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'BALANCHINE'S ETERNAL PRESENT: THE PHOTOGRAPHY OF PAUL KOLNIK' at the 92nd Street Y (Feb. 27, 7:30 p.m.). This special presentation honors the photographer who has spent more than 40 years capturing New York City Ballet. In an evening of conversation with the company's former principal Darci Kistler regarded as George Balanchine's last ballerina Mr. Kolnik talks about Balanchine's ballets and his images, which he refers to as "illuminated documents." Mr. Kolnik's work is currently on view in the Y's Weill Art Gallery through May 8. 212 415 5500, 92y.org JEROME BEL at N.Y.U. Skirball Center for the Performing Arts (March 1 2, 7:30 p.m., March 3, 3 p.m.). For "Gala," the French choreographer showcases 20 New Yorkers, some professional dancers and others amateurs, ranging in age from 8 to 80. This structurally simple work, in which performers cross the stage while enacting specific actions, emphasizes, in the end, the power of movement in humorous and poignant ways. The matinee on March 3, a production of N.Y.U. Skirball's Serious Fun Family Matinee series and the third annual Tilt Kids Festival, is for children ages 7 and up and includes special preshow activities beginning at 2 p.m. 212 998 4941, nyuskirball.org COMPANY WAYNE MCGREGOR at the Joyce Theater (Feb. 27, 7:30 p.m., through March 3). How can you tell your story in a dance without resorting to narrative? In "Autobiography," the British choreographer and director creates a movement palette inspired by the sequence of his own genome as well as by moments from his personal history. The work includes set design and projections by the visual artist Ben Cullen Williams, an electronic score by Jlin and lighting by Lucy Carter. The March 3 matinee at 2 p.m. is part of a new Joyce initiative called "Pay What You Decide," in which spectators are able to first watch the show and then decide how much to pay. 212 242 0800, joyce.org	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
The year 2020 is a watershed one for the director Gina Prince Bythewood, even if it doesn't look exactly like she thought it would. A few months ago, as Prince Bythewood began to put the finishing touches on her new Charlize Theron action film, "The Old Guard," she was eager to share her moment with directors like Cathy Yan ("Birds of Prey"), Niki Caro ("Mulan") and Patty Jenkins ("Wonder Woman 1984"), a rare group of female filmmakers whose big studio blockbusters would be released in close succession. But then the pandemic hit, the theatrical release of Yan's film was shortened, and "Mulan" and "Wonder Woman 1984" have both been delayed until a substantial number of theaters can open. That means "The Old Guard," which is based on a comic book written by Greg Rucka and illustrated by Leandro Fernandez and streaming Friday on Netflix, has now become one of the few action movies with any sort of guaranteed release this summer. Gina Prince Bythewood narrates a sequence from her film featuring Charlize Theron and KiKi Layne. "Hey, this is Gina Prince Bythewood director of The Old Guard. So at this point in the film, Nile has been revealed as a new immortal, and Andy is coming to get her to pull her into the fold, and Nile is not happy about it. Nile played by KiKi Layne and Andy played by Charlize Theron. So for me, the best action scenes are ones that have a story to it, that have a beginning, middle, and end but are also character driven and further the story. And the story of this was really Nile is freaked out about what's happening to her. She's been kidnapped by this woman that she doesn't know or understand and who shot her in the head, and she wants to be free. Andy has this new immortal, wants to test her, see what she's about, see how good she is." "I can fly a plane. You don't speak Russian, do you?" "Why?" "Because I told the pilot to play dead." "So these two come together in a fight, and one of the best templates that we used was the bathroom fight in Mission Impossible Fallout. And what was so good about it is that you saw the actors. You saw the emotion. You saw the story to it. And that's what I wanted for this and why it was so important for both Charlize and KiKi to train hard enough so we could really see them. It could really be them in the fight as opposed to stunt doubles. What we talked about a lot with my incredible stunt team was that I wanted to see the difference in how these two women fought. For Nile, she's a Marine, so she started out fighting the way she was taught in the Marines with the martial arts program. But as the fight continues and she starts to get more and more frustrated because she cannot even touch Andy, she just kind of lets that all go and just starts throwing bows, basically. And Andy, again, the whole time is playing with her and toying with her. I knew I wanted to stay in a confined space, so the DP, Tami Reiker, and I, decided not to give ourselves that crutch of having walls that could move. We wanted to be confined as well. So we built an actual plane with no flying walls. It was I think maybe six feet tall, so it was tough. But also we knew we wanted to shoot just all natural light, so there was no lighting so we could always shoot 360 at any point. And the rehearsal process was first they learned the choreography separately, did the training, learned how to throw a punch. For women, the tell of whether they are athletic or not is a punch. If you can throw a punch, we're going to believe that you're a fighter. And building on that, seeing what the actors were best at and what they would look good doing." "You're very good." Gina Prince Bythewood narrates a sequence from her film featuring Charlize Theron and KiKi Layne. Still, it's a feeling Prince Bythewood knows all too well. Best known for her intimate dramas "Love Basketball" (2000) and "Beyond the Lights" (2014), she has now become the first Black woman to direct a big budget comic book film. That's an achievement that's been in the works for years: Prince Bythewood was set to make the "Spider Man" spinoff "Silver Black" in 2017, but when that film failed to come together creatively, "The Old Guard" offered another chance to shoot her shot. Starring Theron and KiKi Layne ("If Beale Street Could Talk") as immortal mercenaries, "The Old Guard" offers weary antiheroes who aren't sure what they're doing is enough to truly save the world. "The themes were there before, but they hit harder now," Prince Bythewood said when I spoke to her by phone in June. "We are broken, and sometimes it feels like we're in a freefall. Who's going to step up and help fix us? Who are the heroes who are going to help us figure it out?" Here are edited excerpts from our conversation. When you were shopping "The Old Guard" to studios and streamers, how much did you weigh playing it in a theater on the biggest screen possible, as opposed to playing on a streaming service for the biggest audience possible? I've really struggled with this question, but props to Netflix: They gave us so much more money than any potential studio was going to. I did go back and forth, because I just love the collective experience of sitting in a theater where everyone is feeling the same things at the same time. So that's a little tough, but I'm interested in the idea that this will drop in 150 countries on the same day, and the numbers of viewers are potentially tremendous. I'm very, very curious what its going to feel like. Five years ago, when your movie "Beyond the Lights" was on Netflix, you complained that the streaming algorithm grouped it with other Black films instead of other romances. I remember firing off some angry tweets. I was being honest and truthful, and then my agent called and said, "Ted Sarandos wants to talk to you." Props to him for reaching out, because I didn't understand why it wasn't filed under love stories when I had always seen it as a love story first. It's important that films with Black characters not just be called "Black films" we should be in every genre. "12 Years a Slave" is not the same as "Beyond the Lights." So we had a conversation where he explained the algorithm, although I still don't quite understand it. "Beyond the Lights" cost 7 million to make. What is it like to go from that austerity to a big budget movie in the high eight figures like "The Old Guard"? I do find it fascinating that in my career, "Love Basketball" cost 14 million, then "Disappearing Acts" was 10, "The Secret Life of Bees" was 11 and "Beyond the Lights" was 7. In most careers, the movies get bigger each time, and my career was going in reverse. To then explode and do something 10 times that, of course I had the assumption I wouldn't have to worry about money at all, but even on a film of this nature, you have to compromise. But being forced to do a film like "Beyond the Lights" for 7 million taught me a lot about figuring out those situations, and I want to keep that mentality. As a Black female filmmaker in Hollywood, do you believe things are changing? There's absolutely been a sea change in the last three years, although when you look at the actual numbers, it's still dismal. But "Wonder Woman" was a big deal, "Black Panther" was a big deal, and I think Hollywood did get shamed into having to change. Even five years ago, I would go see these movies and love what I was watching, but it never occurred to me that I would have the opportunity to direct a movie like that. Eventually, that attitude shifted to, "I would love to do that. Why can't I do that?" And I started making deliberate moves to get to that point. The production company Skydance was determined to have a female director for "Old Guard," and that's rare, for as much talk as there is about that in this industry. They said I was sitting there because of the character work I had done in my past films and my passion for the material. Most of the time when I get a meeting like that, the question that keeps coming up is, "Well, you've never done action, so how can we trust you with it?" How do you keep your cool when you hear something like that, since so many of the men directing big action films right now were hired off some small Sundance indie? It is maddening for me and a number of other female filmmakers, and we talk about that. We don't get the assumption we can do it, so we have to prove we can. When you get into the pitch meeting, you honestly have to be 10 times better than anyone who walked in before you. You have to be so overly prepared with the bigger, more thought out pitch that you make yourself undeniable. After wanting a film like this for years, what did it feel like to finally get it? The first thing we shot was on a huge soundstage with this full size plane on hydraulics, and I was like, "Oh my God, I'm really here." It was such a cool, slightly scary moment: "Damn, this is really big!" What kept me grounded was some great advice from Rian Johnson, who's been such a supporter of mine. He invited me to set when he was shooting "Star Wars: The Last Jedi" , and I asked him, "How do you not get overwhelmed with all this?" And he said, "Whether you have a couple million or a hundred million, it has to start with the story." Another unusual thing about this film is that it's an action movie where two of the heroes, played by Marwan Kenzari and Luca Marinelli, are in a gay relationship. They even share a passionate kiss. I don't think I've seen a relationship like that in this genre, and I was excited to put that on the screen. That scene alone is why Marwan and Luca wanted to do the film there was no question that it wouldn't be in there. We didn't know what the reaction would be when we put it in front of that core action audience, but in the first preview people started applauding in the theater. That was a really beautiful moment. What do you think the next several months of filmmaking are going to look like, given the uncertainty of this pandemic? Filmmaking is an intimate process. How do you do that safely? Certainly, it's going to get more expensive, and what scares me about that is what happens to the independent films that don't have a lot of money. If it's going to cost big studio films a couple million more to do all the safety protocols they're talking about, are independent films going to be able to afford to be made? That's pretty troubling. I think CG is going to come back in a big way, especially with crowd work where you'd normally have a lot of extras. But for me, I don't want a world where we can't do love scenes or fight scenes because people can't be in close contact. Personally, I'd prefer to put the film off longer so that it can be what it needs to be. I don't want to have to CG two people kissing!	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
A start up is taking on Equifax's employee verification service, and it now has a bit of a war chest too. The new company, Truework, will try to compete with an Equifax service known as The Work Number, which helps employers handle all of the irritating notices they receive from banks and other entities that want to verify a person's employment history and salary. The gears of consumer credit can't function well without this process, but it's a pain for employers and, as a result, a lucrative business for Equifax. Most employees do not know that their employer hands over sensitive information to Equifax and similar services each pay period, even though workers have agreed to some kind of employment check somewhere along the way. And Equifax does not notify those workers each time it gives information to a bank or a potential landlord. Truework aims to change that, promising that employees will receive a message at their work email address each time an entity seeks information about them. The recipients would click to see what information their employers plan to share and can approve the handoff.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Your Money
For many Americans, they prompt images of hippies and surfers, or perhaps memories of wholesome camping holidays. Europeans may associate them more with the police or parcel delivery. As for their name, take your pick: Type 2, T2, Kombi, Transporter, Bulli, Micro Bus, Samba Minibus, Vanagon, Caravelle, Clipper L. The warm feelings will no doubt be chilled by Volkswagen's announcement that production of the much adored rear engine vans will shut down at the end of 2013, after 63 years. Long gone from European and North American showrooms, the vans that were admired for their simplicity and durability, if not their reliability or speed, have continued production in Brazil, where they are called Kombis. But new safety standards in Brazil are finally forcing the end of assembly of second generation or as VW prefers, T2 models. When the assembly line shuts down, the production of rear engine vans will total about 1.6 million units in Brazil over 56 years, on top of roughly 7.9 million built at plants in Austria, Germany, Mexico and South Africa. A special Last Edition model of 1,200 Brazilian T2s, with retro hubcaps and interior features, will see out the model.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Automobiles
Anupam Roy's "Surfaces of the Irreal" (2018) depicts images of social and religious violence in contemporary India at the New Museum's fourth triennial exhibition, "Songs for Sabotage." The New Museum's fourth triennial exhibition, "Songs for Sabotage," is the smallest, tightest edition of the show so far. Immaculately installed, it's also the best looking. Less admirably, it's the safest. There's a lot of good work, real discoveries. But in a politically demanding time, the show keeps its voice low, acts as if ambiguity and discretion were automatically virtues. In an era when the market rules, the show puts most of its money on the kind of work easily displayable things that art fairs suck up. With a roster of just over two dozen artists the 2015 triennial had 51 from 19 countries the show fills three floors (with a spillover to the lobby) and makes judicious use of the museum's cramped, high rise, narrow gauge spaces. Most artists are represented by more than one work, a smart move. And much of the work was commissioned for the occasion, which may explain some rough edges and a lingering scent of fresh paint in the air. And painting is plentiful. Where the last triennial situated itself in the digital present and future, this one is emphatically analog: oil painting, ceramics and weaving are among the preferred media. With just a handful of videos, a few installations, no live performance, and nothing interactive not a keyboard in sight the show has a pre internet, objects only 1980s vibe, an interesting throwback, considering that all the artists, as well as curators (Gary Carrion Murayari and Francesca Altamura of New Museum, and Alex Gartenfeld, founding deputy director of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami) are in their 20s or 30s. Over all, though, the show settles for evoking a mood of political unrest rather than proposing change. The centerpiece of the sparsely, beautifully arranged fourth floor space is a three minute video by Manolis D. Lemos, a Greek artist born in 1989, titled "Dusk and dawn look just the same (riot tourism)." In it we see, from behind, a group of 24 people, their faces hidden by hoods, lined up as if about to march in an empty downtown Athens street. They're facing Omonia Square, the site of frequent anti government demonstrations during a decade of forced economic austerity. As the video opens, the group sprints toward the square. But who are these "rioters"? The video is scored with an old, leftist pro democracy song, but the "dawn" in the title could refer to Golden Dawn, a right wing Greek nationalist party. And whatever they're protesting, how firm is their commitment to it? As they run, they break formation, move farther and farther apart, weaving back and forth in crisscross patterns. Then as they approach the square, they disperse in individual directions and out of the frame, like a corps de ballet disappearing into the wings. Their political gesture seems to have been little more than a choreographic exercise, charming to watch, but tactically slight. From a distance, the effect is gorgeous: an Impressionism of gleaming steel. Up close, though, you zero in on the individual staples and get a sense of the material violation they cause. Whether you see the figures the bodies underneath, and whether you consider them to have been assaulted or exalted by their metal overlay, will depend on how close to them, in every sense, you stand. Large oil on canvas paintings by Gresham Tapiwa Nyaude, who lives and works in Harare, Zimbabwe, also lead a double perceptual life. On first view, each is a crazy quilt of lush, fruity colors and abstract shapes. Gradually recognizable forms emerge: patches of military camouflage, detached limbs, headless mouths, grinning or gaping. A wall text opaquely written, like most in the show tells us that work is an extended commentary on the political corruption and repression that for decades sent fissures of fear through the country under the rule of the recently deposed president, Robert Mugabe. (What may be a portrait of Mr. Mugabe appears in one of the paintings here.) There are many ways for art to address such subjects, some far more forthrightly indicting than what we see here. But Mr. Nyuade's satirical approach, mingling hilarity and horror, suits the show's preference for polemical indirection, just as his semiabstract style, which foregrounds color and texture, sustains a prevailing focus on traditional studio formal skills. Indeed, if seen only in passing, these paintings might not register as political art at all. The same can be said of three suspended metal sculptures by the Norwegian artist Tiril Hasselknippe. On initial encounter, they seem to be boxy, uninventive riffs on old style Minimalist abstraction. Then you note that Ms. Hasselknippe, in her titles, calls them "balconies." And this identity, within the "sabotage" theme, generates narrative possibilities. You can now see the sculptures as architectural fragments left hanging miraculously, freakishly in midair after buildings they were once part of had been blown away. On the third floor, Cian Dayrit's tapestry like mappings, part fact, part fiction, of Philippine colonial history suggest a regal but ideologically loaded setting for Mr. Gunn Salie's monument to martyred workers. On the second floor, work by two young Americans vivacious paintings incorporating religious and racial stereotypes by the Los Angeles artist Janiva Ellis, and 3 D printed African sculptures looking as sleek as car parts by Matthew Angelo Harrison of Detroit complement each other without looking the least alike. As to videos, they do fine on their own. One, by the Chinese artist Song Ta, is short and funny. Somehow, in an amusement park in Guangzhou, he persuaded a troop of starchy, stony faced Chinese marines to take a roller coaster ride one with a terrifying vertical drop and filmed them as they shrieked. They got to loosen up for an afternoon; we get to smile at Mr. Song's soft punch to manly power. Also likely to be an audience favorite, and for good reason, is an animation, by the Hong Kong artist Wong Ping. This is one of the few pieces with obvious digital roots and with politics that feel as much existential as circumstantial. In three ingenious back to back fables, one featuring a Buddhist elephant, another a social media addicted chicken, and third an insect phobic tree, Mr. Wong sabotages logic itself. And I wonder if any logic system could explain the particular weirdness of the animation called "Pool Party, Pilot Episode" by Hardeep Pandhal, a second generation British Sikh living in Glasgow. Basically a manic rap cartoon video, it weaves religion, politics and sex together in an aggressive linguist tangle. The results feel old and new, like 1980s multiculturalism sliced, diced and tossed with acid, or identity politics dragging on past its sell by date. The rapper artist lines up a slew of once meaningful and validating self identities Sikh, male, middle class, British, Asian, former colonial subject, artist only to shoot them all down, execution style. Speaking of executions, the philosopher George Bataille once referred to museums as guillotines, meaning institutional devices that swiftly, cleanly cut art off from life by removing it from its political and psychological sources. I don't know how far you can take the analogy, but for an exhibition that's engaged in its social and political moment, as the New Museum triennials avowedly are, "Songs for Sabotage," despite some powerful work, feels oddly removed from the field. In a disturbed and perturbing time, one that calls out for some any form of revolt, the show hunkers down, cautions wait and see. In place of actions I think of the Queens Museum's idea of positioning itself as a culture resource for immigrant populations it privileges objects: paintings, sculptures and videos; some of those in the show are doubtless already poised to ride the conveyor belt to the market. Again, this triennial has many virtues. What's missing is the will to stretch sabotage art, and the politics of it, in new and needed ways.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
In St. Petersburg, with its palaces of the imperial court and the magnificent State Hermitage Museum, shopping is not at the top of the list for most tourists. But beyond the heralded confines of the city's rich history and culture, there is much for the sartorial minded to explore. The locally owned boutiques along Bolshoy Prospekt, a wide street that is a 20 minute walk from downtown and lined with 19th century buildings, are where visitors can find chic clothes by Russian designers. Sorry, men, though there are a few places for you, most cater only to women. Accessories and clothes for women are the draw here, created by emerging and established female designers from Russia, mostly from St. Petersburg. While the styles span from slightly edgy to classic, colorful merchandise reds, light greens, blues is a definite theme. There is also jewelry that is fun, including leather cuffs with gold spikes and long necklaces with pendants that are modern takes on the traditional Russian stacking dolls. The inventory is refreshed often, yielding different finds on each visit.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
This year, the La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival is breaking out of its small downtown theaters and onto the internet. The festival, which runs May 18 to June 4 and has a reputation for tapping into timely topics like climate change and gender, will crowdsource choreography for " Here to Dance," an online project about human rights. Three local dancemakers Annie B Parson, Raja Feather Kelly and a third choreographer to be announced will provide direction for dancers around the world to submit one minute works in response to human rights abuses. Those will be shared online, then screened during the festival's Dancing in the Street Block Party on May 20. Nine world premieres, two United States premieres and one New York premiere are on tap for the festival. Highlights include "My Memory," choreographed and performed by the Cambodian dancer Rady Nget, which shares a program with Yoshiko Chuma's "PI 3.14...Dead End, Hey! All Women!," a new work featuring a changing cast including Vicky Shick, Jodi Melnick and Irene Hultman. Also on that bill is Orlando Zane Hunter Jr. and Ricarrdo Valentine's "how to survive a plague," about the AIDS epidemic.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
As China Fights the Coronavirus, Some Say It Has Gone Too Far SHANGHAI China's business leaders know better than to argue with Beijing. Leave the politics to the Communist Party, they long ago concluded, and the government will let them make money in peace. A vicious viral outbreak has upended that formula. China's typically supercharged economy has ground to a near standstill as the authorities battle a coronavirus that has killed more than 2,000 people and sickened tens of thousands more. Hundreds of millions of people now live essentially in isolation, as roadblocks seal off entire towns and the local authorities stop companies from reopening. Business leaders and economists in China are increasingly saying, Enough. While China must stop the outbreak, they argue, some of its methods are hurting the lives and livelihoods of millions of people while contributing little to the containment effort. "Strike a balance that is conducive to protecting lives," wrote James Liang, the executive chairman of Trip.com, China's dominant online travel agency, in a widely circulated essay this week. No one questions that the disease is still a serious problem, particularly in Hubei Province and its capital, Wuhan. More than 70,000 people have been stricken, according to official figures. Foreign medical experts have suggested that the true total may be much higher. Nevertheless, business leaders and economists are beginning to ask whether mandatory 14 day quarantines, roadblocks and checkpoints are really required across much of the country, especially in provinces far from Hubei where there have been fairly few cases. The debate is unusual in a country where dissent is usually censored or squelched. Even topics like business and the economy, once considered relatively fair game for discussion, have become sensitive as China's economy has slowed and as the Communist Party has tightened its grip on more aspects of Chinese life. Still, even the Chinese government has acknowledged the wounds inflicted on the country's economy, further fueling national discussion of when enough might be enough. "If the epidemic lasts for a long time, agricultural products, food and industries with long industrial chains and labor intensive industries are expected to be greatly affected," said Li Xingqian, the Commerce Ministry's director of foreign investment, at a news briefing in Beijing on Thursday. The ripples are spreading far beyond China, hitting companies like Apple, General Motors and Adidas. Amazon, the e retailing giant, is taking steps to keep its virtual shelves stocked. Signs of progress combined with growing worries over the economy have, nevertheless, spurred calls for Beijing to loosen up. A team of Chinese economists, mainly at Peking University and the brokerage Huachuang Securities, wrote a widely circulated online analysis last week that took a critical look at the containment effort. Too many areas of China with few coronavirus cases were trying so hard to stop the virus that they were preventing normal commerce among cities, they argued. "If all regions rely on blocking, they may block viruses, but they may also block the economy," the economists wrote in an essay that first appeared in Caixin, one of China's best regarded publications. "At that time, a wave of corporate closures and unemployment may occur, worse than the current epidemic." No single business or city can resume regular activity by itself, because every company and community needs materials and workers from elsewhere, wrote Lu Zhengwei, chief economist at Industrial Bank in Fujian Province, in an online posting this week. "It is necessary to restore normal urban life" for the economy to rebound, he added. Worried about job losses, some officials are paying companies to hire. Xi'an, a city in northwestern China, announced that it was offering a one time subsidy of 285 for each worker hired by companies making medical protective gear, and as much as 430 per worker for companies in any industry that hire large numbers. Chinese officials are also keeping a sharp eye on grocery bills. Even before the coronavirus hit, food prices were surging more than 15 percent a year in China by last autumn. A different epidemic, the African swine fever, had swiftly killed half the country's pigs, its main source of protein. Now the coronavirus threatens to send food prices even higher. The Agriculture Ministry has ordered villages all over the country to take down the roadblocks and checkpoints and to allow movements of animal feed and livestock. But there have already been reports of mass slaughters of poultry for lack of feed, and chicken prices have temporarily plunged in a possible sign of panic selling. "The overall impact of production shutdowns on agriculture across the country," Mr. Lu of Industrial Bank wrote this week, "cannot be underestimated."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Economy
Fossilized leaves from the Lefipan Formation in Patagonia, Argentina, that show signs of damage from different insects. These fossils are all between 60 and 70 million years old. The asteroid that smashed into the Earth near Chicxulub, Mexico, some 66 million years ago annihilated the dinosaurs and obliterated about 75 percent of all plant and animal species on Earth. The devastation affected insects living thousands of miles north and south of the impact zone as well. In western North America, earlier research found that it took nine million years for ancient insects to recover from the extinction event. But on the other side of the world, in South America's Patagonia region, new findings suggest that the insects bounced back twice as fast. After examining more than 3,600 fossilized leaves from Patagonia for insect damage, researchers have concluded that it took about 4 million years for insects in South America to recover after the mass extinction event that ended the Cretaceous period. They reported their findings Monday in the journal Nature Ecology Evolution. "We found that plant feeding insects in Patagonia recovered much faster after the asteroid that hit Mexico 66 million years ago compared to insects in the western United States," said Michael Donovan, a graduate student in geosciences at Pennsylvania State University and lead author of the study which included researchers from Argentina. The findings suggest that ecosystems in different parts of the world repaired themselves at different rates following the asteroid impact. Like their modern day counterparts, ancient beetles, moths, flies, wasps, grasshoppers and other insects all feasted upon plants in unique ways, leaving behind distinct patterns of damage. Some bit holes through leaves while others only munched on the top or bottom layers. Some chewed along the veins of the leaf while others chomped through it. Others used their strawlike mouthparts to pierce the leaves and suck up juices. Larvae burrowed through the leaves and created tunnel marks while eggs leave lumps in the leaves. After millions of years, the damaged leaves fossilized. Scientists can characterize and classify the leaf damage and use the patterns to gain insight into the types of insects that were present during a particular time period. Though they cannot identify what specific species caused each damage mark, by looking at the diversity of damage types occurring over the course of millions of years they can infer more generally about how insects thrived at different time periods. "Plants and insects are important parts of the food webs on land, and many other organisms rely on them for food and shelter," said Mr. Donovan. "We can use plants and insects and their interactions to get a better idea of what's going on with their ecosystems." In the time before the asteroid impact there were numerous types of leaf damage in the fossil record. But immediately following the event, the numbers and types of damage dropped significantly, meaning that the insects that ate the leaves were suffering. In Patagonia it took about 4 million years for the amount and diversity of leaf damage in the fossil record to resemble what they looked like before the extinction event. The team's next steps are to compare insect damage data from other parts of the world with that from South America to better understand how ecosystems recovered after the asteroid impact.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
"Identity exists where the Complication and Unraveling are the same," wrote Aristotle in his treatise on literary theory, "Poetics." The primary task of traditional novelists has always been as such: to test the character of their protagonist through the events of a plot. As the proverbial instruction goes, they must get their hero or heroine up a tree, throw some rocks at him or her, and get him or her down, with an epiphany, or at least some larger meaning, in hand. In two debut novels, Kristen Arnett's "Mostly Dead Things" and Nicholas Mancusi's "A Philosophy of Ruin," the tree each writer has lodged the protagonist in is the bizarrely tragic death of a parent who has left, in addition to a vivid corpse, considerable financial debt. It is not an original inciting incident, though inciting incidents need not be original. It is what proceeds from them that tests the substance of both hero and writer: how they find meaning in means of survival. "It felt right; it felt like I'd been doing it forever," Arnett's narrator, Jessa Lynn Morton, tells us of the first time she sliced open a white tailed buck. "In the dark heart of its carcass, I saw my future mapped out in gristle." Her father, "the kind of man who smiled only when he needed to stretch his mouth," is a master taxidermist, like her grandfather, and their family business reigns in Central Florida. Her brother Milo's shiftless and sensitive nature disrupts the patriarchal lineage, so it's Jessa who learns the precise and grisly art of disassembling dead things and putting them back together under their father's scrutinizing tutelage. Unfortunately, the "red mess" Jessa finds on the floor of their workshop in the opening chapter is not the inside of a deer it's her dad. Terminally ill, he has shot himself in the head and left a note addressed to her. Now it is Jessa's job to master the family's disorder, both professional and personal, neither of which is modest. While averting financial ruin (her father has left behind considerable debt), Jessa must also contend with her mother's new hobby: transforming the shop's display window into a pornographic diorama. It is the sort of flagrant acting out one expects in repressed families. Want to keep up with the latest and greatest in books? This is a good place to start. None Learn what you should be reading this fall: Our collection of reviews on books coming out this season includes biographies, novels, memoirs and more. See what's new in October: Among this month's new titles are novels by Jonathan Franzen, a history of Black cinema and a biography by Katie Couric. Nominate a book: The New York Times Book Review has just turned 125. That got us wondering: What is the best book that was published during that time? Listen to our podcast: Featuring conversations with leading figures in the literary world, from Colson Whitehead to Leila Slimani, the Book Review Podcast helps you delve deeper into your favorite books. Jessa, especially, aspires to the stoicism of her father, or better yet that of her creations: their wounds sewn up, seams disguised with hair dye and glue. But however controlled she is in the workshop, beyond it she fails to keep it together. An advanced but semi functional alcoholism has her perpetually drunk or hung over, and only exacerbates her morose obsession with Brynn, the woman who absconded with first her and then her brother's hearts. Milo's wife and Jessa's longtime lover, Brynn has left each sibling with a catalog of persistent memories. Cruel and charismatic, she once dared Jessa to lick a dead cicada, "gluey, the way that tapioca pearls tasted when stripped of the pudding." The world Arnett creates for Jessa is lushly gross, as if the character's aspirational impassivity has squeezed her emotions out into the material world, rendering everything as rude and compelling as her own suppressed vulnerability. Cartilage abounds, pimples are vividly popped and her apartment boasts dishes "crusted with food that had long ago fouled." Jessa's Florida, thick with "the heavy odor of crushed plants," is beautiful and grotesque, just like people, and the ways they fail at loving each other. The outward conflicts presented at the outset of the novel find their resolutions, though the real story here is an inside job, and Arnett pulls it off with aplomb. Jessa is the disastrous heroine of our dreams; her job has never been to clean herself up, but to open herself. Our heroine prevails because her creed for living, however flawed, includes creation. Beholding a group of resplendent peacocks that she has just mounted, she explains, "there was something about the symmetry of three that made me feel as if the world had suddenly righted itself." Art can do this: arrange the broken pieces of our lives in a way that makes sense, that makes us make sense. It is through this alchemy that Jessa learns how to start talking to the people she loves. It is no small triumph: "It's hard to talk about the ugly parts. How we can be that terrible and still worthy of love." Oscar Boatwright, the protagonist of "A Philosophy of Ruin," is also driven by a professional creed, though his identity unravels more completely than Jessa's when faced with similar conflicts perhaps because of the more abstract nature of his occupation as an assistant professor of philosophy. When he learns that his mother has died on a flight home from Hawaii, his father forced to complete the journey next to her stiffening body, Oscar attempts to mitigate his grief using mental exercises "to distance himself from the idea of reality existing outside of his own head," and to "meditate on the best arguments against the existence of free will." Unsurprisingly, these fail, and Oscar succumbs to thoughts like the following: "Not only was she gone, but her impression of him, that she had carried with her and refined since their first sublimely traumatic moment of his birth, was gone as well." The first quarter of the novel is dedicated to such astute and indulgent articulations of grief and selfhood. Oscar is exactly as smart and self pitying as he should be, sympathetically real though he embodies the stereotype of a philosophy professor. He even plays squash on the campus court with his only friend. The Boatwrights do not talk to one another any more openly than the Mortons do, and so it is to Oscar's great surprise when his father divulges that the reason his parents were in Hawaii was to attend a retreat led by one Paul St. Germaine, a self help guru cum hack philosopher whose series of video sermons had supposedly cured his mother's chronic depression. All told, the semi cult leader has swindled his parents out of their savings and quite a bit more. When the grieving Oscar attempts to drown his sorrows in booze, he brings home a woman he assumes is a one night stand. When he arrives to deliver Monday's lecture on Cartesian dualism, he recognizes her in the third row of his classroom, looking "younger than he remembered." Here, the narrative takes a sharp turn. Our grieving, introspective hero is persuaded by the comely Dawn to drive within spitting distance of the Mexican border to escort home a backpack of cocaine. He is thus dropped into an action movie whose disasters are riveting fun to read. "I am not supposed to be here," the young professor yells at Dawn as the operation skids out of control. "I am a ... METAPHYSICIAN!" If Oscar is at least a three dimensional stereotype, the other characters are not nearly as faceted. The man who intercepts Oscar's journey to steal his stash is straight out of central casting, replete with gleaming white teeth and a black vaquero hat. Similarly, Dawn is an alluring nymphet whose tragic past I kept waiting to be revealed as a hoax. In many respects, it reads like the sort of fantasy a man like Oscar might invent for himself. Or, that a novelist might create to perfectly test his protagonist's integrity. In "Poetics," Aristotle claims that a good ending ought to be "surprising, yet inevitable." By that measure, the catharsis of "Mostly Dead Things" delivers. To my relief, Mancusi's denouement was not an exercise in wish fulfillment. Why should a character like Oscar get a tidy ending? Though he defines himself by ideas, his identity is revealed as much more desperate and human than his ideologies. The novel satisfies, as the game of squash does the philosopher: "how it asked for grace but would settle for fury."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
WHEN I HIT YOU Or, A Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife By In 's "When I Hit You: Or, A Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife," the evidence of a crumbling marriage can be found on the bodies of the husband and wife: "thin, red welts" on her arms where her laptop cord has lashed her; scorched skin above his ankle after he holds a ladle over the stove and then presses it to his leg until she agrees to see a gynecologist about starting a family; a dull ache where a broomstick has pummeled her back. A smattering of burns like freckles on his elbow where he holds one glowing match after the other, singeing himself until she gives in and deactivates her Facebook account. (He objects to "its narcissism," he says. "If you love me, this is the quickest way you will make up your mind.") The slackening of her legs, how she learns to "go limp" when he drags her to their bed to punish, to "tame" her. When the unnamed narrator returns to her childhood home, her parents decipher this marriage story through her ailments. "Her heels were cracked and her soles were 25 shades darker than the rest of her," her mother tells gaggles of curious relatives. "You could tell that she did nothing but housework." And then there's the story of the lice, repeated again and again: "That criminal had cut my daughter's hair short, and it was in fes ted." Little can be more evocative of the rot of this partnership than the image of swarms of little creatures scuttling about on her daughter's head. But lest four harrowing months of her life be whittled down to an anecdote, the narrator realizes she can be the only one to tell us what happened. It would be easy to ask, "What kind of woman would allow that?" Or even, "Why did she stay?" In 2012, when Kandasamy, a poet, translator and activist, wrote about her brief, violent marriage for the Indian magazine Outlook, these are the kinds of questions she was asked. "When I Hit You" is her urgent, searing answer. She does not give her readers the sense of certainty a memoir might offer; she is very clear that this is a work of fiction of imagination, not of memory. Unlike a factual testimony, a novel begs no response from her former partner, no corrections from a lawyer, nor queries from a police officer about the finer details of an argument here, a beating there. In India, where Kandasamy lived with her ex husband (she now splits her time between Chennai and London), the National Family Health Survey last year found that over 30 percent of women have been physically, sexually or emotionally abused by their partners at some point. This book is Kandasamy's rebuke to those who think privilege, financial or educational, protects against harm. Her characters are never named, their anonymity allowing the reader to slip easily into their skins.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
At the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show, Janet Jackson performed her hits "All for You" and "Rhythm Nation," a sensual club ballad and a militaristic funk stomp. She opened the performance and was there at its close, when Justin Timberlake, then a pop superstar arriviste, emerged to perform his hit "Rock Your Body." If Ms. Jackson was glowing during her songs, she was shellshocked during his, after Mr. Timberlake's hand tore her top and exposed her breast. Though the public punishment largely and unjustly accrued to Ms. Jackson, derailing her career, the affected song belonged to Mr. Timberlake. The sensible choice, 14 years later, when offered the opportunity for a clean slate, might have been to leave that song alone. Give it the night off. Don't wink. Nothing cute. But Mr. Timberlake's need for redemption is far greater than his capacity for restraint. And so in the second minute of his halftime show performance at Super Bowl LII, just after he'd pump faked with his recent single, "Filthy," he emerged on the U.S. Bank Stadium field in Minneapolis and began singing (sort of) and dancing to "Rock Your Body." If what happened in 2004 was a wardrobe malfunction, this was a taste malfunction, a seamy need to reclaim the song that, ever so briefly, put him uncomfortably under the klieg lights and restore it to being just another benign entry in his pop soul catalog. Its use underscored the ways Ms. Jackson has been systematically erased from celebratory narratives around the Super Bowl, and also the way Mr. Timberlake's music is flattered most by soft light. At this point, his best songs are fit for aerobics, or SoulCycle, or factories run by robots. Much of the urgency of his biggest hits comes from savvy production choices. He has a lissome voice, but all its victories come via seduction, not power. Regardless, he didn't much use it here, during a 13 minute performance that was heavy on dance spectacle, light on vocal authority. Often, it sounded as if Mr. Timberlake were merely providing accent riffs to his own songs. He leaned heavily, and rightly, on his first two albums, plowing through digital funk smashes like "Cry Me a River," "SexyBack" and "My Love" (and also the non smash "Suit Tie," from "The 20/20 Experience"). Only on the ballad "Until the End of Time," during which he sat at a white piano, did he lean into his singing, allowing its natural tenderness to serve as a pyrotechnic. Mr. Timberlake got his start in a boy band, 'N Sync, and he has a natural gift for grand scale presentation. (This was actually his third halftime performance, including 2004 and also 'N Sync's appearance in 2001.) The dance routines, including an exuberant tuxedo clad brass section and a phalanx of bodies holding aloft mirrors that refracted light throughout the stadium (during "Mirrors"), were effective without being ostentatious. Shows of this size are light work for Mr. Timberlake, even if he was working at about three fourths the intensity of his backing troupe. That Mr. Timberlake, who has had a smattering of hits in recent years including the "Trolls" soundtrack anthem "Can't Stop the Feeling!," which he performed near the end of his set was offered this halftime show slot is a reminder of the wide scale cultural cachet he once corralled. Though he released a new solo album "Man of the Woods," his fifth on Friday, Mr. Timberlake is, in effect, a heritage act. (The heritage of the early to mid 2000s, but still.) His booking also displays the differing ways forgiveness is deployed in public life. That Mr. Timberlake was deemed fit for this rehabilitation has less to do with contrition on his part than the presumption that whiteness is resilient armor, and also the convenience of having a nonwhite scapegoat. In a year in which the N.F.L.'s bumbling relationship to race has been at its most visible, this whitewashing has a particularly acrid smell. On Sunday, in anticipation of Mr. Timberlake's performance, Twitter and Instagram were flooded with photos and videos of Ms. Jackson, often posted with the hashtag JanetJacksonAppreciationDay. In the days before the Super Bowl, there was also a minor conflagration at a report that Mr. Timberlake would be joined onstage by Prince, in hologram form, causing offense to Prince fans (who knew he rejected such spectacles); to those who recall Prince's 2007 halftime performance one of the greats, full of range, attitude and carnal verve; and to those loath to see another black body handed over to a performer who had so famously mishandled one in the past. As it happened, there was no hologram, just a projection of Prince onto a gargantuan scrim as the lights turned purple, and a quick, inoffensive duet of "I Would Die 4 U" that served more as an exaltation than a musical performance. In that moment, Mr. Timberlake was small, of secondary importance: 14 years later, he's learned when it's best to be hands off.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
The modern dance tree has many branches, but three of its sturdiest belong to the groundbreaking choreographers Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham and Paul Taylor. Their influence on stages, in studios and in schools is just as crucial as ever. Squabbles aside and, yes, they've had a few Graham, Cunningham and Mr. Taylor are tied by choreographic blood. On Sunday, March 19, Paul Taylor American Modern Dance's "Icons: Graham, Cunningham, Taylor" grants audiences what seems incredibly like the first chance to see their work back to back to back. In this one off program, Mr. Taylor's "Promethean Fire" (2002) will be performed alongside Graham's "Diversion of Angels" (1948) and Cunningham's "Summerspace" (1958). How are the dances related? How did these choreographers forge individual paths? Both Cunningham and Mr. Taylor danced with Graham, who based her vocabulary on the body's expressive reach as it originated in the pelvis. Cunningham, a proponent of using chance operations in his choreographic process, paved the way for explorations of nonrepresentational dance. Mr. Taylor bridges the two worlds, with dances that invest as much in emotion as they do in structure. So why these pieces? Of "Diversion," Mr. Taylor said: "I knew it was a big one and they could do it." But he added that neither his dancers nor the Graham company's current ones can perform the contraction, a deep movement initiated in the pelvis, the way it was originally. "It was deeper and more central," he said. "In the groin, really." 'DIVERSION OF ANGELS': LOVE IS ALL AROUND As a Graham dancer, Mr. Taylor performed "Diversion of Angels," a rare Graham piece that is light on anguish. Instead, it focuses on three aspects of love: adolescent (represented by a woman in yellow), passionate (a woman in red) and mature (in white). The dance is open to interpretation: Are these three individuals or the same woman at different points in her life? "Diversion" begins with the woman in white standing in majestic profile with her lover behind her. The pace picks up quickly as the woman in yellow skims across the floor with the light, darting speed of a butterfly. Linda Hodes, who danced with Graham and Mr. Taylor and staged "Diversion" for the Taylor company, gave the cast the imagery of dancing on air. As the Taylor dancer Michael Novak explained: "She talked about how she feels this dance exists within the ether. Almost to imagine it like you are above the clouds, and you are dancing through them." 'SUMMERSPACE': AFTERNOON DELIGHT Mr. Taylor's accessibility has often been at odds with the boundary breaking Cunningham. When Mr. Taylor danced for Cunningham, he said he became disgruntled when Cunningham asked his dancers to choose an object out of a hat. "According to what object it was, it said who was going to be in the dance," Mr. Taylor recalled. "My object was never picked, so I never got to dance that dance. Afterward I said, 'Merce, is it going to always be this way?' And he said, 'Well, if you don't like it ...' so I said, 'No I don't like it. I'm leaving.' " Subtitled "a lyric dance" and set to a score by Morton Feldman that shimmers like a summer day, the work transforms the dancers into something more like insects roaming under a warm sky. Each dancer follows a specific path, giving their journeys a feeling of isolation. At certain points, when a trio of women extend their legs in the air and slowly rotate, it takes on an underwater quality. And there are turns. Banu Ogan, the former Cunningham dancer who staged it, said the spine is more vertical in "Summerspace" than in later Cunningham dances, which became more complex and technically challenging over time. "It felt very sparse compared to '90s Cunningham," Ms. Ogan said. "Very few people onstage, very simple movements; yes, it's Cunningham, but there is meant to be a kind of lightness about it. That was a new idea to bring into the work." Ms. Ogan said she never felt so exposed. "It's like a poem, where nothing is out of place." Its architecture is astounding. Set to Bach, with 16 dancers in black velvet, the work opens on a stark note: Quick falls, strident arms and runs dotted with tiny hops send lines of dancers spinning in agitated coils. Midway through, they raise their arms one by one and fall into a pile; from it emerge a man and a woman. This central duet isn't romantic, but shows how destruction and conflict can morph into hope. A climax comes in a daring leap. Ms. Khobdeh, who hurls herself at Michael Trusnovec, must first run from him. The more distance there is, the more thrilling the jump. "There's a part of me that feels like I'm trying to escape, like I'm rushing to darkness," she said. "But the moment I turn back and see him, he's this magnet. He wills me to him. It's bringing the darkness into the light." Mr. Taylor at 86, he's the only one living of the three has yet to name a successor to lead his company, saying only, "There's a couple of good possibilities." The Cunningham company was disbanded after his death in 2009 (its last performance was in 2011), yet his choreography is still being performed. And last month, the Graham company presented, along with repertory by its founder, four new or recent works; three were by European men. Are Graham and Cunningham rolling in their graves? "I think they may be," Mr. Taylor said, with a devilish smile. "Yep. But you know, their dances were worth seeing and should be seen. So let 'em roll."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
"Solo Olos," from 1976, teaches you how. A performer calls out instructions: "reverse," "branch." The instructions are for the other dancers, but they let us in on how the work is constructed. Like a traffic controller for an air show, the caller is fitting together flight patterns and solving equations to get the dancers to diverge and converge. We see Ms. Brown's analytical methods of composition and the heavy mental work required of the cast. That's good practice for "Son of Gone Fishin'." Ms. Brown has described this 1981 piece as the "apogee of complexity" in her work. It looks a bit like "Opal Loop" with no fog, but with more dancers reversing phrases, rubbing up against one another and going in and out of sync; even a foggy notion of the mathematical intricacy involved can make your brain hurt. When the dancers become still between sections, it is again like mist clearing, or like silence after cacophony. With a score by Robert Ashley, "Son of Gone Fishin' " was Ms. Brown's first work with music. The music is just more atmosphere, yet it's part of her tilt at the time from postmodern purity toward theatricality. Judith Shea's gorgeous costumes an early design never used before this reconstruction come in shades of gold. Where you might expect them to sparkle, they look velvety in the light. But new costumes are no substitute for new work. With Ms. Brown in ill health, the company is under the stewardship of disciples and on a farewell tour that runs through next year. Though Diane Madden and Carolyn Lucas, the associate artistic directors, are eminently qualified, it's hard not to worry about evanescence. On Tuesday, there already seemed to be something fading a wildness or unpredictability to energize all the brain work and easy sensuality. You could find it in the video of "Opal Loop" playing in the theater's lobby, in the faint image of Ms. Brown dancing in fog. This program reiterated the worth of catching that spirit, if it can be caught.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
A worker on the site of luxury condos being built in Miami. In March the proportion of Americans in the labor force crept up slightly to 63 percent the highest level in two years. After years of economic desperation, American workers are finally regaining some of the ground they lost in the last decade's recession and the pallid recovery that followed. Companies have been hiring in recent months at a pace not seen before in this century. Wages are rising faster than inflation. Joblessness is hovering near the low levels last reached in 2007 before the economy's downturn. And perhaps most significantly, the army of unemployed people who gave up and dropped out of the job market is not only looking for work, but actually finding it. The 215,000 jump in payrolls in March reported by the Labor Department on Friday capped the best two year period for hiring since the late 1990s, while the proportion of Americans in the labor force which had been on a downward trajectory since 2001 and an even steeper slide since 2008 hit a two year high. "It's really a best case scenario," said Michelle Meyer, deputy head of United States economics at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. "I was particularly encouraged by the pickup in labor force participation." The underlying strength apparent in the report for March reinforces growing evidence that the economy, despite a host of remaining ills, is now consistently moving in the right direction. "This is close to a Goldilocks scenario," said Scott Clemons, chief investment strategist at Brown Brothers Harriman. He noted that hiring and wage gains were healthy in March, but not so robust as to ignite inflation fears and tempt the Federal Reserve to move more quickly to raise rates and temper growth. To be sure, the damage from the financial crisis and the severe recession it spawned is still not fully healed. Even with improvement of the past six months, the proportion of Americans in the labor force remains significantly below where it was when the recession began at the end of 2007. At the same time, while some of the highest paid employees on Wall Street and at many leading companies have enjoyed big jumps in compensation, most workers have experienced only very modest wage gains, heightening worries about income inequality. The American economy still faces fundamental headwinds that are not likely to abate soon like a persistent trade gap, low productivity and the long term erosion of factory jobs that provide an economic lifeline to workers without a college degree. In fact, the manufacturing sector was one of the few weak spots in the economy last month, losing 29,000 jobs. Netflix buys a visual effects company in a move to support its global ambitions. 15 minimum wage for federal contractors will take effect Jan. 30. But companies in the business of providing health care, leisure and hospitality and retailing each gained more than 40,000 jobs in March. And two very different sectors that pay well construction as well as professional and business services both added more than 30,000 jobs. The overall unemployment rate rose to 5 percent last month, compared with 4.9 percent in February. But even that was a positive indication, analysts said, since it was the uptick in new entrants to the labor force that mostly accounted for the rise rather than job losses. If anything, Friday's report portrays an economy gradually returning to a more normal trajectory, while so far avoiding the bubblelike excesses that prevailed in the late 1990s and just before the Great Recession in December 2007. "The last two years have been the best since 1998 and 1999, and that's saying a lot," said Nariman Behravesh, chief economist at IHS, a research and consulting firm. "Those were boom years that we look back on very fondly, so to have that level of job growth again is pretty remarkable." As a result, the economic backdrop of the presidential campaign is also starting to shift. Democrats note that unemployment has fallen sharply since President Obama took office; the jobless rate stood at 7.8 percent in January 2009. Republicans have been citing stagnant wage growth, as well as the exit of many workers from the labor force in recent years. On the campaign trail, they also contend that Mr. Obama's stewardship of the economy has hobbled businesses in a web of excessive regulations. But the steady expansion of the work force and the signs that a tightening labor market is finally translating into wage gains could ease some of the economic anxiety that has marked the primary season for Republican and Democratic candidates alike. While some big companies have announced layoffs in recent months facing worries on Wall Street about profit margins, smaller firms are picking up the slack, especially in the technology sector. "If you're a start up, you're either growing or dying and we've been growing," said Adam M. Ochstein, the founder of the Chicago based StratEx, which provides software that enables companies to automate human resources departments and cut down on paperwork. StratEx hired two workers in March and plans to hire eight this month, bringing its overall work force to just over 80. To lure software developers with three to five years under their belt, Mr. Ochstein has to pay about 100,000 a year. New hires for StratEx's help desk, who have been working for the same amount of time, command less than half that annually. Until recently, the proportion of Americans either employed or actively looking for a job was falling. But it appears to have bottomed out at 62.4 percent in September 2015. The 63 percent participation rate is now back to where it was in February 2014. Although it has been a modest improvement, it was enough to draw the attention of Janet L. Yellen, the Fed chairwoman. She termed the increase in participation "heartening" at a news conference last month. "Wages and participation are where the rubber meets the road," said Michael Gapen, chief United States economist at Barclays. "We will take our cue about the overall strength of the economy based on that." Mr. Gapen, like many on Wall Street, urged the Fed to let the good times roll. "Ms. Yellen is likely to see the March report as evidence that the Fed's policies are working and that their accommodative policies are helping to heal the labor market," he said. "So why push rates higher and potentially choke off that process?"	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Economy
A "Star Wars" origin story is available for streaming. And Director X's "Superfly" remake is on Starz. SOLO: A STAR WARS STORY (2018) on Amazon, Google Play, Netflix, Vudu and YouTube. For a film that takes place in the galaxy far, far away, not many people saw "Solo: A Star Wars Story." The arrival on Netflix of this "Star Wars" prologue a letdown at the box office when it was released will presumably shake loose some potential viewers who were too fatigued by the other recent "Star Wars" movies to cough up movie theater prices for this one in May. Those who choose to indulge now will learn a lot about the swashbuckling galactic cowboy Han Solo, made famous in the original films by Harrison Ford and here played in a younger version by Alden Ehrenreich. They will learn, for example, that Solo can be a dishonest card player when necessary, and that he met his first lover, Qi'ra (Emilia Clarke), while they were both living in the streets. Ron Howard directs an ensemble that also includes Donald Glover as Lando Calrissian (Billy Dee Williams in the originals) and Woody Harrelson as a mentor to Solo. In a lukewarm review for The New York Times, A. O. Scott wrote that the movie is "a curiously low stakes blockbuster, in effect a filmed Wikipedia page."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
Our guide to new art shows and some that will be closing soon. DEADEYE DICK: RICHARD BELLAMY AND HIS CIRCLE at Peter Freeman Gallery (through Oct. 28) A wistfully romantic portrait of the postwar dealer Richard Bellamy, a passionate advocate for contemporary art and a notably indifferent businessman, "Deadeye Dick" (organized by the Bellamy biographer Judith Stein) emphasizes the early 1960s heyday of the Green Gallery, which he founded on West 57th Street, while inviting cleareyed judgments about the difficult realities of the art trade today. Alongside audacious early works by Donald Judd, Claes Oldenburg and other familiar names who got their start at the Green are memorable pieces by the more obscure Jean Follett and Sidney Tillim, as well as portraits of Bellamy by Alex Katz and others that attest to his intensity and charisma. (Karen Rosenberg) 212 966 5154, peterfreemaninc.com DELIRIOUS: ART AT THE LIMITS OF REASON, 1950 1980 at the Met Breuer (through Jan. 4). This provocative multimedia survey ignores the established canon to propose that after the destructiveness of World War II, artists began to answer life's absurdities with more of the same. It follows a thread of irrationality through the efforts of 63 artists from three continents working with abstract form, language and the body . There are some familiar names Sol LeWitt, Claes Oldenburg and Lynda Benglis but the selections and rejiggered context give everything a new spin. (Roberta Smith) 212 535 7710; metmuseum.org 'STREAMS AND MOUNTAINS WITHOUT END: LANDSCAPE TRADITIONS OF CHINA' at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (through Jan. 6, 2019). If you've seen only ash aired Beijing, or that architectural Oz Shanghai, you haven't seen China. Most of the country is wide open space, green and blue: hills, plains, water. And it was for an escape to that openness that some Chinese urbanites yearned in centuries past. Their dream: to sit in on a terrace halfway up a mountain, with tea steeping, an ink brush at hand, a friend at the door, and a waterfall splashing nearby. Not just for vacation. Forever. One way they could live the dream was through images of the kind seen in this show. Technically, it's a collection reinstallation spiced with a few loans. But the Met's China holdings are so broad and deep that some of the pictures here are resurfacing for the first time in almost a decade; one is finally making its debut a century after it was acquired. And there's more than just paintings on view: ceramics, textiles and scholar's rocks fill out the panorama. (Holland Cotter) 212 535 7710, metmuseum.org MYSTICAL SYMBOLISM: THE SALON DE LA ROSE CROIX IN PARIS, 1892 1897 at the Guggenheim Museum (through Oct. 4). This brilliantly tasteless exhibition, complete with carmine walls and blue velvet settees, plunges viewers into a spiritualist and, let's say it, tawdry Parisian collective of the last decade of the 19th century. Around the time Cezanne and van Gogh were down in Provence analyzing apples and mountains, the artists of the Salon de la Rose Croix painted lovesick Orpheuses, busty femmes fatales and virginal shepherdesses, all in the service of the salon's dubious mystic founder, Josephin Peladan, an author with a taste for high drama and white robes. Most of the artists here are little exhibited today. Much of their work is sordid; some is simply gross. But it's all weirdly compelling, and a reminder of the hunger even we alleged moderns still nurse for worlds beyond this one. (Jason Farago) 212 423 3575, guggenheim.org 'HELIO OITICICA: TO ORGANIZE DELIRIUM' at the Whitney Museum of American Art (closes Oct. 1). A leading force in Brazilian modernism, Helio Oiticica (1937 80) began as an abstract painter and moved on to create art meets life installations, one of which, "Tropicalia," replete with banana plants and live parrots, gave its name to a revolutionary cultural movement. Brazil's right wing politics brought Oiticica as a refugee to New York City, where he explored the city's gay culture and the drug trade, before returning home for his last few years. The Whitney retrospective covers all of this, with an emphasis on the artist's hitherto understudied New York sojourn. (Cotter) 212 570 3600, whitney.org	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
'SHAHIDUL ALAM: TRUTH TO POWER' at the Rubin Museum (through May 4). This Bangladeshi photographer has used his camera for 35 years as a tool to advance social justice. Over time, he has pushed against the natural constraints of a medium that registers what is seen, so that he might illuminate what is suppressed or has vanished. But how does a photographer portray people who have disappeared with hardly a trace? Alam addresses that question creatively in works in this show. Since 2011, he has been pursuing the case of Kalpana Chakma, a young activist who disappeared in 1996. Because few photographs or possessions of Chakma survive, Alam conducted what he calls a "photo forensic study," making color pictures of traces, real or imagined. His images are not conventional representations of suffering and resistance. He is trying to break through the cliches that deaden our eyes in a photo saturated world. (Arthur Lubow) 212 620 5000, rubinmuseum.org 'ARTE DEL MAR: ARTISTIC EXCHANGE IN THE CARIBBEAN' at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (through Jan. 10). The Met has never before presented an exhibition of art from the West Indies, and it concentrates here on the ritual objects thrones, vessels and mysterious bird shaped stones of the Taino people, who inhabited the islands now called Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, Cuba and Turks and Caicos. On these islands, and on the Caribbean facing coasts of Central America, styles mingled and migrated, and art had both religious and diplomatic functions; one extravagant gold pendant here, in the shape of a bird with splayed wings and a neck adorned in zigzagging necklaces, traveled from Panama all the way to the Antilles. As the Met begins renovations of its Rockefeller Wing, the Caribbean offers its curators a priceless model of how to think about world cultures: never "pure" but in constant motion and constant contact, diffracted across time and oceans. (Jason Farago) 212 535 7710, metmuseum.org 'ARTS OF CHINA' and 'ARTS OF JAPAN' at the Brooklyn Museum (ongoing). Redesigning an American museum's Asian wing is no mean feat. But these exhibitions, reopened after a six year renovation, successfully integrate stunning pieces by contemporary Chinese and Japanese artists into the institution's century old collection of antiquities, drawing 5,000 years of art into a single thrilling conversation. Look out for the 14th century wine jar decorated with whimsical paintings of a whitefish, a mackerel, a freshwater perch and a carp four fish whose Chinese names are homophones for a phrase meaning "honest and incorruptible." (Will Heinrich) 718 638 5000, brooklynmuseum.com 'AUSCHWITZ. NOT LONG AGO. NOT FAR AWAY' at the Museum of Jewish Heritage (through Aug. 30). 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 'CONTEMPORARY MUSLIM FASHIONS' at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum (through Aug. 23). In recent years social media has helped Muslim fashion designers, photographers and amateur tastemakers definitively prove to the rest of the world that religious modesty and creative personal style can coexist. At this exhibition, which was organized by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, visitors can experience the clothing that's being worn and created by fashionable Muslims around the globe in person rather than on the screen of a smartphone. Around 80 streetwear, couture, sportswear and high end ensembles will be on display with photographs and video providing background on the garments' design and creation. (Peter Libbey) 212 849 8400, cooperhewitt.org 'JACQUES LOUIS DAVID MEETS KEHINDE WILEY' at the Brooklyn Museum (through May 10). One of the most famous works of European painting has come to New York for the first time: "Bonaparte Crossing the Alps," a masterpiece of propaganda by David, in which the Corsican consul sits calm and cocksure as his horse bucks its front heels. The artwork has been lent by the Chateau de Malmaison, in the suburbs of Paris, and paired with a 2004 riff by Wiley that replaces the general with a young man from Harlem, wearing Timberlands instead of riding boots. Wiley's portrait adequate, not especially demanding may seem more immediately relevant to Brooklyn audiences. But David, ruthless Jacobin turned imperial flatterer, can offer young artists especially a more profound view of the fraught relationship of painting and politics. (Farago) 718 638 5000, brooklynmuseum.org 'AGNES DENES: ABSOLUTES AND INTERMEDIATES' at the Shed (through March 22). We'll be lucky this art season if we get another exhibition as tautly beautiful as this long overdue Denes retrospective. Now 88, the artist is best known for her 1982 "Wheatfield: A Confrontation," for which she sowed and harvested two acres of wheat on Hudson River landfill within sight of the World Trade Center and the Statue of Liberty. Her later ecology minded work has included creating a hilltop forest of 11,000 trees planted by 11,000 volunteers in Finland (each tree is deeded to the planter), though many of her projects exist only in the form of the exquisite drawings that make up much of this show. (Holland Cotter) 646 455 3494, theshed.org 'ENVISIONING 2001: STANLEY KUBRICK'S SPACE ODYSSEY' at the Museum of the Moving Image (through July 19). This exhibition brings together original correspondence, sketches, storyboards, props, video clips and much more to illustrate how Kubrick, the film's director, and Arthur C. Clarke, the science fiction author who collaborated with him on the screenplay, set about bringing the future to the screen. The museum will show the digital version of "2001" every week and a 70 millimeter print every month for the duration of the exhibition's run, and several sidebar movie series will complement the showcase. It makes a great achievement in filmmaking look less like a cinematic U.F.O. and more like, well, an achievement the product of ingenuity, talent and tenacity. It illuminates the artistry of a moviemaker whose genius has often seemed inseparable from the mystique surrounding it. (Ben Kenigsberg) 718 777 6888, movingimage.us 'THE GREAT HALL COMMISSION: KENT MONKMAN, MISTIKOSIWAK (WOODEN BOAT PEOPLE)' at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (through April 9). The second in a series of contemporary works sponsored by the Met consists of two monumental new paintings by the Canadian artist Kent Monkman, installed inside the museum's main entrance. Each measuring almost 11 by 22 feet, the pictures are narratives inspired by a Euro American tradition of history painting but entirely present tense and polemical in theme. Monkman, 54, a Canadian artist of mixed Cree and Irish heritage, makes the colonial violence done to North America's first peoples his central subject but, crucially, flips the cliche of Native American victimhood on its head. In these paintings, Indigenous peoples are immigrant welcoming rescuers, led by the heroic figure of Monkman's alter ego, the gender fluid tribal leader Miss Chief Eagle Testickle, avatar of the global future that will see humankind moving beyond the wars of identity racial, sexual, political in which it is now fatefully immersed. (Cotter) 212 535 7710, metmuseum.org 'IN PURSUIT OF FASHION: THE SANDY SCHREIER COLLECTION' at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (through May 17). Featuring 80 pieces of clothing and accessories, this exhibition is, more than anything else, the reflection of one woman's love affair with fashion. Schreier's collection, and the part of it on view at the Met, contains all the major names, but what defines it more than anything else is her own appreciation for pretty things. Hidden away between the Balenciagas and the Chanels, the Diors and the Adrians, are treasures by little known or even unknown designers that are a delight to discover. Three origin unknown flapper dresses from the 1920s, beaded to within an inch of their glittering seams, matched only in their lavish surprise by three elaborately printed velvets of the same era two capes and a column by Maria Monaci Gallenga, so plush you can practically stroke the weft with your eyes. It is these less famous names whose impact lingers, in part because they are so unexpected. (Vanessa Friedman) 212 535 7710, metmuseum.org Read about the events that our other critics have chosen for the week ahead. 'JUDD' at the Museum of Modern Art (through July 11). This retrospective of some 70 works by the American artist Donald Judd is his first in New York in more than 30 years. It ranges from formally spare early abstract sculptures to the high color work done before his death in 1994. The show is a beautiful thing: carefully winnowed, persuasively installed, just the right size. Its one word title, "Judd," suits the artist's view of his wished for, worked for and achieved place in 20th century art history: so assured as to need no qualifiers. He once said that for art to matter, "it needs only to be interesting." (Cotter) 212 708 9400, moma.org 'DOROTHEA LANGE: WORDS PICTURES' at the Museum of Modern Art (through May 9). As this revelatory, heartening exhibition shows, Lange was an artist who made remarkable pictures throughout a career that spanned more than four decades. The photos she took in 1942 of interned Japanese Americans (which the government suppressed until 1964) display state administered cruelty with stone cold clarity: One dignified man in a three piece suit and overcoat is wearing a tag, like a steer, while disembodied white hands on either side examine and prod him. Her prescient photographs of environmental degradation portray the human cost of building a dam that flooded the Berryessa Valley near Napa. Her empathetic portraits of African American field hands shine a light on a system of peonage that predated and outlasted the 1930s. One happy consequence of our dismal political moment is a rediscovery of Lange. Perhaps now younger photographers will be inspired to pick up her banner. The need is all too apparent. (Lubow) 212 708 9400, moma.org 'JEAN JACQUES LEQUEU: VISIONARY ARCHITECT' at the Morgan Library Museum (through May 10). This bewitching, even steamy exhibition showcases one of the strangest and most compelling figures from the years around the French Revolution: a professionally unsuccessful architect who spent his nights drawing fantastic monuments and pleasure palaces. In the 1790s, Lequeu imagined spherical temples to reason and equality that would celebrate the new republic (the National Convention rejected them all). And that Enlightenment ethos also extended to gripping self portraits and pictures of lovers, done with quite a bit of anatomical accuracy. In these painstaking sheets, capricious or perverse, steeped in powder blue and misty rose, Lequeu proved that architecture can be an erotic art, in which buildings get confused for bodies and vice versa. (Farago) 212 658 0008, themorgan.org 'THE ORCHID SHOW: JEFF LEATHAM'S KALEIDOSCOPE' at the New York Botanical Garden (through April 19). In New York, the transition from winter to spring can frustratingly slow. But at this annual flower showcase in the Bronx, the season is already in full bloom. Leatham, this year's guest designer and the artistic director of the Four Seasons Hotel George V in Paris, has created mirrored sculptures to multiply the thousands of orchids he's assembled with the help of the curator Marc Hachadourian. Amplified by the exhibition's dramatic lighting and other embellishments, the flowers' diverse shapes and colors are transformed into complex patterns. On select evenings throughout the show's run, those designs will provide a suitably extravagant backdrop for performances by Princess Lockerooo and Harold O'Neal. (Libbey) 718 817 8700, nybg.org 'SAHEL: ART AND EMPIRES ON THE SHORES OF THE SAHARA' at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (through May 10). Sahel derives from the Arabic word for shore or coast. It was the name once given by traders crossing the oceanic Sahara to the welcoming grasslands that marked the desert's southern rim, terrain that is now Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Senegal. To early travelers, art from the region must have looked like a rich but bewildering hybrid. It still does, which may be one reason it stands, in the West, somewhat outside an accepted "African" canon. This fabulous exhibition goes for the richness. One look tells you that variety within variety, difference talking to difference, is the story here. New ideas spring up from local soil and arrive from afar. Ethnicities and ideologies collide and embrace. Cultural influences get swapped, dropped and recouped in a multitrack sequencing that is the very definition of history. (Cotter) 212 535 7710, metmuseum.org 'ZILIA SANCHEZ: SOY ISLA (I AM AN ISLAND)' at El Museo del Barrio (through March 22). Sanchez, who will turn 94 this summer and is still at work, has spent some 50 years making abstract yet sensual sculptural paintings, approximately 40 of which are gathered here to lead the viewer through her career. While modern art has a firmly established tradition of objects that simultaneously hang on the wall and jut into space, Sanchez does something different. "Lunar con Tatuaje" ("Moon With Tattoo"), one of her most elaborate pieces, features two semicircular canvases with raised half moons in the middle. Frenzied groups of lines arc between various points, accompanied by arrows and an occasional eye or hand. The picture isn't legible, but it calls forth a kind of cosmic knowledge. Such is the duality and lesson of Sanchez's art: It's grounded in the material world but points toward something metaphysical. (Jillian Steinhauer) 212 831 7272, elmuseo.org 'PETER SAUL: CRIME AND PUNISHMENT' at the New Museum (through May 31). This painter has, for more than a half century, been wickedly, gleefully diagnosing America's social and political maladies. The result, as seen in this acidic dirty bomb of a show, is work that's virtuosically bizarre in style (Tiepolo meets Mad magazine), ecumenically critical in content (whatever your ethnic, sexual or political persuasion, there is something here to give you pause), and right up to date in its targets. The museum gives Saul, who at 85 is still hard at work, two full floors of gallery space, but that's barely enough to contain the energy of one our greatest history painters. (Cotter) 212 219 2222, newmuseum.org 'TAKING SHAPE: ABSTRACTION FROM THE ARAB WORLD, 1950S 1980S' at Grey Art Gallery (through April 4). The graphic simplicity of the Arabic alphabet means that it can be made to look like almost anything, from a rearing horse to a pixelated television screen. Most of the artists in this exhibition had some European or American training, and alongside unusual sandy palettes and a few unexpected details, you'll see plenty of approaches that look familiar: lucid colors a la Josef Albers, crimson bursts of impasto similar to early Abstract Expressionism. But unlike European artists, they also have an alphabet with an ancient history in visual art and this gives their abstraction a very different effect. (Heinrich) 212 998 6780, greyartgallery.nyu.edu 'T. REX: THE ULTIMATE PREDATOR' at the American Museum of Natural History (through Aug. 9). 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 in 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 packed a punch that has never been matched by any other creature; 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 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 'VIDA AMERICANA: MEXICAN MURALISTS REMAKE AMERICAN ART, 1925 1945' at the Whitney Museum of American Art (through May 17). This exhibition, which fills the Whitney's fifth floor, represents a decade of hard thought and labor, and that effort has paid off. The show is stupendous, and complicated, and lands right on time. Just by existing, it does three vital things: It reshapes a stretch of art history to give credit where credit is due. It suggests that the Whitney is, at last, on the way to fully embracing "American art." And it offers yet another argument for why the build the wall mania that has obsessed this country for the past three plus years just has to go. Judging by the story told here, we should be actively inviting our southern neighbor northward to enrich our cultural soil. (Cotter) 212 570 3600, whitney.org 'WORLDS BEYOND EARTH' at the American Museum of Natural History's Hayden Planetarium (ongoing). This new space show is a bit like being thrown out of your own orbit. Surrounded by brilliant colors, the viewer glides through space in all directions, unbound by conventional rules of orientation or vantage point. Dizzying spirals delineate the orbits of Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars. At one point, museumgoers are taken along a journey from the perspective of a comet. In illustrating the far reaches of our solar system, the show draws on data from seven sets of space missions from NASA, Europe and Japan, including the Apollo 15 mission in 1971 and still active ones like Voyager. With a sense of movement and scale that only a visual presentation could convey, "Worlds Beyond Earth" makes an unforced point about the dangers of climate change. Another celestial body might have an "alien sea" that "contains more liquid water than all the oceans on Earth," as its narrator, Lupita Nyong'o, states. But Earth itself, she adds later, is the only place with the right size, the right location and the right ingredients an easy balance to upset. (Kenigsberg) 212 769 5100, amnh.org	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
SAN FRANCISCO For years, a divisive debate has raged in the United States over the health consequences of nicotine e cigarettes. During the same time, vaping of a more contentious substance has been swiftly growing, with scant notice from public health officials. Millions of people now inhale marijuana not from joints or pipes filled with burning leaves but through sleek devices and cartridges filled with flavored cannabis oils. People in the legalized marijuana industry say vaping products now account for 30 percent or more of their business . Teenagers, millennials and baby boomers alike have been drawn to the technology no ash, a faint smell, easy to hide and the potentially dangerous consequences are only now becoming evident. Most of the patients in the outbreak of severe lung illnesses linked to vaping which has left 1,479 people sick and 33 dead so far vaped THC, the ingredient in marijuana that makes people high. Until more information is known, officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have warned people not to vape cannabis products. To some scientists, and even industry leaders, warning signs have been apparent for years as vaping cannabis grew in the shadows, propelled by a patchwork of regulations, a wave of state by state legalization and a soaring supply of low cost marijuana. While the government and researchers poured resources into studying e cigarettes, federal rules sharply limiting research into the health effects of cannabis because it is classified as a controlled substance with a high potential for abuse have left a void in scientific knowledge about what THC vaping does to the lungs. Last year, Dr. Neal Benowitz, a professor of medicine and a researcher on nicotine and vaping at the University of California, San Francisco, sent a letter to Congress warning of the risks posed by leaving a hugely popular practice unstudied. "Very little is known about the safety or effects of vaped cannabis oil," he wrote, cautioning that some ingredients mixed into the oils "could have harmful, toxic effect on users, including the potential for causing and/or promoting cancer and lung disease." Even members of the legalized marijuana industry acknowledge the lack of hard science about the cannabis vaping products they sell. "There's a glaring gap in trying to understand this product," said Jerred Kiloh , president of the board of the United Cannabis Business Association , which represents 165 marijuana dispensaries in California, where marijuana was legalized for recreational use in 2016. Mr. Kiloh, who owns the Los Angeles dispensary Higher Path, said he believed that the vape pens sold in his stores and in other licensed and regulated stores are likely safe because the ingredients were measured and tested by the state . The Bureau of Cannabis Control did not return calls asking for comment. Vaping oils typically include other additives, solvents and flavor enhancers, and health investigators believe some such ingredients, including vitamin E acetate, could be responsible for some of the lung illness cases. The problem of unknown and potentially dangerous additives, Mr. Kiloh and others said, is vastly worse in a soaring black market in the nearly 40 states where recreational marijuana is still illegal. Even in states where the drug is legal, counterfeit cartridges are cheaper than the licensed, tested and taxed products. It is hard for legal players who pay taxes to compete. A regulated vape pen with half a gram of THC costs 55, compared with 25 or less on the street for an untested product. "We don't know what the chemical composition is," Mr. Kiloh said, "and we especially don't know what the chemical composition is once it's been combined, heated and inhaled." In the earliest days of cannabis vaping, a small group of innovators saw the technology as a safer way to help medicinal marijuana patients. They hoped that vaping which entails heating THC so that it turns to an aerosol would be less harmful to the lungs than inhaling combusted marijuana. Other Harvest customers said they once embraced vaping but now have doubts. "It's convenient, neat, easy. No lighter," said Michael, who, with his wife, Laurie, both in their 70s, declined to give a last name because they didn't want their teenage granddaughter to know about their habit. With news of vaping related hospitalizations and deaths, though, Laurie was growing concerned. So this time she came to Harvest to buy flower, the old fashioned bud rolled in joints. It was a switch the couple said they would continue while they await more vaping science. Others were undeterred. Cynthia Valdivia , 34, bought a THC vape cartridge after using one to try marijuana for the first time this summer. She said she was not worried about what she bought from a legal store. "There's someone behind the brand and they don't want to kill people," she said. "They want their money." The market has flourished in the absence of regulation, said Eric N. Lindblom , a former tobacco official at the Food and Drug Administration. The federal government, he said, has been unsure of how to respond to state legalization of marijuana, and the uncertainty has left a void of regulation, research and enforcement. "Only now that we have this special, extra weird mystery crisis with the disease and deaths is there now interest in doing something," he said. Some think it may be too late. "The market has run amok," said Carlos de la Torre, the owner of Cornerstone Wellness, a dispensary in Los Angeles. Mr. de la Torre came to the cannabis business in 2007 after a career in television advertising. That year he opened his shop in a Los Angeles suburb, selling marijuana flower and edibles to customers with medical cards. "At the time, I don't think vaping really existed," he said. Not commercially, at least. There was a rich and informal history among a narrow band of regular marijuana users who bathed weed in alcohol to extract THC so called honey oil or hash oil. That was the domain of the "biker, LSD, hippie crowd," said David Downs , the California bureau chief of Leafly, a cannabis news and product website. The first commercial marijuana vaping brand was called the Volcano, and it was the brainchild of a German entrepreneur, Markus Storz , who obtained a patent for it from his native country in 1999. It heated marijuana flower until the THC baked off as vapor. A user then inhaled the aerosol from a large plastic bag attached to an inhalation pipe. Industry insiders thought it might be healthier than smoking a joint because burning marijuana contains carcinogens like tar and carbon monoxide. "If we were really helping cancer patients, then adding carcinogens was not helpful," said Mr. Kiloh, who in 2003 opened his first medical dispensary, Green Cross, in San Francisco, seven years after California legalized marijuana for medical purposes. Federal research restrictions allow the study of marijuana under certain conditions, and scientists at the University of California, San Francisco, found that the Volcano produced less carbon monoxide and tar compared with smoking marijuana. The Volcano was built around inhalation of pure marijuana vapor, created by heating the plant itself. In a few years, the technology would change in a fundamental way. "What happened was that the oil came next ," Mr. Kiloh said. Entrepreneurs began to extract oil by bathing the leaf in ethanol or butane, filtering out the solid material that remained and then evaporating the solvent to leave the concentrated oil. Another method used carbon dioxide, which, when pressurized, creates a fluid that can be used to extract the oil. (There is no "toxicological" research about the relative health effects of the different methods, according to Chris topher Havel, an analytical chemist at U.C.S.F. who works with Dr. Benowitz). Once extracted, the THC oil could then be heated up using a small battery, kept in a cartridge or penlike case, creating aerosol, which is then inhaled from one end of the device. Consumers fell in love. "I didn't want to sell them," Mr. Kiloh said. " What people said for the next three or four months was, 'Can you bring them back?'" But he told them he wasn't sure the pens were safe. Mr. Downs, of Leafly, said the worry was valid. "It's very clear innovation has eclipsed the sophistication of consumers as well as regulators and investigators," he said. "We've been engaging in an uncontrolled mass experiment with inhaling concentration s of cannabinoids." In states that legalized marijuana, farmers could grow the crop openly, creating a vast, lower cost supply that flooded not just legal markets but spilled into illegal ones, said Beau Kilmer, director of the Rand Drug Policy Research Center. Prices plummeted. While national figures are hard to come by, Rand's research shows that an oversupply in Oregon caused the price per pound to fall more than 50 percent, from 1,250 in 2016 to 500 in 2018. Much of the product went to oil. "The fastest growing segment of the market is extract for inhalation," Mr. Kilmer said. And researchers remain in the dark. In August, the Drug Enforcement Administration loosened rules to allow some scientific institutions to apply to grow their own marijuana for study. However, the restrictions still prevent researchers like Dr. Benowitz from examining the kind of THC oil sold widely on the legal and black markets. He summed up what little is known about vaping THC oil: "All we know is that there weren't many problems until recently."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
From now until June 14, Danspace Project is all about DD Dorvillier, with programs exploring the work of that influential choreographer from multiple angles. In June comes a forward look, as Ms. Dorvillier debuts a solo. Starting on Friday are various sideways views, as longtime collaborators present solos of their own, examining shared connections. And the backward glance, befitting such an inveterate questioner of convention as Ms. Dorvillier, is nothing as standard as a remounting of past pieces. Instead, she has culled hundreds of choreographic fragments from videos of her work from 1990 to 2004. She has categorized them according to an elaborate taxonomy, available in handout form, detailing spatial strategies and formal tools. The dancers Nibia Pastrana Santiago, Katerina Andreou and Oren Barnoy have learned the fragments, stripped from context and denuded of their original music, props and costumes. For "A Catalogue of Steps," they take a dozen of the segments, a different selection for each presentation, and repeat them over a three hour span. The opening program on Wednesday was subtitled "Hearts." A handout explained that these dozen fragments had all been created intuitively, following sensation and desire. That theme was in some tension with the methodical presentation, as the dancers performed the same short segment in solo succession or cycled through each permutation of partnering. The format encouraged analytical viewing. You could pay attention to the preponderance of floor work, to the tendency for limbs to bend like a folding puzzle, or to more general concepts like the effect of unison or percussive sound. The repetition focused the mind on details: Did she do that little thing with her finger the last time? Each fragment contained more information than it seemed to at first but not enough to bear so many repetitions.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
The Ellipsis in the Title of Tarantino's New Film Is Explained ... Sort Of Is it "Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood" or "Once Upon a Time in ... Hollywood"? Yes. None Even if you don't go see the new Quentin Tarantino film starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt, you've probably noticed commercials and other promotional materials for this movie industry tale set in 1969. But what exactly is the title? On the big screen, the film is very clearly "Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood." But as eagle eyed grammarians here at The Times and elsewhere have pointed out, the ellipsis shifts when it comes to the marketing. In billboards, bus ads and trailers, it's "Once Upon a Time in ... Hollywood." For a film rife with carefully thought out callbacks to beloved titles in movie history (there's even an extended sequence from "The Great Escape"), it seems like a surprising oversight. As it turns out, it's not an oversight at all. I asked the distributor, Sony, which version was correct, and the answer was, essentially, both. The studio calls it "a creative decision" with the ellipsis placement depending on the context. That's about all it will say other than confirming that for review purposes, the ellipsis goes before "in." If it were up to us, we'd eliminate the ellipsis altogether. The title reminds a lot of film fans of the Sergio Leone productions "Once Upon a Time in the West" and "Once Upon a Time in America." And that's fitting because in Tarantino's movie, DiCaprio's character, an actor named Rick Dalton, is wooed to star in spaghetti westerns as a way to revive his career. But notice what's missing from the Italian movies? That's right. There's no ellipsis.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
TEL AVIV Given the timing of the release on Tuesday of President Trump's Middle East peace plan, I have to begin by asking: Is this plan about two states for two peoples or is it about one diversion for two dirty leaders? It sure feels like the latter. After all, both President Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are, in effect, facing job threatening charges Trump for obstruction of Congress and abuse of power and Bibi, who was literally indicted on Tuesday, for fraud, bribery and breach of trust. They both had a huge need to change the subject and shore up their common base of right wing Jews and evangelicals. If I were Jared Kushner and had worked for three years on a peace plan and was serious about it getting a fair and full hearing from all sides there is no way I would have released it right now. This smells. But then my long held view has always been that the Middle East puts a smile on your face only if a change for the better starts with them. Camp David started with Israelis and Egyptians, and America was brought in only later. Oslo was started by Israelis and Palestinians, and America joined only later. Tunisia, the only Arab Spring country to make its way to democracy, is the one Arab country that America had virtually nothing to do with. For a peace initiative to be serious and sustainable, it should always start with them. And yet, I also know that when America puts something this detailed on the table, it cannot be ignored, at least in the near term. Netanyahu already announced that with Trump's blessings Israel will quickly move to apply its law (tantamount to annexation) to the West Bank's Jordan Valley and all Jewish settlements in the occupied territory. It will be interesting to see how the European Union, which funds much of the Palestinian governing infrastructure in the West Bank, responds once it's studied the plan, not to mention the reaction of everyday Palestinians and Arabs. (I don't expect much. This conflict seems to have passed its fix by date.) O.K., despite the obvious political motivation for the timing of the release of this plan, not to mention much of its substance, is there anything in it that would impress me that the Trump administration is actually serious about promoting a two state solution and actually has a strategy to achieve one? Yes, if our president did something hard. What would that be? It would be his telling Netanyahu that before Bibi extends Israeli law to all these West Bank settlements and the Jordan Valley, Trump wants one thing: an unequivocal public statement that Netanyahu accepts the fact that while Israel is getting East Jerusalem, more than 20 percent of the core West Bank, with all its settlements, plus the Jordan Valley, the remaining roughly 70 percent will become an independent Palestinian state, if Palestinians agree to all sorts of security requirements. Trump needs to say to Netanyahu: "Bibi, you say that I am the most pro Israel president to ever sit in the White House. This plan was written with your team. I have supported your maximum position absorbing all the Jewish settlements into Israel and all of traditional Jerusalem, and with no return of Palestinian refugees to Israel. Now I need to know, the Palestinians need to know, and the world needs to know, that this is not your new starting position. Will you agree right now that the remaining land will be a Palestinian state if the Palestinians agree to demilitarization and recognize Israel as a Jewish state? Will you agree right now to make no further claims ever to the West Bank and not build another settlement ever outside the areas that the Trump plan assigns to Israel?" If Trump were to spend just a little bit of political capital doing that, I might start to take this plan seriously. But if Netanyahu is allowed to evade that question, or turns Trump down with no consequences, then this whole thing truly is a farce it's just the new baseline for Netanyahu's next West Bank land grab. Indeed, if Bibi says he still wants more than this plan gives him already as ultranationalists in his coalition argue then he is openly declaring before the president of the United States that his appetite is for all of the West Bank and that his vision for Israel is that it become a binational/apartheid state that will hold the 2.5 million Palestinians of the West Bank without full political rights. This is the moment when we find out whether Bibi who for decades has told American presidents, "Test me with a real plan and I will show you that I can be a great leader" has any greatness in him whatsoever or is just a corrupt political hack looking to stay out of jail and will do any short term maneuver necessary, regardless of its long term impact on Israel, to do so. Because if Bibi is serious that his ambitions stop at what he's now gotten from Trump, then he needs a whole new domestic coalition the ultra zealots in his coalition will be up in arms and a more moderate national unity government in Israel might even be possible. At the same time, while I understand why Palestinian leaders are denouncing this plan, they should nevertheless try to make some lemonade out of these Trump lemons. It's not as if they have a lot of great options, and their resistance to the Israeli occupation has gotten them nowhere. Palestinian leaders have been feckless and divided for some time; they boycotted the design of this plan. Still, if I were them, I'd tell Trump, "Yes, but we will use this plan as a floor in negotiations with Israelis, not a ceiling." They would surely gain a lot of U.S., Arab and European good will for trying that approach. What do they have to lose? But bottom line: Without Trump getting Netanyahu to definitively end his claims to all of the West Bank, and without Palestinian leaders able to reunite their disparate political factions in Gaza and the West Bank into a single body that can theoretically say "yes" to a fair outcome for their people, while also recognizing Israel as a Jewish state, Trump's Deal of the Century will join a century old library of failed Middle East peace plans. 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.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Opinion
Alvin Ailey's 1972 work "The Lark Ascending," set to romantic music by Ralph Vaughan Williams, begins not with the image of a light, fluttering bird, but with a male dancer poised on his knees with outstretched arms. His face wears a look of reverie; could he be dreaming of his lark? Other dancers cross his path: Four men move in lunging unison walks, while a couple breeze past in jumps and lifts that impart jubilance. Finally, the lark appears. Springing through the air in grand jetes, she soars. Performed by Dance Theater of Harlem on Thursday at the Prospect Park Bandshell as part of the Celebrate Brooklyn! festival, "The Lark Ascending," an airborne, undulating work, unfolds like a constant wave of motion, with curving, sensual arms; tilting balances; and crisp footwork. The gracious Chyrstyn Fentroy made an especially rhapsodic lark figure who always reached for more as she extended her fingertips and toes in arabesque or twisted her torso with lilting arms. As her skirt fluttered around her legs, she dashed across the stage, using trembling hands and softly rolling arms to create the impression of flight.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
The core of conventional retirement planning is this: Save, invest intelligently, work as long as is practical and if those measures aren't enough learn to live on less. For decades, those have been the big levers that the typical person can manipulate to plan for the future. But there is something else you can do. It has rarely been part of mainstream discussions of personal finance, which I deeply regret. It is time for you to get political, and to start thinking of activism as a behavior equal to saving and investing. This isn't just my belief: It is the view of a range of experts who argue about many things, but agree on the need for people to start thinking and acting differently about personal finance. Let me explain why. The best thing most Americans can do to improve their financial prospects in retirement is to insist that Social Security is made financially solid. As I wrote last week, the nation's core retirement system is moving slowly toward insolvency. Social Security must draw down its assets starting in 2020, officials say, and unless government officials act, benefit cuts are coming in 15 years. Those reductions would be severe, starting at 20 percent and rising. Tens of millions of people would be harmed. The stakes, naturally, are highest for those with the least. For half of Americans currently in retirement, Social Security is the main source of income and has kept many people out of dire poverty. And for those fortunate enough to have more money in the bank, any cuts to Social Security would still seriously affect their budgets and quality of life. Solidifying Social Security may be the most important personal finance dilemma that most people will ever face. The question is, what should you do about it? The program's fiscal issues have long been known, and the traditional advice has basically been: Make the best of it. To that, I'd add: Speak up and demand action from the people who are, or want to be, your elected representatives. As Alan K. Simpson, the former Republican senator from Cody, Wyo., told me this week, "Nobody in politics, and I mean nobody, really wants to deal with Social Security a second before they have to." He added, "People have to stand up and make their voices heard or nothing will happen until it's too late." Reasonable people can differ on what form a Social Security solution should take. Experts who have studied the subject extensively disagree about exactly what should be done, though the solutions may be boiled down to tax increases, benefit cuts or combinations of the two. (Maintaining full benefits through debt financing is possible, though I don't consider it a sustainable solution.) Ordinary Americans have an opportunity really, an obligation to force this debate to occur. "This is now a big enough issue that I think people should actually become politically active and let their congressmen and senators know how they feel about this program and how they think the financial shortfalls should be filled," said Alicia Munnell, the director of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. "I cannot think of a more serious problem going forward than the fact that benefits might have to be cut by 25 percent if we don't have some political action." Professor Munnell, an assistant secretary of the Treasury and member of the Council of Economic Advisers in the Clinton administration, says Social Security should be repaired solely by increasing tax revenues not by cutting benefits, which, she says, most Americans simply cannot afford to lose. Locast, a nonprofit streaming service for local TV, is shutting down Capital One's chief executive was fined after being called a 'repeat offender.' Mr. Simpson, on the other hand, says a combination of tax increases and benefit cuts are needed, though says this solution isn't popular. "Everybody and his brother will jump all over you," he said. "I've been there!" Along with Erskine B. Bowles, President Bill Clinton's former chief of staff, Mr. Simpson headed a commission appointed by President Barack Obama to find bipartisan solutions to the budget deficit, Social Security and other problems. The 2010 report of the Simpson Bowles commission, "The Moment of Truth," still makes interesting reading. But neither Democrats nor Republicans embraced it. "The politicians didn't want to touch it," he said. "They didn't want to make the hard decisions." But, he said, a full blown crisis has drawn close enough to make it worth the effort of trying to force the political class to play close attention. Ask your elected representatives what they intend to do about Social Security, he said, but expect to hear something like this: "No problem, we'll fix it, don't worry, there will be no benefit cuts." When you hear that kind of thing, he suggested, you should respond forcefully. "You should say, 'Sir or ma'am or whatever with terminological exactitude, you are a lying sack of'" well, you get the idea. "Unless you force them," Mr. Simpson said, "the politicians won't even try to fix it until the last minute." It's not hopeless. Bipartisan Social Security agreements have occurred in the past. President Ronald Reagan, a conservative Republican, and the speaker of the House, Thomas P. O'Neill Jr., a liberal Democrat, achieved one in 1983 but only after older people rebelled at the prospect of imminent benefit cuts. Members of Congress received an avalanche of calls and letters from their constituents, and organized labor and the AARP vowed to put pressure on elected officials. The Reagan O'Neill Social Security fix effectively cut benefits by, in part, raising the so called "full" or "normal" retirement age from 65 to 66 now, and 67 eventually. There is a paid incentive to work until 70: 8 percent annual benefit increases for every year you delay filing past your "full" retirement age. The "full" age might be raised further in a future fix Mr. Simpson says that is among the measures that would need to happen if direct benefit cuts are to be avoided. Working longer may become even more important for those able to do it. Whether Social Security pays full benefits, or close to those currently promised, is likely to remain an essential issue quite possibly, the essential issue in determining most people's financial well being in old age. That's why speaking out about the shortfall makes sense as part of your own financial planning. Recall what President Reagan said when he signed the agreement that kept Social Security intact for a generation: "We promised that we would protect the financial integrity of Social Security. We have. We promised that we would protect beneficiaries against any loss in current benefits. We have. And we promised to attend to the needs of those still working, not only those Americans nearing retirement but young people just entering the labor force. And we've done that, too." The solution was imperfect and needs to be remedied again. As President Reagan acknowledged, "Each of us had to compromise one way or another. But the essence of bipartisanship is to give up a little in order to get a lot." Bipartisanship may seem impossible now. But politicians will jump on a popular bandwagon if voters demand it, as they did then. It can happen again for Social Security.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Your Money
WILMINGTON, Del. When migratory fish follow their ancestral instinct to swim up Delaware's Brandywine Creek during this spring's spawning season, they will find, for the first time in more than 200 years, that their route is not blocked by a dam. The fish American shad, hickory shad and striped bass have been unable to return to their traditional spawning grounds in the Pennsylvania section of the creek about 25 miles to the north since a series of dams was built across the creek by early American settlers, starting in the mid 18th century. This year, the fish will be able to swim past the site of a dam that was demolished by the city of Wilmington last fall, allowing them to move as far as the next barrier, Dam 2, about three quarters of a mile upstream, where large numbers are expected to create a sudden bonanza for anglers. Beginning next month, "there will be thousands of American shad sitting here," said Jerry Kauffman, a University of Delaware professor. "This area will be full of fishermen because it will be a big fish magnet. It's going to be like Christmas." Dr. Kauffman, who leads the university's Water Resources Center, is part of Brandywine Shad 2020, a nonprofit that hopes to remove or modify all 10 remaining dams on the 23 mile Delaware section of the creek over the next three years. Dam 2 won't immediately be removed because that project would be bigger and more expensive. Dr. Kauffman and his associates want to remove or modify four other dams this year, kicking off one of the nation's biggest dam removal programs across a single watershed. "This one is probably the most dams that have been targeted on a single river," said Laura Craig, director of river restoration at American Rivers, a conservationist group. "The main thing that distinguishes it is the watershed approach, looking at a set of dams at the same time for removal. This is going to be an example that others will continue to follow." Removing dams reconnects fish habitat, lowers water temperature, speeds water flow, increases dissolved oxygen an important indicator of a river's ability to support fish populations and improves water quality for cities like Wilmington, Dr. Craig said. Supporters of the project also argue that dam removal can reduce flooding upstream by allowing water to flow unimpeded rather than pooling behind a dam wall. The need for flood control is becoming more urgent with the bigger and more frequent storms that are forecast with climate change, they say. "We would like to get this dam out by the next big storm," Dr. Kauffman said of Dam 3, a 135 foot structure that is already damaged. The dams, originally built to provide water power for many grist mills along the creek over the last two centuries, have long been obsolete, and some have already been partially demolished by storms and two centuries of water pressure. Three dams are National Historic Landmarks, and will remain in place, along with two other historic dams, after others have been partially or totally removed. The landmark structures will be modified with different technologies that are designed to allow the anadromous fish which spend most of their lives at sea but spawn in fresh water to swim over or around them and continue their journey upstream. The techniques include a bypass, a gradual slope that allows the fish to swim around one end of a dam; a "rock ramp," which builds up the full width of the creek bed on the downstream side of a dam so that fish can swim over it; and a fish "ladder," a concrete channel that's designed for fish to avoid the dam and reach the upstream side. The modifications can enable 50 to 80 percent of fish to get past the dams, Dr. Kauffman said. In 2015, a University of Delaware study calculated that removal or modification of all the dams would produce some 26,000 shad whose annual upstream "run" is prized in the Delaware Valley for its abundance. Other dam removal projects have found that fish return quickly to their upstream spawning grounds after dams are removed. In the Musconetcong River in northwestern New Jersey, the local watershed association has removed five dams since 2008, allowing migratory fish to access about six miles of the waterway above its confluence with the Delaware River for the first time in about 200 years. And in another part of northern Delaware, fish are now swimming past the site of an 18th century dam that was removed from the White Clay Creek in 2014. The pattern is being repeated across the United States as nonprofit organizations and some state governments recognize that removing aging dams helps the environment. Fish have returned to the Penobscot River in Maine after the demolition of two dams in 2013 and 2014. In Oregon and California, four dams on the Klamath River are due for removal by 2022. And in New York State, where there are an estimated 2,000 dams in the Hudson River watershed between New York City and Albany, the state has committed 5 million for dam removal. While dam modifications can help fish return to their spawning grounds, the techniques are less successful than outright removal, and so can be seen as an imperfect solution to the challenge of holistic river restoration, said Dr. Craig of American Rivers. "Bypasses and rock ramps are less effective than removing the barrier completely," she said. "There are places where those approaches have been successful in helping to reconnect habitat but you lose all of the other benefits to the river ecology. "It's suitable for fish if fish are the only thing you care about, but American Rivers tries to look deeply into the feasibility of removing the barrier even it's more challenging and more expensive because of that whole system benefit," she continued. The Brandywine is ready for the return of migratory fish, Dr. Kauffman said, because its water quality has improved markedly since the federal Clean Water Act of 1972, which regulated the discharge of pollutants into waterways. Dissolved oxygen has risen as industrial effluent has fallen, while phosphorus, bacteria and sediment have all declined. The main water quality challenge remains high levels of nitrogen from fertilizer used by upstream farms, although those too are declining. Migratory fish won't return to polluted waters even if there are no dams to block their way, Dr. Craig said. The Delaware River, she said, is an example where industrial waste caused such poor water quality in the 1950s and '60s that shad and other species would not migrate north of Philadelphia. Now, improved water quality has allowed the fish to move much farther up the river bordering northern New Jersey. But supporters fear that the improvements could be set back by the Trump administration's recently finalized rollback of the Waters of the U.S. rule, which will remove federal protections for intermittent streams and some freshwater wetlands, making it easier for landowners to build on those areas. Still, the Brandywine dam project is pressing ahead, with the goal of removing or modifying Dams 3, 4, 6 and 11 this year, depending on the availability of funding from federal, state and private sources. This year's projects will require an estimated 680,000, of which 410,000 would pay for the removal of Dam 4, a 150 foot structure that spans the creek between a state park and the site of an 18th century textile mill where condominiums are now under construction. Later, construction of a bypass channel for Dam 2 which must be preserved because it diverts water to a Wilmington treatment plant is expected to cost 1.4 million. Funding so far has included 241,000 from the federal government as a result of the Delaware River Basin Conservation Act of 2016, which helps local conservation projects, and a matching grant from the State of Delaware, which owns three of the dams. Dr. Kauffman is hoping for a similar amount from the same federal source under a new round of funding early this year. But even before any more dams have been removed, he's confident that this year's fish run enabled by last year's removal of Dam 1 will show that the fish are ready to return. "They will literally hit their heads on Dam 2," he said. "They will just keep swimming until they can't swim any more."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
An art show for Eve Plumb, above, with one of the pieces from her "See the Pony" series, was held in a Chelsea penthouse that just happened to be for sale. IT was billed as "A Double Feature of Never Before Seen Paintings," starring Eve Plumb, a k a Jan Brady, of "Brady Bunch" fame. That may sound like a set up for a "Saturday Night Live" skit (cue the theme song from the iconic 1970s show), but this was the big draw for an event in Chelsea on Wednesday night. Ms. Plumb, blond and charming in her black dress, was flitting about, explaining the inspiration for her artwork. An art gallery opening? No, her work was hanging on the walls of a Chelsea penthouse, and the people hosting the event hoped that the condo would be the real star of the evening. When the Broad Mill Development Group, the developers of Carriage House on West 24th Street, approached Ms. Plumb about displaying her Western scenes and "noir" series of black and whites based on old Hollywood films, she was thrilled. "Anytime anybody wants to give you an art show you take it," said Ms. Plumb, 53, who dabbles in art between acting jobs. She had suggested a tagline for the event: "Have a drink, buy some art, get a condo." That was a bit too direct for the developers. "I wanted to have some fun; let's have some fun," Ms. Plumb said. "I am not a serious person, and it is not serious art." A mix of developers, their friends, invited brokers and a few potential buyers strolled by her artwork Wednesday night in the 1,614 square foot duplex, which features an outdoor hot tub in 835 square feet of outdoor space. The exhibition was just the latest reminder that simply inviting people to come check out the real estate is no longer good enough. To lure high net worth prospects, creative and often kitschy events are now the bait for brokers and potential buyers. Earlier this month, a building at 123 Third Avenue hosted a "bundled luxury event" called "Shop at the Top." Held just a few days before Valentine's, it was a one stop shopping experience with high end retailers, including La Maison du Chocolat, Aaron Basha jewelry, Illuminum perfume and the jeweler Yael Sonia. Guests sipped on wine and hors d'oeuvres while walking amid the retailers and popping upstairs for tours of four penthouses, priced from 3.6 million to 4.5 million. Roxanne Hulderman, a "celebrity psychic," did readings in an upstairs bedroom of one apartment. "We have to be very creative these days to showcase properties and cross brand, and to think of any outside the box ways to bring traffic and attention to properties," said Tom Postilio, a broker with CORE who attended the event. While apartments over 10 million in New York are practically selling themselves often to out of towners like the Russians, the Chinese and the Brazilians some apartments below that level need a little more publicity. Earlier this month, Mr. Postilio said, he was at a runway fashion show in a three bedroom apartment with Hudson River views on the Far West Side, listed for 3.49 million. "I turned to my colleague and said, 'Who would have ever thought that in 2012 we are selling real estate and we are at a fashion show?' " he said. "But you never know who might be in the audience. You just have to spark the interest of one buyer." As Mr. Postilio acknowledged, the efforts are intended to bring together high end brokers and high wealth individuals. Last week he introduced a 6.5 million penthouse at 211 East 51st Street at a party co sponsored by Manhattan magazine, which brought along 50 of its top V.I.P.s, he said. Last summer, Azure, a luxury cond op on the Upper East Side, staged a book signing and reading with Soleil Moon Frye, a k a Punky Brewster, that was attended by almost 100 well heeled mothers, according to Hundred Stories, the public relations company that organized the event with a group called DivaMoms. Last October, Azure hosted a show by John Grande, a photo based painter whose works were inspired by cultural icons like Batman and the Playboy logo. The developers also teamed up last fall with the president of the company that publishes "America's Top Doctors" to host an event, and drew more than 50 doctors from Mount Sinai and other local hospitals. At the inauguration party for the Carriage House last June, Classic Car Club of Manhattan was invited to show off the building's garage and hydraulic lifts by rolling in several posh cars, including a Lamborghini, a Ferrari and a Jaguar. The developers spent 15,000 on the opening, and since then about 35 percent of the apartments have gone into contract, with over half the building left to sell, said Joel Moss, the listing agent from Warburg Realty. 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 unsold 3.6 million penthouse has become a frequent site for parties, said Eamon Roche, one of the developers. Wednesday's evening of Ms. Plumb's art, with martinis and prosecco flowing, was just the latest. "Basically, until they kick me out of this one I will probably have a party here every month or so," he said. "I can't afford to own it, but I can afford to throw a party here." Ms. Plumb moved with her husband to New York from Laguna Beach, Calif., two years ago to get a taste of living in the city. They are renting a two bedroom on the Upper West Side with spectacular views, she said. The party planners had filled one room of the lower level with Ms. Plumb's Western landscapes the "See the Pony" series "all have to have a blue sky, a horse and they are done in vertical strips," she said. On the upper level her "noirs," collectively called "Here Comes Trouble," were arranged around the master bedroom. The names of those works include "Look Out Now" and "Feed the Dog." (The pieces were on sale for 750 to 2,850 and will stay up through March.) At evening's end, she said she hadn't sold any paintings but remained hopeful. Only one broker couldn't restrain his curiosity about the "Brady Bunch" era of her life, she said. I admitted to her that when I watched the show I always identified with Jan and Peter, two middle children struggling for recognition and attention while the older siblings, Greg and Marcia, seemed to have it easy. Ms. Plumb tried not to roll her eyes. She said she understood why the developers had tapped her. "Whatever gets people to look at your product, as long as you don't have to take off your top, which is usually my criteria for projects," she said, laughing heartily. "And at this point nobody really wants me to."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
SAN FRANCISCO The poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti was sitting at his kitchen table in his North Beach apartment on a drizzly morning, telling a story about Allen Ginsberg, when he hopped up suddenly and bounded out of the room to retrieve his hearing aid. "At my age, if it's not one thing, it's another," he said cheerfully. Tall and agile at 97, with a neatly trimmed gray beard and oval tortoise shell glasses that magnified his glassy blue eyes, Mr. Ferlinghetti could pass for a man in his 70s. He still writes almost every day "When an idea springs airborne into my head." Mr. Ferlinghetti is one of the country's most prominent poets, and arguably its most successful: His 1958 collection "A Coney Island of the Mind," which was published by New Directions, has sold more than one million copies. Over the last 61 years, he's published around 50 volumes of poetry. His latest work is unlike anything he's ever written. After retrieving his hearing aide, Mr. Ferlinghetti got up again and returned to the kitchen with a cardboard box stuffed with reporter's notebooks, numbered up to 78. He set it on the table, next to a bowl of fruit and a half empty bottle of merlot. The box holds the first draft of a novel he's been working on, in fits and starts, for the last 20 years. "I think it's a new genre," he said. The book, titled, "To the Light House," blends autobiography, fiction and surrealist riffs on mortality, nature and consciousness. It's the closest thing to a memoir that he'll ever write, he said. Mr. Ferlinghetti's project came as a happy surprise to his longtime literary agent, Sterling Lord, who has been badgering his client to write his autobiography for nearly two decades. Mr. Ferlinghetti has repeatedly spurned the idea. "I've stopped asking him," Mr. Lord said. Now Mr. Lord Mr. Ferlinghetti's friend and occasional sparring partner has finally prevailed, in a way. "This new manuscript is his most personal," Mr. Lord said. "It's certainly different than anything I've ever read. I've never seen an autobiography that was constructed like this." Though neither of them can recall precisely when they first met, their long association dates from the 1950s, when they became acquainted through Jack Kerouac, one of Mr. Lord's first clients. Over the years, as many of the writers they knew have died, they've formed even more of a kinship. "Sterling really is my generation," said Mr. Ferlinghetti, who was born in Bronxville, N.Y., in 1919. "We're in the same boat, heading for the falls." Mr. Lord, who was born in Burlington, Iowa, in 1920, likes to point out their age difference. "Lawrence is the only client I have who is older than I am," said Mr. Lord, who will turn 96 in September. Now, they stand as two of the last living links to the Beat Generation. From opposite coasts, they fueled a literary movement that defined the era and ushered in a new populist, countercultural strain of poetry and fiction. At his New York agency, Sterling Lord Literistic, Mr. Lord helped initiate the careers of writers like Kerouac, John Clellon Holmes and Ken Kesey, who along with his band of Merry Pranksters elevated LSD use to something resembling performance art. When Kerouac, frustrated after a string of rejections, was ready to give up on publishing his groundbreaking, experimental "On the Road," Mr. Lord remained resolute. It took him more than four years, but he finally sold it to Viking, for 1,000. Through his small San Francisco publishing house, City Lights, Mr. Ferlinghetti championed the work of Beat Generation writers like Gregory Corso, Michael McClure, Gary Snyder and Ginsberg, renegade poets who were too provocative for most mainstream publishers. "It was a revolution in contemporary poetry," Mr. Ferlinghetti said. "My way of judging a manuscript was, if I had never read anything like it before, if it articulated a whole new view of reality, then I knew it was important." His subversive taste sometimes got him in trouble. He occupied the front lines of a free speech battle when he published Ginsberg's poem "Howl" in 1956, and faced obscenity charges as a result. His legal victory paved the way for the United States publication of boundary pushing novels by D. H. Lawrence and Henry Miller. "Without Lawrence Ferlinghetti, there wouldn't have been a Beat Generation at all," said Bill Morgan, a literary scholar and an expert on the Beats. "He published all of these people who would never have been heard of." Mr. Lord, who favors tweed jackets, sweater vests and sharp ties, is a tenacious salesman whose star studded client list included the former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and the newspaper columnist Jimmy Breslin. He became famous for wringing fat advances from publishers, with an extremely diplomatic touch. (He titled his 2013 memoir "Lord of Publishing.") Mr. Ferlinghetti, a bohemian rebel who has a jeweled stud in his ear, has long occupied a place on the cultural and political fringes, even as he became one of the country's most popular and influential poets. His fervent fan base includes Bob Dylan, Patti Smith, Francis Ford Coppola and the poet Billy Collins. "Sterling is an old fashioned gentleman, and Lawrence is really an anarchist," Mr. Morgan said. "You could say that one of them is working within the establishment, and one is working against it." Sometimes, Mr. Ferlinghetti and Mr. Lord clashed when they found themselves on opposite ends of the negotiating table as publisher and agent. In a letter to Ginsberg in 1970, Mr. Ferlinghetti complained that Mr. Lord often snubbed him in favor of bigger publishers: "I've written Sterling Lord since Jack's death, asking of 'Visions of Neal' and 'Some of the Dharma' but I never get the time of night from him like we're not worth his trouble for the big money, etc. Maybe you could tell him we complained and push him." At other times, Mr. Ferlinghetti had the upper hand. He once turned down a manuscript that Mr. Lord sent him because it was too disjointed. (It was a messy early draft of William S. Burroughs's "Naked Lunch.") "I am extremely doubtful, from what I've read so far, that any bookseller would dare sell it in his store," Mr. Ferlinghetti wrote to Ginsberg. For roughly three decades, Mr. Ferlinghetti managed his own career without help from a literary agent, which suited his rebellious streak. He did fine on his own. "Most agents can't be bothered with poets because they never bring in any money," he said. But in the 1980s, he struggled to find a publisher for his debut novel, "Love in the Days of Rage," after it was rejected by New Directions. He called Mr. Lord, who quickly sold the book to Dutton. They've worked together ever since. "He admired what he knew about me, and I admired what I knew about him," Mr. Lord said. "He's absolutely unique in the world of publishing." Any perceived slights or old rivalries from decades ago seem to be forgotten. (Mr. Lord seemed full of affection even when he noted casually that one of his ex wives was "kind of in love" with Mr. Ferlinghetti, adding, "I can understand any intelligent woman having a crush on Lawrence.") Both men attribute the longevity of their lives and careers partly to the fact that they weren't as wild as the Beat writers they championed. Mr. Lord, who cycled through four marriages, hung around with many of the rebellious, semi feral writers he represented, but he was always the straight man. He never even smoked cigarettes, at least not in the last half century. "I did smoke a little, in my 30s," he said. "But I didn't inhale." Mr. Lord often found himself in the role of babysitter. Once, when he visited Kerouac in St. Petersburg, Fla., he gamely joined him on a bar crawl, but only drank a few beers, while Kerouac downed rounds of double scotches and chased them with beers. During a visit to Kesey's farm in Eugene, Ore., Mr. Lord rode in Further, the infamous bus that ferried Kesey and his band of tripping Merry Pranksters back and forth across the country. But Mr. Lord's joy ride was a relatively uneventful, acid free trip: Kesey just drove him to the airport. Mr. Ferlinghetti was also pretty tame, by the hedonistic standards of the era. He smoked the occasional joint and experimented with LSD, but never got too crazy. He remembers peeling Kerouac off the ground in front of his cabin in Big Sur early one morning, after Kerouac went on one of his benders while visiting him there. (The visit wasn't entirely fruitless: Kerouac wrote his novel, "Big Sur," which features a character based on Mr. Ferlinghetti, at the cabin). While his vagabond Beat cohorts were taking mescaline and Benzedrine fueled road trips across the country, Mr. Ferlinghetti was married and running two businesses: his bookstore, which he co founded in 1953, and his publishing house, which he created in 1955. On top of that, he had his own creative pursuits. "I had too much to do," Mr. Ferlinghetti said. "I was more interested in developing my own painting and writing." And though he's often lumped with the Beats, Mr. Ferlinghetti rejected the label. "I got associated with the Beats by publishing them, but my own poetry has never been Beat," he said. As they approach 100, neither of them has slowed down all that much. Most days, Mr. Lord, who gets around nimbly with a walker, still works at Sterling Lord Literistic, the literary agency he founded in 1952 after being fired from his job as a Cosmopolitan editor. He often works six or seven days a week. He reads submissions and drafts with the help of a magnifying machine, and conducts most of his business face to face or by phone. "It's a little bit like having Maxwell Perkins call you," Barbara Epler, president of New Directions, said, comparing Mr. Lord to the legendary editor of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway. Mr. Ferlinghetti, who suffers from glaucoma, still paints in his art studio at Hunters Point once or twice a week, though because of his deteriorating eyesight he's limited himself to black and white abstracts. In July, his paintings will be featured in a solo exhibition at the Rena Bransten gallery in San Francisco. He stopped riding his bicycle around North Beach after taking a spill a few years ago, but remains an intrepid traveler. He spent two weeks in Paris last year, and visited the Pacific Coast of Mexico this January, where he spent a week on the beach, writing in his notebooks by day and drinking margaritas at night. "He's still very much engaged with the world," said Elaine Katzenberger, the executive director of City Lights Booksellers Publishers. "It's just who he is." He has a computer that he mostly uses to send emails, and a magnifying machine that helps him read the newspaper. His desk is surrounded by dictionaries in English, Spanish, French and Italian, and bookshelves with volumes of poetry by E. E. Cummings, Milton, Ezra Pound, Ted Hughes, T. S. Eliot and Frank O'Hara. A wicker chair held a thick stack of unpublished poems, typed up with hand scrawled edits. "At my age, I might not publish another book of poetry," he said. "But there's lots to be published." For now, Mr. Ferlinghetti is focused on his new novel, which Mr. Lord is shopping around to publishers. Part of the narrative draws on his coming of age as a young man in Europe and his tumultuous childhood: His father died before he was born, and he lived in an orphanage for a while after his mother was institutionalized. Mr. Ferlinghetti and Mr. Lord have been talking on the phone over the past few months, discussing ways to shape the story. Mr. Ferlinghetti has pushed back on some of his agent's suggestions. But Mr. Lord is, as ever, optimistic. "The book is not a conventional autobiography in any sense of the word, but you get to know Lawrence quite a bit by reading this material," Mr. Lord said. "We're describing it as 'scenes from his autobiography.'"	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
Almost half a century after it was founded by Andy Warhol, Interview magazine, the arts and culture publication, is folding. The news was publicly shared by several employees on Twitter on Monday morning. Ezra Marcus, an associate editor at the magazine, said by email that the staff was notified in an all hands meeting earlier in the morning that Interview, which was founded in 1969, was closing and filing for Chapter 7 bankruptcy. Phone calls to Brant Publications, which acquired Interview magazine in 1989, two years after Andy Warhol died, went unanswered. With its striking style, Interview had long wielded outsize influence in the industry, inspiring the look and feel of many other publications. But questions about the magazine's fortunes have lingered for years, as it faced ever thinning ranks and churned through staff.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
There is an island so perfect the skies so blue, the beaches so smooth, the water so tranquil that the seaweed off its shores is protected by Unesco. People travel from near and far to lounge on these shores, to swim in these waters, perhaps to break up the day with a plate of fresh fish, still briny from the sea and shiny with olive oil. This island is made for people who embrace the beach like an old friend, for people who would brave hardship for homemade pasta, for people who make vacationing well their life's mission. This island is made for Italians. But Formentera is, in fact, one of the Balearic Islands of Spain, a good 600 miles from the coast of mainland Italy. It's also just hard enough to get to (from New York, two planes and a boat) that if you tell someone you're going there, you'll most likely need a follow up line, like, "It's in the Mediterranean," or "It's just below Ibiza." But it also happens to become, for a few months, the extra national home of Italian beachgoers. Go there in the summertime, and you will experience a fusion of two of the most sun and olive oil worshiping cultures in Europe: the Italians and the Spanish. Formentera is, I would soon learn, an island given to man buns, mopeds and melanoma. Don't be misled by its proximity to Ibiza. While Formentera is only about a dozen miles off the southern coast of that famous celebrity stomping ground, the foam parties and ooonz ooonz club beats of Ibiza might as well be a million miles away. (In recent years, Formentera has gone so far as to impose major restrictions on night life, limiting how many people can gather in one place and how late a bar can play music.) Like so many summer destinations, Formentera fills to bursting in the warmer months, swelling from 12,500 local inhabitants year round to over 45,000 in August. Seventy percent of the island is protected from developers, and there hasn't been a major new hotel structure for 35 years. Said one local, "We do not want to become Majorca or Ibiza." In the mid 1990s, Italians really took notice of the island. "We realized we had the Caribbean a couple of hours away from Italy," Jonathan Di Segni, a native Milanese who has been living in Formentera since 2003, told me when I visited with my family last summer. "Of course, once the Italian football players started coming here, everyone wanted to come." Formentera has been a favorite destination of Italy's soccer (a.k.a. football) players for years. "It's beautiful, it's fun, it's close to Italy, we love everything about it," Cristian Brocchi, the coach of AC Milan, told me on the phone. "I've been coming here for 15 years. It's true that it's more popular today, but Formentera doesn't change this is the best part about it." (One Roman woman on the island likened her country's obsession with their athletes to lemmings: "We would jump off the cliff right behind them.") A few days into our trip I had lunch with Claudia Bordino, owner of Casa Y Entorno Inmobiliaria, a local real estate agency. Ms. Bordino, an Italian expat, and I were sharing pizza margherita at Panperfocaccia, an open air trattoria in the port town of La Savina. "Most Italians take their first vacation in Spain, so it holds a special place in our hearts," she said. "Italians love the Spanish we love the language, we love the culture. And the Spanish love a good party; in that way they are more fun than the French." The island itself is mostly sandy, and rocky, with a good portion given over to salt flats. It's the driest place on earth or at least the driest place I've ever been. When the kids and I hung out our laundry, dripping wet, in the morning, it was crunchy and stiff in an hour. After a couple of days, my skin felt rougher, and small flecks of salt started collecting in the cracks of my knuckles. It's a climate perfectly suited to the island's primary inhabitants bright green lizards that scatter over the parched landscape, scampering from one prickly bush to another whenever we walked past. Formentera is full of caves to explore, Instagram friendly lighthouses, classically Mediterranean white stone villages, and mopeds zipping around. But the real action is at the beach. Early into our trip, we went to Playa de Migjorn (Lucky Beach), a stretch of sand on the southern side of the island, nicknamed for a beloved seaside restaurant shack that serves homemade pasta, bresaola, aperitivi, and "music that is really something not to be missed," in the words of Davide Busi, one of the owners of Lucky Bar. "We combine the best of Italy with the best of Spain figs and mozzarella and Iberico ham," said Mr. Busi, who is originally from Bologna. A few days later, we discovered Playa de Illetes (pronounced ee YAY tes) a flat, gentle expanse of beach perfectly tailored for children, sunbathers and anyone who likes her waves no more than eight inches high. Walk out into the water a few feet or a few hundred and you will notice the water around Formentera is startlingly clear. It's like walking through liquid air. And then there's that seaweed actually a sea grass. "It is called Posidonia," said Carlos Bernus Blanch, manager of the ministry of tourism for Formentera. "It's 100,000 years old, this seaweed. In 1999, it was protected by Unesco, and it only grows in the Mediterranean." (Other reports have it as old as 200,000 years, possibly making it the oldest living organism on earth.) "One square meter of this seaweed gives more oxygen than one square meter of the Amazon rain forest," he added. "And the biggest concentration of it is right here between Ibiza and Formentera." The beach was teeming with glistening brown bodies; towels rotated toward the ultraviolet light like a field of sunflowers. Running around the sunbathers were the children shaggy haired, barely dressed in skimpy bathing suits, skin the color of mahogany, all calling to each other in Italian. My children, on the other hand, were dressed as if sunlight were their mortal enemy: wide brim sun hats, long sleeve rash guards, board shorts to their ankles. I had already covered the only exposed skin the tops of their feet and the backs of their hands with a thick white paste of sunscreen. We stood on the beach, Puritans at Woodstock, and gazed longingly at the Italian families. I asked my children to help me set up our umbrella. There are plenty of ways to test the outer limits of one's melanin on the island. For one thing, because of its place on the far reaches of the Spanish time zone, the Formentera sun sets after 9 p.m. There are typically over 300 days of sunshine here, not to mention a handful of nude beaches, a fact of which we were unaware until we weren't. We headed into the main town of Sant Francesc Xavier for wine, pasta and a respite from the blazing sun. We found a table under the canopy of a fig tree at El Gioviale Cafe Restaurant, a trattoria run by Matteo and Francesco Trecca and Giulia Tulli, three Italians who brought recipes from the old country when they moved to Formentera a few years ago. "Our mother taught us how to make proper Italian pasta," Matteo told me. "She owns a restaurant outside of Rome." Sitting in the dappled Mediterranean sun with my daughter (my husband and son stayed at the beach), I could have easily believed we were in a restaurant outside Rome. Or Portofino. Or Positano. I read the options off the blackboard spaghetti all'amatriciana, rigatoni carbonara, insalata caprese as my daughter wiggled the sand out of her toes. A short while later, Ms. Tulli appeared, her arms laden with saute pans tonnarelli cacio e pepe for my daughter and penne pomodoro e mozzarella for me. Serving the pasta in the pans is a typically Italian way of reminding you just how authentic the sauce is and ours, respectively cheesy and peppery and earthy and ripe, were so authentic we nearly licked our pans clean. Later that day, showered and dressed for an evening out, my family and I went to Es Pujols, a lively town on the northern side of the island. Es Pujols is the most Italian pocket of Formentera many of the people who were walking on the boardwalk and sipping Campari and sodas spoke to us only in Italian when we tested our halting Spanish. We settled into a table at Cafe Miranda as the sun was just starting its dip toward the horizon well past 9 and well past my children's typical bedtime. We ordered aperitivi Aperol and prosecco for my husband and me, San Pellegrino Aranciata for the children, plump green olives and salty potato chips for all. We sat quietly for a few minutes, and I could feel my skin radiating warmth from our time on the beach. A handful of Italian soccer players strolled by with their girlfriends. Waiters were saying things like, "Buona sera, signorina." The sea had taken on a romantic orange tint. Soon, our waiter came over to take our order for dinner, but quickly apologized. IF YOU GO Ca Na Pepa. In the middle of a white stone piazza in Sant Francesc Xavier, this is the place to come for a light lunch (carpaccio di zucchine, Caesar salad) or to feed the kids; it has one of the best children's menus on the island (Placa de la Constitution, 5; canapepa.com). Cafe Miranda. Come to this spot on the boardwalk in Es Pujolsa for a cafe macchiato in the morning or an Aperol spritz in the evening. If you see a bunch of very fit men with man buns walk by, it's safe to assume they're Italian soccer players (Paseo Maritimo 1;facebook.com/cafemiranda.eu). El Gioviale Cafe Restaurant. Aim for the table under the fig tree, order whatever pasta the young Roman chef recommends, and enjoy it right from the pan (Carrer de Santa Maria, 59, Sant Francesc Xavier; 34 666 605 973). Aigua. Overlooking the bobbing sailboats in the port of La Savina, this is one of the more formal places on the island, with its white tablecloths and elegantly prepared seafood. That's not to suggest it's stiff: The kitchen doesn't close until 2 a.m. (aiguaformentera.com). Obi Formentera. The Milanese Lorenzo Pepe and his wife, Elena Hurtado, own the island's loveliest shop, which sells artfully structured dresses of her own design and heavy silver jewelry of his (Avenida 8 de Agosto 55, Sant Francesc Xavier; obiformentera.com/en/gallery).	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
When Uber announced an aerial ride hailing division, Uber Elevate, three years ago, the internet and news media buzzed with chatter of flying cars becoming a reality in the not so distant future. While these aerial vehicles have yet to debut, the ride hailing service is expanding into helicopter service, called Uber Copter, starting July 9 in New York City. The new service, booked through Uber's app, will take passengers between Lower Manhattan and Kennedy International Airport, an eight minute flight. "This is a trip that so many travelers make a day, and we see an opportunity to save them a huge amount of time on it," said Eric Allison, the head of Uber Elevate. Currently, that trip by car can take at least an hour, and in rush hour traffic, can last more than two hours. Other modes of transit, the subway and the Long Island Railroad, take between 50 and 75 minutes. Uber Copter promises to cut the total travel experience including ground transportation to as little as 30 minutes. "Our plan is to eventually roll out Uber Copter to more Uber customers and to other cities, but we want to do it right," Mr. Allison said. "The main goal of this initial venture is to understand the operations behind aerial vehicles." Uber Copter will be available only to users who are Platinum and Diamond members the top two tiers of the company's loyalty program, Uber Rewards. These customers can book Uber Copter on demand or up to five days in advance. The helicopters accommodate up to five people and will run Monday through Friday during the afternoon rush hour. Once seats are reserved, passengers will receive an email from Uber with a boarding pass. Similar to Uber rides, Uber Copter will have dynamic pricing determined largely by demand. Nikhil Goel, Uber Elevate's head of product, said that the average ride will cost between 200 and 225 a person. In Manhattan, the helicopters depart and land from a heliport near the Staten Island Ferry, while at Kennedy, they depart and land at a helipad near Terminal 8. Passengers will be picked up or dropped off by car in Manhattan, and at Kennedy, they'll be met at the helicopter tarmac by a car and driven directly to their terminal or picked up at the terminal and taken to the helicopter tarmac, Mr. Goel said. The helicopters will be operated by HeliFlite, a Newark based company with a fleet of twin engine helicopters. Two pilots will be on every flight, and passengers will be shown a 90 second safety video before taking off. Many helicopters, including those to be used by Uber Copter, have neither the space nor the weight capacity to accommodate large bags. Passengers will only be allowed to bring on one personal bag and one carry on weighing no more than 40 pounds. Uber isn't the only company offering shared helicopter rides between airport and urban areas: In March, Blade Urban Air Mobility, a short distance aviation company that operates in select cities on the East and West Coasts, debuted Blade Airport, a helicopter service that flies between three private Blade terminals in Manhattan and Kennedy, La Guardia Airport and Newark Liberty International Airport. That service is available on weekdays from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. and on Sundays from 2 p.m. to 7 p.m. and runs several times an hour, according to the company's director of communications, Simon McLaren. Flights cost 195 per person one way, and include private car transfer between the helicopter and the terminal. Customers are allowed to fly only with carry on bags, but for 85, the company will pick up and deliver checked luggage between the airport and any address in Manhattan. A screenshot of a helicopter itinerary in the Uber app. The launches of Blade Air and Uber Copter come at a time when there is an active protest movement against helicopters in New York City because of the noise they cause and the fumes they generate. The group Stop the Chop argues that all commercial flights over the city should be banned. And on Monday, a private helicopter, with only the pilot aboard, crashed on top of a building in Manhattan, killing him. Steve Wooster, the managing director for services and air operations at the luxury travel network Virtuoso, said that there's no doubt that Uber Copter and Blade are time savers and relatively affordable. "In rush hour, an Uber Black car could cost up to 200 to J.F.K., so these helicopters are competitively priced," he said. But on the other hand, they're not exactly a bargain. "They're likely to be popular with executives and super wealthy travelers," Mr. Wooster said. "I don't think they are services that a well to do family of four would use regularly. You're looking at 800 to get either to or from the airport, and that's a lot." 52 PLACES AND MUCH, MUCH MORE Follow our 52 Places traveler, Sebastian Modak, on Instagram as he travels the world, and discover more Travel coverage by following us on Twitter and Facebook. And sign up for our Travel Dispatch newsletter: Each week you'll receive tips on traveling smarter, stories on hot destinations and access to photos from all over the world.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
HOUSTON Less than two years ago, the British oil company BP was worried about its very survival as a seemingly unstoppable oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico threatened to destroy its finances and reputation. But on Tuesday, BP expressed renewed confidence in its future, reporting strong quarterly profits and raising its dividend to shareholders. The company also said it was eager to resolve billions of dollars in remaining private and government claims from the accident, whether through a settlement or in a trial scheduled to begin Feb. 27 in New Orleans. The explosion of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in April 2010, which killed 11 workers and spilled millions of barrels of crude oil into the gulf, was the most serious environmental disaster involving the oil and gas industry in the United States since the Exxon Valdez oil tanker struck a reef in Alaskan waters in 1989. BP was forced to revamp its senior management and safety procedures in order to regain its footing with international regulators and the public, and oil analysts say the company's reputation will be damaged for years to come. On Tuesday, Robert W. Dudley, BP's chief executive, told reporters in London that BP was "on the right path" as the company reported 7.7 billion in profit for the fourth quarter of 2011, a 38 percent increase from a year earlier. BP said production was up substantially from the previous quarter, and it expected its cash flow by 2014 to surge 50 percent past that of 2011, giving the company the financial strength to invest in exploration and pay even higher dividends. BP is a much smaller company than it was before the accident, having sold 30 billion, or about 20 percent, of its assets to pay for costs and claims related to the accident. Its stock price is still well below where it was before the accident. But its profit for each barrel of oil is comparable to other major oil companies, according to Fadel Gheit, a senior oil analyst at Oppenheimer Company. "BP is here to stay," he said. Still, BP has not yet been able to put the spill behind it. The company faces possible criminal charges in the accident, billions of dollars in pollution fines and claims from people and businesses that have rejected settlements from the 20 billion claims fund set up by the company. On Feb. 27, United States District Judge Carl J. Barbier is scheduled to begin hearing a group of cases brought by a range of plaintiffs that includes individuals, businesses, states and the federal government. The civil lawsuits involve everything from income lost by individuals to civil penalties under federal environmental laws. "We are prepared to settle if we can do so on fair and reasonable terms," Mr. Dudley said on Tuesday. "But equally, if this is not possible, we are preparing vigorously for trial." The hearing, which begins the Monday after Mardi Gras, will focus on placing the blame for the blast, and will include an examination of the events leading up to the explosion and sinking of the oil rig. The second phase could begin this summer, and will deal with what happened after the spill began, assessing the efforts to seal the well and trying to determine how much oil escaped from the well before it was finally capped in July 2010. The government has estimated that 4.9 million barrels of oil have leaked into the gulf, but the final number will be critical in figuring out federal penalties under the Clean Water Act, which start at 1,100 per barrel of oil released but can rise to 4,300 a barrel if the court finds gross negligence. A third phase will go into questions of environmental damage related to the cleanup effort, including the effects of burning the oil and the use of dispersants. The litigation is expected to stretch into 2013. Because there is so much uncertainty and financial risk in the litigation, "there's enormous pressure on BP to settle with the government," said David M. Uhlmann, who headed the Justice Department's environmental crimes section under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. Settlement negotiations have been going on between BP, federal and state officials and plaintiffs' attorneys. Alabama's attorney general, Luther Strange, said in a recent interview that he was not opposed to a settlement, "as long as Alabama is made whole, both the state and the citizens." Many oil experts say that a settlement was made more likely by recent court rulings that limited the liability of Transocean, the operator of the rig that exploded, and Halliburton, the company that cemented the deepwater well that blew out and caused the spill. BP has put aside 41 billion to cover costs related to the spill, including the 20 billion trust fund for claims that has been administered by Kenneth R. Feinberg, an outside lawyer. BP said it has so far paid out 7.8 billion to individuals and businesses affected by the disaster. The company is in the process of selling assets worth 38 billion to raise cash for claims and said it intends to complete payments to the trust fund this year. Mr. Gheit, the oil analyst, said he was confident BP has the money in hand to settle all the claims assuming the company is not found grossly negligent. "If they are, the penalties will take them above and beyond the original estimate of 41 billion," he said. BP's executives apparently feel confident enough about the company's finances to raise the quarterly dividend by 14 percent to 8 cents a share, the first increase since it resumed payouts to shareholders a year ago. "The dividend is still far from the historical heady heights," Richard Hunter, head of equities at Hargreaves Lansdown, said in an e mail. "More positively, the fund put aside to finance these claims seems sufficient, whilst further planned divestments will enable BP to focus more strategically on higher growth opportunities." To repair its tattered image, BP has been investing heavily in television and print advertising since late December to give the public a "progress report," complete with scenes of crowded beaches and flying coastal birds, suggesting that the gulf is returning to normal and the company is readily paying "all legitimate cleanup costs." The company is also planning a marketing campaign over the next two years, with an expected cost of several hundred million dollars, to improve sales at BP gas stations. Most important for its long term prospects, BP is pressing forward with new exploration projects, including in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico. It has five rigs drilling there now, the same number as before the accident, and it plans to operate eight rigs there by the end of the year.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Global Business
In Transit is trying out a new schedule. We will be posting a digest each weekday morning that includes consumer news, deals, tips and anything else that travelers may want to know. We'd love your feedback as we refine the format and focus, so please email travmail nytimes.com or comment below to share your thoughts. Ireland's voters approved gay marriage last week, and to celebrate, the 800 year old Ashford Castle, a 350 acre, 82 room property in the countryside in County Mayo, has created a "Gay Castle Honeymoon" package welcoming the LGBT community. The offer includes two nights' accommodation in a suite, an Irish breakfast, an archery lesson for two, a movie night with handmade chocolates, a five course dinner in the formal restaurant and a late checkout. Prices from 1,600. Ashford can also accommodate weddings for up to 160 guests. A FRESH LOOK FOR THE FOUR SEASONS The Four Seasons Hotel New York, owned by the toy manufacturer and businessman Ty Warner best known for Beanie Babies is in the midst of a 60 million face lift to give it a more contemporary look. First came a redo of the Ty Bar in the lobby, which was unveiled in February. Fifty7, the glass enclosed event space on the lobby level in the former restaurant and bar area, was completed last month. Now Mr. Warner is turning his attention to the 368 rooms: They are being freshened with whitewashed custom designed wood furniture, hand woven upholstery in chocolate and gray tones and tech upgrades including 55 inch curved flat screen televisions and several additional electrical outlets in every room. Most of the changes will be completed by the end of this year, and it's the first major renovation of the hotel since it opened in 1993; there was a "soft goods makeover" in 2004.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
Jacob's Pillow, the annual summer dance festival in Becket, Mass., is planning to extend its reach through year round residencies for choreographers and other initiatives. The new programs, called Vision '22, are the first major project undertaken by the festival's leader, Pamela Tatge, who was hired last year and is presenting her first season this summer. The plans were announced at the Pillow's 85th anniversary gala performance on Saturday night. The choreographic residency program, which previously took place only during the off season, has now expanded to the whole year and is expected to bring in 10 to 15 dancemakers. In an interview, Ms. Tatge said that after a year's worth of conversations with artists, patrons and local residents, "it was extremely clear what the field needs."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
P HILADELPHIA Hers has always been one of the more astonishing, if little known, tales of the American Revolution: a woman who stitched herself a uniform, posed as a man and served at least 17 months in an elite unit of the Continental Army. Wounded at least twice, Deborah Sampson carried a musket ball inside her till the day she died in 1827. While historians agree that Sampson served in uniform and spilled blood for her country, gaps in the account have long led some to wonder whether her tale had been romanticized and embellished possibly even by her. Did she fight in the decisive Battle of Yorktown, as she later insisted on multiple occasions? And how did she keep her secret for the many months she served in Washington's light infantry? Now, scholars say the discovery of a long forgotten diary, recorded more than 200 years ago by a Massachusetts neighbor of Sampson, is addressing some of the questions and sharpening our understanding of one of the few women to take on a combat role during the Revolution. "Deb Sampson, her story is mostly lost to history,'' said Dr. Philip Mead, the chief historian and director of curatorial affairs of the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia. "So, finding a little piece of it is even more important than finding another piece of George Washington's history." The museum bought the diary for an undisclosed sum after Dr. Mead spotted it at a New Hampshire antiques show last summer. He plans to showcase it next year with other items about the role American women played in the Revolution, as part of a larger celebration of the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment. The skeletal facts of Sampson's military service have long been known. After at least one failed attempt to enlist, she ultimately succeeded in joining and fighting with a Massachusetts company that saw action in the Hudson Valley. Her secret went undiscovered until 1783, when, just months before the war's end, she fell sick in Philadelphia and was found out by a doctor. There was no reprimand, just an honorable discharge. Untangling the fuller story has been more complicated. She left only a smattering of records in her own words and seems to have exaggerated her exploits at the urging of Herman Mann, a sensationalist newspaper publisher. He took liberty with the facts in memoirs he ghostwrote for her in 1797, and had a hand in a florid speech she delivered during a paid lecture tour of New England. Each performance included a moment when she theatrically switched out of her dress and reappeared in light infantry garb. Ms. Sampson "is a challenging figure,'' said Harvard Professor Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, an expert on forgotten women, "because she recreated herself so many times and then was recreated again by her supposed biographer." As recently as 2016, Meryl Streep recast history a bit while praising Sampson as a model of "grit and grace" at the Democratic National Convention. She referred to Ms. Sampson as "the first woman to take a bullet for her country." That designation more properly belongs to New York's Margaret Corbin, who never enlisted but continued to fire her husband's cannon when he fell at Fort Washington in 1776. The diary, written by Abner Weston, suggests Sampson likely did not fight at Yorktown as she claimed. He dates Sampson's botched enlistment to a period around January 1782, months after the British thrashing at Yorktown. "If you really want to put her at Yorktown, you could start stretching it, but that sounds like pretty strong evidence that she probably wasn't there,'' said Dr. David Osborn, site manager of historic St. Paul's Church in Mount Vernon, N.Y., a national park site that dates to the Revolution. He noted, though, that Sampson would hardly be the first veteran to place herself at the scene of a prominent battle that might be more familiar to folks back home. Weston, who served as corporal in the Massachusetts militia, created at least three diaries that chronicle the war years, including his deployment to help defend Rhode Island in 1780 and to reinforce West Point in 1781. Two of the diaries are already held by the National Archives. In an entry for Jan. 23, 1782, Weston, then 21, wrote with variant spelling about an "uncommon affair" that rocked the town. A woman, posing as a man, had tried to enlist. "Their hapend a uncommon affair at this time," he wrote, "for Deborah Samson of this town dress her self in men's cloths and hired her self to Israel Wood to go into the three years Servis. But being found out returnd the hire and paid the Damages." Sampson's motivation for enlisting has never been clear. Unabashed patriotism? Financial distress? In the last years of the war, towns that struggled to fill their quotas of recruits offered bounties to attract volunteers. Sampson, born to an indigent family in Plympton, Mass., around 1760, certainly might have needed the money. She had previously worked as an indentured servant. What's clear, according to evidence in the Massachusetts Archives, is that later that year she tried to enlist again, 40 miles away in Bellingham, Mass. This time her gambit worked, and in May 1782 she accepted a bounty to suit up in place of folks from Uxbridge, one town over. She called herself Robert Shurtleff, her alias for the rest of the war. Dressing as a man was considered a crime in Massachusetts at the time, and Sampson's audacity later invited the wrath of the Baptist church. In September 1782, while she, long gone, served with her unit under an assumed name, church elders, still reeling from her earlier attempt to enlist, excommunicated her, citing her for "dressing in men's cloths and inlisting" and other conduct they considered "loose and unChristian like." After the war, Sampson married a Massachusetts farmer, raised a family and spent a lot of time fighting Congress to get back pay for her wartime service. Paul Revere and John Hancock both helped her in that partially successful effort. The museum's discovery of the diary also ended well. The document had turned up among miscellaneous papers purchased en masse by DeWolfe Wood Booksellers in Alfred, Me., last year. One of the owners, Frank P. Wood, later brought it with him to read at the New Hampshire Antiques Show, which Dr. Mead attended while on vacation. The two men got to talking. Dr. Mead, who had studied Mr. Weston's other diaries as part of his doctoral work at Harvard, mentioned his new role at the museum. Mr. Wood whipped out the diary to get his visitor's take. Ken Burns, the filmmaker who is creating a documentary about the American Revolution, said he might feature Sampson in the work. He said the fact that the diary undermines her account of serving at Yorktown does not affect the overall impact of her story. History is complicated, he said. "She clearly bled for the cause," he continued. "It becomes super important that we don't impose modern sensibilities on what this speaks."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
Delia Owens signing copies of her best selling novel, "Where the Crawdads Sing," at the New York Botanical Garden in September. "I have never connected with people the way I have with my readers," she said. "I wasn't expecting that." In the summer of 2018, Putnam published an unusual debut novel by a retired wildlife biologist named Delia Owens. The book, which had an odd title and didn't fit neatly into any genre, hardly seemed destined to be a blockbuster, so Putnam printed about 28,000 copies. A year and a half later, the novel, "Where the Crawdads Sing," an absorbing, atmospheric tale about a lonely girl's coming of age in the marshes of North Carolina, has sold more than four and a half million copies. It's an astonishing trajectory for any debut novelist, much less for a reclusive, 70 year old scientist, whose previous published works chronicled the decades she spent in the deserts and valleys of Botswana and Zambia, where she studied hyenas, lions and elephants. As the end of 2019 approaches, "Crawdads" has sold more print copies than any other adult title this year fiction or nonfiction according to NPD BookScan, blowing away the combined print sales of new novels by John Grisham, Margaret Atwood and Stephen King. Putnam has returned to the printers nearly 40 times to feed a seemingly bottomless demand for the book. Foreign rights have sold in 41 countries. For the past several years, adult fiction sales have steadily fallen in 2019, adult fiction sales through early December totaled around 116 million units, down from nearly 144 million in 2015, according to NPD BookScan. In a tough retail environment for fiction, publishers and agents frequently complain that it has become harder and harder for even established novelists to break through the noise of the news cycle. "Crawdads" seems to be the lone exception. After a burst of holiday sales, it landed back at No. 1 on The Times's latest fiction best seller list, where it has held a spot for 67 weeks, with 30 weeks at No. 1. "This book has defied the new laws of gravity," said Peter Hildick Smith, the president of the Codex Group, which analyzes the book industry. "It's managed to hold its position in a much more consistent way than just about anything." The novel is resonating with a swath of American readers at a moment when mass media are deeply fragmented and algorithm driven entertainment companies like Netflix and Amazon feed consumers a stream of content tailored to their particular tastes. "Crawdads" instead seems to appeal to a wide demographic of American readers. According to a survey of nearly 4,000 book buyers conducted by the Codex Group, respondents who read "Crawdads" came from across the political spectrum, with 55 percent identifying as progressive, 30 percent as conservative and 15 percent as centrists. "I have never connected with people the way I have with my readers," she said in an interview. "I wasn't expecting that." Like the movie industry, publishing has become a winner take all business, with a handful of blockbusters commanding all the attention and sales, so surprise breakout hits have become increasingly rare. But "Crawdads" had several things going for it. The plot seemed tailored to appeal to a wide audience, with its combination of murder mystery, lush nature writing, romance and a coming of age survival story. The novel also got an early boost from independent booksellers, who widely recommended it, and from the actress Reese Witherspoon, who selected "Crawdads" for her book club and plans to produce a feature film adaptation of the novel, and appeared in a bubbly video with Ms. Owens on Instagram this year. Want to keep up with the latest and greatest in books? This is a good place to start. None Learn what you should be reading this fall: Our collection of reviews on books coming out this season includes biographies, novels, memoirs and more. See what's new in October: Among this month's new titles are novels by Jonathan Franzen, a history of Black cinema and a biography by Katie Couric. Nominate a book: The New York Times Book Review has just turned 125. That got us wondering: What is the best book that was published during that time? Listen to our podcast: Featuring conversations with leading figures in the literary world, from Colson Whitehead to Leila Slimani, the Book Review Podcast helps you delve deeper into your favorite books. But even those factors fail to fully account for why the book took off as it did, and continues to sell so robustly. One of the most surprising things about the success of "Crawdads" is that sales began to accelerate months after it came out an anomaly in publishing, where sales typically peak just after publication, aided by the initial advertising and marketing around a title. This past January, six months after its release, the novel hit No. 1 on The Times's fiction best seller list. That same month, it appeared at the top of Amazon Charts' Most Sold and Most Read fiction lists, and maintained its dominant position for the next 16 weeks, the longest streak that any book has occupied the top of both Amazon weekly lists. In February, it began selling well at big box stores like Sam's Club, Costco and BJ's Wholesale Club. By March it had sold a million copies; two months later, it had sold two million. "I've never seen anything like this in 30 years," said Jaci Updike, president of sales for Penguin Random House, who has overseen strategies for best sellers like "The Da Vinci Code," "The Girl on the Train" and "Gone Girl." "This book has broken all the friggin' rules. We like to have a comparison title so that we can do sales forecasts, but in this case none of the comparisons work." The combination of word of mouth buzz and the novel's prominence on the best seller list set off a self fulfilling cycle: The book's visibility drove sales, and sales drove visibility. Merriam Webster added "crawdad" to its list of the top 10 words of 2019, noting that searches for "crawdad" on its online dictionary spiked by 1,200 percent this year. "Once it took off, it fed on itself and it's been remarkably resilient," said Kristen McLean, the executive director of business development at the NPD Group. No one seems more caught off guard by the book's success than Ms. Owens. "I never really thought I could write a novel," she said. Ms. Owens began working on it a decade ago, when she got the idea for a story about a girl who grows up alone in the marshes of North Carolina in the 1950s and '60s after her family abandons her, and becomes an outcast who is later charged with murdering a young man. Though the story is invented, Ms. Owens said she drew on her experience living in the wilderness, cut off from society. "It's about trying to make it in a wild place," she said. For most of her life, she lived as far away from people and as close to wild animals as she could get. Growing up in Georgia, Ms. Owens spent most of her free time outside in the woods. Inspired by Jane Goodall, she studied zoology at the University of Georgia and later got her doctorate in animal behavior from the University of California, Davis. In 1974, she and her husband at the time, Mark Owens, set off to study wildlife in Africa. They set up a research camp in the Kalahari Desert in Botswana, where they spent their days closely observing lions and hyenas, studying their migration patterns and social behavior. The Owenses later became renowned for their foundation's work in Zambia, where they provided job training, microloans, health care and education to villagers. But they also generated controversy. Mr. Owens, trying to stop poachers from killing elephants and other wildlife, turned their base camp into "the command center for anti poaching operations" which Ms. Owens thought was risky, according to her account in their memoir "The Eye of the Elephant." In 1995, one of the anti poaching missions ended in tragedy when a suspected poacher was apparently shot and killed, an incident that Slate reported on this past summer and that The New Yorker wrote about in 2010. Mark and Delia Owens, who weren't present at the shooting, left the country and haven't been back since. After returning to the United States in 1996, they settled in northern Idaho, on a secluded 720 acre ranch. Several years ago, after more than 40 years of marriage, they divorced, and this year, Ms. Owens moved to the mountains of North Carolina, near Asheville. Ms. Owens said she had nothing to do with the shooting and was never accused of wrongdoing but declined to elaborate on the circumstances. "I was not involved," she added. "There was never a case, there was nothing." She brought the conversation back to her novel and likened her experience to the ordeals faced by her fictional heroine Kya Clark, who is subjected to vicious rumors and ostracized. "It's painful to have that come up, but it's what Kya had to deal with, name calling," Ms. Owens said during an interview in New York this fall. "You just have to put your head up or down, or whichever, you have to keep going and be strong. I've been charged by elephants before." Later that evening, Ms. Owens, who still seems unaccustomed to the spotlight, invoked charging elephants again, when she took the stage at the Botanical Garden and faced a crowd of more than 400 people. Looking slightly unsettled, Ms. Owens compared the experience of addressing the audience to the adrenaline rush she felt many years before when, in an effort to escape an elephant that was rushing at her, she jumped into a crocodile infested river. "I've lived in remote settings for most of my life," she told the crowd. "There are more people in this room than I would see in six months."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
The performance space JACK is easy to miss, blending into a nondescript block of Clinton Hill, Brooklyn. What happens inside leaves a stronger impression. Directed by Alec Duffy, this three year old organization, the recipient of an Obie Award, makes room for rowdy, resourceful, politically conscious live art. This week brings the culmination of "Forward Ferguson," a four month multigenre series that explores issues of racial and economic justice. The final two programs come from Wildcat!, a collective founded in 2013 by Jeremy Toussaint Baptiste, Eleni Zaharopoulos and Andre M. Zachery, who combine backgrounds in dance, performance art and sound design. On Thursday and Saturday, they offer "I Do Mind Dying: danse precarite," described as "an experimental labor ballet." On Friday and Sunday, in "3 Meaningful Meditations," each performer presents a solo based on Paulo Freire's 1968 manifesto "Pedagogy of the Oppressed." This is work about working together.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
The Trump administration has mounted a vigorous defense of its ban on travel from seven majority Muslim nations, saying it is necessary to prevent terrorists from entering the United States. But the ban, now blocked by a federal judge, also ensnared travelers important to the well being of many Americans: doctors. Foreign born physicians have become crucial to the delivery of medical care in the United States. They work in small towns where there are no other doctors, in poor urban neighborhoods and in Veterans Affairs hospitals. Foreign born physicians "are the doctors in small towns in Maine and Iowa," said Dr. Patricia F. Walker, the associate director of the University of Minnesota's Global Health Pathway, which helps refugee doctors practice in the United States. "They go to the places where graduates of Harvard Medical School don't want to go," she said. Across the United States, more than 15,000 doctors are from the seven Muslim majority countries covered by the travel ban, according to The Medicus Firm, a firm that recruits doctors for hard to fill jobs. That includes almost 9,000 from Iran, almost 3,500 from Syria and more than 1,500 from Iraq. Dr. Hooman Parsi, an oncologist so talented that he has an O 1 visa granted to individuals with "extraordinary ability or achievement," was to start seeing patients on Wednesday in San Bernardino, Calif. A federal judge in Seattle lifted the administration's travel ban on Friday, and a federal appeals court has declined to restore it. Yet Dr. Parsi is still stuck in Iran, waiting for a delayed visa amid the confusion while his American employer fumes. "We need him desperately," said Dr. Richy Agajanian, the managing partner of the Oncology Institute of Hope and Innovation, which had just hired him. "We had an office completely constructed we spent three months on it, and it was supposed to open Feb. 1. Now we can't open it. This is really sad and frustrating." The 30 doctor practice does a lot of work in the Inland Empire, in San Bernardino and Riverside Counties, Dr. Agajanian noted. "It's very sparse in doctors out there many miles between oncologists," he said. "The patients he would be seeing have to travel another 25 miles now. Our doctors are already overworked, and now they'll have to be on call more often." The United States has a persistent doctor shortage, even though 31 new medical schools have opened since 2002 and many existing ones have increased class sizes, according to Merritt Hawkins, a Dallas based medical recruiting firm. It also noted that there are 22 percent more residencies available each year than there are American graduates to take them. Graduates of foreign medical schools now fill that gap; the largest number come from India, followed by Pakistan, China, the Philippines, Iran and Israel. Many foreign graduates have J 1 visas, which give them about three years to complete their residencies. "They must pass licensing exams and they must do a residency to practice here, even if they're superstars where they come from," said Phillip Miller, a Merritt Hawkins spokesman. Foreign born graduates have often worked at world class institutions and have published academic papers, so they have higher average scores than American graduates on the medical knowledge portions of the licensing examinations, according to Merritt Hawkins research though most initially score lower on the clinical skills portions, which include English and communication skills. "I had to work my butt off to get here," said Dr. Abdelghani el Rafei, a first year resident at the University of Minnesota. "They only take the top graduates from schools in countries like mine." Such foreign born graduates must return home when their visas expire, but they can get extensions if they agree to work in an area that the Department of Health and Human Services considers "medically underserved," which is roughly defined as having less than one primary care doctor for every 3,000 people. Those who practice in an underserved area for several years can apply for green cards. "After that, they can practice anywhere, but at least you've had three or four years of a physician in your town, and that's pretty significant," Mr. Miller said. Citing figures from the Iowa Board of Medicine, The Des Moines Register reported last week that 172 doctors practicing in Iowa were from the seven countries subject to Mr. Trump's travel ban, and that 23 percent of the state's 13,000 practicing doctors were born outside the United States. Andrea Clement, a spokeswoman for Medicus, said that 76 percent of the foreign doctors it placed last year had gone to areas with fewer than 25,000 people or to small to medium size cities of 25,000 to 500,000. It placed more foreign doctors in Wisconsin than in any other state, she said, followed by California, Texas, Maryland, Oregon, Missouri, Tennessee, Ohio and Arizona. Some urban areas are medically underserved, too. While Manhattan's Upper East Side has five times the number of doctors it needs to be adequately served under federal guidelines, parts of the Bronx and Brooklyn have acute doctor shortages. More than 150,000 residents of Brooklyn's Bedford Stuyvesant section, for example, are rated as medically underserved under federal guidelines. One of the doctors stranded overseas last week, according to Pro Publica, was Dr. Kamal Fadlalla, an internal medicine specialist from Sudan who is a second year resident at Interfaith Medical Center, which serves Bedford Stuyvesant and Crown Heights. Many foreign born doctors, experts said, go into family medicine, pediatrics, internal medicine, general surgery and other front line specialties where they see thousands of patients a year, including many on Medicare and Medicaid, rather than pursuing lucrative urban specialties like plastic surgery. As an oncologist, Dr. Parsi was an exception. He moved to the United States in 2007 for postdoctoral work in molecular biology. Then, after passing his medical exam, he completed his residency at the University of Cincinnati and a fellowship in hematology and oncology at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. Because he had to leave the country to get his new visa stamped into his passport, he had flown to Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates. He cleared a security vetting there, he said, but had to wait a few days for the visa, so he flew to Tehran to see his father. But the new court ruling affects only those who had current visa stamps in their passport, so even though he is being issued a new visa, he still cannot return to the United States, he said on Saturday. "Everyone, including me, would like to keep the bad people out," said Dr. Naeem Moulki, a Syrian citizen who is finishing his medical residency in Minneapolis and plans to begin a cardiology fellowship in Chicago in the fall. "But this is not the best way to do it. If I have to leave, it affects my patients." Dr. El Rafei said that the ban, which means he cannot go home to see his family, had depressed him. "I felt like I was back in Syria again," he said. "You feel hunted there, as if you did something wrong, even if you didn't. Now I feel the same way here." He sees patients one day a week at the V.A. Hospital in Minneapolis, where he is sometimes asked where he is from. "One of my patients, he was a veteran in his 60s, said to me, 'Why do you people hate us?' '' he said. "I told him about Syria. I said: 'We don't hate you. The bad people you see on TV are the same people who make us suffer, too.' " "I love this country," he added. "There's a time in our residency when we can work in Africa or someplace. I want to work in a small American town, to show people that we're not all bad. The U.S. gives us a lot, so we want to give back what we can."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
A lot of people have a lot of thoughts (not to mention feelings) about the elusive hip hop star Lauryn Hill, but only the journalist Joan Morgan could have written a slender book as capacious as this one. When Hill released her first and only full length solo studio album in 1998, the ensuing critical and commercial success was so extraordinary that it fueled two decades' worth of speculation about future projects and opinions about existing ones. With "She Begat This: 20 Years of 'The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill,'" Morgan takes an album that was a cultural touchstone the kind of work that elicits ardent devotion and ardent backlash and holds it up to the light, showcasing its brilliance and its shadows. "I loved 'Miseducation,'" Morgan writes. "I was one of the score of hip hop loving and/or pregnant women who swore the album was soundtracking her life." (One of the tracks, "To Zion," was about Hill's decision to have a child.) At the time of the album's release, Morgan was putting the finishing touches on her first book, "When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost" (1999), a blend of memoir and manifesto that introduced the term "hip hop feminism," delineating the contours of a movement that she and her "post Civil Rights, post feminist, post soul" generation might call its own. Morgan insists that loving something isn't the same as giving it a pass. "She Begat This" makes a full throated case for Hill's artistic and historical importance, but this appreciation doesn't translate into gauzy praise for some of the stickier parts of Hill's career including legal tussles over writing and production credits on "Miseducation." Similarly, in "Chickenheads," Morgan didn't go easy on hip hop's prominent strains of misogyny and materialism. Love, she suggests, is too complicated to be reduced to flattery. As Morgan recently put it to The Paris Review, "She Begat This" is resolutely a volume of cultural history, rather than a "track by track by track by track" treatment. The book depicts the 1990s as a pivotal moment, especially for black women who "were squeezed between competing narratives" of "having it all" on the one hand and President Bill Clinton's Republican placating policies like welfare reform and the 1994 crime bill on the other. Hip hop at that time was settling into what Morgan calls "the dual sweet spots": hitting its artistic stride while getting paid too. By the time Hill released "Miseducation," she was already known for her work with the Fugees, in which she staked her claim as a consummate vocalist and a ruthless emcee. (She spits out an indelible verse in "Ready or Not," moving from the sibilance of chess and Eliot Ness to Al Capone and Hill as Nina Simone, doing something nasty to your microphone.) She had ended a tumultuous romantic relationship with fellow Fugee Wyclef Jean (Pras Michel was the third member of the group), and was pregnant with the second of five children she would have with Rohan Marley, Bob's son. "Miseducation" landed at No. 1 on the Billboard album chart and became the first hip hop record there's only been one more since to win Album of the Year at the Grammy Awards. Hill was all of 23 years old when she released "Miseducation," and she clearly meant business. After the sweet and dreamy intro of a teacher taking attendance (Hill is a no show, perhaps a prelude to her habitual failure to show up for performances on time), the album begins with "Lost Ones," a swaggering statement of ambition: "My emancipation don't fit your equation / I was on the humble, you on every station." This sounded like a rebuke to ex boyfriend Jean, but with its echoes of "Bam Bam," Sister Nancy's pioneering feminist dancehall track, "Lost Ones" was more than a burned lover's lament. What was special about the song was the "quality of Hill's rage," Morgan writes. "It was an exercise in precision." Morgan straightforwardly engages with Hill's critics, making a point to talk to those whose opinions don't jibe with her own. Part of the current controversy over Hill is generational, with a younger cohort deeming her moralistic "judge y," as Morgan's millennial goddaughter puts it. In "Doo Wop (That Thing)," one of several hit singles from "Miseducation," Hill delivers a sermon about self respect and authenticity to women who "give it up so easy you ain't even fooling him": "It's silly when girls sell their souls because it's in / Look at where you be in, hair weaves like Europeans." Even if the layers of the song and the video complicate a glib reading of Hill's intentions, Morgan concedes that a good deal of what a regal Hill says bears a distinct resemblance to respectability politics. "For many fans," Morgan writes, "Lauryn was seen as the desirable antidote to Lil' Kim and Foxy Brown's hypersexuality." (It was no small irony, then, when an unmarried Hill's pregnancies at the height of her career drew the unforgiving judgment of women who had always thought of her as a middle class good girl from New Jersey, Morgan says, and were "less than enthused.") In the two decades since "Miseducation," Hill has released a live album (the polarizing "MTV Unplugged No. 2.0") and the jittery single "Neurotic Society (Compulsory Mix)," which was critically hammered for some baffling abstractions ("Transference, projections / Like Cartesian images") and lines that sounded problematic, to say the least ("Quick scams and drag queens / Real life's been blasphemed"). Hill said she had to rush the single out "by virtue of the impending legal deadline" that deadline presumably related to the three months she was about to spend in prison for failing to pay income taxes. But she still tours, and she still commands an authoritative place in a crowded cultural imagination. The rapper Drake sampled Hill's "Ex Factor" in "Nice for What," his recent paean to women's empowerment, speeding up Hill's languid contralto into a cute, bouncy refrain. Hill then covered Drake's track at one of her shows, replacing his lyrics with her own: "So stop acting like you didn't grow up singing my songs." I suspect that Morgan would approve of this exchange between the stars. Her philosophy seems to be, the more voices the better; "She Begat This" is thick with competing opinions, as well as chunks of dialogue. Morgan is such a fluid and candid writer that I often wanted to hear more from her. But reflecting on "Chickenheads" in an afterword to a new edition, she describes how she modeled her own method on hip hop, which has long pursued something more "faulty, contradictory, messy" than a lone, exacting voice would allow. "Truth," she wrote in that book, "is what happens when your cumulative voices fill in the breaks, provide the remixes and rework the chorus." It feels like the right approach to an artist like Hill; her iconic album might be 20 years old, but our understanding of it is still a work in progress.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
Credit...Stephen B. Morton for The New York Times NORFOLK, Va. Huge vertical rulers are sprouting beside low spots in the streets here, so people can judge if the tidal floods that increasingly inundate their roads are too deep to drive through. Five hundred miles down the Atlantic Coast, the only road to Tybee Island, Ga., is disappearing beneath the sea several times a year, cutting the town off from the mainland. And another 500 miles on, in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., increased tidal flooding is forcing the city to spend millions fixing battered roads and drains and, at times, to send out giant vacuum trucks to suck saltwater off the streets. For decades, as the global warming created by human emissions caused land ice to melt and ocean water to expand, scientists warned that the accelerating rise of the sea would eventually imperil the United States' coastline. Now, those warnings are no longer theoretical: The inundation of the coast has begun. The sea has crept up to the point that a high tide and a brisk wind are all it takes to send water pouring into streets and homes. Federal scientists have documented a sharp jump in this nuisance flooding often called "sunny day flooding" along both the East Coast and the Gulf Coast in recent years. The sea is now so near the brim in many places that they believe the problem is likely to worsen quickly. Shifts in the Pacific Ocean mean that the West Coast, partly spared over the past two decades, may be hit hard, too. These tidal floods are often just a foot or two deep, but they can stop traffic, swamp basements, damage cars, kill lawns and forests, and poison wells with salt. Moreover, the high seas interfere with the drainage of storm water. In coastal regions, that compounds the damage from the increasingly heavy rains plaguing the country, like those that recently caused extensive flooding in Louisiana. Scientists say these rains are also a consequence of human greenhouse emissions. "Once impacts become noticeable, they're going to be upon you quickly," said William V. Sweet, a scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Silver Spring, Md., who is among the leaders in research on coastal inundation. "It's not a hundred years off it's now." In many of the worst hit cities, mayors of both parties are sounding an alarm. "I'm a Republican, but I also realize, by any objective analysis, the sea level is rising," said Jason Buelterman, the mayor of tiny Tybee Island, one of the first Georgia communities to adopt a detailed climate plan. But the local leaders say they cannot tackle this problem alone. They are pleading with state and federal governments for guidance and help, including billions to pay for flood walls, pumps and road improvements that would buy them time. Yet Congress has largely ignored these pleas, and has even tried to block plans by the military to head off future problems at the numerous bases imperiled by a rising sea. A Republican congressman from Colorado, Ken Buck, recently called one military proposal part of a "radical climate change agenda." The gridlock in Washington means the United States lacks not only a broad national policy on sea level rise, it has something close to the opposite: The federal government spends billions of taxpayer dollars in ways that add to the risks, by subsidizing local governments and homeowners who build in imperiled locations along the coast. As the problem worsens, experts are warning that national security is on the line. Naval bases, in particular, are threatened; they can hardly be moved away from the ocean, yet much of their land is at risk of disappearing within this century. The plan the students developed has morphed into an ambitious program to safeguard the neighborhood, and another nearby, for decades. The Obama administration recently gave Virginia more than 100 million to carry the plan out. The administration has also enlisted one of the universities, Old Dominion in Norfolk, to spearhead a broad effort at better planning. But the size of that grant illustrates the scope of the problem confronting the region, and the country: protecting a single neighborhood from rising water can easily cost tens of millions of dollars. Sea walls and streets may have to be raised, or movable gates built along waterways so they can be closed at times of high water. While the Obama administration is trying to create a few showcase neighborhoods, there is no sign Congress is prepared to spend the money that cities and states say they need: tens of billions of dollars just to catch up to the current flooding problems, much less get ahead of them. Norfolk alone, a town of 250,000 people, has a wish list of 1.2 billion or about 5,000 for every man, woman and child in the city. As the national response lags, experts warn that the flooding is putting the country's defense at risk. Several studies have concluded that Naval Station Norfolk, the world's largest naval base, is profoundly threatened by rising seas, as are other coastal bases. The Pentagon has managed to build floodgates and other protective measures at some facilities. But attempts by the military to develop broader climate change plans have met fierce resistance in Congress. "When we distract our military with a radical climate change agenda, we detract from their main purpose of defending America from enemies" like the Islamic State, said Mr. Buck of Colorado, the Republican congressman who sponsored the measure. His amendment passed the House 216 to 205, though the Senate has yet to agree to it. Many people in Congress, almost all of them Republicans, express doubt about climate science, with some of them promulgating conspiracy theories claiming that researchers have invented the issue to justify greater governmental control over people's lives. So far, this ideological position has been immune to the rising evidence of harm from human induced climate change. The Obama administration has been pushing federal agencies, including the Pentagon, to take more aggressive steps. But without action in Congress, experts say these efforts fall far short of what is required. "In the country, certainly in the Congress, it hasn't really resonated the billions and perhaps trillions of dollars that we would need to spend if we want to live on the coast like we're living today," said David W. Titley, a retired rear admiral who was the chief oceanographer of the Navy, and now heads a climate center at Pennsylvania State University. "I haven't seen any evidence that there is serious thought about this: What does a world of three, four, five feet of sea level rise look like?" Deep in a thicket of trees on an out of the way island in the Florida Keys, a diesel engine roared to life. Soon a drill bit was chewing through ancient limestone, pulling up evidence from the geological past that might shed light on the future of the planet. On a sultry day in March, Dr. Dutton, the University of Florida scientist, stood watch over the drilling operation, inspecting her samples as they emerged from the ground. She spotted fossilized corals, proof that what is now the dry ground of Lignumvitae Key was once underwater. Dr. Dutton and other leading scientists are focused on the last sea level high point, which occurred between the last two ice ages, about 125,000 years ago. After years of surveying ancient shorelines around the world, scientists determined that the sea level rose by something like 20 to 30 feet in that era, compared with today. But how long did it take to make that jump? That is the question Dr. Dutton, using improved research techniques, wants to answer. Large parts of the Florida Keys are simply ancient coral reefs that grew during the period of high seas, and were exposed when the levels fell. Trees, roads and houses now sit atop the old reefs. By recovering samples, Dr. Dutton hopes to date a sequence of corals as they grew along with the rising sea, potentially revealing the rate at which the water rose. The research, likely to take years, may supply a figure for how quickly the ocean was able to rise under past conditions, but not necessarily a maximum rate for the coming decades. The release of greenhouse gases from human activity is causing the planet to warm rapidly, perhaps faster than at any other time in the Earth's history. The ice sheets in both Greenland and West Antarctica are beginning to melt into the sea at an accelerating pace. Scientists had long hoped that any disintegration of the ice sheets would take thousands of years, but recent research suggests the breakup of West Antarctica could occur much faster. In the worst case scenario, this research suggests, the rate of sea level rise could reach a foot per decade by the 22nd century, about 10 times faster than today. In 2013, scientists reached a consensus that three feet was the highest plausible rise by the year 2100. But now some of them are starting to say that six or seven feet may be possible. A rise that large over a span of decades would be an unparalleled national catastrophe, driving millions of people from their homes and most likely requiring the abandonment of entire cities. In essence, by revealing how sensitive the ice sheets have been to past warming, Dr. Dutton's research may answer the question of whether such a rapid jump is possible. Along the East Coast, scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration say that many communities have already, or will soon, pass a threshold where sunny day flooding starts to happen much more often. "When you look at the historical record, there's no trend saying the flooding is going down," said Dr. Sweet, the NOAA expert. "The trends are all very clear. They're going up, and they're going up in many of these areas in an accelerating fashion." Late last year, in Paris, nations reached a landmark global agreement to cut emissions. It is fragile, and might not survive if Donald J. Trump is elected president in November; he has pledged to scrap it. But the air is already so full of greenhouse gases that most land ice on the planet has started to melt. So even if the deal survives, it will, at best, slow the rise of the sea and perhaps limit the ultimate increase. Many climate scientists, including Dr. Dutton, believe a rise of at least 15 or 20 feet has already become inevitable, over an unknown period. As Brad Tuckman walked the piece of land in Fort Lauderdale where he is building a grand new house, he pointed toward the canal that wraps around three sides of the property. In Miami Beach, the city engineer, Bruce A. Mowry, has come up with a plan for combating the flooding. He rips up problematic streets, raises them with extra dirt and repaves them, installing new drains and giant pumps that can push water back into the bay. The approach has already been shown to work in several neighborhoods. A controversy has erupted about whether Miami Beach is polluting Biscayne Bay with the water, but the city is pushing ahead. Miami Beach plans to spend at least 400 million on its plan by 2018, raising the money through fees imposed on homes and businesses. The huge county government for the region, Miami Dade County, is developing its own resilience strategy, one likely to cost billions. It has committed to rebuilding some of its decaying infrastructure, like a sewage plant, in a way that safeguards against sea level rise and storm surges. "I don't see doom and gloom here; I see opportunity," said Harvey Ruvin, the clerk of courts for Miami Dade County, who has been a leading voice on the environment in Florida for a half century, and who recently led a county task force on sea level rise. "We're talking about the most robust possible jobs program you can think of, and one that can't be outsourced." Many of the Republican mayors in the region are on the same page as Democrats in requesting national and state action on climate change, as well as pushing local steps. James C. Cason, the Republican mayor of Coral Gables, has convened informational sessions that draw hundreds of residents, and he has received no complaints for his stance. "I hope in coming years when we have to spend a lot of money, the citizens will still support it," Mr. Cason said in an interview. Still, his city, and others in South Florida, have some hard decisions to make. Some property owners cannot afford to raise their sea walls, putting their neighborhoods at increased risk of flooding. Will they be held legally responsible when floods do occur? A strict policy could force some people from their homes. Conversely, should public money be spent to do the work, even if it largely benefits private property? Just for streets, storm drains and the like, South Florida governments will need to raise billions, and they have yet to figure out how. Moreover, if the rise of the sea accelerates as much as some scientists fear, it is doubtful the cities will be able to keep up. The region has one mayor, Philip K. Stoddard of South Miami, who is a scientist himself he studies animal communication at Florida International University and has been a close reader of scientific papers about climate change since the 1990s. "I remember lying in bed at night thinking, 'I hope this isn't real,'" Dr. Stoddard, a Democrat, recalled. "I hope other data comes in that contradicts it. It took me several years to get my head around it and say, 'Oh, God, it is real.'" Now he is focused on easing the pain for South Miami, with a 50 million system of sewer pipes to replace septic tanks threatened by the rising water table. "You can play it really badly and let unpleasant things happen earlier," he said. "Or you can push them off by doing some infrastructure repairs and some thoughtful planning." He is, though, under no illusions about the long term fate of the region he calls home. "We're putting enough heat in the ocean to send water over us, no question," Dr. Stoddard said. "Ultimately, we give up and we leave. That's how the story ends."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
THE market for long term care insurance, which covers the costs of some in home health care, has had a rough month. One provider announced that it would not sell any more policies; another is headed toward insolvency, with billions of dollars in liabilities needing to be assumed by someone else. Yet in the face of this bad news, consumers are being sold newly created long term care products that are less expensive than the older products that guaranteed monthly payments and that brought two insurers to a reckoning. The main new ones are hybrid policies that offer both long term care and life insurance. There are also life insurance policies that allow people to tap into the benefit to pay for care. Both are less expensive than traditional policies, whose sticker price has often shocked consumers. But are these newer policies any good? Like most types of insurance, they are only as good as the consumer's understanding of them and that may not be as deep as it should be. Long term care insurance "has always been perceived as expensive for the era when someone is getting it," said Dave Murray, a managing partner of Capitol Retirement Strategies, who has been selling it since 1998. "It's definitely a confusing insurance." He said a person between the ages of 45 and 65 would pay 1,000 to 4,000 a year in premiums. While that may seem steep, Mr. Murray said, at least it might buy someone several hundred thousand dollars in care. For most consumers, the hardest part is getting comfortable paying for insurance that will kick in when they need help doing things they take for granted today: bathing, dressing, eating. Even though, Mr. Murray said, three in four people who live to age 65 are likely to need some form of care, consumers are hesitant to buy it. "I got cold feet at the last minute," said Tom Jenkins, a certified public accountant in the Washington, D.C., area who is the sole income earner for his family. "It is a big decision. It is expensive." Mr. Jenkins, who is in his early 50s, said he had eventually purchased it after doing more research on various products and on the insurance companies themselves. "My wife and I have always been able to project ourselves down the road a little bit," he said. "Here's where we are now, but what happens down the road if we get sick or develop some sort of terminal illness that lasts for a long time?" In the end, they wanted to ensure that home care for one didn't drain the savings needed by the other, and that their children wouldn't have to care for them. Linda Aikey, 62, of Burke, Va., who was married for 26 years before her husband died, said she and her brothers had worked together to care for their mother, who had heart problems in her late 80s. But she has no children and is worried about who will care for her. "My mom was in great health until the last years of her life," Ms. Aikey said. "So I figured there was probably a bigger chance that I'd need it than I wouldn't. I figured when I got to that age I wouldn't be able to afford it." Both Mr. Jenkins and Ms. Aikey had fairly understandable reasons for buying long term care insurance. They sensed or feared a need and wanted a way to pay for their care themselves without relying on others. But for many people, even those who may have similar concerns, it is difficult to get past the price and the hope that they might not need it. The recent announcements by the two insurance companies might add to that concern. John Hancock, one of the largest providers of this insurance, announced that it would stop selling new long term care policies this month. And two subsidiaries of Penn Treaty American Corporation, with billions of dollars in obligations, are set to be liquidated next year. Both announcements play into the consumer fear that an insurer won't be able to pay claims decades down the road. Such concerns are generally unfounded, given how highly regulated the insurance industry is. A photo of Ms. Aikey and her husband, Paul Aikey Jr., who is deceased. Ms. Aikey has considered her family situation in her insurance planning. Justin T. Gellerson for The New York Times John Hancock is still obligated to honor, and pay out, the 1.2 million long term care policies it has already sold. And with Penn Treaty, other insurance companies are required to pay most of the claims. "You are seeing an evolution in traditional products, and at the same time you're seeing a significant growth in linked benefit products," said Jesse Slome, executive director of the American Association for Long Term Care Insurance, a trade group for agents. Mr. Slome continued, "Today, consumers are buying a life insurance policy where basically you are buying a diminished or lower death benefit in exchange for the ability to get your money back should you need long term care." As with all insurance, the devil is in the details. Sales of traditional policies have dropped considerably since their heyday in the early 2000s. But experts say that is largely because insurance carriers aren't promoting a product that works extremely well for consumers but makes little money for insurers and is tricky to manage as companies project over decades. Those original long term care policies defied insurers' expectations. People did not drop them the way they did life insurance, while others developed long term illnesses that threw off the actuarial calculations. Mr. Murray said people who had these generous policies as he does, with its unlimited payments and 5 percent annual adjustment for inflation should hold on to them. But people looking for these traditional policies today are going to face higher premiums as well as caps on how much money they'll receive and for how long they'll receive it. Most top companies cap the payout period at five years and the annual inflation adjustment at 3 percent, Mr. Murray said. Mr. Jenkins said he had bought a traditional policy for himself and his wife. It includes a 3 percent annual increase for inflation, and while the care payments are capped at three years each, the policy allows one spouse to share unused years with the other. These days, the policies that many companies and brokers are pushing tend to be some combination of long term care and life insurance. They seem simple to understand: There's a death benefit, but if you need long term care you can draw down against that benefit to a limit. The numbers sound good, too. A 300,000 hybrid policy might pay out a maximum of 200,000 for care. But that's it. The average man is looking at three to four years of care, which would use up that cap in a year or so. "Insurance companies love selling life insurance," Mr. Slome said. "Is the consumer getting a good or a bad deal? Time will tell." Jeff Merwin, the director of brokerage at Capitol Metro Financial Services, said traditional policies might still offer the best return in terms of premiums paid and benefits received, at least for those who can afford them. "There is the potential that both the husband and wife might die and never need it, but that's unlikely," Mr. Merwin said. "If they do need it, they'll get their money back much more quickly than any other product." It was this argument that persuaded Jim Toney, 67, of Alexandria, Va., to buy long term care insurance. He had no such family fears pushing him to do so, but he liked what he got for his premium dollars. "It was pretty simple that if I pay 20,000 over some time frame and then end up in a facility, in about three months I'd recoup all the money I paid," he said. And then he went about applying a series of rational calculations to how much he and his wife, who is younger, would need. "When I look at the life span on my family's side, it was not beyond 78 or 80, so I sized mine to a couple of years, no inflation, 6,000 a month," he said. "My wife has a longer life span. We felt when I'm gone, she may live substantially longer than I will. So she has more coverage for a longer period of time." Casting such a cold eye on life and death would serve many well in calculating their needs for long term or any insurance.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Your Money
Nashville, right, and Birmingham, Ala., left, were peers 40 years ago. The success of superstar cities like New York and San Francisco and substars like Nashville has come at the expense of Birmingham and other smaller cities. NASHVILLE Forty years ago, Nashville and Birmingham, Ala., were peers. Two hundred miles apart, the cities anchored metropolitan areas of just under one million people each and had a similar number of jobs paying similar wages. Not anymore. The population of the Nashville area has roughly doubled, and young people have flocked there, drawn by high paying jobs as much as its hip "Music City" reputation. Last month, the city won an important consolation prize in the competition for Amazon's second headquarters: an operations center that will eventually employ 5,000 people at salaries averaging 150,000 a year. Birmingham, by comparison, has steadily lost population, and while its suburbs have expanded, their growth has lagged the Nashville area's. Once narrow gaps in education and income have widened, and important employers like SouthTrust and Saks have moved their headquarters. Birmingham tried to lure Amazon, too, but all it is getting from the online retail giant is a warehouse and a distribution center where many jobs will pay about 15 an hour. Amazon's announcement has been widely described as a rich get richer victory of coastal "superstar cities" like New York and Washington, regions where the company plans to employ a total of at least 50,000 workers. But the company's decisions also reflect another trend: growing inequality among midsize cities. Last week, for example, Apple said it would invest 1 billion in Austin, Tex., and could eventually employ 15,000 people in the area, up from 6,000 now. Like Nashville, Austin is a booming state capital with a prominent university and it has a lively music scene. Nashville started with advantages. But local leaders also made some smart decisions like merging the city and county government in the 1960s, allowing Nashville and its suburbs to work together rather than at cross purposes. And in the 1990s, when many downtowns across the county were struggling, the city built a convention center, a hockey arena and a new home for the Country Music Hall of Fame. By contrast, economic misfortune and poor choices have hobbled Birmingham. Once a center of steel production, the city suffered when that industry declined in the 1980s because of foreign competition and corporate bankruptcies. Local leaders tried to pivot by luring banks and insurers, but that bet soured during the financial crisis, and the city hasn't recovered the jobs it lost then. Ask Ralph Schulz, president of Nashville's Chamber of Commerce, why this city has done so well and he begins with the Civil War. Nashville surrendered early, allowing it to avoid the destruction that befell many Southern cities. Union troops used the city as a logistics hub, which laid the groundwork for its postwar economy. Nashville stood apart in other ways, too. The city was less dependent on manufacturing, in part because being Tennessee's capital brought lucrative and relatively recession proof public investments. Its colleges and universities, anchored by Vanderbilt University, earned it a reputation as the "Athens of the South." The music business, which grew out of a 19th century publishing industry, gave the city an international reputation, while the growth of Hospital Corporation of America in the 20th century turned the city into a health care hub. As a result, Nashville had a diversified economy and an educated work force that left it well positioned for the 21st century. But success wasn't inevitable. As recently as the 1990s, the city was portrayed as a backwater on the variety show "Hee Haw." Ronald L. Samuels, a local banker and civic leader, recalled being asked about Graceland which is in Memphis when visiting New York with the Chamber of Commerce in the 1980s. "We had to answer the 'Where's Nashville?' question many times," Mr. Samuels said. Beginning in the early 1990s, though, political, business and nonprofit leaders tried to promote Nashville. State and local leaders adopted a regional approach to economic development to recruit companies such as Bridgestone, Nissan and UBS. Tennessee overhauled its community college system and work force development efforts to align better with the jobs being created. Starting under Mayor Phil Bredesen, who later became Tennessee's governor, the city invested in big projects that helped revive downtown, a key part of the city's success. Economists disagree about what policies are most effective at helping cities grow or if policies matter much. Some, such as Michael Porter of Harvard and Richard Florida of the University of Toronto, have emphasized the importance of cultivating a "creative class" of artists, designers and entrepreneurs. Others, such as Jan Rivkin of Harvard, stress the importance of civic leadership. Pretty much everyone agrees that having an elite university is a big advantage. 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. Whatever the exact ingredients, Nashville hit on a winning recipe. The urban renewal that began under Mr. Bredesen turned into a boom after the Great Recession, which, thanks to Nashville's diverse mix of industries, was comparatively mild here. The Gulch, a former rail yard and industrial district, was transformed into a vibrant neighborhood full of hip bars, luxury condominiums and boutique hotels. Tourism took off, thanks in part to the ABC television country music drama "Nashville." Some of those tourists stuck around: The number of college graduates younger than 35 nearly doubled over a decade, to 155,000 by 2017. Employers soon followed. Among them are Eventbrite, a San Francisco tech company, and EY, the accounting firm, which last month announced plans to open an office downtown for 600 workers. AllianceBernstein, an investment company, decided in May to move its headquarters to Nashville, from New York, in part because of the big city worthy cultural amenities and the small city cost of living. In recent decades, the most successful cities have achieved a kind of economic gravity drawing the best jobs and most talented workers. That's why few economists were surprised when Amazon chose New York and the Washington area for its big expansion. But the effect isn't limited to a few urban giants. Mark Muro, who researches cities for the Brookings Institution, likened it to a fractal pattern: Look past the top cities and there is another layer of inequality. "Nashville is not a superstar, but it's at the top end of this next echelon," Mr. Muro said. The success of the superstars and the substars like Nashville has come at the expense of Birmingham and other smaller cities. Birmingham's great boom arrived a century before Nashville's, when the region's iron and mineral deposits helped it become one of the nation's largest steel producers. But as the steel industry declined across the country, Birmingham struggled to find a replacement. A bet on finance and insurance the city was at one point a significant regional banking center, home to Regions Financial, SouthTrust and AmSouth Bancorp proved disastrous in the Great Recession, when the area lost nearly 45,000 jobs. The city still has millions of square feet of vacant office space. But Birmingham also has some significant assets. It has a research university, the University of Alabama at Birmingham, with a top flight medical school and hospital. Research conducted at the university has helped fuel a budding start up scene, and an affiliated incubator in a former Sears store, Innovation Depot, is home to more than 100 new companies. Last year, the city elected a young mayor, Randall Woodfin, who has put economic development at the center of his agenda. He has created a Neighborhood Revitalization Fund to fix up homes and demolish dilapidated structures, and wants to use business tax incentives to help lift wages, not just create jobs. "As a midsize city, we have to be very intentional about diversifying our economy," Mr. Woodfin said. "I'm not waiting on Amazon or some other company to come in and save Birmingham." The question for city leaders is whether they can overcome the economic forces driving inequality among cities. "It's less than a zero sum game it's a negative sum game," said David Sher, a local business owner who runs a blog on economic issues. Mr. Sher would like Birmingham to follow Nashville in merging the city and county governments. He noted that Louisville, Ky., saw substantial growth after it did that in 2003. But even as some look to Nashville as an example, they want to avoid repeating its mistakes. Nashville's boom has brought congestion and soaring housing costs, making the city unaffordable for many longtime residents, particularly African Americans. In May, Nashville voters defeated a ballot question that would have expanded the transit system, which many attributed to a backlash against gentrification and breakneck growth. "What is the policy, other than growth?" asked Paulette Coleman, a local affordable housing activist. "If economic growth is only benefiting a small percentage, you just keep getting these widening disparities." Those concerns raise questions about Nashville's future. The city has thrived in part by being an affordable alternative to New York and Atlanta. It may soon have to compete with them directly by trying to become a superstar in its own right. In Birmingham, Mayor Woodfin said the city must follow a different path. "I am 100 percent convinced we do not have to be the next Nashville or the next Austin or the next Charlotte," he said. "We can be the best Birmingham."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Economy
It is tough to pinpoint when the kitschapalooza called "Cats" reaches its zenith or its nadir, which are one and the same. The choices are legion: Judi Dench gliding in as Old Deuteronomy, a Yoda esque fluff ball with a huge ruff who brings to mind the Cowardly Lion en route to a drag ball as Queen Elizabeth I; the tap dancing Skimbleshanks (Steven McRae), dressed, unlike most of the furries in red pants and suspenders, no less leading a Pied Piper parade; or Taylor Swift, as Bombalurina, executing a joyless burlesque shimmy after descending on the scene astride a crescent moon that ejaculates iridescent catnip. I could go on and must go on yet how to explain the seemingly unexplainable, beginning with a narrative and language that borders on the gnomic? A doctoral thesis could be written on how this misfire sputtered into existence, though there's nothing new about the movies' energetic embrace of bad taste. One problem is that "Cats" was directed by Tom Hooper, a well behaved journeyman ("The King's Speech"), who is nowhere near vulgar enough for the challenge he was hired for, which is to translate Andrew Lloyd Webber's money printing musical to the big screen. Certainly Hooper has made a robust effort, as suggested by all the busy leaping, pirouetting, stretching, caterwauling and meowing. To help make the transition to the screen he's enlisted some talented performers to slink and sing, including Francesca Hayward, a principal dancer for the Royal Ballet making her movie debut as Victoria. The original musical involves a clowder of cats with its own lingo ("Jellicle") that convenes on the night one is chosen to be reborn. This cat Christ element remains in the movie, which was written by Hooper and Lee Hall. But now the focus has shifted to Victoria, an abandoned kitty who sets off on a heroic journey amid swishing tails, bumping heads and hisses.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
Before the celebrity chef set me straight, I didn't know that ramps grow only in the wild. These garlicky leeks can't be raised in captivity, but must be foraged in rich, moist forests. "They're impossible to actually just cultivate," he said. "People have tried. This is one of those true wild products." And right now, in early spring, is the only time to get them. I would have walked right past them had I not been trailing Mr. Colicchio through Dag Hammarskjold Plaza Greenmarket near the United Nations in Manhattan. I joined Mr. Colicchio, known for his restaurants, including Fowler Wells, and the Bravo show "Top Chef," for a lunchtime excursion earlier this week to scope out this season's offerings with his trained eye all captured on Facebook Live. A stand for Lani's farm from Burlington County, N.J., quite literally had a field of greens, including chrysanthemum greens (a staple of Chinese hot pots), komatsuna (Japanese mustard greens), and so called Chinese broccoli (which had flat leaves that look more like smooth kale). I sensed a theme. "It's a season for greens, not just greens for a salad, but greens to cook," he explained, pointing out a stack of wild dandelions. Mr. Colicchio would saute them in butter or olive oil with garlic and then toss it all with pasta for a weeknight dinner. As he kept an eye out, he seized on a container of broccoli rabe flowers, which have yellow petals that are not only edible but delicious. He nibbled as he went, beheading a kale flower while explaining that they taste sweeter than their namesake. Later, he found one of his favorites: fresh chamomile. "Typically, you think chamomile, and you think tea," he said. "This is kind of sweet, not really sweet like sugar, but really floral." They look like miniature daisies. After he's braised a fish, Mr. Colicchio said he likes to break up chamomile flowers over it, yellow centers, white petals and all. "You get this beautiful floral flavor," he said. Or alternatively, put them in vinaigrette. "You'll only find this stuff at a farmer's market," he said. There are certain things Mr. Colicchio can't get enough of: Beets, Swiss chard and mushrooms. "They all taste like one thing," he said, a smile crossing his face. "They taste like dirt. They taste really earthy." It reminds him of making mudpies as a kid and sneaking a little taste. "It just kind of sticks with you," he said. "For me, I love those earthy flavors." He also had strategic advice for home cooks who want to get the most out a farmer's market. First, do a walk through to see what's on offer to avoid getting overloaded. Mr. Colicchio, who has campaigned against food waste in recent years, is a firm believer in buying to cook for that night's dinner, instead of purchasing a couple days' worth of produce. For those lucky enough to live in areas with several regular markets, that's an option. "Put it into your routine, on the way home from work, hit the farmer's market and get what you need for the night and then you don't have to worry about storage." And on the weekend, bring the kids. "Bring them to a farmer's market with you and show them what a ramp is then it almost becomes their idea." It's something my parents neglected to do (Are you reading this, Mom?), but it's not too late for the generation coming up. "I have a 6 year old and a 7 year old," Mr. Colicchio said, explaining that the youngest "will not eat unless it's his idea." But he said, "If I bring him shopping and he chooses everything, then he'll eat it."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Well
HONG KONG Gretchen Smelter wanted to surprise her husband, Frederic Lagrange, when he returned after a monthlong assignment in the remote northern reaches of Afghanistan and to make the most of their time together before his next trip. So when Mr. Lagrange, a travel photographer, arrived home, frostbitten, longhaired and malodorous, he learned his wife had booked two nights at the Four Seasons Hotel Hong Kong. For the Hong Kong residents, the 2012 experience wasn't a vacation but a "staycation" a getaway just a short drive from their apartment. Together, they enjoyed a luxurious weekend with plush surroundings, fine dining and spa treatments. "Frederic was so happy," Ms. Smelter recalled, grinning. "So happy. He still talks about it now." Like Ms. Smelter and Mr. Lagrange, many people are choosing to spend their disposable income on experiences over material goods, overhauling the ritual of gift giving. If you're still wrapping presents this holiday season, you might be behind the times. Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus, co founders of theminimalists.com, tend not to give or accept physical gifts. In their film "Minimalism: A Documentary About the Important Things," they explain that their lifestyle is about removing the superfluous: if a possession doesn't serve a purpose or bring them joy, it has to go. Growing inequality and climate change are fueling a disdain for conspicuous consumerism, Mr. Nicodemus said from his home in Montana. "It's becoming apparent we can't continue to produce and consume goods on this level." For his 31st birthday, in 2012, Mr. Nicodemus asked for donations to build a well in Cambodia. Through a nonprofit organization called charity: water he was able to help supply clean water for more than 250 people. Two years later, for Mr. Millburn's 33rd birthday, they raised more than 30,000 for the organization. Mr. Nicodemus explained minimalism isn't all about saving money or the planet, it's simply putting people above possessions. At the top of his wish list are a ski pass, a cruise and a trip into space. The ski pass at least, he could tick off in Queenstown, New Zealand. The alpine resort town has developed a reputation as the "birthplace of adventure tourism," said Graham Budd, chief executive of Destination Queenstown. When Prince William and his wife, Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, visited in 2014, the couple was treated to a wild ride down the Shotover River. There is an abundance of research showing people get more satisfaction from experiences than they do from possessions. Amit Kumar, a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Chicago, said he studies "what makes people happy." Most of his research has focused on personal purchases, but the underlying mechanisms remain the same in the context of gift giving, he added. One reason is that people are more likely to talk about experiences after the fact. Even if the experiences don't go as planned, people are inclined to remember them fondly. "I tend to call that the broader social value of experiences," Mr. Kumar said. "Experiences don't just make us happy while we're consuming them or when we're telling stories about them afterwards, but indeed even before the experience has happened at all. If you're looking forward to a dinner or concert, that period of waiting is a positive state. The same can hardly be said for when you're lining up at a store counter. Christoph Schmidinger, general manager of the Four Seasons Hotel Hong Kong, has been in the hotel business for more than 40 years. He said over that time he has seen industry language shift from talking about "service" to talking about "experience." "Everybody has a different expectation and understanding of luxury," he said, adding that it helps hotel staff members when guests brief them about why they're staying in the hotel. What does luxury mean to him? "I'm going to say two sentences which I think say it all," Mr. Schmidinger said, leaning forward in his armchair. "Products are made and consumed. Services are created and experienced. "If you want to be a real luxury hotel you have to focus on the second one." There is a "moment of truth," he said, when a customer and an employee "connect." During one stay abroad, for example, he returned to his room to find a new tube of toothpaste where his near empty tube had been, as well as a signed note from the room attendant: "Your toothpaste is coming to an end and I didn't want you to be in trouble." The Four Season's records show that in 2015, there were 11 staycations per month on average usually to celebrate anniversaries, birthdays or other special occasions. In 2016, that figure has risen to 38 per month at the 399 room hotel. The Ultimate Suite Dream Experience indulges this trend at the highest level. For 139,000 Hong Kong dollars, or about 18,000, per night, guests receive unlimited access to hotel services and facilities. But an experience, even one that doesn't come with such a hefty price tag, is still more valuable than spending the same amount on a possession. "I know this from my own experience," Mr. Schmidinger said. "My wife and I still talk about our vacations, years later."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
Why the 2020 Election Makes It Hard to Be Optimistic About the Future The 2020 election is over. And the big winners were the coronavirus and, quite possibly, catastrophic climate change. OK, democracy also won, at least for now. By defeating Donald Trump, Joe Biden pulled us back from the brink of authoritarian rule. But Trump paid less of a penalty than expected for his deadly failure to deal with Covid 19, and few down ballot Republicans seem to have paid any penalty at all. As a headline in The Washington Post put it, "With pandemic raging, Republicans say election results validate their approach." And their approach, in case you missed it, has been denial and a refusal to take even the most basic, low cost precautions like requiring that people wear masks in public. The epidemiological consequences of this cynical irresponsibility will be ghastly. I'm not sure how many people realize just how terrible this winter is going to be. Deaths from Covid 19 tend to run around three weeks behind new cases; given the exponential growth in cases since the early fall, which hasn't slowed at all, this means that we may be looking at a daily death toll in the thousands by the end of the year. And remember, many of those who survive Covid 19 nonetheless suffer permanent health damage. To be fair, the vaccine news has been very good, and it looks likely that we'll finally bring the pandemic under control sometime next year. But we could suffer hundreds of thousands of American deaths, many of them avoidable, before the vaccine is widely distributed. Awful as the pandemic outlook is, however, what worries me more is what our failed response says about prospects for dealing with a much bigger issue, one that poses an existential threat to civilization: climate change. As many people have noted, climate change is an inherently difficult problem to tackle not economically, but politically. The climate, and the world, are changing. What challenges will the future bring, and how should we respond to them? What should our leaders be doing? Al Gore, the 45th vice president of the United States, finds reasons for optimism in the Biden presidency. What are the worst climate risks in your country? Select a country, and we'll break down the climate hazards it faces. Where are Americans suffering most? Our maps, developed with experts, show where extreme heat is causing the most deaths in the U.S. What does climate devastation look like? In Sept. 2020, Michael Benson studied detailed satellite imagery. Here's the earth that he saw and the one he wants to see. Right wingers always claim that taking climate seriously would doom the economy, but the truth is that at this point the economics of climate action look remarkably benign. Spectacular progress in renewable energy technology makes it fairly easy to see how the economy can wean itself from fossil fuels. A recent analysis by the International Monetary Fund suggests that a "green infrastructure push" would, if anything, lead to faster economic growth over the next few decades. But climate action remains very difficult politically given (a) the power of special interests and (b) the indirect link between costs and benefits. Consider, for example, the problem posed by methane leaks from fracking wells. Better enforcement to limit these leaks would have huge benefits but the benefits would be widely distributed across time and space. How do you get people in Texas to accept even a small rise in costs now when the payoff includes, say, a reduced probability of destructive storms a decade from now and half the world away? This indirectness made many of us pessimistic about the prospects for climate action. But Covid 19 suggests that we weren't pessimistic enough. After all, the consequences of irresponsible behavior during a pandemic are vastly more obvious and immediate than the costs of climate inaction. Gather a bunch of unmasked people indoors say, in the Trump White House and you're likely to see a spike in infections just a few weeks later. This spike will take place in your own neighborhood, quite possibly affecting people you know. Furthermore, it's a lot easier to discredit Covid deniers than it is to discredit climate change deniers: All you have to do is point out the many, many times these deniers falsely asserted that the disease was about to go away. So getting people to act responsibly on the coronavirus should be much easier than getting action on climate change. Yet what we see instead is widespread refusal to acknowledge the risks, accusations that cheap, common sense rules like wearing masks constitute "tyranny," and violent threats against public officials. So what do you think will happen when the Biden administration tries to make climate a priority? The one mitigating factor about the politics of climate policy I can see is that unlike fighting a pandemic, which is mainly about telling people what they can't do, it should be possible to frame at least some climate action as carrots rather than sticks: investing in a green future and creating new jobs in the process, rather than simply requiring that people accept new limits and pay higher prices. This is, by the way, possibly the biggest reason to hope that Democrats win those Georgia runoffs. Climate policy really needs to be sold as part of a package that also includes broader investment in infrastructure and job creation and that just won't happen if Mitch McConnell is still able to blockade legislation. Obviously we need to keep trying to head off a climate apocalypse and no, that's not hyperbole. But even though the 2020 election wasn't about climate, it was to some degree about the pandemic and the results make it hard to be optimistic about the future. 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.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Opinion
As "Crawl" works itself into a lather of bloodied limbs and frothing water, Aja whose slickly savage 2006 update of the Wes Craven cannibal classic, "The Hills Have Eyes," showcased his mastery of mood as well as grisliness delivers a smoothly efficient popcorn picture. The 'gators are gnarly, the manipulation of light and shade is impressive (the plucky cinematographer is Maxime Alexandre) and the claustrophobia is eased somewhat by a barreling pace and the odd check in with the outside world. Sometimes the critters like to go out for dinner. Yet while unlucky looters and a friendly cop are swiftly transformed into mangled entrees, our heroes repeatedly, and unconvincingly, resist being gobbled. And though Scodelario is spunky and game in what must have been an extremely uncomfortable shoot, the script (by the brothers Michael and Shawn Rasmussen) is airless and repetitive. Fans of rampaging reptile movies will fondly recall Greg McLean's tautly inventive "Rogue," which made magnificent use of its Australian Outback locations. Here, there's not nearly enough to distract us from that mucky basement and Haley and Dave's emotional healing, signaled by some of the hokiest dialogue this side of a Nicholas Sparks novel. The pair's matching tourniquets are doing a fine job stanching blood; let's not ask them to stem resentments as well. Rated R for busted bones, chewed corpses and an endangered doggy. Running time: 1 hour 27 minutes.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
KILLING EVE 9 p.m. on AMC and BBC America. The second season of this tantalizing thriller series ended with a bang. (Spoilers ahead.) Just when we thought the seductive yet lethal Villanelle (Jodie Comer) and the rogue MI6 agent Eve (Sandra Oh) were going to ride off into the sunset together, Villanelle shot Eve and left her for dead. At the outset of Season 3, which is debuting two weeks earlier than planned, we learn that Eve survived the shooting but is utterly broken. She takes a job at a Korean restaurant, seemingly wiping her hands clean of Eve, MI6 and The Twelve. Villanelle has a new love, but is clearly hung up on Eve. And in a change of pace, the show is peeling back the layers of her past, introducing us to her former Russian trainer (Harriet Walter) and revealing the traumas that left her coldhearted and alone. As for the rest of the characters, Kenny (Sean Delaney) has a new job, Carolyn (Fiona Shaw) feels sidelined at MI6 and Niko (Owen McDonnell) is on the mend. THIS IS STAND UP (2020) 10 p.m. on Comedy Central. Aspiring comics can learn a thing or two from the more than 100 comedians interviewed in this documentary, which takes a behind the scenes look at the world of comedy. Among the stars are Jamie Foxx, Tiffany Haddish and Jerry Seinfeld.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
New restaurants on and around Ocean Drive in Miami Beach usually housed in the latest branded boutique hotel with big name absentee chefs, high priced fusion menus and '80s decor are a dime a dozen. Then there's 27, a spot that opened in November just a few steps, but a world away, from that touristy, neon dotted strip. The difference in setting is immediately obvious: 27 resides in a classic Art Deco landmark built in the 1930s. Inside, instead of cold marble and garish lighting, the interior design firm Roman Williams has gone in a much more intimate direction with wood floorboards, candlelit tables and low ceilings that run through interlocking rooms; it feels as if you are visiting a private home for a stylish dinner party. On a recent Sunday night every table was taken and the bar was packed, but the vibe was unpretentious, with groups of young Miamians and couples on dates elbow to elbow on banquettes and benches. The complex also houses the owners' other big project, Freehand Miami: a hot spot hostel and a craft cocktail bar, the Broken Shaker. Elad Zvi, an owner, conceived of 27 as a place to capitalize on the region's ethnic diaspora. "We wanted a restaurant that reflected Miami and the people who live here, from the Latin American community to the Jewish," he said. "My partner is Colombian and I am from Israel and we wanted to have that sense of eating at home."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
The desperately ill patients who deluged the emergency room at Detroit Medical Center in March and April exhibited the telltale symptoms of the coronavirus: high fevers and infection riddled lungs that left them gasping for air. With few treatment options, doctors turned to a familiar intervention: broad spectrum antibiotics, the shot in the dark medications often used against bacterial infections that cannot be immediately identified. They knew antibiotics are not effective against viruses, but they were desperate, and they feared the patients could be vulnerable to life threatening secondary bacterial infections as well. "During the peak surge, our antibiotic use was off the charts," said Dr. Teena Chopra, the hospital's director of epidemiology and antibiotic stewardship, who estimated that more than 80 percent of arriving patients were given antimicrobial drugs. "At one point, we were afraid we would run out." Dr. Chopra said the doctors, and others across the country who liberally dispensed antibiotics in the early weeks of the pandemic, soon realized their mistake. "Many physicians were inappropriately giving antibiotics because, honestly, they had limited choices," she said. Now that the initial, terrifying flood of patients in hard hit cities has subsided, doctors across the United States are seeking to draw lessons from their overuse of antibiotics, a practice that can spur resistance to the lifesaving drugs as bacteria mutate and outsmart the drugs. Many critically ill patients on ventilators have developed serious secondary infections. But widespread fears that coronavirus patients were especially susceptible to drug resistant infections a concern first described in studies from China appear to have been misguided, according to interviews with researchers and more than a dozen doctors who have been treating patients with Covid 19. "The fears turned out to be overblown," said Dr. Bruce Farber, the chief of infectious diseases at Northwell Health, which has cared for thousands of coronavirus patients at its 23 hospitals in New York. For many doctors, the pandemic not only provides lessons about the judicious use of antibiotics, but it also highlights another global health threat that has been playing out in slow motion: the mounting threat of antimicrobial resistance that annually claims 700,000 lives as the world's arsenal of antibiotics and antifungal medication lose their ability to vanquish dangerous pathogens. In recent weeks, doctors, researchers and public health experts have been trying to turn the pandemic into a teaching moment. They warn that the same governmental inaction that helped foster the rapid, worldwide spread of the coronavirus may spur an even deadlier epidemic of drug resistant infections that the United Nations suggests may kill 10 million by 2050 if serious action isn't taken. Without new antibiotics, routine surgical procedures like knee replacements and cesarean sections could become unacceptably risky, and the ensuing health crisis could spur an economic downturn to rival the global financial meltdown of 2008, the U.N. report, released last year, said. "If there's anything that this Covid 19 pandemic has taught the world, it is that being prepared is more cost effective in the long run," said Dr. Jeffrey R. Strich, a researcher at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center and an author of a study published on Thursday in Lancet Infectious Diseases that seeks to quantify the growing need for new antibiotics to treat drug resistant infections. "Antimicrobial resistance is a problem we cannot afford to ignore." The pipeline for new antimicrobial drugs has become perilously dry. Over the past year, three American antibiotic developers with promising drugs have gone out of business, most of the world's pharmaceutical giants have abandoned the field and many of the remaining antibiotic start ups in the United States are facing an uncertain future. Such dreary financial realities are driving away investors at a time when new antimicrobial drugs are urgently needed. Who should get a booster shot? It depends, Dr. Scott Gottlieb says. Virginia's new lieutenant governor elect says she won't force vaccines. "I'm worried the remaining small biotech companies won't be here this time next year," said Greg Frank, director of Working to Fight AMR, an advocacy group funded by the pharmaceutical industry. "The longer we wait, the deeper in the hole we're in and the more expensive it's going to be to solve the problem." The crisis, many experts say, calls for robust government intervention. In a report published in March, the U.S. Government Accountability Office documented a piecemeal federal response to antimicrobial resistance and said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was hobbled in addressing the problem by a lack of basic data about drug resistant infections. As an example, it noted that the C.D.C. tracks less than 2 percent of the country's annual half million cases of drug resistant gonorrhea. The data doesn't even include cases affecting women. In addition to improved surveillance, the report recommended financial incentives for antibiotic makers as well as support for companies developing diagnostic tests that can quickly identify infections and enable doctors to prescribe the right drug. "The bottom line is we can do better, otherwise we're going to find ourselves facing a superbug that rivals the crisis posed by Covid 19," said Dr. Timothy M. Persons, the G.A.O.'s chief scientist and a lead author of the report. Legislation in Congress to address the broken antibiotics marketplace has failed to gain traction in recent years, but public health experts are hoping the coronavirus pandemic can help break the political logjam in Washington. "This isn't a political issue, it's not a problem for Republicans or Democrats it's a national security issue," said Dr. Helen Boucher, an infectious disease specialist at Tufts Medical Center, who is a member of the Presidential Advisory Council on Combating Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria. In the meantime, doctors fresh out of the trenches in cities walloped by the coronavirus are reappraising their overuse of antibiotics during the surge. Dr. Sudeb Dalai, an infectious disease specialist at Stanford University Hospital, said nearly every coronavirus patient he saw in those first months had been prescribed antibiotics some by private urgent care clinics they visited before worsening symptoms sent them to the emergency room. That impulse was not entirely unfounded, given the dearth of information about the disease and the medical literature on SARS, MERS and the Spanish flu of 1918 19 viral respiratory illnesses whose victims often succumbed during pandemics to opportunistic bacterial infections. Dr. Dalai recalled the sense of helplessness this spring as doctors scrambled to treat the mysterious pneumonias and spiking fevers. One of their first Covid 19 patients was an older man who had been showing signs of improvement and was ready for discharge when he took a sudden turn for the worse. Doctors put the man on a ventilator, but the fevers continued, prompting Dr. Dalai to prescribe several rounds of antibiotics during the five weeks he was intubated. "Each night I went to bed wondering if I had made the right treatment decisions, worried that he would get worse throughout the night, that he might not make it until morning," he said. The patient survived, but Dr. Dalai came to realize that antibiotics most likely played little role in his recovery. Still, without solid data, some doctors and researchers warn it is too soon to dismiss the dangers posed by bacterial and fungal co infections, especially among gravely ill coronavirus patients who can spend weeks in intensive care units. As their immune systems falter, drug resistant bacteria and fungi that bloom on hospital breathing tubes, catheters and intravenous lines can infiltrate the body and wreak havoc. Dr. Chopra of Detroit Medical Center estimated that up to a third of coronavirus patients who died at the hospital were killed by opportunistic pathogens like C. difficile, a pernicious infection that causes uncontrolled diarrhea and is increasingly resistant to antibiotics. That figure, she said, was quite likely heightened by the poor underlying health of patients who also had diabetes or hypertension or were obese. "Even before Covid hit, our population in Detroit was very vulnerable to drug resistant infections," said Dr. Chopra, a professor of infectious diseases at Wayne State University. In the nearby city of Ann Arbor, Dr. Valerie Vaughn, a hospitalist at Michigan Medicine who is studying antibiotic use in coronavirus patients, has been trying to make sense of the past few months and sharing best treatment practices through lectures posted online. In a review of more than 1,000 coronavirus cases across the state, she found that only 4 percent of patients admitted to the hospital had a bacterial co infection. Most patients were nonetheless given antibiotics soon after they arrived. "What the pandemic has shown us is that even when doctors know patients have a viral infection, they are still providing antibiotics," she said. "It's hard because doctors want to do something for their patients, even when it's not the right thing to do."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
Originally from Detroit, Stephanie Robb Alexander came to New York to study at the Fashion Institute of Technology. She lived in a fifth floor walk up in Murray Hill, sharing a one bedroom apartment converted to a two bedroom. "I saved all my extra money by having roommates, and did that for 13 years," said Ms. Alexander, who is now 46. In 2005, knowing she couldn't afford to buy a one bedroom apartment in Manhattan, she bought one in the Clinton Hill Co ops in Brooklyn for 250,000. She lived there for more than 10 years before deciding the market had mostly topped out "and this was my moment to buy something bigger," she said. Ms. Alexander, a luggage designer for a large apparel group, wanted both a front and backyard, with space to garden. Layout was important to her: The owner's duplex had to be on the bottom, so she could have the basement and garden to herself. Such a layout "really kicked a lot out of the mix, because it's traditionally done the other way around," she said. She intended to purchase one of the neighborhood's many renovated houses, bought within the last few years by developers, redone and flipped. Ms. Alexander skipped places where the construction seemed shoddy. "I was leery of buying a stucco job or a siding job, because I was concerned about what they were hiding," she said. "Some of these flips are not in the greatest condition, and you don't find out what the problems are until you've moved in." On the same block, she looked at a cute one family house, listed for 849,000, with a front parking spot and a paved back patio. She found some interior features unappealing, such as a huge whirlpool bathtub in a bathroom and low ceilings in the finished basement. Moreover, the block was a mishmash of houses and garages, rather than the quaint tree lined street she envisioned. And a two family seemed a better plan financially. Someone else bought the house for 825,000. A two family house on Lexington Avenue, for 1.195 million, had been beautifully redone, with exposed brick, recessed lighting and a deck overlooking the backyard. But here, too, the owner's duplex this one with skylights was on top. An empty lot was nearby, and Ms. Alexander didn't want to risk the arrival of a construction project. "She was more looking for the charming townhouse style, not necessarily the 'wow' this one had," Ms. Fuentes said. The place sold for the asking price. Ms. Alexander was intrigued by an attractive townhouse with bay windows for 1.249 million. The layout was right, with the three bedroom owner's duplex on the garden and parlor floors, and a two bedroom rental on top. The house felt homey. Some of the interior detail had been stripped, and not everything was to her taste. She would have chosen one large bathroom over two small ones. Both units lacked dishwashers and central air conditioning probably because the developer assumed the house would be rented out, Ms. Fuentes said. But Ms. Alexander was willing to compromise. And the block, almost fully residential, was pleasant, with many houses with gardens in both front and back. Ms. Alexander visited her prospective purchase several times, including after a rainstorm to check for flooding or leaks. Every time, she ended up striking up a conversation with a neighbor. "The neighbors are very interested in what's going on. You're anonymous in a big co op, but here you know your neighbors." She concluded, "I could be happy here." The price, however, was over her budget. Ms. Fuentes negotiated, and Ms. Alexander ultimately paid just over 1.16 million. Her Clinton Hill co op sold, after one open house, for 516,000. Ms. Alexander arrived in her new home in late winter. She immediately found herself "freaked out just because it's a huge change, going from living in an apartment to owning and living in a house," she said. "A house is bigger. There's more cleaning." And more stairs, too, constituting "a different way of moving around from room to room." Her first project was hanging mailboxes. "I couldn't get mail until I had a mailbox," Ms. Alexander said, so she hefted her drill and figured out what to do. She has more living space but less closet space than before, so "I got rid of probably a third of my stuff," she said. "I wanted to downsize anyway." She is still working on the backyard, having discovered construction debris under piles of dirt. The house "hasn't been perfect, but it hasn't been catastrophic either," she said. "But who buys a house that is perfect? It's kind of this ongoing adventure." To her surprise, she said, "Brooklyn has a bazillion mosquitoes. I haven't been that close to nature, without leaving the city, for years." But she also gets to "drink coffee in the morning and hear birds sing." She has met even more neighbors, some of whom occupy the houses their grandparents once did. "It's nice living where people watch out for each other," she said. "I've never had that experience in the entire time I've lived in New York."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
WASHINGTON The top United States trade negotiator said Monday that it was unclear whether Canada, Mexico and the United States could reach a deal to overhaul the North American Free Trade Agreement within the ambitious timetable set by the Trump administration. In remarks ahead of a third round of talks beginning on Saturday in Ottawa, Robert Lighthizer, the United States trade representative, said negotiators were "moving at warp speed, but we don't know whether we're going to get to a conclusion, that's the problem." "We're running very quickly somewhere," Mr. Lighthizer said in a rare question and answer session at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington based think tank. The Trump administration has carved out a narrow path to victory on Nafta, pledging to hammer out substantial changes in a matter of months to a sweeping pact governing most of the North American economy. In the coming round, negotiators are hoping to forge progress as they discuss specific proposals to address some areas of disagreement for the first time. But reaching an accord looks increasingly difficult as the administration continues to push for ambitious changes that rankle Mexican and Canadian counterparts. Those include setting new requirements for the use of American made goods and lowering barriers to exporting American agricultural products. The White House is particularly eager to show progress on the trade agenda one of President Trump's signature campaign issues given the failure of Congress to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act and the uncertainty about tax reform. For a new Nafta pact to be approved by lawmakers in the three countries, negotiators say it needs to be largely concluded by the end of the year. They fear approval could be complicated by a series of events, including Mexico's presidential election on July 1, 2018, midterm elections in the United States and provincial elections in Canada. Legislation authorizing Congress to pass a trade deal with a simple up or down vote is also scheduled to expire in July. "The political calendar is such that if we don't get a deal more or less by the end of the year... it will get harder and harder," Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who helps lead the trade agenda, said last week. Jeff Bezos gives 100 million to the Obama Foundation. Stocks rise after President Biden says Jerome Powell will stay atop the Fed. New proposals by the Trump administration are adding pressure to the already complex negotiations. Last week, Mr. Ross told an audience that the administration was considering adding a "sunset clause" to the North American pact. Under such a measure, the agreement would terminate after five years unless all three countries voted to continue it. Canadian officials and business community representatives have expressed concern about a temporary pact. David MacNaughton, Canada's ambassador to the United States, criticized the provision. "If every marriage had a five year sunset clause, I think our divorce rate would be a heck of a lot higher than it is right now," he said. Chad Bown, a trade analyst at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said a sunset provision would create so much uncertainty that businesses might end up ignoring Nafta altogether in their planning. It can take years for businesses to recoup the returns from investments, by which time Nafta might no longer exist. A Canadian government official briefed on the negotiations, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that Canadians were surprised by the proposal. Mexican officials could not immediately be reached for comment.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Economy
Kathryn DeWitt conquered high school like a gold medal decathlete. She ran track, represented her school at a statewide girls' leadership program and took eight Advanced Placement tests, including one for which she independently prepared, forgoing the class. Expectations were high. Every day at 5 p.m. test scores and updated grades were posted online. Her mother would be the first to comment should her grade go down. "I would get home from track and she would say, 'I see your grade dropped.' I would say, 'Mom, I think it's a mistake.' And she would say, 'That's what I thought.' " (The reason turned out to be typing errors. Ms. DeWitt graduated with straight A's.) In her first two weeks on the University of Pennsylvania campus, she hustled. She joined a coed fraternity, signed up to tutor elementary school students and joined the same Christian group her parents had joined at their alma mater, Stanford. But having gained admittance off the wait list and surrounded by people with seemingly greater drive and ability, she had her first taste of self doubt. "One friend was a world class figure skater. Another was a winner of the Intel science competition. Everyone around me was so spectacular and so amazing and I wanted to be just as amazing as they are." Classmates seemed to have it all together. Every morning, the administration sent out an email blast highlighting faculty and student accomplishments. Some women attended class wearing full makeup. Ms. DeWitt had acne. They talked about their fantastic internships. She was still focused on the week's homework. Friends' lives, as told through selfies, showed them having more fun, making more friends and going to better parties. Even the meals they posted to Instagram looked more delicious. Her confidence took another hit when she glanced at the cellphone screen of a male student sitting next to her who was texting that he would "rather jump out of a plane" than talk to his seatmate. When, on Jan. 17, 2014, Madison Holleran, another Penn freshman, jumped off the top of a parking garage and killed herself, Ms. DeWitt was stunned. She had never met Ms. Holleran, but she knew the student was popular, attractive and talented. In a blog post soon afterward, Ms. DeWitt would write: "What the hell, girl?! I was supposed to be the one who went first! You had so much to live for!" Despite her cheery countenance and assiduous completion of assignments, Ms. DeWitt had already bought razor blades and written a stack of goodbye letters to loved ones. Ms. Holleran was the third of six Penn students to commit suicide in a 13 month stretch, and the school is far from the only one to experience a so called suicide cluster. This school year, Tulane lost four students and Appalachian State at least three the disappearance in September of a freshman, Anna M. Smith, led to an 11 day search before she was found in the North Carolina woods, hanging from a tree. Cornell faced six suicides in the 2009 10 academic year. In 2003 4, five New York University students leapt to their deaths. While the appellation is unique to Penn, the behavior is not. In 2003, Duke jolted academe with a report describing how its female students felt pressure to be "effortlessly perfect": smart, accomplished, fit, beautiful and popular, all without visible effort. At Stanford, it's called the Duck Syndrome. A duck appears to glide calmly across the water, while beneath the surface it frantically, relentlessly paddles. "Nobody wants to be the one who is struggling while everyone else is doing great," said Kahaari Kenyatta, a Penn senior who once worked as an orientation counselor. "Despite whatever's going on if you're stressed, a bit depressed, if you're overwhelmed you want to put up this positive front." Citing a "perception that one has to be perfect in every academic, cocurricular and social endeavor," the task force report described how students feel enormous pressure that "can manifest as demoralization, alienation or conditions like anxiety or depression." William Alexander, director of Penn's counseling and psychological services, has watched a shift in how some young adults cope with challenges. "A small setback used to mean disappointment, or having that feeling of needing to try harder next time," he said. Now? "For some students, a mistake has incredible meaning." Meeta Kumar, who has been counseling at Penn for 16 years, has noticed the same change. Getting a B can cause some students to fall apart, she said. "What you and I would call disappointments in life, to them feel like big failures." As the elder child of a civil engineer and preschool teacher in San Mateo, Calif., Ms. DeWitt, now 20, has understood since kindergarten that she was expected to attend an elite college. While she says her parents are not overbearing, she relishes their praise for performing well. "Hearing my parents talk about me in a positive way, or hearing other parents talk about their kids doing well in academics or extracurriculars, that's where I got some of the expectations for myself," she said. "It was like self fulfillment: I'd feel fulfilled and happy when other people were happy with what I'm doing, or expectations they have are met." Penn had felt like a long shot but was her top choice. When she was admitted off the wait list in June 2013, she made a pact with herself not to squander the precious opportunity. Over that summer, she studied the course catalog, and decided that declaring a major early would help her plan more efficiently. She chose math, envisioning a teaching career. "I'm a person who lives by a schedule," she said. "I have a plan for maybe the next two years, next three years, maybe five years." And so she had made a plan for making her life turn out the way she thought it was supposed to. "I had the idea that I was going to find this nice Christian boyfriend at college and settle down and live the life my parents had led," she said. But there was the issue of her sexuality. Several times in high school she had found herself attracted to other girls, but believing her parents and church did not fully accept homosexuality, she had pushed aside those feelings. Her resolve was strengthened when her father sat her down for a heartfelt speech about how proud he was of her getting into Penn and of the direction her life was going. "Tears rolling down his face, he said, 'Kathryn, the reason I'm living is to pass you off to your husband.' " Now, upon noticing a cute girl in her dorm, she had a terrifying realization: "I couldn't deny it anymore." Then came a crushing blow: a score in the low 60s on her calculus midterm. The class was graded on a curve, but surely she would fail it, she thought, dooming her plan to major in math and to teach. "I had a picture of my future, and as that future deteriorated," she said, "I stopped imagining another future." The pain of being less than what she thought she ought to be was unbearable. The only way out, she reasoned with the twisted logic of depression, was death. She researched whether the university returned tuition to parents of students who die by suicide, and began cutting herself to "prepare" for the pain. The existential question "Why am I here?" is usually followed by the equally confounding "How am I doing?" In 1954, the social psychologist Leon Festinger put forward the social comparison theory, which posits that we try to determine our worth based on how we stack up against others. In the era of social media, such comparisons take place on a screen with carefully curated depictions that don't provide the full picture. Mobile devices escalate the comparisons from occasional to nearly constant. Gregory T. Eells, director of counseling and psychological services at Cornell University, believes social media is a huge contributor to the misperception among students that peers aren't also struggling. When students remark during a counseling session that everyone else on campus looks happy, he tells them: "I walk around and think, 'That one's gone to the hospital. That person has an eating disorder. That student just went on antidepressants.' As a therapist, I know that nobody is as happy or as grown up as they seem on the outside." Madison Holleran's suicide provided what might be the ultimate contrast between a shiny Instagram feed and interior darkness. Ms. Holleran posted images that show her smiling, dappled in sunshine or kicking back at a party. But according to her older sister, Ashley, Madison judged her social life as inferior to what she saw in the online posts of her high school friends. An hour before she killed herself, she posted a dreamy final photo of white holiday lights twinkling in the trees of Rittenhouse Square. Where the faulty comparisons become dangerous is when a student already carries feelings of shame, according to Dr. Anthony L. Rostain, a pediatric psychiatrist on Penn's faculty who was co chairman of the task force on student psychological health and welfare. "Shame is the sense one has of being defective or, said another way, not good enough," Dr. Rostain said. "It isn't that one isn't doing well. It's that 'I am no good.'" Instead of thinking "I failed at something, these students think, 'I am a failure.'" America's culture of hyperachievement among the affluent has been under scrutiny for at least the last decade, but recent suicide clusters, including the deaths of three high school students and one recent graduate in Palo Alto, Calif., have renewed the debate. "In the Name of College! What Are We Doing to Our Children?" blared a Huffington Post headline in March. Around the same time, the New York Times columnist Frank Bruni published "Where You Go Is Not Who You'll Be: An Antidote to the College Admissions Mania," which he was inspired to write after years of observing the insanity surrounding the process not only among students but also their parents. Numerous other alarms have been sounded over helicopter parenting, and how it robs children of opportunities to develop independence and resiliency, thereby crippling them emotionally later in life. These cultural dynamics of perfectionism and overindulgence have now combined to create adolescents who are ultra focused on success but don't know how to fail. Beginning in 2002, when she became dean of freshmen at Stanford, Julie Lythcott Haims watched the collision of these two social forces up close. In meetings with students, she would ask what she considered simple questions and they would become paralyzed, unable to express their desires and often discovering midconversation that they were on a path that they didn't even like. "They could say what they'd accomplished, but they couldn't necessarily say who they were," said Ms. Lythcott Haims. She was also troubled by the growing number of parents who not only stayed in near constant cellphone contact with their offspring but also showed up to help them enroll in classes, contacted professors and met with advisers (illustrating the progression from helicopter to lawn mower parents, who go beyond hovering to clear obstacles out of their child's way). But what she found most disconcerting was that students, instead of being embarrassed, felt grateful. Penn researchers studying friendship have found that students' best friends aren't classmates or romantic partners, but parents. Eventually she came to view her students' lack of self awareness, inability to make choices and difficulty coping with setbacks as a form of "existential impotence," a direct result of a well meaning but misguided approach to parenting that focuses too heavily on external measures of character. In June, Ms. Lythcott Haims, who left Stanford in 2012, published a book on the subject, "How to Raise an Adult: Break Free of the Overparenting Trap and Prepare Your Kid for Success." These observations echo those made by the psychologist Alice Miller in her seminal book for therapists, "The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self." In the book, published in 1979 and translated into 30 languages, Ms. Miller documents how some especially intelligent and sensitive children can become so attuned to parents' expectations that they do whatever it takes to fulfill those expectations at the expense of their own feelings and needs. This can lead to emotional emptiness and isolation. "In what is described as depression and experienced as emptiness, futility, fear of impoverishment, and loneliness," she wrote, "can usually be recognized as the tragic loss of the self in childhood." Ms. DeWitt had said goodbye and provided explanations to close friends and relatives on pink rose adorned paper, stacked up neatly on her desk. Her roommate noticed that she had stopped eating after Madison Holleran's suicide, expressed concern and invited conversation. During an hourlong discussion, Ms. DeWitt disclosed how she had been contemplating suicide, but she pretended those feelings had gone away. To make sure her denial was convincing, she tossed the letters in the recycling bin. But when the roommate returned hours later, she discovered that the letters had been taken out of the trash, and she told a resident adviser, who contacted the house dean. The dean insisted that Ms. DeWitt go for counseling. She did, and was immediately hospitalized. After lots of counseling, a leave of absence and an internship at the headquarters of Active Minds, a nonprofit youth mental health advocacy group in Washington, D.C., Ms. DeWitt returned to campus in January. Elite colleges often make it difficult for students to take time off, and readmission is not always guaranteed, something frequently cited as a deterrent to getting help (Yale eased its policy in April after a student's suicide note expressed anguish over readmission). Other elite schools are likewise examining the issue. When Ms. DeWitt's mother came to visit her in the hospital, one of the first things she brought up was the readmittance process. Both of Ms. DeWitt's parents confirmed the contents of this article but declined to provide comments beyond expressing their love and support and saying, in a jointly written email, "Her courage and resilience have been a real blessing and example to us. We want to give Kathryn the opportunity to tell her own story." Ms. DeWitt has tried to forge a new path for herself that is kinder and more forgiving. Rather than stay involved with the Christian group favored by her parents, she joined the progressive minded Christian Association and the Queer Christian Fellowship, where she feels comfortable talking about her newly found identity as a lesbian. She was among the first students to write openly about her emotional state for Pennsive, a blog started to create "a safe space for Penn students to better understand and openly discuss issues regarding mental health." Other efforts at Penn include the formation of a peer counseling program, to start in the fall, and the posting of "ugly selfies" to Instagram and Facebook, a perfectionism backlash movement that took place for a few weeks earlier this year. Nationally, researchers from 10 universities have joined forces to study resiliency, and the Jed and Clinton Health Matters Campus Program has enlisted 90 schools to help develop mental health and wellness programs. Active Minds, which was founded at Penn in 2001, now has more than 400 chapters, including ones at community colleges and high schools. Ms. DeWitt is the Penn chapter's webmaster. These days, Ms. DeWitt's lime green watch covers up a scar where she had cut herself. But she is less concerned about covering up her true self. She has confessed her sexual feelings to her parents. They are working on acceptance. "My mom is there," Ms. DeWitt said. "My dad is still working on it." Having made it through her first year the 60 something on her calculus midterm, graded on a curve, ended up netting her an A minus she has become a lot more relaxed about her grades, her life and her future. "I'm probably going to major in psychology," she said. Her career plans are up in the air, an uncertainty that would have been intolerable to her former self. "I need some experience before I make the decision. It's nice to have the freedom not to know."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Education
Tishani Doshi's third novel begins with a homecoming and the sensorial onslaught such a trip entails. Landing in Madras, in South India, the protagonist, Grace, braces herself for its "heavy, sweaty air, which smells of something that was once sweet, now rotting." Soon she's sitting in a rickety taxi, as if she were in "the belly of a whale on the crazy seas of the Tamil Nadu highways," jolting and swerving on her way to her mother's house. As she approaches, Grace recalls how her mother fell in love with her father, an acousticophobic Italian, whom she eventually left for a spiritual guru. Readers ready themselves for a whirlwind of a woman to open the front door once the car pulls up at its destination. But Doshi has other plans for this character: "My mother," Grace announces, "is in her bedroom in a freezer box on the floor." "Small Days and Nights" is about a woman whose mother's death prompts her to leave her unhappy married life in America and rebuild her home and family back in India. First, Grace inherits an overgrown property on the beach. Then, discovering that her parents had a second daughter whom they never told her about, Grace brings the girl to this big, breezy home. Lucia, who has Down syndrome, is both sister and child to Grace. The woman who studiously refused to have children with her husband now becomes a full time caregiver. Her mother's house, with its gate that never locks properly, influences Grace to abandon her sparse Western life for a lush wildness only India can provide. As the title suggests, the story builds, one daily routine, one daily detail at a time. But Doshi treats this everydayness like the beach on which Grace lives: as a back and forth proposition, constantly in motion, always shifting slightly. Every day Lucia is a little different; every few months the local dogs have more puppies; every so often the village politics flare up and spatter across Grace's garden. The effect is that the tide's push and pull settle into a horizon, a plotline that's both repetitive and linear. "Small Days and Nights" thrives on these pushes and pulls, allowing opposites to coexist. A corpse in a freezer box feels alive and eccentric. A lifelong family secret turns into a forthright responsibility. Grace's urban friends seem more rustic than the village children. The novel's marine backdrop is "beautiful, but somehow posed with certain dangers."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
SOMETIMES the hardest part of being a philanthropist is saying no particularly if the request comes from worthy organizations or equally well heeled friends. "We start from a place of empathy," said Susan Wolf Ditkoff, partner and co head of the philanthropy practice at the Bridgespan Group, a consultancy. "It's hard to say no to someone working on a worthy cause." But saying no is sometimes necessary, and how philanthropists say it can clarify their mission and even help the rejected organization. In some instances, no comes after yes. Carrie Morgridge, vice president of the Morgridge Family Foundation and the author of "Every Gift Matters: How Your Passion Can Change the World," said her family's foundation often makes three year gifts to groups working in education, health, the arts and the environment. But she said she told organizations at the outset that three meant three. "We're often asked, 'Can't you just do Year 4?'" she said. "We say, 'No, that's part of our agreement.' When we say no, we try to guide them to the resources in the other foundations and the other resources in the sector." A no like that should be expected. Other times an organization can become complacent with the grants it gets year after year. Rudolph G. Andrea, president of the Andrea Mennen Family Foundation, said his foundation had put organizations on hiatus when they lost touch and then suddenly asked for more money as if they had been in contact all along. He said this happened recently when he mentioned the lack of communication from an organization to the organization's former executive director. Her successor called within 48 hours. He figured he would have never received that call had he not said something. "I took the position that right now you're out of the rotation," Mr. Andrea said. "That's the tough part when you have a relationship that was great." Most of the time, though, the no comes before a relationship has been established. John Oddy, senior philanthropic director at Foundation Source, recently wrote "Just Say No: The Art of the Turndown," a white paper that outlines the best ways to reject requests. At the top of his list is to be direct but compassionate with organizations. "Part of giving them the news is allowing them to feel like they've done everything they could to the extent that you can validate their cause or their effort while at the same time saying this isn't a great fit," he said. "You have to be firm but compassionate." Marianne Philbin, executive director of the Pierce Family Foundation in Chicago and also a lecturer on philanthropic issues, says that as hard as saying no can be for philanthropists, it doesn't get easier with time. "The earlier you can make a decline for legitimate reasons, the less painful it is for everybody," she said. "The sooner you can establish is there a fit here or not, the more respectful you are of everyone's time." The Pierce foundation, she said, focuses on funding services for the homeless in Chicago but more specifically on making grants to help organizations with operating expenses. She said having such a specific screen limits most of the applications that would be outside the scope of what it would fund. "When declines are the most difficult is when an agency is taken through a laborious process that takes up time from board members and staff and the C.E.O. and it still comes out with a no," she said. "It is much more difficult than working with a foundation that has a very fine screen at the front end so the grant seeker can find out sooner rather than later if there's a real possibility there." Ms. Ditkoff said she had one philanthropic client who was brutally honest in his rejections. "He says, 'I don't want to beat around the bush. This isn't something I'd invest in. I could waste your time by sending you to my executive director and waste her time as well.'" That kind of bluntness isn't the norm, she said. Yet no, if presented in the right light, can be helpful to an organization. Melissa Beck, executive director of Educational Foundation of America, which gives money to arts, environmental and reproductive rights organizations, said she often focused on the reason behind a no and how it could benefit an organization. "We're dedicated to the areas we fund," Ms. Beck said. "'No' is an opportunity to strengthen an organization." "No one benefits when there's a gloss put on a rejection," she added. "If the foundation is dedicated to their strategy, having a really frank strategic discussion could lead to a fresh conversation." And this is where no might mean maybe or yes later. Charlene Wood, whose father started an amusement park and several restaurants and hotels in the Lake George area of New York, said her family foundation, Charles R. Wood Foundation, focused on organizations supporting children, the arts and health care within a two hour radius of Lake George. She said grants ranged from 2,000 to over 1 million. When an organization that she likes gets turned down, she will often offer a suggestion. "Sometimes, it's a gray area" and the board will discuss it, she said. "Sometimes, we go back to them and ask them to come back to us. We might ask them to come back with a children's program." And how should the organization that has been turned down react? "If someone says no, act graciously, and ask, 'What do I need to do to turn this into a yes?'" Ms. Morgridge said. "I say, 'Go to one of my other partners, have lunch with them and ask them.' No is a soft no when done right." Then there is the no that comes when philanthropists are asked by their friends or peers for donations to their own charities. Mr. Oddy said this forces the turndown to be more nuanced because it is a conversation between what he called "social and net worth peers." For philanthropists with private foundations, he often recommends they send the request to the board. When the request is rejected, the philanthropist can blame the board. Of course, this tactic is fairly transparent. At that point, he said, people need to show they care about that cause or honor. "You could say, 'The foundation won't support it, but I'll personally come to the benefit where you're being honored to show you that I care about you and your cause,'" he said. "But make it clear that you're not going to be ongoing funders." Ms. Ditkoff tried to put this type of giving into perspective. "Sometimes, you're going to say yes to something because you really care about it," she said. "Or sometimes, it's a business associate or an alma mater. Just name that and be honest about it." But however they handle requests, every philanthropist has to say no at some point. "Declining worthy projects is part of the package," Ms. Philbin said. "The how is an expression of your values and it also can be an expression of support and respect for the agencies coming to you for help, even if you're not able to supply a grant."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Your Money
In December 2006, the Federal Aviation Administration allowed Airbus, the European plane maker, to use 14 ounce lithium ion batteries to provide standby power for the emergency lighting system of its new A380 jumbo jet. Ten months later, the agency allowed Boeing to use the same volatile type of battery on its new 787 plane. But in Boeing's case, the batteries weighed 63 pounds each, were to be used in critical flight systems as well as to provide backup power, and would be charged and discharged much more often. Yet the agency's ruling used identical language it could have been just cut and pasted in laying out the broad safeguards for using the batteries that it had given Airbus to follow. The use of lithium batteries in the 787 is at the center of the difficulties involving Boeing. The plane maker has staked its reputation on the success of the 787, an aircraft it nicknamed the Dreamliner. All 50 787s delivered to airlines worldwide were grounded last week until investigators in the United States and Japan find out why two lithium batteries failed in recent weeks, causing a fire on one 787 and damage to another that led to an emergency landing. It also raises fundamental questions about how federal regulators certify new technology and how they balance advances in airplane design and engineering with ensuring safety in commercial flying. In addition to finding out what went wrong, these issues will be examined in a federal investigation and at future Senate hearings. When it approved Boeing's request in 2007, the F.A.A. said it had limited experience with the use of lithium ion batteries in commercial airplanes, though it acknowledged that the batteries themselves were more prone to fire than traditional nickel cadmium or lead acid batteries. Still, the agency approved the technology on the assumption that Boeing could make the batteries work and that computer controls could prevent batteries from overcharging or overheating. The agency also specified that any fire or toxic leak be contained and not damage any surrounding electrical systems. At the same time, the agency brushed off concerns raised in 2006 and 2007 by the Air Line Pilots Association that a fire in flight would be difficult to extinguish and that flight crews should be given extra training. "We have concluded that providing a means for controlling or extinguishing a fire such as stopping the flow of fluids, shutting down equipment, or fireproof equipment" was an "adequate alternative to requiring the flight or cabin crew to use extinguishing agents," the agency said in its 2006 decision about the Airbus A380. Experts said that regardless of the cause of the 787's problems, the charred remains of the battery that caught fire earlier this month in a plane in Boston raised the question of whether the safeguards functioned properly. On Wednesday, the National Transportation Safety Board, which is investigating the battery fire in Boston, said that all eight cells in the battery had sustained "varying degrees of thermal damage." Six of them have been scanned and disassembled for further examination. Many battery experts said they viewed Boeing's decision to use lithium ion batteries as a reasonable one and pointed out that lithium ion batteries had also been used in expensive space satellites since around 2000 without serious problems. They said that track record would have added to the confidence Boeing and federal regulators had about using them in commercial airliners. Jay F. Whitacre, an associate professor of engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, said GS Yuasa, the Japanese company that built the 787 batteries, told the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in a 2008 presentation that it had already supplied batteries for six satellites and had contracts for 50 more. GS Yuasa also said that its satellite batteries had never had a shorting incident in more than 10 years of production. "That's pretty compelling," Professor Whitacre said. "If I had all that data and saw that they were making batteries for 50 more satellites, I'd say that was a reasonable risk to take. My sense is that Boeing did a fairly decent job of picking the right company." Kevin Spacey was ordered to pay 31 million to the 'House of Cards' studio after sexual harassment allegations. Netflix buys a visual effects company in a move to support its global ambitions. But another battery expert, Donald Sadoway, a materials chemistry professor at M.I.T., disagreed. He said that sticking with an older type of battery instead of the lighter lithium battery would not have made a huge difference to the 787, adding about 40 pounds, or the equivalent of an extra suitcase per battery. With plane makers pushing the envelope on new technology, safety experts have questioned whether federal regulators had the expertise or the manpower to properly oversee those developments. Michael P. Huerta, the F.A.A.'s administrator, on Wednesday defended his agency's handling of the process as well as its expertise to assess new technology in airplanes. The agency, he said, also has the ability to call in outside experts, if needed. He added that federal regulators would not lift the 787's grounding order until they had fully reviewed its critical systems and understood why the batteries had failed. "Aviation from its very beginning has stretched technological boundaries," Mr. Huerta told reporters. "For more than five decades, the F.A.A. has compiled a proven track record of safely introducing new technology and new aircraft." He added, "We have the ability to establish rigorous safety standards and to make sure that aircraft meet them." Lithium ion batteries have many advantages over traditional batteries. They are lighter, can be recharged faster and more often, and provide substantially more power than other batteries of the same size. For that reason, lithium ion cells have become the norm in rechargeable consumer electronics. But in 2006, manufacturing defects in some batteries that caused them to catch fire led computer makers to recall nearly 10 million laptops Safety regulators, however, were more worried about the instances when the batteries caught fire in the cargo hold of an aircraft, or while being carried by passengers. Federal authorities in 2004 prohibited nonrechargeable lithium ion batteries from being transported aboard passenger planes as cargo. That ruling was reinforced in August 2007, just two months before the Boeing request was approved. There were 132 safety problems involving batteries carried by passengers or in cargo holds from March 1991 to October 2012, according to the F.A.A. Professor Whitacre of Carnegie Mellon said that even though laptop battery packs were banned as loose cargo, that did not mean that lithium ion batteries could not be used safely when integrated into the plane's electrical system with computerized controls and other measures. F.A.A. officials said they oversaw Boeing's laboratory tests of the new batteries. Boeing has said that its military business had begun a program to select lithium ion batteries for its satellites in 2003 and that its engineers felt they understood the potential hazards. Mike Sinnett, Boeing's top engineer on the 787 program, said recently that the company had built a system with multiple layers of protection that it thought would keep the batteries from overheating and contain any problem. The computerized controls are supposed to shut down the battery if it develops a problem, and the battery is supposed to keep a short in any one of its eight cells from spreading to the others. If any fumes or flames escape, Boeing said, the pressurized air system will help keep smoke out of the cabin and vent it outside. But neither the F.A.A. nor Boeing made any changes with the 787 when Cessna replaced the lithium ion batteries on its CJ4 business jet with nickel cadmium ones after a battery fire in October 2011, three weeks before the first 787 made its inaugural airline flight. "It is reasonable to understand their risk and put in engineering design to make up for these risks," said Jeffrey P. Chamberlain, a battery expert at the Argonne National Laboratory. "I will remind you that the wings are full of jet fuel. And the same thing for the car you drive all day. In general, when you adopt a new technology, is it good to account for risk. The reverse would be terrifying."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Global Business
WASHINGTON Aaron Judge, the Yankees' star outfielder, had been waiting for this day for nine months. Even this week, he insisted the Yankees' season ending loss to the Houston Astros in Game 6 of last year's American League Championship Series still bothered him. "Just remember this feeling, remember this silence, this emptiness, and just use it as fuel," Judge said in his address to the team in a somber clubhouse following the loss last October. He added later, "You don't want this feeling again. What can we do different to prepare the right way so that outcome doesn't happen?" Judge and his teammates could not have predicted at the time that their preparations would be interrupted by a pandemic, with players forced to train on their own for weeks before returning for an unprecedented summer training camp and an opening day in July. Still, despite the four month delay and the potential randomness that awaits in a 60 game regular season or expanded playoffs, the Yankees' goal is, once again the same: To win a championship and end a title drought that extends to 2009 an eternity in the Yankees' world. But hours before the Yankees toppled the defending champion Washington Nationals, 4 1, in a rain shortened season opener Thursday night, baseball received a stark reminder of the precariousness of playing amid the coronavirus pandemic: Juan Soto, the 21 year old Nationals' star outfielder, tested positive for the virus, on a sample collected on Tuesday, and was held out of Washington's opening day lineup. He must record two negative tests at least 24 hours apart before he can return. Soto was asymptomatic, Nationals General Manager Mike Rizzo told reporters, and no other players were unavailable to take the field on Thursday after contact tracing had been conducted. But Nationals Manager Dave Martinez was still leery: He told reporters before the game that those who had the closest contact with Soto were tested on Thursday morning and will be again on Friday. None Everyone Loves Ohtani: The Angels' two way star was a unanimous pick for A.L. M.V.P. and his superfans redefine devotion. Phillie Phavorite: Bryce Harper truly committed to Philadelphia and now he's back on top of baseball, winning the N.L. M.V.P. Cy Young Winners: Milwaukee's Corbin Burnes and Toronto's Robbie Ray had hit rock bottom before they worked their way up to stardom. Baseball Is Stuck in Neutral: The potential of a lockout has a star studded group of free agents waiting for the dust to settle. Free Agency Tracker: Get the latest updates on signings, contract extensions and trades. "I'm a little bit more concerned now until we get our next results back and everybody tests negative," he said. Boone said he was shocked to hear Soto had tested positive. He reminded some Yankees players and coaches to be even more careful about being near their Nationals' counterparts before the game. But he said there was "no hesitation" about continuing with the game. The Yankees have had cases in their own ranks, as well: The star infielder D.J. LeMahieu and pitcher Luis Cessa recently rejoined the team after a few weeks away because of positive tests, and closer Aroldis Chapman remains out. While M.L.B. implemented extensive health and safety protocols with every other day testing for players and coaches, and saw relatively few cases during summer workouts, the true test will come as teams begin traveling albeit less than before including into hot spots like Florida, Georgia and Texas. "There's definitely some unknown," Yankees pitcher J.A. Happ said. "I think players across the league, specifically our team, are prepared to try to do what it takes to be as safe as possible." The absences of one of the game's top young sluggers (Soto) and one of its best relievers (Chapman) in the season opener only underscored the bizarre nature of the 2020 campaign. Fans will be absent, at least to start the season, and any results and records may always be seen as requiring an asterisk in the record books because of the shortened schedule. But that doesn't make the possible prize any less sweeter to the Yankees. "There is only going to be only one coronavirus World Series champion," Yankees starter Gerrit Cole said earlier this month. "I don't see why you wouldn't want to take that trophy home." The Yankees have many reasons to be confident. They took a 103 win team and added to it in big and small ways. Chief among them: lavishing 324 million on Cole, arguably the best pitcher in baseball. In a debut a lifetime in the making, Cole allowed one run over five innings, outdueling Nationals ace Max Scherzer. The game was called just before 11 p.m. after a two hour rain delay. Over the winter, the Yankees also hired a new catching coach, whom they hope will further improve Gary Sanchez's defense, and a new pitching coach, whom they believe will modernize their instruction. They overhauled their health and performance staff, bringing in new experts after setting a major league record last season with 30 players landing on the injured list. "That's what separates the good teams from great teams: the little things," Judge said, adding later, "As a team, we took that to heart and made a lot of changes and improvements." The Yankees benefited from the hiatus perhaps more than any other team in baseball on the roster front, with several players recovering from existing injuries. That may prove critical in an abbreviated season in which every game counts nearly three times as much as usual. "A smaller sample size creates more opportunity for a good team to be bad and a bad team to be good," General Manager Brian Cashman said. If the season had started as originally planned in late March, the Yankees would have been without pitchers James Paxton (back surgery) and Luis Severino (Tommy John surgery), and outfielders Judge (broken rib), Giancarlo Stanton (calf strain) and Aaron Hicks (Tommy John surgery). All except Severino are on the opening day roster, an accomplishment for a team that had Judge, Hicks and Stanton in the same lineup only five times last year, including the playoffs. On Thursday, Stanton drove in three runs, including a two run blast off Scherzer in the first inning.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
Naudia West is a case manger for vulnerable populations who has been in social services since 2010. She works two jobs, has two kids at home and just finished her master's degree in social work.Credit...Leah Nash for The New York Times Naudia West is a case manger for vulnerable populations who has been in social services since 2010. She works two jobs, has two kids at home and just finished her master's degree in social work. Women's shift into paid employment in the 20th century was one of the great economic transformations in recent history. Families began buying goods such as convenience foods, vacuum cleaners and microwaves to substitute for women's unpaid labor at home. That shift in what households buy was a primary reason for the post World War II boom in economic growth in the United States and other rich countries. In the United States, this transition started in the early 1960s, when just over four in 10 American women went out to work, and continued until 1997, when the proportion reached just over six in 10. The shift was even more pronounced in some other Western economies. Women's employment rate stabilized in the United States but has continued to increase elsewhere, reaching nearly seven in 10 in the other major world economies. But while the growth in consumer spending thanks to working women is well documented, there is another part of this story that has been largely ignored by economists: the persistence of unpaid work done by women. Even as more women have gone out to work over time, they have continued to do the "second shift." Women take on more of the domestic labor and volunteering in the community than men, and they have less leisure time. In fact, women who work in paid jobs outside the home spend more time each week on chores at home than do men who do not go out to work. Economists have long acknowledged that gross domestic product the most widely accepted measure of economic progress excludes all of this work, which is vital to the functioning of the global economy. But this huge gap has rarely seemed important in the heavily male dominated profession of economics. That is finally beginning to change. The question of what counts in "the economy" is no longer posed only by feminist scholars; it is being examined by economists in general, including those who define the statistics used to measure growth. That's because digital technology is changing the boundary between what we pay for in the market and what we do free in the home for men as well as women. Economists call the line between paid and unpaid work the "production boundary." Increasingly, the ordinary activities of life involve crossing that boundary. When I use online banking to deposit a check or when I book my own hotel room, I am crossing the production boundary, substituting my own unpaid work for the paid work of bank tellers or travel agents. None of this unpaid work is counted directly in gross domestic product. Similarly, many free online products like TikToks, Wikipedia entries and social media posts are substitutes for purchased equivalents in the media and entertainment. Millions of us donate our work to amuse or inform others, in a parallel economy in which others pay with their attention. The digital economy, like the offline household and volunteer economy, is linking us in exchanges that are hard to measure in traditional economic terms, although they create much unpaid value. These activities do create a lot of monetary value for the owners of digital platforms, and that is included in formal measures of the economy, but everything that falls on the wrong side of the production boundary all that unpaid digital work is uncounted. This situation now seems untenable. During the pandemic and subsequent lockdown, in many places much of the activity counted in G.D.P. has come to a sudden stop. Yet it is clearer than ever how much time we are spending on the "wrong" side of the production boundary. Online traffic is as much as 30 percent higher in some regions since the beginning of the pandemic, and households in lockdown are spending many more hours on the unpaid domestic work of cooking, cleaning and child care. Women seem to be disproportionately bearing the extra burden. In addition to their doing more of the unpaid work at home, their economically valuable work outside the home is suffering, as they are forced to substitute unpaid work for paid work reversing a decades long trend. Women have been the main providers of child care while schools have been closed, and mothers working from home are almost twice as likely as men to have reduced their working hours, with the biggest decline in hours found among college educated women. More from "The America We Need" At the same time, women are losing ground in paid employment. The sectors of the economy that are most affected by the pandemic, such as retail and hospitality, disproportionately employ women. In the United States, the unemployment rate for women has risen by nearly three percentage points more than men's; in Britain, mothers are more likely than fathers to have lost or quit their jobs. It is not just women who are being harder hit; the U.S. unemployment rate is significantly higher for Hispanic and African American people than it is for whites. The striking disjunction between what we pay for and count in G.D.P. and what is valuable or "essential" to our lives is now unavoidable. But so far there seem to be few options for doing something about it, other than applauding essential workers or paying for advertising to salute them. Those lucky professionals who can work at home continue to be paid, generating profits for the absurdly well paid owners of their companies, but they, too, are doing more unpaid work at home and spending less money in the "official" economy. It may seem as if lockdown has caused an overall slowdown in all kinds of work, but as long as this shift toward unpaid work continues, income inequality which was high even before the pandemic will continue to worsen. There are ways to change course. Increases in the minimum wage, limits on executive pay and tougher antitrust policies, which would reduce corporate power, would not take long to reduce inequality of income. Scandinavian countries not only have higher wage rates for low paid jobs but also provide support for families, including generous parental leave and subsidized day care, to ensure that the burden of unpaid work does not fall largely on women. Introducing a universal basic income usually defined as a guaranteed income provided by the government for every adult and child would also be a recognition of the value of the essential unpaid work that everyone does, even those who are not part of the "paid" economy. It will take more than policies such as these for us to learn how to value what is truly worthwhile in the economy. Monetary transactions alone are an incomplete measure of economic value. They always were, as the creators of G.D.P. accepted, but economists and policymakers have long downplayed this shortcoming. Now, as the digital shift and the lockdowns have brought "the economy" into our homes, these fundamental questions are impossible to ignore. A broader measure of progress could reshape the way we choose to organize society by validating the valuable work that counts for little, or nothing, in our current system.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Opinion
Fernando Gomez Baquero loves the idea and the reality of living in the world's first passive house high rise. Fernando Gomez Baquero moved into his one bedroom apartment on Roosevelt Island one day before the building officially opened in the summer of 2017. "I convinced them to let me come here early," said Mr. Gomez Baquero, the director of the Jacobs Technion Cornell Institute's Runway Startup postdoc program at Cornell Tech, the technology based graduate school that opened on Roosevelt Island in 2017. He makes it a habit to try to arrive early in general, whether to new technology or rental housing on the Cornell Tech campus. Which might explain why he is so pleased to be living in what is being marketed as the world's first passive house high rise, a 26 story tower called The House. "I geek out on this building," he said. "I was really fascinated by how you make a building this tall consume 60 to 70 percent less energy." His position at Runway Startup came with an offer of on campus housing. At the time, he was living with a friend in a TriBeCa two bedroom, but he liked the idea of having a short commute to work (it's only 49 steps to his office at the Tata Innovation Center). The main draw, however, was the building itself, which generates a steady stream of data for researchers and engineers at Cornell Tech. Several companies in his program have used the data or intend to use it in the development of energy saving technologies. Over the last 10 years, the passive house, a form of green design that originated in Germany, has surged in popularity. By creating an airtight building envelope with thick, insulated walls and triple paned windows, passive houses can eliminate the need for heating and cooling systems in temperate climates and greatly minimize it in a place like New York. But applying those design principles to the construction of a 26 story high rise is more complicated than it is in a single family home. "The design is very clever," said Mr. Gomez Baquero, who thinks that the designer, Handel Architects, balanced the ratio of windows to walls in the building very well keeping the windows large and numerous enough to maximize light and views without compromising the building's functionality (walls make for better insulators). He also admires the heat recovery ventilation system, which minimizes the energy needed to heat or cool air as it comes into the building. Last year, his highest monthly heating and electricity bill (from midwinter) was about 30, which he pays on top of his 3,100 rent. Thermostats in units can be adjusted to between 68 and 75 degrees, which prevents residents from turning their apartments into saunas or freezers, throwing off the building's balance and squandering energy. "To me, that is very comfortable," Mr. Gomez Baquero said. "I think what a passive house can do is show you that you don't need temperature extremes." A further inducement to energy saving is the digital tally in the lobby that tracks energy consumption by floor, which he sees as a fun way to urge residents to do better. Occupation: Director of Cornell Tech's Runway Startup program. He is also a founder of ipHaus, an organization that develops off the grid affordable housing. The world's first passive house high rise: The House, a 26 story residential tower developed by the Hudson Companies and Related Companies, is designed to consume 60 to 80 percent less energy than a traditional high rise, for a projected annual savings of 882 tons of carbon dioxide. Limited access: Apartments in the building are available only to Cornell faculty and students. Leaving the island: Mr. Gomez Baquero said he finds it easy to go to meetings on mainland Manhattan, by taking the tram to Midtown or the ferry to Lower Manhattan. The F train also has a stop on Roosevelt Island. Limited dining options: They don't bother Mr. Gomez Baquero, who cooks his own breakfast and dinner.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
An Industrial Hellscape With You at the Center Stewart Laing found inspiration in all kinds of worlds as he designed the set for this large scale revival of Eugene O'Neill's 1922 drama "The Hairy Ape," now at the Park Avenue Armory. There's the 55,000 square foot drill hall that pairs boldly with the play's vivid Expressionist take on labor and inequality. Russian Constructivist art inspired a scene at a union hall, imagined by Mr. Laing as a Communist bookshop in white and red. And then there was hell on earth. A cagelike space appropriately sulfur colored is just one of several design elements he discussed on a recent tour of the set. Here are others, with photos taken at a rehearsal. The playing space has been radically reimagined since the production was first mounted, by the director Richard Jones, on a proscenium stage at the Old Vic Theater in London in 2015. In New York, the production has the cast, including Bobby Cannavale as the brawny ship stoker Yank, perform on a turntable that circles the audience like a conveyor belt. "The play is written in eight scenes," Mr. Laing said. "We knew we had these eight distinct worlds to put in front of an audience in quick succession." The turntable is about 140 feet in diameter, and is the largest in the modern history of New York theater, according to Paul King, the armory's director of production. It comprises nearly 50 tons of steel, and travels about a half mile in the course of the show. A backstage crew pushes on and pulls off set pieces from the bowels of a trans Atlantic ocean liner to a chic jewelry store from a loading dock behind the risers where the audience sits. The seating bank, for an audience of about 800, is 80 feet wide and 26 feet high. There are 16 crew members, including stage management, wardrobe, hair and makeup. The cast of 15 wears 59 costumes. The crew does a complete change (of set, full company costume and makeup) while the turntable is spinning, in under a minute, while they are out of the audience's view. Sulfur yellow is everywhere, from the audience's stadium seating to a set piece for the"stokehole"of the ocean liner. "There's an idea of the most alien space that you could put human beings into would be a bright yellow, completely minimalist metal space," Mr. Laing said." At several points early in the play, the men talk about being in hell, this industrial world." Sulfur yellow, he added, "has a sort of hellish connotation."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
SAN FRANCISCO Google introduced a new video game service on Tuesday that allows people to play high definition games instantly over the internet, joining an industrywide experiment to offer a so called Netflix of gaming. The new service, called Stadia, will work for anyone with a fast internet connection and a computer, phone or tablet. The service will also work with Google's Chromecast, an inexpensive dongle that plugs into television sets to stream videos. Google said Stadia would be released later this year, but did not announce a price. By focusing on streaming games titles that are pulled from servers instead of downloaded to the customer's device Google is trying to catch the next wave of gaming. The premise: users pay a subscription to access a library of games that they can immediately play, as opposed to the traditional model of paying for a disc or waiting to download a game. There are pros and cons to each approach. The streaming model lets people try lots of games until they find some they enjoy, but the games tend to be superficial with rougher graphics. Downloaded games typically have more polished graphics, but they can take time to install and require a sizable one time payment.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
When I arrived in the United States in 1984, an Indian graduate student wanting to study African American history, I was an anomaly. Most of my fellow South Asians were in STEM doctoral programs. During the Reagan years, I supported the Rev. Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition and the Democratic Socialists of America in their attempt to push the Democratic Party and the United States to the left. Still, I could have ill imagined that one day an African American man would become the president or that a woman of Jamaican and Indian descent would be a candidate for the vice presidency. After graduation, I interviewed across the country for college positions teaching early American history. I was asked over and over again why, as an Indian woman, I chose to study the history of slavery and the Civil War. Usually, I described the connections between Mahatma Gandhi's notion of satyagraha, the struggle for truth, and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s version of nonviolent resistance. The one interview where no one asked me that question was for an assistant professor position in African American studies. I took that job. Black Americans do not need to be told about the long relationship between the Black struggle for freedom and decolonization in Asia and Africa. As the Rev. James Lawson, the leading civil rights strategist of nonviolence, now 91, said at the funeral of Representative John Lewis, whom he mentored in Nashville, the civil rights movement was really "the nonviolent movement of America." Mr. Lawson and his fellow activists set out to demonstrate, as he put it, "the efficacy of satyagraha, of soul force, of love truth, that we would have to do it in Nashville. And so I planned, as the strategist and organizer, a four point Gandhian strategic program to create the campaign." Mark Penn and Andrew Stein write that "only a broader course correction to the center will give Democrats a fighting chance in 2022" and beyond. Tory Gavito and Adam Jentleson write that the Virgina loss should "shock Democrats into confronting the powerful role that racially coded attacks play in American politics." Ezra Klein speaks to David Shor, who discusses his fear that Democrats face electoral catastrophe unless they shift their messaging. Ross Douthat writes that the outcome of the Virginia gubernatorial race shows Democrats need a "new way to talk about progressive ideology and education." Nonviolent protest, personified by Gandhi and Dr. King, has deep roots in the abolition movement, specifically the pacifist ideas of William Lloyd Garrison and Henry David Thoreau's "On Civil Disobedience." They influenced Leo Tolstoy, who in turn influenced Gandhi. What goes around comes around. When Barack Obama became president, I also stopped explaining my name to strangers. When asked which historical figure living or dead he would like to have dinner with, Mr. Obama said, "You know, I think it might be Gandhi, who is a real hero of mine." I, like millions of Americans, especially African Americans, immigrants and other people of color, felt, as Ta Nehisi Coates wrote, that "we were eight years in power." After the shock of Donald Trump's ascendance, the rise to national prominence of Kamala Harris, only the second Black woman to be elected to the Senate, has been therapeutic for me. Despite well deserved criticism from the left of some of their policies, Mr. Obama and Ms. Harris represent the cosmopolitan, interracial democracy that a majority of Americans aspire to live in today. Ms. Harris brings charisma and balance to the Democratic presidential ticket, much like Joe Biden balanced Mr. Obama's. Given her roots, Ms. Harris is also an appropriate riposte to Mr. Trump. Her record as California's attorney general was on the whole progressive, despite serious missteps. She is well qualified to course correct when it comes to her own record and deal with the problems of police brutality and systemic racial inequality highlighted by the Movement for Black Lives. Her Indian background will also appeal to many Indian American immigrants like me, if not to those who tend to be conservative and even racist in their views. As Preet Bharara, the Indian American former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, tweeted: "The most excited person I talked to today was my mom. Because she cannot wait to vote for Vice President Kamala Devi Harris." There have, of course, been many Indian American politicians elected to office. One of the first was Dalip Singh Saund, also from California, elected to Congress in 1956. His election was a fitting conclusion to the infamous 1923 Bhagat Singh Thind case, in which the Supreme Court ruled that Indians were not eligible for American citizenship. That decision led to the denaturalization of around 50 Indian Americans. The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, a direct result of the civil rights movement, abolished national quotas for immigration that gave preference to northern Europeans. In voicing a preference for immigrants from Norway, in 2018, Mr. Trump was harkening back to the immigration regime before its passage. The 1965 law resulted in a flood of South Asian immigrants to the United States. Since then, many have been elected to office. Recently, Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and Nikki Haley of South Carolina were governors with presidential aspirations. But I felt no pleasure at seeing their rise, as they adopted the talking points of the Republican Party, small government, economic retrenchment and states' rights, which hurt their poor white and Black constituents in particular. Among Democrats, the emergence of politicians of Indian descent like Representatives Ro Khanna, Pramila Jayapal and Raja Krishnamoorthi has been far more exciting, at least to me. All were elected, like Ms. Harris, in 2016, an important ripple effect of the Obama presidency. They all had the audacity to hope. After an exciting start, Ms. Harris's campaign for the presidential nomination came to a grinding halt before the major caucuses and primaries. But her historic run, following in the footsteps of Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman from a major party to run for the presidency, was undeniable. Ms. Harris was not just another Indian American politician running for office; as a woman of Afro Indian descent, she appeals to me despite my own politics being more to the left. Moreover, Black women, many of whom could not vote until the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, have since proven to be the most progressive voting bloc in American politics and the backbone of the Democratic Party. Like most Democrats, I support Joe Biden because the country cannot afford the continuation of the "American carnage" that Mr. Trump ironically claimed he would end in his Inaugural Address. Mr. Biden's big tent policy, his adoption of progressive policies championed by his Democratic opponents, and his promise to select a woman candidate for the vice presidency, sealed the deal for me. Mr. Biden had the luck of having an array of talented women to choose from. His decision to pick Kamala Harris as his running mate seems like a personal gift to me. Not only does she represent the very groups mocked and vilified by Mr. Trump women, Black people and immigrants but also, as a woman of Afro Indian descent, she might well be the future face of American politics. Manisha Sinha ( ProfMSinha), a professor of history at the University of Connecticut, is the author of "The Slave's Cause: A History of Abolition."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Opinion
Malaria is among the world's worst scourges. In 2016 the disease, which is caused by a parasite and transmitted by mosquitoes, infected 194 million people in Africa and caused 445,000 deaths. But biologists now have developed a way of manipulating mosquito genetics that forces whole populations of the insect to self destruct. The technique has proved so successful in laboratory tests that its authors envisage malaria could be eliminated from large regions of Africa within two decades. A team led by Andrea Crisanti, a biologist at Imperial College, London, altered a gene that disrupts the mosquito's sexual development; the females become infertile but the males remain able to spread the debilitating gene to an ever dwindling number of progeny. Dr. Crisanti found that laboratory populations of mosquitoes can be driven to extinction within 11 generations, he and colleagues report in Monday's issue of Nature Biotechnology. Wild populations could be made to crash in about four years, according to computer models. The technique involves equipping mosquitoes with a gene drive, a genetic mechanism that forces a gene of choice into all of an organism's offspring. (Normally, sexual reproduction would pass the gene to only half the progeny.) Genes carried by a gene drive therefore can spread very rapidly through a population, which makes the technique both powerful and potentially dangerous. No gene drive has yet been released in the wild. Like the Science Times page on Facebook. Sign up for the Science Times newsletter. Previous efforts to reduce mosquito fertility using gene drives have failed because mutations arise in the stretches of DNA targeted by scientists, nullifying the engineered changes. These mutations are heavily favored by natural selection and permit the mosquitoes to escape the genetic trap. Dr. Crisanti and his colleagues instead found a way to target a stretch of DNA that does not vary from one mosquito to another, presumably because each DNA unit plays so vital a role that any mutations would kill the organism. This invariant DNA sequence occurs in a gene called doublesex, which determines sexual development in the mosquito species Anopheles gambiae, one of the major carriers of the malaria parasite in Africa. Dr. Crisanti's team disrupted the doublesex gene in a way that affects only females. These females develop ambiguous sexual features: they cannot bite because they have male type mouthparts, and they are infertile. But the males are unaffected and continue spreading the disruptive gene until no more eggs are laid. In the lab, when males with the doublesex gene drive were placed in cages of wild mosquitoes, the populations were driven to extinction in as few as seven to 11 generations. No mutations could be found in the targeted sequence of DNA. "We are not saying this is 100 percent resistance proof," Dr. Crisanti said. "But it looks very promising." Kevin Esvelt, who studies the evolution of gene drives at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, indicated that the biological aspects of mosquito control may now be close to solution. "With this achievement, the major barriers to saving lives are arguably no longer mostly technical, but social and diplomatic," he said. Launching a gene drive into the wild is risky. Once released, it can't be recalled or easily disabled should anything go awry. In 2016, the National Academy of Sciences called for extensive tests and public consultation before any gene drive is released. The theory of how gene drives could be used to control pest populations was laid out in 2003, in an article by Austin Burt, a biologist at Imperial College, London, and a co author on the new paper. He hopes that a small scale field trial can be started in Africa in five years. Implementing such a program would entail releasing just a few hundred drive carrying mosquitoes in each village. "We wouldn't have to hit every village, maybe as few as one percent," Dr. Burt said. Complete eradication isn't necessary; the malaria parasite can't maintain its populations once the number of mosquitoes falls below a certain number. "If there are no unexpected technical or regulatory delays," Dr. Burt said, "it's possible to envisage that gene drive mosquitoes, in combination with other approaches, could have eliminated malaria in significant parts of Africa in 15 years." Achieving such a goal likely will require a continentwide agreement, since a gene drive, once released, probably couldn't be confined to a single country, and biologists want to avoid any unintended consequences. All insects analyzed so far rely on the doublesex gene to direct their sexual development. It could be disastrous if an altered doublesex gene drive somehow jumped from mosquitoes to another insect species, such as bees. "That's not possible," Dr. Crisanti said. He noted that every insect species has its own version of both the doublesex gene and the gene's highly conserved region, so a gene drive aimed at one species wouldn't work in any other. For that same reason, the technique potentially could be aimed at a wide range of noxious insects, each targeted individually.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
Several of the plays are already getting attention. "Behind the Sheet," by Charly Evon Simpson, had a well reviewed and much extended run this year at the Ensemble Studio Theater. Alexis Scheer's "Our Dear Dead Drug Lord" is to be co produced this fall by WP Theater and Second Stage Theater; Emily Feldman's "The Best We Could (A Family Tragedy)," will be staged next spring by Manhattan Theater Club; and "Cullud Wattah," by Erika Dickerson Despenza, is being presented next summer at the Public Theater. But many of the plays are still awaiting discovery. The collective members 14 playwrights, directors and producers in Los Angeles and New York are all new this year, and one of their first priorities was to geographically broaden the pool of nominators. Hilary Bettis, a playwright and television writer ("The Americans") who is one of the new Kilroys, said she had seen firsthand the impact of the list after her own work was included. Her new play, "72 Miles to Go...," will be presented by the Roundabout Theater Company this winter. "The amount of doors the Kilroys opened has been astonishing," she said this week. "I got emails from people across the country theaters, literary departments, college professors, high school students." Ms. Bettis pointed out that a survey conducted by the Lilly Awards and the Dramatists Guild found that the percentage of productions of plays by women is slowly increasing nationally to 29 percent at last count. "It has started a big national conversation that's been a long time coming, about the importance of gender parity, and about holding accountable the kinds of work we're putting on our stages," she said. "There is so much great work out there, and so many more great plays being written."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
Sundar Pichai, Google's chief executive, in San Francisco last week. Google's role in the coordinated Russian campaign during the 2016 presidential campaign has been closely followed. SAN FRANCISCO Google has found evidence that Russian agents bought ads on its wide ranging networks in an effort to interfere with the 2016 presidential campaign. The findings from an internal inquiry draw Google further into the growing investigation of how social networks and technology services were manipulated by the Russian government to spread misinformation and sow division during the 2016 election. Using accounts believed to be connected to the Russian government, the agents purchased 4,700 worth of search ads and more traditional display ads, according to a person familiar with the company's inquiry who was not allowed to speak about it publicly. Google found the accounts through its own research and information provided by other technology companies. Google found a separate 53,000 worth of ads with political material that were purchased from Russian internet addresses, building addresses or with Russian currency. It is not clear whether any of those were connected to the Russian government, and they may have been purchased by Russian citizens, the person said. The messages of those ads spanned the political spectrum. One account spent 7,000 on ads to promote a documentary called "You've Been Trumped," a film about Donald J. Trump's efforts to build a golf course in Scotland along an environmentally sensitive coastline. Another spent 36,000 on ads questioning whether President Barack Obama needed to resign. Yet another bought ads to promote political merchandise for Mr. Obama. The ads appeared mainly alongside Google's search results or on websites that use Google ads outside the search company's own sites. It was not clear whether such ads appeared on YouTube or the Gmail email service, the person said. There is a chance that Google may find other ads from Russian linked accounts, the person familiar with the investigation said. Microsoft, a distant rival to Google in the internet search and advertising market, said Monday evening that it too was examining whether suspected Russian agents used its services to show political ads during the 2016 election. Microsoft's Bing search engine accounts for about 23 percent of searches in the United States, compared with more than 63 percent for Google, according comScore, an internet measurement firm. Google has been called to testify at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Nov. 1. But it has so far escaped the intense scrutiny confronting Facebook after the social network admitted that it discovered 470 profiles and pages to the internet Research Agency, a Russian company with ties to the Kremlin. The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, said on Monday that it should not be surprising that Russians were using Google as well as Facebook and Twitter. The only thing that is surprising, he said, is that it took so long for Google to find the activity. "It will take more time and length and breadth to know what Russia did on social media," Mr. Schiff said. "But the themes are consistent across platforms: the desire to help Donald Trump, to hurt Hillary Clinton and the desire to set Americans against each other." In addition to the Senate committee hearing, Google and Facebook are expected to testify at another Nov. 1 hearing before the House Intelligence Committee. Twitter was also invited to the House committee hearing, but it was not clear on Monday whether officials from the company planned to attend. Facebook has said the Russian company had placed 3,000 ads on its network at a cost of about 100,000. Last month, Twitter said it had found about 200 accounts that appeared to be linked to a Russian campaign to influence the election. Google is the only company that sells more digital advertising than Facebook, and its role in the coordinated Russian campaign has been a source of intense speculation in Washington and Silicon Valley. The Washington Post reported that Google had found that Russian agents hoping to spread misinformation had spent tens of thousands of dollars on the company's advertising platforms. But Google's investigation has not found the same type of pinpoint advertising that Russian agents conducted on Facebook. The social network allows advertisers to target its audience with more specificity than Google, including users with a wide range of political leanings. The 2016 presidential election was the first time that Google allowed targeting by political leanings and it allowed just two categories left leaning and right leaning. However, Google has not found any evidence that the ads from the accounts suspected of having ties to the Russian government used these political categories or geographic parameters to focus on specific groups, the person familiar with the company's investigation said. The ads were much more broad, aimed at English language queries or any users in the United States, for example. A Google spokeswoman, Andrea Faville, said the company had a policy that limited political ad targeting and prohibited targeting based on race and religion. "We are taking a deeper look to investigate attempts to abuse our systems, working with researchers and other companies, and will provide assistance to ongoing inquiries," Ms. Faville said. On Facebook, fake Russia linked accounts in which fictional people posed as American activists promoted inflammatory messages on divisive issues. Those accounts bought advertising to promote those messages and reach a bigger audience within the Facebook universe, while promoting the incendiary posts to different locations or people with established political leanings for maximum impact. The Russian linked accounts did not target ads based on political affiliation, but it raises the question of why Google allowed such targeting for the 2016 election when it had not done so in the past. The only location where Google allows ad targeting by political affiliation is the United States. Google is working with Jigsaw, a think tank owned by its parent company, Alphabet. Jigsaw has been doing research for 18 months on fake news and misinformation campaigns and Google is applying some of those findings in the investigation into Russian election meddling, the person said. It is also working with other technology companies like Facebook and Twitter, in addition to independent researchers and law enforcement.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
The choreographer Mariana Valencia has been thinking about her personal history or, as she calls it, herstory. In her new work, "Album" a compilation of dance, monologue and song she approaches making performance as assembling notes for a future biographer. Dance is often romanticized for its ephemerality, but Ms. Valencia, shaping her own narrative, intends to leave a record. On Friday, April 7, Ms. Valencia unveils what she has developed in the first half of a two year residency at Brooklyn Arts Exchange. At an early showing in November, she imbued even melancholic moments with her terse, inviting sense of humor, switching matter of factly between tasks. One section honored the Haitian born poet and performance artist Assotto Saint, who died of AIDS in 1994, while another found her singing a euphoric ode to rice. Ms. Valencia likens the piece to both a photo album and a music album. By the end, a stranger has become a friend. (bax.org)	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
If software was at fault in the deadly crashes of two Boeing 737s like these, it raises questions about how technology that's critical to safety is regulated. Hi. I'm Jamie Condliffe. Greetings from London. Here's a look at the week's tech news: Machines are more than ever controlled by software, not humans. Occasionally it goes fatally wrong. On March 10, 157 people died when an Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 Max 8 jet crashed. Five months earlier, another crash of the same model of airplane killed 189 people. There are indications that software intended to prevent the jets from stalling may have played a role in both accidents. Reporting by The New York Times suggests that the software didn't receive a detailed review by the Federal Aviation Administration before it entered use: Under new rules, the agency delegated much of the responsibility to Boeing. If the software was at fault, and the problem did slip through the regulatory net, it raises questions about how safety critical technology is vetted. Those questions will become more important over the next few years. A year ago, an Arizona woman was struck and killed by one of Uber's autonomous cars. The vehicle's autonomy systems failed to brake, as did the safety driver behind the wheel. Companies like Uber and Waymo, along with most of the auto industry, expect autonomous cars to proliferate over the next decade. Such advances aren't limited to cars they will further automate everything from air travel to food delivery. They are built on technologies, like artificial intelligence, that will make split second decisions for humans. The Boeing software was designed to perform a simple task: Nudge the airplane's nose down based on sensor readings if a stall was anticipated. As harder tasks are handed to software, the stakes rise. "As you create more advanced A.I. systems, the harm that can result from them failing can be really large," said Jade Leung, a researcher at Oxford University's Center for the Governance of Artificial Intelligence. But increasing the complexity of systems makes checking them more difficult. Hardware, from chips to special sensors, can be difficult to test. And it can be difficult for humans to understand how some A.I. algorithms make decisions. Ms. Leung said regulators needed to be more aware of tail end risks the highly unlikely but catastrophic events that could occur if something malfunctioned. That might mean introducing more conservative rules that relax as technology matures, ideally developed in tandem with technologists who understand deeply how the systems work. "Verifying the performance and safety of software is a really, really hard technical challenge," Ms. Leung said. Nonetheless, it's a challenge that has to be addressed. When a company spends billions on world leading digital infrastructure, it naturally wants to wring every last cent of revenue out of it. That's partly what is driving Google's new Stadia gaming service, announced on Tuesday. Google's pitch is straightforward: Think of it as Netflix for gaming. As long as they have a fast internet connection, users can pay a subscription to play high definition games, akin to what they'd find on current top end consoles, on any computer, phone or tablet. The company's promise: that its cloud infrastructure makes that achievable. It will add racks of gaming specific chips to existing server farms to essentially give people an on demand, remote gaming computer. And Google officials believe that since most users are now so close to its pervasive hardware, lag won't be a problem an issue that held back earlier game streaming platforms, like the now defunct OnLive. Google is not alone in the push into what some people see as the future of gaming. Microsoft had already announced that it planned to offer a trial of a similar service for Xbox consoles, computers and mobile devices this year. Amazon, which owns the game watching service Twitch, is widely believed to be planning something similar, built on its Amazon Web Services cloud infrastructure. Those three companies happen to be the world's largest cloud providers. It's not surprising that they're enamored of the idea of taking a slice of the 135 billion gaming industry, when all it could take is the flex of an existing muscle. The U.S. struggles to supercompute About 500 million should buy a lot of computer. This past week, we found out how much. Writing for The Times, Don Clark explained what the Department of Energy would get for dropping that sum on a supercomputer: Lab officials predict it will be the first American machine to reach a milestone called "exascale" performance, surpassing a quintillion calculations per second. That's roughly seven times the speed rating of the most powerful system built to date. The device, called Aurora, will be used to figure out everything from how drugs work to the impact of climate change. It's also a useful indicator of the nation's competitiveness in science and technology or, at this point, whether it's leading or lagging behind China. On that front, Mr. Clark reports that it has been a mixed bag for the United States: An IBM system called Summit, built for the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, took back the No. 1 position last year on a twice yearly ranking of the world's 500 most powerful systems a spot held by China for five years. But China leads by another key measure: It accounted for 227 systems on the Top 500 list, compared with 109 for the United States. China is expected to have its own exascale supercomputer running as soon as 2020 a full year before Aurora boots up. And some stories you shouldn't miss Google received its third antitrust fine from the European Union since 2017. This one, for 1.5 billion euros, or about 1.7 billion, was for imposing unfair terms on the search service it offers to other websites.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
CUPERTINO, Calif. Things change when a spaceship comes to town. Tourists stroll by, whipping out their iPhones to get a photo. New businesses move in. And real estate prices go up even more. Apple's new home in Cupertino the centerpiece being a 5 billion, four story, 2.8 million square foot ring that can be seen from space and that locals call the spaceship is still getting some final touches, and employees have just started to trickle in. The full squadron, about 12,000 people, will arrive in several months. But the development of the headquarters, a 175 acre area officially called Apple Park, has already helped transform the surrounding area. In Sunnyvale, a town just across the street, 95 development projects are in the planning stages. The city manager, Deanna J. Santana, said she had never seen such action before. In Cupertino, a Main Street Cupertino living and dining complex opened in early 2016. This downtown enclave includes the Lofts, a 120 unit apartment community opening this fall; small shops; and numerous restaurants and cafes. Other local businesses are also gearing up in anticipation. A Residence Inn at Main Street Cupertino, expected to open in September, has been slightly customized to meet the needs of Apple employees. Guests will have access to Macs and high speed internet connections, said Mark Lynn, a partner with Sand Hill Hotel Management, which operates the hotel and consulted with Apple about what its employees need at a hotel. "All the things we have, lined up with what they needed," Mr. Lynn said. "They will represent a large part of our business." Tech companies are nothing new for Cupertino. Apple has called the city home for decades, and Hewlett Packard had a campus in Apple's new spot, employing 9,000 people. The surrounding towns have been remade as well in the last decade, as giant tech companies have transformed Silicon Valley's real estate into some of the most expensive in the country. But city officials and residents say this project is like nothing they've seen before. It is even bringing tourists. Onlookers snap pictures of the spaceship from the streets. TV helicopters circle above. Amateur photographers ask residents if they can stand on driveways to operate their drones, hoping to get a closer look at Apple Park. "I just say, 'Hey, go ahead,'" said Ron Nielsen, who lives in Birdland, a Sunnyvale neighborhood across the street from the spaceship. "Why not?" Drone operators want that coveted aerial shot while pedestrians want to get an eyeful of the curved glass building before the headquarters become hidden by a man made forest. The campus is one of the last major projects started by Steven P. Jobs, the visionary co founder of Apple, who died six years ago. Just a few months before his death, he went before the Cupertino City Council and laid out his vision for a futuristic circular house of glass that would foster creativity and collaboration. Two years later, the Council unanimously approved the plans for the campus. The main center features the spaceship ring, the Steve Jobs Theater, a 100,000 square foot gym and a visitors center in a woodland setting with two miles of running and walking paths. An orchard, a meadow and a pond are inside the ring. "Mind blowing, mind blowing, mind blowing," the mayor, Savita Vaidhyanathan, said about her visit to the site. "I saw the underground 1,000 seat theater and the carbon fiber roof. The roof was made in Dubai, and it was transported and assembled here. I love that it's here and that I can brag about it." Many of the public views will soon be going away. Apple Park will eventually have 9,000 trees, filling in much of the big open spaces. The public will instead have access to a visitors center with a cafe, a store and rooftop observation views. "It will be a separate glass structure and be set in an old growth olive tree grove," said Dan Whisenhunt, Apple's vice president of real estate and development. Not all of these changes have thrilled everyone. Residents of Birdland, an 877 home neighborhood, have been particularly vocal. They have complained about early morning construction rigs that beep and rumble along major streets, unpredictable road closings, unsightly green sheeted barriers and construction potholes that result in punctured tires. When her car was covered with construction dust, Sheri Nielsen, Mr. Nielsen's wife, contacted Apple. The company sent carwash certificates. Mr. Whisenhunt said the company strove to answer every complaint it received, "and if the issue is serious enough, I will personally visit to see what is going on." In the design phase, he said, Apple hosted more than 110 community gatherings for feedback. Birdland was addressed in late 2012 and early 2013 and was given information about what would be happening over the next three years of construction. Apple published community mailers five times and sent them to 26,000 households. Homestead Road, the thoroughfare that separates Apple Park from Birdland, became its own subject of debate. Cupertino officials wanted to construct a tree lined median to calm traffic. Apple offered to cover the costs. But homeowners objected. Residents complained that the island would eliminate one lane, backing up the heavy traffic even more. When 20 or so neighbors approached a Sunnyvale town meeting in solidarity, the city ended up siding with the residents. The price of property in the neighborhood has also become a source of some worry. Sunnyvale and Cupertino, like many other Silicon Valley towns, have had an extended real estate boom, as the tech industry has expanded. Prices in the area really started to rise, real estate agents and residents said, after Apple released its plans. A three bedroom, two bathroom, 1,400 square foot ranch style house that cost 750,000 in 2011 has doubled in price. Since Apple said it was moving into the former Hewlett Packard site, prices have moved up 15 to 20 percent year after year, said Art Maryon, a local real estate agent. Today, bidders usually offer 20 to 25 percent over the asking price. Birdland is already drawing Apple employees, replacing homeowners who have cashed out to move to quieter regions. Those who remain are realizing that life will not be the same when all 12,000 of the Apple workers go in and come out on a daily basis. People in the neighborhood dread the increased traffic and expect workers to park in front of their homes since there will be fewer available spaces in the company garage. Apple's answers to concerned residents will continue, Mr. Whisenhunt said. "When you tell people what is upcoming, some of the anxiety they have calms down a lot," he said. And yet, he acknowledged, "you don't make everyone happy."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
College football on Wednesday got a sobering glimpse of what could become routine this season: a game rescheduled because of coronavirus cases inside an athletic program. North Carolina State and Virginia Tech, who were to play an Atlantic Coast Conference game on Sept. 12, said Wednesday that the matchup had been delayed by two weeks, until Sept. 26, because of a cluster of virus cases within N.C. State's athletic department. "There's no blueprint for what we're all trying to navigate and we are grateful for everyone's collaboration to make this work," Boo Corrigan, N.C. State's athletic director, said in a statement. The rescheduling decision was a bleak and unsurprising reminder of the season's perils, and similar moves could become common in the weeks ahead. College football's leaders have cautioned for months that, if games were to be played at all, disruptions were virtual certainties.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
Germany may be known for its beer, but it is also home to some 250 whiskey producers, almost twice as many as in Scotland . Among drinks enthusiasts, Germany is famous for producing some of the world's best beers. And a few of the country's valleys have attained cult status among wine lovers in particular, Mosel, Rheingau and the Ahr. German schnapps are pretty much a known quantity, while the country's herbal bitters have an even broader recognition, or at least the standout brand Jagermeister does. In fact, Germany is now home to almost twice as many whiskey distilleries as Scotland around 250 producers, according to a website run by the German government, compared to "over 130" in the land of the wee dram, according to the Scotch Whisky Association. While that might be surprising, bourbon buffs will remind you that American whiskey has a strong German influence. The Jim Beam family came from Germany, as did George Dickel, the great producer of Tennessee whiskey. The Stitzel Weller distillery maker of such well known brands as Pappy Van Winkle, W.L. Weller and Old Weller was founded by German immigrants, as was the old I.W. Harper distillery near Louisville, Ky. While whiskey produced in the United States might earn frequent comparisons to drinks from Scotland and Ireland, the American bourbon trail was largely paved by immigrants from Bavaria and Baden Wurttemberg. Today, Scotch whisky and Irish whiskey are among the protected geographical designations in the European Union. (Either spelling of the word is acceptable; The Times's style is "whisky" for the liquor that is produced in Scotland or Canada; others are spelled "whiskey.") Unspecified location whiskey can be produced anywhere in the European Union, however. To use the terms, the drink has to be fermented from a mash made of malted grain, distilled, unsweetened, aged in wood barrels of a certain size for at least three years and sold with more than 40 percent alcohol by volume. With around 29,000 working distilleries in Germany, it's not surprising that many have started making whiskey, especially given Germany's high quality barley, the main ingredient in both Scotch and Irish whiskey, as well as in German beer. As a result, a whiskey trail is emerging in Germany, including visitor friendly tasting rooms and guided distillery tours. If you want to sample the best German whiskeys in person, this suggested itinerary covers five leading distillers, all of which are conveniently located in some of the country's most travel worthy locations. A quick language lesson: Your ticket from Munich's central station will take you aboard the Bayerischer Oberlandbahn, or the Bavarian Highlands Train. That is just the first suggestion of Scotland. The second is the spectacular scenery with deep forests, fast flowing rivers and soaring mountain peaks that only gets more dramatic with each minute of your one hour journey to Neuhaus, an easy 15 minute walk from the train station in the neighboring town of Fischhausen. Both towns are next to the Schliersee, a pristine Alpine lake not far from the Austrian border. While tourists have enjoyed the scenery for generations, the Slyrs distillery was only founded in 1999. The shop and visitors' center building are even younger, dating from 2007. Despite its relative youth, Slyrs is now an elder statesman in the German whiskey scene and counts as one of its largest producers, turning out around 150,000 bottles each year. (For perspective, that would make it one of the very smallest distilleries in Scotland.) The self guided tour through the distillery takes you past gleaming copper kettles and the tall "spirit pipe" of the still, leading into a cathedral like barrel room. It is well worth the cost of 9.90 euros (about 11), including a sip of the standard Slyrs, a single malt made from Bavarian barley, along with a sweet whiskey liqueur. For another couple of euros, you can also sample versions finished in Madeira, Marsala or Port casks, though the real standout is the 12 year old Slyrs single malt, offering a bouquet of biscuity malt and finishing with a pronounced minerality. A glass goes perfectly while contemplating the views of mountain peaks and meadows just outside the tasting room. You might be surprised by the crowds at Gasthof Seitz, home to the Elch whiskey distillery. In the village of Thuisbrunn, about 20 miles from Nuremberg, the brewery and restaurant are packed in nice weather, thanks to its location along the Five Seidla Trail, a popular, multi brewery route in the Franconia region of northern Bavaria. On Tuesdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, you'll find large groups of cyclists, hikers, families and occasional American soldiers from nearby military bases. Wooden tables shaded by ash trees and umbrellas and bordered by rock walls cover most of the available space between the restaurant and brewery and distillery buildings, making for a popular beer and whiskey garden. Most of the guests come here for Seitz's excellent Kellerbier a rustic amber lager with plenty of hoppy bite and hearty traditional fare like Schauferla, a pork shoulder roast, served with massive kloss dumplings and sauerkraut. But cognoscenti know that Seitz also distills and sells one of Germany's few peated whiskeys, a single malt bearing the mellifluous name of Torf von Dorf, meaning "peat of the village." Think about how much room you have in your checked luggage for a bottle (55 euros) before you try a sample (3.50 euros). The resulting spirit is pale gold with a complex nose of toffee and Virginia tobacco, followed by diverse flavors of apple pie and plums, and a smooth but spicy finish. It is unexpectedly good, especially considering the brewery's relatively short experience with whiskey production. Although the site has been home to a tavern and brewery since the late 16th century, Seitz started distilling whiskey only "a bit more than five years ago," Mr. Kugler said. "Our beer is mostly sold locally, but our whiskey is sold around Germany." High up on northeastern Germany's Baltic coast, the former Hanseatic League town of Wismar shook off enough of the grunge from its old German Democratic Republic days to earn a spot on the Unesco World Heritage list in 2002. Nearly three decades after German reunification, Wismar boasts enough photo worthy locations to fill the average influencer's feed for weeks, with a trove of Gothic and Renaissance architecture, pastel walls and plenty of cozy cobblestone lanes and picturesque squares. Just a few steps from Wismar's harbor, the brewery Brauhaus am Lohberg occupies an ancient timbered building, where it claims to have been making craft beer since 1452. Like many small German breweries, Brauhaus am Lohberg serves full meals as well as good beers, though the flavors are particular to the location: Instead of sauerbraten or sausages, pride of place on the dinner menu belongs to whole roast Steinlachs, a Baltic coast whitefish. The brewery and restaurant also offers its own distillates, produced on its own pot still and sold under the name of Hinricus Noyte, its first brewmaster. Since its founding in 2010, the distillery has won numerous awards, including prizes for Germany's best whiskey. The actual distillery, in the suburb of Dargetzow, is only open to the public on Thursday afternoons, making the atmospheric brewery and restaurant in central Wismar the best place to sample the spirits for most travelers. Small tasting glasses cost 4.50 euros, and bottles are available to buy. The standard Hinricus Noyte single malt whiskey, called Baltach, has a nutty nose with a touch of tropical fruit and a sweet, spicy finish. A peated version of Baltach offers even more spicy fruit, followed by tarry, tobacco like notes. Though the thick Spreewald forest lies less than an hour southeast of Berlin, it feels like half a world away, with train stations and street signs listing names both German and Sorbian, the language of the local Slavic minority. It is the last place you'd expect to find the most American style whiskey in all of Germany. How American? Just like bourbon producers, Spreewood is working with new American oak barrels, rather than the more common (though not exclusive) approach in Scotland, where most Scotch is aged in used barrels that previously held bourbon or sherry. Even more unusual: Spreewood claims to be Germany's first maker of rye whiskey, taking its inspiration from the great spirits of Pennsylvania and Maryland. The distillery, in the quiet village of Schlepzig, is an easy, 20 minute public bus ride from the train station in the town of Lubben. Housed in a restored, 100 year old farmhouse, Spreewood has a comfortable cafe, serving coffee, snacks and whiskey samples. The cafe does not currently serve a manhattan cocktail, a natural for its peppery rye whiskey. Unlike at Slyrs, there is no 12 year old single malt available from Baden Wurttemberg's Steinhauser distillery, which only began producing whiskey in 2008, with its current longest aged drop just eight years old. The distillery's Brigantia line of single malts has seen recent success, with a version finished in an Islay cask from Scotland, famous for producing pungent, smoky and peaty whiskeys, taking home a silver medal at Germany's Best Whisky Awards in 2018. Outside the village of Kressbronn , on the hills overlooking Lake Constance, (about two and a half hours from Munich or Stuttgart), the Steinhauser distillery officially calls itself a Weinkellerei, meaning a wine cellar or a producer of wine. In addition to its wines, Steinhauser sells an award winning dry gin, as well as an array of fruit schnapps and liqueurs. The source of those ingredients is apparent at first glance: Your journey by bus or train toward this shimmering lake fed by the Rhine River will take you through grove after grove of apples, peaches, grapes and hops, all growing in beautiful, well tended trellises. For most visitors, it will be easiest and most interesting to stay just down the road, in the larger lakeside resort town of Friedrichshafen, the birthplace of the Zeppelin and home to the Zeppelin Museum. The waterfront promenade offers postcard worthy views of Lake Constance, with Switzerland and the rising Alps visible on the far side, as well as the occasional airship sighting overhead. Visitors can sample Brigantia whiskey at the tasting counter of the expansive, on site wine and spirits shop, roughly a 20 minute, cross country walk from the small train station in Kressbronn, with frequent local trains coming from Friedrichshafen. The classic, three year old Brigantia offers notes of licorice and spice, and a long lasting, slightly sulfurous finish; the eight year version is substantially smoother and more complex. Though distillery tours are not currently available, staff said that they may start up soon.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
Congress's watchdog on Thursday criticized the federal government's response to the coronavirus pandemic, noting that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is inaccurately counting coronavirus tests and that more than 1 billion in payments had been issued to dead people. The 403 page investigation by the Government Accountability Office was ordered in a provision of the CARES Act, the 2 trillion emergency pandemic aid legislation, which Congress passed in March. So far, 643 billion of this allocation has been spent, the auditors said. The report is a sobering review of the first six months of the pandemic. In its typically understated language, the agency wrote that the federal government's response was slow, disorganized and insufficient to protect the public, despite years of warnings that a pandemic was inevitable. The watchdog agency also noted that the White House Office of Management and Budget had not directed federal agencies to reveal how much money they have spent until July. "It is unfortunate that the public will have waited more than 4 months since the enactment of the CARES Act for access to comprehensive obligation and expenditure information about the programs funded through these relief laws," the report said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. (AP) Baker Mayfield coughed up the ball and the Cleveland Browns' chances to secure a playoff spot. After a 23 16 loss to the Jets on Sunday, the Browns will need to beat the Pittsburgh Steelers next Sunday if they're going to end the N.F.L.'s longest postseason drought. On fourth and 1 with one minute, 18 seconds remaining and the short handed Browns driving for the potential tying score, Mayfield tried to push forward for the first down on a quarterback sneak but lost the ball when Tarell Basham smacked into him. Browns running back Kareem Hunt recovered, but by rule, Mayfield was the only one who could advance the ball after the fumble and he was short of the line to gain. The call was upheld by video review, and the Jets (2 13) won their second consecutive game after an 0 13 start to the season. It was a rough week for the Browns (10 5), who haven't been in the postseason since 2002 and entered Sunday's game without seven players. That group included Jarvis Landry and three other wide receivers, and the rookie left tackle Jedrick Wills. Cleveland had to call up several players from the practice squad and Coach Kevin Stefanski ran a walk through in a parking lot near the team's hotel to get some of the new players up to speed on the game plan. 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. The Browns learned Sunday morning they would be without Wills because of an illness. He had been placed on the Covid 19 list on Thursday and activated Saturday, but was then downgraded Sunday. The Browns' trip to New Jersey was delayed Saturday after starting linebacker B.J. Goodson was placed on the Covid 19 list and five other players, including Landry, were ruled out because of close contact. The others were receivers Rashard Higgins, Donovan Peoples Jones and KhaDarel Hodge, and linebacker Jacob Phillips. Despite being short handed, the Browns nearly erased a 20 3 deficit. But the Jets were able to hang on to the lead. Earlier in the fourth quarter, the Browns faced third and 6 from their 15 yard line when Basham sacked Mayfield and knocked the ball out and the Jets' John Franklin Myers recovered it, giving the Jets the ball at the Browns' 17 with 3:14 left. Sam Ficken's 34 yard field goal with 2:52 remaining gave the Jets a 23 16 lead. Ficken sent the ensuing kickoff out of bounds, giving Cleveland the ball at its 40 yard line. The Browns got down to the 16, until the defense came up big again to end it. The Jets clinched the second overall pick in April's draft through the combination of their win and the Jacksonville Jaguars' (1 14) loss to the Chicago Bears. After Cody Parkey kicked a 44 yard field goal on Cleveland's second offensive possession, the Jets took a 7 3 lead with some rare razzle dazzle with 34 seconds left in the opening quarter. Ty Johnson took the handoff from quarterback Sam Darnold and flipped the ball to Jamison Crowder, who rolled to his right and zipped a pass downfield to a wide open Braxton Berrios who had been lined up as the tailback for a 43 yard touchdown. The Jets got the ball right back when Frankie Luvu sacked Mayfield and popped the ball away and right into the hands of Folorunso Fatukasi. It didn't take long for the Jets to take advantage. Darnold found Chris Herndon wide open in the back of the end zone. Ficken's extra point was blocked by the former Jets lineman Sheldon Richardson, but the Jets were out to a stunning 13 3 lead early in the second quarter. The Jets then made it 20 3 on Crowder's 30 yard touchdown catch early in the third quarter. The Jets had a chance to extend their lead later in the quarter, but Ficken's 50 yard field goal try was blocked again by Richardson. That drive was extended by a roughing the kicker call on Cleveland's Jovante Moffatt, who ran into punter Braden Mann.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
Matching the Way You Give to the Cause You Give To SCOTT STEVENS gives differently to charities depending on the cause. Money to National Public Radio is charged monthly to his credit card. He donates annually by check to the American Cancer Society in memory of his mother. With his main charity, the Candlelight Ranch, which brings underprivileged city children to a camp outside of Austin, Tex., Mr. Stevens, an associate professor of molecular biosciences at the University of Texas, gives a large annual gift and more money to the group's fund raisers. He also spends on average about five hours a month working on the ranch. Much of that time is in the spring when volunteers get it ready for children coming in the summer. Then there is the recruiting: He said he worked hard to get friends to come to the ranch's events and to get them and their dollars involved. "I love to see that their mission is fulfilled," he said. This is the traditional time of the year to give to charity or at least to be asked by any nonprofit that has your contact details for a donation. November is nonprofit awareness month, though it hardly seems necessary given the growing focus on Giving Tuesday, the push to get people to donate money on the first Tuesday after Thanksgiving. This annual flood of solicitations tries to get people to give before the end of the year both for their own tax reasons and because charities report receiving a quarter to a half of their individual gifts in the last few months of the year. It has become as much a part of the immediately post Thanksgiving period as watching football and shopping for bargains. But should charitably inclined people think harder about how they give? By this I mean both the mechanism of giving, from personal check to private foundation, and the desired result of the gift? Yes and no. Checks are sometimes criticized by advisers as showing a lack of awareness for more sophisticated structures that offer additional tax benefits, like donor advised funds or family foundations. "Sometimes writing a check makes it easier to make an impact with a match," said Maria Tanzola, a private wealth adviser at UBS Wealth Management. For some donors, setting up a convenient recurring payment from their credit or debit card makes sense. This was one reason Mr. Stevens opted to have his donation to NPR charged each month. Cecilia White, 33, a research associate at Colorado State University, said the monthly deduction helped her give to Mercy Corps, a humanitarian aid organization, and to her church without thinking about it. "It's almost like retirement savings," she said. "You don't see it so you don't think about it. It doesn't feel like a sacrifice to have it just go away." Donor advised funds are charitable structures that have been around for decades but have grown widely in popularity and usage in the last three to four years. At their simplest, these funds allow people to contribute appreciated securities to a fund that will then cut a check on their behalf to various charities. This saves individuals from paying capital gains tax on the stock and the recipients from having to manage or sell the securities as opposed to just cashing a check. The donor also gets the charitable deduction immediately and can wait to make the actual grant to a charity. Amy N. Danforth, president of Fidelity Charitable, said that when the organization was created in 1991, it was driven by Edward Johnson III, known as Ned, the chairman of Fidelity Investments. He wanted to bring some of the benefits of a family foundation to less affluent people. Since then, she said, Fidelity Charitable's 65,000 donors have put in 27.2 billion and handed out 17.7 billion. Its main rival, Schwab Charitable, has taken in more than 10 billion since 1999 and has made grants of about 4 billion. In an effort to capture younger donors, both have mobile apps to let people recommend grants on the go. "It's really tax smart," said Kim Laughton, president of Schwab Charitable. "There is no better way to give appreciated stock. It's so simple to make grants. It's like Bill Pay." Both also accept more complicated and less liquid assets, like real estate and private partnership shares. Yet statistics from Fidelity and Schwab show that a good percentage of people who have these accounts are not using them in the optimal way: 35 percent of the money put into Schwab and 46 percent of the money into Fidelity has been cash. Doing this negates the benefit of saving capital gains tax on appreciated stock, and also reduces the value of that money when the management fees are taken into account. People could just write checks. Both companies argue that their platforms provide record keeping services, and Fidelity lets people invest the assets before grants are made. But those services come at a fee. In Fidelity's case, it charges 0.6 percent on the first 500,000. For people seeking the most control, there are family foundations, which exist in rarefied realms. Advisers said they really make sense only for people who are putting 10 million or more aside for charity. Otherwise, the annual reporting requirements and staffing or adviser costs are too much. But they allow donors to direct their gifts wherever they want and even use the foundation's money to finance trips to learn more about a cause. One downside is that these foundations are required to give away 5 percent of their assets every year. For this reason, Nick Tedesco, senior philanthropic adviser for J. P. Morgan Private Bank's Philanthropy Center, said many of his West Coast clients who received a windfall from selling a tech businesses preferred the flexibility of donor advised funds. "It allows them to park their money in a vehicle and donate it when they want to," he said. These structures are seen differently by the charities on the receiving end. "It does matter how you give, to some degree," said Les Lenkowsky, a professor at the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University. Vehicles that allow people the option of giving anonymously, like donor advised funds and private foundations, are good for an individual but can be bad for a charity that wants to thank the donor and ask for another gift, he said. Credit cards are easy but they carry transaction costs to the recipient. And then there is the lure of giving electronically in response to something moving. "It's great for impulse buying," Mr. Lenkowsky said. "You've been watching the N.F.L. and some heart wrenching ad appears and you plug it in and do your 10. Those add up." Making sure those and other donations have the desired result continues to be challenging. Mr. Stevens said he was under no illusion that a 250 check to the American Cancer Society or the American Red Cross was making a huge difference in the organizations' work. But there was an ancillary benefit. "When you see them doing fund raisers and hurricane relief, you get a little bit of pride from being involved." And that is what many organizations are counting on. "Effectiveness and feeling good are two different things," said Paula D. Polito, chief client officer at UBS Wealth Management Americas, which conducted a client study "Doing Well at Doing Good: Why There Is More to Giving Than Checkbook Philanthropy." "Some people don't feel that their approach is effective. But they say, 'I'm giving because it makes me feel good.' " The study, she said, found that people with more than 5 million in assets were aware of and using different tax structures and giving vehicles. But people with more than 1 million, who could take advantage of the same strategies, do not, at least not at the same rate. "I don't know if they feel wealthy enough," she said. Al Panhorst, a former executive at McDonnell Douglas who retired to Scottsdale, Ariz., falls into this category. He said he gave the most money to the Lutheran Church and groups affiliated with it, like a local Lutheran school. For those big gifts, he donates appreciated stock directly to the church; he says he feels he can give more than he would otherwise because he is saving the capital gains tax on the stock. Yet for other gifts, including those to his alma mater, medical causes and the local food bank, he prefers to write checks. It's not the most efficient or effective way to make the donations, but that is fine by him. "There is some satisfaction to writing a check," Mr. Panhorst said. "It's more intimate than calling your broker and saying 'Donate the equivalent of 7,000 to 8,000.' When you write it out and fold it up and put it in the envelope it feels more intimate."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Your Money
Thomas J. Barrack Jr., the billionaire investor and major donor to President Trump, has run into an unexpected patch of red ink thanks to the pandemic: He has struggled to keep up with payments on 1.97 billion in Wall Street debt he used to buy a collection of more than 160 hotels. Monty Bennett, another big donor to Mr. Trump, is in a similar tough spot after he recently halted payments owed on the 2.6 billion worth of Wall Street debt used to acquire his own hotel collection. "Imminent monetary default" is the term a Wall Street research firm used this summer to describe more than 300 million in debt on a luxury hotel in Austin, controlled by Doug Manchester, whom Mr. Trump nominated to serve as ambassador to the Bahamas after Mr. Manchester and his wife donated more than 3 million to Mr. Trump's political causes. The precarious financial position that some friends of Mr. Trump and other hotel executives are now in has fueled an intense lobbying campaign aimed at persuading the Trump administration, the Federal Reserve and Congress to rescue hundreds of hotel industry players that relied on riskier Wall Street debt to finance their lodging empires before the virus hit. Industry executives and their lobbyists say a federal rescue will save thousands of jobs and help local economies, and are hoping their argument resonates with a president who is a hotelier himself. They are making the case that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has the power and access to the billions of federal funds he needs to extend existing coronavirus relief efforts to the commercial real estate sector, which so far has been cut off from most of the stimulus money. But Congress prevented Mr. Mnuchin from tapping the main pot of 454 billion in coronavirus relief funds on his own, and doubts exist in the Treasury Department about the economic case for propping up a relatively small slice of the market that would primarily benefit wealthy investors who knowingly made high risk bets. One industry lobbyist involved in the negotiations said department officials remained concerned that some of the borrowers which include hotels, shopping malls and other commercial real estate might be "zombies" that are not going to survive, and taxpayer money sent to help them out would be lost. Those concerns have not deterred the industry, which has embarked on an aggressive campaign to convince Congress, the Treasury Department and others that the sector will go bust without a big bailout. "We need you to act as often as possible through calls, letters, and social posts to flood the offices of members of Congress," the American Hotel Lodging Association wrote on Thursday in an email to its members. At a Senate Banking Committee hearing on Wednesday, a top industry lobbyist said Congress should make a "technical amendment" to an earlier relief package to explicitly allow a Treasury bailout. The committee's chairman, Senator Michael D. Crapo, who has written two letters in recent months pushing Mr. Mnuchin and the Fed chairman, Jerome H. Powell, to act, said during the hearing that the commercial real estate industry, including hotels, was "one of the most significant industries to lack access" to relief funds. The campaign has put the Trump administration in a tough spot. Mr. Mnuchin may not be able to set up the type of program hoteliers want without new congressional action. Industry lobbyists privately acknowledge that any effort to bail out the industry will generate criticism, given Mr. Trump's dual role as both president and owner of a small luxury hotel brand. "The president clearly understands our industry: He's a hotelier," Chip Rogers, the chief executive of the American Hotel Lodging Association, said in a webcast with a hotel industry broker in May, a few weeks after Mr. Rogers and executives from the nation's largest hotel chains met privately at the White House with Mr. Trump. "It's not like we had to explain to him how things work. He gets that," Mr. Rogers said on the call. "The problem is he and his entire administration are very sensitive to this idea that anything they're doing is specifically helping hotels because the media is going to accuse him of helping his own business." Over all, there are 550 billion worth of commercial mortgage backed securities outstanding in the United States, financing hotels, shopping centers, office buildings and even self storage facilities. During the last recession, another class of securitized mortgages then mostly home loans made to risky borrowers played a major role in the economic crash, as homes suddenly lost value and homeowners defaulted, saddling investors, banks and other financial institutions with huge losses. A similar pattern is emerging in the hotel industry, with 20 billion or 23 percent of the securitized debt held by the lodging industry at least 30 days delinquent on payments, according to Trepp, a company that tracks the sector. In the last recession, the total value of delinquent commercial mortgage backed securities, known as CMBS, peaked at 13.5 billion. While financial agencies are paying close attention to the commercial real estate market, defaults in CMBS alone are seen as unlikely to cause an economic collapse rivaling what happened when residential mortgage backed bonds began unraveling in 2008. In part, that is because the debt is less concentrated and the riskier slices the ones that absorb the first losses are generally held outside the banking sector. In 2008, banks' exposure to securitized residential mortgages brought major lenders to their knees, choking off credit to the real economy and reverberating through the financial system. 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. But the experience is still creating pain. As the pandemic has dragged on, an increasing number of CMBS borrowers, particularly in the hotel industry, are giving up on paying their debt obligations and preparing to turn their properties over to lenders, according to Trepp, which as of August had counted at least 35 such loans worth a total of 1.6 billion. In some particularly hard hit markets like Houston, as much as 66 percent of the hotels financed with securitized debt are now delinquent, according to Trepp, or 664 million worth of delinquent CMBS loans. Republican lawmakers have been pressing the Treasury Department and the Fed to help. Representative Van Taylor, Republican of Texas, has introduced legislation that would direct the Treasury Department to make "preferred equity" investments in borrowers that are struggling to handle their CMBS debt. That would allow the federal government to take a small ownership stake in hotels and other companies, giving borrowers new cash without violating limits on their existing debt agreements that prohibit them from taking on new loans. "Millions of jobs and the prosperity of entire communities depend on keeping these properties open," Mr. Taylor said in a statement as he introduced the bill. Before he was elected to the House in 2018, Mr. Taylor worked in the real estate finance industry and Mr. Bennett of the Ashford hotel group is among his campaign contributors. Publicly, Mr. Mnuchin has indicated that he is open to finding a way to help the industry but he said it was not an easy problem to solve. "This is a large challenge," Mr. Mnuchin told House lawmakers in late June. "Working with the Fed, we have not yet figured out a way to set up a facility" that could assist holders of this debt, "so it's not out of a lack of interest or a lack of desire." The Fed has already taken steps to stabilize the market for commercial real estate securities potentially benefiting hotel owners. The central bank is accepting older private commercial mortgage backed securities as collateral in one of its emergency lending programs and it is buying government agency backed commercial mortgage securities, broadly helping alleviate a cash crunch in commercial real estate markets. But the Fed probably could not participate in the type of direct bailout the industry wants, absent new congressional action, because of limits on how much credit risk the central bank can assume, among other restrictions. Ethan Penner, a real estate investor credited with helping create CMBS, said the federal government should not be bailing out hotel and shopping center owners borrowers he called "greedy and risk loving, or the clueless" after they turned to Wall Street to borrow heavily. "The idea of bailing out owners of real estate does not even make sense to me," Mr. Penner said in an interview. "What could make that rise to the top of anyone's priority list when so many individual people are suffering and need help. These businesses should be allowed to fail." Hotel employees have also argued through their union that rescuing investors who turned to Wall Street to finance hotel buying sprees will not save jobs. "Jobs are driven by occupancy, and only ending the pandemic can fix that," said Gwen Mills, the secretary treasurer of Unite Here, a union that represents 300,000 workers at hotels, casinos, cafeterias and other retail outlets. About 85 percent of those workers have lost their jobs, at least temporarily. Mr. Bennett, whose company owns or provides services to 130 hotels across the United States, practically begged Mr. Mnuchin and Mr. Powell to help. "This crisis is significantly worse than 9/11 and the financial crisis combined!" Mr. Bennett wrote in an April letter. Mr. Bennett said in a statement that he was frustrated at how things had played out. His hotels and related companies applied for more than 120 million in loans through the Paycheck Protection Program, but returned the money amid criticism that his corporate entities were not meant to benefit from small business loans. In August, Ashford disclosed that the Securities and Exchange Commission was investigating its companies over potential self dealing that predated the pandemic. "The government destroyed our business through their shutdowns, offered P.P.P. loans to help repair the damage, jerked them back and then launched an investigation into us," Mr. Bennett said. "Now the U.S. Treasury won't lend the hardest hit businesses in America a dime." "I think it's fair to say that my contributions to the Trump campaign haven't helped us much," he added. For now, Mr. Bennett's companies have negotiated an agreement with some lenders to put off paying interest through November, and to allow his company to use accounts set aside for things like renovations to avoid having the loans foreclosed upon, according to a filing with the S.E.C. These kind of "forbearance" arrangements have been negotiated by many hotel companies. But just in the last three weeks, after lenders moved to sell off or seize some of its properties, Ashford gave up ownership of at least nine of its hotels, including the Embassy Suites Midtown Manhattan. Stephanie Brown, a spokeswoman for Mr. Manchester, said in a statement that he had not contacted Mr. Mnuchin and that the company disputed any suggestion that it would default on the loan for its Austin hotel. "Zero 'imminent monetary default' and zero contact with U.S. Treasury," she said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Economy
"The crisis has meant that our competition simply vacated the space that was our obvious target, in terms of clients," said Jorge Ignacio Marchan Riera of Banco Pichincha. MADRID Rosalia Efigenia Guaman, one of 540,000 Ecuadorean emigrants living in Spain, jumped on the news that the biggest privately owned bank in Ecuador, Banco Pichincha, had also moved here. Rekindling her relationship with the bank she had used back home allowed Ms. Guaman, a housekeeper and waitress, to lower the cost of her remittances, she said, as well as to buy a life insurance policy. "I feel very reassured to know that it will be much easier for my mother in Ecuador to get back everything possible if anything goes really wrong for me here," she said. Pichincha received its Spanish commercial banking license in spring 2010, just as Greece became the first euro zone member to seek a bailout, setting off a sovereign debt crisis that has also left Spain and its banking sector reeling. Since then, the bank's Spanish unit has grown beyond the expectations of its own management by pulling off a trick that companies the world over seek to perform: selling familiarity to a loyal, nearly captive clientele far from home. Its timing also proved fortunate, as Spanish banks that had previously sought to attract Latin American migrants started to pull back from this line of business as the euro zone's financial crisis put pressure on them to cut noncore activities. "The crisis has meant that our competition simply vacated the space that was our obvious target, in terms of clients," said Jorge Ignacio Marchan Riera, who is the head of Pichincha's operations in Spain. Mr. Marchan said his bank would make a profit this year on its Spanish business, two years ahead of schedule. Assets under management in Spain are expected to double, after having reached 63 million euros ( 84 million) at the end of 2011, up from 27 million euros a year earlier. And while most Spanish banks are downsizing their consumer networks, Mr. Marchan wants "at least" 20 branches across Spain by the end of the year, up from 12 at present. Still, it may be too early to call Pichincha more than a small and timely success story in an otherwise bleak banking landscape. "Pichincha is doing well partly because it comes from zero and so doesn't carry the heavy load of bad loans that banks here have accumulated," said Javier Santoma, professor of financial management at IESE, a Spanish business school. "The real test for any bank, however, always comes, not when it lends, but when it eventually tries to get its money back." The World Bank noted that remittance outflows from Spain had remained "fairly resilient" and grew 15 percent in the first half of last year as "migrants have cut into savings and even consumption in order to send remittances, and perhaps to prepare for an eventual return." Yet so far, and despite Spain's struggling with a jobless rate of almost 23 percent, only a few thousand Ecuadoreans have packed their bags to go back home. Senami, Ecuador's national migration secretariat, said that in the second half of last year, 2,794 registered Ecuadoreans had sought information on how to benefit from a state sponsored assistance program to return home from Spain. According to Spain's immigration statistics, the number of registered Ecuadoreans fell by about 35,000 in the last two years, but that figure includes those who, like Ms. Guaman, acquired Spanish citizenship. While the United States dwarfs other countries as a destination for Latin American emigrants, Spain comes second, receiving about one in 10 Latin American migrants each year, according to the World Bank. Over all, Spain registered about five million migrants in a decade, now equivalent to 12 percent of its population. Ecuadoreans form the largest Latin American community in Spain, spearheading migration to the country after a devastating economic crisis in 1999 that led to a 70 percent depreciation of Ecuador's currency, the sucre, and a default on its external debt. The crisis occurred just as Spain's construction led boom was getting under way. The newcomers from Latin America did not go unnoticed among Spanish banks that then had the liquidity to extend credit. Before applying for its own banking license, Pichincha discussed forming an alliance with Banco Popular, one of the biggest Spanish institutions. In 2006, Popular started MundoCredit, a subsidiary with 60 branches, aimed at migrants and their soaring remittances. Money outflows from Spain rose almost fivefold from 2001 to 2007, reaching 15.2 billion in that year, according to the World Bank. But the negotiations between Popular and Pichincha stalled, and last year Popular shut MundoCredit as a stand alone entity, following in the footsteps of Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria, or BBVA, which also closed down a similar business called Dinero Express. Behind such closures, "the logical thinking is that you are dealing with clients whose track record is hard to establish and who are in the front line in terms of job vulnerability," said Emilio Ontiveros, chairman of Analistas Financieros Internacionales, a research consulting firm in Madrid. In the meantime, however, Santander and BBVA, the two biggest commercial banks in Spain, expanded aggressively into Latin America to offset weakening domestic revenue. Net earnings at both banks fell 35 percent last year. While a booming Brazilian business helped cushion the fall for Santander, Mexico overtook Spain as the market contributing most to BBVA's earnings. Pichincha has managed to pick up clients by not charging for remittances to Ecuador or to other countries, like Peru and Colombia, where Pichincha operates. In addition, the bank has been expanding its microcredit business in Spain, as well as setting lower thresholds for clients to earn interest on their deposits currently 3.5 percent a year on an account as small as 600 euros ( 802). The cultural affinity, meanwhile, is strengthened by Latin Americans' accounting for four fifths of the bank's employees in Spain. On the other hand, shifting money from Ecuador to Spain remains complicated and costly because the bank "is simply not as integrated on an operational level as might seem," said Manuel Romera, director of the financial sector of the IE business school, who helped a small Ecuadorean company with such a transfer. Pichincha's other and arguably riskier expansion strategy has involved buying assets from Spanish institutions that need to lift their capital ratios to comply with new banking rules. Last year, for instance, Pichincha paid 5.5 million euros for a Latin American consumer credit portfolio from Bankia, one of Spain's biggest savings banks. Such purchased assets have contained on average 9 percent of bad or doubtful loans, thereby raising the overall level held by Pichincha in Spain to 7 percent. That percentage, however, remains below the 7.7 percent average for the Spanish banking sector.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Global Business
Brandon Larracuente in "Party of Five," a reboot of the 1990s drama. This time, it centers on five siblings raising one another after their parents are deported. In the opening minutes of Freeform's "Party of Five," Javier and Gloria Acosta (Bruno Bichir and Fernanda Urrejola) are arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the restaurant they own and operate. They're terrified, but also they're confused. No, they don't have papers. But they've been in America for two decades. They have five children. Why seize them now, after all this time? "Things have changed," one of the agents says. So they have. Two decades ago, we didn't have a government promising to build a wall on the Mexican border, or an administration erecting barriers even to legal immigration and refugees, or rising deaths among detained migrants, or a president declaring, "Our Country is FULL." And two decades ago, when the original "Party of Five" depicted five siblings raising one another without their parents, all it needed was the time tested premise of killing off mom and dad. Back then, the five Salinger siblings ran a family restaurant and shared a fabulous townhouse in the low key aftermath of loss, in a community that sympathized with them. No one goes to a rally to rage against orphans. Now, the five Acosta kids are in an ongoing trauma and a more vulnerable situation, managing their deported parents' business while worrying about what else society might take from them. The new "Party of Five," from the original's creators, Amy Lippman and Christopher Keyser, is in many ways so far a standard, sentimental family melodrama. But it has urgency and energy because, unlike so many TV remakes that try to turn back time, it's all about how times have changed. Freeform's "Party" keeps the same template for its siblings. The oldest, Emilio (Brandon Larracuente), is a womanizing musician who suddenly has to settle down as the family unit's only remaining adult. The fraternal twins, Beto (Niko Guardado) and Lucia (Emily Tosta), suddenly have life changing stresses on top of their high school woes, while the brainy younger sister, Valentina (Elle Paris Legaspi), is balled up with anxiety. (There's also a baby brother, who has no lines but capably turns the emotional screws.) So the Acostas still have their parents, unlike the Salingers, but they also have far less privilege. There's the looming possibility that Emilio, who entered the country with his parents, could lose the protection he has under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. (Later episodes also introduce other immigrant perspectives, from a runaway teenager Lucia befriends to a teacher who looks down on undocumented families like the Acostas for making things harder "for the rest of us.") It's a compelling premise, though the show still needs to flesh out the kids as characters. The most interesting dynamic is between Beto and Lucia, who had always seemed opposites (he struggles in school and social life, she's a conscientious A student) but now find themselves meeting in the middle. But early on, the strongest aspect of the show is how it commits to an agonizing situation that is easy for unaffected people to simply look away from much like the images of children in cages that faded from the news, even as the detentions continued. In the pilot's most wrenching scene, the Acosta kids watch as their parents are wrested from them in a detention center, and Javier urges Lucia to keep her dignity and let everyone know "who we are." She answers angrily: "They don't care who we are." At heart, "Party of Five" aims to prove her wrong. But one of the strongest responses to our moment draws not on current headlines but on the recent immigrant past. "Little America," an anthology whose first season arrives on Apple TV Plus on Friday, describes American immigration as a complicated love story, one made more bittersweet by knowing the ugly turns that story has recently taken. "Little America," whose producers include Lee Eisenberg ("The Office"), Alan Yang ("Master of None") and Emily V. Gordon and Kumail Nanjiani ("The Big Sick"), bases its half hour episodes on a series of articles in Epic magazine. It feels existentially political, though it's never overtly so. Its mode is not angry or didactic but full throatedly patriotic a spirit of 2015, "Immigrants, we get the job done" belief that making America bigger makes it better. The individual stories are short and pithy. (One, set at a silent meditation retreat, feels like an extended setup for a punch line.) But collectively, the show's understanding of the immigrant experience is complex and nuanced. In "Little America," the impulse to pick up stakes and move is hopeful, but it inevitably comes with loss. It's about aspiration and hustle and dreams, but it's also about homesickness and alienation and loneliness. The protagonists are at once fascinated with and confounded by America. In "The Cowboy," a lonely Nigerian college student (Conphidance) in early '80s Oklahoma takes to wearing boots and a Stetson hat, which are both icons of his new surroundings and a nostalgic reminder of the Westerns he watched as a kid in his village. But he still can't get over the American "sickness" of dousing hamburgers in ketchup: "When God made the meat, do you think God said to Adam, 'This must have the sauce'?" They connect to elements of a new culture and make them their own. An undocumented high school girl from Mexico (Jearnest Corchado) becomes a squash champion; a baker's daughter (Kemiyondo Coutinho) moves from Uganda to Louisville, Ky., and starts a business selling chocolate chip cookies, a foreign confection her mother always dismissed as "too sweet." The characters can seem naive in their belief in America's possibilities, like the Iranian entrepreneur in "The Rock" (Shaun Toub), a "Shark Tank" superfan who buys a property encumbered by a massive boulder, certain that he can remove the obstacle that defeated its past owners. They're not always right or successful, but that belief is a kind of superpower: They're unencumbered by the native citizen's assumptions about what can and can't change. Because the episodes are based on true stories, they're set in the past, anywhere from the 1960s to the last decade. They never mention current politics. Yet the unspoken contrast between the past and now somehow makes a more potent statement. The season's final episode, "The Son," about a gay Syrian refugee (Haaz Sleiman) applying for asylum in the still welcoming United States, feels especially like a dispatch from another time and another land, a kind of alternative history. (The quirky, quixotic story about the Iranian immigrant and the boulder seemed to age a decade after I watched it in early January just before United States border agents began stopping Iranian Americans re entering their own country.) "Little America" feels both aware of this its timeliness and stubbornly hopeful that there is something timeless in its stories' appeal. The episodes can be, like those chocolate chip cookies, a touch sweet. But they're placing a bet that our American palates haven't grown too jaded for that.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
For those who heard the mezzo soprano Anita Rachvelishvili's volcanic, turned up to 11 Princesse de Bouillon in "Adriana Lecouvreur" at the Metropolitan Opera a couple of months ago, the start of her Dalila may come as a bit of a shock. In Saint Saens's "Samson et Dalila," which returned to the Met on Wednesday for five performances after opening the season with a different cast in September, Ms. Rachvelishvili begins with a veritable whisper. Her voice a sheet of gauze, individual notes fine and faint as threads, she sometimes seems to be barely singing at all in the aria "Printemps qui commence." Her seduction at first, that is is about making us, like Samson, lean in closer, rather than roaring out a stereotypical smolder. She brings down the first act curtain with coy quiet. Read how Ms. Rachvelishvili has taken the opera world by storm. But her commanding first notes just after intermission show that that pale, girlish priestess was just a ruse. Ms. Rachvelishvili's voice expands as her Dalila does: to a full throated, lava blooded lover unsure of whether she believes her own lies in the second act, then to an agonized, regretful woman in the third. She had the unusual distinction of ensnaring two tenors on Wednesday. Aleksandrs Antonenko began the performance as Samson, but labored and coughed his way through the first act. Before the second, an announcement was made that he was struggling with a cold and would be replaced by Gregory Kunde. Mr. Kunde is hardly an unknown. Singing now for 40 years, he is a noted leading man in Europe, in heroic roles like Radames ("Aida") and Calaf ("Turandot"). Once a bel canto specialist, he's the rare tenor with both Rossini's and Verdi's very different versions of "Otello" in his repertory. In cleaner, more robust voice than many tenors a generation younger (even on their healthy days), he rose by the end to genuine nobility, passionate without strain. His love scene with Ms. Rachvelishvili was quietly combustible, an achievement considering they had no opportunity to rehearse together. (The Met said on Thursday that Mr. Kunde would take over Mr. Antonenko's remaining three performances, too; as scheduled, Kristian Benedikt will sing Samson on March 28.) For low voices, this revival benefits from playing alongside the rollout of Wagner's "Ring" cycle at the Met. Tomasz Konieczny (an acclaimed Alberich) and Gunther Groissbock (Fasolt and Hunding) moonlight memorably with small yet meaty parts in "Samson," Mr. Konieczny as Abimelech and Mr. Groissbock as the Old Hebrew. Along with the conductor Mark Elder, Laurent Naouri is the holdover from opening night, and he still sings the High Priest with restrained relish. Darko Tresnjak's production has its garish charms; I like gold tasseled costumes and shiny crowns as much as the next guy, and the massive god statue of the finale is impressive. But the staging feels static and antsy, rather than majestic or truly energetic. For all the nearly nude gyrations of this Bacchanale, its intensity doesn't build to boiling. And if you're going to go the old Hollywood spectacle route, as Mr. Tresnjak does, you can't get away with the pitiful anticlimax of his finale, which dispatches the Temple of Dagon with a little bright light and smoke. After lurid lighting and miles of shiny fabric, I want to see a temple fall down!	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
A new wireless giant has entered the scene. T Mobile and Sprint announced the closing of their 30 billion merger on Wednesday, the result of a long in the works effort by both companies to speed the progress of wireless technology and put up a fight against AT T and Verizon, the two companies that have long dominated the industry. As part of finishing the deal, John Legere, the boisterous, magenta clad chief executive who led T Mobile for nearly a decade, handed over leadership reins to his longtime second in command, the more buttoned up Mike Sievert. The new business, called T Mobile, will have about 100 million customers. To keep them and add to their ranks, the company plans to quickly develop the fifth generation wireless technology that will bring broadband style service through the air and is seen as a critical component of the nation's infrastructure. T Mobile has said that deploying 5G would have taken much longer and cost much more without the addition of Sprint. Upgrading the networks also makes T Mobile a formidable challenger to AT T and Verizon, Mr. Sievert said in an interview. "It used to be that customers were forced to choose: Do you want a better network? Or a better value? Now you don't have to choose," he said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
This pill goes down easier if you forget what is in it. Inside the experimental capsule is human feces strained, centrifuged and frozen. Taken for just two days, the preparation can cure a dangerous bacterial infection that has defied antibiotics and kills 14,000 Americans each year, researchers said Saturday. If the results are replicated in larger trials, the pill, developed at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, promises an easier, cheaper and most likely safer alternative to an unpleasant procedure highlighted in both medical journals and on YouTube: fecal transplants. Studies show that transplanting feces in liquid form from healthy people to patients with stubborn Clostridium difficile infections can stop the wrenching intestinal symptoms, apparently by restoring healthy gut bacteria. But fecal transplants are not easy. The procedure requires delivery of a fecal solution via the rectum or a tube inserted through the nose. As with colonoscopies, patients must flush their bowels first. Finding and screening donors is time consuming and can delay the transplant. And the costs can be significant, certainly higher than taking a simple pill. "Capsules are going to replace the way we've been doing this," said Dr. Colleen Kelly, a gastroenterologist with the Women's Medicine Collaborative in Providence, R.I., who was not involved in the study. Dr. Kelly performs five or six fecal transplants a month, but demand is so great she is booked through January. "It's so labor intensive," she said. "You have to find a donor, have to screen a donor. If you can just open a freezer and take out a poop pill, that's wonderful." While the pills are not being marketed yet, the authors of the study, published in JAMA, are already making them available to qualified patients without requiring participation in clinical trials. Their study was small and preliminary, but results were striking: 19 of 20 patients with C. difficile infections were cured of diarrhea and related symptoms. Most saw improvements after one two day round of pills, the rest after two or three rounds, said Dr. Ilan Youngster, the lead investigator. Other research teams, and at least one private company, are developing and testing fecal pills. Currently, the Food and Drug Administration effectively permits doctors to give fecal transplants to qualified patients with recurrent C. difficile infections. Pills marketed commercially would have to meet F.D.A. drug licensing regulations. Dr. Lawrence Brandt, an emeritus chief of gastroenterology at Montefiore Medical Center who was not involved in the study, noted that "capsules are easy to take and do not have any kind of offensive odor." Some experts said they also hoped that pills would discourage people from potentially dangerous do it yourself fecal transplants, which have been featured in YouTube videos. People have used stool from family or friends, often administering it via enema. "I know of at least one person who did it at home and came in with a very severe infection in his bowel," said Dr. Youngster, a pediatric infectious disease physician at Massachusetts General. That patient, treated by a colleague, "did a home brew of stool from a 2 year old infant." In their study, Dr. Youngster and colleagues recruited donors via Craigslist and screened their stool to make sure it was healthy. The stool was mixed with saline and put through sieves to remove "the yucky stuff," Dr. Youngster said, then centrifuged and mixed with glycerol to keep bacteria alive when frozen. It was piped into capsules, which were stored in deep freeze and transferred to a regular freezer before patients swallowed them. Dr. Youngster said the capsules could be stored for 250 days or longer. The capsules are clear, so "the fact that they are frozen is actually good, because then you can't see what's in them." The patients, 11 to 89 years old, had each experienced at least two episodes of C. difficile that antibiotics had failed to control. After one round of dosing (two days, 15 capsules per day), diarrhea cleared up in 14 patients. Five others, sicker than the rest beforehand, responded after a second two day dosing about a week later. One of this group relapsed and needed another dose. One patient may not have responded because of liver problems, Dr. Youngster said. There were no serious side effects, not even the vomiting researchers had expected. Six patients had mild cramps or bloating. Deirdre, 37, a technology consultant in Boston, acquired C. difficile after receiving antibiotics for a breast infection and struggled with recurrences for months before learning of the study. "At first I was kind of grossed out," said Deirdre, who asked that her last name be withheld because of privacy concerns. But about a week after taking the capsules, which "kind of felt like small ice cubes," her digestive system began to normalize. "If this is a treatment that was 90 percent effective and you can get over the gross factor, it seems to be kind of a no brainer," she said. Interest in fecal treatments has grown since a 2013 study found transplants are nearly twice as effective as antibiotics for recurring C. difficile. A nonprofit in Cambridge, Mass., OpenBiome, sends frozen stool samples to hospitals for fecal transplants.Pills are being tested with promising results elsewhere, and a company called Seres Health is in advanced trials of a pill incorporating certain bacteria from stool. Dr. Alexander Khoruts, a gastroenterologist at the University of Minnesota, said some researchers were trying to freeze dry stool samples so they could be made into powders that could be stored at room temperature. Dr. Josbert Keller, a Dutch gastroenterologist who led last year's fecal transplant study, said he would try capsules. "It's much easier for the patient," he said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
ANNE TERESA DE KEERSMAEKER/ROSAS at Baryshnikov Arts Center (Jan. 30 Feb. 2, 7:30 p.m.; through Feb. 3). In the New York premiere of "Verklarte Nacht" ("Transfigured Night"), De Keersmaeker takes inspiration from Arnold Schonberg's score, which is based on a poem by Richard Dehmel. Originally a group work from 1995, the choreographer has given it an intimate makeover: Now performed by three dancers, it is predominantly a duet in which a woman reveals to the man she loves that she is pregnant with another man's child. It's full on drama. 866 811 4111, bacnyc.org Read about the events that our other critics have chosen for the week ahead. GRUPO CORPO at BAM Howard Gilman Opera House (Jan. 31 Feb. 2, 7:30 p.m.). This 22 member Brazilian troupe, formed by Paulo Pederneiras in 1975, returns to BAM with two works by Rodrigo Pederneiras: "Bach" and "Gira." (The two are brothers; Paulo is Grupo Corpo's artistic director, and Rodrigo is its choreographer.) In the 1996 work "Bach" set to Marco Antonio Guimaraes's homage to the composer the dancers, wearing gold, black and blue, hang and descend from steel tubes. For "Gira," the mood shifts dramatically as Grupo Corpo collaborates with the Sao Paulo punk jazz rock band Meta Meta and draws on the rhythms and movement rooted in the rites of the Umbanda religion. 718 636 4100, bam.org JUDSON DANCE THEATER: A COLLECTIVE SPECULATION at MoMA PS1 (Jan. 27, 2 6 p.m.). As part of the current MoMA exhibition "Judson Dance Theater: The Work Is Never Done," which looks at the experimental collective formed in the 1960s, MoMA PS1's VW Sunday Sessions performance series hosts a symposium exploring the group's influence on the current generation. Programming includes discussions and sound improvisations by an impressive array of artists, scholars and critics. The lineup features Fred Moten; K. J. Holmes and Ramsey Ameen; Malik Gaines; Andre Lepecki; Marina Rosenfeld with Eli Keszler and Greg Fox; Clare Croft; and Gus Solomons Jr. 718 784 2084, moma.org NEW YORK CITY BALLET at the David H. Koch Theater (through March 3). The company gives its winter season an extra glow with debuts, notably Gonzalo Garcia in "Apollo" and Teresa Reichlen in "Orpheus" on Saturday evening. Later in the week, as part of the annual New Combinations Evening on Thursday, the company's resident choreographer, Justin Peck, unveils his latest, "Principia," set to a commissioned score by the composer Sufjan Stevens. Featuring 24 dancers led by Tiler Peck and Taylor Stanley, the premiere is the fourth time Peck and Stevens have collaborated at City Ballet. The program will be rounded out by William Forsythe's "Herman Schmerman" and Kyle Abraham's "The Runaway." 212 496 0600, nycballet.com THUNDERBIRD AMERICAN INDIAN DANCERS at Theater for the New City (Jan. 25, 8 p.m.; Jan. 26, 3 and 8 p.m.; Jan. 27, 3 p.m.; through Feb. 3). For its 44th annual performance and powwow, this Native American dance company, formed in 1963, offers a program of dance, stories and traditional music from the Northeast, the Southwest and the Great Plains tribes, along with "Silent Echoes of Time," a contemporary work by Michael Taylor Dancing Wolf. Inspired by Vietnam veterans, it will be shown at select performances. Other highlights include storytelling by Matoaka Eagle, a hoop dance by Marie Ponce and a deer dance from the Yaqui tribes of southern Arizona. The company's director, Louis Mofsie, will serve as the M.C. 212 254 1109, theaterforthenewcity.net	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
New York's Dance on Camera festival has now reached its 42nd edition. Started as a Dance Films Association initiative and itinerant for its first 25 years, it found a home at the Film Society of Lincoln Center in 1996. The schedule for the 2014 season, which runs from Friday through Tuesday, is crowded. Admirably eclectic as ever, it reflects changing forms of camerawork and editing, wraps in history and documentary, and ranges in subject from tap, ice, flamenco and Asian idioms to ballet stars and modern dance choreography, established and experimental. I like a film festival that parallels the extraordinary breadth of the dance I see on stages around this city, and one that keeps adding to the sum of my knowledge. Take three new documentaries that are among the highlights of this year's festival. In "Paul Taylor: Creative Domain" (on Tuesday), directed by Kate Geis, we're shown what the camera has seldom been able to record: a great choreographer at work on a new piece, "Three Dubious Memories." (An incidental factor is the beauty of the studio in which Mr. Taylor creates, especially its light.) Mr. Taylor had just turned 80 when he made "Three Dubious Memories." As he works on a solo with the dancer James Samson, you watch with some anxiety as he maneuvers himself into an Egyptian profile two dimensional kneeling position. But the pose, he tells Mr. Samson, isn't meant to be comfortable. "Three Dubious Memories" had its premiere in 2010; when the Taylor company next revives it, I shall watch it differently with the information gleaned from this documentary. "La Passion Noureev" (on Sunday), a French film about Rudolf Nureyev by Fabrice Herrault, briefly seems to bode disaster in an early scene in which a boy does ballet steps in class as if he might be, or wanted to be, Nureyev. This turns out, however, to be an isolated scene that adds poignancy and dimension. The rest of this chronicle is culled entirely from footage of Nureyev and colleagues, most of it rare and much of it taken from live performance. I had not known that any film existed of Nureyev dancing Balanchine's "Apollo," Jerome Robbins's "Dances at a Gathering" or Jose Limon's "The Moor's Pavane," all of which I saw him perform in 1976; here, there are excerpts from those and 12 other Nureyev roles, as well as vivid backstage interviews and rehearsal scenes. Here is Nureyev at the barre with the Danish dancer Erik Bruhn. Here is the dress rehearsal for Ashton's "Marguerite and Armand" (the celebrity version of Dumas's "Lady of the Camellias," whose lead roles, during their lifetimes, were danced only by Margot Fonteyn and Nureyev). Nureyev was central to my own discovery of ballet from 1975 to '77. I saw him in many roles, have spoken to his colleagues and have read at least four of the biographies that have emerged since his death. This film shows nothing of his long years of decline; it tells us nothing of his sex life or AIDS. It concentrates on the dancer in his prime, from 1958 to 1979. Not only did it refresh my memory of this most stellar of all performers, but it also added vividly to my sense of the temperamental isolation of this nomad and his restless but total dedication to dance. Yet more enthralling is "The Unseen Sequence" (on Friday), directed by Sumantra Ghosal, about a dancer no less dedicated and often even more profound. She is the glorious Indian performer Malavika Sarukkai, an exponent of the Bharatanatyam genre of southeastern India and one of the greatest dancers of our day. The title refers to a point she makes about the way a dance can address the infinite, not just in space but as part of a long continuity, "the unseen sequence." The film combines recent performance with interviews and historic clips. Like the Taylor documentary, it opens in 2012, showing a performance quietly given by Ms. Sarukkai in a beautifully pillared hall at Chidambaram, the temple especially associated with the god Shiva and the dance, to observe her 40th anniversary as a dancer. The camera revealingly shifts from close up to long shot, from angle to angle, showing the rich multidirectionality of Bharatanatyam, the interplay between strict geometric form and speaking gesture, and, above all, the singular way a great Indian dancer visibly subordinates the self to a sense of something far larger. Other facets of the festival include the history of American ice skating and its top performers; the modern dance pioneer Martha Hill; the 3 D "Story Time," featuring the choreographer Bill T. Jones; the theme of dance and community; and dozens more. Large as the New York dance scene is, this festival expands it.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
The interior designer Samuel Amoia lives in Manhattan, but these days his thoughts often stray to the beach. That's because one of his largest projects is Itz'ana, a resort and residential development in Belize opening later this year. The design is a mix of Spanish and British colonial styles and "a beach vibe" that celebrates indoor outdoor living, said Mr. Amoia, 33, who worked for the hotelier Andre Balazs and the designer Stephen Sills before founding his own company in 2012. "Every room has an outdoor chaise, sofa and dining table." But when it comes to relaxing outside, he added, it's the chaise longue that matters most. Mr. Amoia isn't doing much relaxing himself these days. In addition to his work in Belize, he just introduced a collection of furniture at DeLorenzo Gallery in New York, and will receive a Rising Talent award at Maison Objet Americas, the design fair running from May 10 to 13 in Miami Beach. But for those who do have time to relax, Mr. Amoia offered a few tips on choosing an outdoor chaise longue. Think about how you'll use your outdoor space. If it will be both a social gathering space and a place for sunbathing, you need a chaise that offers an upright sitting position and can also function as a bench when flat.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
The Joyce Theater's Ballet Festival, which begins on Tuesday, July 18, has a noble and worthy aim: to give a new generation of choreographers a chance. And if all else fails, this multicompany presentation features a wealth of exceptional dancers from American Ballet Theater, New York City Ballet and beyond. Co curated by John Selya, a former Ballet Theater member who became a leading Twyla Tharp dancer, this contemporary festival opens with Emery LeCrone Dance in a program featuring Ms. LeCrone's sister, the City Ballet soloist Megan LeCrone, and Ballet Theater's Stephanie Williams. Other performances include Claudia Schreier Company with Wendy Whelan, Jared Angle, Unity Phelan and Cameron Dieck as well as two groups headed by Ballet Theater dancers: Cirio Collective, led by the Ballet Theater principal Jeffrey Cirio, and Gemma Bond, a corps de ballet member who is making a name as a serious choreographer. Finally, Amy Seiwert's Imagery, a San Francisco company, closes the festival with her first evening length ballet. Commissioned by the Joyce and set to Franz Schubert's "Winterreise," it spotlights the journey of a wanderer. (Through July 29; joyce.org.)	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
You still love television. You use your tablet more than ever. And now you are as likely to have paid services like Netflix or Amazon Prime as you are to have a DVR service. Those are some of the findings of a study released this week by Nielsen that measured how we are consuming media these days (increasingly on devices we hold in our hands), and how much live TV we still watch (an average of more than five hours a day). The study comes just a few weeks after Netflix revealed some data about how quickly people will take to finish a season of a TV show about five days, give or take, spending two hours a day watching. How much are we watching, and how are we watching it? Here is what Nielsen found: On average, American adults are watching five hours and four minutes of television per day. The bulk of that about four and a half hours of it is live television, which is television watched when originally broadcast. Thirty minutes more comes via DVR.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
YouTube is known for shining a spotlight on viral stars, but sometimes it can act more like a hip record store clerk, digging in the crates. Five years ago, if you clicked on a video for Brian Eno, '80s new age or spiritual jazz, the site's recommendation algorithm directed you next to an obscure and mysterious pick: a Japanese modern classical album from 1983 titled "Through the Looking Glass." It was the work of the Japanese percussionist and composer Midori Takada, and while little was known about her in the United States, the video soon topped over two million views. (It has since been taken down over a copyright violation.) Original vinyl copies of the album started fetching over 1,000. "I didn't know about her music when I grew up in Japan," said Miho Hatori of the duo Cibo Matto, who first learned of Ms. Takada from that YouTube algorithm. "But Midori's music has the energy of the spirit of the early '80s when music and culture was changing in Japan." Such a renaissance was news to Ms. Takada. "I didn't know about that YouTube video, because I don't do social media; even a PC, I didn't have one," the musician, 66, said by telephone from Los Angeles, where she was about to embark on her first United States tour. (She makes her New York solo debut this week.) "After recording 'Through the Looking Glass,' I knew that my music was not popular, so there was no offer to make a new one." "Anything ambient, Japanese, electronic or vaguely related was linking to this video," said Jacob Gorchov, who runs the Palto Flats label and reissued Ms. Takada's enigmatic album last year in conjunction with the Swiss label WRWTFWW Records. It became the No. 2 selling album at the online retailer Discogs for 2017, behind only Radiohead's "OK Computer." In the wake of the YouTube video's popularity, Ms. Takada has toured Europe multiple times and her other albums have been reissued in the last year; next month a reissue of her short lived first band, Mkwaju Ensemble, will be released as well. Classically trained as a percussionist, Ms. Takada originally performed in the Berlin RIAS Symphonie Orchester at the start of her career in the mid 1970s, but soon found herself dissatisfied with the Western classical musical tradition. "If I continued to play westernized contemporary music, it needed many more instruments like an orchestra," Ms. Takada said. Instead, she gravitated to the Minimalism of composers like Steve Reich and Terry Riley. And much like these composers, she was also interested in African drumming and Indonesian gamelan. In these unfussy world music sounds she heard something far more abundant. "People say it's poor, but from very few materials, they produce rich sounds just using their body and hands," she said. "How to make a worldly sound by your body and with simple materials was an important thing to me." Unable to learn much about African music in Japan, Ms. Takada instead studied African drumming by way of two albums of field recordings, from Tanzania and Zimbabwe. "I copied from the vinyl, writing down the rhythm structures, and tried it by myself," she said of her rigorous daily practice to learn polyrhythms, likening it to a daily mantra. "It changed my body." In January 1983, she went into the studio for two days. The album was an arduous process, with Ms. Takada composing, producing, arranging the microphones and playing everything on it, from marimba to drums, harmonium to Coke bottle. The end result is a fascinating mix of contemplative ambience and childlike wonder, building up to the intensifying polyrhythms at its thunderous climax. "It required great concentration to make all the sounds, four pieces recorded in two days," she said. Marketed as a modern classical recording, it did not sell well at the time and Ms. Takada would not record another solo album until 1999. In the years between, she performed in various ensembles, composed for the theater director Tadashi Suzuki and his Suzuki Company of Toga, and taught music theory, environmental formative theory and percussion at various universities in Tokyo. So why did the sounds of "Through the Looking Glass" connect with listeners so recently? "Midori Takada's music sounded so pure and new that despite it being three decades on, her sense of rhythm and space ticks all of today's boxes," the BBC radio host and D.J. Gilles Peterson said in an email. Ms. Takada said new audiences in the West don't change her approach. "Whether in Europe, Africa, Asia or U.S.A., it doesn't matter, each person is important," she said. "My vision is to give individually my sound to everyone." She added that she named the album after the famous Lewis Carroll book not because of the protagonist Alice, but because of the story's reversal of time. "I made the album as a perspective of sounds, so when this new generation listened, they felt something different, recognizing the space," she said. "Nowadays it's easy to play it by electronics, but I played it myself by hand. Even the staff at the studio couldn't understand it. I was misunderstood."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
The dynamic professional and romantic relationship between Bob Fosse and Gwen Verdon has been dramatized in "Fosse/Verdon," an FX series having its premiere on Tuesday and starring Sam Rockwell and Michelle Williams. It might just leave you scrambling to revisit or discover for the first time the brilliance of their work on screen: the exuberance, the precision, the sex, the oft droll humor. Fosse and Verdon collaborated across multiple entertainment mediums, so there are plenty of pieces to choose from. Here are some of the best. The why and how of Fosse/Verdon dance moves. More hats! And a song about ... doing the mambo and feeling sick? The lyrics are nonsensical, but the rare image of Fosse and Verdon dancing together on screen is irresistible. Highlights: The furious footwork and pure joy that comes across. But the real highlight of "Damn Yankees" is definitely ... The dancer and choreographer Ann Reinking, another collaborator (and romantic partner) of Fosse's, has described the characterization of the dance hostesses like so: "From the waist up you're glamorous, you're wonderful. But from the waist down, you're tired and your legs are busted and your feet hurt." You can feel it seep through the dancers' slinky bodies; much of this number actually involves intense stillness. Highlights: The overemphasized, mesmerizing isolated movements, which you can also find in ... The entire hourlong concert special is highlight after highlight, but this number, a cover of a song by soul singer songwriter Joe Tex, stands out. In a hot red mini dress and flanked by two male dancers, Minnelli commands the stage with Fosse's delightfully herky jerky choreography. Highlights: The backup dancers, who are for some reason wearing wide brimmed hats, white ruffled tuxedo shirts and what look like riding boots. Fosse was excellent at envisioning movement for trios, as also seen in ...	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
Our guide to plays and musicals coming to New York stages and a few last chance picks of shows that are about to close. Our reviews of open shows are at nytimes.com/reviews/theater. 'CHRISTMAS RAPPINGS' at the Judson Memorial Church (performances on Dec. 6 and 7). Fifty years ago, Al Carmines, a minister at the Judson Memorial Church and a key figure in the Off Off Broadway movement, premiered a holiday oratorio that captures, as he put it, "the human interest and the joy" of the nativity story. Nearly 50 performers, some of them original cast members, now revive it. christmasrappings2019.brownpapertickets.com '42FT: A MENAGERIE OF MECHANICAL MARVELS' at the New Victory Theater (performances start on Dec. 6). A steampunk circus reoriented for the proscenium stage, the latest show from this American company performs traditional circus acts with a few more gears and wheels. Highlights include log juggling, flying trapeze and a cantering mechanical horse. Chris Lashua and Aloysia Gavre direct. 646 223 3010, newvictory.org 'GREATER CLEMENTS' at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater at Lincoln Center Theater (in previews; opens on Dec. 9). In Samuel D. Hunter's new play, Judith Ivey stars as a woman who runs a mine tour and museum in an economically depressed and politically divided Idaho town. The return of an old boyfriend (Ken Narasaki) offers the possibility of escape. Will she take it? The director Davis McCallum, Hunter's longtime collaborator, digs deep. 212 239 6200, lct.org 'HALFWAY BITCHES GO STRAIGHT TO HEAVEN' at the Atlantic Theater Company at the Linda Gross Theater (in previews; opens on Dec. 9). A playwright who never met an expletive or a wounded heart he couldn't love, Stephen Adly Guirgis returns to the Atlantic with a big cast, high energy story of a women's halfway house in New York. Under John Ortiz's direction, the cast includes Patrice Johnson Chevannes, Liza Colon Zayas and Elizabeth Rodriguez. 866 811 4111, atlantictheater.org 'HARRY CONNICK JR.: A CELEBRATION OF COLE PORTER' at the Nederlander Theater (performances start on Dec. 7). Delightful, delicious and potentially delovely, this concert pairs the American crooner and a 25 piece orchestra with one of the great practitioners of the American songbook. Will the evening be a trip to the moon on gossamer wings or just one of those things? 877 250 2929, harryconnickjr.com Read about the events that our other critics have chosen for the week ahead. 'JUDGMENT DAY' at the Park Avenue Armory (in previews; opens on Dec. 10). A different kind of trolley problem motors into the armory. Christopher Shinn adapts Odon von Horvath's 1937 play, both a tense drama and a political allegory exploring guilt and responsibility. Luke Kirby ("The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel") stars; Richard Jones directs. 212 616 3930, armoryonpark.org 'ONE IN TWO' at the Pershing Square Signature Center (in previews; opens on Dec. 10). In Donja R. Love's new play, Jamyl Dobson, Leland Fowler and Edward Mawere star as three black queer men, one of whom is diagnosed with H.I.V., as Love ("Fireflies") was a decade ago. Stevie Walker Webb directs for the New Group. 917 935 4242, thenewgroup.org 'ONE NOVEMBER YANKEE' at 59E59 Theaters (in previews; opens on Dec. 8). A crashed Piper Cub shapes the lives and arguments of three sibling pairs, all portrayed by Harry Hamlin ("L.A. Law") and Stefanie Powers ("Hart to Hart"). The play, which takes its name from the aircraft's registration, is directed by its writer, Joshua Ravetch. 646 892 7999, 59e59.org 'THE THIN PLACE' at Playwrights Horizons (in previews; opens on Dec. 12). The playwright Lucas Hnath ("Hillary and Clinton," "The Christians," "A Doll's House, Part 2") has a taste for alternative realities. This new play, directed by Les Waters, is about a medium (Randy Danson) and a young woman (Emily Cass McDonnell) who may have some extrasensory perceptions, too. 212 279 4200, playwrightshorizons.org 'WEST SIDE STORY' at the Broadway Theater (previews start on Dec. 10; opens on Feb. 6). Does Broadway feel pretty? Does Ivo van Hove? The celebrated and sometimes controversial Belgian director revives this Stephen Sondheim, Leonard Bernstein and Arthur Laurents musical, with new choreography by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, and one song and one ballet extracted. Isaac Powell and Shereen Pimentel star. 212 239 6200, westsidestorybway.com 'BETRAYAL' at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theater (closes on Dec. 8). Harold Pinter's chronologically tricky and emotionally sticky love triangle leaves the stage. Ben Brantley described Jamie Lloyd's production, starring Tom Hiddleston, Charlie Cox and Zawe Ashton, as "the most merciless and empathic interpretation of this much performed work I've seen." He added, "I didn't expect it to be one of those rare shows I seem destined to think about forever." 212 239 6200, betrayalonbroadway.com 'FOR COLORED GIRLS WHO HAVE CONSIDERED SUICIDE/WHEN THE RAINBOW IS ENUF' at the Public Theater (closes on Dec. 15). Leah C. Gardiner's ecstatic, anguished revival of Ntozake Shange's choreopoem reaches its end. Ben Brantley wrote that what is most pervasive in this production, which stars Jayme Lawson, Adrienne C. Moore and Okwui Okpokwasili, among others, is its "sense of women talking to and being deeply invested in one another, as if in an eternal support group." 212 967 7555, publictheater.org 'THE ROSE TATTOO' at the American Airlines Theater (closes on Dec. 8). Tennessee Williams's sunstruck, Florida set comedy of sex and grief ends its run. Though Ben Brantley had some encouraging words for its stars Marisa Tomei and Emun Elliott, he noted that "it's a vaudevillian notion of sex they're presenting, the poignancy and poetry within their characters' coming together are mostly absent." 212 719 1300, roundabouttheatre.org 'SCOTLAND, PA' at the Laura Pels Theater at the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theater (closes on Dec. 8). Adam Gwon and Michael Mitnick's update of Shakespeare's "Macbeth," with '70s rock and a side of fries, places its final orders. Jesse Green noted that under Lonny Price's direction, it is not only funny, but also "quietly insightful, making piquant connections between Shakespeare's drama of political powerlust and the consumerist mania of our own fast food culture." 212 719 1300, roundabouttheatre.org	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
Julian Schnabel, center, in the Musee d'Orsay. The Paris museum invited him to choose paintings from its 19th century collection to exhibit alongside his own. PARIS A game of brinkmanship began when the Musee d'Orsay here invited Julian Schnabel to choose paintings from its 19th century collection to exhibit alongside his own works of art. "At a certain moment the museum said: 'You can't have this or that painting,' so I said 'I can't do it,' " Mr. Schnabel said in a recent interview at the museum. "I thought, if I can't pick the paintings, there's no reason for me to say that I picked the paintings." The American artist and filmmaker, 66, had his eye on works by four artists in particular Vincent van Gogh, Claude Monet, Henri de Toulouse Lautrec and Paul Cezanne which the museum did not want to move from their usual places. The show, "Orsay Through the Eyes of Julian Schnabel," which opens on Wednesday and runs through Jan. 13, juxtaposes 13 paintings from the museum's collection with 11 works by Mr. Schnabel from the last 40 years. There are several of his signature paintings done on broken plates, as well as other surfaces, such as tarpaulin and black velvet. "What the surface of a painting can be is an obsession of mine," Mr. Schnabel said. "If you see how the plate paintings function, it's very three dimensional, both physically and spatially. I like dealing with physical problems and rudimentary concerns about trying to stick things to a surface." The earliest of his works in the show is the large scale "Blue Nude with Sword" from 1979, the first figurative, as opposed to abstract, plate painting that Mr. Schnabel made. It hangs alongside Cezanne's much smaller tableau "La Femme Etranglee" ("The Strangled Woman," 1875 1876), with which it shares a similar red, white and blue palette. The hanging of the exhibition, which was overseen by Mr. Schnabel and his partner, the Swedish interior designer Louise Kugelberg, also explores connections in style, content and scale. Mr. Schnabel, who is known for his gargantuan pieces, selected two of Toulouse Lautrec's largest paintings both night life scenes featuring the Moulin Rouge dancer nicknamed La Goulue (the Glutton) where the canvases have been stuck roughly together. "If you get up close you can see all these seams that someone might think look like a mistake," he said. "But it's part of the artist's intent and about his attitude towards the materials." The most recent work in the exhibition is a delicate plate painting of roses and foliage Mr. Schnabel did in 2017, inspired by a visit to van Gogh's grave in Auvers sur Oise, near Paris. The Dutch master, whose sublime "Portrait de l'Artiste" ("Portrait of the Artist," 1889) features in the show, has been on Mr. Schnabel's mind lately. In September he premiered his latest film, "At Eternity's Gate," about the final, helter skelter months of van Gogh's life at the Venice Film Festival. The movie, which stars Willem Dafoe, who won the best actor prize at Venice for his portrayal of van Gogh, will close the New York Film Festival on Friday. Its development dates from 2014, when Mr. Schnabel and the French screenwriter Jean Claude Carriere visited a Musee d'Orsay exhibition that paired paintings by van Gogh with drawings by the avant garde poet Antonin Artaud. "Every van Gogh painting we saw was a vignette all of its own," said Mr. Schnabel, who wrote the screenplay for "At Eternity's Gate" with Mr. Carriere and Ms. Kugelberg. "Seeing the exhibition was an accumulative sensation. The movie functions like that: It's a gallery of emotions, a gallery of scenes that possibly could have happened, and ways of talking about painting and life." Mr. Schnabel said that, for him, van Gogh is "the most modern painter" because of "the freedom and clarity of what he established." Like van Gogh before him, Mr. Schnabel paints quickly, completing a work in a matter of hours, not days. He is also an outdoor painter, who said he prefers to contend with the elements than with the dark interior of a studio. His enthusiasm for painting "en plein air" dates from when he did his first plate painting, while working as a cook in New York in the late 1970s, he said. "When I saw that painting, which I'd done in my studio taken out into the street, I thought it looked terrible," he added. "Since then, I've always thought that painting outside is better because you can really see everything." Mr. Dafoe, who has known Mr. Schnabel for over 30 years, said in a telephone interview that "At Eternity's Gate" "is filtered through certain events and certain things that Vincent said, but of course, it also says a lot about Julian." Mr. Dafoe, who took painting lessons from Mr. Schnabel to prepare for the role, often felt as if he were standing in for the artist himself.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
Make room in the packed Trump book marketplace for two more titles Michiko Kakutani's "The Death of Truth," which the former New York Times book critic describes as an examination of "the fallout that dishonesty and the denial of objective truth are having on our democracy," and 's "Liars, Leakers and Liberals," which the Fox weekend host calls "my firsthand account of the real Trump presidency." Pirro, a former county court judge in New York, is a longtime friend and supporter of the president (she once tweeted a picture of herself standing at the White House gates, saying "Guess where I am?"). He has returned the affection, once even gifting her with a box of Ivanka Trump shoes. Not only did Trump give her an interview for the book, he also urged people to buy it: "Our great Judge is out with a new book, 'Liars, Leakers and Liberals, the Case Against the Anti Trump Conspiracy,' which is fantastic. Go get it!" he tweeted on June 22. (It's unclear whether or not he has actually picked it up; a New York Times article once stated bluntly that the president "does not read books.") President Trump is not the only member of the family flogging "Liars, Leakers and Liberals." Eric and Lara Trump, who attended the launch party, have been photographed holding copies of it, and Donald Trump Jr. who recently tweeted that Pirro would make an "awesome" Supreme Court justice was interviewed for it, telling the judge, "Think about the campaign in the early days, when they say this Russia stuff happened. We couldn't have colluded to order a cheeseburger."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
The reports this week that the Alley Oop comic strip was on its deathbed may have been premature. Its current creative team signed off in a strip on Saturday for the comic, which debuted on Dec. 5, 1932, but in an interview, John Glynn, president and editorial director of the company that distributes Alley Oop, hinted at a possible future. The strip's illustrator, Jack Bender, and writer, Carole Bender, announced their retirement in August. In Saturday's strip, Ooola (Alley's girlfriend) asks the title character, "What's next?" Alley's response: "Let's just enjoy the view for a while." The creators added: "Ah, retirement! Thanks to Alley Oop and our readers for a great ride." On Sunday, Andrews McMeel Syndication, which distributes the strip, began running reprints, which will continue through the end of the year. And this week Mr. Glynn said he was encouraged, in part, by a revival of the Nancy strip earlier this year with a new cartoonist, Olivia Jaimes. "It's exciting for me to think about these older features that have some brand equity that a lot of people still enjoy," he said. Other brands have been polished for new audiences before, he said, referring to the reimagining of the characters from Archie Comics on the CW television network. "My daughters, who are 12 and 14, love 'Riverdale,' but have never read an Archie comic in their lives," he said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
"Imagine a CSI investigation this famous TV program where the investigators don't have the murder weapon, don't have the place, don't have access to the victims. How the hell do you investigate that? It's impossible!" Late 2016, Havana. "Dr. Rosenfarb, are you aware of any type of technology that would cause this?" "No, I'm not, sir." American diplomats were complaining of crushing headaches, extreme fatigue. "Who would do this?" And, an intense sound. "Secretary Tillerson ordered the departure of non emergency personnel." The Cubans? They said they knew nothing about it. "Sporadic attacks continued until late April. But that sound is why this building is nearly empty at this important moment for Cuba. For the first time in 60 years, its leader will not be a Castro. "Two things we know for sure." Here's what the U.S. government has said about the sound: "People were hurt, and the Cuban government knows who did it. Whatever happened to these people happen as a result of some sophisticated technology that, quite frankly, is so sophisticated we don't understand it. It leads you then ..." In Washington, Senator Marco Rubio convened a hearing. "It was the early opinion of the security professionals who looked at it that it was likely a form of harassment." "O.K. In late 2016, staff at the United States Embassy in Havana began complaining of strange noises, and among the descriptions that they complained of, high pitched beam of sound or just intense pressure in one ear. There are 24 Americans, who during their time in Havana, have experienced symptoms that are consistent with what you would see in mild traumatic brain injury and/or concussion." Doctors said that diplomats' brain matter had actually changed. What started out as a mysterious nuisance "We know it happened to 24 people" became a suspected instrument of attack. "Tillerson reacted as he would have reacted when he was an oil executive. He heard something happen in an oil rig. Get everybody out of there." Secretary of State Rex Tillerson ordered his staff: "We are convinced these were targeted attacks. We don't like our diplomats being targeted." Depart your post, he said. Leave Cuba. And they did. Everyone from the people who discussed trade down to those who processed visas. The incident had become political. "This is entirely about the health, and the safety, and the well being of Americans. We still have an investigation that's underway. So I hope Cuba would focus instead on helping us with the investigation and be less concerned about claiming this is political." music "So here the contrast, the contrast which is " Carlos Alzugaray was a Cuban diplomat for decades. He's a bit of an unofficial government spokesperson. "Why throw down the Embassy? The bad thing about it is that probably the guys who have been affected more are the regular Cubans, not the government." By the time the diplomats left, the warming started by President Obama had undeniably chilled. The U.S. issued a travel advisory, and tourism dropped. On the streets of Havana, the idea that Cuba was involved in a sonic attack was met with skepticism. It wasn't long after the incident became public that sound experts began downplaying the idea of a sonic attack. Sound can't easily change brain matter, among other reasons. "You've got a long, long way to go before you even attribute this to sound. It's not going to cause physical effects. If the sound goes through air before reaching you, it's not going to cause that." "It may have been a situation where people were drawn more closely together." It wasn't only the sound experts who struggled to explain what happened. "Infectious cause is what I would say." Engineers also tried. "It could have just been a malfunctioning ultrasonic device, perhaps used for some other nefarious purpose." And psychologists. "Well, these people were on an island. Fears can spread in a tight group. Things can get more intensified. Anything is possible." A microwave expert. "If you direct a beam of microwave, the microwave would produce an acoustic wave." This doctor said it could have just been a virus. "An infection, of some type." "So an ultrasonic weapon is not science fiction. I could build one. I could put it in the house of somebody I didn't like, and I could annoy them. What its really seems science fiction is the idea that you could build an ultrasonic rifle that will shoot 100 meters and target somebody, and shoot through a wall and get just that one person." Dr. Leighton is referring to this hotel, where some diplomats reported hearing the sound. Look up. It's unlikely you could direct a weaponized sound wave across this street, 11 stories up through walls and windows, and hit individuals repeatedly without anyone noticing. The U.S. wouldn't share any evidence of an attack with the Cubans. So they did their own investigation. For reference, 140 decibels is about the sound of a plane's jet engine at takeoff. "You ask, what we think is that some people were ill, and that there was a psychogenic contagion. And other people started reporting that they were feeling ill. These are English speaking communities that are relatively isolated from the Cuban population. They live among themselves. They exchange. And any kind of anxiety or stress " Doctor Sosa is referring to mass hysteria, a psychological condition. There was no, quote unquote, attack. This theory is actually the current official Cuban standpoint. Today, the lights are on at the Embassy, but the doors remain locked. "The administration's reaction to all of this is so drastic, to make permanent the drawdown of the U.S. Embassy to ridiculously low, unnecessary levels, which has an element of spite to it." Fulton Armstrong is a former C.I.A. analyst who covered Cuba. He made a career in searching for motives. "They were so desperate to make their case that it was sonic attacks. This is serious stuff. You're accusing them of doing line of sight attacks with a weapon that no one knows exists. So, once the political people got stuck in their own internal contradictions, it was almost impossible, then, to get a real serious discussion of what was going on. The administration had already decided it was going to use it, the legitimate symptoms of U.S. government officials, for a political maneuver that looks like a lot of other political things that this administration has done. And that is, at any cost, undo what the predecessor did." "There are a number of people in the administration, and some in Congress, who didn't want to see normalization of relations. So, for those who didn't like the policy changes by President Obama's administration, it's worked out pretty well." "You have the State Department work, practically all the major executive jobs have not been covered. It's the perfect situation for someone like Marco Rubio to hijack a policy and push." "And so it leads you to conclude that the Cuban government either did this, or they know who did it. And they can't say, because ..." "Marco Rubio got his way. Sometimes, in U.S. politics, the strongest voice is the voice that predominates even when the bureaucracy isn't with you." "Whoever did this did this ..." "The bureaucracy has allowed the political voice to come in and dictate a lot, including analysis of the so called sonic attacks issue." "And then it leads you down the road of motivation. It makes you start to think, who would do this? Who would do this? Someone who doesn't like our presence there, and someone who wants there to be this sort of friction between the U.S. So who would be motivated to create friction? Or who would not be in favor of an increased U.S. presence in Cuba? We don't want to be in this position. We have no choice. We cannot send Americans into Foreign Service and their relatives to a country where their safety cannot be guaranteed." Senator Rubio, a son of Cuban exiles, has been a longtime critic of the Castro government. He's always been an opponent of reestablishing ties with Cuba. Now, I'm not under any fantasy that Cuba is going to transition from one day to the next and turn into Canada, but there has to be progress in that direction. And there's never been a step in that direction to the extent that they've taken these steps, they've been largely cosmetic. And they've retreated from some of those positions. So who would be motivated to create friction? Or who would not be in favor of an increased U.S. presence? Maybe it was a third country. Which third country would want to disrupt the U.S. presence there? And the logical conclusion is Russia and Vladimir Putin." "Has the State Department raised attacks against U.S. personnel in Cuba with the Russian government?" "That's a very good question. I think it would be better to address that issue in a classified setting." "Why would the fact or lack of existence of a communication to the Russian government be something that we can't discuss in public?" "To give you the full reply would be required, and I believe that would be more appropriate in the classified setting." "Has Raul Castro ever said to any U.S. diplomat, 'I didn't do it, but it's possible that some of my guys did it without me knowing about it?'" "I do not believe that communication has ever occurred." "You don't want to discuss something that is not in a proper setting, or is that just you're you've just never heard?" "That is my recollection that I've never heard that." "O.K. "The meeting is adjourned." The U.S. has still not given an official explanation of the sound or its intent, if any. But its effect has been to play a big part in the current disengagement with Cuba. This is happening at a pivotal moment. Raul Castro is stepping down, and Miguel Diaz Canel will likely be president. "The notion that we have just a skeletal staff at the Embassy fewer people than we had during the time of isolation, is just unconscionable." "Well, the transition is not I mean, it's a one party transition. I mean the outcome's not in doubt. You know, you would love to see a new generation of leadership that begins to move in the right direction, and I think those moves would be reciprocated by American policy makers. But it's not going to happen because of a unilateral American opening. That was the flawed thinking behind an opening towards China, and China today is no more democratic and no more free than it was. And that was not the experience in the aftermath of the Obama opening. It did not lead to any changes in governance or on the economic condition of Cubans in the big picture." "After more than five very difficult decades, the relationship between our governments will not be transformed overnight." "What are we doing? We're pulling out of the game. They would prefer to buy American rice and American chicken. They would prefer to have Americans come down and do travel in Cuba. They like us. But if we're going to treat them in the way that we're treating them, they will make their own future without us. They say they've been making their future for the last 60 years without us, and they're prepared to do it, perhaps with some hyperbole, for another 60 years." music	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
Donald Trump's speech from the Oval Office Wednesday night was horrifying for many reasons: It seemed barely thought through, containing three misstatements that had to be clarified (two about international trade, sowing more confusion in an already volatile market); he spoke without humanity, when humanity is precisely what this first order crisis requires (peel off his back, and I'm convinced all we'll see are coils and springs); he blew a racist dog whistle while discussing a global health emergency (a "foreign" virus); he humped the same notes of self congratulation that his early decision to impose restrictions on travel to China was bold, that America is superbly prepared when the latter point is obviously untrue, and the former point is moot. But Trump's biggest crime Wednesday night was the short shrift he gave to what should have been his core message: Keep your distance. Yes, he mentioned it in passing, but only on the way to rah rahing himself, denigrating foreigners, and announcing policies that terrified the markets. This was an opportunity to drive home, over and over again, the one message that practically every public health expert says is essential to stemming community spread, lest the pandemic overwhelm our hospitals. He had the command of all the big networks. Yet he didn't. Then again, it's hardly a surprise. For Trump, the whole strategy of social distancing is a nightmare. It's inimical to his political interests. What last night's address made clear is that Donald J. Trump is no one and I mean no one, a naked emperor nullity without a crowd. Audiences are what energize him, give him his confidence, his king size certainty; it's at rallies that he A/B tests his ideas in real time. Without a press corps to troll or an adoring crowd to feed off, the man is a shell. No wonder that he was leaning on aides not to cancel recently scheduled campaign events in Colorado, Wisconsin and Nevada until the very last minute, and that his advisers had to prevail on him not to announce another rally in Florida, tentatively scheduled for the end of the month. As we saw Wednesday night, if you put him in a room with only a teleprompter and a camera, he can barely make it out of a sentence alive. And Trump has, as always, his enablers. Some of Trump's boosters on talk radio and Fox News may slowly be conceding that the coronavirus is a greater public health threat than the garden variety flu. (Not all, but some.) But immediately following his speech, Laura Ingraham was quick to challenge the wisdom of those who were preaching social distancing, implying, more or less, that it was an overreaction. What about the small business owner, she asked, who'd get pummeled by it? What about our right to assemble? What if the cure is worse than the disease? "Where the risk is minimal, the business of America must go on," she said, adding that closing down business "could end up being more catastrophic for America in the long term than this virus itself." Look: I'm not a doctor, and neither is Laura Ingraham. But public health experts are largely in agreement about this. If we don't "flatten the curve" which is to say, make sure our coronavirus patients come to our hospitals in manageable waves, rather than all at once then we will soon become Italy, where doctors are now facing the possibility of wartime triage, which would require making choices about who lives and who dies based on a patient's age, because there aren't enough beds and ventilators to go around. (If you haven't read Yascha Mounk's vivid, data driven piece in The Atlantic, do so, now.) But rather than flattening the curve, Fox is behind the curve. Each and every time. It is of course legitimate to worry about the fate of American businesses, large and small, and to fear for the short and long term security of American workers. But this swagger about carrying on business as usual goes beyond reflexive pro Trump and pro market reflexes. I am guessing that something about "remote work" strikes the Trump and Fox base possibly correctly as an option for the pampered. It's what the tech geeks of Twitter and Google do. It's what the writers and editors of The New York Times do. It's what the rich kids in Ivy League schools do, as do their comfortably tenured professors. Motoring on through adversity seems, at this moment, like the macho thing to do. Social distancing is seen as cowardly and weak, rather than what it truly is, which is altruistic and courageous. A real leader, one who's secure in his own skin and intellect, could explain the paradox of aggression through isolation. He could encourage cooperation through isolation too, explaining that the two needn't be incompatible. But we don't have a real leader. We have Trump. And we have Fox, whose relentless message is the same as that of Sept. 11: Go about your daily lives or the terrorists win. But pandemics aren't terrorists. Go about your daily lives and the virus wins. Viruses need crowds. True leadership means telling those crowds to disperse. We are finally starting to do that. The National Basketball Association has suspended its season; Major League Baseball has delayed its own opening day; St. Patrick's Day parades are being canceled in cities across the country and Broadway has shut down through April 12. But these changes are not happening because of Trump. They're happening in spite of him. He should applaud them from afar and find someone in his administration to explain why it was, in fact, an act of kindness and solidarity, a sign of strength. 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.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Opinion
SAN JOSE, Calif. Sorry, Apple's not sorry. There has been a theme at the tech industry's big conferences this year: Facebook and other tech giants keep telling us that they've learned from their mistakes and are going to be a lot more thoughtful about the far out stuff they plan on doing in the future. Apple has been cool to this narrative, and it was striking how the company's executives danced around the tech backlash story line from the stage on Monday at its annual conference for developers. Though Apple acknowledged the darker side of society's obsession with the digital world, it didn't go anywhere near the idea that its own technology might bear any of the blame. Apple did announce several new ways of letting adults and children limit how much time they spend on their phones. A tool called Screen Time, for example, is meant to help iPhone customers manage the time they spend on their devices. You can also add limits to how much you use certain apps. And parents will be able to use Screen Time to place limits on how their children use their iPhones. Apple's software chief, Craig Federighi, said the company felt it was time to address smartphones' oversize impact on everyday life. "For some of us, it's become such a habit we might not even recognize how distracted we've become," he said. These features looked quite handy we will know for sure once they're released to users this year. If they do push users to quit wasting so much time on Facebook and YouTube (where getting people to waste time is a big part of the business plan), they are sure to roil Apple's relationship with others in tech. But that is not Apple's problem; it is more concerned about selling you a new phone. Apple is also putting considerable resources into making its Watch stand apart from its phone, a direction that in the long run will create more opportunities to go without a phone. Are you wearing an Apple Watch instead of carrying an iPhone? In time, Apple may not care. But at its event here, Apple's support for what's being called "digital well being" often awkwardly butted up against Apple's larger goal: to make the digital world so awesome, you can't resist it. The next iPhone will let you turn your face into an emoji, and now it can even do "tongue detection" an animated version of your face can stick out its tongue when you do. With Apple's new augmented reality system, the iPhone can turn Legos into a video game. But if you can't even play with some Legos without reaching for your phone, isn't that kind of a problem? Apple wants to stand apart from the techlash with its emphasis on privacy and its oft stated distaste for the excesses of the internet ad industry. On Monday, the company said its Safari web browser would disable tracking software, or cookies, that advertising companies like Facebook and Google embed in websites to track users' activity across the internet. The new Safari feature is a direct swipe at the data collection practices of big internet companies that Apple has tried hard to separate itself from. Apple argues that it has always been one of the more high minded of the big tech companies, so it shouldn't be lumped in with outfits like Facebook. But that argument has always been a little complicated. Apple benefits from our obsession with social software; people buy its powerful phones to use Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat and WhatsApp. Google pays Apple billions of dollars a year for the privilege of being the iPhone's default search engine. "We aim to put the customer at the center of everything we do," Timothy D. Cook, Apple's chief executive, said several times Monday. That seemed like a promise as well as a backhanded defense. Apple will give you the world. What you do with it is your own problem.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
American Airlines wants you to know it would really, really appreciate it if you could ask before raising the window shade, and if you could not hog the armrest. Also, be nice to the flight attendants when they greet you. In a new campaign, which begins this week, aimed at the "world's greatest fliers," the airline says it wants to get away from fixating on features like the speed of its Wi Fi or the size of the entertainment console. Instead, the campaign praises travelers whose actions like ceding the armrest to the middle seat passenger make the in flight experience a better one. "Customers really have a huge impact on the flying experience," said Fernand Fernandez, American's vice president of global marketing. "Always upbeat, great fliers make the best of their situation no matter where they're sitting," one print ad says. Still, in an era of smaller seats, longer lines and increasing fees, it is an open question how receptive travelers will be to the message that a positive air travel experience is really in their control. "It's all a function of the environment they're faced with," said Robert Mann, a consultant for the airline industry. "If you're faced with ever fuller airplanes, with ever greater seating density, people's reactions are going to be moderate to poor anyway." The frustrations of flying are only magnified, he pointed out, when flights are delayed which was more likely to be the fault of an airline in 2015 than other factors like bad weather, airport and air traffic control problems or security bottlenecks, according to data from the Department of Transportation. John Thomas, the head of global aviation for L.E.K. Consulting, pointed out that the delivery of the campaign's message was critical to making it work. "It sounds like they're also trying to touch on civility in travel again. I think the industry as a whole is trying to subtly do that," Mr. Thomas said. When it comes to in flight etiquette, "I think the industry probably recognizes that a lot of people don't know how to define civility," he said, pointing out that infrequent fliers might not be aware of the unspoken code of good flier behavior. "This is a way of starting to educate people." Kevin Spacey was ordered to pay 31 million to the 'House of Cards' studio after sexual harassment allegations. Netflix buys a visual effects company in a move to support its global ambitions. Although the unspoken "rules" of flying are discussed in forums on websites like FlyerTalk.com, they generally remain unacknowledged by the casual traveler. This campaign aims to change that. "It's not just like these are tips on how to be a great flier. It's a way of thinking," said Ralph Watson, vice president and chief creative officer at Crispin Porter Bogusky Boulder, American's ad agency partner. "It's a slightly elevated sense of awareness for others; it's a little bit less selfish. I think a lot of this is to recognize that behavior and help it spread." Mr. Watson said American was aware of the need to use a deft touch. A tone consumers perceive as didactic could be a turnoff. "All we're doing is identifying their behaviors," he said, while leaving the directive implicit. "We're not saying, 'You should.'" Visually, the campaign is heavy on sweeping, wide open spaces, and it returns to prominence the airline's red and blue soaring eagle logo. It includes TV and online commercials, full page print ads in newspapers, ads outdoor and in airports, as well as social media promotion. Next month, American will begin integrating the campaign into sponsorships, as well as into its AAdvantage frequent flier program, and it also is using the campaign for internal marketing to its employees. "It starts with our employees and the contributions they make," Mr. Fernandez said. "We really wanted to take the tone of 'It's really you.' It's you the travelers and you the employee who kind of elevates the entire mood. Let's move that conversation from us and turn it onto them and how they really move us forward in creating a much better experience." In doing this, Mr. Thomas said the campaign also tapped into a broader push toward individualizing the travel experience at every step in the same vein as personalized in flight entertainment and merchandise, and more finely honed loyalty marketing, to AAdvantage members and the like, which airlines have started putting into effect. "I think the underlying tone is, because we recognize that people are different, we as an airline are going to try and treat people differently," Mr. Thomas said. "They want to experience their flying differently."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
El Espace is a column dedicated to news and culture relevant to Latinx communities. Expect politics, arts, analysis, personal essays and more. ?Lo mejor? It'll be in Spanish and English, so you can forward it to your tia, your primo Lalo or anyone else (read: everyone). In the 1999 Colombian telenovela "Yo Soy Betty, la Fea," viewers were introduced to the character of Beatriz "Betty" Pinzon Solano: a brilliant, accomplished woman in her mid 20s who is held back professionally because of her looks. Betty, played by the actress Ana Maria Orozco, had a unibrow, braces and blunt bangs. She wore oversized red framed glasses and unflattering clothes, and her voice was raspy in a swallowed a frog kind of way. In the telenovela, Betty struggles to find employment, despite her graduate degree in economics, so she ends up accepting a position as a secretary at a fashion company. There, she falls in love with her handsome boss, Armando, who, despite his initial revulsion, falls for her too. Betty's story struck a chord with viewers, in Colombia and elsewhere. "Betty, la Fea" has spawned remakes all over the world: In Mexico, there was "La Fea Mas Bella," starring Angelica Vale. In the United States, America Ferrera won an Emmy for her starring role in "Ugly Betty," which ran on ABC for four seasons . Production companies in Spain, Greece, the Philippines, Brazil and Thailand have all released their own versions. And last week, Telemundo premiered its own reboot, "Betty en NY." I'm a huge fan of the original. So huge that I refused to watch "Ugly Betty" when it aired on ABC. It could never match up, I thought. Betty was different from other female novela protagonists of the '90s and early aughts, because she was distinguished by her intellect rather than her looks. And despite the social barriers she faced as a result of others' superficiality, she never felt bad for herself. Instead, she and her friend Nicolas Mora even made light of their circumstances. In the very first episode of the Colombian original, Nicolas, joking about the challenges of finding a job, says they should try out for the circus. Betty, in a fit of laughter, adds that they could be hired to scare the lions into behaving.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
An Academy Award and Tony Award nominee, Anna Kendrick is known for her roles in film ("Up in the Air," "Pitch Perfect" and the "Twilight Saga" movies) and theater ("High Society"). She is also quite the Twitter star, issuing pithy pronouncements "I'm so humble it's crazy. I'm like the Kanye West of humility" to her three million followers. She plays Cinderella in the musical film "Into the Woods," which is nominated for a Golden Globe in the best motion picture, musical or comedy category. A native of Portland, Me., Ms. Kendrick, 29, lives in Los Angeles. BEE SHAPIRO I do this AKMD foaming face wash, which no one has ever heard of, but it's awesome if your skin is a bit oily. Then I do the SK II Facial Treatment Essence, which is like a toner. I feel like I turn over a new layer of skin every time I use it. I always end up breaking out when I fly a lot, but I've realized the most important thing when traveling is being moisturized. So now I'm using the Kate Somerville Nourish moisturizer. I'm really into lip cream. I have this one by Hourglass; it's an oil with this gold tip applicator, and it's schmancy schmancy. When you get to the point that your lips are cracking, the price is worth it. My sunscreen is Aveeno Smart Essentials moisturizer with SPF 30. I hate the way sunscreen smells. It always reminds me of being a kid and all sticky at the beach. This one just smells like lotion. Oh, and if you're not using Intuition razors, you're wasting everybody's time. It cuts your shower time in half. Whenever I hear someone is still using a separate shave gel (the Intuition has it in the razor), it's like hearing they still use dial up Internet.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
Joan Duddy, an influential curator and advocate for new dance as the founder and director of the dance program at the Dia Center for the Arts (now Joyce SoHo) in Manhattan for 18 years, died on Nov. 7 in Cambridge, Mass. She was 78. The cause was a brain hemorrhage, her brother David Duddy said. Ms. Duddy was a familiar presence on the downtown dance scene until 2004, when she retired from Joyce SoHo. A former dancer herself, she made the theater, a bare bones but pristine 74 seat space on Mercer Street, a welcoming home to artists ranging from the most fledgling of choreographers and dancers to established choreographers, among them Laura Dean, Molissa Fenley and Ralph Lemon. "She was the mom of downtown dance," said Robin Staff, a dancer and the producer of the DanceNOW festival. "Her net was wide."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
Is the Floor Sloping or What? For eight years, Edward Tulin rented in Manhattan, all the while saving for a down payment. By last year, he was living in a one bedroom in a midrise rental building in the theater district, paying 2,900 a month. He was interested in buying a one bedroom co op for 550,000 to 750,000 on the West Side below Columbus Circle with good subway access. "But you pretty much have subway access all along the West Side, so that kind of took care of itself," said Mr. Tulin, 33, a patent lawyer. Meanwhile, his partner, Joel Fineman, 26, was sharing an East Village three bedroom with two roommates, paying 1,300 a month. Mr. Fineman, who works for an advertising company helping publishers develop portraits of their online audiences, was willing to relinquish his much hipper location. He organized a rigorous schedule of open houses, planning "marathon days" of up to nine apartment viewings. One contender was a one bedroom with a foyer and a dining area on West 55th Street, close to the theater district but removed from its din. The price had dropped from 675,000 to 625,000, with monthly maintenance of almost 1,700. The kitchen featured pale colors Mr. Fineman described it as "country farm style." The view was of a parking lot. Mr. Tulin offered 600,000 "to reflect the necessary updates and supporting comparables," Mr. Lynch said. The seller agreed, but the deal fell apart without explanation. That experience "solidified the resolve to actually make it happen," Mr. Tulin said. He didn't think he could afford a place in Chelsea, but up popped a one bedroom on West 15th Street for 725,000. Maintenance was around 900 a month. The south facing apartment, on a low floor, was flooded with light. But construction was starting right outside on a 12 story building. The light wouldn't last. And the floors were sloped "dramatically so," Mr. Tulin said. "It was making me a little dizzy." That one later sold for 736,000. Such strange features seemed "a uniquely New York thing," Mr. Tulin said. One place had no stove, just a microwave. Another had a tiny living room with one window, while the massive bedroom had many. Reorganization of the space would have the kitchen sharing the bedroom. Though the men were initially reluctant to hunt north of Columbus Circle, they grew to appreciate the Upper West Side. "I didn't know there was so much dimension to the West Side until we spent so many mornings walking around," Mr. Fineman said. "There are so many different personalities." They traveled northward to a large and handsome one bedroom on Riverside Drive in the 90s. But only one lender would deal with the building, which was occupied by a high percentage of renters. A purchase there seemed risky. Nevada Towers, on Broadway south of the 72nd Street subway station, seemed right. "We had seen so many old, nice buildings but the apartments inside needed a lot of love," Mr. Fineman said. This one, built in 1977, was neither old nor new. "It was refreshing to see three large elevators going up 30 floors. It was the tallest building that we looked at." They saw a fully renovated sponsor unit for 595,000, with maintenance of around 1,850 a month. They liked the rectangular rooms and separate triangle shape kitchen, large enough for two to cook. But there were several offers, three above the asking price. It sold for 623,000. Just a few weeks later, another sponsor unit in the same line, almost identical but on a lower floor, came available. "The view on the higher floor was better, but the view on their floor was great," Mr. Lynch said. Mr. Tulin bought the place for 610,000. Maintenance is around 1,800 a month. The renovation wasn't finished, so they were able to select the kitchen appliances. Mr. Tulin appreciated "having the opportunity to make these choices but not having to go through the hassle of doing a renovation all on my own." They arrived in late spring.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
The main street in Gracanica, a village on the outskirts of Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, is lined with bakeries and markets strung together in a jumble until the shop fronts give way to a high stone wall. Step to the other side, and the hum of Volkswagens and Skodas falls away almost entirely. At the center of a wide lawn sits Gracanica Monastery, a masterpiece of late Byzantine ecclesiastical architecture, its rosy domes like steppingstones that draw the eye and the spirit toward the sky. Gracanica was the last monastery constructed, in the early 14th century, by the Serbian King Stefan Milutin, who had promised God that he would build a church for each of the 40 odd years of his reign. Inside the nave, scarcely an inch of the stone shows through the hundreds of frescoes that ascend the walls and pool in the arches of the cupolas. One need not count oneself among the faithful to be silenced by the suffusion of contemplation and color seabed blue, the opulent scarlets and gold halos of the sainted patriarchs of the Serbian Orthodox Church, their faces blackened remarkably little over seven centuries. When I visited Gracanica, a protected Unesco World Heritage site, in late May, Trojan Parlic, a caretaker with delicately graying curls and a corduroy blazer, led me to a rendering in the church's nave of 16 branches of the medieval ruling dynasty. Christ the Pantocrator floated protectively at the summit. Mr. Parlic told me that the entire interior had been completed over three years, from 1318 to 1321, by two artists from Thessaloniki. "So the painters were Greek?" I said. Mr. Parlic shrugged. "I don't know if they were Greeks or if they were Serbs. It doesn't matter." Ah, but it does. Kosovo has long been called "Serbia's Jerusalem" because of the important medieval monasteries, like Gracanica, within its borders. It is also where the 1389 Battle of Kosovo, a defining event in the creation myth of Serbian civilization, took place. On the Kosovo plain, a valley that opens out to the northwest of Gracanica, the Christian Serbs were, according to the myth, defeated by the Muslim Turks and subsequently endured 500 years of domination under Ottoman rule. In the years leading to the breakup of Yugoslavia, Serbian epic poetry idealizing the martyrdom of 1389 breathed life into nationalist ideology that held Kosovo as the Serbian homeland "composed of heaven and earth." The countryside on the drive towards the Visoki Decani monastery in Kosovo. Danielle Villasana for The New York Times The myths can be and have been deconstructed, but that didn't prevent them from being used as propaganda by the Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic in an ethnic cleansing campaign against Kosovo's Albanians in the late 1990s. A NATO intervention in 1999 helped stop the violence, and in 2008, with the backing of the United States, Kosovo declared itself independent from Serbia as a new, majority Albanian state. At Gracanica, I stood next to Mr. Parlic before the figure of John the Baptist washing the darkness from Christ, while just above them the soldiers of a Roman army battalion advance into the frame, demanding to be baptized. This was the first instance, Mr. Parlic told me, of medieval iconography displaying pagans who sought to become Christians. Mr. Parlic leaned in closer to me. "Are you very religious?" he said. I took that as my exit cue, and made my way across the clean lawn. From there it was a seven minute walk through town to my hotel. Hot pink stucco houses tumbled down a country road, and a scattering of wire chicken coops backed up against freshly laid brick sidewalks. Around a bend lay Hotel Gracanica, Kosovo's first and only boutique hotel. All right angles and clean lines of white terrazzo and Austrian pine, the hotel has a monastic air unto itself. It was opened three years ago by Andreas Wormser, a Swiss attache who worked in the refugee section of the Swiss embassy in Kosovo after the war. He returned to Bern in 2004 but grew bored with the bureaucracy and came back to Kosovo to invest. Mr. Wormser found local partners in Hisen Gashnjani, who had worked as a translator at the embassy, and Atlan Gidjic, whom he'd met at a concert in the town where Mr. Gidjic lives. "We quickly became "kucni prijatelji," Mr. Gidjic told me, "home friends." The partners had hoped for a rural location, but after two years searching the treacherous market for a land permit ("It's never boring here," Mr. Wormser told me), they compromised by laying out the hotel at the edge of town in a slender "L"; the 15 rooms line the length of the edifice, each with a single wall of solid glass that looks out back onto quiet hills planted with corn, the bluish outline of Kosovo's more dramatic mountain ranges the Accursed Mountains hovering beyond. The airy tranquillity of the building, which opened in 2013, evokes a kind of Balkan Grand Budapest Hotel with its hard won inoculation from the swirl of politics outside. It seems hard to believe, but Hotel Gracanica is also one of the few multiethnic businesses in Kosovo, where Albanian and Serb communities remain in de facto segregation, and is perhaps the only hotel in the world with a majority Roma management. In late May, just shy of the summer season, I found myself the only diner in the hotel restaurant on a Saturday night, its pine tables covered in bright geometric textiles from a nearby town. In a short time I had before me a full platter of meze in the Kosovar style, which is Turkish inspired but distinctly Balkan: ground chicken and beef kofte, mushrooms stuffed with carrot and creme fraiche, hot peppers cooked in spicy yogurt, accompanied by a large disc of pitarke bread, which is like pita but softer inside, and was clearly intended for multiple diners though I finished it all myself without any problem. Ajvar, a sweet red pepper jam, brightens everything. I wasn't surprised to learn that the hotel is not yet turning a profit. It asserts its role as a community hub by hosting shows for local artists and musicians, and its weekend brunch draws guests from Pristina's sizable expat crowd (the European Union maintains a heavy presence in local governance). British lawyers laze next to the pool as the afternoon sun arcs over the hills, gossiping about recent convictions of Albanian mobsters and future postings to Africa before heading back to Pristina, a 15 minute drive away. The city is a postwar boomtown of sorts, with luxury high rises popping up in every other neighborhood and cranes in primary colors punctuating the skyline. Everyone seems to know but won't say what's driving the boom; Kosovo remains one of the poorest countries in Europe, and corruption has helped keep it there. Still, 70 percent of the population is under 35, and many corners of Pristina rock with energy. On a weekend evening outside Dit e Nat, a bookstore of exposed brick and reclaimed wood floors that is also a cafe and event space, 30 somethings stood on a patch of gravel drinking Birra Prishtina and smoking Winstons while a Romany rock group performed. A man in Breton stripes introduced himself as an anarchist, despite, or perhaps because of, his being employed by the Interior Ministry. Women in chambray and lipstick the color of a Bic Lady razor browsed shelves displaying Salman Rushdie's "The Satanic Verses" in Albanian, and a friend handed me a thimble sized plastic cup spilling over with plum raki, the local brandy, which I sipped, with a choke. Back at Hotel Gracanica, the staff helped arrange for a Serb driver to pick me up at six o'clock on Sunday morning. We drove across the Kosovo plain, through the early morning shadows, toward the Visoki Decani monastery, reputedly one of the most beautiful places in the western Balkans. The monasteries have been viewed as symbols of Serbian oppression during moments of tension, and have been the target of protests. Outside the town we slalomed between brightly striated roadblocks that led to a checkpoint, where Italian marines, remnants of the NATO forces during the war, photographed our license plate before letting us inside the property. The Decani monks are also known for their magnificent chanting. On Sunday morning the church's nave, cool and damp and smelling lightly of incense, fills with the clear harmonies of the monks' voices during an hourlong liturgy, the textures expanding into diminished chords before resolving into the consensus of unison. Among the hundreds of darkened frescoes, strips of light from a few high placed windows irradiate the face of the Madonna, her mystical gaze inviting the worshiper to trust that what is unknowable to the human mind might be experienced through the ecstasy of the spirit. Afterward, while visitors sipped raki, I spoke with Father Sava Janjic, the abbot of Decani. Father Sava is known for his humanist views he has been criticized by Serb nationalists for helping Albanians during the war, and by Albanian nationalists for his firm stance on protecting Decani and other Orthodox sites. He is also known for emphatically expressing these views on Twitter, which has earned him the title of "cyber monk." He served me sweet apple juice from the monastery orchard. "We happen to be something different, which doesn't fit into someone's political and historical narrative," Father Sava told me, his face framed by a halo of frizzy blond hair, his expression soft except when he hit on a particularly urgent thought. The day before, the church had won a 16 year lawsuit over ownership of the property. "Unfortunately there seem to be some people who believe that they have to change history and everything in the nation building process," he said. "But I always say the identity of these places has to be understood in layers." The drive back to Hotel Gracanica took me past a construction lot promising "luxury living" at something called the Diamond Residence, and a BMW dealership that had been erected next to a junkyard. The country seemed to be barreling ahead in its rush to cover up the old layers with new ones. Maybe, it occurred to me, that's not the only way. IF YOU GO Hotel Gracanica (Ul. Dragana Ristica, Gracanica, Kosovo; hotelgracanica.com). Prices range from 50 euros for a single room to 130 euros for a small studio ( 56 to 145). In the hotel's restaurant, the Saturday night meze platter is 8.50 euros, and Sunday brunch is 10 euros. Visoki Decani Monastery To arrange a visit contact the monastery through its Facebook page: facebook.com/Decani.Manastir. Or email: v.decani gmail.com.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
Morton Schindel, who turned beloved children's books into animated films narrated by actors like Meryl Streep and James Earl Jones while preserving the spirit of the original illustrations, died on Saturday at his home in Weston, Conn. He was 98. His death was confirmed by Scholastic, which acquired his company, Weston Woods Studios, in 1996. Animated children's movies are often designed to entice them to buy toys, attend theme parks or watch sequels. Mr. Schindel approached his films with a different goal. "A film should bring kids back to the book," he told The New York Times in 1985. Mr. Schindel founded Weston Woods in 1953, inspired by a trip to the children's room of the New York Public Library, where he read classics like Robert McCloskey's "Make Way for Ducklings" and Ludwig Bemelmans's "Madeline." But he did not want to sacrifice the books' lush illustrations to animate them. So he invented a camera technique he called "iconographic," which involved mounting images from the original book on a movable stand in front of a camera. The images remained stationary, but the filmmaker could introduce cinematic elements by carefully moving the stand, manipulating the camera and adjusting the amount of light on the image being filmed.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
It is always fun to watch the creases in McKellen's face as the gears turn in Roy's head, and the actor appears to get a kick out of switching on a dime between fragile Roy and menacing Roy. But during her offscreen time, Betty is what? Could a retired Oxford professor really be d umb enough to fall for the idea that she and Roy, who have by this point started living together but are still platonic companions, open a joint account? Why would Mirren, no one's notion of a damsel in distress, take a role that allows her to be little more than a helpless victim? Asking such questions is the wrong way to approach this movie, which involves several layers of misdirection. Unfortunately, the director, Bill Condon, whose first film with McKellen was the much more interesting "Gods and Monsters" in 1998, is not an Alfred Hitchcock or a Brian De Palma a filmmaker with a visual style seductive enough to offer distraction from the grinding plot mechanics, which are especially clunky here. The sleight of hand "The Good Liar" tries to pull off might be easier to keep hidden on the page. As it progresses, the film reveals complications ( it plays particularly dubious tricks with the way it parcels out flashbacks to the 1940s ) and a motive that might as well have been picked out of a hat. The finale could be written with entirely different details, and almost no scene preceding it would have to change. The real good liar is whoever convinced Mirren and McKellen to class up such thin and arbitrary material.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies

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