in trouble. Mr. Buffett's denatured country calypso ditties and horndog smarm seem awfully lowbrow, even in a Broadway environment debased for decades by singing cats and candlesticks. It's quite a comedown in the sing to me of romance department from "Shall We Dance?" to "Why Don't We Get Drunk (and Screw)." That may be its aim. The story, concocted from cliches that were already droopy when they appeared in almost every other jukebox musical ever written, does not require you to put your thinking cap on. Mostly it asks that you notice the winking way it sets up situations that will later make Mr. Buffett's lyrics seem as if they were custom fitted to the yarn rather than the other way around. So if the title song ("Margaritaville," a hit in 1977) refers to sponge cake, lost saltshakers and a brand new tattoo, you can be sure that those items will force their way into the plot, the more bizarrely the better. For the record, that plot goes like this: Rachel (Alison Luff) is an uptight environmental scientist; her BFF Tammy (Lisa Howard) is engaged to a jerk. Together, they take a one week vacation to a rundown, Yelp disapproved Caribbean hotel called Margaritaville. There, they meet Tully Mars (Paul Alexander Nolan), the laid back, guitar strumming on site entertainer, and Brick (Eric Petersen), the dim but sweet bartender. Do you see where this is going? I suppose you could call "Escape to Margaritaville" a coherent aesthetic experience, in that laziness is not just its method but its message. "Work is a dirty word around here," Tully tells Tammy. "If you say it again we'll have to wash your mouth out with tequila." Tully, you see, is more than just a beach bum; he's a philosopher in flip flops. His profound challenge to Rachel is to decide whether she can let down her scientific hair long enough to crawl into a cabana for five days of casual sex with him. (She can.) His challenge to the audience isn't much nobler: Why be an anxious hamster when you can go fishin'? Why scramble for The Man when you can sizzle and guzzle and fire up a fat spliff? That theme could make for an amusing scene or two, but Greg Garcia and Mike O'Malley, the authors of the musical's book, have two hours and 20 minutes to fill. They are clever enough with the punch lines, but twists involving a volcano eruption, a buried treasure and a tap dancing chorus of zombie insurance agents smell of general despair. Worse, because even vapid jukebox musicals apparently require a moral these days, this one forces Tully to give up his toxic bachelor ways in favor of his singing career, which instantly takes off. And Rachel must realize that being ambitious about her work doesn't mean she can't have a man, especially one who has now become a star. Did I mention that her work has something to do with potato power? The story, too, seems to be powered by a tuber. How else to explain why a plot that spends most of its time selling the anti establishment, no strings lifestyle concludes like any old fashioned musical with an island wedding and everyone ecstatically paired? Even the hotel's tart proprietor (Rema Webb) and resident dirty old man (Don Sparks) are required to hook up. And though "Escape to Margaritaville" means to be feminist Rachel name drops Sheryl Sandberg as a hero it's a skimpy feminism at best. It utterly fails the Bechdel Test, no doubt thanks to a hangover. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
Ron Weiner remembers sitting his two girls down to discuss the amount of money they stood to inherit. One was in college and the other in high school at the time, and they wanted nothing to do with the conversation. "They didn't want to hear about it," said Mr. Weiner, chairman and president of Perelson Weiner, a certified public accounting firm. "They weren't prepared to receive that information at those ages it wasn't in their sense of what was relevant to them." That was 20 years ago. He and his wife, Vicki, who owned an investor relations firm and now runs a nonprofit that lends money to women, have persisted each year in trying to educate their daughters about the wealth that they will inherit. But it has been a slow process. "We're getting closer," said Mr. Weiner, 71. "The thought of being left all of this money is outside of their frame of reference. You can't force feed it." Even so, Mr. and Mrs. Weiner are doing something that many affluent people find very difficult to undertake: talking to their heirs about the millions they will have to manage after their parents are gone. Two thirds of the 57 people polled by Wilmington Trust, a bank founded by the du Pont family in the early 20th century and now owned by M T Bank, said they were "apprehensive about sharing inheritance details." All participants had a net worth of more than 20 million, and only a tenth of them said they had given complete information about inheritance to their heirs apparently for fear of dampening their work ethic. Their rationale did not seem unreasonable, at least on the face of it. But they were also concerned with heirs being too young to grasp what would come to them and with their children deciding to pause their lives as they waited for wealth that might not appear. To be fair, talking about money with anyone is a famously difficult task. Old money, historically, has been stereotyped as having a Brahmin disdain for such a gauche topic. And then there is the secrecy shrouding what people earn, particularly among colleagues. But the scale of wealth that some children stand to inherit is life changing. Not talking about it borders on parental negligence. And yet, there is reticence, even though children and their friends can go online and determine the value of their family's homes, cars and vacation destinations. "Of course your kids know how much money you have," said Lee Miller, regional director of the New York office for Glenmede Trust, which caters to the wealthy. "Parents are willfully disbelieving that their children are not connecting all the dots." Bill LaFond, president of the family wealth division at Wilmington Trust, is more sympathetic to the challenges families face. "I don't view apprehension as they don't want to have those conversations," he said. "In many ways, they're appropriately cautious. Heirs know there's money. But once you have that conversation and disclose how much money is there, it's an irrevocable conversation." Joel Treisman, a family wealth coach who leads a monthly group for Tiger 21, an investment club for people with more than 10 million, said he had been left to surmise his family's wealth on his own. He is a descendant of the Cullman family, whose wealth came from Philip Morris tobacco, and also the Lehman banking family. "Despite a Stanford degree and a Yale M.B.A. with all these financial management courses, I was totally unprepared to be an inheritor and that was in my 40s," Mr. Treisman said. "There was no family preparation. It was delegated to the family trust and estate lawyer to send me a letter on my 21st birthday to talk to me about wealth that was going to revert to me outright." Given the size of the home of his grandfather, Joseph Cullman III, he knew there was wealth. But he said neither his grandparents nor parents discussed what it meant. Jared Goss, whose mother is part of the du Pont family and whose uncle is Porter J. Goss, the former congressman and director of the Central Intelligence Agency, said he never remembered his family having a conversation about inheritance. But he did remember learning about the extent of his family's wealth in elementary school in San Francisco. "All school kids in San Francisco then were very into the Guinness Book of World Records, and I remember at one point someone pointed out the fact that the du Pont family was the richest family in the world," he said. "I remember laughing at that, thinking we're just normal people." No adviser counsels silence. But Mr. LaFond does advise families to make sure that everyone is ready to receive the information, and that there is a level of trust between parent and child. This may mean speaking more generally about inheritance or about family commitments that can be met only because of excess wealth. Mr. Treisman said that with his own three children, he has focused on gratitude, privilege and being philanthropic. One goal is not to replicate his experience at his first job. "There was a time when my salary and my job earned me very little money compared with being responsible for my inheritance," he said. "When you're earning 19,000 but responsible for managing 1 million or more of assets, it's difficult." Mr. Treisman continued: "Not knowing about this early, about the financial implications, can be disastrous. In my case, I did not really think that much about it to be honest." Mr. Goss said that his parents, while not forthcoming about exact dollar amounts, told him he would have enough family financial support to pursue whatever career he wanted. And he did, working for 20 years as a curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Wealth advisers said there are basic differences between families who made money in one generation and those who have been inheriting wealth generation after generation. The big one is having systems in place to govern how the money gets disbursed; another is an emphasis on the family's shared history of a set of expectations. While these aren't substitutes for a frank discussion, they serve as a backstop or guide. Ms. Miller of Glenmede Trust said that parents who have made a lot more money in their lifetime face a more daunting challenge than just revealing what their children will inherit. "As they were making these huge amounts of money, they were not thinking about how to model behavior with their young children," she said of the first wave of hedge fund and private equity managers, who are now in their 60s and 70s. "Do they get everything they want? Or do they know they have to choose between that candy bar and this one?" Holding off discussions about money until much later, when children reach their 40s or 50s, has its own complications. When parents are silent, adult children tend to poke around for details to their parents' annoyance, said Maria Elena Lagomasino, chief executive and managing partner of WE Family Offices, which helps about 70 families manage their money. Adult children "really don't know until they're told exactly what they're going to get or not going to get," Ms. Lagomasino said. And until then, adult children worry about what their parents will pay for, or if they might be cut off from support. Early in her career at Chase Bank, Ms. Lagomasino got to know David Rockefeller. "The Rockefellers knew they had a lot of money, but their family talked to them about investing and service to the community," she said. "They put money in the context of the family." She said Mr. Rockefeller told her, "My parents taught me the value of a dollar, whether I was spending it, earning it or giving it away." For families with far less wealth, not talking about money while still funding their children's lifestyles can have a more detrimental effect. The parents could run out of money they will need in retirement. Matt Papazian, founding partner and chief investment officer at Cardan Capital Partners in Denver, said he asks clients, "Do you want to downsize your own retirement to upsize your child's current lifestyle?" He counsels parents with good retirement savings, but not abundant wealth, to focus only on their children's essential needs. "It's a hard conversation for the adviser to have with the parent," he said. "It's also a hard conversation for the client to have with their children. But it's got to happen." Mr. Weiner said he and his wife ask their children for a family meeting each year. In preparation for it, they ask their daughters who are now in their 30s and married with children to tell them how much detail they want about the family wealth. Such conversations invariably invoke discussions about mortality, which children may not want to have with their parents at any age. "I get different responses to that, and in turn it causes me to calibrate what I'm going to share depending on where they are developmentally," Mr. Weiner said. "The objective is to normalize the discussion so it's not otherworldly. It's our world." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Your Money |
From left, Rande Gerber, Kaia Gerber, Presley Gerber and Cindy Crawford at the Sies Marjan show. Elizabeth Lippman for The New York Times | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.